| (no subject) |
[Jun. 1st, 2009|05:31 pm] |
Hi I'm disgustingly sweaty! I just came home from the gym. I'm the only one here so I'll just revel in my grossness for a while, I think. My teaching gig ended on Saturday, so now I'm only working 1 part-time job, and I've decided to dedicate some of the extra free time to actually making use of my gym membership. I realized the women in Japan are tiny little porcelain figurines who will probably make me feel like Snuffleofagus, comparatively. Apparently their clothes go up to like, size 8, and if you need bigger than that they just blink at you, confusedly.
I'm actually on the small side, but my understanding is that as an American with an Eastern European/Jew heritage, I will be considerably sweatier and hairier than everyone else. I'm hoping the fact that I'm a blonde will help distract from that. |
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| Fukuoka-ken |
[May. 31st, 2009|11:18 am] |
This is where we're going:
We'll be living in that temple. JK!
This is where it is in Japanland:
Tropical insects ho! |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 21st, 2009|05:07 pm] |
So I think I'll just post exclusively about food from now on. I have photos of two recent meals Jonathan and I made on my computer at home which I will post soon. They were: sesame seed and thyme crusted mystery fish (mystery because I went to the fish store and asked for halibut, which they didn't have, and then said, "Can you give me something that is like halibut?" and they filleted a random fish for me) and homemade pizza which had the best tomato sauce of all time.
But last night we went to the Asian market across the street from us and got these popsicles of deliciousness:
They're made by a Korean company and are like honeydew flavored creamsicles, but not quite as dairy-ish as what we're used to. And they were glorious! They also have mango, banana, and strawberry flavors, all of which I must try. We also got mochi with adzuki beans inside which were also awesome. My newfound love of Asian snacks is getting me all the more excited for a possible move to Japan in July. (We might do the JET program for a year, depending on our placement, which we should hear about any day now.)
Anyway, get thee to thy nearest Asian market and eat thou some Melona. Don't be scared by the fact that it sounds sort of like melanoma. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 3rd, 2009|08:26 pm] |
the most delicious chicken of all time:
take chicken breast. dip in white vinegar. rub with mixture of 1 tbsp curry powder, some salt, some pepper. mix flour w/ 1/4 cup of warm water (add water gradually) until it has a yogurt-like consistency. dip chicken in it. fry chicken in 1/8 inch of veg oil in a pan. spread mango chutney on top. have mouthgasms! |
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| FOooooooOOODies!! |
[Mar. 5th, 2009|07:05 pm] |
OK I don't feel too inclined to write about my personal life anymore, but I DO want to talk about cooking. So how about if I get a little recipe exchange going here?
First of all, I am extremely klutzy and I used to be the last person who'd expect me to be a decent cook. But I think the issue was more that cooking for oneself can be depressing. Like, all that shopping and chopping and effort to.... enjoy it alone? MIGHT AS WELL HANG YOURSELF.**
**Please don't hang yourself. I'm sure some people get enjoyment out of cooking for themselves.
But anyway, since moving in together Jonathan and I decided to approximate the lives of real people, even though we ourselves are fake people. We've been doing a lot of cooking, and it's been a pleasure for me this time around, to make something and make someone happy with it. Everything we make is pretty beginner-friendly (we being beginners) and cheap (we being poor) but also delicious. We've cooked stuff ranging from chimichangas to salmon to pasta with sausage and vodka sauce. Right now I am cooking dal for the very first time. It smells extremely cumin-y in here. I'll let you know how it goes.
I will also share a very successful recipe I made the other night as soon as someone gives ME a good recipe in the comments! Note: we like meat. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 28th, 2008|07:55 pm] |
Unpopular opinions I have:
1) Rachel Maddow is absurdly overrated. I tried giving her a fair shot, but I really can't deal with her constant sneering and snark. The only reason people I know love her is that they agree with her, and therefore do not see that she is the liberal version of all the Fox News talking heads they hate. With smugness instead of yelling.
2) The Killers are fucking awesome. I enjoy them unironically.
3) I dislike pride parades of all kinds. I don't believe in being proud of something one was born into totally arbitrarily (i.e. race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation.) I think it's more divisive than helpful actually.
4) Frozen french bread pizzas are more delicious than foie gras.
