Friday, February 14, 2003

You know those days?  Those days when every minor irritation, mishap or disappointment seems one more piece of damning evidence that characterizes your life as a hopeless, useless mire, from which your only release will be a lonely and ignominious death? I was having one of those. This accrued evidence is too vast to go to in detail, but I will give you a representative sample: Exhibit 1: One alarm clock, set to 5 am, expressing clearly the essential wrongness of my life. Exhibit 2: This document will prove that it took me approximately one entire minute to turn of Exhibit 1, above, due to the awkward location of said object on a table at the foot of the bed; which placement has caused eternal inconvenience, because Julie Powell, the subject, is short-sighted and must sit up in bed and turn the clock to her every time she wants to see the clock, which happens on average ten times a night; but which placement the subject has not, in six months, attempted to rectify, as that might entail using nails or something. Exhibit 24: One black, long, lacy skirt and long-sleeved top, aka “Hippie Frills”, which subject dons when approaching her maximum weight of 227 pounds. Exhibit 24(h): One pair of fucking freezing hands, indicating subject’s lack of circulation more than likely resultant from morbid obesity. Exhibit 25: One pair of fucking freezing hands, indicating subject’s inability to go out and buy herself a pair of fucking gloves. Exhibit 302(y-ii): A technical explanation for the failure of the ugly-ass fluorescent lighting on the landing of the subject’s apartment, which failure, a month ago, has resulted in much ascending and descending of stairs, often while irritated and/or drunk and/or lugging heavy loads, in near complete darkness: "Lamp starts but glows dimly, may flicker slightly, or exhibits "rings" of bright and dim light that appear to move up and down the length of the lamp.  Cold Operating Location : Fluorescent lamps do not like cold areas, and standard fluorescent lamps exhibit these symptoms when the lamps are cold.  Depending on how cold the ambient air temperature is, operating the lamp may eventually warm the gas inside the lamp to the point that the lamp begins operating at or near its full brightness. The artifacts typically begin when air temperatures around the lamp are below 50F." So this was all bad.  But then, lo and behold – a terrorist threat!  Everybody loves a terrorist threat, it’s like a snow day.  And for a while I was sucked in by all the excitement – they’re shutting down the Battery Tunnel!  They’re raising the terror level to high!  There are tanks on the highways!  You should go home early – you should take the ferry! And it was all very thrilling and neat, until I thought, Wait a minute.  Tanks?  A tank seems to me a piece of equipment remarkably unsuited to finding and rooting out terrorists.  My brother said he’s seen pictures of missile launchers surrounding the Washington Monument.  The Washington Monument?!  Terrorists are going to blow up the Washington Monument??!!  That seems kind of asinine, doesn’t it?  I don’t like being played. Go ahead, Bush, go to war, it’s not like anything I say is going to make a difference.  But don’t treat me like an eight-year-old. Long story short, by the end of the day I’d forgotten to count all the ways that my life systematically sucked.  And then I got to go home and eat Eric’s Spicy Leftovers! Eric’s Spicy Leftovers sometimes leads to surprises.  What would most folks make out of lamb leftovers – a curry, perhaps?  But Eric’s predilections run a different way.  He made lamb sandwiches, in Portuguese rolls, with chipotle mayonnaise.  Not something I would have thought of.  I suspect was initially going to just stuff some lamb in a roll with Hellman’s, but then he felt pressured to do something, and so pulled chipotle out of his ass. And you know what?  It was really, very, excellent.  So good.  He’d stolen the mayo recipe off of some Emeril thing, it had chipotle and garlic and oregano and cumin and lime juice beat into some Hellman’s  I had thought it might go oddly with the mustard-rosemary paste on the lamb, but it didn’t – it just completely obliterated it.  You could, however, still taste the lamb, which was totally delicious. I wish I had one right now.  Early this morning, our aptly-named cat Maxine, while jumping onto the bed, bestowed upon Eric a surprise Valentine’s Day present.  A nice slash across the lips, which will undoubtedly swell up and get nasty.  This upholds something of a tradition in our family – on our honeymoon he had a horribly cold sore.  I try not to read too much into this kind of thing. And so, happy Valentine’s Day to Eric, and to all our listeners in America and abroad!   7:29:13 AM    comment []