December 2004 Archives

Sweet & Sour Beef Stew in the crockpot: Very good and made the kitchen smell really good all day.
Charlotte's Noodle Kugle: Very good. Freezes beautifully!
Chicken Enchilada Cassarole: Pretty good...too many onions for Jeff, though. This got much better after substituting shredded chicken for that nasty, no flavor tempeh. I love making vegetarian dishes better and more...meaty.
Curried Chicken Turnovers: Very Good but takes too damn long to thaw, cut, and fill those pesky puff pastries...especially when I've doubled the recipe. File under "Painful, but worth the effort...sometimes".
Spicy Crab Salad: Very good...but too many onions for Jeff. He'll have to make his own. I don't have to fucking cook everything just for him.
Cranberry mulled Wine: Good...but no cranberries to be found in late december and substituting with frozen Berry Medley just didn't cut it. Tasted OK but not after one glass. Would be better when it's really cold and there are actual people around; i.e., don't drink alone.

Recipes for anyone who wants them.

My New Years resolution for the last five years has always been: Be Better. It’s a good catch all and like all good goals, it is achievable for me. Unlike good goals, it’s very hard to measure in any quantifiable way but as the years wrap up, I have a general sense of myself and whether or not I have, in fact, been better. I’d become anxious and dispassionate over previous year’s resolutions and one year tried the “no more resolutions” resolution which made the year seem pale and apathetic to myself. I read information about goal-setting and concluded I needed to set small, successful goals that are directly tied into me making them possible, not some external force (get a raise, etc…). And so I looked at myself and realized that most of the time, I felt that in a lot of situations, if not most, I could just be better; more engaging, more friendly, more helpful, more loving, less angry and sarcastic, more present. I could just be myself but be better.

This past year, it was not only about being better to others, which I think for the most part I accomplished, but also being better to me. I was put into a difficult, stressful situation at work having to take acting leadership for my office, a task that just happened to coincide with my starting graduate school, and for the first month I was miserable but then I started trying to be better to the people I worked with and worked for and I found that my goal of just keeping the office afloat until a new director could be brought in was within my power. I cut off that pessimistic, redundant inside voice of fear and impending failure (a hallmark of an INTP) and just did the task. At the end, when the new director started in October, I was relieved but I was also confident in myself that I’d managed to keep the office running for the previous 8 months and learn a great deal in the process. So I was being better to myself for not giving into those perfectionist rants of it not being perfect and that felt pretty good.

This year my being better extends back out to those around me. I did maintain and cultivate my friendships this year but there were a few people who I still didn’t feel I reached out too enough and I’d like to make that different. Jeff and I are celebrating our tenth anniversary this spring and I think that this past year, like so many years before, have just gotten better. We’ve shared a lot of common goals and plans for ourselves this past year and we continue to be better, more loving partners to one another because of it. But after ten years, sometimes the routine and the ingrained interplay can be difficult and so I want to be better and really take this year to be a better partner, more loving and less critical, more honest and sharing and less selfish.

For me, much of what has held be back from being a better person was the risk and fear involved. I’m not a social person and very much uneasy with how I see myself in a group, whether social or professional all the while wishing I could be better. I found a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt this year that says, “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” so I’m going to use that as my stepping stone to being better. I’m going to take more risks and charge forth in things that I think I can’t do and I’m going to round myself out a bit, personally, professionally, creatively, socially, and intimately to just be better.

I wish for everyone in the New Year, health, happiness, and good fortune.

Up and at ‘em this morning. I’ve got the slow cooker turned on already and will be trying out a recipe for sweet and sour beef stew I found on the internet. I’ve decided to spend the rest of the weekend cooking and freezing to take back to the city. So far, my itinerary includes:
Sweet & Sour Beef Stew
Beef Stroganoff
Chicken enchilada casserole
Cinnamon Beef Noodles
Noodle Kugle

On the wish list if I can find the recipes and ingredients:
Hot buttered run
Mulled wine
Borscht
Red beet and blue cheese salad.

I’ve unexpectedly found myself upstate for the rest of the week with absolutely nothing to do following the rather insistent wishes of my boss to take some time off. Boo hoo, poor me, I know. Classes are done until late next week, quilting class doesn’t start until February, MS Project class doesn’t start until March, and the four books I ordered from Amazon are being delivered to my office since I was expecting to be there this week. I did haul the 782-page “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell” up with me but even as good as it is, I can only take a few chapters of early 19th century British dialect before my mind starts wandering. I’ve even read all my comics for the month, picking up some new titles (the New Avengers#1 is excellent, the JLA: Classified sucks the donkey) to try prolonging the comic fan-boy ecstasy. What to do, what to do? Trouble lurks in the dark parts of a man’s heart, as I understand it.

