Something next to normal, that's the thing I'd like to try

1. I have decided to get myself a TV streaming stick, either a Roku or Amazon Fire. I am leaning toward Roku based on internet comparisons, but I do have Amazon Prime and a Kindle Fire, so I'm open to being persuaded in that direction. (Also, I have a suspicion that as soon as I buy a Roku, they will announce that they're coming out with a newer model, whereas Amazon already did.) Anyone have a recommendation or preference? (Obviously the best time to purchase such a thing is AFTER I spent the weekend binge-watching not one, but TWO TV series - Jessica Jones and The Man in the High Castle - on my laptop. Both shows are highly recommended, FYI.)

2. I really want to email this to my mother and be like, "Do you think maybe we could try this for a change?" I might possibly be cranky after a phone call this weekend in which I mentioned having a lot of pain this week, and her response being, 'Well, you have been doing a lot of cooking lately and eating more than usual." Like, SORRY MY BAD for trying to eat relatively balanced meals and maintain a healthy weight. Maybe I should go back to eating nothing but grilled cheese. I get that she just wants to be able to make me better and critiquing everything I ingest is her trying to ~solve my Crohn's but CROHN'S DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY and just once I would like to say, "Hey, I'm in a lot of pain," and hear, "I'm sorry, honey, that sucks," instead of, essentially, "Well, that's what you get for eating FOOD." 

3. Speaking of food, I made butternut squash soup this weekend. I'm not even going to bother linking the recipe because the proportions were way off and I ended up having to add more than twice as much chicken stock as the recipe called for in order to get the right consistency, so I'll be looking for a different recipe the next time I make it. My parents have one, but it makes about eight gallons of soup, so I figured I'd just look for a smaller batch recipe online, but this one was not a winner. Tasted fine, though, once I made it not mashed potatoes-esque. 

Whenever anyone would tell me I should watch The Sopranos, I used to joke, "What do I need to watch it for? I've got my own dysfunctional Italian family." It was the same reason I always gave for never having seen The Godfather or any of the other mafia movies. But, you know, it was always meant to be sarcastic, because I was pretty sure my life actually bore very little resemblance to a TV show or movies about mobsters. I did grow up in New Jersey in an Italian-American family, but although we certainly had a criminal element, as far as I can tell, the crime was anything but organized, lol.

But people keep telling me how good it is, and this summer one of my favorite TV critics was doing a rewatch of the first season, so I said what the hell, I'll give it a shot. (I've only seen the first season so far.)

YOU GUYS IT IS SO EXACTLY MY DYSFUNCTIONAL ITALIAN FAMILY.

( Very minor spoilers, mostly just me blathering about my childhood )

I am officially a member, as I had my fifth colonoscopy yesterday! And what an honor, to have achieved this at only 31, having long ago surpassed my father's piddly count of two (at 63 years of age), and closing in on my mother's more impressive six (also 63, family history of colon cancer and polyps). To be fair, though, she started at 40, so she's had 23 years to rack up that number. I did mine in six years. *drops mic*

I did the math, which is depressing. My doctor recommends having a colonoscopy every two years. They generally stop performing them once you hit 75 or so. But that's for colon cancer screening, I guess because they figure the chances of you dying of something ELSE is much higher at that point, so why torture the elderly unnecessarily? Could be there's no limit for Crohn's. So, conservative estimate, assuming I live to be 75 and don't have many more years like this one, where I had two colonoscopies in 3 months for clinical trial purposes, I'm looking at another 44 years of every two years.

That's 22 more colonoscopies. TWENTY-TWO. Conservative estimate.

That seems... unfair.

In other news, y'all know that my dad is a fairly skilled amateur home remodeler/mechanic/handyman. We always joke that he should have his own HGTV show called "Projects Without Permits," since he is not actually licensed to do any of the things he does, but that really only matters because homeowners' insurance can be sort of picky about paying for accidents resulting from unlicensed construction/electrical/plumbing work. But that's only if something goes wrong. Which it never has.

