A nice surprise

I gave the American version of The Office a try tonight (actually, I'm still watching it), and although there are a couple of actors and story choices that are weak, it's a much funnier show than I'd thought.

I think having watched "Little Miss Sunshine" last weekend made the call of Steve Carell a wee more compelling.

I am not procrastinating

I actually *want* to do my homework. Watching the "webisodes" of The Office just seems like the best course of action right now. I'm not feeling a stick (school is pretty mellow the first week) and I can't figure out a carrot. I don't think another piece of pie will help. Or will it?

Go Fly a Kite!

But only if you want to have FUN*, people.






*for about three minutes when the wind is blowing.

It's still baking...

It's still baking to get the pre-made/rolled-up refrigerated pie crust and frozen blueberries and make yourself a "back to school" blueberry pie.

And even though you think "I should feel badly for not whipping up a fresh pie crust or using fresh blueberries", in reality you DON'T CARE, because for less than $5 American and 10 minutes of effort, you have a FUCKING BLUEBERRY PIE to eat.

And when losing your mind in the middle of the day (I know I lost my mind for awhile because I turned on the TV and watched 15 minutes of "What I Like About You" starring Amanda Bynes), a slice of pie and some vanilla ice cream will snap you out of it. Plus, your mouth might turn a little blue!

Have fallen off face of earth, please send chocolate

School started for me yesterday. That along with a general glut of life related responsibilities means I have been instantly transformed into a zombified, humourless homework doing autonomaton.

At least until LOST comes out on DVD. Then I will be a zombified, humourless homework-rushing-through-so-I-can-watch-LOST autonomaton.

I am so goddamn tired, but I have a few more pages to read. Methinks I'm taking too many notes, but it may be the only way I'll 'get' this stuff. Hand cramps!

Time for a glass of water and a piece of candy. I get to sleep when I'm finished!!

Update, 1:22 am: I never did eat my candy... but I'm finally drinking that water now. AND I get to go to sleep soon. IF I can fall asleep, that is.

Today's Horoscope

Gemini

You may not receive public recognition for your performance of a courageous act, but the sense of confidence you gain is invaluable as you find all kinds of opportunities to live up to your potential.

---

Yes, I read these things everyday. Yes, some days they really help.

It Feels Like Heaven to Me

Obsessing over the LOST universe... I've got just a few eps of Season one to go, and then the first two eps of Season two gleaned from the bf's tivo this weekend... and THEN renting the rest of the discs when Season two is out on dvd (Sept 5).

Season three doesn't start until October, so I should be all caught up...

Breakfast today was a slice of flourless chocolate cake and some hot black coffee.

Elevenses? Two kinds of quiche.

Lunch... That must have happened at dinner time. Jambalaya, my first attempt at it.

And dinner just now, an apple and some peanut butter.

Spent a good deal of today draped over one or another of the couches at the bf's place, it was a lazy, thank-bog-for-movie-channels kind of a day. Regrouping, going to look at a really neat apartment, eating well and napping during "I, Robot" kind of a day...

A little slice of heaven kind of a day.

LOST

I finally borrowed the first season of LOST from my bf (bad back giving me the excuse to watch copious amounts of TV but nothing worth watching on TV).

Four episodes in and I'm starting to actually like the show. Although there are still these little things that niggle at me and annoy. The wheelchair (symbol of the past for one of the characters) that is mere feet away from the huge funeral pyre. Um, no one thought "Hey, we might need that someday!", and moved it away from the fire? Also, there are precious few discussions of food and shelter, which, although they could be dull, seem to me essential. I want to know HOW they survive, not just believe that they figure it all out. And where the hell do they do their dirty sinfull business?

These are the same questions I had when I'd catch LOST on TV, and none of the fancy story telling (or the oh my god I never noticed how beautiful she was Evangeline Lily) are going to stop me from wanting to know the answers.

When does the whiny blond get it? I'm starting ep 5-9 now...

Edit... I forgot to say this: Naveen Andrews? HUBBA HUBBA.

I need a road trip, stat!

School starts on Monday (for me), and I feel the need for speed. I wanna take off and enjoy the last week of summer.

My back is nearly better (I scored some muscle relaxants at the dr yesterday), so I should be able to go anywhere by tomorrow.

Where should I go?

Misc.

Happy belated 92nd Birthday to my grandfather. BF ventured out with kids and I to the birthday gala yesterday. It was nice.

