roxy christina barcelona

woooooo busy weekend ! on friday, kristen came down from new york so she and christina could go to maryland sheep and wool. it was great to finally meet her after occupying the same space on the internet as her for like ten years ! it was everything i thought it would be and more. we met up with christina's coworker kathleen, got beer, and went to vientiane, where i once again had tofu lad na because i'm super unadventurous ! i also had an ephemere with dinner and it was a surprisingly good combination.


appley beer

after dinner we got snacks- i had um, v8 and a tastyklair pie?



while everyone else opted for ice cream (and chocolate covered nuts for kathleen !). then we went back to our house and watched the most pbs show ever, "sandwiches that you will like". it was pretty weird- the sandwiches mostly looked disgusting and the footage all seemed to be from the mid-90s. the grossest was the "st. paul sandwich":


"The sandwich consists of a deep fried egg foo young patty (made with egg, bean sprouts, and minced white onions) served with dill pickle slices, white onion, mayonnaise, lettuce, and tomato between two slices of white bread."

ahhhhh ! st. paul is probably rolling over in his damn grave over that thing. i seriously can't stop thinking about it and doing like, a soft gag.

on saturday, the ladies woke up early to go to maryland, and i got up around 9 and tried to do some stuff. i uh, tried to watch some DVR'd stuff (i have like 500 episodes of "what not to wear" and "the king of queens" DVR'd because... i have bad taste in television !) and tried to read the evolution of calpurnia tate but i found it to be pretty annoying and obnoxious so i ended up shelving it for awhile (not literally, it's still cluttering up the livingroom !). i also leveled my priest a little bit !

when the girls got back from maryland (exhausted but with tales of how sheep vaginas look like people vaginas) we met up with mouse and nate and diana (!!!! so many people) and went to bobby flay's hamburger restaurant. well, *i* didn't go- mouse and i went to capo giro because he already ate and i wasn't hungry, and i had gelato for dinner.


why have most of my pictures been food so far?

we all met up at capo giro and i had a really good iced coffee. after a few hours i started to get hungry, so i uh, bought a quiche?


MORE FOOD

and then we came back to my house and met up with anna, who was coming back from like, a weekend long bachelorette party. after christina and kristen went to bed, and nate, anna, and mouse went home, nnamdi stopped by and we hung out for awhile ! that is like the most people i've ever seen in one day.

on sunday, kristen, christina, and i went to green line and had iced mochas and breakfast burritos with hot sauce. kristen left to go hang out with some other philadelphia friends, and diana went to her first haircut appointment. THEN ! mouse and i went over to jeanne's to hang out with jeanne and mike and wait for diana to come give us haircuts. we got burritos and watched the david tennant hamlet



david tennant was super over the top as per usual, but the dude playing laertes made david tennant look subdued. it was uncomfortable to watch this dude, he basically acted like when someone is trying to loudly let a person hiding in a closet know that someone is about to open the closet door.

oh, the most important part ! jeanne was kittensitting a kitten she found in the alley when he was a super super newborn. he's like three weeks old now maybe and she and her friend hannah are sharing his care. he's like, the best? i got to be assistant kittensitter while she got her hair cut !



little wolfman ! he purrs already and plays and is super cute and funny but he weighs like 8 oz and he has trouble pooping by himself (he gets lots of belly massages and wet washcloths and vet visits so i think he's okay). i love him !

jeanne, mouse, and i all got haircuts. jeanne and i just got updated versions of our current haircuts, but we watched the special features of band of brothers to pick out a world war II haircut for mouse. he ended up getting the nixon:



it looks pretty good ! i think my hair looks good too because for the first time ever, people at work are actually noticing and complimenting my hair. it's weird though because i can barely tell the difference. i had to get 2 inches of gross split ends cut off but my hair is still like two feet long.

after we left, we went to whole foods and i missed another friend opportunity. i was wearing this shirt:



and the girl at the hot bar counter was like, "oh, that shirt is awesome, it reminds me that i wanted to call my girlfriends to play d&d". whatttttt that's exactly what i want to do ! i've even made like, craigslist ads looking for girls to play with ! and for some reason i didn't say anything and was just like, "cool story bro" and left. mouse was like, "maybe we'll see her again next time you're here" and i said i'd never seen him before but he pointed out that it was unlikely that a person was making a one-time guest appearance working at a store or something.

