I never liked a girl well enough to give her 12 sharp knives.

I'm currently making Spiced Pumpkin Cheesecake With Gingerbread Crust from Fine Cooking that Veloute sent me. She made it in Vermont and goddamn if it wasn't light and delectable. I hope I make it just like hers, as D will be expecting it to be just like that! Rob is also a huge pumpkin cheesecake fan, so the pressure's on.



You know what I learned this holiday season? Black Friday does not mean what I thought it meant. As an EX-RETAIL SLAVE, I really just sort of thought of it as a doomsday reference. Seriously. Probably even before I knew the hells of working retail. But it's called that because it's traditionally the day of the year the companies go into the black and out of the red, making a profit. So it's a good thing. Supposedly. (And really, after reading Wiki's definition, they seem to suggest I might have been more right than the voice on the radio.)

No matter how irritated I was to land the bitch shift at work and have to close the day after Thanksgiving, only to open the next morning, I did take a moment around 10pm to reflect on the fact that Express was just closing their doors--they were, at that moment, taking a look around at the wreck of a store before them as they fought back the tears. And I felt so much better. And I got paid more to be home at a decent hour.

Plus I was in there last weekend doing a little xmas shopping for the husband and god did their shit suck. Infact, my sister and dad and I were just mocking some of their mailers. The men in their ads looked almost more awkward and pained than the poor fucks who model the Thom Browne Collection (these are new ones, if you saw the old ones).

I did not find what I was looking for at that store. (Really warm bunchy in-the-house socks--so thick you couldn't wear them with shoes if you wanted. It occurred to me as I wandered the mall that no matter which store I chose, I would still be in Texas and would therefore still be in an unlikely place to find such a thing).

Also, for the record, Target has these bitchin' gold lights and I was thrilled to finally know what to do with the front of the house. Simple. Different. Elegant. And now suddenly both the stores in Addison and Arlington are totally out, no shelf talkers or anything--just a taunting display. It's clearly going to be The Thing To Do This Year and I totally called it first. So if you see a house decked out in simple gold lights, egg it for me won't you, as that's what Christmas is all about.

I went with Plan B, these cool icicle lights that fade from blue to clear. Even if the house down the street already does a mega-blue theme. We're not doing mega, for one thing.

My cream cheese may be workable finally.

Nine million terrorists in the world and I gotta kill one with feet smaller than my sister.

Christmas Movie Recommendation #1 & 2: Die Hard I and II

This video is so wrong and funny all at once. Sometimes, apparently, there is just too much out there you wish you didn't know about. You must watch it all, for the great chorus halfway through and for the nice ending. I am, uh, so glad to know there is a whole song out there...

(And yes, I have three posts already for today, in case you're wondering I'm supposed to be doing the January trivia for the Studio...can't you tell I'm workin' here??)

I thrill when I drill a bicuspid..

Goddamn the grocery store. As I am no longer a slave to the retail world, I don't really mind Christmas music, I even kind of like some of it. But does "Little St. Nick" really have to be the last thing I hear on my way out? That must be the stupidest Christmas song ever. What a piece of shit.

Why can't they play this? Nothing says "Merry Christmas" like Paul Simon and Steve Martin...

I'm Linda Mason.

First, a moment of silence for my very trusty, very determined little Divx DVD player. Does anyone remember these things? First of all, I never bought into the whole Divx idea, but it was a lot cheaper than the other brands at the time (1997? 1998?) so I figured I didn't need that feature. Better yet, when Divx died out, I got a $200 rebate and boy that was cool.

I wish I had done this sooner, actually, but I upgraded to an HD-compatible player yesterday, a very sleek and sexy black Toshiba for $73. No shit. I even bought the HDMI cable (as our HDTV has an HDMI outlet), but so far it seems to be working off the component cables. I find this vaguely frustrating, but it's not essential at the moment. The picture is still amazing. I'll make my friend J look at it later.

Best of all? I go to put in Streets of Fire, my go-to for testing DVDs, and lo and behold. Lord have mercy. Those old DVDs that appear to have a box around them? (As if the TV is reading it as 1:33 and then making it anamorphic so the whole image has a black box?) No more. Which is WEIRD cause I thought that was something to do with the DVD itself (well, it still is) and not something the DVD could fix. Perhaps because the player is a upconverter? I'm learning.

But what a BAD ASS PLAYER.

Not that I have all that much money to throw around, especially since a little over a week ago I totally splurged and bought myself...

