Coolest looking Lego set ever.
_

We are going away for the weekend, and I found bananas that I nearly deemed "too old even for banana bread." I was set to throw them out, but my sister pointed out that they were "perfect for banana bread" and she peeled them for me as I declared them "too gross". So, then we were going to make banana bread, but we have just enough milk for tea in Jamie's travel mug tomorrow (she is driving, I am not, she gets the caffeine). And then I had a brilliant idea: Sour Cream Banana Bread. I know have Sour Cream Banana Cake from Epicurious in the oven, and am hoping it is delicious. I will be making sour cream cream cheese frosting in a moment. _

Beach vacation in the works...We have finally figured out where we are going. It's been a while, and many locations have been suggested, basically anywhere from Maine to Puerto Rico (Puerto Rico was ultimately nixed because my mom, who is the only one in the family to have ever  been to Puerto Rico in July declared it "so hot, Tori, that not one of us girls will be able to handle it"). We had largely settled on the Cape, Deleware, or the Outer Banks, and we have finally wound up in the Outer Banks, mostly, I think, because the house is on the water (it is the house we stayed at a few years ago, and there is a private deck on the dunes that is the separation of house and beach), and because someone had cancelled at the last minute. Shockingly, trying to find a beach house just over a month away from your planned vacation during the week of the 4th of July is really really hard. And now the house has central air. It didn't when we stayed there a few years ago. When I spoke with the rental guy, he promised that in the remodel they put in central air, which had been our only complaint about the place. Yay! Beach! _

Moving again. ((sigh)) The new house is beautiful, and the neighborhood is lovely. Also, will probably be a longer move, no more of this "let's move every four months" thing. _

My mom accidentally purchased a giant thing of sour cream when she was trying to get cottage cheese for dog food. Does anyone have any suggestions on what to do with a lot of sour cream? It's like two pounds. We thought of trying a sour cream cheese cake, or sour cream ice cream (or both), but I'm sure we'll still need ideas. _

Today, in an attempt to keep our landlady from knowing how many dogs we have, I was sent off to hang out with the dogs in the park while she was over with people resealing the recently fixed bathtub. My mom said "take a blanket, a squeaky toy, and a book." So I did. I let the dogs off their leashes once we got to the park, because that's what we always do. Ellie and Nattie stuck to me like glue, Sam ran in giant circle, and would come running back smiling and wagging his tail if I thought he was getting too far away. Ben tried to follow a woman who looked kind of like she might be my mom, and then when I started to read my book (I think I read a page) he took off. I called and squeaked the squeaky toy. Someone said "oh, he went that way." So I packed my stuff up, and followed back along the path. Other people told me they had seen him getting closer and closer to the parking lot, where I eventually found him. While I was standing there, petting him, panicking, and trying to figure out what to do next, I started to go into my bag for his leash. And, in the moments when my eyes were off of him, he took off again. I called Jamie. She threw on clothes, and came out. We put leashes on the other dogs. We tried to keep one person in the parking lot, because I had this thought that he might be thinking of it has "base" so he'd come back there. So we took turns going through different areas of the park, asking everyone we saw. I climbed up this observation tower thing (at this point, she had the girls, and I had Sam; Sam got scared of heights and weird stairs halfway up and dropped to the ground and wouldn't get up, so I carried him), and someone up there helped me look and did the fingers in the mouth whistle thing that is so loud. (Everyone was totally sweet. Jamie and I were giving our phone numbers to the police, to nice women walking their own small dogs.) My stepdad told me Ben's favorite places in the park, so I tried to find them. Jamie went to the police station (next to the park) to see if he had been turned in or anything, and two nice women cops got into a cop car and drove through the park to try to help us find him. They told her she could walk around in the high grasses with clear signs that say "Nature Preserve. Don't Walk. $200 Fine and/or Arresting". We texted my mom, who was in a meeting, which she shot out of, sending text messages explaning the situation. Her quasi-boss/partner sent one of his employees out to help her find him. And, as soon as soon as she got to the apartment building where Connor lives, she asked a cop, who said "oh, the small white dog? Yeah, we had him for like two hours. We tried to call the number on his tag, but it's disconnected" (this is true. It has my stepdad's old work number) "and we have no pound in this town, and this woman thought he was cute, so she decided to adopt him, and took him to the vet. She told me which one, here, I'll call." So, we got him back. But not before he had already crossed a road with at least six lanes of heavy traffic. (I had crossed that intersection, thinking maybe he was walking home, and looked very carefully for roadkill, which I was completely relieved wasn't there.)

