black bottom pie

i made a fucking pie last night. for the first time ever. from scratch.

i hit a bag of gingersnaps with a hammer until they turned into crumbs for the crust.

i double-boiled egg yolks and milk.

i bought TWO different kinds of baker's chocolate, just because the recipe calls for SEMI-sweet gratings on the top.

i whipped shit. twice. by hand.

did you hear me? i WHIPPED stuff. i took cream, and i whipped it and beat it and flopped it around until it turned into whipped cream.

i'm not even sure how the shit turned out. it took so damn long to make that by time it was done i wasn't in the mood to eat it. besides, i have to keep it fresh looking for its intended.

because all it took for me to become betty crocker for a night was my boyfriend mentioning his favorite pie and how he hadn't had it in a while. previous to last night, my best culinary skill was macaroni and cheese.

though i still don't know how it turned out, so maybe mac and cheese is still the best i can do.

queer as folk 2/7

at what point, no matter what, is it too much to risk?

i just got done watching the seventh episode of the second season of queer as folk. i won't claim that it's the best show on television. part of the reason i was drawn initially was the edge factor--ooh, it's about gays realistically depicted, including graphic sex scenes that the conservative networks would shy away from. but i have to say... the show might not be the best written serialized drama on television, but the creators are not afraid to address major issues, even if in a cliched manner, that no other relationship-geared show addresses.

this particular episode dealt with aids. obviously, a show about a group of single gay men touches on aids on a regular basis. but this episode happened to be devoted to the topic.

michael, our hero, has been through his share of relationship ups and downs over the last season and a half. the previous episode, he finally met someone who seemed to GET him. to appreciate him for who he is, to let him be HIM. he might very well have been falling in love.

i won't bore you with ALL the details (you should really watch the episode--really), but it turns out that prince charming is HIV+. michael spends half the episode defending his decision to continue dating him (they hadn't had sex yet). the last thirty seconds of the show, he opens the gentleman's medicine cabinet in search of a condom for their first time, and is faced with THE bottleS of pills. he realizes he may be risking too much--that the slightest possibility of HIS medicine cabinet looking like this is too much to risk.

it got me thinking. how much is too much? my sister told me recently that she's been cursed with a malady that would scare off some, if not most, suitors. i, luckily, have escaped all the major curses. but, as this episode of queer as folk addresses, it IS just luck. i've had my share (though not many) of heat-of-the-moment moments. i've always stayed current on my testing, though, so i'm aware just how very lucky i am. my sister? not so lucky. michael's suitor? not so lucky. all it takes is just that... one moment. and you realize you're not as lucky as maybe you always assumed you were.

my last suitor had a myriad of problems that prevented any real relationship from developing. but there was one thing. [i would appreciate a 'bastard' name for this guy from the mad dater, if she's so inclined.] condoms were a battle with him. a constant battle. every excuse you've ever heard from a sixteen-year-old: "they hurt", "they don't fit right", "i'm clean", "i can't come with one", and my favorite, "other girls never made a big deal about it." the fact that i missed this guy once he was gone is the saddest part of the story, but another story for another time.

the question, though: where are your lines? would it be different if you found out about a lover's HIV status after you'd already fallen in love with them? what if you knew that you would fall in love with them, but you hadn't yet, and THEN they told you?

like with our hero, michael. everything was set for this to be a life-long romance, a soulmate. but he found out on the first date that the guy was HIV+, and realized, once they were about to embark on sex, that it was just too much. that his line had been crossed.

what about herpes? what about pregnancy? what about already having a child? or being a divorcee? or liking leather, or being into scat or blood or being watched? what are YOUR lines, and where ARE they?

and do they differ depending on whether it's just sex or if it's actual love? is it one thing to have a friend who's into feet, but another to date someone with a fetish?

lines lines lines. we've all got them. tell me yours. and then tell me why.

wishes

when i was seventeen, i sat in my parents' den, closed my eyes, and wished that when i woke up the next morning, i would be twenty-seven. i didn't want to put up with the rest of high school, or the college bullshit ahead of me. i didn't want to start out at the bottom rung of some corporate ladder. i wanted to automatically be twenty-seven, the age at which i thought all that crap would be far behind me.

when i was four, i laid on my nap mat, propping my chin up with my palms. my elbows rooted in the blue padded plastic, i stared as hard as i could at a giant alligator toy across the way. it was hard and shiny, perched on a set of wheels. you could sit on it and pull yourself around by your heels. like office workers do in their wheely chairs. i stared at that thing as hard as i could, convinced that if i stared hard enough, i could become an alligator.

close-minded? who the fuck is close-minded?

link courtesy of dynamite diva.

my boyfriend works with animals. yesterday he told me about a dog whose name is mr. monsterhead.

goddamn that's funny.

does anybody know

if there is a place in southern california where i can look at something like this for a few hours?




i'm guessing not.

