misc.

--college football is back, you guys. i may or may not be excited about this...oh, who are we kidding? i'm totally excited about this! i'm wearing a northwestern t-shirt as i type, ffs. tonight's game isn't until 9:30 so i'm definitely planning a nap at some point. i still have a +1 for next week's home opener against syracuse, btw, so let me know if you're interested. eta: this ticket has been claimed.

--i'm also excited about pro football season starting. yes, i took off work so i can watch the bears season opener. yes, i switched days with a co-worker so i can watch northwestern/western michigan and bears/vikings. yes, i will have three consecutive sundays off (we're closed tomorrow for the holiday) for the first time in...hell, i think for the first time since i started this job a year and some change ago.

--i made some updates in the post i wrote about moms mabley the other night, so feel free to check that out again, or for the first time if you missed it previously.

--today is international bacon day, which would be a bigger deal for me if i wasn't already such a fan of bacon. mmm...bacon...

happy saturday! hope y'all have a good weekend. :-)

motivation

this is where i link to my other site, b/c anything i'd want to say here tonight has already been said there and there's no point in being redundant. :-)

ladies and gentlemen, it's moms mabley!

apparently my dedication to #31writenow is so real that even though i just got home and really should be getting ready for bed b/c omg exhaustion i haz it, i just had to get a blog entry in before midnight. i'm sure we'll all be glad come sunday when this challenge is over and i can go back to my sporadic posting ways. :P

i saw this documentary about moms mabley tonight and i highly recommend it to y'all when it airs on hbo in november. some of you might remember that i played moms mabley in a play i did for one of my classes senior year at northwestern, so yeah, there's a soft spot in my heart for her.

this movie made me laugh and cry - more laughing than crying, i promise - and i definitely learned a few things that i didn't know about moms. i will try to fill in those gaps later when i'm not desperately trying to hit "publish" on this post before midnight. (seriously, though - who have i become?)

eta: as promised, some things i would've written about on thursday if i hadn't been ready to pass all the way out.

--while watching the documentary, i learned that moms enjoyed the company of women. apparently during her tenure at the apollo, she would be "moms" on stage and then when the show was over, she'd don men's apparel and everyone would refer to her as "mr. moms." this was during the late 1920s/early 1930s. i think i need to re-read this book to see if there's any mention of moms' sexual identity. in the movie, whoopi goldberg interviewed a dancer that performed at the apollo during the same time period, who verified the "mr. moms" story and also pointed out that during that time, the labels of "homosexual" or "gay" weren't really used. people were (relatively speaking, obviously) free to define themselves as they chose.

--eddie murphy revealed that the grandma klump character from "the nutty professor" was inspired by moms mabley. i hadn't even thought about it until then, but it makes total sense if you've seen the movie and have seen/heard any of moms' routines.

--this exchange at the grammys with moms and kris kristofferson almost made me fall out of my chair laughing, particularly around the 2:10 or so mark.
moms: "i never could work with my teeth." (removes dentures)
kris: "you're a woman after my own heart."

faith in times of crisis

this is another one of those topics that i've been meaning to write about for what feels like forever, but i hadn't gotten around to it yet. then i read this nyt article (which may or may not be behind a paywall, depending on your nyt access) and realized that it kinds fits in with what i've been meaning to talk about.

how do people of faith reconcile their beliefs when faced with a crisis? this is something i struggle with on a regular basis. i've written previously about a concept i like to call "crazy faith and angry prayers," which pretty much involves me swearing at god even while i'm attempting to believe that things will work out as they should. i gotta admit, though, that sometimes i feel like my faith isn't enough. like the conversations i have with god aren't being heard. like i could really pull a godzilla and just be like "fuck all of the things" for all the difference my faith seems to make.

shit's hard, yo. i genuinely wonder how other folks who believe in some sort of higher power or spiritual being manage when things go fubar. how do y'all make it work? have you ever been faced with something that redefines the meaning of a clusterfuck and just decided to give up on faith altogether? or were you able to strengthen your faith in the midst of a challenge or challenges?

