Itchy

I have poison ivy on my eyelid. Who knows how these things happen to me.

Weekend Review

I had a long list of productive things I wanted to accomplish over my 5-day weekend. I failed miserably, although I sure enjoyed myself. Last Tuesday, my younger sister Rebecca came home so I took Wednesday off and we went shopping in Annapolis with my mom. I figured I'd better get the shopping out of the way because there is no way I'm going near a mall now until December is over. Nobody's going to get an opportunity to trample this girl.

The Horses! - On Wednesday night, Beverly and I went to Cavalia, a show that is incredible difficult to explain. When I tell people it's a show with horses and people dancing around, they just look at me like I'm drunk. It was kind of like a circus for adults. With beautiful music. And costumes and backdrops. It was the best cultural event I've been to in a long time...and I'm not even a big horse person.

Cavalia has been called "an equine-human ballet." It originated in French Canada and features 47 horses and 32 acrobats and aeralists. A big part of the show involves balance (standing on horses, doing flips on running horses, doing flips on a beam, etc.) set to a live orchestra. At one point, a team of horses came running out with a man standing one foot on one horse and one on the other. Beverly and I had front-row seats because that is one of the perks of being in a wheelchair. (The other perk is good parking...and that's pretty much where the perks end.) We couldn't get much closer to the horses without actually riding on one. We got dirt kicked in our faces and fake-snowed on, and at one point, I thought I was going to get trampled!

It was totally worth the expensive ticket. My only complaint is that it was freezing cold in the big tent it was in. It snowed while we were inside. When it was over and we went back out to my van, my passenger-side window was missing. I honestly thought it was smashed in by some cultured thug (after all, we were in DC) but it turned out that Beverly left her window down. So after she pushed all the snow off my leather seat, we were on our way feeling more cultured than we actually are. If you get an opportunity to see this show when it tours, do it. It'll be in DC for a while longer. To see some awesome photos of it, go here.

Fat and happy - Thanksgiving day was wonderful. Aside from the aforementioned burning of the sweet potato cassarole, everything went without a hitch. Mom makes vegetarian gravy and stuffing for Rebecca and thankfully she took it all with her when she left. Dad built a fire and we played Pitch, a card game that nobody's ever heard of that's been in our family for years. It's the best card game ever. And I'm not just saying that because I won both games we played. Then Megan made us watch The Sound of Music which we sang along to in falsetto and turned off after Maria and Captain von Trapp tie the knot. Rebecca and Megan left that night shortly after we loaded them up with as many leftovers as they'd take.

Black Friday - I honestly don't remember what I did this day. It's like it's been wiped from my mind. And I'd understand a complete mind-sweep if I'd been crazy enough to venture the stores that day, but I'm certain I was home all day.

Movie Review: Derailed - First, let me just say I had no interest whatsoever in seeing this movie. It just didn't seem like my kind of movie...and it wasn't. Watching a movie about two people who cheat on their spouses just seems really demoralizing and depressing. I'm not a huge Clive Owens or Jennifer Aniston fan, so I couldn't claim to see it based on my love of the actors. No, the real reason I saw this movie is because a few of my friends wanted to, and I'm nothing if not a good friend. I'm ususally up for any movie as long as it's not horror or an animal movie. (Speaking of that, I know King Kong is supposed to be the next big thing, but it qualifies as an animal movie. I will be skipping that.)

The movie is violent and goes places I don't want to think about, but the longer I watched, the more I wanted to see the outcome. There is somewhat of a twist about 3/4 of the way through that makes the ending very satisfying. Anyway, if you like debauchery and violence and twists, you should see this.

Movie Review: Walk the Line - I'd been wanting to see this one for awhile, so when my parents told me they were going to see it yesterday, I played third wheel and went along. About one hour into the movie, the screen goes dark, the lights go on, and the fire alarm starts sounding! I have NEVER had to evacuate a theater due to a fire alarm before. So everyone files out the back door and walks around to the front and they're letting people right back in the building! Was this a fire drill?! We sit back down. 15 minutes later, the movie resumes. 45 minutes later, the fire alarm sounds AGAIN! This time nobody moves. The concession stand could've been up in flames, but we weren't budging. Not again. All in all, it was a three-hour movie, including the two "intermissions." If I can help it, I'm avoiding that theater from now on.

