Listening to someone’s conversation in a bar, except it’s not really a real conversation, it’s one person talking about her job and the crappy cast of characters she works with.
And I love when, after her friend makes some consoling noises and starts to tell her his own similar experience, she says, “Well that’s easy for you to say, you don’t have a family to support. But, no, no, i’m not one of those women, really. Tell me your story.”
Wow.
1. Toilet paper holders in public bathrooms that only roll halfway around before they stop. Then the toilet paper rips off and you have to try again. Before you know it, you’re stuck with a handful of 3-square long pieces of paper. I probably waste MORE toilet paper getting frustrated with those damn things than I would otherwise—and I’m sure they were invented to save paper, by someone who wasn’t actually USING them.
2. Commercials that display henpecked men and overbearing mothers/wives. Like the one about TV control—not sure what, exactly, they’re advertising, but it sounds sort of like the V-chip, where you can set certain channels that can only be watched if you enter a password. Anyway, this helpless husband wants to watch something and his daughter has tell him why he can’t get the channel—because he apparently doesn’t know anything about what goes on in the house—and then she has to tell him him that, if he wants to watch that channel, he has to have “Mommy’s” password. He asks “Mommy” if he can watch a certain show—this is her HUSBAND, by the way—and she looks at him with that sort of funny disappointed look and says, “NO!” And he looks sheepish. Seriously? I want to kick her.
3. Any kind of lotion or spray that smells like baby powder. It’s called baby powder for a reason. If you are a grown woman, you should not be wearing Love’s Baby Soft, and no company should ever produce a air freshener spray that smells like baby powder. All I can think when I smell it is, There’s a dirty diaper around here somewhere, isn’t there?
I love An Affair to Remember. Not just because I’m a sap, but because it’s a lovely movie.
One note: Cary Grant has a major perma-tan. It’s OK. He’s still an icon.
We all know the new Harry Potter book is due out this summer.
Two summers ago, I was in Oxford for a couple of weeks and took the opportunity to pick up the entire set of books—then, the first four in paperback and the fifth in hardback—in the British editions. After all, Harry & Co. are British, so reading “sweater” for “jumper” in the American editions always made my palms twitch.
In preparation for obtaining the new book in the British edition as well, I visited Amazon.co.uk and ran the numbers. It will cost me approximately $32 (or about £17) to bring the new book across the pond.
I’m not pre-ordering today, but I’m glad to know that the shipping, at least, doesn’t exceed the cost of the book. I’d have paid it anyway, but it would have irked me a bit.
Mr. Angst arrived at home tonight with Legally Blonde, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the soundtrack to Garden State. He read that we don’t have any chick flicks on DVD and wanted to buy me some. And the soundtrack I just wanted.
:::sigh::: That makes me all squishy.
This is a short little story, mostly because it doesn’t need a lot of exposition to get the horror across.
I was at the grocery on a Sunday afternoon so the place was packed. I was heading straight for the self-checkout. (Yes, I love the self-checkout except when I’m buying alcohol because then you just have to wait for the cashier to come check your ID anyway.) In front of me was a mother and her two daughters. The daughters—both tweens—were acting like morons, as tweenagers are wont to do. I was annoyed by them, but blew it off. Kids are kids, right?
That’s what I was thinking as I was trying to get around them, so I could get to the checkout lanes, when one of the daughters audibly FARTED right in front of me. Like two feet in front of me.
One part of me wanted to get sick. Another part of me wanted to grab the girl by the shoulders and smack her for being gross. A third part of me wanted to use my cart as a roadblock for the mother and tell her how GROSS her daughter was and how she should be ashamed that her daughter FARTED in the GROCERY STORE. In FRONT of me.
Instead, I sped up, cut them off right in front of the self-checkout, and took the only open station. It was the only form of polite retribution I could think of.
I LOVE THIS HOLIDAY!
As a child, I went to St. Patrick’s Elementary School. Because St. Patrick’s Day pretty much always falls during Lent, almost every child in the school would have given up candy and wouldn’t have been able to have any on St. Patrick’s Day.