My stomachache has turned into a really bad backache (think imobilizing pain - I'm trying to stay still and relax), and if I get a fever, I'll be convinced I have appendicitis!

Right now I've really rotten late August air bourne allergies (and a little alliteration to boot)!

School news: I dropped a night class I wasn't all that keen on for a variety of reasons (different instructor than I'd thought I'd have being most compelling) and added my first online class, which I'm a bit nervous about - it's 4 credits, for one thing - which is called "Intro to Mass Communication". One thing that interested me, besides not having to go to class, was that we are to write 'blog entries' each week. And get this: they need to be 300 words. Theoretically, I can write that in my sleep. Plus we are looking at mass media, which is something I would like to do on my own (in an organized fashion) but find myself easily overwhelmed. And think of it, I'll have to watch TV as HOMEWORK. Hooray!

Oddly, my school year starts before the boys' does. Hmmmm.

Escape from my Psuedopod!

I'd promised a post about some new podcasts, and here it is.

Escapepod is a GREAT Science Fiction podcast. Really good stories by published authors from all over the place. I'm busy downloading all of the stories my iTunes didn't pick up (they've been at it for over a year).

Pseudopod is a newer, all horror sister podcast to Escapepod.

Escapepod rates each story as films in the US are rated, and gives a little info about how each story is rated. There is another feed, Escapepod Classic, which features only PG and G stories.

There are also a few X-rated stories on Escapepod (towards which I gravitated immediately).

---

I also *finally* listened to a local podcast I've known about for a long time, Polyamory Weekly. It's usually hosted by Cunningminx, but the one I chose just happened to be hosted by Graydancer (who has his own podcast, Rope Weekly). I'll have to check it out again to hear her. I have to admit to a fascination with polyamory, which started out as a kind of joke but has turned into an earnest interest. It solves my sluttiness problem pretty well (apparently ethical sluttery works really well for some), but I don't know how it might intersect with my jealousy/insecurity problems.

Blergh

I've had a hideous stomach ache alllllll day.

Blergh.

Go Fug Yourself: Fugs on a Plane

It's quite likely I'll go see Snakes on a Plane sometime. It looks fun and like a not-that-bad bad movie.

To be a part of the hype in a slightly different way, I had to share this scarilicious outfit featured on Go Fug Yourself. This is Sarah Lind, one of the SOAP cast.

The women of Go Fug Yourself were speechless, as am I.

I'm going to bake a strawberry cake

Ostensibly for my grandfather's 92nd birthday. But really because I JUST WANT TO.

A rich butter and sour cream cake with strawberries inside and a strawberry glaze.

The ONLY recipe I've found that doesn't include a box of cake mix and strawberry Jell-o!

This recipe includes a crunchy topping made with pecans, but I'm leaving it out.

---

But before I do, I need to go to Penzey's and buy a bottle of vanilla.

The writing group last night was really fun.


UPDATE, 8/19: I made the cake this morning. And laughed at myself because the recipe doesn't even call for vanilla! I put in two teaspoons just because. I should have baked this for at least 5 more minutes; the center for the cake was underdone *but tastes delicious!*. For the glaze, I left out the lemon juice and added a few tablespoons of sugar to the juice, as it didn't have much sugar in it. I put in in the microwave on high for about 6 minutes total, stirring a few times and watching it carefully at the end so it didn't boil over.

This cake is good without the glaze on top, but really yummy with it - it would be good with whipped cream, but because I wasn't sharing this with anyone right away I didn't want to whip up any cream - I just end up eating it all.

UPDATE, 8/21
Had another piece of this today, warmed up with the strawberry jelly and some freshly whipped cream on top. Not as good as when it was fresh. I've decided this recipe is good enough to spend some time modifying and making it more satisfying. I'm going to take out 1/2 of the butter for starters. It's overkill. Add vanilla, and mix the strawberries through the batter, so you get a little in every bite and hopefully the cake will be less dense in the center. The strawberries did taste marvelous, even if it's a bit disorienting to taste REAL strawberry flavour instead of something enhanced (i.e. fake).

Mysterious Skin (2004)

I'd been looking for this at Bongo for a while (I kept thinking it should be on the new release shelf long after it became a 'regular' movie), and finally picked it up and watched it last week.

Joseph Gordon Levitt is amazing in it. His character is a hustler in a small town - his clientele are exclusively older men, just like the man that sexually abused him the summer he was 8. He is hailed as beautiful and exquisite by his johns, and he does have a beatific look on his face at some key moments.

