can't talk...

too busy putting together ikea furniture with "gs to gents" in the background *shoots self in face* that show is HORRID. it's so mind-numbingly BORING. i had a class A wigout last night putting together our dining room tables while the dotytron lolled around on the couch like a strangely lanky seal. i very rarely indulge in mindless tv watching - like, watching something just to WATCH SOMETHING so when the dotytron does it or when i'm trying to accomplish something and that's happening in the background, it puts me on edge. since i was already putting together ikea furniture and was ALREADY on edge, i was a seething ball of barely suppressed (and frequently unleashed) rage. my mulled apple cider was too sweet! i didn't want to go into the basement to get the drill bits! my butt was sore from sitting on the ground! it's too hot in the house! COULDYOUPLEASEJUSTGETUPANDGETMETHEDRILLBITSCAN'TYOUSEEI'MPUTTINGTOGETHEROURFURNITURE?!?????!!!!

i apologized soon after the meltdown (once the chairs were done). it wasn't even a big meltdown, it was just another in the long line of classic lagerfeld and dotytron he said ("why do you have to do this now?") she said ("i'm doing it now because i want it DONE and the least you can do since YOU'RE not the one doing it is get me the small thing i want to finish the job!") testy, snippy scenario. the point is: i got my dining room chairs done. phew! i had lunch with dr. rei yesterday and she was remarking how people always ask her how her friend karl lagerfeld manages to cook dinner, make a billion crafts, etc. and how dr. rei has come to the realization that it's because i'm INSANE, and the most organized person she knows. lol! what really drove it home for her was this past summer, when we went for lunch and i was buying stuff in chinatown, and she asked me what it was for, and i said the meal, and she asked if that's what we were having tonight, and i said no, it's for two weeks from now. lol! i AM insane. and yet, 95% of the time, my insanity doesn't cause me any stress and i REALLY ENJOY it. i love being organized. i love updating my calendars. i love being a little puttering busybody. in another life, i SHOULD have been the heir to martha stewart's throne.

so, for the dining room chairs, i ended up going with these ones:

ikea gilbert, in white. they're in restaurants all over the place, pretty affordable, sturdy, comfortable, and they go with our vaguely modern mish-mash aesthetic. plus i really liked the contrast of the stark white with our dark table and the clean modern lines with the heaviness of our harvest-y table.

i'm still not happy with our dining room colour. what i wanted to be a cool, blue-grey turned more baby's room blue. a little too saccharine. i think i want to punch it up and make it more teal-y/turquoise-y blue...the exact colour in this youtube video (wait for a few seconds in, to see their kitchen colour) would go really well with the purple wall in the living room:



i'm in LOOOOOOOOOVE with our new plates. being the thrifty little parker that i am, i had originally planned on going to tap phong and loading up. then i was snooping around on crate and barrel online and found that they were having a sale on their essential dinnerware. they sell them in 16 piece sets (4 4 piece sets: 8.5" salad plates, 11.5" buffet plate, 7" bowl, and mug)...so i got 3 of those (to make 12 place settings) and then bought for extras of the plates and bowls (i didn't think i would ever need 16 mugs). we like entertaining at home so i wanted a big set, plus my family alone is 10 people and growing. anyway, ALL of that (16 buffet plates, 16 salad plates, 12 mugs, 16 bowls) in microwave and dishwasher safe porcelain okay for ovens up to 300F, was $200 INCLUDING DELIVERY. score me!

i can't bear overpaying for stuff. it makes me mental. i have two sizable williams sonoma gift cards that i can't even use because every time i go in there, their stuff is so ridiculously overpriced that i literally can't bring myself to "waste" the gift cards in there when i know i can get the item for cheaper somewhere else. it's seriously highway robbery in there - i don't even find it fun, the way other people seem to - for me, williams sonoma is not the cook's playground...it's the dilettante's playground. it's not fun over-spending. you can't take the chinese out of me! it's the same when people ask me if i'm going to trick out my kitchen when i reno with a viking range or all the rest. i mean, yeah, if i had unlimited funds a subzero would be nice, i guess? and a viking or thermidor range? but seriously? i'm not the kind of person to go buck like that. i've been banging out amazing meals on my crappy GE gas stove at the old apartment and now the made-in-mexico discontinued line moffat we inherited at lil' ugmo and i'm doing just fine. cooks can cook anywhere. fancy gadgets are nice, but not necessary, and i don't see the value for it. it's like when dilettantes go and throw money at a new hobby and get TOP OF THE LINE recording equipment or the best golf clubs - why don't you develop your craft/hobby first before going out and shelling out the big ducats? i feel like that's one of the ways you can differentiate between people who are serious about their crafts and people who think that throwing money at a leisure activity will solve everything.

tuesday night we had the ex roomie and l'army over for dinner - it was nice! i miss having her around. i made a root vegetable/squash mash (sweet potatoes, yukons, butternut) mixed with the leftover dill sour cream from borscht the night before. i made beer-braised smoked mennonite sausage and kolbassa with caramelized onions, as well as cabbage and apples braised with some salt pork. for dessert i pulled out a frozen log of pecan shortbread i had from last xmas (!) and sliced and baked those off. having frozen cookie dough that's either pre-portioned or the slice and bake kind is really, truly, a godsend.