Except that the pastor of the church, Msgr. Higgins (no, I am not lying, that was in fact his name), would always declare that, because we went to St. Patrick’s School, St. Patrick’s Day was our feast day, and therefore a “day off” of Lent. He basically gave us all a Lenten dispensation.
And he would dress in the green vestments of Ordinary Time, borrow miter and crook from someone, and come around dressed as St. Patrick himself. He’d hand out candy and tell us about the great saint himself. And then the school would always have a big supper and a parade.
Many moons ago, I told Mr. Angst about St. Patrick’s Day not being part of Lent. He’s Irish, or at least part, so St. Paddy is his patron saint, too, sort of. So now he takes the holiday off of Lent. Since he usually gives up beer, St. Patrick’s Day is usually bigtime happy fun for him.
So enjoy St. Patrick’s Day! Read some St. Patrick’s Day jokes over at Scott’s place. And grab you some of the luck of the Irish!
In preparation for selling our home, Mr. Angst and I are doing some hard-core spring cleaning. To that end, we spent about an hour this afternoon going through our books. Mr. Angst has one more bookshelf to go through, but we’re basically done with the book-weeding.
And it’s hard. I have books that I’ve carted around for years in the hopes that I’ll reread them one day, or that I’ll use them for reference. I have books I read once and loved and wanted to hold on to forever. I have books I went through hell to obtain, so I would always have them. Yet somehow, books in all of these categories are going away. We now have two laundry baskets filled with books to take to the we-buy-your-used-books store. I don’t think we’ll get much—they’re pretty well known for not giving much cash for paperbacks. But I have a few complete series, and I have several first-edition hardbacks, and maybe we’ll get enough money back to buy some fine wine and get drunk.
I enjoy the feeling of productivity when I get rid of piles of things that I don’t need. So I feel good right now—clean, refreshed. But I also feel sad. Getting rid of books is sad. I know that the space we’ve freed up is now open for new and unread books, new books that may become favorites, but it’s still sad.
Still to come: the editing of the closet. I have many clothes to give away.
By the way, if you know you live in my city (trying to remain Googlenonymous here, so I won’t say where) and you want to peruse my to-be-given away books (or anything else, for that matter—we’re going to get rid of some furniture and other stuff, too), feel free to email me. I’d be happy to give away things to deserving strangers.
I love it when you go home for lunch, planning to empty and refill the dishwasher, start up tonight’s pasta sauce in the crockpot, and then enjoy a nice grilled-cheese sandwich—or maybe a salad—but instead, when you reach up on top of the fridge to put a big spoon in the utensil jar, you knock off a bottle of balsamic vinegar which then shatters all over the kitchen floor.
I LOVE that.
How many years has Seventh Heaven been on? And when will the WB clue into how bad it is? I admit that, several years ago, it was marginally watchable. But when Jessica Biehl had to pose for Maxim to get out of her contract, I knew it was only a matter of time. I think that time is now—or, perhaps, three years ago, before they stooped to cast Ashlee Simpson.
Via Class Maledictorian, a book list. Instructions: Copy this list of 10 authors. Remove the ones not on your bookshelves and replace each of them with ones that are (replaced authors are in bold):
- Jeffrey Eugenides
- Umberto Eco
- A.S. Byatt
- Jane Austen
- John Irving
- Italo Calvino
- Czeslaw Milosz
- Vikram Seth
- Vladimir Nabokov
- William Shakespeare
My list:
Gasp! Did I just say that?? I’ll say it again:
I hate shopping.
OK. I spent two hours at the mall today, looking for jeans. Now, I have a hard enough time finding “regular” clothes that fit me—I’m short and curvier than is fashionable. So jeans are just impossible to find.
I tried on $19 jeans. I tried on $80 jeans. I even tried on a pair of $200 (and oh my God how can anyone justify charging that kind of money for denim?) Seven jeans. It’s a racket.
I’d love to give up wearing pants altogether—skirts are so much more flattering on me, not to mention pretty comfy—but there are days when a skirt is inappropriate. Like cold and wet days. And we’ll be moving to a place with a higher number of those later this year. Therefore, I cannot give up pants.
