intrigued, horrified...

It's all on the same continuum, right? This both makes me kinda want to gag, but also to try it. It looks very labor-intensive though. Maybe it's the kind of thing you make for guests you really don't like all that much, such that you get to mess around and make it, then have the added satisfaction of watching them politely eat it when they maybe want to gag? I've given up ever entertaining people I don't actually like, though, so I can't even do that. But maybe it's actually tasty? I know some people swear by Thanksgiving-leftover sandwiches, but that was never a "thing" in my family. As far as I am concerned, cranberry sauce goes on the side of your plate, gets eaten with a fork, and doesn't touch your other food.

What's up with Thanksgiving being so early this year anyway? It seems too close to my birthday, even though it's NOT on the earliest possible date. Maybe I'm just in denial because I ain't ready for all this holiday nonsense, followed by the two to three months of freezing cold and snow nonsense.

In other news, I really need a massage.

Happy Thursday!

xoxo

vaginal atrophy starts...NOW, and other news!

Oh, hai, kids. Did I tell you I went to my PCP last week? I can't remember. (And this is part of the problem.) Well, I did. And in the mail today I got my lab results. It's official. My estrogen has bottomed out and my FSH is through the roof. I'm in menopause. Woofuckinhoo! Not surprised, what with the hot flashes and the incredible, scary stupidity, but as detailed before, I'm not sure I'm ready for this. Not that I have a choice.

So I popped my letter from the doctor into my purse and went off to meet M2. We were meeting in Central Square and repairing to Inman Oasis to redeem my $5 soak from RueLaLa (the one that took me a month of calls and emails to get the voucher for, because apparently it was getting blocked in my email somehow? yeah, that one) and then go to lunch. There I was, on the Red Line, getting my phone out to text M2 that I was almost there, when I looked up to see the doors closing and then hear the overhead announcement that the next stop was Harvard. Son of a bitch. I thought we were only at Kendall. So I had to text M2 instead that I missed the stop and was hopping on a train coming back at Harvard. Sigh. When the fuck am I going to get my brain back? M2 says the stupidity and spaciness does not last forever. Either that, or your memory gets so bad, you don't actually remember you don't have one anymore. Oh, the lulz. Thanks, M2!

In any case, the soak was great, and then we went to the All Star Sandwich Bar, where I had a tuna melt and M2 had deviled eggs and salad, and we split (at her insistence) an order of poutine. I did not have the heart to point out that I was pretty sure that gravy isn't, y'know, technically vegetarian. Besides, once she mentioned it I really wanted that poutine.

And eventually I popped back on the commuter rail, headed for the gym. And started dozing. I think it was the poutine carbs. Felt like Thanksgiving dinner, yo. In any case, I woke up with a start, looked out the window, and saw we were passing Bridge Street and were about to go into the tunnel leading to Salem Depot. In other words, for everyone who's reading this and isn't Uncle and knows nothing about the North Shore, I almost missed my stop for the second time in one day. Which would have been really tragic had I not come to until Rowley or something. Sigh. I'm telling all y'all, I'm becoming a danger to myself and others.

I hauled my sleepy ass off the train and to the gym, where I proceeded to burp up poutine throughout my squats and my SLDLs. You haven't lived till you've continually burped poutine for fifteen minutes in the power rack, kids. Going to the weight room in Quebec must be quite the experience.

Well, I hope you all had a lovely Wednesday that lacked bad news about your private parts, transportation snafus, and digestive distress after tasty food. Kiss kiss.

xoxo

mostly it's a chick thing

Our cafeteria in work, which I have bitched about oh so very many times before, puts nutritional labels by some of the foods. This may in fact be one of the things I bitched about before, actually. They're pretty useless to me, because all they tell is the calories, the fat grams, and the sodium or something. I do not now and have not ever cared about how much fat or sodium I am consuming. When I was dieting, the carb counts would have been nice. And now that I'm bulking, I'd like to know the protein grams. But, no, they don't care to tell me either of those things.

But my bitching about that is apparently moot, because yesterday at the deli station that had turkey club rollups on special, and the nutritional info provided claimed that they were 800+ calories each. Um, yeah, okay. Let me tell you what they consisted of. Half a piece of lavash bread, maybe (to be generous) 4oz of deli turkey breast (but probably more like 3), two pieces of bacon, a lettuce leaf, a slice of tomato. No mayo, oil, or other condiments. That's it. This lead to a spirited discussion in line about how that couldn't possibly be correct. In fact, it's probably + or - 300 calories, so even if they were counting two halves as a serving (which most people don't get), it wouldn't be 800.