But the movie itself was great. I highly recommend it whether you enjoy the music of Johnny Cash or not. A large part of the movie covered the tour Cash was on with Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and June Carter. I found all this particularly interesting because, on Thanksgiving night, we played cards with my mom's Elvis deck. I'm convinced that was the real reason I won. My mom was so distracted by the pictures of Elvis that she couldn't concentrate on the numbers. The interesting part is that we also listened to The Million Dollar Session, an impromptu recording of Elvis, Jerry Lee, Carl Perkins, and Cash jamming at Sun studios in Memphis. It's a very cool recording.

I continue to be impressed by Reese Witherspoon. As much as I hate Legally Blonde, I loved her in Vanity Fair and this movie.

So that's all I have to say. Forgive the length. I was trying to make up for the lack of posts lately. I don't want Megan to start complaining. And if I mailed you a Christmas CD that skips, let me know. I'll mail you another.

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Track of the Day: "Look What You've Done" by Jet
"Give me back my point of view 'cause I just can't think for you..."

My pants are waterproof

Happy Thanksgiving. I am fat and happy. Mom burned the marshmallows on the Sweet Potato Cassarole TWO times, each time scraping off the charred mess and re-adding marshmallows. It's a Thanksgiving tradition to burn them a few times so we had plenty of backup marshmallows.

More later...

One holiday at a time

It appears as though Nordstrom is one of the few retail stores that chooses not to put up holiday decorations until Thanksgiving has passed.

"We have a 100-year tradition of waiting to unveil our holiday decorations until after Thanksgiving," said John Bailey, a Nordstrom spokesman. "It's a tradition that works for us. We believe in celebrating each holiday in its entirety before moving on to the next one."

Good for them. It's too bad I'm too poor to support them by shopping there.

Christmas Eggnog Mix 2005

My Christmas music compilation is complete! It's the one productive thing I did this weekend. So, for those of you who emailed me about a copy, I'll send them out tomorrow. Keep an eye on your shady mail carrier.

UPDATE - No track list for you. But music by the following:

Trans-Siberian Orchestra
Mariah Carey
Christy Nockels
Joy Williams
Bon Jovi
Chris Isaak
Michael English
Ella Fitgerald
Elvis
Jewel
Michael Buble
Jonny Lang
Jo Dee Messina
Martina McBride
Eartha Kitt
NSYNC
George Winston
and some other people I forgot.

Wonderboy

After church today, as I was going back out to my van, I noticed a freckled boy of 11 or 12 watching me. I pressed a button on my keychain remote and my van door automatically slid open and the ramp came down. Kids always love this and think it's the coolest thing ever. The boy walked over to me, and with a cock of his head said, "Isn't the technology they have on the market these days amazing?"

"Why, yes it is," I replied with a big smile on my face. I was smiling even bigger on the inside because it's not everyday a young kid comes up to me and remarks on "technology in the marketplace" with more gusto that a sophomore business major. Every other kid usually just says COOL! So we chatted for a few minutes about hand-controlled vehicles and their merits. Turns out he watched some program on the news about vans like mine. What kids actually watches the news?!

I wanted to pick his brain on stock tips, but before I knew it, he politely excused himself. "It was nice to talk to you," he said. "I'll see you later."

It's these types of kids that make me want to get married and squeeze out 10 babies.

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Track of the Day: "St. Robinson and His Cadillac Dream" by Counting Crows
"And the comet is coming between
Me and the girl who could make it all clean..."

Scraping the bottom of the barrel

"I like your pajamas!" said my friend Beverly when she walked into my bedroom this morning. "You should write about them on your website. You should take a picture of them."

"Whatever. I'm not putting a photo of me in my jammies on the Internet." That's just plain asking for trouble. I picked up the warm flannel oversized shirt at Target yesterday when I figured out the temperature was finally going to drop. I wasn't overly excited about the look of it, but God bless flannel. (Don't hit that Back button...I'm not going to launch into the virtures of flannel sheets again. But, really, everyone should own a pair. That's all I'm saying.) So I'm stuck with the ugliest, green paisley pajamas ever sewn into existence. The only uglier ones were the pinky-purple paisley ones. Ugh.

But there is no way I'd dedicate an entire post to my pajamas. I don't care how paisley they are. Only losers post about their pajamas. Please. Like I have nothing better to write about at 10 p.m. in the evening.

