Despite it being overcast to the point of sheer darkness all day today -- thanks, thunderstorms! -- my plant babies are doing okay. Thankfully, because I love them.

The storms were so bad today that despite my umbrella, I was soaked from my toes to my mid-thighs on my walk to work today. Cold and wet all day at work: not exactly a recipe for a peppy day. I left at 4:30, sneakers still wet, feeling like shit. I put the heating pad on my feet when I got home, but I still feel just ick. Ick ick ick.

So, naturally, it was one of those nights where you come home and snack through dinner. I had some sesame almonds, some goat milk yogurt with honey, some refried beans with pico de gallo and jalapenos on top, a piece of dark chocolate, and half of a cran-raspberry seltzer. You must all have nights like this, too, right? I am not the only one who gets too tired to cook and looks at the refrigerator like it's a buffet.

I wish I knew if it were better to do that (given that my fridge is mostly full of healthy things) or actually cook something, nutrition-wise. After all, tonight's dinner was pretty solidly on the healthy side. Possibly better than shrimp and grits, which I was planning to make (although it is worth noting that my shrimp and grits are quite healthy, minus the empty carbs of delicious, delicious grits).

Mondays, am I right?
 

Got herbs to grow inside the apartment: parsley, cilantro, oregano, sweet mint and lavender.

The place looks instantly brighter with those five little planters in front of the west-facing windows.

(Although I will say that I feel like a serious adult, going to Home Depot on a Sunday. Wow.)
 

This entry is going to make me sound like an old person, or a hipster, or an old person hipster, but I'm going for it.

So this exists: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv6dMFF_yts&ob=av2e

I heard this song on the radio this morning on the way to work, and I thought, "Damn, this new band sounds so much like The Format, except kind of worse!" So tonight, I looked it up, and it was a double damn, because in the very first frame I said, "Damn, Nate Ruess looks so old!"

Because it is him! And the band is, precisely, The Format except kind of worse!

The Format was phenomenal. They soundtracked a lot of my high school years. And, let's be real, I still listen to their songs on my iTunes all the time. All. The. Time. Their music was phenomenal. Their first album had such an Arizona-specific feel, while their second album was all about what it felt like to get out of Arizona. Hmm, know anyone who might relate to those things?

I love The Format. I miss them. I didn't know that Nate Ruess had a new (not as good) band. I am delighted for him! He has a #1 single, and from the sound of it, he is substantially less depressed than he used to be. (Perhaps because he moved from Glendale to New York City?) The song isn't terrible. It's kind of catchy. But it's definitely not Format quality. Not even a little.

But you know what, Nate Ruess? You rock. I would have thought that regardless of you having a #1 single, but good for you! I think any number of your Format singles could have been hits. They were hits with me. If you had to dumb down your lyrics a little to be famous, that's your choice. I don't begrudge you that. Especially since I still caught that beautiful Format-esque line about "the holes in my apologies." You still got it, by the way, if you want to reform The Format. But if you don't -- if you want to be "fun." and make a zillion dollars with a dumb band name -- that's your right.

There's a small place in my musical history of heartbreak that The Format only put out two albums. But you know what? Those two albums have gotten me through a lot, happy and sad, and I'm glad that your unique sound and voice are getting the recognition I've thought you deserved from the very beginning, when I was cruising down the 202 and heard your lyric about being stuck on the 51.

Just as long as no one tells me that "fun." is better than The Format, because then I would have to punch him or her and say, "No one likes Wings better than The Beatles!"




Documentation of Format love:
"Pick Me Up" 
"She Doesn't Get It" 
"Dog Problems" 
"It's the only way we think to get ahead." 
"transcendental" 
"Nine Days: Something To Listen To" 
 

I have this apparently? http://www.webmd.com/oral-health/guide/temporomandibular-disorders

I went to the doctor. She was more equivocal than WebMD, saying that it frequently just pops up and causes pain and you have to wait it out. It either goes away on its own or you have it forever. Promising... not. Treatment: heat, Advil, avoid chewing chewy things. Yeah, like I can chew anything. I mostly eat soup and tofu and scrambled eggs for breakfast, because there's no chewing -- just rubbing the food with my tongue and swallowing.

