A totally busy day:
if you have any young teen age girls – the members of O-town were in the Crossgates Apple store today. They looked like they must be “someone” mainly because they had handlers/managers with them. And because they were really interested in dropping money. I talked to one at great length – the one with dreadlocks – about digital cameras and he bought a good camera and an ipod etc etc.
The second guy I rang up also had a strange zipcode, so I asked where that zip was from. Florida. Hmmmm. OK, you’re all from Tampa and you seem to be in a band, so what band? Oh, O-Town – I know about that one. They looked relieved that SOMEone there knew about them. This is the boyband that was put together by Lou Pearlman and was the subject of the somewhat strange reality show “The Making of the Band.”
I left for lunch and they were still in the store. I figured a run on the store wouldn’t be a bad thing, but do you think I could find a stinking adolescent girl? nope – all safely in school. One of my fav co-workers later told me I was totally lame to know about the band AND the TV show. But he was just jealous, I’m sure, LOL. I couldn’t believe we didn’t take a single photo or get an autograph. Geesh.
I guess the boy band was opening for britney tonight in Albany. whoooohooooo.
Then we had a quasi-anthrax scare where two folks decided that some white powdery stuff by the mp3 players was anthrax. uh huh. Someone else (gratefully not me) asked wasn’t it more likely to be powdered sugar, since people are always coming in with cookies, donuts etc? Nope. They finally had to call “the authorities” and as I’m standing there thinking this is pretty silly to close a store over powdered sugar…… a mall security guard appears. He walks in, all decked out in his wanna-be-a-state-trooper uniform, walks over to the infected area, and is back out of the store in literally 30 seconds! Guess those wanna-be cops really know their powdered donuts, I mean SUGAR!
So very silly. Not to make light of the anthrax deal but really. Like ANY cop could tell what it was by looking at it.
Fine. Just fine.
Then I came home and popped an eggplant in the oven to bake. And went upstairs to sew the block of the month that’s due tomorrow night. It’s a nice block but lots of things to cut and sew. I keep getting whiffs of something cooking and wondered what it was. Well folks, if you leave an eggplant in the oven for 2 plus hours, there’s nothing left but the skin. Luckily it didn’t explode.
More luckily, I had back up plans. So I made a cheddar cheese spread – equal parts shredded cheddar and cottage cheese mixed with some finely minced fresh parsley and celery. Little pepper and paprika. Takes very parsley and celery-ish, which is nice I think. You can either spread this cold or put it on melbas and broil it a bit.
Spread number two was cream cheese with olives. I really enjoy this as a treat. I minced the olives rather finely for this since it will be easier to spread, and put some more olives sliced on top. So that’s it for that. I’ll bring an assortment of crackers and a plate.
I’m also bringing a dozen rather simply made christmas stockings which we’ll be donating to a thrift store that distributes a lot of stuff for families for the holidays. Apparently they need about 700 and their annual source dried up. I know my mom made 20, and I made 12 and another woman made about 50. People were talking about doing pieced and quilted stockings, but you know – in this case more is better! I cut out 12 layers of one fabric that I had more of, a black background with a “plaid” of lines of holly or something red, and then 12 layers total of a bunch of other green/red/holiday-ish fabrics. I had some short lengths of green and red grosgrain ribbon from doing pot holders and that was that. They turned out very nice. They’re a nice size too – not too big and none too small.
