absentia

i feel like i've lost time somehow. i've been doing stuff, kind of. but it's the boring stuff that doesn't make for exciting epistolary updates. like, right now i'm eating breakfast. but it's not the kind of exciting breakfast to make someone perk up and take notice, you know? and i'm going to go for a run shortly. and go to a yoga class. and do my grocery shopping. and sharpen my knives. and make dinner for my dinner guests (the goosetang clan.) all details and minutiae that i know, in my heart of hearts, isn't exactly the most scintillating stuff. things have settled down for the time being *crosses fingers* but you really never know in this economy and as a coping mechanism, i've been shutting off from the world when i get home. the dotytron's been super busy with homework so he's usually futzing on the computer and i'm reading in bed. totally uninteresting.

yesterday i spent most of the day with the roomie. first the dotytron and i went to the bank and talked mortgage. it's looking better than i thought...we've gotten pre-approved for a not insignificant sum that won't leave us peering into cardboard boxes under the dvp in search for our abode. if we wait until the dotytron is working full time, our situation improves considerably...that means we're looking at something that might conceivably NOT be a fixer-upper. spring is crazytime for home buying anyway, so we might wait a bit until he has a full time salary and then look again in earnest when people are at their most desperate in the fall and winter. but at least we have a range right now to look in, so if we find something perfect, we can go! our lady was super nice and played around with the numbers on our behalf and entertained our stupid questions.

then i met up with the roomie to visit her friend L, who had a baby in july that i only met for the first time yesterday. oops! i blame the roomie for being anti-social. then we went shopping and i got my performance shoes fixed! they were a pair of $175 dollar seychelles that were perfect - peep-toe, vintage styling, pewter, with a thick wedge heel so i wouldn't be tottering around - marked down to $35 because they were the floor model. they were a half-size too big so my heel wasn't sitting in the back strap properly. i kind of thought the shoemaker would have to cut the strap and re-sew it, but no! he sold me a $7 pad to stick in the toe of the shoe and that totally took care of things nicely. so my performance shoes cost all of $42! what a scoop!

then i went bikini shopping. i effin' lurve bikini shopping. i really don't know what it is. i go swimming literally like, twice a year, but as dr. rei says, "no one loves shopping for swimsuits more than you." lol! i tried on some stuff and found a cute pair of shoes that i like, that i think would be suitable for work and play. they're cheap, too! only $60 bones:


i can't decide between these two colors. i'm probably going to get a brown pair to leave at work, as well. and then my summer shoe shopping is complete.

i also hit joe to see what they had in terms of work gear. not much. slim pickins, especially in my size. the annoying thing about joe is that you have to try EVERYTHING on because there's so much variation in the sizing. i suppose this is what you get when you have $10 tops and $29 jeans. i'm also in the market for a breathable, lightweight, waterproof or resistant jacket. i saw one at lululemon that weighed about as much as 2 pieces of tissue paper, but it was touted as being "water resistant" not waterproof. hrm. maybe all roads lead to mountain equipment coop after all. i also need a pair of hiking boots. apparently some of the trails in hawai'i volcanoes national park trash your shoes and you need the ankle support for the unsteady, uneven ground. it was such a gorgeous day yesterday it was nice just to be outside. i'm starting to get antsy for my landlord to replace our washer. i want to switch over my winter and summer clothes and all my summer stuff needs a good, solid, washing.

see? i told you: boring.


thursday night for dinner i made a quick veggie pasta. we had gemelli (little s-shaped twists) with sauteed broccoli rabe (aka rapini), a crapload of T's chilies, and some garlic and pecorino.


last night for dinner was another veggie meal. i made falafel balls with a tabbouleh salad and some tahini-yoghurt sauce for drizzling. it was hella tasty. we also broke down and fried some jalapeno poppers which were so so so good.

tonight as mentioned, we're having the goosetang clan over for dinner. i'm making jerk pork, coconut rice'n'peas and sautéed swiss chard. for dessert i'm making that banana caramel pecan upside down cake with a scoop of bought vanilla ice cream. then we're going to go see 'i love you, man' sounds like a pretty ace saturday to me!

okay, now i'm off. i gotta do a crapload of boring life stuff today.

fin.

just a quick note

i've been feeling extra frenzied lately - trying to lock down two vacations is a little stressful and the pressures of living a semi-decent life that encompasses a few of my regularly scheduled hobbies. plus the 2009 hotdocs schedule was released last night so trying to whittle down the hundred or so docs and find the magical balance between: light-hearted fare; heart-wrenching human interest stories; heavy political stories; heart-wrenching political stories; educational political stories; glossy, slick entertaining documentaries; something to do with music (for the dotytron); our schedule limitations...is totally exhausting and a logistical nightmare. i think we've got our picks sorted...i'm going to phone it in and hopefully grab our tickets tomorrow. phew!

tonight for dinner we had leftover lamb stew with root vegetable mash.

allow me to leave you with this little tidbit: we are now the proud owners of our very own MAH JONG TABLE!!!!!!! and our own set of lovely, vintagey 70s green mah jong tiles! let the tournaments begin!

fin.

a compendium of oddities

this is going to be a real mish-mash of random tidbits.

so on wednesday, i walked out of work and went to the bike rack, only to find that my front tire was COMPLETELY flat. i deliberated for a bit and then opted to lock it back up, rather than wait around for an hour until the ttc says it's okay to bring bikes on the trains.

i IMMEDIATELY suspected that someone had let the air out of my tires and i was a little put out by it. i mean, i know i'm a brassy broad, but who in the world at large would hold such ill will towards me? what had i done to insult, offend, give umbrage (i know you can take umbrage, can you also give it?) the next day, i walked my bike over to the nearest bike repair place and the guy offered to put a new tire on for me while i waited. as he took the tire off the rim, i said, "when the tire is off, can you see what happened? i suspect foul play." without missing a beat, the dude said, "you're irrational." lol!!! it's funny cuz it's true! he then went on to say that most people suspect foul play but that it's rarely the case. phew. so all my haters in the public service are still deeply bored into the woodwork. when i retold the tale to the dotytron, he agreed, "you ARE irrational."

i was mad hormonal this weekend. i cried like a billion times and picked like 20 different fights with the dotytron. it was kind of awesome. i haven't been cranky like that in a long while. we barely fight ever, anymore. in between being a testy mofo, i did manage to find the time to bawl like a giant baby when s-dawg showed me the following youtube clip. LIKE A BABY. so embarrassing! all weekend he was like, "have you seen the 'christian the lion' video on youtube yet?" and i was like, NO (it sounded kind of ghey.) he kept bringing it up until finally he had me and sister as a captive audience and fired it up on his iphone. i CRIED and got goosebumps like the carefully hidden inner marshmallow i am.



i also finished knitting my niece's sweater. i'm really happy with how it turned out. this is what the original pattern is supposed to look like:

there's an inner button and button hole and the sleeves are long and the collar is floppier.

this is what i did with mine:



i made mine with short sleeves, and i shortened the collar. i also put both buttons on the front, because i thought a thick button on the inside of the sweater would be irritating, and this way, you have some options about how you flip it over. it also looks cute and symmetrical.

