insert annual rant re: spring forward

it's kicking my a** this year. AND futzing everything up. to wit:

- i was doing quite well with a 6:30am run every morning in the breaking light of day. this meant that i still had time to do my morning stuff AND was jazzed enough to get into work early (and thus be able to leave a bit early)
- NOW, at 6:30am it's unbearably dark and it's nigh impossible to run without fear of getting mugged
- ergo, i have to fit in running on my lunch at work, which is okay, but kind of sucky because i have a lot of work commitments (read: lunching with dr. rei)
- i've been going to sleep at 10pm every night. which robs me OF AN HOUR of potential productivity. bogus!

so today i had my book club at lunch but i had to split my time between running AND doing the book club. it was kind of a s**tshow.

last night for dinner i made us a very very very good one. it was a pan-seared, oven-roasted hunk of salmon (seriously, i think my portion was a 1/2 lb-er) topped with a spoonful of sour cream mixed with chopped parsley, dill, and maple syrup. then i made a cold soba noodle salad with scallions, broccoli, and carrots in a chili-kicked sesame-soy dressing. so good!

i've been making a concerted effort to up my fiber intake every day. my goal is about 20 grams of dietary fibre. i'm doing pretty good! i've been starting my day with either a whole wheat bagel, 3 homemade bran muffins, or a bowl of frosted mini-wheats. then during the day i snack on almonds, at least 3 clementines, 2 grapefruits, and a fuji apple with a piece of cheddar cheese. come home to the fairly healthy and vegetable-infused meals we've been eating lately. true facts: dietary fiber is easier to come by if you cook the vegetable. so if you eat cooked broccoli instead of raw, you're like, doubling the amount of fiber.

note: i realize all this talk of dietary fiber makes me sound like a senior citizen. i am what i am. convergence: this fiber kick of mine totally coincided with the GIANT colon at my work! we walked through it today. it's kind of awesome. a 40 ft. colon you can walk through. a 40 ft. colon you can walk through that costs $12,000 to set up for 2 days. amazing.

i felt like all my good work lately was undone by the fact that i had a bowl of mangled mini-devil's food cake cupcakes with bourbon toffee sauce and whipped cream last night for dessert. AND 2 small pieces of leftover mama's pizza. SOBA NOODLE SALAD ISN'T VERY FILLING, AIGHT?

i baked the mini-cupcakes to bring to work tomorrow for a belated st. paddy's thing. i'm participating in a talk tomorrow evening after work with my executive director's class, so i thought i'd bring the cupcakes to that, too. and i'm bringing them again to my non-work book club meeting at my friend J's house next week. mini-cupcakes are the gift that keeps on giving. seriously. at 96 to a batch - you can't beat that yield!


tonight i had a massage after work and then came home and made chova and my mum's joint birthday cake (chilled hazelnut mousse cake with chocolate ganache). for dinner we had homemade ramen (i didn't actually make the ramen). purchased ramen, boiled, and then added to homemade pork stock with boiled watercress (note: I LOVE BOILED WATERCRESS - i can seriously eat like, 10 lbs of the stuff, easy) and boiled pork and leek wontons (also not homemade) with a boiled egg and chopped scallions.

have i ever mentioned that i hate spring cleaning? i do. but it's that time of year. we've kind of started. i've started switching out my summer clothes with my winter clothes and washing and sorting. we're going to do a massive re-org of the basement and install some shelving in the bathroom. we defo gotta clean out our enclosed porch. the dotytron was a prince of new england and raked up all the leaves and detritus outside with a broken, hobbit, half sized rake. you know how tall the dotytron is? it was hell. YOU KNOW WHY HE HAD TO USE THAT RAKE? BECAUSE SOMEONE STOLE OURS. OUT OF OUR BACKYARD. what a c**t thing to do. if i ever catch someone doing it i'm going to go berserker on them and rake the shiz outta their faces. nothing like poetic vigilante justice. AND we've got to start thinking about the giant litter box that was our formerly sodded front yard. and the plumbing. and the roof. and the back deck. ugh ugh ugh.

ugh. i've just spring-cleaning-talked myself out of giving you a movie and book reviews.

sorry for being boring.

fin.

