Monday, February 18, 2008

Signs the universe wants me to stay in bed today.

Sign 1: Firefly marathon on Sci-Fi.
Sign 2: No Reservations marathon on the Travel Channel.

Good effing lord.

I was totally going to do something productive today, but fuck it. Most days my only excuse to stay in bed is sheer laziness.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

A cooking binge.

Some people go on drinking binges; others on eating binges. I sometimes go on cooking binges. I eat some of the fruits of my labor, but pretty much spend a few hours cooking up a storm.

Last night I cobbled together some vegetable soup and broccoli polenta cakes because I wasn't feeling too well and I had a bunch of vegetables to use up. It turned out rather tasty for something random (well, the polenta was a half batch of a simple recipe from Veganomicon). The soup contained one diced onion, several cloves of minced garlic, two sweet Italian red peppers, a handful of diced baby carrots, dried oregano, half-sharp paprika, short grain brown rice, a can of kidney beans, a bagful of baby spinach, and a bay leaf for good measure. The polenta is just polenta cooked with finely chopped fresh broccoli, spooned into a muffin tin, chilled, then stuck under the broiler to brown a bit. I put it in the middle of my bowl and scooped up bits of the cake with my spoon as I ate my soup.

Today I have been going a tad overboard. I had a giant bag of cremini mushrooms that were meant to go into a variety of recipes that I never bothered to make this week, so I thought I'd saute them up and put them in savory chickpea crepes. Because the crepe batter has to be chilled for at least an hour, I ended up baking two kinds of muffins just to use up a carton of soy yogurt I had (and also, I fucking love muffins)--chocolate macadamia with a gentle dusting of coconut and cornmeal blueberry with meyer lemon zest. These both turned out heavenly.

Still waiting for my batter to chill, I started in on the time-consuming task of slicing my creminis and ended up with about six cups of the damn things. Kevin thought I was insane and wanted to know why it was taking me three hours to make lunch. I told him to eat leftovers.

But we cannot live on mushrooms and crepes alone, of course. Oh, no. So I thought, hey, I can do the mushrooms with kala jeera (black cumin seeds) and red onion, then make some palak tofu (spinach and tofu curry--using tofu instead of panir cheese for the vegan's sake) to round it out! Totally reasonable. So now there's a pan full of bright green and spicy spinach with tofu cubes, a pan full of sauteed creminis, and a bowl of crepe batter just waiting for me to ruin too many and give up and make rice instead.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

To-do lists.

My actual to-do list is somewhat different from my inclination's to-do list:

Actual
  • Do sinkful of dishes like a good little temporary housewife
  • Work on cover letters and related job application-y things
  • Get a few odds and ends at Whole Foods
  • Go to the damn gym
  • Prepare something delicious for dinner -- or at least edible and vegan
  • Go see 4 Months...
  • Research upcoming movies I'd like to write about for a freelance project
  • Clean the rabbits' area
  • Laundry
  • Write an email to a friend


Inclination
  • Watch the following stupid TV shows: Crossing Jordan, ER, What Not To Wear, CSI: Miami (I hate Horatio), X-Files (later seasons), Gilmore Girls (have seen every episode at least three times by now)
  • Eat something leftover and possibly involving pasta during commercial breaks
  • Consider taking a shower
  • Decide TV is really lame just in time for the 1:25 showing of 4 Months...
  • Cook something with mushrooms and broccoli and spinach and red peppers, because that shit is going to go bad
  • Realize this will require doing at least *some* dishes
  • Read Project Runway blogs until bored of extreme cattiness from people who hate Christian
  • Feed rabbits dinner when they remind me that it's late by swarming around the food plates with hopeful looks in their adorable little eyes
  • Fall asleep before The Daily Show comes on, again, dammit

So as you can see, I have a busy day planned.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Success of the dork!

For the first time EVER, I, your fearless (besides zombies) movie-watching hero, have actually sat through ALL FIVE feature-length films nominated for the Oscar Best Picture.

ALL FIVE. WOO!

Why this excites me I'll never know. It's less a badge of honor and more a badge of dorkiness.

And having ACTUALLY SEEN all five, I feel I am sufficiently well-informed to express opinions on who ought to win, or who ought not to win. I am using many words for the sake of using them right now, by the way. No one is reading this for reals, right?

Here is, in ranked order, my preferences:
  1. No Country for Old Men
  2. There Will Be Blood
  3. Atonement
  4. Michael Clayton
  5. Juno
That's right, Juno is at the bottom of this list. It tried and failed to be clever. It tried much too hard and too obviously, and while it was good enough for Sunday afternoon entertainment (god only knows I would've been watching some shitty Flavor of Rock of Tequila Love marathon otherwise), it lacks the qualities of a Best Picture.

Michael Clayton was decent, but a nonentity.