feel free to talk about it in the comments, or drop me an email if it's too personal to discuss in public on the internets.

nope!

someone sent me this article and asked "who is this woman?" after reading the article, i wrote back and said "i don't know, and i can't bring myself to care."

before i left for work this morning, i tweeted this as my feelings about the weather and the day in general, and it still holds true. it was fuck this shit o'clock as soon as i walked into work, it's hot as balls outside, and catching up on the day's news and headlines just reinforces my original opinion of today.

in other news, i really wish dairy queen delivered b/c i would nom the hell out of a massive hot fudge sundae right now. 

health care for some and tiny american flags for all!

so i was talking to fbc former boss today (hereafter in this post known as fbcfb, b/c y'all know i love me some acronyms), who currently is freaking out about health insurance. fbcfb is self-employed and was paying out of pocket for insurance through a program offered by the state of illinois, but recently found out that said program is going by the wayside. the rationale is that once the affordable care act goes into effect in october, fbcfb and others will be able to buy insurance on the open market. fbcfb's concern both is political and personal: "what if (the democrats) lose the senate in 2014? what if this program goes away? you know the illinois legislature isn't going to vote to restore funding for this statewide program..." at that point, i had to make a joke about the illinois legislature not doing much of anything these days, which is hilarisad b/c it's kinda true.

while i was having dinner tonight, my thoughts went back to this conversation and also to this piece about the affordable care act and how it's unnecessary b/c, duh, everyone in america has health care.

hi. my name is eulalia and i don't have health insurance. i have doctors who understand my current fiscal challenges and therefore don't give me grief about coming in for checkups and tests as often as they'd like me to. they give me samples and, when they're able, discounts on my bills b/c i'm paying out of pocket. i also have a dentist who understands some of my current fiscal challenges and who gave me a discount on my last visit.

but, hey, everyone in america can just walk into an emergency room and get the care they need, right? isn't that what the governor of mississippi is saying in that article? that all of us can go to the er and, ta-da, health care!

that would resemble something that could be construed as accurate if, y'know, people didn't have to worry about how they were going to pay for those emergency room visits. i know quite a few people who have put off going to an urgent care clinic, let alone an emergency room, b/c they don't have insurance and the out-of-pocket costs are more than their wallets could handle. hell, i'm procrastinating on going back to the dentist b/c i'm pretty sure at least one of my teeth will need to be extracted, and that's an expense i just can't handle right now. my primary care doctor (and yes, i recognize that despite my current uninsured state, i am writing from a place of privilege just by having a primary care doctor) has a list of tests and blood work that i need to have done. my ob/gyn is just waiting for me to call and say that i have insurance again so she can schedule some long-overdue scans and so we can have a conversation about permanent reproductive decisions that is based in reality and not just "well, when you have insurance or when you're able to pay for this, you can do xyz."

i think that's what initially pissed me off the most about that think progress article -  the assumption that receiving health care, let alone quality and affordable health care, is as easy as going to the emergency room. and yes, i know i am harping on an article that was posted months ago, but i saved it as a pdf with the express purpose of writing about it, and tonight seemed as good a time as any since i am still trying to complete this #31writenow challenge.

sharknado cupcakes

nothing i come up with for today is going to be as great as this recipe/video for sharknado cupcakes, so i'm just gonna leave it here. (thanks kim!)

marching without walking

a lot of online chatter today about the 50th anniversary of the march on washington, and rightfully so. more than a few folks have made the well-intentioned suggestion of asking one's elders to tell them about august 1963 - where they were, what they were thinking, etc. well, i can't do that, b/c technology hasn't really perfected that whole "communicate with the dead" thing. skype can only go so far.

what i can do, though, is think about where my parents were in august 1963. i'm pretty sure they were in chicago and not in washington d.c. james would've just turned a year old a couple of weeks prior to the march, and greg and sylvester would've been gearing up for another year of high school, assuming that my math is correct. [one of the vagaries of having siblings who are way older than you are - after a while, you give up on trying to keep track of the age differences.]

