does a bear shit in the woods?

ahhh we have our bimonthly meeting at ten so writing this is A RACE AGAINST THE CLOCK !!!!

christina came home yesterday !!!!! it was pretty hilarious cause she was so wiped out from traveling and was acting so ridiculous. at some point she decided to start doing a donald trump impression and kept firing pizza. in 2010. pretty sure she's never actually seen that show?



i made vegetarian meatballs with noodles and gravy (sort of like lazy swedish meatballs) for dinner, but like.. it was totally gross? like, the gravy was good because i make good gravy


thank you, it's just brown and water

but the meatballs tasted weird and smoky- they're nate's meatless meatballs- and i overcooked the noodles cause i was horsing off with christina so it was kind of like a big bowl of mush with gross meatballs and delicious gravy.

after i ate, i finally finished the explosionist. this book came highly recommended to me and like... it was kind of a stinker?



it's an alternate history book about what the world would have been like in 1930s scotland if napoleon had won at waterloo. i will cop to the fact that maybe i don't really know enough about european history to be riveted or amazed by some of the stuff in the book, i guess, but i also assume that most 11-17 year old girls know even less than i do, so that can't be the problem.

- first and foremost, the book is set up to have a sequel, or else it's glaringly incomplete with about 200 loose ends. i don't appreciate a book in a series that can't stand alone, and this definitely can't. they wrapped up maybe two of like 40 plot lines and plot twists introduced
- the author includes tons and tons of extraneous details that are written in a way that make you assume they'll come back later or be a part of the story, and they don't?
- i guess this is expected in alternate history but all of the stuff like, "aleksandr tolstoy bell" inventing the telephone and "famed irish obstetrician oscar wilde" inventing the incubator zzzzzz
- the book relies entirely on coincidence to move the plot forward. want to take pictures of dead peoples' memories? well, the guy at the camera shop happens to be a guy who BUILT A CAMERA THAT CAN DO THAT and he desperately wants to help you for free. bad guy is going to kill everyone? a random person comes in and like, stops him.
- main character is clearly special in some way (and the author keeps telling you that !) even though nothing she thinks, says, or does is particularly compelling or interesting.
- good guys are identified as good and bad guys as bad immediately so it's like a matter of time before things get worked out.

overall i really wanted to like it, but it couldn't even keep me interested. it wasn't as big a chore as tender morsels, and a few of the plot points were genuinely interesting, but every time i was excited to see where something went, it just didn't go anywhere. poorly written, poorly paced, poorly edited, but i will not stop you from trying to read it if you want to !

after that, i took a shower because my hair smelled like meatballs and shaved my legs and painted my nails and toenails. i've been like obsessed with painting my nails since middle school and it's probably the only like, stereotypically feminine thing i do besides... shaving my legs (but my legs get dry and get gross pus-y ingrowns if i don't !). i don't care about painting my toenails but i have toenail fungus and it covers it up ! haha. the treatment for it takes a year or more and destroys your liver so i'd rather just paint my toenails a beautiful color. full disclosure !

speaking of not toenail fungus anymore, christina and i watched up in the air, finally. i've had it from netflix for like one month, but was worried that it was like a stupid grownuppy midlife crisis movie like sideways. not that i've SEEN sideways, but i have an aversion to lowell from wings because i think he played a law & order rapist or something. ANYWAY



i didn't know much about the plot of the movie before seeing it- it's about a lone wolf type dude whose job is to fly around the country and fire people and offer them a severance package that includes career counseling through his company. i was reticent at first because like, i don't really care about lone wolf dudes being afraid of commitment and blah blah blah, but i totally loved it.

good
- george clooney. i don't even understand. i think he's a great actor, but like... how is one dude so handsome and charming and funny and hot and handsome and endearing and hot and ugalsddjlkg? every time he'd smile and his eyes would crease christina and i would start cursing at the television.
- vera farmiga was excellent as well and like, her butt. i mean, her acting, but also, her butt. she made the role seem effortless, like she was this real amazing woman who accidentally wandered onto the set. aside from the fact that she is stunningly beautiful, she was just such a huge presence and almost upstaged clooney even though i want to do stuff to him that he has never heard of cause he probably hasn't seen urban dictionary cause he's old.
- every single interaction in the movie was believable
- the heartbreaking reveal was so perfect and jolting (i hadn't read anything about the movie beforehand) that it made my heart hurt a little.
- i loved his interactions with his sisters and his attempts to prove to the people around him that he isn't a ghost or a stranger while sort of still acting like one.
- random sam elliott !

bad
- i'm not really sold on anna kendrick, who plays a recent college grad whose strategy to cut costs at clooney's company fucks up his life. her acting was very high school play.
- i found clooney's interactions with her a little paternalistic and it was hard to take, though i get the point.
- everyone in the movie was "on" all the time and witty and quick and it was a little hard to take, but uh... the director also directed juno, so maybe he's still working some of that bile out of his system.

overall i highly recommend it, even if you are a creepy adult child who hates hearing about adult problems and a dour feminist who doesn't care about men's midlife crises.


it really takes talent to look so unreal in that totally whack shirt

i have a meeting now, so i have to go. i'm going to be kind of busy at work today and tomorrow cause we have an event tomorrow ! tonight i'm supposed to go to jeanne's after work and i'm psyched ! diana is going to be there and we'll get to hang out and i think i'll get a cool haircut.

p.s. the only thing more annoying than knitting a sock with tiny needles is unknitting a sock with tiny needles

one malooga, four loogas

what's up dudes ! i think i'm getting a cold just in time for the weekend ! i've been sneezing a lot all week, which is odd, but i've felt totally fine, and this morning my nose is stuffy and gross.

