Work smarter, not harder

So, it turns out if you do all of your work during the week and don't have to make it up on the weekends, that leaves plenty of time for...naps.

(Naps which in no way help resetting the body clock from California, but still bring the delicious, wonderful, I-want-it-right-now sleeeeeeeep!)

Holy Moly, sometimes CA rocks

Other things that were good about this trip:
(My, my, aren't I just a ray of sunshine!!)

Direct flights. Two of 'em. Oh, baby!

Beautiful, fabulous, apparently-crazy-to-spend-time-in-the-car-for-me!-little-old-me! friends. With an adorable child. Which in no way stimulates my as-yet nonexistent babyhunger, but it's nice to see that they can be ridiculously, absurdly, cute In Person!

Bacon! (Only allowed on trips.)

A rediscovery of my love of putt-putt.

The PCH (Pacific Coastal Highway). Mountains hither, ocean yon, and you in between. Spectacular.

This is in no way indicative of California in particular, but the delivery of food direct to your hotel room was an awesome invention.

Good things about today

Current mood: sometimes I love California

A stroll along the pier.

Perfect, on the cusp of needing long sleeves, but remarkably comfortable and sunny weather.

Sea breezes in my hair.

I don't know where they get them and how they stay so consistent, but the Marriott hotel cookies are always just the right amount of chewy.

Ocean murmurs in my ears.

Green curry that had the missing, secret ingredient that some of the restaurants know and none of the Thai cook books will reveal.

Patio dining by the harbor.

A computer that works again (briefly) and easy access to the Interweb.

My toes in the sand.

I am a sheep

I'm not really embarrassed to quiz hotel staff about Internet access, good restaurants in the area, and workout possibilities, but I do feel pretty sheepish when I have to call down to the desk to ask:

Um, how do I turn on the shower?

Oh yeah, this is what it was like to be young

Currently: huh, I remember this

Turns out, I like to go out. Once I get my lazy (old and tired!) butt out of the house, I enjoy being out and about, seeing people, places, and interesting things. I don't think I was really meant to have the semi-hermit lifestyle I've been living...

(Or maybe it's just that the spring warmth is stirring up my cold blood. Either way, the answer is clear.)

Thoughts of the suddenly stranded

Setting: A fine spring morning, on the way to work

Eh? What's that sound? It's delightful; almost a silvery, trilling, thrilling...now it sounds like...metal filings? That's not nice. Is it getting louder?! WTF?! Hey wait, that's really awful. Metal nails-on-chalkboard squealing! It sounds like my car is trying to kill a shrieking banshee!! Kill it! Kill it! BAD CAR!! MAKE IT STOP!!!

*I pull over*

Ohdearlordthankyou it stopped.

Um, now what?

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I hate Shell! They are mean to the African villagers who live along their pipelines! This service station, however, is most conveniently located right where my car has stopped. Choices, choices...

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Don't call me ma'am. Or little lady.

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I wish I knew how cars worked. Or just my car. Why doesn't my manual have a section labeled "scary noises?"

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Their cars are going. Bitches. They don't understand!! I wish my car would go. Well, technically it does go, but only under protest. Sigh.

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Heh, now I want to get to work!

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Why is there a gazebo in the parking lot? It's cute, but...look at me, I'm 16 going on 17!!! I've never kissed anyone in a gazebo. Sadness. I like saying gazebo. Gazebo gazebo gazebo.

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Neat, a thrift store. Mental note.

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I wonder if I have time for a bowl of pho?

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My car looks funny without wheels!! I wish I had my camera. Wait, I do have my camera! But then the guy, who is actually doing work, might think I'm weird. Musn't have that, so never mind.

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Carlos O' Kelly's is a stupid name for a restaurant. It's Mexican, it's Irish, it's...why would you ever want to eat there?

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How much?

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Nuh-uh, I got my oil changed a few weeks ago, so there! $40 less makes it...

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There goes my refund. Ah, well, mobility is key.

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Nice car. No more screaming car. Why do you get an expensive trip to the spa? Off to work, now!

Sometimes I eat like one, too

Currently: mostly healthily full

Once in a while I attempt to eat like a real Asian person. Fish and greens and rice are what I'm supposed to eat, but only actually make on occasions few and far between. I've wanted to beef up (heh) on my fish-cooking techniques for quite some time. In part, I don't make fish very often because I hate the smell that lingers in the house; steaming, poaching, and baking, however, don't seem to create as much of the almost-stink. It's just the fish frying (oh, the frying) that I have to stay away from. I tried out a caramel fish recipe to recreate the dish that I love in Vietnamese restaurants. I've been on a kick of late to try and replicate some of my simplest restaurant favorites. If I can get them at home, I probably won't save any $ because I'll just order something else, but at least I'll expand my palate! The greens were a simple saute with garlic-ginger paste of random vegetables from the Asian grocery that I thought were Chinese broccoli, but, um...no.

