Believe it or not, I saw that movie for the first time today. I know, I know, I'm behind.

Haven't seen too many Westerns yet-- I don't remember what the first one I ever saw was, but it had John Wayne in it. The scene was him coming up to this woman's house (I think she was a widow) and she was of course wary of a strange guy on her property, and he looked her over and sneered, "Don't flatter yourself." At which point I delivered a ten-minute lecture to my father about exactly how much of a sleaze the supposed 'hero' of the movie was and then left the room.

The remake of 3:10 to Yuma convinced me that no, not all Westerns are necessarily Like That. So today Chris and I borrowed A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly. We rented High Plains Drifter, which seemed to be the next part in the series. Loved the first three, but then the fourth one opened with Female Stereotype #42 saying nasty things to the Eastwood character until he snaps that she needs to be taught a lesson, and so he drags her into a barn and rapes her while this creepy guy from town watches and grins (of course, by the end of it she's stopped cursing at him and struggling, because we all know that even when women say no, they really want it!).

Chris: *turning off DVD* "Soooo, what do we want to watch instead?"

I check imdb so I can make sure to never ever rent anything else that guy did the screenplay for, and one of the first comments I saw about the movie was, "Well I don't know why people are calling it rape, she was obviously looking for attention and--"

Me: "Self, you cannot psychically make people explode through the computer. Unfortunately."

So now we're watching Pinky and the Brain, because it's unlikely to raise my blood pressure and Kaylee likes dancing to the theme song.

In other news-- dinner was chicken with tomatoes and feta cheese, and lunch yesterday was homemade tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches (white cheddar and bacon). I think I like this whole learning-to-cook thing. :-)

Was productive in an entirely different way today-- I made lunch!

(yes, for me this is a major breakthrough)

Fiddled with a recipe I found online, and made some spicy turkey with penne pasta in a cream sauce. Came out really good, which is fortunate, because the recipe made a lot.

Baking is still my thing, but I'm finding out that I like cooking, as long as it's not just for me. If it's for me, I just grab Pop Tarts. :-)

A peanut butter and honey sandwich does count as a healthy lunch, right?

*whistles innocently and skips off*

I just got to try out my container of violet luster dust and I am in love with the stuff. Ashley, Amanda, when you guys come down we're going to Lori's to buy every neon color they have so we can make shimmery hippie cupcakes. :-)

I think the house is finally something close to clean. All that will end by tomorrow morning, but hey.

Over the past couple of weeks I've gone on a bit of a baking frenzy. My little 'someday' hope is to have a cupcake bakery, and I've been practicing. Made mocha chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese icing (the family favorite by far); devil's food cupcakes with honey icing (I worked on creating that myself, and genius me forgot that honey doesn't set. Whoopsie); chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter icing, and I'm going to be making cupcakes for a friend's wedding at the end of the month. :-) Pictures of my experiments will hopefully be up on my website soon.

Payday was yesterday, and for once it didn't all disappear in a flurry of medical bills! I am pleased. Must work on character portrait descriptions now. Heh.

Also, on a less-cheery note, this is but one of the many, many reasons why I'll be referring to the mainstream media as "Talking Head Assholes" from now on.

Okay, so since there's quite a bit of flooding around the area, Chris and I decided that going out of town for an anniversary dinner would be a bad idea. Went through some recipe books, I decided to make some cookies. New recipe. Mixed together all the ingredients, and it was supposed to make a roll-out dough, but it was still a bit runny. Put some more flour in. Basically no change.

So Chris stirred while I double-checked the recipe. I put more flour in, and when it still didn't work I shook my head. "There's gotta be three cups in there now instead of just two. I swear, I have never seen flour act like this."

The light dawned.

We both looked at each other, and he tasted the 'flour' and started laughing. Yep, yours truly had grabbed the powdered sugar. Oy.

Anyway, speaking of the flooding, last night we went driving around in the country to see what roads were washed out, etc. And when we were driving down a narrow road, this white blur dropped down out of a tree and right in front of the passenger side tire. We hit an owl going about 30 mph. Chris looked at it-- basically just a wing sticking up-- and thought it was dead, so we reluctantly drove on.

