Archive for August, 2011

Meat Coma


21 Aug

We finally had the opportunity to eat at a Brazilian Steak House. This was a little difficult for me because my braces make it hard to eat anything that requires being chewed by the molars. Luckily, the pieces were in general cut thin enough that there were only three things I ended up not being able to eat.

The chicken was amazing. The cinnamon pineapple superb. And the fried plantains? Like being transported back to my Nana’s banana pudding. Talk about delicious.

Oh, and while it never occurred to me to sugar grapes, sugared grapes make a pretty great desert.

Movie Review: War, Inc.


20 Aug

I have a place in my heart for satirical war comedies. And I had seen bits and pieces of War, Inc. before, but never sat and watched the whole thing.

I love that John and Joan Cusak like working together. Their real life sibling relationship always translates to great on screen chemistry.

The movie had some absurdist moments- fight in the back of a garbage truck, anyone –and also some sweet moments between John Cusak’s character and Hillary Duff’s.

However, if you’re looking for John Cusak as a bad ass assassin in a dark comedy, go for Grosse Pointe Blank.

What do you want to be, when you grow up?


19 Aug

Before this thread devolved, there were some great stories about how people chose their careers.

Turns out, some people know what they want to do from a very young age. Some of them did that, and some still ended up in positions very different from what they envisioned and loved it.

Some went with what was practical and made money. Some fell in to careers and some just work jobs, wishing they were doing something else.

But the point is, you do not have to decide what you’re going to “be” at 18. Life takes us different places. Be open.

Too Much of a Good Thing


18 Aug

Our favorite restaurant has bottomless cups of chai. This is a good thing, most of the time.

We usually eat lunch there, so that the caffeine has time to wear off before bed. This week, we met friends for dinner. And then had amazing drink service.

What I mean by that is that our chai glasses were often being topped off after only one or two drinks. We have no idea how much chai we actually drank.

Yes, we do. Too much. Caffeine normally doesn’t have much effect on me, yet it took me over three hours to fall asleep.

Friendship


17 Aug

Friendships require work. This seems counterintuitive to everything I learned about friendship as a child. As a kid, you saw our friends every day at school or around the neighborhood. Friendship was something you fell into.

Adults don’t make friends as easily. They take time and effort- time to spend together, effort to get to know one another, to figure out where you fit in each other’s lives.

It feels exhausting. And yet, for me, at least, after an evening spent with a friend, life always seems so much better than it was that morning. Friendship is still worth it.

Hello world!


16 Aug

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

On Winning and Losing


16 Aug

Every once in a while, I am reminded why it is important that I’m not that competitive when it comes to board games. (I am competitive about other things, but not board games.) This is good because my husband is very competitive, is not a gracious loser, and is only marginally a good winner. The same goes for other friends to whom winning (or not losing) is equally important.

Being okay with losing the majority of the time means that I can still enjoy the games, even when playing with people who are much less casual about it than me.

I have a Phone!


15 Aug

After nearly 3 weeks, I have a phone again. So what that it thinks my name is Hank and has all of Hank’s contacts and none of mine. I can fix that easily enough.

All of the service people we dealt with at Sprint were very nice. With the SIM card that didn’t work, we had a great guy who called us back after our initial call to try something else.

The problem is, Sprint doesn’t use SIM cards. Only the Nextel phones do, and 90% of their tech people don’t know anything about activating SIM cards and Nextel phones.

Great Live Performances: BOWI Band


14 Aug

My favorite part of the Renaissance Faire is seeing the live performers, especially the musicians. I love traditional music and hearing the variations the different performers put on the songs I already know by heart.

One of our favorite groups to see perform live is the BOWI (Band of Wandering Idiots) Band. They have a new CD out this year and performed a number of songs off of it. The Highwayman, in particular I really loved, but the whole thing is good stuff. Plus, their live performances are all about having fun, which is what I’m about, too, at Faire.

Movie Review: Robin Hood


13 Aug

The Gladiator version- Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott, back together for a movie far inferior to the one that made the pairing famous. Or perhaps the Magna Carta version. I don’t know. It wasn’t a bad movie, and there was the “twist” that it was really just a prequel to the Robin Hood legend. (Knowing this won’t ruin the movie for you, trust me.)

It was pretty, I’ll give you that. And I never complain about Cate Blanchett. But overall, it took itself too seriously, almost like it was trying to be the Braveheart version. I’ll stick with Errol Flynn.

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