when i got home, it was a billion zillion degrees in my apartment. christina was dutifully cataloging all of her beautiful yarn. i watched part of treme with her, which i really like


check out this cool treme photoshop someone made

i'm really bummed that the pacific is a total stinking pile of shit and garbage and puke and garbage and farts, but treme fills the void a little. oddly though, i really like it but i don't know why i like it. i don't feel any pressure to watch it on time every week but i'm enjoying it a lot.

thennnnn i leveled my new priest with paul's warrior for awhile. we got to level 10 and probably could've gotten to 20 pretty quickly, but i was really tired. leveling with paul is fun because he's very methodical and focused and i can zone out and smite stuff.

i'm going to go do work now. these are my busiest two weeks of the year and so far everyone is being annoying. my updates may be spotty and complainy until after may 16 !

long ago

hello dogs. i'm sorta bummed to be at work because it's raining and i love sleeping while it's raining !

on friday, christina, mouse, and i went to vientiane to meet up with nate and anna. the wait was pretty long because the restaurant is super super tiny, but we ran into brian v. while we were waiting and it was really nice to see him ! i got tofu lad na (and will probably only get that there for the rest of my life) and everyone else got neat looking stuff including homemade beef jerky (which is apparently amazing, but i've only had real beef jerky once and it was nothing to write home about). mouse went home after dinner because the wait was so long and he had to work in the morning, so the rest of us got treats (percy jackson flavored airheads?) and went back to my house, where we watched beavis and butthead music videos



and um, that hbo documentary about magic johnson and larry bird? nate and i are both really into larry bird highlight reels and i think we were hoping the documentary would just be a 90 minute highlight reel but it was actually the touching story of their rivalry and friendship. oh also larry bird is autistic or something. what the hell.


larry bird's daughter who he DENIES IS HIS DAUGHTER. also it's hard to search for magic johnson and larry bird without finding pics of lady bird johnson

on saturday, christina and i went to green line and i got a delicious apple lemonade which gave me the idea for all these lemonades i didn't actually make ! we went to whole foods and trader joe's after that and both stuck to our lists and got a bunch of cool groceries. then we came home and christina defrosted our gross freezer (it was seriously like 50% ice since we moved in) and i finally sewed a button on the hat i made for mouse's nephew.



then we went up to mouse's mom's so i could meet his super small nephew, scott. holy crap, he's cool ! he's like six weeks old so he's not at the stage where he... does anything but he was a really cute tiny little loaf and he slept on me. mouse looooooooooves him



and scott obviously looooooooooooooves the hat i made him:



heh heh ! it was also nice to see mouse's family, because i haven't been up there in awhile. his grandma gives very good grandma arm hugs.

on sunday, i made sweet potato salad which i'm proud to say was pretty delicious. i roasted small/thin sweet potatoes cut in half (but cut unevenly so some pieces would be super soft and some would be firmer) with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then cubed the slices and mixed them with carrot ginger dressing and green onions.


it basically looked like this but i left the skins on, and um, those aren't green onions

i also got stuff to make delicious hoagies (tofurky slices, munster cheese, avocado spread with lime and garlic and salt, cucumbers, tomatoes, arugula) and jeanne and mouse came over to have lunch. we watched the bear, which was a very beautiful movie:



it's about a baby bear whose mom dies who is taken under the wing of a big male grizzly who is being pursued by hunters. it's notable because there's almost no dialogue and the actors are just like.. real bears and it's almost like watching it really happen in the wild (but with a few claymation dreams added to give insight into the bear's psyche). the story promotes kindness to all creatures and ends with the line, "the greatest thrill is not to kill but to let live". aw. also it's like 2 hours of a baby bear doing shit so if you like that, you should rent it !

what else ! oh, the third episode of the pacific. i really really hate to say it, but despite this being the best episode so far, it really hasn't grabbed me yet.



this episode found the marines in melbourne after guadalcanal and before peleliu. most of the episode was about robert leckie falling in love with a greek australian girl but the pacing and sense of time is so off that i have no idea if they knew each other 3 days or 3 months. the characterization was a little better, and the guy playing leckie is a legitimately good actor (and he was good at sex scenes ! but the unrealistic sex scenes where the lady is psyched that the guy comes in 30 seconds and then hops off after unprotected sex and doesn't need to take care of anything is so distracting !), but the dude playing basilone totally sucks. like, he was supposed to be anguished because his good friend died, and torn between excitement at getting to go home to sell war bonds and guilt over abandoning his fellow marines/his best friend, but he just seemed vaguely grumpy? he's just so so so wooden. i also think they're trying to cover up the fact that the show is not about one unit, and not about men who ever know each other? because the lines are super blurred and they even show the characters in the same rooms.

