Keep It Like a Secret

So I didn't quite blog every day (or every week, really)! Alas, alack, i pick up again now.

What I did instead of posting the past two weeks:

• freelance work
  
• had brunch with the ChicagoBusties at Uncommon Ground
  
• enjoyed ridiculously beautiful fall weather most weekends
  
• made a bourbon cheesecake for a dinner party
  
• read the final Luxe book in less than 36 hours
  
• saw Drag Me to Hell, It Happened One Night, The Box, GI Joe, and The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
  
• lost all the data on my iPod Touch so have had to re-input a bunch of stuff
  
• bought and began reading Mark Bittman's Food Matters
  
• went to Oak Park for my friends' book signing (their new book, Master Cheesemakers of Wisconsin is awesome) and caught up with a bunch of old college pals
  
• read Keith's Easy Rider road trip article, which finally went up on Slate last week
  
• went to a book reading for Keith's book

So I've been busy. The next couple weeks should be busy too. We are going to Ohio on Thursday and we're having dinner at a restaurant (those of you who remember the debacle of a meal we were served a few years ago - four words: mayonnaise, splenda, fruit salad - will understand why this is the best decision.

Then, on Dec. 5, we're going to NYC for a long weekend. Keith's book is doing really well, unexpectedly (it was top 100 in Amazon over the weekend and is still top 500 in sales) so he and his coworkers are hosting a reading/event at Union Hall in Park Slope on Dec. 8. It's free, so you can totally come hang out with us and The AV Club and Friends. Apparently you can also play bocce.

I am looking forward to January. I have to go to Boston for work, but once that is done, my life should be hella less stressful, and you can believe I'm looking forward to that.

So The Luxe is my Twilight, and I have the VERY LAST BOOK in my hands. I'm about one-third of the way through, and I can't decide if I want to rush through to see what happens* or go slow and savor it.

*Rest assured, SPOILER none of the characters will be turning into vampires.

Tonight, I made Brussels sprouts with bacon, figs, and parmesan, based on the recipe that Bittman had in the Times a couple weeks ago. I shredded the sprouts a little too much by using the food processor; next time I'll slice them by hand instead.

I really loved making the figs in bacon fat - they turned out tender and flavorful. I'm going to be using that combo a lot more in the future.

I basically want the next season of Mad Men to start right now.

I won't spoil anything .... but I really, really do not want to wait until next summer! Although I do look forward to getting to bed at a decent hour on Sundays.

For reasons I can't quite explain, I spent this afternoon watching The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2.

Never saw the first one.

One of the great pleasures of life is watching William Shatner read various quotes from the Palin family and its hangers-on as beat poetry.

I just reread my post from the Obama rally last year. It feels so far away, and yet just like yesterday.

As I wrote on Inauguration Day, he was always going to disappoint us. But as frustrated as I am by the health care debate being, well, a debate, the situation in Afghanistan, and the continued existence of Don't Ask Don't Tell, I think of everything that happened since he took office, knowing full well it wouldn't have if it had been someone else: Lilly Ledbetter Act becoming law, the repeal of the global gag rule, expanded hate crimes legislation to include sexual orientation, and ending the travel ban for those with HIV and AIDS.

Is it everything I wanted from him, by now? No. I expect a lot more. But you know, the man has eight years of damage to undo (and more, really; as much as I admire Clinton and think the good far outweighed the bad, the man did sign DOMA and the dreadful Telecommunications Act of 1996).

I don't feel the euphoria like I did last year. But I don't think there's any reason to give up.

Made fresh pasta tonight -ravioli stuffed with pumpkin and then cavatappi with the leftover dough. It was easy to make the dough, but rolling it out and cutting and molding it? Oh my.

I bet Italian pastamakers have fucking awesome shoulders.

I'm trying to do NaBloPoMo to kickstart regular blogging, so expect to see a few posts about cooking in the next few weeks. Like this one!

Keith had to see A Christmas Carol tonight, so I was on my own for dinner. After briefly considering an Amy's microwaveable meal, I decided to make something similar to panzanella, an Italian bread salad.

I think it usually involves tomatoes and occasionally capers, but I didn't have that. The most important ingredient is good bread that's a few days old, and that I definitely had.

It turned out delicious and super-filling. I've got leftovers for later this week. And, best of all, it took, like, 15 minutes.

( Read more... )

So! I have two fashion questions and would appreciate any advice.

1) I am catching up with the hottest styles of spring 2009 and will have a pair of boyfriend jeans arriving this week. It is November, so obvs. the sandals and ballet flats typically worn with these items will not do. How do you make the boyfriend jean work for fall in a cooler climate?

