Dinner date with a magical animal

Nothing says "I want you to visit NOW" like when your mom oh-so-casually mentions that she just 'happened' to make some pork zongzi, a dish that requires 8 hours of stovetop cooking.

So I got back from my conference in DC laaaaate last night and tonight I promptly wolfed down 2 of the dense delights (pork, fresh peanuts, and salted egg yolks [made separately ahead of time], all surrounded by sticky rice, each wrapped in a banana leaf, boiled for 5 hrs, steeped overnight, and then boiled for another 3 hrs) at Mom's.

Yes, I know that 2 of those babies probably equal my entire WW points budget for the whole day (if not more) but sometimes, you just gotta break the bank.

Mom, meanwhile, was giggling delightedly as she watched my willpower implode in a massive fireball of gluttony, and admitting, "Gee I guess that's not going to help with your weight loss, is it?"

No, Mom. It's really not ;) but I know food = luuuv, so hey :)

Points if you can pick out Mom's building in the distance.

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Institutional ecosystems

You know how I have the acronym RTBT for Reasons To Be Thankful? (And there are always many RTBT.) Well it occurs to me that every now and then (or lately, more often than that) I have gotten supremely cranky, and who better to be the archetype of crankiness than my beloved Marvin The Martian? (BTW, all crankfest posting will henceforth be tagged with MTM.)

I was so fond of his antisocial tendencies that one of my exes once bought me a MTM pillow which I still have. And considering my mom, I come by my crankiness the old-fashioned way: both nature AND nurture!

The current upheaval at work is just stoking the crank-o-meter with premium unleaded: we are moving offices to a building a few blocks away on Friday and boy oh boy has the process been fun (you know, like a root canal). Welcome to our entry area this morning, once they started dissambling the bookshelves (and check out the toolboxfilled with noisy power tools, heh):

We are moving to a place where we do not know how many cabinets or drawers each person will have (we have been wheedling the nice guy from the moving company to tell us how big each filing cabinet drawer is, since he's seen it but we haven't, not even our boss), and to a floor where the library (our vastly reduced reference collection) will be located on the other side of the floor from the librarians (oh yeah, that would be US).

If you picture the entire floor as a square clock, we are at 5:00 and the stacks are at 12:00. So we will be traipsing through another department's cubicles each and every time we need to get a book. (Yes, I know -- time to break out my pedometer and see how many WW activity points I can rack up every day.)

If this all doesn't sounds like much to be all MTM about, consider that there are many things I am NOT posting here out of discretion (what little I apparently still possess), but here's on factor for ya: on a floor of almost 90 people, there are 4 ladies room stalls. Yep, a whole whopping FOUR.

According to the American Restroom Association (yes, there really is such an organization; no, I'm not making this up), there are designated ratios based on occupancy for such facilities (we're not even going to get into gender disparities here, people) and they are remarkably chintzy.

So on this particular topic, I leave you all with this thought: I drink 8 - 10 glasses of water / beverages a day.

But also, all of the moving will have an unfortunate ripple effect on our support staff: the security guards, cleaning staff, newsstand operator in the lobby, etc. None of them know if they will be transferred over, and some of them already know they will be unemployed at the end of the year, when the current building is completely emptied. When you see people every day for 6 years, saying hello/goodnight with a smile, you do wind up worrying about them, especially since they are all uniformly pleasant and friendly.

So RTBT: they are keeping us and we will remain employed (with good health coverage -- YOWSA!)

And on unrelated but droolworthy note, I leave you with French pastry p*rn (hazelnut and coconut macaroons, French butter cookies, and chocolate-covered almonds, oh my!) each of which is bigger than my palm. They're from the Financier Patisserie mini-chain scattered throughout downtown.

Also, I have been requested by my relatives to no longer post photos of their superadorable offspring here. So while I may rave about their fabulous cuteness, I will no longer be able to put my memory card where my mouth is.

Yabba Dabba Doo!

When will I learn that no matter how much I am infatuated with my new cellphone (well, new to ME, as of July) that for truly mouthwatering food porn -- or heck, even food photos that are correctly exposed -- I need to rely on my trusty 4 year old Canon digital camera?

Witness tonight's cholesterolfest with my friend Sam, whose culinary company will surely cause me to need Lipitor soon, as I cannot for the life of me persuade him to meet for a meal that doesn't make my arteries feel all funny. (We're going to have to Have A Talk about that soon as his restaurant preferences are the antithesis of WW suggestions for healthy eating and I am really trying hard to at least go to restaurants where not every single thing on the menu is deep fried.)

