Wait, wait, wait. I thought that last post would be it, but I went back over to CNN.com (to watch the bird-pant-smuggling video, natch) and I found one I had missed:
Bob Barker Turned Down Porn Role
I think we can all heave a sign of relief for that one.
I had to break my blogging fast (wedding plus carpal tunnel syndrome equals BOOOO!) to bring you the latest in the CNN.com Headline Hall of Fame:
Man Tries to Smuggle 14 Birds in Pants
God bless you, CNN, for bringing us the truly hardhitting news stories that touch our lives.
By the way - you can get that on a t-shirt. Classy!
My pets are both sitting and staring at me. I am trying to write a paper that does not want to be written. The staring is not helping.
At long last, two weeks before the semester ends, we finally had a musical theater class that didn't entirely convince me that puncturing my own ear drums was the way to go. We got to talk about the Muppets (?!?!?!?!?!?!?!) and their incredibly fantastic oeuvre. Apparently there were a couple of people who had never seen the Muppets (home-schooled weirdos? You be the judge). During our viewing of "The Rainbow Connection" this caused much consternation, culminating in an outburst of "IT'S A PUPPET, NIKKO! A PUPPET! JESUS CHRIST!" I walked back to my office with "Movin' Right Along" stuck in my head, which I think we can all agree is preferrable to the stab-inducing "Surrey With a Fringe On Top" that stalked me through the hellish Oklahoma unit.
God damn it, this is really pissing me off now. Someone in the office next to mine has a cell phone ringtone of the freaking suspense-y, bomb-about-to-go-off music from "24." You know, that "beep...BOOP...beep...BOOP...beep...BOOP" sound. It is incredibly distracting and pulse-increasing, as it is meant to be when it is played where it should be, on a crazy, anxiety-producing Fox drama. Not right next to my office!
I woke up with a stomachache this morning. I drank a little coffee and knew that wasn't a good idea. So I waited to get to work in order to finish my caffeine fix, but it was already 80 degrees by the time I got into work at 7:30. And then by 10:00, when I finally got my drink, it was HOThot and my stomach felt better, so I got an iced black tea lemonade from Starbucks. A venti, because I don't know my limits when it comes to something as delicious as a Starbucks black tea lemonade. When I worked at Starbucks (summer of 2004, during my purgatory in Spanish Harlem), we could have one free drink a day. Mine was always a venti black tea lemonade - and this was back when they still had the amazing Valencia orange syrup that elevated that drink to the orgasmic. I would drink it on the subway platform on Lafayette Street (the gross one below the library, by the Waldorf Astoria), and even though NYC subway platforms run between, oh, 250-300 degrees during the summer, I would be content. Even though I was headed back to my disgusting, infested sublet that made me want to cry, and wearing my hideous Starbucks uniform and smelling like bleach and burned coffee. The Starbucks I worked at was in a hotel right by the UN, and every so often the police would swoop in and shut down the whole area and we had to stay inside and be on lockdown for a few hours. I loved those times - I would grab a New York Times and a drink and just enjoy the post-apocalyptic feel of the armored vehicles rushing down the avenue, probably with Kofi Anann inside or something. It took so little to make me happy during that incredibly depressing summer.
Anyway, moral of the story, I like Starbucks black tea lemonades. But I should not have had a venti one, and then an hour later eaten my lunch of whole wheat pasta with roasted vegetables. Because my stomach is as unhappy OR MORE unhappy than when I woke up. I have class in an hour and I have to listen to a lecture on, like, Barbara Streisand's career highlights or something retarded like that. I hate this musical theater class. Actually, I just hate musical theater. I shouldn't blame the class. It's not the class's fault. But having a stomachache is going to make it that much more unpleasant.
Another one for the CNN.com Headline Hall of Fame:
"Robotic baby seal has healing powers."
Admittedly, nothing has ever topped "Meat Thief Hit in Face with Frozen Ham." Good times.
Tip of the day: If you're going to microwave your kitchen sponge to
disinfect it, make sure it has water in it.
