The Average Blogger

Discipline Your Image

"We use the buddy system. No more flying solo. You need somebody watching your back at all times. Second off, you're gonna learn to discipline your image. You think I got where I am today because I dressed like Peter Pan over here?"

So, the weekend started with a plan -- an ambition, a reasonably attainable goal, if you will.  And with a cohort.

I was lamenting to a friend that I need more competition to get myself motivated to do stuff. Get off my ass and go to the gym, run faster or longer if I do manage to get to the gym, eat better, whatever.  Commiseration ensued.

And a plan was hatched for gradual substitution of bad habits with good ones. Or at least, better ones.  In my case, this means weaning myself off the sugarbomb soda and eventually dialing it back to iced tea or water or what have you.

(I'm guessing tea.  I don't know why, but I can't get onto the Water is Awesome! Drink It All Day! wagon.  And I don't do hot beverages, so coffee is a non-starter.) 

For sundry reasons, my friend backed out before anything got off the ground. Which I guess makes the competitive part of me glad (I win!), but is sort of disappointing in that the goad is gone. (I lose.)

So, I'm still going to move forward with my plan -- drink a regular amount and chart it, then drink one less a day, and one less and one less and so on until I'm completely converted. I have no idea if it will work better than the "just drop it all at once and get the hell over yourself" method. I would imagine the blood sugar headaches will be held at bay a bit better.

All this noise led to some woolgathering on this morning's commute.  I remember dieting when I lived alone -- and it was much, much easier than now, when I live with two males blessed with metabolisms that could eat Manhattan and not gain an ounce. (Or if they do gain, they don't care.)  It was definitely easier to get up and move around when I was single and had dogs to walk, plus I was a flunkie whose job consisted of 8 hours and out. (And I was already thinner and more energetic, cough cough.)

But it was also harder to justify a lot of those changes, as I didn't really have anyone to make them for besides myself. I was dieting to wear cute clothes, not to stay alive for family, so I'd skip meals one week and then I'd go to the other extreme and binge at Burger King the next.  I drank a fair amount. I don't now, primarily because Not Your Average Blogger abstains, but also because I'm responsible for more than just two dogs who could pretty much fend for themselves.

(I had a similar thing with psychotropic drugs, way back in the day. At a certain juncture in my narrative, I couldn't really see any point in not partaking every weekend. Why not? It was cheap, it was easy, it didn't make me sick, and I knew about how much time was going to be burned on the experience. Then I graduated and got my own place and it occurred to me that if my house burned down it would be a problem if I wasn't sure whether the walls were really melting or not. So much for that.)

I don't miss drugs at all, strange to say.  I never smoked, so I can't speak to that.  As for alcohol ... I don't miss the hangovers. I only occasionally miss the numbness and euphoria. And every so often I will drink socially up to the point where I realize I'm about to embarrass myself. These days, I tend to stop and excuse myself before that happens, rather than after. At least, I think.

But I do sort of wonder if I'm a different person than I was and I am fooling myself thinking I'm pretty much the same, just a bit more boring.  And I wonder if forgoing my other vices will make me even more boring.  Being a fat sugar-holic isn't a very interesting vice to begin with, so I am thinking not.  Still. I know smokers who quit and then turn into sanctimonious blowhards who disdainfully sniff about how annoying smokers are. And people who go into therapy and then insist everyone should try it. Will that happen to me? Will I become a tea hound who rails against the sins of corn syrup?

Maybe I should cut back by one every other day.

Show Us Your Mother, Riff...

Sunday was the big day.  I’ll spare you the suspense: I didn’t win a ribbon. Except for maybe first place for Most Embarrassed Parent Ever.

I’ve been working on the bacon-chocolate cookie recipe for a while now.  For the past two weeks I took in samples to the office and subjected co-workers to my experiments. I think I got it down just right in the last batch – a good mix of super-crunchy bacon with a moist chewy chocolate cookie that got the salty-sweet thing well-balanced. 

