I have 8 days of music on my now fully charged iPod. I made several new playlists of music I've been meaning to pay more attention to. I made a special "road trip" playlist with lots of upbeat songs. And I pulled out all my old tapes from previous road trips - those always bring back good memories.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, I expect to hate ALL of my music somewhere around Chico tomorrow.
Sigh. At least the drive from that point on should be pretty.
Overheard in New York... I wish I had thought of this genius concept. (The web site overall, not asking drunk pirates to pay in doubloons.)
On a related note, I told someone, "not sure, I wonder if I'll get Knocked Up today," in response to their question about what my Friday evening plans were. My follow-up statement ("I mean, I hear it's funny") did not help to clarify things, so I just walked away...
LOST was a rerun tonight so I scanned the channels looking for good background fodder while I packed away another box or four, after getting home from "going away party" number 5. (There are 2 more to come. I hope I actually do really go away, at some point. Otherwise these people might be pissed.)
Unfortunately, it ended up being just one box packed because I found this, and got TOTALLY SUCKED IN for numerous hours. (But I packed during the commercials.)
First let me say that I'm a sucker for anything that generates camaraderie. Like, at a U2 show, when they turn the microphones off and the crowd sings along with the chorus to "One," I get a little weepy. I think it's because I'm in the presence of a few folks who have the power to make 30,000 folks memorize their song lyrics, and that's a pretty overwhelming thought. (It also happened at the last Beastie Boys show I went to. 30,000 folks chanting along to Paul Revere. Some might find that scary, I was comforted.) Or like, when an audience gives a standing ovation for the actors in a play, I am often overcome with emotion.
SO. That said, I watched this live dance-off tonight and got a little weepy - several dozen people creating such a commotion amongst many young (and my age) Americans. Would the gymnastics experts overcome the group who lost a group-mate a few months ago? Both groups - hell, all the groups reunited tonight for the live finale - totally ROCKED OUT.
And made me weepy.
Then again, my hormones are all off this week...
Once again - NO CABLE IN PORTLAND. BAD. CABLE BAD.
Five reasons I am feeling awfully optimistic today (and parenthetical blah blah blahs), despite waking up at 4am to fret for 3 hours about the impending EVERYTHING, in no particular order:
Adding one full tablespoon of red chili pepper flakes to the homemade tofu version of Trader Joe's General Tso's Chicken (the sauce is a bit bland) was a bit too much. (AS IN, OMG WAAAAAAAAAAH MY MOUTH IS ON FIRE too much.) But I confidently recommend adding one HALF tablespoon of red chili pepper flakes (and a handful of fresh broccoli) to make it a genuine spicy sauce.
And another note to self - it is probably some sort of abomination to cook deep fried tofu with sugar-and red-chili-pepper infused sauce while watching The Biggest Loser, but I'm OK with that. After all, I'm going to join a running group when I move really, really soon. Or if nothing else, lots of the apartment complexes seem to have fitness centers. And hey, broccoli was involved. Thrive.
Look - progress!
(Yes, I'm so proud of packing my 75 remaining "frequently played" CDs - the other 350 were packed into plastic storage bins two Superbowls ago - that I needed to take a picture of it and show you guys. And now I really must take a break to watch the third Planet Earth DVD because I've had it for over two weeks now, and it's making me anxious just sitting there implying that I don't care enough about it to pop it in. Or maybe I should watch Rent in honor of the end of the Broadway stint.
I am starting to get the feeling that this is going to be a long, painful move...)
I took a walk to the far away drugstore this afternoon to get some supplies that would help me in my whittling down (no, I wasn't procrastinating, the closer-by drugstore didn't have what I needed... and yes, it's ironic that I needed to buy things to help me get rid of things).
ANYWAY, Kimya Dawson accompanied me on my iPod. I couldn't help but think that the mostly upbeat but completely somber songs were so inappropriate for such a lovely day. (Another fine reason why I'm moving to Portland. "Goin' where the climate suits my songs...")
It reminded me of my freshman year of college. Pearl Jam's "Ten" came out a few months earlier, and on any given sunny afternoon you could walk through the quad and hear "Porch" or "Black" blaring from a dorm room's open window. It was such a refreshing change from Bob Marley or the Grateful Dead, also prevalently wafting out of dorm room windows that year. (And every year prior and every year to follow, I would imagine.)
