Checking on the Space-Time Continuum

Last night my father called me to see how I was doing. This may not seem strange in the world of other normal people, but my father. Does. Not. Call. Ever.

In fact, every time I call home, he immediately hands the phone over to my mom. I didn't even know he had my phone number.

So last night, I'm standing in my kitchen asking him why he was calling, and he said, "I haven't heard from you in a while, and I was just wondering what you were up to."

This from a man whose policy with his children is: Don't Ask. Don't Tell.

This is a policy I am very comfortable with. I've never understood people who felt like they needed to be best friends with their kids. Your kids have friends. They need parents. I like to think that my father feels that he's instilled me with a way to navigate the world and to make my own decisions, and that's why he doesn't need to touch base too often. Or, it could be laziness.

When I used to travel abroad, he used to say, "Just call if something bad happens. If everything's okay, don't bother. So if I don't hear from you, I'll just figure you're having a good time."

This is very unlike Peter's mother, who calls almost every day we're on a vacation, just to make sure that, yes, oxygen is being breathed in and carbon dioxide is, in fact, being expelled out...as we speak.

Advice From Tim Gunn

Tonight on Project Runway, Tim Gunn gave this advice to Chris.

When you first enter into the monkey house at the zoo you think, "Oh my God this place stinks!" And after you're there for twenty minutes you think, "It's not so bad..." And after you're there for an hour, "It doesn't smell at all!"

But anybody else coming into the monkey house, freshly, thinks, "Oh my GOD this STINKS!"

You've been LIVING in the MONKEY HOUSE!

I asked Peter, "Do you think this advice would work with your clients?"

Goin' Cross Country...Maybe

Peter and I may be taking a road trip to Los Angeles to pick up an old guitar that is at his friend's house. The reason we're taking a road trip is that Peter doesn't want to check the guitar on the plane. Plus we hate to fly. But I've always wanted to drive cross-country.

I'm doing some research on what spots to hit along the way. Right now I'd like to stop in Chicago, Denver, Bryce Canyons, Las Vegas, and The Grand Canyon.

Any suggestions or tips would be really helpful.

A Little Fonduddy

After our experience at The Melting Pot, Peter and I decided to try to make fondue at home using the fondue pot we got at our engagement party...about three-and-a-half years ago. Yes, finally putting that to good use. Now if only someone fancy would visit us, we could break out the Wedgewood Crystal still in their boxes.

We tried this recipe from All Recipes and what we got was a clump o' mess in a vat of white wine. It was a clump of delicious mess, but did not get nice and creamy like a real fondue. I think it may be because we used Jarlsberg Lite Cheese instead of Swiss. Y'know, because we're watching our weight while eating a huge vat of melted cheese.

I might try this again with other cheeses or maybe use a different recipe, because no matter how much I was whippin' that cheese, it would not melt. It would kind of melt when you whipped it, but then once you stopped for one second because your arm felt like it was going to fall off, it turned back into its clumpy old self.

Peter called it Molten Terminator Cheese.

At one point, Peter got a bit of semi-melted cheese on his piece of bread and it was stringing everywhere, so I said, "Here, let me help you with that." I took my fondue skewer and grabbed at this tiny piece of stringy cheese. But because the cheese on the bread had already cooled off, when I pulled at the sting, it brought the whole thing back down and plopped back into the pot.

I cannot relate how funny this was, but even now whenever Peter says, "Here, let me help you with that," it CRACKS ME UP.

Famous Vegetarians

A lot of people happen to stumble onto my site looking to see if Heath Ledger was vegetarian or if Brad Pitt is vegetarian. So I will do my public duty and inform you that Brad Pitt is indeed a vegetarian. Which means that he has yet another thing in common with Peter (along with international fame).

Here are a list of famous vegetarians from happycow.net, which has saved us, on several occasions traveling throughout this vast country of ours, from eating at the local Taco Bell.

I had not known that Aristotle was a vegetarian, as is Elvira Mistress of the Dark (isn't she a vampire?), JD Salinger, Vincent Van Gogh, and of course, our good friend Jesus Christ.

But then why didn't he miraculously create a huge pot of vegetarian chili instead of all those fish?

Eric Bana - Movie Ruiner

I don't understand how Eric Bana keeps getting roles. My sister calls him the Movie-Ruiner, since not one movie he has been in has been worth seeing.

I am very excited to see the new Eric Bana movie, "The Other Boleyn Girl." But since he plays the king, it's probably going to be terrible.

Munich - Terrible
Troy - Bad
Hulk - Embarrassing

Has anyone ever seen a good Eric Bana movie?

Let's Call Fondue Fun-due!

We got this coupon in the mail for a new fondue place that opened up in White Plains called The Melting Pot, so we decided to check it out yesterday. Usually Peter tells me to throw these coupons out, but just say the word "Fondue!" and he's all, "Let's GO!"

When we were seated, I cracked open the menu and got completely confused. It's set up with three different priced meals and a whole bunch of options. So I asked the waitress about a zillion questions, such as, "If I get the Big Night Out Meal, I can substitute any of the fondues for the ones on the ala carte menu? And if that's the case, and my husband's a vegetarian, how would we share? Also, I'd like to order to four-course meal, but I have an issue with feta, so can I get a different salad?"

Every time we go to a restaurant and I ask the waitress a question other than,"May I have a Coca-Cola?" Peter starts to roll his eyes and make annoyed noises. He started to do this, so I asked him if he understood the menu. He said yes and told me to leave our poor waitress alone.

So after she left, I asked him my questions and he didn't know any of the answers. And then, he admitted, "Yeah, this menu is not very intuitive."

So why didn't you let me ask the lady my questions?

This happens every time. Peter always gets antsy when he thinks I'm bothering waitstaff, but I used to work at my dad's restaurant, and I never had a problem answering people's questions. Because you want to make sure that people understand what they're getting.

But Peter is a failed waiter (after getting fired the first day) and doesn't understand that the waitstaff is paid to know the menu backwards and forwards, and they are aware that when a person takes up their time, they will get compensated in the size of their tip.

We finally figured out what the heck the menu meant and hunkered down to one of the longest meals in the history of long meals. The whole thing took about three hours!!

Figuring out the menu took half-an-hour. The first course was this great cheese fondue, which was out-of-this-world. But between heating up the fondue pot and the waitress preparing the whole thing in front of us, it took about another hour to finish that course. Then we got a salad, which was incredibly yummy. And THEN, we had to wait for the broth fondue to heat up and cook our food ourselves, so that took ANOTHER hour. Finally, it was on to dessert, which was a chocolate fondue.

By the time the meal was done, we had been eating for three hours. Peter said:

"Wow, this meal was an INVESTMENT OF TIME."

Yeah, about the best investment of time I made all day!

Hateful and Spiteful Mother-in-Law

A few weeks ago, I spied a delicious box of chocolate-covered wafers in my mother's pantry and I asked if I could have them. I told her that I would give them to my mother-in-law because that was the only way to con her into giving them to me. It was a HUGE box, that probably had at least 100 cookies in it.

In the car, I told Peter that this was all a ploy to get the cookies. My sister agreed that my mother would only give me the chocolates if I wasn't going to eat them (because she thinks we need to lose a few pounds).

The next day, Peter went to his mother's house and when I reached into the pantry for the box of cookies...they were gone! Later, Peter said that he thought I was just joking in the car.

After the initial melt-down, I told Peter to ask his mother to save some of the cookies for me, because although I would love to eat the whole box, even I know that this is not a good idea. He called her and she agreed to save some.

I was so happy that I was planning on driving her to Long Island (by myself) to visit her daughter (the most hateful one in the family of hatefulness) and throwing her a big surprise Mother's Day party, as well as inviting her to our home again soon.

Then yesterday, when Peter spoke to her on the telephone, she told him that she "forgot" that she had agreed to save some for me and finished them all!

This could only mean a few things:

1.) Those cookies were so delicious that she ate them all in three days (ALL the cookies!!!! - I mean, doesn't she have ANY self-control?)

2.) She is getting dementia and forgot she promised to save some for me.

3.) She is HATEFUL and SPITEFUL.

After discussing this with Peter, I irrationally said, "She didn't save ANY of them for me? Wow. She really HATES me."

I expected Peter to say something like, "No, she doesn't hate you. She just loves cookies."

But instead, he looked me straight in the eye and said. "Yeah. I think she must hate you. She would have never eaten them all if anyone else asked her to save them some. She would probably never have even opened the box."

"But doesn't she realize that I'm so upset that I'm NEVER INVITING HER TO MY HOUSE EVER AGAIN?"

"Yeah," he said. "I don't think she cares. That's how much she must hate you."

And driving to Long Island? Never happening. AND I'm not throwing someone who hates me a Mother's Day party. AND I am NOT going to EASTER DINNER.

Question of the Day

What's my favorite flower?

Uh...hmmmm...

You don't remember do you?

Sure I do. It's uhhmm...parsni...persimm...it's got this really long and unusual name.

Long and unusual? Something like pink peonies?

That's it! Pink Peonies.

Yah, right.

The Same Old Valentine's Day

My sister called up and asked Peter what we were doing on Valentine's Day and he said, "Same thing we do every year."

When my sister asked him what that was, he said, "Nothing."

Then she told us a story about going to the mailbox with her boyfriend. When she opened the mailbox, a bunch of Fruit Roll-Ups came out of the mailbox, like when the Tic Tacs fell out of the mailbox in the movie Juno. She turned to her boyfriend and said, "Oh! That's so sweet!"

He said, "This wasn't me."

And then he looked really sad about it. We think that it was one of his friends playing a prank on him. But Jenny thinks that it may be someone else doing this to random girls on campus.

"But it can't be random," I told her. "This person has to know you love Fruit Roll-Ups."

"But everyone loves Fruit Roll-ups," she said.

"Uh. No. They're gross."