i like to think that my parents would've supported the march and its aims, even if they weren't physically present. i like to think that they were trying to lead by example, by making sure their family was provided for and taken care of.

of course my thoughts go to daddy b/c he was the parent i was able to have more years with. assuming that i'm correct in thinking that he wasn't in d.c., i wonder if he felt any guilt about not being there. i wonder if he thought he was already living the dream, so to speak, by successfully moving from mississippi to chicago and raising a family. [technically 2 families, since my mother was his second wife, but my "sisters" are persona non grata to me so let's not go there, ok?] maybe he thought he was already a step ahead of other folks who were still in the south with no viable way to get out. i don't know.

i do know that daddy raised us all to be responsible, to do our best, and to never give up on learning. i remember at some point during his long career with the cta, daddy was chosen to go through some sort of management training. some folks thought he wouldn't be able to cut it b/c of his age. some others thought it was ridiculous that a black man be given the option to receive this training (and this had to be in the late '80s/early 90s, so what does that say?). but he did it. complaining about my homework was impossible b/c daddy would be cracking the books too.

daddy also raised us to dream and aim big. from about 4th grade until about midway through my freshman year at northwestern, i was convinced that i was going to be a lawyer. daddy not only wanted me to be a lawyer, but he wanted me to be the first black female mayor of chicago. maybe even president. i think it broke his heart when i was in high school and told him i had no intention of entering politics.

and let's not forget daddy's dream of me going to alcorn state on full scholarship and him tagging along so he could play football. i broke his heart again when i said i wasn't going to college anywhere south of the mason-dixon. james and i would joke that the only position daddy would be able to play at his age would be the waterboy, and this was years before the adam sandler movie.

but i digress.

my father likely wasn't in d.c. 50 years ago b/c his circumstances likely wouldn't have allowed it. i'm not in d.c. today b/c my current circumstances would fall out laughing if i even attempted a trip of such magnitude.

daddy did what he could, where he could. i'm trying to live up to that legacy. i think that's going to be my takeaway from this morning's discussion about the march - that we should all try to do what we can, where we can. amen.

my friends, they are awesome

i have to say that my days off this week were pretty fantastic, and tomorrow will (hopefully) contain more fantabulousness. although i wasn't able to connect with bff this week, i was able to hang with a few folks that i hadn't spent any quality time with recently, and that was cool.

there were a few times during the course of my day today that i was reminded of just how great my friends are, for various reasons. i am trying to be better about telling people how great they are on a regular basis, b/c i feel like we all need to be reminded of the shit in our lives that doesn't suck, and therefore i am once again publicly issuing my thanks for my friends. i love you guys like i love a good book and chocolate, which, as y'all know, is saying a lot b/c nobody hates the chocolate. :-)

have a great weekend!

another day, another placeholder type of post

i think maybe at one point last night or this morning, i had the idea to write about my day of win yesterday, but upon further reflection, it'd read more like a list of "hey look at all the shit i did yesterday" and that just doesn't sound appealing to me right now.

i'm becoming convinced that my mental fog today is due to the fact that i had such a kick-ass day yesterday and my brain didn't know how to fully process it. that, and the rain/clouds today just make me want to have all of the sleep. i'm surprised i managed to pull myself off the couch to come out to the bar, where i've just finished up working on job apps and am pondering my next move before i head out to the chicago dancing festival tonight. maybe i'll go home and drop off my laptop and take a quick nap?

so, yeah. sorry for the more unexciting than usual content today, folks. let's hope i'm back on my only moderately unexciting game next time. :-)

dreamgirls in the summertime

so last night keidra and i had plans to hang out in millennium park to watch "dreamgirls" for the 20th time. that might be a conservative estimate, b/c i'm pretty sure we've each seen it 15 times if we've seen it once.

due to technical difficulties, though, the movie couldn't be screened. we were sad for about 20 seconds, until the announcement came that we could stay in the park and listen to the soundtrack. since we know the movie well enough to sing/speak a good chunk of the dialogue, we decided to stick around. you can check my twitter timeline from last night for highlights if you're into that kind of thing.