Hahaha TMJ TMI.

For real, though, this is the worst. This is so much the worst that I am considering acupuncture, since (a) there is literally no treatment for this and (b) sticking a needle in my jaw does not sound worse than what is currently happening.

The thing that blows is that I am not clenching my jaw or grinding my teeth (I never have, and there's no evidence of it in my teeth now), or chewing gum (or chewing anything!), or doing anything that I could just stop and cure it.

BOO.

So anyway, I am impatient and annoyed all the time, not to mention hungry. So very, very hungry.
 

So, here's a pop quiz:

1. When was the last time you were catcalled in the street?
2. When was the second-to-last time you were catcalled in the street?
3. What about the time before that?

Answer:
1. Today! At lunch! In Manhattan! By a construction worker who reached his hand out, so that I had to walk all the way to the other side of the sidewalk, by traffic, to avoid it.
2. This morning! On my way to work! In Manhattan! By a homeless man who asked me if I would like to give him a blow job.
3. Yesterday! At lunch! In Manhattan! By a teenage hoodlum who peeked out from under his doorag (when did skinny white guys start wearing doorags?) to size me up.

But I was probably asking for it, you know, since I was wearing a winter coat and tennis shoes. How dare I walk around in the city like I work there? How dare I exist in public with breasts? I should know better!

Barf.
 

A couple blocks from my work, there is a Hello Kitty store. That's all it sells: Hello Kitty paraphernalia.

It is, unsurprisingly, in Koreatown.

There is a big sign out front saying that they prohibit pictures or videorecordings of the storefront. You know, in case you wanted to prove to other people that they do, actually, exist.

They do, though. I saw it. There is enough Hello Kitty crapola in the world to fill an entire store.

I'd say "only in Manhattan," but I'm sure this exists in Korea, too.
 

Got your attention?

Headed to Florida tonight, Tampa then Miami. Nowhere near the beach, and let's face it, when you're working ten hour days starting at 8:30 in the morning, you aren't doing much partying the night before. So not spring break, and not shark attack. But still Florida.

See you Thursday!
 

So I started reading The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. You've probably heard of it: there was buzz all last year before it came out, and in fact it had the largest advance for a debut novel in all of 2011. It bridges that nice world between historical fiction and magical realism, but not terrible magical realism like The Uncoupling, don't worry.

I've had it on my to-read list for a while, waiting for it to show up on the library shelves. Last week, it did.

I'm about 100 pages in right now, from train rides this morning and tonight and half of my lunch hour this afternoon. I figured I would give it a shot before this weekend, since I only have a day and a half before leaving for a business trip to Florida, and I wanted to see if it's worth lugging with me on the plane. Now, I think I might read too much of it before getting on the plane to justify the space in my carry-on.

This is the thing: it's not a great book. The writing is choppy in places and clunky in others (though I suppose not as clunky as your usual present-tense narrative), and there is a weirdly high number of pointless comma splices (which is to say, astylistic comma splices, assuming you subscribe to the theory that a comma splice can be stylistic, which I personally do not*). And on every page, I just think I'm reading The Prestige.

I can't say that The Night Circus is derivative, because I haven't read The Prestige, only seen the movie. But it's all there: the dueling magicians, the fact that their illusions are real (sorry, spoiler alert, but that movie came out like five years ago), the dark setting at the turn of the industrial age.

So why do I like it? I don't really know. The places where it isn't clunky, the writing is solid. The plot is interesting, if not original, and I really do care about what is going to happen. I enjoyed it so much on my train ride in that I lugged it along with me to lunch, instead of listening to the second half of Hunger Games 3. (So far: better than Hunger Games 2, not nearly as good as Hunger Games 1.) This is impressive, considering that the book is enormous and my iPod Nano is tiny. But I did. I lugged. And I read, and read, and read, until my banh mi sandwich was ready. (Luu's Baguette, 26th Street: best banh mi I've had in New York City.)

