Am really enjoying the theme of The Squares Challenge this month: ODD.
Thank you so much to Becky at the Life of B for hosting!
Here is a garden materials store near self’s home, that sells only one thing: rocks.
Just look at these beauties! Playland for garden landscapers.
Self thinks these three photographs are in dialogue with each other. Agree or disagree, dear blog readers? (Funny how she started this post thinking she was going to post a series of landscape shots! Self is so unpredictable — even to herself LOL)
First, a digression: Today, self and The Man went to see the first screening of American Hustle.
J-Law is just a-DO-rable! Simply adorable!
Amy Adams was of course hot.
Bradley Cooper was the exact same speeded-up dude he played in Silver Linings Playbook. Only this time, he was an FBI agent. Many of the funniest scenes in the movie were his.
But Christian Bale. CHRISTIAN BALE. Since self had just seen him in Out of the Furnace, she couldn’t quite wrap her mind about this new Christian Bale iteration. But — he was magnificent. And also the only member of the cast whose Noo Joi-sey accent was firmly in place, from first to last.
The accent thing was quite a crucial thing in this movie. Alas, self has finally spotted a chink in the J-Law persona: Her accent was the messiest in the movie. But self feels so chary in pointing this out. For J-Law has the most hilarious scene with an exploding microwave. Not to mention, she brings such vulnerability to her role.
And now to — the ONE!
After the movie, we went to The Man’s favorite breakfast place: Broiler Express on Laurel Street in San Carlos.
This time, when they brought her order, the pancake had mouse ears!
BWAH. HA. HAAAA!
Self’s pancake never had mouse ears before!
This was the very first time!
Self’s face broke out in a huge grin, she just couldn’t help it. And the waiter was grinning, too.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Two days since Thanksgiving ended. Though self had no one over, the clatter in her head can be quite deafening, a clatter the sole other occupant in this house is always happy to add to. Every day brings a new spurt of instructions, whether it’s when to mail bills or covering windows with cardboard. Mother-in-law said it best: “My son is such a character.”
Now he has stepped out, without any prior warning: A friend of his from Ateneo, Randy, came over. Self imagined both would want to watch the games. But suddenly, after she’d bought all manner of chips and snacks and drinks and ham and what-have-you, she arrived to find the two men preparing to go out. What is self going to do with all this food? She’ll send it home with Randy, probably. It’s either that or scarf on chips for days on end.
Anyhoo, after self watered a bit, she settled down in the tiny room she calls her “Office.” This has all her memorabilia, all her saved literary magazines, all her knick-knacks. Through the French doors, she can look right into the backyard:
Now self settles down to tackle a huge pile of back issues of The New York Times Book Review. There’s a “Let’s Read About Sex” issue, and the October 20, 2013 issue, which has more than the usual number of “Women’s Literature” reviews. Self is bored reading about sex in the staid NYTBR. It would be much more fun reading books about sex if she were reading something like Rolling Stone. So she goes for the October 20, 2013 issue.
A short story collection by T. C. Boyle is reviewed in this issue. Self really loves T. C. Boyle so she is happy to read the review (and would read anything by him, regardless of whether the review was good or bad). There’s a review of a novel about the forty-ish Bridget Jones, and a review of a Scandinavian novel in which a traumatized woman is plagued by the conviction that her husband is guilty of a heinous crime (Don’cha just love those traumatized women in Scandinavian novels who are so . . . so noir-ishly fragile in temperament! After all, there can never be another Lisbeth Salander. That’s over. That’s done. Now it’s back to the Scandinavian women of an Ingmar Bergman movie)
Of the four crime novels reviewed by Marilyn Stasio in this issue (Sunday, October 20, 2013), two are set in Florence. How absolutely fabulous! That’s Florence, Italy, in case you were wondering. The third is set in Manhattan (It’s by Jeffery Deaver, who writes about Manhattan like nobody’s business). And the last one is set in a small town in Connecticut — but in 1956. Self likely won’t get to the Connecticut novel, as she is easily confused by mysteries that happen in the recent past (Mysteries about the way, waaaaay past are much easier on her nerves. At least, everything’s different, not like the ones set in the 1950s, where self keeps forgetting the decade and then wonders why she is so confused)
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Self has come to a new appreciation of Simon!
The 55-year-old woman looked so great in her short black slinky dress, but the minute she opened her mouth — GADZOOKS! The other judges looked non-plused, but the most real response was Simon’s: He started to laugh! Which was exactly what self felt like doing! Though she would be too polite to do it in public! And then he said, and then he said (Simon, you are such a card!): “S___, 80 dogs are now trying to get into the theater.”
How fab! His insults are the only true thing about “The X Factor”!
In closing, self saw this sign in Dona’s Hallmark in downtown San Carlos today:
And it is a good thing. To. Feel. Dangerous.
Occasionally.
Stay tuned.
Self’s new favorite booth of the San Carlos Farmers Market is:
TA-RA!
