I wish I had more general laudations to share, but apparently I drank so much that the libations are crowding the field. But here are the minor lauds I can muster.
My bike
It's a beaut, isn't it? I'm a very privileged woman; my folks bought me this bike after I graduated from undergrad and moved to Duluth in 2003, but really it was a combination graduation/moving/hey, sorry you just got diagnosed with UC present. It's been parked inside through Duluth, Minnesota winters, outside (with a sketchy tarp) through Syracuse, New York winters, and outside in every kind of weather Texas has to offer. You see that chain? (I'm totally not zooming in on the chain. It's shameful.) It's the same. Damn. Chain. As when I first got the bike. Completely covered with rust - or rather, it was. A. and I braved the game-day crowds this weekend and took our bikes in for chain replacements.
Yeah, I'm a bad bike owner. But check out this bell:
Very ring-dingy, I'll have you know.
Son of Rambow
Loved this.
I did make a point to see Rambo: First Blood beforehand, which helped (Even in the guise of Weird Al, Rambo was unwelcome in our house during my childhood), and a friend explained the sequels to me with such gusto that I feel if I saw them, they'd only disappoint. But on to the libs.
Midas Touch
This was pure sweet deliciousness. It reminded me of mead, but not as cloyingly sweet and with a stronger kick. For more ancient recipe-inspired beers (and another Dogfish one), check out these links:
Full disclosure: I'm not a big IPA fan. When I want sour, I want a cocktail. This one was a major exception. I bought it on a whim because I like most of Saint Arnold's stuff, and apparently all the sales go to (as the website says) "Operation Homefront...an organization that provides emergency financial and other assistance to the families of our service members and wounded warriors." Cheers.
I'm still enjoying the Alaskan amber ale. But now that it's finally starting to get chilly out, I'll be looking for more dark beers. Left Hand milk stout, here I come.
Yes, that's right. It's time again for laudations and libations, that happy feature of this blog where I discuss all things great and small, some imbibable, some not at all. Enjoy.
These were bizarre. I think someone (maybe P & S) described them as "more fudgy" if you made them in a square instead of a cake pan, and since I cannot resist any fudge knownst or unbeknownst to man, I used the little 8 x 8 pan A. and I found in the yard. (Yeah, this was about three months ago and yeah, we washed it first. MAYBE. Come have brownies at my house, yo!) Anyhoo, when I pulled the pan out of the oven the brownies had expanded into a giant fluffy pillow. I put it on the counter and started washing dishes. A. came over and said, "Wow, they're huge!" and I said, "Yeah, weird, huh!" and then I heard a quiet putt, putt sound, and then A. said, "Oh. Shit. Sorry." I turned around to see the brownie pillow: cratered and collapsed in upon itself. Said A.: "I was poking at the bubbles."
Although Christmas was ruined, the brownies tasted amazing.
Beans
I've discovered that my gut does not like lentils. My gut has "issues" with a lot of things, but normally I can shame it into eating and digesting them anyway. A dinner with lentils, however, make the UC grumble in its sleep. Two dinners with lentils make the UC roll over. Three, four, five wake that nasty blaggard up and hence woe, woe, woe was me last week. Luckily A. and I finished the leftovers, so I'll wait a month or two before trying them again. But I'd like to get me some more protein on a regular basis, so I'm currently boiling up a pot of pinto beans. (If you don't make your beans from dry, you should try it; beans smell wonderful and earthy when they're cooking.) Mark Bittman from the NYT and How to Cook Everything says that it's possible to get your body more used to beans (ahem: less gas) if you eat them more regularly, so we'll see.* But to quote the Kids, none of my furniture has any resale value anymore, so it's a moot point.