"Really? I thought EVERYBODY loved them."

If by everybody, she means everybody who loves to put partially hydrogenated oils and Red #4 into their balanced diet.

And You Do Not Want A Very Expensive Towed

The other day someone in this complex got his car towed. Each parking spot here is assigned except for the guest spots, and people around here are just chomping at the bit to have someone towed. This is great sport in the complex and everyone stands around outside watching the tow trucks come by with their yellow lights dancing and they don't go back inside until the car has been dispatched down the ramp.

A few years ago Peter and I visited Chicago and went to a fancy event for the Cambodian Association. Throughout the evening, a lady went up to the microphone and said:

If you are parked in an illegal parking spot, you will be towed. And you do not want to pay for a very expensive towed. (Of course, this sounds like "expensive toad")

So now, every time someone gets towed, Peter says, "Someone is going to pay for a very expensive towed."

Superbowl Pre-game Sillyness

Did anyone catch the weird pre-game Patriots skit which involved the Founding Fathers as they sat around talking about the Declaration of Independence? I was all like, when is Paul Bunyan coming out to represent the Giants? And then when they trotted out Thomas Jefferson, I thought, "Oh No You DIDN'T!" (Y'know, cuz he would totally be a Redskins fan).

I'm sure that when the founding fathers came up with the idea for this nation, it was all to pave the way for the creation of the NFL. And Thomas Jefferson totally wrote the Declaration of Independence to be recited before the Superbowl.

Totally.

Parking Spot Controversy = Solved!

After about three months with no response from the management company or our condo board about our parking spot situation, I emailed "Lazy Lady" who works for the management company. Of course, she completely ignored my emails, so after about half-a-dozen emails from me, Peter called her up.

Over the telephone, Lazy Lady let it slip that the board "was not doing anything" about the situation. Peter informed her that during the board meeting the condo president said that this was an "inequitable situation" and that something would definitely be done about it. Peter asked Lazy Lady for a copy of the board minutes.

I guess asking for the board minutes really got her going, and before we knew it, I received an email from the board president and he told me that he was INCENSED. Apparently, the board had decided the day of their meeting that something will be done to increase the size of our parking spot. He was upset that no one from the management company told us about this.

The funny thing is that Lazy Lady is also a bit Not-So-Smart. She forwarded my email, which stated that she IGNORED MY NUMEROUS PREVIOUS EMAILS. I mean, I would NEVER forward an email to my boss that exposed the fact that I IGNORED CUSTOMER EMAILS.

The solution I was offering was to re-paint the lines from the guest spots so that they would be a bit smaller and we could have a spot that is bigger. What they did was tear off part of the sidewalk and move our neighbor's spot over, cover the ripped out sidewalk with tar (but didn't pave the tar over so now it's all bumpy and ugly).

My neighbor has hated us since the day we moved in, when our moving truck hit her car. Plus, we have two dogs and I'm up at all hours of the night. And now her parking spot got messed with. I think she's going t'be MAD!

But now our spot is BIGGER! Yay! Now we can actually (gasp!) open our car doors!

Not Saving the Planet Today

In an effort to save the planet, Peter put a lightly-used Ziploc bag in the dishwasher because we learned that we can re-use Ziplocs if it is safely washed. This Ziploc bag was placed inside-out in the dishwasher, so when I fished it out, I flipped it back to its usable state.

A few hours later, I hear, "Oh NO!"

I rushed into the kitchen to see what happened.

Peter was in the process of spooning the leftover tomato paste into the washed Ziploc bag, but he had flipped it inside-out so it could not close.

He had remembered that he put it in the dishwasher inside-out, so when he saw it, he went ahead and flipped it back around.

Oh well. Operation Save the Planet from another Ziploc bag = FOILED!

Happy New Year!

Hello all. Happy New Year!

Hope it's a great rat year!

But You Can Have One of Your Own for Practically Free

I attended an adoption meeting a couple of weeks ago. We've been trying for a baby for about two years now and Peter suggested that we explore adoption. We kind of have a "if it happens, it happens" attitude about children. I have always wanted children and Peter feels that children will make us miserable...because all our friends with kids are now having marital problems that range from "We're going to a marriage counselor" and "We're kind of just roommates now" to "Yeah, he's moved out."

My home growing up was never happier than when we had an infant in the house. I don't know if I'm looking back on this with rose-colored glasses, or if things were very tough for my parents and I don't remember--although I'm pretty sure I would have noticed that at 14. Plus, if you're going to have another child, make sure that your eldest is 14 and can do most of the diaper-changing and formula-feeding.

The meeting was very eye-opening for me. Apparently there are mountains of paperwork and credit histories and background checks and home studies that must be performed to ensure that you will be able to take care of a baby who is sitting around in an orphanage with two other crib-mates with no one to care for her. But what was most incredulous to me were the fees. It will cost about thirty thousand dollars to adopt a baby from China.

When I told my friend Marisol, she said, "But you can have one of your own for practically FREE!"

The statistics are that there are about 100 international babies that need to be adopted for every home that can be provided - and yet, most people can't afford $30,000.

I can't help but feel that there are a lot of middlemen who are getting paid and agencies making a lot of cash off of people who are trying to adopt. Peter says that it kind of feels like you're buying a baby. Most people who have adopted take umbrage when people ask how much they spent, but the truth is, it does cost a lot of money.

Even though Peter is a bit worried about adding to our family, he also thinks that it would be nice to have a baby in the house. So here's to throwing those dice and taking a chance.

The Raccoon Made Me Do It!

Last night, right after the Superbowl, I took my dogs out, but when it came time to throw out their dog poop bag, a huge tan-colored animal with a large tail jumped out of the garbage dumpster.

I completely froze. I went back towards our place and hid the dog poop bag behind some bushes near our apartment (I didn't leave it in front of our door because we still had guests upstairs).

When I got upstairs, I told Peter what I did and asked him to take care of the poop in the morning.

Just now, when I took the dogs out, I discovered that someone from the complex had fished the poop bag from behind the bushes and put the bag in front of our door.

I know that it was wrong to hide the bag in the bushes, but my brain kind of froze when I saw that animal and I was too scared to go near the garbage can. Also, I figured Peter would take care of the problem in the morning and no one would be the wiser, but of course, he has no memory of the conversation I had with him last night. During the haze of the crazy Superbowl victory, the words coming out of my mouth just didn't register into Peter's brain.

What I don't like about this whole thing is the surreptitious and passive-aggressive nature of the poop bag incident. I would have more respect for this person if he/she rang my doorbell and confronted me face-to-face. Also, it kind of annoys me because I do take the time and energy to clean up after my dogs, which is more than I can say for some of the other people in the complex.

Plus, can't the surreptitious passive-aggressive complex people let a gal get away with a first offense before getting surreptitiously passive-aggressive about something?

Welcome to New Yawk!

I threw Peter a Superbowl Party/40th Birthday party last night and during the planning of it, we didn't expect a New York team to actually be at the Superbowl, much less going head-to-head with "The Team of HISTORY."

So when the day came nearer, I know that a lot of Peter's friends would rather hole up in their darkened bedrooms and watch the Superbowl under the covers. Fortunately, they manned up and came to the party.

Peter's one birthday wish was to see the look on Belichick's face at the press conference after they lost their perfect season to the Giants, and for some reason, I had a good feeling that it was going to happen. Just because it would be a great 40th birthday present and I hadn't gotten him a present yet because I was so busy at the AWP conference, and goshdarnit, Peter's so great he deserves anything he wants on his birthday. A Giants win and a vanilla/chocolate Ben & Jerry's ice cream cake.

And of course, that's exactly what happened. There was a lot of screaming and "This is HAPPENING!s" and Peter's nephew Tony almost got thrown off the porch for making jinxy comments.

After the game, one of the guys at that party said, "Of course this could only happen with a New York team. You think you're going to end with the perfect season? Fuck You! Welcome to New Yawk!"

My Feet Are Tired and It's AWP's Fault

I went to the first day of the AWP conference this year, which was held in NYC - the best city in the world, but the conference was located in mid-town Manhattan - the worst place in NYC.

Last year the conference was in Atlanta, where all the book tables were in one huge room, so you could see all your friends. This year the book fair is split up into three rooms, and we're stuck in a corner behind a wall, which sucks.

This means walking up and down stairs and walking all across creation every time I want to talk to somebody at another magazine because everyone's so...spread...apart.

AND John Hodgman is NOT coming to our story reading OR party...because he had to go to LA to film another Mac commercial...likely story. Boo.

Next year the conference is in Chicago...boo number two...Chicago in the middle of winter is what I call Shitcago.

Declutter 2008

This week we woke up and decided that We...Must...Rid...Ourselves...Of...All...This...Stuff...

I threw out things this weekend I have kept for twenty years. I threw out the little toothpicks wrapped up in origami paper to look like teeny-tiny geishas my dad gave me when we went to a Japanese restaurant when I was eight.

I threw out all our Adobe Photoshop 5.5 books, because you know what? We're not in 1999 anymore.

I threw out the puppy yucky, which is this spray we spritzed on items so that our puppies would not chew on them - mainly our dining room set.

I threw out a bag of pantyhose I've been keeping since college because I DO NOT WEAR PANTYHOSE. Yet, I thought that some day, I might get a job where I will have to wear pantyhose. But you know what? I've decided that even if I get a corporate job, I will stop the wearing of the pantyhose.

I threw out about five huge shopping bags full of books and another five big shopping bags full of clothes. Outdated terrible clothes I haven't worn in years.

I threw out my old Hello Kitty Jewelry box I've had since I was 5.

I sold our snow-thrower to a nice gentleman on craigslist (Thanks Luigi!).

I threw out almost all our cassette tapes because there's this thing? It's called an MP3 player? I'm 35 years old and I cannot believe how much outdated electronic equipment we already have. I threw out a huge box of diskettes (remember THOSE things?).