NOOOOOoooooo!

my research concerning question five below brought me to the urban dictionary. my answer to said question is now NO.

not that i'm completely averse to tossin' some salad. just not dubya's.

answer time!

kerry, over at the safeword, offered to create questions for anyone interested in playing the new interview game. here are the questions she came up with, and my answers. if anyone's interested in playing, i'll try to come up with five questions for you to address in your very own blog, or you can steal the ones here (but please credit and link thesafeword.com).

1. What's the hardest thing you've ever done, emotionally, physically, or
otherwise?

1) bootcamp
2) work the scene of twa flight 800. i still can't stand the smell of jet fuel. also, something no one really said in the news, there was a large shipment of glitter on board. it was all over EVERYthing. so jet fuel and/or glitter = flashbacks. goddamn. now i'm thinking about it...
3) telling one of my supervisors what had happened that---dammit, it went back into the attic. slammed the door down behind it. slippery little thing.
4) end my marriage

(these are in chronological order, not level-of-impact order.)

2. Would you rather be deaf or blind, and why?

deaf, i think. i like looking, and staring, and driving too much. though i would miss music. i know you can crank a stereo and still feel the music when you're deaf, but i imagine it's not the same thing as hearing the treble.

3. When you were a little kid, what did you think your life would be like
right now?

i totally and completely thought that i would be a mission specialist for nasa by now. preparing for my first shuttle launch. either that, or working mission control for nasa.

maybe a veterinarian. but that was just to fall back on, if the nasa thing didn't work out.

4. Are you happier with your life the way it is, or would you rather your
life be what you thought it would be when you were little?

i would much rather be dealing with nasa's bullshit right now than the bullshit i deal with here.

5. Would you toss Dubya's salad for 10 full minutes in exchange for 250K in
tax-free cash? Come on. Think about it. 250K for TEN MINUTES.

what, fight him? that's what tossin' salad's all about, right? of course. i'd fight just about anyone for ten minutes for that kind of cabbage.

it has come to my attention that i have NO idea what tossing salad exactly is. this answer will have to wait for further consideration, and heavy research.


i think the answers are supposed to be longer and more in-depth.

oh well.

whoever

invented strep throat ought to be strung up. and beaten. and poked with hot things.

swallow.

ouch.

swallow.

ouch.

goddammit.

update

i can't help but link the post in which i am linked at bored housewife.

i think i may be becoming a certified link whore. woe is me.

it's true,

i met fat free milk this weekend. recently, there was a post on his site concerning what he looked like, and a lot of people weighed in on the subject via comments. i can now assure you, fat free fans, that kevynn does NOT look like ben affleck. he's way dreamiercooler (i met his hot sweet girlfriend the other night as well, and i don't want her kicking my ass).

it's also true that i met "not just some guy" guy through kevynn's site. i guess fat free milk is sort of a dating website, too.

and, in response to today's post at fat free milk, i was NOT freaked out about meeting the face behind the blog. well, maybe a little. but i was MORE freaked out about meeting a way-back friend of my new beau. first impressions and all, ya'll.

he's right. hard and fat do some mean karaoke. you're missin' out if you live outside the greater OC area and will therefore never even have the opportunity to experience it firsthand.

a big shout out to chris, who supplied my first few captain & cokes of the evening. gollee it's been a while since i've partaked partook partaken of the good captain, and i do believe he kicked my ass early that evening.

i'm also recruiting reviewers for the new post over at hard's place. it's the beginnings of a kickass short story. enjoy.

my fucking jaw fucking HURTS.

interpret that as you wish.

but goddamn am i miserable.

this calls for liberal self-medicating.

another shot, please.

happy friday.

attics

i found this story through a link at the yeti. it's an amazing story, and incredibly written.

i'm of the lot who try their hardest not to think too much about that day in september two years ago. i remember being transfixed to the screen for two or three days straight. i remember crying. and i remember being angry. angry at those responsible, and angry for those who wouldn't let me turn away. the media assault pertaining to the events was loud and thorough. as a child of the television and the glossy mag, there was nothing left for me to do but stare in anger, fear, and pain.

i remember trying in vain to reach my mother, whose job requires her to frequent the pentagon. i tried my father, and then my sister.

everyone has such stories.

i'm in awe of the story i linked here, though i cannot bear to look at the picture that inspired it for more than a second. and, as photographs go, it's a beauty. a pure moment of history captured on accident.

selfishly, i hate that day those towers that crash, because it reminds me of other days that i've pushed up into my memory's attic. thinking about that day brings them tumbling down.

i had the intention of dragging those attic dwellers out today. be done with it. have them someplace where i can refer back to them only when i want when i'm ready when i'm prepared. hope that by writing it out, maybe they would move out of my head and into these words and wouldn't creep up on me, silently and from behind, ever again.

