Yearly Archives: 2010

Music

In which I may be too old for live music

13 Comments

6/52
Project 52: Date Nights logo

  • Wilco tickets!
  • Babysitters!

    • Our date night this weekend was actually an out of the house date! After we dropped the kids off at my brother’s house, we drove a few hours* to meet some friends for dinner before the show. (At a real restaurant! Where we didn’t have to ask for a high chair or crayons or a kids menu!) After dinner, we walked over to the show venue. The concert was terrific, despite the people sitting in front of me who spent most of the show leaning over talking to each other and thus blocking my view.

    (Attention: People who go to concerts just to drink beer and/or make small talk all night! Take it to the lobby! Sheesh. I think I’ve gotten old and grouchy enough to need to pony up more money for better seats, so there are fewer irritating people in front of me. Either that or just stay home and listen to my record albums on the Victrola.)

    After the show, we drove about half way back to my brother’s and checked into our 3-star-according-to-Hotwire hotel.** The hotel was just around the corner from an exotic car wash — which I assume means it had a tropical theme or something — and it was attached to a “sports bar” from which poured a steady stream of ladies dressed in various configurations of spandex. The room itself wasn’t terrible, so long as you didn’t look very closely. In other words: Wow, Hotwire, you and I? Our stars do not align.

    Fortunately, I was too tired to care all that much about the noise levels or the big rip in the curtain. It was a terrific date.

    *There aren’t many bands that I’d go to that much trouble to see, but Wilco is one of them. In fact, Wilco is probably the only one.

    **The conversation that was had when booking said hotel:
    Me: “It isn’t telling me what hotel it is.”
    Rockford: “But it’s a 3-star hotel! It’ll be fine.”
    Me: “Three star according to?”
    Rockford: “Zagat! It’s Zagat-rated.”
    Me: “It is not. But fine.” Click

    Family matters

    “Breathing is the greatest pleasure in life”

    3 Comments

    We had a really lovely weekend; I’ll tell you more about it tomorrow. Yesterday evening, though, Spring’s first allergy attack hit me hard. I know today is Monday, which means I should be sharing a menu plan with you. But for now, I’m concentrating more on breathing. It’s hard to think about what you’ll be eating for the week when you can’t taste anything.

    I’ve always had bad seasonal allergies. I’ve never been to an allergy specialist before, but a GP once told me I had the worst nasal inflammation he’d ever seen. So, yay for me? He prescribed Zyrtec and Flonase, which worked really well until the Flonase started making me crazy dizzy. Turns out, other medications also make me dizzy, and you know what I don’t need? More dizziness.* I can’t remember whether the Zyrtec had bad mojo or not, but I’ve been taking Claritin for the last several years.

    And every Spring, I’ve thought, “I should go to an allergy specialist.” And then I don’t, because procrastination! It’s what I do best.

    But! This morning, I called an allergy specialist and croaked out, “I’d like to make an appointment.” On Thursday, I’ll go to their office and get poked with needles. (Or something. I don’t know.) And guess what? I can take exactly zero antihistamines between now and then!

    I’m guessing they’ll say something like, “You’re allergic to trees and grass and dust and dust mites and pollen and everything else in the whole wide world. We suggest you take three allergy shots a day. And wear this bubble on your head.” And you know what? I might sign on for that.

    *I get really dizzy for two or three days roughly every month and a half. If you clicked on that link and are wondering, the CrazyFeelings are mostly gone. But now there’s the dizziness. Why haven’t I gotten the darn thing removed already? I don’t know. Laziness, I guess.

    Also: “Breathing in the greatest pleasure in life.” Giovanni Papini said that, and right now I certainly can see what he meant.

    Eating

    Cake blogging on demand!

    2 Comments

    i’m demanding a new blog entry…. it’s been 3 days. =)

    That was the email I received from my sister-in-law this morning. Since she’s agreed to watch the kids overnight this weekend, I’ll comply. Also, the kids are upstairs playing “Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle,” so I have a spare moment. (Even though said spare moment should be dedicated to folding laundry. Oh well.)

    Earlier this week, I made a carrot cake for a friend’s birthday. I love carrot cake, and so does she. It’s the foundation of our friendship. There’s a place in town that claims to have the best carrot cake on earth, so we briefly thought about ordering one from them. Until we found out it would cost fifty dollars. And here’s one of my life rules: Do not pay $50 for a cake.

    I’ve never made a carrot cake before, so I searched high and low for a great carrot cake recipe, finally deciding on the highly lauded “Sam’s Famous Carrot Cake” with whipped cream cheese frosting. The cake had a good flavor, but it was so dense that I don’t think it qualified as “cake.” I’m 98% certain that had more to do with my equipment than with the recipe, though. I’ve been using silicon cake pans, and I think they’re causing heightened baked-good density. It may also be that the oven’s temperature isn’t what it should be. Someday, I’ll pick up an oven thermometer to keep in there. Until then, I’ll use a different cake pan next time and see whether that makes a difference.

    So the cake itself was disappointing — it has, nevertheless, been consumed already — but the frosting? Oh, the frosting! It was terrific. It would make a great fruit dip. Even though that would pretty much negate any nutritional value in the fruit.