I've been drifting away from livejournal for some time now, but I guess before I disappear again, I should announce:

I got engaged on Halloween!

Finally, at 34 years old, I'm actually preparing to do that thing that people do.

Abandoning an online blog?

Well, maybe that too.

In that ongoing series, Doormen on Film, a cheesy, but enjoyable one off cheapie, The Phantom of 42nd Street, has a full-on Broadway doorman who sits at desk next to bunch of mailboxes.

It's awesome.

I can't believe I'm typing it, but this season, so far, The Office has been pretty disappointing. Jim is an asshole, Pam is irritating and there's just not enough Dwight -- or Andy.

Did I mention Jim's an asshole? A kiss ass who thinks only of himself? And Pam? Annoying?

I have a feeling this wedding episode tomorrow night might really annoy me....though the prospect of Dwight, Angela, Toby, Kevin, Creed ect. at a wedding IS promising!

Still...trepidation...

Next Sunday I'll be in Paso Robles, CA attending a wedding. Well, the wedding's Saturday, but the wine tasting is on Sunday.

I hope we go to the same vineyard Real and Chance took the Stallionettes to! (We actually looked into staying at the Madonna Inn, where the girls and brothers stayed -- but before they stayed there -- this was like a month ago. Pathetic? Maybe!)

Nobody believes that's her real hair right?

Or her real face?

I bought a new bra yesterday and I LOVE IT! It's nothing special, Joe Boxer, red with a winking face on one cup (the gentleman friend calls it, appropriately, the Kool Aid Man), but it's the most comfortable bra I've had in years.

And I love it.

Yay, over the shoulder boulder holder (or tiny tiny pebbles, in this case)!

Two things first.

One, call me ignorant of a major world cuisine, but I've never loved Mediterrean food. Italian, Greek, parts of Spain, lower France....not really for me. I love fatty hearty brown and white gravy dishes -- the tomato is good -- don't get me wrong -- but such foods have always kind of bored me. Good Italian is good Italian, but would I spend $100 to eat a haute cuisine Italian or Greek meal? No, I wouldn't.

Two, I always approach Cat Cora episodes of Iron Chef America as "Oh. It's a Cat Cora episode." I know that's terrible, but only Mario Batali got me less excited than her.

So imagine my surprise when the gentlemen friend, his parents and I ate at Cat Cora's new restaurant at Disney World, Kouzzina (that's a link to the dinner menu -- can't find an official site). It was AWESOME!

We started out with the sampler -- two skewers, cashews (sweet and cayenne peppery!), olives, pita bread with hummus and tzatziki (everyone's fave gyro sauce -- yogurt and cucumber). Then I had the flank steak (good, but less exciting than what everyone else got), the GF had the fisherman's stew (AMAZING, especially the red broth, although the chunks of fish, scallops, shrimp, etc. were impressive), his mom, the cinnamon-stewed chicken (mmmm!) and his dad, the pastitsio (they describe it as Greek lasagna, but it reminded me of shepard's pie too -- the meat sauce was cinnamony and the pasta just yummy!). We had dessert -- baklava (formerly my only giant Greek weakness - I LOOOOOOVE baklava. It's in my top five desserts of all time, easy.) and yogurt ice cream, which was shockingly good. Just that little bit of tartness and all that creaminess. Mmmm....

There was an important bit of magic -- Cinnamon. Dude. Meat and cinnamon, yes. I've had that in Middle Eastern cuisine (which I do like quite a bit) on lamb, particularly...but with beef and chicken? Sure!

Which brings us to last night's cooking extraveganza. The GF's parents got us Cat Cora's cook book, so we made our first Greek meal -- Spicy Gypsy mussels (first time cooking those -- and we didn't get sick from them! Yay!), Greek Potato Salad (lemon juice in the dressing, plus kalamata olives making it more Greek) and Peppers Stuffed with Meat (cinnamon among the spices) and Rice. Delicious!

So I will no longer dismiss the Greeks or Ms. Cora. Apologies to both! I was ignorant -- thanks for the education!

ladymorgain sent me this from the New York Times and I had to share -- Craiglist Missed Connections Ads reformatted as poetry.

As a former -- and she a current -- resident of Borough Park, this was both of ours favorite (what is the proper grammar for that improper construction?).

