The Average Blogger

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!!!!

Bittersweet

So, on Friday it was in the 90s, and on Saturday it hit 102, and on Sunday it hit 100. What better weekend to bake? 

Cookies are my thing.  NYAB was ecstatic because I made chocolate chip cookies and I hit the right flour-grease-cinnamon ratio. I rarely see him eat more than one or two from a batch, but he ate three at one sitting this time. 

Another of the recipes I tried out this weekend was a modification of a too-sweet deep-chocolate chocolate chip recipe.  To cut the sweetness, I added bacon.  Sounds vile, right? But it's not so bad. I have blind-tested it in the office, and so far nobody has spit anything in my trash or declined after one bite.  In fact, I have had repeat visitors. The only thing I will do differently next time is buy thinner-sliced bacon and make sure it is very crispy rather than quasi-chewy.

Now, I need a name. Because "Bacon Chocolate Cookie" sounds ... well, vile! And "Something Bad for You Made Worse" also lacks that certain something. Thoughts?

In other news, NeighborGirl graduated from high school on Friday night. And her party was Saturday.

It was a success in that I made assorted cookies and was told repeatedly I should sell them. And secondarily a success because she had not gone out and bought herself an iPod Touch after telling me she wanted one, so she actually liked the gift we got her.

It was amusing in that the graduate (with whom the YP is totally in love,) was play-wrestling with some relative, and the YP came to her rescue, tiny fists flying and Indiana Jones hat askew.  While singing the Raiders of the Lost Ark theme, natch.

It was disturbing in that the YP spent about 6 hours playing with a Wii, and I am worried we will probably jump on this bus and get one sooner rather than later.

It was sad in that we will all miss NeighborGirl when she leaves for school. Made more sad because every day it looks more and more like her folks (whom I also adore,) will probably call it quits the second she's in her dorm room and we will wind up with another house for sale on the block, sure to be bought by scary losers. Sigh.

It is sort of hard to explain this. I've never been a particularly neighborly person.  I've moved around a fair bit in my life -- in conscious memory and including college, I have lived in 17 different houses/apartments. Of all those, I have had six neighbors I  could stand and three I legitimately liked. Four of those six were our neighbors when I was not of legal voting age. Of the remaining two, one became my roommate the next year of college and we became such good friends that we were in each others' weddings. The others? Live next door to me now.  Bleah.

Previously, having good neighbors was not particularly important to me. For one thing, I've always been pretty self-sufficient and while I think I'm generally friendly, I'm not particularly outgoing. I was always the person who didn't know any of the adults in the neighborhood, but every kid in town hopped my fence to play in my yard with the dogs. 

Also, I was always a renter. I think this makes a significant difference in how much effort one puts into relationships with the others on your block.  I always knew that if things got truly out of hand or it turned out I'd inadvertently stumbled on to Crackwhore Avenue, I could always bust my lease and move.  This is not so much the case when you are a homeowner.

And as a homeowner with a 5-year-old, it gets that much more complicated. I want to know my kid can run next door if he sets our house on fire when I'm not home. I want to know he can play in our yard at 11 a.m. and if he kicks up a racket and wakes up the neighbor trying to sleep off a hangover, the neighbor will be understanding and forgiving about it.  I want to know the people moving in won't be lawn Nazis who sniff at me if I screw up like I did this year and let weeds take over the flowerbed while my family is dealing with illness, injury and incessant rain. I want them to have dogs because we can't as long as the YP is allergic.

In short, I want the people who live there now. Sigh. 

Of Course, in NYAB's Family, Mom Made Doughnuts From Scratch. Because That's How She Rolls.

When I was in junior high, I had braces.  My father once referred to my mouth as "that abandoned graveyard with headstones pitching every which way."  (He was only allowed to do this because it was his stellar genetic hand-me-downs that were to blame.)

Combine this with the frizz factor that Florida humidity wreaks on my particular hair type, a complete illiteracy on my part regarding fashion and cosmetics, and a mother who could rebuild a car engine but knew as much about "product" as I knew about the federal deficit, and you wind up with junior high photos that by and large landed on the burn pile before they could sear anyone else's eyeballs.  Though in retrospect they probably weren't quite as bad as I thought they were at the time. Still, I wish someone had introduced me to a flatiron before I hit my 30s.

