Neighbor's Cats: A Movie

I made another movie based on real, actual, events of the R. Family. So, we got a new neighbor, and she has cats, and they like to spy on us. So, one day, I thought I would play a practical joke and when they were in the window, I put Kaya in her window seat, but it kind of backfired on me...

more vegas

Here are a few pics from our Vegas trip that I nabbed off my sister's blog:Here's the whole gang... there's my long-time friend L on the right, one of my many friends who procreated this summer. Three month old baby and she's the hottest mamma in town!
And here we sample deep-fried twinkies and oreos before heading to the airport the last day. A perhaps misguided choice. I'm "pretending" to have a heart attack. They were at once delicious and inedible.

Here's the website for the Golden Nugget pool, I don't seem to have a good shot of the pool (with sharks!).

New hat

I got a new hat.
I'm ready for fall. And a spy caper.

Day Two in Vegas

The second day in Vegas we spent the morning/early afternoon at the pool, where C and L reserved a nice cabana to shelter us from the (did I mention this?) ONE HUNDRED AND NINE DEGREE weather. A Las Vegan came by to tell us they were actually having a "cool down" and it was normally one hundred and nineteen degrees at that time of year. It seems to me that you would just burst into flames at a certain point...

My sister, M & I had appointments at the spa in the afternoon, which was lovely, and then we went to their vow renewal ceremony, which was unexpectedly emotional and lovely. Not a dry eye in the house. That night we went to dinner and a couple (a couple three, as my dad would say) bars.

Experiencing the "Fremont Street Experience"

newly re-married

Vegas, Baby

Over the weekend, we went to Vegas to celebrate my sister and brother-in-law's remarriage (to each other). It was a great time and a fun party. We all stayed at the Golden Nugget in "old" Vegas, where I'd never been before. The hotel was pretty sweet, and, I must tell you, that there were friggin' sharks in a tank in the middle of the pool. So, like, when you're swimming, there are friggin' sharks swimming next to you. Also, there's a clear slide that goes through the middle of the (friggin') shark tank. So.

The first night we went to the Fireside Lounge at the Peppermill. Although it was ONE HUNDRED AND NINE DEGREES in Vegas, the Fireside Lounge was chilled to no more than 47 degrees. Despite the cold, we enjoyed some tropical drinks.That drink was huge, C's straw is actually 2 feet long!

M & K huddle for warmth.

Come back tomorrow for Day Two in Vegas!

Freezer corn

When we were in Indiana last weekend we stopped at our favorite vegetable stand and bought (a mere) two dozen ears. They had a "Freezer Corn Special" for $3-something a dozen if you got 10 dozen, but that's a lot (even for us!)

M's granny gave us her recipe, which I'll recap here. (I posted about this in the bygone days of aught-eight, and just had another laugh at my dad's comment!)

• Slice the kernels off 16-24 ears.
• Melt one stick of butter in a heavy saucepan.
• Mix in corn with approx. 1 cup water.
• Cook for approx. 20 minutes.

The trick to slicing the kernels off the ear is to put a small bowl upside down in a large bowl. Put the ear on the up-turned bowl and slice down with your knife.

Then, hold your knife perpendicular to the corn and drag it down the ear. This is called "milking" the corn.
It's really easy to make and ten-thousand times better than (dare I say it?) canned corn. I can't wait to eat it at Thanksgiving! In fact, we couldn't wait to even get it in the freezer, we had corn for dinner that night!

Panzanella

One of our favorite summer dishes is the Italian treat, panzanella. We first had it at my fave Chicago restaurant, Ante Prima. In our little family, we have bruscetta one day, and panzanella the next, with the leftover bread from the day before. Sometimes we buy lots of bread to make sure we'll have left-overs! You can put just about anything in it, but I like:

• Stale baguette, cubed
• fresh tomatoes
• cubed cucumbers
• thinly sliced red onion
• Balsamic vineger and olive oil vinaigrette

Throw the whole lot into a bowl and toss. Eat immediately. You won't want to wait, anyway!

Bruschetta

Bruschetta is a frequent summer favorite on our family table. Everyone has their own method of making it, but M & I do ours like this:
Start with a good baguette (I get mine at Bennison's Bakery), slice diagonally and brush with olive oil, then turn them all upside down on the pan and pour olive oil over the other side. Toast in the oven for about 5 minutes on each side.

Meanwhile, chop up your tomato nice and small, as well as basil. (That's the fun part for us because it all comes out of the garden.) Liberally salt (kosher salt is best, I think.)

When the toasts are done, rub with a garlic clove, then spoon on the tomatoes.

more tomatoes

Another favorite summer recipe is this one, which I'm pretty sure I saw on the food channel but can't seem to find a source. It's really simple and a really nice, light dish and a great way to use your fresh tomatoes.