5) I was really rubbed the wrong way by people saying, "We did it" after Obama was elected. Actually, you didn't do shit, and he hasn't done anything yet either. |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 7th, 2008|11:54 am] |
Whenever I can't find the cat, odds are she's made herself a nest in Jonathan's closet, wrinkling and be-furring his clothes in the process. Also, she's very excited about President-Elect Obama. |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 5th, 2008|01:03 am] |
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Quite the contrast between the mood tonight and the mood four years ago, at least in the strange tumbleweed-ridden territory that is my brain. Also, damn, I used to be shrill! |
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| thanks vicki! |
[Jun. 30th, 2008|01:10 pm] |
1) Look at the list and bold those we have read.
2) Italicize those we intend to read.
3) Underline the books we LOVE
4) Reprint this list in our own blogs
Average adult has read 6...
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (Danny is obsessed with Dune. I should probably read it soon.)
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 21st, 2008|04:54 pm] |
OK: I'm close to getting this teaching gig but I need to audition with a mini-lesson on any topic of my choosing first. Lesson should be approx. 10 - 15 mins long. I'd like it to entail handouts, blackboard writing, and/or some sort of participatory activity. Any topic suggestions? When I did my Kaplan audition I talked about "how to create your own blog" but that was only four minutes or so. I need a more time-filling subject. I was thinking maybe "how to write a sitcom" but maybe that covers too much. I don't know!
Also, some people graduated from law school and will soon be making six figures! HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA it's so funny how useless I am. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 19th, 2008|03:38 pm] |
So today this woman sitting behind me on the Long Island Rail Road was talking on the phone to her mother about the Desperate Housewives finale and I guess her mom wasn't that into it? Because the women was like, "Whatever," and then hung up. And then when the ticket taker came by, the woman tried talking to her about it.
Passenger: Do you watch Desperate Housewives?
Ticket Taker: Oh, uh, no.
Passenger: Oh my God because I can't believe that Susan (blah blah blah I have no idea what she was talking about)
Ticket Taker: Uh... I have to get going.
The passenger didn't seem to feel the situation was at all awkward, though. Long Island is sofa king weird, seriously. |
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| Highlights (though not for children) |
[May. 14th, 2008|11:48 am] |
The highlight of my day yesterday was definitely when I tried to use my ATM card to get into the subway. You know, instead of the MetroCard I use several times every day. That was awesome. Especially because it was rush hour and a ton of people saw. They probably thought I was some confused foreigner, or worse, a tourist from the Midwest.
Actually no, the highlight was when I was on the phone with Jonathan having a conversation about this interview I'm going on next week when suddenly I looked out the window into the neighbors' backyard and interrupted myself to scream, "OH MY GOD! A BUNNYYYYYYYYY!"
You see, our neighbors were farmers back in their native Poland, and every spring debut a new menagerie of critters for us to giggle at. Until they disappear in the winter, presumably to be eaten. So right now we've got a chicken and a huge adorable white bunny hanging out back there. I kind of want to go on a rescue mission, because they're so cute, but that'd be totally hypocritical since I have eaten plenty of chicken, and even some rabbit, in my lifetime, and also I LOVE STEAK. But there's something about seeing the animal every day, and coming to think of them as pets (even if not your own pet) that makes it super sad they will be dinner in a few months. You know? So, any ideas for stealth missions into my neighbors' yard? |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 7th, 2008|02:39 pm] |
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am experiencing powerful creative itchies. too bad am at work and then have a meeting tonight and won't get home to novel or camera for a while. also i finished a draft of my novel, sort of. still has plot holes you could stick an arm thru. but am going to print it all out and begin scratching away with the red pen.... soon. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 27th, 2008|04:49 pm] |
OMG guys so there is a new rock station in New York that isn't unbearable. It's 101.9WRXP (AKA the New York rock experience), formerly known as the home of smooth jazz. Anyway, your typical Clear Channel-owned crapfest station plays the same pre-approved junk over and over. And sometimes not junk, but really, how many times am I expected to listen to "All Apologies"?
Anyway, WRXP's website says that "RXP won't be relying on corporate playlists. The music we play will be chosen and presented by our local, New York staff and DJs. We'll pay close attention to the music, concerts and events that are part of New York's rock scene and support up-and-coming local artists as well."
