a superficial dickwad. and 5 favorite comfort foods.

the book for today was her fork in the road -- women celebrate food and travel. a very good book, though i was disappointed to see that the ruth reichl essay was an excerpt from her book tender at the bone, which i've already read. i've also clammered through 63 pages of notes from a small island by bill bryson, which is very amusing. note the british dictionary at the end. also read: 20-odd pages of naked by david sedaris at b&n. must start scouting more local used bookstores -- it's possible i may go broke before christmas.

after starting notes, though, it seems to me i need a good cockney slang dictionary/history book. did you know bread meaning money is from bread and honey? and raspberry tart = fart, which is why blowing a raspberry is making a stinker-noise. i'm fascinated. plates of meat = feet, shortened then to plates.

also, shirt-lifter is a gay male.

we were going to see santa v. the snowman and vikings at the imax dome but got caught up in the hoopla of shopping at citrus park town center. stupid mall. christen made the enlightened reflection that we see the same damn stuff everytime we go, but we still go. a trip to maida's bookstore beforehand made the trip bearable. i bought 3 books for myself and 4 for ian for christmas -- a couple clive barker (the thief of always, which was a fabulous book for any age) and a couple ray bradbury. after the mall we spent nearly two hours trying to get christen's mop cut (his head's been a bit more bushy than usual) by his barber while ducking the old dude's insistence that he cut christen's hair. the last time that happened it wasn't short enough and was way crooked. no thank you, we'll just wait in line for the good barber.

in light of my fascination with food, i've decided to do a number of lists having to do with those fabulous morself. todays? 5 favorite comfort foods. these are foods that are easy peasy to cook and are nice to make when you're by yourself and don't want to do anything.

1) mac & cheese. i will order m&c absolutely anywhere. mimi's? no good. that little pretentious cafe in old hyde park? marvelous. i make it baked and stovetop, but i won't make boxed anymore. when i was young it was velveeta m&c all the way. those kraft powdered things were fine as long as you didn't think of it as cheese; it was a completely different food. now my usual mac and cheese consists of noodles, a little bit of milk and sliced american cheese. american breaks down so the cheese isn't stringy. my recipe: cook approximately 8 0z. noodles until tender. drain. in same pot lower temp. to med. high, put enough milk in pot to cover bottom of pan. one at a time put about 6 slices of american cheese in pot, using each slice of cheese to stir the mixture. stir cheesiness until well mixed, add noodles and mix. eat until overstuffed.

2) grilled cheese. when i was younger we had a sandwich maker so that we wouldn't burn down the house while making our grilled cheese sandwiches. i bought one when i moved out but it stays permenently in my pantry now (though it does make tasty quick pizza and brownies) and i continue to go with the old standby stovetop version. you know the drill. butter both sides, stick a piece of cheese (or two) in between and grill until right before burnt. some people make it in the toaster oven, but i'm still in awe of mine. it makes toast and cookies?

3) buttered egg noodles. this favorite is due to a memory of mine. see this entry for details. i think you should know how to make it. buy egg noodles (i get those cholesteral-free ones), cook till tender, drain and mix with butter. yum yum.

4) peanut butter and jelly. there's no real consensus. i love smooth peanut butter, christen is a crunchy fan. he loves grape and so do i, though i love rasperry sometimes too. but pb&j is love, man. pure love.

5) cereal. this is a real do-it-yourselfer. apple jacks, corn pops, total raisen bran. it's not the meal that matters, it's whether or not you drink the milk. me? if i'm having another bowl i'll reuse. if it's my last bowl, i drink it.

my top 5 teachers.

1) Ms. Dalton. kindergarten (1985). i went to PHE for kindergarten with the butterfly lady. even now people call her the butterfly lady. every year she collected monarch caterpillers and raised them in her classroom so that the kids could learn the metamorphasis process and how to treat them, what they ate, etc. it was a huge thing. they've done stories on her, they muraled one wall of the school with butterflies and cocoons and forests and everything. she was amazing. plus, i freaked her out twice. once i had a nosebleed that was so bad it wouldn't stop bleeding and she thought i had a clotting problem and the other time i got really allergic to the punk trees on the road (those are the trees that have bark like paper) and my eyes swelled shut and had to go home. ahh, allergies, my friend. sweet blinding allergies.

2) Ms. True. freshman english (1998). i learned to love to write, other than whiny poetry.

3) Mr. Hines. 11th grade english (1996). i copped out of advanced english because they wanted a portfolio and all i wanted to do was play cards in the backroom of the bandroom. so i got stuck with the stupid kids. all the non-advanced english classes weren't stupid, but the people in this class were. and i kept getting cheated off of and had to explain everything to the stupid people around me. but mr. hines never lost his cool and made us watch really great movies, like shawshank redemption and the emerald forest and a midnight clear. as opposed to spanish, where the same stupid people convinced profe that friday didn't have anything objectionable in it.

also, i wore this button on my backpack that had pinocchio on it and it said "would i lie?" and he really liked it.

also, he realized that the rest of the people in the class were stupid and let me get a pass to the bandroom whenever i wanted one.

