Life

Happy Equinox!

“It’s spring fever.  That is what the name of it is.  And when you’ve got it, you want – oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!”
– Mark Twain

Ah, Spring!  When young C.’s mind lightly turns to thoughts of clothes like this, food like this, working out for real this time, shopping, opening all the windows (there by disrupting J.’s overwhelming, masculine desire to live in a cave), all-day blue skies for the first time in weeks (I’m ignoring that it snowed yesterday.  As far as I’m concerned it never happened), getting the desire to bake out of her system before Summer shows up and using our oven isn’t an option anymore, salads, fresh fruit, sandals, shaving her legs more carefully, and even cleaning a little!

Happy weekend, darlings!

Botticelli's Primavera (c. 1482)
Family, Fashion, Shopping, Wedding

Dress Up

“I wore dresses all the time.  I like to wear dresses.”
– Willard Scott

Anyone else hitting up this awesomeness next week?  Better believe I am!  My sister-in-law is getting married in a month and I still don’t have a dress to wear.  My beloved Shabby Apple is going to be selling their fab frocks at the Riverwoods this weekend at discount.  If I don’t score this for the upcoming nuptials (which look, by the way, to be the social event of the season!) it won’t be my fault!

Humor, Office, Work

Horror!

 “Work is the curse of the drinking classes.”
– Oscar Wilde. 

It's definitely a rage stroke.

I haven’t complained about work in a while, and there is a very simple reason for that.  I had a rage stroke.  Seriously.  I got so angry that the rage literally had nowhere to go so it just retreated to a corner of my brain and fizzled.  Between what I consider to be bad management with our pet project (which is still giving us a ridiculous amount of grief), and ego running our office in terms of funding, personnel relations, and department communication and day-to-day running, I was just FED UP.

Then, suddenly and blissfully, I just didn’t care anymore.  Of course I’m not so foolish as to think the apathy is permanent.  Just a few days later our copy machine threw up its metaphoric hands and said, “To hell with it,” Hennessy and I got so stressed that she had a minor meltdown and I spent a cathartic ten minutes kicking a brick wall before I went home, and self-entitled people began pouring out the woodwork (think they’ve been hibernating?).  

To top it off, Dilbert™ for the past couple of days has been frighteningly like our department.  Either Scott Adams secretly works here, or my worst fears have been confirmed and every job in the world is exactly the same. 

And still they don't get it...
And still they don't get it...
I promise this isn't an exaggeration. Really.
No. REALLY.
Humor, Office, University

It’s Alive!

“The trouble with troubleshooting is that trouble shoots back.”
– Unknown

So, while documenting records in our database, I must have tapped some keys in just the right order to summon the devil.  Or something.  Because this popped up in that scary font only techie types use:

This version requires a [something or other thing that I don’t understand] directory to store your alias files.  Shall I create it for you?  Y/N

At a loss, I type “N” and assumed it would all go away.  The response…

Very well.  I won’t create it.

But you may run into difficulties later.

Die, evil computer program, die!  Help, my computer has become self aware!

I wouldn't do that, C.
Family, History, Holidays, Humor

Luck ‘o the [Insert Nationality]

“The list of Irish saints is past counting; but in it all no other figure is so human, friendly, and loveable than St. Patrick – who was an Irishman only by adoption.”
– Stephen Gwynn

This might be the only holiday where people have to actually genetically alter themselves to feel like they qualify for the desired binge.

For some reason, come St. Patrick’s Day every single person in the US seems to acquire Irish geneology, even where previously there was none before.  And everyone gets wildly protective of their geneology and suspicious of others.  I overheard a loud girl on her cell phone while walking from car to office today, “Yeah, I don’t know where she gets off saying she’s Irish!  She just dyes her hair red.  I mean, my family, we’re Irish…”  

This is particularly funny to me these days because the state I live in is notoriously English and Scandinavian in terms of population.  Blonde hair and blues eyes abound and names ending -son/sen are very much the majority.  (Note: mobile phone girl was a Viking’s daughter if ever I saw one!) 

Now, we do know we have some Irish ancestry because we have family records detailing which of them got gruesomely killed in the battle of Boyne, but I digress.  The point is that my father is…wait for it…half Slovak.  So my Dad has darker skin and tans wonderfully, as do all my siblings, and don’t get me started on my fantastically beautiful black-haired, blue-eyed, dark-skinned cousins! 

And me?  I’m short, brunette, green-eyed, incredibly pale (un-tan-able) and bad-tempered.  That’s right: a leprechaun.