There are several depictions of the abuse, and the character talks about how much he liked being so special to the man, his baseball coach.

In looking for reviews, I found this, which has three short reviews. In one, the reviewer talks about the "soft focus" look at pedophilia, and Mysterious Skin does have that feel in parts. It is very uncomfortable to watch that, and there is one particular scene later in the film that made me flinch. Sexual violence is yucky. But it seems pretty real too (I don't have first hand knowledge of how these people operate, or what a relationship with an abuser could be like).

I liked it, and I will watch it again. But probably not for a long while.

Some Reasons to go back to Netflix

So I can watch a few good TV shows (and some bad ones):

Homicide: Life on the Streets
Law & Order (only because I don't have cable)
21 Jump Street
Good Times
Mr. Belvedere
Barney Miller
Quincy, M.E.
Living Single
The Bob Newhart Show
Herman's Head (this is just wishful thinking, apparently not even on the back burner)
In Living Colour
Night Court
Taxi
WKRP in Cincinatti (Oh, Damn, that's not out yet - man, did I love that show beyond reason. Hey, I was 8 years old, I must be forgiven)

Her write of pixie blowhole

[post title = spam subject line]

What's up with late afternoon lassitude? I am so freaky-deaky-diddling tired I can't keep my eyes open, and my attempted power-nap did nada for me.

In other news, I'm going to a writer's group tomorrow, which scares the crap out of me. I may or may not report on it here afterward. We'll see.

Library of Congress

Okay, I just thought of another thing I'd love to do if I had unlimited time and money (and actually, if I figure out exactly what I want to study, I could make this happen as part of said study, couldn't I?*): Go to the Library of Congress for a week or two. Just hang out and look through collections.

Find books by people I've met in real life. Research something.


Here are a couple of interesting places to start: "The African American Odyessy" The name is very 'big' innit? What with all the sex and stuff, The Odyssey seemed kinda like fun, and had a happy ending, right? But there was a lot of killing and suffering and monsters. So maybe it's an okay name.

The "Bound for Glory" exhibition is pretty amazing as well. Color photographs of rural life during The Depression. (kottke.org has some colour corrected versions of the photos found online - which is how I got to the LOC in the first place)

---

*The cool thing is, my interests so far are: Library Studies, Anthropology and Folklore. All of these things fit together, and I can put in Labour, Race or Gender studies in with all of them! Plus, I could find a way to link food to any of these as well. OMG, I could study it all!!!!

The Devil and Dave Chappelle

A good article, which made me think AND want to watch some Dave Chappelle and Richard Pryor stuff.

I saw the 'devil on the shoulder' bits online a few weeks ago and they hit home. Not only do they work for race, but also for being a woman (if I talk about how difficult I find math, am I reinforcing the 'women are stupid' myth - or if I get all emotional with my bf, am I a 'typical' or 'hysterical' woman?).

Brains! Serial

Ooh, a zombie story written as a blog!

This could be interesting. Or horrible. But I'm game.

Magic Circle

So this morning, BEFORE I spilled my second cup of coffee all over myself and the kitchen floor, I was drinking my first cup and reading my new Harper's magazine. There was an interesting article about games as teaching, and someone mentioned the Magic Circle. I've only done the most cursory Wiki search for the term and came up with this:

The seminal text in play studies is Homo Ludens by Johan Huizinga. This work popularised the notion of the Magic Circle as a conceptual space in which play occurs. That is, the state in which the various actions in play have meaning...

So when you are in the circle, you do the things (kicking a ball in soccer, acting out a word in charades, delivering a well-deserved spanking*) that makes the game/play happen. There is also a safety in that circle. You can behave in ways that you wouldn't in other aspects of life. I realized how much I was enjoying smashing people over the head while I was playing Black Knight last evening, where I wouldn't really enjoy doing it to people in real life.

What this discovery means is that I have a new way to think about something that's been missing. What I want to do now is find/create/recognize magic circles in my life and to give myself permission to act and enjoy while in the circle.

School is a magic circle of sorts - it has it's own rules. I notice too that people 'forgive' things of a student that they wouldn't of a non-student. School is one place where I need to accept that failure (or at least incomplete, non-pristene success) is okay.

*Intimate/sexual relationships have magic circles too!

And friendships, and families.

Wow.