As it is painfully slow here at work this week, I opted at the last minute to take off Thursday (besides having the official New Year's holiday on Friday), to have a nice long weekend. My boss thought it such a good idea that he asked me to take Wednesday off too! Score!!
Now I hear the 'thrum, thrum, thrum" of Warcraft in my ears.

Saturday night at Jeff's Mom's birthday party:

Uncle Buzzy, Jeff's 90-something great uncle who hasn't seen us for a while:
"Wow...you got big. Jeff must be feeding you well."
Me: "Uh-huh"

*format stolen from someone’s blog because it was too perfect to pass up for this event.

Vanity: Holy Shit!! Are you kidding me with this? How can my hair look this bad after I just got it cut and relaxed?
Beau: I know, I know. Totally fucked out of $125 to look like this.
Vanity: I’m embarrassed to be seen with you. It hasn’t looked this bad since your 7th grade school picture.
Worry: What will people think? Everyone is totally looking at us.
Beau: Jesus….I know, I know. We need to consider our options. Probably can’t get another appointment until next week and that’s a whole weekend of Harrisburg in-laws for the holiday with this. I’m just going to wear a hat.
Vanity: No. Way.
Spontaneity: Ahhhhhhhhhhh. I’ve got an idea. Where’s Resourcefulness?
Beau: Resting from the day at work. He’s around someplace.
Spontaneity: We need him. We’re cutting our own hair tonight.
Vanity: Say wha?
Beau: Huh?
Worry: Oh good Lord.
Spontaneity: Find Resourcefulness and Beer. We’ll take care of everything.
Beau: How bad could it be?
Worry: Bad bad. What if it looks WORSE? They’ll be no correcting it until next week and then you know Pride is going to jump in and not let you go back to that hack and force him to give you a better cut.
Vanity: But my God…we’re going to be around a shit-load of people this weekend. What to do, what to do.
Resourcefulness: Got a beep…whattsup?
Spontaneity: Grab Beer. We have work to do.
Beer: I’m here.
Spontaneity: Bring friends.
Worry: I don’t even know where to begin. I need to go find Fear.
Beau: I’m totally out of this whole thing.

Ten minutes later:

Beau: Hmmm….
Vanity: Hmmm….
Worry: I’m not even looking.
Spontaneity: We should bleach it white. Wouldn’t that be cool?
Worry: Oh God.
Beau: I’m thinking we’re done for this round of being left home alone.

Poo on anyone not watching Project Runway on BRAVO. 12 up and coming fashion designers squaring off each week in weirdo competitions (design a dress using "envy" as the theme) that put them and their skills to the test. The designers are all characters and honestly, having known a young, up and coming fashion designer for some number of years, it seems they're all cut from the same bizarro cloth.

All that being equal, what's a reality show without some ridiculous tag line used when one of the contestants is thrown off? Thankfully Heidi Klum as the hostess of the show gets to really vamp off it. Her intro, right before the runway competition starts always beings with the same speech: "As you know, fashion is about the now. One day yaw in and the next....(dramatic pause or forgetting line, we're unsure)...yaw out. Blah, blah, blah." But the best is when they toss the contestant off for horrible, uninspired, ugly work. Then you get the very Aryan handshake with a firm "Auf Wiedersehen!!" I almost expect her to get pissy with the devastated designer and give them a final, "I said GOOD DAY."

Watch it!

I was chatting with Barnes today and I confessed something to him that I’d rediscovered about myself last night as I was walking home from the pedicure that ended up costing me $75. The pedicure wasn’t the confession, although it did set me on the deep thinking path about myself. It started with, “Why am I the kind of person who just keeps saying “yes” instead of “I’m sorry, I can’t understand what you’re saying” to the nice lady shaving the calluses off my heel with a razor?” and by the time I was past the Bergdorff Christmas windows, which are as sumptuous and sophisticated as always, I was rediscovering the self-realization that I will never be a New Yorker. I’d come to this conclusion late in the final year before our move to the country and now that we’re back in the city periodically, the notion remains. Even if I was moneyed and connected, I would still be that mid-western boy from Ohio; naïve, percolating anxiety and simmering embarrassment at the slightest social foible, geeky in sort of a boring way. And it’s not self-loathing or low-self esteem but just an identification of where in the metropolis’ strata I reside. And so that is how I fit into the New York scene.

To underscore this very idea, I went to my first WYSIWYG Talent Show playing in the lower East Side. It was never an area we ever spent much time in when we were in the city but it was so beautiful tonight with strands of white bulbs zig-zagging from tree to tree over the streets, funky, expensive boutiques in closet-sized stores, and darkish bars and restaurants with a few people leaning in to whisper to one another. It’s colder than fuck right now in the city so I was all bundled up, sniffling and just enjoying the hell out of my slow prowl.

