as promised.... proof positive we're knee deep in babyjesus

how about some ho- ho- holiday pics of the seasonal clutter around the house to start the day?

we'll start with a little cuteness:






don't get these two confused- city first, country second...





creepy?


i really don't get this one at all:

what am i supposed to ask you almighty seashell angel? why are your eyes like that? are you hungover? seek? say what? and knock?? knock what? knock you?

jesus, jesus and more jesus....

hidden on top of the cookbooks


these ones have four leaf clovers on them... i didn't know jesus was from dublin....

these guys we shoved under the rack 'o' china:


and no holiday home is complete without a tiny shrunken wooden one as well-


a little off the topic, but i stepped out the back door to take out the trash last night and walked right into mothfest2005. it was gross- anyone know any good moth recipes? this warm weather must have them all confused...

oh my.... don't they make a cream for that?

perhaps mick should think about that little thing called RETIREMENT... ?

60 degrees

howdy-ho lil partners... it's nearly december and 60 and sunny in boston today. i wonder if the locusts will be here before lunch? i should check www.wherearethelocusts.com for the latest biblical calamity forecast for our area. you know massachusetts is always under some sort of conservative christian watch or warning ;)

i'm finally starting to wake up after sleepwalking through the first part of my day. i have no idea why i was so sleepy this morning- slept fine, only one glass of wine last night, not up for the day at 4am like jmo was. could it be because this is my first day back at work since last wednesday and i really don't want to deal with figuring out how to get 30 canadians from places like winnipeg and saskatoon to belize for new year's? maybe it's because i still have mashed potatoes and stuffing coursing through my veins? or perhaps the sudden absence of my daily anti-depressant soy gingerbread latte from stahbies is taking its toll... well, whatever the reason the fog is lifting.

when i get home tonight i'll have to take some photos for the xmas explosion that happened in our home this weekend. jmo and i have been working overtime trying to scatter the babyjesus creche/nativity scenes that are popping up everywhere... what i want to know is who fed mary and joseph after midnight? oh yes, 'tis the season. that's right- the chimney's been greased with santalube, the tree's up (complete with a colony of seashell angels and a herd of walnut mice and even a creepy fetus-esque seahorse), everyone has a homemade stocking hanging from the mantle (including the mildly retarded deaf cat and the hairfest pukebag gimp of cat that both belong to momma jmo), and there is not one, but TWO complete christmas village type deals in the dining room. one is 'city' and one is 'country.' i nearly commited a deadly holidayvillagefauxpas when i suggested one of the sets of battery operated street lights be used with the country village instead of cramming them both in with the city. silly me- street lights in the country??

the best part is when blimpie hops up into the middle of the country village and settles in for a nap on the cotton 'snow.' it's like a scene from catzilla vs. national lampoon's honey i shrunk the christmas peoples.

i must confess- i really do love the holidays, though. yesterday in biology class i spent an hour figuring out what kinds of cookies i'm going to make this year and then proceeded to make most of my shopping list- it was either that or drool away to the drone of endoplasmic reticulums and mitochondria. 2 weeks of classes to go and the semester is over, praise be.

ok- it's noon now and my tummy is rumbling. more later.

sleeping beauties....

if this doesn't melt cho butter.... ;)

holy leftovers

well, it's saturday morning and the post-thanksgiving gluttondust has settled. we all had a wonderful day and ate/drank ourselves stupid. after working our butts off on wednesday evening to get everything ready i was up at 5am thursday morning to drive up to new hampshire to meet my grandma (she was a little nervous about driving from maine all the way to boston on her own). once i got north of boston it was snowing like a mo'fo-


definitely a little more of an adventure than i had in mind....

but the rest of the day went well and it was nice to just sit around the fire all day and graze. the food got rave reviews, so the minions were happy.





yesterday after seeing my grandma off we headed out for the 5th year of day after thanksgiving tree fetching:


i guess there's no turning back now- 29 days until xmas.

hope everyone had a good thanksgiving and good luck disposing of all those leftovers. we can barely close the fridge.... although truth be told, there's nothing like stuffing and mashed potatoes for breakfast, lunch and dinner ;)

happy thanksgiving eve

so later this afternoon j.mo and i will leave work early to rush home and begin the annual foodprep marathon. it's a lot of work, but i love every minute of it. hours in the kitchen with my guy, our kickass kitchenaid mixer and multiple root vegetables- how could you go wrong??