little miss up there was being super squirmy with the pictures. more shockingly, we had an incident that i will heretofore refer to as "chunkygate '09" my sister and i were researching a disney world vacation. more correctly, i was researching while my sister kept me company. somehow she took it upon herself to project manage the family's disney vacation, even though she HATES doing stuff like that. within half an hour, i had taken her scribbles on random pieces of paper and had organized a tidy chart complete with footnotes.

anyway, my niece was playing dress up quietly by herself while we were researching. she had put on one of my mom's old jumper from the late 80s and was looking at herself in the mirror when she idly asked, "does this make me look chunky?" my sister and i immediately gave each other significantdangereyes. injecting a forced tone of casual inquiry into our voices, we asked, "why? what's wrong with being chunky?" and my niece said, "i don't want to be chunky, like ____" "who?" i asked. "___" she repeated. my sister looked me in the eye and imperceptibly nodded, "like ___," she said, mouthing the words, "he's kind of chunky" lol!!!!! poor little chunky gaffer. so then we told her there was nothing wrong with being chunky.

later on, when we were having dinner at my grandparent's favorite restaurant she was throwing a pretend costume party for everyone while we were eating and we started giving her the gears, "can i have a chunky costume?" (me) "can i have chunky peanut butter at the party?" (dotytron) etc. exasperated at the teasing, she burst out, "why does everyone want to be CHUNKY?!??" and then we said, "what's wrong with being chunky?" and she said, "don't you see the sign?" (pointing at an imaginary spot on the wall.) me and my sister gave each other dangereyes again. "what does the sign say?" and you could totally see the expressions flicker across her unguarded, impatient little imp face. she paused, and then we prodded her. "it says: no chunky persons INVITED!" terrible!!! the poor little lamb! where is she getting this stuff from? chunky isn't even a kid word! she's only four! but kids are so crafty. when we asked her point blank, "is it okay to be chunky?" she's say yes, but you could see in her eyes that she didn't believe it.

le sigh. it's hard to know what to do and how to approach it. you don't want to turn it into a giant thing, but at the same time, there's going to be a good 10 years of the vicious cruelty of kids/young teenagers ahead of her...there's no need to get a jump on it now.

tonight for dinner i made us meatball subs with leftover frozen cooked meatballs, simmered in defrosted frozen tomato-basil sauce, and topped with provolone cheese and broiled in the oven. served with a mixed generic salad with thousand island dressing.

in other news...my family is going to disney world this summer. eeks! and then the dotytron and i are going to follow that up with a week and a bit in hawai'i. the prices at disney are SO MUCH LOWER in august. it's their low season (coinciding with hurricane and typhoon season.) we used to go in august when i was a kid. it was hot and muggy and humid and there'd be periodic flash thunderstorms when the skies would open up and unleash a torrent upon you and then five minutes later the sun would be back, turning the water into tacky, sizzling vapour. the weather we're not concerned about. we'll bring rain gear. plus, the other alternative was going during the holidays when you get GANKED on the prices and when the park is teeming with people. as i said to my sister, if disney can't protect us during a hurricane, then i don't know what can. lol!

i was worried the dotytron would feel robbed of his lune de miel by piggybacking it on a family vacay, but he was surprisingly amenable. since i'm doing all the vacation planning, it's actually kind of nice for me. before i had to worry about researching all 4 major islands and then somehow whittling it down. if we only have just over a week, we can focus on one island. because seeing the volcano and hopefully catching some lava is our primary goal, that limits us to the big island, hawai'i. much easier! i've found us some cute b&bs to stay at...i'm excited!

this is all provided of course that the upcoming ontario budget doesn't obliterate my job. *weak laughter*

no seriously. i hope i don't get laid off.

fin.

so i'm one of THOSE girls now?

the one who bought a performance dress that just barely fits after a night of three bowls of delicious vegetarian thai food and two cupcakes?!? so maybe it wasn't the best idea to try on my dress right before bed, after eating all of the above, and chugging my nightly before-bed 500mL of water. let's just say that i couldn't have gotten zipped up into the thing without help and the upward trajectory of the zipper was precarious at best. i feel like one of those broads on that show "chunky brides" on tlc or whatever...the one where they squeeze women into gowns that are like 5 sizes too small, WHEN THEY VERY WELL HAVE THE RIGHT SIZE FOR THEM, for no other reason than to put these poor women through torture.

i've learned my lesson. i'm on a one cupcake a day diet. starting on monday. lol!

so i'm writing this up in markham after an exciting morning of BREAKING BIG D'S WASHING MACHINE. like, smoke coming out of it breaking it. oops. our washing machine at home is broken and it's not looking like it's going to get fixed any time soon, so i came upon the treacherous idea of bringing my laundry up to the mater and pater's familial estate, major mack, to do. going in, this plan was not without its collateral damages. first and foremost, i knew pretty much that i was going to get yelled at. big d is a yeller. his normal talking voice is kind of yelly. cantonese, the language of my people, sounds the opposite of lyrical and sing-songy (ie. mandarin, french, spanish). it's a yelly language.

then you have to factor in the fact that big d is particular about everything. i probably get my micro-managing, control freak tendencies from him (and actually, my dad is like that too.) big d will micro-manage the way you use the garage door opener. he will stand over your shoulder when you use the microwave. because my mom abdicated all semblance of domesticity before i was born and she grew out of her hippie crafty phase, big d has been responsible for all laundry and grocery shopping pretty much my whole life. my mom has been responsible for buying frivolous stuff. anyway, the laundry machine is one of the prize possessions in big d's domestic fifedom, so i knew i was playing with fire. at the very least, i expected an earful and being told that everything i had ever known about doing laundry was wrong. unfortunately for me, i overloaded it and i think i blew the motor. this ordinarily would have been a recipe for me getting yelled at for a good hour and then periodically throughout the day whenever our paths crossed (big d is also long-winded. another trait i share with him? lol!)

anyway, i got off with a mild tongue-lashing. seriously! he yelled once to get me downstairs to see the thin tendrils of smoke emerging from the washer and then went on for about 30 minutes about how i overloaded the machine. that's NOTHING! the only thing saving me is that today is my mum's 60th birthday and he's in a tizzy about it. anyway, he came in asking me if i could shuck oysters and we've hatched a plan to order oysters from rodney's oyster house to complement our lobster and steak dinner. it's a surprise and he's all excited about that. because he defers to me on all things food, we're co-conspirators, which has put me in his good graces and earned me a temporary reprieve from his verbal barrage. saved!

i also got on his good side because the last time i came up, i accompanied him on his weekend grocery shopping mission, which includes no less than like, 6 different trips to different stores, all in the service of chasing the perfect deal. i think it's an immigrant thing. you get your milk at no frill's, but not the meat. meat you get at longo's, and then you go to price chopper for something else. it's epic. i spent my formative years in grade school and into high school tagging along with my stepdad grocery shopping, all day on saturday, and even into saturday night, completely mortified when i ran into a school mate working the late shift, being outed that at 16, my saturday night consisted of buying toilet paper at iga (mom and big d were super strict, in a vain attempt to keep me from being an illicit substance dabbling girl with loose morals.) anyway, it felt like old times again, rolling up on no frills, scrounging for the good boxes to store our groceries in, bickering over how overpriced a can of soup is downtown compared to markham. fun times.

