30/30: Free Night

October 25th

It was a long week, so tonight we took a free pass.  

Tommie brought home free food from work for dinner and we curled up (Maya included) to watch a few episodes of Homeland.

30/30: Butter

October 14th

It's actually really hard to think of different things to do every day for a month--especially on weekdays.  This is how one ends up having a butter-themed night.

It all started when Tommie decided we should cook something we've never cooked before so he simmered some chicken thigh meat in Indian butter sauce and I made rice with butter and fresh ground turmeric.  

Then I remembered that one of my co-workers recently told me I should watch the movie Butter about an older foster child and the couple who adopts her.  I was looking for a good time to watch it, so I ran with the butter theme.  The movie was okay--a little too much over-acting, but the girl's story was cute.

So, this is how we ended up watching Butter, eating butter chicken with butter rice followed by ice cream with peanut butter sauce and calling it a night.

30/30: Storms and Shipwrecks

October 7th 

The remains of Hurricane Karen filtered through North Carolina today so we had a movie night in and watched Life of Pi.

While Pi had to share his lifeboat with a feisty Bengal tiger, we had to share our couch with an equally defiant little "tiger."  Why are animals always the boss?

Weekend in Wilmington

Last weekend, we went on a short getaway trip to Wilmington along the coast of NC.  I missed the ocean, and seafood, and I even missed my husband who spent the past month married to a grant deadline and not me.

Of course it rained most of the time we were there and we ended up watching far too many Retro Real World episodes.  Luckily, the place we rented was a cozy and comfortable place to hole up while it stormed.  Maya tested the bedding first to be sure it met standards.

During a random clearing of sunshine, we zipped over to Wrightsville Beach and took a stroll along the water, took deep gulps of salty air, and snapped pictures of surfer bums.  Well, I did that part on my own while Tommie looked on disapprovingly.

The rest of trip was filled with seafood delights of lobster, tuna, salmon, and calamari from Catch and Circa 1922. We also tried a Thai/Vietnamese restaurant Indochine, which we highly recommend.

Sometimes getting away is the only way to really leave work and home behind.  We have to do it more often.

Crazy in North Cackalacky

If I had blogged this past month, each post would have been titled "Why I Hate Doctors."  After seeing numerous doctors and specialists for chronic abdominal pain, having complications with a small procedure, and ending up in the ER, I realized that I was right all these years not to trust doctors.  I'm going with my gut, literally, and switching to an integrative health practice, and I feel better about it already.

Ironically, I have lived in three major medical/research areas in the country (San Diego, Boston, and now Raleigh/Durham)--surrounded by my medical mortal enemies (only a slight exaggeration).  Taking a more holistic/creative approach sometimes makes me feel like I'm the odd girl out...especially in the south.  I'm not sure where my quirky views and lifestyle fit here in north cackalacky, and I definitely find myself holding back for fear of saying/doing something too off-color.

I'm not used to being the craziest person around.  I've always been weird, no doubt, but (aside from my opinion that childbirth is actually the most unnatural thing in the world) I don't think I'd win the prize for crazy...until now.  People here don't talk about going to hippy doctors; they don't believe in astrology more than God; they don't use adjectives like "shitty"; and in reference to The Bachelor, they claim they would never kiss someone on national television.  Pa-lease.  They'd be lucky if I stopped there (again, only a slight exaggeration).

Maybe I need to meet weirder friends; maybe I need to accept that until more northerners keep moving down here, I'll be one of the pioneer weirdos in the south.  Onward!

Concert in Wilmington

Last weekend, Tommie and I went to see Passion Pit perform at Battleship Park in Wilmington, NC. 

It seems like everywhere we go, we're the old people now. The concert was mostly college kids, and while we like to pretend we can still pass as students, Tommie's feelings were hurt when someone recently told him that's just not true anymore. (At 29, we are the oldest of all all his colleagues.) On a good day we can pass as grad students.

Before the concert, we took a stroll along the riverwalk then went to our favorite nice restaurant in downtown Wilmington (Circa 1922). We had a good time as elders hanging out in Wilmington and enjoying the band in a small, outdoor venue on a pretty night. Dawson's Creek was filmed along this river and I'd like to think that it makes me cool for knowing that, but really, none of these kids even know what Dawson's Creek is.

When we found out there were multiple opening bands, which meant that Passion Pit wouldn't be on stage until 9:30 p.m., we complained about how late we were going to get home (in our defense, we did have a two-hour drive), and when a couple crazy boys started to climb the support beams holding up the tent we were under, we formed an emergency escape plan and shook our fingers at them with some middle-aged woman. Eventually, even the lead singer, at a mature 25-years-old, yelled at them to get down.

We're no spring chickens, but it's good for us to get out and try sometimes.