My mom, on the other hand, is very talented at many things, but home repair is not one of them (you should try her lasagna, though!). So their latest project is remodeling their master bathroom. My dad has completely retiled the floor and the shower, installed new fixtures, sink, vanity, etc. My mom's job? Paint the linen closet. The linen closet is a rather tight space, so for this job, she had a little mini paint roller with a matching mini paint tray. I am told it was adorable. I never saw it, for reasons that will soon become clear.

So at one point, my father walks into the bathroom, into what he describes as a scene from The Three Stooges: My mother is standing on a step-ladder, leaning over to reach the back corner of the closet, except that as she leans, the paint tray tilts with her, and so it is spilling paint all down the step-ladder and onto the floor. While bending down to clean up the spilled paint in the narrow space, she bumps against wet walls both in front of and behind her, and now has paint in her hair and on the back of her pants.

She resumes painting. Somehow - and neither one of them could tell you precisely how it happened - she manages to fling the mini paint roller so vigorously that the sponge part flies off the handle and directly into a hole in the wall, which my father had made in order to access the water pipes for the shower. So my mother, already covered in paint, is now sticking her entire arm into this hole in the wall in an effort to retrieve the paint roller.

Dad: "You're going to get stuck."

The paint roller is never recovered.

Later: My parents have come to visit for my colonoscopy, and my mother has decided that I need plants on my balcony. She loves flowers, and rather enjoys gardening, so I let her do her thing, even though there is a 90% chance I will kill them within a week. My father and I are watching with bemusement as my mother sits out on the balcony, digging around in a flower pot with a kitchen spoon, because $11 was too much to pay for a shovel at Home Depot, and of course I don't have one. Gardening is too dirty. Which I say, out loud, and my mother mocks me for it.

And then she accidentally flings dirt out of the pot and all over her shoes. Me: "I rest my case."

When she's finished her planting - and her side of the balcony is smeared with mud - she realizes she can't come in the house without taking off her shoes because she'll track dirt in, but she can't untie her shoes until she's washed her hands because her hands are caked with mud. Me: "Would you like some wet wipes?" Mom: "Shut up. And yes."

Once she's got most of the dirt off her hands, she realizes she forgot to replace the garden flag in one of the planters. The garden flagpole is tethered to the balcony railing, because it gets super windy up there on the 6th floor, so sticking it back in the planter involves some maneuvering. My mother's solution is to tip the planter sideways and slide it under the flagpole's bottom prongs. Immediately, it tips too far and more dirt spills out onto the balcony. My mother looks at her hands, looks at the dirt, says, "Oh for God's sake!" and starts picking it up by the handful and tossing it back in the pot.

Dad: "What'd I tell you? Three Stooges." Me: "More wet wipes?" :D

Haven't posted in a while because I am at my parents' house. The original plan was for them to come visit me for Easter, since I would have to go to work today, and the 3 hour drive home would kind of mess up dinner plans. But we handily solved that problem by me getting laid off a week ago!

Fortunately, my unemployment only lasted a few days, as I got a job offer on Thursday (which I'd applied for well before I knew I'd be losing my job). End result: I got three weeks off and severance pay from the old job, which I wouldn't have gotten if they'd just waited a week and let me quit. \o/ This pleases me, since the old job sucked and the people were dicks and I'm glad to be rid of them, and the new job pays a lot more. And since I don't have to work this week, I came home to spend a few days with the new kitten my parents. (The new kitten is SO CUTE. But still a little afraid of me.)

Also? BEST WEEK TO BE UNEMPLOYED, because I watched SO much TV courtesy of Watchathon Week. I've actually made an index post to keep track of all my TV shows. Feel free to leave recs in the comments or just boggle at the size of the list. As you can see, I've now completely caught up on Game of Thrones, and I started in on Girls, both of which I enjoy but don't really feel the need to get all meta about them? Nevertheless, if you have ~feels, let me know. (I have not and do not intend to read the books, so please restrain yourselves and keep any GoT talk to what's aired so far. I'm not super-concerned about spoilers, but it'd be nice to avoid them.)

