Finally managed to get my test results. It is very confusing, providing lots of abbreviations and cryptic numbers and the normal range for each item. One level was really high over "normal," red-flagged even. Decided was dying. Set out onto Internet to determine meaning of the I'm-dying abbreviation.
Turns out that "HDL" = "good cholesterol," and having a really high number over the normal range = I shall live forever. Hooray!
It was my dad's 65th birthday on Saturday. That means he is all old and stuff. I will add some nice pictures as soon as I can spend some quality time with the scanner....
We had a great dinner at a steak place, per his request. It was very far north from where I live (I won't specify since I'm trying to be, like, anonymous, but if you know me maybe you can figure it out).
I haven't been up to that area in years, not since I looked at an apartment up there back when I was in college – I was trying to find an apartment with a yard for my big dog, and you pretty much had to go up there to find that.
Back then, there were those apartments and the headquarters of some corporation (which grazed and/or grazes livestock on its massive campus, for some sort of farming tax break) and absolutely nothing else. Now there is an entire really gorgeous area with condos and faux-urban streets and tons of restaurants and stores and trees with Christmas lights. I thought it was great. I would totally move there if it wouldn't make my already extremely excessively obscenely long commute at least twice as long.
The dinner was really great. A sat on my lap and ate more of my delicious duck (I suffer from steak aversion ever since the tragic steak overdose of 2003) than I think I did. And a lot of my mother's steak as well. I would wonder how she stays so skinny if I hadn't seen firsthand how she does nothing but run around maniacally for all hours of the day. Sometimes if she has nowhere to go she'll just run around and around in circles.
Anyway, shortly after we sat down, a woman came up to us and asked me if I was, well, me. And since I am me, I said yes. It turns out that she was my dance teacher from over a decade ago. This probably won't be of interest to anyone but D, who took dance with me (and is in fact where I met her fabulousness), but there ya go. It was so random and funny. I thought it was so nice of her to actually come over like that. She looked very different from what I remember her but still very slender and dancer-like. She said she is now a stay-at-home mother to her 8- and 3-year-old children. She seemed very happy.
This is all well and good, but dude, how are people recognizing me from back then? For crying out loud, I like to think I look DIFFERENT, and maybe even BETTER. (Because, for all that I danced back then, I didn't work out and primp like I do now, and I like to think that maybe just maybe I am THINNER and possibly PRETTIER but c'mon who am I kidding?)
Plus I think I haven't aged well in general, like all the stress over the years has shown itself around my eyes, and my predilection for straw-usage has left its mark on my upper lip as if I were a smoker, and basically I'm just plain OLD.
And, to be perfectly honest, I have, in typical holiday fashion, gotten really fat over the last month. As in...oh, I can't believe I'm admitting this, but if I can't tell the truth to you, random Internet stranger, can I be honest with anyone????...I have gotten fat to the tune of about 10 pounds in the last month. I would be worried about that – I AM upset about that – but to an avowed yo-yo dieter like myself, that's just par for the course. Just, alas, the HIGH part of the course. If she could but have seen post-surgery me....! Give me a month and all will be right as rain. As soon as I get rid of that awesome gift basket from one of my clients. It's got almond toffee AND walnut fudge! So nice when people know the real you.
So, I was a little bit sad that I was so incredibly recognizable even after so much time. Okay, people I haven't seen since the seventh grade have recently recognized me, but still. Still.
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Meanwhile, I went in for a bunch of medical-type stuff and tests last month. No concerns; just a general wish to be more attentive to my health following the great health scare of 2007 (just as tragic, but with more psychotropic medication, than the steak incident of 2003). They told me test results would be available at a particular website using the provided username and password, right about...now.
I tried logging in tonight for the first time.
The website won't load and won't load and won't load. Maybe they're upgrading because it's Sunday night – that's reasonable, right? – but it would be nice to know if I'm dying before I toddle off to bed.
Life is just way too hard sometimes.
http://www.garfield.com/comics/comics_archives_strip.html?2007-ga071226
So, the thing is, I really love Christmas. Like a whole lot. Like more than you do. Neener neener, so there.
No, wait, come back. Let's not fight. I don't mean it, any of it. I'm just lashing out in a pathetic attempt to avoid the pain of post-holiday letdown.
