flea, my grant writing metaphor would be finding shoes -- there's the fit part, then the appropriate to the purpose -- snow boots for the beach, or running shoes for a formal wedding do not meet the purpose and then finding a high quality pair without obvious flaws and errors.

But that's because I like my metaphors weird and not super obvious.

I am teaching a unit on style analysis using Tim Burton films. I had an argument with my students that Nightmare Before Christmas, while written by Burton, is not completely his. There is this lovely scene with Diane Keaton in Edward Scissorhands where she is walking up the steps in the mansion and it looks just like Sally going up that amazing staircase. Who stole from whom, I wonder?

Except, who's the shopper and who's the shoes? I would say the funder is the shopper, really. The grantwriter is making the shoes.

I just spent the last couple of hours peeling 10 oranges, removing the pith from the peel, and then alive ring the peel. This is in prep for the Persian feast K-Bug and her best friend (my other daughter) are cooking tomorrow. Persian food is nommy, but the prep is a killer.

alive ring the peel.

I don't know if this is a Persian food thing that I'm not familiar with, or autocorrect.

I hope it's the first.

Just don't give them all the credit for the meal! Prep is part of cooking, after all.

Man, I wish there were a good way to get to Allentown from Boston. There is not!

Slivering is what I meant. They end up candied with slivered carrots, almonds, and pistachios. Mix that with tiny lamb balls (ground lamb and onions - get your mind out of the gutter). Those are layered with Persian saffron rice. It is called Shireen Polo or Sweet Rice. We are also making Persian Dolma (grape leaves stuffed with ground lamb, rice, and a bunch of herbs).

Suzi, that sounds so good! (Even if you don't alive ring the peel.)

Oh, god, that sounds so good. I will have to come visit you for No Rouz some time, it sounds like my kind of holiday.

I am having lamb for dinner, coincidentally, but it is still under the broiler and I am so very hungry. It won't be ready for minutes. Minutes!

That sounds delicious.

Jesse, even then, it still works. If you are the shoe seller, and you have a woman who needs heels, you'd never show her a pair of Nikes.

So in weird My-neighborhood-is-odd stories... I took Grace a couple of blocks away to get iced tea and a treat drink from Coffee Bean. I decided to stop at the grandma shop (no, seriously, this is the storefront: [link] to get a new bra since I couldn't find either of the other two I own and they carry Wacoal and I don't have to struggle to find parking at the mall. So I go to pay and realize I have my purselet but no wallet. ARGH. They set the bras aside and we leave to go back home to get my wallet. I do, however, have enough cash for the drinks, so we go to CB. I run into a coworker there and tell her my stupidity. She then kindly offers to let me use her charge card to buy the bras and then I can pay her back. It's so kind but also, awkward, amirite?

My neighborhood is odd.