Here are some photos of what it looks like this morning. It’s still snowing, but not as hard, and bigger, soft flakes.

We use the garage roof to gauge the snow fall.

Here’s a view of the street. It’s quite clean because the local fire house uses it on its return trips home, but I feel for the people who have to dig out their cars! I guess though we have a garage, we still have to dig out the garage even if our car is clean and dry inside.

I left work at around 3:15 today. The snow was really coming down by 2pm. When I got to our subway station near 4pm, the main street was already fairly empty of cars and the light was starting to fail.

Katsuya and I did one shoveling around 5:30, and there was already close to 6 inches on the ground. Anna loves the snow. She romps around in the yard and even eats snow. While we were shoveling though, she just sat in the yard getting more and more covered by snow. That’s one thing I’ve noticed about her, is that in the absence of someone to play with or motivate her, she’ll just sit there outside.

Later around 8:30 we finally took Anna for her walk, and it almost looked like we hadn’t shoveled! It’s snowing much more slowly than before, but it’s still pretty steady. The street near our house is well-plowed, because the fire station (very close to us) uses it as a turnaround to get back to the firehouse. Not bad!

The snow should be tapering off around 9 or 10pm according to the radio, so we might do one more shoveling them before going to bed.

The Boston area is predicted to get 6-12″ of snow today from around 2pm. I’ve always loved snowstorms. When I was a kid, I’d listen to WBZ to hear the school closings. For nostalgia, I tuned into WBZ this morning to hear the school closings. It wasn’t the guy I used to listen to (Gary LaPierre), who used to be able to do all listings in what sounded like a single breath, but this one was harder because most places were closing 3 hours early or had early dismissal, so instead of  “Newburyport, Newington, Newton” it was more like “Newburyport early dismissal, Newington closing 3 hours early…”

One thing I noticed though, whereas they used to give the entire list at once, they now do about 1/2 of it and then break for commercials and other news. Talk about stringing people along! By the time they got to the Ns or Ws, you’d be late for school if you had to go. I think it’s just all a tactic to make people to listen to more radio, but I guess now in the Internet age, there are plenty of other places to get your school closing information, whereas in my school days there was just the radio.

Our office is open, but I’m betting a lot of people will stay home rather than risk a messy commute in the afternoon.

I asked Katsuya if they ever had no school announcements in Tokyo, his response was “What do you mean? If the schools were closed they’d just say ‘Tokyo.’”

I felt disappointed this year in that we did not have a single trick-or-treater come by until nearly 7:30pm! When I was a kid, I remember that my parents’ doorbell would ring fairly frequently from about 5-8pm. Me and my friends would go around to every house on the street and maybe the next street over, too, and ring every house with its light on.

I guess that nowadays, kids only go to houses of people they know. It was kind of sad. Our first trick-or-treater was Katsuya’s friend S and her kids. After that we got 2 more sets of trick-or-treaters, but that was it! We heard plenty of kids go by, but only those kids stopped by.

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The fall foliage was unusually pretty this year. Many more oranges and reds than in previous years. Even the oak trees at the park were a warm orangey brown instead of just turning brown and falling off the tree.

Anna and I enjoyed them on our walk.

This was a particularly brilliant tree. We went apple picking a couple of weeks ago and the trees out west were really really striking, like this one.

Potato & Cheese Dumplings (Silesian dumplings)
2 large potatoes
4-6 oz. cream cheese
1 egg yolk
all-purpose flour
potato flour (or potato starch)
1/4 tsp. salt

Boil potatoes. Rinse with water and wait until cool to the touch. Mash the potatoes until they are smooth.
Add the cream cheese and blend.
Add egg yolk and mix.
Add flour equal to about 1/4-1/3 the volume of mashed potatoes.
Add twice as much potato flour/starch as flour
(so the proportion of potato to flour to potato flour is about 4:1:2)
Add salt and mix well.
The dough should feel almost like pasta doug but will be more sticky and wet. Add more flour if needed to obtain the right consistency.

