Moi, Toi, et VoI: December 2005

Tidbits

This morning I went to 7-11 to get some cash for T&B, our cute couple cleaning service, and I picked up my favorite guilty food pleasure: machine coffee, er "coffee". I made an enticing blend of Fat Free French Vanilla, French Vanilla Cappucino and Ghiradelli Hot Chocolate. Yumm....you say, can't get better than that. But wait: you can get better than that. There, nestled between the lazy susan of flavored syrups and flavored non-dairy creamers (my, that place is getting fancy), was a can of marshmallows. I shook the can. I could have played the thing like maracas. Cha cha cha!

So I sprinkled 20 or 30 on the top of my machine concoction, closed the lid, paid the 7-11 guy, got in the car, drove home, chatted with T&B for a few minutes, got back in the car, started the engine, put on my seat belt, opened the lid, and took a sip. Crunch crunch crunch! What the....?! Is that my tooth? a little rock? could it be the Devil's Snack - a CornNut???? Alas, no, it was a marshmallow - still crunchy and solid after 20 minutes of soaking in the machine coffee fluid....crunch crunch....interesting concept, the marshmallow that won't melt...or soften. Hmmm....just something to think about...If anybody can come up with a name and a fresh marketing idea for these, let's talk. I think we can make some real $$$$ here.

I must be a glutton for punishment though, because everytime I buy machine coffee I think of the time in high school when Nancy got some machine hot chocolate from the school caf (excuse me, "The Commons") and found maggots floating in it! Eeeewww....

Goooood Mornin'!

Scandipop: My New Crush

Last night I was trolling around on on my various pop sites, and I came across my new favorite Scandipop band: Labrador. You must check these Danish dudes out. Fantastic stuff, even if you're not into the lush over-the-top orchestral style of the likes of ABBA and its current derivatives. Be sure to give Freeway to Mars a listen. As a matter of fact, as soon as I finish blogging, I'm going to hunt it down and order it. It sure ain't on itunes, baby. I think I might actually have to get it from Denmark for chrissake.

Another special one I found is Ultrasport, perhaps the only Finnish Scandipop band out there. Yeah, you've got one-hit-wonder Norway, and the Swedes for whatever reason are the Gold Medal Olympiads of this genre of music. Why not Finland, you ask? What's the friggin' matter with that country? Too close to Estonia? In any event, it's got some nice jangles- a little Belle-y, a little Smiths-y...good stuff.

Oh, oh...and I've saved the best for last: Camera Obscura has a single that they've dedicated to John Peel. I'm gettin' all weepy here. Apparently he loved the tune soo much, they posthumously honored the man with it. Just listen. It's super sweet. As always. The Glaswegians always come through for me.

Back in the Saddle

I purposefully refrained from too much blogging during Christmas so I wouldn't get coal in my stocking or whatever next year. I wanted the holidays to be bright and chipper for all - so I kept my maw shut until I could no longer contain myself.

Christmas in Brooklyn: We ain't goin' there. But we're not talking Brooklyn Lite like Prospect Park or Brooklyn Heights - we're talking Brooklynbrooklyn - Kings Highway, Sheepshead Bay, Avenue U....ya probably have never been out that far unless, well, unless you're going to your in-law relatives for a Christmas Brawl! Oy! But I will hold my tongue. Just. This. Once.

Last night was fun: M, a new girl named J and I went to a special Tuesday night Sex Dwarf. Met a nice cat named J, who's a friend of M's and Popscholar's and he lives with the DJ. How 'effin' cool! What a small 'effin' town too. But maybe this means we can get some VIP Smiths spinning one of these days. In all fairness, he was playing Barbarism when we walked in....I left at 12:30 because this morning I have work and it's a very very special day because....ta ta ta da! I'm quittin'! Yup! Time for me to flee the nest, jump ship, take the bull by the horns, to blow this popstand. I've got a bakery to set up, damnit! No time for this here nonsense. Argh, I do hate doing this crap on the phone, but I fear that's the way it will have to be. I don't think anyone's coming in the shop today. Though there wasn't a to-do list either...hmmm...very suspicious. Maybe they are coming in, in which case it would suck more because then I'd have to wear thier idiotic regulation kercheif on my head. Very unattractive.

So, wish me luck, god speed, good riddance.

Oy. Oy. Oy.

Oy.

Recovering from last night's celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, Jew Extraordinaire, here on Christian Street. Oy.

