As you all know, I love to bake, and when I only had a few people working for me, it seemed like a great idea to give them Christmas cookies as a gift. I made some to serve after Christmas dinner, and the rest I gave away. Over the years, the department has grown, and the cookie making was getting completely out of control.

This year, I was noodling over how to avoid spending days and days baking and wrapping without disappointing everyone (they start talking about their cookie bags in November), and I happened to glance at some mason jars left over from some project or another. I decided that filling them with delicious hot fudge sauce from Perfect Scoop (David Lebovitz) and baking a batch of everyone's favorite cookies (fudge ribbon bars) would be the perfect compromise. So I did. I put a jar of sauce and a small bag of cookies on everyone's desk this morning, and everyone seems happy. Whew.

Thanks to S, our Christmas dinner will also be less stressful. She no longer eats meat, so roast and popovers are out. kristenlou came up with the brilliant idea of making seafood casserole, which I've had twice at her house and is fantastic. It's not even fattening, being from Cooking Light, so it's pretty much perfect. Don't worry, it doesn't taste light.

Only 1.5 days of work left this week, and then we're off until after New Year's, a break I'm really looking forward to. Now, we just need to get D cheered up. He made a supreme effort to get into the holiday spirit this year, but now we are having some problems with heating and other stuff at our rental project, and he's not coping too well.

This post made me happy. So well done.

An eventful long weekend, some good, some bad. Thanksgiving was terrific. Got to spend the whole day with D, we even walked up the street together with the dog to get coffee, something we never have time for. We had a great meal at kristenlou's followed by a long walk and some game playing. I made an apple pie with a crumb topping and a pumpkin tart with a graham crust. Both were very well received. The pumpkin recipe was one I hadn't made before from Ina Garten; she never lets me down.

On Friday, S and I braved the crowds to try to find some clothing bargains. Got a couple of cashmere sweaters at a good price. Would have bought more but really couldn't find anything I liked. The crowds weren't that bad; I think the early shoppers had left by the time we arrived. After shopping we went to H Mart, a new Asian supermarket with a food court. Had delicious bibimbap and had a great time exploring the food aisle. As a bonus, we ran into doctor_mama!

Friday night, D came home in a good mood having spend the day at the nightmare project while the owner was away and gotten a lot done. The same cannot be said for Saturday. She came home from her Thanksgiving trip and immediately started making him crazy. He was again ready to take his tools out of there and leave the project half finished. I won't bore you with details, but this woman is a piece of work. D also hurt his back during the week, so that isn't helping his mood. Every time I think the project is getting near completion, more bad things happen. He has promised not to work any more weekends now that the stove and fridge are back in the kitchen, and I hope he keeps to that.

Saturday morning, I took A out to breakfast. I figured she planned to be pleasant or she wouldn't have agreed to go, but with a teenager, you never know. We had a fine time, and she talked to me like a normal person. The way she acted when we were in France. She is doing better in school and seems a bit more upbeat. We did not talk about her living situation or the past hostilities, just chatted about regular stuff. We have four tickets to the Boston Pops right before Christmas, and I asked her if she still wanted to go, and she said yes, so she is certainly leaving the door open to a relationship of some kind. I plan to just take things as they come and not worry about the future.

Having the crappiest day. Several companies are rewriting their stories, which is awful. But then they are insisting we run them, which is much worse.

I was reading Frank Bruni's recent NYT review of Union Square Cafe and had to share this paragraph, which I think is just brilliant:

It gives the best phone in the business, its staff so seemingly genuine in their yearning to accommodate you and their contrition when they can’t that Danny Meyer, the restaurateur who insists on this flamboyant hospitality, must be giving them either Method acting classes or major pharmaceuticals. Maybe both.

::snort::

And the woman on the phone in customer support WOULD NOT stop talking to me as though I were a three-year-old. Even after I asked her! Twice!

"Well, the thing is, ma'am, our policy, ma'am, is to have you blah blah blah, ma'am." In an unbelievably condescending tone. "Excuse me, Frigidaire CSR, but I was wondering if you realize that there's an actual person here on the other end of the phone who did not recently have a lobotomy!"

We bought three Frigidaire fridges from Best Buy for the apartments in Lynn. One of them, bought on May 1, died this week. Called Frigidaire to get repair company names, called all three, got one to come. She tried replacing the relay, no go, which means the compressor is gone. On a two-month-old appliance!

Tenant had just gone grocery shopping, of course.

Repair woman does not have equipment to fix compressor. Call another. Also does not have equipment to fix compressor. Call another, cannot come until next week. Call Frigidaire, perhaps they will just replace it since it's ONLY TWO MONTHS OLD AND SHOULD NOT HAVE DIED? No, they will not unless one of their repair people says it's not repairable. Call first woman, will she do this? No, it IS repairable, she just can't repair it.

@#$@%^%E$$@#!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Get more numbers of authorized repair people and call yet another. Yes, he can replace compressor. But not until next week. And even though a repair person has said it's not the relay, he has to come see for himself AND NOT FIX IT the first time. Then order the parts and wait a while and jack around and then finally come fix it.

