Save the Chocolate

All of a sudden it's HOT here. We go from one extreme to the other. First it was crappy. Then we had some beautiful days this week in the mid-70's. And now it's supposed to be in the 90's for the next few days (and humid!).

When we got home from the farmer's market this morning and the house was already stuffy, I thought "Holy crap! My chocolate!" My glorious stash of chocolate that I collect and that I received for my birthday is on the verge of disaster. I lost my entire chocolate stash last summer when it hit 90 degrees outside, as it only takes a few hours before it's 87 degrees in the house. That's not a healthy environment for chocolate! And putting it in the fridge makes it too cold so it gets weird.

Then my husband had the genius idea that I should put it in the wine cellar (the dark little crawl space under the stairs in which one can find wine, air mattresses, and Christmas decorations). So I sprang into action and cleaned all chocolate out of the cupboards and relocated it to the wine cellar. Disaster averted!

I'm feeling much better about life now. Except I have to clean the bathrooms.

The reading meme

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. I think I can do a little better than that.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.


1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - I tried, but they're SO DULL
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - One of my favorites
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible - Not the whole thing, but I spent my time in Sunday School and Catechism
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - Gawd, what a dullard
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - I only read The Golden Compass
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - I'm not a Dickens fan, though.
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare - Some! Nobody has read all of it. And plays meant to be read anyway! And sonnets are redundant.
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier I always wanted to read this.
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - Believe it or not, I missed this when I changed schools.
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger I have this at home.
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot I don't even know why I want to read this.
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - Steinbeck puts me to sleep!
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen I don't typically read Austen, but I really liked this one. One of her smarter female characters.
36. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
37. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
38. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
39. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
40. Animal Farm - George Orwell - I hated this more than 1984.
41. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown The most brainless book to ever earn eleventy billion dollars.
42. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
43. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
44. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
45. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
46. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
47. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood - It's the only Atwood book I really got into. Excellent on so many levels.
48. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
49. Atonement - Ian McEwan Only about 5 chapters. McEwan stimies you in the details.
50. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
51. Dune - Frank Herbert
52. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
53. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
54. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
55. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
56. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - Why did they make us read so much bloody Dickens in high school?
57. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
59. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
60. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - And so much friggin' Steinbeck!
61. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
62. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
63. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
64. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - I read this in my high school senior French class. What a hoot to read a book in a foreign language and actually understand it!
65. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
66. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
67. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
68. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
69. Moby Dick - Herman Melville - Another high school torture.
70. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - Gah!
71. Dracula - Bram Stoker - Read this in college. I can't remember the name of the class, but we read Dracula, Frankenstein, A Christmas Carol, and the Batman graphic novel. The prof was a bit off, but fun.
72.The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - I loved this around the age of 11 or so.
73. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
74. Ulysses - James Joyce
75. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
76. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
77. Germinal - Emile Zola
78. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
79. Possession - AS Byatt
80. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens The only Dickens I can stomach.
81. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
82. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
84. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
85. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
86. Charlotte's Web - EB White I remember crying so hard at the end of this when I was a kid. And I hate spiders!
87. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
88. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
89. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
90. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
91. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery Le Petit Prince en francais! I didn't like it, though.
92. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
93. Watership Down - Richard Adams This was as torturous as Animal Farm. I had to read both in 8th grade, and hated them!
94. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
95. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
96. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
97. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - I loved this SO MUCH as a kid. I read it over and over and over. And the sequel, too. Charlie and the Glass Elevator or something? Such a wonderful story about good things happening to a good kid and all the brats getting what they deserved. I read it every time I felt picked on.
98. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo Snoozerville


No idea what happened to 99 & 100!

Can you pick the Monday?

Here’s a game we’re going to play. I’m going to describe three separate days of my life, and you see if you can pick out the Monday! Fun, eh?

Okay, here we go!

One Day of My Life:

Copious amounts of the best kind of food – meaning, snacks! Cheese, salami, salads, chocolate. Oh, and mimosas. Heavy on the mimosa and the chocolate.


Another Day of My Life:

Making pretty in the yard. Heliotropes and coleus…dahlias and phlox…. Oh, and ice cream. Laying in the back yard reading.