Okay, now that the kitchen floor is dry, I'm going to go attempt to brew another second cup of coffee.

Pictures

I've been looking at pictures of Madonna and her husband Guy Ritchie, and I have to say, he doesn't look very happy now. The older pics of him and Madge find him with a smile on his face more often than not. Perhaps it's just the weight of his (or her) celebrity?

This reminds me, I need to take more pictures!

(It's funny, I read about, listen to and think about the news of the day, but this is what I can find words to write about. I do have some podcasts to post about soon...)

It's okay this time

You know how dumb you feel when you forget something important (like, I dunno, paying the mortgage)? I just did some investigating and figured out (which could have been REMEMBERED, maybe) that I didn't actually have a mortgage payment due now, as I paid ahead two months ago, when I was flush.

As relieved as I am that had foresight, it scares me how little recollection I have.

So I'm giving myself a free pass on this one. But just this once!

Clubbing

I cannae stop playing this game. At first I was all pacifist-mamma saying "oh no, we can't play this", but then I thought it looked harmless, and now I can't stop playing it.

It's really pointless!

Black Knight The King has created a new way of getting taxes from his people.

Play this free game now!!

The Fair (picture post)

As long as I'm catching up on the past month, I've got to post my pictures of the Dane County Fair. There are a lot more, but these will have to do for now.

BLATs and Troll Boogers

The summer is racing by! Although it seems like just a couple of weeks ago, nearly a month ago the boy and the bf did a science project thingy and made Troll Boogers.




The kit was procured from the crazy science stuff outlet (we went to the one in Chicago after seeing Wilco in May of 05 - the kit was languishing on a bookshelf until the boy noticed it one day). I left them to their mad scientisting while I made dinner.

A BLAT (Bacon Lettuce Avacado and Tomato Sandwich) is a thing of beauty.




Delicious.

After we ate, we took a walk to a nearby park. It was a nice night for it, and we had eaten so damn much, we needed to move a bit. The fellas took time out to play on the equipment, while I took pictures of the beautiful old trees which circle the park.




That was a nice night.

Two buffet I go back to

When I was a kid, an all you can eat buffet would have sent me into paroxysm of delight. I loved to eat, and was pleased by the simplest things (I still giggle uncontrollably when I see a #10 can of pudding at the grocery store. Imagine all of that pudding!). Food was love and I loved it right back.

These days I avoid most buffet style eating. Heat lamp warmed greasy crap isn't my idea of a treat. I do however, have two local exceptions (and am open to finding more of them).

One is the lunch buffet at both the East and West locations of Maharajah. The Westside has impressed me more, and made me happy many times. I remember going with my bf when we first dated - we met for lunch after he went to a job interview. He came wearing a tie and bearing gifts, so actually I remember less about the food there than I usually do. What I do remember about that visit is that I was introduced to the chili sauce. The bf is a huge fan of culinary heat, and will put chilis or hot sauce on nearly everything.

The Eastside buffet has been very tasty the few times I've gone, but so far I have yet to see my favourite Westside dish, Chili Chicken. I will keep a stiff upper lip and go back again and again until I find it.

I recommend Maharajah for regular dining as well, but do yourself a favour and hit the buffet sometime. It's well worth it. They have a new (new to me as I haven't been, but open for a while) all-vegetarian restaurant too, Danbar, I think it's called. I'd guess it is just as amazing.

A couple of weeks ago bf and I went to catch the second to last showing of "Don't Come Knocking", which is Wim Wenders' latest. Before hand we met at the Peking Palace, a Chinese Buffet place. I've always enjoyed eating there, and although many of the dishes succumb to the greasy buffet thing, they have a few gems that always make me smile. There are green beans that are always cooked just so, and remain just crunchy enough, and these mushrooms in oyster sauce that are incredibly simple and really delicious. It's usually pretty quiet when I go for dinner, but the time I went for lunch the joint was hopping.




These pictures are from Peking Palace. In the bottom picture you can see the mushrooms at 10 o'clock, the green beans at 11, with Chinese vegetables following @ 12, a dumpling at 2 o' clock General Tso's Chicken at 4 and 5, Chicken with black bean sauce at 7, and a fish fritter at 8 o'clock. The top picture is bf's plate, so I'm not as intimately acquainted with it, but it looks like the green beans, some fried rice, a bowl of hot sour soup and a spring roll (watching him eat his I had to get one too. They were good, a step above serviceable but far from transcendent).

