I saw this graphic on The Daily Show and giggled myself breathless. My husband, sisters, and friend Dennis will know why:

Now that I am on the Stewardship Council at Church, I attend monthly meetings with the rest of the crew, most of whom are quite friendly, interesting folks.

The person closest in age to me is a fellow named Carl who, despite his beard and mustache, could easily be considered separated at birth from "Niles" from Frasier due to his seemingly erudite nature and refined manner.

Carl generously and painstakingly prepared authentic Irish Coffees for the entire council, complete with the "right" glass vessel for each, plus caramel biscuits to accompany the beverage. He even made WHIPPED CREAM from scratch with a nitrous-cartridge dispenser and then sprinkled cocoa atop its foamy goodness. Needless to say, it was delicious, and we all loosened up and had a fruitful meeting.

Clearly the Big Guy approved of our venture into whiskey land: as it turned out, our devotional study/discussion was none other than the Wedding Feast At Cannan - where Jesus turned water in to wine!

We made it official: from here forward, we will have some kind of fancy boozy concoction served at each Council meeting. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirits, AMEN!

Macaroons!

That is all for now.

Likely our most "unique" evening in Atlantic City was spent in the space-age, trance-dance accomodations of The Continental - a NJ outpost of Steven Starr's concept restaurant empire. Surprisingly the service was FANTASTIC (I was expecting alot of attitude) and we were treated to a semi-private booth, complete with bubble windows and plush velour banquet seating.

If you take time to click the link above, you'll take note of the mondo-retro "fire pit" seating area in the front of the restaurant. Beyond this area and to the right you walk through a Logan's Run-era automated sliding glass door and into a second room of booths that look like 1960's automobile bench seats, complete with headrests! Then further into the joint, is a lounge highlighted with a rainbo-lit plexiglass chandelier, and accented with lavender mood lighting around the walls. We were offered this very sexy booth as I had noted when I made the reservation that we were celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary (ok, so maybe we were celebrating 6 months early but the hostess didn't need that much detail...)

The food is wonderful - not intimidating, but unique and delightful. Its more or less a "tapas" concept, sharing small plates of delicious and familiar items put together in a very new way. Some of our faves: White Truffle Mac 'n Cheese, Buffalo Chicken Meatballs, Kobe Sliders (mini Kobe beef cheeseburgers.) The sound system pumped out groovy beats and the cocktails kept flowing. Needless to say, the heady mix of rich food and exotic drinks neccesitated antacids and advil later that evening but nontheless it was a magical night.



I cannot help but think that this restaurant must be the modern-day equivalent of the infamous Gobbler, minus the hotel accomodation. 

..I was recovering from giving birth to my daughter - yep, my lil' gal turned 7 today!

We went out to dinner (she chose the restaurant, naturally) and inundated her with gifts from Justice, Hannah Anderson, Barnes & Noble, American Girl (Santa brought Felicity & Elisabeth; now we get to buy their accessories!) and some Game Boy cartridges.

You'd think that having a birthday so close to Christmas would mean a pretty dry gift haul, but somehow my kid manages to clean up every year...

If Santa's sleigh lets him down, maybe he can hitch a ride in our GMC Savanna...

Speaking of which , we are heading back East on Wednesday for not only yuletide gatherings but also a mini-vacation for hubby and me at not one but TWO, count 'em, TWO AC Casinos. We played like lunatics over the summer on slot machines. Luckily there is the delayed payoff of comp hotel nights - which we are gladly using after we drop the kiddo and the dogs off with my parents.

 I'm excited about my first "away just with my 'date' trip" SINCE MY HONEYMOON. Yeah, its been that long - almost 10 YEARS! So our first night will be at one of my favorites, the off-boardwalk HARRAHS. Then we head for two nights at the Tropicana which used to be a dump but has reinvented itself with expansion that includes "The Quarter" - a shopping/spa/entertainment/dining complex that juts off the boardwalk and has served the Trop well in bringing in a younger clientele.

My mom, who is "hooked up" with those in the know of Atlantic City nightlife, secured us hard-to-get reservations at the (in)famous hidden gem, Chef Vola. I described this restaurant to a friend as a sort of "speakeasy for foodies, minus the booze." I doubt any other description could be more apt. You have to KNOW someone who is an established patron there to serve as a "reference" for you. It is cash only, and there is no sign anywhere on its residential street to tell you that in the basement of a classic yet unremarkable Atlantic City home lies a culinary paradise for invited guests.

Its BYOB which is cool because despite the heady menu prices, the tab is usualy reasonable due to no fancy martini drinks - and accompanying taxes - on it.

The worst mistake you can make is passing up the seafood or steaks for pasta. The pasta is just fine...but its really better as a side dish than entree; since many items at Chef Vola are served "family style" (like the salads, and veggie sides) my guess is that the pasta is also more of a side, as well. Since i have seafod allegie s( *sigh*) I cannot partake of the crabcakes, of which my husband is particularly fond. For certain, the desserts - all homemade and quite unique - are unbalieveable - I will go low-carb again after the new year! Best of all, it is about a block from the Trop so we can booze it up with our own wine and walk back to the hotel to gamble away what we didn't spend on Broccoli Rabe and Lemon Cello.

