On the Third Day of Christmas

my true love gave to me

three Ed Hardy hookahs!

red, white and blue - as Amurrican as apple pie and baseball, by damn

Oh god.

Do people still buy Ed Hardy gear? I thought Jon Gosselin had made the brand synonymous with "douchebags" (the only good thing he ever did for society)... Regardless, this might be the worst of all the terrible things Ed Hardy has ever inflicted on the world. I can't even adequately write about it. Let's let the website description speak for itself, shall we?

Ed Hardy's art surrounds the water-bowl. Quickly the tempo of the Hookah builds up across small shades of art cutting across the Hookah's body-sparkle A third up the Hookah throat on the disco-ball are beautiful snippets of Ed Hardy's art. This art enters the Ash balcony constructed of glass. The Hookah is topped by a Beautifully shaped and smoothed Tobacco head. The Lightweight and aerodynamic hose is lightly touched with glittery-impressions running down the hose and then with its Ultra durable and flexible frame shapes itself across the Hookah's body.

Okay now stop. Read that again.

Just so you know, that is all copy and paste. I did not change a bit of that account. And you're not reading it wrong. It really does say: "small shades of art" "body-sparkle" "beautiful snippets of Ed Hardy's art" and "lightly touched with glittery-impressions."

Ignoring the blatant disregard for common grammar and capitalization, the fifth-grade adjectives, the awkwardly sexual nature of the description.... no, actually, you know what? This PERFECTLY encapsulates the Ed Hardy hookah.

...two handerpants

and an ornament of yummy sushi

Category(s): ridiculous, WTF

[Find them HERE]

family food fun!!

Oh my god you guys. I am SO full. I think I'm leaving Thanksgiving week behind me approximately 63 pounds heavier. Instead of going home (other home at least), this year my parents came to our new home in Boston and we literally just ate, drank and played with Penny for four days straight. It was glorious.

And although it was weird not to put up our usual Christmas tree while listening to carols (that is, if you call Celine Dion Christmas, "carols"), it was still a fully holiday-y holiday.

[Sidenote, here is an actual conversation that occurred on Thanksgiving morning as we waited for Nancypants and Russbuckets to arrive and begin the festivities
Me, excited: Babe! Starting at 5:00 today we can start listening to Christmas songs!!
Brian, not as much: No we can't. I'm not listening to Christmas songs until Thanksgiving is officially over.
Me: Babe! Starting at 5 a.m. tomorrow we can start listening to Christmas songs!!!!!
Brian: I hate you.*
*He didn't say this, it just sounds more dramatic. He actually said some nonsense about you can't listen to Christmas tunez until December or some such thing. I called foul and immediately began downloading the Glee Christmas album.
Sidenote over.]

But I have a lot to be thankful for.

I live in an awesome, bustling, cool city with my best friend, who has been known to bring me not only an open beer but also a purring kitten (I know!) while I watch tv on my computer in my pajamas.

I have parents who stock up my cabinet with wine - much more than enough for just Thanksgiving weekend so I can have some after they leave (you guys are the best, Momsy and Popsicle).

I have friendys all over the U.S. who I am lucky to miss so much.

I have some amazing, beautiful sistahs (Bonnie, Anne, Allie and the newbies) who are going to bring me some incredible souvenirs from India (right? RIGHT?!?!?!?!).

I have a tiny tiny kitty who is sleepy and sweet and adorable and playful.

And much more, yadda yadda I am thankful blah blah blah. Let not get too mushy here.

But really. I am.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

 

This, my friends, is quite possibly the most ridiculous recipe I've ever seen. If you can't tell, that is two layers of turkey with a layer of stuffing in between, mashed potato "icing" and candied yams on top. Yes, it is a Thanksgiving CAKE. So if you're looking for a way to spice up your leftovers, the recipe can be found at here!

And now, if you'll excuse me, I must go fall into a tryptophan coma. Cheers!

On the Second Day of Christmas

my true love gave to me

 two handerpants!

Let's just read how these gems are described by the website, shall we?

"Crafted in breathable 95% cotton, these cosy, palm-protecting undercrackers absorb sweat and prevent chafing, and can be worn alone (but with the rest of your clothes on, obviously) or underneath gloves, making them ideal for all kinds of tasks, from typing and lifting weights to doing jazz hands at improv shows and pretending your fingers are hunky Calvin Klein models. They really are total pants." 

