In da liv-er.

I know that there are many of you out there in the interweb that have been missing me very dearly. Hanging on my every word, I know. And I've been ignoring you.

I apologize. But I'm not going to promise to do better. Honestly, blogging at home is not at all easy. For a number of reasons.

1. Constant accompaniment.

2. Constant entertainment/ employment.

3. Constant questions.

I'll not elaborate, but you get the idea.

Anyway, if you were near me, you would be annoyed by my constant imitation of and reference to Bas Rutten. Please enjoy the following video. It is six minutes of pure hilarity in the form of Bas Rutten's bar fight instructions.



I especially like Rutten's voice inflection. It. is. per. fect.

So, until next time, friends, keep it real.

**Also, things are very interesting around here at present. My sister is currently being offended by the naked women in 300. If you'll remember... there are only two notable women in 300. Ugh.***

VA is for bloggers, at least this one.

I'm home for a few weeks. Gone are the snowy hills of Maine! Well, I mean, I'm somewhat confident that they are still there, but I can't be completely sure.

Travel was... well... travel. I sat in the airport for 3 hours and then on the runway for another 3. Yesterday was long and boring.

When we finally drove through the good 'ol News, my mom said, "Does it feel wierd to be home?"

And I thought about it for a second, sighed and said, somewhat disappointedly, "No."

What was wierd, or what I really want to say is "disappointing," was that it felt like I'd never been gone.

Coffee Conclusions

I need no overcoat. I’ve got my love to keep me warm.

And by “love” I mean a Starbucks Grande Soy Caramel Macchiato.

Yes, a grande. I hope this drink alone causes me to visibly gain weight.

At least I won’t have to double-cup like Twiggy at the condiment counter. If I ever become so temperature sensitive as to complain about both the chill in the room – that no one else feels – and the mild heat of my coffee cup – that everyone else enjoys – please reintroduce me to the cheeseburger.

Please also remind me that even though I paid a meal-sized fee for it, the fancy coffee in my hand is, in fact, not a meal.

Myface and Spacebook*

Is there anything better than looking through hundreds of pictures of people who are obviously happier than you when you should, actually, be writing a paper?

I submit that there is not.



*Title courtesy of my dear, sweet, mother who honestly thought that's what they were called.

ssssnnoooowww

It snowed all weekend and started up again on Tuesday. This morning I woke up with a gershry (does anyone know how to spell yiddish words?!) to find no snow. None! It was gone. It had rained all night. And it was perfect. I skipped through the rain all day today b/c rain I can handle. Rain I almost love.

But it's supposed to snow again tomorrow.

Really?! Really, Snow?! What have I done to you? Was it the move? Did it upset you that I came here acting like I knew you? Is it the fact that I didn't even try to get to know you before? Is it because I didn't call? I get that I'm all up in your piece and I have to play by your rules, but I don't have to be happy about that. I mean, you throw me down. You've bruised me more times than I can count, and I'm sure you'll do it again. I think you almost like being mean to me.

You and me are just going to have to deal, I guess.

So here it is: Stay out of my way and I'll stay out of yours.

If I see you around tomorrow, I'm going to be pissed. Now you know.

Dating Figs, or Figging Dates?

It's been a while since I teased you guys with a cupcake, so here you go!

This latest cupcake was very trying for me for several reasons.

1. I was baking for an actual event, not just because I wanted to bake.

2. The cake recipe calls for figs, but it's winter in Maine. I had to use dates.

3. I mistakenly used both the stick of butter called for and the stick of butter I was softening for the icing in the cake batter.

However...despite my best efforts to ruin them, these cupcakes are both tasty and cute. Observe:

These are Date Spice Cupcakes with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting and Fig Newton Books.

Last night I pre-gamed the cupcaking by decorating 24 Fig Newtons with tiny little book spines. I'm taking these to the potluck for my Young Adult Lit class. The course title is ERL 518.


And then when I started actually preparing the cupcakes this morning, I had to begin by stewing the dried dates. Let me just say . . . well, I'll just show you.

