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I had an almost totally unproductive weekend and it. was. terrific. I just heard that my best college friend's favorite uncle died, which, while sounding like a line from Spaceballs, is also only the latest in what seems like an endless flood of depressing news that's travelled along my personal grapevine since New Years. To counteract the temptation to sink into a pit of cliche-ridden existential angst, I'm summarizing things from the weekend, which was both busy and pleasant.
On Friday, as usual, I betook myself to the Badgerhaus, eagerly anticipating polenta and tomatoes (as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
greyhoundliz and I had discussed on Thursday night while I learned how to run the credit/debit and EBT machines at the co-op.) As semi-usual, I brought a bottle of red wine, purchased after much hemming and hawing at the Wine & Spirits Shoppe at Chestnut & 13th. The expectation had been for a dozen or more at dinner, but when I arrived the Junior Badgers had decamped en mass for center city, winnowing the projected diners to six - greyhoundliz, jimmi_obadger, o_flaherty, two of his friends, and me. Also, Liz had already picked up two bottles of wine.
Theno_flaherty's friends called to cancel.
Cooking and snarking and wine-sipping ensued. The polenta polented in the oven, Liz addressed the problem of Too Much Tomato Stuff For The Pan in various creative ways, including all of us hanging over the pot doing serious quality control (known among the uninitiated as "tasting") to keep the juice from overflowing. I made a vegan chocolate cake using a palimpsest of a receipe, and miraculously succeeded.
Finally, the four of us sat down to a groaning board and promptly ate ourselves silly. The overbusiness for the polenta had home-canned crushed tomatoes (that I'd helped can in September), sundried tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, garlic, olive oil, beans, and sundry other hearty delicious things. I forgot that there was dessert coming and had a second helping of polenta... and then I of course had to have some chocolate cake... and then I was good for nothing but staggering into the living room and sprawling in an armchair under an afghan. And watching "Once More With Feeling," the Buffy musical. And, um, drinking more wine. Around the time everyone on screen started to walk through the fire, I looked over at the Head Badgers and said "I think I'm gonna stay here tonight."
(I am, perhaps, veryvery easy, but when Tara sings "everything is turning out so dark" it really gets me. Every single time. And that Tara&Giles duet of "Wish I Could Stay," oh my.)
After a lovely, long, wine-deep sleep, I had a lovely, long, sunny morning, which included taking the badgers' plastic recycling to the recycling point, browsing through boxes of free books and scoring a few, and then having a leisurely coffee-shop breakfast of tea and blueberry scone and 84 Charing Cross Road and pleasant intermittent conversation withgreyhoundliz and jimmi_obadger, who were reading the paper and Rubyfruit Jungle, respectively.
I toddled off home, to fritter away the afternoon with tea and snacks and books and fannishness. I finally finished Emma Donoghue's Hood, which was more depressing but also more complex than her first novel Stir Fry. The "Irish lesbian novel" genre should be larger.
On Sunday, there was much sleep, then some wrestling with with my recalcitrant desktop computer that, while I wasn't looking, has gone from young!Obi-Wan to decrepit!Obi-Wan. Sometimes it seems more like a Palpatine!Comp than an ObiComp. (Fortunately, my dear little GilesComp, the laptop, is a vital two years younger and just keeps on trucking despite a cracked screen.)
In the afternoon, one of my co-workers came over to join me in Not Watching The Superbowl. We made cookies (chocolate chip and hazelnut, absolutely decadent) and watched the movie Osama about a girl in Kabul under the Taliban who dresses like a boy so she can get work to support herself and her mother and grandmother. Yeah, I think we may have taken the anti-Superbowling-it a little far. The film is like Schindler's List without the list, if you get what I mean. We had been planning to watch Garden State afterwards, but it was too late, so we went out for burritos and then she went home.
Work was extremely Monday-ish. None of us in the processing room seemed able to get going, and the football-observant were in mourning, so we allowed ourselves to spend a ridiculous amount of time discussing and critiquing an email from the president of the society about a change in time and format for the monthly all-staff meetings. Imitations were involved - we're not sure if the prez is part-British or just affected. Silliness occurred.