For Pete's sake, even Dallas BBQ has a spinach salad option, but it required some really creative negotiations with the (cute friendly) waiter to order a plain baked potato (which I had been craving all afternoon) as one of my side dishes at RUB BBQ, since oddly enough they offer a stuffed baked potato as an appetizer but no plain baked potato as a side.

So hey, since it was RUB or nothin' tonight (I seem to be held hostage to other people's dining preferences lately -- this is going to have to change) I opted for one of their specials this evening, "the gigantic beef ribs" (yes, that's what it said on the daily menu). Considering the fact that the BONE is as long as my entire forearm, from my inner elbow to my wrist (!!!) this was not mere braggadocio. (Actually, I really felt like Fred Flintstone when I held the bone up and started gnawing on it, since it was considerably wider than my head!)

The photo up top doesn't really give a sense of scale, even though the whole potato looks a bit teeny next to the rib. (But the shot does show all the glistening, fatty goodness of the well-marbled beef.) The photo on the bottom of the post shows how puny the steak knife and fork look next to the meat. (But does not give a good idea of how tasty it actually looked.)

So yes, I came home with probably two more meals of beef in my future (I still have 8 oz. in the fridge!) along with the vinegar-based cole slaw and am trying to figure out if I (or my mom) can use the rib bone for beef stock or something. heh.

As a minor attempt to feel like I had not swallowed an anvil for dinner (it was delicious but not exactly light fare) I hopped out of the subway at Columbus Circle and walked for 25 minutes (carrying my beef bone and slab of rib meat). It was in no way going to work off the dinner, but it salved my conscience just a teensy bit.

And now, it is once again, way, WAY too late. I need to go to bed. Ciao!

Purely P*rn

There was a reason I bought this tiny print many years ago: it does indeed express my acute... fondness for doing laundry.

So while I have made VAST improvements on the state of Chez Squirrel (my knitting lady friends can now be allowed back into my home as there is somehwere for them to SIT) one of my 2 laundry hampers [brights vs. darks] is stilll staring reproachfully at me. Oops.

But I put my shredder through its paces today, oh yes indeed. And I'd made a mix CD for my morning exercises which turned out to work equally well in terms of getting my a** moving a la housecleaning.

Lady GaGa may have eaten my brain, but she and many others (Tom Jones, Rihanna, Nelly Furtado, KC & The Sunshine Band, The Shanghai Restoration Project, and Lisa Stansfield circa 1990) powered me through several hours of cleaning on Sunday.

The cleaning was wedged in between two evenings of multi-course feasts at opposite ends of the budget spectrum.

Saturday night I went out with my friend Jane and the other 2 bridesmaids for dinner at A Voce in the Time Warner Center, which should've been a tipoff that it was a good thing I'd just gotten paid this week.

Does not the facade intimidate, er, I mean, indicate that you'd better be prepared to be swarmed over by hordes of black-garbed waitstaff? (Um, do I sound bitter? But actually, the staff was very pleasant and unobtrusive, and the evening was entertaining. And as A helpfully reminded me, it did indeed generate some luscious food porn.)

When I looked at the menu at the office on Friday afternoon (to scope out food options for my WW points), my hair turned a little whiter than it already is (from the prices).

But I sucked it up and resigned myself to the $$$$ since I had had weeks beforehand to poke around and raise an objection. Next time I know, that as Anthony Bourdain says so succinctly in his new book, Medium Raw (which is hilarious, by the way -- thank you Kobo and New York Public Library!) Chapter 3: The Rich Eat Differently Than You and Me. (I plan to read that chapter on the subway in the morning, so no, I dunno how differently, according to Mr. Pottymouth.)

My appetizer, though delicious ("Insalata di scarola - escarole, warm pancetta vinaigrette, soft boiled farm egg, pecorino romano") I did not capture for posterity as it was, well, a salad. And my wine ("Vernaccia di San Gimignano, Rocca delle Macie, Tuscany") though delightful, was also not memorialized.

My entree I tried to capture without a flash (BIG mistake) but I present here nonetheless the yummity Cappelacci del brigante ("hand crafted pasta, marinated mussels, garlic, marjoram") which I demolished happily.

For dessert, Jane ordered the semifreddo ("semi-frozen chocolate chip mousse, bitter orange, cocoa pizzelle").

Meanwhile, I was torn between this option below, the torta (chocolate walnut tart, cinnamon gelato, caramel) and what I eventually ordered.

When I appealed to our server (who remained elegantly nameless, thankfully) for help she grinned and laughed. (uh oh...) One was the house specialty and the other (the torta) caused the pastry chef to be hired/stolen from her previous employer. Heh. Decisions, decisions...

