That's My Bix!

So Much Meta-ness

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Every year I organize a holiday card exchange and this year is no different! If you’re interested in participating in the seventh annual Holiday Card exchange, just send me an email at weetabixREMOVE@THISgmail.com with your name, mailing address, and your internet website (if you want to share that, some folks like to see it). Also include whether you’re a Holiday Card Exchange Veteran or not, because I send those folks one of my holiday mix CD/cards instead of the standard holiday greeting. Although last year, I just sent a mix CD to everyone but I was feeling inordinately festive that year, so no guarantees it will happen again (although really, you never know). As with previous years, if we have more than 40 participants, I will be splitting the exchange into two separate exchanges, so please also indicate whether you want to be in One or Both exchanges.

So, to recap, I need from you the following:

Name
Mailing Address
Website
Holiday Card Exchange Veteran: Yes/No
Do you want to be in One or Both Exchanges?

Then all you have to do is sit back and wait for November 22, which is when I will send out the list of addresses. Then you stamp and lick and stick and mail your cards and sit back to wait for a slew of awesome greetings from all over the country and some years, all over the world. That’s right, you do not need to be in the US to participate in the card exchange. Everyone’s welcome (and if we get to two exchanges, I’ll split up the non-US addresses evenly between the two).

Yay! Holiday Card Exchange!

Also, there’s this:

Details here.

(PS. Squee.)

Filed in Bloggy Goodness | Tagged holiday card exchange, holidays | Comments Off

Like Supergirl, only not as cool

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

This weekend, Esteban and I did a lot of nauseating couple-y things like going out for dinner (actually, I just drank Cape Cods and kept him company. I’m having one of those weird Not Hungry phases, which is pissing me off because eating is fun). On Saturday, we both slept in, because it was raining and also it’s lovely to sleep in when it’s cold and the pitter patter of little (mouse feet) raindrops soothes your brow to sleep. I only roused myself from bed for the lure of the farmer’s market. It was the final one of the season, which sucks, because it’s so arbitary and deigned by the city council and not the growing season. There’s still several weeks left of the harvest, lots of pumpkins and apples still in the fields, and yet, bah, November 1 is the strike of midnight for farmer’s, per some guy in a suit. Whatevs.

So, despite the rain and the lateness, Esteban and I hit Starbucks for some coffee and then he pulled up near my favorite apple vendor so that I could hop out and get my final Golden Supreme apple fix of the season, with two bags for four bucks total. I also snagged a ginormous acorn squash for a buck, and managed to only get a little soggy in the process. Then Esteban went to Scotty Boom Boom’s to do homebrewing and I went to the butcher, where the baby back ribs looked too beautiful to leave in the case, studded with really generous strips of the loin. Back home, I concocted a dry rub and applied it, then threw the racks in the fridge to do their thing, then after an hour, into a slow oven. Then I spent the rest of the day trying to make headway on the (fucking) laundry and also my backlog of writing for school.

The ribs braised in the oven for practically forever. I also threw the squash into the oven at one point, whole and uncut, then took it out midway, sliced and scooped out the seeds, then filled the cavities with brown sugar, butter, salt, pepper and some pumpkin pie spice that I had found while digging through our spices (which totally need to be organized. I found duplicates of a lot of things, and yet, we had no roasted garlic powder. A crime.) then, while waiting for the ribs to finish their final broiling, I peeled 8 apples for, well, something. With the new dozen apples, I had to do something with the leftovers from my stash that were getting waxy, but last weekend, I cobbled together a crisp recipe (arrrgh, I so didn’t mean that pun) and Esteban had decided that he preferred applesauce. I threw it all into a saucepan along with some rum and it ended up being the best applesauce I’ve ever made in my life, hands down. I still think it would have also made a fantastic crisp, though. Ah well. The world will never know. The ribs and squash were incredible too, and it was the kind of meal that, in retrospect, is like the planets aligning and a happy chance that each component managed to be the ideal representation of my culinary efforts (I don’t want to use the words ‘ability’ or ‘talent’ because I really think I have neither, just a sense of adventure) and I sort of wish I knew when something like that was about to happen, because I would have invited someone else over to witness it. Ah well, I guess Esteban’s gratitude is enough.

