I love this photo

Found it on the Sartorialist's site. Please go take a look and read the story behind the image. Or stare at it for a few minutes to pick out the awesome details. Like that glass of milk at her side. Or the gentleman in the mirror taking the photo (obscured by the flash).  Or the jeans she's wearing - apparently they are men's jeans and women from small towns simply did not wear men's jeans. Love it!

my chocolate lover

I call M my chocolate lover (hee hee). He loves chocolate. And yesterday was his birthday. We were both able to take the day off to enjoy it together. We ran errands (dr's appt for leftie, a stop at Target),


(my chocolate lover does not wish to be photographed)
ate an elegant lunch downtown

(I loved that chandelier)
watched An Education (please go see it, I found the trailer to be misleading. It's not as cheesy looking and esoteric as I thought it would be. It was actually quite good.)

And then I baked him a cake.

(I am a towering presence of chocolate)
It's become a birthday tradition. I offer to bake him whatever he wants for his birthday. Usually it's chocolate cake. I found an amazing recipe for one that was a white or yellow cake with a milk chocolate frosting. I wanted to make sure that was okay with him. But then he got to ruminating. Because I told him that the milk chocolate frosting is not a ganache frosting. Which is a frosting I've used more frequently in the past. And he decided that he wanted a cake with ganache. Because that's a fun word to say. So ganache it was. I followed this recipe to the letter (except I subbed a rice syrup that I found at Whole Foods instead of the corn syrup). It. Was. Amazing.


(I look innocent, but eat me and I will have you climbing the walls)
Probably should have doubled the recipe for the ganache. I couldn't help but sample it (again and again) as I was making it. While it was still warm and gooey it tasted like a really rich and heavy chocolate mousse (in the very best way). In fact, I might just make that as a dessert on it's own in the future. A-may-zing!

Anyways, I loved the ganache so much I would prefer more of it with the cake, which is not my normal reaction to frosting. But this isn't just frosting after all. It's a ganache. And it's a fun word to say. I just might have to get more supplies for another batch to go with the rest of the cake.

Recipe here.

we watch a lot of movies around here

[EDITED TO ADD: M noticed that I forgot to include *The Band's Visit on my list. It's a recommend and I thought it came out in 2007 which is why I forgot to include it here. It's a charming and unexpectedly good (like I thought it was going to be good, but it was even better than I thought, so... unexpected and even better) movie about an Egyptian police precinct band on a performance trip to Israel who get stranded in a remote town wondering if they will make their scheduled performance for an Egyptian embassy opening. I know that's a run-on sentence. Go watch it, you'll like it.

And also? I forgot that the Oscar nominations were being announced yesterday so my bitching about the Academy possibly overlooking Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei was unnecessary. They both got nominated. Yay!]

It's well into 2009, but since I have a lot of time on my hands I'm going to write up a list of all the movies we watched this year and this time just brief notes of my thoughts, maybe. Okay and stars next to the ones I recommend.

The Business of Being Born (interesting documentary, very biased)
In Bruges (interesting - not really the comedy it was advertised as being)
Charlie Bartlett (it was okay)
Be Kind, Rewind (awesome visuals! I would have loved to be on staff for the props and set department when making this movie. Too bad the story was just so-so.)

*Blindsight (documentary about a blind mountaineer (really) who undertakes an expedition to climb Mt. Everest with a group of blind Tibetan kids. Yes it's crazy inspiring but really I engaged with the people in the film more for their stories and not necessarily for what they accomplished as blind people. Very very good.)

The Hammer (Adam Corolla's movie. not bad. not really that good though)
Run, Fat Boy, Run (not worth it)
Shine A Light (the only way I'll ever afford to see a Rolling Stones concert. I'd recommend this if you like the Stones and concert films.)

*Young@Heart (loved it! not great as a documentary but the subject matter was so intriguing!)