Got to a flooded road, turned around . . . and the owl is sitting in the road, staring at us, looking completely dazed. I hear dogs barking nearby and considering that and the water rising in the ditch-- animal rescue time. So Chris takes my coat and wraps it around the owl, and I hold it on the way back to town, talking to it. It was actually pretty calm, except for a few mad scrambling fits.

"Umm . . . these claws can't tear through the coat, can they?"
"They definitely can."
"Ohhh great. Good owl. Don't do that anymore, k?"

We managed to get it home into our garage. When Chris unwrapped the coat, the owl took a step or two and then flew around a little bit, landing up near the roof and just tracking us wherever we went. We're both seriously surprised he was alive, let alone flying.

But the important thing is-- we got pictures. :-)

( See the unkillable owl! )

ETA: We left the garage door open all night, just in case. When we got up in the morning and went to check on him, he'd flown away. :-)

To say that I don't cook would be a huge understatement. Baking is all well and good-- I love making cookies and brownies and experimenting with candy recipes. Give me a family reunion or a party and I'll stay up half the night going through recipe books and plotting. But normal 'okay, time for dinner' cooking? I'm fixing macaroni and cheese or popping in a microwave dinner.

Which wasn't particularly healthy before and I knew that. I just have zip in the way of willpower; I'll change my diet for one or two days if I start feeling woozy and then I'll get caught up in writing or reading or cleaning and be right back to 'oh look, Pop Tarts'.

Chris and I are both making some lifestyle changes because of the pregnancy-- his main one being trying to quit smoking, and mine being trying to overcome my laziness when it comes to food.

Fortunately Chris likes to cook, so that helps quite a bit. And on our last trip to the grocery store, we stayed away from the candy/cookies and chips aisles, and bought a lot of fruits and vegetables; I'm going to start trying to eat salads (Ashley, pick yourself up off the floor). Chris and I are also talking about making up daily menus, seeing if that helps.

Edy's Thin Mint Cookie ice cream is officially one of the best things ever. Which means, of course, that it's a limited edition. Ah well. I'm already hooked, so it's clearly time to stock up and then eat all of it within a week.

If I buzz around like a hummingbird on crack over the next few days, now you all know why.

At least the hyperactivity helps make me productive. Finished a submission for the latest issue of Unlined. Have a story in mind for the new novel Kath and I are writing; think I can get it done tomorrow afternoon. Or maybe tonight if I stay up late enough, which I really shouldn't because I have work in the morning, but we'll see.

We visited the rental store (yet again) this afternoon, and I picked up some odd little horror movie called Devour solely because Jensen Ackles is in it. I've gone fangirl again. I don't even want to know how many guys are in my mental harem by now. A lot.

Brrr. If I have to deal with weather like this, I'd rather be cold at the Sundance Film Festival (largely because I want to see Slipstream immediately if not sooner).

Anyway, the weekend was fun. Went to visit Ashley in El Dorado, and I met her roommate Amanda (she of the cool jewelry and eerily accurate tarot readings). We went to Wichita on Saturday to check out Ashley's job at KWCH, and by the time we left the station, it was snowing heavily. Which wouldn't really have been a problem, except for the fact that some people didn't realize they couldn't go 65 anymore.

The heart attack of the day came when a truck on the other side of the median took a turn waaay too fast and went off the road and into the grass, coming right at us. Very, very fortunately, our side of the ditch was a bit too steep for him to maintain speed. Immediately afterwards:

Ashley: "Well."
Me: "Yeah."
Ashley: "You awake back there now, Amanda?"
Amanda: "Yep."
Ashley: "Who votes we should just stay home tonight?"

We had been planning to go to a dance club, but after that, we figured that hiding out in the apartment until things got a bit saner sounded like a good plan. After dad heard about it, he said, "What did I tell you about excitement being overrated?" I told him I still thought it was an inaccurate statement-- excitement like 'yay! I'm getting published' would be just fine. 'Oh god oh god we're all gonna die' excitement is the type I can do without.

On the way back to El Dorado we saw a car with its hood up off in the ditch-- unlike several others we'd seen like that, no police were around, and no one was trying to push the car out, either. So Ashley tried to stop, but she was too close and the car just skidded. So we went a bit further until we found a place to turn around, and then went back. Turns out the guy did have a cell phone, so he'd called for help and everything was fine. At least, until Ashley tried to get back out onto the road and discovered that her car was stuck, too. So the couple we'd stopped to help had to push us out. ;-)

We also watched Serenity, and made a belated-birthday cake for Devin. (Ashley bought a new airbrush and was dying to try it out). It's a heart-shaped cake with black icing and little pink candies on it, with "REDRUM" written in the center. *s* Pictures will be posted as soon as Ashley sends them to me.