speaking of fun times, last night was the best! we ordered from jean's and sat and got our hair did and watched the 'battlestar galactica' finale. it was a big, fat MEH. totally anticlimatic. a bunch of stuff they had been leading up to, making the fans anticipate a total, WTF?!?? moment, totally fell short. here's a review i posted on a stupid messageboard:

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"i thought it was LAAAME

why BOTHER with the flashbacks?!???? they revealed NOTHING?!????? so we see roslin as some cougar and that's what makes her decide to go into politics and that's supposed to be RELEVANT in some way? are you serious?

so kara thrace is the human version of that british cockney lawyer's invisible cat? lol!!!!! way to not explain THAT!

the final five meant NOTHING! they didn't do jacks**t! the opera scene meant NOTHING! why stage it in an opera house? you mean roslin and athena had been sharing visions that eventually culminated in being shut out of the main command room? it's laughable! hera meant NOTHING! she was supposed to be the hope for the future! unless they're inferring in the final shot of the national geographic that humans and cylons were able to co-mingle and everyone was halfies...but my bro didn't think that was the case.

boomer's "i owe you one" for letting her stay in the force? and not, say, for shooting him?!??? lol!

i totally called the our earth thing like, first season, so it was nice being vindicated.

cavill offs himself when the going gets tough?!? lol!!! why introduce the idea of the BOXED MODEL daniel, WITH 4 EPISODES LEFT TO GO and then not address it???

i gotta say, weak. sauce. hella weak. sauce.

the battle sequences were hype though it was hard to tell what was going on. too many unanswered questions. way too many. liked the centurion on centurion violence. in the end, i'm glad the ship shaped like a giant wheel survived.

also, i hadn't watched the webisodes so when adama handed off control of the ship to "somebody i can trust" i was like, WHO THE HELL IS THAT GUY?!?"

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none of the above is going to make any sense to you if you hate 'battlestar galactica' (ie. S)

it was fun watching with A and my bro s-dawg though, since we were treated to s-dawg's uniquely off-colour and tasteless (but funny) commentary, and S's occassional hushed commentary on how much she doesn't get the show. i love those guys!

okay, that's enough out of me for one day. the point is: big d is in a big d tizzy over my mum's bday. we're having a family dinner of steak, lobsters, raw oysters, mushrooms fried in butter and cognac ($$$), asparagus, and cupcakes and chinese cake (actually, my mom just informed me she got it from a japanese-french bakery. same diff. not enough sugar.) my sis is coming up shortly with the kids, we're all going to play mah jong, and hopefully see a movie tonight.

tomorrow or monday i'll tell you all tales of my being a freakazoid and getting called on it by random bike mechanics. hahaha.

fin.

gluttony!

what was supposed to be a night of yoga turned into a night of 2 bowls of pasta, 1 cupcake, and jeopardy's tournament of champions. the questions get WAY harder in the tournament of champions. tonight's semi-finals featured one of those super-anxious contestants that jerks off the buzzer. it's really distracting.

for dinnie we had a spinach, potato, and gorgonzola pasta, loosely inspired by something posted on smitten kitchen that caught my eye. thinly sliced yukon gold potatoes are drizzled with olive oil, salt, fresh rosemary stripped off the stalk, and pepper and then roasted at high heat in the oven. sauté a red onion with 2 bags of chopped spinach and some garlic in a bit more olive oil. cook off your pasta, toss everything together with a bit of gorgonzola (leftover in my case) cut into bits. loosen with a bit of pasta cooking water if desired (not really necessary) and add more cracked black pepper.

this weekend is my mum's 60th birthday and we're having some of the kdubsguelph tdot crew over tomorrow night for some chattin', relaxin', battlestar galactica-in'. my bro the s-dawg is going to come over too. we're probably going to order in. anyway, the convergence of these two events meant that i had another incentive to fire off a GIANT batch of cupcakes even though my mom wanted to get a cake from some dodgy chinese pastry place in pac-mall. chinese baking tends to be THE WORST. sorry to be culturally insensitive, but it's kind of true. i mean, it's okay if you don't have that western-bred taste for the pure saccharine delight of sugar - if you weren't weaned on high fructose corn syrup and instead spent your formative years in a faraway land where legumes are a de rigeur player in the mealtime finales. i hate chestnut, red bean, and green tea flavours in cakes. i don't mind those elements in chinese desserts, but i don't like the mash-up between cultures. i also don't like that a lot of chinese baking relies on sponge cakes or genoises. that's my least favorite cake genre. i like a sturdy, all-american, good, ol' fashioned, CAKE cake.

to that end, i made a batch of golden cupcakes with a salted caramel buttercream. it's like the yang to my usual go-to celebratory cupcake recipe, the devil's food cupcakes with the brown sugar buttercream.

i didn't even get any knitting done! bogus! i got the new alison bechdel collection, 'essential dykes to watch out for' and i've been voraciously consuming it. it's a retrospective of seminal DTWOF comics over the years (bechdel took a hiatus from doing the regular serial last march, to focus on a new memoir book and other projects.) i EFFIN LOVE THESE COMICS.

eep! the dotytron is coming downstairs expecting me to watch tv with him. i have to let him down gracefully.

fin.

slackin'

i've been taking it pretty ez these past few night once i get home, so that's why dispatches from the lagerfeld camp have been intermittent. things have been kind of hectic at work and the dotytron is on march break which means lots of togetherness and less time to be sitting in front of the ordinateur.

we've been eating dinner and then hunkering down in front of the glowy box to watch movies while i knit knit knit away on my niece's knitted bolero. it's going to be pretty cute! i'm making some pattern adjustments to suit my taste and i'm optimistic about how they'll turn out...i had to rip it out at some point and almost ended up having to unravel the whole thing - fixing the mistake has cost me some precious time and meant that it's been consuming my thoughts/leisure time until i got it back on track and right again. the roomie is sick with a head cold so we've been enjoying the quiet comfort of escaping together into random tales from hollywoodland.

i biked to work the past two days and tried going for a run yesterday at lunch. i didn't even make it a 1/4 of the way around the park...but i kept at it...walking in between little bursts of jogging. i'm excited to get good again...the key is making sure i make it a priority to stretch afterwards, lest my already tense hamstrings retract into even tighter coils of petrified muscle.



last night for dinnie i used leftover corned beef to make us reuben sammies. it's my first time making the CLASSIC reuben, complete with sauerkraut (i had been unnecessarily suspicious of its inclusion before) and thousand island dressing (in lieu of the more traditional russian dressing.) reuben sammies are AMAZING! alongside we had a giant salad with more (kraft) thousand island dressing (i was having weird thousand island dressing cravings yesterday - a desire for a creamy salad topper instead of the usual vinaigrette coating i gussy up.) this corned beef is the gift that keeps on giving. i have enough leftovers to turn into a corned beef hash for a future breakfast or breakfast-for-dinner. that's THREE meals out of one 4.25lb corned beef. thrifty thrifty!