Balmy

Why it's 70 degrees in mid-November, I don't know. But I'm highly annoyed at the lack of cool weather. How am I supposed to get into the holiday spirit?

MOVE!

Let's discuss etiquette for a moment here. Movie theater etiquette, to be more specific. How many times must I complain about the way people behave in a theater?! Obviously the real offenders here don't read my posts on the subject.

I went to see Pride and Prejudice yesterday. (It was a decent movie. Nothing compared to the A&E production, but they did very well for having to cram a lot into 2 hours. It stayed very true to the book although the ending was butchered a bit to be "more romantic.") Because The Powers That Be predicted little interest in the movie, it wasn't being shown at many theaters in the area and the one I went to assigned it to their smallest theater. We arrived in plenty of time to get seats in the front of the theater like usual. As in almost every theater, the seats were in a stadium-seating format that has several seats on the floor level removed for wheelchairs. This is the area I always sit in.

On the way into the theater, a girl maybe a few years younger than me pushed past us and sat in one of the seats adjacent to an empty space for a wheelchair. "No problem," I thought. "We'll just sit on the other side." We sat down, but about five minutes later three people and an elderly lady in a wheelchair came into the theater and looked across the row for somewhere to sit. Now, any normal person with a fully functional brain would immediately offer his seat to remedy the problem, right? Ha. This girl sat there like she didn't see the group of old people STANDING RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER. She had her stuff spread out on the seats next to her. Only when one of the men approached her did she stand up and shuffle a few seats down. And the dumb broad obviously couldn't count because there still weren't enough seats available for the group to sit together. So after the same man asked again, she got up and moved to a single seat at the end of the row.

I know I'm more sensitive to these situations than others, but I'd really like to think that, if I was that girl, I'd have enough sense and thoughtfulness to move if a person in a wheelchair or an older person didn't have an easy place to sit. What am I gonna do? Make grandma hike up a bunch of stairs? What is wrong with people?!

And while I'm on the subject, please, people, leave your babies at home. Nobody wants to hear your kid cry in the middle of the movie.

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Track of the Day: "Fix You" by Coldplay
"...and I will try to fix you."

Movie Review: Donnie Darko

I've always heard about Donnie Darko but never saw it until this weekend. This is a weird movie. I thoroughly enjoyed it even though I have no idea what on earth in going on in it. It's bizarre, yet strangly appealing. And I have no idea how to even describe it or summarize it. It involves time travel, a jet engine that falls on a house, and a demonic rabbit that tells Jake Gyllenhaal's character what to do while he's sleep-walking. How can you resist a 6-foot-tall demonic bunny rabbit?! Gah! I'm going to have to watch this one again.

Blood and coffee

I went to the doctor last week and they did "blood work" which is really a kind way of saying they stuck me with needles and took 4 vials of my precious life-sustaining fluid away forever. Well, on Thursday of last week, the office called to tell me my iron and oxygen was very low. Apparently I'm anemic or something like that. So yesterday I had another appointment for more blood work. Four more vials of blood just to make certain last week's samples weren't just quirky. If I'm really anemic, stealing more of my precious blood is probably not the best idea. But again, I'm no doctor.

Afterwards, my arm was weak and my hand was tingling so that gave me the perfect excuse to hit Starbucks. I needed a little sugar. I've never tried their Gingerbread Lattes before, but the DJ on the morning show I listen to is practically obsessed with them. It was okay but I think I'll stick with my 2-pump vanilla latte.

And he lies on my pillow

You know what's annoying? Owning a dog who drags his nasty butt on the carpet. But what's even worse is owning a dog who is a tick-magnet. Zeke has managed to have at least one tick on him every single day for the past three weeks. You think I am exaggerating. I am not.

My backyard is forest-like, thick with trees, woodland animals, and obviously parasites. It backs up against the Patuxent Wildlife Refuge. And Zeke spends his afternoon doing who-knows-what back there. It's as if he's found a nest of ticks and lays himself in it EVERY SINGLE DAY. Most of the time they're on his head somewhere.

I put Frontline on him every month but unfortunately that doesn't prevent ticks from latching on. Anyhow, picking ticks off him is getting old. I keep waiting for a good, hard freeze in hopes that'll kill off the nasty things. I may be waiting awhile because the 70 degree weather doesn't seem to be cooperating with my wishes. Until then, Zeke is grounded inside with the occassional bathroom break.