In other culinary news, about a week ago, I sent away for a test that would tell you if you were a supertaster. I’ve always been curious about Esteban, because of his utter abhorrence of all things vegetable (except mushrooms, potatoes and the occasional canned green bean), so it was worth $7 with shipping for two tests.

I received it on Saturday and I figured I’d use the other test myself. The test was simply a little litmus-sized piece of paper that you put in your mouth and started chewing for ten seconds. The paper was supposedly coated with a special chemical that to supertasters, is extremely bitter. Normal tasters would taste a mildly bitter or bland taste, while ‘non-tasters’ would taste nothing or paper. I popped it into my mouth and waited, fully expecting it to be papery or maybe the taste of unsalted, unbuttered mashed potatoes. What followed was the most horrible acrid taste in my life! I think it was in my mouth for a total of four seconds, and that’s only because it took two seconds to cross the kitchen to reach the wastebasket. I then had to rinse out my mouth with water four times, then pop a piece of chocolate to get rid of the taste. I decided that it had to be a joke, this $7 test, because there’s no WAY that some people couldn’t taste that horrible bitter crap. However, when Esteban took the test, he chewed away, eyeing me like I was playing a joke on him. Only after about ten seconds did he start to distinguish a slight bitter taste.

So the mystery of why I dislike artichokes, olives, beer, coffee, some wine, brussels sprouts, dark chocolate, and a million other strong tastes has been solved. Actually, it wasn’t really a mystery, but will probably be yet another thing to feed my ego.

Like I needed another thing.

Filed in Diaryland | | Comments Off

Em Oh You Es Ee

Sunday, October 28, 2007

It is definitely pre-Winter here in Wisconsin, which is to say that there’s no doubt about the fact that it’s late autumn. The leaves are peaking or, in some cases, more bare than there. I keep spotting turkeys and deer by the dozens, and in one rather traumatic moment on the highway today, one hanging out of the back of someone’s truck. Ah Wisconsin, for all of your charm and beauty, you still manage to fuck it up.

Wisconsin’s wildlife really has been chafing my ass this month, actually. You see, a month ago, I came back from one very long and exhausting business trip, stripped my stifling manmade fibers along my zombie-esque lurch into the bedroom, flipped on the light and immediately spotted IT amongst the bedroom detritus of random socks, camis and whatnot on the floor.

IT being a dead mouse, placed ever so specifically at the foot of our bed.

I screamed for Esteban and then could say no more than “Go IN THERE! GO! LOOK! SEEEEEEE!” and then actually started hyperventilating in the dining room while he did a comedic “What? Where? What? Weet, I don’t see—oh, oh dear. Oh my. Wow. Uh…. Yeah. Shit.” And then made the bad thing go away. He then managed to tarnish his own shining armor by returning back to the house to tell me that it hadn’t had a head.

Fucking hell.

We located a hole in the wall between the garage and the kitchen. A smallish hole, definitely gnawed, definitely mouse-ish, and then squirted some stuff into it, thus, sealing it. I tried to put it out of my mind, and then the Sunday night after everyone was here looking at the pre-autumn leaves (sorry, guys, a little too early I guess), I was working in my office by the sole light of my pc monitor and then Tilly walked in and made the very specific, very creepy meow that in Catish translates to “I have something for you!”. I looked down and saw a shadow of something in her mouth, leapt up and flipped on the overhead light. She dropped it on the rug at my feet, which is, you have to admit, very sweet, much like the endearing moments a girl has with her stalker. Since Esteban was at his Dorkathalon, I couldn’t take the pansy way out, so I hurdled over the cat, grabbed a Glad plasticware bowl (one use that Glad undoubtedly never wants to publicize) and used the lid to scoop the creature into the bowl.