2) I'm in the market for an adult handbag, something made of leather by an actual designer, as opposed to something made by Guatemalan children for Target that will begin to fall apart after two weeks of daily use. It needs to have inside pockets (zippered and for cell phones), something I can attach my keys to, be cute but professional. I don't want a messenger bag, just something I can throw over my shoulder. I'm thinking low three figures, and I want it something that'll last the next ten or fifteen years. I like the hobo shape or a shoulder bag. Nothing too big, oh, and no logos visible logos (if it's attached to the bag like a keychain that I can remove, that's okay.)

Keith's father passed away this afternoon. His mom was by his side, and Keith was able to spend time with him this morning at the hospice facility. I'm flying in tomorrow, and we're planning on services in the early part of next week.

It's a difficult time, of course, but we're grateful for all of the thoughts and prayers that everyone has had for us.

There is a new Robert Langdon book by Dan Brown. I am so torn, you guys! I am DYING to read it, but then I reflect on the last Dan Brown book I read ... and I am too embarrassed to request it at the library. I guess I can wait a few months until I can buy it for $1 at a garage sale again.

Then again, this new book does not appear to have any homicidal albino monks doing the secret bidding of obviously evil old possibly gay antiquers intent on destroying the Church for ... God, I can't even remember why. So I may not enjoy it as much.

I just hope it has lines as great as "Bazu Fache lost his shirt in the technology craze a few years ago. And Fache liked expensive shirts." Don't we all.

Last night, I listened to NPR for three hours while I reorganized our closets (yes, I know how to party) and heard the absolute worst piece that This American Life has ever run. The theme was "Got You Pegged," about people in situations in which they make assumptions that aren't true: there was a wonderful piece about a woman giving up her child for an open adoption, a very funny reading from Richard Price about a wrongheaded arrest he witnessed, and then this absolutely wretched, neverending bit from Shalom Auslander about trying to expose a fellow vacationer as fabricating his status as a Holocaust survivor.

First of all, it was twenty minutes long at least, and it was just this guy, with a nasal-yet-monotone delivery talking about how he ruins every vacation he goes on basically because he's a jerk. So he goes to therapy for a year and he and his family decide to go to some Sandals-like place in Anguilla, and their neighbor is an 80-year-old man. Auslander immediately doesn't like the old guy, essentially because the old man is chatty and people are nice to him. Later, he finds out the man has been going to the resort for 20 years and he liked to do certain things that he used to do, with is wife, who died. In the Holocaust. Which the old man survived. And that makes Auslander hate him more. So then Auslander becomes convinced the guy is faking his past so he can get free stuff, and spends the rest of his vacation trying to expose the guy as a fraud. And it kept going and going and going, and the voiceover was basically, "and then he said hello. God I hated him! He's so horrible, with how he says hello and talks sadly about his dead wife."

From what I could tell, he was just mad that this old man's talking was getting in the way of his being able to enjoy himself at his luxurious resort. And then, he ends up having to help the old man out of the ocean and flat-out says that he doesn't like the old guy. Then the old guy leaves him alone and he has a fine vacation. There was nothing funny about it, there were no deeper truths about humanity discovered. It was just, "Hi, I am kind of a jerk and here is a story about how jerky I really am."

I think it was supposed to be funny, or self-deprecating, but dear me, it was irritating and unpleasant. And it was Act Four, and it was about 20 minutes. I can't imagine why This American Life devoted a third of their broadcast to some pissy jerk complaining about how horrible it was to have to stay in a high-class resort along with a lonely Holocaust survivor.

I love bad movies, entertainingly bad movies* anyway. So, of course, the last ten years of Nicolas Cage's career have been a gift, to me. Particularly the National Treasure franchise. Well, I just watched this amazing trailer of a remake (kinda?) of Bad Lieutenant starring America's greatest fallen actor and his hair. I don't think it can live up to The Wicker Man, but any movie with the line, "Shoot him again, his soul is still dancing" has nowhere to go but up. Or down.

You know what I mean. Watch this. It's the best way to spend two minutes today.



*Fool's Gold, for example, is not entertaining. Side note: I still have not seen Obsessed! Beyonce! That chick from Heroes! STRINGER BELL! Maybe this weekend...

