fur Amanda

I love podcasts almost as much as I love Jeopardy, and downloaded fifty eight yesterday.

Not at the top of my list, but still on my list is Radiolab, and they did a good one about how animals think, and there was a great story about a leopard seal (Thanks Melmar for the tip).
You can listen to it, or download it here, or you can (this is mostly for Ryan who acts like downloading a podcast is the most mysterious and complicated thing you could do) do iTunes, then iTunes store, then podcasts. Then you hit the "get" button next to everything you want, and you get it. Easy.

Here's the leopard seal, eating a penguin. You should see the teeth on these guys.

gold

Slow days. Followed by foods, Olympics.

These are my new antibiotic, and maybe the prettiest pills I've ever taken. Dark blue and pink.

Both plans and non-plans. Upholding sweatpants lifestyle more than I ever thought. Surprise police visits. Finding any and every way to make my room more humid (lately, this:

just setting the glass of water from last night on top of the radiator. It's usually almost gone by night time. This, in addition to a dragon humidifier. I can't wait for Spring). A lot of talk about killing rats. Visits. Deciding about going to Jerry's (our old landlord) dad's funeral.
These could all get a paragraph or something, but I don't feel like it today.

Barnes

This weekend, we got up early and Jady took us to the Barnes Foundation.

I cannot believe it took me 5 (6?) years of living in Philadelphia to get there. If you haven't been: shame on you. If you want to go, you better get on it. Reservations seem to be hard to come by?
$25b of art, in one guy's collection.
Hundreds of Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse.

So much you can barely handle them.
Personal favorites? Jungle Rousseaus I hadn't heard of and the Modigliani portraits.


If you don't know about this place, it's a house/gallery type setting, with objects arranged by how they relate to each other, and was extremely far removed from a Museum Experience. There's no placards, no titles.

Even aside from the whole art end of things, Barnes was also pretty awesome historically. He made his money by inventing a drug, and then chased around the world befriending artists, collecting work (and dogs), and generally was good at being rich.
In his will, he stipulated that the collection wasn't ever to be moved, specifically to Philadelphia, but that's exactly what's happening next year. And I can't wait to see the movie about it - The Art of the Steal.

regal

Today I had a "crown lengthening", which turned out to be one of the grosser ones. Now I've got a mouth full of stitches, and can't brush my teeth for a week. Comments (disguised complaints) the whole time about my tiny mouth and "extremely hyperactive tongue".
I'm not sure I would have posted it anyway, but I tried to take a picture of the back of my mouth, cause it's real gross, and it is REALLY hard to do.

hawks

I've been using my perpetual calendar that everyone (including NICK JAQUITH, who I failed to credit, so: learn about it everyone, and Nick, stop complaining) made. It's really nice/fun. If you're not using yours at work or home, you should. Then you can know what day it is.

Here's yesterday's, from Elizabeth. Pretend I posted it on the actual day. I was going to tell you about my favorites, but that's like half, so forget it.

And, in an effort to defy spring, I really really quit boots today.

Bare foot tops. It's in the forties! (Oh, a hundred colors, dress, jeans, houndstooth AND leopard? Yeah. One of those mornings.)

Tonight? Who knows. It's Making Time.

Reasons I don't want to go to Making Time:

It's cold(ish). That means you have to wear a coat. Then you have to either hide your coat, or check it. Pain.
It's ten dollars.
Drinks are either gross or expensive.
It's at Voyeur, which might seem fine to you, but isn't to me.

Reasons I might get talked into it:

I do like Andy.
Leslie is going, and that's different, and assumes a lot of other people I like are going.
This would really break up my lifestyle of "my house or other people's houses, every night".

So...we'll see. Like I said before, they do have nice posters.

getting there

I'm over winter.

I secretly liked the blizzards as much as the next girl, but I can't wait for warm weather.
I'm tired of boots.
I miss riding my bike.
I want to ride my new Vespa to the thrift store every day.

Icy sidewalks are making the walk to work so irratating I can barely handle it, so I often end up taking Septa, where you just never know when they'll show up, what weird detour they're taking because there's still roads that aren't plowed, and you never know what will be on the seat next to you. Like razor blades.

(It's weird that no one wanted to sit there?)

I'm mostly excited for how nice everyone in Center City dresses, the first day they can. Really good outfits. And, speaking of outfits, has anyone ever done this "plan a week of wardrobe" thing? Where Sunday you'd pick out all your clothes for the week, in an effort to not do that morning-scramble thing, and so you don't end up wearing jeans, and so you use up all those clothes you don't end up wearing because they take too much planning*? I kind of want to do it, but I'm not sure how it would work...
It'd be kind of like menu planning, but for people who don't care about food that much.
Thoughts/tips/experiences?

Here's a picture of MLB, he's all (cat) elbows.



*it's probably the same girls doing their outfit planning that have really boring "This is what I wore today" blogs (that I sometimes get caught up in).

mardi

I was going to write about food. By that I mean: I was going to start a side blog (a "slog"?) about the food I ate. It mostly stemmed from conversations (that I've only had with girls, coincidentally) about which frozen lunches are okay, and which are gross.

For instance:

Usually, when I'm at the supermarket, I buy a few frozen lunches. Because 1) one brand is usually on sale for around $2, which is $5 cheaper than buying lunch out probably and 2) this frozen meal is potentially healthier (and by that I mean less un-healthy?) than eating take out in Center City.
Anyway, there's a lot of brands. Most of them are pretty comparable, and have names with the word "Smart" or "Light" or "Easy" in them.
Then, there's Kashi.
Kashi meals are never on sale. They cost more than a gyro from the corner. They're mostly made of rice.
But they're supposed to be good for you (used loosely, of course), and medium tasty. So, I decided to go for it. I picked out one good looking one, just to try it - because if it was tons better than other crappy frozen lunches, it might be worth it.
Well, here:

All natural Southwest Style Chicken.
Slop.
This is what you've got Kashi? I'd rather have some sort of fakesy panini with imaginary vegetables made on a revolutionary grilling tray.

Know what else wasn't good this week? Trader Joe's Chicken Vindaloo. It was very yellow though. Very yellow.

This side blog that won't exist was going to be called DoggieFood or something. But then I realized I don't even really like reading real food blogs, and one about fake food would be a pretty big waste of internet space.

Here's another fake entry from my fake new blog:

Yesterday was Fat Tuesday. Marilyn made potato pancakes and beignets in the style of Gramma Liedke, and it was great. (Imagine pictures of all that here. Potato pancakes that got eaten faster than a smoke monster eats Mr. Echo, sour cream, and fried dough that left piles of powdered sugar all over the table). Bring on lent.