Pie In A Blender

For our wedding present my parents got us (or should I say, got Tommie) a Ninja Kitchen System. Let me start off by saying that sometimes Tommie finds himself captivated by infomercials...particularly food-related clips. Once he heard that this gadget can serve as a blender, a food processor and more (neither of which we have), he had me add it to the registry. And when it arrived, what was the first thing he wanted to make with it? Pie.
See, it comes with this handy little recipe book complete with some mouth-watering images, including one of key lime pie, which happens to be one of his favs. I'll admit I was skeptical about the whole pie in a blender thing. Plus, I've never made pie of any sort before (...in that case, maybe making it in a blender was a good way to start). The ingredients were simple: sweetened condensed milk, eggs, and lime juice. We poured them in, hit a couple different blending settings (this thing sounds like a lawnmower when turned on), poured the mixture in a graham cracker crust, baked, chilled, and voila!
Tommie claims it falls into his "top three best key lime pies"--yes, he rates food in his head all the time. It was easy and quick to make; a good balance or tart/sweet and had a very smooth and airy consistency. I think we should be on the next infomercial.

The Final Frontier

Many popular current movies are set in the uncharted territories of outer space; take recent blockbusters like Star Trek and Avatar (two movies Tommie and I saw this past weekend). While entertainment has explored the mysteries of outer space for years (Star Trek, of course, coming from the old T.V. series), it's becoming more and more true that space really is "the final frontier."

As each year passes on Earth, we push our depths of discovery further. Think about how thrilling it must have been for someone like Jacques Cousteau when he explored the depths of the ocean no one had yet ventured to. And now we can rent DVDs that show, in high definition, the ocean that many since Cousteau have ventured to film and study. While we make leaps and bounds with our discoveries here on Earth, our discoveries in space seem relatively slow in comparison because of how vast and dangerous it is. It's not that we aren't making progress--NASA has amazing photos to prove it--it's just that we know so little about what's on these countless other planets as opposed to all the information we have collected over the years about our own. When I think about it, it makes even the most mysterious places on Earth seem tame.

Sure, there is still a lot on Earth to study, but the more we uncover, the smaller and less mysterious our own planet becomes and so we turn to the great beyond. I'm still amazed by Earth's beauty and differences across the globe, but as I get older and spend more time traveling, and watching those HD movies, or seeing photos of just about every place imaginable on the Web...the more obvious it becomes that man has touched just about everything here. The age of discovery is winding down and soon enough astronauts will be the only people who get to stumble across anything for the first time.

(NASA, Hubble photo: Spiral galaxy about 100 million light years away.)

Billy Collins: Poetry Videos

I stumbled across a Website featuring animated videos that go along with poems read by former poet laureate Billy Collins. These short QuickTime videos are basically what music videos are to songs...something visual to watch while listening to the words. I think this is a great way to entice people who don't care to read poetry to at least listen and watch it. Not to mention, Billy is a very accessible, humorous, and fun-to-read poet.

Billy Collins
action poetry

Slumdog Love Story

When a movie gains a lot of hype or wins a big award I usually stubbornly avoid it knowing that things that most people enjoy, I don't typically find amusing; I can be such a curmudgeon. But tonight I was glad we decided to rent Slumdog Millionaire which won Best Picture in 2008. It was well put together, had you rooting for the underdog (or slumdog, in this case), and above all it was a great love story. My criteria for a great love story is the Peter Parker (Spiderman)-kind, where an unlucky kid catches a larger than life break while never losing sight of the girl of his dreams. It makes me grin. A bad love story is the James Bond kind where the pompous rich guy who already has everything insists on having all the large-chested women too. It makes me gag. Slumdog Millionaire was the good kind...a chivalrous hobo doing everything in his power to reunite with his childhood sweetheart. A love story and a hobo...definite winner in my book!

I'm Not Getting Any Younger

When I first saw the previews for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button I was miffed because a few years ago I had thought, "I wonder what life would be like if humans were born old and got younger as time went on?" I thought someone stole my idea until I looked it up and found out good 'ole F. Scott Fitzgerald thought of it first. Shoot!

I dragged Tommie to the movie because I absolutely love the concept. My sister says it's creepy and scares her and she refuses to see it. In a way, she's right—it was creepy watching a man (even a man as studly as Brad Pitt) get younger while the love of his life gets older. It was tragic, sad, but it was also completely romantic. The theme of life and death so intricately woven throughout the film emphasizes the idea that each of us has a timeline that stretches from birth to death, and regardless of which way that timeline is moving, it's what goes on in the middle of those two fixed points that counts. Tommie and I really enjoyed the movie even if it did leave us in an overly contemplative mood.

I can relate to Benjamin because my friends and family like to tease me that I'm really 85-years-old (only in reality I am and look like a person in their mid-twenties). I can't help it if I say words like "yikes" and "snazzy" or phrases like "She's a dish," or "What a snoozer," or if whenever I act my (real) age and go out to bars or parties I have to recuperate for several months afterwards because I'm pooped. Being young is exhausting. I don't like getting older but Benjamin didn't have it easy going the other direction either.