Verbal Napalm

For Halloween next year, someone please remind me to be David Bowie circa Aladdin Sane.

The title has nothing to do with what I’m going to write about.  Just seriously want someone to remind me to be David Bowie next Halloween, i.e., THIS piece of sex on a stick:

Well, I had time to cook a whole 2.5 times this week!  I made a spiked spiced hot apple cider which only counts as a half, as it was super easy. (AND SUPER F-WORDING DELICIOUS)

On Friday, my dance company had their annual holiday party.  It was a potluck, and I signed up to bring a main dish.  I called my mom for a recipe recommendation because MY MOM IS THE BEST COOK IN THE WORLD the end kthx.  She recommended a chicken enchilada casserole.  I had already literally parked the car at the store; so I said that sounded great, and she e-mailed me the ingredients.

PLUS BEER!!!!  I forgot to put it in the photo, but half a cup of beer was included in the recipe as well.  I chose Corona.

I don’t want to say the recipe was complicated, but it was a LOT of preparation!  My kitchen is SUPER small; so I cleaned it spotless before I even started cooking so that I had the maximum amount of space possible.  I think I used every single mixing bowl/pot/pan in my kitchen collection.  I forgot to take a before picture, but this was after.  WOMP WOMP.

My casserole turned out PERFECT despite one dumbass move of forgetting to dice the canned tomatoes prior to mixing them in.  Luckily they were so mushy they were easy to dice up as I mixed them in with the chicken.  I only got to try a little bit of it at the party because I wanted to leave it for everyone else to enjoy, and it was GONE in minutes.  Casserole success :-D …AND it was a recipe from Cooking Light!  Yay healthy delicious goodness!

It has been my goal to make home made cider and egg nog this Christmas season.  Yesterday I finally got around to the cider.  I picked a recipe and got the ingredients:

So easy!  I put the spices in a cheese cloth and put them in the crock pot, then filled the pot with 7 cups of Simply Apple apple juice, a cup of rum (Let’s be honest I put more than the recipe called for), and 1/3 cup of brown sugar.  Cook on low for 3 hours and YUM!  My neighbor/friend Nate just came over to enjoy the last of it with me while watching Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune because apparently we’re 65 (and we added MORE rum… lushes!) and he LOVED it.  It’s now all gone and I can’t wait to make more on Christmas at my mom’s house!

While I was cooking dinner last night, it got unbearably hot in my apartment despite it raining down; so I had to open the door to my apartment.  Naturally, Gemini made a break for it to run around the apartment building, which I let her do now and then so bitch can get some fresh Koreatown air.  I went out to play with her on the stairway and it was supes cutes.  

Me playing peek-a-boo with her.  She’s a killer.

Then as she always does, she got all feral acting and crazy; the cat version of Cujo of Stephen King fame, if you will.  She forgets she’s a civilized housecat when she’s been out of my apartment for more than 30 seconds… which makes it really fun to play with her.  

“WHOA, WHOA, WHOA.  NO TOUCHING.”  (Arrested Development quote, anyone?)

“I WILL KILL YOU AND YOUR FAMILY”

and, finally:

“I WILL EAT YOUR BABIES, BITCH!”  (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia quote circa Season 1)

Oh, yeah.  When I was done exorcising the demon held deep within the bowels of my precious kitty cat, I ate what had been turning my apartment’s temperature to that of the 7th circle of Dante’s Inferno:

Shitty iPhone picture, but it’s bacon-wrapped stuffed chicken breasts.  Inside is a mix of spinach, mayo, garlic, and artichoke.  It was OKAY.  I need to marinate the chicken first next time and could have EASILY used low-fat mayo and skipped the bacon or used turkey bacon or something.  It was a little much but still good!

I’m off to watch the love of my life I never met, Gene Kelly, in my favorite movie of all time SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN.  If you haven’t seen it, please come over.  I’ll watch it with you.  I will NEVER not want to watch this movie!  

Having been a tapper for 20 years (WOW…  I’m old), THIS is my favorite tap dance IN THE WORLD… I have scoured The Interwebs for a video of someone teaching these steps and have not been successful.  I’ve tried from the actual DVD and gotten frustrated.  They’re honestly simple steps just VERY fast; so I’ve given up.  I WILL ONE DAY KNOW AND PERFORM THIS PIECE OF TAP HISTORY!

