So busy and important.

Sorry about no post yesterday, dudes. I'm sure you were all distraught. I've been busy as hell trying to get ready to go out of town for the weekend, and every time I come home I discover that Pancakes has done something like destroy Rooster's harness or spread my yarn all over the living room. Frustrating.

In lieu of an actual post, here's what I have to do before my train leaves in the morning:

• Finish the laundry so that I can
• Pack my duffel bag (I learned on my last trip that those great little suitcases with wheels weigh a fucking ton and suck to haul up and down subway stairs) with:
• 5 pairs of socks (it's important to me to always have clean socks available)
• 4 sets of unmentionables (if I phrase it like this, it sounds like coordinated expensive underwear/bra combos, instead of mismatched Hanes undies and bras I got on sale at J.C.Penney)
• 1 pair of jammies
• 1 pair of jeans
• 3 t-shirts
• 2 sweaters
• 2 pairs of shoes acceptable for walking around the city
• 1 stuffed cow
• Toiletries, which when you're me is code for deodorant and contact solution
• Pack my "carry-on" (the bag that I'll keep with me) with:
• Yarn, needles, and knitting pattern
• Mindless magazine
• A book (I'm trying to decide between Bill Bryson and David Sedaris. Help!)
• Since I'll be on the train for lunchtime:
• A pb&j on whole wheat bread
• Sour cream and onion chips (a traveling indulgence) (I know this is weird: I'm a really picky eater but I love the taste of pb&j with grape jelly mixed with the taste of sour cream and onion chips. It's okay if you think that's gross.)
• Trail mix (dried cranberries, almonds, sunflower seeds, and chocolate chips)
• An orange, peeled and sectioned, in a baggie
• A big bottle of water 
• A bottle of Coke and two homemade chocolate chip cookies, so you don't think I'm all healthy or anything
• Fully charged iPod with headphones
• Sunglasses
• Gum
• Set up three posts for this joint to keep my hordes of readers at bay
• Pick at my chipping nail polish for a while
• Have dinner over at my parents' house for my dad's birthday
• Get as close to 8 hours of sleep as possible
• Shave my legs, because I'm sharing a bed with the friend I'm visiting and I'd rather not have her think she's sharing a bed with a cactus (I'm a snuggler. What can I say?)
• Watch my neighbor's car get towed with great interest

So you can see, I'm a busy lady with lots of claims on my time. I'm going to go get stuff crossed off this here list, starting with picking at my nails and watching my neighbor's car get towed. See, I'm even multitasking!

On Man vs. Wild

From the website where I found that picture: "Who can indulge himself  in danger and eat variety raw meat for sake of enjoyment or pleasure?  Bear Grylls has dare to do so. Here are some of his incredible weirdest eating."

You guys ever watch this show? Now that we have the Netflix, Andy and I watch this crap all the damn time. It's amazing. I know that it's staged and that Bear Grylls, the star/host/whatever, does all sorts of crazy shit that is the opposite of what one should do, and I definitely feel like puking during almost every episode, but I still am secretly happy any time Andy suggests we watch it.

Basically, if you're unfamiliar, this dude, whose name is Bear for some reason, parachutes into dangerous areas. In theory, he shows you how to survive so you can make it out or be rescued, but every episode he's all, "Usually, you would want to stay out of the frigid white-water rapids and try to find another way around, but I'm going to show you what would happen if you tried to make a raft out of some twigs and then floated downstream."

Apparently Grylls is also on his own for finding food, because he eats things that no human should eat, like part of a zebra he found, or a live scorpion. It works out okay to watch the show in the evening, because there is no way I can snack while I'm watching it if I don't want to hurl. I actually thought I really was going to barf during one episode when he bit the head off a snake, pulled the spine and guts out, and then ate the rest of it. Sick.

Ever watch this show? Tell me I'm not alone!