Oh, hi! Yes, it has been several months since I last posted. (I've been reading and commenting though.) I'd like to say that everything has been boring, and that's why I've been offline, but it really hasn't. I suppose it's like anything else you stop doing for awhile; you don't know quite how to start back up again and it's paralyzing. Anyway, this is what I've been up to:

• Saw Morrissey, Leonard Cohen, and Bruce Springsteen
  
• Went to Italy (loved it!)
  
• Took on two new freelance jobs, so my free time has been limited
  
• Started writing a novel
  
• Started taking long walks each weekend, after walking 5+ miles a day in Italy
  
• Solved a Rubik's cube
  
• Hosted my parents for a few days

Anyway, I've missed posting. It's probably time to start doing it regularly again. With my job keeping me busy, all the travel we've been doing and planning (we're going to Ohio and New York next month) and the freelance work I've been getting, I haven't been taking much time for me as of late. And that's really important, to make sure I'm eating right, sleeping, working out, seeing my friends, writing in my journal and such. Plus, I find that I'm getting less articulate and that writing, here, helps me in writing elsewhere.

If nothing else, the weather is nice again, and that is making me think positively.

There has been so much going on, I have barely had time to post.

Monday was my birthday. It was super fantastic. I took last Friday off, and Keith and I went to Madison. We drove up via New Glarus and stopped at the brewery to enjoy the day's tasting (Stone Soup, Coffee Stout and Cracked Wheat) then bought pastries at the New Glarus Bakery, the best bakery I have ever visited. I had a doughnut, even though it was 5p.m., that's how good the doughnuts are there. We bought 52 bottles of beer. We ate the fish fry at the Old Fashioned, visited the House on the Rock (OMG, the terror) and went to Nick's for pie and saw some old friends. On our way out of town, we did our weekly grocery shopping at the Willy St. Co-Op, so I have loads of Wisco cheese and organically raised meat from the fields of God's blessed country.

It made me miss Madison, a lot. I suppose the nice thing about not living there is that it makes visiting such a pleasure.

We came back on Sunday and I did some freelance work, and we watched some TV. Oh, and I got my birthday gifts from Keith: The Complete New Yorker and an ice cream maker. Rad.

Monday, my coworkers took me out for lunch and gave me a bottle of wine and some hilarious coasters. After work, we met up with a few friends for dinner at Big Jones, a Southern restaurant in the neighborhood that I'm fond of, and that was fun. So I stretched my celebration out to four days.

Oh! And I'm going to Italy in late April. I got a ticket for $48 using my frequent flier miles, and we got a cheap ticket for Keith. We'll be in Tuscany for three days (Siena and Florence) and then Rome for three days. I wish we had just an extra day or two but I'm grateful enough to have the resources to travel. My renewed passport came in the mail yesterday, so I am all set.

Of course, with all this fun stuff, there had to be some bad news. My employer is facing a large shortfall, so we're laying off ten people (my job is safe) and the staff is taking five furlough days. Memorial Day and July 4 will be unpaid holidays, and then we need to take an additional three unpaid days after that.

So between that, and saving for Italy, we're going to be pretty frugal for the next few weeks. Good thing I have all that beer, food and an ice cream maker. I don't see any reason to leave the house.

There are exactly ten shopping days before my birthday, and you may be wondering what you could possibly get me, the girl who has everything.



This is your answer.

Ten years ago and change, I was befriended by a shy young writer after a brief meeting at a screening of She's All That. A few weeks later, he asked me to see Cruel Intentions. I had already organized a group outing to see it at East Towne Cinemas, and much to Keith's credit, he was not at all disturbed by this, and he asked for my phone number when we all moved onto Nick's after that very special film.

A few days later, we went to dinner at the late, lamented Luigi's Restaurant in Madison and then saw The General, a somewhat forgettable film by John Boorman and starring Brendan Gleeson, about a Dublin gangster. I didn't order a drink at dinner because I was worried about being carded, and the movie was kind of short. Keith drove me home (a grand total of two blocks) and held my hand at the end. I was home by 9 and ended up meeting up with my friends post-date to watch The Last Days of Disco or maybe it was Spiceworld. I had a nice time, but I wasn't convinced I'd see him again.

And yet, ten years later, here we are, with a cat, a dog, a house and a life together. It's funny how even the quietest beginning can lead to something special.

/mushy.

All these many years, all the scientific advancements in this world, and yet no one has figured out how to make Robitussin taste better.

Even though the economy is tanking and there's loads of things going wrong, I found myself feeling relieved that Barack Obama is president while all this is going on. And then I thought how comforting it is to know that at no point in the next four years will I watch a speech by my president, turn to Keith and say, "Did he just say 'human-animal hybrids?'"