It was a majorly panicky two and half hours. We are totally greatful that he's okay. _

One of our dogs gets distressed by sirens and howls. It sets the other dogs off. Now, whenever I hear a siren, I think "must comfort Ben!" It doesn't matter where I am or where he is. I can be at work, or walking down the street in the city, and look for Ben. _

My new job (being done from home) is proofreading questions for Kaplan's Bar Prep class. I'm learning a lot about laws, right now, and also about people's inability to correctly space words. I'm not just talking about my own pet peeve of two spaces after periods, but who puts two spaces after semi-colons. _

My parents have switched our dogs from Advantix/Frontline to this herbal supplement of garlic and onions for tick prevention. During the winter, they were talking about how wonderful it was, forgetting that, hey, winter. And now it is no longer winter. I have pulled two ticks off of one dog in the past two hours. I have found two ticks on me since ticks have come out. I want to go back to the scary chemicals. _

Sometimes, when I am reading a particularly good book for fun, I feel vaguely guilty about reading fast. It's not that things don't stick with me (unless I really don't like the book, and then I basically skim and forget - there are definately seminar readings that I have completely forgotten because I read them too fast and didn't really care), but I sometimes am aware that the author poured weeks, months, years into a book that I will read in less than a day. _

I should stop watching Lost and Heroes. Heroes because it has gotten ridiculous, and they don't have the guts to get rid of their ever increasing cast of characters. And Lost because gurl xrrc xvyyvat zl snibevgrf. (rot13ed for Katherine) _

If I decide to upgrade my RAM by getting a new chip onlines (from, say, Small Dog Electronics), and I install it myself, does that void my warantee? Or can I take to the Apple Store and get them to do it for me? _

This evening, we went to a Charity Event (which I have never done before). It was for the Brain Science Foundation, which is the reason I still have a healthy brother. There were appetizers and free drinks and a silent auction and speakers who were interesting enough to make me almost interested in biology. (There are things that people are interested in that I just totally understand why people are interested in them, and there are things that I can understand, but don't share the interest. Biology is the latter.) One of the speakers compared fighting brain cancer to the battle for Minas Tirith, and played a video from The Two Towers to help emphasize his point. By the time the video was playing, I had had two drinks and three cheese puffs and was having a hard time controlling my laughter, but it was a nice way to tie in interests. And then we went out for Thai food, because it was the brother's birthday. _

Finishing touches are the hardest. I decided to wear my new red sweater out today because the knitting is done, and the weaving in of ends. It has no zipper, and I can tell where I switched yarn balls because my hand dying was so imperfect (thanks Julia for the massive amount of Grape Kool Aid) and I'm probably going to redye it, but who knows how long the weather will stay at such that I can actually wear this? New England weather is so weird! _

I think that "The War on Terror" was a bad idea, that the idea was to "Stop Terrorism" as though there was some sort of truly centralized terrorist group, rather than a bunch of desperate people who can only act out through terrorism.

I think the idea that Obama should "Stop Piracy" is probably an equally bad idea. _

Occasionally, my mom will complain about her hair being a mess and hard to manage, especially when she feels like she needs a hair cut. (I'm sure most women have made this complaint.) My stepdad, in response, will say something like "there's nothing they could do to your hair" because he really likes her hair all the time, even when it's a mess and unmanageable. No woman has ever heard him say this and thought he was complimenting her hair (she, my sister, my brother's roommate, me), we all hear "your hair is such a mess no one could do anything to make it better". Whereas guys tend to hear what he means. I find this incredibly amusing. _

I tried to make meringues this morning (I made ice cream, and had extra egg yolks). They failed, and I was sad. I stood there over my Kitchen Aid and stared at the mess of egg whites that was just not going to turn into stiff egg whites no matter what I tried and tried to figure out what I did wrong (I think it was a combo of adding the sugar too early and that it's kind of humid). So, Jamie and I tried to think of things to do with them, debated the idea of turning them into some kind of dessert souffle (Jamie is on a souffle kick), and I decided to turn them into brownies.

From Drop Box

They are in the oven. I hope this turns out to be one of those things that started out looking like a failure that turns into an awesome thing. _

I realized, recently, that I had always sort of assumed that the line in "American Pie" "the marching band refused to yield" was a reference to The Play despite also knowing that The Play happened in the early 80's and "American Pie" is older than that. _

Just off the phone with someone who, with all good intentions, said "have a blessed Easter weekend." And I was good and bit my tongue on the "and you have a happy Passover" that nearly came out and said "you too!" _

I love iTunes. I don't know how I listened to MP3s without it. (Actually, that's pretty easy. I had a 6 gig harddrive, which really didn't have space for MP3s, so I just didn't listen to them.) _