dwarves are very upsetting
I've been trying to make my posts more thematically linked and less random, but I don't really feel like sorting through all the thoughts I've had since my last post, so you're going to get an old-fashioned rambly epistolary sort of thing like I used to write back when I had adventures and no job. Here you will find detailed descriptions of food, some talky bits about books, and the long-awaited return of that anchor of adventures, the staple of swashbuckling, the don of drinks--BUBBLE TEA!
Saturday, March 3, 2012
First proper snow of the season. On March 1.
Today after work I ate ALL THE DUMPLINGS. J and I went to Anthropologie to ogle dresses, then came back to get S and we all went to the Gourmet Dumpling House. (We were going to try Taiwan Café, but it was closed for renovations, so.) NOM NOM.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Replacement fillings completed in under 15 minutes without drugs. Record! Celebrated by going grocery shopping. Made a completely passable black bean w/carrots and broccoli stew over rice. Flavored with a little bit of chopped onion (probably should have fried the onion first for more flavor, but whatever), some salt, oregano, cumin, and black pepper, with cheese. Completely edible! Good, even!
Had a weird dream this morning as I lay about not needing to get up, but occasionally starting into semiwakefulness. The bookstore was remodeled into a badass HQ and the staff were an odd mix of the Avengers and X-men. I was Jennifer Lawrence. Go me? XD Our mission involved Natalie Portman with the exposition and some kind of sifting through Mesopotamian pottery, when we weren’t watching TV. Look, I know I’ve been reading Reading & Writing in Babylon and looking at a lot of red carpet fashion lately, but that seems silly. I don’t even know anything about the Avengers.
On plus side, was super hot superheroine for about twenty minutes in my brain? Was also rather sassy. Possibly was also redhead again.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Happy International Women’s Day! (I'm going to spoil that a bit by talking about a book that's mostly about boys, but it has some great ladies too.)
Yesterday after work I hung out with some friends reading The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom and reading the best bits aloud while J cooked.
Long story short, this is a very good middle-grade fractured-fairy-tale-animated movie in book form.
Four Princes Charming--from the tales of Cinderella, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White--are fed up with being known only as "Prince Charming".
Things are not going so well with their respective True Loves, either. Cinderella runs off in search of adventure and derring-do, setting off a chain of events leading to our four heroes banding together on a quest to defeat evil and find true love, friendship, and personal growth.
I generally like a bit more chewiness in my fractured fairy tale books-this one is rather slick-but I enjoyed it a lot. Especially the bits that begged to be read in a Valleygirl accent (aka any time Briar Rose said anything). I loved the grammar dorkery, and the text does ask a legitimately interesting question: Why, when all well-known fairy tale heroines have come to have unique names, have all princes come to be known simply as Prince Charming?
"...none of them are actually named Charming. No one is. Charming isn't a name, it's an adjective." (p. 1)
(Though I would argue that a lot of the princesses get adjective-y names too.)
I was also left with a desperate need to listen to Into the Woods. Alas, my recording doesn’t have the two princes’ second duet (“It’s my thing about blood.” “Well it’s sick!” “It’s no sicker than your thing with dwarfs!” “Dwarfs are very upsetting!”) There are a lot of curmudgeonly dwarfs (sorry, dwarves) running around.
"The Sylvarian dwarfs once started a war with the Avondellian elves simply because the elves were bragging about the fact that they got to pluralize with a V." (p. 96)
(Again: grammar dorkery. It's my not-so-secret weakness.)
Somewhere in the depths of my email drafts folder is a list entitled “Are There No Fairy Tales for Boys (No, Seriously)?” Here is one. The princes are solidly, entertainingly flawed (Frederic: fop! Duncan: hapless! Gustav: the inferiority complex tends to spoil the effect produced by brawn and flowing hair! Liam: Oh Liam...if only "hero" and "ego" rhymed). Both Cinderella and Liam's little sister Lila are smart, brave adventurers; Rapunzel and Snow White are doin' their own respective things; Briar Rose is hilariously bratty; and the witch is (duh) evil. (She's also named Zaubera, which amuses me because "zauberer" is German for "sorcerer".)