A new Canon PowerShot! It's just a li'l point and shoot but it's very cool. I'm not sure about the shake on it, but Alex says she's been impressed with hers. I haven't used it much yet...a combination of my forgetting I have it and my not having anything thrilling to shoot. The latter never stopped me before:



Me at Gloria's, the new location here in Arlington. I fucking LOVE this place. I can go for happy hour and they have this bitchin' bean dip and queso (two separate things, yes, located behind the drink) and cheap-o margaritas. So nice.



The view from my chair (notice no one is here at five in the afternoon, but again, that never stopped me either...and it IS five in the afternoon, thank you very much). This is the Studio Movie Grill, where my friend J works. He snagged my fajita leftovers.



The super yummy sweet potato rolls. The pretzel salt totally makes them. I could eat these all day.

I will try to remember to use my new toy more! Our friends Rob and Katie are going to come out this weekend (and presumably bring the Wii with Guitar Hero--**drool**) so I'll see if I can take some entertaining shots...

Thigh man. Mr. K was a hellraiser.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Thanksgiving was very nice. We had lots of yummy non-traditional food and hopefully if I can get to my camera later I can plug in my new drive and upload right off my little SD card! So I got a new point and shoot for myself...that one I had from 1999 just wasn't cutting it anymore. I would have loved to have gotten a real digital camera but the difference in price was a wee much.

And I can't get up at the moment because there is a warm black cat in my lap who refuses to get out. I dumped him out four times before I gave up. I turned the heat on for the first time this morning, so I don't know what his problem is.

Oh, and it actually snowed here on Thanksgiving Day! No accumulation, needless to say, but big honkin' flakes of snow! And it's currently very cold and very wet outside. Good day to polish off the final season of The West Wing if I were to get my lazy ass out to Movie Trading Co.

Did get through first half of Weeds, Season 2 last night. It continues to be good and occasionally shocking.

I love it when I can't remember if I've posted videos or not. But this is a nice upper Vel sent me a while back...

It's not right for a woman to read. Soon she starts getting *ideas*, and *thinking*...

My dad sent me three commercials, great stuff.

Australia obviously has better commercials than we do.



And a couple nice beer ads...

Our speedometer has melted and as a result it's very hard to see with any degree of accuracy exactly how fast we were going.

Alex sent this from Cute Overload...hysterical...


http://view.break.com/388549 - Watch more free videos

I think adults are just children who owe money.

I was going to see Sleuth tonight, as D is working and I need to catch up on my theatre movies. Alas, I chose not to. Well, it was all the way in downtown Dallas and my work day was really stupid.



Usually that would be a fine excuse to see a movie but considering the drive and the fact that it didn't even start til 9:45...I'm fairly prone to inaction, really.

And today was wicked stupid at work. I honestly don't know how many times I (inaudibly) said, "You fuckin' people," to myself. A lot. I lost count.

As I was getting ready to leave for the evening, a co-worker asked if I was going home for the night. "Yes," I said, "I'm going home to poke my eyes out." I think she was having a similar evening.

Time to go call Emily, as it's my turn to call back and it has been ages. She moved to San Francisco a few months ago, a city long at the top of my list to visit. She just can't move til I visit!

A frying pan. I'd have probably thought about that next.

And the photos continue...



Here we are at Spider House. I LOVE this place. Coffee, beer, hard liquor, pie, sandwiches, whatever. And a crazy backyard full of swings and bizarre sculpture. Note the head probably did not originate on this statue...



Gag. Girl very aware of having her picture taken, tries to look normal.



County Line, great place to sit for the afternoon. Those are not our beer glasses in the foreground. There always seem to be glasses left out from the night before when we go for lunch...



Breakfast at El Sol y La Luna. Always so fucking good.



Don't bring your evil here.

Warping back to June, Drew and I visited the Fort Worth Water Gardens, which I had not seen since being a wee child. They were actually closed for about two years after a family of four drowned in the main exhibit.

What you cannot see in these photos is how ridiculously hot it was that day. It was insane. We then went to Joe T. Garcia's for lunch. That place is, based on my experience there, the most goddamn overrated place to eat in North Texas.



Pretty.



Drew at the edge of the main pool.



This is the main exhibit, and four people were killed, each as one went in after the other trying to rescue the previous people, but the suction kept them down and well, that was that.



See? Not lying. And to the left of this memorial are two more adults' names from the 90s. It was very bizarre, I have no idea what happened to them.



Touching the wall is nice, especially on hot-ass days like this one, hard not to smush your face against the wall.

Then it was off to the Fort Worth Stock Yards (where I had never been before in all my years of living here).



Very Texas, Drew and I had Blue Bell ice cream and Dublin Dr. Peppers. Yum.



Behold. The Stock Yards.



Twice a day they move the longhorns back and forth. It's just as exciting as you might expect.



