Doug's Project 365

My Christmas Thanksgiving cactus in my office at work is about to bloom.  I’ll post again later when it has actual flowers.  I brought this plant to the office when we were showing the house, and have kept it there because it’s doing well.

My coworker Margaret is excited about this because she has a Christmas cactus that never bloomed, until I told her the secret — they need to be by a window so they get cool at night.  You can even turn them so non-blooming parts get cool, and then they will bloom in sequence.

I made a big batch of pea soup tonight for tomorrow’s dinner (and for the freezer).  No pressure-cooker cheating here — this one is still simmering in the oven.

We celebrated Ali’s birthday today at House of Blues in Boston, at Gospel Brunch.  It was a lot of fun.

We went out for Juj’s birthday celebration tonight, first to a Chinese restaurant and then to one of those pub/movie theater places in North Attleboro (which Droid pronouces “at lee bro”).

Here Bob shows off his somewhat girly-looking scorpion bowl for 1.

Lis stayed home from work today to try out some science experiments for work.  One of them involves drying out some unpopped popcorn (in the oven), adding moisture to some, and leaving a 3rd batch as a control.  You then pop them, and observe the differences.

After dinner, we conducted the experiment.  Here we’re watching the dried-out batch (try to) pop.

Doug has finally given in to pressure and replaced his cell phone.  I was already pretty tempted by the prospect of some of the newer phones, but when my old trusty AT&T Wireless phone (pre-Cingular) started flaking out on me the other night I knew it was time. 

Welcome, Droid, I hope you are a worthy replacement for phone and Palm.

Veterans Day.  Nobody but government employees and students gets it off, so the rest of us tend to forget about it.  Until, that is, we hear a marching band outside.

I was working from home today — car in the shop — and took the opportunity to roast the beet left over from the last Boston Organics delivery.  This evening I grated the roasted beet, mixed it with goat cheese, ricotta, and a little basil, and made ravioli. 

This is the first time I’ve made ravioli, and they’re for my dinner tomorrow night.  I hope they come out all right!

I’m not doing a theme this week; back to normal old pictures.

Lis and I hauled the trash & recycle containers out to the curb last night.  This morning, I took out the kitchen trash to add to it, and realized (much to my environmentalist delight) that there was nothing else in the big blue bin — we’d gone an entire week and generated only half a small bag of trash.

Hours theme, 7pm 

Lis and I went out to dinner tonight, to Tuscan Grill on Moody St in Waltham.  I had the rabbit cacciatore and a Caesar salad.  The food was good; the lighting was not.  Apologies for the truly horrible image quality; I sometimes forget how spoiled I am with the big camera when it comes to low-light pictures.