I'll Have the Stew, Hold the Squirrel

I realize I missed "Friday Food," yesterday. It was a mostly quiet night at home, though, and I really didn't have my computer on. Which, in some ways, was a good thing -- especially for this blog.

You see, I got a new editing assignment at work. This one is for a cookbook that -- I believe -- is being put together as a fund raiser for a school. Or at least I hope that's what it is. Because if it's a "real" cookbook... well... let's just say it's not going to propel anyone onto the Food Network any time soon.

I started working on it today, and got most of the way through it. Most of the recipes are pretty basic. There are some salads and some salsas and some desserts. Many of which have been made "healthy" by such revolutionary things as substituting whole wheat flour in place of all-purpose flour, and leaving everything else the same. Okay. I might give them "healthier" but not "healthy" on that.

And -- although I don't know where the school is from, I'm guessing that it is Midwestern, but also fairly multi-cultural. There was a recipe for California rolls, and a couple for dips to have with tortilla chips, and lots of stir-fried stuff to serve over rice. But each time "chilis" were mentioned there was a note in the recipe saying to be careful because it would be really hot. (One of my favorite recipes was for "Vegetarian Fried Rice" -- in which you could use pork, beef, or chicken.)

Anyway...

As I worked my way through the book, I found a recipe for Venison jerky (looked good enough), and two for fish which called for whole fish (the cook is supposed to cut the fish down the middle and "remove the insides" in one step). And there is the recipe for octopus -- but that also gives an option of other kinds of meat. So I was doing okay until... yeah... I got to the two recipes that called for squirrel.

One of them called for a "furless" squirrel, and the other called for the squirrel to be dressed. I know what that means, but reading it I felt bad for the squirrel who had "dressed for dinner" only to find out he was the main course. They both call for the meat to be cooked until it "just about falls off the bone." (shudder)

I don't know about you, but I think I might have to pass on those "dressed squirrel" recipes. The tiny little top hat and bowtie on the side of the plate would make it way too hard to eat.

Baffling Bathrooms

I've been meaning, for a while, to write about the bathrooms in the building where I work. They're not anything special, but they have a few quirks.

First of all, there are actually two (maybe three) "shower rooms" in the hallway on my floor. No. Not emergency showers or anything, but actual "I've had my yoga class, now I need to rinse off" showers. When I started working here, I thought those were simply handicapped bathrooms (they have the "accessible" logo on the doors), so I walked into one one afternoon. What I found was a bathroom-sized room with a bench on one side and a curtained-off shower on the other. Nothing else. Some days, on my way down the hallway to the office, I hear the water running as I go by. It unnerves me just a little for no apparent reason.

In the actual bathrooms, the building is trying to be all environmentally and public-health conscious. They've got "no touch" paper towel dispensers. They've got (on some floors, not all floors) hands-free faucets. And they've got the kind of hand sanitizer dispensers that you don't have to touch to get squirted. I understand all of those things. I even understand their latest upgrade: Automatic lights.

But I also have a problem with the Automatic lights.

You see, for them to record motion throughout the bathrooms, the sensors have to be put where they can register the whole room. This means that -- at least in the men's rooms -- the sensors are all the way at the back of the room away from the door. That's not a real issue when you're in the room, but if you walk in and the lights are off, it can be a problem.

If the lights are off (they're timed, so they shut off after so many minutes), you have to walk into the dark room and kind of take a leap of faith that you're not going to trip over anything as you wait for the sensor to trigger. The one on our floor isn't too bad. If you walk in and wave your arms in front of you before the door closes, you're pretty much good to go. The one on the next floor up can be a problem, though. Up there, the bathroom is long and narrow, and the sensor is all the way at the back. If you walk in just far enough to wave your hands around, nothing happens. You have to let go of the door and walk about 3 more feet before the sensor finds you.

Now, I'm happy to say that the bathrooms in this building are pretty clean. But, really, who wants to walk that far into any dark room?