*The Visitor (very strong performances-Richard Jenkins has become one of my favorite actors to look out for, compelling story, uplifting ending)

*Son of Rambow: A Home Movie (awesome! love the visuals-very creative! adorable kid actors (not in the saccharine way) and heartwarming story about friendship)

Iron Man (entertaining-I'd recommend it if you like explosion-laden summer blockbuster types)
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (a sentimental favorite and entertaining for that reason but admittedly flawed)
The Foot Fist Way (thought this would be way funnier. it fell flat)
The Promotion (engaging enough of a concept, last bit sort of didn't make it for me. enough funny bits to keep you going)
The Incredible Hulk (Ed Norton is a better casting choice for the Bruce Banner role than (give me a break) Eric Bana ?? and there were plenty of fun explosions and such, but not a very good movie overall)

*WALL-E (very very good. I loved how the first half of the movie conveyed a very complete narration with nearly no dialogue. a touch preachy at the end but still very enjoyable)

Wanted (interesting ideas, tried too hard to force the comedy in, and the gore was unnecessary and over the top)
*Tell No One (French title:Ne Le Dis a Personne. Not bad, does a fine job of working within the genre. The music was a bit overwhelming and the end was just a touch unsatisfying but still quite entertaining. Not a top recommendation, but I guess I would recommend it.)
Hancock (the first half was good the second half sucked ass)
Batman: Gotham Knight (Heath Ledger was without a doubt magnificent in his interpretation of the Joker. the whole movie was about 30 minutes too long, they didn't seem to know how to end it. Better to have done the 2-face story as another movie than try to force it as an additional plot line into this one? I don't know. Something about it didn't work.)

*Kenny (still on my top 10 list for this year. I appreciate a movie that is very good and very funny and has a positive ending. It's so easy to kill off all the characters if you're stuck and don't know how to end your story. It's much harder to keep them alive and put a positive engaging spin on the end of the story of their journey.)

Transsiberian (interesting but flawed. Ben Kingsley isn't all that in this one)
Step Brothers (ridiculous but funny)
Man On Wire (french tightrope walker documentary. fascinating and sometimes beautiful, but I kept thinking to myself: what a crackpot!)

*Frozen River (this movie too remains on my top 10 list with similar thoughts as above about the ending as I had about Kenny)

In Search of Midnight Kiss (not worth it, I regret that I wasted those hours of my life)
The Pineapple Express (not as funny as I'd hoped and slightly ridiculous 'specially at the end, but still entertaining)
Tropic of Thunder (really bad)

*Burn After Reading (it's refreshing to watch an intelligent comedy. I enjoy the silly ones, but this one was even more enjoyable because it was smart and felt true and well acted. A fine ensemble cast.)

Ghost Town (disappointingly not that good considering the talent involved)
Rachel Getting Married (it was okay. Anne Hathaway was good in a dramatic indie role. And the wedding party scenes were my favorite visually, but the story didn't work for me. lots of loose ends, you know?)
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (cute idea, heard a promising review of it, but it wasn't that good. Charlie Bartlett was better)
Happy-Go-Lucky (very enjoyable character study of an amazing individual. I loved the trampoline scenes which I thought visually connected with the idea of joy and happy-go-luckiness (if you will). Not really a story as much as a slice of life, you know, something interesting happened once and here I'll tell you about it in a 90 minute film format. Eddie Marsan who plays the crabby driving school instructor (en rah-hah!) also gave a strong performance)
W. (made me feel sorry for him. felt like a too-long SNL sketch Josh Brolin does an amazing impersonation)
Synecdoche, New York (3 hours of my life that I'll never get back)
Role Models (not as funny as I thought it would be)
Slumdog Millionaire (unsatisfying story but pretty to look at and the music was good)
Wendy and Lucy (sweet, compelling and short story like)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (unsatisfying story but pretty people making out a lot and beautiful cinematography+art direction)

*The Wrestler (I cried a lot after this movie was over. I cried a fair share during it too. When I saw the trailers for it I had a very visceral reaction and I teared up a few times. His face is so amazing, there's so many stories in it. I hesitate to call it my #1 movie for this year, because I feel bad recommending a movie that's so sad. But it was very well written, fantastically performed and directed and I think what makes me most sad of all is how true it is. Mickey Rourke and Marissa Tomei will get totally overlooked by the academy for their roles in this movie which is a crime as far as I'm concerned.)

*Waltz With Bashir (animated full length feature of a lebanese war veteran dealing with his demons. I kept seeing the trailers for this one but didn't want to go see it. M saw it without me and what he told me now makes me want to see it. So this is a bit of a cheat to include it on this list, but there you go.)

