Traffic Savvy

Thanks for bearing with the irregular updates over the past few weeks. I haven't been too busy to blog -- just the opposite. I have plenty of time to blog, but nothing to write about. "Dear relatives, today I did the dishes and took out the compost." "Dear relatives, I played Jak II (a PS2 game) today and beat seven straight missions before my eyeballs melted."

Today, however, I have a topic. I'm going to tell you all about my Traffic Adventure. First, though, I had a truly lovely lunch with Grandma at La Luna, including a peanut butter chocolate cake with exactly the right proportion of peanut butter to chocolate.* I have a sneaking suspicion that I said that more than once while enjoying dessert. Absentminded, or early senility? You decide!

Anyway, I drove from Springfield to New Haven in about an hour, racing rush hour all the way down. I hit the 91-95 Junction at 5:15 and it was awful. That area is pretty well-designed, considering the circumstances, and its complexities always make me think of thriving arteries carrying commuters through cities heaving for breath. The junction at rush hour was a beautiful illustration of an artery in need of bypass surgery.

So I hopped off 91 into downtown New Haven and immediately hit a wall of brakelights. Ten minutes later, I pulled free of the four-block blockage and struck out East, avoiding signs for the highway, crossing bridges as I went. I had to call Dad once or twice, but I made it through to East Haven and then back to 95, heading always for the darkest part of the sky.

That was my only adventure today; and if I deemed that worth including, imagine what entries I've spared you lately. Stay tuned for a Wednesday blog and maybe, just maybe, a Friday.

Then on Saturday: back to snowy Oberlin and my own sweet Keep!

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* I prefer a ratio of roughly 1:6.

Live on Oberlin Blogs and Chock-Full of Cookie Dough

I don't have a whole lot to say today, but I do have an exciting announcement: I'm live on the Oberlin Bloggers website! My personal site is here. From there you can navigate to individual entries, or use the links at the top to find other bloggers' entries about life, Oberlin, and life at Oberlin. I recommend it: it's a very cool group of people with good writing skills and a lot to say! Mom read a lot of blog last spring while we were deciding if Oberlin was the right place for me, especially Ma'ayan's and Eli's.

In other news, I found a wonderful egg-free chocolate chip cookie recipe online. Why egg-free? So you can eat the dough, of course! We used butter, so we ended up with very flat, creamy cookies. I just went to take a picture of the plateful of cookies, but there was only one left, so I ate it instead.

Muffaasssa.

This is Mufasa, according to Aaron, who so kindly took a picture of the snow-sculpture once I was done. I have always wanted an imposing lion at the gate to our grand country estate. 

There might be more snow animals to come. I hope you, unlike my lion, are all warm and snug!

Thank You!

I have been lucky enough to receive several care packages since the beginning of the school year. I've enjoyed them thoroughly, starting with the gasp of excitement at the mailroom and a familiar anticipation almost as delicious as the food itself. (A little more delicious, in fact, than some: the box from home containing snowboots, for example.)

I have shared them with my friends, devouring them fairly continuously until we somehow find the willpower to stash them out of sight. I have given whole plates away as gifts and then "borrowed" a few back on room visits. I've also used certain goodies as payments for haircuts and incentives for house cleanings (after eating as many as I wanted). But I have not, at least publicly, thanked any of my benefactors -- mainly Nana. So, thank you, Nana! And thank you, Mom, for racking up ridiculous USPS charges to send me essentials like a winter coat that I insisted I wouldn't need until Thanksgiving. I needed it around November 3rd.

... Anyway. My latest culinary delight, the cause of this post, has come in the form of a gorgeous Edible Arrangement from Papa and Grandma. Here is a picture of the confection from the front, for those of you who aren't familiar with them:

Beautiful, no?

Also delicious. Here is a picture of the confection from the side near my computer:

I think the picture speaks for itself. Thank you for the fruit bouquet!

Anyway, I hope all of you are enjoying the snow (or lack of it, depending on where you find yourself). Ciao!

Snowed In

I am doing well, as I hope all of you are. I'm enjoying the snow day and the polite silence of the four hooligans who traipsed through the kitchen about an hour ago and left their cocoa to get cold. (Oh well. It's in microwavable mugs.)

I'm missing Oberlin terribly, of course, but Harbor Street is enchanting under its mantle of snow, and even the hooligans (reminded of their cocoa) are rather charming. I haven't any updates, really. My project today is going to be a simple paper incense burner made out of book scraps from my toolbox project. Speaking of the toolbox project, here is a picture of the inlay for the first compartment:

The picture shows it in the process of being laid out, but it is now complete on a separate piece of paper. When I'm done, it will look at first glance as if I carved every page in the outline of the inlaid tools.

Wish me luck as I work on the second compartment -- it's larger, but less complicated. Maybe I'll start on it tomorrow?

One Galaxy and One Menagerie

It is occasionally a little difficult to concentrate on writing a blog entry when there is a cat on your lap, stretching, purring contentedly and digging razor-sharp claws into your thigh. Especially when that cat is watching a dog watching two other dogs wrestle over a rope. So if I sign off early, you'll know why.

So what's with the cat? My friend John and I are in Maine, visiting Ali and Nikki, some folks from a conference called PeaceJam. Nikki has an entire menagerie of animals! The zoo includes Chance and Deuce, two labs with sweet dispositions and energy to spare; two bipolar lap cats who will either purr and lick your invading hand or attempt to savage it; and a rabbit. Hannah, a puppyish spaniel, visited on Saturday morning.

Here is a picture of Deuce taken a few years ago in Caribou, presumably by Nikki:

Despite the picture, he is more likely to spend his time bellying up to the nearest human in search of a head rub than chasing after a ball -- unlike Chance, a tireless lab-greyhound-boxer mix who will fetch anything anyone is willing to throw.

Nikki's mom graciously allowed us to join the three kids and five animals for a weekend, and tried to keep out from under her feet. On Friday night, our hosts took us out to go Galaxy Bowling, which is -- well, not exactly what it sounds like. It's essentially glow-in-the-dark bowling with dance music, disco balls and a few contests for good measure. We went with nine or ten Mainers and had a lot of fun.

I enjoyed tubing on Saturday even more, although we couldn't stay too long. We finished up our stay with a delicious (and hilarious) dinner at Texas Roadhouse, which is, judging from the Saturday night crowd, a big deal in Maine. Who knew?

Sugar Cookies

You might have noticed that today is Wednesday. That puts me two updates behind, but hopefully, you would all rather read fewer updates about more interesting things than a lot of updates about how I sat around all day and accomplished nothing. Well, very little, anyway.

I have completed a few more projects, although the one-per-day rule is starting to plague me. I have modified it to mandate making one thing per day instead of creating one thing per day, opening the field to things like "important arrangements" -- my Friday project, which included arrangements for scholarships and summer employment, among other things.

I haven't completely gone to pieces, though. On Sunday, Allie and I made Crisco-recipe sugar cookies and cut them into fun shapes, including a narwhal, a ukulele, and a velociraptor. Here is a picture of the first tray of cut cookies:

And, because I am just so proud, of the second tray:

My favorite is Allie's ghost in the bottom-left corner. You can't see its other arm in the picture, but rest assured, it's frighteningly adorable.