So for a little while today I felt slightly hip, or at least 10 years younger. And it was good.
I was writing an email to someone today and mentioned how nice it was to work for a Christian-based organization because we got Good Friday off. (Yay, Jesus! Oh - I mean... sorry, Jesus! It'll be allllll good on Sunday, promise.)
Anyway, I misspelled "Christian" and instead of correcting the spelling manually, I right clicked for the auto-corrected spelling. None of the choices was remotely close (which was odd, I didn't misspell it that much!) and one of the choices was actually "Antichrist." I'm not kidding.
It reminded me of the time I spell checked an email to a non-native-born coworker and the spell checker didn't recognize his name. Right clicking revealed that one of the suggested replacements was a word that had no business being in the company spell checker's "suggestion" list.
I won't do a link or a quote or anything because I don't want the virus bots to attack my or your precious machines, but here's a hint: it's one of the words within the song from the Hair soundtrack whose title is illegal in several dozen states. (I almost googled how many states it was actually illegal in, and thought better of that as well.)
[pause while the realization that this was in the company's "suggestion" directory kicks in]
... I KNOW!!
I have no idea what that quote means. It's from Catch and Release, a predictable yet tolerable comedy/romance... as long as your definition of "tolerable" is "playing in the background while catching up on 19 back issues of various magazines."
Yeah, I have no idea what that quote means. But she said it while very drunk as someone escorted her out of the bar.
So naturally, I hereby dedicate it to whoever is forced to deal with me after the WOW next weekend...
I have my first Portland job interview today. It's a phone interview, obviously, and I'm hoping that the vet was right this morning and that Her Majesty will get sleepy from the vaccinations pretty soon instead of doing her usual conference call thing (sitting at my feet meowing while the people on the phone laugh, then sigh, then "JEEZ!" over the course of the call).
The interview is with my former company, for a job I know I could do and probably wouldn't mind doing for a little while. I'm not getting my hopes up, especially because I could NOT do the job and NOT mind NOT doing the job, and also I think their hiring time frame is not going to work with my current plans.
The main question I have for her is whether I'd still be within the time frame to start accruing vacation days at 7 weeks/year (which is what I had when I left).
I suppose I ought to think of some other, more thoughtful questions...
It started today at the volunteer gig with Felix. Then the kittehs... er, kittens, then Paisley, and so on, and so on... And it ended with Her Majesty.
"Oh hai."
I couldn't help it. It just came out naturally. Automatically, in fact. Oh hai Felix. Oh hai kitteh. Kitteh! No bite! Bad kitteh!
I wonder when I will be able to say a normal "oh, hi" again.
In related news, the gig is going well. I was worried that it would make me sad, all those poor cats in need of a good home. But actually there's great turnover so while I'm sad that Oliver, Slow Bear (aka Riley Reincarnated), Dorothy*, etc. have been adopted, I am of course thrilled for them... I dread the day when Felix will not be there. He's my current fave. It's kitten season so perhaps he'll be around a little longer.
I'm also on a new kick to foster cats after Her Majesty becomes a dearly departed (because lord knows she wouldn't have any of that nonsense while she was still alive and well). There's something appealing about socializing a cat to ready them for adoption, then giving them away and having your life back. (Which is, coincidentally, my approach to kids, generally speaking. Hmm.)
But the best part about this gig is the confused look on Her Majesty's face when I come home smelling like 20 different cats instead of my neighbors' two. Priceless.
_________________
* OK seriously, who names a cat Dorothy?
"And so, at 11am on a Tuesday, a prominent politician spoke to Americans about race... as though they were adults."
The entire speech seemed utterly unrehearsed, unscripted, unteleprompted - even though he glanced down a lot and looked left and right only, it seemed as though he'd spoken these words millions of times before. If only Hilary was remotely as eloquent. I really, truly hope this ends well.
More here. (Crib notes here.)
... is anyone other than me befuddled at (irritated with, morbidly appalled by, etc.) John Corbett's new Applebee's commericals? (I kind of agree about the JC Penny Plant/Krauss sellout too, but it doesn't bother me quite as much.)
Oh and also - I waaaaaaaaaaaant one. Mainly to see how it actually helps you brainstorm topics for essays, but still...