It's simply my favorite time of year. I love the decorations and the special foods and toasty fires and gaudy Christmas sweaters and cheesy Christmas movies and the excitement and the happiness and really just about everything.
But once again, it's zipped right by me, and all I have to look forward to are months and months of Not-Christmas in which I feebly attempt to recreate the holiday spirit by adorning my house with seasonally appropriate hearts or shamrocks or bunnies or flags that do little to fill the gaping Santa-shaped void. Alas, that this day has come! Woe to us all!!!
I've decided that my ideal job would be running a year-round Christmas store. If it were at all a viable business model where I live, I'd go for it. I can't express the sheer rage I felt when I heard that this is precisely Linda Tripp's current endeavor. Why, a grinch like her simply does not deserve to live my dream! Bah, humbug!
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Anywho. A few years ago I found a great recipe for coq au vin. I've been making it for Christmas Eve dinner ever since, and it's been a big hit. 'Cuz it's all yummy and stuff.
This year, I was in a huge rush to buy all of the ingredients on the 23rd. I had so little time that, rather than copying the necessaries to a shopping list, I just ran out with the recipe in hand. The store was a madhouse, and though I wielded my shopping cart with full battering force, sending old ladies and small children scattered trembling in my merciless wake, it nevertheless took so long that I ended up missing the movie I was supposed to see that night. In all the hubbub, I somehow left my precious recipe behind.
Fortunately I realized it before I got home, and I went racing back into the store in full panic mode, only to find it innocently lying at the register where I had forgotten it. But for a few moments there, I knew the fear, that chilling ice-water gush of fear that everyone experiences at some point in their life – that of a Christmas without fancy French stew! The horror, it truly is too great to contemplate.
And the worst part is that, while I usually type out my recipes so that they are incorporated into my fancy self-coded, fully-searchable-by-multiple-parameters, cross-referenced, really-really-pretty Recipe Database (it's called OCD – deal with it), I somehow neglected to do so with this one.
So you see, the recipe would have been lost! Lost, I say! Lost beyond all recovery!
In the interest of preventing such a dreadful disaster from ever occurring, I decided to present the recipe to you.
It's from Parade magazine, but I note that recipes are subject to limited copyrightability, and only to the extent that they encompass some creativity beyond that of listing ingredients with basic factual instructions for preparing the dish. Ahem. In that regard, I have taken some liberty with the recipe.
(Comic strips, well, those are, like, copyrightable and stuff. I figure that there is an exception somewhere southeast of fair use, covering permissible reproduction in the event of post-Christmas depression....)
Coq au Vin
3 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 pound bacon, cut into 1/4 inch pieces
4 pounds chicken (I buy chicken breast strips that are easy to trim and cut into manageable pieces; the recipe calls for 2 chickens of 3 pounds each, simply quartered)
3/4 cup chopped shallots
2 pounds carrots, cut into appr. 1-inch pieces
3 tablespoons chopped garlic
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 pounds white mushrooms, quartered with stems removed (I omit the mushrooms)
3 tablespoons flour
2 cups defatted chicken broth (fat-free canned is fine)
2 cups Burgundy wine
1/4 cup cognac
1/4 cup tomato paste
1 tablespoon red currant jelly
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves or 1 teaspoon dried
1 bay leaf
Salt and black pepper, to taste
6 tablespoons chopped parsley
Parsleyed potatoes or egg noodles
1. Heat the oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat. Add bacon and cook for 10 min. until slightly browned. Remove with slotted spoon to paper towel-lined bowl to drain.
2. In the same pot, brown the chicken pieces (about 4 minutes per side). Set aside.
3. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
4. Add shallots and carrots to pot and cook over medium-low heat, about 10 minutes. Stir in garlic and cook 5 minutes longer.
5. Add butter (and mushrooms, if including mushrooms) to pot and cook for 5 minutes. Sprinkle the vegetables with flour and cook for 2 minutes longer.
6. Add chicken broth, wine, and cognac. Bring to a boil, cook until the sauce thickens, about 5 minutes. Keep stirring throughout, scraping bottom of pot occasionally.
7. Stir in tomato paste, red currant jelly, brown sugar, thyme, bay leaf, salt and pepper. Add bacon and chicken and incorporate into the sauce. Bring to a boil.
