Archives for the month of: November, 2005

I GOT IN!!!

this morning i found out that i’ve been accepted to camberwell‘s post-graduate art conservation program! i’ll receive my official admissions packet in the next few weeks. woo!

yes, you can all come visit me in london. yes, my official vote for the family vacation is now Australia.

…yes, i accept cash and credit cards for my tuition fund. 🙂

um, so there are some pies and desserts here at work. FREE dessert y’all! so i decided to be adventurous and have some of the pie that no one knew what it was. except that i’m eating it and i still don’t know what it is. it’s sort of…brown. there isn’t stuff in it, it’s all mixed together. it’s like a brown cake with a thick brown gelatinous layer between it and the crust… uh…it’s not real fruity or sweet…in fact it smells savory…there is a light crumbly flour-y topping on it…what the hell is this??

update: this pie has a weird aftertaste.

update update: upon talking about where to eat in san francisco this weekend:

kara: or, man wendy’s does sound good. like, it sounds good RIGHT NOW

eric: it’s pretty close

kara: because i am HUNGRY

eric: hehe, sorry about that

kara: that pie must’ve been makeyoumorehungry pie

eric: maybe it was faux bacon and real marijuana

kara: lol

eric: bacon-flavored marijuana

the trip home was good, as usual. thanksgiving lunch/dinner was awesome and i played euchre and double-deck euchre with my aunts, grandma and cousin allllll afternoon which was FANTASTIC.

food, glorious food

my aunt pat, who much like myself does not cook (the running joke is that she and my uncle built a kitchen in their house purely for resale value), made this awesome veggie casserole and i have to remember to get the recipe because darn it, if she did it, so can i. my aunt jo made the desserts and oh! what desserts. pumpkin pie and pumpkin roll and the best pecan pie i think i’ve ever had. my cousin matt’s wife jenny makes this really good cranberry-orange relish stuff that goes really well with…everything, actually, but is particularly good on turkey.

my grandma is in charge of the turkey every year. she and my grandpa drive it over in their giant metal broilingroastingcookingwhatever pot and then my dad carves it and my grandma makes gravy from the drippings right there in the bottom of the pot. it’s like magic! grandma is also famous for her homemade chicken & noodles, so she made some of those too.

my mom made candied yams and a different kind of mashed potato. she bought a potato riser this year, so dad milled a bunch of potatoes then mom added sour cream and something else delicious and therefore horribly fattening. the potatoes came out sort of like a coarse mash (although not so coarse as the delicious SAGA smashed potatoes) but with a slight flavor that was not overpowering and went very well with grandma’s turkey gravy.

i managed to take it easy during the actual meal but spent all of euchre-time eating cold turkey from a little plate and then around 10pm, after everyone had gone, my mom and i pulled our usual post-huge-meal-weirdness and raided the leftovers, leaving nary a cauliflower in the veggie tray.

other culinary delights: my parents took me to the circle tap for ribs on friday night, my mom took me to chick-fil-a saturday afternoon and my parents, grandparents and i all went to the maid-rite for lunch on friday. since i’m doing the whole seattle sutton thing (see above where i mention that i don’t cook), the whole idea of actually picking what i want to eat (instead of having a set menu) was rather novel.

movies

the quad cities is a good sized metropolitan area and there are a couple of nice movie theatres, but the movie offerings aren’t nearly as varied as in chicago (nor can they be expected to be as such). thus, i had problems deciding what movie to see on friday (which was also my dad’s birthday). i decided on ‘walk the line‘ for a second go-round, because a) not much else was playing at the right time and b) i knew my dad wanted to see it and it was his birthday and he should see something he wants to see no matter how much he insists that i pick what i want to see. anyway, it was good the second time around, maybe better.

saturday there was a dearth of good tv, so mom and i went to the rental place in milan to pick out a few movies. but of course, since i see at least one (usually 2-3) movie a week, i had already seen almost everything, and my parents usually see a movie every week or so too. also, it was thanksgiving weekend and a lot of movies were completely checked out. we got ‘sahara’ (which i heard was bad, but was also described as indiana jones meets ‘national treasure’ and i think both of those are great so what the heck) and ‘the upside of anger’ (which tyler, i think, had mentioned was pretty good). i liked ‘sahara’ and thought it was a lot of fun, although i could see how it might be poorly received and i thought ‘the upside of anger’ was good, mostly because character studies or movies with grown-up topics are rare lately.

sunday the bears played, so while dad cheered them to their victory mom and i went to the moline theatre and saw ‘pride & prejudice‘ with 40 or so other football widows, their daughters, granddaughters and friends and a few guys who maybe don’t like football, whose team wasn’t playing, who are just a really good boyfriend/husband/son, or (my strongest hypothesis) who think keira knightly and/or rosamund pike are super-hot and wanted to drool for a few hours. the movie was really good. now i’ll have to rent the bbc colin firth miniseries. i know i know! i’m sorry, i just never got around to seeing it before. anyway, it was sort of odd seeing matthew macfadyen play mr. darcy (someone so serious and quiet) since the only other thing i’ve seen him in is ‘maybe baby‘, a little british film starring hugh laurie and joely richardson, wherein he plays a really annoying executive who is always wearing a cellphone headset (a tool tool, as meghan and i would say). he was good though, as was keira knightley and donald sutherland and brenda blethyn and everyone else.