Similarly, earlier in the week, at the pizza station they had slices of cheese pizza listed as 350ish calories and slices of pepperoni as 700+. WTF? Go look up the nutrition facts for Pizza Hut or the like. A slice of cheese pizza and a slice of pepperoni pizza have almost the same calorie counts. Adding pepperoni does NOT double the calories. Obviously, those nutritional labels at the caf? They're just making them up out of thin air. They bear no resemblance to reality. So I'm glad they're not telling me how many grams of protein is in their slop. It'd be wrong anyway.

But what I thought was hilarious was that I and the three women directly behind me in the deli line yesterday all knew and were pissed that that sandwich nutritional label had to be wrong. I was thinking, would most guys know that? I don't think so. It's we chicks, most of whom have been on diets on and off since we were like 12 years old, who can tell you just by looking at something more or less how many calories are in it. It's kind of sad actually.

xoxo

and one more upside

...to all the rain. My tomato plants are going crazy.



xoxo

it ain't a madeleine, but...

Back when my son was a wee little newborn who only slept when he was attached to my body in some way, preferably by the nipple, and I was sleeping four hours a day in 45 minute snatches, his father was the manager of a Jiffy Lube kind of store. It was not a Jiffy Lube, it was some other chain which I believe is out of business, probably because their name wasn't as catchy as Jiffy Lube (which it wasn't, 'cause I'll be damned if I can remember it). ANYWAY, this pseudo-Jiffy Lube was located in a strip mall where, among other assorted businesses, there was a Popeyes.

You may or may not remember this, eastern Massachusetts Adventurers, but in the mid-late 80s, Popeyes were popping up all over the place in our environs, before they all failed. Much like Krispy Kreme did twenty years later. I guess some things are not meant to be exported from the South. The difference, however, boys and girls, is that, unlike Krispy Kreme, Popeyes is fucking delicious. While in my uber-sleep deprived and burning 8 billion calories a day milk-producing state, my ex-husband would bring me home spicy fried chicken and biscuits for dinner. To this day, probably twenty years since I last tasted one, I still involuntarily drool at the thought of those biscuits. The combination of bad carbs and (probably trans)fat was a thing of beauty. In fact, when I tally in my head the things that were not douchebaggy about my then-future ex-husband, his providing me with those biscuits in my hour of need is right up at the top of the list. (Although, I'm pretty sure he was having an emotional, if not physical, affair with a girl who was the manager at one of the other strip mall stores, maybe even that Popeyes, though I've mercifully blocked that out too, much like the name of the faux Jiffy Lube, so I'm not sure my chicken and biscuits were totally without ulterior motive. Nevertheless, those biscuits were worth even infidelity if so.)

What brings this up today? Well! At some point, some year, in relationship to something, Mr Indemnity and I discussed Popeyes and our love thereof and the fact that there aren't any around here anymore. And our great great sadness. However we then at some point independently discovered that--holy shit!--there's one in Kenmore. And we have, for some period of time, discussed that goddamn it, we ought to go there. Well! The other thing we decided we ought to do is get Sox-Cubs tickets, because how often does that come around? And thus it will come to pass that this Sunday evening, we shall have Popeyes followed by Cubs baseball. The only thing that can spoil this is if our seats turn out to be behind a pole. Or whatever newly-promoted minor leaguer the Sox have pitching makes it a 23-4 game. Or the fact that it's an ESPN game means we'll be in the 7th inning only at 11pm (12am, if the score's high double digits). Or if it's freezing cold and raining like it's been all week. Or if those biscuits aren't as good as I remember.

A lot could go wrong, actually! I'm still really looking forward to it! It'll make up for all the agita Justin's caused me this week. (My yard is 2/3rds done, if you're counting.)

xoxo

friday am good news/bad news

Well, the sports news was certainly good, wasn't it?

And in sports news you don't care about unless you are, y'know, me, Felix Hernandez remembered that he is not in fact James Shields, but King effin' Felix, reigning AL Cy Young winner, and decided to pitch like it. Which is good. I was beginning to lose faith in my baby Hispanic power pitchers--well, except Jhoulis***. But now I'm sure my Ubaldo will come along any day now.

In sports news you also don't care about, but which is not so positive, can I just tell you (i.e. complain to you) that in fantasy baseball, the way to make some douchebag who is in a horrible slump and who could not get a hit even if he were facing friggin' Lackey come out of it is to sit him. This will make said douchebag go three for four while hitting a two run home run. Because your fantasy players, despite not knowing of your existence, live to spite you. (That's what the voices in my head told me. Shut up.)

