Pig Eats Ice Cream

Week Recap

I know I haven't been blogging much (sorry, Melissa!) but I'm back. I've been spending a lot of my free time watching Ballykiss Angel, which is that BBC series set in Ireland I mentioned a few posts ago. It's not as over the top as Monarch of the Glen, but it is very cute and quaint and I love it because it totally reminds me of my awesome vacation there. It's about a priest (which is funny, because I'm totally not religious and never thought I'd ever watch a show about a priest...except for something ridiculously funny like Father Ted - another Irish series) who moves into a little village called Ballykiss Angel (duh), and about all the wacky characters there. The show manages to sort of put in a will-they-won't-they romantic story line between the priest and the woman who runs the local pub, who is anti-organized religion and doesn't go to church. It's very subtle, but it's definitely there, and the show teases the relationship along here and there. Talk about the ultimate forbidden love - a priest!! I have already read in the reviews on Netflix that the show "jumps the shark" in the 3rd season, which is interesting because that's exactly when MOTG starts getting bad. What is it about these BBC series that really last only two seasons??? Of course, it's not stopping me from continuing with the show, just like it didn't stop me from continuing on with MOTG...

Oh - and I have some good news. Pig finished her second dose of anti-biotics last week, and we got the results of her urine culture back and she's okay! The UTI is gone!

Max and I have had some fun events to go to lately. Last Saturday, a bunch of us went to a charity event called "Vegas in LA." It was held at a huge hangar at the Santa Monica and basically you could sample food from about 30 local restaurants, and there was wine tasting from about 40 some wineries. After wining and dining, we played Vegas casino table games and traded in our play money for tickets for a raffle held at the end of the night. I had a great time - most of the food was very very good, and it was fun doing the wine tasting. Since I don't know much about wine, it was kind of cool to get the chance to taste a whole bunch and to get a better sense of how they were different. We all got dressed up for the event, so I got to wear this black cocktail dress that I've had forever but haven't had a chance to wear.

Afterwards we went to AD's house, where one of his roommates Rosie (short for Roosevelt) was having a birthday party. Rosie loves to wear pink, so the theme of the party was "pink." They had decorated the place with pink decorations, laid out pink food, and everyone had to wear pink. Really fun.

Last week was my turn to host Project Runway so everyone came over. We watched in dismay as Jeffrey was a TOTAL ASS to Angela's mom. Now, I'm no fan of Angela's but it's still so hard to watch someone be mean to someone else's mom. I want the following people kicked off in this order: Jeffrey, Vincent, Angela. Argh. This season is soooo annoying!

Anyway, that's what I've been up to!

Talking Dogs

Definitely worth watching!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCYaw5tGYAs

Baby Pics

Kate and Melissa posted up their baby pics a few months ago. I took me awhile to get my hands on a few of mine, but here they are!

Hotdogs and Listeria

Poor blog. Haven't been posting lately as I've suddenly been on an online poker kick again. I'm up $200 so far so I'm pretty happy about that! Have also been spending my free time looking up the diseases they mention on that show House, M.D. Thoroughly informative. I've learned more about listeria and legionnaire's disease than I care to.

Last Saturday, Max and I had our bonfire party, which was very cool. Max headed down to the beach early in the day to ensure we got a fire pit. I joined him in the afternoon with enough hot dogs and hot links to feed a small army. After having five straight meals of hot dogs/links/brats over the course of the weekend (we brought the leftovers to Amol's house to bbq on Sunday), we called it quits and stuck the rest in the freezer. That bit that I learned about listeria would have come in handy before I ate all that processed food.

I've finished reading Love in the Time of Cholera. It was excellent, which made my next reading choice even more unbearable. I gave up on The Other Boleyn Girl, which will be made into a movie, and sounded kind of cool - a fictional (I think) account of Anne Boleyn's sister. Too bad it's written like a romance novel for people at a 5th grade reading level. The fact that I accidently got the "Large Print" edition did not help.

Strange Friendships & Fainting Goats

So I'm reposting this story about a baby hippo named Owen and his best friend Mzee, who is a 130 year old tortoise. I found it on Nannykate's blog (Thanks, Kate G!), and it's just too cute.
http://www.digyourowngrave.com/tortoise-adopts-baby-hippo/




Also, check out this video on "fainting goats." It had me and Max rolling on the floor laughing.

http://www.digyourowngrave.com/myotonic-fainting-goats/

Two Lb Lobster & Two Sides for $26.95!

So this restaurant called Enterprise Fish Company has a special on Mondays - a 2 lb whole lobster plus two sides for only $26.95!! A few of us trekked our way over to Santa Monica last night to take advantage of this deal. And it was awesome! Really fresh lobster and quite meaty. Why does lobster taste sooo super good with butter? I probably bathed my lobster in about four sticks of melted butter.

I've taken a short departure from my usual fluffy bookreading habits and have been reading Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I can't tell you how refreshing it is to read something that is actually well-written. Sadly it's taken me awhile to work through it - I'm usually a very quick reader but have been so distracted by MOTG lately that I haven't really been reading. I only have one season of MOTG left before I'm done with all available seasons, so I expect to be able to get back to my reading very soon.

I have also not been exercising. This is very typical of me. Two weeks ago, I was an exercise-machine. Last week I went twice in the beginning of this week. This week - have not gone once at all. Sigh. It's just so hard to stay motivated, and just so much easier to give into 2 lb lobsters drenched in butter and biscotti ice cream sandwiches (if you haven't had one before, look for them in the freezer - delicious).

