Applesauce and Christmas songs

This seems more like me. Homemade applesauce is the greatest, and this is the best time of the year for singing along to Christmas music.

I made applesauce last weekend, too, and I am shocked how many people have never had homemade applesauce. It’s like pie only good for you. It’s doubly good for me because it doesn’t require any true cooking skill. You just cut up apples and put some water in a pan, and it becomes applesauce on its own while you go off and do something useful like blog about what you’re doing.

Breaking news and building maps

Yesterday a New York state court ruled that using eminent domain would be unconstitutional for Columbia University’s expansion plans, granting a victory to the local business owners whose property could have been seized. The expansion area in question is a few blocks north of campus, an area I pass quite often on my trips between Columbia and City College. It’s also within the upper Manhattan area my class covers on The Uptowner, so we all hopped into breaking news mode.

Lighting up campus

Columbia does holiday lights with manic thoroughness. Lights lights lights! Best time of year.

Master’s project master plan

It finally started coming together in my head, so I went to the nearly desolate journalism school and comandeered a white board for half an hour. I have a dozen reporting checklists scribbled in notebooks, but this is the first time I felt like I know enough to make a writing plan.

Then I photographed it and erased it.

Plum scones and NPR

The other day I listened to NPR and sipped tea while I made plum scones. It felt like somebody else’s ideal morning, though I enjoyed it plenty myself. Here’s the recipe I sort of used, before I changed everything and measured none of it. Really. I didn’t use a single measuring device.

Thankgiving parade, again

My roommate and I went to the parade Thanksgiving morning, just to see it. We took the train down and found a decent side street facing Central Park, north of Columbus Circle. We weren’t too concerned about getting awesome seats, but it was a warm day and pleasant to be there.

So I finally read The New Yorker

I’m pretty sure I never picked up a copy of The New Yorker before last weekend. I’m kind of proud of that.

Of course, I realize that’s not too far off from the proud ignorance that reinforces the East Coast elitist disdain for the rest of the nation. So I read an issue at the library. It was pretty interesting. I particularly liked this article about Hollywood’s expert accent coach.

Cleaning off my desktop

A handful of friends and strangers have commented in recent weeks about the cluttered state of my laptop desktop. I know, I know, so I finally got organized and threw a few virtual reams of scrap paper into the recycling bin. Also found this, which I apparently saved a while ago for the sake of some old Evergreen lolz.

Hahaha.

Inspiration for lunch

I’m not caffeinated today, but some combination of music and weather and thought added up to about the same effect. So, despite the fact that it was raining and the fact that I hadn’t eaten anything yet, I decided I absolutely needed to spend my lunch hour between classes at the Lehman Library where they keep old J-School master’s projects.

I was looking for these.

If you can’t read the titles: Christopher J. Chivers (‘95) writing about the Marines and Damien Cave (‘98) writing about theater.

They’re long pieces and I didn’t have time to read them through (non-circulating books are annoying), but I did read the “P.S.” method notes at the end of each. Good stuff. And I did make time to get lunch.

Is Veterans Day a cookie holiday?

That’s what one of my classmates asked yesterday when I brought sugar cookies for the class. They were frosted with red and blue sugar on top, but I forgot to take a photo at that point. I made more than 120 star-shaped cookies and left most of them with the student veterans at City College, whom I’m writing about for my master’s project.

The cookies were a day early because today I am running around to parades and things. And yes, I believe Veterans Day can be a cookie holiday if you want it to be. Why not? Veterans like cookies just like everyone else. Better than shopping the Macy’s sale.