And in totally non-sports-related bad news, I missed my bus to work this morning by one minute--I was on the opposite side of the street, trying to cross as it zoomed by my stop--and I was so irritated, with myself if no one else, because I was up in plenty of time to get out of the house when I should have, that I walked down to Dunkin Donuts and bought a blueberry muffin. Bought and ate a blueberry muffin. Five hundred calories and my entire daily carb allowance wasted on something that sucked, just because I was in a bad mood. Grrr. I suppose being in a bad mood because you actually missed your bus is better than being in a bad mood because you had a crappy dream (which makes no sense at all) and therefore I am one up on yesterday. Go, me.

xoxo

***I don't even want to tell you how long it took me to learn to spell Jhoulis (and, honestly, I'm not even sure that's right).

Addendum: I did, however, eventually, hours later, find the mistake in this post and fix it. I may be getting stupider and I may have trouble with "Jhoulis" but there will be no homonym abuse on my watch. Dammit.

guess what???

ET cash-in and health care reimbursement together in today's check as predicted. Woohoo! I think I'll go right home and write my check to the city, like, immediately. But first I'm going to pretend to myself that I make that kinda money every week and daydream about what I'd do with it. Other people have sexual fantasies, I have this. Don't judge.

In other news, I am so hungry, I do not know what's wrong with me. I've had 1200 calories already today and, to be honest with you, I don't think I'm finished with lunch yet. Heh. I think this possibly means my metabolism has cranked up again and that I should keep feeding it. Or I have a tapeworm. One of the two. I was over at the cafeteria buying a drink (a drink only, because I brought my lunch) and other people's lunches looked and smelled so good, I wanted to, y'know, grab stuff off their trays. So consider this fair warning: if you eat with me any time soon, keep your fork ready to stab my hand or I *will* eat off your plate.

And this time, I'm sorry, I can't resist: How about those Red Sox? Oh, you have to laugh. What else can you do? D said, "If this keeps up, I'm going to lose interest real quick this year." I countered with the (maybe untrue) fact that the Sox had a miserable April in 2004, and that this is just a lead up to us going all the way, baby. But no one believes me when I tell them that. Sigh.

And, okay, I can't resist again: Ubaldo is on the DL *with a hangnail.* Okay, okay, not exactly a hangnail, I exaggerate, but cannot we fly Angela my magic nail lady out to Colorado to fix his cuticle right up? If you could only see the job she did with my toenail crisis, you would have faith.

And finally, another sign of spring. Salem cops on Highland Ave with radar guns. You know in cold weather, they stick to their cruisers and Dunkin' Donuts, so this is more promising than crocuses. (Crocusi?)

xoxo

reporting in

First order of business. I had lunch with M2 at the newish vegan place in Central Square today. She prefaced her suggestion that we go there with, "I know I always complain about this place, but..." Apparently the service has gotten less incompetent and the food better with each successive visit, though the prices remain somewhat ridiculous and the vibe a little precious. But she's been eating cake and cheesecake and so forth and so on, and she just really wanted to go somewhere and eat a nice healthy salad. I understand. Sometimes you just need a vegetable.

So we went and here's an example of the precious: the salad I got was called The Sufi Poet. Did you just throw up in your mouth a little? Yeah. It did not contain any poets, so false advertising, dudes. I was saying to M2 that I hate when restaurants use those stoopid "clever" names for their foods. Like, when I go to Coven, they have the best chicken salad. It's just awesome. But they call it something ridiculous. I refuse to order it by that name. I say, "I want some of that chicken salad." Anyway, my Sufi Poet was good, but it contained approximately two tablespoons of hummus. I do not know how these full time vegan people can survive on that pitiable amount of protein.

Second example of the precious: while they serve caffeinated tea, wine, and beer, they do not serve coffee. They serve some kind of "healthy" coffee substitute. That irritates M2 to no end. We both decided to go for the tea. She had a chai latte and I had a green tea latte. Your choices for latte making are: rice milk, soy milk, almond milk, or half & half. I don't know what vegan half & half could possibly contain, but I was not gonna find out either. Almond milk, thank you!

Second order of business. I was not too concerned with the lack of protein in my lunch, because I had already had two banana muscle milks, one before and one after the gym. I think I am becoming addicted to that stuff, which is not good, because on sale at Shaws it is $2.50 a bottle and off the shelf at 7 eleven, it's fucking four bucks. Which I have paid. Ahem. But, man, that fake banana flavor is so good. I know I should be embarrassed to admit my palate is that unsophisticated, but all y'all already know my VitaminWater shame, so whatever.