there's no porn like foodporn :)

here's the menu- BYOT (bring your own turkey, of course)
bruschetta
tomato and spinach soup
roasted mashed butternut squash
lil g's garlic and basil mashed potatoes (with the skins left on)
maple clove sweet potatoes
j.mo's world famous stuffing
green bean and tomato salad
homemade cranberry sauce
cornbread
pumpkin and cranberry bread
homemade cinnamon rolls and vanilla soy/ice cream for dessert

after a long day of eating everyone will be happy and paralyzed and passed out in front of the fire. now that's what i call a holiday. although i remember as a kid how i really could care less about thanksgiving- with christmas right around the corner that meant a tree with mounds of gifts would be waiting for us- fuck the turkey... i was holding out for a battery operated keyboard and glow in the dark socks.

but then you get older and you realise the impermanence of it all- so an entire holiday devoted to a homecooked meal and time spent with your family really becomes one of the simplest pleasures around.

so whatever it is you're up to on thanksgiving i hope you have an excellent day... and when the mashed potatoes come 'round for the second time go your hardest- i know i will ;)

biglove,
g

pint-sized rage

chixie's been leaving comments lately and i'm lovin' it-

i totally had a chixie-inspired flashback today in the midst of whiling my workday away:

dim the lights- a little hit of the fog machine:

a few years ago we were about to step off the curb to cross boylston street in back bay to wander back to work. all of a sudden there was this buzzing/2-hair-dryers- running-at-once kinda noise and it was getting louder by the second...

and then (and forgive me for my lack of poltical correctness) a tiny midget streaked by on a tiny midget motorcycle.

naturally we were both staring in that 'holy shit- are you seeing this tiny midget on a tiny midget motorcycle too?? or was there acid in *only my* spring roll?' and since we were gawking at her, that little speeding midget gave us the dirtiest, meanest little midget scowl you can imagine- like we should have been used to seeing the shrunken circus speeding past!

still one of the funniest moments of my life. thank god/buddha/oprah someone else was there with me. :)

if only i could connect the usb for the digital camera to my head so you could see it all on instant replay. i'm sure that will come as a standard feature of the next i-pod.

!viva la france!

they should have let her go...

supersize my umbrella

in this country's boundless quest to turn everything (and everyone) into the equivalent dimensions of a 94oz mega slurpee, yet another once-upon-a-time-perfectly-proportioned functional daily tool has been supersized into absurdity: our crap weather friend, the umbrella.

what was once a pint-sized collapsable tanlge of cheap metal and semi-waterproof (and highly flammable) fabric has become nothing short of the overgrown brainchild of some MIT nerd's failed collaboration with the us military to produce better parachutes for the space shuttle. umbrellas are out of control- they're beyond huge. so huge that it makes the amply proportioned average american standing under them look normal-sized. i suppose all these gigantified things in our lives are supposed to make us feel better about being fat overconsuming slobs- if you're life isn't the size of an escalade and you don't get biggie fries with your lunch then something's wrong.

we're talking 15lb endangered redwood handles and canopies with a wingspan of 10 feet. some of them even have a second umbrella popping out of the top- an upper umbrella to keep the lower umbrella dry? and those little metal spikey bits poking out all around the edge? 6 inch long eye-popping-daggers-of-blindness.

these things are lethal- and those who operate them are apparently oblivious to their massive dimensions and potential to blind multiple pedestrians. these people look like they literally walked up to a poolside patio table at a resort and grabbed the sunshade umbrella (complete with crank handle) on their way to work...


to the ever-dwindling number of you still getting by (mostly dry, i might add) with the atari umbrellatron circa 1980, i salute you.



some things just aren't getting better with time-

the weekend (re)view

monday- monday. here's to a quick and painless short week for everyone! turkeyday is so close i woke up tasting sweet potatoes and stuffing (the breakfast of champions).

last night we watched the best movie i've seen in a long time:




i'd been wating to see it for ages and finally its number was called in the netflix queue last week. such a good film- beautiful to watch and listen to and a truly moving story. last year i took a course on latin america and we spent quite some time on the topic of the region's many revolutions, including the one sparked by Che in cuba. this film was great because it was based on Che's days well before he was off in Cuba doing his thing. it was awesome to watch Che's transformation from a twenty-something med student living a comfortable life to a roadwise humanitarian who would become one of the most widely recognised poltical activists in latin america... the whole time you could see that spark of compassion he had for the struggling poor and the indigenous that were stripped of their land.

