weekend ramblings
August 30, 2009 at 11:50 pm | In daily ramblings | 4 CommentsAHHH I am on a total Mad Men high right now because that episode was so good and the sets and costumes were so delicious. M. is very kind for not complaining about how I keep him up late every Sunday night because no, I can not wait until tomorrow to watch it. I would if I could BUT I CAN’T.
So. On Friday morning my bedresting BFF gave birth to a baby boy. (Yes I do teach master classes in alliteration but they are all full at the moment I’m afraid.) So on Saturday we headed back to CT to meet her brand new second son. Like all newborn babies, he was impossibly small and light. I held him for a little while and he cried, but as he was only one day old his cry was more of a little squeak and I enjoyed every second of it.
I had the first disc of True Blood arriving from Netflix, and I was very much looking forward to watching it, when I got a text from my mother that said: “You messed up! Dad says thanks for sending us True Blood!” See, I had changed my address when I was staying at their house watching their dog, and forgot to change it back. So I was all, Drat, my plans have been foiled! Except with curse words. My Dad does appreciate a good vampire story though, so I figured it wasn’t a total loss. Then we had this text exchange today:
Mom: Dad said that dvd was raunchy…language…lots of nudity.
Me: Sounds like it was good!
So, I’m going to have to wait to get caught up on that one. Thankfully I have Mad Men to satisfy my television needs until then. Also M. has no interest in vampires or watching shows about them. I tried to tell him there would be naked people, but I don’t think he changed his position, so I may be watching this one alone.
Today we hung out with Dan and Casey because we love them of course, and also because she cooks for us and it is oh so good. They gave me an awesome belated birthday present. Casey and I had had a discussion about some of my favorite childhood books, and she gave me these:
Being a nostalgic book nerd, this was a very exciting present. The Dollhouse Murders is a young adult book that is so scary I honestly would not read it before bed now at age 30. Misty and Me is I think a pretty obscure one–and she even found it with the same cover as the one I read so many times when I was a kid. It’s such a sweet book. And Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt is the novel that inspired my 12 year old self to write approximately 42 stories about a girl who is abandoned and/or runs away from home and has to travel across the country with only twelve dollars and a granola bar.
Finally, I had planned to do a couple hours of work tonight, but instead I thought it would be better to have a really hellish Monday morning.
this gets a yes
August 28, 2009 at 9:29 pm | In favorite things | 3 CommentsMy sister Christine recently finished an art project that I believe she will be showing at an event, which I can’t give any details on because frankly I don’t know them. I’m also afraid I have not seen Twin Peaks, so I can’t appreciate the true pop awesomeness of her Laura Palmer sculpture, but I know for certain that it is cool:
i guess this is really happening!
August 27, 2009 at 10:06 pm | In tv and movies | 3 Comments
Rumor has it they’re filming in Niagara Falls right now. Aw, good for them!
daily ramblings
August 26, 2009 at 4:51 pm | In medium deep thoughts, miscellaneous | 9 CommentsI didn’t really cook much for a couple weeks because, well, it was the Hot Weeks–those couple weeks of a New England summer that are oppressively humid, yet brief enough that most of us don’t have central air, so for those two weeks we just stay the hell out of the kitchen. Our kitchen was uncomfortably hot without the oven on, so with it on we most likely would have just died. This doesn’t really matter, because during the Hot Weeks I generally prefer a dinner of watermelon with a side of ice water.
So, this week it’s still hot but a more reasonable kind of hot, and I’ve been in the mood to cook. Partly because I had some recipes I wanted to try, and partly because I felt guilty for not cooking much lately. So I made chickpea patties with a yogurt-lemon dressing and pasta with sun-dried tomato dressing, both thanks to my beloved food processor, and I made my mother’s scrumptious peach cobbler with all our fresh-picked peaches. I would post pictures, but I don’t have a working camera at the moment, which is driving me crazy. And yes I know the iphone has a camera, but it’s not the same. (Though I will also take this moment to say that I am loving the iphone, passionately so.)
M. plays in a soccer league on Tuesday nights, which means Tuesday nights have been my “Steph nights”–the nights when I put on Gilmore Girls, clean the apartment, eat snacks for dinner, catch up on emails and just generally do my thing. However, since last night was his last game, I headed over to watch him play like a good fan. And it was pretty fun to watch actually, since M. is very good at soccer and looks good in the shorts. I got to see some of his fancy footwork–yet also check my email when he was not on the field, thanks iphone! M. will actually be out tonight, and I rented Sabrina (the Audrey Hepburn one) a couple months ago and haven’t gotten around to it, so I think this will be Sabrina night. Plus then I can return it and start True Blood.
And I’m just looking at the calendar and thinking how in tarnation is it the last week of August? I feel like I just dragged all my summer clothes up from the basement and ironed them all and hung them up and dragged all my sweaters down. MAN seasonal clothing changes are a lot of work. Granted it rained here for the first two-thirds of this alleged “summer,” but really this whole year has been like a blur. I blame the wedding. I also blame getting older. (I’m THIRTY if you did not know.) I realize this is not an original thought and is really just a part of the human experience, but GOD remember how long a summer used to seem? Particularly now that I have one of those jobs where you don’t get the summers off, because work weeks are busy and full and they move very quickly. It’s leisure time that can feel slow, and that’s the difference between being a young person and being where I am now. The leisure time is a free evening or a free Sunday, but it’s never weeks at a time, and I do miss those chunks of free time because it feels as though we have more control over that kind of time.