We purged the house of boxes full of junk this weekend and you know what? We've just barely scratched the surface of the clutter.

This is really hard for me because I'm a pack rat and when I was growing up, we had almost no money, which meant that we couldn't even afford toys, so most of my playthings were hand-me-downs. Every Christmas, I was allowed to keep one or two items so that we could repackage all the other gifts the rest of the year to give away when I got invited to birthday parties. We couldn't afford to buy my friends gifts and I always saved the best toys to give away.

I think it's because of this childhood that every single item I owned became very precious to me, including the ugly wood carved monkeys my grandmother gave me. I don't want to make this sound like it's soooooo traumatizing, but I think it is a bit more difficult for me to declutter than it is for other people.

One time, on a family trip to Yellowstone, my great-aunt gave us these really ugly scarves sewn up from scrap fabrics. My cousins got really angry about them and threw them in the wastebasket. They said things like, "Ugh! I can't believe she gave us that garbage!"

I rescued them out of the wastebasket because I didn't want my great-aunt to see it in the trash. I was afraid that it would hurt her feelings. I put them in my suitcase and brought them with me all the way home. And yes, those scarves were one of the items I donated to Goodwill over the weekend. I kept them this whole time!

Put Down That Computer

I was surfing the internet and Peter said to me:

"If you're looking up Bronson Pinchot on the internet, it's time to put down that computer."

To which I replied:

"I'm just concerned about him!"

That Austen Lady

I've been watching the new PBS Masterpiece Theater Jane Austen series, which started with the movie Persuasion. It wasn't as good as the film from 1995 and I was a bit disappointed.

Peter did not like this movie, since at the end he said,

"That Austen lady. She takes a lot of liberties."

The Movie Theater is That-a-Way

Peter has the worst sense of direction. He deserves an Oscar for worst sense of direction. I don't have a great sense of direction, since I am a landmark direction person - this means that I will never know what street I'm on, I just know that my cousin Mark's apartment is a block away from Nobody Beats the Wiz (which used to be Unique Boutique).

Our friend John once said, "No one can have THAT bad a sense of direction."

I told him that once we were in Irvington and Peter didn't know if we were going North or South. I said, "Well, since the Hudson River is on our left, we must be going North."

To which he replied, "Why do you say that?"

John's reaction to this story?

"Oh dear..."

So we're at the Ghirardelli ice cream store having a Delicious Sundae and a Waffle Cone when Peter insists that the movie theater is this-a-way.

Since we have been to this place about thirty times before, I tell him that actually, the movie theater is that-a-way.

There are times when Peter is so wrong, but he is so confident that he's right it's downright irksome. So I laid out a bet. Whoever is wrong has to take the dogs out ALL DAY the next day.

Peter smirks and happily accepts the bet. We ask the waiter where the movie theater is and he points that-a-way.

But Peter is not going to accept defeat just yet, he is so convinced that he's right that he says to the waiter:

"No, The AMC Theater. Which direction is the AMC Theater."

The waiter looks at Peter like, "I just answered that question!" He pointed that-a-way again and said, "The movie theater is THAT way."

Of course, I'm giggling the entire time.

Not Too Many Vegetarians at Hilton Head

Peter and I stopped at Hilton Head Island in South Carolina during the first leg of our Florida trip. The next day we got up pretty late, tired out from all that driving, and headed out to lunch. It was about 2:30pm, and luckily, most places stop serving lunch at 3pm. We were in the mood for Mexican, so we picked out a place called Aunt Chiladas and made ourselves comfortable.

We figured, "Hey, it's Mexican. There's beans and rice, spinach burritos, cheese quesadillas -- there's tons to eat!"

Wrong, wrong, WRONG.

There wasn't a thing on the menu that you could serve a vegetarian. Also, I don't know when Fish & Chips became a staple of Mexican cuisine. When the waitress stopped by our table, we had already gotten up to leave.

"I'm sorry, but he's vegetarian," I told the waitress.

"Yeah," Peter said. "There's nothing for me here."

At the next table, a woman eating a healthy serving of ribs looked up at Peter in horror. Like, "Eeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwww. He's a vegetarian. I'm glad we don't have one of THOSE in the family."

The next half-hour was a mad dash through every strip mall on Hilton Head Island. That was like this:

"Oh look! An Italian restaurant! Pastas are vegetarian!"

CLOSED IN THE MONTH OF JANUARY

"Hey! There's a sandwich shop!"

COME AGAIN WHEN WE RE-OPEN IN FEBRUARY

"Let's check out this restaurant menu!"

NO VEGETARIAN ITEMS FOR YOU - BUT WE DO SERVE ALLIGATOR

Finally, at our fourth strip mall location, we find a little shop that actually has (gasp!) a vegetarian menu!!!!

The place was called Market Street Cafe and the food was really good. This was a huge sigh of relief because when Peter doesn't get to eat, his crankiness meter goes way up into the region of NOT TOLERABLE BY ANYONE WHO CAN SEE OR HEAR HIM.

It was nice to sit down and finally relax. Then Peter said he felt badly that I had to deal with this vegetarian thing. The vegetarian thing is nothing. It's the Grumpy Grumperson persona that pops out when he's not fed that is the real problem. But you can make it up to me by learning how to juggle.

The rest of the day was wonderful, like movie-poster wonderful. We took the dogs out for a walk on the beach, which was right in front of our hotel. I was smart and wore my ugly hot-pink imitation Crocs. Peter had his leather shoes on. I told him to go back to the hotel room and change into his sandals, but he decided to walk barefoot. As soon as he set his feet onto the sand, he realized that I was right because walking on the beach in January is like walking on ice, which, according to Peter, "It isn't so bad, but when you lift up your feet, there's nowhere to put it down but on more ice."

So yes, AFTER he went and got his sandals, we took a long walk with the dogs on the beach as the sun was setting. It was a gorgeous day, 60 degrees in January.

For dinner, I was smart about it and picked the one restaurant in the Hilton Head Island magazine with an ad which emphasized that they serve vegetarian items. The place is called Tapas Restaurant and the meal we had was one of the best I have ever enjoyed in my entire life.

I think God loves vegetarians.

I've Heard That Many People Do This

The night before we took off for our road trip, I emptied out my DVR cache, so I watched my saved episodes of Real Simple. I fast-forwarded the brown-haired-lady segments because they are cooking segments and you can tell she NEVER cooks. The way she holds a tomato while slicing it with a knife makes me cringe because one day, she's going to lop off one of those dainty non-cooking fingers. And I feel like telling the Real Simple crew, cannot ONE PERSON go over basic knife skills before you put her ON CAMERA? If she held a knife that way in my mother's kitchen, she would be escorted out of the room.

The next segment was hosted by the guy who talks way too much. Every time someone starts saying something interesting, he interupts them with a stupid comment. (Why do I watch the show? Because even though I dislike 2/3 of the hosts, the young black girl is so awesome and I LOVE her.) This segment was all about how to prepare your house when you go on a vacation, so I paid attention.

The guy said that the one thing you should always do is lock the door, because so many people forget to do that. I turned to Peter and said, "What kind of idiot doesn't lock the door? Obviously, they were not raised in New York City."

Cut to the next day, and as we were leaving the condo, Peter turns to me and says, "You take the dogs and lock up."

I looked at him and thought, "Ha ha, very funny."

You know why this is funny? Because he had the only set of keys in his hand. The night before, we had dropped off my set at his friend's house just in case of an emergency. And this is exactly the kind of thing Peter and I joke about.

So I take out the dogs and I was planning on taking them back to the car, doing a once-over in the house before locking up (with Peter's keys), so I left the door wide open. While I take the dogs out, Peter drives the car down the hill and I assume that he has locked up, so I packed the dogs up and got into the car.

About twenty minutes later, as we are driving down the Saw Mill River Parkway, Peter turns to me and says, "You did remember to lock up, didn't you?"

I looked at him and said, "WHAAAAAT? You know you have the ONLY SET OF KEYS!"

"Why didn't you say something when I told you to lock up?"

"I thought you were JOKING!"

"Do I joke like that?"

"Yes! This is PRECISELY your type of humor!"

"Wow, we have a lot of trouble communicating."

So we drove all the way back home, and to anyone who has ever embarked on a long road trip knows, having to go back home to get something or do something is the single most demoralizing thing that can happen. And of course, I am thinking, "This is all Real Simple Guy's fault! He jinxed me!"

Off to FLA!

Peter and I are driving a zillion miles down to Florida, but first we will be stopping for a day at Hilton Head. Why Hilton Head? I don't really know. It was just the point on the map that was about 2/3 of the way down and I had heard of it before.

I hope that there is stuff to do there and places where Peter can eat.

We're also taking the dogs with us, because we figured that hey, if we're going to do a ridiculous thing like drive to Florida, we might as well double the ridiculous factor and bring the dogs too!

Why are we ridiculous?

Simple really.
a.) We don't enjoy flying.
b.) We don't trust dog-sitters -- since we had one who LOST Scout.

Mt. Kisco Honda Sucks Part Deux: Don't Go to Kisco

Remember PART ONE? Well, here's part two:

The Honda dealership in Mt. Kisco has a jingle and it goes:

"Let's go to Kisco! Mt. Kisco HONDA!"

It is pretty catchy, but now I have a sour feeling. We got the car back and the workers stepped all over our car seats, leaving very muddy footprints on the seats. I was so ANGRY. But Peter says that there's no point in calling and telling them about this because they won't care.

Keep in mind, I've had my windshield changed three times already and not once did any of the other guys need to step on the seats. I think that they did this deliberately because they didn't want to change the windshield.

But to add insult to injury, while we were at Whole Foods, I opened the back of my car and noticed that they CHANGED MY LICENSE PLATE frame. Now there's a black frame that says:

"Mountkiscohonda.com"

"Let's go to Kisco."

