coexistapart's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- my world is complete now that I've discovered dry shampoo I've got all kinds of notes for various entries that I have been scribbling the past few days, but it never feels like the "right" time. The weather has been positively heavenly here the past two days. They've projected 25C and sunny all week. Management reopened the pool, so I will be down there reading 2-3 hours per day poolside as soon as I get some of my other tasks under control. Tonight I jumped in the pool, and then had a soak in the hot tub after my workout, and it was just delightful. I would have lain out in the sun today, but the wind was just vicious earlier in the afternoon. Today was quite productive. It made me feel like I was on the ball again and that my life might have some purpose. I accomplished a couple of little tasks that I have been ignoring for quite a while (i.e. cleaning the stove) and then I cooked dinner from scratch. I cook dinner from scratch *every* day according to most people's standards, but the last couple have felt cheap because I just slap a piece of meat into a pan, boil rice, steam broccoli, and serve. Tonight I made potatoes dauphinois (scalloped potatoes) and meatloaf...wth meat that I ground myself. That was actually quite frightening. I've had these sides of beef brisket in the freezer for about a month now. It was one of those gigantic $30 sides that I cut into 5-6 pieces. The last two attempts at making brisket were disastrous; the first was Portuguese style, in red wine with veggies and herbs in a pot for two hours. Last week was so-called BBQ wrapped in foil in the oven for 4+ hours. Both attempts were exceedingly dry and tasteless. Not sure what to do with the remaining beef, I decided that I would defrost one and grind it up in my meat grinder attachement that I received for Christmas last year. Even though I was aware you don't technically grind brisket, it was just going to be an experiment. Well, let me say, grinding red meat is not for the faint of heart. In fact, it kind of makes you want to become a vegetarian. And while I admit that I did not read the machinery directions, leading to me touching A LOT more ground meat than necessary while trying to fool around with the wrong parts, there's nothing like soft ground fat and dripping blood all mixing in the same bowl to make you swear that you are never buying anything but halal or kosher butchered meat EVER AGAIN. Ugh. The other day I stopped in at International Delights for the first time in over a year, since Spoon took me while Big was away one weekend. A bunch of ladies at church mentioned that they were meeting there for lunch this week; I thought to myself hmm, clearly it cannot be as sketchy as I remember.... And so I was in the neighbourhood two days ago, with about an hour to kill before driving back over the mountain to pick up Big, and I stopped in. Admittedly the inside IS a little food courtish with square tables and those horrible black upright chairs, and wide screen televisions show arab news channels, but the coffee bar and menu are very extensive and the patio is simply divine. This cafe is in the corner of a sketchy neighbourhood, where two perpendicular strip malls meet. They've taken a corner and built thick terra cotta walls with large windows where they've placed that ornate metal work you see all over car ports in Israel and the Middle East. Then they've thrown in some metal security doors for good measure, because of the area, but they have a fountain, and various arbors, and plants and palm trees, and outdoor space heaters. Now granted, as I said, the weather this week has been exceptional, but but honest-to-goodness it's a very pleasant atmosphere. There was an old, professor-type guy snoozing on one side of me over a copy of "Gallois Theory." There were various women in whute head scarves (very rare in this town) coming in and out with takeway coffeee and kids in tow--clearly going out of their way to get coffee here--as well as various tables of college students doing the philosophy of life thing. I was only there about 45 minutes and had the most delightful apple-almond baklava. Now if they have free wifi (as many of the alternative cafes in this town do) then I'll REALLY wonder what I've been doing not going there during the past 7 months. I can't wait to go back tomorrow. The fact that I have to go Boston in two weeks has really just snuck up on me. I know this only because I thought oh, tomorrow is payday; Big will buy my ticket, but then when I started to look on travelocity, and I had to click through and pick the date, I realized that it is basically two weeks tomorrow. Boston will be fine, I'm sure. I'm not looking forward to it at all per se, perhaps because it's Boston or perhaps because I haven't seen Amy & Stephanie since January, and although nothing went wrong, I was feeling particularly fragile that day and it didn't seem we had much to talk about. I'm sure we'll have a good time, find stuff to do, have good fun girl time hanging out, but part of me is kind of sad knowing that I'll be heading back to Canada without any real resolution to my life. Don't get me wrong...I've made surprisingly quick peace with the situation. Last week I felt like I was pulling my hair out nearly every day because I had little to distract me and the mail was filled with junk. This week has been better, but if you go with "one month" from Feb 2 it really does seem unlikely that I will know before I leave on March 12 or 13. After that I probably only have 6 more days of mail until Big goes to Maryland for his son's wedding, which means I will be completely out of the know until he returns back here on March 31. Thankfully, I do have a large degree of