Let's just hope they don't put timed sensors in the shower rooms. I would not want to be the person who is plunged into naked darkness just because he needed to rinse a little longer.

Some Things You Can't Make Up

For many years I have been amused by the names some people are stuck with as they go through life. Some of them have names foisted upon them by their parents. Some have married into and, thus -- to some degree at least -- chosen their bizarre names.

I'm not talking things like all of the "color" names out there (you know, like the person with the last name of "Black" whose parents called her "Ebony"). I'm not even talking about the people who are not-so-subtly named after stars (like "Vanna Wright" or "Rhett Coutler"). I'm just talking about the names which are too ridiculous to be real.

When I lived in Baltimore, I worked in a box office with a broad range of names that came and went. There was the little tiny woman whose name was bigger than she was (Mrs. Walter Winkenwerder). Or the woman whose name really should have been part of a super hero novel (Lois Lee Speed -- don't you just know she'd be married to someone like The Flash?).

In my current job one of my tasks is to put together a bunch of documents to send off to the distributor. Most of the time, I just bundle them up with the first word of the book as the tag. So I get to email off things like "Battle Covers" or "Beginning Documents" or, one of my recent favorites, "Wretched Marketing Plan."

But, today, as I was working on those files, I got the best of both worlds. I got to write an email saying "I need a Marketing Plan for DeKok." Yes. I know it's juvenile and silly, but it made me laugh.

Oh. And have I mentioned that the first name of that author is Joy?

Yeah. You can't make some things up.

Lansbury. Zeta-Jones. Night Music. What a Dream for a Travel Tuesday.

What would you do if you found out that someone you knew was going to have the chance to see one of your icons on Broadway? Well, last fall, when I found out that a friend of mine in New York was going to be seeing Angela Lansbury on Broadway in A Little Night Music, I started by whining a little, and then just settled in to some moderate jealousy.

Okay. Maybe I even started stalking their website just a little so that I could listen to snippets of the music and daydream about being able to get to New York for the show.

Somewhere along the way, I even started trying to figure out how to make a trip work -- even though I knew it couldn't ever happen. Of course, you know that I have a vivid imagination, right? Let's see how your imagination compares to mine...

Start by imagining that, as you were opening Christmas presents, you found out that Christopher (or your version of Christopher, since this is about you, not me) had gotten in touch with your family and arranged for plane tickets to New York and tickets to see... well... just for the sake of argument... Angela Lansbury and Catherine Zeta-Jones in A Little Night Music. On Broadway. With Christopher (or... again... your version of Christopher).

Remembering, of course, that this is all just supposition, suppose that, about a month later, you find yourself in seats in the first row of the balcony of Broadway's Walter Kerr theater, just off the aisle to the left of center -- probably about 20 feet from the stage. And you get to sit back, snuggle just a little, stretch your legs out into the aisle, and let the Night Music flow over you.

Photo from www.nightmusiconbroadway.com

You've got one of the icons of American stage and screen just feet away from you, in one of the iconic roles in the Sondheim pantheon (Lansbury is playing the role of Madame Arnfeldt - the matriarch who made her money the old fashioned way: by having all the right dalliances), while one of the current leading ladies of screen (and stage) plays her saucy, sexy, sassy daughter (yep - that'd be Zeta-Jones).

So you're there. And you're watching and listening. You're soaking it all in and wishing it would never end, even though you know the show well enough to know that the end is coming. So when the strains of "Send in the Clowns" start, you tear up. And as the night sky smiles its three smiles, you're both thrilled and amazed. Overwhelmed, overjoyed, mildly overstimulated. And, above all, you're thankful to be there. To have been there.

Photo from www.nightmusiconbroadway.com

Oh. And while you're imagining a trip to NYC, you might as well throw in a couple of good meals with phenomenal friends, some amazing hot chocolate, gorgeous clear views from the "Top of the Rock," a quick walk through Times Square, and memories that will last a lifetime.