In short: a book that has awesome as well as flawed ladies, dudes who are allowed to be flawed in different ways, and lots of quippy banter!
It, uh, also has a plaque around its neck saying "COMING SOON TO THEATRES NEAR YOU". XD
...
Then we ate mac’n’cheese and peanut butter mousse cake and watched the first two episodes of Shut Up: Flower Boy Band and decided that Byung Hee was the lovechild of Captain Jack Sparrow and Tamaki from Ouran.
Friday, March 9, 2012
Working on my second bubble tea of the year (the first one was last night, which I bought during my break. It was night by then, and warm and spring-like, and actually quite nice walking around what passes for the back streets in Harvard Square. I forget sometimes how good and solitary it can be, to walk purposeful and unhurried after dark).
(Also, I had stopped by Boloco for an inspired-by-burritos thing because it was on the way and because I wanted tofu. They were out of tofu. I made a sadface and just ordered brown rice with beans’n’cheese. I guess the guy felt bad, because he just gave me the thing for free. Yay? It wasn’t especially tasty, but since I didn’t end up paying for it I wasn’t about to complain.)
Mmm, bubble tea. Some twentysomething thing are still hard, and I need somebody to kick me in the pants about a couple other things and make me do something about them, but things could be so much worse, you know? I have bubble tea. I have amazing friends. I read a couple of books lately that I didn’t hate. Liked, even. A lot.
Namely The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom by Christopher Healy (mentioned above) and The Springsweet by Saundra Mitchell, which makes me nostalgic for the Little House books. The Springsweet is in first person, and I still liked it. So many books that are in first person really shouldn’t be. This one was fluidly comfortable with its voice. Thumbs up! I shall now read The Vespertine, to which The Springsweet is actually a companion.
I think this brings the total number of sequels/companions that it's okay to read before the first book up to three. (The other two being Mossflower by Brian Jacques and Fire by Kristin Cashore.) Are there others?
Life: it's happening.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
First proper snow of the season. On March 1.
Today after work I ate ALL THE DUMPLINGS. J and I went to Anthropologie to ogle dresses, then came back to get S and we all went to the Gourmet Dumpling House. (We were going to try Taiwan Café, but it was closed for renovations, so.) NOM NOM.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Replacement fillings completed in under 15 minutes without drugs. Record! Celebrated by going grocery shopping. Made a completely passable black bean w/carrots and broccoli stew over rice. Flavored with a little bit of chopped onion (probably should have fried the onion first for more flavor, but whatever), some salt, oregano, cumin, and black pepper, with cheese. Completely edible! Good, even!
Had a weird dream this morning as I lay about not needing to get up, but occasionally starting into semiwakefulness. The bookstore was remodeled into a badass HQ and the staff were an odd mix of the Avengers and X-men. I was Jennifer Lawrence. Go me? XD Our mission involved Natalie Portman with the exposition and some kind of sifting through Mesopotamian pottery, when we weren’t watching TV. Look, I know I’ve been reading Reading & Writing in Babylon and looking at a lot of red carpet fashion lately, but that seems silly. I don’t even know anything about the Avengers.
On plus side, was super hot superheroine for about twenty minutes in my brain? Was also rather sassy. Possibly was also redhead again.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Happy International Women’s Day! (I'm going to spoil that a bit by talking about a book that's mostly about boys, but it has some great ladies too.)
Yesterday after work I hung out with some friends reading The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom and reading the best bits aloud while J cooked.
Long story short, this is a very good middle-grade fractured-fairy-tale-animated movie in book form.
Four Princes Charming--from the tales of Cinderella, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White--are fed up with being known only as "Prince Charming".