And the Third Day of My Life:

Waking up at 5:30 am. Confined indoors for 8.5 hours. Staying up too late watching Oprah just because Steve Carrell was on, and I needed a laugh. Cleaning toilets.


Can you pick the Monday? Can you? Wow, your powers of deduction are ASTOUNDING!

In other news, my sister is a genius, and her post about sucking at stuff is a must-read:
http://cursinginheels.blogspot.com/2008/06/letting-yourself-suck.html

important service

I just wanted to compile all the important work that a friend and I did yesterday. It all started with an email from her....


Tag, you're it



To which I cleverly responded:

Hee!!



Her:
The hockey season is over, what's a guy to do...




Me:
There's always tennis!




Her:
Or, should the weather be fine, a swim?




Me:
Ah yes, swimming! But don't forget to bring a change of clothes for when it's time to get back to business.


I want extra credit for refraining from sending buff Daniel in the ocean while you're at work.



Her:
Yes, tho' (there's a rumour going around that) it's almost summer, so no one will mind if you want to undo a couple of buttons and let your hair down. ;-)




Me:
Well heck, if it's summer, that means it's time for frolicking in the great outdoors!





Her:
...and soaking up some rays...





Me:
Go for a spin with the top down!





Her:
Enjoy an evening out with a friend.


There are, obviously, many fabulous pics of Gerry out there but this one made me laugh. Plus, this means Gerry is taller than me, so I'm happy. ;-)


Me:
And since we're among friends, you can just kick back and relax.





Her:
...and let it all hang out...


(LOL, I'm so sorry, but I couldn't resist!)



Me:
But be careful! Idleness can lead to a life of crime!





Her:
So consider the consequences of your actions. Behave accordingly--and look damn fine doing it.





Me:
Because even in the midst of peril, it's important to accessorize.






Her:
But, remember, when working with accessories one should rigorously apply a liberal dose of caution and good taste. As Coco Chanel famously said, "A woman should always take one item off before leaving the house"--an adage that is doubly true for men.





L!O!L!

in memoriam

After seeing Singing in the Rain, I wanted to be Cyd Charisse when I grew up. She was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen (and, really, still is).

order your t-shirts now

I’m stealing from myself, so that doesn’t count as plagiarism, right?

There are many campaigns going on in the world. Save the Earth (because it’s the only planet with chocolate). End This War. Obama ’08. Race for the Cure. The One Campaign. Fund Our Schools. French Cuisine Kills Bunnies.

But it seems to me that the world is missing a very important activist cause right now. That would be the Undoing Seriously Unenlightened Coffee Klutzes campaign. U-SUCK for short.

Okay, so maybe I need to work on the name a little bit, but the purpose of U-SUCK would be to put an end to the people in line at Starbucks who order a venti six shot banana meringue mocha 3/4 full with half-whip, half-yak foam.

Over. Done with.

Granted, it’s Starbucks’ fault for catering to this milkshake population to begin with, but I can’t stand in another line for eleventy billion years while the moron in front of me has to read her drink order off a parchment scroll so she can actually remember how stupid her order is, let alone the poor barista trying to write 6x M BaM ¾ ½ wh + ½ yf on the paper cup.

The 1st stage of my campaign would involve simple shoving those people out of line. If they try to get back in line, we haul them off to a coffee reprogramming center in Guatamala.

The 2nd stage of my campaign would be directed at the person who gets in line at 7 am with a drink list for her entire office because she thinks it’ll make her popular to bring all 458 of her co-workers coffee (who all happen to drink venti breve macchiatos with extra whip). She then must proceed to tell the barista fascinating details about each of those co-workers while the overtaxed barista is trying to make 458 venti breve macchiatos.

The solution for this would be a swift kick to the back of her knees, followed by intensive psychiatric care until she understands that holding up the line in Starbucks at 7 am for her 458 ungrateful coworkers will not make her more valued or more loved. It just makes her a sucker who annoys the crap out of everybody else in line at Starbucks.

I know this may sound somewhat violent and snobby, but I believe it’s really for everyone’s good. You won’t find me sniffing and swishing coffee and remarking on the undernotes like a seasoned sommelier. (Actually, I wouldn’t do that with wine either. Spit out wine? Are you CRAZY?) But this is simply a practical matter and will improve everyone’s standing in the world. Any remaining persons who desired a caffeinated milkshake would then be forced to go to Dunkin Donuts, and my mornings would be much happier. A nice by-product of this would be that Starbucks would eventually get rid of the caffeinated milkshake beverages (well, except for the coffee frappuccino; I’m not a Puritan, people!). We could then return the good ol’ days of streamlined coffee ordering where the only decision was between a latte and a cappuccino.