I did not, however, have a chance to watch this weekend's Doctor Who or the premiere of Orphan Black, but I will get to those this week, I'm sure.

Mini linkspam:

* Clark Gregg talks about resurrecting Agent Coulson for S.H.I.E.L.D.

* David Tennant and Billie Piper are slated to return for Doctor Who's 50th anniversary special. Interesting.

* Natalie Dormer discusses her role in Game of Thrones. I get a very Anne Boleyn-ish vibe off Margaery, but I can't tell if it's the character or just Natalie's Tudors history.

* Every Jurassic Park dinosaur, in order from worst to best. Guess who gets the top spot.



(Related: Why do I not have more Jurassic Park gifs.)

Been somewhat out of commission this week. My parents were here this weekend, and if it seems like that's really soon for them to visit after I just spent a whole week there over Christmas, you'd be right. But I had a colonoscopy on Monday, and so they came down so that I'd have someone to drive me home while I was loopy from the anesthesia. (Which I actually got this time. SO MUCH BETTER. Last time they gave me fucking extra strength Tylenol and I was awake the whole time and felt EVERYTHING. WHAT THE FUCK. I think that actually qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment. And the doctor was all, "You can watch on that screen if you want!" Like I'm Katie Couric or something.)

Anyway. Links:

* It's really a shame this post is in all-caps, because it's really a fascinating and insightful take on cinematography and pins down exactly what I disliked about Les Miserables but couldn't quite put into words.

* Speaking of which, there may possible be an extended director's cut version of Les Miserables? GOOD GOD HOW MUCH LONGER COULD THAT MOVIE POSSIBLY BE?

* Aaron Tveit continues to be my favorite, giving pronunciation lessons, talking about Les Miserables and his new show, Graceland, and why he's not on Twitter.

* Sarah Michelle Gellar is trying again with TV, this time on a sitcom. To be fair, I've always thought SMG's comedic talent was vastly underrated. She was great at the comic material on Buffy.

* Downton Abbey and Entourage are pretty much the same show. I can't actually speak to that, having never seen Entourage, but the criticisms of Downton are spot-on. Having just rewatched the first two eps of season 3 while my mom was here, this in particular resonated with me: "Downton Abbey is full of tension heightened by the fact that these people have nothing better to do than sit around and worry about nothing."

* Community could totes possibly get a fifth season. Yeah, I'm not holding my breath on that one.

* Jon Stewart says what we've all been thinking about the gun control debate.

* This oral history of Good Will Hunting made me all nostalgic. Remember when Matt and Ben were nobodies from Boston? LOL Matt: "Ben’s still the youngest writer to ever win an Oscar for screenwriting. I’d be the youngest if it weren’t for Ben. Fucking asshole."

Guess that means I have to finish my Christmas shopping after all.

I am at my parents' house, and since I have a crazy ELEVEN days off this year, I brought a special guest with me. Chelsea (who is currently hiding under the covers on my bed) gets to come home with me and hopefully she and Patches (my parents' cat) will not kill each other. We won't try to introduce them for another few days, at least (they've met before, but it was a few years ago and didn't go well).

Pre-Christmas linkspam:

* The writing's been on the wall for a while, but Leverage has officially been canceled. I suppose it's good, in a way, since this season has very much had the feel of a final season, and the season finale episode (which airs Christmas Day) was written as a series finale "just in case." Here's hoping Aldis Hodge, Christian Kane, and Beth Riesgraf find other work soon. I will miss those crazy kids.

* And yet, HIMYM goes on and on, now extended for a ninth season. DAMMIT JASON SEGEL. I was depending on him to stop this madness, but apparently he caved.

* Another Les MIserables clip, this time the full version of "At the End of the Day." Definitely better than "One Day More," but this discussion of 10 reasons the movie misses the mark is starting to look more and more accurate.

* Ben Affleck for Senate? This is apparently an actual possibility.

* Community's holiday sneak peek involves ADORABLE KITTENS.

If I don't make it back online before Christmas, hope everyone has a lovely holiday!