Third order of business. So then I was headed home from town at the beginning of rush hour, and when you are on public transportation, whether it's the commuter rail or the express bus, at rush hour, you will find that there are people who all take the same train/bus every day and thus all know each other and are all chummy. And so they have intimate conversations. This is how I heard all about the young woman behind me's mother being upset that she is spending too much time with her new beau. "She doesn't understand, it's all new and fresh and exciting. It's hard for me to tear myself away from him. She says, 'you see him all day at work' but that's completely different. At work we're not holding hands, we're not kissing... She wants me to get pregnant, but I don't understand how she thinks that's supposed to happen if we're not alone together." Just reread that and process it for a moment. And then take it as piece of evidence #3295 that I live, if not in the ghetto, at least ghetto-adjacent.

Okay, all this vegetable eating and eavesdropping was tiring, so I must retire for the evening. Peace!

xoxo

in today's mail...

I got a summons for federal jury duty. (And they do not care I just did state jury duty.) Three fucking weeks in May. Three. No electronic devices in the courthouse. I am overjoyed. As you can imagine.

This is NOT what is supposed to happen on Trent Reznor Wednesday, I'll tell you what.

Oh, and I've got complaints left over from yesterday, too. Is there some kind of grape tomato shortage going on? I ordered some with my peapod order and they were out of stock, which was strange. So yesterday after acupuncture I went to the Shaws near Marcy's office and they had none either. Did the crop suddenly fail or what? It is fucking with my ability to have my salads they way I want them. God. All was not completely lost however, since I then stopped in B&N on my way to the subway and bought two fantasy baseball magazines. (There were like 6 to choose from. No lie.) I'ma take my band of sad losers all the way to mediocre this year. You just watch!

xoxo

"the ikea effect" and food

Okay, go read this first, so you'll know what I'm talking about. Go on. It's short.

You back? Alright. I have a few thoughts. First of all, I was thinking of my own dinner last night. On the way home from the gym, I was thinking that I had a package of hamburger in the fridge that I had to cook one way or the other because it was at its sell-by date. This didn't fill me with any great joy, because I was tired and I'd have preferred to skip the whole cooking dinner thing. But because that wasn't an option--I had meat to use up--I was running down the options of what I could do with it, considering what else I had in the house. I could make tacos, but that's such a production, what with all the toppings to prepare, and it makes a mess. I could make meat loaf which is less of a production, but it needs to be in the oven 50-60 minutes, so I'd be eating late. Or I could just make cheeseburgers, easy peasy, but which would mean there'd be leftover hamburger and we'd be eating cheeseburgers on Sunday too. Well, by the time I was in the door with my coat off throwing the junk mail into the recycling and putting my gym clothes in the wash, I made the decision to go with meat loaf.

And despite my not not not wanting to cook it, it was delicious when it was finally done. I make good meat loaf.*** Just sayin'. If the theory posited in the article is correct, maybe it was extra delicious because making it was filled with effort I hadn't wanted to expend.

On the other hand, do you see the flaw, the glaring flaw, in the premise? If in 1965 the average married woman was spending more than twice the time her counterpart 30 years later was cooking and cleaning up after, perhaps this theory explains why she was less fat than the 1995 chick. But what about her husband, huh? Average married guy in 1965 spent no time and effort getting fed. He didn't even have to push a few buttons on the microwave. He sat down at the table and, glory hallelujah, someone put a nice (or not-so-nice, not everyone who cooked everyday got it down to palatable****, but at least it was food) home-cooked meal in front of him. So why the fuck shouldn't he have been fatter than 1995 dude who presumably had to do some work in the kitchen at some point?

But I may see a way around this, if we take into account that striatum business. Maybe the act of having someone cook us a meal hits up our dopamine receptors because it's so emotionally satisfying and pleasurable--it is at least for me--and thus we are satiated that way.

Or maybe this is all a bunch of bullshit and the reason Americans are getting fatter is the HFCS in every goddamn thing they eat. Excuse me, "corn sugar." That's what we're calling it now, aren't we?

xoxo

***Actually, I have been buying almost solely the "nature's promise" meat from Stop & Shop or, once in awhile, the actual grassfed stuff from Whole Paycheck, and D and I are both convinced it tastes better than the cheap meat. I made pork chops the other day, just sauteing them in a little olive oil with rosemary and salt, and they were so freaking good, and I'm not even a pork fan.

****I had a couple of aunts...oy.

snacks and baseball

First, I would like to make a food recommendation to you. Go to your local neighborhood Trader Joe's (or, if you are like me and they closed your local neighborhood Trader Joe's [bastards!], go to a less convenient one--trust me, it'll be worth your time and effort) and take yourself to the aisle in which they sell the nuts and dried fruit and trail mix thingies. There you will find a product called Wasabi Wow. This is a mixture of dried fruit, nuts, and wasabi peas, and it is, I'm not lying to you, the perfect combination of sweet, salty, and spicy/hot. Your three most popular snack category flavors rolled into one perfect munchible food. Is genius! Especially, ladies, if you have PMS. But good any time of the month. No worries. The only worry, actually, is that it is so munchible, I highly recommend portioning out a serving or two into a bowl and putting the rest away. Eating from the bag directly could possibly be dangerous.