at one point, keidra & i looked around and realized that at least half of the people who were in the park before the movie cancellation announcement was made were still hanging out. i might've yelled out something like "omg chicago i love you so much" once or twice. there really is nothing like #summertimechi, folks.

there's also nothing like belting out all the parts to "it's all over" and "and i am telling you" and making instant connections with every other black woman you make eye contact with who's also singing along. you couldn't tell us that we didn't sound fantastic.

and then i remembered something i wrote last year about "dreamgirls," and keidra & i laughed b/c we both knew we'd be on youtube at some point looking at clips from the original broadway production, which, of course, leads us to this clip which still wins all of the things.

what does "home" mean to you?

home for me has almost always meant chicago. it's no secret that i have lived and loved my hometown for as long as i can remember.

when i moved out to the south suburbs back in the day, "home" was always my father's house back in the city. i'd go "home" for weekends and holidays and breaks from school and other special occasions, and that's how it was until i graduated from high school and started living full-time with my father for the first time in 10 years.

at northwestern, "home" was still my father's house. i'd still go home for weekends and holidays and breaks and sometimes just b/c i could, or just b/c daddy wanted me to.

after daddy died my junior year, my sense of home shifted a bit. james & carol's place was my permanent address, but i didn't really live there. it was around that time that i started finding housesitting/petsitting gigs so i'd have somewhere to stay during breaks when nu's campus was closed.

post-graduation, home was, appropriately enough, my apartment. easy enough.

when i had to give up casa de eulalia and embarked on my current journey of housesitting and couch-crashing and guest room usage, home was still chicago. during most of 2012 when i was in the north 'burbs, any extended trip to chicago was a trip home. if you were reading this blog last year, then you probably remember some of my ramblings about my love of this city. if you've been reading my other blog, then you're also acquainted with my unabashed affection for chicago, flaws and all.

and now that i'm in chicago and on the verge of moving again, my sense of home continues to shift. it's logical to me b/c as the years have passed, i have grown to consider the circle of friends i've developed more like my family than some folks who are actually related to me.

home is still chicago, and, if i'm honest with myself, will likely always be chicago. i can't imagine myself anywhere else, which probably speaks to a limited imagination on my part and i'm willing to accept that criticism. a lot of it is due to the fact that i spent a good chunk of the past year or so working to get back to the city that i love. i can't see myself giving up on chicago, despite mounting evidence that it's trying its damnedest to give up on me and its other fine citizens.

watching tv in the digital age

this is where i admit that i am relatively retro when it comes to my tv viewing habits. i'm probably one of the few people left on the planet that doesn't have a netflix or a hulu subscription. i still prefer watching television shows on an actual television, as opposed to streaming through my laptop or via my nonexistent gaming system. a number of my friends have given up their cable subscriptions and, in some cases, their television sets, and now rely on streaming services (both of the paid and "omg this show just magically appeared on my hard drive lolz boom" varieties) to feed their tv show habits.

my acquiescence to technology is being a firm believer in the power of dvr. if all goes according to current plan, my next crashpad will have cable, but i will be sans dvr for the first time in years. right now i'm keeping up with "the newsroom" by watching it at the aforementioned crashpad via on demand. i'm amused by the #firstworldproblem-ness of it all. :P

i finished watching the first season of "house of cards" this morning. how'd i manage such a feat, considering that it's a netflix show and i just admitted to not having a netflix account? i rented the dvd set from the library. told y'all i was retro like that. i probably won't see "orange is the new black" until it comes out on dvd for the same reason.

there are a slew of shows that my friends are huge fans of that i've never watched, like "mad men," "breaking bad," "it's always sunny in philadelphia," and "the walking dead." actually, that last one's not entirely accurate, b/c i've seen maybe 2.5 episodes of "the walking dead," which is enough for me to be like "oh hell no i'm not watching that on a regular basis b/c ZOMBIES." i keep saying that i'll catch up with them at some point, and everyone says "oh you can just watch on netflix or hulu," like that's something i could do. i mean, i could, but i'm not. not yet. anyway.