Food, Friends, Fun, Humor, Husband

Come Together

“Video games are bad for you?  That’s what they said about Rock’n’Roll.”
– Shigeru Miyamoto

Last Friday, J. and I headed north to the city to play with Angel and her husband Hotty.  Both of the men lived/worked in Korea at some point and converted their respective wives to the cuisine so we went to Angel’s favorite restaurant, got ice cream, and retired to their basement flat to play Rock Band.

In retrospect, I think I liked him because he was (also) touchy about his height.

Growing up we didn’t have gaming systems and to this day they remain verboten at Chez Parents, so I have never developed the necessary finger-eye coordination and thumb dexterity required by video games.  My gaming experience was limited to watching Peregrine playing Final Fantasy back in the day, and trying Spyro The Dragon (exactly two times) while babysitting.  And since I didn’t know what the point of the game was or how to achieve it, I mostly just scampered around whatever level I was on blowing fire and falling off things into oblivion while evil signs flashed “GAME OVER,” or something of the sort.

Pictured: Angel, Hotty, C. (with mustache), and J.

So, Beatles Rock Band went about as I expected.  They started me on the drums which was manageable on the easiest level, but still confusing as I couldn’t get the timing of my whacks on the drum set vs. the scrolling instructions right until J. told me to ignore it and go along with the beat instead (oOOOoohhhh.  Rhythm.  Right). 

At some point I graduated to guitar and luckily we set it to “impossible to fail” because I proceeded to slaughter the music.  Then I got really ambitious and went from “Easy” to “Medium” and discovered my lack of hand-eye coordination is not just limited to sports.  And I must be mildly dyslexic because for the life of me I couldn’t manage to match my fingers with their assigned keys, much less with the dots of color that wouldn’t stop rolling towards me.  And chords!  Impossible!

I think I’ll be settling back into video game retirement now, thanks.

Humor, Life, Weekend, Work

Beware the Ides of Monday

“Julius Caesar was killed for one reason,
the Senators decided to accuse him of treason,
the day was the Ides and March was the season,
he wanted to be king, they wanted his head.”
– stanza of a poem I wrote ten years ago.  Won me a school competition.

Monday feels a bit, appropriately, like this today:

Ouch!

 

Editor's Note: If only all brutal monday mornings were accompanied by a young Marlon Brando.
Drama, Family, Humor, Money, Office, University, Work

Wealth And Consequence

“Not for all the money in the world would I let any children of mine develop into Pendletons!”
– Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

Dear un-named child of an extremely generous university alumni: I am very grateful for your father’s contributions and service.  I am sure that the whole school thanks him for his patronage.  You, on the other hand, are not your father and are not entitled to his privileges.  He has given us a lifetime of service and hard work, you have give us a series of debilitating migraines because of your rude, unbelievable behavior.  I do not care how much money another person has donated, you are an insufferable ass and no amount of money will make you less responsible for your actions.

Wealth doth not a gentleman make.

I got home yesterday absolutely burning with rage after dealing with this boy. 
“If,” I snarled at J., “we ever become as successful as we hope, we are donating everything to PBS and cancer research.  I’ll be damned before I see any of our family act like that!  The things I wish I could have said!”
“You don’t have to take apart every jerk that you deal with you know.”
“But I want to.  It would make the world a better place!”

If I be waspish best beware my sting!

I come from some WASP stock myself, but if I ever behaved the way this kid does, my parents would gleefully disown me!

Family, Food, History, Home, Humor, Life

My Love-to-Hate Affair With Mac & Cheese

“At least she’s eating better things than macaroni and cheese.”
– Heidi Klum

Translation of fragment: "Mac and Cheese is food fit for dogs. And Gauls. Go Rome!"

Throughout my life my mother has been in school, in some capacity or another.  When I was about three or four, she had to leave Dad and I for a few weeks to finish up something or other with one of her degrees (I misremember which.  Which isn’t me being a bad daughter, it’s her having one in Asian Studies, one in American History, and now another in Classical Studies from Cambridge because she decided to learn Greek and Latin.  In other words, my mother is exceptionally awesome).  Time has blurred the details a bit but as I recall, this was an absolute highlight of my short life because Dad and I subsisted on mainly pizza.

I didn’t realize this during the Great Pizza Blitz, but it turned out that my Dad hated cooking.  Really hated it.  He encouraged my Mum to go to school, continue her education throughout her life, and work if she wanted, but by golly the one thing he wanted was dinner to be on the table, because left up to him, dinner would come grudgingly from a frozen package.