One could say that I've had an off day.
I went to bed early last night knowing that I had to wake up early today (early for me, anyway - rise and shine is almost always between 6-7am). This morning I hit the snooze one fatal time (my clock radio only handles so many snooze hits... after which point it just shuts off... I *really* need a new clock radio) only to be immersed in an "I know what you did last summer"-corporate-stylie sort of dream. I don't recall the specifics but somehow the ship was set to explode, and my brother and I had been peripherally involved with setting the explosives but we didn't know why, and we were not allowed off the ship due to the investigation, which seemed a little odd - if they suspected a bomb on the ship you would think they would evacuate, but no, the investigators contained us all. So as soon as I was about to find out how I had been involved and what kind of sentence I was facing (other than death, as this was right before the ship exploded), I woke up.
Clearly a work dream. CLEARLY.
I woke up at 7:30am with a start from this dream. According to the plan last night, I was supposed to get up early to be clean and awake for an 8am meeting which was fortunately a 5-minute drive away. So I had 20 minutes to kinda clean up but not feel completely comfortable, and I was in no way awake for the meeting. I just kept thinking about the dream, and wondering why/how I'd been involved. Five minutes into the meeting I got the sense that the person I was meeting with had other priorities so I wasn't too concerned about my own distraction, although it was our last ceremonial bitch-and-moan session before I leave and I'd been looking forward to it. At least I got coffee'd up and fed.
Then later I sat through another meeting where I got really emotional for no apparent reason other than the suspected fact that my doctor switched a prescription to the generic brand and now my hormones are all off, and there's not much I can do about it since I won't have insurance in the near future. So I tried my best to hide my emotion (and I think I did OK) but it still bugged me that I couldn't contain - or explain - myself or my thoughts.
And then at the evening meeting that I was looking forward to, I got snubbed by someone which shouldn't have really surprised or bothered me but it did, and then (probably due to the aforementioned hormone issue) I started to feel feverish and even after eating something I didn't feel better, so I scurried out without really talking to anyone.
And now two hours later I've had some tea and played an hour of virtual Texas Hold'Em (which I learned about thanks to stalking ex-coworkers on Facebook), winning numerous points from strangers...
And I wonder if this is what my life will be like in Portland. And this worries me.
And so I will shut down Mr. Computer and turn to my other best friend, Mr. TV... well - actually - Mr. Planet Earth. I think I need a nature/nurture/I-am-really-not-that-important-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things night.
And some more cheese. That always helps.
Now spinning in my head 90% of every hour, although I am too lazy to update the list: Wilco - Sky Blue Sky - namely, Either Way... "Maybe the sun will shine today, the clouds will roll away... Maybe I won't be so afraid... I will understand, everything has its plan..."
Five things on the "things you do that really piss me off" list I got as a present on Saturday, that I actually do, in no particular order:
I've... found... the... Texas hold'em... Facebook... app... sorry... have... to... type... between... dings... omg... my... life... is... over...
I paid my car registration fees a few months ago. When I got the sticker and registration card I promptly put the sticker on my license plate... and did something with the registration card. That something did not involve putting it in my glove box as I usually do.
This did not occur to me until Tuesday of this week, when I was cleaning the glove box and realized that my old registration card was set to expire on Friday. I searched high and low for that dang replacement card to no avail. So I got up early Friday morning and headed to the DMV to pay the $17 fine to get a replacement card.
This afternoon I was cleaning out my file drawer (more with the whittling/purging) and got to my car folder. Insurance card from 2006, oil change from summer 2005, don't need those... Hmm... Here's the top portion of my 2006 registration card, and here's the 2007, I wonder if...
And sure enough, I must've put the promptly sticker on my desk and also promptly filed the stupid registration card in its correct folder. Where it would do me no good. D'oh.
If the duration of initial <-> end sticks, I figure this means that I'll find the two birthday cards I made four months ago, that I was supposed to hand out last night, sometime around April 26th... and that in about 3 minutes I'll remember that two weeks ago I told my neighbor I would feed her cats today.
Five things that made me laugh today, in no particular order:
No, I have not yet seen Across the Universe, though after this glowing review I can't wait to. I've been too busy to watch the three very intriguing Netflix flicks awaiting me, let alone anything new. Too busy to venture out into the real world to see movies, bands, life.