Hasidic dude staring at you

You’re probably not surprised
that I was staring at you,
I’m probably not the first one.

I don’t remember what you were wearing
because I so was attached to your face.
You have the most beautiful face
I have ever seen in my life.

All I remember is that you
had blonde hair in a ponytail,
and beautiful blue eyes.

You kept stealing a peak on me,
and kinda measured me (not literally)
head to toe. You didn’t seem annoyed
by my staring, I don’t know why,
most women would.

I had a beard, and sidelocks
(those Hasidic side curls),
blue jeans and a t-shirt.

Email me back
I wonder what you thought of me.
You can even let me know
I was creepy,
so I know.

Oh, I've seen that movie!

Wait...that's an ACTUAL headline?!

I've missed you.

(Even if I'm so not excited about Pam's pregnancy.)

And COMMUNITY! I love The Soup and now, Joel McHale is on regular people TV!

Thank GOD for the fall season. TV has been shit-tastic at the theatre, especially now as TBS is my only cable channel nowadays.

Next week at this time I will be in Orlando, FL.

Yay. I need a vacation.

(Btw, going to Epcot Center for the first time since 1983 or 1984, not sure which! Do you think it's changed at all? ;-)

One thing about MAD MEN that's been irritating me. I have mentioned "Bay Ridge" on the show, which looks nothing like Bay Ridge. Okay, fine. But Peggy, who is Norwegian, supposedly, is both Catholic and has a dominating family obsessed mother?

She's not Scandinavian. She's Italian. Which makes her Bay Ridge 100%. Now, granted, Bay Ridge actually had a healthy Scandinavian population -- Lief Ericson Park, for example, is on 66th and Fort Hamilton Parkway. My first rental was from an Italian family who liked very much that I had a Swedish background because "Swedes are clean."

But, in 1960, for example, 96% of Norwegians in Norway were LUTHERANS. 96%!

It would be such an anamoly for Peggy to be Catholic that it's almost unbelievable. Especially that they picked Bay Ridge for her and then....made her Norwegian. Why not make her Greek? Or Italian? Did they feel like her cold unlikeable personality (very Scandinavian!) would be unbelieveable in an Italian or Greek?

Fair enough, but then she wouldn't be Catholic either. I mean, hey, I like the Colin Hanks-involved priest/changing Catholic story line a lot. Seriously! But really...the Norwegian hasn't been explained enough for me to be satisfied.

Unless there is a forgotten detail? Was Peggy's mother Italian or something else? Obviously, her father was Norwegian (Olsen) and Peggy identifies as Norwegian. Did I miss something somewhere?

I am willing to stand corrected. Find me some 1960's Norwegian Catholics in Bay Ridge and I will apologize. And want to find out more about them!

So I just read that the New York City health commissioner would now like to ban smoking in all city parks and beaches. This seems....wrong to me. Sure, the city government has already chapped my hide by making it against the law to not offer your seat on the train to the handicapped, elderly or pregnant. I think a person SHOULD UNQUESTIONIGLY offer their seat to such persons, but to make it against the LAW???

There is such thing as quality of life, but persuing graffiti artists and petty thieves is way different from fining someone for not offering their seat. Bah. It's like when they started penalizing jay walkers OR when I got a $50 fine for having my leg up on a seat in a near empty D train at one in the morning.

I admit, not allowing people to smoke on the softball field would be kind of nice. I wouldn't miss standing in the dugout with a face full of smoke. But still...I just get up and move away. It's the outdoors. It's not like being stuck in a room with someone smoking.

Government, get out of smokers' business. Because, really. It's getting unfair.

Finally have my reservation for the Blue Hill at Stone Barns (for the end of October). We've been debating about it because they aren't open on Monday or Tuesday, the two easiest days for us to go eat there. But it's not that bad to get up to Tarrytown and honestly, I couldn't get a Sunday night reservation earlier than 8:30pm anyway. So yay. In the middle of the fall harvest, the food is going to be fantastic (I am way more of a fall-winter food girl than a spring-summer -- give me warm and fatty and vegetable-y over fruity and light and salady any day)!

