fun and games with pop songs

my sister had 'we don't have to take our clothes off' running around her head this weekend, and we couldn't remember who sang that little ditty. she e-mailed me on monday that it was jermaine stewart's masterpiece and i suspected she was trying to plant it in my head. so i countered with color me bad's 'i wanna sex you up', but she informed me that nothing could dislodge jermaine from her head.

a sure sign of spring

a dude from maintenance just came to take off the plastic that covered the outside of my office air conditioner.

i think i'm getting to the point where i can be myself again

okay, so the last week or two were, in a word, shitty.

so.....

i did not go in and do extra work last friday. i did not go to the mom's group friday morning. we had some beautiful weather, with the exception of a rainy saturday. our daffodils are starting to bloom and the tulips have bulbs. we tried to spend money somewhat frivolously at farmway, but were unsuccessful, so we'll try to do it elsewhere this week. we did some REAL housecleaning. i went on a long run. we drank red wine, had crackers, cheese and tapenade, and read the sunday ny times on the deck on sunday evening. all in all, it was pretty mood restoring three days for me.

things are getting back to normal, with the exception of wrapping my brain around the strange concept that i don't have grandparents anymore.

exhaustion

i'm tired.
i'm tired of feeling tired
i'm tired of not having enough time to fully clean the house, only to tidy it.
i'm tired of trying to think of things to make for breakfast and lunch and dinner.
i'm tired of winter clothing.
i'm tired of cold weather and once-in-a-while-one-warm-day teasers.
i'm tired of work.
i'm tired of trying to squeeze in time for myself between doing things for others.
i'm tired of getting e-mail during the day at work that people i care for have died.

two lines guaranteed to make my sister joanna laugh, courtesy of dave eggers

now. see the "x"?
that's where the motherfucker came up.

oh boy, what will friday bring?

this week is turning out to be pretty crappy.

i find out someone i worked with for years at pamf died at age 54 earlier in the week, my grandpa is still in the hospital for a partial hip replacement, and my co-worker's husband is dying by inches and was admitted to the hospital this afternoon.

more movie reviews

don't see captain correlli's mandolin. i hadn't planned on seeing it, but we got the video from brian's brother who had watched it and was going out of town for the weekend. it was a total hollywood vehicle. read the book. it's much better.

do see the big sleep with humprhey bogart and lauren bacall in their first movie as real life husband and wife. it's full of great 40s/50s fashions, and lots of double entendre lines. do have a notepad with you to keep track of the suspects, it gets a little confusing at times.

it's the little things

i have a new mouse for my computer at work. i love it. but it is so much more efficient and responsive than my old roller ball mouse that i'm overshooting targets on the screen by just a hair.

entertainment

another creation from the geniuses at rathergood.com

a few lines about movies and cooking

i/we have been watching lots of movies on video lately and have the following to report:

some of the videos i would recommend for rental: tadpole, citizen ruth (by the same guy behind election and about schmidt), what's eating gilbert grape (who knew i would actually like leonardo dicaprio in anything?), monster's ball (yes, halle berry deserved the oscar), austin powers and goldmember (come on, it's total brain candy-plus the cameos and dance numbers are hilarious)

some that i would not recommend: perfume (altho there are some good performances in it, there's a reason it went straight to video), MIB II (not nearly as good as the first one)

some i hope to rent sooner rather than later: secretary, far from heaven

and now cooking (this has been floating around in my head for a long long time). i LOVE making (and eating) soups. especially in the winter-they cook for a long time (usually) and warm up the house as well as making the house smell yummy.

i would highly recommend these recipes if you share my love of the soup course:
-Asparagus leek soup: super-dee-duper-dee easy to make. i add a few diced yukon gold potatoes which makes it nice and thick. i also add a little milk instead of sour cream. serve with biscuits or some crusty sourdough french bread...mmmmmm
-spicy beef stew: this turns out perfect every time, meat tender, veggies soft, broth yummy. and what could be easier than putting all the ingredients in a pot and throwing it in the oven for 4 hours?
-hot and sour soup: hot and sour soup is the best decongestant. don't believe me? try it for yourself. since we have yet to find hot and sour soup in the upper valley as good as we used to get in palo alto, i looked up the recipe. yes, this recipe has the typical martha stewart heavy prep ('2 carrots...cut into matchsticks...' yeah right. bite me), but once you start cooking, it goes really quickly. honest. plus it makes a lot of soup. plus it's loaded with protein (chicken, egg and tofu). if you like it really hot (chemically), in addition to the black pepper you'll need to add some white pepper and a pinch of cayenne. do a very little bit of the extra pepper(s), esp cayenne. wait a few minutes and taste a little. a little cayenne goes a long way, and the soup will often taste hotter (chemically) the next day.

i was going to continue on the cooking theme with a little homily about cookbook authors, but i'll save that for another day.

pondering...

so, if there's a blackout in baghdad, how were the iraqis supposed to watch this?

couldn't have said it better myself

from i suspected as much: We listened to part of Bush's speech to the Marines and their families in N. Carolina this morning, about how America is trying to preserve liberty by removing a dangerous dictator. By that standard... could we ask someone to invade the U.S. and remove him?

addicted much?

on hipclicks every friday, they post readers suggestions for fun/interesting sites. the guy who submitted this described it as computer crack. having played it now, i'm inclined to believe him.

feeling better, thanks for asking

i'm better now. recovered from the crazy day that was tuesday. a run with lis when i got home from work helped, as did the martini i had that night (although i hate to admit it), and the fact that i stayed home from work yesterday with rory. she's better too. spent yesterday eating like a horse to recover from 5+ days of vomiting and diarrhea. her teacher at daycare even commented on the fact that her stomach is smaller (they always laugh about the large size of her tummy).

we're still dealing with the weather issue though. i bet if we had just a little bit of sunshine, there would be quite a few folks around who would have much better attitudes. but we are under a winter storm warning until SATURDAY NIGHT. jeez.

most of my tulips and daffodils are starting to come up and i can't wait for their flowers! come on come on come on....

and another thing

it supposed to snow or rain or both for the next three days.

totally and completely bumming right now

so brian and rory were supposed to be getting on a plane right about now to go to california, and i was going to join them on friday. and up until 5:30 this morning, we still thought the trip was a 'go' despite rory having thrown up several times yesterday morning. she'd pretty much recovered and was back to her usual smiley energetic self by yesterday afternoon. but then-this morning. apple juice. barf. plain bread. barf. water. barf. so we called it off.

i know, i know, nobody really knew we were coming out (aside from our families). we didn't tell anyone that wasn't related to us (with 2 exceptions) because the sole purpose of the trip was for rory and her great-grandparents to spend some time together and we didn't think we would have time to see all the folks we wanted to while we were there.

the worst part is that for the longest time, i've had this sneaky intuition-ish feeling that this was going to be the last time i would see my grandpa alive. i mean, the guy is 101 years old, and everytime i see him it might be the last, but i just couldn't shake the feeling. spending time with him has become much more precious now that i can't just drive a few hours to see him. not being able to see him in person and have him see rory is the biggest bummer of this situation and it hit me hard when i was driving to work this morning-i almost broke down and started crying in the car on the ledyard bridge. i truthfully wasn't sure i would be able to make it through the work day, but i seem to be holding it together and it's taking every ounce of strength i have left. it will be much worse tonight when i him tonight to break the news.

i think i need a soak in hot bath and a dirty vodka martini tonight.