Which revived it.

This is when I had a stroke and died.

Except that I didn’t. Normally, I would have jumped into my car, driven the animal to the Wildlife Sanctuary about two miles away, where there is a ton of ground fodder like the dried corn for the sanctuary’s deer, but in the snack-sized plastic container, I doubted the animal would be able to deal with the lack of air and also, I was in my pajamas. So I went to the front door and let it go under the porch, harboring the faith that it was a leftover mouse from before the seal had been in place and therefore would not find its way back into the house.

When I relayed the event to Esteban, he chastised me for the fact that the mouse would undoubtedly get back in, using its finely tuned rodent memory and I should have gotten in the car, in my pink boxer shorts and taken the mouse to the Mice Who Have Visited Casa Bix Retirement Community. My argument was that if there was still a hole to be accessed, then we have more problems than a single vermin with a very good sense of direction, because it’s not like there was only one mouse left on the planet. In fact, there were probably 100 mice within as many yards distance of our house. If there was a way to get in, then Esteban’s tenuous logic wasn’t going to keep them out.

Enough days passed with no further gifts from our own little Weapon of Mouse Destruction that I started believing that maybe The Mouse That Lived really was just a straggler from after the hole filling. And then.

AND THEN.

On Thursday evening, I was traipsing betwixt my office, Esteban’s office, the bathroom and the kitchen, getting ready for bed, finishing a few odds and ends, doing my evening ablutions, and then I bumped into Tilly in the hall, nosing over a supine body.

I am really getting sick of white mouse underbellies.

Esteban was in the middle of a WoW raid and when I did my standard “Esteban! Come here! Look!” he shouted back “I’m busy!” and I shouted back “I KNOW. But you need to come out here RIGHT NOW.” Because I am a major fucking wiener and damn it, killing a virtual troll or Jabberwocky or whatever is NOT more important than coming to your wife’s rescue. And also, I am fully aware of what a sham it is that I consider myself a feminist but look, do not judge me, a dead (or possibly only mostly dead) mouse on the floor is like the battlefield in the war between the sexes and there are no fucking atheists in fox holes, ok?

This one really was dead, although probably died from shock, as La Femme Attilla did not actually pierce its little body nor inflict a crunching blow upon its head. But what we have here is a fucking situation, people. A situation of mouse proportions.

You should probably know that right now I am writing this from a hotel. I am on a business trip and will never again complain about scratchy underthreaded hotel sheets again.

Ok, I don’t believe me either. But still.

Filed in Casa Bix | Tagged autumn, cats, mouse | Comments Off

for want of a good pair of jeans

Thursday, October 25, 2007

One of my first memories of shopping for clothing that didn’t involve Brownie uniforms is the summer I turned 11. I had spent most of the summer in a swimming suit but when it came time to put on real clothes for school, it was pretty obvious that I was never going to get that Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret moment of my first training bra. Instead I transitioned from commando to a 34B Playtex Cross-Your-Heart overnight. Three hooks, that sucker had. How do you migrate from nothing to strapping on something with three fucking hooks overnight? There’s no learning curve there. It’s just a wall. Therefore, you employ the hook and spin maneuver and hold on tight. I still do it that way (destroying the elastic way before its time).

That summer was momentous for reasons other than the new titties. You see, I was moving to another school, exchanging my sheltered little parochial life (paid for by my grandparents who were very influential in their church and I have always suspected that my tuition was all part of a much more grand political scheme by my great grandfather in some kind of Midwestern Lutheran quasi soap opera) for the very frightening concept of a public school, which I only had seen depicted on ABC After School Specials. I was terrified that I would be involved in fights every single day in the school yard, as that is what happened in the Adam Baldwin classic My Bodyguard (Chris Makepeace, Schmakepeace).

When the first day of school came, I was terrified. I figured that everyone would be dressing nicer, so I picked a pair of cords (also verboten in my private school) and a button-down shirt I thought was pretty casual. It was plaid and had a silver thread running through the material.

