joy and shadows

Watching "Stardust" on Showtime tonight.

Cross-dressing Robert DeNiro doing the can-can? LOL.

And after all that srs biz, I want to announce that I've finally finished watching Paradise Kiss. It's only taken me three or so years!

Me: Hm, I think I'll check my email.

Biscuit: YOU ARE GOING ON INTERNETS AGAIN. LET ME HELP YOU! INTERNETS ARE MY FAVORITE!

Me: Oh Biscuit, you're right in front of the screen.

Biscuit: THINGS ARE APPEARING! WHAT CAN THIS BE? I POUNCE NOW ON ANDERSON COOPER!

Me: *tries to look around cat butt*

Biscuit: WHAT IS LITTLE ARROW THINGY? IT RUNS AWAY, LIKE THE ELUSIVE RED DOT! WHY CAN'T I CATCH IT? *paws all over screen*

Me: CAT. Stop it.

Biscuit: *sneeze* YOUR MONITOR IS NOW BLESSED!

Me: Caaaaaaaat. *cleans screen with Windex*

Biscuit: NOW I WILL CHEW ON YOUR SPIDER PLANT.

For the first time in probably ten years, our site had a snow day! Yeeha!

First, we had a delayed opening until 10 AM, and I sadly put on my hat and coat and got in the car so husband could drive me to work. (He always has snow days when there's one flake of snow... so nice to work for a nonprofit!!) He was very sympathetic, saying that it felt like he was taking me to the executioner. We got to work, which is only about 5 min away, and a woman out in front of the building who was cleaning snow off her car said that the message had just been changed to state that only essential personnel needed to be in. And I'm non-essential! I let out a whoop you could hear all across the parking lot, and husband took me home, and there was great rejoicing.

We stopped at the market on the way home, and when I got back in the car, I saw a perfect little six-sided snow star sitting on my coat sleeve. It was like a tiny bit of candy. So, the first thing I've done with my snow day was to grab my loupe and my Field Guide to Snowflakes and take a look at what was falling. I found stellar plates, branched stellar plates, and dendrites, many of which were covered with rime. So pretty! Now it's time to turn the heat up and maybe do a little quilting.

It's bad enough that we can't leave food unattended in the kitchen for longer than fifteen seconds. Now it turns out nothing is safe.

In the mornings, I go down to the kitchen while my husband is having a shower to put out the cereal bowls for breakfast and pack lunches. This morning, we didn't pack lunches, so I tucked a dishtowel all around the food and went to watch TV for a while. We also take multivitamins in the morning, so I left them on the counter near the food.

When husband came downstairs, we quickly discovered that the multivitamins were gone, and one of the three pills (the supplement I take for my eyes) had been horked up on the floor. The other two Centrum-like tabs were nowhere to be found - not under the fridge or oven, not on the floor, not anywhere we looked. We could only deduce that Biscuit had eaten them.

I don't understand how she could have managed the two horse pills, never mind that they taste terrible, but since we couldn't find the vitamins anywhere, we had to assume that they were in her stomach. One call to Animal Poison Control and $60 later, we were assured that she might have some tummy trouble but would otherwise be OK. She got to spend the day in the basement so that if she did puke, she wouldn't do it on something like my husband's prized leather lounge chair.

It's like having a baby. Biscuit wakes us up at 4 AM because she wants to be fed, she cries all the time, and she's a total pest. Last night she was "helping" me quilt, and I was terrified that she was going to put her nose on the iron. Now we've had to call Poison Control (according to my MIL, she had that number memorized, because my husband and his brother had a taste for stuff like Pine-Sol.)

But she's a cutie pie. :3

Oh, Biscuit. I don't know what you ate, but dayum.

For a while now, I had been going on about wanting to go into the city to Via Emilia for some authentic Emilia-Romagnan Italian cuisine and to Vino for some Lambrusco. My husband's family is from Emiliga-Romagna, and the style of cooking there is quite different from the Siciliano and Calabrese style you tend to get in the US (lots of red sauce, cheese, and fried things.) Lambrusco is a fizzy dark red wine that has a bad rep in the US because apparently it was popular in the '70s, and it evokes a lot of disdain now. We drank a lot of it in Italy, and it's great stuff on a hot summer's day. Unfortunately, because Lambrusco is so unpopular, we had to go to a special store to get it here in the States.

On the spur of the moment, my husband looked up some room rates in midtown Manhattan, and they must be hurting bad for customers because we found four-star hotels for $200 and lower. He booked us a room in the Hyatt on 42nd and Park, and off we went. It was a lovely weekend to be in the city, because the weather took a turn for the warmer, and you could walk around outside without wanting to dive into the nearest coffeeshop.

We went to Grand Central Station because I'd never been there before, and then we thought it would be interesting to go to the UN. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything to see, because it was all closed. Then we went to the central branch of the New York Public Library, and Patience and Fortitude seemed to have gotten a cleaning since I was there last. (morgi, I wanted to take a photo of the reading room for you, but no photos were allowed.) Afterwards, we went to Teddy Roosevelt's birthplace because husband is a big fan of TR, and it was a worthwhile way to spend an hour or so. Afterwards, we got our Lambrusco at the wine shop, which was in the same neighborhood, and then husband took me to Tiffany's so I could look at all the sparklies.

Around 6 PM, we went to dinner, and we were both very pleased to get some torta fritta and some Lambrusco to drink with it. The flavors were authentic, and my husband enjoyed his wild boar entree while I had the lamb shank. By the end of it, we were so stuffed that all we could do was totter back to the hotel, though we tried to go to a Barnes and Noble for something to read and found it had closed at 8 PM (much to my surprise.)

Although we wanted to spend Sunday doing something interesting in the city, it was too nice a day to spend indoors, and I missed Biscuit. I always feel guilty about leaving her alone all weekend. We had a ridiculously expensive breakfast at the hotel ($30 each for a crappy buffet? next time, husband will be more open to the idea of grabbing a bagel) and headed home. It was so nice out that we washed the cars, and husband went for a ride on his new bike, and I made tomato cream soup with orzo for dinner. And I'm ashamed to say that I watched the Pro Bowl. All in all, a very nice time out.

I'm vastly amused about the media attention given to the "25 Random Things About Me" meme on Facebook. (There's also been an article in the New York Times.) It's like these people have never seen an Internet meme before. HELLO PPL WELCOME TO INTERWEBS.

I just love the Grumpy Old Presidents. Bush 41 and Clinton, BFF.