Love in a Non-Descript Brown Cardboard Box

Thanks to the dominance of email, texting, Facebook, instant messaging (do people use that anymore?), Twitter, and maybe even smoke signals, my mailbox (and yours too, probably) is usually filled only with junk mail and bills (in that order). It's not often that I receive an actual card or letter or package that I didn't initiate. In fact, I think my birthday and Christmas are about the only times I receive fun mail that I didn't specifically request (e.g., purchase from Amazon).

So imagine my surprise when my doorbell rang today around noon and there was my mailman saying he had a package for me. Since my birthday was almost a month ago, I couldn't figure out what surprise might be in his hands.

I retrieved the brown cardboard box and noted the return address was Amazon. But I hadn't ordered anything from Amazon . . . I thought. I opened the very heavy package to discover How to Cook Everything, Completely Revised Tenth Edition: 2,000 Simple Recipes for Great Food by Mark Bittman, which left me even more confused. My mind quickly raced back to my window shopping spree last night on Amazon when I was looking at cookbooks. Specifically, I was looking at Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking for an upcoming blog post. I also perused a few other cookbooks, but didn't remember buying anything. Or did I? Upon further investigation, I found the packing slip and discovered that my brother Dave sent me the book on Monday. Talk about speedy delivery.


Later this evening, I had the chance to speak to Dave and thank him for the wonderful surprise. He said that he knows how much I love to cook and that he heard about the book on NPR on Monday (I couldn't find the story he heard. Maybe it was a repeat of this story.) and thought I'd enjoy it. How cool is that?

I have to say that this is the best cookbook I've ever owned. While it doesn't have pretty pictures of perfect looking foods, it has drawings of how to do things like shucking clams and removing a mussel beard. How to drawings are so much more useful than pretty pictures. I mean sure it's great to know what a dish should look like (in comparison to how it actually looks), but knowing the difference between slicing, dicing, julienne, roll cut, and chiffonade is priceless! I could have used those skills in the summer of 1991 when I worked in the kitchen at Watervale, but better late than never.

What's even better is that I'm having guests for dinner this weekend and maybe early next week too. So they'll be guinea pigs for my new mad cooking skills.

Do I have the coolest brother or what?

My Favorite Christmas Gift

Today I received my last Christmas present. Truthfully, I wasn't expecting this gift, which is part of what made it extra special. The best part of the gift was that the person who gave it to me had clearly put some effort into thinking about what I would like.

He remembered how much I was inspired last year by a certain story, wrote about it four times and said repeatedly that it gave me courage to quit listening to the negative voices inside my own head telling me I couldn't do things. He also saw my world rocked just a couple of months later and how I let the weight of the world be put on my shoulders and put my own dreams, hopes, and desires aside. He listened to me sob on more than one occasion when I completely broke down. He never judged me. He just kept being my friend, even when I'm not sure I deserved it.

What was this gift? It was the new CD by Susan Boyle, "I Dreamed A Dream." Honestly, I don't remember the last time I bought a CD and more than that, I don't remember the last time I sat down and listened to one from beginning to end, like I did tonight, and simply loved each and every song.

Okay, I'll grant you that not one of the songs was an original. They were all covers. Lots of artists do covers of famous songs, but they don't all hit each of them well. Susan Boyle hit every note in every song with as close to precision as I could tell.

You can listen to samples of each track on the album here. My favorite is "Who I Was Born to Be."

To be sure, 2010 is off to a great start and I'm back on track to be who I was born to be. And for those times I forget, I'll just toss in this CD and be reminded. Now I'm going to go upload it to my iPod, if I can figure out how.

Bradley Whitford on The Daily Show

If you've been a long-time reader of Little Merry Sunshine, you know about my lust for Bradley Whitford. To be sure, he and Josh Lyman, the character he plays on The West Wing are pretty much my ideal guy. Smart, political wonk, witty, kinda geeky. As far as I can tell, the only thing wrong with Bradley Whitford is that wedding ring.

My favorite Bradley Whitford line from this interview is "It's my standard autograph policy, you know, if you let me touch you down there, I'll do whatever you want." To be sure, he can touch me anywhere, anytime.

I'd be remiss if I didn't send a big thank you and a huge wet sloppy kiss to the friend who thoughtfully sent me this video this morning. There is almost no better way to wake up.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Bradley Whitford

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