We are buying the tenant a mini-fridge for the interim and paying for the groceries she lost. And D will have to come back early from our vacation to meet the repair person on Weds so he can look at--but not fix--the fridge. This is actually okay as he has a bunch of other work going on and really can't take a whole week off right now.

It's not the vacation part that I mind. It's the stupidity part.

I really like this guy's paintings. Yes, they're expensive.

If any of you watch Food Network, you'll appreciate this site. Very funny.

Just finished The Piano Teacher by Janice Y. K. Lee. Really worth reading. Well written, good characters, interesting setting. Hong Kong during WWII.

This article is very funny.

This Web site is appalling. Go ahead, look anyway.

Eew. Just eew.

A did two things this weekend she hasn't done in a very long time. First, she sat down and talked with me for about 15 minutes without asking me for anything. We talked about her summer reading requirements and her school schedule for next year. Second, she sat with S in S's room and chatted with her for about 30 minutes while they did their nails. She normally has no contact with S at all other than a few minutes during dinner with no real conversation.

She is obviously making an effort to act like a human. She did not complain when I told her she was on dish duty on Weds night. She left a few things for me to wash, of course, but hey, one step at a time, right?

Check out this cake. She made those bananas out of marzipan. She's amazing. Nuts, but amazing.

S and I went to the Boston Pops last night and had an incredible time. We were in the first row on the third balcony, and we could see anything. It was a tribute to Richard Rogers, the first half tunes from Rogers & Hart, and the second half was Rogers & Hammerstein. I had given S a few nights to choose from, and she chose this because she loves Broadway musicals. They had two major vocals (one male, one female), and large cast of secondary players. I had no idea there would be so much singing, and it was just perfect for S. The performances were excellent, and the girls wore beautiful silk gowns. My favorite number was Surrey With The Fringe On Top, an awesome arrangement in a swing style. We got to bed very late, and tonight is parent's night at her school, but it was worth it.

We had dinner at Betty's Noodle beforehand. The food was good, but it's really overpriced.

Back from Paris. Trip was great, flights were horrendous. Do not fly Aer Lingus--we had a three-hour Dublin layover on the way back that ended up being eight hours, and it was like 30 degrees in the cabin for the entire six-hour flight.

Here are some things we saw/did: rode to the top of the Eiffel Tower, spent a day at Versailles, walked along the St Martin Canal, went on a dinner cruise on a Bateau Mouche, climbed up Montmatre to see the Sacre Coeur, briefly toured the inside of Notre Dame.

Here are the museums we went to: Louvre, Rodin, L'Orangerie, and Musee D'Orsay. All kids under 18 get into museums for free--awesome! The D'Orsay is amazing not only for the art but the execution of turning a train station into a museum without making it seem like a very odd train station with art on the walls.

Here are food things we did: ate caramel ice cream at Bertillion (a top-five food experience), ate at two non-touristy bistros, bought macarons at Laduree (to die for), bought pastries at Pierre Herme (also to die for), bought caramels and chocolates at Jaques Genin (caramels awesome, chocolates we haven't eaten yet), had crepes made for us by a French man (my step-sister's fiance), ate crepes from several street vendors, went to an outdoor market, had a picnic in the Jardin de Luxembourg (so beautiful), and ate a six-course dinner at Dome du Marais.

The pictures are still in the camera, but I will post some this weekend.

Off to Atlanta tomorrow to speak at a magazine conference.

I really liked this post from John Halamka, who blog I read regularly for work. It's an interesting way to look at what's been going on in the world lately.

D has been working every weekend on the third-floor unit of the new house, and it's really coming along. He replaced one window, both entry doors and both bedroom doors. He also put bead-board up in one of the closets that was a mess and in the built-in pantry. I did some cleaning and some painting, and he'll be starting on the kitchen soon. Here's the living room before he started ripping things up.



Here's the kitchen now.



We'll replace that half cabinet with a regular-sized one so it won't look so stupid. The cabinets aren't the best quality, but they're new, so they'll stay. The countertop will be new (tiled) and extend around to the left in an L. New stove is coming, along with a fridge that will have to go on the other side of the kitchen because there's nowhere else to put it.

S played the witch in her school production of Into the Woods (junior). I know it's bragging, but she was the best one. For one thing, you could hear her (most of the kids talked and sang too softly). For another thing, she is really coming into her own in terms of being on stage, and she's got a great sense of comic timing. I attribute this to my dad, who taught everyone he loved about great humor. He would have been excited beyond belief to have seen her shine in this role because he was a huge Sondheim fan. Here she is in her wig and cape:



With her best friend, who played (obviously) Little Red Riding Hood.



The performance was a couple of weeks ago, and since then, S tried out for the local production of Annie and got the part of Lily St Regis. This is the woman who pretends to be Annie's mother, and in one of the movies, the part is played by Bernadette Peters--which is funny because Peters played the witch in Into the Woods on Broadway.

Yeah, so, no surprise--no closing today. It's extended until the 19th. Onward.