Since the other two bridesmaids helpfully ordered the torta, I was free to head straight for the house specialty, the Tuscan doughnuts ("Bomboloni alla Toscana - tuscan doughnuts, bittersweet chocolate"). That innocent description did not do justice to the superfluffy dough, dusted with crystal sugar and filled with warm custard.

Oh. My. Goodness.

Since they were huge and plentiful, everyone got to try some, and also the chocolate dipping sauce. There was no graceful way to eat them (that I could figure out anyway) and so by the end of dessert, my fingers were a sticky mess and I was a happy camper.

Since it is now very, very late (or early, depending on how you look at it) I will have to hold off on describing Sunday night's feast with two neighborhood friends.

In The Closet

You know the Closet of Disaster beloved of sitcoms and home organization shows? The one where you throw all sorts of crap in there and slam the door shut, knowing that to open it again would unleash an avalanche of garbage? Yeah, THAT closet.

Welcome to my psyche post-engineer.

On the other hand, you could also make the case that my apartment is already physically manifesting the eruption of my emotional trash, both aspects of which I've been studiously ignoring for weeks if not months now. (For those of you with hygiene phobias, fear not: my crap consists of papers and not anything that would generate new mutant life forms.)

Well this week's session with my Pearl of Wisdom started the process of at least cracking the door open to see how much I've stuffed into that clown car of a closet.

All of the above could explain why I am suffering from one of my periodic bouts of what I jokingly refer to as SMDS: Severe Motivational Deficiency Syndrome (a/k/a can't I just stay in bed forever?)

Being the perverse creature I am, however, I scheduled a 6:30 AM - 8:00 AM Fresh Direct delivery Thursday morning instead. While getting up before dawn is highly undesirable, it did provide me the chance to catch a spectacular sunrise.

Enjoy!

Dojo & mojo (redux)

So today's weekly WW weigh in was finally positive news (-1.6 = hurrah! such a relief).

My friend the tapeworm (well I'm not pregnant, so I often joke that my post-lunch yen for food must be from a run in with one of those critters a la the X-Files) insisted that I buy a bagel at 2:30ish. My counteroffer was to buy a 9-grain bagel (see? trying to at least do the best I can, though I wonder if it's akin to negotiating with terrorists or just being pragmatic).

Ergo tonight's dinner on the run was not the usual sneak attack at Two Boots Pizza, much as I love their kitschily named pies (though I doubt Mrs. Peel would've looked the way she did in her catsuit [yowsa!] if she snacked on the Mrs. Peel pie regularly).

Instead I took a stroll and ate at Dojo's on West 4th near Bway. Although my roommate and I would go often when we lived there 20 years ago (eeek! yeah, I feel old) I haven't been there in ages. I got yakisoba with veggies and chicken + homemade ginger ale. Tasty!

Addendum on Thursday:


So I have replaced the yakisoba photo with a slightly less blue-tinted shot, and while it may LOOK odd and vaguely slimy (sorry), it WAS actually quite good. And the homemade ginger ale was so milky looking because it had a giant pile of shredded ginger at the bottom, with some lemon zest thrown in for good measure. Delicious!

Rorschach Test

I looked around my living room this weekend (before I took off for CT with a giant load of laundry in my 3-weeks-in-China suitcase) and realized that I literally had no room in my life for anyone else at the moment. Hell, I have no room on my couch for anyone else!

Those of you who've seen the giant sofa I fondly call The Green Monster know what a scary concept that last statement is. (In fact, this Craigslist posting from Long Island [most likely soon to expire] gives you an idea of the size of my beloved six year old coccoon of sage green coziness.)

So yes, even my knitting buddies have been banned from my home for months now (sorry ladies) as I stubbornly resist dealing with the cluttered interior that is my brain and emotional cupboard. No room for anyone except me and my baggage (which I am working on getting down to carry-on size: right now, it's more like an entire car of a freight train). Once the emotional crap is cleared out, the physical mess always follows.

By the way, when I told my sister about last weeke's dream re: Engineer, she snorted that it was wishful thinking (very true) but the fact that I had it at all is kind of a timely reminder about that river in Egypt: just because I refuse to consciously think of the wreckage strewn in his wake, doesn't mean that my brain isn't chewing on it at some level (and yes, there's some level of anger I'm just not facing yet).

Ironically, the last time I mentioned a Rorschach test here on the blog, the world was a much different place: the Engineer and I were still on our "honeymoon" phase, and my brother-in-law was still (mostly) the man our family knew and loved. It's hard to believe that it's just been two years since he was diagnosed...

On a determinedly different note, I leave this lunchtime posting with a fabulously porkerific photo of dinner at Blue Smoke on Friday night with A. My favorite was actually the gi-normous beef rib with dry rub, and yes, this was the rib sampler for two!