Daximus & Mr. Daximus came over for a little Let's Pretend We're Goyim For Just This One Night debauchery. I cooked a turkey. Yes, me. High heat roast - the only way to go. Made some stuffing with bacon (bacon!) and just so we remembered who we really were, the Daximuses made killer latkes. Better than Mickey D's any day of the week, people. (If you'd read my latke article, you'd understand the joke...)

Too many bottles of wine, some tiramisu, and a tense game of Go Mental were had by all. And ye were all merry....until about 2 am. When I woke up with a wicked brain shrinking headache (yes, apparently when you've drunk too much and you've a headache it's because your brain is actually shriveling from lack of hydration...but anyhoo....) and endured Johnson Family Vacation, Dragnet and Punchline until the sun rose...

Just polished off the last of the stuffing along with 2 Motrins and a vitamin B pill. Off to Brooklyn for the annual Sheepshead Bay Christmas Sham...more on that tomorrow...

Oy! Can't I just go back to sleep, people?

Happy Holidays, Redmond! (Are you a boy or a girl?! There's a raging debate on this issue....)

Cool Beans: I'm Proud to be a Barnardian.

Work: Naaahhh....

And this is pretty damn cute too. Thanks, Glasgow.

Timely, Relevant

WTF do you mean, Oy Vey? Why is this timely and relevant? Cupcakes & Narnia. 'Nuff said.

This made me laugh this morning, which is practically a miracle considering I haven't had a drop of caffeine yet.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PEOPLECAT!!!!

WTF: Lateral Gift Giving Etiquette

Yesterday I got a holiday gift from my cousin. We're pretty much the same age, were fairly close as kids, live in different parts of the country but try and keep in touch the best we can. This year I sent her a box of fancy chocolates. She sent me...eight packages of scone mix....? WTF? Isn't this like giving a musician some BASF tapes? Or a lawyer Grisham novels? I'm a baker. Which means I bake for a living. Which means I know how to make scones and don't need the handicapped version. I just find this very odd -- and not thoughtful (not thoughtless, just not very well thought out). Hell, I know how to make scones and even if I wanted to for pleasure, I'd make the fuckers from scratch. Hmmm...

So I shouldn't be looking a gift horse in the mouth, right?

It beats the weirdness of last year's gift: a check. The cousin sent the cousin a check. Check giving is not in the Lateral Gift Giving Guide as far as I'm concerned. It's only okay for one to send someone younger than you a check. Gift certificates, however, are another ball of wax entirely....

Am I just being a cranky ho because I haven't had enough coffee yet this morning?

Weekend of Debauchery

This weekend was frackin' busy. Not with work, thank god. Rather, with good times! For all! Wish you were there Redmond...

Friday night was spent at Sex Dwarf with Popscholar and M dancin' the night away to Erasure, Ministry, the GoGos, outfitted with whiskey sours and glow sticks til a wee 2am....and it took another hour, I swear, to find a frickin' cab. Outrageous! But that is life in the big city I suppose.

THEN we headed out to Queens for our annual college buddy holiday party on Saturday. It was great seeing everybody. We're all growin' up that's for sure...(which is a major reason why we spent the evening in Queens, but I'll let it go...as long as it's not at Chuckie Cheese next year I'll be fine...)

After a Cheesecake Factory-sized dinner, we headed over to the Korean part of Queens (Flushing? I haven't a clue.) for a little post-midnight karaoke. The private room type, not the make-an-ass-in-front-of-others-just-than-your-friends bar type, where we continued with the booze fest til, sigh, a wee 3 am. Funny how no matter where you go, it's always the same videos - random shots of Amsterdam and Prague, small Asian children waving at you/the camera man, dogs chasing frisbees...C did a frighteningly excellent rendition of Back in Black. Myself, I think I excelled splendidly at All Out Of Love, shared Take On Me with C and K, and jesuschrist I can't even remember what else. Oh yeah! After getting shit from the boys about choosing #4548, just as I had insisted, everyone got pretty damn into I Want It That Way. We sounded like the effin' Mormon Tabernacle Choir. So, good times had by all, especially, I will add, Daximus, who pretty much was the emcee/lead vocalist throughout the night. Good Times, baby. Good Times...

In The Know: Latest Epicurean Trend

More Bits and Pieces

1. Today was the last day of Howard Stern on regular radio. I listened to the tail end of the show - it was a rally that rapped around 6th Avenue a long ways. I admit, I was a little vaklempt. Particularly when he thanked his daughters for being "gracious, because it's not easy being Howard Stern's kids." Oy! Over nine years ago, I named my cat Jackie Puppet, in honor of that horrible miniature cast of Jackie "The Jokeman" Martling. So I am a fan. Er, was a fan. But it is the end of an era and I am a wee bit sad. And fuck, I feel old. Life moves on. And I probably won't get Sirius.

