2004

Voter registration deadlines are fast approaching (in fact, in most states the deadline is tomorrow!) You’ve still got time if you act quickly, so let the molten move you (to the post office and mail your registration today)!

I have so much updating to do, I don’t even know where to start!

About a month ago a few loyal Bouchon employees started what has become a Las Vegas tradition: Picnic In The Park Fridays. We eat, drink, bond, and demonstrate althetic prowess on an asundry number of sporting fields. The first picnic was a raging success; homemade Spinach and Chicken Calzones and boxed brownies (a cardinal sin since 75% of those involved in the picnic were pastry cooks, but when you need chocolate fast you NEED chocolate fast!) transformed the night into an impromptu feast. Tasty beverages, disc golf and bonding with a few local homeless guys (apparently we were using the table they live on) contributed to an especially memorable evening. I feel the homeless guys made out as they ended up with the extra brownies and brewskies. The tradition has evolved since that first evening…we have a new favorite park that features electrically-lit beach volleyball courts, covered picnic tables, and fewer table-dwellers, but the original holiday spirit is still the same.

In other news, I recently got new brakes! Woohoo! Beatrice glides down the highway like a 1952 caddy now, thanks to her new ceramic brake pads. (I think it helps that I’ve been practicing the downshift too…)

For those of you out there eagerly awaiting your next installment of goodies from Pastry of the Month Club, I regret to inform you that the club has undergone some administrative changes and will hereto forth be known as the Random Acts of Pastry Club. Sorry for any inconvenience, but look forward to a mouthwatering Halloween installment!

Speaking of Halloween, Sydney recently spent some time preparing for her first All Hallows’ Eve by communing with a field of pumpkins. She has six new teeth with which to eat all that great trick-or-treating candy (though I feel she may have to wait a few years before gaining a true appreciation for candy corn and Mars bars).

Carrie is coming to visit this week! YIPPEEE!!! We’re going to see Mystere on Wednesday night!!! I’m sure we’ll be doing dozens of other exciting things as well. More info soon…

La Vita Vera Italia

Five hundred. That’s the number of tissues I’ve used in the last week and a half. Lord, how does all this snot accumulate in one body?! You know it’s bad when, in the absence of tissue, you’re desperate enough to blow your nose on a pair of dirty socks. I can’t wait to go to the doctor on Monday and get some real help.

I’ve been reading like there’s no tomorrow lately (and have the library fines to prove it). I wish Clark District would extend their lending period to four weeks. Two weeks is just not a sufficient amount of time. I found eight GREAT books that I just HAVE to finish reading. But my time is up! (It’s been up for a week already…) And I’ve only finished four and half books. I would like to win a library card with a lifetime-fine-exemption feature. They should invent a card that you pay for and then not charge you fines when you have overdues, don’t you think? Maybe when I get rich I’ll become a biblophilic philanthropist and my generosity to libraries worldwide will earn me a sort of “get out of jail free” no-fines-to-pay-ever-library card. That’s my idea of heaven.

Fines or no, I’m still thankful that libraries exist: free education at your fingertips! Take a look at some of the great vocab I learned from D. H. Lawrence this week:
insentience – devoid of sensation.
cataclysm – violent catastrophe involving upheaval of the earth’s crust.
intelligentsia – the intellectual ellite of a society.
simulacrum – an image or representation, an unreal or vague semblance.
laconically
sere – dry and withered (like flowers).
lambency – flickering lightly on or over a surface; effortlessly light or brilliant.
blether – nonsensical talk.
bolshevism – a.k.a. Soviet Communism.
soporific – tending to cause sleep
insouciant -blithe unconcern.

I dare you to use these in conversation! What new words have you learned recently?

In other news, my trip to SF last weekend was great! I have a new favorite hotel: Hotel Pickwick. I don’t know why Expedia only gave it two stars, it deserves many more in my opinion!

I have a miserable cold this week. I wonder about the etymology of “cold” (as an illness). I always seem to get them in the Spring or Summer, so the cold part doesn’t really make any sense…

Well, I just looked cold up in the etymology dictionary and discovered that the phrase cold (as in, to have a cold, to be sick) originated in 1537 and is based on the idea that the symptoms you have when you’re sick are the same symptoms you get when you go outside in cold weather–i.e., runny nose, hurting ears, dry skin, etc. Very interesting, no?!