What I didn’t know is that one didn’t wear button-down anything to public school. You wore a T-shirt or if you were preppy, a polo. There hadn’t been polo shirts at Shopko on sale (which is the only thing I could buy), and in my house, T-shirts were what you changed into after school so you didn’t get marker on the cuff of your blouse. What is more, people were wearing jeans. The idea of wearing such casual garb to school was strange and exotic! Jeans! My babysitters wore them every day and they were older, wiser and could turn their hair into feathered creations that I admired greatly. I spent the rest of the day certain that I would get into a fight over wearing cords, or that someone would want to steal my plaid shirt with the Christmas tinsel in it. They did not.

My grandmother took me to Shopko, under agreement that we would buy jeans and decent T-shirts that would be actually worn to school, no kidding, but in Women’s World, there was nothing that looked like the stuff the sixth graders were wearing. The T-shirts in the Stout Shops all had sayings on them that were clearly intended for grown up ladies, not kids. I remember one said, “Behind every good doctor is a great nurse.” I was not a nurse! I had no opinions about nurses, nor the whole emotional judgment that those glory-hogging doctors were stealing all of the medical spotlight.

Did it have to be so hard to find a pair of fat girl jeans back then? The only women who were my size apparently had lives which required them to wear stretchy polyester pants 24/7. My aunt took me to the place where she bought jeans for her boxy frame. It was the men’s department. I put on cobalt blue Levi’s that had numbers plastered on the back tab and I looked down to see the crotch had enough room to house an actual penis. This is the moment that kicked my complete and utter adolescent shame into overdrive. Thank goodness I did not have access to an evil genie who would grant my wishes, because I might actually have died as an 11-year-old, standing behind a curtain at Casual Corner, wearing a shirt reminding the world to thank nurses.

As I got taller and boobier and curvier and even more boobier, the constant need for clothing chapped my ass all the time. I never had enough jeans. I would blow out a pair climbing a tree, riding a horse or in one rather cataclysmic moment, sliding down a sharply pitched roof and wearing through the seat of my pants on the asphalt shingles. Jeans were never abundant in my drawers, because my parents were broke and a single pair of plus-size jeans cost about as much as three pairs of on sale normal-size jeans. During the pin-striped jeans craze of 1983, I had but two pairs, both of which had very distinct markings, so I had to swap them out every day and plot which shirts I could wear on which day (the plaids didn’t go with stripes, oh god, the ’80s were a tough time for fashion) and plus, I couldn’t wear any of the button down shirts on gym day because it slowed down my lightning fast changing act, lest the rest of the locker room get to gawk at my industrial strength bra, because gawk, they would. Hooo boy, they would. And woe would befall if something should happen to offset the rotation of those precious pants.

One of the most traumatic days of 9th grade was when I got dressed one morning for school and the zipper on my jeans broke. The only other pair was soaking wet in the washing machine, and my hippy parents only connected the dryer when the temperature got below freezing outside, figuring that nature could handle all of our laundry drying needs. I had nothing else to wear and stayed home sick that day, horrified that anyone would find out and think that I was so fat that I broke out of my pants, when in reality, I was so fat that my pants were like diamonds, difficult to find and involved a lot of pain and anguish from a child. And they did find out. Of course they did.

Now I still have problems with finding adequate anything (although quite frankly, my standards have improved along with my aesthetic) but I find myself hoarding clothes. I will buy two or three of the same shirt in different colors. I own seven pairs of the exact same size and brand of flat front black trouser. Seven pairs. That’s more than a week’s worth of the exact same look! We will not even begin to discuss the number of plain solid-colored T-shirts folded on my closet shelf (Okay, after doing my seasonal wardrobe transition a few weeks ago and culling out the stained or tattered stuff, I counted. There’s 67 short-sleeved T-shirts in either crew or V-neck. I must really love you to tell you that.) Y’all, I have a problem, is what I’m saying.