flexibility; I'm not booking a return ticket to LC from Canada until I'm in Toronto and know what I'm doing. Depending on the admissions situation, I can use 50,000 to fly to Paris/Europe and the pay to fly on to Israel, or else I can use it for two Canada-USA return trip tickets. If I'm going to Middlebury, then one down in early April and back in early May (so I can get the I-20) will suffice for now.) So whereas even last week I felt like I couldn't wait to get to Toronto, to see various people and get caught up, now it looks like it will just continue to be awkward because do I really want to hang out with people, have them ask ME questions when I really, still, don't know what I'm doing? As Big plans more and more what they're doing when he is in MD with his mother, sister, et al., I am so SO glad that I had a legitimate reason to bow out. I just don't know what I was thinking when I thought that would be easy; now it just looks like a freakin' nightmare that would make Emily Post roll over in her grave. Oh. Incidentally...IMPORTANT. When I was on the phone with Anna over the weekend she was like "how is big...big Big." As in she used the adjective I use here in conjunction with his real name. Now, given what I said about her mental state, it is very possible she was drunk, high, or cracked out on whatever when I spoke to her, but at the same time it made me immediately suspicious because she's not excessively prone to sarcasm and that's not something I've heard before. So, while it seems very random that she somehow found this address, and somehow realized it was me without having access, and then discovered a way in which to get the login information (anyone?), I feel like I'm going to change the password in the next couple of days....so be aware. I got ANOTHER card from my mother today. Again, delightful. This one a Valentine's Day card plus a copy of the letter showing me that she paid for ONE (1!) copy of a United Church hymnal in memorium to my father. She's discreet like that, always, as though me knowing about what she supposedly does is likely for me to give her more credit, not less. We get Sports Illustrated every Thursday now, in addition to the zillion other magazines that we actually pay for annually. I dropped Gourmet, but I still get Bon Appetit & Texas Monthly; Big gets Newsweek, Shotgun Weekly, the New Yorker, the Economist, Architectural Digest, a bunch of US Army publications, Foreign Policy quarterly, and Mental Floss. Now we also get People in Espagnol, SI, Entertainment Weekly, Money... it's really kind of insane. I love Newsweek, but I guess because they've been coming for so long I mostly ignore them rather than trying to stay on top of all the issues. However, each week that we've been getting SI now I absolutely love reading it. It's so bizarre; you would think that if I only read articles about the NHL, it would be ready to toss aside pretty quickly each week, but they've always got such neat articles. And the issues themselves are *just* the perfect size to get through in one sitting, but where you feel like you've actually been briefed as to what's going on in the world of sports. The week before the Super Bowl I read a very interesting article about how jumbotrons affect game play. This should be obvious, but I'd never really thought that a guy running down the football field on a breakaway would think to look up at the jumbotron to see where his closest opponents were, rather than, say, swinging his head around in a 180 given that might slow down his sprint. Today was mostly about Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong, and Bobby Orr--all of whom I know relatively little more than the basics. The Bobby Orr article was about how it's interesting that he chose to become a player's rep after he was screwed during his professional career, and I pretty much already knew that, but it's still always so interesting and readable. They had one quote that I really liked, "But Bobby Orr is how a certain segment of Canadians want to see themsleves--self-effacing, self-sacrificing, [and] quietly great." Right after I read SI, I went into the gym and a bunch of the guys had it into ESPN and Sports Desk. I was kind of appaled to hear that various NFL teams are talking about picking up Michael Vick when he gets out of jail, though honestly I guess that shoudln't really surprise me. I've been speaking to Emily a little bit here and there. It's kind of hard for me to take her seriously because she asks these open, generic questions that I think she probably should (could?) already know the answers to based on facebook, mutual connections, et cetera. I still feel kind of annoyed that she changed her mind on me last minute in January. A girl I know from camp, Jen, her sister got married a couple of weeks ago. Nora is in NoLa this week doing houses for Habitat. I went to Target yesterday and bought the Jon & Kate DVD for Anthony's gf, but now I'm thinking of taking it back like it might be too much...after all I don't think I even, technically, got Anthony anything for his birthday. I'm kind of on the fence about going to Ottawa this month. I got a fb message from Travel Guy with "all my love," in the addendum. This could be frightening except that I think we're at a point now where he's telling me that, and we both know that we don't have to worry about the situation...as in he admits, by saying that, that he's knows he's simply SAYING it and not that he's confused by something I did or said, like in the past. Saturday we're going to Peppers in Mesilla and bowling with some people from Bliss. Let's hope the weather holds. Song of the Day:Jai Ho 7:19 p.m. - 2009-02-26 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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