but, they're slippery little bastards. and the time probably isn't right, anyway. how could i ever spew my experiences on an anniversary such as this...

some thoughts

it must be love, because i've gone around and deleted my profiles from dating websites.

i discovered today that my boss is threatened by other men. the reason he never gets mad at me for fucking up or fucking off is because i'm no threat to him. i'm just a fluffy little girl.

i gave a small gift to 'not just some guy' today. he doesn't know that he has it yet. i'm wondering what his thoughts will be when he finds it.

i can hear one of my coworkers bitching with her apartment management via phone. apparently, her neighbor (who works nights) made a stink because my coworker's alarm clock wakes her up as she's going to sleep. now, my coworker is no angel, and i've shared hotel rooms with her before, and it's likely that when her alarm goes off in the morning, it goes off for a good long while. BUT, with all due respect to the third-shifters out there, our society is set up for the diurnals. i think that maybe nightworkers need to close their windows and put in earplugs. these are the things one has to deal with regarding apartment living. you're surrounded by people and people make noise. get the fuck over it.

anyway. i guess that's all for now. i thought i had more thoughts. i thought wrong.

i can't believe how

freaking RAD this is:

blogstop.

though i'm sure i'd be one of the lame-os who would beg for entry into the wonderful world of blogstop, only to abandon my duties one or two short posts later.

coors light

i found this:

Colorado Kool-Aid

I know this is uncool, but I like Coors Light.

It all started about two years ago when I was visiting my relatives in Ireland. I stepped into a pub with a few of my cousins who live in Donegal. I ordered a Guinness, they all ordered Coors Light. I was surprised, I said "You guys all drink Coors Light?" They said "Yeah, what's wrong with Coors Light?"

After doing a little "research," I noticed that Coors Light was on tap in almost every bar in Ireland. And all of the real Irish bars in Manhattan (not the faux Irish yuppie hangouts) have Coors Light on tap. I asked a pub owner in Dublin about it. He said that Coors Light was his best selling beer; only Americans on vacation order Guinness.

And when I really thought about it, nothing is wrong with Coors Light. It tastes good and it's a great summer beer. It reminds me of days when beer was still dangerous and illegal instead of a necessary medication.

at patent pending.

and now i have another "take that!" for people who give me shit for liking both those beers. there's some kind of unwritten rule regarding beers like these. if you like the finer piss beers, like coors light, you're supposed to find guinness disgusting. and if you like beers like murphy's and guinness (the milkshake beers), you should actually spontaneously barf if anyone even suggests or offers an american see-through beer.

one time, this guy was telling me how girls who drink guinness are hardcore.

i went on to explain to him that the following is way more hardcore than a girl drinking guinness: going to a place like the yardhouse (250 beers, most of them schmancy microbrews, on tap) and, while ignoring the smarmy looks that the people you came with will inevitably give you, ordering a coors light. THAT, my friend, is hardCORE.

then i made fun of the fact that he used the word 'hardcore'.

marvin gaye

so my 'not just some guy' guy blew me away last night. AGAIN. i keep thinking he'll pinnacle out regarding things with which to impress me...

it was also the first time i ever attended a 'real' karaoke competition. previous to last night, the only karaoke i'd witnessed was at the types of places where the singers might have sounded a tad better if they hadn't had to avoid cockroaches and strange sticky spots on the floor on their way to the stage. though you haven't lived until you've seen karaoke done in hawaii, at a korean bar, with the random cheap romantic images behind the words on the screen and hot korean waitresses trying to woo your boyfriend/date/husband into the back room with words like, "buy me drinkie? drinkie, yes?" but damn those roaches.

god. he even grabbed his crotch. it was totally freaking hot.

anyway, i think it might have been the first time i've ever seen anyone i give a shit about on a stage of any kind. my circles in high school and college intersected with the theatre crowd a bit, so i'd sometimes see acquaintances over-emote 'a midsummer night's dream' (shit, IS that the name of that play? it doesn't look right for some reason... maybe i'm just a dumbass). but my good friends involved in such arts were always behind the scenes folk.

so seeing someone you're already all moony over take the stage and take it well? it fucking rocks. i think i'm gonna like being involved with a performer. at least, i know already that my libido gives it a hearty thumbs up.




p.s. two new google searches that led people here:

1) infected ingrown hair pictures
2) mom sister pee poop

#2 is the raddest thing ever.

phone tag

i've been playing phone tag with a good girlfriend of mine for weeks and weeks. she finally told me in her last message that it was kind of pressing stuff and that she'd like to talk soon. she's not one to even be THAT emotive about personal shit, so i got a little worried. i phone tagged her back right away, and sent an email to let her know that i'd keep trying.

