yoga, books, movies, tv & too many crime procedurals – not necesarily in that order
I was going to make this chicken recipe last night but our plans change and so I made it tonight, with The Spinach recipe and a couple of bags of SteamFresh roast potatoes with green beans.
1. The chicken was awesome and (in keeping with RealSimple tradition) very easy and DELICIOUS. The boys were very happy.
2. I dig those fucking SteamFresh things. I’ve probably eaten more vegetables in the last year because of those bags than I have in the last five years.
3. That might be a slight exaggeration but probably not by much, unless you’re counting vegetables on pizza.
4. I didn’t use the olive oil called for in the breading recipe because I use pre-minced garlic that has a smidge of olive oil in it. Turns out the olive oil was totally not missed.
5. Beer is AMAZING.
I’m also apparently having some blog issues with regard to commenting. I thought it was maybe the theme, so I changed the theme and then ran into a whole other bunch of problems so I’ve resorted to IntenseDebate as a temporary solution. I do like that you can use your twitter login to comment so I’m hoping it works out until I have time to poke at the bugs going on here.
Spouse and I are both set up on XboxLive (yay for prepaid cards on sale) so I’m looking forward to LOTS more BandHero.
In unrelated and totally lame news, I bought a scarf today that matches my rainboots. I’m embracing my lame. I’m also considering dying my hair a pinkish blonde, just for the hell of it. That would also, incidentally, match my rainboots although that’s not my main motivation.
I am INORDINATELY excited to find out that other people hate noise-canceling earbuds. I LIKE being able to hear ambient noise. It’s the kind of thing that keeps me from being mugged or hit by cars. While there are definitely times when it’s good to block everything out, I’ve found I can do that by using my attention span/imagination which makes it unnecessary to render myself nearly deaf. Yay brains!
Something I’m not excited about: finding a dentist. I haven’t been to the dentist since we moved to Colorado and I’m working up one hell of a cavity on one of my right molars. I hate the dentist. HATE.
Best news of the week: Colorado FINALLY got around to sending me state certification as an EMT-B (I’ve had national certification since the fall). That means I can finally look for a medical job!
Supernatural was back this week and although I’m only halfway through the ep, I’m stoked. I missed the massive amounts of sarcasm and creepy/scary (not to mention hawt). Mercy is on a par with the sarcasm but balances it out with more humor (and laugh out loud, at that). This weekend’s movie lineup includes: Jennifer’s Body, Sorority Row, The Informant, Tenure, The Princess and the Frog and Where the Wild Things Are. Yes, we are random. I may also do a Yg + Spouse recap of Twilight/New Moon because we cracked me up.
I’ve been reading Finch but I’m not gonna lie, the CONSTANT use of. Fragments. Is Really. Annoying. Probably it’s supposed to convey. Speech pattern. Or tone. Mostly. It makes me want to throw. My fucking Kindle across the room. So I keep putting it down. Listening to Oryx and Crake on my ride home from work each day and it just reminds me how much I love Margaret Atwood. The listen is a refresh before I start In The Year of the Flood (ALSO very excited about).
That pretty much sums up all the immediate stuff. I’m going to do a yoga post before the weekend is out (shocking, I know) but for now I’m going back to my chocolate chip cookies and delicious Coors Light. Shut up, I like it. I don’t critique YOUR beer.
And no, I do NOT mean the Winter Olympics.
Got a notice from Verizon last week that I was due for a phone upgrade. I LOVE my LG ENV2. Love it. This is the phone that, not even two weeks ago, survived three hours in the freezing slush of the work parking lot and possibly being run over by a coworker. LOVE that phone. So I wasn’t really inclined to change when I had a perfectly acceptable and functional phone, right up until a friend mentioned that she kept her really good phone as a backup and upgraded to a new gadgetier phone. That planted the seed. Then I made the trip to the local Verizon dealer to scope out the offerings. The only thing really catching my eye was Droid.
The store didn’t have either droid model in stock (Motorola Droid, HTC Droid Eris) so I went home and checked out gizmodo and cnet and the usual suspects about the two models. I know people love the iPhone and, no lie, it’s a sweet device, but AT&T provides absolute shit service up here – so much that the tourists CONSTANTLY bitch about it. Not only that but it’s not exactly CHEAP.
I got to mess with the display models at the store and while the Droid has some really nice bennies, the slide out keyboard frankly feels cheap. Like plasticky might-break-if-you-drop-the-phone cheap. The Eris doesn’t have the same battery life but it comes with an 8 gig micro card and is upgradeable. It’s also got Google with voice search and sweet market apps and frankly, the keyboard didn’t mean that much to me – especially because it felt like a crap feature. So. Droid Eris.
Dudes, I LOVE THIS PHONE. I spent a ridiculous amount of time finding and discarding apps, customizing the look, and setting up all my contacts with Google so that I can access my rss feed, my twitter account, my gmail, and pretty much everything I love on this phone. I’ve got Pandora, a great calendar (which is shareable) and this AMAZING app called Ringdroid. Ringdroid lets you take any audio file and customize a ringtone from it. It is THE BALLS. I now have a ringtone that says “I swear to god I’m going to PISTOLWHIP the next asshole who says SHENANIGANS!”
LOVE.
So pretty much all my free time has been sucked up with searching for neat shit on my phone and tweaking my apps. It’s sad. I know.
