you spin me right 'round, baby

I made borscht today! It was crazy how much the kitchen ended up smelling like Ukraine--and as the smells of cabbage, beets, and dillweed inundated the house, it became clear that none of us were exactly excited about eating the stuff that I was laboring over. Sigh. So my mother baked some potatoes and my father grilled some steaks, which I definitely enjoyed; this was my first non-ham meal since Christmas day, much to my secret chagrin. Despite my dread, the borscht was v. good, especially after the customary dollop of sour cream was added. The reaction of the rest of the family ranged from my father's relative enjoyment, to my mother's quiet resignation, to my brother's rebellion against all things traditional by adding cheese, crackers, and french onion dip. There's plenty left for the rest of you if you are interested, or I can offer up my borscht-making skillz when I get back to California. They may not be as useful as bo-staff skillz or computer-hacking skillz, but they will definitely sustain you through a long, harsh Russian winter.

The rest of the night was consumed with the broadcast of the Kennedy Center Honors on CBS (honoring, among others, Robert Redford and Tina Turner), the ten o'clock news, David Letterman, and the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. My trips home always catch me up on the latest offerings from CBS. In California, I never watch network television (or television of any kind, really, except for random crap on VH1 and the occasional episode of 'The Daily Show'). In Iowa, I never watch anything other than CBS. There's some good stuff on CBS these days--I liked 'Two and a Half Men', and all those 'CSI's, and 'Without a Trace', and 'Numbers' (think 'CSI' meets a hot, geeky math grad student), and 'How I Met Your Mother' (since I'm a sucker for Neil Patrick Harris). However, I'm really falling in love with Craig Ferguson. He took over for Craig Kilborn last year, but I hadn't watched him until this break--and now I can say that he's brilliant! He's Scottish, which is a huge plus, and he also does an extremely long fifteen-minute opening monologue which I find hysterical. It's too bad that he's on at 12:30am on the West Coast, since I need to start sleeping more. It's also too bad that I always forget that CBS exists when I go back to California, but TV isn't really good for me anyway, so perhaps it's for the best.