yesterday i had some errands to run after work, so mouse and i met up at the last word (my favorite used bookstore, which is um, conveniently located in my neighborhood !) because it was convenient to where i would be. haha. mouse wasn't feeling well because it's been hot at night lately and allergy stuff is bad right now. we went to radioshack so i could get a new mouse ($15 ! highway robbery ! also that sounds like a joke, like i replaced mouse with 'a new mouse' cause he wasn't feeling well, but my computer mouse actually broke earlier this week) and i got some coconut chip icecream that i couldn't finish. i bought a copy of the face on the milk carton by caroline cooney for $1.50 and read it after work:



i read this book when i was in elementary school and i remember it being super sexy and exciting and racy and it's like, unsurprisingly, total garbage? haha. the pacing is awful and every character talks in the same voice, from a female 50 year old ph.d in medieval history to a male 17 year old F student. if you aren't familiar with the story, a 15 year old girl sees a picture of herself as a 3 year old on a milk carton described as a missing child. she starts remembering snippets of another family and life, and when she confronts her parents, they say they are really her grandparents, and her real mother was their daughter (hannah) who got sucked into a cult and left her with her grandparents for safekeeping. THEN, she discovers that hannah actually abducted her from a shopping mall, so she WAS a kidnapped child but her parents weren't guilty. the two highlights though were:

- the evil, soul-sucking, kidnapping, money hungry, dangerous, violent, brutish cult that abducted the main character's 'real' mother are the hare krishnas !!!!!

and

- the lover's lane/makeout spot type place being called SEXUAL OVERLOOK

i didn't raid last night because i oddly couldn't get my new mouse working- it's a crappy simple usb mouse replacing a near-identical crappy simple usb mouse and i plugged it in and it didn't show up ! whatever. i also read more of the explosionist, which theoretically is really interesting and harrowing but not in a way that prevents me from putting it down every few pages. also um, i'm almost done with it and there's only been one explosion.



my plans for this weekend are pretty exciting- i'm hoping to get my knitpicks order tonight, which includes yarn to start some boy socks and new needles to work on my girl socks (though i may put those on hiatus until christina gets back so i can ask her questions). on saturday, mouse's band is playing at the human bbq at pi-lam (a... frat house that has punk shows? and has for a billion years.) and then we're going to see someone in his jiu jitsu class fight at an mma thing. on sunday, mike is coming down for the cherry blossom festival at the japanese house in fairmount park



oddly, that was an idea planned out by mike and mouse? haha. they only invited me as an afterthought ! then i think they're going to box, and after that maybe we'll eat some indian food or something.

p.s. i'm sort of amazed that my entry about guy fieri got the most comments...?

when you're climbing up a ladder

yesterday we went to lemongrass for lunch for my boss' birthday. they have an awesome lunch special ($8.95 for soup, an appetizer, and an entree !) and it's probably my favorite thai restaurant in the city. i opted not to get the royal bath (according to urban dictionary this is when a king throws a bucket of jizz on you ! probably, i didn't look it up), which i get every time, and opted for the siam noodles which as far as i can tell is like.. pad thai with a few more vegetables?


here is some pad thai for reference

it was really good ! the restaurant is a 20 minute walk from my office, and it was like 75 degrees out, and my coworkers kind of treated it like a grim death march on the surface of the sun, but it was nice to be outside. unfortunately, i got the world's most upset stomach after we got back. like, ridiculous cramps and running back and forth to the bathroom 9230283 times. i ended up having to go home early, where things weren't much different but i had a decent book to read in the process:


the explosionist by jenny davidson- young adult alternate history fiction with spiritualists and bombs !

uh, what else? we raided last night and did bloodqueen first, and then did the plague wing. my mouse is broken and it's extremely hard to play video games on a computer when you can't turn your character and shit ! it was super frustrating and my dps during some fights was super embarrassing because it took me 10 seconds to turn around.

i also looked all over the internet for masculine sock patterns so i can make a pair of socks for mouse. it's hard to knit presents for men because men's clothing and accessories are boring, and scarves are also kind of boring to knit unless there's a fancy pattern (which most dudes wouldn't wear), but he likes socks ! so i finally settled on this pattern:


guitar man socks (stupid name) on ravelry

and i got these colors (since they're $1.99 a ball) to see which i prefer:

+
asphalt heather (a black with grays) and verdant heather (a moss green with turquoise, gold, and olive)

i'll probably end up going with the black because the other is a little extravagant for mouse !

what else? eating disorder stuff is not going well. lots and lots of food seems disgusting to me now so it's impossible for me to stick to any kind of meal plan or routine. i've seriously never had this happen before? i've been able to control it to an extent by sticking to a set plan and i ate like.. the same exact meals for every meal every single day for a year, but now like.. cashews seem gross to me, beans and rice, brussels sprouts, veggie burgers, etc. basically everything but fruit and noodles right now. like the thought of them makes me want to puke. i'm in transition with ED therapists (i'm in a program where the therapists are students doing their practicum with ED patients, and my newest person quit her program ! coooool.) right now and it's been about a month since i saw someone, but it would be nice to get a professional opinion in the interim. i have my old ED therapist's contact information so i may e-mail her, since she doesn't seem to mind that. maybe i can paypal her for her time !



it sort of bums me out to write about this stuff cause i think my blog is otherwise fun/funny but life is not always fun/funny. even though mine mostly is. here's a baby muskox:



p.s. netflix has created these genres to recommend to me based on my rental history:
- Military Historical Documentaries
- Wilderness-survival Adventures
- Witty Romantic Comedies