A very cool clock built by Dr. John Taylor to honor John Harrison who solved the longitude problem and invented the grasshopper escapement. The grasshopper model alone is awesome.

I know I've been bandying about some weird ice cream ideas lately, and lord knows I certainly do love cheese, but even I draw the line at cheese ice cream.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967, Robert Morse [now Betram Cooper on Mad Men] and Michele Lee) has just become my favorite movie because not only is the color design pure genius (Mary Blair, y'know), but the head of the company (Rudy Vallee!) secretly knits when he gets stressed.

Speaking of hot weather, my latest obsession is the one pint Donvier ice cream maker I found in perfect condition at Goodwill several days ago for $6.99. I've been eying the 1.5 quart Cuisinart ICE-20 for almost a year after seeing a recipe for olive oil ice cream in the local paper, but really don't have the space in my tiny freezer to store the bucket and they're kinda noisy. The Donvier turns out to be perfect: the pint bucket takes up way less space and the manual crank couldn't be quieter. You don't have to crank it continuously, either--just two or three times every five minutes for a span of about twenty minutes. The main thing is to keep the bucket really frozen solid and to get the ingredients as cold as possible before they go in. It's best to let the stuff sit in the freezer for at least a few hours after cranking, too.

I've made two sorbets so far which, to quote Aunt Sandy, turned out fabulous: lemon and lemon basil. This is the lemon basil sorbet I made yesterday, using turbinado sugar which is why it's that raw sewage color instead of a delicate yellow (admittedly the lighting could also be better). But it tastes really, really good. The recipe came from an ancient issue of Cooking Light that I saved for all this time (the recipe, not the whole magazine) because I'm a packrat. The lemon sorbet recipe was from olive and also quite tasty. I've yet to make a disappointing recipe from olive, by the way. Wish it wasn't $10 per issue.

Dumb episodes caused by really hot weather: first of all, this photo is from an incident back in late June when a 12-pack of Diet Pepsi that I was too lazy to carry in from the car exploded in my back seat on one of the many days that topped 100 degrees. I think it was about 106 this particular day. The first can exploded as I was driving out of the parking lot at work, and luckily I still had the empty cooler from our ash-scattering (ash-dumping?) trip to Mendocino in the back, so I was able to put the soda cans in there. Two more exploded before I got home. At the time, work was insanely busy so the cans stayed in the cooler for a couple of weeks, where they got all moldy and gross and I ended up having to clean the cooler out with baking soda and vinegar in my bathtub.

This afternoon I was making gazpacho for the second time this week 'cuz it's nearly 100 again today, when I dropped my fancy pepper mill (except mine is an earlier, less ergonomic model without the stand) into the soup. At that point I discovered I have no idea how to open the damn thing. Turning to the Web, I found several other bloggers who couldn't figure it out either, and posted instructions from the manufacturer. I got it rinsed out (not easy--peppercorns float), and am now hoping it will dry without rusting or molding.

My hands still hurt a lot so I haven't been able to knit for about 2 weeks, and even holding a book upright can cause pain. Instead, I've rediscovered jigsaw puzzles. I put this one together over about three evenings and a morning while watching the final season of Charmed on DVD. I am now working on a Peanuts-themed puzzle while I watch the first season of The Wire.

Latest news: had to purchase toilet paper for the first time since January. When dad died he had apparently just been to Costco so I got all of this. He also had something like 18 rolls of paper towels, I guess in case there was a huge oil spill right there in the ocean in front of his building he'd be all set to go help clean it up. I gave a lot of the paper towels to his neighbors.