2. Popscholar introduced me to If You Lived Here You'd Be Home By Now. Ah what a pleasure. I'm addicted to Jeremy Newborn Street and May Day. Some of it is a little too country/folky for my taste, but JNS is just so effin' sweet. Even though the horns bridge sounds a lot like a Belle song I can't put my finger on yet- it might be I Love My Car. We may have a New Order/John Denver situation here. Watch out, Nerissa et co. And I totally dig the fact that I've got a wicked cool knows her shit and loves excellent music life coach. Sigh! Though there must be a better less cheezoid word than 'life coach.' I'm not altogether comfortable with Dr. Phil lingo.

3. We had dinner with a friend from New York at Continental last night. He wrote a screenplay and is in the process of selling it. Keanu Reeves and Nicolas Cage are both interested in playing the lead. Now don't you feel like a loser?

4. Sex Dwarf at FLUID with the ladies tonight. Look out DJ Robertdrake. We're comin'!

Bits and Pieces

1. I think I'm a little autistic. Really. I have the tendency to listen to the same stuff over and over and over again. And it never gets boring. In fact, I figure if it can withstand the Oy Vey 1000 plays test, it's effin' gotta be good music. At the moment, I'm switching between something old and something new.

The something old is Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi. I adore this album. Come on - The Sun on His Back? Oh, how so very singable and delicious and sweet. The absolute best. And Shine Like A New Pin. Oh oh oh! Anti-Western. Swooooon...... This is one of my top favorite albums of all time. Good stuff, damn good stuff.

The something new is Strange Geometry. I like The Clientele's older stuff, but this album is really heads and tails above the other two. It's incredibly romantic, so very British, it's got Beach Boy riffs and lots of lucious strings. It's less fuzzy and a bit more polished than the previous gems. My Own Face Inside the Trees and Since K Got Over Me are simply divine. Besides, how can you not love a lead singer with the name Alasdair?

2. Why does the ATM have to ask what language you would like to proceed in? I mean, shouldn't it know this already? I would think that 99.7% of the people using them are probably always picking the same language. Unless you're Students of the School of Berlitz I don't understand this. This should be in our dossiers. Like everything else isn't already? Who are you kidding?

3. I've lost my iSkin and now my iPod is sticky with flour/sugar/butter (see Friendster profile...). It's gotta be around. Someone screw my head back on. Please!

4. Here is what sounds like a phenomenal egg nog recipe. I'm going to make it for this year's college buddy holiday party in Queens this year.

That is all. Yet I retain my right to carry on with my list should it be necessary for my sanity.

Drama in the G-Ho

So last night was bad. Really really bad.

It finally happened. I poked my eye with the #9 needles. There was blood. I stumbled to the emergency room. I was in surgery for hours but they couldn't save my eye. They tell me I'll eventually lose my 3-dimensional vision and I'll need a glass eye to look normal. It's horrible. Just horrible.

Price of Emergency Room visit: $900.
Price of New Glass Eye: $2500
Price of Making fun of Sandy Duncan: Tasteless.

Okay, so I lied. But I thought I'd get your adrenaline flowing so you wouldn't need so much coffee this morning. Anyhoo...

What do you get the chihuahua who has everything? It's a question I've been asking myself every day for the past two weeks. My mother's dog is one spoiled little fucker, let me tell you. The world is his oyster. Or at least the arroyo behind their apartment complex in Santa Fe. So I settled on getting the little bastard a girlfriend. Meet Henrietta.

And on the Chicago front: Borg the cat is getting some Kitty Kaviar. And Lucy the bulldog gets a dog treat donut with sprinkles. What a good auntie I am.

Dangerous Knitter

Oy. I practiced my knitting last night. At the peril of my eyes.

I think I'm casting on too tight, which is making me force the needle through so hard that I nearly poked my eye out several times. It's scary, those big mofo needles coming so painfully close to my orbital lobes. This hobby should require signing a waiver, because I swear to god, I'll sue those blasted yarn people up in northern Vermont if anything happens to me...

I think I may have to wear goggles until I get the hang of this.

But I did manage to get 2 full rows nearly perfect. Granted it was a 4 inch "scarf" (my 'pixie' dickie), but dammit I'm determined to get this. Jesus, I'm Martha in the Making, I MUST get this. Everybody does it. "I learned it from watching you, Dad!!" (Sorry, just off on a Tourette's tangent...)

My New Favorite Place

to go is Jetro, the wholesale restaurant supply warehouse in Philly.

