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Friday Fun! (Sarah Silverman)
Hello my lovely readers! Sorry there was no Friday Fun post last week. I had the day off and was staying as far away from the computer as possible. :-)
Last weekend I got to meet Sarah Silverman! She was in town for her book tour for The Bedwetter. She read a portion of the book featuring her father’s hilarious voice mails to her. This was followed by a Q+A session that I’m pretty sure nobody in the audience was aware was going to happen. It took us a bit to come up with semi-good questions. Among the things I learned:
- She doesn’t drink. (Say what?!)
- Her feelings were hurt by the whole TED fiasco, and her presentation for it is still unavailable online.
- She originally mocked twitter, but now loves it as a “message in a bottle” feature for her life.
- The only topic she personally has boundaries for is making “fat women” the butt of jokes. She said that “America as a society has this idea that fat women don’t deserve to be loved or happy, and I just think that’s really wrong, so I don’t go there, but other comedians have the right to do what they want to do.” Classy lady.
- She wants to adopt a mentally challenged kid, but she doesn’t want to feel guilty for dying and leaving a mentally challenged adult with no one to care for him/her, so she decided she should adopt a mentally challenged child with a terminal illness. Lolz.
After the reading was the book signing. There were probably around 150 people in line. She was sweet, but a lot more demure in person than I was expecting. I suspect she’s got the classic case of a shy person who comes alive when performing. She was nice to everyone, and I’m pleased to say I came away still glad to be a fan.
Also last weekend I dropped off my bike to be repaired and now it is all shiny and awesome! I was shocked to ride it and discover the gears are supposed to be smooth, not difficult to cope with. I’m hoping to start biking my commute soon. I just need to practice the route on a non-work day to get the hang of it.
As for grad school, my final projects for the semester are done! Now I just have to attend one more class session for each of my classes, and then I am home free with two months of vacation. Oh happy day!
What have you guys been up to in the last two weeks? Anything exciting or awesome?
Happy weekends!
Friday Fun! (Finals, New Neighbor)
Hello my lovely readers! I’m smack dab in the middle of finals period, which for some bizarre reason consists of two group projects and two presentations (one solo, one group) this year. I gave my solo presentation this week. It was a database teach; I really enjoy those! Oh, heck, I just enjoy a bunch of people listening to me talk. It makes me all warm and glowy inside. Anyway, the two group projects mean that I can’t procrastinate this time around like I normally do. My team-mate for my face-to-face class is awesome, though, and she and I are motivating each other via GoogleDocs.
Over in my apartment, the painting guy came to check out the massive wall stains from the leak. He says it’s still too wet to fix, and it’ll be another 3 to 4 weeks before repainting, so my apartment still looks like Big Bird’s blood was smeared up and down the wall. In related news, my new neighbor moved in yesterday. She’s my age, has cats, and isn’t married. Even if we don’t wind up friends, that’s still a major step up from the we-got-married-and-immediately-turned-grouchy-and-started-acting-old folks who used to live under me. My tomato seedlings are actually starting to look plant-like now, the herbs are all fluffy and adorable, and the peppers finally sprouted! I would show you guys pics, but I don’t have a good digital cameras so taking and uploading pics is mind-bogglingly frustrating.
I get a three day weekend this weekend since Monday is Patriot’s Day. I know that’s not a holiday you get off in most of the US, but here in Boston it’s also the marathon day, so if you work nearish the marathon route, you get it off. Yay! Happy weekends everyone!
Friday Fun! (Movies and Gardening)
My apologies for no book reviews this week! The reason is three-fold. First, I’m reading a graphic novel series, and I wanted to just review the whole series in one post. Second, my regular book I’m reading is really long, and I’m not enjoying it that much, so I tend to wander off and play Plants vs. Zombies on my iTouch instead. Finally, the auudiobook I’m listening to is crazy long. We’re talking a grand total of 7 days worth of audio. Like whoa. However, all three will be finished next week, which means you will be inundated with reviews!
Last weekend, I attempted to see Hot Tub Time Machine. About 3/4 of the way through the movie, the fire alarm went off. We all evacuated and were puzzled to discover zero employees anywhere in sight. Finally, a fellow movie goer took the initiative to call the fire department, as the alarm was still going off. The firemen showed up and went in the building and miraculously an employee finally showed her face. We got free passes to another show, which means I can see a 3D movie even though I’d only paid for a 2D one. Score!
While I was in Home Depot getting my huge planter pots for when my seedlings become, y’know, big plants, I noticed people buying seed pots. Some of these babies even had complex clear plastic covers to simulate a greenhouse. I feel that I should at least save my readers from this marketing scheme. You really don’t need to buy seed pots! Look in your recycling bin. Empty plastic food containers make excellent seed pots. I currently am using hummus containers, cheese spread containers, and a yogurt cup, but pretty much anything that’s about that size and plastic can be used. Put the dirt in it. Add a bit of water and stir it up. Put the seeds in it. Now, take the plastic wrap you’ve got in your cupboard, put it over the top, and hold it in place with a rubberband. Voila! Nearly free seed pots.