So, you cook pasta, I prefer gemelli or some twisty pasta. In the last minute or so, throw some chopped broccoli into the pasta water and then drain when it's al dente. Meanwhile, in a big bowl, dump a thingy of ricotta and mix with 1/2 cup of pasta water. Whisk. Zest some lemon in there. Something amazing happens with the ricotta and water and it makes a nice creamy sauce for your pasta. Mix in the pasta and broccoli and top with cherry tomatoes. You won't BELIEVE how good it tastes. Oh, you can grate parm on top too.

what to do with tomatoes

I made a lovely little appetizer with our cherry tomatoes, basil and fresh mozzarella - it was as delicious as it was lovely to look at.

know-it-alls

This weekend M & I went to Indiana to visit family and go to M's HS reunion. The reunion was fun and I got to meet some of his old HS pals. Not surprisingly, all of them have like 3.2 kids and we were treated to many a speech about how having kids "changes you, man" and "it just changes everything, forever." Oh, really? Being fully responsible for a helpless human being's emotional and physical well-being has an impact on your life? I hope so! I find it amusing albeit slightly tiresome when a new or old parent decides to drop some knowledge on me about how "you just can't believe how much it changes you."

In non-parenting news, but tiresomely self-congratulatory, I bring you Garden Fresh Week, where I'll drop some knowledge of my own, mainly what we're doing with our absolutely fabulous tomato haul. So, stay tuned for some easy and fabulous recipes!

Here's me and M, either going to his reunion or off to a yacht party - you decide!

and here's Adorable Nephew the Second watering the flowers with an obscure reference to a de Chirico painting in the background.

Magnets: How do they work?

By now, you've probably seen both of these, but I am not above posting internet stuff that's weeks old on the off chance my faithful reader might have missed it.

My Birthday Month

Last week I celebrated my birthday - M took me to Everest, where we had a trés fancy meal and an excellent time. It's an elegant restaurant on the 40th floor of the Chicago Stock Exchange building. We had a table right by the window and one of the best meals of my whole life. They treated us like the queen and king of England.

We spent a long weekend at my friend G's family lake house in northern Indiana - always a lovely time. Spent most of the time lounging in the water or the sun while a certain husband occasionally delivered another cocktail. What a life! Friends threw little party for me and I got some very nice presents. Highlights include: G's mom warning us that she had something in a box that was "not alive and didn't smell", pregnant C in a bikini (I love a pregnant lady in a bikini!), somehow not noticing a roomful of decorations for several minutes, a midnight swim with J, walking around under a full moon, and watching an incredible storm on the porch.

Alas, only a few more days to continue celebrating my birthday month, but it has been an exceptionally great month so far.

I write like...

On I Write Like you copy in some text and it tells you who you write like. I copied and pasted some of my blog: George Orwell. Some more blog: David Foster Wallace. An email: Stephen King.

Oh, great, a bunch of dudes! Straightforward writers, not especially elegant, with the exception of Foster Wallace, who writes like a fright train and I find largely unbearable.

It's silly but fun and also infuriating. (I just did it again: Dan Brown. Again: HP Lovecraft. Whhhaaaaat?)

Hotels

I'm at a conference right now, which means staying in a hotel all by my lonesome. Generally, I like to cleave to a certain husband at all possible moments, but do manage to enjoy barricading self in a hotel room and ordering room service and watching television all night. One of my favorite things to do in hotels, besides extreme sloth, is get a bucket of ice from down the hall and drink glass after glass of ice water. Is that weird?

My presentation today went really well. We had such great feedback it almost made me blush.

I picked up Girl that Plays with Fire in the airport and might finish it before I get home. I previously said I wouldn't read more in that series, but my colorist and A. told me this one was all about Lisbeth and I wanted to learn more about that character. That's a couple of solid recos I couldn't turn down. And now I can barely put the book down either. That guy sure could write a page-turner. My hairdresser has delicious taste in books. I was happy to share Lonely Werewolf Girl with her, and when I wore my Twilight tshirt into the salon she walked me around to show everyone.

Oracles

Last weekend we went out to my friend A's family farm in rural IL. Always a lovely time - mostly sitting around on the porch and chatting - very relaxing. We watched the World Cup on Sun., I think the first time several people, including me, had watched a soccer game all the way through. Very interesting. I don't understand why The Netherlands didn't try to score a point at the end when half of the Spanish team literally laid down on the pitch and sobbed. I had read about that Octopus in Germany who'd predicted the winners of the WC, so I blindly believed that Spain would win because the octopus said so, and they did. So.