Of course, for any of this to happen, you'd have to do it all over a weekend. Because if you missed any work you'd never be able to talk about the trip in the presence of anyone from your office.

Which is why it's better that it was a marvelous dream. After all, I know I'd never be able to keep a trip like that a secret. Would you?

Valentine's Day (the movie)

Alright. Let me start by saying that I will not be talking about much of the plot of the movie, because I know some people who want to see it who haven't seen it, yet. That being said, there's really not all that much plot to talk about.

Valentine's Day takes place, basically, within 24 hours. Coincidentally, these happen to be the 24 hours of Valentine's Day. And, as you might guess, it's pretty much all about love -- the ins and outs and ups and downs of it.

** Career Goal Sidenote ** One of the main aspects of the movie is the business owned by Ashton Kutcher's character. It's a flower shop and coffee shop that he runs. I've been thinking about that ever since I saw the movie. If you know of one of those up for sale, let me know. ** End Career Goal Sidenote **

As you may have heard, it takes a page (or two) from the Love, Actually playbook as it interweaves a whole bunch of storylines and you find yourself watching the movie putting together the pieces to see how the characters are all going to fit together. No, it doesn't do it as well as Love, Actually (or Crash -- which does it masterfully in the midst of a much more dramatic movie), but it does it well enough.

And, no, none of the characters are going to win Oscars, although watching Shirley MacLaine acting on screen while she is also being projected in the background (in scenes from 1958s Hot Spell), was amazing. And... wow... the chemistry between the characters was palpable in a few of the scenes. Anne Hathaway and Topher Grace - totally believable in their weird situation. Ashton Kutcher and George Lopez as best buddies - I completely got that. And the pairing of Taylor Swift and Taylor Lautner as the lovestruck highschoolers - HI-larious. The soundtrack was amazing, too.

But (You knew there was going to be a "but," right?) I had a few issues. Above all:

Pretty much every woman in the movie needed to gain some weight. Shirley MacLaine (in either time period) had onscreen curves. But as much as I liked seeing Jennifer Garner and Anne Hathaway and Julia Roberts, I just kept thinking that they needed to have a few heart-shaped cookies or the guys they were kissing would get cuts from their cheekbones. On the other hand, I really don't know when Ashton Kutcher and Topher Grace put on weight in all the right places (both of whom are in their 30s, so I don't have to feel like a dirty old man). Wow.

So... What did I really think?

Grade: B+. I loved the Garry Marshall touches. The small moments that made the rest of the movie worthwhile. And the end credits were a fun short all by themselves. But I kept hoping for more. I wanted that moment at the end of Love, Actually, where you feel like the world is going to be okay. (Yes. I know that's totally subjective. Did you expect love to be otherwise?)

Sunday Night

Ah, yes. We've come to the end of another way-too-short weekend.

I've spent time on the phone with the cable company complaining about the quality of our current TV reception.

We went out to a very nice dinner on Friday night, and we went to a really fun party at some friends' house on Saturday night.

I spent about 10 hours editing, interrupted from time to time by various procrastination techniques (cleaning, breaking the ice blocks from the street so the water could drain, doing laundry).

And, tonight, Christopher and I had dinner followed by some TV time (on channels that weren't pixelated).

Tomorrow brings the new work week. Yippee.

Who ever thought that it would be a good idea for the work week to be five days and the weekend to only be two?

And why didn't I get a vote?

The Branding Folks Will Scream

Ahh... Fridays at work. The day of tranquility and peace -- if you ignore the huge list of things that people suddenly realize have to be done before the weekend.

Luckily, if you need to send something from point A to point B really quickly, you can always use one of a number of carriers who specialize in such things.

For instance, when a customer needed to send me a check in a hurry, here is what he told me he would do, today:

I'll cut the check right away and mail it FedEx.

Yep. The Postal Service and FedEx marketing folks have got to be proud that their branding is still holding strong.

Now where's that weekend...?