tonight we're continuing "irish springs" week and having lamb and guinness stew with carrots, mushrooms, rosemary, and a root vegetable mash (potato, sweet potato, rutabaga, mashed with my roasted garlic-parsley butter and some milk.) i threw in some bits of calf liver too, just to clear out the freezer some. i know that's going to gross some people out but it was really tasty. i'm testing out the new slowcooker. it's okay. i liked the old one because it had a light that turned on when you turned the knob so you knew that it was working...but really, a slow cooker is a slow cooker is a slow cooker - you don't need all the bells and whistles and for it to tweet you when the food's ready.

on monday night we watched 'little dieter needs to fly,' a documentary by our hero, werner herzog (he turned it into a feature film starring christian bale, called 'rescue dawn' - a way more michael mann-ish hollywood title befitting the fictionalized treatment.) the documentary chronicles the story of dieter dengler, who spent his whole life wanting to be a pilot. he finally gets his wish and enlists in the u.s. navy and is shot down by enemy fire during the vietnam war and captured by the viet cong, held captive, tortured, before making an escape.

it's a hellish portrait that leaves you wondering at a person's capacity to endure, process, and exist with such horrific memories and through such limit-defining experiences.

to counterbalance the monday night screening, the dotytron rented 'role models' which stars lagerfeld fan favorites paul rudd (i want to marry him) and jane lynch. this was surprisingly not not bad for a movie featuring the actor most well-known for playing stiffler. it's formulaic, kind of dumb, but not COMPLETELY insulting to the viewer's intelligence, it has a lot of heart, and it champions the causes of the underdog/oddball and LARPers (that's live action role play to you and me.) it got more than a few chuckles out of me and so was worth the rental price (just barely.)

i have a book review for you but i'll save it for another day. in the meantime, allow me to just say that while i was amongst the luddites who grumbled about the LAST facebook update and then rapidly forgot what the previous iteration even looked like...this new one is TOTAL balls. it makes everything a lot harder to use/less intuitive and it's super-annoying. almost enough to turn me off using it entirely. not impressed facebook impresarios. and when you lose a member of the creative class (i've taken up richie florida's charge and am self-applying the term) (don't you love how i call him richie florida?) you lose a not-so-valuable-though-no-less-vociferous cog in the great social networking machine.

fin.

lovely lovely

i had a perfectly lovely weekend that was nicely balanced between being social, having home time, being productive, and (most importantly) eating good food.


saturday night we stayed in and watched the movie 'milk' i really enjoyed it, for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that my beloved, james franco, put in a thoroughly endearing, tender, soft performance as harvey milk's long-time, long-suffering partner, scott. the roomie and i were clamoring for more and there was a noticeable vacuum when he wasn't on screen. "bring back scott! bring back scott!" was our refrain (scott leaves when the trials of being a political wife become too much.) sean penn completely disappears into the role - his mannerisms, physical tics, the way he holds his body, the cadence and intonation of his speech...it was a well-deserved oscar...though i still have to see 'frost/nixon' to balance out that opinion.

as a well-educated, solidly middle (if not slightly upper-middle) class, left-leaning liberal, it's hard not to feel a little shocked, getting re-acquainted with blatant homophobia and the battle for civil rights. on an intellectual level, i know that this stuff is still going on (prop 8 being one example) but i feel so insulated and inured to the real battle for visibility and acceptance being waged by marginalized peoples. which is TOTALLY part of the problem. people don't get invested the same way anymore...and it's mostly on the side of the complacent and soft left, cushioned by our middle class blubber, drifting idly in our inner-tube of taken for granted rights in a lazy river of consumer desires. it's hard for us to be stirred up as we've been given just enough lee-way to pursue our immediate desires that we don't feel tangibly oppressed enough to be stirred from our torpor (foucault alert!)

it's quite troubling. what you have is richard florida's exalted "creative class" busily downloading apps to their iphones, leaving the true work of policy development and social change to the sycophantic chorus who refused to critically engage with their own praxis and adapt to change (provincial ndp: andrea horwath? really?!?) i'm as guilty as anyone. i feel like i'm still capable of being stirred up (my own long-suffering scott corollary, the dotytron, would no doubt attest to this) - i just don't feel like there are suitable channels and outlets for my way of contributing to the discourse.

anyway, the long and short of it is the film is really entertaining and i love the way it was shot - with that hazy, grainy, low-res texture that i adore. great performances all around - josh brolin is a consistently high-calibre actor and should be recognized as such.

on sunday morning, the dotytron and i ventured out to morning glory for breakfast. the original plan was bonjour brioche, but people rate morning glory so i figured i'd give it a try. it was a mistake. $32 (incl. tip) for breakfast for the two of us. it was pretty poor. i wasn't really interested in a lot of the menu offerings, the short card was pretty uninspiring.

the dotytron finally settled on the omelette of the day, brie and sage. it was DISGUSTING. imagine a handful of RAW julienned sage littering an omelette and assaulting your nose and mouth with it's dusty sageiness with every bite. it was SO GROSS. it came with toast and potato rosti and he ordered a side of farmer's sausage patty, which was one thin patty that had a decent flavour, but tough texture.


i had better luck with my order, a western omelette sammy, served on ace ciabatta with their homemade ketchup (which is quite nice) and aioli and a leaf of romaine lettuce. the ciabatta kind of made the sandwich. realistically - it was a western omelette. i mean, it's no better than anything i could do at home (really no better) and the environment isn't all that nice...you're eating with corktown yuppies with smug babies. it was kind of gross and off-putting. i doubt we'll ever deign to go back.

when it comes to brunch spots...you want a few things: either something super-cheap that's as good if not slightly better than what you would do at home, or something that's a little special that you wouldn't ordinarily do at home, or a neighbourhood place that's easy to get to and doesn't require anything of you. in the super-cheap category i would put a place like zorba's on the danforth. you get 2 eggs, meat, and homefries (i don't usually do homefries at home - somewhat paradoxically) for $5 or thereabouts. plus, you don't have to sit in close proximity to annoying yuppies who think that by virtue of having babies, that makes them any less insufferable. sample conversation at morning glory:

a duo with a baby strikes up conversation with another family with a baby seated at the next table. pleasantries are exchanged. duo w/ baby (DWB) asks family w/ baby (FWB) if they live in the area. FWB pater familias replies: "oh, we used to, but then i got a house in the beaches." he continues, semi-apologetically, "i know, i know. i love this area [corktown] - something about the beaches just doesn't sit right, i feel so - my friends call me a yuppie now"

karl lagerfeld, esquire, silently mouthing to the dotytron: "his friend is right" lol! it's not like living in the beaches makes you a yuppie. being an annoying, inane butthole (we had listened to more of the preceding and subsequent exchange to determine this) does.