Well, I am back in the 21st century! As are my parents, actually, since they finally got their electricity back on Sunday night after I'd left. I guess it's kind of fortunate that the hurricane happened in October because, as my mom pointed out, "If the mayor wants to get reelected, he'll get the power back on before Tuesday!" And lo and behold, it worked.

Speaking of which - obviously, if you are American, go vote! Do it now. I'll wait.

*Jeopardy music*

Done? Good.

Anyway, as much fun as it was walking around the house with giant scented jar candles (my mom dug out as many as she could find, so it was like seasons colliding as honeydew melon, lavender, cinnamon, and Christmas cookie all mingled together) and making toast by holding slices of bread over an open flame, I am glad that my Laura Ingalls interlude was brief. Moving day was... unpleasant, as expected, but we all survived, so there's that. Also, my grandmother apparently told my mother that I am "growing up to be so beautiful," which - setting aside the fact that I haven't "grown" in over a decade - is a nice change from the usual "Have you gained weight?" and "Why don't you have a boyfriend?" comments that I usually get. \o/ I guess moving makes her sentimental? She was crying an awful lot...

Otherwise, there is not much happening with me. I do have recipes to post and picspams to finish. Best get on that. Anything exciting going on with y'all? I hear we're getting another nor'easter tomorrow (though this time without the bonus hurricane), so that should be fun.

...seriously, you haven't voted yet? What are you waiting for? DO IT!

Parents came to visit again this weekend (is it just me, or does it seem like they're ALWAYS here? I'm starting to think I run a B&B...). Fortunately, they can be exceptionally entertaining, which makes up for it:

Mom [talking about the epic project of cleaning out my grandmother's house]: You wouldn't believe the nice suits I found. There's this one, it's tweed-ish -
Me [giggling]: Tweedish?
Mom: Yeah... What? Tweed-ish. It's tweed.
Dad [also laughing]: Do you have a lisp?
Mom [incredibly confused]: No...
Me: Tweed is fabric. Tweedish are people from Twee- [laughing too hard to finish]
Dad: From Tweeden!
[Dad and I break down in uncontrollable laughter.]

(I think my favorite part is that my dad caught on without my even having to say it. Of course, once we explained it to my mom, she found it funny, too, and then all three of us laughed so hard we cried.)

Haha, well, I guess it's obvious that my new power cord arrived in the mail, and I clearly have priorities (POST AVENGERS ICONS!). Gotta have something to dull the pain of going back to work after a week-long vacation (more of a staycation, really, since much of it was spent at the pool).

( Read more... )

So that's what's going on with me. What's new with you?

My parents are visiting for 4th of July - my dad had off Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and my mom has an obscene number of vacation days, so they figured they'd spend a long weekend at the Hotel Laura. Of course, I could not take off from work (otherwise I'd be on vacation right now), so I am in the office being bored while my parents get to sit on my balcony and go in my pool. Something about this situation does not seem right... :\ At least I got to go to the pool yesterday. The water is SO WARM, so I guess this crazy heat wave has been good for something. I also got a lovely sunburn while I was outside, but it's already turning to tan (thank you Dad and your Mediterranean genes!).

Chelsea had quite an adventure, though. We've been sort of practicing with walking on a leash in my apartment, and we've managed to get to the point where Chelsea's not afraid of the leash anymore. (It was pretty funny, for the longest time she had no problem with the harness - I swear, you could dress that cat up in doll clothes and she'd sit there and let you - but as soon as I clipped the leash on it would freak her out.) So yesterday, while my parents and I were sitting out on the balcony, I took her outside and she sat in my lap for a few minutes, then tentatively explored a bit, before slinking back into the house. Which is an improvement over the last time I took her out, when I held her for about 15 seconds before she ran back inside. I really think she'd like the balcony once she gets used to it. She is, as they say on Animal Planet, a "tree dwelling" cat, so she likes being up high.

The other excitement in my condo was rearranging the furniture to make room for my new piano! Which should be delivered in the next week or so! YAY!