The Girl Who Ate Everything

A straightforward name.

I'm not the kind of person who'd be labeled as "the life of the party"; I'm more like the person who stands in the corner and looks lost or confused. So to shoot myself up the ranks without gaining any social acuity, I bring out the big guns: Georgian cheesy bread, aka khachapuri.

One loaf is the size of...a whole buttload of quarters.

This one had congealed a bit before we dug in. Still tasty, though.

Georgian Bread in Brighton Beach is a small bakery well known for their imeruli khachapuri ($6), a large, flat round of soft, slightly chewy and crusty bread filled with a mixture of cheese, egg, and butter. Buy at least two of them: one to tear into right away (preferably shared with at least three other friends, who will subsequently loooove youuuu) when it's fresh out of the oven, and one to eat later at home.

...Or to bring to a oven-equipped party where people will fawn over your contribution of warm, soft, curd-y (not so much gooey), salty cheese wrapped in carbs. Those people may not remember your name, but they will remember the khachapuri.

Update: A friend has offered to take my card to a specialist who may be able to recover the photos. Thanks for your help!

Bluhblahbleebloo.

Today I found an effective way to lose my appetite without inducing nausea: find out that my two-ish-year-old 16 GB CF card isn't readable on my camera or my computer. The illustration above shows how I felt on the inside. On the outside, I went ;_;.

It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have photos on it that I wanted, but since I procrastinated I probably have two weeks of photos on it. Somewhere. Deep down in its...guts. Made of...FAIL.

Since y'all are smart with the brainmeats, I figure some of you may have advice on what to do before I resort to one of these data recovery places. If so, I would love to harness your smarts. Here's some more info about the problem that may or may not be helpful.

The card is a SanDisk Extreme CF 16 GB 60 MB/S UDMA card. My camera is a Canon 7D. One moment it was all fine, then the next, the camera would no longer read the card. Not like I dropped the card in a puddle, ran over it with a car, smothered it in peanut butter, took it out of the camera while it was being read, etc. I put a different CF card in my camera and it works fine.

The first time i tried to read the 16 GB card on my computer (iMac, OS X) it appeared in Finder, but when I tried to access it, Finder crashed. The card no longer appears in Finder after I connect it to my computer. So. Hm. Yeah. I know there are programs that can try to recover data, but as my computer doesn't even detect the card, I'm guessing that's not going to work.

Doobeedoo. [twiddles fingers]

Well. Yup. If anyone has advice, please let me know (roboppy@gmail.com). Thank you!

Merry (belated) Christmas, everyone! (And to those of you who don't celebrate Christmas, happy winter! And to those of you in the southern hemisphere, happy December! And to those of who aren't currently in December for whatever reason, happy whatever!) I hope everyone's having a great holiday.

I thought I would manage to sneak in this post just before December 26, but I totally failed. And I didn't just fail by an hour, like the timestamp says, but by seven hours because I'm currently in Norway, visiting Kåre in Bergen. Hell, I didn't even start writing this on December 25. :( But, if you do the math, you'll see that I stayed up until 7 a.m. to finish this post. Because I care! Yeah! YEAAAAHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhuuuh.

I know I've been sort of dead this whole month. Not that dead; the other dead where I'm not actually dead. I don't have any good reasons—just the same old dangerous combination of working inefficiently/wasting time/unintentionally killing brain cells/under and oversleeping I never escape. (I highly suggest not staying up until 7 a.m.)

Norwegian Christmas Eve dinner.

I haven't edited all my photos yet, but here's the spread from Christmas Eve dinner at the Sandvik home. Kåre's mom made the traditional Norwegian Christmas dinner of pinnekjøtt (cured lamb ribs), mashed swedes (aka rutabagas), boiled potatoes, and sauerkraut. If this sounds familiar, it's because she made the same meal for us when I visited back in February, just this time she made a lot more of it since her daughter Anne-Kristen's family—husband David, daughter Haley, son Kristian, and mother-in-law Margaret—is also visiting from England for the holidays. (Last night for Christmas dinner, Anne-Kristin and David prepared an awesome British meal. I will blog about it...eventually.)