(The fish came out decently well, but the mystery greens were over-gingerized.)

Even as I was attempting an Asian eating experiment, I also had to acknowledge the other ingredients laying around the kitchen, in the form of cheezy bread puffs. They are my Goldilocks food -the first time I made them, I added far too much (the amount required in the recipe) salt. The second time, I cut back too much and ended up with blandness. This time I finally split the salt at the correct percentage and came up with perfection.

(Chewy! Delicious! Cute! Really doesn't go with any of the food above!)

Perfect timing

Currently: bargain-hunter gleeful

Retail therapy can work wonders on any bad mood, but retail therapy, at half price, for things I actually want? Maybe not priceless, but pretty damn awesome!

(Game geek alert!)

Breakfast, Chinese style

Currently: full of the grease and the crunchy

When the name of something translates as "oil stick," you know it's got to be good.

(not my photo)

The crunchy texture hurts my tender baby mouth (Cap'n Crunch is, sadly, my enemy), but it's worth it for the fried, bready goodness that takes me back to the special occasion Chinatown breakfasts of my childhood. Read all about them here.

Lack of employment

Currently: In other words, ARGH!!!!

Ok, so if one has been out of work for a year, with "out of work," being only the kindest of ways of describing the state of "never really having been employed at all," how would one go about getting a job? Any job? Or would the year of joblessness indicate that there was never any intention of getting a job, as long as the parents were willing to float the basic survival needs (food, shelter, cell phone, games fit for the new computer, etc.)? Would more years of schooling really help? Would low-wage fast food employment be desirable over nursing the indignation of wasting a perfectly good BA at home while somewhat relentlessly (and fruitlessly) surfing Careerbuilder?

What about the parents? What could they do to speed along the re-emptying of their nest? Could they really just kick the (monstrously spoiled, lazy, feckless) child out? What's the quickest way to "mature" a should-really-be-but-not-quite-yet-post adolescent male?

This week in Highlights

Currently: taking, making the time to take it all in

I was much enamored with the lead article in the Washington Post Magazine last weekend. Nutshell: Joshua Bell, hottie and genius of the classical music world, busks at L'enfant metro stop one morning, to the approbation of a statistically insignificant few. Sadness. I wonder what I would have done in a similar situation. The same situation would have never happened to me, as I never get up that early and my work schedule is flexible and doesn't require much of a commute. A lot of people have been writing in to Gene, saying that they were moved to tears and reflection on their own (and American, particularly Washingtonian, society in general) "can't stop, no time, musn't be distracted by the roses" mentality. As someone who has been described many times as "childlike," knowing myself to be eminently distractable, and noting that music (and the shiny!) attracts me like not much else, I want to think that I would have been one of the few, not necessarily enlightened, but appreciative folks who stopped to add a moment of extrinsic beauty to my life. (Or maybe I would have recognized him, as I used to Sigh! over him with the string section girls back in my orchestra days and I've seen/heard him play several times.) I do think I'm a person that allows herself to find small joys and transcendent moments in ordinary living - I just haven't been doing much of it lately. While the article did make me pause and contemplate my own, somewhat-drab-if-I-don't-actively-prevent-it, life, I wasn't exactly inspired to run for the hills to embrace the sound of nature's music (well, mostly because of the pollen) so much as resolve to engage in more of the art forms I've laid by the wayside in favor of lounging in front of the almighty (even though cableless!) TV. Baby steps, right? For example, I am kicking myself hard for looking away from the Library of Congress concert schedule for just one second and missing his free concert.

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I want to eat here. I am somewhat scared of being underwater, but that looks amazing - enough to risk being trapped and perhaps eaten by sharks.

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This is a mite tedious, but very, very funny. I can't wait until the iPhone is unleashed!