WATCH ME NOW KTHX

The end never fails to make me crack up!  SO random!

I will end with that.  UNTIL NEXT TIME, my faithful 12 Tumblr followers haha :-)

If I have nothing in my refrigerator, I do not post.

So far my posts have revolved about exercise and food; neither of which I’ve done much of in the past couple weeks due to being BROKE  (DAMN YOU, QUARTERLY TAX PAYMENTS) and I was in rehearsals for my company’s show in Vegas this past weekend.  : ::cue white girl arm raise with classic “oooOOOOOHHHH” sound to sum up this weekend: ::

Kind of like this, which happened not this Vegas trip but a few before:

I was cheating.  I knew a photo was being taken; so I tried to look Vegas-y.  That’s my best friend on Culture Shock, Eddie.  His hand in this picture reminds me of this from Scary Movie 2:

P-the-fuck-S.  Can I just please relay the amount of Google searches and past Facebook picture comment posts I had to look through to find this picture?

Number one, I thought it was from Harold and Kumar.  I was SURE of it; so I was looking through pages and pages of Google image searches for “Harold & Kumar HAND” …Clearly on the wrong track; secondly, I remember my friend Alex first told me about the hand/movie character comparison.  Couldn’t find the picture in my albums, as I have no patience.  THEN I went to Google and as a last resort typed “MOVIE CREEPY HAND,” and voila, a YouTube video titled “Scary Movie 2 - Fucked Up Hand Person” appeared before my eyes.  HAHA. 

Blogging is a lot of work and sometimes strenuous upon one’s brain.

I haven’t cooked anything in over a week.  This makes me sad and obese.  I have a whole bookmarked collection of Crock Pot recipes I am dying to try, and by Thursday I just MIGHT have time to complete one.  This Friday is my dance company’s annual holiday party, and I signed up to bring a main dish.  If you have any requests, Dancers, please tell me!  So far I’m thinking fettucini alfredo because who doesn’t love a fatty cream-based bisque ladeled upon carbohydrate-filled noodles?!  

Sadly, I have decided to forego the half marathon my friend Emily is doing.  It’s now just two months away, and I am realizing WAY too soon for me.  I am new to running and still completing even three mile runs FLAT is a chore for me.  I know this half marathon will have some hills in it, and I don’t want to die or make her wait for me or feel bad for leaving me behind, or worse, have me looking like this:

Okay.  I know that’s gross, but once again, funny Google story.  I Googled “Runner fail” to hopefully get a picture of someone falling retardedly during a marathon or something.  Turns out I get TONS of pictures of this clearly-out-of-his-mind marathon runner completing a race AFTER SOILING HIMSELF…  I have no other words.  You can Google for yourself the massive amount of coverage on this complete fool.  

Note to self:  WHEN YOU CRAP YOURSELF, THROW IN THE TOWEL.

I will end with that: a runner with poo on his legs.  

I have now found the tone of my blog.  Tune in next time.

Blogs.

So I’m supes into blogs right now.  Also, I’m totes into talking in abreevs.  Probs annoying to everyone other than my girl Krystle, who shares my affinity for sounding like a dumbass, but ah well.  

Anyway, blogs.  Yes.  I love them.  And by that I mean I currently read four.  Here are my daily reads:

NHerShoes - I went to high school with this girl.  She added me on FB a while before our 10-year reunion (she was the high school pres so she was helping put together the reunion) and I noticed she had a blog.  I checked it out and have read it daily ever since.  She offers tips on organization, meals, and talks about all her fun workouts which make me wanna get off my butt and RUN.  Thanks, Bobbi!

Kath Eats Real Food - I discovered this blog through Bobbi’s.  This girl’s a dietitian and lives in Virginia and posts three times a day about all the amazing meals she makes.  She’s in the process of opening a bakery with her husband who is adorable, and it’s fun to read about how it’s all going down.  Mostly I just love the beautiful pictures of the healthy delicious meals she makes!  Her husband also brews his own beer and I love the posts about their taste tests.