I've decided to use my labeler and paste over certain words so now my license plate reads:

"Mountkiscohonda.SUCKS"

"DON'T go to Kisco."

It's So Good It's Not Real

I made a very delicious strawberry lemonade. The recipe is pretty simple, I blended about five strawberries in a blender and added the juice of 8 lemons to make a concentrate. I put about 20% concentrate to 80% water and added a few squirts of agave nectar until I got the right amount of sweetness. Peter likes to use honey to sweeten and you can also use sugar.

My sister had some the other day and she said:

"Wow, this is so good it tastes FAKE!"

Mount Kisco Honda Sucks!!

Peter and I have an orange Honda Element because orange is my favorite color. I always thought that I was unique in this, but according to the lore, Frank Sinatra's favorite color was orange too, so orange is so completely cool that it is Rat Pack cool.

We gave my sister the old Nissan Maxima last summer, and every time I had to have the car serviced I brought it to the Mount Kisco Nissan Service people, who are pretty much the nicest service guys I've ever met (I've almost never gone to the same place twice because I start hating the mechanics/service people).

Unfortunately, the Honda folks are assholes. They just walk around like they are complete jerks and you can tell that they are soul-less. Every time you go in with a problem, last time it was a cranky wheel, they give you a lame diagnosis like, "You should have your left-hand-signal fluid replaced for one thousand dollars."

Every time they tell me to do something for my car, I google it and The Internet informs me that these guys are complete hucksters and assholes for even suggesting this work.

This time we had this window crack (our yearly and fourth window crack), which is under a special warranty because there was a defect in several Element models and ours happens to fall under this category.

When Peter brings the car to the dealer, they tell us that the crack didn't start in the lower right-hand corner of the windshield where it cracks every year. No, it must have gotten hit by a miniscule pebble that left no evidence.

Right, because a PEBBLE fell out of the sky from the Mount Kisco Honda Gods and hit our windshield in the corner where it split the windshield while the car was PARKED in our eensy weensy parking spot.

Fuck you Mount Kisco Honda.

So we called Honda customer service and the lady we spoke to said that the dealership was supposed to take care of this and not give us a hard time. But if they did give us a hard time, to take down her telephone number and extension and she'll have them take care of it.

So when I went to the dealership, they acted all surprised to see me again and said, "Your insurance won't take care of it?"

My reaction was to get really ANGRY and say in front of all of their other customers, "NO, I don't think that my INSURANCE needs to take care of it when this issue is a DEFECT that you guys all know about and I have already shown you the PAPERWORK for the extended warranty your company gave us regarding this issue. I spoke to customer service at Honda and they said to have you speak DIRECTLY to them about it if you guys gave me a hard time."

They were such jerks and got all defensive and said stuff like, "We're not giving you a HARD TIME. We would NEVER give you a HARD TIME."

Right, your customer service is GREAT. That's why steam is practically rising out of my head.

Reluctantly, they called the Honda lady and said that they would take care of the problem but it would probably take three days.

THREE DAYS? Last time Geico had this done, it took fifteen minutes and the guys came TO OUR HOUSE.

Mount Kisco Honda guys are SUCH ASSHOLES.

This makes me want to get one of those electric plug-in cars which would ensure that I would NEVER have to go to a dealership again for service.

Pizza Hut Pizza Mia

One thing about being married to a vegetarian is that we never eat at fast-food restaurants. The only way we keep up with what's going on in fast food is by the commercials on television. The other day, a commercial came on for The Pizza Hut Pizza Mia:

"3 Pizzas for $5 EACH!"

And Peter said:

"What kind of crap are they putting in those things?"

Should I Be Scared of Rocky?

A few days ago, a Doberman killed a baby in Brooklyn. The night I found out about it, I started freaking out and spent the next few hours googling "Dog Kills Baby" and reading EVERY story that popped up.

At first I was relieved, because the list of baby-killing dogs were:

Pitbull
German Shepard
Pitbull-mix
Doberman
Pitbull

But then an article popped up which shocked me -- a Pomeranian dog killed a baby a few years ago. In case you didn't know, a Pomeranian dog weighs about 6 lbs.

Then I googled "Labrador Kills Baby." Fortunately, I didn't find one case. Feeling brave, I googled "Siberian Husky Kills Baby" which yielded 2 results (although one of them was a Siberian/Shepard mix).

I started to look at my dogs, who are the sweetest dogs in the world, and wondered if a baby could make them snap. If the sight of a vulnerable, soft-headed baby could make them want to chew it up like a dog toy.

I walked over to the bedroom where Peter was, and asked him, "Do you think that one of our dogs could kill a baby?"

And he said, "Oh, I would NEVER trust a dog alone with a BABY!"

So I guess the answer was yes?

Most Disgusting Couple Post of the Year

Okay, I don't mean disgusting-gross, I meant disgusting-ughhhhhhhh.

Right before Christmas there was a BOMBARDMENT of celebrity perfumes ads and the most ridiculous one involves Charlize Theron tearing jewelry and clothes off her body and saying:

"J'aduhhhhhhhhhhhhh Diuhhhhhhhhhhh."

Makes me laugh EVERY time. That's brand-new comedy right there.

One time, after this commercial aired, I asked Peter:

"If I had a fragrance, what would it be called?"

"Heaven."

"Don’t you think that’s kind of prosaic?"

"It’s not your fault that you smell like Heaven."


I found a list of celebrity fragrances. Did you know that the Hulk had a fragrance? Although I believe his real title is "The Incredible Hulk." Ya think he splashes this on before putting on those purple pants?

Notes to Myself

I have a document on my desktop where I keep a running list of items I want to write about in this blog. I opened it today and there is a line that simply states:

"and shit"

Huh? When did I write this, and what does "and shit" represent? Some extremely funny story that I have long forgotten? Something I heard someone say in a context that was so hysterical that I had simply written these two small words down, certain I could never forget such a funny episode of my life?

Who knows now? It's lost to the cosmos.

Mental note to myself: Write more detailed notes to myself.

It's Not a DOLL! It's LLADRO!

All through Thanksgiving dinner, Peter's sister-in-law (his brother's wife, I guess that makes her MY s-i-l too) kept mentioning that she got me "THE PERFECT gift" for our house.

So after dinner, she pulls me into Peter's dad's bedroom and closes the door (as Peter's mother is on the other side). This makes me very nervous, and I went to re-open the door, but my sister-in-law whispers that this gift is SECRET.

Secret to who? The only people present were her family, Peter, me and Peter's mother. Because the door is closed and bolted, I become extremely nervous and can hardly focus on the gift, which she takes out of a ripped Banana Republic bag. Tina unrolls sheets upon sheets of bubble-wrap and reveals this:



I say, "Thank you, you didn't have to do that," and I give her a kiss on the cheek.

She kept standing there as if expecting more. So I thanked her again. And then she said:

"This is LLADRO. This is VERY GOOD."

I must confess that I must not have the woman gene that appreciates fine porcelain shaped into lovely young women. I do not enjoy Hummel dolls (I think they are creepy) and I think Precious Moments dolls are not very precious.

To be honest, I thought that the doll was cute, but I'm REALLY bad at reacting to my sister-in-law's gifts. I never give her the reaction she wants, probably because she gives me things that appeal to 80-year-old women. Plus, I was still a little freaked out about the locked door. I grew up in a house where we were taught that it is rude to lock a door in someone else's house (except the bathroom, of course). And lastly, I wondered a little if she gave me the geisha girl because I am Asian, and if she understands that I'm not actually Japanese.

No matter how many times I thanked her, she seemed really dissatisfied.

At the end of the evening, after everyone left, Peter told his mother that Tina gave us a gift and she said, "I know, she showed me. And she said that your wife didn't really like it."

If she was going to show Peter's mother the gift, why lock the door? I am still trying to figure this one out.

I said, "I like it, but I don't collect dolls."

Her response was:

It's not a DOLL! It's LLADRO!

(comedy side note: everyone pronounced it L-ADRO when the correct pronunciation is Y-ADRO)

I Am Being Indexed by Google!!

Today we were watching Liz Cho on ABCnews again, and yet again, she flubs her lines.

So I say to Peter, "Hey, let's compile a list of Liz Cho flubs and put them on YouTube every month."

He says, "Google Liz Cho flub."

"Why? Did someone do it already?"

I google "Liz Cho flubs" and guess what comes up?

MY BLOG!

And yet another thing I am s'proud of?

Google "Westchester Sucks" and you get THIS.

Happy New Year!

Peter and I went to my friend Hannah's New Year's party in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. At one point we wrote the things we wanted to get rid of on round paper lanterns which were thrown out the window at the start of the new year.

I wrote: My Stuff

Peter wrote: Body Fat (but on the lantern it looked like Baby Fat)

This is the year to conquer clutter!

Movie Round-up 2007!

Peter and I went to a lot of movies this year, and I am famous for my "sound effects" movie reviews. Someone asked me if I liked Vanilla Sky and I said, "Well, at first it was like ohm-em and then it went whaiiiir."

My friend's response was, "I don't know why, but I totally get what you mean."

Here are my list of movie critiques in order of must-see.

Year of the Dog completely conned us. The previews showed a cute movie about a woman who loved dogs. The movie was not a cute movie. It was about a suicidal woman who has PROBLEMS. RUN don't walk AWAY from this movie.

Pirates of the Caribbean was really confusing. Why did the goddess get turned into a human? And why did she grow to be a jillion feet big and turn into gajillion crustaceans? And the glass eye was one of the sacred coins? Did these writers just pull stuff out of their butts? Did not enjoy.