First of all, what the hell is an undercracker??
Second of all, who would EVER wear these?
Third of all... just why. Why. Why???

...and an ornament of yummy sushi

Category(s): dumb, WTF

[Find it HERE]

missing Millsaps

Lately I've been thinking about Millsaps. A lot.

I miss the instant access of having all my best friendys at my fingertips. For four years I only had to go next door, down the hall or at the most to a building 100 feet away in order to spend time with all my favorite people.

Every weekend was a party (often involving costumes, heaven). Every meal was a chance to catch up with my friends. Every class was an opportunity to exchange thoughts and opinions with people that I respected.

Tait was always there to watch Harry Potter and craft and drink wine. Bonnie was always there to work out, hit the caf, procrastinate in the English house or get dolled up together. Molly was always there to pre-party for any and every occasion. So many friendys meant so many different things to me it would be pointless to try to name them all individually. CMO was there to dance and gossip and laugh. Kappa Delta was there for swaps, formals and post-chapter dinners. Lambda Chi Alpha was there for parties, games and movie nights. Of course Brian was always there, for everything.

And he still is. I love that we get to have this Boston adventure together. I love that we get to figure out how to be adults (and sometimes rebel against adulthood) together.

But that doesn't mean I don't miss the other parts of my old life.

I enjoy BU and I like the friends I've made, especially through being a TA, and I really want to get better at my chosen field... but sometimes I think perhaps I should have taken a gap year or two. It's really weird, and hard too - unexpectedly so - to be technically in college but to feel so disconnected from the whole experience. I think if I had a year in between the feeling wouldn't be so... raw. At Millsaps we worked hard, but we played hard too. Having such close friends around made the work seem easy - or if not easy, then easier. The absence of those connections here makes the work feel so much harder, even when its not.

Then again, I've heard from others that going straight into grad school and knocking it out is the best way to do it. So maybe its just a grass-is-greener kind of thing. Which just makes me think of KD, and the wave of nostalgia washes over me again. Sigh.

On the First Day of Christmas

It's that time again... time to begin planning, purchasing and packaging the best presents I can possibly procure (suck on THAT alliteration!). Yes, that's right, its beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. And I know it's not even Thanksgiving yet, but let's face it, most stores started stocking Christmas merchandise the minute temperatures got below 72*, so I'm just not fighting it this year. In the spirit of gift giving and receiving, over the next month and a half I will be counting down some of the most ridiculous, dumbest, WTFiest and/or most awesome things the internet has to offer, Christmas-carol style. Here we go!

On the first day of Christmas
my true love gave to me
an ornament of yummy sushi!

There are lots of traditions around Christmas, from the time the tree goes up (the day after Thanksgiving, without fail) to what we eat Christmas morning (coffee cake, which is prepped before any gifts get opened and then cooks during the unwrapping bonanza and then is eaten as we sit amid piles of paper and bows and shiny new presents) to certain gifts we get. It is a tradition in my family to get a new ornament, or two, or five, each year commemorating something special that happened that year - some big occasion or fun family trip or life-changing event. Over the years, this has turned our tree into a quirky, colorful hodgepodge of memories. Decorating the Christmas tree each year is like taking a little trip through time. As I hang each one, I remember visiting the Monterey aquarium or joining the basketball team that one year or starting school at Millsaps or all the fun I’ve had with my sorority family.

With all that has occurred this year, there are a plethora of ornament options. Graduating college, moving to big city Boston, starting grad school at BU – I’m sure one of these will result in another ornament to add to the tree and every year hereafter when I nestle it among the branches, I will remember this year.

But you know… sometimes a girl just wants some sushi. Because sushi is awesome.

Category(s): awesome (obviously)

[Find it HERE]

* Except for the Hobby Lobby in Jackson, MS, which already had at least three aisles of Christmas decorations up in July. 

hibernation nation

Well, here we are. It’s officially that time of the semester where the weather, my motivation level and the time change all intersect, causing my urge to hibernate to skyrocket.

Living in Mississippi for the last several years, my hibernation instinct never really came out due to the weather staying absurdly warm (on and off at least) until January. But last fall I spent the semester in Ireland and it emerged full-force. I would leave an afternoon class in the pitch-dark and all I could do was retreat into my little room in our apartment to eat special k and watch tv on my computer.

