I may be picky but I know what I like!

So for dinner the other night I made mac and cheese to go with meatloaf. Actually, it was ziti and cheese, but you get the idea. After I was finished the kitchen had that,
"Logo's been cooking again" sort of look about it. Mr. Logo does adore it so.

The answer to the obvious question there (obvious to SOME people anyway) is, "No, I don't neeeeed all the cupboards open. That is just a bonus!"
Anyway,
I started with a roux, and used about a pound of sharp cheddar cheese. However, I swear it wasn't as unhealthy as it could have been (the roux used more olive oil than butter for example), and at least it wasn't fake food.
Some things should NEVER be in a powdered form, and cheese is on that list.
As are toys for children (those are NOT monkeys, and that ain't the sea)
and tea (Get thee behind me, Lipton).

So this was the stage where I couldn't keep Thing Two out of the pot,
and here is what it looked like afterward.

I had to eat fast because my pal and I had big plans.

The guy who wrote Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet did a stop over not tooo far from where I live and since we both love this book, it seemed the perfect way to pass an evening.

Jamie Ford was articulate, funny, smart, and all the things you hope for in an author making an appearance. I totally have a crush now.

He met his wife at a library and proposed in a bookstore. Now, THAT is a relationship with an excellent start.

Single worst moment of the evening though? When the old, and apparently backward, woman in the row directly behind me asked the half-chinese author of the book how you can tell Chinese people from Japanese people when you are looking at them. I KNOW my face registered horror and disbelief in the split second before I realized people looking at her from the front half of the room could totally see my face so then I attempted to slap on a nonchalant and neutral expression.
I probably managed to appear startled and addled, but it was the best I could do at short notice.

I mean, really???

Jamie Ford was very kind and diplomatic in answering the question, far more so than I would have been. That might have gone more like this,

"How do you tell a Swede from a German? What differentiates the apppearance of a Scot from the Welsh? How do you distinguish a Russian woman from a French woman? Oh, you can't always tell? I wonder what you might extrapolate from that?!"

Grrrrrrrr...