From DVD:
*Billy the Kid (documentary about an amazing teenager)

my current favorite restaurant and also mashed sweet potatoes

[photo from the Tender Greens website]

I can't believe I've gone this long without mentioning my favorite restaurant Tender Greens. The one we go to is located in the (recently?) gentrified downtown neighborhood of Culver City about 20 minutes away. There's a discount movie theater down the street from it that m and I go to nearly every weekend and that's how we found out about this place.

At the base it's a salad place using fresh seasonal local ingredients for their salads with some dishes featuring grilled meats added on top. Or if you prefer, you can order a hot plate of the grilled meat with a small side salad and mashed potatoes. Or the grilled meat (or veggie) on a ciabatta bun with a small side salad. I'm making it sound like their menu items aren't terribly original, but that's just me lacking the ability to fully describe how awesome this food is (I'm going to blame the allergy attack I've been suffering from). I've been going down their menu trying each salad one by one and I've yet to find a clunker.They also feature a weekly special salad and soup. And all of this is very reasonably priced which makes it a win/win/win for us.

[photo from the Tender Greens website]

We were there recently and M ordered their special which was a hot plate instead of a salad. A slow cooked duck leg on a bed of mashed sweet potatoes with a small side salad. It was damn good. I particularly enjoyed the mashed sweet potatoes. They were creamy, lightly sweet and just that right porridge/pudding consistency that screams of comfort food.

[photo from the Tender Greens website]

So Friday night, my first night feeling up to cooking a meal, I decided to make some of those mashed sweet potatoes. I roasted two medium sized potatoes for about an hour (pricking the surface with a fork a few times) and then scraped the flesh from the skin into a medium sized bowl. I was a little worried about how maybe the oven roasting might have dried out the potatoes so I added about 1/4 cup of milk and a dollop of light cream cheese for flavor. This is the thing with mashed potatoes in my opinion, add a dollop of cream cheese before mixing/whipping and I think you'll find that it adds a little extra va-voom to your 'taters. Just a little extra creaminess, you won't be able to taste the cheese flavor at all. Try it, I think it'll change that way you make mashed potatoes. To the mashed sweet potatoes I didn't even add any salt or pepper or any of my other mashed potatoes seasonings (sometimes I add a dash of nutmeg or ground white pepper - I guess the secret's out now). And dudes, let me tell you it was out of this world!

Oh and I cooked honey glazed porkchops and garlic sauteed spinach to go with it.

meeting up with Our Secret Brother John Green (osbJG)

It's been a busy coupla days around here and so I'm only now getting around to writing about last Thursday when I biked over to the Santa Monica Public Library to see osbJG. He was in town on his book tour promoting his most recent novel Paper Towns and I wasn't about to miss an opportunity to hear him talk in person.

I regret that the only good photo of him makes him appear as though he has agitated hands.

The library auditorium was packed (with some attendees in an overflow room. Thank goodness I got there early) with folks (mostly high school kids is my guess) dressed up for Halloween as per osbJG's suggestion. This queen of hearts' costume was too good not to photograph. And that sailor boy just warmed my heart. Look at that grin!


This gal wore my favorite costume.

Says she hand sewed it so it took her two weeks to make. See? It even flips inside out for when the ghost gets eaten by Pac-Man. Awesome!!


NB: osbJG came dressed up in costume as well. Can you guess who he's supposed to be?

Walt Whitman! Of course!!

I regret that my photography skills are so wanting. I think I was a little nervous. Nervous because I was one of maybe 5 non high school/college age kids there (the other 4 were probably parents who'd driven their kids over) and felt a little like a moron. Nervous because I was worried that when it came time for osbJG to sign my book I'd say something stupid and he'd mock me (in a funny and kind way, but mortifying if you are the one who getting mocked). Nervous because I was going to ask him to hold my sock-in-progress and he might think that I was a perverse sort of stalker indeed.

He did hold my sock in progress and graciously allowed me to photograph him doing so. I am racking up nerdy points in so many ways with this shot.

NB: I haven't finished the socks in question yet. I learned the hard way that knitting argyle successfully for me involves backwards knitting for the colorwork part.

The talk and reading was great! I like what osbJG said about why decided to write for the young adult genre, how he finds it meaningful to be given a voice, invited to sit at the table among those who might influence the opinions of our young people. It's validating to see so many young folks responding to his energy and enthusiasm.

for the typography geeks

From James

Click the above image to be redirected to the video.

