Quodlibets

Questions for the esteemed Senator from New York

• May we please see your tax returns?
• Do you intend to destroy the Party, or is that just a by-product of your all-consuming need for power?
• Do you feel guilty at all about this?
• Are you trying to destroy his career or yours?
• Are you really comfortable stealing the votes to get the nomination? 
• And if so, how does that make you any different from GWB?
• Do you consider yourself a feminist?
• How can you denigrate a man in one breath and say he'd be a great veep in the next?
• Furthermore, how can you insult him by acting as if you're the front-runner?
• Have you no shame?  No, really.  Is there anything human left inside you?
• What will it take for you to just let it go?
• Are you not slightly worried about how intensely you've alienated very many Barack Obama supporters who then might not vote for you if you somehow got the nom?
• Also, how dare you say that John McCain is better than Obama?  Don't you think that crossed a line?
• Are you really that selfish?
• What other dirty tricks will you pull out of your bag before Pennsylvania?

Progress Report Monday # I can't remember (a list)

Things that are left to sew:

• Snow
• Part of a Brick Wall
• Trees
• Sky
• The Xmas lights along the eaves
• The bells on the horse's rig
• Every bit of backstitching

Reasons that I haven't been sewing lately:

• see above
• very little on TV to watch while sewing
• a string of bad days doesn't allow for much motivation
• mindless devotion to Civilization IV (Warlords)
• busy weekends
• can't sew at work
• a good number of new books to read

Words

Some good words:

• tintinnabulation
• aphorism
• plaisance
• beryllium
• Djibouti
• qi and qat
• sonorous
• anorak
• Barramundi
• elephantine
• hippopotamus
• marimba
• Xerxes
• jejune
• facetious
• dilly-dally
• malevolent
• onomatopoeia
• shellac

I miss it too much

Football.  I miss football, okay?  Sundays suck now, because I don't have something to watch while I sew.  Last night, Sam and I watched Any Given Sunday, which I think I'd seen half of when it came out in the theaters.  (Long story short, I ended up leaving without seeing the end due to a power outage.)  I was definitely watching it with new eyes last night, and here's a little list of things that I didn't like about the film:

• The uniforms.  Especially the uniforms in the last game of the movie.  Those Dallas Knights (?) uniforms were terrible.  I told Sam that I thought the costume designer for the film was really, really bad, and had no sense of the aesthetics of football, because whoever it was really didn't get anything right.  Bad helmets, bad pants, bad jerseys.  Bad logos.  The only one that sort of worked was the main team's mascot, the shark.  The shark head/costume worked.  But the uniforms in the film just didn't look like professional football uniforms.
• The editing.  I thought that the way the film was edited took it further away from the feel of real football than it did bring it close.  Maybe I'm influenced too much by the NFL films and HBO crews (from the sadly defunct "Inside the NFL".  RIP.  Easily one of my favorite seasonal shows.  Too sad.  I love Collinsworth, and I know I'll see him elsewhere, but still.  Same with Peter King.  I really REALLY like Peter King, and I'll still be reading his column, but I'll miss his reports on that show.), but the in the game moments didn't feel right at all.  I can't put my finger quite on it, but to my estimation, the film isn't a success if the football doesn't feel real.
• The music.  It was very uneven.  I'm not saying it was all bad, but I am saying that at times it was very distracting.  Football always has seemed like a rock and roll sport to me, the only true rock and roll sport out there.  And there was a good amount of rock in this movie.  But there was also a lot of Moby (like, what?  Moby and football?) and a bit of rap, and it just didn't jibe in my head.  There wasn't a score, really, which I thought was nice, but at the same time, I'm just not sure.  I don't know how this could have been better, but at the same time, I definitely wasn't happy with it.
• The league.  The NFL is so so so omnipresent and so huge that it's really hard to buy this alternate league, with expansion teams in Albuquerque, is making so much money that the only team losing money is in Miami.  Really?  Considering that the other teams are in huge markets with huge teams (Chicago, NY), I just had a hard time buying it.  I'm sure it'd be impossible to make this movie set in the NFL, but then jeez, I don't know if you can succeed in a serious football movie.  I'm trying to think of other football movies that I've seen and enjoyed greatly, and honestly, the only one I can think of off the top of my head is Rudy.  Yeah, and that's set in college.  Realistically.  Because it's a mostly true story.
• Al Pacino as head coach.  Just bad, I thought.  But I did like Dennis Quaid as the seasoned QB.