Another excellent by-product of this campaign would be that McDonald’s would have to stop running their inane ads that imply that going to Starbucks is way too posh for the general public, so we should go to McD’s and order a “latte” made from powdered coffee and powdered milk in a 7-11 machine. Please. Any troglodyte can (and does!) hang out at Starbucks. And Sanka isn’t espresso. Ever.

All I need now are some U-SUCK wrist bands, and I’ll be in business.

ma vie en rose

My car is dead. As in D – E – A – D. As in had to be towed to the dealer dead. As in there shouldn’t be a damn thing wrong with it because it’s only four years old, and I drove it all day yesterday without incident, but apparently it has PMS, so it refused to start and wouldn’t even go into gear to move it out of the garage kind of dead.

And this, my friends (my vast readership), is because my life is awesome.

But I am wearing new shoes, and it’s above 70 degrees for the first time in an era, so yay me.

You know what would be even more awesome is if they can’t fix my car today, and I have to ride into work with my husband tomorrow morning. My husband who leaves for work at SIX FREAKING A.M.

BlargaBlargaBlarga

And I forgot my iPod at home. I was rushing so much once the tow truck left in order to get my silly arse together before a friend came to pick me up for work that I forgot the iPod. How am I supposed to get through the workday without my tunes, yo!

So I’m streaming KCRW. They’re super cool when one lacks an iPod.

Oh Sweet Jesus, my car will be ready this afternoon. I’m sure this is a greater relief to my husband than to me. He knows how incredibly well I function in the morning (something on par with a Kraken), and I’m sure he was really looking forward to commuting with me.

So there goes $290 to the Nissan dealer. That’s an awfully expensive car wash.

Viva Las Vegas, baby!!

My sister (aka Cursing in Heels) and I are going to Vegas, baby! I can't even begin to describe how fabulously excited I am about this.

True, we don't go until the end of September, but so what! Bellagio awaits. I know many people think Vegas is incredibly cheeseball. But those people simply have never stayed at Bellagio.

When you can't afford to fly to and/or stay at a true luxury resort beyond the continental U.S., you go to Bellagio (if you're smart). Plus, I scored us a free night at the Westin to start the trip so we don't have to pay crazy-ass Saturday night rates! And I even figured out how to find the cheaper Bellagio rates. They hide them, silly bastages. But I know their tricks.

Yes, that would be me who rocks.

And combined with my favorite cheap-eats locales, we'll be set! We can be posh without spending a lot of dosh. And, most importantly, lounge in the best pool area evah whilst reading trashing magazines, gossiping, and refusing to do anything remotely productive.

Sweet! I can feel the sun already (well, sort of...it may take a while for my frozen, vampiric skin to remember what that big ball of fire in the sky actually is)

Plus, this meets one item on my Celebrate the Last Year of My Thirties list. Vacation! (Okay, so that's always on my annual agenda, but I think I should do something extra-special in recognition of the last year of my 30's. Like go into Christian Louboutin in Vegas and . . . well, all I can actually do is try something on, but that's sporting.)

save me

Today's headline in the Seattle Times:

Seattle Weather: Colder than Siberia!

And to depress us even more, they showed a map with temps from Siberia, Alaska, and Seattle. Thanks, dudes. That rocks.

So my movie marathonage continues in order to keep myself distracted from eating everything in the house and/or beating myself with a shoe until sufficient brain damage occurs so I don't even notice the weather anymore.

Last night I watched Fin Août, Début Septembre. I found it to be a fairly typical French character piece with some questionable editing, but since Mathieu Amalric was a very cute pup 10 years ago, it was worth the viewing for me. He was excellent in it, but it could possibly be wearing on anyone else who doesn't share my penchant for offbeat acteurs français.