The sandwich was so phenomenal that I didn't read much after that. So, to recap: Hunger Games 3 < The Night Circus < banh mi sandwich. But that's unfair to poor Erin Morgenstern. Not many books can pull someone away from a perfectly-made banh mi.

Has anyone else read this book? Can I expect something different from The Prestige in the coming chapters? A deus ex machina like in the movie?

(I recently read a new release called Deus Ex Machina. LibraryThing predicted I would love it. I did not.)




*For me, a run-on or a fragment can be stylistic, but I have never in my life seen a "stylistic" comma splice that worked. Never. Nor can I imagine a theoretical case in which it would be necessary or even better than properly punctuated sentences.
 

April Fools. Funny, right? Laroon.



So this is old, but I just came across it now: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/20/AR2010092005696....

There's this common idea in international relations research that despite it being clear in hindsight, you can never see who's going to be the next big problem. In World War II, no one thought that Stalin and the line of Soviets after him would be a problem, despite all the signs being there. During the Cold War, no one thought we'd have to worry about radical Islamists, despite them as much as saying they only hated the Soviet Union more, and hated us too. We deal with these problems one at a time -- or, as is the case of many Western intelligence agencies, we continue to deal with them in the last generation's paradigm until forced to do otherwise

So we look at these problems, these children who nominally do not exist in the eyes of their already-flimsy government, and we don't think, "Maybe we should make sure that we are able to ingratiate these people into society in a way that doesn't make them reactionary?"

You see this everywhere. You see this domestically, even: groups of people so marginalized by society that all they do is commit crimes, because they have never once seen a person in their station do anything else — be able to do anything else.

That shouldn't be. We shouldn't have stations. What year is this? Seriously.

In Iraq, I guess it shouldn't be too surprising. Women aren't considered people; rape isn't considered a crime; forced marriages and births are nothing but a sin a woman committed. 20 years old, and she can't leave the house. 20 years old, and her life is over. Her child's, too, before it even begins.

Color me unsurprised if this generation of people is the next Taliban.



Dinner tonight is broiled flounder and this: http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/03/sauced-tyrokafteri-hot-pepper-and-cheese-dip....

I'm roasting the peppers now, and my apartment smells amazing.
 

Oof, crazy week here. Work was really busy, A--- had a crazy grad school week, there were repeated train delays, nothing I read on my commute was that great... Crazy. Crazy crazy. But now it's Saturday, albeit a cold and rainy Saturday, and I get to relax.

Well, for one week, at least. This coming week will be much more balanced at work, and A--- is on spring break, so not only will he be able to chill out and have some fun, he's making dinner for us each night! Extra relaxation for me on that end, too I actually really enjoy cooking, but it will be a treat to take a week off from it.

(He keeps trying to get out of it by saying, "But I don't know how to cook like you do" and "Okay, I guess we're going to have five days of pasta," but he's just trying to get out of it. And he won't. I've taught him how to make several crock pot meals, which is what we have at least twice a week since it's so easy when we're both out of the house all day, and hopefully one day we'll have Cobb salad. Yum.)

So this week will be nice, and then after that it's off to Florida for work. Two to three days in Tampa Bay, then a day in Miami. I'm excited! I've never really been to Florida, only ever flown through there, and I'll have at least one free evening in each city. It'll be fun, I think. Not a terrible time of year to go, either.

(Man, I have to stop eating these Girl Scout cookies. They are not helping along my idea of losing a few pounds. Delicious, though: yes.)

It's nice to have a day to relax, finally. At some point today, I'll need to make a library run and take out the trash, maybe run to the grocery store, but that can all wait. For now, just a hot cup of tea and enjoying the overcast sky. Saturday. Sign me up.