Labor Day, we finally got to do some cooking, which was RELAXING (don't know many other things I can do for four hours and feel totally chill afterwards). We made, together, hot carrots (a common Cali bar food -- basically vinegar pickled carrots, onions, jalapenos, garlic, peppercorns and bay leaves), agua fresca (cucumber water, basically, plus simple syrup, lime juice and a serrano chili), a roasted potato recipe with onions and roasted pepper (over the gas burner, ghetto-style -- also we used confetti potatoes, which meant awesome blue/purple potatoes, which I've never made before), tomatoes a la provence (a Julia Child recipe I clipped from the Daily News -- bread crumbs, herbs, shallots and tomatoes) and, finally, fancy ass ghetto pigs in a blanket (Neiman ranch gouda-apple sausages wrapped in Pillsbury dinner roll dough). It was fantastic!

And my new oven is AWESOME.

Tomorrow, we're going to make Buffalo-style chicken breast pieces. Yay. How can you not like to cook? Afterwards, you get to eat the results. Not many other arts/crafts allow you that (well, fine art, I suppose, depending on the medium and your personal psychosis).

Sunday night, the gentleman friend and I made a sorjourn down to Mayahuel specifically to see our favorite bartender in the world, Adam (he left Flatiron many months ago and, while we love Monday night's Megan very much, we have been missing the extra special bonus magic).

And -- as children of the 80's can appreciate -- he's developing a line of tequila drinks based on the signature wrestling movies of some of the great stars of the WWF. There was the Figure Eight (Ric Flair -- now where's the Testicular Claw?) and another whose name is lost to a tequiliac haze. But I got to suggest the name for the Rowdy Roddy Piper-inspired "Sleeper Hold," which was basically four or five kinds of booze (jalapeno-infused tequila, chartruese, vermouth (two kinds?) and something to make it pink?). So yay!

Because, seriously, wrestling moves? AWESOME cocktail names. My only request? That one day there will be a Camel Clutch (the Iron Sheik) or the Bear Hug or Boston Crab (the former specifically to Nikolai Volkoff, the latter to a few of the villans).

Always loved the bad guys!

I know it was some big sci-fi geek 3-D James Cameron excitement thing, but I saw the Avatar trailer and I have no freakin' CLUE what it's about or why I should care. Those things look like giant Jar Jars or, even, something out of a particularly mediocre Don Bluth film.

What the hell.

Koyie at home Koyie Hill at the plate.

Teddy Roosevelt attends pre-game batting practice.



Fontenot warming up at batting practice.

THE WOLFMAN TRAILER!!!

Okay, okay. It's not sad sack Larry Talbot (oh, Lon Chaney, Jr., there will never be another you), but Benecio del Toro does kind of fit in there, the period is great and Anthony Hopkins as another totally mad monster killer?

I am so there. Happy Valentine's Day to me!

Fette Sau was delicious! The rub they use on the pork belly, particularly, was very fall-like -- cinnamony and all spicey. Sweet, but not too sweet -- just right. I would return in a second!

They also had an American whiskey (they do whiskey flights, for those who might be interested) called Copper Fox that tasted exactly like pound cake. Yes, please!

Afterwards, we thought we'd look for some place to hang out in Williamsburg, but it wasn't really for us. Instead we ended up walking over the Williamsburg Bridge (where there are still remnants of the memorials for DJ Josh Link, who was killed on the bridge) into Manhattan.

We ended up at Mayahuel. And I think I can say this here -- I love tequila and I dig sotol, but you know...mezcal is only okay. It's too smokey -- there's not enough interesting tastes going on with it -- like soapy scotches. I'd rather enjoy the tequilas.

I know. They're taking away my cocktail dorkdom even as I type...

I just finished reading William Faulkner's Sactuary (which was really good for me -- I've been reading a lot of trash and non-fiction and popular works lately and I wanted something to make my brain happy. I like a little challenge now and again, although certainly, Sanctuary is pretty accessible.) and wanted to share this quote. I feel like Miss Jenny most of the time.

"'This morning the Baptist minister took him for a text. Not only as a murderer, but as an adulterer; a polluter of free Democratico-Protestant atmosphere of Yoknapatawpha county. I gathered that his idea was that Goodwin and the woman should both be burned as a sole example to that child; the child to be reared and taught the English language for the sole end of being taught that it was begot in sin by two people who suffered by fire for having begot it. Good God, can a man, a civilised man, seriously...'

'They're just Baptists,' Miss Jenny said."