Don't worry fellow WW fans, we rounded it out with chopped salad, collard greens (with bacon, natch), and cornbread, so I tried to minimize the damage points-wise, but oh was it tasty! (And rounded out by a nice glass of Malbec -- yum!)

Let's not and say we did

That's the amusing URL for what looks to be a mindnumbing teen film called EASY A, based oh-so-loosely on The Scarlet Letter. That could also be the motto for my TiVo watching and churchgoing.

The church part is only appropriate since my cab cruised by the house of Hollywoodland on the way to the Metro-North station in Harlem today. I blinked at the storefront and then snapped a photo. The other photo was taken a few weeks ago in Greenwich by A. We BOTH blinked at that sign and wondered what it was about the monkeys that we were supposed to consider.

As for my 5 y.o. TiVo that's hooked up to my 15 y.o. TV, it's been faithfully recording and deleting shows (according to my programming rules) for weeks without my actually turning on the TV. I wonder if I'll spend the entire new season virtually watching shows that way? But then how could I sate my girlcrush on Grace Park in the new HAWAII FIVE-O? Okay Daniel Dae Kim and Alex O'Loughlin also aren't hard on the eyes.

Oh! It's my stop!

Hamster Town

So I often joke that the thing powering my PC at work is a very tired little hamster, as it seems to be going slower and slower these days (according to the specs, I was last upgraded in 2007, with a not top of line desktop, for what that's worth) as it will frequently freeze due to lack of processing power and RAM. (Believe me, you fellow Windoze folks would laugh uproariously if I told you the specs -- CPUs that you no longer remember, RAM outpaced by my low budget Dell Mini netbook, the list goes on.)

With our upcoming office move later this month, there is a faint glimmer of hope (smaller than an exhausted Tinkerbell) that we might get new PCs, but my coworkers are resigned to achieving detente with their own PHs (personal hamsters, which sounds wrong, but if what we've taken to calling them).

On the bright side (well, we either find a bright side or our heads all explode, so that's motivational) we've learned to be more zen about the whole thing, like when I was working in our China offices on an even older loaner laptop. Patience, grasshopper. Or as I used to joke at an old job, a day without rebooting is like a day without sunshine. Oh wait -- our current offices have no windows.

Despite all that whinging, I really am happy to have a job I like, with coworkers I like, and of course, excellent health insurance! Woohoo! Life is pretty darn good. It's just a NYC pastime to make sarcastic comments, in a hopefully amusing manner, but if I ever turn into my perpetually complaining mother, you all have my permission to smack me upside da hayed.

Another NYC habit is to run at 90 mph, which is what my mind feels like sometimes. Just like when people land in one of the airports after a relaxing vacation on a tropical isle and start snapping at each other about the overhead luggage, my mind's been chasing pirates again (if you haven't already, you really should check out the lyrics to see what I mean).

In general though, I've been sleeping better, and the mile / two mile walks I've been taking up CPW most evenings have been helping, as has the pounding away at the keyboard of my netbook, venting all the ravings of my inner hamster on a wheel. So while the weekly WW weigh ins have been stubbornly unencouraging, my clothes inform me that I'm moving in the right direction.

And last night (!) I had a dream where The Engineer wrote to me that he was working out his things in his mind and would soon be ready to get in touch and be friends. (WTF?! Where did THAT dream come from?) My dream self then thought about it and realized that no, I didn't really want to be friends with him. Now is that reaction anger or mere acceptance? Who knows?

I do know however, that I'm off to work, to keep said nifty job, and will leave you all with the comment that the above photo was taken the night I came back from Boston and is of the main USPS building in Manhattan, that is no longer open 24/7, due to budget cuts. Isn't the Farley Building beautiful? And the cars streaking by looked cool too.

Ciao, mis amigos!

Back from Beantown

So yo! (as certain piranha-nettes I know would say) I have many shots of food porn to post, and many details to tell y'all about my fun, fun trip (well, those of you not already on Facebook -- I have been blabbing on FB throughout the weekend) but I think I will continue the trend of going to bed eeeearly for now.

In fact, one night up north I was ready to crawl under the covers by 9:00 pm, while another night I fell asleep during a panda segment on high def TV. Yes, believe it or not, I slept through footage of giant pandas being adorable -- incredible but true. Apparently 10:00 was just too late for me that night.

So this photo shows just the speed I was set for during my trip (that is to say: immobile / inert / mellow). However, my readiness to go * thud * early every night and sleep for 10 hours could also have something to do with the 1 to 4 mile walks we took daily along the seashore. (Ya think?)