See? It's not good. I just don't like dried fruit too much. And I hate hate hate things with skins. And the dates started out dried and then - with the stewing - gave up their skins. Ugh. I'm making an ew face just thinking about it again. It makes my own skin feel a little crawly.

Anyway, I powered through the stewing portion of the show and then opted for the food processor rather than the "chopping" that the recipe demanded. I just couldn't be handling the dates that much. The processing worked just fine.

Dates aside, the recipe was quite nice. I made some lovely - read odd - buttermilk and combined that with some reserved date water and I was on my way! Please note the snow. It continued to snow all day today. Again. I'm so over it.

The cupcakes are really helping me cope with the snow for sure. Haha. Don't question it, just let it be.

Here's a wacky picture of both my life at the moment and one of the cupcakes. Notice the stack of books in the background. They'll be going to class with me tomorrow too.


So, that's what I've been up to lately. The end of semester has actually snuck up on me. I feel like we just started, but I have only paper left to write. And, next week at this time, I'll be on my way home. Success.

iNeed iTunes iHelp

So, here's the problem: I've been listening to music all day while I wrapped up my YA lit projects. And... I thought that was a good thing.

It was fun while it was happening. And the songs were lovely and wonderful and sometimes even fun. But now that it's evening (Well...in Maine it's been dark for two and a half hours and 6:22pm) I'm finding myself rather bummy.

Nothing has happened. I had a pretty alright weekend (though there was minimal human contact, that might have something to do with it). I finished a fair amount of work. I even made 6 adorable cupcakes. So what gives?

I'll tell you. My iTunes.

Apparently the singer-songwriter thing I've had going for a while is just not good for Maine winter. That makes sense, right? Brandi Carlile is beautiful and perfect and honey, but her heaviness is probably not what I should be listening to when the days are so short.

So here are the most frequent artists on my iTunes these days:

Tegan & Sara
Brandi Carlile
Missy Higgins
PCD
P!nk
Josh Ritter
OneRepublic
Girlyman

Now...I know that P!nk and the PCD are a little random in there, but I like them. Sometimes. I <3 P!nk, but those Dolls are only okay sometimes.

Anyway, I'll stop making excuses. I'll just ask for help.

What should I be listening to? Please advise.

Oh, and please know that Hayden Panettiere's single Wake Up Call is some kind of magical. That is all.

Nog and Snow

Yesterday afternoon I got a little antsy. I have a fairly ambitious academic weekend set up for myself; I'm actually trying to get the majority of my work for the semester done and out of the way. And, I honestly don't have that much left. I need to respond (rather creatively) to three YA novels, and then work up a Letterman-style Top Ten list of my YA learnings. For my play class, I need to revise (yet again and this time like I mean it) the paper that will become my seminar paper.

I know in my head that these things will require a good deal of work. However, I keep thinking that since the YA stuff is all creative and the Staging History stuff is 'just' revision, I can breeze through these last efforts and be set.

Bearing all this in mind, I got antsy yesterday afternoon because I didn't feel the need to do real work. Therefore, I found myself checking out all the great cupcake recipes for fall/winter. I've already figured out what I am taking to the YA lit last class potluck (and you'll just have to wait and see what happens there) on Wednesday, so I thought I could hold out and just bake on Tuesday.

No luck there!

I've been needing to try out a recipe before I take it to the big Christmas party, and I have been wanting to make a batch of six cupcakes. Without further ado, I proudly present the cutest batch of cupcakes an alchy ever made!

These gorgeous babies are egg nog cupcakes with a healthy amount of bourbon whiskey. I can say 'healthy amount' because they taste like bourbon. It's interesting, really, being a cupcake and tasting of liquorhol, but it's not bad. When I make them for the party, I'll use a lovely smooth rum, but for the test purposes, the Jim Beam I had worked just fine.

I don't know if you can see the recipe in this picture, but making only 6 cupcakes is not an easy feat. It requires measurements like 1/8 of a tsp and such craziness. Needless to say, there was a fair bit of guessing involved. It will be nice when I can make a full recipe and not have to finagle like that. The recipe did, however, make exactly 6 cupcakes.