i don't know. i wish they could've found one unit with good stories and not just used the three famous stories/memoirs about the pacific theater.

oh, what else? i finally finished tender morsels.



so many people told me this book was good and i'm convinced that they were lying or the author paid them to tell me, because it was terrible in ways that i was totally unfamiliar with? the book starts with a father repeatedly raping and verbally abusing his daughter and violently forcing her to have abortions. once her father dies, the author moves on to a violent gang rape of the main character. then she's sent to a magical land where no one can hurt her (just like what happens to real rape victims...?) with her two babies and is totally psyched and happy, because having babies from rape is totally the best thing to ever happen to a woman (because women love babies).

had that been the last rape, it still would have been a little over the top, but next a man makes his way into their dream world (since he was wearing a bear costume in the real world, he's an actual bear in their world) and... sexually assaults one of her daughters as a bear and chases her with his bear dick out with the intent to rape her. at this point you may be saying, "there's no way this author could get more rape into this book !" but you'd be wrong, because one of the daughters uses magic to conjure up five men with HOT POKERS FOR DICKS to violently rape her mother's rapists almost to death in retribution. and at no point is anyone like, "that was totally not the right thing to do" or "this sends a really weird message about rape" or anything?

aside from that, the writing was pretty bad. the whole thing reads like snow white rape fan fiction. it takes place in Ye Olden Tymes and the Olde Tymey writing is super inconsistent and tedious, and the author also introduces 293920832 characters whose stories go nowhere and barely spends any time on the characterization of the main characters. and then the ending is like, "having daughters is great". cool message...? anyway, terrible book.

aside from that, um, i'm going to try my hand at making a sock.



this is the sweet socks pattern from knit picks, and i'm going to make it in those colors (the yarn is stroll sock yarn). it should be fun, despite the fact that i don't wear socks. anyway, back to work !

p.s. i also happened to watch part of kristie alley's reality show and it was equal parts boring, depressing, and funny (maybe slightly skewed toward boring). i think i'd really like her if she wasn't a scientologist and asshole who owns exotic pets.

your love is a river running soul deep

i had the best time with jeanne yesterday ! she asked me to hang out because it was so nice out ! while i waited for her, i went to mariposa co-op and bought some fake chicken broth and a dark chocolate bar with whole cherries.



then we walked to clark park and petted a billion dogs (well, two. but we saw some other dogs ! including a neapolitan mastiff right next to a chihuahua, an australian shepherd mutt, some pitbulls, a fox terrier). thennnn we stopped at a pet supply store on baltimore and went in because they had a kitten for adoption in the window from a local shelter. i bought pizza some catnip just so we could pet the kitten !





she was super cute and suuuuper tiny and super chirpy and talkative. we're trying to get everyone we know to adopt her. she was reaching through the bars and batting our noses and hands !!

after cat petting, we walked down to vientiane, a thai/laosian restaurant. i really love vientiane but i basically always forget it's there. i had the tofu lad na (which is tofu, wide rice noodles, and this like... amazing thinly sliced broccoli) and it was awesome



by the way, is anything more unappetizing than camera phone pictures of peoples' food? i've never seen one that looked less than disgusting. i don't know why i take them.

we went back to my house after that and hung out with christina, and (sort of) true to my word, i practiced crocheting. i did a bunch of rows of single crochet to work on my tension (though i used this sort of weird thick/thin tweed yarn which made it impossible to tell how i was doing !) and feel confident enough to start youtubing double and half double crochet. christina has also graciously offered to show me if i can't get it since she taught crocheting forever.

once jeanne left, christina and i watched the terminator



and i have to say- you know the scene where the terminator is killing all the sarah connors he can find, and one sarah connor just made an awesome looking sandwich and he kills her before she can eat it? that bummed me out, so i ordered a sandwich even though i'd gone out to dinner 5 hours earlier. i got a little bit of indigestion but i basically never want to miss a sandwich opportunity before i get terminated.

i'm going to go forage for breakfast food. i'm getting good texts from mouse today because he's super high on allergy medicine.

oh, yeah, i got accepted for penn's summer session ! that isn't a huge deal because uh, all employees really have to do is 1) have graduated high school and 2) give them $35 (and believe me, i understand that both things are a huge hardship for most people, so i'm not saying that like LOL ITZ EAZY !!!!), but i'm excited to register for a class on monday !