Spotty

Is how I've been about blogging the past few days. To bring you up to speed, we did get our new camera, we did get our memory card the next day, and I did decide that I hated the camera and couldn't get it to work. And Matt came to the rescue, as always, by pointing out (after I'd angrily read the manual cover to cover) that I just didn't have the lens on right. What would I do without him?

The past few days I've worked 7-7, and last night I got home with the anticipation that we'd be going to pick my mom up at the airport at 8:55. Then that turned to 12:05. Okay, fine. 12:05 turned into 2:05...so we set an alarm and got a little sleep. By the time the alarm went off at 1:30, her flight had been cancelled, we'd heard nothing from her, and had no idea where she was.

I was beside myself, thinking that my mother had been done in by her unselfish desire to spend my birthday with me. Matt assured me she was fine. Finally, just after 2am we heard from her: she'd been checked into a previously-undisclosed location and was apparently enjoying the charms of a European village with all the friendliness of northern Kentucky. We surprised she hadn't called but my dad says he can count on one hand with three fingers cut off how many times she's ever left him a note telling him where she is. Anyway, the idea now is that she'll get here now around 1:45 this afternoon. Here's hoping.

In the meantime, Matt and I got up and made hootenanny and a pot of espresso. We also made a batch of this soft butter spread, which we thought might solve two of our existing concerns with butter: a) the high saturated fat content (this way we'll get to use more butter for our artery-clogging buck...or, you know, we could actually use less) and b) the fact that keeping it at room temperature so that it's spreadable means that it's subject to an untoward amount of interest (okay, licking) from our cats. It's chilling in the fridge as we speak.

In the meantime, here are some samples of Matt's early work with the new camera.

So why am I doing all the blogging, right?

Oh, and the no-knead bread? A delicious, chewy, crispy success.