Do you know what else I blindly believed? A st/ring test. A is preg. and to have a whatchacallit the next day to find out whether the baby was a girl or a boy? So, we did that thing where you tie a string around your wedding ring and dangle it over The Belly. Eventually the ring will either swing round in a circle or back and forth. Anyway: It. Worked. I did it, then she did it, and we both got the same thing, then, I mean, you hardly need to even GO to the doctor for confirmation after results like that, but she DID, and, it was RIGHT. So.

it's more fun with matching shirts

Here are the tshirts I made for the movie!
(My preggo friend's shirt says "No Imprinting", which makes sense if you've read the books and the other says "Team Cedric"). We got a couple of thumbs up from other movie-goers, which totally made my day. My review is in the previous post.

Eclipse

After an impossibly long build-up, I saw Eclipse last night with 3 girlfriends - we spend the obligatory amount of time in the adjacent bar to properly compare (those of us who weren't pregnant, that is). My reaction to the movie: a heavily biased, slightly tipsy It was fun! The audience was really into it and we all had a lot of laughs.

Which is not to say that the movie incredibly sexist and slightly ridiculous (my friend who hadn't read the books or seen the previous movies kept leaning over to ask questions like, "Now, do any of these other people know they are all werewolves and vampires?") What was interesting is that in this movie/book, Bella wants to be turned into a vampire so she can live for eternity with her bf, and he's not so excited about that because he thinks her soul will be destroyed. So, he says he'll make her a vampire, but only if they get married. Because he's old-fashioned like that. Also, he doesn't want to have sex until they get married. Bella says, in a remarkable moment of clarity, "Getting married, at my age, means you just got knocked up." Bella's like, How about we have sex now, when I'm a human?* Anywho, I love that they acknowledge that girls wanna have sex just as much as dudes do. Edward claims, aside from not wanting to have sex outside of marriage, that it's too dangerous. "Why's it dangerous?" my friend whispers. "Because he's afraid he'll lose control and bone her to death," I whisper back. We howl.

What's gross and skeevy is that Edward displays classic abusive relationship attitudes by stalking his own girlfriend, restricting her movements by messing up her car and bossing her around and telling her what to do all the time. Ick. I mean, beyond ick. Also, as per the books, Bella's always being picked up and carried all over the place. You know, it's all well and good if some dashing young man finds a woman ill or injured on the moor and carries her to safety in a Jane Austen novel in the FRIGGING 19TH CENTURY, but it is decidedly NOT COOL to carry a capable young woman around like a two-year-old in this day and age.

The funny thing about Robert Pattinson is he's the first one to claim he's not a good actor. Kristen Stewart is a quite GOOD actor. Even though both are quite open about what complete bores their characters are, Stewart, at least, puts in a very believable performance. I honestly think she has the skill of a young Hepburn or Monroe - she can hold a close-up so well - it's the eyes, I think. Taylor Lautner, who plays the werewolf, and seems to have a contractual obligation not to wear a shirt more than 10% of the movie, looks like he ought to be on the set of Glee. I fully expect to see him there soon. That boy is so pretty and clean-cut. But, I really had to wonder what poor Anna Kendrick (btw, check out this gorg dress she wore to the opening) thinks about this whole thing - surely she's like, "I was nominated for an OSCAR! I'm TOO GOOD FOR THIS SHIT!"

Really excellent soundtrack including a gorgeous song by Florence + The Machine called Heavy in Your Arms. Finding that song was kind of worth the price of admission for me.

If you're a fan, I suspect you've already seen the movie, if you're not, there's absolutely no reason you should go, naturally. Who else saw it? What did you think?

*Apparently Bella has some angst that vampire sex won't be that great. My friend G said there's mild controversy about how a vampire gets an erection because they don't have any blood. Something to do with "magical semen" which is what her t-shirt is going to say next year.

fore-arm warmers

Sometimes when I'm sitting around with cold calves and cold forearms, I reach for my legwarmers, but what about my arms? How can I keep my forearms warm and my hands free, while simultaneously keeping my options open vis-a-vis vampires and werewolves? Oh, that's right - forearm warmers!

I know you guys are probably pretty sad this two-week-extravaganza of Twilight nonsense is drawing to a close. Don't worry, I'm pretty sure we can repeat the whole thing at least once when the final movie(s) come out. And, I'll bring you my review (and my own crrrrrafts) over the weekend. Thanks for indulging me and reading!

Best one yet?

OMG, I guess there's this scene in Eclipse where Edward and Bella and Jacob go camping for some reason? And Bella and Jacob are in a sleeping bag together? I seriously didn't read it, but, uh, my friend told me about it.

And, I don't know what happens, but you can act it out with these dolls! (For $95!)* Personally, I think they're freakball awesome.


*Includes sleeping bag, so it seems like a pretty good deal.