The stock boys like me. They are always sooo so very very helpful when I can't find the parchment paper or the dried coconut. They follow me around the store, getting the stuff I need and sticking it in my cart for me! I feel...cute! And usually I go in there with my floured clogs, pigtails and no makeup. Yet they still pretty much fall all over the little baker girl rolling her ginormous cart around looking lost yet determined. Granted, it's not hard to be cuter than the usual Jetro customer - a ole' dirty fat bastard chef in a wife beater and Eagles sweatshirt.

But I like the attention. I admit it. I'm a Jetro Ho.

Makin' That List!

I'm spending the morning doin' some holiday shopping for YOU, YOU, YOU, YOU, maybe you, YOU, YOU and YOU too. And Redmond, if I knew your hat size and address, you'd be on the list too.

Etsy is fantastic. I've done a good 37% of my shopping sittin' here on the couch, while coffee, cat and laptop keep me warm as I try and defuzz from last night's debauchery with Daximus, Guinness Girl and the boys. We were at The Sidecar. With our lips on a sidecar....(I just can't help myself with that line...)

At some point I will need to get my booty up and out of the house and head on over to Borders and Sephora for those gifts for those incredibly boring and uninspiring people you have to get a gift for but don't have a clue as to what the hell to get them. Worse comes to worst this year, and they're all getting Target giftcards. So waah.

Alright. Up and at 'em.

Therapy in a Bottle

Last night Guinness Girl and I met at Eulogy for a coupla beers and some mussels. It was absolutely lovely. I highly recommend the Dirty Ho and the Traquair Jacobite Ale (it's brewed with coriander and it's Scottish!). We laughed, we drank, we talked, we drank, we ate mussels. It was THE BEST therapy session I've had in a long while. Thanks, GG. Redmond, you shoulda been there.

I'm feelin' pretty okay today. Much better than after our outing to Jones last week. But I am wearing the same clothes I had on last night. Oh well, I'm only baking, right? And I took a shower, washed my hair and changed my undergarments. My eyes are a little puffy.

Lookin' forward to tomorrow at the Sidecar. God, we do get out, don't we, GG?

Don't tell me who got booted on ANTM. It's all TiVoed and waiting for me!!!!

Lucy, Peter, Susan, Edmund: PsyOps for the Right Wing?

My childhood has been wrecked.

I must have read The Chronicles of Narnia a dozen times between ages seven and 13. I loved those books. I felt so grown up reading this series - what was it? a good 1200 pages of pretty tiny print? Yeah, I was a precocious little twit.

Not until very recently did I realize the raging debate - is it a debate really? - over the Christian themes running through those books. Was my fundy stepfather trying to brainwash me or was it really just a proto-Harry Potter adventure story? I never thought about anything Jesus-y when I read them. And besides, Aslan was the lion and weren't lions supposed to eat the Christians?

AND I heard on a Beeb newscast that C.S. Lewis has two sons: one's a completely secular "spiritual but not necessarily Christian" dude and the other's an Orthodox Jew. What gives?

I feel so...soiled.

Maybe that's why I went through a brief phase of wanting to be a nun when I was nine. Those brainwashing bastards. Screwing with the mushy moldable minds of younguns.

Stitchin' Wid da Bitches in G Ho

Daximus gave Popscholar and me our very first knitting lesson last night. I think I can speak for both of us when I say it was a pretty atrocious scene.

Between my 10 fat little thumbs, the 10.5s jerking around on their own accord like a possessed planchette, the cats having a lovefest with the piles of gnarled-up yarn and the click-clack clack-cll-ack-click-awfuck-click-clack of those bamboo torture instruments, it was an ugly scene. Really and truly. If you saw me, you'd pretend not to know me.

After they left, I practiced some more and then really messed up what was going to be my piece de resistance, the gem that would show my natural genius for all things crafty and knitty and such.

But by the end of my first swim with no instructor, I was nearly suffocated by that evil orange yarn, I nearly poked my eyes out with those chopsticks and the cat scratches made me bleed all over my three scary rows of the little scarf I was knitting for the roach that lives in the basement
.
But I'll get The Book and all will be well.

I Survived

my night of loneliness.

I ended up going slightly more high brow than I had initially anticipated with my in-home adventures last night.

After returning from a child-infested holiday party ("This place is a shande! Huff! Christmas tree - a shande! Wreath - a shande! Oy!"), I stopped off at Whole Foods, picked up some sushi, hemmed and hawed over the cosmetics section and finally ended up splurging on a tube of Dr. Hauschka's Rose Day Cream. I came home, rolled a skinny and watched Kurosawa's Red Beard until I got sleepy and then hunkered off to bed and listened to some NPR until I fell into Dreamworld.