On rememberances

Oatmeal-Chocolate-Chip Cookies via

We don't know most of our neighbors. We've lived here for over three years, and I don't know the name of a single person who lives in the house across the street and over one. It's kind of sad how insular the suburbs can be.

But we do know the neighbors to the south of our house pretty well. They're some of those genuinely great neighbors that we feel lucky to have. When we moved in, there were four of them (mom, dad, college-aged son, middle-school-aged son), but, sadly, the mom died of cancer two years ago this week.

This lady, whose story is not mine to tell so I'm not going to tell you her name, was a dynamo. She was funny and clever and generous and an incredible cook. Her sons certainly know how to have a good time but she raised them to be polite, respectable, nice dudes (remind me to tell you about her older son at our Halloween party sometime).

Every once in a while, a few times a year, I'll bake something and send it over to the boys. I know that their mom used to bake like whoa, but that it's unlikely they make themselves many cookies, so it's a little something I like to do to remind them we're thinking of them. The last time I brought something over (it was a batch of pumpkin-chocolate chip cookies that were still warm), the younger son, who's now fifteen, dragged his friend over here to hug me and say thank you.

So today I'm making them a batch of oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookies. I know this week has got to suck, and cookies aren't going to do much, but at least they'll have something delicious to eat while they're thinking of their mom.

What do you do to remember lost loved ones? What would you suggest I bake for my neighbors next time I'm feeling bakerly?

In a good mood

It is a gorgeous day, all sunshine and fat fluffy clouds! It's still cold, but that's fine, because all I have to do for the next two hours is curl up on the couch and take a nap.


Andy and I made amazing brunch this morning - I made pancakes-the-food, which is pretty typical around here, and Andy made an omelet with big chunks of red onion and corned beef. So, so good. So now I'm full and drowsy and finishing my orange-grapefruit juice, with Pancakes-the-dog curled up next to me, and we both keep yawning.

Later, we're going to a surprise party, then tomorrow we're doing brunch with Andy's folks, then we're going to another birthday party, and on the way to that one we're finally picking up the smashed car.

What are you up to this lovely weekend?

On being picky

Gross.

My grandma - the passive-aggressive one - once called me a "fussbudget" for not eating a casserole made with Cream of Chicken soup, even though I was a vegetarian and had been for several years. In fact, I was using the "vegetarian" thing as a handy excuse to not eat the casserole, which looked pretty gross.

I have always been a picky eater. I didn't realize that I was for most of my life, because the Kid is about a dozen times pickier than I am. For a period of about two years, she only ever ordered chicken fingers when we went to restaurants. After I started dating Andy, I realized just how picky I really am.

Andy will eat anything. I mean it. The only food he absolutely refuses to eat is beets. I actually like beets, but I've promised Andy that I won't sneak them into his food or anything, because he deserves to have one thing he won't eat, when I have, like, a million.

Here is a very partial list of foods I dislike:
- Bell peppers (they make me ill. My mom and sister can't eat them, either. It's called a non-allergic food hypersensitivity. But mostly, I just hate how they smell enough that it turns my stomach, and I get really nauseated if I eat something that contains even a little bit.)
- Sausage
- Most processed food, including:
  - All Hostess snack cakes that I've tried (which is kind of a lot)
  - All Little Debbie snack cakes except Swiss Rolls, which I love
  - Rice-a-Roni
  - Doritos (all flavors)
  - All Sun Chips except Harvest Cheddar
  - Almost all donuts (I like cream-filled, not custard, and chocolate glazed; that's it.)
  - Most snack-type food, including, without limitation, most prepackaged cookies and cheese-type things
  - Canned pie filling
- Olives
- Any rice-pilaf-type thing
- Any food with artificial fruit flavoring, including Popsicles, Kool-Aid, fruit roll-ups, and lollipops (lone exception: strawberry pop-tarts. Don't know why.)
- Gravy (disgusting slimy meat goo. And no, I won't like your grandmother's recipe. All gravy is gross.)
- Artificial sweeteners including aspartame and saccharine (they taste metallic to me)
- Most soda

The one thing I really, really like, despite its totally artificial and gross-if-you-think-about-it nature is regular Coke. I know it's bad for me, and bad for my teeth, and that high-fructose corn syrup is satan's work, but I can't stop drinking this shit. 