And now I will segue smoothly into my next topic by saying you'll want to keep this in mind because before you know it, you may be on your couch watching fuckin' Papelbon blow a save and you'll want something yummy to snack on while he's doing it. (The compatibility of wasabi wow with beer has not yet been tested, at least not by me, but feel free to report any of your own experiments.) Yes, boys and girls, the time is almost upon us for me to start yammering about baseball, both real and fantasy (Ubaldo 2011!) This was underscored by the arrival in my mail yesterday of my Sox Pack, half of which belongs to Mr Indemnity. Look for us in the nosebleed seats of right field on selected occasions! I'll be the one *not* wearing my son's jersey, since apparently that's an evil, bad luck garment.

xoxo

P.S. Both google chrome *and* blogger spell check do not recognize wasabi as a word. Again, I ask you: isn't that racist?!? Ha!

the cranks and the idiots are forever with us

So, according to jezebel, today is World Nutella Day and some fruitcake in California is suing them for claiming they are a healthy part of your kid's breakfast. I admit, those commercials are laughable but that's all they are: laughable. If you seriously think something made up primarily of sugar is good for you, then your kid deserves to get diabetes and OMG THE OBESITY booga booga. (I of course have no moral high ground on this, having admittedly fed my toddler "fruit snacks" on the faulty assumption that something that contains something that was once kinda sorta fruit had to be at least marginally better for you than, say, Hershey's Kisses. But goddamn it, that boy needed calories. Mothers of skinny preschoolers who seem to subsist primarily on air, you know what I am talking about.)

I am not a huge Nutella fan myself. I mean, it's good and all, but so many women seem to go on and on and on about it, like it's an orgasm in a jar, and it really ain't all that. This lawsuit is stoopid, though, obviously.

But it puts me in mind of other laughable food commercials in which dubious foods are being sold under the rubric of healthy eating. For instance, have you seen that one for (I believe) Total cereal in which they show you a bowl of Kashi Go Lean Crunch and about 18 various horse-sized pills vs a bowl of their own cereal and ask which you'd rather eat to get your complete daily quota of vitamins and minerals? This always makes me talk back to my TV and tell them that I personally would like to eat that bowl of Kashi Go Lean Crunch and, y'know, take a multivite, because Kashi Go Lean Crunch is the best tasting cereal EVAH. Plus it has 9 grams protein in it. Plus Total sucks.

It's like my beloved VitaminWater, which I am sadly broken up with. No one in their right mind believes that adding a few supplements to a bottle of sugar water *really* turns it into a health food, but someone felt the need to sue them too. I thought it was obvious that the clever little spiels on the bottles of this adult Kool Aid were just for entertainment value and no one is seriously swilling down cases of "mega-c" because they are concerned about their immune system. But I suppose I could be wrong!

My advice is, if you're gonna celebrate Nutella Day, chase it with some milk. That actually is good for you. Unless you're lactose intolerant. Ahem.

xoxo

breaking medical news

Did you know that some people with severe food allergies (dairy, peanuts) are so sensitive they cannot ingest their partners', um, bodily fluids if their partners don't abstain from the allergens too? And I mean, like, totally abstain? I didn't either!

If if came down to the choice of a.) no blowjobs ever or b.) no cheese ever or c.) dumping said partner, which would YOU choose? (Clue: if you would give up either blowjobs OR cheese, it must be twue luv. In the immortal words of Ms Carter-Knowles, put a ring on it! Stat!)

xoxo

solo moderadamente triste

I am out of peanut butter! And almond butter too! As I said to my son half an hour ago, "What am I supposed to have for my second dinner now??!!?" Luckily I solved that problem with a bowl of kashi go lean crunch and (whole) milk. I'm also still drinking the glass of red wine I started with my first dinner (steak, broccoli and carrots, if you must know). I have never had cereal and wine together before. It's not as disgusting as you might think!

But, anyway, this is just a segue for me to discuss an article I read today dissecting that Special K diet that those sleazy corporate purveyors-of-fake-food motherfuckers are trying especially hard in January to foist upon the wimmins of America and Britain. Someone did the math. If you eat their suggested meal plan, you wanna know how many calories you'll ingest for the entire day? Less than 900. The majority of them from cardboard-like food substances drenched in HFCS. Yum! Dudes, I lost 20 pounds eating CHEESE and drinking the occasional beer. I pick my way.