*shakes fist*

at daylight saving. i've said it before and i'll say it again: i hate spring forward. fall back, i love. fall back i welcome into my life with open arms. spring forward is a dicknose. i don't care about the extra hour of sun (she says, in the depths of march at its most leonine)!

yesterday was a giant gong-show from the get go. we got in from 'the watchmen' rather late, in bed at 1:30am, woke up at 8:30am, to find that it was actually NINE THIRTY am due to the confounded vagaries and demands of agrarian life. this led me to LOSE MY S**T as i ran around the house, trying to put together breakfast, tidy up, pack my bags for a full day of no less than 3 activities, make arrangements, and do my exercises. this inevitably lead to me screaming at the dotytron: "DOTYRON, COULD YOU PLEASE COME UPSTAIRS AND HELP ME OUT!???!##!!" while he blissfully went about his laid back sunday morning routine, while i was simultaneously trying to crank out angry crunches, smush down a corned beef hash, and pack my bags. it wasn't pretty. i was supposed to be at my prof's house for 12pm but was half an hour late, and i LOATHE being late.

things settled down after that. i'll post pictures of my corned beef hash breakkie tonight. we had it with fried eggs. i sacrificed my portion to the broken-yolked ones as i felt it was suitable punishment for not setting the clocks ahead the night before. never underestimate the power of corned beef hash to soothe a plethora of ills. thus fortified, i visited with my prof and her adorably cherubic baby and hung out there and ate cupcakes, went and played dodgeball, met up with dr. rei, window shopped and gossiped and philosophized, and then headed to dr. rei and hanbo's house for dinner.

dr. rei has been feeling the pinch and pull of a harried busy life lately, so we awaited the arrival of the dotytron and bwong and then settled in for a goosetang night of delivery panzerottoes (BWONG'S FIRST ONE EVER!) and a dessert that i had concocted especially for my bff. i made a banana cream pie, with a bitter sweet chocolate layer, a salted caramel layer, vanilla-flecked pastry cream, and bananas. it was delightful. i hope she liked it...banana cream pie is one of her favorites, but this had so many tweaks, it wasn't the classic one she was used to. it was very rich and filling and absolutely divine in its own right.

so. 'the watchmen' was okay. fine. nothing spectacular. crazy old alan moore is right: the source material was not intended to be and could not successfully be translated to the big screen.

the casting was pretty on point. i think malin ackerman is a terrible actress - flat and wooden to the extreme, but she fills out the costume nicely, which is kind of the point of the female superhero, except i kind of think that moore was critiquing the rampant misogyny of the genre in the comic. the dude who played ozymandias was an outright mis-cast, coming off kind of nebbishy and cerebral - like niles from frasier. the thing is, the ozymandias of the comic IS fantastically cerebral, but at the same time, is also paragon of all-american, aryan, brawny physicality - most of the time in the comic he's depicted vaulting off a pommel horse (i'm only partially joking.)

the movie is VERY faithful to the comic, to a fault. certain scenes and events that add depth to the world of the comic are included in the movie and result in an over-long, meandering film that lacks the central narrative core to make it compelling or exciting. i found myself lulled out of a daze brought upon by the disjointed, episodic treatment of the film by the sheer kinetic energy of the fight sequences, which brought the movie to life. there's an inspired opening sequence that i quite enjoyed that neatly summarizes the back story that sees the dystopian, paranoid, american alternate world turn against masked heroes and vigilantism and sets the stage for the post-superhero milieu of the film. music choices are a cheesy and hackneyed. they didn't make smart, sly obvious soundtrack choices. instead, the songs are SO obvious that they drive straight off the cliff and land in uncomfortable, cliched zone.

i wasn't optimistic that snyder had the vision to make this film. he has a singular command of visuals and textures that lends itself to comic adaptations but he lacks the discipline and creativity to make the characters sing. '300' traded in tarted up stock characters and (sometimes uncomfortable) stereotypes...all style, no substance. 'the watchmen' suffers the same fate. the comic perfectly encapsulates the waning vestiges of cold-war paranoia and dystopian, crank, cyberpunk-tinged, mindset that characterized a certain subset of cultural production in the 80s. it plays with archetypes and is a damning indictment of an america still reeling from the failures of vietnam and the omnipresent threat of nuclear holocaust and urban blight.

the problem with the movie is that it presents a ramshackle, disjointed collection of characters that become simplified to the point where they no longer have any signifying power beyond their 'hook'. they movie turns them into flat, 2-dimensional superheroes - so easily pigeonholed by their one identifying skill/power/character trait - which does a disservice to the richly realized world moore created and the message (i believe) he was trying to convey. you're either going to have an introspective character study, or a rock'em sock'em brawling joy ride. the best comic adaptations manage to be both ('the dark knight' par example.) this gave you neither - it wasn't deep enough to provide food for thought, nor shallow enough to provide corporeal thrills.

i have to say, i was more excited for some of the trailers we saw. 'terminator salvation'! 'xmen origins: wolverine'! (sorry sister, i can't get behind the new star trek - i care not!) the summer movie season should be a good one and may is going to be a busy month...i have to clear my schedule! lol!

i'll update with some food pictures tonight after dodgeball.

fin.