Happy weekends everyone!
Friday Fun! (Visit to VT, Gal Pals, Wii)
Although the reason for my visit home last weekend was sad, I had a wonderful time getting to see my dad’s side of the family mostly together for a change. My aunts, uncles, and cousins were all wonderful, although it’d been so many years that I did shock a few by having beer at the wake. Hah! Apparently, me being 23 snuck up on them. I also got to see my nephew, who is now talking in complete sentences. I was shocked at how well he remembers me, as well as at how much time he wanted to spend with me. It was fun! Apparently, I like toddlers. Who knew. I also got to meet my niece for the first time. She’s got her daddy’s red hair, so she’s bound to be a bundle of trouble. ;-) Really, though, she’s looking quite good for all the time she had to spend in intensive care at first.
Back in Boston, I hung out with my ever-lovely gal pals, Nina and E. I, shockingly, got to introduce them to the infamous Telephone music video, which they naturally fell in love with. Bonding occurred over Thai food, and Nina sent me off with a bottle of vodka. The gal knows me so well. :-) Meanwhile, all three of my herb plants came up and seem to be doing relatively well. *fingers crossed* Also making an appearance is the seedlings from the mystery seeds I got from Old Navy. I have no idea what flower it’s going to be. We shall see. I’ve been playing my way through wii’s Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess. It’s the furthest I’ve ever made it in that type of game. I will say, getting to swipe the wiimote in the air and having it kill troll things on the screen is AWESOME. I think if I ever actually manage to defeat this, I’ll have to try another game where I get to wave my arms around and kill things.
Happy weekends, everyone! Here’s hoping the gorgeous weather holds out!
Friday Fun! (A Memorial)
A lot of things happened this week–I got into my WISE course (an online course taken from a different MLIS program than my own), one of my herbs sprouted, we got the Richard episode of Lost finally, and more. But what I want to tell you guys about today is about my Aunt Kitty, who passed away unexpectedly last Saturday of a stroke.
My father’s sister had 8 siblings, 7 of whom were brothers. She had two kids of her own, my cousins Chris and Michelle. I was never super-close to her and many of my childhood memories in general are foggy, but what I do remember is how she always greeted the nieces and nephews with a smile and a hug. Her house was next to our grandparents’ house and sometimes playing at Grandma’s turned into slipping into Aunt Kitty’s backyard. She never minded. In the falls she would make us these delicious, sticky popcorn balls. I remember looking into hers and my Aunt Linda’s faces and wondering if I’d look at all like them when I grew up, since everyone said I looked most like the McNeil side of the family.
Aunt Kitty touched my life in a way only aunts and uncles can. She got to be the fun person who let me slip into her backyard and give me super sugary popcorn balls even though they would make me hyper. I loved her, and I am sorry to see her go.
Friday Fun! (Rain, Gardening, and Cooking)
In spite of the torrential downpour that Boston experienced last weekend (check out pics of the sinkhole that erupted under a line of the T here), I still managed to have a very nice weekend. I got to flex my Beirut playing muscles Friday night and got to spend most of the rest of the storm holed up inside, except of course for Monday when I had to commute to work. Also, inside didn’t exactly mean no rain as both my library and my apartment sprung leaks in the roof. They thought they had fixed the library ones. They were wrong. The hospital didn’t even bother wet vacing the carpet this time around. As for my apartment, it held strong for most of the storm, but on Monday morning, I woke up to water running down one of the walls. It appears some of that wind finally took its toll on the roof tiles. Almost everyone I talked to though said there was at least some water damage to their homes, so it has been proven yet again that I am not a unique snowflake (thank you, Fight Club).
The weather the rest of the week almost totally makes up for it though. It’s been in the high 60s to low 70s. I haven’t had to have my heat on in days! I took this as a sign of spring and started my herb and flower seeds last night. I’m planning on ordering my veggie and strawberry seeds today and hopefully will get them planted soon as well. I’m honestly pretty darn stoked for all the food aspects of summer–plants in my kitchen, farmer’s market on the way home, possibly taking a whack at canning by myself for the first time, berry picking, etc… So much yumminess and new skills to learn!
I tried out two new recipes this week. The first was a low-calorie, low-dairy mac and cheese bake (I printed it from some random website, which I can’t remember off the top of my head). It used pureed butternut squash to replace most of the cheese. The only cheese used was 1 cup of mozzarella and 2 tablespoons of cream cheese. Naturally, the pasta was whole wheat. I enjoyed this, and I think it will be a good recipe with time. A little something was missing from it, though. A wee bit bland. My dad suggested nutmeg. Any other thoughts?