Esteban made a bet with me a few weeks ago. He bet me that I could not go until the end of the year without buying any clothes, shoes or purses. Harumph, I’ll take that bet, mister. Except that when I have a spare moment during a conference call, I’ll find myself surfing through Zappos and Lane Bryant’s websites. When I blew through Target over the weekend to buy laundry detergent (understandably, the bulk of the laundry in our house is monumental, but on the plus side, I can wait a very long time before I run out of, well, anything), I found myself automatically drifting over to their truly dismal little plus size section stuffed behind the Liz Lange maternity wear (Note to Target: pregnant women need maternity clothes for, what, six months, tops? But win over that plus-size market and you’re going to have a lot of lifelong customers. Simple math, people). What is going on here?

Maybe Esteban is right? Or maybe I was scarred too early by dressing like a 40-year-old woman named Arlene. Shortly after the bet, three of my jeans got either ripped, snagged or destroyed by a possessed washing machine. My parochial background is such that I still never really automatically throw on a pair of jeans because they don’t really feel all that natural to me, and truthfully, when I get home from work, I ditch the work garb and get comfy in yoga pants, not denim. The bet, however, couldn’t have happened at a worse time, as I am down to two pairs of jeans that fit me right now (I told you about the shameful T-shirt count, so I will not tell you how many pairs of smaller sized jeans are sitting in storage) and one pair are Mom Jeans that didn’t look as Mom-ish when I bought them online.

Esteban gave me a temporary dispensation to replace existing stock, but I am going to tough it out, but damn it, January 1st can’t come soon enough.

Filed in Being a Girl Is Hard, Bloggy Goodness, Fashion | Tagged clothing, Fashion, fat acceptance, jeans, plus-size, sizism | Comments (1)

the magic bullet of zzzzzzzz

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Think about how much sleep you got last night. Was it in the 5-hour range?

Studies are finding that sleep (or lack thereof) is directly linked to the body’s inability to register a feeling of fullness as well as a direct link to insulin resistance. In one study, people who slept less than 7 hours a night were more likely to be obese than people who knocked back a solid 7 or more hours of pillow time.

I’ve always been a light sleeper, and unfortunately, for the last 16 years, I’ve been sleeping next to a human metronome. If he’s not rustling his feet in the blankets, he’s flipping to his left side, then on his back, then on his right side, then on his back, left side, pillow thrust, rustle rustle, back, right side, lather rinse repeat the cat wants attention oh my god please put a bullet in my head.

Ahem.

Then one day, my dentist commented for the umpteenth time about my smaller than normal mouth and I realized that it wasn’t a weird pick-up line, but in fact that he was suggesting I see a sleep disorder specialist. After two nights in a sleep lab, I was diagnosed with several sleep disorders. One of these is obstructive sleep apnea, which is pretty common for folks who are overweight and can be caused by a number of reasons; for instance, my weirdly tiny mouth. With sleep apnea, most of the time you stop breathing shortly after getting into those good quality levels of sleep (i.e. where the dreams live), so you wake up enough to start breathing again and then start all over again. It’s as satisfying as trying to eat Thanksgiving dinner through a straw.

At night, I now sleep hooked up to a breathing mask that keeps air flowing down my freakish fairy-sized gullet. I’m sorry, I keep reiterating this, but it’s the first time in my life that any problem has been blamed for my being too small. I even wear a size small sleep mask, which they normally only give to adolescents. Size small! Suck that, Posh Spice!

The interesting correlation to this is that I have so much more energy now. I actually find myself daydreaming about running, about lifting heavy things, about dancing for hours upon hours. After getting sleep that is a normal quality, I am amazed by how fucking tired I must have been before. What is more, I’ve noticed that I’m eating less and not craving sweets as much. Yesterday, I had a burrito for lunch and at 8:30 p.m., it occurred to me that not only had I skipped dinner but I really still wasn’t hungry. I am a little nervous about making the mental leap to miracle diet but seriously, is this why I have a fat ass? Because I spent the last 30 years of my life not getting enough of the right kind of sleep?

