Enough, enough, but bear with me for two more links:
Sad about a proposed koala cull. I know they’re pests and disease-ridden and maybe the Aussie equivalent of raccoons, but still sad.
Big ups to the Ninth Letter on their splash debut. It looks really, really good. I’m looking forward to the special Rick Powers section this summer.
Add comment April 30th, 2004
What I could or should be doing:
What I am doing: sitting on the couch in my underwear, surfing the Interweb. That’s what the Interweb is for, right? No, seriously. Actually I’m kind of killing time. sMother is on her way but won’t arrive for another half hour at least – when she gets in we’ll probably have to head right to dinner. No point in trying to connect with the boy cos it would only be for a few minutes. Instead I’m connecting with the whole world while in my underwear. How great is that?
Add comment April 30th, 2004
I always feel weird when I haven’t blogged in a few days – like so much should’ve happened, even though that’s rarely the case.
I started at Aroma on Wednesday – I think I’m going to like it a lot, time commitment notwithstanding. Free coffee and food while I’m working, and a discount when I’m not – a good deal to me! The people I worked with seemed pretty cool, and all the stuff from the days at Barnes & Noble are coming back (except the knock box is sooo much better than the one at the bookstore which ate Augie’s wedding ring). I did have to “steam” water, but that’s to be expected.
Yesterday was fine. Weird tension at work all day – people being really bitchy, but I managed to tune most of that out. I went to the dermatologist on my lunch break and got some stuff to help with my skin – let’s hope it works, it certainly cost enough. Ran home after work and took a quick shower, then met Shawn at Moonstruck for a while. Dinner with the kids at Cafe Luna, which was freaking great. If you’re looking for a place to take a date you’d like to impress, go to Cafe Luna. The food was wonderful and looked amazing – “a perfect blend of form and function,” according to Hannah. You’re definitely paying for quality rather than quantity, though, so next time I think we’ll try a bunch of things from the tapas menu rather than getting entrees. Either way, tasty. Back to my place for a while – it was freaking hot, and I blame the cats – then I crashed early.
sMother and Coo are coming tonight – I think we’re having dinner at Biaggi’s with Mark and maybe Melissa. Tomorrow I’m hoping the weather will hold so we can have lunch downtown – maybe at Cowboy Monkey. I’m half looking forward to Coo’s inane questions about why young people live in old houses and wondering if he’ll talk Shawn‘s ear off about Legos. My parents really hoped that things would work out with my marriage, and I’m wondering if me being with Shawn is weird for them. I know they’ll love him, but it’s just a weird first step. I love him and want my family to know how important he is to me – but I don’t want to make them (or him) uncomfortable either. I’m still feeling out how much to include him in family things – fortunately it’s not as much of an issue with my family a couple of hours away – it’s just one of those things, you know?
Anyway, I’m off to lunch. Time to enjoy a few minutes of fresh air. I think I’ll have a sandwich with fresh mozzarella and tomato – yum.
Add comment April 30th, 2004
What a freaking gorgeous day! Let’s set aside the fact that having a day off mid-week is a total waste of vacation time unless you’re doing something special – which I’m not – but beyond that, what could be wrong with this day? It’s sunny and breezy and just the right temperature, halfway between warm and cool. It feels like the perfect day to play hooky, to sit in the park with a cup of coffee and a book (which I intend to do later) or a friend. The only things that would improve this day would be someone to sit with and not having to work tonight. Unfortunately I do have to work tonight, but only for a few hours, and I do not have anyone to sit with today, as my friends are all in school.
So what am I doing with my day of leisure? I spent the night at Shawn‘s after 24 watching and a Chinese buffet dinner. We were both a lot tired and a little delirious, and I was definitely bleary-eyed when I woke up this morning and drove him to school before coming home. Returned a few phone calls, made a doctor’s appointment (NO, Jen, it’s not what you think), then ran to the post office and over to Mark’s to pick up my Easter present from sMother – kitty charms for my bracelet, and more purloined hotel toiletries from L’Occitane. Yay for that.
And the rest of the day? It’s almost 1 – I think I’ll probably putter around here for a little bit in preparation for sMother’s visit this weekend – now that David doesn’t need to show my place, I haven’t been stressing things like putting away laundry or picking up dishes – then grab coffee and/or food somewhere and find a place to sit outside and read – the park, the quad, etc. I’m almost done with Balthazar and am trying to decide if I want to start Mountolive directly or take a break with Tropic of Cancer, which has been on the to-read list for quite some time. I’m already thinking longingly of the many weekends past when the boy and I would wake up together and read in bed (or on the couch or on the porch or in a coffeeshop) for half the day. I know I make it sound like I’m going to be working every waking minute of my weekends and that’s not the case – but exaggeration is fun, and I’m going to miss the extended leisure that has characterized the last six months.