while south america (patagonia especially) has been on my list of places i need to get to for a while now, seeing this movie has made me want to go tomorrow. that's going to be an awesome trip. we might skip the motorcycle part though. god only knows what kind of a state johnny-no-knuckles would end up in ;)

unfortunately, the evening went downhill from there. i still have this sinus infection brewing and a lovely chainsmoker's cough to go along with it. i'll be dragging around an iron lung by thursday, i'm sure. but last night i thought a sudafed and three glasses of chardonnay would ensure a good night's sleep. at 10p i was still hacking away so i ventured out to get some nyquil. two sleepytime shooters and i was out cold.

until 2am when i was wide awake and coughing up a storm.... i ended up 'sleeping' in the spare bedroom so i didn't keep j.mo up the rest of the night (and hopefully he won't catch my ebola).

the rest of the weekend was divided between a whole saturday at the library taking care of school stuff (less than a month to go!!) and getting ready for thanksgiving. the living room is finally done- my only wish is that we had a before photo for those of you who never had the pleasure of seeing the distant memory of the mess it once was.... but here is the finished product-





mad props to j.mo for all of the awesome trim and detail work. i can use a roller for painting walls but that's about the extent of my painting (dis)abilities. i'm a spastic with a paintbrush- it's really quite sad. i seem to lose all motorskills if i need to do anything that doesn't involve slathering the walls with a footwide roller. but that's the way it is- and we both know better than to even let me near anything detailed.

we also had a very grown up like planning session re: housing. we sat down and figured out exactly what we need to do financially in order to move into a home of our own (well, an over-priced condo back in dirtydot aka dorchester, but still something we can own) by about this time next year. now *that* is exciting :)(:

i guess that's about it- i've babbled enough. i'm on my way out to finish the rest of the food shopping for thanksgiving and then i need to give myself a haircut and get ready for school this afternoon.

hope everyone's day is off to a good start.
-g

no butter

an entire saturday at the library awaits- try not to be jealous..... we're also out of butter, making breakfast a little complicated. maybe i can convince j.mo we need donuts. lots of them :)

avocado maki randomness

yesterday afternoon and evening was certainly the upswing- an easy work day and a good workout that left me feeling excellent, followed by a little clothes shopping on the way home and an evening with the new madonna cd (which is very good- even though the photos with the CD crack me up)... yumma dinner and a very good episode of ER. all is well.

then the downswing. today is a bare minimum kinda day. i slept like garbage last night and i'm sure i kept john awake with my tossin'n'turning routine (sharing is caring afterall). i've been on the verge of getting sick all week- kinda sore throat, stuffy nose etc. and this morning i woke up with that oh so familiar brick on my face sinus pressure feeling that seems to happen every year. it didn't help that early this morning we were awakened by that sound john's mom makes when she's having a bad day. this would certainly count as a bad day.

i wholeheartedly think we did the right thing by moving in and doing all the work on the house etc. but i also think we're both realising it's time to put a plan together since this is not an arrangement that is going to last indefinitely. it's hard to live somewhere that doesn't quite feel like home. between work and school and part time jobs i think we would accomplish much the same as far as keeping an eye on her and working around the house whether we live there or not. i guess these are things you just learn as you go along.

so tonight we're going to begin researching the whole first time home buyers adventure. it will feel good to come up with a plan for whatever is coming next- there's great sanity to be found in the prospect of owning our own place.

in the meantime, i'd just like to point out that even with all the crazy juggling of two jobs each, classes, looking after mum and whatever else has gotten tossed into the mix along the way, what we've got never ceases to amaze me. i've got the best guy around and our relationship is so incredibly grounded that all of this stuff just rolls off like water- it's simply amazing.

i sho do love you :)



things are looking up- it's nearly lunchtime and i'm gonna have me some avocado maki and miso soup.... then i'm going to sit here and watch the show: every year a giant christmas tree is cut down in nova scotia and trucked to boston as a thank you for boston sending firefighters to halifax back in the day when there was a huge fire that destroyed much of the city.

