One That Didn’t Work

Sometimes trying new things works out well. You meet new people despite your growing certainty you have more than enough friends. The dress in the fitting room does not make you look like Mary Ellen Walton despite its appearance on the hanger.

Sometimes trying new things makes you think of all the variations you could try with said new things. Like spaghetti bread. After all, that seemingly kooky recipe was tasty and provided several days of lunches. The possibilities of what to encase in bread dough are endless. Right?

84th Academy Award Nominations

In spite of having watched 31 movies last year, I didn’t see very many on their first release so it’s hard to work up excitement for this year’s Oscars. And unless ABC runs the ceremony live on its website, I won’t be watching it either. This is what happens when you decide to save money by cancelling cable/satellite television. Oops.

I may make a slight attempt to get to the theaters to see some of the nominated films and performances. I’d like to see War Horse at any rate. Nothing else has jumped out at me as a must-see in the theater. If you’ve seen any of the nominees and consider the theater experience critical to appreciating the movie, let me know in the comments.

Without further ado, here’s a list of some of the nominees. For other categories, check out the Oscars website.

Review: The Night Swimmer

The Night Swimmer
Matt Bondurant
Scribner
$25.00, hardback, 288 pages (also available as an ebook)
Release date: Jan. 10, 2012

Books captivate readers for a number of reasons. Maybe it’s a character that reminds you of someone you know or someone you want to know. Maybe it’s a setting that you’ve always dreamt of. Maybe the plot engages your attention fully, refusing to let go even as it twists and turns.

If you’re lucky, a book captivates you because of its author’s voice and its author’s awareness of how to build character relationships and how to maintain suspense. Readers of Matt Bondurant’s The Night Swimmer can consider themselves among the lucky.

The Wonders of Spaghetti Bread

Ah, Facebook. How you have changed my life. Kept me up to date on the minutiae of others’ daily lives. Introduced me to honey badgers. Opened my mind to new food combinations, namely …

Spaghetti Bread

It’s an idea so simplistic in the beauty of delivering an American-Italian dinner in one bite. After all, how many spaghetti dinners do you have without bread or where you didn’t wish you had bread to sop up the last sauce from the plate?

After seeing a link on a friend’s page to this meal, I knew I had to give it a shot.

How’d Small Pond Do in 2011?

Why do I like WordPress.com to host my blog? Once you get past the main draw of it being free (which cannot be underestimated), I like the Freshly Pressed feature; I like the pretty easy-to-use interface; I like the occasional emails from the site that inspire me to write more. Like the one that came at year-end with stat summaries.

You can check out the full report from the link below.

If you do, maybe you can explain to me why so many people were searching for St. Edward’s crown and/or specter last year? I swear, someone landed on my blog at least three times a week looking for that.

Here’s an excerpt from the report:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 8,600 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report. I suspect the firework animation is tied to hits per day listed so it’s a pretty lame show. Maybe the finale will be good, but I haven’t watched through the entire thing and I certainly don’t expect you to.