Make the dough into small golf-ball size balls and flatten a little (M puts a little dent in the center).
Bring a pot of salted water to boil.
Put in dumplings a few at a time so they don’t overlap.
When they float to the surface (about 5 minutes) they are done. Try one to make sure it is cooked through.

Serving ideas
1. with meat sauce (or stew)
2. With fruit like strawberries and plums (you want to cook the fruits a little to make them a little softer.
3. Sour cream and sugar. (Mix the sour cream until it’s nice and smooth)

Enjoy!

P.S. My dumplings came out a little rough, not nice and smooth like M’s, so M recommended adding more flour and less potato flour.

A few weeks ago, we made Polish dumplings from a recipe from M, one of my friends at work. It has potatoes, cream cheese, flour and potato flour. They were really yummy, although we didn’t get that really smooth texture that M has. Maybe we put in too much mashed potatoes?

Dumplings waiting to be boiled.

In the afternoons, I sometimes work from home, so we have tea time when I get home. Anna is looking as anxious for her tea time biscuit which you can see next to the Japanese sweets (manju) that we’re about to have.

Hi!

We spent this past weekend, at a friend’s place in Vermont. Anna just loved running around off leash on the acres and acres of meadows and forests. It rained and rained on Saturday after lunch, but Anna and Katsuya got in a small hike in the woods behind the house in the morning.

These photos are from Sunday afternoon when we went for a stroll.

Anna got quite excited on the lower meadow and did a bunch of her herding dog figure eights.

There was a pond down there, and besides taking a drink, she nearly went all the way in!

Here is a pensive moment by the apple tree looking down at another pond.

Katsuya and I had a great time. There’s nothing quite like just being away from home because then you don’t feel like there are a whole list of things you should be working on.

While at our friend’s place, we discovered Pablo Casals’ autobiography Joys and Sorrows, which we started reading. It’s a fascinating read, not so much because of the story of his music, but more about the times he grew up in, and his own personal beliefs about doing what is right.

What with no neighbors nearby, we could practice violin and recorder at any time of day, and play anywhere, even outside! It was a real feeling of freedom and release.

We felt sad to leave, and Anna was even quite reluctant to get back into the car. We really felt for her. She had been off-leash all weekend and now it was back to leashed life in the city. The interesting thing is, even though she was off-leash, she never really went very far from where we were, or ran off.

In fact, being in a strange house seemed to make her more uneasy. I guess dogs are creatures of routine, but then Katsuya says, it’s only human beings who go on vacation and change their routine, so it makes sense that she would feel unsettled away from home, even if she might prefer living in the country.

We really think that in his old age, Tommy is reverting to a more kitten-like personality. Lately he’s really been very friendly with Anna’s feet as you can see here. At one point he had his head right between Anna’s hind legs. It seems much more like something Sabrina would do.

Lately we’ve been really into the films of Mira Nair. I always liked her movies (“Mississippi Masala” and “Monsoon Wedding”), but we recently saw “The Namesake” which is based on the Jhumpa Lahiri novel. It was totally engrossing and we couldn’t stop until we were done with it. It’s a 30-year saga/story of an Indian family living in the U.S. and how their son grows up a complete American, but when life-changing events happen, he finds himself in his Indian heritage that he has been trying to ignore to then. It’s hard to describe, you just have to see it.

The extras were also excellent, too. Mira Nair conducted a seminar at Columbia University and the insight and advice she brings with regards to the movie are just like taking a graduate level class. I haven’t seen extras this good on a DVD. We are going to have to rent it again to watch the movie with her commentary.

This past Thursday, I drove to Mattapoisett, on Buzzards Bay, to visit my good friend E and her family. It was a very short visit, but it was good to see her as she lives on the West Coast. Here’s a shot of me at the beach.

Is it poor eyesight or just our alpha cat Tommy softening up.

After pretty much ignoring the existence of our dog, Anna, since she joined us in July 2005, Tommy has started to pay attention to Anna, but only as a scratching post for his chin!

Anna doesn’t seem quite sure what to make of it when the “king of the jungle” that she has to protect her food against is suddenly rubbing his chin against her paws.