Most of what is understood about the human need for sleep has been discovered in the last 30 years, so imagine what else might be unlocked in the future? So much is riding on those hours when you’re horizontal, and yet, tell me again how many hours of sleep you got last night?

So this is my suggestion: tuck it in early tonight. The hours invested in getting the appropriate amount of sleep come back to you tenfold in levels of energy, mental sharpness and just general good mood. I can’t tell you how much more productive I am through the day now that I’m no longer fighting through the four hours in the afternoon when all I can think about is how much I would rather rest my head on my keyboard and take a nap. Slap a fucking S on my chest, because with my sleep snorkle, I feel like I could leap buildings with a single bound.

Filed in Bloggy Goodness | Tagged health, obstructive sleep apnea, sleep, sleep apnea | Comments Off

There was a bunch of text, but Diaryland ate it

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Filed in Diaryland | | Comments Off

A very short video entry

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Hey, I made a cameo on Elastic Waist’s new show!

What you don’t know is that we taped that this morning at about 6:50 am my time, as I was sitting in my car in the parking lot of Starbucks, trying desperately to be chipper after pounding a Venti mocha and listening to Britney’s “Gimme More” at top volume. It was still dark outside and roughly 40 degrees. You should also understand that I didn’t get home from school until 11:30 pm last night and thus, didn’t get to sleep until about 1 am, which was unbelievably close to my alarm going off at 5:00 am. So yeah, the Wisconsin accent is thick and the lisp, seriously y’all, I know that Jen Wade and the 3 Fast podcast commenters say that I don’t have one, but I so totally have a lisp.

That’s my time, I’m out of here.

Filed in Diaryland | | Comments Off

A Not Picture Entry. No shit.

Friday, October 12, 2007

Last weekend, I entertained M. Giant and his absolutely delightful wife Trash. They graciously allowed me to invite myself to dinner and then we went to the Bad Bar, which was strangely not very crowded, yet was playing the music at 8 million decibels. At one point, I sent a text message to the owner, asking him to turn the shit down, but apparently since he was on Letterman the week before, he’s now too good for my shit.

It’s rummage sale season here in Wisconsin, everyone clearing out the shit in their houses to make room for new shit. I’m trying so desperately to divest myself of clutter and yet– oh the allure of old tymey crap. There was recently a church tag sale, my favorite one, the one where I scored the antique enamelware-topped table that lives in my kitchen (for the princely sum of $40). This time, it wasn’t quite as good, but I did find a 50’s tiered serving tray in chrome with the atomic zig flare thing on the top, clearly unused and was probably found sitting inside someone’s dead aunt’s china cabinet and then thrown in the pile for the church. I also snagged 3 very old Nancy Drew mysteries (apparently I have started a collection, as I always buy them whenever I spot them) and a church cookbook from 1940. All of this for the princely sum of $2 total.

I know that I hate Wisconsin but I also love it when I can take advantage of the cluelessness. And I am all about the princely sum.

The Farmer’s Market season is waning, only a few weekends left, and they just started with the Golden Supreme apples that I’ve been waiting patiently to become available. They are totally my favorite apple and I only discovered them last season. I have been eating two a day, every day. I slurp them and dribble juice onto my shirt and desk, and in general, am the epitome of a very professional person.

Oh! Speaking of that! With my new position, comes a change in location, to be closer to the three other Whosits Whatsits in my company. So I will be eschewing my semi-public cubicle for a quad office in the back and also? I shall be getting a window. A WINDOW! When it starts to snow, it will no longer be a rumor, I will be able to simply turn my head and look into…well, into the chain link fence that surrounds the car lot next door to my office building. But still, windows! I won’t have to stand up and then walk twenty three steps to see the sky, it will be right there for the looking! I am stoked. Sadly, I’ll be closer to the sound of Annoying Coworker’s voice. She’s given up on me, I think. I hope.