The name? Depending on the audience they are Pigs in the Mud or they are BacOMGs.  The name “BaConfections” was also suggested, but unfortunately when you say that out loud it sounds too much like “Bake Infections,” and what with swine flu and all, that was just sort of ew.

So I figured I had a decent submission for the chocolate bake-off. It tasted good, it had good texture, it was reasonably creative.  And chocolate-y, dear lord, yes. 28 oz of chocolate, plus another half-cup of unsweetened cocoa.

Now mind you, the last time I entered a baking contest, I was 22.  I entered a contest looking for lemon submissions that required a whole dessert plus one serving plated.  I entered something called sunny-side-up cake, which was basically angel-food cake with a hole hacked out of the center and replaced with lemon custard. That lost too.  At least partly because it never occurred to me that you’d just hack out the middle of the cake on the plate, so I tried my utmost to cut up the whole cake, insert a custard center, and then replace the top.  It was not horrible, but it certainly didn’t win ANY points for presentation. 

Not so this time. I mean, cookies are cookies.  Nothing to it. They look good. They look like cookies.

I baked them Saturday night. Batted the hovering Not Your Average Blogger away from the bacon. Swatted the Young Prince away from the chocolate chips. Got all three dozen cookies baked and cooled and set. Wrapped them in individual Cello bags.  Taped them up. They were very pretty. 

Sunday morning I got up, did the ironing, cleaned the kitchen, fiddled around.  Went and got NeighborGirl around 1:15, and off we all went to the fair. It was happily uncomplicated to find the right gate and building, and there wasn’t a huge crowd, which was nice. I filled out my entry forms, left the stuff on a cardboard platter, and then we took off and entertained ourselves wandering around other parts of the fair. We went from the baking booth to the barns, where we saw the baby goats and the giant pigs and the miniature horses. We went to the midway where the YP had a screaming nervous breakdown and got kicked off one of those rides that is basically a bunch of cars going around a circular track with some centrifugal force thrown in. We stopped on our way back to the baking contest and I finally notched off the last of the deep-fried desserts I had yet to try – a deep-fried Twinkie.  It was quite good.  Though having tried them all, I rather think the deep-fried Snickers are best. 

We got back to the bake-off around 3, when the judging was going on.  Since I had no idea how this worked, I wanted to see what the process was.  NYAB and the YP lasted about 10 minutes before I gave NYAB my BlackBerry and told him that when it said 4:00, he should come back.   That left me and NeighborGirl to sort of people-watch, gape, and chortle.

Lord, was there ever a lot to chortle at.  I swear, I kept expecting Christopher Guest to yell “Cut!” and tell the various characters, “No, no, let the fat roll over your yoga pants show a little more,” or “Hey, you, try to look a little more keyed up!”

First of all, there was the hall itself.  All the chocolate submissions were dished out on top of these glass cabinets, but inside the cabinets were winners of other contests – and it looked like some of them had been there for, ahem, a while.  Mint leaves shriveled and gray-green. Pineapple upside-down cake that looked like it came from Morrison’s Cafeteria.  Etc., etc.

Then there was the milling-around area for the current contest participants. For some reason, the poor woman trying to run this show apparently had made it her mission in life to leave no dead air between the time of the entry deadline and the winners being announced. I’m not clear on whether she was with the Red Cross, which would receive all the proceeds, or if she was involved with the fair, or what, but she sure did do a lot of talking. To further facilitate waiting, there were a bunch of folding chairs set up in five or six rows, all facing a counter with the prize baskets and a big portable easel.  Why an easel? Because they were running a sort of strange little Jeopardy game that alternated questions about community safety (“What is one method to stop bleeding?”) and chocolate (“Is fermentation part of the chocolate making process?”) NeighborGirl and I spent a little bit of time making fun of this (“Pour salt in the wound!” “I do all my best binge drinking with chocolate!”) and then we wandered around and looked at winners of other contests.  There sure are a lot of blue ribbons at county fairs.  We couldn’t really figure it out.  We’d be looking at “quilts, category 12A” and there were at least five blue ribbons.  Very confusing.