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The first season of Friday Night Lights is over. I say first because, while it hasn't yet been announced as renewed, no one in upper management (even at NBC) who has actually seen the show could ever think of canceling it - it's just too good. I pretty much hate football, didn't care for the movie (and this is back in the days where I sort of - for shame!- liked Da Beek), and haven't read the book, but the series has been sheer perfection for portraying small town Americana. They pack so much believable and enjoyable character development for a whole host of archetypal characters that they've raised cinematic, serialized television to a whole new level. If I can take the shaky, hand-held camera work that brings so much immediacy and intimacy to the scenes, anyone can. Sure it's cheezy; it can be predictable; but it's beautiful. All the episodes are up online here. Go watch!!!!

So I started by saying I want to watch less TV, then pimped out more TV, but I didn't find the two positions to be contradictory. Anything that makes you laugh, cry, and think - about it, about your own life, about others, about the world at large- enriches life. I won't argue about whether something is "art;" (except feces! on canvas! is NOT art!) I just know that I want to have more enriching (in my mind, artful) experiences in my life than I currently do.

(Also, the season is nearly over, so I'm almost safe from the predation and joys of network TV. Summer is a great time for art!)

(Oh, and Happy Friday the 13th!!! Mwahahahahaha.)

Taxes, not yay

Current mood: erm, that's not relief you're feeling anymore...

Why is it that momentary happiness must be rewarded by the gods with a swift kick to the knee?

All I can say: H&R Block is EVIL.

Far less refund for me :(

(Also? Why can't I just leave well enough alone? In addition: next year file early, stupid. So there is time for the yelling. And 4 months of interest.)

Taxes, yay!

Currently: relieved to check that chore off the list

I found out that the VA Department of Taxation, while almost excruciatingly slow, is steady. (A pleasant surprise and yet sad, that any measure of competence in a government agency makes me surprised, happy, and grateful.) I asked a fairly involved question of their online service center and a few days later, the answer to my problem arrived! Also, I noted an online filing system for state tax returns that appears to be interview-based, much like the other tax-prep products that are available. If I hadn't already overpaid to have them filed for me, I would try to file my return directly with the state. Next year!!! After all, a penny saved...

Happy Easter

Current mood: Bye, bye, Lent!

Once more, with feeling

Currently: abashed

If I cancelled at the last minute and rescheduled the same event three different times, would you laugh derisively at me when I tried to schedule the fourth attempt? Would you even hear me out?

I am girding my loins for some judicious mocking.

Ode to snacktime

Oh day, which once was bad

making me very sad

how do I cope?


Should I surf funny sites?

Or hold on till the night?

Wait, pudding to the reeeeeeesscue!

Chocolate, smooth and sweet.

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So, I've rediscovered the joys of pudding...

Red hot

Some days, I wear my glasses because I'm going for the sexy librarian look. Or the teen movie, stereotypically "ugly" girl who just has to whip off her glasses and shake out her long, luxurious mane (previously confined to a prim bun) to be "hott," look.

Haha, just kidding - I wish. I usually wear my glasses when I am too lazy and tired to put in my contacts.

Or when my contacts kick and scream and refuse to go into my eyes.

Or when my eyes bitch and moan about "things that touch! Make it stop!! Aeiiiiiii!!!"

Contacts are like kids! Or pets!

Anyway, today was an emblematic spring day; i.e., the kind of allergy-filled day in which my eyes were too red and swollen and itchy to even contemplate dealing with contacts. I gamely put on glasses, even though my watering eyes were clouding my vision all day. I think I infected several people at work with empathetic itching by my inadvertently baleful, weaselly glare. I'm going to (HA! already) have a lot of eye area wrinkles, because I've been vigorously rubbing that most delicate skin every spring and fall since I was a kid, trying hard not to claw my eyes out :(

Yay, spring?? [half-hearted fist pump]

In defense of Exasperated with government

Currently: scornful

Now, I'm more of a liberal than a libertarian (this told me so), so I favor governmental controls for certain things (e.g., protection of property, civil freedoms, public health, and the environment). However, there are lots and lots of government functions, programs, and services that I think should go away. NOW.

For example:

This is over $1100 worth of books from the government printing office (GPO).

(please note my book-placement artistry - and my beloved rainbow slinky!)

It took over a month of back and forth with communications to get them to send the darned things, but then they sent the wrong ones! It only took two more weeks for GPO to ship the volumes we'd actually ordered, and then they forgot to include the shipping label so I could return the incorrect volumes. Also, pause a moment to take in the [HIDEOUS!] binding color. Kinko's could have processed my order in a fraction of the time with eye-pleasing bindings that wouldn't fall apart as soon as I cracked open a book. And yet this is the only place I can get most government publications!! And we needed these books (preferably on time) to perform contracting work for the government!!!

[Sigh.]