8. Cover the pot and cook in the oven for 30 minutes.
9. Remove the cover and cook in the oven for an additional 30 minutes. (I left it in much longer at a lower heat this time when people were late for dinner, and it turned out better than ever – I'd almost recommend letting it stew for an extra hour or more at very low heat, then increasing the heat for serving.)
10. Stir in parsley and adjust seasonings as desired.
11. Serve with potatoes or noodles. Can be cooked beforehand and reheated later.
Now it is saved for all posterity.
I also make a punch that is loved throughout the land. Might as well throw it in while I'm at it....
Poinsettia Punch
Pour together into a punch bowl:
2 cups cranberry juice
5 ounces Cointreau or Grand Marnier
2 bottles sparkling wine (I find that the sweeter the wine, the better – I prefer Asti Spumante)
It would be nice to know someday what it's like to experience Christmas without that sick stuffed feeling and the resultant coma.
Several years ago, we discovered Christmas Day buffets. All the hotels have them; apparently they're fantastic money makers. They're always quite lovely, with live orchestras and beautiful decorations and all the mimosas you can drink. And food. I hear they have food.
We've enjoyed them a lot – they're great for keeping the Christmas festivities going a little longer. Nice to have an excuse to get dressed up, too.
The only problem is that the new Christmas tradition is for me to make myself desperately ill, each and every time. I will never learn.
Other than that, Christmas was good. I got lots of great presents. Even Santa himself slipped one under the tree – a margarita maker! How DID he know? I've been experimenting with recipes that will work given the amount of shaved ice that's added to the mixture. Any suggestions? The one I tried is too bitter, and I don't want to use the recipe that came with the machine, which calls for a big heaping splash of the margarita-maker maker's own margarita mix. I'd prefer to make it from scratch if I could get it to taste right.
The Christmas party somehow went off more or less without a hitch. People came, they ate, drank, and made merry, and then they went home. The convergence in the same room at the same time of my lawyerly colleagues and my compatriots from bygone days of yore did not cause the universe to implode. I am fairly certain nobody mentioned my shameful predilection for unlawfully obtained libations. So, all in all, a SUCCESS.
I also totally cleaned up with hostess gifts, a delightful twist I hadn't expected. Maybe I should have. I've had parties before, but not holiday parties. Since it apparently means people give me PRESENTS, you can rest assured that this shall become a tradition. (Next year, however, I will write down what people bring as they enter the house – I have no idea who most of the stuff came from, and few included gift labels. This would not have helped with the people who entered on their own and just set their gifts down somewhere, which apparently happened at least once.)
One snag...slight miscalculation with respect to the amount of food needed. No biggie. Just thirty or so giant sandwiches left over. Five pounds of dip. Three cakes. Ten crates full of assorted beverages.
Anyone wanna come over and raid my fridge?
I think I am slowly going insane. Except by slowly, I mean "really quickly."
I've been running around like nuts all week, and in particular all day today. There is work to be done and deadlines that must be met and things that clients must sign by Christmas Day but OOPS ha ha they are going on vacation starting Thursday afternoon so gee, can't you just shoot the stuff their way right now? Hmmmm, maybe if they had actually responded to my numerous other communications over the last 6 months about this issue, then golly, I might have it ready, but now? NOW I need to prepare these things from start to finish along with all the other people's things and we had a firm-wide section conference/powwow all day today so when I am going to find time to do things hmm maybe RIGHT NOW? Guess so.
And I had to bake a cake tonight because I promise things I can't deliver. And then I did a favor for my brother whom I love. And I still have to clean up the cake stuff in the kitchen and for some crazed reason I decided -- on MONDAY -- to have a Christmas party -- on FRIDAY -- so that is just adding to the stress. And if you're coming to the party that includes people from work please use discretion with respect to issues you raise about me about which work people might be unaware, up to and including the existence of this blog because otherwise I might have to kill you and that would also cause me STRESS.
Oh, and a client offered this great deal for the purchase of a certain item that I decided I wanted to get my dad for Christmas, thinking I could just go pick up the item at one of client's many convenient locations. But then client informed me that I had to go to client's headquarters, which are Far Away, oh, and only during these two hours Thursday afternoon, not a problem, riiiiight? So I have to be at work at 6 a.m. tomorrow so that I can leave really early to pick up the thing which is being offered at a pretty awesome price but I'm starting to think I'd rather pay extra and avoid the trouble plus it's big and so I had to borrow a bigger car. From my dad. Whose gift it is. Who is now being inconvenienced for the sake of his own gift.