well it has arrived- the cranes are parked outside and the giant hole is dug. why they don't just bring a big ol' tree with roots and all and plant it on the common is beyond me... instead they do this same thing every year. i'm totally like an old woman at the nursing home peaking out at the passerby's from behind the blinds.

random ranting complete. carry on.

catching and upping

hello internets- i must say, i did miss you :)

j.mo and i decided to take yesterday off together to a) sleep in and b) finish priming the once wallpapered and crumbling water-stained living room walls so we can get to painting before the turkeyeaters descend upon our humble home next week. while i've got quite the soft spot for crackden living rooms (afterall who can argue with form *and* function?), it's a bit much to take in when it's the very first thing you see when you enter the house... but fear not, it's mostly under control now- 2 coats of paint this upcoming weekend and we'll be good to go.

so that's where i was yesterday.

on with bidness.

naturally i had to have stahbies this morning- being that it was only my second day of work this week. last week my usual starbucks ran out of soymilk half way through frothing my venti latte. so i got a half full coffee (what was i supposed to do?? let them dump it out and continue on my way to work sans caffeine??) and a coupon for a free drink next time.

well today was next time. and they were out of soymilk.

again.

breathe in breathe fucking out. ok, whatever- plan b... off we go to the stahbies at emerson, a few blocks past where i work. it didn't take long to figure out why the line formed a semi-circle against the wall near all the babyjesusbdayjunk instead of the standard single-file line stretching back toward the door. all of my fellow coffeeschleps were fearing for their lives- and for good reaosn.

there was a pint-sized shebeast dressed in pink velvet pants and a red velour jacket with snot all over her face absolutely terrorizing the place. when i opened the door she had 1lb of sumatran roast in one hand and a candy cane travel mug in the other- both were airborne in seconds.

i love kids- don't get me wrong. i cannot wait to be a dad. but the sight of this earlymorninghellraiser, face covered in snot and all angry and abusive- yeah... i'll pass, thanks.

and this creature's keeper? completely oblivious. even the man with the huge hickey (truly a timeless look) kept glaring over at her like 'don't you have a stun gun or something??'

here they are fleeing the scene- sorry i couldn't get a better shot, but i really didn't want to get caught in the crossfire:


all this for coffee. there have to be better morning habits to indulge in- i shall investigate.

so now it's after 10am and i have to log on to my online ciminal psychology course (which i hate) to take an exam for which i'm barely prepared. the bulk of the exam is on the oj simpson case and we were supposed to have read a 450 page book about the case before attempting the exam. i still have 130 pages to go- needless to say, we're taking the exam anyways.

for news on this and other developing stories, tune in at 11.

innocent little snack cakes

froggie got me started on this whole hobnob topic (check the comments on the msn article on inflata-bling that set me off this morning)... the name was ringing a bell, but that was as far as we were getting. i thought maybe this 1960's pint-sized queen of individually wrapped aerated pig fat goodness would show me the way:


but alas, no hobnobs rolling out of this darling's hot little ovens. although i did stumble upon some spectacular commentary on her website:

'The Little Debbie® brand has become number one for two reasons: quality and value. McKee Foods uses secret recipes and the highest-quality ingredients, thereby improving the taste of the snack cakes. The snack cakes are also sold at a reasonable price. In fact, Little Debbie® products on average sell for half that of other leading brands. That's due to manufacturing efficiencies the company has developed over decades of baking experience.'

i don't know about you- but i certainly was thinking quality and value last time i got sick on donut sticks and zebra cakes. must have been those uber refined manufacturing efficiencies and pentagon secured secret recipes that were a little heavy on my delicate palate.

it turns out hobnobs are a british thing- and since i've never set foot on ye olde isle of pale and pasty i had no clue. although i think they may be circulating in certain circles in australia, explaining the vague recollection. i did, however, find this picture to help all of us hobnob-virgins figure out exactly what we're working with...


google image search is my hero

perhaps the butter queen can shed some light on this topic...? is this the real reason why you moved to london?

please don't...

it's really annoying when people at work schedule meetings for 9am. no one is here at 9am. and when i do get here at 9.05am i just want to eat my soy yogurt with ginger granola and finish my coffee in peace while i catch up on internet happenings- no questions, no fresh-squeezed corpricana chatter... just the usual website visits followed by the now customary blog post du jour.