anyway, zorba's is amazing. in the something special you don't get everyday, i would put bonjour brioche. i would not normally make fresh baguettes and a savoury quiche with a ultra-flaky crust at home. in the neighbourhood spot that doesn't require anything of me, i would put a place like three's company, on the danny, where i can get a serviceable plate of eggs benny for SEVEN DOLLARS.

morning glory was definitely not worth the drive to acton [corktown]

then i had a visit with my prof J, hubby S, and their outlaw sister S who is slightly closer to me in age (i think) to drop off a baby sweater i had knit for their daughter for her birthday. i had a delicious slice of chocolate cake S had baked that featured mascarpone in the frosting. it was a classic, double decker, chocolatey cake...the kind of thing that looks perfectly at home next to a cold glass of milk and set atop a cake stand on a kitchen counter in anytown, u.s.a. loved it. i don't usually make those kinds of cakes but i sure do appreciate them when they pass by.

then we played dodgeball. i've been getting out a lot lately, because i've been trying to work on my catching skills. i've realized that catching is the most important skill in dodgeball. above throwing and dodging, because it allows you to get someone out and bring one of your own back in. so i've been trying to catch everything that comes my way. it was a hard fought battle...we came back from being down 10-3 to tie it up but lost the final, deciding game. tragique! there's also talk that we might only play one night a week next season which has me somewhat frantic trying to find another activity to take up. i might take a hip hop dance class.

yesterday we had our st. paddy's day meal. i found a recipe online for BAKED corned beef which was AMAZING. it's topped with a brown sugar/mustard glaze (i used creole mustard instead of the sweet hot honey mustard in the recipe). the recipe was the corned beef and cabbage recipe from simply recipes. the author provides the baked way with sautéed cabbage and the more traditional boiled way with boiled cabbage.

the baked descriptor is a little misleading because you actually bake it in a foil pouch, which results in a baked/steamed combo, allowing the moisture from the steam to thoroughly tenderize the brisket. it was DELICIOUS. alongside, i made champ (mashed potatoes with leeks or green onions.) this might have been my favorite element of the meal. the dotytron was hovering and had obvious misgivings about my methods because he had worked in an irish pub 15 years go, and i had never had the dish before in my life. i cut the green onions into 1" pieces and poached them in a butter-cream mixture before adding all of the liquid with the now-poached scallions to the potatoes for mashing all together. the end result belied its humble origins and provided a solid return in the taste department. i also sautéed up some white cabbage as a side.

the boys (we had dinnie with the roomie and her bf) had black and tans to drink and we listened to irish ditties, which were kind of the worse. my comment: "now you can see why they went buck for like, the cranberries" lol!

for dessert i made a gingerbread with guinness from claudia fleming's gramercy tavern dessert cookbook. it's the darkest, spiciest, stickiest, most mysterious gingerbread i've ever had. to lighten it i added cream cheese frosting. it was the best!

then we all watched 'nick and norah's infinite playlist' (which holds up to a second viewing) and trundled off to bed.

perfect!

tonight me and the dotytron decided to take a break from all the meat we've been eating and to celebrate his freedom from the yoke of teacher's college tyranny in the form of march break by eating sushi for dinner.

fin.

I LOVE PRODUCTIVE SATURDAYS!

so it's not even noon yet and i've already:

- been to st. lawrence market to pick up groceries
- went and performed my cat-sitting duties for my colleague
- did all my errands (assorted grocery shopping, coin-rolling, coin-cashing, banking, library pick-up/drop-offing)

i'm about to do my exercises and yoga for an hour or two and then the rest of the afternoon is MINE! mine for cooking and baking and knitting and chatting with T in vancouver and chicago planning and hawai'i researching and movie watching and menu planning and laundry-doing and online shopping (minor - i need to buy some photo albums and our segway tour.) all of that adds up to a stupendously satisfying day of PUTTERING. i love PUTTERING!

last night's dinner with nanny and poppa went off without a hitch. i rushed home after work (leaving 15 minutes early) to make sure i had everything in on time but start to finish the meal took just over an hour. i made a spinach-stuffed pork loin roast with a dijon mustard coating, sweet potato casserole with marshmallows (nanny was a huge fan of this), and roasted brussel sprouts. for dessert, i made that espresso mascarpone icebox cake, which despite containing 1 c. of mascarpone and THREE cups of whipped cream, gives off the illusion of being light and airy (i hate how desserts can do that.)

we had a great time visiting and chatting for over 2 hours and then we sent them on their merry way back to mississauga.


as promised, here is a pic of thursday night's delicious dinner.


tonight we're celebrating national pi(e) day with a bittersweet chocolate pecan pie, topped with whipped cream. i'm keeping things thematic by having it conclude a southern, new orleans inspired dinner of shrimp and grits. an andouille sausage spiked rouille becomes a velvety sauce for shrimp, which then gets set atop a bowl of steamy, smooth grits. unf unf unf!!!

here are some post-dinner pictures of the above:



fin.

sekkle down, sons

wow. i just gotta say this...people need to calm the f**k down about twitter. mashable and boing boing do not a movement make. there's more people going apes**t about twitter than are actually USING it - it's a matter of the co-creation of the zeitgeist again.

i just gotta say: remember cloud computing?!!!? I DON'T!

i really don't see the use of twitter. it's ANOTHER forum to amplify the inane, self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing, and self-promotional weaknesses for marginally interesting people. i've said it before and i'll say it again: i'm really getting tired with this culture of entitlement, mediocrity, and inanity.

anyway, i gave twitter an honest try. i followed a bunch of people who are THE BORINGEST (richard florida, malcolm gladwell, obama, a fake tina fey) and i really, really, REALLY don't understand the appeal. the problem with the frequency and ease-of-use that twitter enables is that, like the first wave of facebook status updates gestalt, people are under no onus to be funny, creative, or challenge themselves to put something out there that's WORTHY of being put out there. the last thing we need is this global nation of context-disabled, functioning illiterates to further cement their rapid entropic intellectual atrophy with 140 character sound bites. *shudders*

this post from naked capitalism kind of gets at what i find distasteful about twitter (although i like to pride myself that i would never stoop to making a hackneyed reference to orwell or doublespeak *shudders*)

i should be watching the dotytron's sister perform tonight. the dotytron however is STILL going buck and it seemed like poor time management to trek out in the middle of the productive hours of our evening to catch her set, and then leave right after (she was opening for the trews, and as a wise bwong once sagely stated, time is our most precious resources and not to be wasted on impotent, signifying nothing, generic can-con rock.) i've never heard the trews, but i suspect they suck. like, they're rock music for moms. short break for a youtube excavation okay. i was right. F**K. i waste SO MUCH TIME confirming that i'm right about stuff. not only do i waste my valuable productive time, it's like self-flagellation - i willingly subject myself to a physical and aural assault for the sake of covering my butt the next time i have to talk to some n00b who won't concede to pwnage until they've managed to subjugate me under the yoke of empirical methodologies. le sigh.

okay...i'm off to do more stuff.

tonight for dinner we had that fried goat cheese, lentil, bacon, and baby arugala salad with baguette. i have a picture for you but the dotytron has commandeered the camera.

fin.

