Thinking about New Year's Eve

Christmas dinner (menu and location) has been decided.
Cards have been sent.
Shopping is done.
Decorating is done.
Wrapping will be done when the last present gets here (Thursday, according to the USPS website)

Time to think about New Year's Eve. Ugh.

I don't like New Years Eve. (Which is probably why it seems to sneak up on me every year, I ignore it.)

If I had my way, New Year's would be celebrated with lunch on the day itself. Everyone would make extravagant predictions for the coming year, which would then be recorded and read out at the following New Year's Eve lunch. (The key word is extravagant - no predicting that you will buy a new car. More along the lines of  "I will have lunch with Bono and discuss why rainbows are such a popular motif on clothing for little girls.") 

I've had friends go to see the ball drop at Times Square in New York, and the stories they tell (pickpockets, standing for hours on end packed into an enormous crowd, wearing a Stadium Buddy, because you can't leave) all fill me with horror. And they actually go back. I can't imagine any concert being worth that.

Really, you can't even see the stage

I've always wanted to do the dinner and dancing all night, but the men I've dated have all been the kind for whom dancing is a punishment, with formal wear a close second. And New Year's, like Valentine's Day, does not seem to be a good night to go solo. 

Sleeping through it is not an option. My neighbors are going to explode enough fireworks to light up the ship channel. (I may have to sedate the cat.)

So I'm throwing it open. Any ideas?

So far I have:

• movie night (which leads to another problem - what is an appropriate New Year's eve movie?)
• buy some fireworks of my own and join the freezing people outside.
• bottle of champagne and popcorn.
• leave the country

Recovering Grammar Nazi

Language is a marvellous thing. It's not just a useful way to let other people know that there is a bus heading their way, or bargain for a cabbage at the market. It is flexible. It can be incredibly exact and clinical,  dreamy and poetic, or just the basic prose of everyday life. In what other format can you express so much, with only 26 letters and a few punctuation marks?

Language matters to me, a lot. And because language matters to me, I'm sensitive to misuse. In a way this is ideal, because I'm an editor. When I read things aloud, the errors practically jump at me from the page. Don't misunderstand, I'm not claiming perfection: into every editor's life, some typos must fall. I'm just trying to convey how attuned to language I am.

And sometimes I wish I wasn't, because listening to the news, or reading the newspaper can be painful.

My current pet peeve is the now common usage of the word "troop" as a synonym for "soldier".  A "troop" is a group of soldiers. It's like saying six pack is another word for beer. Think about it. Having 2-3 beers is a fun night out, having 2-3 six packs is a drinking problem.

So when I hear reporters (who should know better) say we're sending 50,000 troops to Afghanistan, I want to throw things at the television. This is counterproductive and just raises the blood pressure. I'm going to try and be more like Stephen Fry, who I think has the right idea.

Proof that I am not a gardener

There has been an unassuming green bush by my garage. I thought it was an azalea. It didn't bloom when the other azaleas bloomed, but since it seemed healthy otherwise, I didn't really think about it.

Yesterday I found out why it didn't bloom with the other azaleas.



It's a gardenia.

Weekend fun video



Diet Update: Week 2 - A Setback

Current Weight: 276.8
Lost this Week: -2
Lost Total: 6

Some well meaning but inconsiderate person, (who shall not be named here) brought cookies into my house this weekend and left them there. A sane person confronted with such temptation would have thrown them out. But I am not sane around sugar. When it comes to sugar, I am Willie Nelson with a bale of weed. Cookies are my kryptonite. I ate them.

And I am paying the price for it. It's sad, going over the same ground twice, but I have my healthy lunch all packed, and a nice healthy dinner in the refrigerator and there is nothing left in the house to ruin my diet. I am determined to get this done.

In honor of Willie Nelson's 80th birthday (yesterday) and also how I feel about sugar.

Let's get out of the house

I got a raise! Not a lot, but more than I had. Time to go out and celebrate!

I'm thinking sushi, and maybe a beer. (I know. I'm wild.)

I'm already committed to seeing an exhibit of Russian book illustrations (my friends are as nerdy as I am) but there are a lot of things going on this weekend. A few suggestions for those not looking at Russian books:

• Texas Crawfish Festival - tasty crawfish!
• Houston International Festival - cool music!
• Houston Fine Mineral Show - shiny rocks!

Is it odd that I find all three equally appealing?

