More photographic evidence that spring is springing up all over my yard:

Another reason I know its spring is that Mary is getting the urge to cook some of the delicious Italian dishes that she found in a cookbook we bought last year. After watching Under the Tuscan Sun for the umpteenth time it occurred to us that for all our love of pasta we had a very limited repertoire of dishes that we prepared. This is a very delicious one with a very light sauce that tasted so incredible last night!

Recipe for Spaghetti with Tomatoes, Black Olives, Garlic and Feta Cheese from Food and Wine Magazine’s Quick From Scratch Pasta Cookbook:

Incredients:

(Serves 4)

1.5 pounds tomatoes, seeded and cut into 1/2 inch squares

1/2 cup Kalamata or other black olives, pitted

1/4 pound feta cheese, crumbled

3 tablespoons drained capers

3 tablespoons chopped flate-leaf parsely

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper

3/4 pound spaghetti

6 tablespoons olive oil

3 cloves garlic, minced.

In a large glass or stainless-steel bowl combine tomatoes, olives, feta, capers, parsley, salt, and pepper.

In a large pot of boiling, salted water cook the spaghetti until just done, about 12 minutes, drain.

Meanwhile in a medium frying pan, heat the olive oil over moderately low heat. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Add the cooked pasta and the garlic oil to the tomato mixture and toss.

That’s it! Simple! The hardest thing is cutting up the tomatoes and getting the seeds out. (Which I did last night..I’m such a martyr!) 😉

It is a warm, light, delicious dish filled with so many interesting flavors. Thank you sweetie, it was yummy!

Hope your spring is going well so far. Its Tuesday folks, only 4 more days until the weekend!

Saturday was my daughter’s first flag football game of the season. Yes, you heard right, flag football. The greater Kansas City YMCA’s have a coed flag football program and this is the last year Tori could participate. Her age group is the 6th-8th grade one. After getting over the initial qualms about the boys playing touch rather than flag football…wink, wink…I have to admit that its pretty cool and I’m proud of her for getting out there and doing this. She doesn’t have a great deal of football knowledge except for that gleaned from watching the KC Chiefs and playing in our annual Thanksgiving family football game but she makes up for it in enthusiasm and the courage to get out there and do her best. The weather was gorgeous out all day Saturday and they play their 5 on 5 flag football games at Derrick Thomas Academy on a small, 50 yard astro-turf field painted with Chiefs colors. It is a really cool little field. In her minimal playing time her strength appeared to be what would essentially be middle line-backer. She recorded a sack and harrassed the quarterback a few times. I look forward to the rest of the games this season. In the “its a small world” category I was shocked to discover that her assistant coach is one of the guys I know from the local comic shop. He’s a great guy, very encouraging. Should be a fun couple of months.

After grabbing something to eat we headed to the Loose Park to spend a few hours people watching and playing with Moses and Motley. It is there that the beautiful afternoon turned gray as one of our own, our beloved nephew Motley, turned to a life of crime and was busted:

There is a leash law within the city limits and Motley was running free, claiming the park territory as his own. For a usually vocal dog Motley had been unusually quiet all day. Perhaps he was deep in thought planning his introduction into the criminal underworld. This all changed when the animal control officer showed up and Motley vehemently voiced his opinion of the men in blue, rebuking the officer for stepping onto his turf. Cooler heads may yet have prevailed had Motley not decided to also jump on the officers leg. For his crime Motley saddled his owners with a citation…damage to be determined by a ticket in the mail. The officer shared that they had written 45 tickets in the last hour. Evidently this was some sort of dog mafia spawning ground. Hopefully Motley will travel the straight and narrow from now on!

There is evidence all around that spring has indeed sprung, for which I am extremely thankful. It is so nice to be outside. We of course were all recipients of natures April Fool’s joke as none of us thought to wear sunscreen on that glorious Saturday and 6 hours out in the sun makes for some lobster-like complexions! And speaking of April Fool’s Jeff pulled a nice email joke on me when he told me that my favorite author…do I need to name him?…would be at Planet Comicon this year. This is of course the annual Planet Comicon that had earlier been cancelled due to space issues. It was almost midnight on the 1st, I hadn’t been pranked all day, and I was also very vunerable after my nephew’s earlier criminal behavior because I bought it all hook, line, and sinker. Of course I haven’t stopped crying since I found out the truth. Betrayed by my own friend and fellow Gaiman fan. The youth of today are so cruel!

Happy Monday everyone, I wish you a week filled with spring breezes, the sights and scents of new spring growth, and no animal control officers!