The Darjeeling Limited was worth seeing just because it looked great, but it was a bit of a mess script-wise. My favorite scene in the movie is the one where Adrien Brody (who I don't like) goes to get his father's car, which is still in the shop and isn't ready. He goes around the shop, crazy, trying to get the car going. He screams for items that he needs to fix the car, even though he doesn't have a clue and his brothers run around like mad trying to find the things that he needs. That scene embodies siblinghood. I can completely see me going crazy and demanding things at the top of my voice and my sisters running around trying to get them for me, just riding the wave of my hysteria until I calm down, because at that moment-- it's just what I need.

Margot at the Wedding was kind of excrutiating to watch because the characters are really terrible. I like Noah Baumbach's movies because they're so real, and I thought that the characters were interesting and terrible in their real human flaws. Each character made me think, "Oh my GOODNESS, that's ME!" at different times. And that mean criticizing mother played by Nicole Kidman made me miss my own grandmother. Ahh, memories.

The Bourne Ultimatum. The funniest part of going to see this movie wasn't even the movie. We got completely lost trying to find the theater because Peter is driving along, ladida, as if he knows where the theater is, and then ten minutes later, tells everyone in the car that he doesn't know where he's going. Luckily we had Garmina with us and she saved the day....again. As we walk into the screening room, we hear the commotion of an action sequence and someone is dead on the screen. My sister Jenny says, "Oh no! We missed the first murder!"

Superbad made me a bit nervous about raising kids in this day and age. I couldn't really get into this movie because I just don't think girls talk like that.

No Reservations. We took Peter's mother to see this movie and all throughout the movie she would yell, "I LOOOVE THIS MOVIE! This is a BEAUTIFUL movie!" And Peter would have to remind her that we are not sitting in her living room, and see all these other people in the theater? They are not interested in your opinion.

Michael Clayton had the best movie quote of 2007. "I'm not the guy you KILL. I'm the guy you BUY OFF! Are you so BLIND that you can't see that? I sold out Arthur for 80 GRAND. I'm your EASIEST problem and you try to KILL ME?"

American Gangster was a good movie, but I didn't think they needed Russell Crowe. I mean, aren't we tired of that sweaty-toothed-telephone-throwing cave man?

The Namesake reminded me of what it must have been like for my parents who came to this country and left their family behind. I grew up in Elmhurst and those scenes early on reminded me of Queens. I also identified with the scene where Kal Penn goes jogging in India. I remember when I was 15 I put on my gym shorts and ran on the streets in Taiwan. Everyone in the street stared at me like YOU ARE CR-A-ZY.

Knocked Up had one major flaw. That Katherine Heigl is just way too cute to EVER hook up with that guy -- I don't care how drunk she was. But other than that fatal flaw, it was a good movie.

Waitress made me want to go out and open up a pie shop.

Lars and the Real Girl is a modern love story. Although, whenever there are movies about these nice small towns, I wonder if everyone really is that nice, or are they all secretly racist?

Juno was my favorite movie this year. Whew! That was a lot of movies.

Merry Christmas!!

Hope you weren't naughty.

Keep Your Opinions to Yourself INFOMERCIAL!

Infomercial guy:

Body fat is so hard to get off and is really unattractive.

Peter:

Fuck YOU!

Donut Holes Are Our Friends

I discovered Ani's Raw Food Kitchen at the library and it has completely changed our lives. You have to try the most delicious dessert ever created. It's called Donut Holes.

It's the kind of recipe that calls for all sorts of things I wouldn't normally eat on its own. Before this recipe I thought I didn't even like almonds and dates. Now I realize that they are my friends because they form into this ball of deliciousness.

I think it's a great cookbook for kids and adults who act like picky kids.

We've been eating from this cookbook for the past few days, and at first, Peter was really excited about it and considering changing into a raw foodie. But then yesterday, he woke up and said, "Can we eat something today that isn't mush?"

Stuff You Just Can't Say

There are certain things that you just can't say when you want to remain friends with someone - and one of theses things is "Stop wasting our food!"

Yesterday, Peter's friend came over for breakfast and poured two cups of maple syrup all over his waffles.

I'm not a stingy person because if he actually ingested those cups of maple syrup, I would not have minded one bit. One time he came over and ate 75 ravioli and I just sat back marveling at this amazing accomplishment. I now introduce him to people as, "This is the guy who ate 75 RAVIOLI in one sitting."

But I felt this extreme sadness as I put his plate into the dishwasher and watched the torrent of wasted maple syrup slide down and form a sad puddle. We buy the good stuff, the stuff that costs twenty times the price of, let's say, an Aunt Jemima that is made up of sugar and high fructose corn syrup. I stand at the aisle in Whole Foods and go through several bottles to find the one that is the best price.

But how can you ask guests who come over to your house not to waste your food?

This same maple syrup thing has happened with another friend. Peter attributes it to the fact that most people buy the cheap stuff, so they don't realize that the syrup we buy is different. He thinks the way to combat this is to buy a bottle of Aunt Jemima to serve guests, which I think is so tacky. I want to serve the best to our guests.

My parents once had a friend who would serve watermelons to us, but only after she cut out all the sweet parts for her own family.

I think that there's no way to say anything like this to people in a nice way that would not make them mad. And of course, it makes me feel like a terribly negative person that this kind of stuff even bugs me.

Juno

Peter and I were watching the movie Juno, which is about a pregnant teenager who looks for parents to adopt her child.

At one point in the movie, she said:

I'm looking for a graphic designer in his mid-thirties who has an Asian girlfriend and who plays bass.

I looked at Peter and said, "THAT's US!"

Peter had a Rock Star stage, but he would probably call it more of a Rock Minor Satellite stage where he toured all over the western world and got all sorts of funky stickers to decorate his guitar cases.

The baby would definitely grow up cool if he grew up with us. At least there definitely would be stories in the house about how Daddy once saw the drummer from 311 bitch-slap the lead singer.

The baby would also grow up dorky, because let's face it, I'll be in the house.

I Created An Avatar

The penguin story:

When I was about two years old, I ran away from home while we were living in Tokyo. It was raining and my mother and I were at the laundromat next door. I offered to go home to get an umbrella and my mother said, "Sure!"

This led to me deciding not to go home and to walk to my grandparent's house located in another town that was three hours away BY TRAIN.

I still have vivid memories of this experience, one of them was passing a fire station about ten times, thinking to myself, "I was JUST HERE!"

I guess I had been walking around the block.

A few hours later, I met two old ladies who took me to their home to take a nap (I was exhausted). When they asked me my name, I mumbled it so they thought I had said, "Penguin."

"Penguin-chan? What a strange name!"

I didn't bother to correct them. I was returned to my parents EIGHT HOURS after I had run away. The entire police force in Tokyo had been out looking for me. That's how little crime they have in that city. It was probably the most exciting police action all year.

To this day my mother can't look at a penguin without thinking about this incident.

Poor This and Poor That

Tonight Peter said:

I was going to do this and that tonight, but now I'm so tired that I'm not going to do this and I'm not going to do that.

Helpful Google Elves

I've never made popovers before, but I saw Martha Stewart's show on popovers and decided to try making them.

I wanted to do a search on popovers, whether to slit or not slit the tops of them at the end of the baking process, so I did a Google search.

I put in "slit" and immediately the Google elves gave me several suggestions, and at the top were "slit wrists" and "slitting wrists."

Aren't those Google elves s'helpful?

Yes, We Did Black Friday -I'm Finally Ready to Talk About It

The day after Thanksgiving, we went to Woodbury Commons, which is the "Premier Outlet Store" in the area, for their huge blow-out all-night outlet sale.

We thought we were being smart, so we ended up taking a nap after the Thanksgiving dinner we ate at his mother's house. By the way, usually we have the dinner at around 3pm, but this year, his brother wanted to take off for home, which is in Albany, really early. He did not want to drive in the dark.

If any of you know the New York area at all, right after daylight savings time, the sun goes down at around 5pm, which means that Peter's brother's family would have to leave the house at around 1pm to drive home in the daylight.

So Peter's mother agreed to have the dinner at 1pm, so of course, Peter and I kept calling it lunch. Every time we said "lunch" Peter's mother had a conniption, and screamed:

"It's DINNER!"

Right. Dinner. At 1pm.

I guess we're having our midnight snack at 4pm.

Anyway, after we got home, we took a short nap and decided to get to the outlets at around 3am for the huge 12am-10pm blow-out sale with 40% OFF AT WILLIAMS-SONOMA!!!!

There are not many things we'll get our asses out of bed for, but 40% off already marked down prices for All-Clad? I haven't been this excited since we snuck out of the house in high school to see Alisha at Danceteria. Yes, it's better than seeing "All Night Passion" performed LIVE.

We figured the midnight crowd would have dissipated by 3am, I mean, shouldn't these people be in bed by 3am? We were convinced, night-owls that we are, that we could wipe the floor with the "normal" people.

Boy were we wrong. 3am and still not a parking spot to be had. It took us about half an hour just to get into the parking lot since there were a billion people trying to get in and trying to get out.

I came PREPARED with my shopping store sale printout, but it all proved to be fruitless.

40% off everything at Banana Republic?

Not for those who didn't want to stand in line for two hours in the frigid cold. I mean, a line for the Banana Republic? I mean, we're not fifteen anymore.

We got bounced around quite a bit and couldn't get into some of the stores we had planned on, but we did get a beautiful All-Clad pan, marked down from $500 to $125!

Peter also got a great Tumi laptop bag for about 60% discount!

All in all, it was a successful trip that paid for itself, but as we headed out of the outlet driveway being cut off by hundreds of SUVs, Peter said, "Well, I hope you enjoyed this because WE ARE NEVER DOING THIS AGAIN.

We'll see.

Santa Baby

Peter has the uncanny ability to detect any celebrity voice, so tonight I was channel-surfing and landed on the Lifetime channel for a few seconds.

"What show is Jenny McCarthy on right now?" Peter asked me from the kitchen.