This probably explains why I spend more time taking pictures than having them taken. 

Now, my kid, on the other hand -- he still has all his baby teeth and they are all straight, and if I do say so, he's a fine looking young man. Even if he does need another friggin' haircut. 

What will he look like at 14? This, however, is not my point.

As any of you who had braces might recall, getting them tightened generally meant about 24 hours afterward of not really wanting to eat anything that required chewing.

Thus was born one of my fonder pubescent memories. 

I had signed on with this orthodontist when we lived near Palma Ceia, but two years into the process we had moved about 30 miles away, off to the exurbs. So my mom would drive me to these appointments and after I'd had the screws put to me -- but before my teeth started hurting -- we would hop one building over and she would buy out the doughnut shelf at Kalupa's Bakery. Then we would sit on the hood of her '69 Camaro in the parking lot and snarf them down. There we were, two skinny pony-tailed blonds in jeans and T-shirts on this muscle car licking glaze off our fingers and swilling milk. 

Looking back, we were probably the best advertising that bakery could have wanted.

Flash forward 20 years. NYAB's back surgeon has an office on the second floor of a building whose storefront is a combination Baskin Robbins and Dunkin' Doughnuts. This building is also across the street from the hospital. So over the past two months, the YP has learned that Daddy's Doctor Visits mean Fun For Us.

Though there was that one episode where the cashier misheard us and gave us hot chocolate instead of chocolate milk and the YP took a big mouthful and then shrieked but didn't spit it out for fear he would get in trouble and burned the everloving hell out of his tongue. 

But today, we got our order without incident, and I asked the YP, "At a table or at the car?" And he enthusiastically responded, "In the car!" So off we went. "On the car or in the car?" "No, no, Mama, in the car.  It's too windy on the car."  So we sat in the car and snarfed  down sugar and waited for NYAB to get the clean bill of health from his surgeon and had a grand old time.

Sugar rush, anyone?

Saturday Surprise!

After an astonishingly sucktackular end to my workweek, the weekend brought many wonderful things.

First, my husband was very nice to me and fed me very well.

Second, many incredibly kind people showed up for our cookie party (10 kinds of cookies! Lots of candy! Noooooo salt!) despite the fact that a lawmaker died, Congress was still dithering with federal spending, and there was a Big Fat Threat of a Killer Ice Storm of 2007 -- which did scare a few people from making the drive even though it turned out to be a lot of wind and a fair amount of rain.  (No photos, once again, I was too busy having a good time to actually document any of it.)

Third, my mom and dad showed up for the event, which was a total -- and much-welcomed -- surprise. I didn't even realize how much I'd hoped they would come visit while the house looked nice and there was stuff around to eat until there they were standing in the garage saying, "Hi! Can we put cookies on plates or make coffee or anything?" And they hung around and played with us all day yesterday too, including a foray out to the Bull Run Festival of Lights, even though I know they think that stuff is lame and hokey.

And now it is Monday and I am back at work and not sure quite where I'm sitting in the misery-meter, but the weekend is making it a lot more bearable.  I'm so lucky to know so many of the people I do, and to like so many of the people I'm related to.

No Time to Say Goodbye, Hello! I'm Late I'm Late I'm Late

We're having a party this weekend. I'm busy baking 10 kinds of cookies, several different kinds of candy and generally wiping down the walls. When I'm not working. Or mopping barf up out of the back seat after foolishly assuming my kid was really just overtired and lying when he said he was sick. (Of course, as is his wont, he was back to healthy in 3 hours and Bouncing. Off. The. Walls. Just when I was trying to work. Go figure.)

Which means, no post today. Maybe tomorrow. Or maybe not. I'll keep you guessing. 

But here is a photo of a lovely $45 glass of Dom Perignon that I drank on Friday night as part of my extremely lovely Christmas gift of dinner at the Willard Hotel.