So, a few years down the road when she decided to teach for a semester or two at a local university, I thought the Pizza Affair would be reborn.  I was sadly, terrifyingly mistaken.

This is NOT food.

Mac and Cheese.  From a box.  Every night.  Some days even for lunch.  Sometimes we varied it up with chunks of hotdog, but mostly not.  Again, I’m sure both time and horror have worked their magic on me and the vile orange sludge was not as prolific as I remember, but it sure seemed like it at the time.  When my mother’s teaching finished, I refused to eat another disgusting, processed bite, and I’ve never touched it since.  Once when shopping J. picked up a box for himself on days when I’d be at school late or he needed a lunch, I had to swallow escaping bile.

However, watching Food Network the other day, I saw a recipe for ‘Grown Up Mac And Cheese’ and thought suddenly to myself, “That doesn’t look so bad.”  It sounded pretentious enough that I could assure myself that it would be as un-Kraft-like as possible, but looked really easy to make.  So, on Sunday I girded my loins and made Mac and Cheese for the first time in years.

And you know what?  It was pretty darned tasty!

**I’ll still never make the packaged stuff again.  My children will not be subjected to this powdered cheese monstrosity, except to survive the Zombie Apocalypse.  And even then, I might choose death.

Fabulous, Fashion, Humor

Dressing Up/Dressing Down

“Fashion is like the id.  It makes you desire things you shouldn’t.”
– Bob Morris

Well well, it was the night of Marchesa, Armani Prive,  and Elie Saab!  There were some good, some bad, and some ugly.  Metallics, ruffles blush/nude/pale colors, thigh-high slits, and jeweled shoulder accents gave a good showing and though perhaps not as daring as last year, I was still impressed.  Heck, even Kristen Stewart cleaned up!

The Good

Vera Farmiga  and Sandra Bullock in Marchesa.  Bullock gets top marks for classy hair and the pop of red lips.

Elizabeth Banks and Demi Moore in Versace.  Banks is better here though both are on point with the ruffles, gray is an undervauled color in my opinion.

The fabulous Meryl Streep in Chris March and Kristen Stewart (surprisingly washed and coiffed) in Monique Lhullier.

Anna Kendrick and Rachel McAdams in Elie Saab.  Kendrick’s isn’t the best of the best, but she’s on point and the blush goes good with the dark hair.  McAdams was my favorite dress of the night.  Way to rock a print at the Oscars, only you and Maggie did it and both pulled it off.  Ah, Elie Saab, my love affair with you continues…

Queen Latifa in Mischka Badgley, showing how you’re supposed to dress luscious curves: right color, right accents.  Carey Mulligan in Prada, doing another cut-away-in-the-front dress.  Works!

The Bad

Amanda Seyfried and Jennifer Lopez’s stylists obviously aren’t BFFs, otherwise they might have warned one another that their clients would both be rocking Armani Prive in basically the same material.  This is purely fabric dislike on my part.  And though Lopez gets points for daring, I’m still not loving the bunch on her hip.  In Seyfried’s case, the color washes her out.

In Gabourey Sidibe’s case, I wanted to like her gown, after all it’s another Marchesa and a fantastic color but I really dislike the applique florals.  They bring down the dress for me, to a crazy nursing home belle.  If she had stuck with just this gorgeous draped blue fabric with just the sparkles on her wrist and ears it would have been classed up.  Charlize Theron, in Dior, was bad.  No one should have a perverted Miss America sash groping you.  Period.

Anika Noni Rose in (didn’t catch the designer) and Zoe Saldana in Givenchy.  Both these girls had the same problem: their bejeweled bustiers made an appearance.  The bottom of Saldana’s gown is interesting, but I’m going to have to give both of these a thumbs down.

The Ugly

Diane Kruger and Sara Jessica Parker both bombed in Chanel (impossible, you say?  This is Chanel after all.  Yes).  There were good elements in both gowns, but neither translated on the wearers, I thought.  The first is Eliza Doolittle Goes to the Races, and the second is a sack. 

Congratulations, Mariah Carey, you managed to make Valentino look bad.  The proportions here are just all wrong.  And, Miley sweetie, better than last year but you join Saldana with underwear as outerwear for a top.  And you’re tiny but you looked so cinched in you might as well have been wearing Spanx.  Keep trying, you’re getting there.

And the dress I wanted to take home for myself (I don’t think I could pull off the McAdams dress, unfortunately, but this one would more than compensate): Penelope Cruz’s Donna Karan.

Thoughts?  Compare to last year, what do you think?