22 is not a prime number

Oh frabjous day!

I miss Andrea, she was a wonderful house guest and we had lots of girly fun around Boston and I wish we lived in the same city. But even her short visit was a wonderful birthday present. She got a private tour of the museum, and we had our first Bloody Mary brunch together, and we shopped in the rain until we dropped into a cozy Thai place. And of course Cuchi Cuchi was our Saturday stop and I felt incredibly schmancy with my Blackberry Dahlia cocktail. Next I will have to go visit her in order to get my Andrea-fix, and cause a ruckus at the university.

Aah. This is very exciting. I enjoy numbers that are doubles - 11, 44, 99, et cetera. I'm sure there's a name for that but I don't know it.

My boss gave me Belgian chocolates and I'm in heaven, though a bit sugar buzzed. Tonight? Beer and friends at our house, then Publick House.

The professor and Mary Ann

I went on a Tufts alumni harbor cruise last night. This alumni stuff is killing me. It was lovely to see certain people - but did we have to be trapped on a boat for three hours in order for that to happen? Makes ya "see-sick"...

Work is incredibly busy, and that's good. The days fly by...but then I'm exhausted.

For now, I'm waiting until 5 to head to ColdStone for a free scoop...all donations go to Make A Wish today! The moral of today's story, philanthropy is bad for my health.

This weekend it's Andrea time - and that's tomorrow!

schaedenfreude

(I spelled that right on the first try.)

Ah yes. So those front row seats at Fenway? Actually front row in the third section up. Hehe. Somebody misread their tickets.

Anyway it was a good game, though Cleveland won, 4-3. Obviously if I had been there, I would have been a good luck charm and the outcome would be a little different.

Instead, I spent the evening at home massacring a sweet potato in the microwave and trying to resuscitate it with brown sugar, and watching the newest episode of House - of which the DVR cut off the last two minutes. D'oh!

AND I planted the mimosa pudica seeds (after soaking for 48 hours) that came this weekend in the mail - Dr. Andrea can check my handy work this weekend, and perhaps offer some advice for my fallen fig. If that sounds weird, it is.

Tuesday Good: Today smells like fall. I am wearing tights. Tuesday Bad: Slept through my gym time. And I forgot to pack a lunch.

Maybe if I go stand outside the as-yet-unopened Panera they'll pity me and toss a baguette my way.

PS Three days to Andrea!!! Let's hope the forecast for this weekend changes soon.

there is more to life than processed nut butters (who knew?)

This weekend was pretty nice, wandering in Boston and relaxing at home, and we visited the Cambridge Antique Market which was c-razy cool and I'll surely go back when I
A) have more money and
B) need his/hers Meissen inspired shepherd/shepherdess table lamps.

Oh - and tonight I've got more time to relax...Mr. Man's boss gave him and a coworker tickets to the Sox-Indians game tonight. Just two tickets though. Me, I've never been to a game. Even living/working in such close proximity to Fenway. Yup. Hoooome alone tonight. Oh, and their seats? First row. Behind home plate. Yeah.

But why don't I feel sorry for myself?
Because ANDREA IS COMING TO VISIT THIS WEEKEND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(picture Kermit the Frog waving his arms and going "Yeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaay!")

My first house guest in the new place! And what a guest! I'm so excited - I have to get things ready, set out the tiny guest soaps and shampoos and put the tiny hand towels on their tiny racks and make tiny GF hors d'oeuvres...I swear I'm not setting up house for an elf.

And I'll have her all to myself (Mr. Man will be out of town for a tennis tournament. Scoff.) - now I don't have to be scared at night and will have someone to tell me bedtime stories.

But what to do with the weekend?! After I drag her around the museum for one of my patented un-official tours in which I jabber on about everything you never wanted to know about what I can remember to have read or maybe heard about art, we'll go shopping. And drinking. Maybe we'll shop for wine! I need to come up with an awesome itinerary, so this week I'll log some serious Yelp time.

In the meantime, I have reduced fat Skippy to keep me company - appropriately dubbed SuperChunk.

damn skippy

It is 2:27 pm, Monday September 22, 2008.

I am surreptitiously eating peanut-butter by the plastic knife-full straight out of a jar in my desk drawer.