I think I might be hungry now...

Java Cat

My seven year old is kind of spoiled*. It's easy to take him out to eat, and he's got this crazy sweet tooth. For some reason I let him indulge in it way more than I ought to. Perhaps because I was so strict for such a long time - and honestly, both of my kids are not horrible eaters, most of the time they are quite good.

We've been going to Java Cat at least once a week lately. I've discovered their dark roast, which I just realized yesterday is what I've been buying to use at home (Just Coffee's MayaSuperDark, which is yummy and smooth). Until I started drinking their dark roast, I was thinking of not going anymore. I am NOT a fan of their regular coffee. It is just BLAH. But the atmosphere is nice, and the bakery is tasty [and well priced, as are their other food items].

And we found out you get a small dish of gelato free on your birthday.

* I told him this yesterday and he was offended, as he had a right to be. It was unfair of me to say. He's not spoiled, it's more that he's lucky (or unfortunate, depending on your perspective) and gets what he wants sometimes.

Angelic Eats

A chicken salad with a fake Mexican-sounding name


Obscenely topped Nachos


Miss P and Mister B both got the veggie burgers. They looked really tasty.

Three weeks ago (already?! time flies), the bf and I met up with his hs friend Miss P and her hubby (Mister B if we extend the naming convention) and new baby (Lil N). We met them at the Angelic, where the 5 of us drank beer and ate lunch (the baby did both at the same time, via breastmilk, although she wouldn't have gotten any alcohol, really - hops are very good for breast milk production, you know).

The Angelic used to be a brew pub, but now it's a bar that happens to serve a lot of local beers. That was nice, being able to choose from a variety of locally brewed stuff.

The Ale Asylum is run by a former Angelic brewer, and their beers are featured. Tasty! I should link to them now, as well as giving a brief review or bit of history, but I'm lazy.

ROBOCLAW

This is a maddening fun flash game.

Revealed to me just how uncoordinated I truly am.

[Am I the only mac owner who can't play flash games in Firefox? I just go straight to Safari these days.]

ReallyReady.org: A Project of the Federation of American Scientists

Check it out.

Six-hour work day 'key to bliss'

Is anyone surprised by this?

"...Sydney University academic Dr Caroline West says while work delivers self-esteem, income and social ties, more than four to six hours a day will bring anxiety, exhaustion and a poor quality of life."

The good doctor goes on to mention something about how making more money doesn't offset the problems of long work hours, and I can't help but think, what about people who work 40+ hours a week and just make ends meet? They are particularly screwed.

Anyhow. I know one day I'll want to work (at least, I hope so, because I need some money and I'm not very lucky or entrepreneurial). A six hour day sounds just right. Really, during most of my last several years of employment, working for 8 hours wasn't producing 8 hours of work - I was just *there* for that length of time. I'd guess that six hour days are more productive.

My inner Barbie

Lately I've been thinking of making some really frou-frou girly jewelery.
Specifically, this little number:



I have no idea why I find this thing so appealing. I honestly don't see many opportunities for myself to wear something so precious. I do kind of have my bf's roomie in mind, she is a girly girl, but not this girly.

This is very curious.

I have also been cooking like mad, and craving cake, muffins and other sweets - nonstop.

In other news, Butterscotch *is* living in her exercise wheel - what's that about? I'm wondering if it has to do with a wire mesh in the bottom of her cage - I'm going to leave that piece out when we clean it tonight and see if that helps.

Butterscotch

My son turned seven last week, and his one request was to have his own pet. He wanted a hamster of his own. Actually, he wanted a hamster or a gerbil, but I'm not very fond of gerbils, so I pushed for a hamster (I had two as pets when I was a kid).

It was a joint effort, with his dad getting the cage and accoutrement, my mother buying the hamster, and me pretty much getting away with not doing anything. To be fair to myself, I will be making sure he doesn't forget about taking care of the thing.

He is very pleased, as am I. And Maddie is thrilled. She's been watching the cage like it's a tv.

Butterscotch is a dwarf hamster, just a wee thing. Very nice personality, for a hamster. I was initially a bit put off by her eyes, which are red, but now I think she's cute as a button*.

Our goal, now that she's home and comfy, is to take a picture worthy of Cute Overload.

*Blogger is being a shit right now, I can't upload her picture. Just trust me. - okay, they are up now. But blurry! I gotta go take more, she decided to build her nest INSIDE her exercise wheel. It's super cute.