Finally, 4 p.m. rolled around.  Our nervous emcee woman – who I kid you not, was like a dwarfish and more nervous version of Jennifer Coolidge – introduced all the judges, and when she was done, some other woman came over and announced there was some kind of problem and they needed all the judges to come back.  Off they all trundled.  NYAB and the YP came back, and we “donated” $4 to the Red Cross to get two plates of samples of the various other entries.  There was some good stuff, there was some bad stuff.

So there we are. Five minutes pass.  Ten. Twenty.  Because we’ve been there forever, we’ve scored three of the folding chairs in the back row. We’ve finished the chocolate,  NeighborGirl and I are snarking away under our breath about whatever catches our eye, and the YP is on my lap being very annoying and squirmy and not resigned to waiting. 

And Jennifer Coolidge has NOT SHUT UP the entire time.

All of a sudden, in the middle of a story about her first experience at the county fair was winning a blue ribbon for a jar of preserved green beans, out of absolutely nowhere, my darling son, sitting on my lap, fiddling with a pair of binoculars made out of toilet paper tubes, sits bolt upright and shouts out, in his best and loudest Rocky Horror voice, “BO-RRRING!!!”

(This, it turns out, was only to be expected.  Rocky Horror was on TV last weekend. We taught him how to do the Time Warp dance.  He lost interest after 45 minutes.  I didn't really think anything but the dance had stuck in his brain.  Serves us all right.)

I clap my hand over his mouth, but it is too late.  I look around again for Christopher Guest and wish I could sink through the floor. I can feel my face flushing about 1569 shades of red as I howl, “YOUNG PRINCE! Shame on you!”

Even though, of course, not five minutes previous I had been grousing to NeighborGirl that it would probably be less irksome if she’d just, you know, let us wait in peace and quiet.

(NeighborGirl and NYAB were no help whatsoever, let me add.  Both of them were laughing so hard they had tears streaming down their faces.  Of course, if the kid has been on NYAB’s lap, that is exactly what I would have done too.) 

Emcee Lady was very nice about it, “Oh, yes, I know, I’m so boring!  Just a few more minutes honey!” And to me, “It’s ok! I know he’s a little boy! They just do that!”  Argh, argh, argh.  NYAB finally composes himself and takes the YP out of the room for a talking to, and Emcee Lady wraps up her anecdote with, “So does anyone else have any INTERESTING stories?”  Ugh, ugh, ugh.

NYAB and the YP return, and I tell the YP he must apologize to Emcee Lady.  He says, “I know. Daddy already told me that. I will tell her I am sorry and I didn’t mean she was boring.”

So off he went, and apparently did a reasonably good job of it, as she smiled and patted his head and – he reported later – told him she understood and she was sorry he had to wait so long. 

Finally, around 4:30 or so, the winners were announced. The third-place adult winner was one of the judges for the youth category, and the grand prize winner had the same last name and was off manning the cash register for the Red Cross “donations.”  I don’t remember for sure, but I’m pretty sure one of the youth winners had the same last name too.  I say the fix was in.  Heh.

But here’s what I do know: Cake beats out cookies, cheesecake trumps cake, and ganache apparently tops everything.  So I’m all set to try again next year!

I Know What's Going On

My brain went in odd directions this weekend. I spent a lot of time freaking out and/or being irritated about work-related things and then on three separate occasions decided to screw all that and focus on better and more useful endeavors. (It really worked, as you can tell, since I had to disengage three times.)

I took advantage of Virginia's "tax free" weekend and got the kid all outfitted for school with new shirts and long pants that end closer to his ankles than his knees and the 5 things that we hadn't yet bought on his school supply list.  I'm amused to report he chose a GI Joe backpack for this year, though he has yet to see the movie and given other friends' reviews probably won't see it any time soon. I'm also amused to report that I am pleased at the realization that my first-grader is sharp and funny and perceptive, albeit combative -- and yet a tiny bit sad that he no longer bears any similarity at all with the jolly and easygoing baby who was completely awed by any and every new thing to come his way. On the other hand, if he were six and still acting two, I'd probably be sad about that. So what do I know?