But they DO have some pretty impressive horns, I must say.



Then it was off to Billy Bob's, the honky tonk. This was the place that has rodeos every weekend and a dance floor whose mirrorball is a rhinestone-encrusted saddle. So awful it was great. Drew and I played several games of pool and had far too much beer, all for less than $20, what a great afternoon.



Looking at it now, it seems the $2.50 charge is for watching the rodeo, but at the time all the signs seemed to suggest that you could RIDE a real bull for $2.50. I just don't know. It's not appealing in either case, but the latter is totally scary.

Aww, I wish I were an ant. Awww, they're so shiny.

HAPPY 400 TO ME! WOO WOO!

Enjoy some random pictures. Bless Cinema Mark and my completely legal Photoshop CS2. Curse Arlington Camera for insisting that it's COMPLETELY NORMAL for them to send both our slide *AND* C41 film to uber-expensive BWC to process and burn a CD. They actually asked D, "Did you REQUEST we do it here?" Are you serious? I BROUGHT IT HERE. BWC is a specialty lab that does true B&W and slide processing that Arlington Camera cannot do. C41 film and burning CDs is something ANY lab can do, so instead of admiting their mistake (which the woman who initially rang him up sort of did) and providing good customer service, they acted like you had to specify you did NOT want the exorbitantly priced option. They did price it down a little, but it ended up still being on the outrageous side.

I could have purchased sex for less.

And having worked across town at another pro-lab, I assure you the shit the manager fed my husband is a CROCK. I just won't be frequenting or recommending them anymore.

So enjoy these pictures, in no order either logical or chronological. They range from our Daily Show trip (Jon made me promise not to post the tequila pics, sorry) to Drew's June visit here, to visiting Veloute in Vermont, to the hot new tile that's goin' down in the main bathroom.



I think this was apple pie. I was trying. It ended up being a HEAPING PIE. But much to the chagrin of my husband and oldest sister, I am just not a fan of apple pie. It looks and smells faboo, but just not my thang.



Drew's last day here in June, not long before taking him to the airport. It was Margarita Wednesday at El Arroyo, so away we went.



They're like, $2. No really. That thing is TWO DOLLARS. Yum.



D paid a quarter for this doll at the grocery store because she has a chunk taken out of her face and it made him laugh that they were trying to sell it. On one of my days off, the gummi bears wanted to divide and conquer.



We really like going to Battery Park when we go to NYC, apparently. It's just a really nice place to smell the ocean and relax. Also, I took WAY too many pictures of the seagulls I was feeding. That seems to be something you don't ever learn to stop doing.



Fiona, D, and Sophia. SO CUTE.



Vel: "Do you remember D?"

Fiona: "No."

(pause)

Fiona (to D): Your hair is different.



Veloute models the very delicious apple cider from Cold Hollow Cider Mill. I may not be much of an apple pie girl but this cider was amazing.



Vel and D posing. Hee hee.



I was envious of the adoration Sophia heaped upon D.



The day we left, getting ready for Halloween festivities at the Shelburne Museum in Burlington. This made me giggle.



And for some good juxtaposition, we're off to the Museum of Sex in NYC!



Yes, this is on the street! Wide open! Sooooooooooo much fun. I just love the vulgarity of the store-front, we'd NEVER have something like this here. Very raunchy, good times.

I was, in all honesty, really blown away by a photography exhibit called Intimate Encounters: Disability and Sexuality. It was a fantastic project and a truly engaging exhibit.



I am one of a billion to take this picture.



I'm just not clear on where you're supposed to sit the Doritos.



Plushies, furries, this is merely the tip of the fetish iceberg. They had shit I'd never even heard of. There is a whole fetish for SITTING ON CAKES. Really.



I wasn't kidding about that tile.

More pics to come.....

He's finally matched his meet. You really licked his ass.

Have I mentioned how I'm wetting myself in anticipation of this movie? I stole this from Hot Lemon's blog...



I think I spend too much time on Netfux. I was playing around on amazon and found myself hovering the mouse over the titles of albums or movies and expecting little blurb boxes to pop up and tell me about the item. It never happened.

Anyone living at the Denton house tomorrow is welcome to read I Am America (And So Can You!), as I seem to have bought a Happy Daylight Savings Time To Me present...it wasn't anything special but it definitely had some good chuckles, particularly the chapters on homosexuality and immigration. (I had two gift cards left over from Barnes & Noble, so Colbert was mine for about nine bucks, can't beat it).

I'm gonna eat your brains and gain your knowledge.

This made me laugh in a couple places, particularly the end...

There's the aristocracy, upper class, middle class, working class, dumb animals, waiters, creeping things, people who eat packet soup, then you.

