25 random things about me

This game is going around on Facebook, so since I just got tagged over there, I thought it could serve as today’s post over here too.

1. I talk to my sister on the phone every day
2. I am very afraid of bats
3. I’m allergic to shellfish
4. I love baseball and I am a huge Cubs fan
5. The only other sport I really love is Formula One racing. 
6. I find American Idol strangely compelling
7. I always lose my car in the Target parking lot
8. Summer is my favorite season
9. Princess O loves horseback riding but I get nervous every time she gets in the saddle.
10. I was a campaign volunteer for Barack Obama during the general election
11. I wish I knew how to speak Italian
12. There are four kinds of mustard in my refrigerator
13. Wow 25 things is a lot
14. I have been going to yoga classes for about five years now, and I still can’t get my hands to touch the ground in a forward fold
15. The best thing about the Super Bowl is the commercials
16. I love it when you find an onion ring mixed in with your fries at Burger King
17. We do not have any pets and I like it that way
18. I hate classical music (with a few exceptions)
19. I don’t like jazz much either
20. I still refer to Chicago as “home” even though I haven’t lived there since 1993
21. I have a Fountain Diet Coke from the Quick Stop almost every day
22. Dairy Queen is my favorite ice cream
23. I eat too much junk food
24. I can type really fast
25. This was harder than I thought it would be

I think you could die if you ate this

I can feel my cholesterol level rising and my blood pressure ticking up just writing about it.  In fact, I suspect just reading the recipe will cause partial blockages to form in your arteries so please, take a moment to consider those facts and proceed at your own peril.

Yesterday while I was fooling around on the Internet doing research I discovered the Ultimate Super Bowl Food.  It is called The Bacon Explosion.

It even got mentioned in the New York Times.

Now, I am not a doctor, and I don’t even play one on TV, but it doesn’t take an MD to figure out that this dish is very, VERY Bad For You.

Tom took one look at it and said, “Oh we are so making this.”  I’m going to try to talk him out of it, but if I don’t succeed, watch this space.

A rant

I am just a little bit peeved about this.

A couple weeks ago we got fliers home from school about the after school foreign language program.  The C-man wanted to take Japanese, and Princess O wanted to take Chinese.  Perfectly fine with me.  And both of those languages had classes on tueadays after school.  How handy.

Last week I got a call from the woman who organizes the program saying that the C-man was the only child who signed up for Japanese, and they were canceling it.  Fine.  She told me they would return my check.  And by the way, I still haven’t received it.

Classes started this week.  We never heard where the class was supposed to meet, so after school on Tuesday The Princess and I went to the office to ask about it.  We were told the class was tomorrow morning.  Well, I didn’t sign her up for Wednesday morning because she hasd violin on Wednesdays.  And really, how hard would it be to make another phone call?

I called the woman I had talked to earlier, and left a message.  She finally called me back tonight.  She told me that my hunch was correct, and that there weren’t enough kids for the Tuesday class so they put them in the Wedesday morning class.  So I explained to her that The Princess cannot attend the morning class and can we please have our money back instead.

She insisted she had told me about the change.  I said, “no, you told me about the Japanese class, but not the Chinese class”.  We went back and forth about that a couple times and then she finally told me they would send me both checks.  Stay tuned.

Odds and Ends

The C-Man has a friend over this afternoon.  As a result, The Princess has been moping around acting bored because the boys don’t want to play with her.  I find this amusing because when it’s just the two of them around, and the C-Man wants to play with her she can find a million and one things to play by herself so she doesn’t have to play with him.

***

When Renault unveiled their new (ghastly) orange and yellow livery one of the first thoughts that went through my head after I stopped retching was “how am I going to find orange nail polish?”  Well, guess what?  I found it.  And it wasn’t even that difficult.  It was, in fact, easier to find than silver was in 2007.   That was the year Alonso was on the silver team.  Also known as The-Team-That-Must-Not-Be-Named. 

I have decided that orange is not a good color for nail polish.  It is not cute at all.

***

You know it’s been a cold winter when this happens:

I walked outside this morning and thought to myself, “Wow!  It’s really nice out here today.  It must be warming up.” Then I got in my car and checked the thermometer on my dashboard.  It read:

 

Wait for it

 

2

 

Yes, that’s it.  A whopping two degrees.  And it felt warm.  Pathetic.