I hate Mondays.

tgifloljkomgttyl8trz

Hooray! Last night there was an event at the museum and I felt super swanky swanning about the "aht" with a glass of wine in hand.

And then I went to IHOP.

I'm so classy I can't stand it.


The last of my boxes are FINALLY unpacked, and we organized the apartment more to make room for a sleeper sofa (or futon) and to actually set up the second bedroom as a guestroom/den. I've got the decorating bug and I'm resisting the urge to get vinyl sticker wall art. I know it seems cute in photos but really my taste is too far on the "traditional" side of "transitional" for that kind of thing.

In other news, my birthday is on a Monday and I hate that. Can someone do something about that please? Thanks.

tofu in a blender

Tuesday Musings...

My favorite pesto recipe involves tofu. I think that might make the Italians angry.

I watched waaaay too many CSIs yesterday. Two and a half. But there's a new season of House starting tonight so I can replace one corny pseudo-medical drama with another, thanks to the wonders of DVR.

As requested by my mom, I'm also going to start writing a novel. So...um, I'll take volunteers for whoever wants to write the reviews on the back. You can use fake names too.

And to think that in some countries these dogs are eaten.

I want a pug.

Yeah, I couldn't travel on the weekends like I do now. Yes they shed, and have a litany of health problems associated with the short muzzle and bugged out eyes...

But they're adorable and have great, affectionate, playful personalities without being too hyper. Want one now.

Note to readers: my birthday is coming up.


see more puppies

gimme now

Last post of the day, I promise. Maybe.

Panda chair

Celebrity Sighting

Update: Half the staff at UFood, where I purchased today's lunch, thinks I look like Hilary Duff. Or, more specifically - "That blonde one, in that Cinderalla-kinda movie. For TV."

meat is murder...tasty, tasty murder

Nobel Prize? Please. I wrote my senior thesis on this in high school. I would like my chunk of the prize money now.
Meat: Making Global Warming Worse

This is common sense folks...

I never eat meat - and that's counting poultry and seafood, for the zoology illiterate - more than a few times a week. It helps to be poor. I did consume part of a "Buffalo" chicken calzone (with bleu cheese) last night - and I notate Buffalo that way because it's like consuming "New England clam chowder" at a Denny's in Cleveland.

pencils down

Last night I was up every two hours with sneezing fits. Allergies?! NOW? I never get them this time of year. And during the longest bout of actual sleep I managed to catch I had a terrible stressful dream about a standardized test. Um. First I was seated in the dark, then the proctor yelled at me for trying to move, and then there was some sort of riot. Bad, worse, irrational.

My fig plant is dying. It's drooping (like the Mister when he can't get on macrumors), and I don't think it's getting enough light. Our apartment is very bright and airy, but it doesn't get any direct light, oddly enough. So I put it on the balcony yesterday, and it blew over. I did the same today, because I have no other alternatives, and I'm just praying it doesn't blow right through the railings. Sad sad fig. I thought of bringing it to work, but I'd have to put it in the kitchen where it would inevitably get over-watered. It can't go in my cube, it would probably throw itself off the counter out of pure despair.

I guess all I can do is hope it makes it until Halloween and then use the leaves to be Eve.

I just put two and two together about my dream and the fig. I need a new hobby.

trust falls

Staff retreat yesterday...painless enough but I felt like I was back in a lecture hall, listening to lots of people dole out important information but not truly engaged. Yes yes listening is an important skill and I know two ears, one mouth et cetera...but for goodness sake, if someone asks you a question (and not a rhetorical one!) then it's a lot harder to yawn. Just sayin.

BUT we got out at 2 and I had a glorious freebie afternoon! Ran an errand in the car and decided that my own voice was far more entertaining than anything on the radio, and I sorely missed Kara's karaoke machine. Maybe I'll invent Kar-aoke - where you can do karaoke while driving. DMB "Crash" would be top on the list. And "Ring of Fire." Har har.