Whoo-Ha! NERDFIGHTERS!

PS. Although, I do take offense to the idea that Comic Sans "saves the day," as it were... or Courier Old for that matter.

virtual field trip: Poitiers, France

If you want to take a trip to central France but don't have the dough, check out these awesome photos that my french dad Jean Beaumont took. Ahhh, it takes me back...


Of course I zoomed in on the ones of the printing equipment. I mean come on, does it get any cooler for a printing geek like me?

go celtics!

Last night I went to Game 5 of the NBA Finals. M got the executive tickets from work! These seats are right in the midst of the press section. What a treat for my Boston sports fan.

Check out how cool my camera's zoom lens is! I was able to get a few decent shots from clear across the Staples Center. These were during the pre-game, I was too tense to try and shoot any of the actual game.


KG is so hard to shoot (with a camera, that is). The man never kept still for a minute.


Leon Powe, my sentimental favorite. Have you heard his story? It's a tremendous one of someone achieving the American Dream against lots of adversity. And a fine bench player too.


There were celebrity fans.

I think Jack's my favorite Lakers' fan. He really gets into the game, unlike say... oh the rest of the people at the game rooting for the Lakers. It's hard to respect the L.A. fans. Much like this blog post, they seem to be more interested in the celebrities than the game.

Of course Mark Wahlberg was there representing for Boston (Though he left at the beginning of the 4th quarter and did not return. Why Mark, why?).


Oh, and Matt Damon too (in the green cap). He stayed for the full game and seemed to find something very funny he kept laughing.


Here's my favorite Boston fan (a little blurry though) with friends Lee and Val.

Bummed that the Celtics did not clinch the championship with this game, but secretly a little relieved because I feared I would get beat up wearing my Celtics shirt. Is that wrong?

how felt+glue+interfacing+last minute inspiration saved the day

Hope you have a nice day.


We'll give you a call on Sunday to wish you a happy.

thumbs up - thrift stores of Fresno

I forgot to talk about my thrift store venture after our Yosemite trip. I haven't been to a thrift store since H's visit. It's just been that kind of busy around here.


We stopped off in Fresno on our way up to Yosemite and noticed a string of thrift stores in the downtown area. I have a friend who lives in Fresno and I remembered him telling me about some great finds in his local thrift stores. So of course I was curious to check it out for myself after the trip on our way home. I scored the above teacup at the last store I walked through. I really like the color.


And these stacking tulip shaped bowls (I love their little notches on the inside so that they stack perfectly). I have another dish from a different thrift store purchase that I think came from the same family. Same lines, same colors (slightly greener aqua, whereas this one has more powder blue in the aqua) but with a little partition in the middle. I can't figure out what these were originally intended for. Condiments? Sauces? For now, they are just stacked on a little shelf in my kitchen above my cookbooks and food mags.


Fresno thrift stores ROCK, by the way. Very well organized. LOTS of selection. Lots of variety of selection. It was bake-your-brains hot that day and none of the stores seemed to have AC, so it was a brief trip in and out of each one (I stopped into 4, the 5th was closed). I don't have too many occasions to be in Fresno, but if I ever am again a visit to their downtown is a must.

more young@heart

These guys were in town last night to promote their movie!


When I heard that, I rushed to get tickets for us. Wow, the show was awesome! This guy is one of my favorites. He's got such a great energy and spirit. And a lovely lovely voice to boot.


The audience was thrilled to see all the dancing on stage. Especially when the fella in the wheelchair got up to cut a rug. I think we all remembered him being more mobile in the film and so it was a little surprising to see him in a wheelchair, and then was doubly thrilling to see him up and kicking it.


The band was also great. Such talented bunch of musicians!


(Blurry photos. But I didn't want to annoy the theatre goers behind me (all 3 rows of them) with all my photo taking, so I had to keep it quick and infrequent.)

There are some fun videos on youtube as well if anyone's interested. When M and I got home last night, we couldn't stop watching them. Seriously if you hear that these guys have a gig near you, go out and see it. you won't be disappointed. Good times, people, good times.

happy birthday dude

Today my little brother is 30. THIRTY.

Please call him James.

This is where he works.

For this auspicious occasion, I knit him a very special set of socks. From this pattern.


And baked him some very special cookies.


They were delivered in a special bag that I made just for him. We swapped my sewing skills for his web knowledge.