Hyperbole and a Half - This is just hilarious.  Authored by a girl named Allie.  She tells exaggerated versions of real stories of her life complete with hilarious MS Paint drawings she makes herself.  Every post is laugh-out-loud funny and I read them all at least three times.

Izzle Pfaff - I’ve read Skot’s blog for YEARS.  He hasn’t posted so much recently because he just quit his job (cancer research) of 15 years because it was just killing him inside.  Ironic, no?  I’m excited to see what he’s going to do with his life now.  His biting sarcasm and wit have kept me coming back for what seems like a decade.  

What are your favorite blogs?  I need more bookmarks of pages to help me procrastinate when I should be editing transcripts :-)

Tonight, I didn’t even need blogs to help me procrastinate.  It’s cold outside, and after a harrowing tale of my next-door neighbor/friend Nate coming home to an apartment full of flies and the stench of a dead pigeon in his wall heater, I will NEVER use mine.  Therefore, it’s freezing inside my apartment as well; so Gemini will not lie ANYWHERE else aside from my lap.  It’s cute… unless I’m trying to work.

Blog recs in the comments section.  Please and thank you!

Dan Radcliffe brings the LoLz.

Thanksgiving… Gluttonyfest 2010!

I am from a town called Redlands.  We’re known for oranges.

I have been in said town since Wednesday for the holiday weekend.  Thanksgiving was a small gathering of my mom, my friend/neighbor Scott who spends holidays with us since his ass is from Washington and he never goes home, and me.  My sister and her husband Steve joined us after spending half the day at the in-laws’.

In the spirit of Redlands, I went out and got a case of Hangar 24 Orange Wheat beer, my favorite beer in the WORLD.  the Hangar 24 brewery is a relatively new edition to the town, and perhaps I’m bias, but they really do have DELICIOUS beer.  They have a new chocolate porter which I hear has hints of banana in it that I’m dying to try.

Scott and I managed to polish off the whole case.

To not give in to the Thanksgiving-feast-induced food coma, we grabbed a couple road beers and went to a park to walk around and swing on some swings and be a general nuisance to society.

Dana and Steve made it over for champagne,

Pumpkin creme brulee,

and iPhone trivial pursuit.  I won!

Scott getting in on the torch action.

Move over, pumpkin pie.  There’s a new Thanksgiving desert in town.  YUM!

Friday was my high school friends and I’s annual REDLANDS ROCKIN’ RAMADAN party.  This was our 10th.  We realize we’re not Muslim and that Ramadan was, like, a month ago…  It was just the original BS reason we decided to throw a party on this weekend 10 years ago.  It’s been a great tradition.  I didn’t take ANY pictures because I’m a dumbass.  Well, I did get one… of the most fantastically creepy picture hanging in my friend’s house.

WHY?!  I may never know.

Tomorrow ends my holiday weekend (even though I did some work every day of it) and I head back to L.A.  Not looking forward to the DISASTER-state I left my apartment in in rushing to get out of town last Wednesday, but am looking forward to planning more crock-pot deliciousness to cook up for dinners this week and getting in a couple runs in addition to rehearsals.  Striving for two three-mile runs this week and a long run with the Pasadena Pacers on Saturday.  Photos of all to come!

Running, preparing dinner, and catching up on work before noon on a Saturday. Who. Am. I.

Well, I made it.  After dinner last night, I took a shot of NyQuil and settled in with some Season 2 Gossip Girl (… Yes, I suck.  I’m aware) because I knew I wouldn’t be awake long enough to watch a movie.  My alarm went off at 6 a.m. this morning, and I felt tired but not horrible.  I heard my coffee machine, which I had programmed the night before, start to brew and it got me out of bed.  

7 a.m. and I found my way to where the Pasadena Pacers meet at the Rose Bowl.  I was surprised there were sooo many people there — and on a rainy cold day!  Here’s some of the group stretching.

There’s three groups — the pre-conditioning group, the half marathon group, and the marathon group — so I chose the pre-conditioning group because I hadn’t run anything that could be considered a long distance for a looooong time and I figured I’d be stupid to jump into the five-mile run the half marathon trainees had planned.  We ran for 30 minutes which ended up being something like 2.38 miles.  Perfect for me.  I feel like I could have done more, but I guess that’s better than being absolutely DEAD and not wanting to go back.

