I LIVE

It's true. I do live. I did not off myself or drive off a cliff or elope with Puff the Magic Dragon. (wouldn't that be cool, though?) Things just got uber nuts with the holidays and me getting a new roomie that there hasn't been time or energy to blog. So what are the highlights for all you sports fans?

For you literal sports fans, I bet my dad $20 that Rex Grossman would hurt himself during the playoffs. There was that one play at the end of the game when he ran and slid where I was sure I would win me some cash money. But no money for me and no win for the Bears.

My cousin arrived at the end of December, right before Christmas. We have pretty much gotten used to each other, and luckily for me she is very nice. Hopefully she thinks the same of me but hey - I'm the landlady, she don't got no other choice. She has started school at the local community college and has oodleloads of homework. There's of course still lots of gaps in communication but after all she is here to learn English better so that's to be expected. So far she's in awe of many things in America, namely what we show on tv (South Korean tv is VERY restricted evidently), the shopping outlet prices, and the concept of making baked goods at home. Oh, and how frigging much we eat. Her living here has made a positive impact on my waistline, as I think more about how much I am really eating, and we have also become workout buddies, doing yoga and/or Pilates nearly every day.

And that's a good thing because I'm going to be a bridesmaid for my best friend's brother's fiancee. We went to look at wedding dresses for her yesterday and the lucky girl ended up buying the first one she tried on. It's truly one of the more unique gowns I have seen and it is gorgeous on her. I got to flashback to 2001 and try on some bridesmaid dresses. Some things never change, and how I look in pink satin is one of them. Thankfully, she does NOT want pink dresses for us. The couple is a bit overwhelmed with wedding planning so I am glad to pitch in with any remaining bridesmaid powers I retained from 2001.

My new favorite quote (and it is perhaps hubris to quote myself but it's my frigging blog, so deal with it) was in response to playing the game "Who Would You Do?" with my friends John and LK, and being presented with the choice between two disgusting nasty ex-co-workers:

(Me) "That's like choosing between shit and shit with corn."

My other new favorite quote is from Brokeback Mountain, which I saw with John and LK.
(Jack) "This is one goddamned bitch of an unsatisfactory situation."
I need to use that all the time. The movie was pretty good by the way. Not the best movie I ever saw in my whole life, but really pretty good. Though the 1970's portion of the movie DID make me fall out of love with Jake Gyllenhaal. DAMN YOU, NED FLANDERS.

I went to San Francisco for a work conference. I happened to be on the same flight out there with John who was also going out there for work, so we hit a fried chicken place for dinner when we got there. That was basically the highlight of the trip for me. The conference was dead boring. We sat and listened to so many presentations that my ass nearly collapsed in on itself. I had to actively pray that I would not experience an Ass Supernova, or worse yet an Ass Black Hole that would suck in all the boring around me and create a new Boring Galaxy. When you think that perhaps a presentation by a motivational speaker (3-time Olympic luge medalist. You heard me. Luge.) was perhaps the high point of the conference, you know that things were bad. Real bad. But seeing the Europeans that I used to work with was really nice.

Next week is Mom's birthday, and my cousin and I are planning to make her favorite, carrot cake for the occasion. My cousin is totally excited at a) the prospect of making more baked goods at home and b) she really likes carrot cake.

My mother on the other hand, is not such a whiz at baking (it's really just not done in Korea at home, so she never had to learn.) although she's a super fantastic cook. To illustrate the sheer depth and breadth of her baking don't-know-how, I bring you the following story.

My mom buys stuff on sale. She'll just about buy any type of food if it's buy one get one at the Jewel. I once told her that I really think she'd buy George Bush if he was on sale. She assured me that she wouldn't but I don't really believe her. So around Christmastime, she purchased two tins of fudge because they were $2.50 apiece.

Now, I hate fudge. The texture squicks me out nearly as bad as heavy cheesecake. My cousin had just tried fudge at my friend's house and really disliked it. So Mom brings out two tins of fudge, and none of us can really eat it as it turns out that she and my pops didn't end up liking it either. So she's stuck with a boatload of fudge.

At this point, you'd think the logical thing to do was to melt the fudge down and mix it with instant grits. What? That's not the logical thing to do? Well it's what Mom ended up doing in an attempt to salvage the fudge. Not only did she mix it with instant grits she mixed it with UNCOOKED instant grits. Not only did she mix it with UNCOOKED INSTANT GRITS but one of the fudge flavors happened to be strawberry cheesecake, which rendered the entire mess a sickly pinkish-brown. This resulted in the effect that once the mess was cooled and cut into squares, it looked EXACTLY. LIKE. SPAM. That's right, my mom got a chocolate product to resemble POTTED PORK SHOULDER AND HAM. We tasted it out of curiousity - I had to wipe off my tongue and drink water and eat something else. The texture was even worse than you'd expect. My only regret is not getting pictures of the pseudoSpam.

Well, I think that's some of the high points anyway, and hopefully I will be much better this year about keeping up the blog. Thanks for any fans (all 3 of you) who may have stuck around this long. Mooches smooches.