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Track of the Day: "You're Everywhere" by Third Day
"I know, now I truly know
That I can never go from your presence
My God, you are everywhere
From the lowest depths to the heavens..."

Recipe: Salmon with Indian Spices

Every Sunday while I'm getting around in the morning, I watch PBS's Antiques Roadshow (can you believe some of the junk on there is worth thousands?) and Everyday Food, a 30-minute cooking show featuring easy-to-make recipes. I'm a huge fan of cooking shows. If there isn't anything worthwhile on television, I'll scour the weird channels in search of a cooking show. In college, I'd lie on the living room couch mesmerized by whatever cooking show was on at 3 in the afternoon. I love to cook...probably because I love food.

On Tuesdays, my dad and I typically whip up something together. This past Tuesday, we made a recipe that was featured on Everyday Food, Salmon with Indian Spices. And I chopped up Yellow Squash and Zucchini to go with it. It was delicious and really easy. I've been eating the leftovers for the past few days and am enjoying them so much I felt compelled to include the recipe below. Because I'm always thinking of your greatest joy and satsfaction. You have to try it.

Salmon with Indian Spices
Serves 4 | Prep Time: 5 minutes | Total Time: 20 minutes

Ingedients:
¼ cup low-fat plain yogurt
½ teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon turmeric
½ teaspoon ground coriander
½ teaspoon coarse salt
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
4 skinless salmon fillets (each 6 ounces and about 1 inch thick)
Vegetable cooking spray

This salmon recipe utilizes a combination of spices — ginger, turmeric, and coriander — for unique results that draw on the flavors of India.

1. Heat broiler. In a small bowl, combine yogurt, ginger, turmeric, coriander, salt, black pepper, and cayenne pepper.
2. Spray a broiler pan or rimmed baking sheet with cooking spray. Place salmon on pan. Spread yogurt mixture on top of fillets, dividing evenly. Broil until fish is just opaque throughout, 12 to 14 minutes. Serve immediately.

Per serving: 323 calories; 14.2 grams fat; 44.2 grams protein; 1.7 grams carbohydrates; 0.3 gram fiber

You've got to be kidding

Rep. Cynthia McKinney from Georgia must have been a Tupac fan. She's been pushing a bill for the "expeditious disclosure of records relevant to the life and death of Tupac Amaru Shakur." All must be well and good in the state of Georgia if this is priority for a politician to introduce. Tupac has been DEAD for almost ten years. It's history. Ugh. Tax dollars hard at work...

Go, white girl, go!

Check out me Krumping on RAD's site!

Whatever floats your boat

I frequently pull up at a stop light and hear the thud of bass coming from a nearby car. Before I moved, I heard it almost every day from the house across the street. I'm not a Loud Music Listener. I value my hearing way too much to blare my music. In addition, I just don't have the right taste to pull it off. It probably not cool to pull up somewhere in my minivan and blare Sarah McLachlan or Mindy Smith. (Although image doesn't really seem to stop the people who turn up Kenny Chesney.)

Yes, I like my music at a reasonable volume and I attribute that to getting older. But there are people out there determined to prove that age doesn't necessarily mean mellowing. My 33-year-old friend Mike listens to Rage Against the Machine at deafening volumes on his commute home. Mike has heart problems too, although I'm sure it has nothing to do with his angry music.

My neighbor's son is 15 and has friends that drive. They'll pull up in his driveway at night and roll the windows down. Lately, they've been cranking Michael Jackson's "Beat It" or "Thriller." I'm not sure where Michael Jackson songs rate on the cool scale these days.

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Track of the Day: "Who Stole My Radio?" by Shemika Copeland
"Making lists telling you what to play
Same 10 songs every night and day
What I'm hearing sounds all wrong
The feeling ain't there
It's long, long gone..."

A little help here

I'm in the process of mixing a Christmas CD and I have a few open slots I need to fill. Suggestions, please. What is your favorite Christmas/holiday song? (Oh, and if you want a copy of my Christmas mix, email me your address.)

The Crazy Family With The Chickens

My weekend? Nice. I had a birthday party to go to on Friday which the birthday girl almost missed. Kinda funny to be sitting around with over 20 different people -- some you know, some you don't -- without the common link.