I learned this the hard way this morning when I microwaved our
environmentally-friendly organic bamboo fiber dish scrubber (purchased
at too high a price at the food co-op, because I'm so clever and would
be saving the cost of those floppy green scrubbers that get all
disgusting within a week because you can't get all the crap out of
them, because they're designed specifically to pick up that crap and
then you just have to toss them but they stay all moldy and make the
trash smelly and you have to pretend not to smell it because you're
passive-aggressively waiting for your husband to take it out before
you, even though you'll eventually be forced to after the dog gets
curious and knocks the trash can over at 3 am trying to get a better
sniff; basically there is just nothing good about the floppy green
ones). I was smug, and pride goeth before a fall.
Basically I baked a crapload of bamboo fiber in the microwave this
morning because the goddamned thing was dry. It smells ungodly. And
the tragic part is that it probably didn't really even need to be
disinfected yet, considering I've only had the thing since Saturday.
Learn from my mistake. Douse those fuckers good before they get
zapped!
I recently bought the last issue of Martha Stewart Weddings that will be published before my wedding (yeah, I don't know why I read Martha Stewart Weddings either - I don't read any other bridal magazines - but for whatever reason I just really love it). Inside it, I found the stupidest bridal advice since that book that recommended hiring the mentally retarded to make your favors, since they work so cheap.
From the Beauty section: "Big Breakthrough: Spun from silk microfibers coated in 24-carat gold (which reduces inflammation and stimulates collagen growth), Chantecaille Nano Gold Energizing Cream is a must for princess brides. $420 for 1 ounce, neimanmarcus.com"
A must for princess brides. Naturally.
There is nothing crueler than having PMS and watching Iron Chef when the secret ingredient is chocolate. Damn you, Alton Brown and that Japanese guy that screams. Damn you.
I knew it was time to write another post when I came back to the TypePad website and they had redesigned it. Like, a while ago. A bad sign.
Right now I am cooking a roast chicken in milk. Weird, right? I know! But I have high hopes for this chicken. It's a heritage chicken from Whole Foods (actually I don't know what that really means, but it sounds good). Having a vegetarian spouse when you are a meat eater is fantastic, because you never have to share. This is especially handy when it comes to bacon. All the good, crispy pieces? I don't have to parcel them out. They're mine. Mmmm.
By the way, here's the chicken in milk recipe: http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/meat-recipes/chicken-in-milk
This morning I got into work around 7:30. I settled down, had some coffee, was checking my email, when suddenly the ceiling gave this ungodly buckling noise and started raining bits of concrete. Managing to avoid wetting myself with fear, I hightailed it the fuck out of there and ran upstairs to see what the hell was going on. Turns out - THERE'S NO ONE ABOVE ME. It's just an empty lab. FREAKY. I have no idea why the hell my ceiling started going to pieces, but there was a fine layer of dust over half my office today. It's structurally sound, thank god, and I only heard the demon noise once. Here's hoping the building is still there tomorrow.
Alright, alright, I know. It's been ages. I believe the last entry dates about two days before the beginning of the semester, which is about right. So, to the two of you still reading this, welcome back. Your patience is greatly appreciated.
This semester is approaching the point of killing me. In fact, I'm so used to doing 15 things at once that while I'm writing this, I was attempting to watch "Angels in America." Which is ridiculous, because "Angels in America" deserves our full attention, so I paused it. This is a step in a positive direction.
I'm taking two classes right now - Advanced Topics in Production Dramaturgy and Contemporary Trends in Theatre. I'm also the dramaturg for the Arizona Rep production of Medea. I just finished the actor packet. It is a huge weight lifted from me.
Regardless of the fact that I generally like my class, my job and my show, the three in concert with each other have that sort of sickening bacon-ice cream correlation: delicious separately, but when taken together they quickly induce nausea. I'm also constantly switching roles, which is getting tiring. I feel a bit like that dancing frog from Warner Brothers - in certain situations I am merely croaking and ribbit-ing along, but am called upon to tap dance for the amusement of others at frequent intervals.
Tonight I took the opportunity afforded to me by finishing my paper early to go buy dog food. Because that's my life right about now. If I am not doing school work or work work, I am tying up the lose ends that slipped away from me, like ensuring a constant supply of sustenance for the living things that rely on me. When I got home, there was the inviting smell of a wood-burning stove, which is strange because this is Arizona and no one has a wood-burning stove, least of all me.
"Hey, honnnnn...Are you cooking or something?"
Adam then emerged from the office where he was writing a paper (he's in more classes than me, poor thing). "Um. No. The cutting board got a little...singed."