she emailed back today: "i'll have to call you next weekend. i was working on an affair, and a divorce - the two go together. when is a good time to call?" that's it. no details. i have to wait until the weekend for more information.

and i have to sit here and feel like a shitty friend for not getting back to her sooner and not trying as hard to get in touch. i am. a shitty shitty friend.

good god. a DIVORCE? last time i saw her, she was over the fucking moon for her husband. still talked about him like she was sixteen and it was prom season. goddamn a lot can change in a year. i just hope she's alright. which i'm sure she is. she's the hardest of the hardasses. though it's exactly those types of people that never get enough sympathy during personal crises. one of the many things that she and i have in common--never wanting to ask for help.

i can tell you one thing. i'm gonna be the best damn friend ever when we finally get to talk to each other live. instead of to each other's voicemail. which, now that i think of it, still had her husband's voice on it... maybe it IS someone else's divorce she's talking about...

i hate waiting.

extreme tracking revisited

and this, from asia.google.yahoo.com, might be my favorite:

"my sexy daughter is my friend".

it's funny how nicely this particular asia google user put their request. though i'm sure they were searching for the same sites as those nasty americans in my previous post.

"my sexy daughter is my friend"--goddamn that's funny.

extreme tracking indeed

i've been paging through all the stats that extreme tracking provides me.

someone stopped by my site by searching for "my alaska vacation 2003" on google. how sweet.

but then two other people stopped by, one from google and one from yahoo. they searched for "young girls fucking daddy's best friend" and "my best friend fuck my mother", respectively.

i can't imagine their disappointment upon arriving here.

this is apparently why

i've been getting progressively more hits from google.uk:

my new best friend: the series.

thanks to vague for calling this to my attention.

hubbard glacier!

a sneak preview of the boredom that awaits you. hah!

this is how the previous post would've read had i not been tired, drunk, and angry:

after five or six days of this vacation bullshit, i can't imagine how it is true that my family actually misses me. why would they want to take me on vacation with them? all they seem to want to do when i am around is use me and poop on me. perhaps they miss my new methods of being the middle man between the three of them. i know nothing about football, but if there is some player who spends the majority of the game running interference for all the other players--that's me.

don't get me wrong, the vacation was great. alaska is beautiful. being out on the open sea again, though not quite the same as working on the open sea, was nostalgic and satisfying. and i love my family. it's the time likes these that allow me to learn a little bit more about them personally.

the problem is that i don't like a whole lot of what i learned:
1) my sister is cruel, narcissistic, and selfish.
2) my mother has a wicked martyr streak.
3) my father is too regimented and habitual.
but that's family, i guess.

so every day was spent doing ultra-planned family outings. funstuff. six p.m., every day, was the sit-down five courser. for one or two hours after eating, a passive-aggressive tug-of-war happened regarding what our nighttime activities should be. for me, this meant entertaining my mother (who, at one point, her eyes shiny, said the following: "it's not that i want to check up on your sister, it's that i have NOTHING else to do. except wander the ship alone. no one wants to hang out with me.") to keep her off my sister's back, while my sister danced alone and very provocatively at the ship's dance club, organizing and playing the four guys who had fallen for her against each other. my father went to bed between nine and ten most nights. his frustrations came from the fact that everyone was busy at night and never wanted to get up with him in the morning. so i did.

to me, the best vacations are those in which i do little differently than what i would do at home, except i'm in a new place and sleeping in a hotel bed. and the very definition of vacation seems to imply that one should enjoy sleeping in and relaxing--two things you can't do during a normal workweek. VACATION.

i got little sleep on this particular vacation. which put a damper on my enjoyment of experiencing alaska on someone else's dime. up until 3 or 4 most nights, since i like spending alone-time with my sis, but mom kept an eye on us until 1 or 2. breakfast with dad at 8. i'm too old for that shit. especially on a freaking VACATION. mai tais and lazy days--THAT's a vacation. i was amazed my sister was in such good spirits for most of the trip, with the hours we were keeping. until i realized that, unlike me, she was sleeping until noon each day. and popping excederin daily. which i won't get into. but she's a fucking moron for wondering why she can never sit still, knee always bouncing, eyes always twitching.

to make the whole thing worse, i was missing him bad. not so bad that it ruined my good time, but enough that everytime i saw something cool or funny or pathetic, i would want to turn and laugh with him. but he wasn't there. goddamn life is fucking strange.

but the end of that drunken post is true. he makes me feel home and sated and normal. he's my daily excederin without the speed-like effects. and i missed him. a lot.

p.s. you guys are so lucky. it will only be a matter of time before i post a link to my vacation photos. and there is NOTHING more fun than looking at someone else's vacation pics.

p.p.s. for those that care, comments should be back up within a day or two.