And yet women have this crap shoved into their minds constantly. Do you know how many chicks think it's perfectly reasonable to subsist on 1200 calories a day? Not when they're dieting, mind, but every freaking day of their lives? Okay, that *is* muy triste.

Food is good. You heard it here first.

xoxo

very important, crucial food question

Okay, kids, I bought me some Stop & Shop deli Swiss cheese. I just opened it and there are no holes. Is it possible to have hole-free Swiss cheese or did those idiots give me the wrong thing? Also? It kind of tastes like Parmesan, but I don't know if I am mindfucking myself into thinking that 'cause it looks wrong. So, incompetence of grocery employees or just what I get for being cheap and not buying the Boar's Head or Alpine Lace?

Answer soon. The fate of the universe and/or my lunch depends upon it.

xoxo

Also, please advise on how to tell if blue cheese and sour cream have gone bad. Extra points if you explain kefir.

(Blogger spellcheck does not recognize the existence of kefir. That's racist. Mongolian power! Um, no, Russian power! Wikipedia has corrected me. Maybe I should see what they say about effin' Swiss cheese. I'll stop editing this any.time.now.)

Swiss cheese is a generic name in North America for several related varieties of cheese which resemble the Swiss Emmental. Some types of Swiss cheese have a distinctive appearance, as the blocks of the cheese are riddled with holes known as “eyes.” Swiss cheese has a piquant, but not very sharp, taste. Swiss cheese without eyes is known as “blind.”[1] What the hell do I need you people for when I have the interwebs. God.

Mongolian kefir is "kumis." Everyone knows that. Duh.

welcome to december misc

1.) Well, I experimented and it is possible to put my phone on silent and still have the alarm work. On the other hand, after I told my kid that I would kill him if he texted me at 4 am again, last night he emailed me to tell me we're out of Q-tips. So it's all a win-win.

2.) Every time the commercial for "The Fighter" comes on TV, I get all excited and tell D I can't wait till it comes out. My excitement has proved infectious and he thinks it's really cool that it was filmed in Lowell, etc. (Perhaps not infectious enough that I can convince him to see it in the theater, but where there's life there's hope. Or some other platitude.) Anyway, I was lying in bed this morning with those kind of random thoughts that flit through one's head flitting through mine, and it occurred to me that while it is a boon to have Wahlberg, Affleck, and Damon as big box office stars so that they can keep having movies set in eastern Massachusetts (all of which I am compelled to see) with leads who don't fucking butcher the accent, they're getting older. Which is to say, we need a new crop of Massachusetts boys as up-n-comers. Someone's gonna have to carry the torch so that in fifteen years the Boston Crime Film genre doesn't die out and leave me with nothing to see at the movies. God. Someone get on this.

2a.) Why doesn't Maura Tierney get roles in those movies? Is she typecast as a TV actress or is it just that she's too old by Hollywood standards to act opposite Affleck/Wahlberg/Damon? I always liked her when I used to watch ER. She's a good actor, and pretty in that "normal person pretty" way.

3.) I made the traditional after-Thanksgiving turkey soup, but I had so much leftover turkey (see: emergency preparedness extra turkey breast, which btw, caused M1 to say "only you, Andrea" which, yeah) that it is kinda like turkey sludge. Delicious though!

4.) The shoes I wanted for my bday were on sale for about half price on Zappos so I bought them. We're also getting a surprise bonus in our paychecks this week (for me $100, which is about $65 net) so I suppose I shouldn't feel guilty for treating myself.

That's all I have to say about any of that. Namaste. Bitches.

xoxo

various complaints and non-complaints

1.) I am at that point in the year where my skin starts to look really horrible. I have the incipient dry, flaky patches near my eyes, but when I try to head these off with moisturizer, my skin looks greasy all day. And believe me, I have tried many different types of moisturizer.

2.) Part of the problem is that as soon as it gets cold, I cannot keep myself hydrated enough. In the warm weather, I'm sucking down water and assorted beverages all day long. In the winter, that is torture. I've been trying to drink more cups of green or herbal tea, but that involves constantly making cups of tea. Impractical, especially at work. So not only does this contribute to the skin dryness, the circles under my eyes look a thousand times worse. Even after applying concealer (which is not the miracle product the cosmetic industry would like me to believe), today I look like I got punched in the face, basically. It's depressing.

3.) I was up bright and early, 6:45-ish, this morning, even though I did not have to be at work till 11, and despite that, and despite the fact that I have so much shit to do before Thanksgiving, I got exactly nothing accomplished between then and when I left for work. And I was running out of the house even then, no gym clothes with me, no lunch, no water. Oh, I did get the trashcans back in the garage after the garbage men came, so there is that. But I am so disgusted with this frittering away of time.