I walked into the kitchen and the entire cutting board was black. Adam explained: "I read that in order to get the smell of onions out of your cutting board you should lightly cook some olive oil into the surface. But I didn't cook it lightly enough. Also I forgot about it."
I think this is pretty indicative of our life right now. Oh, we have pets? Oh, I have greased wood on the burner? Whoops! So you can see why, when compared to fuzzy animals and open flames, this blog has ranked a bit low down the list.
According to Annemarie (who's in Beijing), my blog is banned in China.
I can't imagine what's quite so subversive about my random bitching and stories about my various injuries. But there you have it.
As I'm sure is no surprise to anyone who read this blog while I lived in Spanish Harlem, I have a serious roach phobia. This goes beyond your typical "ew, gross, get it away from me" reaction. I can sometimes go into full-blown panic attacks when I see one, although thankfully my reactions have grown less and less severe in recent years. This is helped by the fact that I have a guy at home to kill bugs full-time. I am a feminist, but I still believe that men need to make up for their privilege by eradicating my home of insects.
This weekend, however, it was just me at home. I was looking forward to spending my evenings drinking wine and watching movies that Adam would hate ("No Reservations," "The Notebook"). As I was getting ready to curl up for a nice evening of cinematic emotional manipulation, I saw it - a roach leg, lying on the living room floor. It was just the leg, and I knew immediately that of the four mammals living in my home, only one is casually sadistic enough to pull the leg off an insect and call it a day - Kiko the cat.
This would not the be the first time Kiko had brought a roach inside. In Arizona, we have these ginormous roaches that live outside, and one afternoon Kiko bounded through the dog door as happy as could be with one these winged bundles of evil in her mouth. My trusty household bug-killer sprang into action, squishing it and scooting the remains into a bush.
Admittedly, I was afraid this would happen. There is really nothing I would rather my cat would stop doing than bring roaches in the house. She could be synthesizing methamphetamines for sale to school children, and I would look the other way if it meant I could be guaranteed a cockroach free existence.
But anyway, this leg. It was like some horrible threat from the mafia - "Give us what we want, or we'll send you the rest of this." The rest of the weekend was spent on high alert, ready at any moment for the appearance of the now-disabled roach, which in my mind had taken on the proportions of a silverback gorilla.
Currently I am in my bedroom with towels stuffed under the door, just in case. I never claimed sanity. Adam comes back tomorrow morning, and I will task him with a thorough inspection of the house for the intruder. And hopefully I'll be able to stop sleeping with the light on and one eye open...
For many weeks now, Adam has been growing tomatoes in our backyard. He used to grow tomatoes professionally, organic heirloom varieties for some of the major restaurants in Chicago. He's been working on an similar organic heirloom tomato this year, and while many of the tomatoes grew from the six or so plants we have, they haven't been ripening.
Until now. One tomato has persevered, turned bright pink, and given hope to both the remainder of its unfinished brethren, and to Adam. He was overjoyed, and made sure that I would check the tomatoes while he's away in Pittsburgh this weekend.
Tonight, while I was reading and Adam was playing Super Mario Galaxy like the compulsive freak/Super Mario addict that he is, our dog Stout started chewing on his paw. I addressed him directly, as I often do to him, our cat, and any particular inanimate object in my viewing path.
"Stout," I asked hypothetically. "Why do you do that? Why do you chew on your paw? Are you stressed or something?"
By way of an answer, Stout got up, hopped up on the couch and stuck his face firmly in Adam's lap. I then heard a horrible heave, saw Adam simultaneously jump back and shove Stout's head out of the way, and witnessed my dog projectile vomit all over the couch.
Adam and I went into detective mode: "Did Ron feed him stew or something today?" "No, no, it's not entirely chunky enough for stew." "But it does seem to have elements of fresh vegetables in it, does it not?"
At that point, I think Adam knew. I think he knew before he actually knelt down to get a better look at the evidence. The tomato was gone. Stout had eaten it, and then backed it all up.
There's something almost sadistic about it - eating a man's tomato and then deliberately attempting to regurgitate it in his lap. Adam was heartbroken ("A lot went into that tomato!"), but Stout took it in stride. He was in the kitchen eating the cat's food in no time.
Thomas L. Friedman: Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America
This book scares the shit out of me.
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