last night i went to ikea and got to ride on the rickety wooden ikea bus. the dotytron met up with me and we bought the chairs and some picture frames (yay, credit!) and then headed home to leftovers. i'm not good at this leftovers game. to give you an idea of how bad i am at cooking for two, i ate leftover muttar paneer. we had that like, a week and a half ago!!! i finished it off.

tonight is dodgeball and it's my dodgeball boyfriend's birthday so we're going out someplace after for food and drinks. i'll stay out for a bit (to eat) and then high-tail it home to hopefully finish writing thank you cards and packing for the weekend. team geneseo is coming up! yay! after thank you cards are done then it's time for xmas cards - gadzooks! but that's easy because it's not as much handwriting and profuse thanking.

i have a whole passel of book reviews to do, but first let me say that our tv watching has started to plumb new lows. we've gotten semi-hooked on dr. drew's "sex rehab" on much music. it's the worst/best! the other "celebrity" (loosest possible definition of that term) rehabs are tough to watch because they're kind of depressing and harrowing because of the physical effects of withdrawal. but sex rehab just seems a lot sillier. even though when you start to get into the people's histories it gets really dark. so i think we're going to stop watching. also, dr. drew is the worst psychologist/psychiatrist ever. he gives you this really patronizing, faux-concerned, duck lip/nod combo that would make me turn TO an addiction, not FROM it.

fin.

super cheap night!

lately i've been on a roll. last week when sarah dessen's newest, "along for the ride" came out officially in bookstores, i went out on my lunch break to grab it. as i sidled up to pay, i pulled out a indigo/chapters gift card of unknown provenance, thinking that at best, there was maybe a balance of $2.00 left, at worst, nothing and at least i would know and would be able to remove it from my wallet. there was $25.00 on it! i only had to pay $2 for a HARDCOVER BOOK! score!

then today, i was on my way to see "away we go" with K and J and H and that guy. i walked up to the theatre with K and was contemplating what i was going to eat - mcdonald's being an option, because today was my colleague's retirement party (29 years! holy cats!) and that meant that i had prepared for the bounty of potlucked goodies by designating it an "eat whatever i want" day. i had a mcdonald's gift card and ended up only spending $2 on my big mac combo! score! then i went to the theatre and pulled out a mouldering cineplex odeon card of equivalent unknown origins as my chapters/indigo one, again thinking that i had maybe a few bucks on it. nuh-uh. i had $25.00! enough to pay for my movie AND another one in the near future! score! so i only spent $2 tonight (notwithstanding the unforeseen tragedy whereupon i forgot my subway tokens at home and had to buy a set of five, because i find it ridiculous to pay full fare for the ttc when there are always [nominal] savings to be had by buying in groups of 5 or 10). at any rate, it was pretty good for my newfound thrifty self.

"away we go" was nice. i wasn't expecting to like it. i had kind of gotten the impression (hammered into me by the constant touting of its' literary pedigree and hushed, reverential "from the hands of david eggers and vendela vida" association that it was probably going to be smugly intellectual. it doesn't help that sam mendes' fingers were in this pie. have i mentioned that i loathe "american beauty"? well, i do. i probably haven't mentioned it because it's a dated thing to hate. but i remember and will trot out this old chestnut if needs be. anyway, reading a.o. scott's review didn't help. but it wasn't as horrid as i thought it was going to be. it was decent. not great, but decent.

maya rudolph gives an even, measured, against-type performance while john krasinski's burt is a little harder to swallow and i'm not one of the few women (or men) immune to his rumpled, crooked-smile charms. i just have less patience for the man-child, ambling, educated slacker thing. and by "less patience" i mean, "no patience" - you're talking to the girl who hates lloyd dobbler and "reality bites" (and by extension, ethan hawke's entire raison d'être). it's basically about a couple travelling around trying to find a model of family that they can subscribe to. i found some of the models with which they're presented really overplayed, especially the alison janney one and the maggie gyllenhaal one. i got the point, i just think the same point could have been made with a measure of subtlety and been all the more effective for it.

there were some things i questioned, but it would be spoiler alerting for me to expound on them, so i'll refrain. they weren't big enough to risk ruining it for you and you'll probably come to the same "huh?" moments as i did anyway. we did see the previews for both "paper hearts" AND "(500) days of summer" both of which seem very twee, indie, and painfully winsome - all things i teeter on the brink of loving/loathing depending on the proportion of heart, humour, and sincerity present. i'm excited to see both of them - i kind of find joseph gordon levitt cute and we all know how i feel about zooey, even as i fear her zooey-schtick is getting as well worn and uncomfortable for its familiarity as michael cera's (his cera-schtick, i don't think he does a zooey one).

this is monday night's dotytron-prepared dinner. pretty tasty looking, eh?

last night i came home after returning some stuff to lee valley that i didn't end up needing and made myself red cabbage coleslaw with a fried pork on a bun sammy that had lettuce, tomato, and plenty of mayo as dressing. it was TASTY.