So my mother-in-law got me (uh, us, ahem) a $25 gift card for Central Market for our anniversary. This is awesome and terrible--just enough to get me in trouble, thinking I have carte blanche to get something outrageous I wouldn't normally get.



Sure enough, I'm leafing through my Fine Cookings this morning and find a great menu for a "Christmas" spread of a succulent roast beef with some neat-o appetizers I've been dying to try. The first is an oyster dish. I really have been wanting to give oysters a go even though I really don't suspect I'd be a huge fan. This is followed by this weird-ass poached-egg-pasta-caviar dish. Enough said, I'm there. WEIRD.

And Plan B? Well, in that case I'm buying some prime filet mignons and making my own truffle butter sauce. Cause I know they have white and black truffle oil there. *salivates*

So I FUCKING FINALLY FIND the caviar (at the deli of all places) and the salmon roe is $8 an oz...who buys this?...and then it starts. At $56 for what one supposes is the actual caviar. I was expecting more like $40, so I'm already hesitant. And there is no beluga. The very cool man who knows his caviar explains to me how it has been unavailable since last year when the government made it an illegal import and Russia controls it (editor's note: oh, look at that, it's endangered...) it's all very exciting and forbidden and expensive sounding, really. But I just do not have the stones or alcohol in me at that point to make such an investment, especially not knowing which caviar would best replace the recipe's preferred beluga. As a pleb, I don't know dick about caviar, there, I said it.



Oh, baby, baby. (I'll probably hate it).

But even better? Beside the caviar display...there it is. TRUFFLE BUTTER. I nearly buttered my skirt. Ten bucks.

The caviar experiment shall go on the back burner (ha ha) and at the moment I'm baking up a couple Fine Cooking recipes...roasted butternut squash and caramelized onions casserole, glazed carrots, and the potato rolls recipe I attempted a month ago...at the time it was only moderately successful, not puffing up as outrageously the second time as it did for my mother. Seriously--my mom makes them once and they look gorgeous--like nauseatingly picture perfect--and make the house smell like heaven and orgasms (wait, is that appetizing?) and then they do an eighth of this when I make them. The worst is that it seems like a fairly easy recipe.

Pastry Chef Vel suggested I'd let it sit out too long the second rise. This time? This time has been a bit of a fuck-up. I put in a tablespoon of yeast rather than the teaspoon the recipe suggests. I dumped the potato-water in lieu of regular water and went from there. Everything has been ok but the second rise has seen nearly zero action in the rising department.

What. The. Fuck.

This is not a difficult recipe. I am really not a master of precision and detail--a horrendous baker I would make, I know.

Anyhoo.

The onions smell fantabulous. Onions on the stove are one of the few smells that send me into pure rapture--best kitchen smell ever.

Balls, the ipod just died. Time to put the TV on and catch up on some piffle TV while I cook.



Here's hoping there's no writers strike at midnight...what's a girl to do without her Stewart/Colbert fix at night??

Kale was not a good idea.

I totally forgot to gush and swoon about one of the best things to happen this week.



Well, more accurately, perhaps the next photo will explain. (Though an avid fan, hmmmm, I guess I missed the unedited menage-a-trois shower scene, perhaps it will be in the extras...?)



It's understandable I forgot, I mean, I haven't even mentioned the yumminess of Vermont (the FOOD, the adorable NIECES.....the coolest fireplace EVER that actually warms the room...it's always so nice there, as Veloute & Douglas have the nicest house in such a gorgeous locale and two of the neatest daughters ever. Fiona is scary smart, as our dad puts it (seriously, I'm pretty sure most of the conversations we had were way above that of a normal five year old, including the "You're mocking me!" accusation) and Sophia has this power of pure cuteness like I've never seen. I would have given her anything, so here's hoping she remains ignorant of her powers as long as humanly possible.

Nor did I mention the good times of Austin, hitting the usual haunts in a quickie couple-day anniversary get-away (one year, woo hoo!), County Line, Scholz Garten, Spider House...just very low key and not too expensive this time...we even opted for a cheap motel instead of the usual Austin Motel. BIG MISTAKE. You know that roach story in Creepshow? It only became apparent to me how bad it was while we were stalling to leave on the last day, Halloween, watching this E! show about the "real story" behind The Exorcist (I was totally not watching some Angelina Jolie expose before that), when one you-know-what appeared in my empty truffle paper on the table next to me (I heard the paper r u s t l e) and D saw two more behind the fridge. And one ran across the alarm clock, maybe it was the same one from the paper, but who the fuck was going to stop and check?

So fuck the "real story" behind The Exorcist, I was out of there.