I figured out what to get my grandparents for their 60th wedding anniversary.  I will tell you how it is received. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who will think it is anything other than a little bit off.

I am going to see most of the Illinois contingent in a couple weeks. Due to a series of last-minute maneuvering by the siblings of Not Your Average Blogger, he is saving vacation time to be with them in October. Apparently they've decided to take his parents' and brother's ashes up to the Grand Canyon rim and toss 'em into the abyss. Since the Young Prince will be in school, NYAB will be going solo.  And since we actually used most of our time off this year and need to save some for Christmas, NYAB  will not be accompanying me on our usual Annual Midwest Tour.  Instead, the kid and I are flying to Winchester and then driving home in my grandmother's Camaro, which I'm very excited to be getting because it is pretty, and which NYAB is less thrilled about but OK with because it will give us a third quasi-reliable vehicle to use for our commutes.

So last night, my father informed me that the tribal elders held a council and it was decided that a frumpy middle-aged woman and her blathery soon-to-be-first-grader were at great risk traveling alone halfway across the country in a quasi-reliable antique car, and that he had been tasked to accompany us as a bodyguard. I am not sure how you'd classify my reaction -- maybe "patronizing"?? I know the words, "well, if it makes YOU feel better" came out of my mouth at one point. One thing my reaction definitely lacked was gratitude, which I feel sort of guilty about in hindsight. I am just tickled to pieces by this in so many ways.  I can't figure out if it means that my family has gotten really old and paranoid, or if they think I'm that flighty and foolish, or if they don't realize that I've got a cellphone and a lot of anger to carry us through adversity or what.  Regardless, I have to confess that I find it incredibly sweet and touching that they actually care if we get dead.  And I'm grateful.

I'm not sure what this means for the various side trips I had planned -- wanted to go see a friend's new baby, wanted to reconnect with some other friends I haven't seen in 25 years, etc. -- but it seems unkind to drag my father along on this stuff, so it might have to wait a while.  I suppose the car isn't really the best choice for such jaunts either, so I may just chuck it all and head back home directly.

I have plenty of time to decide, however.  Today I take the kid to find out if he's a plague carrier, and next Sunday I find out if my deep-dark-chocolate-with-chocolate-chips-and-bacon cookies are prize-winners at the county fair.  I still need a name for those suckers.  Smokehouse Sweeties? Cocoa Bellies? Anyone? Names with "Pig" in them will not be considered.

One Month...

That is how much time my mom has given herself to plan and execute a party for my grandparents' anniversary. 

This is a woman who will spend six hours in a store debating which of the three available light fixtures she should buy, and then leave without buying any of them, and leave a big bare hole in the ceiling for six more months before she goes to another store to repeat the process.

I don't think she's going to make it.  Not without medication, anyway.

One month is also the amount of time left before the deadline for the County Fair's Hershey Cocoa Classic baking contest.  That is how much time I have to perfect my bacon-chocolate-chocolate-chip-cookie recipe.

I am a woman who will bake cookies and then be so exhausted from the effort I won't even bother eating any for at least 24 hours.

I don't know that I'm going to make it. Not without lots of milk, anyway.

I wonder if I can ship a batch of cookies to the party?

Moral Relativism

As if you needed further proof that I can take any topic and turn it into sleeping potion, allow me to share an issue my friend Bald Owl and I were discussing last night.

Owl has a saying: "We like rules, because when we follow them we're allowed to judge those who don't."

You can trust me when I assure you that Owl knows from rules.

Anyway, the conversation turned to movie attendance, and seeing two movies for one ticket (declared unacceptable by both parties,) which in turn led to the issue of smuggling in one's own contraband material. And that posed the following question:

If a theater does not provide your beverage of choice, where on the moral outrage scale should you land if you bring in your own?

I worked in a theater for a while, and I know that the little sign on the door that says, "Please, no outside food or drinks," is up there for four reasons:

1 -- Every cent of concession profit goes to paying for everything except the movie.  Movie tickets cover the distribution fees and that's it. Popcorn covers rent, salaries, electricity, etc.

