Nathan and I visted the open house of the Tech Model Railroad Club. Their set up is pretty amazing, and I find the history of the TMRC pretty interesting - it had a big role in the history of technology. Nathan love love loved it. We were there for well over an hour, watching trains go by. They had an Acela, which was probably Nathan’s favorite.
We had an office lunch today, that came with a Sundae bar from Toscanini’s (the world’s best ice cream store). Now I don’t know if they were messing with us or what, but it came wit a couple of dishes of Wasabi Pea ice cream. My coworker margaret and I just dared eachother to tast it.
It’s really pretty bad. It’s just sweat cream ice cream with a bunch or wasabi peas dumped in. The ice cream was good, but the peas tasted all mealy and weird.
I may have to have a couple spoons of burnt caramel just to cancel out the experience.
Nathan has figured out that he can get Thomas the Tank Engine DVDs from the library. We only let the poor boy watch one in the morning and one at night (each ‘episode’ is 5-10 minutes long).
I choked on a mouthful of broccoli raab during dinner. I was really choking. I couldn’t breath, and was trying to cough and couldn’t and had my hands at my throat, and Lisa was getting scared and Nathan was getting scared. As Lisa was picking up her phone to call 911, I managed to reach into my mouth and pull enough of the raab out that I choked up the rest.
After I was pretty OK again, Nathan said “No ambulance? We should go play trucks!” And we did and it was awesome, I mean I was so glad to play trucks. The rest of the evening has been just normal. My throat muscles are a little sore, but otherwise it’s like nothing happened. I feel kind of lucky and happy.
And like I’m never eating broccoli raab again. Got that would have been such a yuppie way to die, choking to death on broccoli raaab.
Nathan got his haircut today. Nathan and I get our hairs cut in the basement of the MIT student center. Our barber is Oscar, who is also a Colombiano, from Medellin. Nathan refers to him as “Oscar the man” to differnetiate him from Oscar the cat.
This morning Ben yelled out to me, “Do you think any other train obsessed 3 year old have ever said that?” It seems that Nathan’s morning train had to stop for a snack as one of the engineers baked a souffle for the other and it was time to eat it. He has an interesting food vocabulary. Last year in music class the teacher went around the circle asking for favorite foods and Nathan’s at that moment was crostini. That one embarrassed me a little. I suppose in the interest of health it is better to have a 3 year old who talks of souffles and crostini rather than donuts and candy.
The Ed and John’s wedding was great. Trinity church in Copley Square was an amazing palce to have the ceremony, with the interior recently restored and an incredible organ.
The reception at UMass Boston was lavish and fun. Great location with views of the harbor, but try getting a taxi to pick you up. A bunch of us were out there calling taxis for half an hour. The wedding planner eventually had the grooms’ limo drive us all to the nearest red line station.
Last weekend I bought Nathan some new watercolor paints. They are the nice ones that come in tubes rather than the ones that come in cakes and all turn brown within minutes (at least with a preschooler using them). Waldorf people like watercolors for young children that is what inspired me to get them rather than the more typical tempera paints used by children. I can’t remember what is supposed to be better about water colors. It is something about how they are clear and more reflective.
Nathan’s first experience with his new paints was rather astounding. He hadn’t created any representational drawing aside from circles before yet he sat right down determined to paint a train. And he did. It is really incredible. His train has all of the necessary parts and they are all in approximately the places you’d expect to find them. It is an acela train so he included the electric wire running above the engine along with the pantograph connecting the two.
This painting really blew me away. Here is a photo of it for you to enjoy.
Before we even moved in here I knew I would hate our stove. In my research I have learned that the entire thing is called a range and it is the entire thing that I hate. It is a cheap, horrible appliance that makes me want to cry every time I go near it. Let me start by telling you about the stove part. The worst feature about the stovetop is that although it has four burners it is nearly impossible to fit two pans side by side unless they are tiny 1 quart sauce pans. I often need to have multiple pans going at the same time and it really frustrates me to have pans hanging off the side and barely on the flame. It also has really flimsy grates that make a high-pitched squeal when I move a pan around over the burner. Yikes!
The really horrible part is the oven. After we moved in we had many smoke detector incidents. I felt like I had really lost my touch in the kitchen since everything burned to a crisp. I tried lowering the temperature but nothing seemed to help. Everything cooked in record time and then burned. I finally got a thermometer that showed that the oven is a full 100 degrees hotter than the dial suggests. Now that I know that I am able to adjust it but it means that there is no warming feature. The lowest temperature I can get is 300 degrees. I also suspect there is an issue with the way it burns as it releases noxious fumes into the kitchen sometimes. Tonight as our Chilean Squash casserole was baking I was sure that Nathan and I were breathing in carbon monoxide.
Despite this vile apparatus our casserole was good and Nathan and I baked these delicious breads to celebrate Dia de los Muertos. The recipe comes from The Cheese Board cookbook. We used whole wheat flour and I added cardamom instead of anise because that’s what we had. I sure wish we could be in Berkeley to try the authentic thing but ours were really good. Anyway don’t get me started on the “range” we had there. Let me just say it was pink and not in a cool retro $4000 range way.