Add comment April 28th, 2004
1 lb chicken breast halves
Kosher salt & freshly ground black pepper
2 T vegetable oil + more as needed
1/2 medium onion, finely diced
1 T minced fresh ginger
2 T seeded, minced fresh jalapeno (I left this out)
1 T sweet curry powder
1 C low-salt chicken broth
1 medium potato, peeled and cut into 1/4″ dice
5 1/2 oz can coconut milk, well shaken
1/2 C frozen peas
2 T roughly chopped fresh cilantro
Trim the chicken into 3/4″ thick pieces and season generously with salt and pepper. In a 10″ straight sided saute pan (or skillet), heat the oil over medium-high heat until it’s hot enough to shimmer. Add half the chicken and cook, flipping once, until lightly browned and just barely cooked through. Transfer the chicken to a plate, and repeat with the remaining chicken. Cover with foil to keep warm.
Return the pan to medium heat and, if it looks dry, add another T oil. Add the onion, ginger, and jalapeno and saute, stirring almost constantly with a wooden spoon, until the vegetables soften, about 2 minutes. Add the curry powder and saute for 30 seconds. Pour in the chicken broth and scrape the pan with the spoon to loosen any browned bits. Add the potato and 1/2 t salt. Bring to a simmer and cook, partially covered (I do this with an inverted skillet), until the potato is barely tender, 7-8 minutes. Add the coconut milk and peas; simmer uncovered until the peas are thawed, the potato is fully tender, and the sauce is somewhat thickened, 4-5 minutes. Taste the sauce; add salt and pepper as needed. Add the chicken along with any accumulated juices to the sauce and turn to coat. Serve immediately, garnished with the cilantro.
When I made this for Meat Night it was really tasty, though a little salty. I would recommend getting a low-salt broth, and maybe cutting the salt added to the recipe. A different curry might also help. Either way, this was really good with Parmesan couscous, a green salad, and some fresh melon.
Recipe from Fine Cooking
Add comment April 28th, 2004
It’s cold and grey, and I’m tired and lonely. I’ve spent the day, on and off, putting the rest of the archives online, trolling through a year-or-so worth of highs and lows, enough for a lifetime. Odd to read my guarded prose now – and to wonder if things would’ve been easier if I’d just said what I was feeling, what I desperately needed and wanted to say. Would the story be different? Odd to think that a year ago I was stressing over a job decision and praying for a house. So much has changed. And I think the weight of those two years, plus a generally blah day, have really gotten me down. I don’t want to be in this apartment alone right now – but there’s no one home at the kids’ or Shawn‘s, and I don’t feel like eating alone either, or I’d just go somewhere. So I think I’m going to take a bath and wait by my phone and hope I snap out of it.
The latest:
Shawn‘s taking my apartment, which will mean our moving is ridiculous but somewhat easier as the deadlines won’t be as firm and we can leave things behind.
The interview at Aroma was last night. No word back, but they said they would call today or tomorrow.
Meat night dinner was tasty, if sparsely attended. Sarah and Hannah were at a show, and Mark was busy. Shawn and Melissa and I had chicken with potatoes and peas in a coconut-curry sauce – a little salty, but damned tasty.
I have an interview at Health Alliance tomorrow.
This review of Kill Bill V2 almost makes me want to go see it again.
Add comment April 22nd, 2004
OK, so I was offered the job at Friar Tuck. In under 10 minutes. Like, I got out of my car at 5:19, and was back in my car at 5:28. Good sign? Bad sign? To me it reeks of desperation – “oh, you have a pulse and can lift 50 pounds? you’re hired!” – but then what do I know. I was asked few if any of the usual questions – why do you want to work here – what’s your work experience like – tell me what you liked/didn’t like about X job – literally within four minutes of me sitting down, he had offered me the job. So yay, good for me, right? I told him I wanted to think about it – told him about my concerns with my car – and he said I should call him back by this morning and let him know.
But do I really want this job? There are some pluses – great discount on liquor, decent hours – and some minuses, namely that I’m not sure I want to work there in the first place, and I don’t want to have to rely on my unreliable car. Besides, I’m a little weirded out by the speed of this whole process. AND then last night I got an email from Aroma saying they would get ahold of me this week to set up an interview. And I’d so much rather work at Aroma – it’s closer to home, I really like it there, it’s more the sort of job I’m looking for, I wouldn’t have to go out and buy more clothes.
So do I take the job?
Do I take the job and quit if Aroma offers me a job as well?
Do I turn the job down cos I feel downright weird about all this?
Do I just get my head out of my arse?
Discuss.
Add comment April 20th, 2004
Dear Lord,
Please make me independently wealthy so I only have to work when I want to. On a more realistic note, please give me a lifetime of weekends like this – food and sleep and sex and reading and sun and cool and love. That’s more important than the independent wealth, though that’d be nice too.