The library

The new John Grisham book The Associate was published today.  I’m a big fan.  Imagine how happy I was to discover that a copy was already waiting for me at the local library.  I had completely forgotten that I had even put it on hold.  I raced over there this morning and picked it up.  I will probably be able to write a review of it in the next couple of days.  Grisham is usually a pretty quick read.

I love the library.  And I seem to love it more and more all the time.  We have a very good library for a town of our size, and between the kids and myself we usually have at least 20 things checked out at any given time.

So what is so great about the library?  Well, if you check a book out of the library, read 50 pages and decide it is stupid and boring and not worth your time, you don’t feel guilty about not finishing it.  I knowI am more willing to try new authors and new kinds of books knowing that I can just take it back guilt free if it isn’t for me.  You can’t really do that if you buy it at Borders or some other bookstore.

But, really the best thing about library books is that when you are finished reading them, you don’t have to figure out where to put them.  As someone who already has more books than shelving, this is a huge bonus.  Instead of trying to decide which teetering pile to place your latest acquisition on, you can just chuck it back into the library bag.  Once it goes back, it’s not your problem anymore.  Hooray.

Something I miss about Italy

The children and I went to the new fancy gelateria in town yesterday.  Because, of course, that is what you do when it is 10 degrees Fahrenheit outside.  Without the wind chill.

This is our second trip to this establishment, and it really is good.  We have a punch card now and if we order two more gelati we get one free.  Awesome.

The Princess had chocolate and chocolate hazel nut, the C-man had just cinnamon (he prefers to eat just one flavor at a time).  I had chocolate and blood orange.  I love blood oranges.  I ate one every day when we were in Rome.  I would eat them every day here too if I could only find them.  The local grocery stores do not seem to carry them.  That is a true tragedy.

For those of you who don’t know, blood oranges are like regular oranges, but inside the flesh is red.  Sometimes it is all the way red; sometimes the flesh is marbled red and orange.  They are delicious and beautiful.  I like them so much better than regular oranges.    

I have heard that they sometimes have them at the small, organic, members-only grocery store downtown, but frankly, it’s not worth joining on the off chance that they might have them. 

There are a couple of places where you can buy them online, but I have to decide if it is worth shelling out 30-40 bucks for 10 pounds of them.  Can I eat them all in time?  I just don’t know.  In Rome we only bought a few at a time.  What to do?  What to do?

Dracula

I was reading my brother’s blog today, and he had a list of books he has purchased at Stacey’s in San Francisco since it is going out of business and everything is on sale.  For those of you who do not know, Stacey’s is probably one of the last of a breed, a general interest independent bookstore.  It’s the kind of place that looks like it could be a Border’s or a Barnes & Noble but it isn’t.

It’s a shame that it’s closing, but really I can’t get too worked up about it.  It’s just one of those things, and like I said, independent bookstores have been on the endangered species list for quite some time.  And most of the ones that have survived have done so by carving out a niche and carrying a deep selection of a small category, something the Killer B’s can’t do.

Anyway, I mentioned all that because I got distracted.  And also because one of the books he bought was:

The New Annotated Dracula by Bram Stoker, and Leslie S. Klinger, Janet Byrne and Neil Gaiman.  This is so unbelievably cool.  I only heard about it because my brother bought one at Stacey’s.  I just bought one from a certain online book retailer that is probably part of the reason stores like Stacey’s are going out of business. 

I love Dracula.  It is one of my favorite books ever.  I still have the paperback I bought for a class in college.  I probably read it about once a year.  So I am very excited to have a complete annotated edition, so I can see what other people think about it. 

And here’s another cool thing I learned about Dracula from my brother’s blog.  There is going to be a sequel!  Here’s a story from the Guardian in London.

I know, I know, these sequels written by another author so long after the original are generally not a good idea.  But, this one was written by Stoker’s great grand-nephew, and he used Stokers notes for the original story to write it, so I am cautiously optimistic.  It won’t be published until October though, so I have plenty of time to wait.  Plenty of time to wait and study my New Annotated Dracula.  Woo hoo!  

I am such a geek.

