Vignettes of Enjoyment
Things I'm enjoying but don't have time to write individual posts about:
John Adams, by David McCullough
Honeymoon With My Brother hadn't come in yet at the library, and I was in the mood for more Revolutionary generation reading anyway after finishing Founding Brothers, so I picked this up at the branch library off Rittenhouse Square (called the Philadelphia City Institute branch, not Rittenhouse, strangely enough) last week. I was a bit worried by its size, and that it might be as dry as the Benjamin Franklin biography I tried to read for six months in 2003-2004, but it's so wonderful that I can't wait to get in bed every night to read. It got me on the first page, and it's been just as absorbing since.
Fage Total 2% Yogurt
Man, this stuff is fabulous, especially with a spoonful of strawberry jam. At $1.69 (a whole $1 more than regular yogurt), it's more of a weekly treat than a daily indulgence, though I'd consider trading a Starbucks coffee for the smooth texture and incredibly fresh taste of this yogurt.
Iron Chef America
All the drama (and most of the kitsch) of the original, plus incredible food facts and breathless foodie enthusiasm from host Alton Brown. This second try at an American version of Iron Chef really hits the mark, managing to impress, inspire, and inform while whetting the appetite. (And thankfully, William Shatner is nowhere to be found.)
MT-Moderate
I've pretty much vanquished comment spam on all my blogs with a combination of moderation and MT-Blacklist... which means that the spammers have turned to trackbacks to propagate their filthy casino, porn, and pill URLs. I went to Jay Allen's blog to see if there was any news on the trackback spam front, and I found a post where he mentioned MT-Moderate. It overlaps with the built-in MT comment moderation, but since it's possible to remove the comment moderation module and only use the trackback moderation module, it turned out to be exactly what I was looking for. And it plays nicely with MT-Blacklist. There's probably some unneeded rebuilding of entries (since the trackbacks that MT-Blacklist would normally remove from an entry never made it there), but all in all, a good, easy-to-use solution for managing trackback spam.