Looking forward to Project Runway night tomorrow night. The Wednesday PR gathering has become the highlight of my week. Last week Rebecca made us this drink called Rainbow Champagne - which she renamed "Liquid Gay." They were awesome. I'm due to host a PR night but my apartment is still pee-suspicious, or rather "sus-pee-cious." (Heh. I was very amused with myself when I first came up with that!) Pig is still not over her UTI, and is now on a second type of anti-biotic and there is a definite waft of yuckiness that is most apparent when the afternoon heat cooks up my carpet, but it occasionally lingers into the evening. Will have to look for a professional carpet cleaner to take care of the situation. I don't really know what to expect from a professional - will they move my furniture? How long does it take to dry? How much does it cost? I suppose I will find out soon enough.

Weekend Recap

Ugh Monday again.

Had a super weekend. Max and I planned a "date night" on Friday night. We decided to go out to dinner at Marix, a Tex-Mex restaurant, and then maybe go see a movie or get some drinks afterwards. I got out of work early on Friday, and came home to a beautiful vase of long stemmed roses (aww, isn't he sweet?!) and then headed out to the restaurant, early enough to catch happy hour. The meal was pretty good and the margaritas were great. Unfortunately, the thing about "date night" is that you really can't start it too early. By the time we were done with dinner, and a second round of margaritas, it was only 7:30 p.m.! There wasn't a movie we wanted to see, and neither of wanted to go bowling/putput golfing/bar hopping so we mutually agreed to end our "date night" and meet up with our friends at our usual watering karaoke hole - Boardwalk 11. Which was fun of course. Thode and AD challenged these two frequent karaoke-ers to a sing-off and did an excellent job on "Promiscuous" while the rest of shook our asses off on the dance floor. Later we got Taco Bell and headed back to AD's for general goofiness, which included more dancing and pretending we were models in a Victoria's Secret commercials (fake accent and all) while preening in front of AD's gigantic fan.

Saturday morning I woke up with a hangover. I was completely fine by the time I went to bed the night before, so the headache and nausea made for an unpleasant surprise. I spent the day as follows:

Woke up. Ate breakfast. Took morning nap. Woke up. Ate lunch. Watched Monarch of the Glen. Took afternoon nap. Woke up. Ate dinner. Watched Monarch of the Glen. And then got ready to go out. The life of a Lady of Leisure!

Later, I met up at Josh's apartment and then carpooled over to a bar called Blu Monkey. We had been promised a "second floor with dancing" but the "second floor" was non existent. It was an okay bar - good music, make-shift dance floor by the entrance, weak drinks, good patio and what I described as "Trading Spaces" decor - pretty budget-y and homemade. But I was just glad we actually went to a different place. There has to be thousands of bars in LA but we seem to always go to the same two weekend after weekend, so the Blu Monkey was a welcome change.

Yesterday when I should have been exercising or doing errands, I spent the day watching - what else - Monarch of the Glen. I'm sad to say the show has jumped the shark, but I really can't stop watching it. I've added a whole bunch of other BBC shows on my Netflix queue so hopefully I'll have something new to obsess over as soon as I finish the available MOTG dvds. I'm thinking of trying either "Good Neighbors" (recommended by Max's mom, which also stars one the leads from MOTG), "Ballykiss Angel" (another small village town type series) or "Jeeves & Wooster."

October 24, 2006

Mark your calendars. On Oct. 24, 2006, both the second season (of two) of the Hamish Macbeth series AND the fifth season (of seven) of the Monarch of the Glen series will finally be released on DVD.

While I'm still only in the middle of season 3 of MOTG, I will surely be through season four and dying by the end of next week. And don't get me started on finally seeing the second season of Hamish Macbeth!!

Also - Flavor of Love II starts Sunday night! I'm not sure which is worse - my love for quaint BBC series or my love for ridiciulous trashy reality tv.

Nonsense on a Tuesday

My new favorite show to get from Netflix is "Monarch of the Glen" which is this BBC Scotland series that ran from 2000-2005, about a guy named Archie Macdonald who moves back home to the Highlands where he lives with his family and reluctantly fulfills his role as the new laird of Glenbogle. He has try to save the estate, which has been in his family for generations, from financial disaster and the rest of his family are idiots. Am absolutely in love with the series which Max describes as a bit like Arrested Development, but is neither funny, interesting nor good. He hates it obviously. Actually it's more like an even fluffier version of Northern Exposure. I'm watching it to see if Archie ends up with current girlfriend Justine (boo!), his housekeeper Lexi (that might be okay) or Katrina, the local school teacher (yay!). Really, I am ridiculously easy. Get a cute lead actor, throw in some quirky characters, set up a love triangle and I'm hooked. Plus now I can do a very poor Scottish accent.

My second new favorite thing to watch is the "Mystery!" program on PBS on Sunday nights- generally they show an episode from the new Miss Marple series. Sometimes it's followed by "Rosemary & Thyme" which is this mystery series about two old lady gardeners named, yes you guessed it, "Rosemary" and "Thyme" (I think "Thyme" is the last name of one, and "Rosemary" is the first name of one) who go around solving crimes. I really am 28 going on 78.

Speaking of being getting old, I had no idea what a podcast is and had to look it up on wikipedia the other day. Sad. But then I understood, and also learned that Tim from Project Runway has a podcast! How awesome is that.? I'm totally subscribing to it and plan on listening to Tim while I exercise on the elliptical machine. Maybe I will invent a Tim-Gunn-Podcast-Exercising game where every time he says "carry on!" or "make it work" I'll do a set of push-ups. Uh, maybe.

But, I still don't know what a "sidekick" is. See, this is how it starts. First you watch random crap on the BBC, next words like "podcast" or "sidekick" mean nothing to you and before you know it, you turn into your mother and say things like "Rap is crap." The other day, my cousin Anders said he'd play something "old school"on his ipod for us and he played a Nirvana song. Was horrified naturally.