If anyone knows of a brand of jeans or store that sells jeans that are appropriate for a short woman with a .68 waist/hip ratio, I’d love it if you’d share.
I hate shopping.
Yesterday, books appeared on my desk, as if they’d been deposited by a bolt of lightening: The Chicago Manual of Style and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.
They are nestled now on my bookshelf next to Garner’s Modern American Usage, Strunk and White, and The Careful Writer. They look happy, and at home.
Sadly, they are not mine. When I leave, they stay. My reference manuals will probably miss their new friends.
Tonight, I have been madly helping Mr. Angst with his personal statement. That is to say, in the grandest tradition of writing instructors, I have been gently (but swiftly, since he has to fax it tomorrow) guiding his very good core statement toward a clean and precise written document.
I have had such fun! I love the red pen, the molding of language; I so enjoy seeing what can be and encouraging it to come out.
Yes, I know, this makes it sound like I should be a writing teacher. And I’ll admit that a big part of my law school personal statement was about eventually hoping to teach lawyers the importance and impact of language. But I also know that just teaching kids and adults to be more effective writers wouldn’t satisfy me quite enough. I think I need more than that, I need to know something better is coming from what I do.
Maybe that’s why I’ve enjoyed tonight so much. Mr. Angst’s plan is to go into a program that has a great deal of moral merit; he wants to do something great and wonderful and important and I am so proud of him for that. And I know that the writing I am helping him with will help with that goal. So it makes me very happy. Also, I love him, so that contributes to my good mood.
I feel good right now. Very good. Proud, and happy, and (a little) arrogant about how good I am. ::::sizzle::::
CM has not heard of buttermilk pie. So i am going to tell you of the goodness that is buttermilk pie.
CM asks if it is like a custard pie, and, indeed, it is. But this custard pie is made with buttermilk. If you like buttermilk, you will love buttermilk pie.
Imagine: a couple of cups of buttermilk, a cup or so of sugar, a few eggs, and some nutmeg. Oh, and vanilla, too, because it’s yummy. Pour into a pie shell and bake for slightly less than an hour until set, and eat. After it cools, of course.
Buttermilk pie…imagine the goodness that is any other custard pie: lemon meringue, say, but without the lemon or the meringue. The closest analogy I can imagine is ice cream. There’s vanilla, and chocolate, and pistachio, and rocky road…all kinds of ice cream that are all essentially the same but with different flavorings added. And then there’s sweet cream ice cream, which is basically ice cream with nothing but cream, eggs, and sugar.
Buttermilk pie is the sweet cream ice cream of custard pies. It is to be loved and eaten.
The choir I sing in has begun preparing for our Christmas concert. (Sadly, I will not sing in the concert since I’ll be visiting campuses in DC that weekend.) At any rate, we’ve begun to work on some of the music, and it’s definitely put me in the holiday spirit. We’re even singing Pat-a-Pan!
So now I’m listening to my college choir’s recording of Lessons and Carols (ours is called Look from Afar and I sadly cannot find it for sale online).
I know, I know, Thanksgiving isn’t even until next week! What am I doing listening to Christmas music? All I can say is that I love this season. I shudder to see tinsel and fairy lights at the mall this early, but music…music is another story altogether. Good music, that is. (After a season working retail, I can’t hear Baby, It’s Cold Outside without wanting to hide under a display table.) Plus, this music is really Advent music, totally appropriate for preparing oneself for Christmas. It’s also really beautiful and soothing.
Is it wrong that I really want to put our Christmas tree up the day after Thanksgiving? Mr. Angst would disapprove, I’m sure. We’ll be at a football game anyway, so I guess it’s a moot point. Maybe Saturday?
The wonderful thing about the proper onset of cold weather is that warm foods, like soup, stew, and hot tea, are so much more appropriate—and decidedly yummy.
Today, a positively divine tortilla soup (sans cheese or tortilla strips, since I’m counting) from one of the “gourmet grocery stores” here in town. Perfectly heated, deliciously flavored, and not too spicy. Yuuuuuuuummmmmm.