Things are not going so well with their respective True Loves, either. Cinderella runs off in search of adventure and derring-do, setting off a chain of events leading to our four heroes banding together on a quest to defeat evil and find true love, friendship, and personal growth.
I generally like a bit more chewiness in my fractured fairy tale books-this one is rather slick-but I enjoyed it a lot. Especially the bits that begged to be read in a Valleygirl accent (aka any time Briar Rose said anything). I loved the grammar dorkery, and the text does ask a legitimately interesting question: Why, when all well-known fairy tale heroines have come to have unique names, have all princes come to be known simply as Prince Charming?
"...none of them are actually named Charming. No one is. Charming isn't a name, it's an adjective." (p. 1)
(Though I would argue that a lot of the princesses get adjective-y names too.)
I was also left with a desperate need to listen to Into the Woods. Alas, my recording doesn’t have the two princes’ second duet (“It’s my thing about blood.” “Well it’s sick!” “It’s no sicker than your thing with dwarfs!” “Dwarfs are very upsetting!”) There are a lot of curmudgeonly dwarfs (sorry, dwarves) running around.
"The Sylvarian dwarfs once started a war with the Avondellian elves simply because the elves were bragging about the fact that they got to pluralize with a V." (p. 96)
(Again: grammar dorkery. It's my not-so-secret weakness.)
Somewhere in the depths of my email drafts folder is a list entitled “Are There No Fairy Tales for Boys (No, Seriously)?” Here is one. The princes are solidly, entertainingly flawed (Frederic: fop! Duncan: hapless! Gustav: the inferiority complex tends to spoil the effect produced by brawn and flowing hair! Liam: Oh Liam...if only "hero" and "ego" rhymed). Both Cinderella and Liam's little sister Lila are smart, brave adventurers; Rapunzel and Snow White are doin' their own respective things; Briar Rose is hilariously bratty; and the witch is (duh) evil. (She's also named Zaubera, which amuses me because "zauberer" is German for "sorcerer".)
In short: a book that has awesome as well as flawed ladies, dudes who are allowed to be flawed in different ways, and lots of quippy banter!
It, uh, also has a plaque around its neck saying "COMING SOON TO THEATRES NEAR YOU". XD
...
Then we ate mac’n’cheese and peanut butter mousse cake and watched the first two episodes of Shut Up: Flower Boy Band and decided that Byung Hee was the lovechild of Captain Jack Sparrow and Tamaki from Ouran.
Friday, March 9, 2012
Working on my second bubble tea of the year (the first one was last night, which I bought during my break. It was night by then, and warm and spring-like, and actually quite nice walking around what passes for the back streets in Harvard Square. I forget sometimes how good and solitary it can be, to walk purposeful and unhurried after dark).
(Also, I had stopped by Boloco for an inspired-by-burritos thing because it was on the way and because I wanted tofu. They were out of tofu. I made a sadface and just ordered brown rice with beans’n’cheese. I guess the guy felt bad, because he just gave me the thing for free. Yay? It wasn’t especially tasty, but since I didn’t end up paying for it I wasn’t about to complain.)
Mmm, bubble tea. Some twentysomething thing are still hard, and I need somebody to kick me in the pants about a couple other things and make me do something about them, but things could be so much worse, you know? I have bubble tea. I have amazing friends. I read a couple of books lately that I didn’t hate. Liked, even. A lot.
Namely The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom by Christopher Healy (mentioned above) and The Springsweet by Saundra Mitchell, which makes me nostalgic for the Little House books. The Springsweet is in first person, and I still liked it. So many books that are in first person really shouldn’t be. This one was fluidly comfortable with its voice. Thumbs up! I shall now read The Vespertine, to which The Springsweet is actually a companion.
I think this brings the total number of sequels/companions that it's okay to read before the first book up to three. (The other two being Mossflower by Brian Jacques and Fire by Kristin Cashore.) Are there others?
Life: it's happening.