"It's this show where she plays Santa's daughter and she goes home to REVOLUTIONIZE Christmas as we now know it."

Not realizing that this was a kid's show, he asks:

"Topless Christmases?"

Don't You Hate When THE MEDIA Does That?

I love how news programs and entertainment shows call paparazzi "the media" as if they are not "the media."

Another Kung Fu?

I always thought Speed Racer was Asian, maybe because he happens to be JAPANESE. I don't think that white people should play Asian characters.

But I guess Eddie Murphy was Dr. Dolittle, so what do I know?

Food Meme

Taken from running42k.

1. How do you like your eggs?
Scrambled, but cooked over-easy.

2. How do you take your coffee/tea?
Lots of milk, lots of sugar.

3. Favorite breakfast food?
Lemon Sour Cream Pancakes

4. Peanut butter - smooth or crunchy?
Smooth.

5. What kind of dressing on your salad?
My mother’s ginger dressing

6. Coke or Pepsi?
Coke.

7. You’re feeling lazy, what do you make?
Alan Alda’s Baked Pasta

8. You’re feeling really lazy. What kind of pizza do you order?
Plain, I’m a purist.

9. You feel like cooking. What do you make?
Roasted Tomato Soup (it takes a bazillion hours and is too delicious for words)

10. Do any foods bring back good memories?
My mother makes the best curries. They’re so delicious, especially on a cold winter’s day like today. When I was younger, I would ask her to make it every day and she said, “If I made it every day, you’d get tired of it.” This has never happened.

11. Do any foods bring back bad memories?
Raw tomatoes. My grandmother used to make us all eat raw tomatoes, whole. The local farmer in the small Japanese village would bring us fresh tomatoes all the time, so we always had a bunch on hand. She gave them to us because she was a lazy cook. I just hated, hated, hated, the glop, the mushy texture, the yucky peel. Now I can only eat cooked tomatoes or very VERY thinly sliced tomatoes with NO GLOP. Once, my grandmother said that if I didn’t eat the morning tomato, I would have to hold it all day. Sometime in the afternoon, my cousin Tanya said to me, “You know, I feel bad. I’d eat it for you, but now it just looks rotten.”

12. Do any foods remind you of someone?
Raw Tomatoes- grandmother
Raw Eggplant – grandmother (my father, to this day, refuses to believe that his mother fed us raw eggplants – even though my cousins and I were all there to witness this.)


13. Is there a food you refuse to eat?
Stinky tofu, chocolate-covered ants, pigeon feet, chicken feet, beans, duck blood, cow tongue, pig intestines, basically anything my father says is “chicken.”

14. What was your favorite food as a child?
Curries!

15. Is there a food that you hated as a child but now like?
Chickpeas. I’ve discovered that if you grind anything up, fry it, and pour delicious sauce on it, it will taste GOOD.

16. Is there a food that you liked as a child but now hate? My likes and hates change day by day.

17. Favorite fruit and vegetable:
Japanese momo (peach) – at 4 for $100, they better be delicious (and they are).
Spinach – great cooked and raw, and of course, makes you strong.

18. Favorite junk food:
Doritos! Last year, I had a conversation with a vegan, and I told him that I could never turn vegan because of Doritos. I thought he would think I was gross, but he looked right at me and said, “Doritos. Yeah. They’re GOOD.”

19. Favorite between meal snack:
Nutella Marshmallow Panini with Italian Bread

20. Do you have any weird food habits?
I eat all the chunks in chunky ice creams (like Americone Dream) first. This drives Peter CR-A-ZY.

21. You’re on a diet. What food(s) do you fill up on?
I’d drink lots of water and I’d eat the Trader Joe’s Multi-Grain Cereal.

22. You’re off your diet. Now what would you like?
Macaroni and Cheese with Cougar Gold Cheese.

23. How spicy do you order Indian/Thai?
Medium.

24. Can I get you a drink?
Passion-Fruit Margarita please.

25. Red wine or white?
I know red is better for you, but I like cold beverages, so white. But sometimes my dad refrigerates red wine for me. Is that bad?

26. Favorite dessert?
My mother’s cheesecake is the best…EVER.

Yes to One More

Peter and I had the $8.95 lunch buffet yesterday at The Jackson Diner. We were already in Queens for a business meeting.

I really miss living so close to excellent food. I used to be able to walk to The Jackson Diner. Now it's about an hour's drive, but VERY worth it.

Afterwards, Peter and I went to the local dessert place to pick up what we call "honeyballs." Its Indian name starts with a G, but I can't ever remember it. They are little brown balls of heavenly deliciousness.

We walk in and Peter asks for 6 pieces. The man behind the counter puts six in a box, and it's about .84 pounds, so he says:

"Do you want one more to make 1 pound?"

Peter says yes, then later, as we walk away from the store, he says to me:

"If he had said, 'Do you want ten more to make 2 pounds?' I would have said yes."

I Did That Already

My sister calls my house about five times while I was TAKING A NAP. She called my cell, then my house phone. I heard the rings, but didn't bother to answer it. Finally, my very concerned husband gets the phone and brings it to the room.

"She might be lonely," he said. "Or she might want to talk to you about something."

"I know her. She just wants to tell me about some product she saw online."

Of course I didn't know that she was actually on the line so in order to call her, I press the "talk" button, which hangs up the phone. This happens to me every other time I grab the phone.

When I finally reach her, she says:

"I have the most BRILLIANT idea for a present for Mommy and Daddy!!!! We just went to a lecture and this person talked to us about FAIR TRADE COFFEE! Don't you think they'll LOVE THAT?!!"

"I tried that a few years ago and Mommy didn't like it."

"Oh...That figures. Once again, my brilliant idea is something that you've already thought of and executed."

That's right, this is the only perk to having a fourteen-year head start.

Merry Christmas?

While shopping at Whole Foods, I was bombarded with Christmas carols. This means that they are going to be playing Christmas songs at Whole Foods for ONE WHOLE MONTH. I can't take this.

The speakers blared out that they wished me a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I still have more than a month left of THIS YEAR. I mean, isn't that jumping the gun a little? Why don't you wish me a Happy Rest of the Year?

I wonder why we start the Christmas holiday a month beforehand. We don't do this with any other holiday. On January 15, we don't go around saying, "Happy Valentine's Day!"

I'm sure Whole Foods doesn't start playing the Star Spangled Banner and God Bless America on June 5th.

We don't start preparing a month in advance for birthdays or anniversaries.

I'm not ready for the holiday season yet! I just got through Thanksgiving. Can't we have a lull after Thanksgiving?

Westchester Tells Monday to GO SCREW!

More than once Peter and I have decided to go out to lunch on a Monday afternoon. Just because Monday is that day when I don't feel like making something because, quite frankly, I go shopping on Tuesday, so we've run low on almost everyhing except tortilla chips and that really sad banana Peter's mother put in the refrigerator. (By the way, DON'T PUT BANANAS IN THE REFRIGERATOR! They turn brown, then black, and I will pretend that they do not exist.)

Today we got into a parking space, put our two quarters in, and went to the Bollywood Bistro.

We get out of the car, and the restaurant has two doors - one is obviously a door and juts out onto the street, so the immediate instinct is to try to get in that door. There is a note on that door that says "PLEASE USE THE DOOR ON YOUR LEFT."

Unfortunately, we don't see the door on the left because it's kind of smushed into the building and it looks just like the other glass windows surrounding it. So, we're hunting around, and this guy says to us:

"The door's right here, but the restaurant is closed on Mondays."

Without thinking, I yell, "WESTCHESTER SUCKS!"

Then I look at the guy sheepishly, because the people who live here? They LOVE IT HERE and defend its honor the way a mother bear protects its cubs -- so if you say anything to the contrary, they will try to pull apart your appendages, one limb at a time.

When I get back in the car, I say, "Why didn't we call ahead of time? I mean, we called two other places before we left, other places which are closed on Mondays. Why did we think THIS PLACE wouldn't be closed?"

Peter said, "This is the LAST STRAW. First of all, the food was just okay, Secondly, their waiters cannot pour water into your glass without spilling it ALL OVER THE TABLE, and NOW THIS!! We are NEVER COMING BACK HERE AGAIN!"

Our list of Westchester restaurants we are never going back to? Growing by the minute.

NaBloPoMoWha?

Generally, I am the last person to come across anything. I became a Nirvana fan right around the time Kurt Cobain committed suicide, I started listening to The Police when Sting already started Stinging, and I was the last person to get a Cabbage Patch Doll at the tail end -- and, oh yes, don't forget the real estate craze - we bought our house right at the height of the market.

I just heard about NaBloPoMo - a bit too late, being as there is only a handful of days left in November. Apparently, many bloggers had been posting every day this month, taking on the challenge, and I, once again, have missed the boat.

Why is the world conspiring against me?

Paranormal Girl

Peter's nephew brought his new girlfriend over Thanksgiving dinner - and she was a very nice girl. One of the first things she talked about was her interest in the paranormal, which, OF COURSE, made her very interesting to me.

She told us that she had just gone to this haunted prison (i don't remember where - but I think somewhere in MA) where they lock you in for the night and you get to hang out with some ghosts.

I'm just not sure why she would tell people she had just met three minutes before about this -- I don't tell people right off the bat that I had a crazy aunt locked in her room.

Is this weird? Or is an interest in the paranormal quite normal?

I Heart Calzones

Peter just made the most beautiful and delicious calzones in the world. I will definitely tell my children to choose spouses who know how to make mouth-watering calzones.

I mean, without them, life would be completely meaningless.

Love the Freak in Your Family

We went to see the movie, Lars and the Real Girl, on Tuesday and it was so terrific. The premise of the story is that Lars comes home one day with a girlfriend...a girlfriend that is a sex doll...a girlfriend Lars believes is a real person.