The Wire/Wallander
A. and I have been switching it up on Masterpiece Sundays. Inspector Lewis was getting awfully predictable: is there an attractive young lady in the thick of it? She'll be dead by the end of the second act. Plus A. and I have started doing voices - he's Lewis, and I'm Hathaway - and everyone knows that's a nail in the coffin for taking a show seriously, so we started watching Wallander instead. We just finished season 2, which I enjoyed more than season 1. What the show has really made me want to watch, though, is the original Swedish version. Roger Ebert does a review of the movie/mini Revenge here, but as with most Ebert reviews (these days?), you'll need to beware of too much information if you click through. My preferred mode for seeing movies and TV these days is to avoid all reviews and then check them out afterwards, which is kind of ridiculous given my dual laud to the first season of The Wire, originally airing back in 2001? 2002? Yeah. And speaking of spoilers:
A. and I watched this with friends recently - mostly because I cataloged it at work and none of us had ever heard of it. (I thought the DVDBlu-ray case said "The Boogers" at first.) For me, it was worth it for the dialogue and the old dude creeping around (see 00:27 of the trailer for the ominous close-up), but overall it was giggle-inducing and not scary at all.
I am having some serious trouble with this book. By which I mean I am hard, hard pressed indeed to put it down at night. Nor am I able to stop thinking about the plot and characters and my god, what the hell is Kvothe going to get into by the next page. It's frustrating as hell, so I recommend you do not read. Really. Don't pick this one up. You'll be sorry. Your soul won't be your own any more. I am WARNING YOU. DON'T DO IT. Okay?
But seriously now. This is book number two of the Kingkiller chronicles, which Wiki and the author's website tell me is a trilogy. And it's good. I'm bothered by how good it is and how deeply it claims my attention - mostly because I'm jealous and it's a debut novel (the second volume has a blurb on the back from Ursula K. Le Guin, for god's sake! The swoons! The dream of dreams! Eaargh! Er, suffice to say that if I were this dude, I'd have had several heart attacks by now) - but also because it's been a while since anything I've read has engrossed me so, and without the use of cliffhanger chapter endings! I am shocked, shocked, to say the least.
I think my favorite thing about it is that Rothfuss has already revealed a great many things about the main character and the plot by jumping around in time in the telling; for example, we know certain things have happened to Kvothe in his youth because he references them as an older man, and yet when we dive back into his story, I'm still in suspense.
Anyhoo. If you like fantasy, give this a try. If you don't, give this a try. And don't be fooled by the slow start of book one. It's a damned lie.
Libations
I've been enjoying some Alaskan brewing company beers, particularly the Summer kolsch. Also recommended: the Hedgeline Vineyards riesling. It's cheap and not terrible.
* Although I don't know if I can trust him; so far HTCE is turning out to be a book I use only for looking up definitions, meat temperatures, possible cooking times, etc., because all the recipes out of it I've tried have run the short gamut of uninspiring to awful. Okay. Only the pancake recipe was awful. I don't fancy myself Julia Child, but I won't be straying from my own pancake recipe from now on.
My laudations and libations is a little massive this time around, as I've been watching a ton of movies, reading a ton of books, and dinging around at work and in the kitchen.
To Hear the Laudation(s) of their Women
Watching:
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Slow-moving, enjoyable. Stellar performances by the whole shebang - especially Gary Oldman. And overall I thought they did a good job of condensing the original Alec Guinness miniseries. (Still haven't read the book.) But I did wonder what it was like for people who hadn't had the benefit of the book or the miniseries. I tried to watch it from that perspective, and I think it was confusing. Maybe the producers/distributors are banking on people needing to see it at least twice? One other weird note: unlike the miniseries, where Ann Smiley is capably played by Siân Phillips, we NEVER see Ann's face in this version. We see her hair, various body parts including her bum being groped, but never a look at her. Very unsatisfactory, and I spent most of the evening afterwards trying to figure out why, apart from the basic, oh, but she doesn't matter, see. She's not even a pawn, so she's completely uninteresting. Blech.
Sherlock. What a great show. So far I've only watched the first season because I'm anti-cable and pro-library (not to mention pro-cheap and pro-free) but I'd recommend it highly.
Silent Running. Decent movie, a little preachy, but I can see how it would not have been in its time. Interesting effects. Terrible Joan Baez screeching throughout, though. Bruce Dern reminds me a little of my husband's father, which is funny to me considering the first time I ever saw Dern in a movie, it was this one:
Marathon Man. Um. I'm not sure what to say about this one. It was very...speedy? I think I liked the scenes with Lawrence Olivier and Roy Scheider were good. Dustin Hoffman has never been one of my favorite actors, but he was good.