Off to the races

We spent the morning at the Cub Scout Pinewood Derby.  Oy.  I have had a headache ever since.  They are very loud, which is amazing since the cars don’t have any engines.

The C-man and Tom have been working on his car for the last couple weeks.  We don’t actually have any woodworking tools, so we have to make do with just a hand saw, a rasp and some sandpaper.  So the car is basically a block of wood with the corners rounded off a little bit.

What we do have is access to the fancy spray painting room at the College of Design.  It has a special exhaust system so you can you spray paint or epoxies in there and not asphyxiate yourself while doing it.  This is handy since it is the middle of winter and it’s really too cold outside to use spraypaint.

The C-man went with a bumble bee theme, which meant two trips to the spray paint room.  But it turned out really well.

We arrived at the Derby at 9 o’clock this morning.  They were also having a bake sale so the children had brownies for breakfast.  I am such a good mom.  I did draw the line at root beer though, and made them have milk.  Meanie.

They finally started the races about 45 minutes after we got there.  I am not sure what was up with the delay, but whatever.  These things are never very well organized.

The C-man had a fine time, and Princess O did too.  They had an open category at the end that anybody could enter.  The Princess entered the pinewood derby car she made for Girl Scouts back when she was a Girl Scout, about two years ago. I think she came in third, but I’m not sure.

All in all, it was a fine way to start the day.  But I am glad they only do it once a year. 

 

The C-man and his creation

Bumblebee in the paddock

 

The Princess and her creation

 

 

 

A funny joke

 

Two guys from  Chicago die and wake up in hell.

The next day, the devil stops to check on them and sees them dressed in parkas, mittens and bomber hats, warming themselves around the fire. 

The devil asks them, ‘What are you doing? Isn’t it hot enough for you?’

The two guys reply, ‘Well, you know, we’re from Illinois, the land of ice and snow and cold. We’re just happy for a chance to warm up a bit, you know.’ 

The devil gets a little steamed up and he decides to fix the two guys. He cranks the heat up as high as it will go.

The people are wailing and screaming everywhere. He stops by the room with the two guys from Chicago and finds them in light jackets and hats, grilling sausage and drinking beer.

The devil is astonished. ‘Everyone down here is in abject misery, and you seem to be enjoying yourselves.’ 



The two Illinoisers reply, ‘Well, ya know, we don’t get too much warm weather up there in Chicago , we’ve just got to have a cookout when the weather is this nice.’

The devil is absolutely furious, he decides to turn all the heat in hell off. 

The next morning, the temperature is below zero, icicles are hanging everywhere, the people are shivering so bad, they are unable to wail or moan.

The devil smiles and heads for the room with the 2 Chicagoers. He finds them back in their parkas, mittens and hats.. They are jumping up and down and cheering. 



The devil was dumbfounded. ‘I don’t understand. When I turn the heat up, you’re happy. Now it’s freezing cold, and you’re happy. What is wrong with you two?’

The Chicagoans look at the devil in surprise. ‘Well, don’t ya know – if hell froze over, that must mean one thing… the Cubs won the World Series!!

The Sopranos

Tom and I have been watching The Sopranos on DVD for about the last two years.  We get them from Netflix.  I love this show.  I love how much I am rooting for Tony Soprano even though he is a thug and a murderer and, well, not to put too fine a point on it, a criminal.  It’s one of the best TV shows I have ever seen.

Now we are rapidly approaching the end.  I think we have one DVD left and I think that DVD has three episodes on it.  And yes, I realize that Tom and I are probably the last two people on earth who have not seen the entire series.

I’m very torn about how to proceed now.  Part of me wants to stretch it out, and maybe only watch one episode every other week instead of every week, to make it last longer.  Another part of me wants to set aside one whole evening and watch all the episodes we have left back-to-back-to-back.  It’s a dilemma. 

I remember I felt the same way when I was reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  Part of me didn’t want to put the book down because I was dying to see how it ended.  And part of me wanted to take it really really slowly because I knew it was the last one, and that once I finished it, there wouldn’t be any more. 

With Harry, speed won out over enjoying the moment. It remains to be seen what will happen with The Sopranos.   Tom says he votes for speed.

I am also thinking of going back to Season One and starting the whole thing over again.