4.) My three week old iPod died over the weekend. Luckily, it was still under warranty (ya think?) and the nice man at the Apple store yesterday just reached in the drawer and gave me a new one. But I also wasted an inordinate amount of time and aggravation trying to restore the broken one myself on Saturday.

5.) I bought an indoor countertop turkey fryer, because Amazon spammed me with Thanksgiving bargains and I bit. There were like a gazillion 5 star reviews of this thing. Now, however, I am getting nervous that it won't work and my Thanksgiving will be ruined. So I'm going to go out and buy a back up turkey breast and cook it in a more conventional manner so there's a fail safe. I think this shows that I'm a pussy, because no guts, no glory. However it may instead show that I am always prepared, just like a boyscout. You be the judge.

6.) I did manage to get Trader Joe's pumpkin ice cream. Even if I fuck up two turkeys, you cannot argue with pumpkin ice cream, yo.

7.) Plus a nice cava. I should probably not start drinking it before I'm done fucking around with large amounts of very hot cooking oil, right? Boyscout or pussy? You be the judge.

I think that's it for now!

xoxo

drink!

That's not a command, though if you choose to interpret it as one and pour yourself something, I won't dissuade you. No, Drink is a bar in the South Station/waterfront area where you go to have cocktails. Not that they won't serve you a beer or a glass of wine, but if that's what you choose to imbibe, you're missing the point. See, Drink has a conceit: they don't have a cocktail menu and their bartenders are mixologists. You inform them what you might be in the mood for or what sorts of things you usually like to drink, and they take their creativity and encyclopedic knowledge of alcohol and make you up something they think you are gonna like.

And so it came to be that I spent last evening imbibing various champagne cocktails, since it was my birthday eve and I wanted something celebratory. 3 and 1/2 variations of champagne cocktails, to be exact. (We'll get back to the half later.) The second one, which contained champagne and bourbon, is, I think, the one that got me wasted, despite my efforts to drink it slowly. There was a fuckload of alcohol in that thing. More alcohol than the delicious little finger foods they also serve could keep up with. I recommend the fancy grilled cheese that's served up in bite-sized pieces, and not just because I've been relatively carb-deprived the past few months. It was good. Also good were the cupcakes the bunch of girls down the bar, who were celebrating someone's 30th, shared with us. Don't you love the camaraderie of friendly drunken generous strangers when you're out on a mission to get annihilated? What's NOT to love?

But back to the half drink. Those of you who know me well, know that I am fairly clutzy. I have next to no hand-eye coordination, and it's a daily marvel to me that I manage to pull together enough fine motor skills to actually perform my job. So even under the best of circumstances, the chances of my dropping, spilling, tripping, etc, are not inconsiderable. When I'm drunk? All bets are off. And thus halfway through drink #3, whilst making an expansive hand gesture to punctuate my point in the conversation, I sent my flute flying off the end of the bar and onto the floor, where some poor peon had to come out with a flashlight and pick up shards of glass before any mixologists pierced their feet. I apologized profusely to my bartender, who said NBD, and that the lifespan of a glass in a bar is not a long one, generally. Then he said he'd like to make me another drink, to make up for that one. Imagine my surprise when the bill came and it was on there. I totally thought he was offering me a freebie!

But even a non-free drink did not harsh my buzz, because as you people also know, I am a very happy drunk. Also a hungry one. Mr Indemnity walked me to Haymarket to make sure I got on my bus home in my inebriated condition. (Who then got him home on the red line safely in his inebriated condition, I dunno. But he is alive today, so it happened somehow!) But on reaching Haymarket and finding I had twenty minutes till my bus, I insisted we run over to the North End and buy a cannoli. You would think this would be easily accomplished in twenty minutes, but we ended up cutting it very close and stuffing Italian pastry in our faces as we speedwalked back. There's some kind of white residue on my purse straps today. I can only assume it's powdered sugar, because, hey, the night didn't get *that* out of hand.

In summary: we give this evening two thumbs up even though my belleh understandably feels like crap today. That will not, however, keep me from eating birthday onion rings tonight. I'm tough like that!

xoxo

bitter disappointment

Ever since the "coming soon" signs went up, I've been excited about the new AJ Wright store opening in my neck of the woods. "Oh," I thought, "it'll be nice to have a conveniently located craft store." It wasn't until this week when they actually opened and I heard a couple of my fellow Prison Bus riders discussing it, that I realized AJ Wright and AC Moore aren't the same place. Goddammit. Anyway, according to them, AJ Wright was just like a Marshalls, only better. Well, you see my first mistake. Never listen to people on the Prison Bus when it comes to matters of taste.