The switch from Daylight Savings (or is it TO Daylight Savings? I never can remember) has my circadian rhythms all off.
Firstly, I am waking up earlier because of the light, no matter how late I go to bed. Last night, for instance, I was up until about midnight, when the networks called Ohio. Yet I still was stirring awake by about 7 am—which, by the way, is a full half-hour earlier than I usually get up.
And now it’s the end of the day, and I am getting ready to leave, and the growing darkness outside has me confused, too. It’s so dark! Am I in the office too late? Did I lose track of time? What’s going on?
My undergrad was located about 30 miles west of the time zone shift from Eastern to Central time. When Daylight Savings changed in the fall there, it was so much worse than it is here (several hundred miles farther west). There, I’d go into choir rehearsal around 5 and it would be dusk; by 6:15 when I’d be heading to dinner, it would be pitch black. So I really shouldn’t be complaining too much, here in the heart of Central time.
But I am. I don’t like being awoken before my alarm goes off by the light; I don’t like feeling the day is over when I am just leaving work. I don’t like it. The only good thing that comes with the time change is the promise of cooler weather. (I am actually wearing my favorite sweater today…yay!)
Not that my bitching is going to change anything. It’s just one of those things that gets me at 5:20 in the afternoon when I still have choir rehearsal. Some things never seem to change.
Good:
The cool weather has finally arrived. I am actually wearing a sweater today.
Bad:
My blowdryer decided this morning that it would not blow if the barrel was not pointing up. It works to about 15° off the horizontal, but any farther than that and it craps out. This will make drying the top of my head awkward.
Good:
Last night’s dinner was lovely—mushroom risotto, baked pork chops with a balsamic pan sauce, and spinach salad with Don’s Florida Salad Dressing. I added a pinch of dill and some oregano, too, just because. We also enjoyed a bottle of our honeymoon wine.
Bad:
My iPod battery has been acting funky, taking a full charge and then resetting itself because it thinks it doesn’t have any charge. This is nervewracking. I bought it in February, so I still have a few months of warranty. I really don’t want to send the thing in for replacing, though. I seem to be able to avoid problems if I (a) listen to it every day and (b) charge it up every night. Listening and charging simultaneously, which I tend to do at work, appears to only increase the likelihood of problems.
Also:
Everybody who hasn’t voted needs to drop what they are doing right now and make their way to their polling place. Voting matters. Really.
In an attempt to reverse my recent habit of poor nutrition, I offset my cheese bagel with an Odwalla drink this morning. I chose the one with “a full meal’s worth of protein, and 190% of your daily requirement of folic acid.”
Folic acid is good, and I am of childbearing age, so I should probably get more of it. Plus, it was made with soy milk and vanilla—yum!
No. NOT yum. In fact, the antithesis of yum. Chalky shit. Tastes like Milk of Magnesia, but with vanilla instead of wanna-be mintiness. Mind you, I still drank the thing because my body needs to know what healthy, nutritious food/drink tastes like, but I dreaded every sip.
I used to eat well. When I lived alone, I made myself healthy meals most nights; when Mr. Angst wasn’t taking night classes, I cooked wholesome, well-balanced meals all the time. Now, I’m lucky if I have a peanut butter sandwich and some Ruffles.
I need to master cooking in advance, and stock my freezer with wholesome well-balanced casseroles. I just hate frozen food and our freezer makes everything that comes out of it smell vaguely like fish.
Scheherazade has a new post about the onset of fall.
I miss fall greatly. My undergrad institution was located in a place where September has a chilly bite in the morning and leaves actually change color. Many of my favorite memories are of walking alone through one of the many green areas on campus, meandering through the snow-weighted evergreens. Or bundling into fleece and wool for the three minute trek to the dining hall.
Here, the weather has been a tad unusual for September—it actually is chilly this morning, which thrills me. I know, though, that the chill will burn off quickly, leaving only a blazing sun behind. September is hot here, and always has been. The days are not truly cool until November, and the leaves do not turn colors; they just wither and drop from the trees. And while I love this city I live in and this state I am from, I miss fall deeply.