So cute when they're naked. And here's the striptease version...

So after an afternoon of successful baking and an evening of The Grinch and YA responses, I dozed off to Footloose. It was a pretty good night all in all. But then I woke up to this:

Neither wind nor snow nor dead of night, or some crap like that. So far, each time it has snowed in this apartment, I've walked downstairs to see this postman delivering the mail to this neighbor.

If it were anyone else, I would call this kitschy. But since it's me, I just call it aggravating. The good news is that since I've sat at my kitchen table doing homework this morning, they've plowed the street. Success. Now I just have to see to my car and driveway. Or...maybe I'll just stay in today.

And have another egg nog cupcake.

This Wordle has me befuddled.

Tonight in my blog readings, I stumbled upon Wordle. Wordle is one of those fun word cloud things that counts up the number of times words are used and then represents that with words of different sizes. My explanation is lame, but it's pretty cool.



I can't figure out how to enlarge it without sending everything pixely, but you can click through and see the wordle on the original site.

So, now that you know what I spend my blogs talking about, go to Wordle and do it with your own blog.

Also, egg nog cupcakes to come! (I got a little baking stir-crazy earlier.)

And the answer is...

So, my roommate and I revived an old debate about a week ago.

Our discussion went something like this:


A: "Well, you know, you can't balance without your big toe. If it's cut off, you'll just fall over."

B: "No... that's the pinky toe. You can't walk without it."

A: "I think you're mistaken."

B: "I think you are."


Alright, alright. I hope it was better the first time around, because - though we might struggle - my roommate and I should be more effective communicators by this point. We'll assume that my rendition just sucks.

Anyway, about a week before Halloween this year, I most likely broke my big toe. I say "most likely" because there was no x-ray or physician opinion. However, both a Master of Zoology and pre-med student deemed it broken. It swelled, turned red, then blue, then black, swelled again, and is now mostly better but sore-ish at times.

This morning, I might have broken the pinky toe of that very same blessed foot. This time the coffee table turned against me. This tiny toe is behaving exactly like it's big sister to the right. It swelled and turned a couple of pretty colors. Since it's quite painful, I've buddy-taped it in the most hilarious way.

But, the silver lining to all this is that I think I've gotten to the root of our Big Toe v. Pinky debate. Though the broken big toe was painful and certainly nothing I want to repeat, this struggling pinky toe is killer!

Pain shot through my toe and up into my leg when I raised my right foot to put my pants on this morning. Same thing happened when I - like an idiot who just won't learn - raised my right foot to put on my sneaker. Apparently, that stupid pinky toe is in a large way responsible for my balance. Ughflurgajibit.

Of course.

So I couldn't play racquetball today as scheduled. Instead I drank black coffee - for the first time in a long time - and rambled at my racquetball partner. Despite her requests, I did not flash my newly broken toe.

What I did do was buy first aid tape after my night class.

It is one glamorous life I lead.

Unprecedented.

Well, gentle readers, I'm doing something new today. I'm actually posting from the office. I thought today was going to be wickedly stacked and busy, but as it turns out, I'm stuck here for the next hour with nothing to do but cough.

I finished my homework and it turns out my students don't think they need me today. I'm playing racquetball in a bit and then I'll be off to class later, but for now I'm just . . . here.

So, I might as well blog!

For starters, my brother and sister left on Monday. My sister forgot her cold, hence my persistent cough, but other than that, my siblings made it to their respective homes without incident.

Here's my paparazzi wrap up of their stay in Maine.

Think Celeb Sibs: They're Just Like Us!

They eat mashed potatoes from the bowl!

They walk off Thanksgiving Dinner!

They take touristy pics!

They pull their own luggage!

So there it is. I'm asking my students to create their own tabloids as part of their final project this semester. They are freaking out quite a bit, and I was starting to get worried about the fairness of the assignment. But honestly, kids?

That was just plain fun.