i spent the rest of the weekend getting my eyes checked and watching tv and buying new mittens. aunt jo brought logan and caleb over for a bit on saturday (my mom printed out some open house invitations for my cousin and her new husband and new daughter). nothing else real exciting except for the aforementioned food and movies and euchre and seeing my family and cat and the joy of being transported everywhere by car and not having to wait out in the cold for said transportation to arrive and coming home to a house that is the perfect temperature and probably has a fire going as well. odd, the things that you miss the most. i’m already looking forward to christmas.

inspired by ray, everyone’s favorite cartoon cat, here is my list of 5 things i am thankful for:

  1. my family is healthy and supportive. there aren’t any big troublemakers and everyone pretty much likes each other and gets along. there aren’t any blatant bigots or intolerant types so that’s good. sadly, my dad voted for bush, but i love him anyway 🙂 in fact, way to stick to your guns, dad – even though everyone (your in-laws, sister, daughter) kept decrying your presidential choice, you did what you felt was right.
  2. i am free if physical or mental disease. ok, the latter is probably up for debate in some circles, but IN GENERAL i am healthy, always have been and i am glad i don’t have to worry about some horrible food allergy or dialysis or chemo or herpes or, you know, death, so i am fortunate in this area.
    • corollary: this is maybe shallow, but i’m thankful that, despite my body’s irritating refusal to get any taller, i came out pretty well in the genetic lottery. i’m not fugly and i’m not dumb (even though i do a lot of stupid things, posting this corollary possibly included) – when people see me they don’t shrink away in horror and i look back fondly upon high school calculus and that simpler time when i wished all of school was as fun as deriving. [commence laughter and ridicule at my love of mr. docherty’s aretha franklin rule.]
  3. i have a super boyfriend. i am not thankful that he is 2000 miles away, but at least now we get to work on our phone skills. five minute long silences have been almost entirely eliminated, although we’re both looking forward to him getting dsl at home so we can resume our choice method of communication: instant messaging.
    • corollary: i am also thankful that eric is healthy (i’m also thankful that he’s 6’2″ so he can reach things from high shelves and whatnot, but that’s more of a perk and not so much a thankful-ness-worthy thing. but still. it’s pretty handy).
  4. i am financially secure. i don’t have to worry about living paycheck to paycheck. i have money saved and invested.
    • corollary: i have a stable job at a stable place. it is hard to imagine how awful i felt at this time last year (when i still worked you-know-where) and the very fact that i have a hard time remembering…that tells me that i am much happier now.
  5. i’m thankful that i live in a country that recognizes and, in general, protects rights and freedoms that a lot of other places would laugh (or probably shoot) at. things aren’t perfect, but perfect is boring anyway. remember what happened in be a perfect person in just three days? all of the perfect people just sat around in a dim theatre, talking in whispers if at all and sipping weak tea. who wants that? no one, that’s who. speaking of which, where the heck is my copy of that book? it’s one of my favorites!

so far hugh laurie‘s the gun seller is fantastic. he has a really witty, clever writing style and a sense of humor that is distinctly british, whatever that means, but works well for him, since he is, in fact, british (most commas ever). the book is about a man who is unwittingly caught up in some international intrigue involving arms dealers. allegedly. i’m just now getting into the arms dealing thing and while the plot is really interesting – particularly the way he reveals tidbits of information, resulting in frantic flipping back through what’s already been read – i couldn’t care less if it was just about a guy sitting and doing nothing. it’s that good.

read the first chapter of the gun seller.

welcome to Hyperbolation v4.0!

some basic housekeeping changes and of course, new graphics. if things look really messed up, then try emptying your browser cache and hitting ‘reload’ a few times. note that all AV Club content has been moved to the index page. I also finally wrote myself a CMS for the AV Club so I don’t have to cut and paste links anymore!

known issues:

  • flickr photostream badge does not display properly in some versions of Internet Explorer. i am pretty bummed about this, but not as bummed as i’d be if it didn’t display in a browser that actually behaved properly in general. if you can’t see the flash badge to the right under ‘photostream’, perhaps this would be a good time to…

    1. get the latest version of IE, or
    2. get Firefox
  • spacing is a little wacked out in Firefox, but nothing i can’t live with.
  • AV Club image headers do not center-align in PC IE 5.5
  • code and blockquote tags don’t work properly in Firefox, but i hear this is a Firefox issue that is to be addressed in the next upgrade or so.

if you notice anything else, please let me know. i’ll put a little bug reporter link in the av club section as well.

player piano plate mommy's answer
the inquest music rolls

new san francisco photos up from the musée mécanique, a museum of vintage mechanical amusements like kinetoscopes, mechanical dioramas and orchestrions. it’s a really cool place and it was fun to see what sort of entertainments were available at the turn of the century

from recent spam:

The Ass and the Horse your hands will only make me more watchful, lest under these (…) and live with us as brothers should? We differ from you in one A GROOM used to spend whole days in currycombing and rubbing down The Ass and the Horse

i got half-way to the el station before i decided FUCK IT and went back and got my winter coat. halfway from the bus stop to work i gave in and actually PUT ON MY HAT. A HAT PEOPLE. i look completely MORONIC in hats but it was so windy, i had no choice but to put up with the pointing and laughing (thanks mom) and wear the damn thing.

eric: mike thinks that “revenge is a dish best served cold” was coined by the writers of star trek

kara: uh…i think that’s been around for awhile

eric: yeah that’s what i told him.

eric: i came up with this new philosophical concept. it’s called “prevenge”

kara: …i can guess what that is

eric: basically you just assume everyone will screw you over at some point, so you get them first!

aaron: i think there’s another word for that. it’s called “schizophrenia”