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Cinnamon Rolls -- a Thanksgiving Tradition

It seems that cinnamon rolls are becoming a Thanksgiving weekend tradition in our house.  This year I tried Alton Brown's Overnight Cinnamon Rolls and they were delicious!  I didn't do the boiling water in the oven thing that he recommends, but I did let these sit out for a few hours in the morning before baking them.  I baked them Thursday morning and we ate the last of them on Sunday.  Popping them in the microwave for 20-30 seconds made them as fresh and gooey as the day they were baked.  I'll definitely use this recipe again.

Up by Pixar

Another Amazon deal -- Up for only $13. And you don't have to battle the Black Friday crowds to get it :)

He would have been 60

My dad would have been 60 today.  Difficult to believe he's been gone for over 10 years.  We still miss you, Dad.

Black Friday Deal

I found this awesome deal at Amazon while I was looking at their Black Friday Deals. Basically you get the Nintendo DSi pre-loaded with 5 games for $15 less than the plain DSi with no pre-loaded games. (This is of particular interest to me since my DS lite finally gave out after years of daily play.) So just wanted to pass it along in case this is on the wish list of someone you know :)

Stress and Star Trek

The past week has been very stressful (family issues I shall not discuss here, but rest assured, things do seem to be improving -- or my attitude toward them perhaps.) So all I really wanted to do this weekend was hang out with Pete and Maddie, go out to dinner at our favorite restaurant and rent Star Trek. I didn't hold out much hope for that last bit since I knew it just came out on DVD and would most likely be all rented out at the video store, but it was my lucky night! Pete fell asleep (probably thanks to the calming effects of the La Mex Margarita that he had with dinner :) but Maddie and I had a great time watching the movie together. Even if you aren't a Trekkie, it's difficult not to like this move. It was very well cast and super exciting. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Here's hoping this is a better week!

Margaret Atwood does it again

Margaret Atwood returns to the dystopia she created in Oryx and Crake in her latest novel, The Year of the Flood.  This time she follows the stories of two women, but employs the same technique of jumping back and forth in time which was so effective in the first novel.

Here we have two women caught up in the God's Gardeners movement -- a group fighting against the corporations which have taken over the planet.  We see them before the pandemic as they struggle with life in this nightmare scenario and after -- perhaps just as nightmarish, or perhaps not.

I loved this book so much, that I immediately reread Oryx and Crake when I finished it.  Since one is not a sequel to the other, but a retelling from a different perspective, you could read them in whichever order you chose, but I might recommend reading Oryx and Crake first for reasons I don't want to mention here for fear of giving away too much. 

I literally could not put these two books down and would highly recommend both of them.

Remembering Kurt Vonnegut

"I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled 'science fiction' […] and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal."

~ Kurt Vonnegut

Happy Birthday, Mr, Vonnegut, the world isn't the same without you.