Here in Boston I find myself succumbing to it again. November rolled around, the temperatures dropped, it started getting dark at 4:30 (thanks a LOT, daylight savings) and now all I want to do is stay home and hide with Pennycat under the fluffiest comforter I can find.

It’s just so much WORK. Getting dressed no longer involved throwing on a cute dress and Toms and running out the door with wet hair. Cute dresses would cause my skin to freeze and possibly shatter like ice. Toms must be worn on top of thick woolen socks, largely altering their entire fit. Wet hair will cause me to immediately contract pneumonia and spend the next (and last, obviously) 48 hours of life sneezing and coughing and wishing I had taken time to put a hat on… Put away is the sorority uniform of Nike shorts and large tshirts. Put away are the strappy sandals and jorts and tank tops and other things that can be described as "easy breezy."

Instead I must take the time to blow dry my hair, find approximately 43920480 layers to put on until the only skin visible is from my eyebrows to my chin and shuffle out, alternating between sweating inside and shivering outside. It's MUCH easier to just remain in my jammies, moving as little as possible to avoid allowing any of the warmth in my little cocoon to escape.

Here’s the thing... I really do like cold weather. Growing up in Utah instilled in me a love of crisp, snowy days where everything is blanketed in white and kind of soft and muffled. A snowy winter wonderland is one of the most beautiful sights to me.

But until I see some snow on the ground rather than this wind, cold rain, bluster and general dark/damp depressingness, you can find me under the covers, eating toaster waffles to fatten up before falling asleep for the next three months.

Note: I wrote most of this post yesterday when it was dreary and rainy and somewhat terrible. Today it is sunny and almost even warm (almost) and I feel kind of dumb posting this even though my overall opinion hasn't changed. Mother Nature is laughing somewhere, like "You want to bitch about ME on your blog?!? Suck on this! And tomorrow its going to be 40 degrees and sleeting! And then perhaps the next day I'll send some 90 degree weather and you can sweat to death in your  non-AC-equipped apartment!! Hahahahhaha! You SHOULD feel dumb!"

Sex Ed

This past weekend, three of my closest friends and I went to a sex museum in NYC. For scholarly reasons.

No, really.

Allow me to explain.

Although I was an English major in college, I was an “everything else” minor. I took random classes in nearly every discipline, from math to chemistry to fine art, and although I loved my major, some of these random classes ended up being some of my favorites. One such class was a Philosophy course called Sexual Ethics.

I took the class with the same three friends I was with this weekend (one of whom was a Philosophy major and encouraged us to take the class because of her love of the professor who taught it*). Sexual Ethics was one of the best classes I took all four years of my undergraduate career, not just for the ample quotes it provided my inner twelve-year-old boy to snicker at, but because it was a legitimately fascinating, difficult, scholarly course that taught me to think in a different way about people, gender, relationships, the law and life.

But it’s my bestie Tait who provides what is probably my favorite memory of the class. Never one to waste ink or page space, Tait simply wrote “sex” in her planner every Tuesday and Thursday along with the other classes she was taking that semester. One day in a sorority chapter meeting, Mary Mitchell Williams saw Tait flipping through her planner, leaned over and whispered, “Do you schedule sex?!”

At Millsaps, I guess you never know.

* Who happens to be bald, gay and a complete genius.

Sandwiches I Have Loved

According to some food thing I follow on Twitter (clearly, a reliable source), today is National Sandwich Day. And you know what? I LOVE SANDWICHES.

So to honor this illustrious day, let’s go on a journey of discovery through my sandwich past.

The PB&J: The first sandwich to enter my repertoire was the pb&j, which I ate plenty of because I was quite possibly the pickiest child alive. However, even though my taste buds have matured, I still get a hankering for this classic, especially because I have now discovered the trick of toasting the bread, which makes the peanut butter gooey and the bread crunchy.

(Let it be known that my mom, whose age shall remain undisclosed, still eats a pb&j at least three times a week, and more when my dad travels and she doesn’t feel like cooking. Multi-grain bread, Skippy peanut butter and boysenberry Smuckers jam. Like clockwork.)

Sometimes it may be substituted by a PB&H (peanut butter and honey), which my dad prefers to elevate by whipping the two ingredients together into a somewhat fluffy substance - bananas optional.