But it was so nice to have the vacation break.

And long story short, I am totally stoked to see the WHOLE ENTIRE SET OF TWIN PEAKS OUT!!! And fuck yes it has the actual pilot that aired, not that shitty-ass "European version" that was overly long and gave away everything.

All my years and years of waiting, salivating, whining and bitching...it is here! And I never did purchase the prior releases, as they were incomplete and my VHS set was good enough for the time being. I probably waited less time before having sex than before hastily purchasing this (incomplete) series on DVD. Priorities, man.

Just kidding, mom and dad.

But seriously, I usually buy these DVDs and then get screwed over by the better edition that comes out a month later. Not this time, my precious.

Which doesn't mean I can afford it at the moment. But things at work are looking up, so I'm thinking January, after the raise sinks in....

And perhaps most importantly, do not be fooled by the fun-times snowman or the notion of a cool-sounding seasonal beer.



Vanilla was not a good idea.

I'm like apple pie with a hot dog in it.

This was a hysterical....prior to this, Colbert was bashing Halloween as a pagan holiday that supports panhandling. He pulled out his basket of alternative Halloween treats for kids that included boot straps, an Ayn Rand book and a large mousetrap, which he loaded. He then moved on to "The Obama Challenge..."

I'm going to be your ninja assassin!

Oh, and I almost forgot...

A) Halloween was a huge success, D even had to make a run for more candy. We mingled with neighbors who seem very cool. Also, our Halloween set-up in front of the house? Yeah, it made one kid scream. That's when you know you got it right. (He was quite young).

and

B) South Carolina BLOWS. No one liked them anyway.

Marcellus Wallace don't like to be fucked by anybody except Mrs. Wallace.

I understand and appreciate the need to keep my credit card secure, I really do. But ever since my card was magically changed over to Bank of America, the amount of security on it has become ricockulous.



I locked myself out this morning because I didn't know the answers to my security questions. What kind of questions were they? Where is your vacation home? and Where did you meet your husband? (city only) No, I don't have a vacation home but I'm pretty sure I would answer Tokyo. Alas, no. Just for shits I tried Austin and Northfield, but apparently no. And call me INSANE, but I'm pretty sure I know where I met my goddamn husband. Is it case sensitive? Is it my system? Who knows. Certainly not the twats on the other end of the phone tonight.

The first guy failed me because I did not know my Verbal Passcode (I never call these people), nor my credit limit (why would I, they raise it all the time and I'm nowhere near it) and I could not tell him the exact amount of the last payment since GUESS THE FUCK WHAT, I CAN'T LOG IN. Didn't matter I could tell him I was a member since 1998 nor that I used to live in Japan nor that I JUST BOUGHT GODDAMN CHOCOLATES FOR $40 AT VERMONT CHOCOLATIERS. Nay, these things matter not.

He had me call back and get someone else since he could not help me. The second person asked me the same cunting questions.

And then transferred me to a Different Department that had Different Verification Questions.

That guy kinda chuckled and told me my exorbitant credit line but then just transferred me back to the online people who kept me on hold for so fucking long I could have cooked an egg with a lighter, should the need have arisen. (And he never asked me any questions at all, so that was cute and consistent...NOT).

The fourth person was actually helpful and reset my shit. She offered some lame excuse about how my system might not see my answers the right way. I don't know, I just want to pay the fucking bill. There's really not a whole lot you can DO online, after all, do they have many complaints about criminal bill payment these days?

I take full responsibility for not knowing my obscure-ass security questions the system arbitrarily asks me. I think I do know the answers, but for some reason (again, the system? the way I type it in?) the computer did not like it, nor would it let me unlock it with their email code. It sent it to me three times but never worked.

What I DO have a problem with is being blind-transferred between two departments repeatedly and getting nowhere. I have a problem with a company that doesn't go to the trouble to hire people with brains who can use them and make judgment calls. They would prefer to scrape the bottom of the barrel and annoy the ever-living-fuck out of me so I just won't call. You laugh--expect the people on the other end to HELP??? I wouldn't think such a thing were even possible if I didn't work for a company that does just that. At my company they go out of their way to empower us to make Actual Decisions and Use Our Fucking Brains and Sense of Reason. It shouldn't be that shocking, which is really sad.

But being on the phone with Bank of America for THIRTY GODDAMN MINUTES to just unlock my cunting account? It may be the (seemingly) simplest of problems, but they somehow managed to nudge me almost to the edge of feces-throwing rage. There was no reason the first three fucks shouldn't have been able to help me.

Good job, Bank of America. I'm transferring that balance the first chance I get. (To someone else completely incompetent, no doubt, in subtle yet different ways).