I’m also a good chunk of the way through Middlemarch, thanks to audible.com. I bought the audiobook because I couldn’t bear reading it and it’s turned out to be surprisingly good. I’m leaning toward the test of a good book being it’s ability to show interesting parallels between its time and now ( whenever “its time and now” happen to be). Also (unsurprisingly) it’s full of great social commentary. So there you are. Go classics!
Last night we had a homemade mini-pizza party with post-apocalyptic virus film chaser. It was kind of fantastic.
In TV news:
Mercy knocked it out of THE PARK this week. I’m always surprised by how much I enjoy this show and that they’re willing to be (sometimes) shockingly honest while at the same time (sometimes) screamingly funny. I laugh out loud during every episode and I also see something that makes me think. I love that. One of our friends who was a career nurse ALSO has great things to say about it and that seems to be a rare thing in med-drama circles.
I’ve been working early shifts which generally means going to bed early, but our DVR was otherwise occupied on Thursday and wouldn’t record The Mentalist. I wanted to go to sleep but it was all Cho, all the time and I just couldn’t pass it up. The writers do such a great job on that show – I knew whodunnit as soon as the culprit was introduced but I DIDN’T CARE because they did such awesome character stuff.
Chuck continues to be awesome. Kristin Kreuk is 1000% less annoying than when she was on Smallville and I’m digging the new team dynamic. Having Superman aboard isn’t hurting things one bit.
Castle is consistent and engaging. I found out during the Superbowl that it’s a local-friend fave as well.
I haven’t caught up on all my Thursday and Friday shows yet.
Work is good! It looks like I’ll continue on mornings/days full time. I’ve been enjoying my tasks and team work so I’ve got zero complaints. Life in general is pretty kick ass.
Tomorrow I begin a new work schedule for January, which requires my getting up at o’dark:30. On the bright side, I’m done with work in the early afternoon with plenty of time to run errands and cook dinner. Downside? I’ve got to be in bed by 10pm in order to be functional.
In an attempt to be responsible, I’ve already packed my lunch. Two Pb&Js, some Cheez-its, dark chocolate covered almonds, and a bottle of water. I’m hoping that’ll get me through two breaks and a lunch. When I do my grocery shopping tomorrow afternoon, I can stock up on breakworthy food.
Spouse’s truck isn’t totaled but we won’t have it back until sometime next week. It turns out our auto insurance rep isn’t much good for anything so we’ll likely be in the market for new insurance soon. Luckily a coworker was generous enough to offer him the use of their truck until his is repaired, so we at least aren’t having to pay for a rental or juggle schedules. It’s one of the nice differences here- back in Saginaw, Spouse was the guy who’d made that offer but never had it reciprocated (even from neighbors). Here we had two such offers and it’s very nice to be in that kind of community.
Not much reading progress today on Middlemarch, though Finch is turning out to be quite interesting. Turns out George Eliot is precisely as boring as I remember her being but I’m making an effort.
Last week I clocked just over 40 hours at job 1 and almost 20 at job 2. They also requested that I come in a couple of hours early tomorrow and, while I’m happy to comply, I’ll be heartily glad when I’m down to just the one job. On the plus side, my drive time has gotten me caught up on backlogged Talk of the Nation podcasts. Most interesting of the lot: The Department of Mad Scientists: How DARPA Is Remaking Our World, from the Internet to Artificial Limbs
Speaking of which, I have a day off this week (!) and Spouse has mad noises about a second viewing of Avatar. I’m all for it.
Chuck returns next week! So does Burn Notice!
I finally decided what to spend my h$liday money on – a long-wanted XB0x 360. It was a close battle between that and the entire 5 seasons of The Wire but I opted for multi-user fun. Not only that, Fatima helped sway me with promises of long-distance movie viewing and snark. The 360 marks the last of my ‘frivolous’ purchases for the next 4 months (save for “gift” money)- the only resolution I made this year. No books or music until I’ve read through everything on the kindle and listened to everything on the Zune at least once.
Happy New Year!
I’ve been a legal Colorado resident for one year. My trip to the Driver’s License office was on New Year’s Eve 2008. What a year!
We’ve enjoyed the town and love living here. That bodes well as we never felt that way about Saginaw. I’ve also nailed down some full-time work, which kicks the year off famously.
I also finally finished East of Eden today. Despite my earlier Farrah-induced prejudice, I really loved this novel. I wouldn’t have read it at all but for my GoodReads group, so I’m thankful for that. I’m looking forward to rereading it just as soon as I get through some of my TBR list. It was incredibly timely and does a fantastic job of looking at nature vs. nurture and the complexity of family interaction. Loved it.
During my shift tonight I also read the latest Sookie Stackhouse book. I continue to admire how Charlaine Harris pulls off the books in the series without becoming repetitive or dull, and I enjoyed it as much as I’ve enjoyed every other book in the series. While I loved season 1 of True Blood, it really doesn’t hold a candle to the charm, humor, and intensity of the novels.
Next up from Chicks on Lit: Middlemarch. Given my own personal dislike for George Eliot, I’m hoping this turns out as well as East of Eden.
I’m not much for resolutions, but mine for this year is to live each day like it’s my last. Enjoy every minute. More reading, more yoga, more great conversation.
