for those who are unaware, i am hopelessly addicted to food/recipe/craft blogs. my enslavement doesn’t really limit itself to blogs, i guess, but expands into the realm of any food/recipe/craft site that has commenting functionality. see, i want to know how to make things, but i want someone else to try it first, and tell me if it sucks, or how i can do it better.

lately, almost everything i cook or bake comes from blogs (not martha and smitten kitchen are the main culprits, closely followed by chow and epicurious) home made oreos, no knead bread, cinnamon bundt cake, and chicken salad have been some of the delicious results. with every new blog post, my to do list and my grocery list get longer and longer. i have roughly 12 recipes in queue right now.

but i have to draw the line somewhere. and today, the line has been drawn, with home made bagels via smitten kitchen. 12 steps, each about a paragraph long, five after-notes and 1,199 words. she started friday and finished the bagels saturday. yes, they sound delicious. but i cannot possibly make them and risk spending all that time, looking high and low for the perfect ingredients to end up possibly messing them up and wasting all that time and effort. i just can’t bring myself to do it. did i mention there were 12 steps??

i went out on a limb the other day, and started cooking some stuff out of magazines, you know, the good old fashioned way, with no print button and no user reviews. so far i’ve gotten 2 batches of the best roasted veggies i’ve ever had, and the most disgusting thing to ever come out of my kitchen. this stuff is sitting in my stomach right now, and i’m feeling a little nauseous thinking about it, but i did learn something: stay away from rice noodles. unless i seriously jacked things up, i don’t ever want to see rice noodles again, as long as i live. think clear gummy worms with no flavor. i guess there are a lot of varieties of rice noodles, so maybe some of the others are good, but i seriously could not stomach what i made for dinner tonight. (rice sticks..part way down the page)

and now i am off to make replacement dinner. but the only things that sound good are peanut butter fudge or pumpkin pie. hmmm…

just stop reading if you aren’t familiar with the old-school computer game ‘the oregon trail’ because you will not appreciate this post.

however, if you remember the excitement of computer class when you got to fire up your apple IIe (or apple IIgs if you got there early) for forty-five minutes of trail blazing adventures as you and you friends forded rivers, caught dysentery, and hunted in the old west, and if those memories still make you feel just a little bit giddy deep down inside, you, my friend, are about to be very happy indeed.

may i present: thule trail. oregon trail fans, trust me, don’t give it a second thought. click on the link and play it now, i guarantee you will not be disappointed.

i didn’t make on my first try, but here are some of the things that happened to my caravan en route:

kara gets a small fruit candy stuck up a nostril

kelly asks a weird question during “would you rather?”, taking things too far again

kara sticks her hand out the window during a hailstorm and suffers a broken metatarsal

john is feeling cramped

brian has unexpectedly fallen in love and stayed behind, guess what happened in vegas is going to stay in vegas

john falls for a truck stop waitress named starla and decides to stay with her

and now, i must try again…

saturday afternoon i decided it was time for a trip to the library. as we approached downtown, i noted there was some sort of country music event taking place, as there were country radio station vans and fans everywhere. as we tried to pull into the library parking lot, i rolled down the window and asked the security guard “are there library parking spots left here?” to which he replied, “yeah, but you can’t park here, you just heard me tell those other people it was only for library patrons”. so obviously this man thought i was downtown for the country music event, and not for the library. i said “we ARE here for the library” and he accused us of lying and said “didn’t you know the library closes in 2 minutes?” um, it was 1.30. the library closes at 1.32 on saturdays now?

seriously. people that i’ve known for 15 minutes have left me to take care of their infant children. in more than a few cases. on my first day of work at my first job after college, i was given a pile of cash by people who barely knew me to take to the bank. but this guy thinks i’m going to lie about how i’m a huge dork and the highlight of my day at that point was going to the library?

QUESTION: which should offend me more - the fact that i don’t look like a reader, or that i was mistaken for a country music fan? or maybe the fact that someone thought i would lie about something as ridiculous as this?

you should eat this:
costco granola: get a costco membership and buy the big fat pack of granola near the baked goods. then have your friends over for a granola-eating party so you don’t eat 2 lbs of it all by yourself, like i’m about to.

you should drink this:

POM lychee green tea: never had pomegranate juice before and to be honest was a bit skeptical. however, for $2 (and a really fantastic glass -with a lid- that you can keep) i thought it was time to try. uber tasty. wow, pom tea and granola-eating parties- i sound like a real hippie.

you should read this:
the kite runner: i’m on one of my semi annual reading binges. i’ve figured out that my problem with reading is that so much of the bookstores seems to be filled with crap, that it makes the decision making process overwhelming for me. luckily i discovered that my bff in kansas is some kind of book aficionado who frequents borders on several occasions per week and she emailed me about a book which was coincidentally by the same author as a book that john had told me about so i figured with two recommendations from friends, i’d give it a shot, starting with the kite runner. i really liked the writing style and the story was great. i was sucked in, so much so that i read this book in about 4 sittings. i just got my copy of a thousand splendid suns from amazon today and have the feeling that productivity will be at an all time low this week.

you should listen to this:

the album leaf: into the blue again: mostly keyboard/instrumental which is great reading/working music. i was actually listening to this album while reading the kite runner and realized that this song would make a really great closing credits song if hollywood ever decides to destroy the kite runner book by trying to make it a movie (which would almost certainly suck).

you should try this:

a haircut at trim: yeah, maybe a little pricey (my 1.5 hour haircut was $40, but this is the low end of prices i’ve heard about from trim), but i’ve been 100% happy. in fact, i now have one of those haircuts where you can go to sleep and it looks just the same in the morning, maybe even better, if that’s possible - no small feat for someone with notoriously bad hair. someday i will take a picture of what my untamed hair looks like if i were to wash and air dry. it ain’t pretty, i can tell you that. anyway, trim is great - you get a scalp massage before your haircut. i don’t mean a “she washed my hair and it felt nice” scalp massage. i mean like a real scalp massage. while you’re waiting, they bring you coffee or tea, AND they call you a day or two later to make sure you like your haircut. free bang trims between haircuts. what more could you ask for? talk to libby - she’s great.

running is a strange sport. 10 weeks ago i ran 7 miles, and was disappointed my run ended so early. i really think i could have easily done at least 2 more miles after the first 7. since then i’ve tapered off a bit and taken some time off, due to random aches and pains and partly due to the heat. i went out this morning, aiming for 2 and only got through 1. it wasn’t my legs or my lungs, it was my head. i’m under the firm belief that the only thing stopping most people from running long distances is their own brain.