Friday Fun Video
Los Lobos will be playing tomorrow at iFest.  If we're lucky, they'll play this.

Small, good things

It's been such a traumatic week; I thought it would be a good weekend to focus on little things that make life worth living.

This weekend, my friends Daniel and Vero are celebrating the 5 year anniversary of their 1st date.



From their wedding - 2011

 

My favorite webcomic: Girl Genius is still going strong.

Seriously, Agatha Heterodyne rocks.

And Bailey has decided to take advantage of laundry day by building a nest.

 

Weekend Fun Video

 

And a great version of a great song

 



 

 

Cooking with Shakespeare

Friday Fun Video

Since I only made hash this week,  a more entertaining recipe for your enjoyment.

Colors!

 

It's spring, and all I can see is the new colors coming out on the trees, and out of the ground, on the flowers and all around. Happy weekend.

Asteroids! Live!

I am a child of the Space Age, born slightly after the moon landing. There were a lot of space toys and books and games when I was little. Seriously, one of the books we had was "Let's Go to the Moon" which had an accurate description of the workings of a three stage rocket.

Because we lived in the South my brother and I were taken to the Kennedy Space Center (Florida) and the Johnson Space Center (Texas) multiple times.  The highlight of the trips was the astronaut ice cream, touching the moon rocks, and in the Kennedy Space Center they let you climb in and out of an actual space capsule, which had more buttons than I had ever seen in one place. (I don't think they let you do that anymore.)

So today I'm excited to hear about the asteroid [Asteroid 2012 DA14] that is going to pass by us today. You can even see it live (Well, sorta. Can you call a lump of frozen rock live? Sorry. I digress.). Slate magazine has a list with links to the observatories showing it here.

The people in Russia are probably not as enthusiastic. A large meteor exploded over the Ural Mountains this morning, creating a sonic boom that has injured approximately a thousand people. Story here. 

It's a dangerous universe out there. All the more reason we should find out all we can.

Friday Fun Video

Carl Sagan at his most poetic.

Happy Valentine's Day

An Oscar-nominated short film from Disney.  Very sweet.

Goal Check

It's February 1st. We are now one month into 2013. Time to look at my To Do List for 2013 and see if I've made any progress on my goals. I could go over all 14 resolutions, but I know y'all are only interested in one of them:

"Lose 100 lbs"

And if you've been reading this blog, you know my last posted recipe contained cheese, white flour and half a pound of butter. So have I made any progress? Have the scales gone down, or up? Drum roll please.

As of today I weigh: 268.6 lbs. A loss of 13 pounds!

And the crowd went wild.

And because I am that kind of a geek, I made a chart. As you can see, it's not a smooth slope, (the chocolate cookie incident is very obvious) but the overall trend is downward.

I still have 87 pounds to go, but that's a decent start, don't you think?

Friday Fun Video
A classic of the early 90's.

What do you want to be?

I have been lucky to have for friends many dynamic women. Women who knew what they wanted to achieve in life. Some are teachers, some ride horses, some are getting their doctorates, some own and run their own businesses.  But me? I'm Luann. (She's the blond on the far right.)

I never really knew what I wanted to do. In school I wanted to get good grades and graduate. That was it. I didn't have a career path in mind. It's not that I didn't think about it. I'm a planner. I like having things mapped out. But I couldn't decide what I wanted to be.

I have never been one of those people with a vocation. I thought back to what I wanted to be when I was a kid, and it changed a lot.  I went from opera singer, to novelist, to photographer, to cartoonist. I even remember a spate of Olympics-inspired gymnastics; that one wore off after belly flopping into the horse a few times too many.

I'm not complaining. I have a job that I'm good at, and it pays me decently. I have a house, health insurance a 401K and a cat. I'm just restless I guess.

Is this it?

Friday angst video

Bunheads is back! Yay!

I know real grownups are talking about Downton Abbey, and I like the show, but mostly for the fabulous period costumes and the chance to watch Maggie Smith zing somebody. She does it so well.

"What is a weekend?"

But the show I'm in love with is Bunheads, which came back on Monday. I love the cast, the wisecracks, even the ballet. I loved the writer's (Amy Sherman-Palladino) former show (Gilmore Girls) and I am so happy to see Kelly Bishop again. She has such an air of distinction, even drinking shots in the local bar. (1st episode)

I'm not a fan of ballet. My attention span for a dance performance is 30 minutes (at most).  But one of the things I like about Bunheads is that every other episode or so, there is a little dance. Nothing big or flashy (this isn't Glee), but something that realistically could be done by high school dance students.  And they are wearing costumes high school dance students would have.