And for some reason I can't stop shaking. I can't imagine why!
I can't wait for the holiday. Then I'll have nothing to do all day except relax. And buy presents, wrap presents, bake ten different types of cookies, cook Christmas dinner, run around to all the appointments I put off all year and finally managed to schedule, get my hair cut, do some landscaping, find a cure for cancer, bring about world peace....
You probably don't want to read this if you're male.
In typical fashion, after months of discussing it and obsessing over it and analyzing all possible aspects of it and driving everyone crazy over it...I decided to go and get laser hair removal.
Please don't judge me. I know this is the kind of thing that people with too much money do to slightly reduce the overwhelming burden of hauling around all that money. But I...y'know...really wanted to do it.
Anyway, I think it's awesome. I was horrified/saddened to discover that it's not one-zap-hey-you're-done, but that apparently it takes six or more sessions spread out at eight-week intervals. Dudes, that takes me into frigging 2009, potentially. I will not need to shave my legs by then anyway because we will all be wearing space suits and zipping around in our flying cars. On Mars. With bionic bodies that don't grow hair anyway.
I still think it's cool, though. There's really only one downside. It's kind of like when I'm at my ideal weight, instead of feeling happy about myself and pretty and confident, I suddenly find new things about myself that I don't like. Maybe it's good to just feel fat if it means I don't spend time worrying about my nose. Well, now I've discovered new areas that really should be hairless. As in, pretty much everywhere that isn't on my head or the pre-approved, expertly shaped eyebrow region.
This led to me pondering the sociological ramifications of Western women's obsession with hair removal. I'm all deep like that. How strange that what we're striving for is, essentially, to make our bodies look more like children's. Really sick, that.
I have at least one dear friend who proudly proclaims her freedom from shaving and embraces all that results therefrom. However, said friend is a big ol' hippie who lives in Hippie-Land, and her hippie husband is perhaps even more enthusiastic about her liberation than she is. How nice for them.
So, I contemplated all of this. For five seconds. And then signed up for the platinum package. Hair-free in 2010, baby!!
Around the time I read the last Harry Potter book, I found myself asking the big questions, pondering the meaning of all of this. Such as, why will there be no more Harry Potter books?
This made me very sad, and as I said in the post linked above, my one consolation was the fact that surely I will come across some other books that I'll love just as much. I embarked upon an epic search for such books, and I will occasionally post about the results here. I would also love to hear suggestions. It's not necessary that the books be "like" Harry Potter or fantasy books or children's books – mostly I just want something that's really enjoyable to read, something that has a kind of sweeping scope that transports you to another place.
Well, back in August and September I read the His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman. I meant to post about it sooner, but then I got sick and then I kept waiting until I got over that and to be honest I still haven't really gotten over that, at least not mentally in such a way that I am back to being the way I was before all of that.
But now the movie of the first book, The Golden Compass, is out, and I feel very remiss in having delayed so long. Movies change the way that people feel about the books...a bad movie might turn you away from a good book; a good movie might leave expectations that the book can't fulfill. (For a good example of the latter, see The Last of the Mohicans – still one of my very favorite movies, but the book, which I read first, is just...blah...maybe it is the glistening male bodies in the movie, but no, I think it's more...the book is boring. Bor-ing. Yawn.) And then of course there's The Dark Is Rising, my recommendation for people seeking post-Harry reading, but I understand the movie sucks. I haven't seen it yet....
I also haven't seen The Golden Compass. But I have read the books, all three of them, even.
And...I thought they were...okay. Just okay. I was not transported; I did not find them worthy of great obsession or discussion. If there was some kind of (anti-)religious agenda, to be honest it didn't really occur to me. I was surprised at some of the content (I have seen all of the various commentary in advance of the movies, but it wasn't really those issues mentioned that struck me....one of the things that got me, and which I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere, is...dude, those angels are toootally gay).
I also didn't realize that The Chronicles of Narnia had a pro-religious agenda, so there you go. Oh, and I think that Moby Dick is all about the fact that the author just had a thing for whales. No, seriously. I read the unabridged version for "fun" (ha ha ha) and there is this passage that goes on for page after page about all the different whale crap that is in this particular town....there's this whale-shaped door-knocker, that whale painting, and blah blah blah....dude just liked whales, if you ask me.