Pekoe ignored me when I said: dude. get out. the photo shoot is over. (NB: I washed the bag after the photo shoot, and before the cookies were put into it.)


Yes, that is indeed what you think you are seeing on the right corner of the bag. If you click on the link coming up, all will be revealed.

James is a good kid. I am so proud of him. He taught himself a bunch of computer tricks (I believe his resume states that he is a LAMP Developer which he tells me stands for linux apache mysql php - I know I got that wrong somewhere) and then got courted by an up and coming web advertising company to be their web guy. Shazam. What a smart dude! It's been a bit of an uphill battle for him to achieve his career (i.e., no. he did not major in anything to do with computers in college) and he deserves many many accolades and more for all his hard work.


What else to tell you about james?

• He's a goofy guy with a crazy sense of humor. (Like the day I saw a post on Apartment Therapy about a toilet themed restaurant in Taiwan? I knew he would get a kick out of it.)
  
• He's got a sick sweet tooth.
  
• He has a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.
• He's great with kids.
• He enjoys entertaining conspiracy theories.
• He speaks Japanese and Korean.
• He loves coffee.
  
• He's my kid brother and I love him.
• What a swell guy!
  

Happy Birthday dude!!!

I love public radio

I might have already shouted out about this program, but I have renewed interest in it lately and it deserves another shout-out. M and I were channel surfing one Sunday evening as we were driving around town running errands. And we stumbled upon a fascinating radio program whose topic that evening was Morality. How humans deal with it, how they define it, if it's unique to humans. It was FASCINATING. Sorry, are caps used like that annoying? I am a little at a lost on how I can convey just how compelling this program was. We sat in the car in the middle of a supermarket parking lot for an extra 30 minutes before we reluctantly shut off the radio and continued with our Sunday evening grocery shopping. We found out later on that this show is called Radiolab and is produced out of WNYC. And later on, we found out that there were podcasts, so I signed up.

I'm not sure what I was saving these up for, but I subscribed to the podcasts and never really listened to them. I listened to one once when I was knitting and wanted something to listen to. It was an episode called Musical Language and it totally jazzed that nerdy linguist part of me. I've been listening to one nearly every day as I go out for my daily constitutional. The shows are fascinating. They sort of remind me of This American Life where they take a theme and explore the ideas in the theme and produce stories for the theme. But where This American Life deals with more every day life, human interest type stories, Radiolab deals more with science and how it related to humans in themes.

So far I've listened to stories about stress (the human biology as well as psychology behind it), what happens when the brain stops communicating with the rest of your body, theories on the expanding universe (jenn: it's basically the raisin bread theory, so stuff you and I discussed all those years ago but still fun to hear other people talk about it and also the behind the scenes dirt on Carl Sagan's love-life, it's sweet actually), dominance of a genetic mutation (which I might be a part of incidentally. cool!) and the psychological effects of a placebo.

I really enjoy the two hosts' (Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich) personalities. They play off of each other well. And they also produce the program with a lot of audio textures that paint a visual picture for you sort of the way a good movie has a great cinematographer or production designer. I read in their bios that Robert Krulwich has won awards for his science reporting and has a particular knack for explaining really complicated scientific things clearly for the everyday person which I would have to agree with.

PS. Good logo.

the best tasting jerk sauce that perhaps isn't

I want to give a shout out to a great jerk sauce that I used the other night. I found it at Whole Foods when I needed jerk sauce for a completely different meal that I can't recall at this moment. Anyways, it's called Nanny's and whoo-baby! It is so good. So freaking good. So good that I start to wonder if maybe I might be the only person who feels this about Nanny's jerk sauce. I mean, m ate the same meal with me and he certainly wasn't going on and on about the jerk sauce. Then again we are sort of opposites in the food palate.

M prefers sweet flavored things. Aside from the obvious stuff like ice cream and chocolate, I always get high compliments when I cook dinners that cater to the sweet tastes. Stuff like orange chicken, sweet and sour and honey roast chicken are his favorite meals. I tend to favor the savory tastes like garlic anything, salty anything, pickled anything. Garlic, pickled salt sounds like it should be my favorite food item (mmm.. I might be on to something here).