Instead, I just keep making lists. Lists of things to do before I go, things to do when I get there, things to do to GET me to there (um, hello, the most important part), people I should call (present and future), places I should visit (present and future), restaurants I should eat at "one last time"... Overwhelming.
It doesn't help that the next 2.5 weeks are INSANE IN THE MEMBRANE. What with nineteen going-away parties (I didn't know I had more than nineteen friends, so the "nineteen parties" part is pretty exciting, albeit somewhat exaggerated, and also I don't even know WHEN I'm going away, so the going-away parties are pretty odd), several poker nights, petting cats (AKA volunteering) and - oh yeah, wrapping stuff up at work which includes several evening/weekend meetings... I have approximately 3 spare hours between now and March 30.
At which point I will venture up to Portland to spend a week finding a place to squat for the next 6-9 months.
OVERWHELMING.
Thank goodness for TV. Thank goodness for Lost. Thank goodness for wine. Must. Escape. (Briefly.)
Cribbed from a friend of a friend.
1. Who was your first prom date? My "first" prom date? I only went to one prom, and I went with a really good friend. We had A TIME. A TIME, I tell ya.
2. Do you still talk to your first love? I don't talk to any of my former "loves."
3. What was your first alcoholic drink? I believe it was champagne at my parents' NYE party when I was 10 - I had a sip, literally a sip, and I had a horrible hangover the next day.
4. What was your first job? Under the table: babysitter for Satan's offspring. Legit: data entry clerk at the construction place where my parents worked.
5. What was your first car? 1984 Nissan pickup. Purchased in 1990, died in 2003. May she rest in peace.
6. Who was the first person to text you today? No one texted me today. I get charged $0.10 per text. By the way.
7. Who is the first person you thought of this morning? I don't remember. Probably someone in some meeting I was dreading.
8. Who was your first grade teacher? Mrs. McClelland. I will never forget her - she was reprimanding some JDs at the front of the class one day, using her plastic meter stick to emphasize her point, and that puppy shattered from the force of the "emphasis."
9. Where did you go on your first ride on an airplane? Maryland -> New Jersey to see my aunt.
10. Who was your first best friend, and are you still friends with him/her? It was a girl I met in elementary school, and we stayed friends (though not best friends) through college (even though she didn't go to college).
11. What was your first sport played? Oh lord, maybe HORSE or badminton in the backyard with my brother? Or freeze/flashlight tag with the neighborhood kids?
12. Where was your first sleepover? My cousin Kelly's house. She had a canopy bed. I was soooooooo jealous. And we made rainbow colored popcorn, the whole ROYGBIV spectrum of colors, which I haven't been able to find since then.
13. Who was the first person you talked to today? Assuming Her Majesty doesn't count, I think it was saying hello to one of my staff.
14. Whose wedding were you in the first time? I was the flower girl in a neighbor's daughter's wedding when I was about 5 years old. Guess they didn't know any little girls so they asked me.
15. What was the first thing you did this morning? Hit the snooze button.
16. What was the first concert you ever went to? Neil Diamond when I was four! Yay Mom.
17. What was your first tattoo or piercing? First ear piercing - when I was about 13. The five other ear piercings were in high school. First tattoo was the spring I turned 18, during my second semester at college.
18. What was the first foreign country you went to? Does New Jersey count? How about South Carolina? That South of the Border is pretty crazy, after all. Ha ha, just kidding. First foreign country was London, the start of my 12-countries-in-7-seconds tour of Europe during my sophomore year in college.
19. What was your first run-in with the law? I got a speeding "warning" picking a friend up from the airport in my parents' Monte Carlo when I was about 19 (man that thing could coast - and fast).
20. When was your first detention? I never had a detention. I was a goody-two-shoes.
21. What was the first state you lived in? Maryland. Lasted 23 years, give or take.
22. Who was the first person to break your heart? My first "official" boyfriend in 8th grade, I had such a crush on him, but he called me boring, and my friend told me as much.
23. Who was your first roommate? College, freshman year. We got along OK, but she had issues. (OK, so did I.)
24. Where did you go on your first limo ride? I have never been in a limo. With the impending departure, I think it's time to plan that wine tour o'Napa or o'Sonoma! (Preferably not within a day of the WOW though.)