Atonement was beautiful, and actually I'd recommend seeing it in the theater if you're into that sort of period drama, and if it wins I won't hate on it. It felt like what it was: a book on film. The sets and costumes and makeup and cinematography were stunning. But it didn't make me cry or my heart swell or leaving me thinking, "Wow." No, friends, that honor is left to the #2 and #1 films.

Happily, if There Will Be Blood wins, I'll be pleased, assuming I am still awake by the end of the ceremony (go Jon Stewart!). It was pretty fucking great. But so was No Country for Old Men, and I give the Coens just a bit of an edge, because that movie made me forgive them for making shitty movies for the past few years when they are capable of attaining greatness. And while I would never suggest, say, my mom see these movies (violence is her least favorite thing, proclivity for crime procedurals aside), they have stuck with me in a very good way. Loved these movies. Really.

Thus ends an entry no one besides me gives half a shit about, and it's all thanks to the auto-save on Blogger. My X server (Linux windows) keeps crashing and I thought I'd lost the whole damn thing.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

So much for daily blogging!

Two days in a row, then... big shocker.

Something is clearly amiss in the universe. It's 8:45 and Kevin is already up and showered. And I don't feel like watching TV.

Yesterday the "last days of Mark Greene" episode of ER was on. It made me bawl like a baby. I am a dork. A dork who spent half her Monday morning cleaning out the burr coffee grinder, which decided to stop working due to the massive amounts of old coffee grounds crammed inside its mechanisms. Fortunately, I was able to remedy the situation and get my coffee on (specifically, a Barefoot Ethiopian Harrar roasted last Friday, yum).

I am trying to catch up on movies. My intention for this week is to finish seeing all the Oscar Best Picture nominees. Having already seen Juno (overrated), There Will Be Blood, and No Country for Old Men (between those, it's a toss-up of which is most awesome), I saw Michael Clayton yesterday (good, but a bit of a yawn) and intend to see Atonement today or Thursday. I also want to see 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. These are all playing at the Camera 7, and between me, my handy Discount Cards, a sunny afternoon, and a lack of anything else to do, I am certain to achieve my goal.

Thursday, February 07, 2008

Oh, hell, I'd rather watch doggy poo.

For serious, it's a movie. An animated Korean movie about a living piece of dog shit that ponders the meaning of life, or something. And you can watch it ***instantly*** on Netflix. Oh, if only my computer ran Windows instead of Linux.

Today's episode of ER dealt with Dr. Greene deciding to quit chemo and quit working. It was a huge fucking bummer. Maybe the reason I can't stop watching it is that it reminds me of when my own dad was dying of cancer. I teared up. It was bad. I had to polish off my stash of (homemade, vegan, whole grain, low sugar!) chocolate chocolate chip cookies after that.

My fluffy, floppy-eared little friend Lilly is amusing me with her adventures. They're simple adventures, like out to the living room and hopping up to the first step of our shoe bench, but they're adorable. Any rabbit adventure is an adorable adventure. I think it says so in the House Rabbit Handbook. Lilly and Ollie taking a nap together is adorable. Ollie cleaning his butt is adorable. Ollie is cutest head-on, while Lilly is best in profile. The bunnies hate me, but I don't care. They like the food I bring them and sometimes they let me pet them for a minute.

Is anyone still watching Project Runway? Sometimes I think I'm the only one of people I actually know. Anyway, Crying Ricky finally got auf'd! I cheered so loud that Ollie ran under the bed to take cover.

By the way, anyone want to take a poll? How about several hundred? My good friends down at the ol' ex-employer have got you covered in the inane polls department. Hey, everyone needs a paycheck.

Even me. Soon. Someone please give me a job? I will TOTALLY work hard and stuff.

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Unemployment, day 3

I decided it might be "fun" to attempt to chronicle my vast wanderings through cyberspace, seeking gainful employment. Thus far it's consisted of hitting "refresh" on Craigslist's SF Bay Area writing/editing jobs page and harassing former coworkers on LinkedIn. Most of my days have been sucked up by that glowing siren, television. Oh, daytime TV, such a wasteland of repeats and syndication. I have yet to succumb to Oprah, but my god, did you know that there's two straight hours of ER on every morning? I don't even like ER, but it's on the episodes where Dr. Greene finds out he has brain cancer again and hey, look, the abused wife is now totally the sexy bitch on Mad Men!

I quit my job to pursue what I actually wanted to do. So far, that includes doing the dishes, cooking, grocery shopping, staying in bed all day, checking my email, and watching an obscene amount of stupid TV. Can't say it's a total lie, but it doesn't pay the bills. And I do love other things, too! Like, uh, being right and knowing stuff and helping people (see that I was right about the stuff I said I knew)!

This has been kind of fun! Maybe I'll do it again tomorrow.