More non sequitur: Last Saturday, we checked out a little cafe I read about on Chowhound, and that’s the only reason I knew it existed. Mario, the owner and chef of Caffe Mario (natch), came out and talked to us several times, as we were his first diners of the evening. Esteban got the night’s special, lamb and sauteed artichoke hearts that were incredible while my gemelli with four cheeses was perfection. Plus, he makes his own bread and we got there early enough that it was almost too hot to cut. Fantastic stuff. When we were leaving, he came rushing out of the kitchen to again clasp our hands and thank us for dining with him. Anyway, total local gem and as such, it will probably be out of business in five months and I will cry. Damn, I wonder if I can convince Esteban to go there tomorrow, even though it’s his birthday and he’s supposed to pick? Probably not, as Italian isn’t his favorite cuisine.

In remodeling news, the dining room now is painted red and has new cream colored berber carpeting. The crown molding and base trim is painted glossy white and on sawhorses in the garage, waiting for someone to put it all up. And expectedly, Tilly has now claimed the room as her very own room. She sleeps in a square of sunlight on the floor, and as the sun moves, so does she, so that by the mid-afternoon, she is almost in my office. And when she is bored, she goes into the empty room and crafts feline songs of love and heroism to the red walls. I believe she finds them inspiring to her burgeoning indie rock star status.

Clearly, I need to figure out what kind of furniture to put in there, to muffle some of the echoing, but my pickiness and OCD is again coming out. I shouldn’t complain because I really love how my office turned out. It feels entirely like me, on all levels, and I want the same feeling (only mixed with Esteban) in the den nee dining room. Plus, once we have seating in there, we can set it up with the electronics. It’s such a cozy and dark room that I predict we will watch a lot of movies in there. The requirements for the furniture, however, are that it be smallish enough to fit in the corners where we want seating but large enough that it doesn’t feel small. I’m thinking love seat and a chair, but we’re having a hard time finding anything we both like. But this has become a requirement, as the yodeling right outside our bedroom door at 5:30 AM? Not funny, Tilly. And also, fuck you.

School started last month and this semester I am taking a writing workshop. I just couldn’t handle the idea of taking another lit class (I only need one more lit requirement and then I have completed the credit requirements for my Masters) after the disaster of last semester’s Scifi class and also, my creative thesis needs some plumping. I just don’t feel as though I have a strong enough 100 pages of fiction, thus the workshop. Already, it’s been extremely productive, as I’ve workshopped one story so far and I think it might be the best one I’ve ever written. Also, my professor is ever so dreamy. And quite honestly, the picture doesn’t do him justice. Given my propensity to develop slight crushes on my professors every semester, when he walked into the first class, I just thought to myself “Oh COME ON you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” The deck is stacked! It’s like John Irving and a Pretty In Pink era Andrew McCarthy had a child and gave him beautiful piercing blue eyes and a propensity to Hugh Laurie-esque sarcasm. What can I do other than give in? Especially when he says nice things about my story. Yes, flattery does get you everywhere with me. Also, I feel like maybe I’m a little part of the program now, which is very cool, but weird, considering that I’m almost finished with my Masters.

Although I do always find it funny, the social dynamics among writers. Writers are people, first and foremost, in that they judge you on your looks first, and I tend to be a little shy in groups and withdraw because I’m so freaking nervous. So I assume that they just put me into the slot with other non-traditional fat women who want to become romance novelists. And then my story gets workshopped and there’s a palpable social shift. Suddenly, people listen to and laugh at my jokes. Suddenly, there is chatting before and after class. Suddenly, I’m in the In Crowd. I’m not saying that it’s because I’m good (although let’s face it, I have an ego the size of Mount Rushmore sometimes) but rather that it’s so freaking bizarre. Writers really are a pack of dogs sometimes. I wonder if it’s that way in other professions or arts? It must be.