4) Mr. Blackburn. 6th grade geography (1991). it really isn't mr. blackburn's fault that i'm so terrible at geography. he really tried; i know it. but he is responsible for my impecable sense of direction. his introduction to the cardinal directions was to stand on his desk and scream north! while pointing to the north wall of the room. it's engrained in my head now. north!

5) ms. vaccaro & mrs. sapashe. 2nd grade (1987). since they were both my 2nd grade teachers, i feel justified in giving them a tie. ms. vaccaro taught me to close my s's (not to be confused with esses) in cursive, and mrs. sapashe taught us the value of plastic money when she set up shop in her classroom. plus, i learned how to do my 9x tables on my fingers in her class.

when did nick and jessica become sonny and cher?

funny part in the terminal:

the guys are playing cards and the indian dude brings out the grand prize: cher's panties. and they say "these are cher's panties. there are witnesses." and victor says "does that mean we share them?" and black dude says "not if i win them."

so why do nick and jessica have a christmas variety show if they're broken up (if i can believe the tabloids, and i know i can). and a better question: why am i watch it?

i'm not ... anymore. wow, that was major suckage.

better. i thought dirty dancing was on oxygen, but when i turned it on it was clueless instead.

in the spirit of memoirs and christmas (lists) and moocow's (lists) and high fidelity (lists) i'm going to write some ... lists. i'm going for 25 different lists, but i need ideas. favorites, worst things, funniest somethings, most embarrassing stuff, etc. so comment and tell me what to write about. you were just waiting for someone to invite that, right?

when're we going to jasmine thai?

i love making up contractions.

like "when're we going to jasmine thai?"

and "why've you been out all week?"

it's so fun to watch people try to figure out what you mean.

still giving it out for free.

that was a quick intermission, right?

after my excitement over empire records the other night, i did some amazon.com research and found out that there was indeed a new version that came out on june 4th. (which incidentally was when i was supposed to be born. now isn't that interesting? i made mom miss the fireworks though, cuz she was in labor for 13 hours and they found out i was not a boy like they thought on july 5th.) back from sidebar -- the new version has more than 16 minutes of never-before-seen footage. that doesn't really seem like a lot, but it's more like an extra 5 seconds of dialogue in every single seen. and some things are way different. like when liv tyler takes her clothes off for rex manning, in the original he pulls down his zipper and says "let's rock and roll." in the new version he pulls down his zipper and grabs the bottle of salad dressing and says "i hope you like blue cheese." -- another sidebar --- it wasn't blue cheese, it was ranch.

overall, from what i saw the new scenes don't really do much for the movie but the extra lines are very amusing. i talked to christen about it so much last night that i think he's now getting it for me for christmas.

do you have an appointment?

ahh! i can finally get into my blog. it's been frustrating, to say the very least. let's hope it sticks around long enough for me to rattle off an entry and get back to urbz. i have to figure out what to do next, you know?

went to dinner with brad. oh, how i've missed brad. we talked about books and resignments in the white house and what's going on at the paper (when i left i appointed him copy desk chief, and now he's going to be an associate editor) and all that jazz. he bought a book solely because it was published in 1896. he's so like me sometimes i have to look twice, yo. except for the pot and all that. :D he's just sowing his seeds late.

in the news: ken jennings has finally lost. jepardy will be so much more interesting.

also in the news: they're making a new law & order. wonder if it's as good as the others. i'm addicted to l&o.

adrian called to find out about my bakery. actually, he wanted to know how to order the puerto rican bread that i used to get (phonetically it's pan-so-bau, but i have no idea what it really is) without getting laughed out of the bakery. we'll see how it goes. i need to take a trip down there.

i think after the first of the year christen and i are going to try camping around the keys. i don't want to try the mountains in january, but i'll go closer to the border. maybe i can check out all the hemingway shit. there was a little restaurant in clearwater called the rum cay grill that christen and i used to go to, and we called it the hemingway house. it was very neat. they razed it. we were usually the only ones there, so we would get grouper sandwiches and red beans and rice and play rummy for two hours before i had class. good times.

off to urbz now. and law & order.

the quickie (you know you like them)

I didn’t get up in time to blog as I wanted to this morning. I was going to do it anyhow, but I would have been mad late (I was 10 minutes late to begin with). And then I tried to log on but blogger was down. A sign from the heavens, right? So msword will be my friend now and take notes. Take notes, will you? Anyhow, that’s why I’m actually capitalizing some things. Dern msword.

I had a dream last night that a few of my blog pals had come to florida for Christmas and I bought them scrapbooks. Don’t ask me why. For some of the time we were all camping in the north Carolina forests – but in florida. The funny thing is, I don’t think I saw real people. I think I just saw the words “moocow” and “shipwrecked” floating in the air and knew it was them. Odd … I know I’m odd.