On Sunday, my three sisters and one of their friends came to visit. It was really nice to have the whole family together even if it was just for a few hours. Over a delicious dinner of steak fajita salad, Megan gave me a terrible time for not updating since Thursday. "I had nothing to do at work," she said. Forgive me. It slipped my mind that my entire reason for living is simply for Megan's amusement. I only update when something remarkable happens to me which, by the looks of the past few year's posts, only proves that my life is really rather dull. I'm okay with dull as long as you are, but just keep in mind...the days that I don't post are really not worth mentioning.

Nothing against my parents... (My parents are my saving grace. I love them more than steak fajita salad.) but I am awfully sad that I am living at home instead of closer to my sisters. I live at home for convenience sake. Because it's cheaper and much easier than the alternative. But when we're all together, I look at how beautiful they are and think how much I'm missing out by not getting to be where they are and it breaks my heart a little at a time. But that's all the self-pity I can handle for one night without breaking down in tears.

Speaking of my parents, on the way to church this morning my mom gave a long pitch on why she'd like to get some chickens and keep them in the back yard. It went something like this:

I know there's something in the neighborhood covenant about not having sheep, but I wonder if we could get some chickens? The house we passed back there had chickens. We could clip there wings so they wouldn't fly over the fence. Then we'd have fresh eggs.

And then we'd have no friends either because we'd be known as The Crazy Family With The Chickens. And nevermind what poor Zeke would do with crazy egg-laying chickens on the loose. If you think he's scarred now, just wait until the chickens get to him.

But the best part is after the chicken talk, she started in on owning a cow. "If there's a depression, I want chickens and a cow."

Enter Dad: "If we had a cow, we'd have to have a better lawn." Of course he would think about the lawn.

And Mom: "We'd just have to walk it back through the gate and into the woods back there."

So there we were on the way to worship God, discussing farm animals and using government park land to keep them alive. May we never have another Depression.

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Track of the Day: "The One I Love" by David Gray
"There’s things I might have said
Only wish I could
Now I'm leaking life faster
Than I'm leaking blood..."

One-stop shopping

Perhaps this may be of interest to one of my Denver-dwelling friends? Russ? Normsquatch? There is a slight age difference, but if the price is right...

On Wednesday's "Around the Watercooler," the anchors checked out a deal that might tempt single men looking for a new house and a new wife. Deborah Hale is offering one-stop shopping — you can buy her three-bedroom/three-bath house for $600,000 in Denver, and she'll throw herself in as a wife for free. Hale, 48, who runs her own wholesale jewelry business, said she has tried online dating and is looking for another way to meet Mr. Right.

I like the house. It's a shame I'm not qualified.

Black on Black

Few things bother me like racism disguised as political maneuvering. I'm a huge fan of Michael Steele, the Lt. Gov. of Maryland and hopeful senator who just happens to be a black Republican. He announced his intent to run for U.S. Senate and is getting thrashed by Democrats. Thrashed. I guess nothing is out-of-bounds when it comes to bashing black conservatives, including racism. Steele is the first black man to win a statewide election in the state of Maryland, but instead of treating that as an accomplishment, he's been attacked by black Democrats.

"Party trumps race," said State Sen. Lisa A. Gladden, attempting to explain away Steele being called an "Uncle Tom" and having Oreo cookies thrown at him. They're just "pointing out the obvious," said another black Democrat.

Delegate Salima Siler Marriott, a black Baltimore Democrat, said Steele's politics are anti-black. "Because he is a conservative, he is different than most public blacks, and he is different than most people in our community," she said. "His politics are not in the best interest of the masses of black people."

(I am sickened by people who continue to promote the idea that black people have to be Democrats...that black people need special programs and pandering. That in itself is racist. I'm even more sickened by people who label intelligent, well-spoken Blacks of any political affiliation as traitors to their race. [i.e. D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams])

So apparently racism in politics is acceptable. It is impossible to view a person's politics without taking into consideration the color of their skin. Maybe I'm just cynical, but I am willing to bet that, if the situation was somehow reversed and black Republicans threw Oreos at Obama Barack, Jesse Jackson with the NAACP on his heels would come out of the woodwork faster that you could scream "reparations."

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Track of the Day: "Can't Get Enough of Your Love Babe" by Barry White
"I don't know I don't know I don't know why
I can't get enough of your love, babe..."