Would I recommend this movie?  Probably not so much.  Could have been way better.

Random Things

• I just put my iPod on all shuffle mode.  The first song to come on:  Say It Ain't So.  I can't lie and say that this song isn't a Rock Band song to me.  When I hear it, and sing along, I'm thinking of how I sing it when I play Rock Band, and I'm thinking of the way it is to play it on the guitar.  This may be stupid, but this is also the song I think I've played the most on the game.  It's also one of the handful of songs I can play while singing and guitar-ing at the same time.  Yes, you read that right.  I've advanced to being able to do both.  It's fairly simple: take your Xbox provided headset, and plug it into one of the game controllers.  Unplug the microphone from the USB extender.  Et Voila!  You have a headset.  My one problem with the scenario is having to stand close enough to something to put the controller on.  The controller and headset and connected by a wire, after all.  It can get to be something of a pain in the ass.  The other problem with the whole scenario is that you really do have to know almost perfectly the words to the song, or you're sunk. Or at least I am.  I haven't yet mastered the art of seeing both the guitar parts and words at the same time.  Anyone else doing this have any hints?  Seriously, though, it's the most super-fun ever.  Especially since Sam won't play with me, and I end up playing Rock Band alone unless it's Weds. night.  Plus it makes me feel good about myself!  Look!  I can sing and pretend to play guitar at the same time!  Woooo-hooooo!
• For the first time ever, I'm re-listening to an audiobook.  For the past month or so, I'd just been listening to Kevin Smith's podcasts, jettisoning the audiobooks.  They got kind of boring, and I was having trouble finding shit I wanted to listen to.  But now I've exhausted those podcasts, and I'm ready to do audiobooks again.  So I used my credits to get a few, and then when I was loading them on the iPod, I saw this one, and thought, oh man, that was good.  It's Lost and Found by Carolyn Parkhurst, and it is  as good the second time as the first.  It's got me excited about audiobooks again, and I really needed it yesterday as I sat in traffic for an hour and ten minutes.
• I had a bizarre dream last night about our old dog, Maggie.  My mom hadn't actually put Maggie down a few years ago, but had given Maggie to my dad, who shipped her down to his house in Florida and hired a caretaker for her.  Seems neither one of them could let her go.  Except they still told us (the kids) that Maggie had been put down.  It was like the OPPOSITE of telling your kids that the dog had been "given to a farm", and just about the weirdest thing ever.  Maggie was put down (in real life) because she was peeing constantly, everywhere, so I asked my dad's wife, M, what they were doing about the peeing thing, and she said they had this one dresser that they moved around to cover pee spots.  What???  It's totally bizarre, and I remember so vividly from the dream the feeling of Maggie's head in my hands as I pet her.  I woke up feeling Maggie's fuzziness.  All the same, I didn't awake from the dream unhappy in any sense at all, just really glad that I got to see Maggie again.  Again, very vivid dream.  Insanely vivid.
• Last night I saw a very bad billboard.  It had two babies sitting next to each other (and I want to say that they were dressed up funny, but I only caught a passing glance at it.  It's on the inbound Eisenhower right near the Budweiser mural, as far as I can recall), and there was either a thought bubble or a speech bubble above them, and it said something like this:  "Embryos are just little babies!"  I know it was a pro-life billboard, because I did catch those exact words--pro-life--on one side of the thing.  It disgusted me.
• Here's something kind of sick.  One of the legacies of the diet is that whenever I'm really hungry (and know I'm not going to be eating--such as last night, when I ate a good piece and a half of Lou Malnati's pizza, a meal that would not make me hungry normally, but did last night--this is the old thing rearing its ugly head.  I eat plenty of food but always feel hungry, so I just don't eat when I'm hungry.  I only eat when it's a meal-time.  It's not exactly intuitive eating, but it's the right thing, right now.)--anyway, where was I?  Oh yeah.  When I'm really hungry, and don't eat, I feel skinnier.  I know I'm not, because hello, I totally ate dinner.  A fine, filling dinner.  But my brain tricks me into feeling skinnier.  And even worse, I feel more virtuous.  It's like this sense of....moral rightness takes over, and it feels damn good.  I'm not saying this to provoke anything, I'm just saying, it's really insanely fucked up that the world can do this to you.  That diet (which my therapist at the time convinced me was a good idea), really messed with my understanding of what a normal person is supposed to feel like.  Hunger?  NOT morally superior.  Skinny?  Not morally superior.  Not eating?  Not somehow linked to moral superiority.  I fucking HATE feeling this way.  I feel betrayed by my mind and body.  It's the worst feeling in the world, and my brain is trying to trick me into thinking it's the best.  So yeah.  These things, they just don't go away. 