Anyways the weird thing is I don't think Nanny's is even the best jerk sauce out there. Maybe I shouldn't say best, that's sort of subjective isn't it? It's not... how do I say this? it's not jerky enough. I don't know. Maybe not enough tamarind or vinegar? And it's got a smokey barbecue-ish flavor that is a little stronger than I'd expect in a jerk sauce. But who knows. Maybe this is how jerk sauce ought to be and I am ignorant. Or I suspect that everyone has their own version of jerk sauce and this one is just a little different than what I've had in the past.

An-y-ways. It's got a little kick so be warned. When I used it for jerk chicken, I added it to a pan friend chicken (whole chicken cut up into its parts, pan fried in olive oil for about 30 minutes on each side until cooked through) and served with steamed purple kale (fun color) and some rice with black beans. I couldn't stop spooning the sauce onto my rice. Ooh. Yummy. For lunch yesterday I had rice and beans with kale and more of the jerk sauce. I'm out of kale so I bought more at the store to steam up and also bought more sauce to add to it. I'll be eating this for lunch every day this week. Maybe next week too. Unless I get my hands on some garlic pickled salt first. Then I'll probably have that for lunch in bliss instead.

domo arigato...

~mr. roboto

Dude.

Dooooooooood.

I don't even know where to begin! (Let's begin at the beginning, shall we?)

After the numbers had been run, the research conducted and the reviews read, I took the plunge and purchased a Roomba(!). [Cue trumpet fanfare]



Never has an object changed my life like the way this little machine has done! Some folks who know me might describe me as being somewhat...um, retentive about my cleaning methods. (True story: once while at College 8, I flicked the duster at jenn's head cause she'd spent what I deemed too long a time sitting in one place.) With two cats, a busy schedule and (surprisingly?) an abhorrance to running the vacuum, the Roomba seemed like a natural solution to getting clean floors. Mind you there are some parameters to consider before you run out and plunk down your hard earned dollars for a robot vacuum of your very own.



We rent an apartment with hardwood floors throughout the apartment and the standard ugly vinyl in the kitchen and bathroom. No area rugs, though we did keep a rag rug folded at the entry to dust off a little extra dirt when entering the abode.

We follow the asian custom of removing our shoes when we enter our home. Before the Roomba, if I skipped vacuuming one weekend, I'd spend the following week wearing indoor-use only slippers because the floors felt gritty. (Mind you, not gritty enough to convince me to pull out the vacuum and take care of the issue.)

These parameters are important to take into consideration because in the reviews I'd read some users complained that the Roomba had transitional issues going from hard floors to rugs and that they pretty much sucked on plush carpets or shags. And how you probably have to clean out the little hopper all the time to keep it running properly cause that's where the hair and debris goes since there's no vacuum bag to hold it all in, nor a HEPA filter of any sort.



But then I also read a review from one user who used his Roomba every day.

Every. Day.

People. This is my DREAM, to have the kind of floors that are that kind of clean. The kind of clean only achievable by vacuuming every day. But who has the time or patience to vacuum their floors every day? Wonder no more because now I can have floors that are that kind of clean. Without running the vacuum every day.

~Shazam~

So I purchased the Roomba model that includes a scheduler so that my groovy little robot can do its thing while m and I are work. We come home and voila: clean floors!

I can't tell you how FREAKING AWESOME it's been. The floors feel silky smooth underfoot. No floaty cat-hair beasties scuttling around. I think it's helped to reduce some of my allergy symptoms. My hair is shinier and my skin is glowing.

It's true.

I swear.




The Roomba sings a cute little song when it's ready to start its thing (kind of a variation on the little tune that goes: dum-dee-dum-dum-dee-dum....CHARGE! as if he's all jazzed to start vacuuming and do his thing), when it's low on power, it also sings a little song as if to say, uh-oh. And when it's all finished, it scoots itself back to its home base (which is also the charging station) and sings one final song to signal its completed mission. I am so charmed by how cute all of this is.

I'm not saying that everyone should run out and spend the money for this dear machine. Or that it'll change your life like it did mine (though I will still swear by the shiny hair and glowing skin). But man, oh, MAN am I glad that I did.

As an added bonus, I get new entertainment material out of watching the cats quietly freak out over their newest nemesis.


The Och maintains a steady watch over the Roomba.


Pekoe, is also unconvinced of the Roomba's magical powers to shinier hair and glowing skin. But he is a selfish kitty and unconcerned of my welfare.