A couple coworkers came over in the later evening to watch Garden State and eat more cookies. The movie was not as funny as any of us expected, but it was quirky fun. Plus, there was Ian Holm doing an amazing New Jersey accent, and an excellent use of Paul Simon's "Only Living Boy In New York."
On Friday, as usual, I betook myself to the Badgerhaus, eagerly anticipating polenta and tomatoes (as
greyhoundliz and I had discussed on Thursday night while I learned how to run the credit/debit and EBT machines at the co-op.) As semi-usual, I brought a bottle of red wine, purchased after much hemming and hawing at the Wine & Spirits Shoppe at Chestnut & 13th. The expectation had been for a dozen or more at dinner, but when I arrived the Junior Badgers had decamped en mass for center city, winnowing the projected diners to six - greyhoundliz, jimmi_obadger, o_flaherty, two of his friends, and me. Also, Liz had already picked up two bottles of wine. Then
o_flaherty's friends called to cancel.Cooking and snarking and wine-sipping ensued. The polenta polented in the oven, Liz addressed the problem of Too Much Tomato Stuff For The Pan in various creative ways, including all of us hanging over the pot doing serious quality control (known among the uninitiated as "tasting") to keep the juice from overflowing. I made a vegan chocolate cake using a palimpsest of a receipe, and miraculously succeeded.
Finally, the four of us sat down to a groaning board and promptly ate ourselves silly. The overbusiness for the polenta had home-canned crushed tomatoes (that I'd helped can in September), sundried tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, garlic, olive oil, beans, and sundry other hearty delicious things. I forgot that there was dessert coming and had a second helping of polenta... and then I of course had to have some chocolate cake... and then I was good for nothing but staggering into the living room and sprawling in an armchair under an afghan. And watching "Once More With Feeling," the Buffy musical. And, um, drinking more wine. Around the time everyone on screen started to walk through the fire, I looked over at the Head Badgers and said "I think I'm gonna stay here tonight."
(I am, perhaps, veryvery easy, but when Tara sings "everything is turning out so dark" it really gets me. Every single time. And that Tara&Giles duet of "Wish I Could Stay," oh my.)
After a lovely, long, wine-deep sleep, I had a lovely, long, sunny morning, which included taking the badgers' plastic recycling to the recycling point, browsing through boxes of free books and scoring a few, and then having a leisurely coffee-shop breakfast of tea and blueberry scone and 84 Charing Cross Road and pleasant intermittent conversation with
greyhoundliz and jimmi_obadger, who were reading the paper and Rubyfruit Jungle, respectively.I toddled off home, to fritter away the afternoon with tea and snacks and books and fannishness. I finally finished Emma Donoghue's Hood, which was more depressing but also more complex than her first novel Stir Fry. The "Irish lesbian novel" genre should be larger.
On Sunday, there was much sleep, then some wrestling with with my recalcitrant desktop computer that, while I wasn't looking, has gone from young!Obi-Wan to decrepit!Obi-Wan. Sometimes it seems more like a Palpatine!Comp than an ObiComp. (Fortunately, my dear little GilesComp, the laptop, is a vital two years younger and just keeps on trucking despite a cracked screen.)
In the afternoon, one of my co-workers came over to join me in Not Watching The Superbowl. We made cookies (chocolate chip and hazelnut, absolutely decadent) and watched the movie Osama about a girl in Kabul under the Taliban who dresses like a boy so she can get work to support herself and her mother and grandmother. Yeah, I think we may have taken the anti-Superbowling-it a little far. The film is like Schindler's List without the list, if you get what I mean. We had been planning to watch Garden State afterwards, but it was too late, so we went out for burritos and then she went home.
Work was extremely Monday-ish. None of us in the processing room seemed able to get going, and the football-observant were in mourning, so we allowed ourselves to spend a ridiculous amount of time discussing and critiquing an email from the president of the society about a change in time and format for the monthly all-staff meetings. Imitations were involved - we're not sure if the prez is part-British or just affected. Silliness occurred.
A couple coworkers came over in the later evening to watch Garden State and eat more cookies. The movie was not as funny as any of us expected, but it was quirky fun. Plus, there was Ian Holm doing an amazing New Jersey accent, and an excellent use of Paul Simon's "Only Living Boy In New York."
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