It’s the last day in November, which means the end of another NaBloPoMo. I may not have posted well, but I have posted often. Thanks to you and all your comments, it hasn’t been a total chore, but I’ll admit, NaBlo kicked my ass more this year then the last. We’ll see what happens next year, but I’m not entirely sure that I’ll try for the three-peat in ‘09. Insert resolution to keep blogging here.
Hello. This is a communique from REBEL UNDERGROUND BLOG! We have taken over your normally scheduled blog post for a critical message from our IMPERIOUS LEADER!
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Actually it’s just Mike subbing in for Vicki. 
I finally get to play with her new laptop. Wooooo!
Onwards to the topic. Why is Mike just so darn cool?
5. Crazy navigation skills. Nobody can hike 3 miles through the woods and find a camouflaged box like Mike.
4. Master gardening powers. Have you seen the tomatoes? How about the 15ft tall sunflowers?
3. Bitchin’ computer knowledge. I can fix any computer with my magic hands. Now MOVE!
2. Fantastic kitty powers. Yes, I KNOW what they are thinking. It’s actually pretty scary.
1. He’s a Viking in the sack.
We now return you to your normally scheduled blogging. Feel free to comment on why you agree that MIKE IS SO GREAT! 
Pumpkin and pecan pies, respectively.
As anticipated, the pumpkin did not go over as well as the pecan, but that just means there more leftovers for me. I made The Pioneer Woman’s pecan pie instead of my usual recipe, and it is OMG so good that I am probably going to forsake that other pie in the future. Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends, at home and abroad.
I tried to run the dishwasher, but instead somehow I flooded the entire kitchen, and half of the basement (including the laundry room and all of the clean laundry). Awesome.
…is not about making or buying the pie crust, but what do you put in it? As usual, I’m responsible for two pies for Thanksgiving this year; one has to be pecan (unless I want to be disinherited). Pumpkin, sadly, is not an option, since there will be anti-pumpkin family members present. The second choice is traditionally Dutch apple. Maybe peach this year? I do have 50lbs of peaches that aren’t eating themselves…
Since this seems to be a favourite topic: what’s your favourite kind?
My grandmother made the world’s best pie crust; each one was always that perfect, holy grail combination of tender and flaky, melt-in-your-mouth delicious. As good as the fillings were — creamy banana, puckery lemon with fluffy meringue, tart strawberry rhubarb — it’s that crust that sticks in my sense memory. Grandma learned how to make pie from her mother, my great-grandmother, who in old farm-wife tradition, spent every Sunday making seven pies for the coming week. I inherited her best cookbook: a wonderfully battered volume published by a prairie flour company. The pie section is the most well-worn part of the whole book, pages stained and crusted, the margins filled with her notes.
Now I’m in charge of making the pies for family gatherings. It would be so much easier to just go to the store and buy one of those ready made crusts, one of those strange tubes with the dough inside. Even my grandmother, her hands not nimble enough for pastry making any more, does that now. It’s not like anybody besides me cares, or would even notice. But I can’t do it. Work may be piling up around my ears, and I might be up baking until midnight. I might be so tired and cranky that I’ll throw the floury rolling pin across the kitchen (there’s a dent in the wall testifying to the likelihood of this). It just feels right to me, adding my own marks to that old cookbook, and it’s worth any stress or time.
That being said, you might want to stay out of rolling pin range, just for the next few days…
Why yes, it is cold enough for me. Now stop asking that question, or I’ll touch you with my unnaturally icy hands.
p.s. Any sort of humor based around the idea that Canada is cold is automatically doomed to fail if the party making the joke is from Wisconsin.
Ah, you mean the time of the not-work. Once I too could partake of the time of the not-work. But that was before my inbox would catch on fire if I was away from the computer for more then five minutes. Those were the days (back when the internet was powered by mammoth oil, if I remember correctly).
Speaking of work, here’s a vaguely related question for you: why is it, that as I’m looking through stock illustrations for sites, I can find plenty of images of men working on computers, but most of the female illustrations seem to be about online shopping? Lame.
