More Ways than One to Boil Water....

We slept late, for us, this morning and awoke to...what is it you call it? Er...right, rain! Not heavy enough to be heard on the roof, but enough to puddle on all the equipment the tile guys left outside the bedroom door. Thank goodness David came over while we were taking Rick to the airport to move the wooden vanity back into the garage. Good thing on two levels, since he found Ozzie sitting on the front porch with his stick....

Unwilling to go outside and get wet for a second time, having ventured out during a lull without rain gear and gotten soaked already, I took pictures of the cozy fire burning in the TV room while we watched football, and Rudy , who had burrowed behind the pillows on the couch, but I finally settled for my newly shined teakettle.

I love the design of this Alessi kettle. It was a splurge many years ago, has had several new bird whistles*, and is entirely unsuited to its job of boiling water, since the handle and the bird whistle get too hot to touch, (and the bird must be removed in order to pour) but I still love it. A friend who had one said that she just made a Zen activity of making tea, which works for me. Although having seen a few authentic Japanese tea ceremonies, which are endlessly long and incomprehensibly boring, I hasten to add that my version is Zen mostly in its "mindfulness"!

My little kettle is a perfect example of Italian design--gorgeous to look at and dysfunctional when it comes to performing the task for which it was designed....

*A house sitter burned up the first bird and we wrote to the company in Milan to find out where we could get a replacement. We got a letter back (in Italian) saying that they were "chiuso" for the Christmas holidays. Eventually, we got an email with the name of an Alessi store in San Francisco--a lovely store to visit. The proprietor had a cardboard box under the counter filled with little whistling birds. It's about time we go back for another one, since the current one has ceased to sing....