We've had it on at work all day and I've heard The Pixies, Radiohead, The Hold Steady, The Flaming Lips, Bruuuuuuuuuuce, and some semi-obscure 80s stuff. Everyone should listen! It's a jillion times better than Q104.3 or (shudder) K-Rock. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 25th, 2008|09:59 am] |
Anyone have any yummy and easy curry recipes to share? Jonathan and I plan to attempt cooking tonight. Given that last time I tried to make dinner for him, it ended with a smoke-filled kitchen and tears (not from the smoke, from the fact that I have the emotional maturity of a fetus), this will be a collaborative effort and hopefully not involve too many steps. Or an oven.
Oh and has anyone ever heard of Irish potatoes? Apparently they are candy that looks like potatoes with a kind of cinnamon outside and coconut paste inside. I had never heard of them until last weekend. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 21st, 2008|12:51 pm] |
Reasons ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) forwardthe should re-friend me:
1. I live a thrilling, fast-paced lifestyle in the most exciting city in the world, and therefore she should want to live vicariously through me.*
2. I am unmarried and not pregant** so I provide the single woman's perspective.
3. I provide much-needed Schadenfreude to anyone who remotely has their shit together.
4. You can never have enough people telling you that your kid is cute.
5. I am pretty bored of the circumcision debate so like, I won't comment on those entries.
6. Let's be honest, I'm way funnier**** than most of your LJ friends.
* By "me" I mean the TV shows I stay at home watching and then blog about, because I cannot afford to go out
** As far as I know***
*** Just kidding, Dad
**** i.e., not humorless |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 29th, 2008|01:53 pm] |
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So, apparently I get $800 back from taxes? In addition to the rebate? I will try to be responsible and put the extra cash mainly toward rent / bills etc. but I would like to buy myself a present too and maybe some of you can advise me here: I want to get a nice camera. In high school I was very into photography, and not only because there was a really cute older hipster boy in my photo class and I dreamed that one day he'd pull me into the darkroom and make out with me (alas, no.) So currently I own a very old and scratched SLR and a basic point-and-shoot digital camera, and what I want is I guess somewhere between the two extremes? Something where I can snap a quick shot if I want but also be able to futz around with aperture and focus and other functions if I decide to be "artsy." Any photo people on my friends list care to advise? |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 20th, 2008|10:58 pm] |
1. Pick 10 of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Fill in the film title once it's guessed.
5. NO GOOGLING/using IMDb search
1. You know what you done there? You told my story, you told my whole story right there, right there. One time, I told you I was gonna make you somebody. That's what you done for me. You made me somebody they're gonna remember.
2. You and I share the same DNA. Is there anything more lonely than that? Adaptation
3. Jean Louise. Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passing. To Kill A Mockingbird
4. Elliot, I don't think he was left here intentionally, but his being here is a miracle, Elliot. It's a miracle and you did the best that anybody could do. I'm glad he met you first.
5. Love is too weak a word for what I feel - I luuurve you, you know, I loave you, I luff you, two F's, yes I have to invent, of course I - I do, don't you think I do? Annie Hall
6. You see a lot, Doctor. But are you strong enough to point that high-powered perception at yourself? What about it? Why don't you - why don't you look at yourself and write down what you see? Or maybe you're afraid to.
7. Out! Back to the sixties! Back! There's no place for you here in the future! Get back while you still can!
8. So, ladies and gentlemen... if I say I'm an oil man you will agree.
9. Look upon me! I'll show you the life of the mind!
10. You see, before he came down here, it never snowed. And afterwards, it did. If he weren't up there now... I don't think it would be snowing. Sometimes you can still catch me dancing in it. Edward Scissorhands |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 15th, 2008|01:17 pm] |
Hello everyone, hope you all had a nice V-Day, and that it wasn't a VD-Day. I visited Jonathan in Bronxville and we went to a party for the graduate writing students, so everyone, of course, was extremely drunk. Good times! He got me roses and I got him cupcakes from the Magnolia Bakery, which we ate while singing "Lazy Sunday" ("five / no, six / no, twelve / baker's dozen! / you know i'm crazy / bout these cupcakes, cousin").
This morning Vivian was telling me how that scene in "Billy Madison," where Steve Buschemi crosses Billy off his "to kill" list, reminded her of her boyfriend. I think her boyfriend is better looking than Steve Buschemi, but then, there are women who find him attractive, apparently. Which leads me to ask, who do you find weirdly sexy, even though they are not generally considered attractive? Post photos here. |
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