Bagelin'

Before:


After:


The first bagel recipe I ever tried was from the Tassajara Bread Book and it was essentially challah donuts and honestly, it wasn't very tasty, even for challah. The next recipe I tried was from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice and they turned out bubbly, thin and ugly. From my limited bagel knowledge I would say they're more of a Montreal bagel instead of the New York that I was looking for. The bagel recipe I've been trying out now is from Baking Illustrated is great and I would argue ideal for the home baker - simple, straightforward, delicious. The only change I would make to their directions is in forming the bagel: instead of rolling out a round of dough into little dough snake and sticking the ends together it's way easier to take the round of dough and push your thumbs through the middle and stretch out a hole.

Sid Luscious and The Pants: awesome. Also: Sid Luscious is Anu! (For those of you who aren't a Sawyer - Anu is George's cousin Iran's husband...so George's cousin-in-law?) Surprise!

people doing stuff at museums

Look, it's my Pa! He's famous.

We took the afternoon off and went to the MOMA to see Olafur Eliasson.

Tomorrow evening we're going to see Sid Luscious and the Pants, per an invite from Iran. Oddly enough it's also at a museum.

Halley's here attending the Game Developers Conference (oddly it's not at a museum).

benz fleet

granted it's a very small fleet... but we like it. yannick's is an '81 wagon with 225,ooo miles. apparently over 75% of these cars are still on the road. mercedes has a high mileage club.


left to right: curtis, liz, pia, jenne, turbo, consuelo, zoe, yannick


jenne has named her evinrude. we gave her a wash and wax today.

It's for true.

George definitely bought the Mercedes.

Benz Blitz

It's true. I think we're going to buy it. I was on the freeway last week and noticed all the traffic going in the opposite direction had stopped. In the middle of the road was a car, or rather half a car, rather a car half the length a car should be. It had been rear ended by some big SUV... and it was newer car too. It got me thinking about what would happen to the Rabbit if it got in an accident... I'm sure the results would not be pretty. I decided that as much as I like the idea of the Rabbit (small, good gas mileage, alternative fuel, sweet design, easy to work on)... I'd much prefer to be alive. So I started looking for cars that had some of these qualities, but would also leave the occupant intact in an accident. The Mercedes 300D is perfect. It's built like a tank, as opposed to a tin can, it will run just fine on biodiesel (in fact this one has been for 2yrs), it's pretty easy to work on (and unlike the rabbit it'll be reliable), and in it's own way it's a pretty sweet design. I wasn't planning on actually getting one until after the Rabbit had sold, but this opportunity is too good to pass up. It's rare to find one with under 200k miles, even around here, in the Mercedes Mecca. They usually make it to at least 500k. This one was driven by a little old German lady named Ulga (I think) for the first ~120k miles. It turns out Yannick went to highshool with the current owner. He's had it for 2 1/2 years, and the only reason he's selling is that he's headed to Australia.

Anyway. I just got the proper bracket for the transmission. I'd better go reassemble ol' bun rab. It's been good, but I think this is a smart move. Plus the 300D has "modern" features! power steering! and a sunroof! and it's oh so quiet....

Manic panic

If only this had been the case.

No, no. We ended our Thursday and started our Friday with some manic panicking - well, no, that's not accurate, only I panicked. We let Boy and Girl out last night around dinner and by 9, 10, 11...only Girl had come in for the night. By 8:30 this morning Boy was still unaccounted for; the last time this happened Boy was waiting eagerly for breakfast. I came home from work and we scoured the yard - under the house, by the creek, under the cars, in the bushes, in other parking lots - nothing. We were 99% sure that Boy doesn't wander beyond the houses on either side of us and occasionally across the street, so we tried across the street. Out of no where comes mysterious, nervous and loud meowing! With the help of our well honed deductive reasoning skills and ears we tracked him up a tree, where Boy was poised between two branches, eyes as big as golf balls. George climbed the tree, plucked the my-claws-are-still-embedded-in-the-bark cat, brought him inside and we promptly stuffed him full of cat food and half and half and put eye drops in his scratched cornea. He's been sleeping for about five hours.

Continuing our automobile epic: the transmission has yet to be installed due to having the incorrect transmission mount, I think. Luckily, the fellow George bought the transmission from has the correct one and is being nice enough to drop it off tomorrow morning, so by afternoon we should operating on all five speeds. The real auto excitement takes place tonight though - when we look at a 1985 Mercedes 300D! It's true, we're considering a different car. Why? Well, something to do with safety, reliability...etc. Apparently the owner of this particular Mercedes is leaving for 10 months starting tomorrow, so this one may not work out.

Weird: A couple guys in a big, old, piece of shit car just pulled into our driveway and either deposited a lot of glass bottles or took a lot of glass bottles from our recycling.

Ye olde bullet style...

- Curtis found a place in Berkeley.
- Got to play with Dyani's new kittens!
- Saw the Whoreshoes and had dinner at Suppenkuche.
- Boy got his cornea scratched and third eyelid cut. We took him to the vet and the doctor used a stain to see if Boy had any cuts in his eye and it made him look like he was crying antifreeze. (Now he's got eye drops and should be fine.)
- Jenne's sick. And got a raise!
- It's 60 and sunny.
- Finally saw Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and was astounded it was actually three hours long - George believes it's one of the worst movies he's ever seen, Jenne would like to see it again because, naturally, she was too tired to really pay attention.
- Finally saw Juno and loved it. (Like everybody else.)

The most exciting bullet:
- George is working on replacing our four-speed transmission with a "new," fancy five-speed! He got the old one out yesterday and as soon as he has some more free time will get the new one in...along with a brand new clutch! (He might put up some pictures later.)

Moving update, etc.

Don't worry, we're still moving. Despite my optimism and wishful thinking it looks like the move will be pushed back to April/May. I keep feeling like we're not actually going to leave and that it'll keep getting pushed back more and more but George is standing strong that we're still going. All the reasons we're not leaving in March are sort of out of our hands (but if we really wanted to be gone we'd go.)

My computer came! It looks almost exactly like George's!

Curtis is here! He showed up a few days ago with all his stuff in his car and we've been dragging him around the area. Today he starts his hunt for a place to live in Berkeley.