unless there's a 9am meeting. in which case i have to drop my bag, hold off on food and go roll my eyes in the conference room with an exploding bladder for an hour.

so now it's nearly noon and i'm just getting around to starting my day (aka starting my romp around the internet until lunch)

signing into hotmail today i noticed a link to this article on msn about how to look rich while living cheaply- i'm more of the look tired and disheveled while living poor but overall happy and eating well crowd, but hey... i couldn't resist the urge to give it a quick read in the hopes i'd find something bloggable hidden away-

while it was predictably pathetic, i must say (insert sarcasm HERE) thank god john and i are taking tomorrow off so we can address handy hint number 5: Purge the Poverty from Our Lives... maybe i'm just spending way too much time at school picking all kinds of things apart at the moment, but that phrase really jumped out at me. whatever pseudorichbitch wrote the article considers a carpet stain or a squeaky door to be ways we've allowed poverty to creep into our homes (no joke- it's in the article). i simply had no idea we were living in a guadalajara open sewer all this time- the filth, the flies... thank you thank you thank you so much msn!- i can't wait to go home tomorrow and bust out the poverty-be-gone spray and spritz our house into the veritable immaculate conception it's meant to be.

purge the poverty? not sure i like those two words used together- something just doesn't sit right.

i dunno- maybe i'm crazy. see how a 9am meeting totally fucks with my day?

nancy reagan's monday morning starchat

i'm not much of an astrologyguru, but i do enjoy reading my horoscope on the odd occasion that swoon remembers to email it to me. swoon used to send daily horoscopes- now they just seem to pop up at random in my hotmail every few days/weeks.

a little snippet from today's:

'And ideally you want to be at the helm (or fully participating in discussions) when decisions regarding your long-term ambitions are on the table - which is harder to accomplish successfully when you're playing Ping Pong with minutiae.

ping pong with minutiae

like still taking undergraduate classes- 5 of them to be exact?
how about the goingnowherequickly traveljob?
and an even more mindnumbinglyasinine part time job transcribing speech utterances?
never ending house repairs at a place we're already dying to leave?
and watching my sleepdeprivedguy deal with much the same?

thanks to swoon i now have a convenient label for it all: ping pong with minutiae. i think if i ever get around to writing a book i've now got the perfect title.


thank you google image search

metermaid

john and i were walking back from lunch mere moments ago when we stumbled upon this little lady...



my my- i wonder what happens when you slip a quarter or two in this meter?

someone alert kathy lee gifford

it's nearly time for the seasonal opening of everyone's favorite holiday sweatshop:



the pay is crap, the work is menial and repetitive, and our fingers will bleed from all of the accidental needle pricks (watchoself johnny-no-knuckles).

an entire day of popcorn and cranberry stringing is on the horizon. i guess that means christmas really is just around the corner...

you know i'm a sucker for all things turtle/tortoise

This old gal's about to turn 175 years old!



Good on ya love ;) Lettuce cake for everyone...

ps- i'm sorry you ended up at this sharing space with this dickhead- but i suppose it's better than rainy ol' england.

the floodgates have (re)opened...

she's back...



under the guise of having exhausted my coffee supply at home, i've now consumed 3 capitalist pig latte's from stahbies this week. i was doing so good- i'd given up overpriced antidepressantcaviarcoffeebeans quite some time ago... alarmingly, it was becomming an unaffordable part of the daily routine last year. how could i resist? who doesn't like tasty caffeinated beverages made with soy that leave you feeling strangely happy (the post stahbies daze) whilst pretending to be busy at a job you care about?? but c'mon- $4.10 for a soy latte? that's $82 a month for coffee! so instead i've been trying to make coffee at home every morning and bring it with me for the trek to work- secretly i just want to be like all the other sexytravelmugcommuters.

so yeah. three trips to lattes'r'us this week- it's getting ugly. it's a slippery slope and i'm sure i'll be there tomorrow am, standing in the line that stretches out the door and into the street with all the other brand bitches and label schmucks jonesin' for some designer stimulation- 'i'd like a non fat triple tall decaf latte extra hot double cupped with shade harvested nutmeg...'

how has it come to this???

i wonder how much money i would have in 30 years if i took $4.10 everytime i was craving starbucks and put it into my nonexistent 401k account?