fauxturkey recap

hope everyone had a gluttonheavy t-day. there were six of us gathered round for an extended stay in the starchzone, but of course we cooked enough food for double that. it really is the best holiday. and it has been so lovely to get those extra few days off from the regular routine. nothing overly exciting to report from the rest of the long weekend- as if thursday's pile of food wasn't enough, we managed to go out for pizza, japanese and indian take-away from our neighborhood chickpea-pusher. wandered around the city, caffeinated, got lost in a bookstore, went to the movies (would highly recommend seeing slumdog millionaire- great film!). my mac died (went to hard drive heaven), venturing into the apple store on black friday wasn't exactly what i had planned, but it wasn't too painful thanks to a healthy dose of recessionaryrestraint on the part of the consuming masses. and even though the warranty was expired, they fixed it for free.

a few pics-

'straight from the bog' really, which marketing genius thought this was gonna work? personally, i would have opted for 'what UTI?'


where bread is reincarnated as j.mo's famous stuffing:


blimps making sure margarine, the festive gravyboat (yes, we own a gravyboat *and* it has a name), doesn't act up:


the first victims of the diabetic coma that eventually hit us all:


at the feeding trough:


trough shot II:


working the kitchenmojo:


a few others:

it won't be safe for much longer...

i think today the window of semi-safe pre-holiday shopping has just about closed. i ventured over to our neighborhood targhetto this evening, partially for caffeine (stahbies may not have invaded the hood yet, but they are hiding out inside target... so now you can conveniently get amped up on soy chai as you fill your cart full of gallon-sized-double-pump-my-hands-be-ashy-lotion and 40lbs of kitty litter), and partially to get some xmas fixins, knowing full well that soon it will be an all out combat zone. that tinseltweak was already in the air, but not quite upped to 5-candy- cane-chaos-status just yet.

on my list of things to acquire, j.mo needed a new 'round the house hoodie- his current one has nearly detachable sleeves (as in falling apart at the seams), so it was time. i was wandering around in the clothing section, looking for an appropriately priced fabrique en cambodia vêtement. sniff, sniff... wow- sure does smell like liquor up in here. and then i rounded the corner and stumbled upon 3 very inebriated amigos from the far side of the rio grande, heatedly debating which sweatpants to buy as they removed their own pantalones and tried them on right there in the middle of the store. couldn't have been a couple of olympic divers, nope. it had to be a trio of pot-bellied muchachos looking for some elastic waistband action... for a moment i thought i had been transported back to 2001 when said target did not yet exist and in its place was the most god-awful kmart on the planet. this once-upon-a-kmart was definitely the last respite of implosion-oriented-bottle-friendly-urban-humanity. a couple of drunk guys trying on sweatpants in the middle of the men's section wouldn't have even raised an eyebrow from the fully armed security force stationed at the exitfrisk.

'tis the season for happy shopping- it only gets better from here on out.

a clinton (or two) in an obama white house- this election really is the gift that keeps on giving...

it's the meatfairy!

from boston.com:


FRAMINGHAM - The evidence: a 5-pound shoulder cut, a scrap cut, covered in gristle, a 10-pound roast, and a slice of liver.

The crime scene: the town green.

For five weeks, butcher-quality cuts of red meat - it appears to be beef - have been appearing regularly beneath a tree in the historic Town Centre Common, and the caper has perplexed just about everybody in town. Police and town health officials are investigating. Residents are bewildered, even worried.

"I hear the meat might be poisonous," said Taryn Fusco, who has spied the meat on recent walks through the park with her Shih Tzu-Yorkie-mix. "I feel unsafe bringing my dog to the park."

Authorities have inspected the meat and sent samples to the state public health lab in Boston to determine whether it's been tampered with. They are pursuing every lead they can find, though those have been in short supply.

"It's our mission to get to the bottom of why these pieces of meat are being left," said Lieutenant Paul Shastany of the Framingham Police Department. "Why? Who? And what is it? What kind of meat?"

The mystery began in early October, when dog walkers began finding slabs of raw meat, seemingly carefully arranged at the base of a large evergreen.

reveille

as anyone who still checks in will attest, i've been a wickid slackah with blogging. i was thinking that once school was over (which was done more than 5 months now!) i would get back to regular posts, updates, pics, commentary- all the things i used to enjoy. but it's just not happening. maybe i'm still recovering from years of the wear'n'tear routine of full time work + school at night and this is some sort of writing PTSD. it used to be that blogger was my best bet for wasting time online. but now i can easily lose an hour poking around on facebook. we'll see, maybe i'll get to back to it. maybe not. upwards and onwards for now.

so daylight savings time ended last night. ahhhh, an extra hour of sleep. or not- perhaps instead the dog will get up at his 'usual time' which is now conveniently one hour earlier than normal. i was hopeful that if we ignored him he would go back to bed. normally it works, but not today. it was 6.45am and we were up and prepping for a frosty early morning walk. blimpie, our resident mensa material cat and all around dog disser, was curled up on the bed- one eye scathingly watching him pace back and forth, undoubtedly saying to herself: 'ugh, of course this cretin's circadian circuitry doesn't know the difference between daylight savings time and the cat poop he occasionally tries to fish out of my litter box.'

speaking of circadian short circuits... i'm beginning to think i may have a diagnosable case of some sort of syndrome. i've always had a healthy appetite for sleep. but it's been way worse than usual the past few days thanks to my trip to israel tossing everything into a tailspin as far as the eating/sleeping/exercising routine goes. if this keeps up, i may need to ask santa for an espresso machine and shade grown coffee plantation for xmas.

how excited are we all for tuesday? somehow, someway, we've managed to be lost in the Bush for 8 years. while i do appreciate the elevation of status french fries received when they were re-branded freedom fries, that is the single solitary one and only accomplishment of the bush administration that merits applause in my book. i have high expectations for tuesday and may be irreversibly disenfranchised if something with a '-D' fails to land at the white house. so much so that come thanksgiving we'll be munching our tofurky north of the border if need be.

on a quasi-related political topic, i've been catching up on the scandal with massachusetts state senator dianne wilkerson and find it all very sad. she defied some serious odds to get where she was (woman, single mom, african american etc), only to find herself at a rather classy boston restaurant, stuffing a wad of bribedollars into her bra:



oopsies.

and again:



but wait, there's more:



and to think she didn't think she needed to pay any attention to the resounding call for her resignation?

moving right along....

so my trip to israel was definitely an experience. it was jam-packed with mostly work stuff, but i did get to trek around and see some of the essentials. i didn't really know what to expect- and in a lot of ways, i think i'm still kinda mulling over what i saw and what it was like. it's the first place i've been that has proven really hard to describe in any kind of succinct way. from the moment you arrive, politics and religion are front and center. guns, fences, walls, and barbed wire seem to be everywhere. but equally present were normal people, living normal lives... especially in tel aviv. i guess it's probably best to let the pics do the talking:

jerusalem, near the old city:


guess we're not going that way:


the wailing (western) wall:


tel aviv:


our armed guide:


akko:


masada- kind of looks like something out of 6 feet under, huh?


me floating in the dead sea:


and covering up in dead sea mud:


here are the rest of the pics...