2 -- Generally, people who bring in their own food and drinks are a sloppy and inconsiderate bunch, which means not only did they not help pay the salary of the guy who will have to mop up whatever they spilled, they also required that guy to do that much more work for that much less pay.  This is a bit of a tautology, though: If that class of person weren't sloppy and inconsiderate, they'd probably respect management's request to not bring stuff in.

3 -- Because the theater management doesn't want you sneaking in your booze and spiked brownies to enhance your viewing experience.

4 -- So they can say you were duly warned when they kick your ass out if they do catch you bringing in stuff.

Now, here's the thing. Generally speaking, I am simply too lazy and not really well-organized enough to plot a surreptitious picnic in a movie theater.  But if I were ....

The theater  where we go most often does not serve my drink of choice.  They serve Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite and fruit punch.  They might also serve that nasty orange crap that tastes for all the world like that glucose test pregnant women have to take, I don't remember.  But they do not serve Dr. Pepper.

I say, if they do not serve my drink of choice, I should not necessarily be required to cough up the $3.50 to buy a drink of their choice. Generally I do, because the way it works out is that we get the YP a "kid's special" which is a tiny popcorn, tiny drink and bag of Skittles, and then NYAB and I split a 40-gallon drum of popcorn, and then he gets another drum of punch, and I scowl and get a drum of Coke. If he were to get Coke, I'd probably just drink half of his -- which is about the amount of beverage we both wind up throwing out anyway, as "small" in this world means "bigger than your head."  Occasionally we will also get some kind of candy, depending on when we last ate.

As you see, I'm not exactly stiffing the movie theater of its 99-percent markup on concessions.  I'm not bringing in my own popcorn, or my own fruit punch, or my own Reese's Pieces.

So on those rare occasions I actually know in advance we are going to the theater AND I remember they don't serve my soda, or in the slightly more common event that I just happen to have a half-bottle in my purse because I didn't finish it at work the day before, I will drink it in the theater -- with gusto, but also with care and non-sloppiness, and keeping in mind the hiker's motto to take out what I brought in.

Owl says this is wrong, and judges.  He is correct to do so, though I think my defense is solid.

The question I didn't ask Owl last night because it didn't occur to me until this morning: What if I were to buy a cup of ice from the theater and then pour in my own liquid? Does that square the deal? Or am I still in violation? After all, the sign on the door does clearly say "No outside food or drinks" -- not "No outside food or drinks unless you promise to be good and buy other stuff from us." 

What is your take?

I think, after all this, that perhaps the easiest thing is to just start going to the movie theater that's another 10 miles down the road, as they do serve my beverage of choice and all this woolgathering is moot.

Weekend Trip

Every time we go to New York these days, I feel like we are missing so much. We are usually there for long enough to do stuff but not long enough to get organized and motivated, plus we are usually tethered to the kid, and I'm such a lightweight anymore that if I'm not asleep by 11 it's a farking miracle. 

And NYAB doesn't drink, so there's that, too. Even if we didn't have the kid, bars and clubs are not his default setting.

So this was a pretty good trip, actually.  We weren't there long enough for me to feel we had time to waste, and we stayed out of the hotel room more or less the entire time until we were ready to go to bed.

We got to Union Station around 11, and Thomas had his first experience with Godiva chocolate. You can't see them here, but he got a chocolate duck. He was quite excited.

Then we got on the train and headed north.  I alternated looking out the window and looking at my BlackBerry, NYAB read Ivanhoe, and the YP played his DS.  An uneventful trip.  Best kind, with that kid in tow.

We got a cab and got to the hotel around 3.  I love love love the Doubletree now.  They give you free cookies at check-in, and they have Neutrogena stuff in the bathrooms, and we got this room where the bedroom is set off from a little office -- with a door. And a lock.  Yeah.   And it's got this crazy lobby that looks like it was designed by Yul Ulu.  (And I can't find any links for that, either, so if you don't know, email and I'll explain.) Unfortunately, I didn't take photos, and can't find any to link to, but imagine lots of skylights, chairs with no arms, and suspended sculptures of glass globs strung on wires. 

