like a drunk baby who shows up at your house and won't leave
[a] I bought art! Or, well, a very fancy-pants print of some orignal art. About six months ago, smartlikejustin, moireach and annakovsky and I were having brunch at Trident and there were a bunch of paintings by a local artist up on the walls and I fell in love-at-first-sight with one of them but since it was, you know, an original painting, it was $800, so our love not to be. I went to look at the artist's website to see if she sold postcards or anything and lo and behold, she did prints! Including prints of the painting I saw at the restaurant! But instead of regular old poster prints, she did canvas giclee prints, which were less than $800 but still a lot more than I was comfortable paying for an item of interior decoration. I mean, seriously, I dig through those big scary bins so I can buy all my bed skirts and curtains at Goodwill. I am a spendthrift.
But I kept thinking about that stupid painting, and then when I got my state tax refund and it was the exact amount, to the dollar, that the stupid print cost, and I figured that as long as I plunked my entire federal refund in my savings account, there are worse things you can do with your tax refund than blow it all on stimulating the economy by supporting a local artist, right?
Anyway, it looks like this. I hung it up on the wall facing my bed and it's the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning and it makes me ridiculously happy.
[b] Last Monday was a Snow Day (!!1!!) and because I'd gotten up and showered and everything before finding out that we didn't have to go into work, I was sitting on the couch trying to find something to watch on tv at 8 o'clock in the morning and ended in with a re-run from midway through the seventh season of The West Wing. I ended up recording the rest of the season and watching it after work over the last couple weeks. Several things: (1) Watching Jimmy Smitts play Matthew Santos after having just finished watching the third season of Dexter was fucking creepy.
(2) Eight years removed from my staunch Josh/Sam OTP shipper reactionary Donna hatred, I actually found Josh and Donna's budding campaign romance kind of ... cute? I don't even know. 2001 me is so fucking disappointed in 2009 me. I maintain, in the first and second seasons, their unresolved sexual tension was creepy because there was a massive power imbalance and also because she was supposed to be this young college drop-out except that Janel Moloney was, like, 30, which made the character seem a little pathetic. But repressing that, and with woman-hating cokehead Aaron Sorkin no longer at the wheel, I was like, "Oh, it's cute, they're all caught up in the exhaustion of the campaign and now they're going to realize they're in ... WAIT, THIS IS JOSH/DONNA WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?" I'm ashamed.
(3) People have talked about how Matt Santos = Barack Obama and Josh Lyman = Rahm Emanuel has turned into a funny little bit of art imitating life imitating art, but that whole series of last-days-before-war campaign episodes was really enjoyable, and made me vaguely nostalgic for the Obama campaign, which bordered on an RPF fandom of its own at times. Weird.
[c] Other evidence that I have lost my damn mind: I've decided I love Dollhouse. Halfway through the second episode, I turned to J and said, "I've had a revelation. Dollhouse is not a show I watch because it was created by a person whose work I theoretically like and respect. Here's what happened: one night, at two am, I was drunk and I turned on the Versus network, and this show Dollhouse was on, and it was AWESOME." I don't begrudge you if you have given up on Dollhouse because it's a misogyny minefield, or because you think it is not very good, but I have decided that I love it because it is awesome bad. It's like a cross between all the sexy outfits of Alias and the endearing-like-a-head-injury predictability of The Pretender. And I loved the fuck out of The Pretender, so maybe that explains some things. Last Friday night, I went to a birthday party, and even though I was exhausted and kind of drunk, I watched Dollhouse as soon as I got home. Tonight, I don't have any plans, so I think I'm just gonna go home after work, and I may watch Dollhouse LIVE AS IT AIRS. What's even happening to me?
[d] I discussed last fall how I was buying shit-tons of sauce tomatoes, slow roasting them and freezing them for the winter. I cleaned out our freezer this weekend and have discovered that there are only six bags left, which is terrible. But I also think it means we can pronounce the experiment a success. I have used them to make sauces for pasta and enchiladas, I have put them on sandwiches, I have scrambled them with eggs. And not once this winter have I given in and bought a gross, flavorless, expensive tomato at the supermarket. Zictory!
But I kept thinking about that stupid painting, and then when I got my state tax refund and it was the exact amount, to the dollar, that the stupid print cost, and I figured that as long as I plunked my entire federal refund in my savings account, there are worse things you can do with your tax refund than blow it all on stimulating the economy by supporting a local artist, right?
Anyway, it looks like this. I hung it up on the wall facing my bed and it's the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning and it makes me ridiculously happy.
[b] Last Monday was a Snow Day (!!1!!) and because I'd gotten up and showered and everything before finding out that we didn't have to go into work, I was sitting on the couch trying to find something to watch on tv at 8 o'clock in the morning and ended in with a re-run from midway through the seventh season of The West Wing. I ended up recording the rest of the season and watching it after work over the last couple weeks. Several things: (1) Watching Jimmy Smitts play Matthew Santos after having just finished watching the third season of Dexter was fucking creepy.
(2) Eight years removed from my staunch Josh/Sam OTP shipper reactionary Donna hatred, I actually found Josh and Donna's budding campaign romance kind of ... cute? I don't even know. 2001 me is so fucking disappointed in 2009 me. I maintain, in the first and second seasons, their unresolved sexual tension was creepy because there was a massive power imbalance and also because she was supposed to be this young college drop-out except that Janel Moloney was, like, 30, which made the character seem a little pathetic. But repressing that, and with woman-hating cokehead Aaron Sorkin no longer at the wheel, I was like, "Oh, it's cute, they're all caught up in the exhaustion of the campaign and now they're going to realize they're in ... WAIT, THIS IS JOSH/DONNA WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?" I'm ashamed.
(3) People have talked about how Matt Santos = Barack Obama and Josh Lyman = Rahm Emanuel has turned into a funny little bit of art imitating life imitating art, but that whole series of last-days-before-war campaign episodes was really enjoyable, and made me vaguely nostalgic for the Obama campaign, which bordered on an RPF fandom of its own at times. Weird.
[c] Other evidence that I have lost my damn mind: I've decided I love Dollhouse. Halfway through the second episode, I turned to J and said, "I've had a revelation. Dollhouse is not a show I watch because it was created by a person whose work I theoretically like and respect. Here's what happened: one night, at two am, I was drunk and I turned on the Versus network, and this show Dollhouse was on, and it was AWESOME." I don't begrudge you if you have given up on Dollhouse because it's a misogyny minefield, or because you think it is not very good, but I have decided that I love it because it is awesome bad. It's like a cross between all the sexy outfits of Alias and the endearing-like-a-head-injury predictability of The Pretender. And I loved the fuck out of The Pretender, so maybe that explains some things. Last Friday night, I went to a birthday party, and even though I was exhausted and kind of drunk, I watched Dollhouse as soon as I got home. Tonight, I don't have any plans, so I think I'm just gonna go home after work, and I may watch Dollhouse LIVE AS IT AIRS. What's even happening to me?
[d] I discussed last fall how I was buying shit-tons of sauce tomatoes, slow roasting them and freezing them for the winter. I cleaned out our freezer this weekend and have discovered that there are only six bags left, which is terrible. But I also think it means we can pronounce the experiment a success. I have used them to make sauces for pasta and enchiladas, I have put them on sandwiches, I have scrambled them with eggs. And not once this winter have I given in and bought a gross, flavorless, expensive tomato at the supermarket. Zictory!