Whirlwind

I was told once, by a very wise man(child), that once I started working full time my weekends would become so jammed packed with stuff that I wouldn't know what to do with myself. I would seek "real life" and "stuff you didn't even know you wanted to do" like it was...well, my job.

And it's often true, as it was this weekend. The moment I left the office Friday I bounded, skipped, leaped with my coworkers into Audobon Circle for some tasty margaritas. Then I went to Sunset for birthday burgers with friends from Tufts.

Upon waking (and thanking my good sense to have that gigantic turkey burger to balance out the 'ritas) we went to Weston for an awesome maple sugar shack's pancake breakfast, complete with a live bluegrass band. Delicious and a lot of fun. After some traipsing about Boston buying clothes I don't need (but look really good in!) we returned home for a bit to prep some dishes to bring to Wise Old Manchild's Girlfriend's Potluck Game Night.

Boyfriend made oatmeal walnut chocolate chip cookies (he bakes! with a bit of reverse psychology maybe...) and I made avocado deviled eggs - both were a hit and I'll definitely make the eggs again come picnic season.

This week Boyfriend's sister and bro-in-law are coming into town - which will be great since we rarely see them and they're staying at Casa de Brighton for a few nights. I need to get Apples to Apples to play with them because I looooved it at the Game Night. It's so much fun. And the game website has ideas on how to make it even better... I'm slightly afraid I'm going to become a Game Night freak and host lots of nerdy board game events, but whatevs.

food fails again

Almost weekend!

Nothing could ruin my day, except this. About eating "Almost Meatless."
Really? This is all you can come up with, foodies of America? Puh-leeease. We are just about the only culture with three square meat-centric meals a day, and to talk about this new "trend" is to ignore the fact that America's carnivorous tendencies are the real trend. A century or so worth of unsustainability and heart disease.

In reality, centuries (millenia!) of people have subsisted on mostly-meatless diets. Another "duh" moment for all of you. I'm still waiting for Nobel prize on how eating less meat can save the world, you know, for that big paper I wrote in high school.

Yeah, I scooped the Times six years ago.

Food articles always cycle back to this, though, and constantly report this ancient and natural way of life as yet another socially-conscious trend, you know, back in here and here and here... Maybe it's eating all that meat that's effecting everybody's memories.

Bah! Ok, I'm done being shrilly liberal.


Happy weekend all!

an open book

I'm finally into my book, Christine Falls by John Banville, writing under the nom de plume Benjamin Black. Now this is noir...foggy city streets, manly men with drinking problems and sordid pasts, and the wily damsels that somehow surprise even though we knew they were hiding something all along. I admit it took some time to get into, and really it's not knocking my socks off. But I can't blame it, it's a tough act to follow after the stellar The Reader and it had formerly seemed like yet another disappointment. Instead, it's currently ranking at about a B.

Kara reminded me of my ongoing book organization - I don't bother with authors/genres to organize (and I tend to mentally categorize them by the order in which I read them anyway) - I go by color, so the spines in similar color families are grouped together. I spend more time looking at the bookcase than I do searching for particular books, and I know them well anyway, so I don't find it all inconvenient. Instead, I think it's purdy.

Now, the BIG issue at hand here is: which books to bring on vacation? I think Angels & Demons might be a good beach book, and timely considering the movie will be out soon... but I'm open to suggestions. Thoughts?

c'mon get happy

I needed to be cheered up this week.

Seeing The Watchmen on Saturday didn't help too much - it was violent violent violent and as much as I wanted to like it I found much of it to be really...stupid. We went to the Jordan's in Reading for the full IMAX treatment and the only redeeming part was the hilarity that is Jordan's Furniture. And when a 15 foot animatronic Wally the Green Monster outshines a movie, you know it's bad. The story deserved some solid action treatment to showcase the artfully twisted characters, and instead we got the usual superhero cliches and spandex clad babes. I wish I could give a better review but my eyes were closed half the time to ward off scenes of people blowing up (seriously, how many shots can you have of people looking shocked at after being DRENCHED in a passerby's blood?), and also I plugged my ears more than a few times to block out some God-awful soundtrack choices.

But, to accentuate the positive (much like Superchick's spandex number...) Spring Cleaning 09 officially took place this weekend. So I have prematurely switched out my winter clothes for the summer wardrobe, and will have to be artfully decked out in lots of layers until spring actually arrives.

Last night I made my favorite recipe - a tofu pesto sauce. It's from the Moosewood Cookbook, a veritable vegetarian bible, and even though I've only tried a handful of recipes from it they've all been amazing. This one is basically a traditional pesto with a block or so of blanched tofu added to make it creamy. I can eat it by the spoonful, and I do. It makes me want a big food processor though, which would handle it much better than our poor overworked blender.

It's very nice to be able to come home to a super clean (and organized!) house with a well stocked fridge. Now, we wait for patio season...

ready for my close-up

Good news and bad news:

I get to order a cake! And it will be AWESOME.
Then I'm doing my taxes. And it will be BORING. (But lucrative! I can has refund please?)


On the film reel:
This weekend I want to see I Love You, Man because I adored Jason Segel in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. But Boyfriend still wants to see The Watchmen, so...let's keep our fingers crossed.

I saw a trailer for Observe and Report for the first time last night - looks like it could be mall-tastic glory akin to Mall Rats... I also caught the trailer for Sunshine Cleaning (Thanks to Doug for the review link) and was really excited - a smart dark comedy with two female leads? I'm in heaven!

kiss me I'm Polish

In honor of everything that has nothing to do with St. Patrick's Day, I give you this:

Corn Pops

You can thank me later.

cloud nine

I did it. We did it. Finally.

A vacation is happening, at the end of April. Go ahead, check out those highs in the mid 80s. I dare ya.

It isn't Prague, but that's okay - I'll plan a better trip, a less frantic and get-me-outta-New-England kinda thing. Since Mr. Boyfriend is a former expert on the Dominican Republic, and I look really good holding fruity pink drinks with umbrellas, this couldn't be more ideal.

Unless it was free - I'd take that.

Because I like to have money. And, super conveniently, so does this lady. Inspired by this major financial commitment (though I do feel our Orbitz vacay package was a good deal) and the artful debtor, I'm gonna make a big step and work extra hard to cut down on my biggest spending drain: dining out. To soften the blow of this hardship (and one of the things I like to blog most about) I've decided that if I'm hankering a takeout dish I can cook it myself and make a trip to the grocery store. So my wallet won't suffer, and my culinary skillz can get an upgrade. And it'll probably help me be less lazy in the kitchen.

Also, my random blog-stalking has yielded as awesome cache of silly images: Who ate the damn pizza rolls