And that's about it. Until next time...

Chris and I are probably going to stay up until 3 or so watching M*A*S*H (we just got the fourth season on DVD). Wild and crazy, that's us. ;-) What are you going to do?

The M*A*S*H marathon will have to wait until Chris gets home, though, he has to work until 10:00. In the meantime, I'll write, or go through my music collection and make some mixed CDs. Dunno yet.

We actually have a nice amount of spare money for once-- hooray Christmas presents-- and that of course means character portraits. *plots*

I should post something deep and meaningful, but instead I'm just going to squee over the fact that when I was looking through a Valentine's Day aisle, I found raspberry Hershey's Kisses. Candycandycandy.

Happy New Year, everybody. :-)

Having such a good day. Went over to St. Paul yesterday evening to visit Kevin and Lisa, and ended up watching a George Carlin DVD, talking, and generally laughing ourselves silly until one in the morning.

Then today when Chris and I got home, I opened the mailbox and found a package from Kath-- Lake Champlain chocolate bars, maple candy (yay for feeding my addictions) and an absolutely lovely dichroic glass necklace. Pictures will be posted soon.

Hope you're all having a great time! :-)

This is why I love Charm City Cakes.

You have no idea how tempted I am to order one of those for my next birthday. :-D

Good weekend in El Dorado/Wichita-- bought several wok/stir-fry cookbooks for Chris (yay for used bookstores) and later today we're going to see Pirates of the Caribbean 2. :-)

Here's another thing that got done this weekend--

A Waldorf Astoria Red Velvet Cake made from Ashley's (rosevaughn) grandmother's recipe. It has cream cheese frosting, and I made the candies for it (it's for her dad's birthday today).

( Read more... )

Going to Kansas City for the weekend. Need to remember to look up a few restaurants to try out.

Found the box set of Earth 2 on Sunday. Haven't watched it yet, but they did have preview episodes of Sliders, and a show called Cleopatra 2525. I knew I liked Sliders, so we watched the second one . . . oh man. The level of cheese cannot be adequately explained with mere words. But we were about two minutes in and Chris goes, "Isn't that Zoe?" Me-- "Ohmygod, it is!"

These honey-butter pretz/pocky things are the best ever. Ashley, I blame you for getting me addicted to this stuff.

Planning to get another chapter of my alternate-universe ghost novel done this afternoon. I really do need to name this thing.

Sunburn is getting slightly better. I actually have a little bit of a tan, amazingly enough. My shoulder freckles also multiplied by about twenty-two million. Freaking sun.

I miss LOST. I also miss Shannon. *throws things at the writers*

So, the Arts and Crafts Fair was yesterday. I spent Thursday and Friday buying more supplies and baking for hours. Set up the tent in the midst of some rain, but then it cleared up and turned into a nice day until about 2:30. I had my books priced at 16 dollars each, both for thirty dollars.

Not that it mattered, since nobody bought any. For all that work-- and missing about eighty dollars in pay at my actual job for taking two days off-- I made twelve dollars and fifty cents.

Next year I doubt I'm going to bother.

Saturday is the Arts and Crafts Fair, so I'm going to spend most of today and tomorrow baking sugar cookies; icing said cookies; making lollipops; baking peanut butter cookies; and making cream cheese mints. I'll see what I can do about posting pictures. (what with pictures of the kittens, my purple-streaked hair, and the Fair, this is going to be a graphics-intense journal soon) :-)

Listening to "Oh What a Night" at way too high a volume helps with bad moods, I've found. At least somewhat. That and finding a new icon. Heh.

Now all I need is either 1) chocolate, or 2) a movie with a cute guy in it, and I should be okay for the rest of the day.

You know what? After you knock a half-full glass of milk over onto the carpet next to your chair is not a good time to discover you're out of paper towels.

And the cat is now licking the carpet.

I give up.

Because, looking around the kitchen, I have made this inventory of our food:

Rice
Ritz crackers
Pop-tarts
Peanut butter
Ramen noodles
Cheez-its

...Yeah. Hurry up, Friday. :-)