It is indeed time for another Friday Favorites, and although the wheels have been turning in that oh-so-goofy brain of mine I regret to inform you that you will have to wait until next week. Alas! I hear you cry. What foul deed has befallen you, prohibiting you from opening the coffers of your Favorites file to share with us its rich treasures?!? The perils of my indentured servitude…er…work…is mostly to blame for my lack of energy and artistic enthusiasm. But I would be less than honest if I did not also blame several late nights countering international espionage as Sam Fisher in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. And then of course there was the distraction of the late show of V for Vendetta on Wednesday night followed by a vigorous discussion of the virtues of the Coen brothers and Oh Brother, Where Art Thou. Mostly I am just beat. My muse is singing loudly in my ear but my body and mind crave sleep above art. As you journey forth on your weekend I wish you well. Keep the April Fool’s Day jokes to a minimum, watch some March Madness, turn those clocks back forward (thanks Anne), and rest….

Updated with new pictures! Happy Birthday Dad!!!

The post I did last year for my dad’s birthday continues to express my sentiments towards him though they are even deeper one year later. My parents were recently here for a visit as much for social reasons as to help us out with many and varied repairs that needed to happen around our home. Thanks to his intervention a long plague of rolling, mysterious electrical outages throughout the house is now at an end, my dishwasher is fixed, and my chainsaw is once again with blade. He probably did numerous other things that I am forgetting now. Through it all I was able to visit with my dad, appreciate who he is and the love he has always shown me, and admire his willingness to get in and try to fix anything. If I had half the courage and motivation of my father I would be a much better man.

My dad is a shining example of what it means to be a father to one’s children. I am often reminded of how truly blessed I am to have this man, my dad, in my life. I am so thankful for your continued influence in my life. I hope you have a wonderful birthday and I want you to know that I really enjoyed talking, laughing, playing darts, and celebrating with you last weekend. I love you dad.

He didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.
~Clarence Budington Kelland

(Mom, Dad and their grandchildren: Elijah, Tori, and Haley)

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And I also encourage you to say a very special “Happy Birthday” to Angela, Sci Fi Chick, who turns 29 for the very first time this year! I have enjoyed another year of talking all things geek with you over the past year Angela and am sorry that for some reason my site chooses to not work for you more often than it works. I hope your day and coming weekend are filled with lots of celebration and appreciation by those you love. Have a wonderful day and remember, this is as old as a woman ever has to get! 😉

(click on picture for more detail)

You may recall that on April 21st last year I inaugurated the Artisan Series by waxing eloquent about one of my favorite artists, Lisa Snellings-Clark. While browsing her website for research purchases I became enamored of the red-headed girl pictured above. Red flooded me with such a melange of imagery that I was captured. She brought to mind Neil Gaiman’s dark story The White Road and the Masquerade number from Phantom of the Opera. She recalled the flapper girls of the 1920’s and the large art-deco statues of men and women from that era that I coveted in an antique store when I lived in Tulsa. Mostly, however, Red captivated me for who she is…a unique artistic creation from the heart and hands of someone whom I admire. I love the grace and movement of the piece. The long, lean shape is at once real and unreal. I find a kinship in her arm being draped over her head in that I often find myself doing just that as I sit in my office at work and visit with staff. Each of these limited resin casts is hand painted by Lisa herself. Mine is slightly different from the one pictured (I need to get a digital camera!). My Red has her mask held in such a way that it just begins to cover on eye giving her a more mysterious aura. And her eyes are green! In addition to the rich red color and flow of the dress, her innocently cute face and the red heart are things that attracted me to this piece originally. I am so happy to have this creation of Lisa Snellings-Clark. I had been anticipating her in the mail this week and she arrived on Friday while I was at work. My parents were visiting and I really wanted my first viewing to be a personal thing so I put the package away and waited until midnight when everyone was off in bed. That was difficult, as you can imagine, but as I slowly unwound all the packaging I realized it was really worth the wait. Although I currently don’t know where she will reside, I have Red on the floor (she’s fairly tall, 21 inches I believe!) next to the antique corner cabinet that I would like to put her on (shelf removal may be an issue). I like her in there because Mary and I have dashes of red in our living room decor and Red is currently just below and off to the side of this image by artist Bill Brauer.

They make a somewhat serendipitous pairing, don’t you think?
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Thought I’d share a little about the weekend. As I said my parents were visiting and Saturday afternoon/evening we got together with them, my sister and her husband, and my brother and his family to celebrate Mary, Jason, and my dad’s birthdays. The weather was wonderful and Abby and Mike got to introduce their newest child to the family:

Moses is a very young, but very large new member of the family. He towers over his older brother Motley

though Motley seems to be able to hold his own. They were alot of fun to play with. My brothers little dog Zoe was less than enamored with Moses so I was able to take advantage of that and hold her some…generally she doesn’t want to be held by me and would prefer to run and run and run.

We took the dogs for a walk, I was able to play throw the baseball around with my nephew Elijah for awhile…man, that kid has an arm!, and the guys and the kids spent the majority of the evening playing darts on Mike’s fancy new dartboard. Keeps score for you thus eliminating the need for taxing the brain with unnecessary things like math! It was a terrific evening and that time spent with family was the highlight of the weekend. It is slowly starting to feel like spring around here and my spring fever is kicking into high gear. Hopefully I can harness some of this energy and get some things done!

Happy Monday everyone!