the scatterbrained bookie

i've been knee-deep in YA fiction lately, interspersed with short little jaunts into paulo friere's 'pedagogy of the oppressed' and chicago and hawai'i travel guides.

a while ago i read maureen johnson's 'the key to the golden firebird' - it was aight (do a search for the full review if you're so inclined), but nothing to write home about. this was more of the same. standard white girl protagonist who is awkward and shy and doesn't know how to behave around boys and is described in that careful YA language that leads the reader to envision someone who is pretty, but in a self-effacing manner. YA authors of a certain ilk are always throwing around words like 'curvy' or 'medium-build' or 'round-face' to make you (the reader, who is presumably a teenaged girl perhaps possessing those self-same attributes) feel a certain affinity for how NOT cookie cutter the protagonist is. the character descriptions aren't the breathy, soapy, seventeen-magazine model-prose of "sweet valley high," but at the same time, you're still left with the impression that these girls aren't HOMELY, by any means. they're still attractive and more often than not they get the boy.

this book is about a girl whose high-strung, dramatic artist of an aunt ups and deserts her one day and then passes away from cancer (requisite macabre, jolting, real-world tragedy YA trope, check!) and leaves her a stack of 13 blue envelopes containing instructions that set her off on an international adventure where she has adventures and scrapes and learns about herself in the end. it's pretty boring and the writing isn't very engaging. i think i'm done with maureen johnson. she's so-so as far as YA authors go, and i have no room for so-so when there is work of the following author's calibre floating around out there.

this brings me to john green, who wrote 'an abundance of katherines' which was mind-blowingly, genre-bustingly good. first of all, green is a wordsmith of the highest order - the main character anagrams like crazy. he also has the gift of creating characters that manage to walk the fine line between imperfectly, believably, smart and kooky, and relatable - that impossible heady literary elixir where you could almost imagine meeting people like that in your own life (and fervently hope and wish that such was the case.) i LOVE writers who can do that.

green is a keen observer of human nature and is thus fantastic at limning personalities that can speak in that heightened reality way that made me laugh out loud on more than one occasion with their easy, effortless, cleverness. the main character (colin) is a child prodigy (different from genius) and is a boy (a bit of a departure from my usual YA fare) but i could totally see this appealing to all genders. colin sets off on a cross-country adventure with his best friend, a chubby, snarky, loyal muslim kid named hassan who looks out for colin and banters back and forth with him in arabic (another charming thing about this book are the frequently funny explanations, historical tidbits, and translations in the footnotes. sometimes footnotes can be extremely pretentious - not so here.) colin has only ever dated and had his heart broken by girls named katherine, 19 in all, and this book disguises his attempts to find his own place in the world through the vehicle of his road-trip tour with his best friend hassan and his attempts to find a mathematical equation that will predict the duration and characteristics of a relationship.

it was a profoundly enjoyable read - winning and charming and whip-smart.

after reading 'an abundance of katherines' i was obviously hungry to consume the entire john green oeuvre. next up was 'looking for alaska' - green's first published novel. this was very different, though it shared some of the same attributes: smart, self-aware, slightly awkward male protagonist with a nerdy quirk (this time, the character is obsessed with famous people's last words) in the process of self-discovery. the main character goes away to boarding school (dr. rei alert!!! although this book isn't as full of plummy boarding school details as the harry potter series, or curtis sittenfeld's 'prep' - it's more of an afterthought than a key element), where he falls in with a rag-tag crew of misfits and outcasts, led by his roomate the colonel and the beautiful, impulsive, and wild object of his yearning, alaska.

i don't want to diminish what happens - the book unfolds in such a way that the central crisis comes as a total surprise (or it did for me) - it's a neatly composed coming-of-age story that managed to make me somewhat at peace with my own sense of self. it was very moving, to the point where i was brought to near-tears on the subway as i flipped the last page. it again speaks in a very pure, original, and almost real voice that captures the paradoxical mixture of wisdom and naiveté that all teenagers seem to possess. it was one of the most moving pieces of fiction that i've read in a long time and had a lasting impact. it's one worth buying and re-reading, for sure.

tonight for dinner i went with my friend L and the dotytron to king palace. it's a pakistani place on church, frequented by cabbies. kind of shabby, bare-bones decor, one wall featuring a tv blasting south asian music videos and the majority of the place taken up with a battalion of chafing dishes atop a sturdy levy of steam tables. there's a dizzying aray of combos. i don't even remember what we had, but it was all uniformly delicious and came to about $15/person including a pop, salad, naan and/or rice (depending on the combo) - we emerged feeling stuffed:




it's nice to have an option for cheap eats in the neighbourhood...especially if you're going to see a movie at the cumberland or something. it was really tasty and i can't wait to go back to try some of the other items (especially the ones the guy manning the steam tables gave me dangereyes about - namely the stuff he thought i would be too squeamish to eat. i can't blame the guy - i wouldn't peg me for a cow's stomach eater either, at first glance.)

fin.

food and culture

this is what i've been eating lately:

that pile of barfy-looking slop is actually vegan shepherd's pie, featuring my THIRD reincarnation of the french onion soup from weeks back. thrifty domesticity strikes again! observant readers will remember that i transformed the leftover french onion soup into a caramelized onion gravy for our sunday roast dinner (not this past sunday, the one before.) i then used the leftover gravy to add some moisture, flavour, and viscosity to the filling of my veggie shepherd's pie. the filling also featured leftover bacon-fat and sage roasted kabocha squash from the same meal that i had been hoarding in my fridge like a creepy miser. the filling also had onions, garlic, carrots, mushrooms and tvp. i topped it with leftover mashed potatoes (also from sunday roast chicken night) with some newly mashed potatoes to bulk it up, that i mashed with dill and buttermilk. then i topped the whole thing with grated cheddar cheese and threw it in the oven. it was quite nice with a squooge of ketchup.

on saturday, to go with out movie watching and our desserts-on-the-weekend edict, i made beignets. the dough was really nice, we dusted half of them in powdered sugar and the other half in cinnamon sugar and were eating them piping hot straight out of the fryer. they were delectable! they lost their lustre and toughened up in a direct relationship with how removed they were from the hot kiss of fresh canola oil, but they were still good. the dotytron had an inspired moment where he realized that donut holes play the role of evening the distribution of mass in a donut so that they're easy to flip and don't roll over (my first batch of un-holed donuts - sorry, beignets - were refusing to flip and overbrowning on one side).

with the donut trimmings we made these cute little guys, our donutty men from a donutty planet (corporeal integrity was a bit of an issue...a lot of them did not emerge from their boiling canola oil bath intact):


this is my sad sunday breakkie corned beef hash, complete with busted yolk fried eggs:

and finally, the banana tart of love - this was AMAZING, if i do say so myself:




tonight for dinner we had a roasted butternut squash, sage, and gorgonzola pasta. it was SO easy! it's like a mash-up between my roasted squash and brown butter pasta and the spinach and mushroom pasta with two cheeses.

that's enough out of me. i have to finish seaming up that baby sweater so that i can fully put it in the can and i've got some pleasure reading to do. the pleasure reading includes: RESEARCHING A HAWAII VACATION!

