February 2006 Archives
I’m also blaming the tiredness on Sunday’s Day of Beauty, that tricked my body into thinking it was on vacation. Abby, Krista, and I met for a delicious brunch, then went to the spa for hour long massages. We were then whisked away to Krista’s apartment, where we did 6-step Sonya Dakar facials, got drunk on margaritas, ordered Indian food, and watched MTV’s “Real Life: I’m a Competitive Eater” and the Project Runway recap show we missed. I’d never had a massage before, and I have to say it released all sorts of craziness into my body. I felt completely out of it afterwards (in a good, vacationy way), and adding tequila on top of that helped not at all. Did I mention that the massages and facials were belated Christmas presents from Krista? Here's to Christmas in February! Best day ever.
But now? It’s Tuesday and there is no more massages or facials or margaritas and I am just sleepy. Good thing I have the Ultimate Blogger competition to keep me on my toes. Real Girl is already slaying me with her pitch. Love it.
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HOWEVER!
Guess who IS a contestant? Beating out hundreds of applicants and clawing her way to the top 10? Yes, it's our very own Real Girl! It is clear that she is the cutest one up there, but can she outwrite all the others? I have great faith in her! Of course, she will need our support. Every few days they will be issued a challenge that the contestants will have to respond to in the form of a blog post. It will be up to the judges to pick the best one, which will receive immunity. Then the players vote off one of their own. Leaving lots of comments to support Real Girl will help morale, and good morale leads to even better writing, right? Right! The responses to the first challenge won't be posted until Wednesday, but you can read everyone's intros here, and of course, leave comments for our girl.
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I’ve been popping AirBorne like crazy, trying to keep his cold away from me. I’m too busy for sick! I have things to do, people to see, massages to get (more on that later…). Last night I was busy making pans of margarita bars, a twist on my famous lemon bars that include lots of lime and a bit of flaky sea salt. The secret ingredient is really one drop of green food coloring that makes them distinctly margarita-y looking. I suppose you could do something drastic and add tequila, but so far I’ve been afraid to mess up the silky texture of the bars.
Anyway, the bars were prepared for Miss Kelly, who is the lady with all the job and apartment getting lately. (Although Jennie also has been making good with the job and the apartment getting, but hers was more spaced out and has so far involved less parties. Jennie: where are the parties?) Her old work is sending her off in style, which in the financial world tends to involve lots of expensive alcohol and other general fanciness. I think I will feel a little weird entering the bar with my hokey little trays of pastries, but who am I to turn down a request from the woman of the hour? I guess the worst that could happen is I sit down and eat all of them while drinking a $10 beer, right?
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We can't help it. He's like an awesome combination of Joe Cocker and our friend Aaron. I don't care if he gets the boot because he's destined for great things and I'd almost prefer to see him sing non-American Idol songs. I might actually pay to see him sing non-American Idol songs.
Also okay by me is Chris.
Yes, he's got some Bo Bice rocker action going on, but on the plus side: he's not Bo Bice. Sorry, folks, never a Bo Bice fan. HERE'S A SECRET: I ALWAYS liked Carrie Underwood better. Hah! Anyway, Chris slayed me with some Bon Jovi action and wins a gold star in my book. Even if he sang Sheyrl Crow before. Once I was very jealous of Sheryl Crow for dating Owen Wilson and I may have never gotten over that. Also, I find her a bit annoying.
We'll just call him Wilma Carr. And my 16-year-old self would have totally dug him. Y'know. In a Bobby Brady, Seth Cohen kind of way. J casts him as the dork friend in a movie who has all the good lines.
Elliot takes a nice picture. That psycho-just-crawled-out-of-a-hole-and-killed-someone look really doesn't come across at all in photos. How nice for him!
Kevin...Kevin is basically a four-year-old stretched into adult form. I bet his dad's a scientist and invented a machine that ages you twelve years, yet allows you to retain your lisp and mom-cut bangs and lil Kev snuck into the workshop.