The one below not only uses a favorite song of mine but features the girl I most wanted to be in high school. The cool one. She could wear black eyeliner without looking like a raccoon. She could be difficult and unpleasant and not feel apologetic about it afterwards.  Damn! but I still want to be that girl.

Great number. 2 minutes.

Home Improvement Holiday

Since I wasn't going anywhere for Christmas, I decided I might as well use the time to get some things done. So this past week I've painted the bathroom, organized the garage, and even bought (and put together) a bed frame to get the mattress off the floor.




the garage - before

The garage was officially a Christmas present from my brother. A present I suspect my dad had a lot to do with.  (My father has been over here three times to measure the garage and sketch out potential layouts since I bought the house.)  It needed to be done. I don't have a lot of stuff, but what I did have was just accumulating in piles along the walls, since I didn't have anywhere to put it.




the garage - after. It doesn't look like much, but it's really a big improvement

Now I have pegboard on the back wall, the pile of leftover bricks has been moved out of the way, and it looks more like a garage and less like an abandoned prop room. The nicest part about this was I didn't really have to do anything beyond move bricks and sweep up sawdust. My father and brother did the rest. My kind of project.

 

The other big project was repainting the master bath. I've been planning to change the color since I bought the house. It was a muddy brown, really, really dark and way too much. Last month I got a bunch of paint chips from the home improvement store, taped them to the walls, and decided on a color I liked. Four days ago, I bought a gallon of "Sigh" (a very pale blue) and painted one wall.

 

I hated it. It looked like breath mints.

 

Still, I was going to get this done. My backup plan was to paint it the same color as the bedroom: beige - boring but bearable.  I bought a gallon of that and covered up the breath mint wall. It worked. 

 

So I've spent the last three days working on the bathroom. It's more complicated than it sounds because it has three doors, a shower stall, a window, a vaulted ceiling and lots of little corners that have to be taped off before painting. And have you ever tried manipulating an eight foot stepladder in a shower stall?  

 

Dad helped the day before yesterday, but it needs another coat before it's done. So I'm hoping I can bribe him into coming over and finishing the job. I've got everything I can reach, but I need someone tall to get the last two and half feet.

 

Then, I can put the towel racks back up, put the ladder back in the garage, rinse out the paint brushes, sweep the floor, wash the shower stall and collapse on the sofa with champagne, Chinese food and the feeling of a job well done.

 

Happy New Year!

Sunny Christmas Eve

I've lived my entire life in warm climates.  I learned to ski on water. I threw my first snowball on vacation when I was 36 and I have never shoveled snow.

So when I think of Christmas, I don't think of snow on fir trees or trying to stay warm. My memories are of blue skies and sunshine. Today, all my windows are open to let fresh air into the house and it's a glorious day to be outside.

So I'm going out, to enjoy the weather. Merry Christmas, or Kwanzaa, or Hanukkah, or Solstice or whatever it is you celebrate. I'm going to take a tip from Mr. Minchin and have a long lunch with my family.

White Wine in the Sun - Tim Minchin

I'm on vacation!

It lights up too!

Now I can go shopping!

Seriously, I have the problem recipient.
He's an awkward size, so clothes are not an option (you can only buy someone so many scarves)
He's not into sports. so I can't get him team jerseys or anything like that.
He lives in Asia, so any electronics, movies etc I can buy here won't work on his machines/current.
He doesn't read (for entertainment value anyway) and his hobby is rowing.
And whatever I buy has to be portable and go through customs.

The way I see it, my options fall into two categories:

1. Buy something that can be consumed during his visit. One of those novelty popcorn tins, a bottle of wine, beef jerky. (and before you say chocolate, he's not into sweets) or

2. Wacky presents. Something completely off the wall. Last year, my father gave me a glow in the dark jellyfish paperweight, which turned out to be the thing I never knew I wanted. (Really, it's very cool.) But truly wacky presents are hard to find, and you run the risk of "what the #%$ is this?"

So I'm going to be drifting among the shelves for the next couple of days. Any suggestions will be gratefully received.

Friday Fun Video
Not to add any more pressure, but what are your plans for New Years? I'm thinking potato chips and champagne.