that's right, i think we might go to hawaii for our lune de miel (doesn't that sound like, 70% less ghey than 'honeymoon'?) the dotytron has been gripped with the desire to check out volcanic activity since he took that correspondence geoscience course last year and it JUST SO HAPPENS that hawaii is home to some of the world's most active volcanoes. AND you can get a return flight from honolulu for SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS. THAT'S CHEAPER THAN VANCOUVER. IT'S LIKE THEY'RE PAYING US TO GO! lol! that justification only goes so far because hotels in hawaii are muy expensivo. i'm kind of thinking i might want to bling out for the first few days and stay at a top-flight place and then return to our usual mode of travel for the adventuring/volcano-chasing/hiking part. anyway, right now that's number 1 with a bullet. i want to sit on a white sand beach and roast in the sun and relax and then go snorkeling and scuba diving. the dotytron is pretty hell-bent on us getting our scuba certification in toronto first so we don't waste time being n00bs in hawaii. lol! i can't believe this is kind of sorta in the preliminary stages of happening.

i know this is a pretty dinky post...i really want to finish that baby sweater and i'm kind of zonked right now. i'll be back with book reviews tomorrow.

fin.


--------------------------------------------

butternut squash, sage, and gorgonzola pasta

serves 4-6, main course

1 large or 2 small butternut squash(es), peeled, and cut into 1/2"-1" cubes
1/4 bunch of sage (like a 1/4 c. chopped)
150 g. gorgonzola cheese (the dolcette kind), cut into smallish pieces
4 T. of butter, cut into small pieces
1 lb. of dry, short pasta of your choice
olive oil
salt and pepper

- toss the squash cubes in olive oil, salt, pepper, and the chopped sage. throw these on a sheet pan in a 450F oven and roast until golden brown and tender (about 30 minutes)
- meanwhile, have a pot of boiling salted water going.
- when the squash is close to being done, cook your pasta.
- when the pasta is al dente, drain it, and toss it with the gorgonzola, butter, and cooked squash. season to taste with salt and pepper.

*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.

sir thomas more = original badmon

so i'm frantically trying to finish a little knitted bolero for my former profs J & S's baby. i'm going to their place to decorate cupcakes for L's birthday party and to visit and it's a no presents party but i don't like showing up empty handed. i've made a LOT of headway (i'd say i'm about 60% done) and i'm steadily plowing my way through season 2 of 'tudors' as my knitting viewing accompaniment.

i don't think i'm giving anything away to say that sir thomas more just got iced because of his scruples. i remember reading 'a man for all seasons' in oac english and it had an indelible impact - what can i say, i gotta love people with integrity (atticus finch, i'm looking in your direction.) a little bit of wikipediaing revealed that sir thomas might have been a little teh creepz0rz (wearing a hair shirt, engaging in flagellation) but in the 1400s and 1500s, seriously, who WASN'T a little creepy? poor guy. i feel bad for him. i should re-read 'a man for all seasons' if only because i haven't read a play since the years long ago when i was required to.

you know what makes me feel old? the fact that it's 2009. more importantly, that raves were like TWENTY years ago (or just starting 20 years ago). an entire generation! it's a cultural historical footnote for the kids nowadays. they don't know what the crap it's about. it's weird to have lived through the life of a subcultural movement. i don't know why i'm fixated on that one in particular (probably because it defined my formative years) but still - IT'S TWO THOUSAND AND NINE! what the heck?!??? i was thinking about it yesterday but it was brought even closer to home because we started watching this british series called 'skins' which is about the scandalous lives of 16 year olds in britain. it's like a cross between 'coronation street' and 'gossip girl' with wackier characters and way more lasciviousness (i can't BELIEVE how the brits are so blasé about showing boobs AND hoo-has during prime time television!) anyway, at one point in the series (which is decent - it makes for pleasantly vacuous, mildly entertaining, but not very engrossing passive watching), the kids are at a showcase for these mcs, who are terrible, and whose equipment goes on the fritz. the crowd starts grumbling and there's about to be a major mutiny, when the dj steps in, and drops 'original nuttah' and everyone starts brucking out and the night is saved. to quote tina fey: "i want to go there." it would be kind of awesome to live in a city where 'original nuttah' is like, a retro pop song that you can drop anytime, anywhere. BEST!

so today is a pretty lowkey day taken up with a lot of knitting and trying to get this thing done. i'm using up leftover yarn from another project...i was worried that i didn't have enough so i had to cannibalize a baby sweater i had knit up ages ago but didn't have an intended recipient for. i thought it would be kind of traumatic unraveling a sweater but it surprisingly went down pretty easy. i'm making a dessert for dinner chez dr. rei and hanbo tomorrow and maybe doing some exercises and small errands on the danny. otherwise, it's me, henry viii and anne boleyn, and a pile of yarn i'm trying to wrassle into a garment.

but tonight! tonight we're going to see 'the watchmen' - if i'm not frantically trying to seam a garment tomorrow i'll post a full review. i've also read a slew of YA fiction lately and i have to review that. i've discovered a new favorite YA author (although really, i think his work transcends the oft-pejorative use of the classification), john green. he's EXTRAORDINARY. we're also having vegan shepherd's pie and beignets for dinner tonight. tasty!

fin.

living the high life

dudes, i cannot reiterate enough how much these every-third-fridays off PWN. it's a gift! i love it! although the dotytron informed me in no uncertain terms last night that if/when he gets a teaching job in the school board, he's going to be working 4 years on 1 year off. i can live with that.

last night i went to watch dr. rei's rec bball team, the compact pressarios, go down in ignominious defeat. actually, it wasn't all that ignominious, i just wanted to use that word. they put up a good fight, but there wasn't much they could do when they were up against a team with a GIANT, blonde, amazon who - rumour has it - used to play in europe. they were also up against the dunkingest dude ever, who easily towered by a foot over everyone. the best part of the game was that the dude who runs the league, this short, little, mustachioed gentleman who keeps score, sat all the teams down for a pre-game talking-to.

in the change room, the team that had played before had warned us that we were going to get a talking to, because apparently the notorious poor-sports of the league had gotten into mad drama with another team the preceding week. guys, the TALKING TO WAS THE BEST THING EVER. super mario called everyone and made them sit on the bench and then proceeded to ramble on about how he was giving everyone the same speech because he didn't want to show favoritism, and how everyone had to dial down the competitiveness a lot and how it pained him to have it come to this because he really had tried to create a PARADISE OF RECREATION here and it was unfortunate that some bad eggs were spoiling it, etc. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) lol!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i almost had to bite my fist that line was so ace. a paradise of recreation!!!!!!! then he went on to say, "look, there's no point getting competitive, we're all in this together, and the connections you make here with the other teams are important. i mean, i didn't want to have to say this, but there's a good chance that a lot of you are going to lose your jobs this year and the connections you make could get you work in the future." i'm paraphrasing, but the key thing to remember is that i'm going to lose my job this year (believe me, you're not half as shocked as i am to find that out) and that i'm going to be working for someone i met in rec sports. a-mazing!