March 2008 step one: final dentist appointment, final doctor appointment, final eye doctor appointment, figure out interim health care. Dentist = done. Doctor = done, cholesterol check pending my availability to wait in the lab for nine years, oh and also pending when I want to hear the results of the cholesterol check, which will be, oh I don't know, NEVER. Eye doctor = Monday. Interim health care = ugh ugh ugh, need to find the patience and energy for this.
March 2008 step two: final car tune up, final vet appointment. Car = $950 later, done yesterday. (Sigh.) Vet = next Friday.
March 2008 step three: secure hotel (errr... motel... cheap, sorry-ass motel fifteen miles outside of town) reservations for first week of April when I go up to seek housing in my new city. Done today.
March 2008 step four: secure someone's spare laptop for mad Craigs List apartment searches during my trip the first week of April. Anyone? Anyone? Hook a sister up...?
March 08 step five: Get. My. Shit. Together. Literally AND figuratively. Yeah, um... Pending.
I'm sure that at some point, the craziness of my lackadaisical attitude about this MAJOR LIFE CHANGE will hit me, and I will start to freak out, which will subsequently stress me and Her Majesty and everyone around me out, which is what I'm really trying to avoid. I went from nine years at one crazy job to over a year at another really crazy job without much of a break, and I'm making every attempt to use this move as an opportunity to take my time and casually meander up to the Northwest. But without deadlines, without any sense of urgency, and with everyone and their mother asking me "do you have a place" "do you have a job" "what's your move date" "what do you plan to do when you get there" etc., etc., I'm feeling a bit lost.
I really hope that I do find a new abode that first week of April. I think that will put a lot of things into motion. And if I don't... well, I really hope my boss is serious about me doing some consulting work in April.
"Step by step, I really think its just a matter of time."
________________
Virtual high embarrassing five to anyone who immediately knew the band quoted in this email.
Today, I do not enjoy being a girl.
In other news, I am officially a fan of this gal on SFGate's culture blog. My current favorite excerpt:
"It's always a delight to watch Tim [Gunn from Project Runway] interact with regular people. He could not look more uncomfortable eating three-bean-salad balanced atop his lap on a stranger's Jennifer Convertible. You can tell he's dying to grab a hag and whisper, Did you see those entryway curtains? My god, they look like Cher's Oscar rejects."
And finally, today a coworker witnessed a burglary in progress so he called the police. I went into a meeting shortly after he called them, and returned to our office a mere 30 minutes later to find two handsome uniformed men getting his statement. It was a little intimidating to be
in the immediate vicinity of all those guns and all that dark blue. But can I just say - your tax dollars DO work.
(Or, more likely, it was just a slow day in Oaktown.)
In a strange turn of events today, I slept until 10am. (Well, technically 9am - stupid daylight savings time.) I had vague plans to start "doing something" toward the impending move...
But then I got sucked into a Quarterlife marathon on Bravo, which was another strange turn of events. I'd heard the buzz about this show and tried to watch it a few weeks ago at its regular time, and I got bored so instantaneously even my yawn was surprised. My interest today was either related to procrastination, or PMS (which makes these types of shows more appealing to me... me + PMS + Dawson's Creek = sheer heaven), or my adult onset ADD (which makes watching shows week by week intolerable, but hour by hour totally enrapturing - I'm pretty sure I will not have cable in Portland because I've become so accustomed to the Netflix Tv-on-DVD concept).
ANYWAY. I don't recommend the show unless any of the above apply.
The marathon ended at 2pm so I ventured out into the beautiful day to get a fish taco and the newspaper, then headed back home to start "doing something" toward the impending move. Since I don't know exactly when I'm going, or exactly where I'm going, packing is damn near impossible - what if I need that wool skirt/book I have yet to crack open/fourth (of four existing) color ink cartridge between now and "then"? What if my new bedroom closet doesn't have room for my wire Ikea shelf o'exercise clothes/six pairs of shoes I have worn once/nineteen thousand empty hangers?
