Thursday, February 25, 2010

Bluffin Muffins

The last two days I've been baking some fuckin muffins.

The first day, we made this recipe from Smitten Kitchen and they were good but not particularly flavorful.



My main contribution, as is usually the case, is chopping stuff. This time I got to chop some roasted walnuts. I also made the creamy ricotta cheese/sour cream filling but that only consisted of putting the two in a bowl and mixing. Nothing too fancy.


Today Kerry had the good idea of sassing the recipe up a bit with some orange zest and honey in the filling and some vanilla bean in the muffin mix. They turned out awesome.


So I need some inspiration for things to do this weekend and next week. Anything that requires me leaving the house and that isn't very expensive. I'm feeling a bit stir crazy staying in all day (I took Maude on 3 walks today!) but I don't just wanna go to a coffee shop for the sake of leaving the house (cause those lattes add up.) Any ideas besides getting fat off of baked goods?

ONTD pointed out that he is doing his best Worf look in this ... on Twitpic

Moneez!

This has been quite the week for winning at bar games! As I mentioned earlier this week, we hit up the bingo on Monday night instead of the regular Bachelor + dinner evening since there was some boring reunion where one of the ladies tried to malign Chris Harrison's reputation (doesn't she know that every time someone hurts Chris Harrison's feelings, a puppy dies?) The grand finale is next week. Will it be Tenley or Vienna? (or will Ali come back in a not-shocking SHOCKING twist?!) The gossip mags never even talk about Tenley so my money is on Vienna, though sadly she is not in my bracket anymore, so I guess I can't put my money on it.

Anyway, to get back to bar winnings - Kathryn totally kicked ass at Bingo and won the 1st round. It cost $1 per board and all the money was put in a jar, so when Kathryn won, the bingo announcer poured all the money on her head! It was raining dollar billz!

To be fair, the picture doesn't quite capture the moment. Kathryn's reaction was a bit more like this:

It was an exciting night and though no one at our table won the 2nd round, we did get a round of margaritas and a delicious biscuit.

Last night we went to Thirsty Lion for a young lawyers schmoozy networking event that was followed by their pub trivia. We were #1 the entire way through until the very last round where we underestimated ourselves and didn't bid enough in the "final jeopardy" type bidding round. We still got 2nd though and won $60 and a bottle of champagne.



It wasn't enough to rain money but it was just enough to make a cash fan. I'm taking those $1s and hitting the strip club*!




*Not really. Drag show? Maybe.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Yummies

I've had a crazy whirlwind day today, including a visit to the Kinko's to fax a form to my loan peeps so I don't have to pay my student loans for awhile and a couple games of knock-off Settlers of Catan (called Xplorers) which a FB friend introduced me to. Now I'm at the Extracto coffeehouse on Killingsworth finishing up a pro bono project I started on Friday (yes, Agrado has a heart of gold y'all). But I had to stop and tell my 3 readers that they must get here to try the marionberry cheesecake bar post haste! That + an IZZE drink (which I've never had before but now I'm a convert) has been the perfect mid-day snack.



After I'm done with this, I think I'll get back to my hectic schedule of


and maybe a little of



Oh! And I'm going to play Bingo with Kathryn and Kerry and a bunch of other people tonight! I'm hoping there will be plenty of hipster old ladies there. I never win at games of chance but at least it requires leaving the house.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Glambert & Weir

My two new favorite things (and also a good name for a law firm - Glambert & Weir LLP?)

I didn't watch the season of American Idol that Glambert was on but his new album is amazing. It's such a wonderful dancey pop sensation. It's been an inspiration every time I put it in my CD player (yea I know...way to be a luddite about technology. As soon as I get another job, I'll get another ipod!).

Isn't this the most glamazing (glamorous + amazing!) album cover ever?! The hot new dance song of 2010 will totally be "If I Had You." You heard it here first.

And my other favorite glamazing person is Johnny Weir. If you follow my buzz or twitters or facebooks, you probs already know about how our house has basically turned into Casa Weir. Can't get enough.

His show on Sundance, Be Good Johnny Weir, follows him and his cadre of Russian trainers and fabulous outfits. It's worth getting the super special cable for (that, and Logo for RuPaul's Drag Race).