In other vague writing news, I officially have the best freelancing gig in all the land. Every week, I have new beauty products arriving at my house and I open the box and giggle. My office has turned into a Sephora. BEST GIG EVER.

Did I mention that I get to gaze at an adorable professor once a week, too? Yeah. Sometimes I have a pretty awesome life.

The best things on the internet this week involve a bird and a Viking dancing. Not with each other. A shame.

Filed in Bloggy Goodness, Casa Bix | Tagged work | Comments Off

Like Supergirl, only not as cool

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

This weekend, Esteban and I did a lot of nauseating couple-y things like going out for dinner (actually, I just drank Cape Cods and kept him company. I’m having one of those weird Not Hungry phases, which is pissing me off because eating is fun). On Saturday, we both slept in, because it was raining and also it’s lovely to sleep in when it’s cold and the pitter patter of little (mouse feet) raindrops soothes your brow to sleep. I only roused myself from bed for the lure of the farmer’s market. It was the final one of the season, which sucks, because it’s so arbitrary and deigned by the city council and not the growing season. There’s still several weeks left of the harvest, lots of pumpkins and apples still in the fields, and yet, bah, November 1 is the strike of midnight for farmer’s, per some guy in a suit. Whatevs.

The ribs braised in the oven for practically forever. I also threw the squash into the oven at one point, whole and uncut, then took it out midway, sliced and scooped out the seeds, then filled the cavities with brown sugar, butter, salt, pepper and some pumpkin pie spice that I had found while digging through our spices (which totally need to be organized. I found duplicates of a lot of things, and yet, we had no roasted garlic powder. A crime.) then, while waiting for the ribs to finish their final broiling, I peeled 8 apples for, well, something. With the new dozen apples, I had to do something with the leftovers from my stash that were getting waxy, but last weekend, I cobbled together a crisp recipe (arrrgh, I so didn’t mean that pun) and Esteban had decided that he preferred applesauce. I threw it all into a saucepan along with some rum and it ended up being the best applesauce I’ve ever made in my life, hands down. I still think it would have also made a fantastic crisp, though. Ah well. The world will never know. The ribs and squash were incredible too, and it was the kind of meal that, in retrospect, is like the planets aligning and a happy chance that each component managed to be the ideal representation of my culinary efforts (I don’t want to use the words “ability” or “talent” because I really think I have neither, just a sense of adventure) and I sort of wish I knew when something like that was about to happen, because I would have invited someone else over to witness it. Ah well, I guess Esteban’s gratitude is enough.

I received it on Saturday and I figured I’d use the other test myself. The test was simply a little litmus-sized piece of paper that you put in your mouth and started chewing for ten seconds. The paper was supposedly coated with a special chemical that to supertasters, is extremely bitter. Normal tasters would taste a mildly bitter or bland taste, while “non-tasters” would taste nothing or paper. I popped it into my mouth and waited, fully expecting it to be papery or maybe the taste of unsalted, unbuttered mashed potatoes. What followed was the most horrible acrid taste in my life! I think it was in my mouth for a total of four seconds, and that’s only because it took two seconds to cross the kitchen to reach the wastebasket. I then had to rinse out my mouth with water four times, then pop a piece of chocolate to get rid of the taste. I decided that it had to be a joke, this $7 test, because there’s no WAY that some people couldn’t taste that horrible bitter crap. However, when Esteban took the test, he chewed away, eyeing me like I was playing a joke on him. Only after about ten seconds did he start to distinguish a slight bitter taste.

Like I needed another thing.

Filed in Bloggy Goodness, Casa Bix | Tagged autumn, cooking, food | Comments Off

I don’t actually suck.

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Jenine has very nicely asked me to post something else here other than the last entry, because she reminds me that I do not in fact suck (Oh, but Jenine, sometimes I do. I’m ok with that, though. I’ve come to peace with the suck that is occasionally me.) and she has sent me a picture to put up in its place. Jenine, this is for you….