Something I’ve noticed: ever since this incident the trains seem to be sounding their horns even louder and longer when going through stops. It’s easy to notice this, because the tracks run right next to my apartment complex. It’s a good thing I like the sound of trains.
I need to upgrade my WordPress install and also figure out a way to keep fake blogs (you know, the ones that want you to buy their World of Warcrap* junk or start in newd* photography) from entering pretend comments and trackbacks in my moderation queue. It’s not that I get a lot of these things, it’s just that when I see that little “comment in moderation” message I get all excited, only to find out it’s something posted to a four-month old entry and it leads to a fake blog.
Anyway, it’s December! December. De… cemmm… berrrr. De. Cem. Ber.
Nope, that doesn’t make it any more exciting or interesting.
I’m trying to get into the Christmas spirit this time. Even though one of my last friends in this area moved back to her parents’ house in Ohio recently and she hasn’t written me yet and I don’t have her address, and my other friend is going to visit her sister in Ft. Lauderdale for the holidays, so it’s gonna be a lone Christmas this year. Not that I usually mind such things, but I do so love free cookies. Anyway, I’ve been hunting around the WordPress theme sites for a Christmas theme, because I can’t seem to get into the groove and make my own. I’ve just lost the touch, as well as the password to my now-obsolete Photoshop install (it’s version 5 — I think they’re up to version 12 or something), and I just don’t feel like wrestling with the Gimp. I do have Paint.net and I’ve been fiddling with that.
I also have to plan next year’s blog. (For those of you who are new to my weird ways, I always end my blog on December 31st and open a new blog. It’s my way of keeping the blog to paper-diary standards, and my way of bucking the trend, and also my way of irritating all my readers, who have to change their links and re-register on my new site. Maybe I’ll be nice and pre-register you — if I do decide to go that route I’ll let you know and I’ll put up a post to collect requests.) Anyway, I can’t decide: simply make a new folder on Victory Soap called “2009”? Or buy a new domain name? They’re cheap at Godaddy, though I really should watch my pennies. And should I use WordPress again? I think I will — Everyone seems to have had it with Movable Type’s increasingly cumbersome and arcane versions, and Blogspot is… limited. Typepad costs money, and I don’t see that they’ve got anything I need that is worth paying for. Textpattern has an attractive admin screen, but it doesn’t seem to do anything better than WordPress.
Anyway, that’s what’s been on my mind, besides applying for jobs.
Update: I forgot to add — I’m looking for a WordPress Christmas theme that isn’t too hokey looking. The 3-D ‘toon Santa look seems to be in this year for some reason, as is the color red. I found one Christmas theme that makes your monitor look like someone was murdered on it, that’s how much red is the main color. That’s… a little too much. Also am I the only person in creation who isn’t so enamored of RSS feeds that they have to have a huge, orange 3-D logo for it? It’s really annoying.
*Words misspelled in the no-doubt-futile hope of fooling spambots.
So here’s a stupid meme! Since it’s long, I’ll put it under the cut:
In the interests of irritating the politically correct, here’s an old Polaroid of me and my sister (who was a Real Native American, by the way) dressed in costumes our grandmother made for us. The reason I looked so thrilled was: I hated dressing up for photos, I hated dressing up, I hated having my photo taken (for one thing, they always put us facing the sun so the light would hit our faces — I blame my future cataracts on the approximately 9,000 photographs taken of me in the horrible Florida sun).
(Click for larger.) The Indian headress was not made by my grandmother, but instead was acquired at a tourist trap in Cherokee, North Carolina, where we used to go whenever we would visit my grandparents at their summer home in Highlands. By November, though, they were back in Coconut Grove. This photograph looks like it was taken in their back yard — I can’t remember exactly, but most Thanksgivings we ate at their house. The date on the back of the photograph says “Thanksgiving 1971,” which means I was eight years old, and my sister was six. The years have not improved me.
Festivities update: despite my ailments I managed to tuck away two nice-sized chunks of excellent prime rib. No, my friends did not make turkey — however, there were baked sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie, as well as many other delightful edibles. That meal, and the dose of Nyquil I just took, have left me feeling like a semi-sentient floor pillow. I need to observe another Thanksgiving tradition: sitting in front of the tv in a catatonic state. BBL
Health update: well, after a good night’s (and morning’s) rest with only five or six interruptions to go to the bathroom, I don’t feel as exhausted. However, the cold has moved completely up to my head, which means my skull is a ball of itching, dripping torment. I’m running low on stuff to catch the drips (note to self: never buy the cheap dollar store toilet paper again — if sandpaper could be a nano-micro-millimeter thick, that’s what was in the package) and medicine to make me not care (i.e., the mother of all cold remedies, Nyquil; and I have to buy the liquid form too, as the gel caps don’t work as fast and don’t have alcohol in them — check the “inactive” ingredients). So for the rest of the day, if I am sentient enough to post, the content may be… interesting.