Tonight I watched Look Both Ways. LOVED THIS FILM. I'm not even sure how it ended up on my queue, if by Netflix rec or if I found it in the paper during the year-end Best Of movie lists. It's a wonderful little film. I wasn't too sure about it at first because it's basically about people with various problems, and I typically don't like wah-wah-kvetching movies, but this wasn't like that all. And it's an Australian film, so the bonus is that you don't get a subtitle headache from it! It's one of those films that makes you lament that more films aren't made like it.

And now I must finish laundry. Oh yes, turn green with your envy of me!

to be seen or unseen?

I was pondering blogging. More specifically, the visual portion of blogging.

When I first started using the internet (back when the Earth was cooling), you only got to know people through their words. Those ancient bulletin boards barely supported formatted text, let alone graphics or user photos. The only thing you could glean about a person was by deciphering their user name. Even when Prodigy and AOL first hit the scene, your first impression of someone was their email address. If CUTIEPIE4YOU posted, you could easily suss out her focus. But if AMARIEM posted (that was me), it was all very ambiguous until the emails really started flowing.

With MySpace, Facebook, et al, it’s pretty much the How Ho Can You Go school of representation.

I choose not to use a real photo for my blogging life, but then somebody said to me the other day “You can always tell the ugly chicks when they don’t use a real photo.”

Err, wha?? I aint no damn ugly chick!

In the several years I’ve been online, I’ve met some freaky-ass people. Super crazy stalker people. As a result, I don’t publicly post any personal details about myself. True, it’s not like any of the super crazy stalker people I inadvertently befriended ever showed up on my doorstep, and I’ve met far more normal, lovely people than crazy harpies, but I find it’s just better to keep the personal stuff between friends. Nor do I feel the need to publicly share all the details of my daily life (mostly because you can’t ever take it back once it’s in print!)

I just found his comment amusing, though. It did come from a younger person who wasn’t around when the Earth was cooling, so I suppose the “if you don’t post who you really are, you must be a hermaphrodite with three eyes” mentality is just part of the evolution (for good or bad) of internet life.

When I objected to this attitude, I received the following response: “But you should post a photo of yourself. You actually look good for your age.”

To which I responded: “Oh thanks! That’s so nice of—wait…what do you mean for my age??”

My only consolation is that he will likely have much less hair and much more beer gut by the time he’s this age!

curses!

Whilst groggily driving to work this morning, I dared look at the temperature gauge.

FORTY-SEVEN degrees. In June. It is dumping buckets on us as it is. The rain is bad enough, but 47 degrees?? We don’t expect it to be sunny all the time in June. It’s usually a fairly wet month. But it’s at least 70-ish. Somebody please send in the Marines. I need to be evacuated to Vegas.

And to top it off, our cable has been out for two days. It doesn’t matter that there’s nothing to watch now. It’s merely the principle of the thing. It’s in the 40’s, it’s pouring rain, and we have no cable.

Hello, this is America. Isn’t it my birth right to be a couch potato between the hours of 7 and 10 pm when it looks like November in June? I’m sure it must be in the Constitution. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and cable TV. No, wait. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, cable TV, and Target. Look it up.

I am swiftly running through my Netflix queue as a result. But sometimes you really don’t want anything more than America’s Next Top Model reruns while you surf the Nordstrom semi-annual sale.

Anyone who knows us (meaning our vast – and I mean VAST – fanbase) will note that my sister is blogging about running a 5k this weekend whilst I am blogging about couch potato’ing. Kindly keep the compare/contrast comments to yourselves. I’m having lentil soup and baby carrots for lunch, and I declined a donut this morning. What more do you want from me?

Nerd Alert!
In other news, I discovered last night that the Alliance Francaise in the U District has Scrabble parties every Friday and alternating Sundays. SWEET. I can easily geek out over Scrabble in English, but Scrabble in French has me in geek nirvaaahhhnnnaaahhh.

apparently I'm bionic, too

I smell something weird today, but I don't know what it is. I can't even describe what it smells like. It's just...different. I thought it might be my sweater, so I had to smell the collar while sitting here at my desk, which only resulted in getting lipstick on my sweater. Hello, I'm a moron.

Perhaps this has something to do with being dragged underwater by the ankle. Some residual olfactory pseudo-trauma?

In other news, I have decided that I don't feel like working anymore this afternoon. C'est vrai. Believe it or not, I am experiencing a profound lack of motivation at 2:30 in the afternoon. Shocking, I know. This never happens.

Yep....