this day has been awesome so far. it's unseasonably warm, so i'm doing laundry, airing out the bedroom, tidying up the house. i went to a yoga class, did my grocery shopping, gonna wax my 'stache and pluck my eyebrows and plan our chicago itinerary, book our segway tour (!!!!!!!!!!!), make a dessert for the dotytron, knit, throw together a batch of chicken stock and freeze it, prep some beignets for our new orleans feast tomorrow night, and chill the eff out. it sounds heavenly, doesn't it?

tonight for dinner we're having croque hermaphrodites (a croque monsieur with a fried egg on top, but without the bechamel/mornay sauce to make a classic croque madame) with a fennel, radicchio, and grapefruit salad. i think i'm going to throw together a batch of tapioca pudding to warm the dotytron's downtrodden, tired, overworked heart. i'll update with pictures tonight.



fin.

still bit

by the travel bug. now that we've effectively saved a bundle on our nuptials all i can think about are ways to blow that cash on travel. we weren't going to take a honeymoon before but now we kinda can. there's a part of me that wants to go back to hong kong and hit shanghai and beijing. there's another part that wants to take the dotytron out west to b.c. and salt spring island. maybe spend a week at a shack in maine? or finally do our tour of the bbq states? maybe recreate 'the wire' at the towers and corners of baltimore? go back to barcelona and while away the days eating jamon iberico on crusty bread smeared with ripe tomato pulp? maybe we'll go down wicked south and hit argentina and chile!

ah, the places we'll go. the fiscally responsible thing to do is to batten down the hatches and keep saving for our down payment. but there's really no fun in that. or, no *immediate* fun at any rate.

so, we're all getting owned right now. being on the receiving end of the pwning stick is not a position i'm a) comfortable b) accustomed to and it rankles. summer beckons with the false promise of heady, sun-filled, lazy days that i know are an illusion. THOSE DAYS DON'T EXIST ANYMORE. it's a non-stop work parade. i do love being busy but i wish i had more control over when the brakes get applied. this is not to be. this summer i want to throw taking a language class into the mix. ai-ya!

a few months ago urban outfitters was offering free subscriptions to 'nylon' magazine so i signed up. i received my first issue yesterday. i took one cursory flip-through and promptly regretted everything. so contrived! it's like a magazine in the style of a reasonable hand-drawn fascimile of chloe sevigny or something, except that now even chloe has the class not to try to throw together a magazine consisting of cliches like: glassy, doe-eyed girl staring vacantly at camera in a get up that embodies the golden rule of directionless magazine stylist nightmare: too many layers, ridiculous hats, touch of neon, slouchy bad posture, one incongruous element that's meant to be "cheeky." oy vey. the only good thing is that i now have a regular and steady supply of bug-smashing instruments near at hand that i won't mind sacrificing to the cause. seriously, 'nylon' rivals 'information outlook' (special library association, natch) for "magazine that i receive in the mail but have no intention of ever reading even if i have to stare vacantly at my toes in the bathroom during an epic deuce"


on to happier things! like...spaghetti and meatballs!!! i made sauce on sunday and quickly threw together meatballs when i came home. start to finish i had dinner on the table in under an hour...a pretty impressive feat! i baked the meatballs in the oven on a rack in a pan, to let the fat drain off...ever since old supervisor T gave me the secret for proper polpette, there's been no turning back. spaghetti and meatballs has got to be one of my all-time favorite comfort foods. i made a salad but we housed too much pasta to eat it.

another happy thing: finished knitting. FINALLY. ladies and gentlemen, may i present to you:


bella's mittens from the movie 'twilight' lol!!!!!! anyway, huzzah to having some knitting to show for all my hours doggedly in pursuit of sexy results during the tudor era!

i made them for a rabid 'twilight' fan (are there any other kinds?) i'm quite proud of them...i had to make some adjustments and i had to start over once. the pattern is written for bulky wool and i used worsted. the colour is a lovely emerald-teal. i hope the recipient likes them!

fin.

scrappy doo

uhhhhh...so, there's no delicate or easy way to put this...*cough* ahem...



the performance is off.



it's kind of awesome telling people that because they get all concernedface about it and worry that me and the dotytron are going kaputz. we have not imploded. we just realized that planning performances is NOT our idea of fun. my friend M said, "that's strange, because planning that sort of things seems like PRECISELY the kind of thing you would enjoy" which is true enough...on paper. in reality, we were dragging our feet every time we uneasily eyed the glowing yellow (colour coded for "performance 2009") deadlines i had fastidiously loaded onto the google calendar - they were staring us in the face even as we let them slip by, not done and not caring.

i think i'd like doing it for OTHER people, or for something else...like a baby shower, maybe? but for us, it just seemed to be too much work. and i resented the fact that this was going to be my WHOLE SUMMER spent running around for a day that i knew i was barely going to remember. the first three weeks of august prior to the big day were DEFINITELY going to be a write-off...and i'm turning 30 then! i wanted to be able to have a leisurely, cottage and long-weekend filled summer lazing in the sun wearing sundresses and french braids and birkenstocks and terrorizing teenage boys at the public pool - the diametric opposite of worrying about inconsequential details that would barely register (flowers! making 90 jars of jam/jellies for favours! coordinated invites! timeline for the day! dress rehearsals!) when it came down to it, i wanted only a few things: good food, our families to be around, my best friend, and to look cute with the dotytron.

so there's a new plan, new date. it's now august 1, 2009 (day before my birthday!) we're still going to recognize the day we (re)met as our anniversary...it's more significant to us anyway - this performance day is arbitrary and an afterthought. it's taking place in my sister's town in the states, we're being married by her old judge. we still get to do the fun stuff we had planned, but just on a much smaller scale (immediate family and best friends) and we're having it catered by dinosaur bbq and maybe a drive-in movie, after???. as soon as we decided, it felt like i lost 50lbs...we both felt so relieved and LIGHT! we're going to have it coincide with our annual summer vacay in geneseo, which means golfing at the CHEAPEST GOLF COURSE IN THE WHOLE WORLD (an 18 hole round WITH cart rental is like, $25 lol!) and swimming and stoneybrook and playing in the inflatable pool with our niece and nephew.

i know some of our friends are disappointed...i'm not gonna lie, it probably WAS going to be the social event of the season and it would have been fun...but we can't get a refund on rosetta mcclain gardens and we still have it booked for august 22, 2009. so maybe we'll have everyone we were going to have at the big to-do show up there and squat in the park instead!

anyway, we love you all very much and this is in NO WAY a reflection on how much it would have made us overjoyed to spend a day with all our nearest and dearest. the thought of that is *ALMOST* enough to make the stress, planning, family politics, crystal goblets from bowring, and the fact that it was going to pass by in a blur, worth it. we needed to stay true to ourselves, and at the end of the day, i think we're path of least resistance, lowkey, not a big production kind of peeps.

loves ya!

fin.

p.s. if and when we ever decide to procreate, i promise you the baby shower to end all baby showers (ie. featuring a special old skool jungle set from dj c64 and mc'd by caddy cad)