Or Scooter finally figured out how to become a real boy.
And you always need someone around for entertainment value. Someone who sings and shimmies like a semi-retarded drunk lounge singer. Thanks for being a sport, Bobby!
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All day I was excited to go home and make these crazy pancakes I mix together once in a while. I don't make them more often because there are literaly TWENTY ingredients in them, which is, like, seventeen more than are in Bisquick ones, so it's got tha big strike against them. Additionally, several of the ingredients are things like lemon zest, buttermilk, walnuts, and wheat germ, and those aren't always the ingredients sitting around my kitchen every time I have a pancake urge. But if you are feeling especially plucky and desire some tasty, hearty pancakes, you should definitly go for these.
You know that plastic cone that florists wrap flowers in? Max's new favorite cat toy.
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I normally really dislike ice dancing, but did you see the Russian Italian couple last night? Man, was that ever good entertainment. He dropped her on a spin the night before and she glared at him for like a solid hour! All through the judging and while sitting in the kiss-and-cry area. So much so that last night the commentators kept referring to is as "The Glare." She remained so angry they practiced seperately and didn't so much as look at one another until it was their time to skate last night. Then she mouthed something quiet to him, he nodded, she nodded, and they skated their asses off and won the gold fifth place or something and loved each other again. Yes!
Also? When the French couple skated out in blood-stained, tattered costumes, I completely called the Les Mis music.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't mostly excited for the ice dancing to be over with.
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Real Girl just informed me that they have announced the new ANTM cast (the link will reveal the 13 finalists, so don’t go if you want the gripping suspense to last through the first few episodes). I will go right ahead and ruin a couple spots, though, since they’ve practically ruined it for themselves by being named Nnenna and Furronda. Perhaps they are in some sort of league with Moana from “The Bachelor.” A league of mumbly-named reality television show women.
I am honestly not sure why this week isn’t over yet. Every day I have woken up and wondered if it was the long weekend yet, and whether I could sleep in, and every morning the answer is still “no.” I’m thinking there may be some law of physics at work here that make the week leading up to a long weekend feel especially extended. I have proof, because how else would one of my friends manage to get a new job, a new apartment, acceptance into a new class, and a new boyfriend all in this one week? Okay, I am lying about the boyfriend, although apparently her new landlord found her pretty irresistible and invited her to a local bar tonight where he would “give her the keys.” Those quote marks are also a lie; he’ll literally be giving her keys. Jealousy makes me into a liar. But she’ll probably get a boyfriend before Sunday because this is a girl who knows how to get things done!
I realized when I linked to Urban Honking the other day, I didn’t tell you about Ultimate Blogger II starting up! We’re talking reality show excitement RIGHT HERE ON THE INTERNET! Right here where you’re looking RIGHT NOW! You thought reality excitement was all about prime time, but soon this game will be unfolding before your very eyes. Also, they are still taking applications for contestants, so if you are reading this and you have a blog, you could be the next Ultimate Blogger. With a title like that, who needs the $1,000 prize packet? Oh yeah, there’s a $1,000 prize packet that includes all kind of digital goodies. Seriously, this will be much more fun to watch if one of you is competing. Real Girl and I have applied, but their selection process is mysterious. The application asks lots of questions about celebrities and crime (and your mom), so this year’s competition could really go anywhere. I’ve got my paparazzi camera ready, just in case.
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Tonight, J and I will be indulging in some Indian-ish food at Tabla, the dessert-portion of which will undoubtedly contain chocolate. I think we celebrate most of our holidays together in the spirit of good food and excellent desserts.
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Houseguest Jennie and I braved the first flurries to pick up a ton of Mexican food makings, which we prepared and laid out as a buffet feast for everyone who came over. We listened to good music, watched the Olympics on mute, played a kick ass couple rounds of Apples to Apples, and even toasted up some s’mores on our indoor kit. I don’t know if anything cozier ever existed.