The other recipe was for stuffed eggplants from my cookbook The Vegetarian Bible. Basically you halve the eggplant, scoop out the insides, then mix the insides with tomatoes, onions, garlic, and al dente pasta. Then you stick it back in plus mozzarella and bread crumbs then into the oven. This wasn’t a bad recipe. It was nutritious, filling, and tasted fine. I just didn’t love it or really like it enough to warrant the labor intensity of it. I doubt I’ll make it again unless I randomly have lots of eggplants I need to use up. The other recipe I’ve tried from the cookbook was really good though, so I think this might be a personal taste thing.
What did you guys get up to this week? Any new things tried? Happy weekends!
Friday Fun! (Tiffany, Wii, and Websites at Work, Oh My!)
Even though this week was spring break from grad school, I still had to work full time and of course managed to be super-busy outside of work as well.
My friend Tiffany from my days of interning with Americorps/the National Park Service has been in town for training for her job. She lives in Virginia, so this was pretty darn exciting. This was her last week in Boston, so she came over to my apartment so we could visit in relative quiet as opposed to the noise of a restaurant or pub. It was so lovely to get to catch up after all this time, and I was glad to discover that in a relatively short time we were chit-chatting just like we did when we lived and worked together at the park.
This week I discovered that having the tax return money to buy a Wii and tv is one thing, finding places that have them in stock is another entirely. I won’t even go into the debacle that was the store brand tv purchased at Best Buy (needless to say, it was returned), but I will say what the hell, Nintendo? You have an insanely popular gaming system, and you’re not meeting demand? That just doesn’t make sense to me. After much searching, genius finally struck me in the form of Walmart.com, which had a few consoles in stock. Huzzah! It arrived on Wednesday, and I’m enjoying it just as much as I thought I would. My tv arrived from Walmart.com yesterday, but I have yet to set it up. Fingers crossed that we’ll be able to make Netflix stream on it!
Work has also been very busy as this is the time of year when I update our website. Long story short, with hospital privacy concerns, one person has control of all of the websites connected to the hospital, which means we get to update our websites once a year and that we have zero to very very little control over the appearance. This is frustrating to me as it limits what I can do. (For instance, I’ve been having to use tables. TABLES). Since we can only update once a year, that also means a bunch of our links are broken by the time that comes around, so I spend a lot of time hunting down the good ones. Thankfully, this will soon be in the past as the hospital is organizing an intranet, which means I will get to be webmaster of our websites! (And the nurses’ websites, which I’m actually a bit nervous about). So as soon as I finish this update to tide our patrons over until the intranet, I’ll commence working on the intranet. You guys, I’m nervous, this will be the first time I’ll be using my real web programming skills for work. Eep. *crosses fingers*
I’m excited for the weekend! Be expecting more reviews of old and obscure books as the Audiobooks app is a good companion to web design. Happy weekends!
Friday Fun! (Nina’s Back, Refunds, and Gardening)
This was a busy, but overall fun week for me. One of my closest friends, Nina, was on a two month trip to Israel, and this week she returned home! (She kept a blog of her trip, check it out!) She and one of my other good friends came over Wednesday night, and we all cooked together. Well, Nina and I did. E was the cheering squad. Also, she brought the chocolate. Nina made tehini the way they do in Israel, and we had that with whole wheat bread for an appetizer. It’s a lot like hummus, only more bitter. For dinner we had whole wheat crust pizza topped with vodka sauce, marinated tempeh, shredded carrots, avocado, onions, spinach, and cheese. You guys, vodka sauce lends such a nice sweetness to a pizza. Swoon. Also, Nina brought me a lovely tapestry from Israel. I believe she said it was made by the tent dwelling Arabs, but I was also tipsy when she gave it to me, so I could totally be wrong about that. Although it is many colors, it is predominantly a vibrant shade of red with hints of black, so it will go really well with my living room. I’m so happy Nina is back, and she and E are going to be roommates, so I’ll be seeing much more of both of them.
In tidbits of news, my state refund came in, so there’ll be a bit of shopping this weekend. I was going to get a Wii, but I think I’ll wait for my federal refund for that. Instead, I’ll probably get a new tv, mostly so I can finally hitch up my mac to it and stream Netflix. Also, what’s the point of having a Wii if you’re playing on an old tv? (Don’t worry, budgeting types, some of the money will be going into savings and some into the terrifying undergrad debt).
I’ve decided (partly spurred on by my librarian friend, Kristi, check her blog out), that come hell or high water I will get some gardening done this year in spite of the fact that I have neither yard nor balcony and a kitty who is very determined not to share windowsills. I found a windowbox that is a bit sturdier and fits on the windowsill better, so hopefully she won’t knock it off. I’ve also got some other ideas up my sleeve (such as the topsy/turvy planting thing). I’m planning on growing tomatoes, herbs, peppers, and strawberries. I’m also considering potatoes via an indoor method Nina learned about in Israel. I am, however, known to have a brown thumb, so hopefully this pursuit won’t be in vain.
Happy weekend everyone!
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This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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