Self tried the traditional cheesecake the very first Thursday the Farmers Market was open:
Almost every Thursday since that first time, she’s dropped by Namesake Cheesecake.
The owner/chef is named Cherith. She also makes a fabulous raspberry sauce. Self usually buys the raspberry sauce to go along with her cheesecake, and OOOH MAMA that sauce is soooo fine.
The slices are $3 each. A whole cheesecake (8 deep slices) is $16. It makes more sense to buy a whole cheesecake, but self has never done this because she knows that the thing will disappear into her belly before two days have passed. And that would be TERRIBLE — not only to self’s figure, but also to her self-esteem.
Here is the wonderful Cherith:
Today she had on the most fabulous gold earrings. Self could not stop staring at them every time she moved her head. Me want some of those!
She complimented self on her blue nail polish. Ah yes, another of self’s indulgences: a manicure at Belle Spa on Broadway in downtown RWC.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Self went into Gracie’s Delectables on Laurel Street in San Carlos and for the first time ordered a whole pie. A lemon meringue pie. Like she has room for even just one more thing in the fridge!
She was going to have prime rib for Thanksgiving, instead of turkey. Then hubby came home with a Safeway gift certificate from his office. So she went to Safeway yesterday and began feeling around in the frozen turkey bin. She found the smallest Butterball turkey, it was only around $17, and she hauled it into her cart, then saw a lot of people milling around another bin, and she saw that those turkeys were Safeway Select “Fresh, Never Frozen,” and when she pressed cold fingers against the turkey, the flesh did have lots of give. So she hauled the Butterball out of the cart and put the “Fresh, Never Frozen” turkey in. When she got home, she wondered how she was going to cook this turkey, when the prime rib and the turkey have completely different oven temperatures, and self has only one oven. Oh well!
Self wonders how she is going to get through four days of eating. Son is coming, but he will be out a lot, so it will most likely be just hubby and self eating an enormous prime rib and a turkey. And there’s that lemon meringue pie . . .
The house is cold. Actually, it’s been cold for weeks. Since self got back from Bacolod in October. It’s a different kind of cold: a chill. It will be The Ancient One’s last winter, she knows. She dresses the poor ol’ crit in tweed sweaters (Did dear blog readers know that Bow Wow Meow in San Carlos sells the most wonderful warm knit sweaters for dogs? Bella loooves hers. Since self put it on her a week ago, she’s been wagging her tail 50% more. Self will have to wash it, at some point. She should get a spare.)
When hubby came home from the office, he wasn’t as interested in Monday night football. Instead, he switched to IFC which was showing a bloody epic called “Valhalla Rising” or “Raising Valhalla” or something like that, whose one-eyed hero is called “One Eye” (didn’t fool self one bit — This is Mads Mikkelsen, a Scandinavian actor whose one milky eye shed blood, in the first Daniel Craig James Bond movie, “Casino Royale”). In “Valhalla,” he doesn’t utter one word. He wears his dirty blonde hair in a topknot and goes rampaging over the Icelandic (or are those Scottish) fjords on a revenge quest that involves many, many gruesome killings. Hubby and self finished watching Part 1, but there was a Part 2 (“The Silent Warrior”) in which One Eye has apparently decided to join the Crusades. Alas, on the voyage to Jersualem the ship is overtaken by a great, unholy mist, in which there are many signal opportunities for One Eye’s comrades-at-arms to kill him, but our hero is always too quick for them, even though he has only one friend, a blonde boy about 12 who, needless to say, is useless in a fight.
But now self decides she’d better get dressed because she needs paper towels (You have no idea how many paper towels you need when ministering to an incontinent dog, dear blog readers) and maybe she will drop by a nursery and buy some poinsettias.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
These are a few of the things you observed today:
When you went down to the reading room, you didn’t even have to ask to be buzzed in, the staff waved you through the stile. And then you started reading, and taking notes, and reading, and taking notes, and suddenly you were in Manila while Japanese planes were dropping tonnage on Clark Field, and you were reading letters by American soldiers who were watching the mayhem, and right next to you, sharing the table, was an Asian woman who was very smartly dressed: black cardigan, white tailored shirt, grey pants, black pumps. (She’s Japanese, you thought. I’m sure of it. What would this woman say if she knew what you were reading?) The pages the woman was poring over were a pale green, filled with neat columns of heavy black calligraphy. And the two of you stayed side by side, reading, for almost two hours. You left first.
Let’s see, what else about today? You were standing in line at the Menlo Park Post Office. Naturally, you were mailing out a story. A story set in Cambodia. You really like this story. It’s the only one you’ve written about Ying. Your new Droid sent out its space-y ring (not really a ring so much as an echo. Like an outer space vibrato or something). You answered, and it was son. Wow, you thought: this is truly my lucky day! He told you he’d found an apartment. At the very very last moment. And of course, since school was only days away, it was — ahem! — kinda expensive. Sigh. But what can you do? He is the sole fruit of your loins. OK, you said. You agreed to send some more money.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Kanlaon 