Anyway, I have to go.  It's ref desk time.

Two more:

• One of the notions I've been disabused of in playing Rock Band is the idea that everyone can make their voices go up or down an octave if they want to.  I'm not saying this to be a jerk AT ALL, I'm just saying that I thought could do it, because I can.  For instance, in singing Creep, I have to go up an octave because Thom York from Radiohead hits some low notes I can't if I sing at the original tone.  I sort of assumed anyone could do that if they could hit the pitch on some songs.  But I guess not.  Maybe I'm not as musically dumb as I've always thought I was.
• And finally, and this is political and I don't care, I'm so sickened by Hillary Clinton's suggesting that a REPUBLICAN might be better for this country than Barack Obama, simply for the fact that John McCain is no doubt going to continue many of Mr. Bush's worst policies.  For Hillary to put her own interests above a) the interests of the Party and b) most of all, the interests of this country is unconscionable.  Every day, she says something that strengthens my resolve not to vote for her.  If she's trying to tear the liberals in this country apart, she's doing a damn good job, and she's proving in the PRIMARY that she's no uniter.  She's a damn divider, like George W. across the aisle.  I'm honestly disappointed that this is the way this is playing out.  For shame, Hillary Clinton.  Bitch may be the new black, but selfish bitch isn't.

In like a lion

Things I miss about spring/summer (and it ain't the hot weather):

• Flip. Flops.  My feet hate being confined to shoes.  I hate socks.  I hate shoes.  I'm ready for weather warm enough to require a pedicure.  I'm ready to buy flip-flops.
• Driving around with the car windows wide open and loud music pouring out.  And me singing along loud and happy.
• Bike rides and long walks in Lincoln Park.  I can't stress enough how much I miss being outside.  It's weird, because when it gets to about 90 degrees, I'll be done with it.  But right now, I'm just craving being out.  Last (glorious) Sunday, when it was 55, Sam and I walked over to the Conservatory.  And besides dodging the lakes of puddles everywhere, it was supremely satisfying.
• The farmer's market.  Yeah.  I've been eating vegetables a bit this winter, but nothing so fresh and satisfying as the produce at the market.  Right now, it's the cherries that I'm jonesing for, hard.  But I'd also take any old thing they're offering, if you ask me right now.  I'll get really choosy by the time I actually go, but still.  The season of green tomatoes beckons.
• The smells.  There is a green smell of spring, and I miss it.  I don't so much miss the stale, still air of the hottest part of summer, but in those early days, when windows can be thrown open, it's the smell of new, and I miss that.  I can't wait to have air flowing through the apartment again. 
• The sense of possibility.  As I've mentioned prior, this winter has seemed very, very long.  Part of it has got to be that relentless few weeks of snow, when it felt like every day was the next day it would snow.  That feeling is oppressive.  Snow is oppressive.  I'm not a lover of rain, but when it rains in the spring and summer, it's not always a nuisance.  Sure, traffic is bad because a little rain spooks everyone for some reason, but in the summer especially, a rainy day feels good.  Snow days?  Never good.
• Wanting to go places again.  It's just so painful on some days in the winter to go out.  I give Sam mucho props, because I think that if I had to take the bus to work, I'd be even more angry about the cold.  It's just not fun to get all bundled up to go and stand at a bus stop to wait for a bus that's going to let you off in the pile of slush at the curb.  And then you get somewhere and you have to deal with a winter coat and boots.  And the puddles of slush your shoes make.  Or if it's not wet out, you can't get warm again (happens to me all the time) and you just wish for your warm apartment.  I feel for people with winter b-days, because I know if my b-day was in Jan or Feb, I'd just stay in my house and wallow in warmth.
• New books!  This is so weird, but most of the authors I really like are on spring/summer publishing schedules.  I have a list of about 20 books by authors I read habitually, and they're mostly starting to come out at the end of March.  These aren't authors I'm curious about, but authors I love.  Eight of the books coming out are part of a series (books by Charlaine Harris, Kelley Armstrong, Stephenie Meyer, Janet Evanovich, Naomi Novik, Kim Harrison, Sherrilyn Kenyon, and Lisa Lutz), and the rest are stand-alones by some favorite authors (to name a few: Jennifer Weiner, Michael Chabon, Jhumpa Lahiri, and David Sedaris).  Every day, I can add books to that list.  And that list doesn't include books by authors I've never read but might want to.  Spring and summer bring books!