For some reason I’m exhausted today, even though I’ve hardly done anything. I went to the bank, walked across to the grocery store (next to the bank), then came home. Yesterday I felt well enough to go for a long walk — today I made it as far as the duck pond on the other side of the apartment complex and had to go back. Also I’m peeing a lot (yes, TMI) and also am very thirsty — I woke up about every hour last night to pee, or so it seemed, and today my allergies are also bothering me. And I have a scratchy throat. So I think I’m coming down with something. I did make the mistake of going to Walmart a few days ago because it’s cheaper, and my cashier was guzzling cough medicine like it was soda. I’ll bet you she gave me her virus.
So I’m doing a load of laundry, because I’m out of clean underwear. Which brings me to my pet peeve: why is a washer/dryer for clothes in one’s own apartment an alternative that not all apartment complexes offer, yet hardly any apartment complex dares offer units without a dishwasher? Dishes can be washed by hand, but washing all your clothes by hand is a pain in the ass, not to mention where do you dry them? In the bathroom so they can mold and mildew? What about sheets?
And that being said, why do we have to put money in the laundry machines here? It’s not like this place has washer-dryer hookups for everyone. (This complex only offers them in the large two-bedrooms.) You’d think that the cost of the washers in the laundry rooms would be included in the rent. They should offer a washer and dryer unit as an option to the dishwasher. I’d gladly wash my dishes in the sink just to be able to wash my clothes in my apartment. I sure do miss having my own washing machine, grumble…
Later: gah, feeling worse — itchy, stuffy, fevery. I took Tylenol and prepared one of my cold remedy suppers: chicken ramen noodle soup with onion, garlic, hot red pepper flakes, sliced bell pepper, and sliced grape tomatoes thrown in. Vitamin C city. And I ate an apple and an orange. So at least I still have my appetite. This better be gone by Thursday — I’ve been invited to a friend’s house for Thanksgiving eats.
PS: thanks to those of you who have donated to my Paypal and Amazon tip jar in the past couple of days. This is a lean week, so the money is really helping.
As an update to yesterday’s post where I mentioned how good the food that Anthony Bourdain was eating in Ghana looked, I went to my favorite INTERNET and found some recipes, here and here, and oh, here. They look easy enough to make and all the ingredients are either already in myΒ house (peanut butter) or readily available in the grocery store. My feast will have to wait, though, until I can afford more than ramen noodles.
I might substitute rice for the fufu, though.
Do not watch the Travel Channel program Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations when all you have in the cupboard is ramen noodles. There were three episodes on tonight: one in New York, one in Ireland, and one in Ghana. Everything he put on his plate looked delicious, yes even the Ghanaian cuisine. (I’ve already grown up in the tropics, half the ingredients in Cuban food was originally African, so I could imagine myself downing those delicious-looking spicy stew soups — even the one made of some sort of giant African rat. Hey, rabbit is a rodent too. Mmm, Hasenpfeffer!)
My stomach has been growling for a couple of days now. I’ll be sitting there and suddenly what sounds like a creaking door or a particularly irritated Jack Russell terrier will start sounding off from the direction of my bowels. I don’t know why — I’ve cut down on the greasy crap, and have been eating lots of fiber (fresh vegetables, salad, oatmeal). Then again, maybe that’s why. Apparently when you get older your stomach doesn’t digest as efficiently as it used to. But still they tell us old folks to start downing hard-to-digest fiber. Which is why old people fart. Or at least, why I do. That’s probably more information than you wanted about me.
Anyway, over at Rachel’s there’s been a long conversation about how there is no Mexican food in the UK and what is she going to do when she moves there. (Her guy got a job over there and they’ll be moving to Blighty real soon. That’s hysterical to me because of all the people on my blogroll Rachel is one of the last people I would think would end up in Britain. She just seemed so perfectly of her current location, Texas USA. Also she hates the cold, and Britain is apparently over its heat wave and has gone back to being cold and damp. And no, I am not totally seething with jealousy so much so that the green glow from my skin is scaring my cats. So not.)
To continue: her commenters are trying to help out with suggestions and stories or just joining in on the mutual moaning. As for me, I did what I always do these days when I read that someone has made a declaration that I find questionable (here, that there are no Mexican restaurants in England): I go to Google and look it up. I know that Google is a pack of America-hating communist rich jerks from some university, but they’re still a good source of links. Of course I found plenty of Mexican places listed in the UK. I don’t know about the quality of the food — It’s been almost thirty years since my one and only trip overseas, and while I experienced fine Indian and Chinese and Indonesian and Middle Eastern food, we didn’t look for any Mexican places. And of course most people aren’t even reading my link, and are going on and on about how they’ll mail Rachel care packages of tacos and hot sauce, and how there aren’t any Taco Bells over there.