y'know what i am doing, though? tweeting while watching television. i am all about that live-tweeting life, as evidenced here. if i'm watching via dvr or on demand or, in the case of "house of cards," via dvd, i'll still tweet about the show. i suppose in that regard, i'm not all that retro.

which leads to the question/thesis i've been trying to get at: how are you watching television in the digital age? please to discuss in the comments.

this weekend was brought to you by sangria

it's true - you don't make friends with salad, but you can sure as hell enjoy your friends' company with a cup or 5 of sangria. cheers!

and as always, folks, please drink responsibly, unless you're like me and don't have to worry about driving anywhere, in which case you can drink somewhat irresponsibly but still be able to get yourself home safely and in one piece. :-)

strange fruit

so i finally got around to listening to india.arie's new album a few days ago. i was marginally excited b/c i'd gotten the opportunity to see her perform live a while back at a listening/preview party, and there were a couple of songs that i remembered liking, and i was right.

what i didn't realize until listening to the album, though, was that india.arie did a cover of "strange fruit," the song made famous and damn near iconic by billie holiday. thanks to the powers of teh interwebz, you can see/hear billie for yourself:



i was taken aback by india.arie's version b/c it sounded a little too upbeat for my tastes. i can't find a linkable version of the whole song, but you can listen to a snippet of it here.

i'm sure i was on the bus making all kinds of weird faces while this was coming through my headphones, b/c holy cognitive dissonance batman!

i mean, it's not a bad song per se, but when i think of "strange fruit," i don't necessarily think of a dance tune. that could just be me, though.

no means no

(note: i am issuing a trigger warning for this post due to stalker-ish behavior. please govern yourselves accordingly. thanks.)

no means no. no does not mean attempting to figure out their schedule so you can "just happen" to be at their job or standing outside of their class "just to say hi." no does not mean calling their place of employment over and over again hoping that you'll get a chance to talk to them. i know i don't need to remind my enlightened readers of certain rules of engagement, but apparently other assclowns out there need a refresher course.

one of my co-workers got asked out by a patron. they declined. patron somehow became fixated. kept asking. started calling work asking for co-worker. came in to check out books and return books damn near every day hoping that co-worker would be there. it's gotten to the point where all of us know enough of what's going on to run interference.

(actually, remember the patron in the first story here? same patron as the one i'm venting about tonight.)

things came to a head today. during my shifts this week, i've seen this patron in and out a half-dozen times if i've seen them at all. my co-worker was already having a shitty week and when we first saw the patron today, i did what i normally do in these situations - told co-worker to disappear and that one of us would handle them. that got difficult as the day progressed, b/c this patron kept showing up. co-worker dealt with them a couple of times while our manager was nearby. patron didn't try asking for another date this time.

nope. this time, toward the end of the day, patron gave our manager a letter to give to co-worker. manager gave the letter to security b/c of "holy shit there might legit be something wrong with this patron" reasons. co-worker had a mini-breakdown. we all walked co-worker out of work today where their ride was waiting b/c shit had officially gotten real.

i walked to the train and pissed off doesn't even begin to cover where my emotions were at that point. then i started having flashbacks to freshman year, when some fucktard tried to hit on my then-bff and wouldn't take her no as an answer, so then he started showing up outside of her classes. would randomly appear at events/meetings she'd be attending. we made all kinds of reports but since he hadn't technically done anything wrong, there was nothing the administration could do...until he left a note on her dorm room door and we realized that he'd somehow gotten into her room and moved a couple of things around.

luckily, we had friends on the other side of campus that we both crashed with that night - her b/c she in no way felt safe in her room, and me tagging along b/c there was no way in hell that i was going to let her out of my sight that night.

more reports and meetings with administration followed. dude got a reprimand of some sort. he was graduating that year, if memory serves, and therefore there wasn't a need to, y'know, suspend or expel him or anything. that and i think his parents were relative bigwigs and had more clout than a couple of lowly freshmen did.