It's been a bad day, please don't take a picture

Bad days have been legion in the EfroMano household lately, mostly on my end.  Poor Sam, he has to deal with quite a lot right now.  Without further ado, here is a list of things that might make your day (or mine!) worse:

• Traffic.  It could be the weather.  It could be some idiot who got in an accident.  Or it could be the dumbasses in the office that decides what gets repaired when who decided to do a repair on the bridge under the post office on Congress that closed down three lanes (leaving, yes, ONE!) during the early morning rush.  It's oh-so-pleasant being stuck on lower Wacker for 20 minutes waiting for a line of cars to inch forward into traffic on Congress that's probably backed up to Michigan.  Whoo-hooooo!  Way to go Chicago!  I don't even want to think about how badly that situation escalated after I got through, because I leave my house earlier than the main rush.
• The primaries.  Who isn't just a little depressed by the results?  I thought that for the first time, Americans might be better than scared shitless by stupid ads run by a despicable person.  Guess not.  I hate Her ever more for the way she won these three.
• The iPod situation.  It's very depressing to witness the death of the iPod.  This morning, when I plugged it into the charger, it didn't light up.  Turn on, whatever.  It didn't have any response whatsoever, whichever buttons I pressed.  I reset it, and it worked (with a massive battery deficit that didn't exist two hours before, but still), but I know that when I go to listen to the podcast this afternoon, it'll be all messed up and in the wrong spot because of the reset.  Slow iPod death sucks.
• Little things: 
• finding the Once soundtrack isn't on your iPod like you wanted it to be (and thought it was),
• getting home from work and having the cable or the internet not work,
• not getting the package you've been waiting for,
• getting the evil eye from someone,
• finding a big gray water spot on the back of your pant leg,
• the cold weather,
• the sun coming up as you're getting up at 5:50 (I literally HATE this so much it makes me want to cry; if I have to get up at 5:50, can the world do me a favor and be in darkness?  Thanks.),
• looking forward to a new book in a series you read, and then really hating the book,

This all probably seems like petty, small things, but you add those up, and it just makes your day less sunny.  Coupled with other things (things that I don't want to talk about here, but let me reiterate, have nothing to do with family and friends at ALL) going on right now, it's just kind of a crappy time right now.  This winter can't end soon enough.  I hope 2008 gets better soon, or I might just hibernate until August (and Hawaii) and then from there until November (Disney).  Sigh.

A selective list of things I do every day

• Listen to traffic radio.  Somewhere along the way, I got addicted, and now, I listen to traffic radio every day in the shower.  Even Saturday and Sunday, when the chances I'll be using the roads mentioned on traffic radio are slim to none.  There's something about it, I don't know.  It makes me feel secure.
• Fill my Platypus with water.  I love this thing.  It's the best water bottle I've ever owned.
• Pull on a pair of knee socks.  Obviously, this will change in the spring, when my footwear of choice will be flip-flops.
• Shower.  I mean, yeah, most people do shower every day.  But I really do shower every day.  No skips.  And I wash my hair every day, even though I totally know you're not supposed to.  The thing is, I was doing the washing every other day thing, and one day, Sam was playing with my hair and he said something like, "Ew, your hair is really greasy." and that promptly ended.
• Blow dry my hair.  I used to let it go every once in a while, but ever since it stopped being curly, I've just been too fed up with it to let it go.  It only takes me about 6 minutes.  I've got it down to a science.
• Read.  There's never a day that I don't read.  Because at the very least (and this rarely happens, when the only time I read is in the morning), I read while I dry my hair.  Most days, if I'm at home, I'll read while eating one or two meals, standing in the kitchen with the book on the counter.  I almost always read when I wake up in the morning on the weekends, while Sam snoozes next to me.  This totally depends on what time we get up, however.  I also like to read before bed on the weekends.
• Watch TV.  Sad but true.  Most days, however, I'm either sewing or doing something else while watching.  I would say that I maybe ONLY watch TV 5% of the time while doing NOTHING else.  There's almost always something else going on, even if it's just lazy cuddling with Sam.
• Curse out my computer.  I really hate my MacBook.  It's just kind of a pain in the ass.  First of all, it's really not great at running more than one program at a time.  Sam seems to think that a change of the hard drive might help (I'm apparently short on space), but I have no clue if that's what's wrong.  I should probably take it over to Apple and tell them to fix it, (as it's still on warranty), but living without a computer is torturous.  Then again, sometimes it seems like operating this one is torturous.  Problem is, there's not a real option for me.  If I were to ask for a new computer, which one would I ask for?  I already think the MacBook is slightly too big for my tastes, and the MacBook Pro is bigger.  A new MacBook ain't going to solve any problems, and no way am I going back to anything non-Mac, because a) if something goes wrong, I am screwed and b) I like the actual use of the Mac.  I loved my Powerbook, once upon a time.  I love things about the Mac.  (Oh sweet TimeMachine, how did I ever live without you?)  I can't deny that the Mac has made my computing life better, it's just little nagging things that bother me.  It's like any relationship.  I love the thing most of the time, but every once in a while, I hate it.