Oh stop right there. Yes, there is a notion in the comments that Taco Smell, as it is known in these parts, is somehow “Mexican” food. As if. I’ve eaten Mexican food, both Tex-Mex and California Mex and “real” Mex prepared by real Mexicans (though not in Mexico), and I can tell you right now that Taco Bell’s “cuisine” is about as Mexican as apple pie. Maybe less so. It’s imitation Mexican, at best. But if you’re at all blocked up in the downstairs region I can recommend a couple of their tacos to break the dam, so to speak. Just be prepared to set a couple of days aside to spend on the commode. Lay up a nice pile of magazines.
As an aside, I don’t see what the big deal is about Mexican food. Just about everyone I know is obsessed with the stuff. “What’ll we eat tonight?” “Let’s go out for Mexican!” Said with the gleaming eyes of fanatics. And then we end up and some Fake-Mex place like Chili’s. But like I said, I’ve eaten the more authentic cuisine (when I lived in Miami there was the little place in Little Havana, of all neighborhoods, which was owned and run by Mexicans from Mexico, stocked with Mexican sodas and all kinds of things, where the food was the real stuff; and it was good too — all at a little hole-in-the-wall place). But I don’t see what’s so special about it. It’s basically the same heavy peasant fare that people eat the world over — meat, rice, beans — tarted up with hot chilis. I think that’s the draw, the hot chilis: apparently capsaicin is addictive, you build up a resistance to it like to any drug and you need more and more to fulfill your cravings. Also it increases endorphins, just like heroin. But it tastes better than sprinkling heroin on your food.
The thing I don’t understand is am I the only person in the universe who looks stuff up? Eighty percent of the people on Rachel’s comment listing simply accepts the sweeping declaration that “there is no Mexican food in England,” with the secondary notion that there is only the horrible English cuisine (which isn’t always that horrible, but I’ll get to it later), and they join in on the moaning. If it were me and my boyfriend told me there wasn’t Mexican food in England — well first, I’d never ask him, because men don’t know things like that. They don’t know any of the gatherer stuff women know — they’re the hunters, remember, programmed to go out and kill animals for dinner, not to look for seeds and nuts and shoe sales. Restaurants, being sophisticated places, come under the heading of “shops” in a male mind, and they don’t know where those places are, even in their own neighborhood. (But for some reason, they know where the bars and pubs are. I guess in prehistoric days herds of beer and whiskey roamed the land.) Anyway, the first thing I’d do is hit the internet — that’s why we have this thing. Or so I thought.
Even Steve is getting into the act. Well, he is a man — I guess it’s not manly to Google. That’ll be the new “asking for directions” — “I don’t need to Google it, I can find it on my own. I’ve got my spear! And I’m a man!” Two hours later you’re lost in a strange neighborhood of porn sites.
There’s also the predictable slams on English cuisine. Don’t misunderstand me, I’ve slammed it too — when I came back home from England I never wanted to see a potato again. (I’ve since recovered.)Β But it’s basically what I call Your Grandma’s Cooking — if your grandma was a WASP like mine was. We’re talking anything made in the kitchen on the stove or in the oven. Roasts, boiled food, fried food. Vegetables are usually rendered into mush, for the comfort of people with bad teeth. The second starch is bread. Bread is white. Salad is a small pile of iceberg lettuce (in Europe, usually served at room temperature), with maybe a few cautious shavings of carrot or purple cabbage, and some bland mayonnaise-y dressing like Thousand Island. The desserts are good, though — mostly custard based, with piles of whip cream.
Someone made fun of the awful sandwiches they serve at British railway stations. I had some of those — mine was the same type of hard-boiled egg sandwich I used to make when I was a kid: slices of thin white bread, butter, one layer of sliced egg. And I had a ham sandwich in a restaurant that was one thin slice of ham, one leaf of lettuce, on a very thin, flat baguette. But the food here at such places isn’t much better. When I took the Amtrak up to North Carolina to get my car, I got a sandwich in the dining car that came in a plastic bag. It was on a white bun, and was turkey, I think — a few layers of thin-sliced meat and one slice of cheese. They did have a full bar, though.
That’s all for now. I’m off to see if I can’t persuade my electric company to give me a couple more days to pay my bill. They refused to give me an extension this time, I don’t know why — unless they’ve changed all their policies for some reason. (The girl told me her computer didn’t give a reason why.) It’s just been one of those months. I am collecting funds, as usual — and no, I won’t be buying booze, that’s just a joke. (I don’t know how winos do it — but then that’s why they’re living on the street.) Changed — booze is fattening anyway. I am thinking of running a campaign like Wikipedia’s — their goal is six million dollars. Mine is a bit more modest, though if you have a couple of million just lying around…
Hey, at least, unlike Wikipedia, I don’t pretend everything on here is trufax. π
Hey, I opened a Twitter account. Now when I’m at Walmart I can send a text to my page saying I’m at Walmart. Seriously, I get these little thoughtlets when I’m out and about, and by the time I get home and get the computer on I forget them, and I’d like to keep at least some of them. Maybe this will help.