Too good not to share - redheads, alas

What HAVE I been up to lately? Oh so much, oh so little. It's September, and I'm feeling the changes and it feels good.

I spent the past weekend making one of my favorite recipes: the world's most complicated chicken pot pie from scratch. A four step process from stewing your chicken and slow-cooking the broth, to making the filling, the cream sauce (yep, cream!) and the rich buttery crust. So dang delicious and worth the three days of work.  All from my favorite indulgent cookbook The Pastry Queen. If you have a friend who loves to bake, it's the gift she'll always thank you for.

In fun news, this week was my birthday. I took an afternoon off and ate lunch at the Upper Crust Bakery, the special spot I always go on special days. I went thrift store shopping for some new fall duds. And I had a mani-pedi done at my favoritest ever salon, Embellish, here in the ATX.

For my nail varnish I picked Old Blighty by Butter - a vintage feeling burnt red shade. I feel purdy. Which is good, because lordy, lordy, I'm older than thirty by a mile now.

In drama queen news, I had a good little cry in my car at the post office, which substitutes as the passport office. I had made our appointments to have our passports "done" two weeks ahead. I had dutifully gathered all paperwork and I was prepared to see it behind me. Lo and behold, the jots and tittles of government bureaucracy threw an obstacle in our way and I found myself in tears.

I want to go to Paris. Soon. And I have a history of recurring nightmares involving passports -- it's always the missing passport, the forgotten passport, right as I'm about to enter the country. This tapped into some subconscious loch ness monster. I'm sure it will all be okay, but for now I feel like a captive of my own native soil.

And in case you're wondering why redheads are my theme, today, in news from the UK...  I admit it. I like to read the Daily Mail UK. It's embarrassing really. But did you know, according to said stately publication, that only 8.8% of men prefer redheads?!?

Brunettes come out on top in the hair color wars. I am quite flabbergasted. But that's okay. I've already got my man. Who, btw, didn't really prefer redheads until he met me. Love isn't about types. It's about meeting the person who breaks the mold. (Btw, I quite liked the news that men prefer curvier women. Thank goodness. Eating celery for life is a turn-off.)

But I say redheads, hurrah! What about Anne of Green Gables? Adele? Florence Welch? Lily Cole? Queen Elizabeth? Rita Hayworth? Pippi Longstocking? Nicole Kidman? Emma Stone?Amy Adams? Isla Fisher?  Lucille Ball? Gillian Anderson who immortalized Dana Scully on The X-Files?

In the what I'm doing this weekend category, I am perpetually looking for my next book. You know what you're reading isn't making you tingle when:
A) You're reading six books simultaneously and you're just starting a seventh
B) You'd rather watch bad summer television than read
C) You skim-read or skip to the end
D) You start re-reading something that did make you tingle awhile ago

In my case it's all of the above and I'm currently re-reading The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, which did make me tingle the first time. It's an odd sort of dracula novel, slow-movingly creepy, the sort that keeps you awake at night but is still artistic and poetic and has nothing to do with gushing blood or silly teenage love.

Anything you're reading that is making you tingle? Please share!

Happy Friday! Have a fabulous holiday weekend everyone!