I could relate to this movie because for a few years after college, I lived in the same apartment as my crazy aunt. My father was kind enough to allow his sister to live in one of our apartments in Queens, NY -- so when I returned to New York City, I took over one of the other bedrooms in the apartment. At this point, she had lived in the apartment for years, not paying any rent, hardly ever coming out of her room. She would sit in her room and watch television and she made her money on the stock market. As a child (she talked more to the children in our family than the adults - and once I became an adult...well, you get the picture.), I asked her why she was so interested in the stockmarket, and she actually said:

"I wanted to make money doing something where I didn't have to leave the house...something I could continue doing even into old age."

Too bad for her, there was no INTERNET at the time. Perhaps she could have started an interesting blog, such as, "My Stock Pick of The Day," or "How Many Days Can I Go Without Coming Out of My Room."

It was very strange, living in the same apartment as her and...not interacting with her. Sometimes I tried to talk to her (let's say, when she walked into the kitchen to get a glass of orange juice) but she politely ignored me. After a while, I got used to it, and it just because a part of my everyday existence.

Occasionally,I had friends over, and she would hide in her room the entire time. My friend Gus used to come over a lot, and stay pretty late, too. And one time he said, "You know, I don't believe that you live with anyone. I think you flick that light on in that room so that I can see it under the door, and you've been pretending this whole time."

Once I had a wild party, where we ended up staying up all night and going for breakfast in the morning...a breakfast of beef noodles from the Chinese restaurant down the street -- and not one peep from her. I think everyone was excited about the possibility of her making an appearance.

The movie made me feel that you should just love and accept the freak in your family, because you never know...One day, the freak may be you.

Happy Birthday Rocky!

Today Rocky turned 6 years old -- in dog years, that's 37. When we decided to get Scout, I really wanted a dog and researched a few dozen breeds. We went to several breeders of different dogs, when I finally came to the conclusion that I really, really, really, wanted a yellow Lab.

I had the books, I bought the chew toys, I got the organic dog food, I was PREPARED.

Two years later, Peter and I were walking through the Garden State Plaza mall and I told him I wanted to look at the puppies.

BIG MISTAKE.

DO NOT EVER STOP BY THE PUPPY STORE JUST TO LOOK AT PUPPIES.

Peter saw Rocky, a teeny all-white Siberian Husky, turn around in his little kennel, put his head down and sigh. Peter turned to me and said, "I want that dog."

I asked the girl at the pet store to bring Rocky out. He was so squirmy, he wouldn't stay in my arms for two seconds. The girl came back around to see how we were doing, and Rocky was so excited to see her, he was almost bouncing. He was such a happy dog, and I turned to Peter and said, "I love him sooooooooooooo much!"

Scout was kind of like that planned child, the one that has the name all picked out. The one that gets the freshly painted room even before they're even created. Rocky was like that mistake, the one that happens with an "Ooops! Too much wine!" moment.

As soon as we brought him home, Scout HATED him. She couldn't stand to look at him. She looked at us like we betrayed her. Sort of like, "Why would you DO THIS TO ME! I'm going to my room, and I'm not coming back out until you GET RID of THIS!"

Then we brought him to the dog park, and our friends there were HORRIFIED we got him at a pet store.

"But they told us he was from a breeder," I said, defending myself. And, of course, they all shook their heads at me and told me that it was a lie, and that all good dog-loving people should know this information because, didn't you know? It came in THE HANDBOOK. One of those dog-park-people even told me to return him to the store, and continued to tell me to do this, every time I saw her.

Because Scout hated him, and the dog-park-people hated him, it was a bit difficult for me to bond with him at first. And he kept climbing out of his dog area in the kitchen, so on Valentine's Day, he climbed over this obstacle course in the kitchen I made out of Peter's guitar amps and I had it. I yelled at him, picked him up, and slammed him back down into his puppy area.

Alarmed, Peter grabbed his keys and the dog and said that he was returning him. I ran after him and during the whole ride to the store, I held Rocky in my arms, where he calmly sat, not knowing that a human drama was unfolding.

We sat in the car outside the store for two hours, and every time we thought about bringing him back, it hurt so much inside that we cried (Okay, I cried, wailed and sobbed. Peter kind of had 1.8 tears well up in his eyes). And to top it all off, it was Valentine's Day. I knew that if I returned this dog, I could never celebrate another Valentine's Day ever again.

Finally, we decided to go home and we've been a family ever since.

And Rocky never again tried to escape from his puppy area.

I Was Following You!

I've been taking a belly dancing class on Tuesday nights, and it's been so much fun. Yesterday was election day, so the gym was overtaken by poll machines and our class was held in a different room.

I saw my teacher and we started walking together and chatting. We walk all the way down the hall and she turns to me and says, "Are you sure this is the right way?"

I look at her and say, "I've been following you! I don't know where the class is."



This reminds me of the time I took my sisters and two cousins to the movies. They were all about seven and eight-years-old. After the movie let out, I asked them:

"So, do any of you remember where we parked?"

James, the smallest one, turns to me and he looks like I just told him I ripped up all his beloved Pokemon cards and ran over his best friend. He says:

"I don't know! YOU'RE the ADULT! YOU'RE RESPONSIBLE!!"


I mean, SHE's the TEACHER. She's RESPONSIBLE.

You: Reading This Blog

I went to Borders yesterday, and was struck by how many You books there were:

You: The Owners Manual
You: Staying Young
You: On a Diet
You: On a Walk

Pretty soon those guys are going to run out of ideas, so I have several:

You: At Borders
You: Walking to Your Car
You: Programming Tivo

Now I Hope They Will Stop Cursing at Us

Last year, Peter and I went to Boston, a city we adore. Some of my favorite places are in Boston - I love walking on Newbury Street, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Esplanade, The Elephant Walk restaurant, I could go on and on for days.

However, the one thing I hate about Boston is that ridiculous way Bostonians act about the stupid Red Sox.

Peter ALWAYS wears a Yankee hat in the summertime, and someone in every freaking place we walk into has to make the, "Nice hat," comment - as in "Nice hat, you stupid Yankee fan, now I'm going to spit into your soup."

Once we were sitting on a bench at the Museum of Fine Arts and an old guy was mumbling something under his breath. We were sitting there for about five whole minutes before I realized that the guy was saying, "Fucking Yankees...mumble mumble mumble...Yankees."

It's so ridiculous. And the funny thing is that Peter actually likes the Red Sox.

Now that they've won another World Series, I hope that they'll start feeling a bit better about New Yorkers when we visit.

Fabulous Fun

Last week, Peter and I took a ride on the Circle Line. It was a great day, 83 degrees in October!

When we first sat down, Peter turned to me and said, "Wait, this is going all around Manhattan? I've SEEN ALL THIS."

Immediately, a shower of grumpness rained down on me.

Luckily, this only lasted until the boat started to move and we both moved to the bow. The wind was blowing and we were THIS CLOSE to the Statue of Liberty. A ridiculous technicolor rainbow appeared right above Miss Liberty. And then the animated birds came out...

An hour later, Peter called the boat ride, "Fabulous Fun."

I am the Fabulous Fun to his Grumpy Grumperson.

Jake Gyllenhaal = Sam The Eagle

Don't Mess With Our Food

About once a week Peter and I get into a fight about food. Usually someone ate something that had been sitting innocently in the refrigerator for a few days without either one of us thinking that it was a potential time bomb of arguments and pouting.

Today, it was Ben and Jerry's Pistachio Pistachio ice cream.

I had been at Trader Joe's eyeing the ice cream aisle, but since we had a pint of Pistachio Pistachio ice cream in the freezer, I decided to pass and was looking forward to having some of the ice cream we ALREADY HAD IN THE HOUSE instead of buying more ice cream.

Of course, I get home and Peter takes the carton to his office. That's fine, because I saw how much was in there, and I figured I would have some later. A few minutes later, he plops on the chair and says, "Whew! I can't believe I finished it."

"Finished WHAT?" I asked.

When he told me he finished the ice cream, I was SO ANGRY. Which didn't even make sense to Peter because, you know what? I DON'T LIKE PISTACHIOS.

Peter pointed this out to me, but that made me EVEN ANGRIER. I felt that he should have asked me whether I wanted something I had never shown interest in before - at least before he finished it. Is that TOO MUCH to ask?

Why Do We Keep Doing This to Ourselves?

When my sister Judy was little, she used to beg me for peppermint candies I used to keep in my bag. I never really understood this, because she ALWAYS spit them out and said: "I don't LIKE this!"

And of course, I would get annoyed because, you know, one more wasted peppermint candy.

Once, she said: "I don't LIKE this again!"

That pretty much sums up how Peter and I feel about Food in Westchester. I don't know why we keep trying new places. I read an article in the local weekly paper about a restaurant called Lyla's.

We wanted to give it a chance, since the article declared it the best thing EVER.

Suffice it to say, it was terrible. My sandwich was NOT GOOD. How can you mess up a sandwich? Peter's food wasn't very good either. Not only was the food not good, but the place was empty and the counter boy decides he's got to Windex the next table WHILE WE ARE EATING. This ALWAYS pisses me off. I mean, does your mother spray Windex at you while you are eating dinner at home, counter boy? What is WRONG with you?

When we got back in the car, Peter turns to me and says: "Why do we keep doing this?"

And I said: "What? Oh, you mean, why do we keep bashing our heads against the wall, look at another wall, and decide to do the same thing?

Hey, That Would Be Great On a Blog

For the first time in about a year, I had dinner with my friend, Marisol. I thought she was an ex-friend until this exact week, because ever since we moved to Mt. Kisco, she has literally dropped off the face of this earth.

Every time I call her or email her, I get these excuses, like:

"I had to oversee the TimeWarner merger and flew to Dulles, here is the Associated Press article telling you all about it."

"My father had stents put into his heart, so I had to go to California for two weeks."