So after we got cleaned up a bit, we headed out.  Since I knew Delmonico's was out, and adventures in strange food was out, and I couldn't stand the idea of eating at an effing Fridays or Ruby Tuesday's in Manhattan, I rifled through the hotel tour book for "American fare" and stumbled over the "best burger in New York" entry -- apparently served eight blocks away in the lobby of the Le Parker Meridien Hotel. Finding the hotel was easy.  Finding the joint ... well, see for yourself. This is the only indicator where the place is:

I think the book may have been right. The burgers were excellent. The fries were great. The milkshake was well received by all. We should have bought at least one more.

After dinner, we wandered around a bit, and took the YP to his happiest place on Earth, the M&M store.

And on the way out of there, we bumped into Spiderman.  The YP was delighted to get his autograph.

Then we went to the show, and were surprised to learn we were in the first row.  The YP was alternately very excited at being so close, disturbed by not being able to see, and put out at the amount of dry ice smoke blowing on him.

He was also rather vocal.  He howled out when Oliver Platt came onstage. "That is NOT Frank Sinatra!"  Oy.  Then he turned to us. "WHERE is Frank Sinatra?"  I'd been bashing him to shut up for at least 3 minutes already, so he turns to NYAB, who says, bluntly, "HE IS DEAD."   The YP looks a bit stricken and settles down. 

Same thing when Lauren Graham came on.  "But where is Faith Prince?"  "YP, we told you that the woman from Gilmore Girls was doing this." "Huh." 

Finally, some theater staffer came down and hissed at NYAB that people backstage could hear the kid.   At intermission, NYAB explained we were in danger of being kicked out, and I told the kid that I was going to cry if he embarrassed me again.  Not sure which piece worked, but he was virtually silent the entire second act. No more front row for us for a while, I think.

After the show, some cast members were shilling for AIDS funding, and the YP was astounded when he gave money to the woman holding the bucket.  "She was on stage!! I saw her on stage!"
Yah, and she doubtless heard him, apparently.  But she was very nice to him and seemed enthusiastic back at him.  So that was nice.

Headed back to the hotel and crashed around midnight. 

Got up in the morning and headed down to the restaurant for breakfast.  I'm not sure if I was tired and cranky or the waitstaff was, but that was a little rocky.  We looked at the menu waiting to be seated and settled on our orders -- pancakes for me, waffles for the kid, and French toast for NYAB. We sat at the table.  The waiter came, and said, "Are you having the buffet?"  "No, but ..." by which time he had huffed off to get us menus.  He returns with them and I say, "Thanks, but we already know ...." and he'd already huffed off again.  Then he came back and said, "So, no buffet?" I said, "No. I will have pancakes, and the kid will have waffles, and ... " and he interrupts me and says, "Why don't you just get the buffet? The boy eats free."  Jeezopete. 

Well, after being urged three times, I huffed up and said, "Fine! Buffet it clearly is, since that is the only way we will ever get any food here."  Grrr.  Stomped into the buffet.  Saw no pancakes, or french toast, or waffles.  NYAB took a half-pound of bacon and a banana.  The YP ate Frosted Flakes.  I found some meh scrambled eggs and bacon and had that.  I wish I had thought sooner to  just take the waiter's head off while we were trying to order and just said, "No. We do not want the buffet. But we would like a waiter who will do what we ask. Can you arrange that???"  Bleah.

The waiter wandered by to see if we wanted drinks. "No, thank you," I gritted. "Really? No coffee?"  I look him in the eye, apparently with an OMGWTF look, and said, "No! Thank! You!" 

I finished eating before the YP and couldn't stand being there waiting for the check, so I went back upstairs to finish packing.  NYAB came up later and said they only charged us for one breakfast, so apparently my displeasure was registered and responded to.  Which made me feel better. 

After breakfast, cab back to train station.  Train back to DC, sitting next to Gwen Ifill.  Cab back to office. Car back home -- with a stop off for Little League practice.  So far, the YP appears as engaged with baseball as last time, which means either he will die when he gets hit in the head with a ball or I will die of an aneurysm wishing he'd stop playing in the dirt.