Here’s me looking absolutely TORE UP after we finished.  A combo of no makeup, sweaty, and wet with rain.  Awesome!

Then at the recommendation of my friend Tommy, I went to Intelligentsia Coffee which happened to be just a couple miles away and enjoyed an americano and coffee cake muffin.  It’s a beautiful shop with the most delicious coffee.  Plus the guys who make the beverages look like they belong in a barbershop quartet, and there’s nothin’ wrong with that.

Came home, prepared the crock pot for dinner, and got to work on a transcript due next week.  Feels good to be responsible.

Speaking of being responsible, here’s a picture of my cat in a little sombrero.  She likes it.

A morning of mania leads to an evening of blogging and relaxation.

It happens without fail that, if I have to wake up early for a job, say, before 8:00 a.m., I will inevitably wake up about 30-45 minutes before my alarm and then proceed to try to force myself back to sleep to savor the remaining time.  I’m usually successful about five minutes before my actual alarm goes off, making me feel double like crap for having missed out on that 30-45 minutes of sleep and having just achieved that wonderful goal of unconsciousness only to have it ripped from my sweet slumber-filled grasp.  This morning, however, I awoke feeling all too rested and therefore knew something was afoot.  I had just gone to bed 6.5 hours earlier and knew I’d usually feel like crap if awaking on my own and BEFORE my alarm.  There was only one explanation to this puzzle, and I panicked before I even looked at my clock.  Yup.  It was 8:45.  My alarm supposed to have gone off at 7:50.  I frantically found my iPhone, which I use as my alarm, and the alarm was going off, yet no sound was emanating from my supposed “Smart Phone.”  For no reason at all.  I panicked more as I was supposed to have left for my agency to drop off some exhibits before heading to my job at 8:30.  I probably looked like this:

Luckily I had just done laundry the night before; so I was able to throw on some work clothes with the rapidity of a… professional… clothes-putter-onner… : ::cricket cricket:: : gathered my exhibits, and hurdled out the door.  I took the drivers of LA’s lives into my own hands as I did my makeup on the way to West L.A. and made it to my job within three minutes of its starting.  We reporters normally like to arrive at our jobs 15-30 minutes early to set up, especially if it’s a firm we’ve not previously been to, which of course was the case today.  My job then proceeded to last for 19 minutes.  So glad I almost had a heart attack and ran down school children and rear-ended a Bentley to ensure my timely arrival.

The upside to all of this was of course that I had some time to kill that I wasn’t expecting to have and I was well-rested after my unexpected almost eight hours of repose.  I went to the store to get ingredients for a seafood jambalaya which has been in the slow-cooker since 2:30 and I am now about to enjoy.  My neighbor Nate is coming over to join me.  

After I piled the giant Louisiana-style concoction into the slow-cooker, I realized I was STARVING because I hadn’t had time to eat yet; so I had some pumpkin granola with a spoonful of almond butter so that I get a little bit of it with each bite.  I’ve been full ever since, and that was at like 2:30.  

Oh, and I’m having sour crumb cake is for dessert.  I’m not one for sweets; so I’ll probably give most of the pan to my friend/neighbor Scott who I often see eating things like Top Ramen with a side of Saltines and cheese from a can.  No.  Joke.  I made him cookies for his 39th birthday a few weeks ago and they were a hit.  I’m rather domesticated when I want to be and it’s a great feeling to share it with others :)

Tomorrow, if all goes as planned and my iPhone doesn’t thwart my attempt to arise early, I will be getting up for a 7 a.m. run in Pasadena at the Rose Bowl.  I know it’s going to rain; so I’m telling myself I’m going to go no matter what, but if it’s absolutely POURING, I will at least go and run my miles on a treadmill at the gym.  My best friend from back home, Emily, who I’ve never known to run in her life, just completed a 10k and is now training for a half marathon.  This is the perfect motivation for me to do the same.  I think the only thing which might prohibit me is my permanently deformed left ankle, but I’ll have to see how I feel as I increase my miles.  As long as I don’t end up like this, I’ll feel proud of myself for making it out there:

Rolling In The Deep - Adele