Yet, I do manage to find time to read a lot of blogs.
cruel desk calendar
August 26, 2009 at 4:09 pm | In miscellaneous | Leave a CommentLooking at this picture of Puerto Rico hanging in my cubicle. Low to moderate pining.
note to the fruit flies in my apartment and office
August 25, 2009 at 11:12 am | In grumble grumble rant rant | 6 CommentsDear Fruit Flies,
Where do you come from? WHERE DO YOU ALL COME FROM!?!
Sincerely,
Medium
classic maddie shot
August 25, 2009 at 11:11 am | In things that are cute | 3 CommentsPlease pay particular attention to the tongue. It’s too bad there isn’t a Westminster category for Tongue Cuteness.
Yes, I am doing this now:
Follow or read me!
If you’re at all like me, you might not get the point of having a twitter account so here are the reasons why I like it. (If you already have one, feel free to skip this.) So, a while back I finally figured out that some entertaining people were on twitter, but I was not prepared to actually join twitter, so I bookmarked them. Eventually I realized that I was kind of stupid because I was checking all these people’s individual twitter pages, when instead I could just join and then their updates would all just show up in one place on my home page. If you’re someone with an above average interest in pop culture like myself, this is extemely entertaining.
I don’t know a lot of people who are on Twitter, so I mostly read updates from famous people as well as some bloggers who I like. Here is a sample of the people who I am currently following: Stephen Colbert, Lady GaGa, Margaret Atwood, Mindy Kaling, Kelly Kapoor (in character), Diablo Cody, Nicole Richie, Martha Stewart, Demi Moore etc. If you are interested in celebrity culture, hearing what these people have to say can be amusing. So, you can see why reading updates from these people is not at all the same as reading your friends’ status updates on Facebook. And I find that on Twitter people are much less likely to post mundane status updates about how they’re heading to or have just returned from the beach. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but people seem to make a little more effort to post something interesting or funny. So even if you don’t want to actually post anything, it’s still kind of fun to join just to follow people and read their stuff. If this is something that would interest you, I suggest joining now when you can probably get the account name you want.
Also, I can be pretty entertained by some of the trending topics. These little twitter memes pop up and sometimes people get pretty funny with it. I’ve already posted about a particularly awesome one in the past. Another of my favorites was Failed Children’s Book Titles. Here are some of the best that I saw:
StevenKJohnson Charlotte’s Dead
StevenKJohnson The Boxcar Children No. 164: Child Protective Services Steps In
diablocody: Nobody Else Poops
mindykaling Ramona Quimby, Age 38 and Unmarried
mindykaling Harry Potter and the Ghastly Erection
jaketapper the duckling that had a really great personality
MickiMaynard Everyone Knows Where the Garden Is
And yes, I’ve already told you that I’m a late adopter and I come around to these things slowly. But I’m kind of into it right now, especially now that I have the iphone because it’s something entertaining to check during the day. So that’s my rant on why I like Twitter and why it’s a nice addition to my list of time wasting sites I read. And writing them is fun too. (Notice I haven’t used the word “tweet” at all? Because I don’t really like it.) And yes, I do know I may not always have this much free time in life.
weekend ramblings
August 24, 2009 at 12:46 pm | In daily ramblings | 4 CommentsI had one of those busy but satisfying weekends full of good stuff. We went peach picking on Saturday. Who knew you could grow peaches in Massachusetts?? It was news to me. And they’re actually really good! Fat, sweet and juicy, just as peaches should be.
We went up to NH for a visit with some relatives who were in town. Visits to my parents’ house always include some puppy love time and at least five desserts, and this trip did not let me down. We also had to play our wedding video highlight reel once again for my relatives. The first couple times I watched the wedding reel, I was totally schmoopy about it. The next few times I thought, I like this, yeah, it’s nice. Now when I watch it I’m just like, Oh god, here comes the bad angle shot! Too much of a good thing.
I also went to CT to visit my bedresting friend Cara, who didn’t actually rest once the entire day as far as I could tell. Bad bedrester! I guess it is hard to bedrest when you have a two and a half year old though. I was glad to visit her lovely little family pre-baby and will probably head back next weekend to visit post-baby. I also got to feel the baby’s little foot sticking out against the belly, a phenomenon I always involuntarily react to by shouting “WEIRD!!!” Wonder if that’s annoying.
The weekend ended with Mad Men, which is a perfect way to wrap up a Sunday. My viewing experience was slightly tainted by the TWO HOURS of ironing I was working my way through, but there was some excellent Peggy action so I was satisfied. Though I stupidly turned off the TV before the ”Next week…on Mad Men” scenes, and my DVR didn’t record it. So if anyone saw it, please feel free to fill me in on the preview for next week, thank you very much. I am a need to know person; preview scenes are important to me.
mad men spoiler/shocker
August 24, 2009 at 7:51 am | In tv and movies | 3 CommentsSomething shocking happened in last night’s episode of Mad Men: A smiling, dancing hippy made Don Draper feel something!!!! Could this be the beginning of a character arc in which he moves from high powered corporate executive to bare-footed commune leader? Welcome to the sixties Don!
things that do not mix well, Vol. 1
August 24, 2009 at 12:13 am | In miscellaneous | 2 CommentsAugust and ironing.
Peggy Olsen and Bye Bye Birdie.
Ny Quil and milk. (Tried it once when I was 11. That was a bad night.)
ha
August 23, 2009 at 8:46 pm | In best laugh | 4 CommentsHarrison Ford is just the type of guy who really cares about his wife, and his family.
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