The horrorfest that was Stylista is finally over, with Megan proving to be one of the worst losers in (un)reality tv history. I can't say I'm glad Johanna won exactly; I'm just glad that DyShaun did not win. I think it was entirely due to the stupid hat that made him look like a perpetual freshman at NYU. Ashlie was probably the strongest competitor, but out of that bunch that's not saying much. I kind of feel sorry for the Elle editorial staff for having got themselves roped into this whole mess.

The food thus far on Top Chef has been surprisingly uninspired, given the caliber of this season's cast. Jamie from Absinthe is hanging in and seems to be doing well, but it's still at the point where I'm having trouble telling all the balds and beards apart. The blond guy is kinda scaring me. Unclench, dude.

I'm pulling a very late night tonight for work as we're releasing a bunch of assets in conjunction with the client's European office and there's no way we can currently "unlock" a folder on our public ftp automatically, so I have to start uploading a giant movie file at about midnight so it'll be available at 1 a.m. when the press release goes out. Whee. PR is all glamor all the time, people. This week I managed a local press tour for a client who was sick as a dog with the stomach flu. While we were all amazed and impressed with his ability to carry on while having to run to the bathroom about every 90 minutes to barf, I'm just very, very thankful he managed not to puke in my car.

Update: Um, wow. I had not yet watched the latest episode of Top Chef when I wrote this post about an hour ago. Kudos to Tom C. for staging a mini intervention.

Isis loves hummus. She knows this pizza has hummus on it and will not back off. This is a small pizza I threw together out of what I found in the fridge: my favorite Mediterranean style flatbread spread with a hummus base, crumbled feta, slivered sun dried tomatoes and shredded romano.

As I've been doing almost every week for the past few months, I tried out a couple of new recipes last week in order to build a set of relatively easy, healthy things to make at home. The home run was a spicy mushroom, cabbage and rice soup from Apartment Therapy. This can be easily tweaked with different ingredients, like adding chicken or turkey or substituting different grains. It actually got less spicy over the three days I ate it.

The big miss for the week was a roasted broccoli "pesto" from Vegetarian Times mag. The recipe said that roasting broccoli would bring out richer flavor... well, not exactly. Roasting broccoli brought out the burnt flavor. And it took me forever to get the odor out of the house (in freezing weather, I might add). I like Veggie Times and will probably renew my sub, but their recipes are very hit-or-miss.

Is it just me, or does the Illinois governor look like Donovan?

So I tried an official cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee while in Orlando and I agree they make a fine cup of coffee, probably better than a cup of Starbucks drip (definitely mellower), but maybe not as good as Peet's. But then I usually get lattes at Peet's and Starbucks, and anyway there aren't any Dunkin Donuts places around here. In fact, other than a gaggle of locations in Las Vegas, there aren't many DDs anywhere west of the Mississippi. That makes their tagline "America runs on Dunkin" just plain untrue. Since "About half of America runs on Dunkin" doesn't sound very strong, maybe they should have come up with something else.

Fuzzy photos taken from my phone from my Thanksgiving trip to Orlando:



The male sandhill crane standing guard while the female ate seed on the porch.














Castle lighting at Magic Kingdom. We also went to the first night of the Osborne Family Lights at Hollywood Studios, but didn't get photos. The Osborne Family is kind of interesting.



I kind of regret not getting a photo of Mom playing Wii Music at Thanksgiving.