The Talent Show was an all musical holiday special and it was my single social thing I had planned for this week. My very large paper due tomorrow on supply chain revision is already 1000-words over the upper limit so I put the kabash on it for the evening, scrubbed the kootch and tried to pick from the few comfort clothes we have in the apartment something that looked vaguely Lower East Side hipsterish. I failed miserably, ending up looking like a lesbian, but I went anyway. Of course anxious over the idea I might not get in based on past sold out shows, I arrived much too early so I found a great little Ukrainian restaurant and ordered a big bowl of steaming borscht. I chose borscht because as my one and only social outing this week, I wanted it to be everything my regular evening is not, so I pretended to belong down there and ordered wine and a potato pancake, too. The talent show was fun and I got to see Sparky but it was obvious that where I sit in the Blog is much different from where the cool kids are at these days. This site is such a relic of days past, even though it’s coming up on five years in January. Nothing new under the sun, just new shoes. The musical numbers were hip and inspired and witty and of a talented nature so all in all, it was a good night to be part of the city again.

I had, thus far, managed to avoid the Christmas/holiday spirit this year. I was completely fine with that, too, as there is little worse then walking around in some dazed semblance of happy, happy, indiscriminately smiling at strangers and hoping, as one hopes every year around this time, for world peace and blahbbidy, blah, blah, blah. I’m not a curmudgeon in any sense of the word other than I refuse to feel the zeal of the holidays just because merchandisers and retailers tell me to. To this end, I fashioned my own holiday cards this year and opted out of buying hardly any gifts because who needs that kind of worry and stress. It has all worked out mighty, mighty fine on the whole.

Then of course this morning I’m sitting having breakfast reading the Post, almost jubilant at the thought that Scott Peterson and Danny Pelosi are going to get the swift hand of justice they so readily deserve (so sayeth the court of public opinion), and Celine Dion’s rendition of “O Holy Night” comes on and I’m whacked. Totally overcome with the Christmas Spirit. Mother fuck…I mean, come on! How stupid is that? I do admit that an hour or so later, the bubbling, over-wrought emotion is subsiding a bit but it’s obvious that I’m going to get out of it this year all together. I guess that’s fine and it is not going to change my view that justice, in some cases, can be swift, blind, and karmic. It does put a rosy glow in my cheeks though and raises my toleration of the artic air descending on the city today, people walking slow in front of me, and assholes who bring their babies in big-ass strollers on the subway at rush-hour. OK, not so much the last one because there ought to be a common decency law about that one, but whatever. I hope when I sneezed on them yesterday they caught this bitch of a cold I have. So not totally overtaken by the Spirit, but close enough, I suppose, for all intents and purposes. Happy Holidays, Everyone.

In a post-haze of Nyquil and Benadryl, I forced my germy, disease-riddled body out of the apartment this morning in search of...something other then the apartment walls. I ended trolling up Lenox Ave to 125th street, passing the most amazing side streets of gorgeous row houses. Harlem gets a lot of bad raps but it's like one of those great New York things, you just have to look a little closer and you find some real treasures.

Unlike my prior rant about the lack of good coffee up in this neck of the woods, I did happen to find, to my surprise I'll admit, a very serviceable and cozy Starbucks up on 125th which led me to have a delightful Sunday morning with the Times and a Chai Latte, watching all the fancy-dressed people meander to church. I could very much get used to this.

As predicted, the combination of a shitty cell-reception in the heart of this fortress-like apartment in conjunction with picking up the cable remote several times to replay a missed conversation on the TV, has led us to purchase a bare-bones phone line from a large telecom company for the sole purpose of being able to use the new Series 2 Tivo we purchased. For anyone counting, that's 3 separate Tivo's we boys now own, two for our home and one for the apartment. Thank God for the multi-user plan which discounts multiple DVR's on an account. It’s a sad statement of our lives that we can’t have a TV that isn’t tied to a Tivo but I’m sorry, we’re just futurists that way.

The saddest thing and the dirtiest secret that isn't much talked about (until after the purchase, that is) is that Tivo, unless you buy the $1200 DirectTV with HD capability model, doesn't work with high definition TV, just like the one we just bought for the apartment. Homosayswhat? Seriously. So I spend the day emailing Max, Great Giver Of All Good Tivo, complaining and looking for help. The support forums on tivo.com help only in the way that allows me to understand that there might be a cable work-around that would at most allow the Tivo to function on all non-HD channels. But then what's the point. This evening's two hour time-slip (those hours when I get to the apartment from work to the time I would have gotten home had we driven to the country like in the old days) was spent matching up A/V cables and S-cables and reconfiguring audio in to audio out, from cable box to Tivo to TV. Not something I particularly adept at but which, none the less, has to get done and it's the one thing I can figure out, eventually. And I did and now we're ready to go except our land line isn't turned on yet. Next week I'm going to figure out how to cable the Tivo into the wireless network (an oxymoron I still don't understand myself)and utilize the desktop features promised with the Series 2 model.

UPDATE: Never mind about that online networking business. Apparently the Series 2 doesn't support my Linksys G router. Fuckers. I hate technology.