Finished "The Book of Air and Shadows." It had a disappointingly happy ending. Really. Gruber pansied out. I wanted him to go for it - half a dozen people get tortured throughout the book, and another dozen or so are killed...but he doesn't describe much of it! There's a scene where someone's brains end up on a coffee table, and he just kind of brushes over the description. He didn't embrace the gore. He's billed as a "thriller" author, and I was not thrilled. Entertained, but not thrilled.

live to eat and read

More reading. This book is so good...well, I admit I have no idea what's going on in the plot right now, but at least I'm enjoying myself. The Man and I spent a lot of this weekend lying on the couches just reading and replacing our blood with tea. He seems to be enjoying the book on Steve Jobs I got him for his birthday, so that's happy. And we look up words we don't know together! Everybody all together now..."Awwww...bleaaaarghphooey."

I broke my Going to the Gym Daily Streak last week because I had crazy blisters/shoe wounds on my heels and couldn't bear to don sneakers and socks. Too bad so sad gonna get fat. I did go today, though, and watched a stupid Rihanna music video on the flat screens and decided her music and look have nothing to do with each other. Pseudo-goth + dance/hip-hop? Nope. And all her songs are the same.

Saw Tropic Thunder - laughed my pants, er, skirt off. I love Ben Stiller's characters - they're all over-muscled, ditzy males with an affinity for head bands. Comedy gold. Except the Focker ones, and Along Came Polly. But did you ever see Heavy Weights? Classic steroidal Stiller. And Disney, to boot.

Tried a new sushi place - awesome! And the tapas place down the street - awesomer! I'm eating the leftover salmon RIGHT NOW for lunch and love it. It wasn't exactly Las Ramblas though because of the loudmouth Russians sitting next to us who talked on a cell phone the whole time. Like, one cell phone, two people, talking to each other, to their caller, and ticking me off. But they did advertise flamenco events...I'll be there.

On to travel talk...I really want to visit Andrea but am trying to get my mom here to visit me and it's all too complicated. And the likely dates are bookended by important work events and I'd like to visit Pittsburgh to see my sister too (more to gawk at her living outside her natural environment)...what to do.

I don't trust books; they're all fact, no heart.

Ever been late to work because you've been reading during breakfast and lost track of time?

I feel like that might happen in the next few days. And this threat is only exacerbated by the fact that I can't ever get a seat on the D line on my way to work, and thus can't read (very well without getting jostled) whilst standing up...so I try to get in my morning lit before the commute. But I do love to eat cereal and read a good book.

I think I would be pretty happy to find out that heaven is an easy chair next to an ever-replenishing bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats with whole milk, and a stack of the best books ever written (hopefully Jesus likes himself a lot of Agatha Christie, and a good bit of candy-lit because no way am I spending eternity reading the likes of Faulkner. That would be Hell). There would be kitties, too. Oh, and that guy I like.

live free or die hiking

Can't...type...too...tired.

You know what I'm craving right now? Mall. Pure, unadulterated mall. Indoors, filtered air, people in coordinated outfits stepping on my blissfully sneakerless impracticle-shoe-shod feet. Top 40 music piped in next to artificial plants. And an Auntie Anne's pretzel. And a diet coke. Yeah - eat that Mother Nature.

I prefer my physical activity (if I can say "prefer" and "physical activity" in the same sentence) to be limited to 30 minute blocks. It's manageable, I know I can shower right away, and it means I only have to give up being lazy for half an hour of my day.

So that four hour hike Sunday has all but liquefied my non-existent muscles. We headed up Mt. Monadnock, and I was the most inexperienced hiker there. Lots of families were taking advantage of the perfect weather on this loveliest of Labor Day weekends, so many small scampering six year olds lapped me on that mountain. But enough of those memories, I have the mosquito bites to help me relive that afternoon.

On to brighter news - Joe Biden looks like a saint compared to what the Republicans have dug up - ARGGGGGH it's pro-lifer Evangelical Christian former beauty queen Sarah Palin! Step right up to view the feminist's nightmare: our first GOP viable female VP candidate hate's women's rights! The real cherry on this backwater sundae is that her abstinence-only sex education stance has firmly backfired and she still won't budge to consider that maybe America's kids are smart enough to cope on their own if they aren't kept in a holy water bubble - Palin's own 17 year old daughter is pregnant. Surely, this poor girl has enough to deal with without media scrutiny - but for the love of Kotex - somebody send this family to therapy!