Nevertheless, this afternoon after the gym, I needed to go to that shopping area to visit the pet store (new flavor of Greenies for EK) and Shaws (the sour cream and 4-Cheese Mexican blend I forgot when I was buying the other ingredients for tacos yesterday, sigh), and I figured I would go in there and see if it was just like a Marshalls. Or even better! Okay, first of all, I was in there for no more than five minutes before I wanted to kill someone. People blocking the aisles with their carts, most of which contained two or more ill-behaved, illegitimate children in or hanging off them. It was immediately apparent that this is where the ghetto Market Basket shoppers are now going on Sundays after picking up groceries. Then, secondly, while the merchandise was certainly inexpensive ($5 shirts, etc), it was incredibly shoddy cheap crap that looks like it was made just for them. There were only a few things that I saw that were recognisable brand names (Nine West purses, a couple NY&Co shirts, some Rocawear and Dereon hoodies.) Even though I refuse to give up hoodies, a woman of my advanced years should stay far away from gold-embossed Dereon ones no matter how cute in a ghetto-fabulous kind of way they are, and so it was that I left completely empty-handed and not liable to be back. BITTER disappointment. My cheap disposable clothing will just have to continue coming from the Tarzhay.

Which, to prove the point, I then marched into and bought a new pair of sweatpants. But, no, really, I needed them, I swear. I have a couple pairs of drawstring waist sweatpants that I wear to the gym when I don't feel like wearing yoga pants, and even with the drawstring pulled as tight as it can go, they really don't stay up anymore. It's time to face the fact that they need to be relegated to sleepwear only. So new sweatpants were a completely reasonable purchase. Really.

In lesser disappointment? A couple weeks ago when D and I were in the supermarket, we happened to walk past the Muscle Milk Light, and with his encouragement, I bought one. I've been afraid to try it, frankly, but since I had all those errands to do after the Y and I didn't want to eat an Organic Food Bar (protein flavor)*** today because I had a carby breakfast pre weights, I bit the bullet and threw it in my bag this morning. My first impression was that it was too sweet. Then about a third of the way through it, I got a mouthful of something lumpy and oily. Oh, disgusting. There's the essential fatty acids! It was then that I realized that I was supposed to shake the damn thing before drinking. After shaking it vigorously, the remaining, properly blended shake was less sweet and non-lump containing. It still was not what I would term "good." So, no more Muscle Milk for me.

In no disappointment whatsoever, I have somewhat convinced myself that I can see some delt development now. This is very good since, when I first lost weight, it was suggested to me that my shoulders (and upper chest) were looking a little bony. Which is how it goes. I get really lean there before the lower body fat budges much. Now I think I'm getting a little meat back on there, and it's muscle, not fat. Too bad it's seven more months till spaghetti-strap weather again. I'll just admire my possible delts in the mirror like a dork till then.

Okay. Hope you all were totally free of disappointment this weekend. Namaste!

xoxo

Addendum: Holy shit, I forgot to put in the footnote. Scandalous!

***Protein Organic Food Bars are *awesome*. Their main ingredients are almond butter and dates. And rice protein. Did I tell you this already? If so, just let me reiterate: delish and not full of any chemical crap (though they do contain agave syrup which is the grunchy granola equivalent of HFCS, hehe!)

some people can't be taught

I love that saying about people who get married for a third or fourth time--"the triumph of hope over experience." But you can apply it to a lot of different issues.

Last night when I left the gym, I went to Dunkin' Donuts for an iced coffee. Because, seriously, when you've elevated your heart rate with the cardio, doesn't jacking it up more with caffeine sound like the thing to do? Oh, shut up. I was really hot and the pint of water I'd just chugged straight from the bubbler hadn't helped. Anyway, as I was leaving my new favorite Dunkin' Donuts (the nice woman who makes my iced coffees there takes "extra cream" seriously and shows it to me to make sure it's light enough before she hands it over), I saw the advertisement on the door that their seasonal pumpkin stuff is back. You know my issues with this, right?

Every year when September and October roll around, I look at those signs and then I buy a pumpkin muffin. And every year the pumpkin muffin sucks, being way too sweet and tasting more of icing than of pumpkin. Triumph of hope over experience. Which would be bad enough, but *then* every year I buy two or three more before the season ends, even though the first one basically sucked. There is absolutely no explanation for that other than that I'm insane. And, also, they *look* really good on the sign and on the shelf.

So even though I am seriously seriously off the sugar and junk food this year, I looked at the sign on the door yesterday and thought, "Oooo, pumpkin muffins!" My mouth watered. It's watering as I type this. Insanity.

xoxo