Have a Merry Christmas, everyone!

...And no bong in the rectory, either.

Imagine my surprise to find the rectory living/dining room to bear an uncanny resemblance to a fraternity house (well, a really, really NICE fraternity house, anyway.) They even have a bar, complete with a neon palm tree wall hanging. I'm not even kidding.

The key differences between the frat houses of my youth and the priests' home of today are outlined as follows:

	Frat House	Rectory
Entry	Greek letters over door	Crucifix over door
Foyer	pile of coats on floor	coat closet for guests
atmosphere (i.e. - SMELL)	stale beer	stewed cabbage
centerpice of coffee table	game of "quarters"; bong; ashtray; plastic cups of beer	large glass hurricane candleholder surrounded by wreath of holiday greens; coasters for guests' drinks
wall decor	girlie pinups, beer ad signs, neon palm tree	wood carvings saying "jesus"; repro landscape prints, neon palm tree
furniture	stained, soaked, shredded tweed armchairs and sofas from 1984	good-quality leather sofa and loveseat; classic wing chairs, dept. store-quality traditional dining room set, faux/moveable fireplace for "atmosphere"

It was a nice get-together; Fr. Jerry (the pastor) put together a table of appetizers and I bought cookies. He tended bar, and to my annoyance, for some reason he kept avoiding serving me, and in fact topped off the men's wine but skipped over me...that is weird because I've never gotten drunk and stupid at a church event... other events yes, but not a chuch event. Heheh.

Today I flew solo!

I gave out my first Host! I was so nervous and unfortunately for the recipient, I had to keep glancing at my prayer book. But I got the host from the tabernacle, put it in the little travel container, drove over the recipient's home and luckily for me he instisted on standing with his walker so I skipped the Our Father and the reading and all the "pregame show" and help up the host, said the required prayer, waited for his prompted response and carefully placed it on his tongue. Then as "dessert" I said a prayer of blessing and annointed his forhead.

The awkward part is after that was done, I didn't know wha else to do; I made some chit-chat conversation and then scheduled a regualr day/time to bring him communion. He is a very nice elderly gentleman, homebound due to illness, so besides the religious aspect, we have a nice little visit and I'm sure for him it breaks up the day, is something to look forward to, etc. In so many ways, then, the sacrament is healing.

Continuing with my Church-y theme for the day, I am a bit nervous and uneasy about our council meeting for tonight; the pastor decided to move it to the rectory (the little house where the priests live) because we are having some kind of cocktail party along with our regular agenda. I dunno; maybe its silly but that place seems to me like it shoud be "off limits".

I ran into him as I was grabbing my "Christ-to-go" order. He leaned in and said, "Hey you're coming tonight, right? Come to the front door. I'm having appetizers."

Somehow I had a flashback to the age when guys invited me to frat parties, off-campus keggers, and the most insidious invite - the "birthday party" that never was. What was THAT all about? Oh, well at my first job after college, a male co-worker (roughly my age) called me at home and invited me to his apartment.
"You gotta come over, it's my birthday, I'm having a party," he pleaded.

I hesitated but I thought it sounded like a good (and cheap) way to spend a Friday night so I put on a cute party dress and drove over to his Rogers Park digs. In the cliche of all cliches, I knock on the door and the only other "guest" was a quarter ounce of hashish and a bong lined up in the living room!

Now I highly doubt that any hallucinogenic agents will be the centerpiece of tonight's meeting.But I'll let y'all know if the hymn chanting gets so raucous as to elicit a visit from the cops!

Despite freezing temps and an even more ominous icy glaze, my goldfish is (are?) still ALIVE! I say "is/are" because I was able to see my one huge brilliant orange fish nestled (and moving fins/breathing) in some debris toward the bottom of the pond. The others were merely fry when fall set in and are tough to see as they are only a gray color (or were at the time.) The tadpoles/froglets also would be hiding under mud/leaves if they are still alive. And there are tons of snails puttering around happiy munching on that leaf debris at the bottom.

Word for the day: "MULM"

Mulm is the decayed mush from plants, dead insects, fish and frog poop, etc on the bottom of a pond. EWWW!

My pond has load's of mulm now but I have a bubbler (airstone) running 24/7 to add oxygen and prevent the whole thing from turning to ice (moving water has a hard time freezing.) As the plant matter deacys it adds warmth but also toxic gasses (see previous entry!) so if that gas builds up under the ice it will kill everything off. The airstone (as well as a de-icer that floats on top) allows for holes so the gasses can escape and an oxygen exchange can occur. So far, so good!

Here's my plan to rid our country of dependence on foreign oil:

1.) step up barley farming and distribution efforts nationwide.

2.) mount a massive campaign to get everyone on a turkey-barley-vegetable soup diet

3.) get those windmills and natural gas plants ready for action.

Seriously, though, what the duece is with BARLEY? It seems like this innoucous little grain, has a nutty, al dente chewiness, is delicious in soups and stews, is packed with protein and fiber but DAMN does it get the colon cackling.

I wonder if simultaneous worldwide spritzing of OUST and FEBREEZE will inerefere with those windmills?