It rained allll weekend, so I didn't get outside to do any work. Work desperately needs done outside, so....
Instead, I baked cookies! Not all weekend, of course. I found the recipe for 'Chinese Gingersnaps' online. It calls for 1tbsp of white pepper, 1/2tsp of cinnamon, 1/4tsp of cloves, and 5 whopping tablespoons of freshly minced/ground ginger. If anyone wants the recipe I'll post it, just let me know.
I decided to halve the recipe (I didn't have enough butter) and it still made 56 cookies.I topped some of them with green sugar, some with regular sugar, some with nothing, and some with finely-minced candied ginger. 
Guess which ones I liked best?Matt went morel hunting Sunday morning. Didn't find any that were pickable yet. Soon. VEEERRRYYY SOOOOON.
There was a kitty hiding behind the tree, Max was going nuts here.We went to meet a friend of Matt's for coffee, then after we got back we decided that we had to clean out the gutters. In our nice cl
othes. With the hose. And the muck. Did I mention our nice clothes? Max helped, though, by barking at the drainspouts. You see, around here chipmunks like to hide in our drainspouts, so he had reason in his mind to bark at them. He also has the habit of grabbing onto them and pulling them off the house. The drainspouts, that is. Not the chipmunks.He also helped by grabbing plants and pulling them out of our way roots and all. Very helpful, our Yorkie. Fortunately, the plants were already long dead, so no harm was done.
You can see ^ Matt's legs on the ladder, and Max at the far left of the picture, barking.And here's a close-up of Max staring at the black water coming from the drainspout.I also recently purchased a treat for myself. It is a peanut butter meltaway egg from Sarris Candies in Pittsburgh. It weighs 1 pound. It is everything I thought it could be. I figured it out, the entire thing is 2300 calories, 143 grams of fat.
I started giving Max his Spring haircut this week. I tend to have to do it in parts, so this picture was taken when his back was done, the top of his head, one ear, one front leg, some of his belly and butt.Matt thinks he looks like and old Englishman.Later that night, I got one side of his face done but the other was still long and hairy. I should have gotten a picture then.
I stole this from Tim. I'm actually surprised at how FEW of these I've read.The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?Instructions:Look at the list and put an 'x' (I bolded) after those you have read and tally your total at the bottom. Let us know if you really LOVED any of them.1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Herper Lee (not complete but some)6 The Bible (not complete but some, under duress)7 Wuthering Heights - EmilyBronte8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwel9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (not complete but several)15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger20 Middlemarch - George Eliot21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (one of my favorites)26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (not complete but some)28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (not complete but some)34 Emma - Jane Austen35 Persuasion - Jane Austen36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres39 Memoirs of a Geisha40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne41 Animal Farm - George Orwell42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding50 Atonement - Ian McEwan51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel52 Dune - Frank Herbert (major favorite)53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (not complete but some)58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson75 Ulysses - James Joyce 76 The Inferno - Dante77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome78 Germinal - Emile Zola79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray80 Possession - AS Byatt81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (not complete but some)93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks94 Watership Down - Richard Adams95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo.
othes. With the hose. And the muck. Did I mention our nice clothes? 