But hey, we've got the Whole Week Off. (Sort of. Except for me working half-shifts at 5 a.m. and a full day in the office Tuesday.) We can work on skills and focus.  Right? Right.

Christmas Foodie Tradition

I hope you and yours had a happy merry holiday. Ours was swamped with twisted USB cords, tiny game cards, and lots and lots of books.  I got a new iPod, with mega-memory that will hold allllll our CDs. The kid got a Nintendo DS.  Not Your Average Blogger got the entire history of Holy Land excavations. Ergo, an extended bloggy absence.  That, and a couple outings.

I think y'all know I'm pretty fond of my kid, and we drag him along to a lot of things that maybe other people wish we'd leave him home. (Including him, probably.)  DInners out. The theater. Occasional forays to the office.  So far this season he's been out for dinner twice and sat through the Nutcracker.

So we left him home when I gave NYAB and early birthday gift of tickets to West Side Story. This is a greater gift than you might think, because honestly, of all the musicals on earth, this one is probably the only one I will mock openly and without restraint. People, I had to bite a hole in my tongue to keep from laughing until the first intermission.  NYAB got up to use the facilities and I got all my rants out of my system by sending snarky Bberry messages to Best Boss Ever.  NYAB returned, with the following conversation:

"OK, you can't laugh about this ANY MORE.  Even Russ Grimm is here."
"Huh? How do you know?"
"Because I saw him."
"Well, did you talk to him? What did you say?"
"I said, 'Hey, you're Russ Grimm!'"
"And what did he say, 'Yes, but don't tell anyone you saw me here?'"
"NO. He just said yes and shook my hand."

So that was all nice and fun and good.

But last night was one of my favorite Christmas traditions -- the one wherein we ditch the kid with a sitter and go have dinner at the Willard Hotel.  It is lavish and decadent and represents the one time a year that I eat and drink expensively without a lot of regard to how much I'm spending or whether I finish everything on my plate to make it worth the price.

It's fan-friggin'-tastic, man. Last night was no exception.

Last year was a $45 glass (yes, GLASS) of champagne.  Last night was two mint juleps.No photos, because it is very dark in the Willard and the drink is very dark and all the photos came out looking like a glass of iced sewer water with a lemon peel on top and that is just not fair.

(A word about the mint julep. I first encountered this drink in literature -- The Great Gatsby -- in my early teens and it sounded sooooo good. Doesn't it? Like it is ice and mint ice cream and chocolate and little bits of cotton candy and pixie dust, right?  So imagine my disappointment when my 16-year-old self is in New Orleans with my parents at a very lax-on-IDs bar and upon ordering one I'm presented with a glass of bourbon and some chunked up mint leaves in a glass with some ice cubes. Whaaa? I made a very sad face. My mother laughed. I think my father drank it for me. Fast forward 21 years, and I am pre-theater dining in the very hotel where the drink was invented. Heck, sez I, it's been 20 years. And I like bourbon. Let's take a shot. People, it was soooo good. It is mint leaves and crushed ice and bourbon and little bits of crunchy sugar and drunky dust. So when we are there for dinner a week later, I get two. Yessss.)

Aside from drinks, we had an amuse-bouche of foie gras cappuccino. It tasted about as you'd expect. The bread was better, imho. I had duck canneloni for an appetizer and NYAB did not eat the venison he ordered as it showed up looking a bit like a slice of spam on a plate.  But the main courses didn't disappoint -- NYAB had sea bass and I had prime rib. At that point neither of us was particularly interested in dessert, but we glanced over the menu and didn't really see anything to change our mind. (Especially since I was pretty sure that Best Babysitter Ever and the YP had made cookies in our absence.) So we called it a night.

It was an odd night for dining companions, however.

First, there was the guy dining alone at the table next to ours -- RIGHT next to ours -- who engaged both us and the couple at the table on the other side of him in occasional conversation. It was sort of sad yet annoying. I mean, I'm a big proponent of being nice to those dining alone, but if I want to invite them to my table I do so. And when I'm dining alone -- I take a book, I don't expect the people around me to take me in like an orphan.