So instead I am working on whittling down. Today I attacked the closet and dressers using the "if I haven't looked at it in a year, it's gone... OK, now if I haven't worn it in a year, it's gone" methodology of getting rid of things. I ended up with a respectable pile of space saved in the moving van (especially when you include the lamp and chair, which are not coming with me - unless I can't offload a cat-hair-laden red corduroy chair between now and then):
This is just the start. In the coming week I will work on the kitchen. Surely someone at work still drinks Celestial Seasonings tea, or needs a giant ladle or some mason jars, or would love a box of Cheerios purchased by my Dad in December 2005.
I despise daylight savings time. Why?
Why, because I am apparently a pseudo-vampire who loves watching reruns of Buffy in the dark of winter when the sun sets at 4:30pm. Truth be told, I absolutely hate when the days are sunny for nineteen million hours at a time. Portland is just a step toward Alaska, which has one-hour-of-Mr.-Sun winters, after all.
But now, Yahoo!Tech ALSO gives YOU a reason to despise DST! Finally, a co-conspirator. Mwah hahahahahaha!!!!
(For geeks only: That's the extent of my pseudo-vampire impressions... Or is it? I DID quote Angel in the subject line, after all, and which of you Buffy fans thought they'd ever see the day I quoted THAT guy? Might as well be quoting Riley, for Pete's sake! Mwah hahahahahaha!!!!)
In order to round off the "comes in three's" we have to go back to last summer, but technically I think this counts because I just found out about it yesterday.
See, there was once this very sweet, very funny, very smart, very stylish person, the kind of person you wanted to be friends with, that I went to junior high and high school with. I wasn't good friends with her or anything, and we certainly didn't keep in touch after high school. But we shared six years of classes, and I liked her a hell of a lot more than most of the other people I shared six years of classes with.
A high school friend sent me a Facebook message about it. His wording was pretty somber so before I clicked the link, I sensed that the outcome was not good, but I suspected maybe a plane crash, or a car accident, or something having to do with some war somewhere. She seemed like the traveling Peace Corps-y type, after all. And I was on the Facebook high, poking people and taking movie trivia quizzes and joining social networks and what not, so clearly it had to have some positive spin to it. Never in a million years did I suspect that she had suffered a horrific death at the hands of her "boyfriend."
So I'm no longer fearing the reaper, as I tend to do while waiting for #3 to drop. Instead I've turned my attention to watching my faith in humanity continue to disintegrate by the ever loving millisecond.
"I envy people who have the capacity to sit with another human being and find them endlessly interesting. I would rather watch TV. Of course, this eventually becomes known to the other person."
Last night I had the pleasure of attending a performance of Wishful Drinking. It was a personal, humorous, painful glimpse into the life of the woman who shall be immortalized as Princess Leia.
I hope my theatergoing friend will chime in, but my reaction to the show was all over the map. At times I felt disdain (oh boy, another sob story from Hollywood). At times I felt empathy (inbreeding, no father figure, men approaching you on the street proclaiming their love for you in "that little bikini number while you were chained to a giant slug," someone actually owning her likeness). At times I felt awe (Paul Simon wrote SONGS about this woman, I was Princess Leia for Halloween when I was four and I wrote a paper on the character in college - and there she is, RIGHT THERE).
But mostly, I appreciated her vulnerability, her openness, her engagement with the audience, her stories, her manner of storytelling, and her incredible sense of humor. Time has not been good to her, physically, but her inner strength is remarkable and I highly recommend this show for anyone who's remotely curious.
Now queuing Postcards from the Edge.
Her Majesty's incessant whining has really gotten out of control lately, to the point where I'm constantly barking "OMGSTFU already" at her, and she's waking me up at 4am to MEOW in my face, so after a visit to the volunteer animal gig tonight I decided to try another tactic: absolutely no acknowledgment of her incessant whining. (And also, I scheduled a vet appointment this afternoon.)
I have not said a word since I got home. Not to her, and not to my general surroundings. (I not only tend to acknowledge her whining, I also tend to talk to myself a lot when I'm at home.) Everything else has been as normal - she got her squishy food right away, she got pets when she was being quiet, she was calmly pushed away when trying to get in my lap while I worked on a paper online (which has never been OK - she has never been allowed to sit in my lap while I'm at the desk, but alas, this has never stopped her from trying).
She is now sitting at my feet, staring at me, occasionally moaning or groaning, reaching a paw up every now and then in an attempt to sit in my lap or sniff at the "other" cats I played with tonight. But in general, she's been fairly quiet for the past two hours.