Christmas Cards

Oldest mass-produced Christmas Card - circa 1843!

I love letters.



E-mail does not come close to the thrill of getting a real letter or postcard, something with actual stamps on it. A letter that a friend of mine took the time to write and put in the mail means something to me. A letter is a gift, in and of itself, even if the news is boring. 

I try to keep up the habit of writing letters. I'm far from perfect, and I don't send nearly enough, but I insist on sending Christmas cards. Electronic cards are ok, there are some beautiful ones out there, and it beats being forgotten altogether, but I'd rather get a real card. 

And aren't the cards themselves fabulous? Small pieces of mass-produced art. Who wouldn't love getting one of these in the mail?

Very 50s - I can see my grandparents sending this card

I love how it looks like an ornate paper cutting

a minimalist aesthetic - for your more design oriented friends



I love the idea of this one - very clever



Wow!



Friday Fun Video

Not your average Jingle Bells.

Christmas Decorations

I don't usually put up a Christmas tree.  It's not that I have anything against trees, but one bedroom apartments don't have a lot of room for that kind of thing.  So I have been practical, mistletoe in the hall, a wreath on the door and poinsettias on every flat surface. Festive on a small scale.

But now I have a house.

A mostly unfurnished house. The sensible thing to do would be to save my money and put it toward something I really need, like a desk.

I can live without a desk.

So this past weekend I blew my budget on a pre-lit, seven and a half foot tree. (It was on sale. I'm not totally crazed.)  But a tree needs ornaments, and while I've been collecting them for years, I only have about 15, not nearly enough to deck out a tree.

So I put the Christmas music on and got out my cookie sheets.

The flecks of coarse salt make them look specked.

These are made from salt dough, (follow the link for the recipe) which is astonishingly easy. Flour, salt and hot water. You can use coarse salt, like I did. Regular salt will give the dough a smoother texture. They can be painted, molded, covered with glitter, wherever fancy takes you. I'm more of a minimalist, so I just painted them with an egg wash (1 egg whisked with 3 tablespoons water).

Harder than it looks: I'm right-handed, but I can't focus the camera with my left

The egg wash makes the ornaments brown and gives them a slight gloss, otherwise they're just a dull whitish grey. And don't forget to put holes in the ornament before you bake! If you don't, you're going to need a drill, these things are hard.

Once they are all baked and cool enough to handle, get the yarn back from the cat, who has appropriated it for her own use.

Get your own yarn - this is mine.

Thread the ornaments on the yarn, cursing yourself for not making the holes bigger, and voila!



 A plate full of cookies, ready to go on the tree.

Merry Christmas!

Friday Feel Good Video

Fortunately, my cat hasn't found the tree interesting.

Sympathique

This Friday, I find myself with nothing to say. It happens. So instead, I give you this very sweet little video.  It's about as girly as it gets; you have been warned.

Bisous,

Rebecca

Why I like Pitbull

The Latin Grammys were last night, and one of my favorite performers, Pitbull, opened (and closed) the show. Yes, I like Pitbull. Pitbull's music is raunchy, randy, overtly sexual, with a great beat and very hum-able, (because you don't want to be heard singing those lyrics in public.)

I know, I know. I'm totally not his demographic. I tell people I like Pitbull and they either think I'm insane (what self-respecting feminst likes Pitbull?) or making a lame attempt at being cool. To which I say: I'm a Trekkie, I gave up on cool a long time ago.

But I was thinking about why I like Pitbull, particularly when I recoil from other artists whose lyrics towards women are similarly suggestive/dirty. Leaving aside the rythym and the fact that he has a great voice,  in large part I think it's because Pitbull isn't of the "get over here b***" school of lyrics. He's suggestive, but he's not bossy. He never refers to women rudely, and he's openly appreciative of their charms. Appreciation makes a girl feel good. 

Unlike a lot of rappers, he doesn't do songs about showering her with material posessions, which I appreciate, because I've been on the receiving end of that and it's not flattering. It's like they think they can buy you.

Mostly, the songs are about female beauty and what he'd like to do.  Also, and this is key, he makes it sound like fun, not a transaction, not an end-of-the-world, all-consuming passion, just fun. Essentially, he's making an extremely naughty offer but it's her choice about whether or not to accept. That's called seduction, and seduction is very attractive.

Friday Feel Good Video

Obviously it's a Pitbull video, and while this one is fairly tame, it's probably not safe for work.