Second, apparently it was dress-up night for the DAR or the Ladies of the Confederacy or something, because as we were wrapping up with the check and whatnot a slew of creakity old men in tails and dickeys came in accompanying a swirl of ladies in hoopskirts and ringlets and lace shawls and feathers. I am not even kidding. It was bizarre, but it made for a nice backdrop as their outfits were a nice match for the Willard's chandeliers and heavy oak partitions.  No photos -- I couldn't bring myself to be quite that obviously rude -- even if I did have to choke a laugh into a cough when one old guy dumped his water glass into his plate.

Mmmm, Doughnuts

Served hot!!

Food and Friends

The food situation is ... odd, but improving.

Breakfast is every day at the Holiday Inn Express.  Hard boiled eggs, cinnamon rolls (not fantastic cinnamon rolls, but pretty good -- and free!) juice, scrambled eggs of questionable quality, cereal.  Not a bad spread.

Inside the perimeter, if you don't have a hall pass, you are pretty much restricted to the hot dog stand. Corn dogs, burgers, fries -- and canned soda. No fountain. There is also a Circle K inside the perimeter where you can get convenience store food, and use a gas station bathroom.

If you DO have a hall pass, you not only get to use the indoor plumbing, you also have access to a better array of food vendors.  We skipped the "buffalo bratwurst" stand and moved on to DiGiorno pizza -- which was a horible mistake. The sauce was eh, and the crust was not cooked through, so it was basically ketchup on raw pizza dough.  Apparently if you go left off the escalator, the selection is better, with barbecue and fish and chips stands.  That figures, a left turn at the Democratic convention yields better results.  Will be trying that tonight. Or maybe we'll just walk alllllll the way around. The other item of note inside the hall are the mini doughnuts. Yummm. Will be getting more of those tonight.

Apparently Wednesday and Thursday will be catered affairs. And by "catered" I think I mean, "box lunches will be provided." But I'm not sure.

Notable Quotes:
(Speaking of food)
"I can't believe you're eating that. Your body is a temple."
"Yeah. And my taste buds are the altar, damn it."

(After cramming 10 people into a minvan built for seven, including a top editor and her son into the trunk) "Hey, just hang in there and we'll be to Nogales in 18 hours!"

(Random conventioneer on his cellphone:) "No. No! NOOO!!"
(Snarked as we walked past) "Yes. Yes, we can. We don't appreciate your negativity."

Bossy Chocolate -- Better Than No Chocolate?

So this colleague of mine is constantly putting these dumb little Dove candies in this candy bucket I have on my desk.  Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for the contribution to the cause and chocolate is chocolate is chocolate, and that's all good.  But the Dove wrappers bother me. See, each chocolate is "wrapped with a special PROMISE® note inside." Promise, my ass. There are no promises here.They're like Fortune Cookies, only they don't give fortunes, and they aren't cookies.

(Of course, even fortune cookies usually don't actually offer up fortunes any more, they say things like, "A fearless man often gets kneecapped by the Mob," or whatever.  NYAB's theory is that litigation regarding one's fortune not coming true is somehow involved.)

So, these Dove things.  Yesterday I opened one that said, "Sing along with the Muzak."  And I was all, No, little Dove dictator, I will NOT.  Then later I opened one that said, "Flirting is mandatory."  WTF?  Sez who? Piss off, Dove wrapper. I don't like flirting with people I LIKE, when I'm in a GOOD MOOD, and yesterday I was very hatey and not-liking and bad moody.

And this morning's offering was "Remember your first everything."  Whaaat? I can barely remember my first NAME, let alone my first everything.

I call NYAB in his office.
"Are you alone?"
"Yeah...."
"Do you remember your first blowjob?"
"Huh?"
"Do you?"
"Ummmmmmm... I think I have to say no, I don't."
"Mm hmm. OK. Thanks."

Seriously, I resented it when my feminine products offered me useful advice and I resent my chocolate telling me what to do. Step off, inanimate objects!!!!