Grown-up things

Reasons it Sucks to be A Grown-Up

• rent
• car payment
• dealing with insurance issues (health, car, home)
• caring about politics
• work
• work
• work
• life isn't just about existence anymore; you have to have a goal
• people look at you funny when you say you love DisneyWorld
• compromise is suddenly very important
• cleaning (maybe you all cleaned as children, but my house was a no-chore zone)
• spending your own money on clothes

Reasons it does NOT Suck to be a Grown-up

• having your own place
• having your own car
• you can travel wherever you want on vacations
• cereal for dinner!
• cookies for dinner!
• you can set your own bedtime
• grocery shopping for yourself
• buying as many pairs of shoes as you want
• all the learning (so sue me!  I'm a nerd.)

Things Sam and I have cooked in the past few weeks (and some future meals)

• Chicken fajitas.  Sort of.  We used a packet of fajita seasoning and a pound of cut up chicken (and an onion, chopped in LARGE pieces), and took that and turned it into tacos.  Sam enjoys fajita seasoning more than he enjoys taco seasoning, so if we're going to use chicken, we switch over to this.  I then turn my tacos into nachos with some delicious chips.  And since I use A LOT of lettuce, it often ends up more like a salad than anything else.  Still, super yummy, pretty healthy meal.  We'll be doing this again this week.
• Tomato-cream pasta.  One of the nicer brands of bottled tomato sauce comes in a smooth version, which we doctored by adding a couple of dollops of mascarpone and about a 1/3 cup of heavy cream.  Very, very delicious.
• Chicken Sausage and Asparagus pasta.  My old standby.  Includes onions, crushed red pepper flakes, and copious amounts of lemon juice.  Usually the juice of one entire lemon.
• Hot dogs.  I like to eat hot dogs with a side of mac and cheese.  Oh, and we always use turkey hot dogs.
• Frozen breaded halibut.  Sam tried Halibut fish and chips at a restaurant a week ago, and really liked it.  So imagine our delight when we found frozen breaded halibut filets at the grocery!  We served them up with some french fries (and brussel sprouts for me), and they were actually pretty darn tasty, as far as frozen fish goes.  Better than any other frozen fish I'd tried.
• Sloppy Joes.  This dish is one we've eaten fairly often in the past few years, actually.  I found a simple, great recipe online when we first moved in together, and Sam liked it so much he actually requests it pretty often.  We try to keep 1/2 lb of ground beef in the fridge at all times, because every other ingredient needed for this is always in the house.  It's a go-to kind of a meal.  I really, really love it with tater-tots.
• Italian sausage and peppers in red wine.  This is tonight's meal.  I can't wait to make this; I haven't had it in ages.  My mom used to make this a lot when I was a kid, and I remember it fondly.  I also don't think it's very difficult to make.  And I also don't think Sam will eat it, but oh well.  I will eat it and love it.
• The aforementioned Tomato-cream pasta with Italian sausage.  When you buy a package of sausage and only plan to cook three in one night, you've gotta find another use for it.  I plan on sauteing up some of the sausage (sans casing) and adding it to the cream pasta later this week.  It's a vague approximation of a dish I had from an Italian restaurant a few weeks ago.

We've been cooking A LOT lately.  I don't know what it is, but somehow we've clicked into this mode where we're able to plan ahead better than we normally have been, so we end up leaving the grocery on Sunday with at least three or four meals in front of us.  I like it.