Love,
E
Add comment April 19th, 2004
What a freaking lovely weekend.
Friday was the same-old same-old – work, then a brief meeting in which we were all told to basically forget about having any days off in August. Boo. I went straight to Shawn‘s after work – he was sleeping off a bout of bad snacking. Spent the evening in, watching movies and generally curling up. Sherlock: A Case of Evil was generally reterrible and featured Vince D’Onofrio as Moriarty, NOT as Holmes himself, as IMDB had advertised. Lame. Did you know that Sherlock was hooked on heroin thanks to Moriarty, and that he routinely got it on with multiple gorgeous girls? Hmm, news to me. Oh, and Mycroft (I think) totally stole Watson’s one joke. Maybe I wouldn’t be so indignant had I not read all the Holmes stories a couple of times. We also watched Quills, which I’ve wanted to see for a while. It was good – very good, though not something I can really see myself watching repeatedly. Geoffrey Rush was brilliant – he seems to be able to pull off the tortured genius bit better than just about anyone else in Hollywood.
Saturday we stayed in bed until late, then sat around on the porch for a while. We were a bit taken aback to make a new “friend” – a woman named Lisa stopped on her bike in front of the house, then came up on the porch and talked to us for a long time. It’s hard to find the happy medium between being rude and being nice when you are really taken aback and/or don’t want interruption. She eventually left, after I hedged a lot about where I lived and whether or not she could come visit me. Umm, no and no. Shortly thereafter, a carful of guys drove by and yelled “HIPPIE POWER” at me. This is an odd, odd town. We walked downtown in hopes of getting lunch at the Cowboy Monkey – it was a gorgeous afternoon, just the sort of day for eating outside. Too bad everyone in Champaign, even the ones not attending the Boneyard Arts Festival thought the same. Apparently Cowboy Monkey hadn’t planned accordingly, and ran out of food, as did a couple of other places. We ended up at Aroma – always a good time. I had the Turkey Jerk Wrap – not as spicy as I expected – and a mojito. Hooray for spring/summertime. Walked back to Shawn‘s and chilled in bed for a while until early evening – mmm – and then went flip-flop shopping and to see Kill Bill V2, which was much better than I expected. The first volume was a non-stop bloodbath which, while aesthetically really nice in parts, had some serious continuity issues. Volume two was hokey at times, but felt like a much tighter film – oh, and Uma only kills one person this time around. We stopped at the diner for pie and coffee (which ended up being coffee and breakfast), and then turned in after some reading.
As Shawn mentioned, yesterday just kind of flowed into today. Both days have been characterized by the sort of torpor that sets in when it’s gorgeous out and you don’t feel like working. I finished Down and Out in Paris and London, then dragged myself off the couch around 3 as Shawn was hard at work. Did some shopping, then came home and made iced tea, and right now am curled up in a chair by one of my bedroom windows enjoying the fresh air. I bet if I tried I could access my network from outside, but this is almost as good. I will miss the view of the park when I move, but Shawn‘s front porch can hardly be beat (well, except for the random crazies). In a little bit I’m going to try and plan my meals for the week, maybe blog on the book club page, get some stuff done around here, then head back over to Shawn‘s for the belated 24.
I’m definitely taking Shawn‘s apartment, despite my reservations about the fridge and the lack o’ tub. I’m sure if I looked I could’ve found a place more to my specifications, but it’s such a wearying and thankless thing to do that it hardly seems worth the effort. When I moved here Sarah did all the legwork, and for that I’m supremely grateful. I looked at a few places online, but every place in which I expressed interested ended up being way too expensive ($875 for a one bedroom above Boltini?!?!) or didn’t allow cats. So yeah, I’m lazy, and next winter when I don’t have a tub I’ll be sad, but in many other ways it will be a good place for me. Besides, I really like living close to downtown. I won’t be as close, but I also won’t be in weirdo Urbana or in a complex.
My mom and brother might be coming down next weekend, which would be nice. I haven’t seen them since Christmas, and don’t anticipate getting back to Rockford until summertime – I need to fix my car first, and I won’t have the money for that for a couple more weeks – and I’m sure I’ll want to stick around here in May to spend time with Shawn before he leaves for the Academy. Besides, my parents haven’t been down here since September, a couple of weeks before I moved – I’m glad they’ll get to see my apartment and such before I move again.
I have an interview at Friar Tuck tomorrow. I really don’t want a second job, but I do need the money. I’m hoping that Aroma or Kopi call me back first, though, cos it’d be nice to work closer to home. The not-using-my-car bit would be a total waste if I still have to drive to work, PLUS drive out to Savoy a couple of times a week. We’ll see.
I hope your weekend was every bit as lovely as mine. Let me tell you – it’s hard to keep from being totally lost in love on days such as these.
Add comment April 18th, 2004