Are you a picky eater? Have you ever tried to quit drinking soda? I'm thinking about cutting it out, and I could use some tips!

Christmas in March

Yo, dudes, sorry about no post yesterday. I know y'all are broken-hearted, but I was out being awesome with my husband. We got all fancied up and went out to dinner at a classy steak joint, then went to see The Lion King - I got Andy tickets for Christmas! Have you seen it? It was great. Some notes from the evening:

Steakhouse.
1. Just because the restaurant is fancy, don't assume that other people are. Yes, we were dressed nicely. No, the woman nearest us in a grey hoodie and Uggs was not. Also not classy: one of her table-mates downed three Jack and Cokes before their appetizer arrived. Cool. The best part was that they were definitely there on some sort of business thing. I betcha the company was covering their meal.
2. I may be eating meat again after a ten-year hiatus, but I'm still not comfortable eating meat that looks like a muscle. Andy's medium-rare steak, while I'm sure it was delicious, looked kind of gross to me. And I didn't even stop eating meat because of that whole "it's a living animal with feelings" thing.
3. Not everyone knows what linguine is. The largest of the work group near us had his companions walk him through the entire menu, describing what "rigatoni" and "fettuccine" and "capillary" meant. Just kidding about the capillaries.

The Play.
1. Just because we are classy, don't assume other playgoers are. There was a guy there, no joke, wearing a t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off. I'd say almost 70% of the audience was in jeans. Is there no event people dress up for anymore??
2. Just because a child has seen the movie version of the Lion King, it doesn't mean he's old enough to see the play. The four-year-old behind us spent THE ENTIRE PLAY asking his dad questions. He was cute and otherwise well-behaved, but I paid plenty for those tickets and understood the storyline without the guy's help, you know? I mean, the show didn't end until almost 11. Wouldn't a matinee be more appropriate for the under-ten crowd?
3. Garth Fagan is amazing. He did all the choreography, and his dance company is based in my city! I rode with him in an elevator once, years ago. I told Andy about that yesterday. I remember that Mr. Fagan complimented me on something, but I can't remember what. My guesses were my shoes or whatever book I was holding. Andy paused, and then was like, "You know, it's more likely that your hair was blue, and he complimented you on that. You know that, right?" He's probably right.
4. The guy who played Adult Simba also played Marius in Les Mis on Broadway. He was amazing. I am absolutely biased, because Les Mis is my favorite.

Have you seen Lion King? Do you dress up for evenings like that? Are we the only classy mofos left??

On begging the question

I work for a publishing company. We have a staff of fully trained editors, the kind of people who laugh at jokes about punctuation. We also have a sales staff, people without a background in Latinate roots and so on, people who can't be convinced that it's a good idea for the editors to glance at the things we'll be sending to thousands of our clients. This leads to frustration.

So when we have an editors' meeting, I look forward to passing a meeting without gritting my teeth at whatever horrible things are going on, grammar-wise.

Today, however, we had an editors' meeting, and my teeth were gritted anyway. One of the editors said that something "begs the question" of why we hadn't done such-and-such. Thing is, "begs the question" does not mean "raises the question." Never has, and never will, no matter how many times people use it wrong.

"Begging the question" is a very specific logical fallacy. It's similar to circular reasoning. When one begs the question, one uses one's premise as proof for itself: "Paranormal phenomena exist because I have had experiences that can only be described as paranormal." 


I know that we can't all know every single thing there is to know about the English language. I just hate when my coworkers don't know the things I do. And I know an awful lot of things.


What grammar goofs drive you nuts? Have you ever misused "begs the question"? If so, do you promise to stop now that you know better?