art imitating life

Sometimes I forget how much Tak puts into Secret Asian Man that is, for the most part, straight out of our real lives. In a recent story line, we goes into our break-in from a couple years ago. (No, I don't actually have a vintage Woodface T-shirt, but it would be cool if I did.)

What else is funny--this is what our place looks like--the colors, the layout, the furniture. Only cleaner!

childhood comforts

We've been playing a lot of board games in the last couple weeks as a TV alternative. It's been fun to get back into Trouble, and Sorry! I found a new travel-sized version of Mastermind at a game & tobacco shop in Brookline, and rescued our travel-sized Othello dating back to the 70's from my parents' house. Owen loves Othello, and I've even downloaded it to my iPod touch (called Morocco).

Another blast from the past has been a recent run of dinners like "beef" stroganoff and American chop suey. We usually use ground turkey and whole wheat noodles. For snacks, we've been having cream cheese or peanut butter on celery, which I hadn't had for years until last Thanksgiving. Anyone have a good tuna casserole recipe?

series to series

I have been tearing through a couple of fun series lately: the Sookie Stackhouse books (the basis of HBO's True Blood), starting with Dead Until Dark, by Charlaine Harris. Soap opera-y but with vampires, I've seen the show, but love love love the books. One of them I finished on a train ride to NYC, it was so engaging. With a break to read Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (a must-read for every comic book geek), a co-worker lent me Storm Front by Jim Butcher, the first book in the Dresden Files series. It's a great mix of noir and magic; at least two of the books I finished in a day, they are such fun and engrossing reads. Sure, they might get a little predictable, but I still need to know what happens; which is probably also why I've stuck with TV shows Battlestar Galactica and Heroes. Now that Medium is on after Heroes, my Monday nights are couch-bound.

Want a taste? Try Many Bloody Returns, a good collection of short stories edited by Charlaine Harris, Jim Butcher, and Toni L.P. Kelner. Also included is a short story by Kelley Armstrong, author of Bitten and the "paranormal romances" Women of the Otherworld." Yes, she wrote the short story "Twilight" and no, it has nothing to do with Edward and Bella.