The Bologna: I’m pretty sure I was the only one who EVER got the bologna sandwich in the Kava house on Fridays and I’m pretty sure I never want to find out how it is made/what’s in it and I’m pretty sure people judge me for this… but I harbor a secret love for bologna.

The Fried Egg: This sandwich may just have single-handedly kept me alive in Ireland, where deli meat was either hella expensive or sketchy at best and I had to walk half a mile to take a bus the rest of the few miles and carry all my groceries that whole way and I only had one shelf and approximately six square inches of fridge space in which to store my food and had access to very few cooking materials and, well, half the time I didn’t feel much like making something all that complex.

So I made a LOT of fried egg sammies. It was always best on toasted bread, with mayo (and if I was feeling crazy, some cheese). The egg should be fried just to a point where the yolk is still a tiny bit runny, so it kind of oozes everywhere when you cut it and you can soak it all up with the bread. That is such a gross image, but it is so so yummy.

The Steak: The ideal leftovers ‘wich. Take a quality steak cooked medium rare, throw it in the fridge overnight, bust it out at lunchtime, slice it thin, add bread (preferably crunchy and/or soft dinner rolls) and cheese and mayo and enter sandwich bliss.

This sandwich tastes the best when it has been put together by my dad. There have been scientific studies that prove this irrefutably. 

The Bagel: Perfection. While bagels might have 8952300932 more calories than normal sandwich bread, they are also 949328743820 times better. There are breakfast bagels, with egg, sausage and cheese – delicious. There are deli bagels, with meat and cheese and veggies – scrumptious. But the pinnacle of bagel goodness is also the simplest. Toasted with cream cheese – perfection, for breakfast, lunch or dinner (or possibly all three – I’m not above it).

The Turkey: I make turkey sandwiches the most often these days. In addition to making them for myself, on the days Brian has to work I wake up sometime between 5:45 and 6:30 (depending on how on-time Brian is running), shuffle around in my pajamas and crazy slept-on hair, mumble incoherently and carefully make a turkey and havarti cheese sandwich to send Brian off with before crawling back into bed and resuming unconsciousness for another hour or two. Turkey, the sandwich of love.

God I’m hungry now.

Project Crackway

I, like everyone else in the world*, am appalled at the outcome of the latest Project Runway. Specifically appalled that the judges were smoking crack the level of which made them name Gretchen, not Mondo, the winner. Not because I think Gretchen is a bitch (I mean, I don't not think it, but that's not why I'm appalled), or because she is a terrible designer... It's because LOOK AT THESE CLOTHES:

 

 

Mondo, you fabulous little sprite. I would wear any of these clothes and probably anything else you put your genius hands to. Gorgeous. Love the shapes, loooove the black and white patterns, love the sparing use of color. I even love the hair and makeup (those lashes!!). 

Now look at THESE clothes. Gretchen made what looks, to me, like pajamas. 

jammies

ugly jammies

jammies with a jacket on top

I would love to lay around the apartment eating Chex Mix and watching Jeopardy in these, but I would never wear them in public anywhere. The only look of Gretchen's I reeeeallly like is this one:

But I would like it even better in a graphic, black and white print... aka Mondo-ized. (Also, give me that model's hair).

So yes, Gretchen's clothes were well made and I wish the best for her, but they were in no way exciting and breathtaking and wearable and clever and fun the way Mondo's were. The judges had decided before the runway shows who was going to win, and they argued themselves in circles trying to make it work. The shit they said in praise of the winning line were things that were criticisms in almost every previous season. A lot of people in the blogosphere have been shouting that they will NEVER WATCH THE SHOW AGAIN!!!!! I'm not saying that, but I do think the things that made Project Runway great in its beginning seasons are being smothered by producer interference and shoddy, inconsistent judging. Please put the drugs down, PR, and maybe I'll tune back in. 

* Everyone else who watches Project Runway and has taste, that is.

(All photos stolen from courtesy of Tom and Lorenzo.)

Harry -- I mean, Happy November!

I can't believe Halloween is already over, which means the holiday trifecta is one-third behind us. But I guess the Earth spins on, so let's continue looking forward, shall we?

November typically is the month of delicious whole turkeys and even delicious-er leftover turkey sandwiches and imbibing and family and eating until you want to die. However, this November, something takes precedent.

HARRY POTTER

Which is why I will be watching this and various other trailers between one and one hundred times per day until November 19:



Holy shit, goosebumps every time.