Hope you had a pleasant weekend, Redmond. Catch ya on the flipside!

I Don't Want to be Rude, but..

Redmond, get a life!

What gives?! Please feed me a little tidbit about yourself. I'm so very very curious.

This isn't Uncle S, is it? But he's in Bellingham, and I googled Redmond and it doesn't appear anywhere near Bellingham. Jill, is that you? And I doubt this is anyone from my adventures in Sequim either because I like to keep a tight lid on my super-secret blogger identity.

Could it be someone from Math and Physics Club, per chance? That'd be waaay too cool. I may just swoon....

Come on, Redmond, can't you throw a girl a bone?

No One to Play With

Nobody's going to be around tomorrow night. Nada. Not a friggin' soul. Bojack's got poker night, Daximus is going bowling (that'd be a WTF?! if I didn't know it was for someone's birthday), Popscholar is off to be a groupie, I think, and my newest buddy, LA is going to DC. Pooh on all of you!

Hmmm...Maybe I'll go see Calexico and Iron & Wine at The Electric Factory by melonesome. Or maybe I'll just have some wine. Do I look like I iron?

Actually, it'll be kind of nice. I'll pick my poison, get some sushi, and maybe rent Sixteen Candles or somesuch. Sounds like a plan. I'm already there in my mind.

You Can All Breathe a Sigh of Relief

because I've finished my business plan.

Now it'll go to the bowels of PNC for review and the goddesses willing, some much needed moolah to open The Most Effin' Fantastic Bakery Philadelphia Has Ever Seen. Ever. will come my way.

Right now I'm green with envy because this crappy half-assed bakery that I'm working at right now is getting a spread in Philly Mag, the byotches... : /

Cranky ass, I am.

Grrr.....argghh...

Kvetch of the Day: The Streets of Philadelphia

I've refrained from whining about this topic for some time now. I thought I could live with it. I thought it would get better by the time the winter months approached. But alas, the City has forced me to bitch about the horrid conditions of the state of our streets. Deplorable.

Yesterday while I was driving down Pine, I kid you not, I actually saw the street bend under the weight of the cars rolling over it. And I'm not talking Hummers or Russian tanks and what not. A little GTI was cruising in front of me, and I swear to you, the street actually went concave. In two separate spots on the street. OK, this is a little odd, no?

And then there are the potholes. More like cauldronholes really. In the morning I went to run some errands. I came back about an hour later to find a 10' x 10' hole in my street. No explanations, just a giant mass of broken concrete smack dab in the middle of the road.

And then there are the myriad potholes that are more like wells, where those orange and white horses that are supposed to alert an oncoming driver that they are approaching a 4 foot abyss in the middle of Christian Street have actually fallen into the hole, so you can only see about an inch or two of the little guy.

DC had its excuses when its mayor was on crack. I wish our mayor was on crack then I wouldn't be wondering what the hell the problem with this town is. Lordy.

Moi, Toi, et VoI

Friday, December 30, 2005

Tidbits

Thursday, December 29, 2005

Scandipop: My New Crush

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Back in the Saddle

Sunday, December 25, 2005

Oy. Oy. Oy.

Thursday, December 22, 2005

Cool Beans: I'm Proud to be a Barnardian.

Work: Naaahhh....

Timely, Relevant

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PEOPLECAT!!!!

WTF: Lateral Gift Giving Etiquette

Monday, December 19, 2005

Weekend of Debauchery

Saturday, December 17, 2005

In The Know: Latest Epicurean Trend

Friday, December 16, 2005

More Bits and Pieces

Thursday, December 15, 2005

Bits and Pieces

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Drama in the G-Ho

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Dangerous Knitter

Monday, December 12, 2005

My New Favorite Place

Saturday, December 10, 2005

Makin' That List!

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Therapy in a Bottle

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Lucy, Peter, Susan, Edmund: PsyOps for the Right Wing?

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Stitchin' Wid da Bitches in G Ho

Sunday, December 04, 2005

I Survived

Saturday, December 03, 2005

I Don't Want to be Rude, but..

Friday, December 02, 2005

No One to Play With

You Can All Breathe a Sigh of Relief

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Kvetch of the Day: The Streets of Philadelphia

Contributors

Baking

Booze of the Day

T-Shirt/Bumper Sticker/Tattoo Sighting of the Day

Reading on My Kindle

It's the Kind of Day

Coveting

Looking Forward To

Burning Question

Stuck In My Head

Stuff You Should Click On (in no particular order. I know where everything is. Welcome to my world.)

So Yesterday

The Stacks