Of course, we were quite surprised to wake up to our entire backyard filled to the windowsills with snow. I know that people are supposed to enjoy playing in the snow. Normal people like to get a little chilly and throw snowballs and make impromptu sleds. But honestly, I kinda like to drink tea from the inside. I don’t know what happened. I blame it on the winter backpacking trip I took in college where I was cold and wet most of the time. Even when I wasn’t cold I was still a little cold, and I was always still damp. I remember very clearly standing there in my snowshoes, wind blowing everywhere, and trying to open a frozen zipper on my pack to retrieve some trail mix. I remember thinking, “Liz: this is the most awful thing ever. You are miserable. You are cold. You hate this with every bone in your body. Do not let this memory fade to a pleasant general memory and agree to go on another winter backpacking trip ever again.” And I haven’t. But I think some wires crossed over and made me more sensitive to winter in general.
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Last night we got to watch Project Runway and see Abby’s pictures from her trip to Taiwan. She also let us draw from a grab bag of goodies and I walked away with a little triangular pencil case that says “Rice Balls” and pictures two dancing rice balls (triangles?). In fact, now that I look at it closer, the two ends of the pencil case are also anthropomorphized rice balls, one laughing, one winking. Heeey! Even though I believe strongly that anthropomorphized food is Wrong and a Poor Marketing Tool and also Lazy and Unimaginative, these guys are pretty cute. They are so bubblingly sweet and cartoonish that they don’t really count all that much as food. Plus, they’re basically triangles with smiles. Also okay: panda-shaped fishballs.
You should go check out Abby’s pics, which include images of a Taiwanese Monopoly game where instead of properties there are countries. And instead of labeling them correctly in English, they just labeled a bunch of them “Syria.”
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Watching TV
"Smallville" superhero/villain sponsored by Acuvue: I'm in if you're in.
Liz: Did she just say, "I'm made of urine?"
J: Yes, she's made of urine.
Superbowl announcer: It looks like a groin injury.
Krista: What exactly is the groin, anyway?
J: It's like the whole area. It's Junktown.
Krista: So the area.
Josh: It's all of Junktown, but not the mayor.
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The other afternoon, while I was the only one in the office, an older woman wandered in looking for a knitting store. Our office is in a building with a doorman, and would be very difficult to mistake for a knitting store, or any store for that matter. I thought perhaps she had the wrong address, but then she gave me the name of our company and mentioned knitting again. I can’t really emphasize enough how little we are a knitting store. I told her I didn’t know what to tell her, but we really didn’t have any bulk yarn or even deal with anything knitting-related. At all. She was visiting New York and looked so crestfallen and lost, that I offered to look up some knitting stores in the area. I came up with several and gave her a list with their addresses and cross streets and phone numbers. She was grateful, but not overly so, and I thought she might not realize the oddity of the whole situation until she got home and relayed it to her daughter, at whose apartment she was staying.
A couple weeks ago, two kids were messing around at the turnstiles at our subway stop as J and I were trying to swipe through. They heard the train approaching and one of them sprang over the turnstile, and the other gave up on a card he was sliding through and slid under. I wondered aloud to J whether MTA workers have any methods for stopping people who hop the turnstiles, or whether they’re pretty helpless behind the plexiglass. We were right behind the kids, and as they bound down the stairs, the one who had been trying to swipe a card dropped a couple bucks. The train was coming and they were running, so we didn’t try very hard to give the money back. J swooped it into his pocket and I mumbled something about instant karma. (The money later went in a tip jar at a coffee shop.)
It seems like I should feel good about helping the old woman, or bad about not trying to return dropped money, but I feel exactly the same about both situations. It’s just sort of a neutral irritation, something out of the ordinary that was supposed to test me in some way, happening against the normalcy of everyday life. It’s not that I mind helping or taking the ethical high ground, or even rationalizing my way around doing something unprincipled in certain situations. But maybe it’s that I don’t like the feeling of being tested, or of having the obligation of feeling good or bad when I don’t feel either.
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Maybe chicken wings or chocolate.
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