In other random happenings, I've been getting a lot of books out of the library since I have free time and no money and love to read. Those in Portland know how awesome the Multnomah County system is. Last week I found someone's old "to do" list in my copy of "The Left Hand of Darkness." Someone had to pick Bill up from the airport at 4:30. Today I found a temporary tattoo in my copy of "Cycler" and another "to do" list. On the back of this to do list (which included turning on the straightner and doing makeup) was a convo between 2 girls about how one of them 'did it' with Brent last night at the CYO dance! OMG No Way!



I've seen on Oprah et. al. all about how kids these days are into rainbow parties and sexting and stuff. OMG!1!!TehChildrunz! I'm glad that they're still actually just hooking up and writing notes to each other about it.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Never Gonna Get It

Lately, I've had many discussions with Kerry about that horrible David Guetta/Akon song "Sexy Bitch," (He's TRYING to not be disrespectful. But these bitches! It's just too hard sometimes!) and the New Boyz/Ray J song "Tie Me Down" about how he likes having sex with this girl but: "There's too much girls and I ain't lettin go, Cause my life is great, And you ain't nothing but a hoe"
And his excuse is: "Ay yea you know I'm a man, And I have no feelings"

There's some other song about a guy who asks this woman he was interested in if he could "visit her at work" so he could see her "slide up the pole with no panties and no shirt.



That's exactly how I feel baby meerkat! Sheesh! It makes this pop music-fan wonder what the eff these guys are thinking? Don't these men have any women in their lives at all? It makes me grateful for all the Lady Gagas and the Beyonces in the world to counter all the terrible misogynist bullshit. It's not all horribly offensive out there! When the mainstream pop-hip hop world has you down, I like to throw on one of these never-fail classics:


This song has my favorite back up vocals ever. "I'm a survivor (what!)/I'm not gonna give up (what!)/I'm not gonna stop (what!)/I'm gonna work harder (what!)." Here I must shout-out to Kim, one of my high school bffs. We used to car-sing the shit out of this song back in the day.
See also: Independent Woman




Also recommended: Shoop


Can't Hold Us Down - Christina feat. Lil' Kim

What am I forgetting? Now I'm off to Katherine's for some steak, potatoes, and Jake the Bachelor. It's the fantasy suites episode!

Saturday, February 13, 2010

All my life, I've been waiting/Pass my time, procrastinating now

I've been saying to myself for the last month that one of these days I'll blog again. And I don't really have a good excuse not to now that I'm unemployed but then Kerry gets the complete DVD set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and there go a few weeks. Or I rejoin Netflix and now they have the instant watch feature and it turns out I missed a lot of 30 Rock season 3 so I guess I should just re-watch the whole season again. And they have Howard the Duck on their instant queue list, which was one of my favorite movies when I was little so I had to watch that.



Yes that is Lea Thompson. Other before-they-were-famous stars of this George Lucas disaster are Tim Robbins and Jeffrey Jones. Turns out I had terrible taste in movies as a child and it's the most boring (and MEGA-creepy) movie ever. Who knew? I bet Mac & Me is still good though, right?


There's no way this is boring or creepy, contrary to how I remember it as a movie that I made my parents rent 10 times. (I wonder why I loved movies about outer space aliens/animals?)

It's been kind of a crazy and stressful last few months for me. My job was getting increasingly insane and stupidly stupid and there wasn't a day that I came home not totally angry and upset at the situation. Things finally worked themselves out in early January and I am now living off the dole. Unemployment is a nice buffer that keeps me from totally freaking out about having no money but it's not so much that I don't regularly have mini panic attacks about getting a job.

Besides work, Christmas was awesome. I went home to see my parents and sister and her dogs and we had an awesome time.



Maude is still doing great, though since New Year's Eve we have been to the vet 3 times, once for a mild paw sprain after Portland's Snowpacalpyse 2009



and twice for what is probably allergies. Now I have to put drops in her eyes 3 times a day and wipe down her paws with these little paw-wipes so she doesn't lick them all the time. I'm glad Maude got the memo that my income has been cut to a quarter of what it was a few weeks ago.


Hmm, guess she doesn't really care that much!

Also 20 million points to whoever knows the song that I got my post title from (without Googling it cheaters!)