Hmmm. I might be on to something...
But I'm still investigating kitty Prozac with the vet next week.
After a many-year search for "vegetarian" General Tso's Chicken in the Bay Area that would rival that of Seven Seas (College Park, Maryland) version, which I got absolutely addicted to in college and which I ABSOLUTELY MUST have every time I go home to visit...
I have not found many competitors. In fact, until last week, I hadn't really found ANY competitors. Which shocked me, being in this culturally- and environmentally- crazy environment.
I have found several local sorry attempts to recreate the dish. They were pink and squishy and did not come with broccoli and they were not breaded, not deep-fried goodness, not at all spicy, and they made me throw them out after just a bite or two. Even after walking twenty or more blocks in hopeful optimism on my lunch hour. I just couldn't swallow them. So I threw them away and ate a backup Luna bar.
After all that effort, I have almost found it. I have almost found its rival. The texture was perfect, the broccoli was just enough, the underlaying sauce was just saucy enough - but not too saucy. The only issues I had were the lack of RED PEPPER OH MY GOD HOT spicy (that is, it wasn't quite spicy enough) and the size of the "chicken" (Seven Seas gives you big boneless wing sized portions, Big Lantern's were too small to be exactly chicken-sized - then again, they were easily consumed via chopstick whereas I have to use real utensils at Seven Seas).
And now, damn it all to hell, I'm moving to another state. So I suppose my new mission will be to find Portland's rival to Seven Seas' version of vegetarian General Tso's Chicken which I recently just about found at Big Lantern in San Francisco.
The job is suddenly coming together, the friend activity is suddenly coming together, and now the food is suddenly coming together. Must be time to get the hell out of Dodge.
Click this link, then wait for the site to load, then wait about 10 more seconds, then turn your sound down and enjoy. IKEA is fahrfrumgruvin' compared to these guys.
OK, back to the list.
We dug into disc one of Planet Earth, another wonderful BBC/David Attenborough collaboration. We laughed when the monkeys crossed the stream, arms upheld, looking annoyed. We stared in awe at the largest migration on the planet and rare footage of a snow leopard family. We cheered when the impala got away from those pesky hyenas (oops - spoiler alert!) and when the elephants frolicked in the water after a long, dry journey. And then we sat in awe through two more episodes about mountains and water.
It was brilliant.
The only thing I didn't like, that some people will probably love, is that the last 10 minutes of each episode featured a "how they did it" segment. It was easy enough to skip, but it wasn't in a separate "special features" section of the disc. When it comes to things like that, I don't want to know. I just want to experience the magic.
Yesterday in class I made a list of all the work and home things I want to get done this week. Eight for work, nine for home. Most relate to wrapping things up at work and getting ready for Portland.
I have been up since 6am, because apparently I'm old now and therefore incapable of sleeping in. It is now 3:43pm. I have done ONE THING on my list, and subsequently added about twelve more things. And done about six things that weren't on ANY list... And absolutely no TV was involved (well, except between 6:30-7am, when I watched a Buffy rerun on F/X during breakfast).
Finding time to do everyday normal things is hard enough. Imagine adding an interstate move... It's overwhelming.
On the upside, my allergies are back and I ran into a former coworker for the second weekend in a row, both of which cemented the thought that it's about time to get out of Dodge.
And on a totally unrelated note, the Parkway has joined the 21st century and now accepts credit cards. As when Trader Joe's switched from typing in prices to scanning items, this shift made me a little sad. There was something small-townish and charming about the prior situations. I know it's all about efficiency and the bottom line, but still...
Damn, I AM old.
I am a colon. No, not that type of colon. This type :
I am very orderly and fact driven. This is true. I am not concerned much with theories or dreams... only what's true or untrue. This is true. I am brilliant and incredibly learned. HA! Anything I know is well researched. This is true. I like to make lists and sort through things step by step. This is true. I am not subject to whim or emotions. This is mostly true. My friends see you as a constant source of knowledge and advice. HA! (But they are a little sick of me being right all of the time!) DOUBLE HA!
I excel in: Leadership positions QUADRUPLE HA!
I get along best with: The Semi-Colon
What kind of punctuation mark are you? Please identify yourself, semi-colons...