"The car got crushed by a garbage truck, so I'm having it fixed."

"My nephew had knee surgery and I have to go take care of him."

Forwarding me an article from the Associated Press? I mean, come on. Why don't you just tell me you don't want to be friends anymore?

Anyway, she finally did call me, and we had a really nice dinner. Halfway through the meal, I tell her that I've made a concerted effort to enjoy my time in Northern Westchester, and will no longer complain about the fact that it is not Park Slope, Brooklyn.

"After all," I said. "I want to enjoy the time we're living there, and really explore the positive things."

"That's good," she said. "It's like a blog, 'My Year in Mount Kisco.'"

For a second I almost stopped breathing, because I haven't told her about my blog - in fact, I've only told one friend and my sister about it. I guess I want to see if I can actually keep this up. I don't want to tell someone about my blog and it's only three entries long. That's happened with some of my other friends, and it's difficult to take them seriously after that.

I checked myself and tried to remember if I actually did have a conversation about this blog, but I know I hadn't. So my conclusion?

This must be a great blog idea!

It's a Wonder I'm Still Here

I went home last week to visit my grandmother. She's my mother's mother, the kind woman who left her native homeland half a world away to come take care of me when I was eight-years-old. She was sent here because of a conversation I had with my dad while I was at my babysitter's house.

Dad: Where's Alba?

Me: She went with her son to walk the dog.

Dad: She left you all alone? With your one-year-old sister?

Me: She does this all the time.

Dad: Take Judy and go get her. Tell her I want to talk to her.

Me: I can't.

Dad: What do you mean, you can't?

Me: I can't open the door from the inside, she locked it from the outside.

To his credit, my father remained calm, but later that night, he tore Alba a new one. What if there had been a fire? Do you know HOW DANGEROUS THAT IS?

We never went back.

It was kind of strange, because I used to see Alba's son at the playground all the time, and he would pretend that he didn't know who I was. I would say, "Remember? Your mom used to babysit me and we used to play Atari games in your living room."

He always shook his head and said, "That was someone else. I don't know you."

It really used to mess me up, to a point where I thought, "Maybe I DID make it all up!"

Anyway, when I saw my grandmother, she told me a funny story about me when I was about seven months old.

"I put you on the bed, surrounded you with a comforter, and told you not to climb over it. I made gestures, I hit my head with my hand to show you what would happen if you did, and you nodded at me. And you were so good! You understood and didn't climb over. When my sister came to visit, she said, 'I don't think that's a safe place for her.' And I told her not to worry, because you were so smart!"

The Parking Spot Controversy

Ever since we moved into this condo complex, we've noticed how small the parking spots are and we're constantly getting dinked on the left side, since it's a guest parking spot and there's no specific person to blame for dinks.

The thing is, Peter and I are ultra-sensitive about dinking other cars. Sometimes, I literally have to hold open the door so it doesn't swing open because, of course, the parking lot is on a little bit of a hill, so it's easy for the door to just careen out and dink the next car.

I'm super-nervous about this because our neighbor is CRAZY. Okay, she may not be crazy, but she hates us, and by us, I mean me. I'm a friendly person, so whenever I see her outside, I say, (in a super-cheerful voice), "HI!" She pretends she didn't hear me and continues on her way.

This may have something to do with the fact that right before we moved in, we had painters and carpenters and floor installers fixing up this place. Oh, and our mover's truck whacked into her car bumper trying to get into our parking spot. And yes, one last thing, we have two dogs, and they sometimes decide that 2 a.m. is the ideal time to start wrestling. But I feel that none of these things are reasons to hate your new neighbor.

The other day, Peter said, "I think our spot is smaller than other people's."

Of course, this is exactly the sort of injustice that I WILL get worked up about, so yesterday, I got out the tape measure. Here is the finding:

Parking Spot # -- Width of Parking Spot in inches

13 -- 151
12 -- 103
11 -- 102
10 -- 103
9 -- 102
8 -- 102
7 -- 102
6 -- 102
Guest Spot -- 102
Guest Spot -- 105
Guest Spot -- 94
5 (OUR Spot) -- 93.5
4 -- 115

As you can see, our spot, and the guest spot next to ours is teeny-tiny. Why? Did the parking spot line painters just decide that the people in Apartment #2 just didn't deserve to have a decent sized spot?

We wouldn't have made a stink about it, but there is a substantial difference. Why should spot 13 get a huge palatial parking spot? Their spot is practically double ours. So we've written the management company. Peter doesn't think that they're going to do anything about it, but I'm optimistic that they will.

I guess the problem is that Peter's a realist (I call him a pessimist, but he says it's realist) and I'm an optimist. I always think that people will do the right thing, and then when they don't, I get angry about it. So we'll see. If the management company doesn't do the right thing, I'll probably buy a cheap-o motorcycle and park it in the guest spot next to ours. Permanently.

Is that really spiteful? Will that send me to Parking Karma Hell?

A Strange New Growth

Married people share a lot of things, and one of those things requires having your spouse check out something on your body that you can't really see, and give you their opinion on it.

Many such conversations in our house start out with:

Me: Is that a mosquito bite, or a pimple?

Me: Is that a pimple or an ingrown hair?

Me: Is that an ingrown hair or a tumor?

Whenever I say, "Can you take a look at this?" Peter instantly freezes, pretends he didn't hear me, and walks slowly out of the room. Much the way Rocky, the Siberian Husky, acts when he sees me heading toward him with the doghair brush.

Today Peter said, "I have a bump in my mouth."

Me: So floss!

Peter: I did NOT say I had something in MY TEETH. I SAID I had something in MY MOUTH. I think it's some sort of bump.

So we go into the bathroom where the light is better, and he uses his fingers to hold his upper lips and gets down on bended knee so I can see. And even though he's in this ridiculously precarious position, I crack up and say, "Of course I'll marry you!"

He starts laughing and said, "I was going to say 'Whii yuh mawrrehh meh'?"

When a couple gets married, the priest should really say, "Do you take this person, in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer, and will you check out any strange new growths that will appear on his body?"

No, Not Pregnant!

Every time I talk to someone I haven't spoken to in awhile, they ask me if I'm pregnant.

The other day, I was telling someone a story, about how my mother is FREAKING Out over the fact that I'm not pregnant yet, and I said:

"The funny thing, is that there's something that happened last month that I haven't told her about..."

Before I could finish my sentence, I heard through the telephone, loud enough to shake the plaster down on the walls of my apartment:

"You GOT PREGNANT!"

After a long pause, I said, "Uhm...NOOOOOOOOOOOO..."

I mean, that doesn't even make any sense. I feel like all people hear from me these days is, "blah blah blah, blah, blah blah blah blah." They're just waiting to hear the "P" word.

Kind of like my dogs, except their magic word is "food."

10 Years!!

September 5th marked the tenth anniversary of the day I first sat down next to Peter and said, "Hi! I like your glasses!"

I heard a report on 20/20 that our bodies regenerate all the cells on our bodies every ten years - at this point, Peter and I are walking around with an entirely new set of cells. So I guess that makes us entirely different people now.

The very first time I met Peter, I was wearing green cargo pants, a nylon neon-orange-and-neon-yellow camouflage tank top, and the extremely ugly Mephisto sandals my mother bought me because the salesperson at Nordstrom told her that they would mold to my feet, which was apparently something he convinced my mother was VERY IMPORTANT.

I know NOW that this is a hideous outfit, but for some reason, I looked at myself in the mirror and went, "I look TERRIFIC!" (Keep in mind, I had just spent a year in Ann Arbor, Michigan. For over there, anything not pre-worn by someone else was high fashion.)

A friend of mine brought me to see a coworker play guitar at a bar/club in the city. He pointed Peter out to me and said, "That's the guy who knows Beck."

At the time, I had just moved back to NYC from Ann Arbor, and I would take the 18-hour train ride every month or so to visit my family. On my portable CD player (remember those, guys?), I listened to Beck's Odelay over and over - my theme song for that summer was "New Pollution." So of course, anyone who knew Beck would be instantly cooler than anyone I had ever met before in my entire life. And boy, I was so right.

Did I Say a Million?

Peter's nephew Tony came over to visit us to print out business cards on our color laser printer that sits in our living room. Yes, in our home, instead of a pretty curio cabinet or a funky side table, we use pieces of computer equipment as decorative items.

So Tony came over with his packet of print-it-yourself business cards and instead of the 200 the box claimed it would print out, we only managed to get about 170 cards due to the falling apart of the business cards in the eventual paper jam.

First we were manually feeding them in, which we felt was a waste of time, so we tried putting one, then two sheets at a time, which worked, at which point I said:

"Hey, why don't you put ALL of them in."


"No," Tony said. "That might piss the printer off."

So we fed three-at-a-time, four-at-a-time and then, since there were only six left, we threw caution to the wind and put them all in - at which point the printer spitefully spat out a mangled last page.

"See," Tony said. "We were pushing our luck."

This took far too long, and I told him about designyourowncard.com, where I printed up my tutoring cards. For the $20 box, he only got 170 cards and I told him that this website will print out 1000 cards for $40.

"That way, you can print out 1000 cards and hand them out to A MILLION people! Uhm, or, you can print out 1000 cards and hand them out to 1000 people.

Camouflage

Peter and I went to Florida this past week and the very first day, I managed to scrape my foot on the bottom of the pool. Luckily, I found a Band-Aid in my bag and put it on.

Later, at the Boma buffet restaurant in the Animal Kingdom Lodge, otherwise known as "The Place Where You Should Put Down Those French Fries and Chicken Fingers and Get Some of That POT ROAST and RIBS and Potatoes with AFRITUDE," Peter looks down at my foot and said:

"Why did you take off your Band-Aid?"

I told him that it was still on and he looked at my foot closely and said:

"Wow. I think you're the first person I've ever known who actually has Band-Aid-colored skin."