In a fit of inventiveness, I decided that we should make hand-pulled noodles for dinner last week. Despite knowledge to the contrary, i thought, "How hard can this really be?" Well, after abotu an hour and a half of pulling and kneading and resting and doing it all over again we came up with some tasty but not quite as thin as they should be hand pulled noodles, a la Aaron. My favorite style!!

I recommend the experience to anyone, but honestly, it's a lot easier to buy the ones from the store, plus they taste almost the same.

Below is the final result, hand pulled noodles in a peanut sauce, delicious!

Check out my pictures of the Hamptons, where Jennifer and I passed a fabulous newyears. Our friend Marie happens to be a real blue blood (though she fell on the hippie side of the tree) and her family owns a beach house in Easthampton on Long Island. Though her parents' house is a 5 bedroom, 3 fireplace job with a pool and room for a pony, it's rather modest by the standards of the area. Go figure. A house a kilometer up the beach had it's own observatory with the rotating dome and 15 inch telescope and everything. Now that's a a frickin' beach house.

Over the course of the holiday we broiled some salmon, flew kites and shucked our own oysters. It was truly a New Years to remember.

My photos are found at
http://picasaweb.google.com/aaronritz/TheHamptons
Another good set is at Matt Lyons page
http://picasaweb.google.com/matthewtlyons/Hamptonians?authkey=fIFHufQF8ns

Holidays beat work days, any day

Holidays are indeed better than work days, scientists have now proven it! The study was published recently in the International Journal of Studies with Sample Size One. In this study, a scientist took a sample of one person, himself, and found that work days are unequivocally less awesome than those days in which work was either optional or unnecessary such as holidays.

Ok, I admit, the journal is this blog, and the scientist is me, but dammit, I'm right here!

I'm in the process of posting some pictures of our recent escapades in the Midwest and East, but given the prolific nature of my photography, it's taking a while. Jennifer assures me that I take far too many bad pictures, but for me that was the whole point of getting a digital camera, I can take as many junk pictures as I want and just cull the herd later.