Nope.

I thought maybe I was feeling motivated for a minute this morning.

But no, I'm not.

Art, Bunnies, Impulse web shopping!

I have a poster and a print that I am waiting to have framed, both of which I bought a while ago. I haven't even taken them out of their shipping containers because I know they'd be ruined if I did. This morning I followed a link to Kozyndan (who I've visited before) and found some more art I'd like to have.

Today I am trying REALLY hard to not order some posters from them. This image is actually of a limited edition archival print, but seeing as I'm jobless and broke, I can't justify $100 on art right now.



Their stuff is gorgeous and whimsical and I love it.

The simple things

My oldest son and I had 13 minutes before his father came to pick him up. We were looking through his younger brother's National Geographic Kids magazine, and saw the
"Make Ice Cream in 5 minutes" article. He said "we've got five minutes", and a quick perusal of the recipe showed we also had all of the ingredients, so we went as fast as our little legs would carry us into the kitchen and made ice cream!

It took us about 7 minutes, and his dad came before we were through, but he waited outside while we finished. I sent the results off with son, so no pictures, but we are definitely going to do it again sometime.

Five Minute Ice Cream:

You will need:
1 Gallon sized ziplock bag
1 sandwich size ziplock bag
Ice cubes (to fill the gallon bag 1/2 full)
1/2 C Kosher salt

Ice cream mixture:

1 Cup Cream, Half and Half, or Milk (we mixed 3/4 C Half and Half w 1/4 C milk)
2 Tablespoons Sugar (I used a wee bit more, just eyeballed it)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (I used more because I'm crazy about vanilla)

Fill gallon bag 1/2 full of ice, add kosher salt.
Mix ice cream ingredients and place in sandwich bag, seal well.

Place sandwich bag in gallon bag and seal well. Wrap a kitchen towel (or any small towel) around bag and SHAKE VIGOROUSLY for five minutes.

The ice was melting by the end of five minutes, but we ended up with a nice soft ice cream. If we didn't have the person waiting, I'd have been tempted to shake for another couple of minutes.

OMG, this was absolutely delicious.

And reminded me of what I like about my life.

What do you know?

It's Sunday.

I invited the bf for dinner tonight, but damn if I just don't feel like cooking.
Decided to be good and leave off the A/C (it's only around 80° F out), but then the house got hot and I got realllllly lazy.

Plus, I didn't eat breakfast until 1:30 this afternoon, so...

Cute pictures of the newest member of our family, Butterscotch, at some point this week.

Dice Wars

My latest Flash Game addiction. Damn, it's fun. And helps me with my poorly developed strategery skill-set.

O Face?

Slideshow/game (from Details magazine): guess if the face is a food personality (enjoying sumpin' tasty) or a porn star (enjoying sumpin' sumpin)...

Got a Light?

"Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke."

- Lynda Barry

Culinary in the Desert: Fluffer Nutter Bars

Joe from Culinary in the Desert posts about his cooking adventures, and sometimes a food drives me to distraction.

Case in point: FLUFFER NUTTER BARS (peanut butter crust with chocolate chips and peanuts resting on a bed of marshmallow fluff). I'm not a huge fan of bars, they are usually way too sweet for me. But this one I find fascinating and irresistable. I'll have to give it a try when the weather cools down.

YUM.

My take

So Mel Gibson, blah blah blah.

I read an apology statement he made where he apologizes to all jews for being an asshole.

Where the fuck is his apology to all women for calling a female law enforcement officer "sugar tits"? Or for that matter, his apology to all law enforcement worldwide? Or, frankly, to all people who aren't fucking bigots or sexist drunk idiots? Huh?

That's what I'm wondering*.


*Of course he did make a really insane religoviolenceporn that was crazily anti-semetic (and said Jesus was fucking Italian), so maybe he was really apologizing for that.

Borny!

As the mother of a couple of post-born embryos (with no or pitiable health insurance at the moment), I do appreciate this one.

Did it used to be easy?

I've been thinking about my bf and I - our relationship - wondering where, if anywhere it's "going". I never used to think about stuff like that. Is it my getting old, or wanting more of a 'destination' in my life generally, or what?

OMG, this is an exercise in futility. I've written and erased for the past 15 minutes. Okay, anyhow. I'm 36, things don't seem easy, I get frustrated. I wonder what will happen next. I wonder what the hell I want.

Where did this come from, anyway? Maybe it's the heat.