in other news, does anyone else find it stupidly cliché that all the actors and big stars in l.a. support the lakers and not the clippers? it's so annoying. wow. way to be the biggest jerks and not support the non-rich, non-winning team. so i think i want to rep the clippers. even though i know nothing of basketball. but still! they need love, too!

okay, i'm off to slang stuff on craigslist. i'm also going to try a new thing tomorrow of getting up at 6am and going for an early morning run. we'll see how that goes. the idea is it won't be as hot and i'll be motivated to run longer (possibly) and then i can have my lunches back to do what i want, instead of slogging through the worst of the sticky, still, oppressive heat of the day.

roll call of awesome:

cb2
this is my new favorite online store in the whole. wide. world. i want to buy the store - if you're ever complaining that i'm hard to shop for, get me a g/c here, please. i want all these things:







roll call of bunk:


also from cb2 (hey, not everything can be amazing) - do you really want to hang up your toothbrush and have the bristles in some guy's crotch? no thank you!

fin.

note to self: ridiculous looking golf stretches

are meant to prevent EXCRUCIATING post-bucket-of-balls-at-the-driving-range tendonitis. ow ow ow. it's a good thing my job consists of 99% sitting in a not-so-ergonomic chair and typing. *limp wrists*

we took poppa d out to the driving range yesterday morning to shoot a bucket of balls. i had fairly consistent luck hitting about 100-125 yards, straight, with my rented driver. this prowess on the greens is offset by more than a few ABYSMAL shots that would ricochet off the side of my little driving range cubicle OR land spectacularly and tantalizingly a few feet away from me. me: "can i go and grab the ball and re-hit it if it's so close?" the dotytron: "absolutely not." i also like to MILK my bucket of balls. i do a lot of thinking and psyching myself up before a shot. the dotytron thinks it's a mistake. he claims it's a mechanical thing so you should just keep cranking. i had decent luck with a 7iron but i was way more inconsistent. the point is: I LOVE THE DRIVING RANGE AND I KIND OF LOVE GOLF. i definitely did better when i wasn't focusing on cranking and hacking away at the ball but just let myself relax into the swing. in other news: the rubber tees at that driving range (beach fairway) are set unnaturally high. seriously, the ball is like, 2" above the ground, minimum. it really messes with your game.



we collected momma d and whisked them to our place for a father's day brunch of corned beef hash and over easy eggs (thrifty housewife alert! last of the leftover corned beef used up!) and oat scones with devonshire cream and jumbleberry jam. it was a super-fortifying breakfast for what would turn out to be a day of home-based busybodying and crafting.

home-based busybodying is KIND OF AMAZING. sure it sucked being inside all day when i could have been, i don't know...walking the syringe infested boardwalk at the beach; or...rubbing elbows with sweaty, greasy, bleary-eyed hipsters spending mad ducats on queen west; possibly...squatting and listening to reggae in kensington market and avoiding being hit by bedraggled, emaciated, young'uns on fixed gear bikes. the point is: that life is NOT for me. no no, i'd rather be re-gluing the joints on the telephone tables and reupholstering the seats (staple guns are THE BEST!) (wearing my ear plugs and safety goggles of course) or scrubbing the rust off of my dumpster-rescued chrome and naugahyde chair or cleaning off the school desk or packing up books and vhs and dvds and forcing the dotytron to get rid of same or making boxes with packing tape or labeling said boxes or taping up paint samples and considering them ad nauseum with the dotytron.

that's what we did. he also used our new drill bits to drill tidy little holes in the back of the rosewood buffet and set up our home entertainment system complete with bumpin' sound system. it was so much fun! this is our life now, folks. we basically spent the rest of the evening BEAMING at our rosewood buffet. lol! i kind of always knew in my heart of hearts that home ownership was going to be the busybody project of all puttering in the known world and that i would take to it and be as happy as an otter cavorting belly up in the water.

for dinner i made a beet salad with peeled, cold, sliced beets on top of some arugala, bedecked with crumbled goat's cheese and chopped pistachios. i dressed it with a sweet-lemon vinaigrette. i also made these zucchini pancakes. i got the idea from my old supervisor T. that's what she does with her zucchini blossoms. she chops them up (in my case i just used a regular old zucchini, grated on the coarse side of the box grater) and mixes it with egg and just enough flour to make a thin batter (it's mostly egg). i added salt and pepper and fried them up. they're delicious warm or cold or room temperature. i sided them with sour cream with fresh julienned mint mixed in. they were SCRUMPTIOUS.

we've started watching "mad men." it's not bad. i kind of like it. the episodes go down real easy and i love the set design and have the hots for joan's outfits and torpedo boobs.

the dotytron is making me dinner as we speak. we're having spaghetti with pancetta and caramelized onions and black pepper and grated parm (kind of like a carbonara minus the eggs) with that italian antipasto salad we're obsessed with. eaten al fresco. ah, summer. ah, backyard. i will miss thee. eating under the sky is one of life's greatest pleasures. i think we're going to try to do some frisbeeing in the park, post-foodstuffs.

fin.