Incidentally: wow, the Oscars have gotten quite speedy in their way, too, haven't they?
Reading: I read Dead Until Dark, the first book in the Charlaine Harris Southern Vampire series. I know, I know, I'm perpetually late to the party. But it was enjoyable and quick. Speedy seems to be my MO these days. Am nearly finished with Anna Karenina and as A. and I went to the bookstore this weekend, I have a whole shelf of new and exotic (to me) stuff to read.
Eating: Ginger Snaps. They are delicious. This is obvious, yes.
You do not need to get these. They are not as great as they appear.
I should probably go through and rethink some of my tags. Just noticed I have "boobies" as a label. I poked around and discovered I have used it exactly once - to talk about breast milk and the possible excretions of medication in thereof. Sorry 'bout that, boobie label-clicking folks. I suppose I could tag this post with "boobies," given I've typed it so much, but that'd just be cruel recursion, wouldn't it?
Anyway, it's time for a new year full of Laudatory Wonders and Libations I like to Thunder (down my gullet. Bad rhymes do not matter when you have delightful beer).Yay! Let's link and drink!
A. and I finally watched this before Christmas. It's much better than The Departed, which I still like, mostly for the inclusion of Mark Wahlberg's character.
Don't know if I've mentioned her here before. She's a lovely artist. She also had a Christmas/holiday sale, which was why I planned on posting about her. I don't know if it's still on. Oops. But you should check out her site anyway.
1. The Edgar Allan Poe Audio Collection, as read by two of my all-time favorite actors, Basil Rathbone and Vincent Price. I love all of Price's horror films, but one of my never-wavering favorites with him is Laura, in which he plays Shelby Carpenter, a charming, manipulative mooch.
2. The Dark Side: Tales of Terror and the Supernatural by Guy de Maupassant. I actually read this back in November, when A. and I took a trip to San Francisco. Creepy, creepy, creepy short stories. Also, the edition I read had some very informative prefaces/introductions that described Maupassant's life, which sounded prolific, raucous and sometimes unpleasant. He attempted suicide multiple times, and he died (at age 46) in a Paris asylum.
3. My backyard.
Groomed it is not, and please, pay no attention to the mud and the mulch and the enthusiastic dog-clawings. In the plus department, we have a large tree nearby and a lot of overhanging branches, so our feeder attracts some pretty cardinals, chickadees, mourning doves, and other chirpy fellows.
Today's (well, last night's, really) Libation:
Lobotomy Bock from Indian Wells Brewing Co. in California. This stuff was delicious. I think I need more so I can fully describe the flavor with well-chosen phrases like "nutty chocolate aroma" or "bitter dark mysteriousness." Yep, definitely gonna need some more.
This really hit home for me, mostly because our move to Texas was dictated by A.'s grad school needs and my prospects for professional work and using my library science degree (especially for the area in which we live) are pretty slim. Sometimes? Because of this lack of choice and/or work or personal compulsion I had to move here? It feels like hell. It feels misaligned, wrong, like I'll never grow or prosper here, like if only I had had a solid reason for moving here apart from the oh, right - we're in love thing, then everything would be okay.
It's hard to enjoy even a calculated risk if you're not taking it for yourself. But then, I do understand that I AM taking it for me, and that despite the tendency we have to label things ruined and irreparable and black-or-white wrong-or-right, this is just one of the short experiences of my short life.
And then I go to the new Indian restaurant in town, or I call up/chat up one of the awesome friends who I wouldn't have met save for this move, or I go buy some überfresh produce at the local farmer's market, or I pull up Skype and give a long-distance call to my folks or friends, and I remember, Wake up, you doof, this ain't so bad.
(I know, I know; call me when I'm having a flare in 100+ degree heat and we'll talk then.)
Today's Libations (or rather, tonight's):
Last night I picked up a six-pack of Leinie's Creamy Dark. I guess I'm feeling nostalgic for the days when it was a cheap sixer rather than an import.
In other news, everyone at work is either sick or sickening from the weird cold/fluish thing I had a couple weeks ago. I'm flinging hand sanitizer around like goopy confetti and drinking the beers while I got 'em.