Um. What was I saying? Something about whales, and how they bore me, especially when they feature in books?
Oh, wait, His Dark Materials. Here's the pocket review:
Plot Summary: Skipping it as you can read the movie reviews. Some cool conceits, like the notion that the characters have animal familiars that function as their souls, but that's not really the point.
Harry Potter Replaceability Factor: 4 out of 10. Diverting only for the moment, totally lacking in the richness and texture of the HP books. Despite the Big Topics and the traveling across worlds and everything else that HDM offered, I still couldn't help feeling that, compared to HP, the HDM books were somehow...small.
Not-a-Harry-Potter-Ripoff Factor: 9 out of 10. Really not a ripoff at all. At least the first book, and maybe more, came out well before the first HP book. That does score it a lot of points as far as I'm concerned. I hate pandering....
Overall: I think my big complaint is that I felt so remote from it all. The things that happened, any danger facing the characters, didn't really impact me. I read it, but I wasn't ever really invested in it. Just....okay.
If I Were a Kid: Hard to say. I think I might have liked it a lot. The whole animal-soul thing probably rates really high with a kid who likes animals. And of course the whole kids-with-important-destinies thing would have played well with Kid-Me. I inevitably would have missed whatever religious commentary the books might have contained – no surprise, as even Adult-Me is so totally oblivious. There is some content in the third book, which I will reference only obliquely so as not to spoil it for anyone still reading, that I think may have actually gone outside of my decency boundaries for kids...and as someone who spent her childhood reading Stephen King and watching horror movies, I have really liberal decency boundaries....but then again, maybe kids would also not read into those scenes the meaning that I did. No more to be said about that unless you've read it.
Recommendation: Eh, go ahead and read it. I know this is a lukewarm review, but if your bookcase has been cold and bare since Harry's departure, this just might be the adventure series you've been looking for. Moi, I think I will reread The Dark Is Rising and watch Lord of the Rings and dream of better days....
It's that time again...precisely two years ago at this moment, my niece A was born. It was a cold and wintry day – my IP final that morning had been pushed back to the late afternoon due to the icy conditions, and I didn't discover until I got home that evening that A was on her way.
I went to the birthing center and studied Secured Transactions and pondered the miracle of natural birth. Or rather, became yet more convinced that I will definitely get the good drugs when/if I have kids. As C has hilariously commented regarding the potential effects of said drugs on the baby, I'll just consider it my very first birthday gift to him or her.
Anyway, today A had a great time being treated like a little princess. Which was no different than any other day. Pretty much every day is a great day when you're A.
She was so enamored of one of my parents' presents (a play purse that came filled with highly realistic replicas of the things that fascinate her in grown-up purses, like a cell phone and keys), she wouldn't stop playing with them long enough to move on to her other presents. She also refused to put the items in her purse, insisting on gathering all of the things in her arms, which of course led to her dropping something, which of course led to her wailing in despair, "My keys!" or whatever she had dropped.
This was all very cute, but dudes, I got her a very awesome like-real baby doll that I was just dying for her to open. She was having none of it. I finally asked her if I could open her presents, and she said, "Ooookay," but when she saw me actually go over and start to touch one of HER PRESENTS, she broke land-speed records racing over to pull it out of my hands. That awful aunt. Can't trust her with anything. She loved the doll but found the responsibility of feeding the baby her bottle and carrying her around a bit much, so she decided the baby was "so sleepy" and needed a nap. A had calls to make, after all.
I asked if I could use some of her powder and make some calls, and she let me a bit, but then she became suspicious (since, as discussed previously, I was not to be trusted). She finally handed all of her gear to my dad and very clearly instructed him not to let me have any of it. She doesn't have the words for it yet, but there was no doubt what she meant. She handed him the items, turned and pointed at me and then her toys, and then said to my dad, "No Aunt ____!" She didn't walk off until he assured her I wouldn't be allowed to play with her toys.
Sooo not fair.
It's 1 a.m. These are my choices.
I can:
(1) Go to bed;
(2) Exercise;
(3) Write Christmas cards (several of which are headed overseas); or
(4) Post on my blog.
Did I mention the part about how I could go to bed now? See ya around, suckas.
And don't be waiting by your mailbox for that card, either.