and even though my then-bff and i don't talk now, i still have a bit of survivor's guilt w/r/t this situation b/c the assclown in question tried to hit on me first. if my then-boyfriend hadn't been at the party with us, fucktard might've tried escalating shit with me. instead, he moved on, and essentially drove both me and my then-bff to a level of crazy and paranoia that neither of us wanted or needed to deal with for the rest of that school year.

suffice it to say that i have a very low tolerance for stalker-ish behavior. my then-bff didn't deserve that drama from damn near 20 years ago, my co-worker doesn't deserve the shit now, but these perpetrators deserve every last little bit of retribution i can rain down on them and then some, b/c fuck that.

can you tell that i have a very low tolerance for people who fuck with me and/or my friends? i know i joke a lot about flipping tables on folks' behalf, but i really will do that shit in real life if it came to it. i've said it before and i'll say it again now: fuck with me and mine at your own fucking peril.

diddy the diabolical strikes again!

so back in the day, keidra and i would give our quasi-mst3k treatment to making the band, particularly the danity kane and day26 editions. at one point we started referring to sean combs as diddy the diabolical, b/c we couldn't believe that we kept watching the drama that he was creating in trying to put a music group together. part of me still can't listen to "end of the road" w/o remembering this "classic" showdown:

god, i'm laughing all over again now. good times. and now danity kane is making a comeback and...oh, hell, i can't even finish typing whatever the rest of this sentence was going to be w/o laughing. shit. it's 2013 and the fact that i am writing about danity kane and day26 is just too much. someone find donnie klang so we all know it's real.

gotta get over the hump

my to-do list has at least 4 blog post ideas on it, but i don't have the energy to tackle any of them right now. a shame, really, since i'm sure some of y'all had grown accustomed to seeing new content here every day in august so far. besides, i'm guessing that you guys don't want to read my whining about hormonal ennui and how mother nature has pwned me today, so i'll spare you.

i'm not giving up on #31writenow yet - just owning up to the fact that i don't have a full-blown post in me at the moment. it's entirely possible that posting will be light for the next few days, unless a combination of inspiration and time to write strikes. stay tuned.

fun with job applications, part who knows b/c why won't someone hire me for a full-time gig already?

a few weeks ago, i was filling out yet another online job application and uploading yet another copy of my resume, but thankfully not copying/pasting information from my resume into the same application b/c applications that ask you to fill in job history boxes after you've already uploaded your resume are the worst. this was not one of those applications.

no, this was an application that asked for an essay. not just any essay, mind you. a 150 to 300 word treatise on the following:

"write a first-person description of a turtle’s greatest accomplishment from the perspective of the turtle."

i'm not making this up, people. i did make up an answer on the spot, though, and since i recently received a rejection e-mail from the job in question, i figure it's ok to share my (admittedly mediocre at best) answer with you.

"My greatest accomplishment to date? Staying alive. Sure, most folks see the cartoon version of me "racing" against some zany rabbit and beating them to the finish line, but that's not real. Real life for me is avoiding an overzealous kid who wants to see what might happen if s/he tries to snap off one of my limbs, or, better yet, take off my shell. Parents, please don't let your kids grow up to be cowboys, or animal torturers, for that matter. I'm still recovering from what happened to Todd a few years back. Poor guy. We didn't always see eye-to-eye on things but no one deserves a fate like his.
 Yup, every day that I'm able to open my eyes and appreciate my surroundings is a good one, unless those surroundings include cars whizzing by me. That's part of what happened to Todd, poor fella. Some kid did all kinds of weird experiments on him and then set him loose in 4 lanes of rush-hour madness. It was just...
 I'm sorry. I don't mean to get emotional like this, but I'm sure you can understand how witnessing something like that can really stay with you. Now...what was the question?"

not even close to my best work, and probably serves as further proof that i shouldn't fill out job applications late at night, which is advice we should all try to live by, no?

51

james would have been 51 today. at some point during my thursday night/friday morning dreams, there was a sequence that involved james. i'll spare y'all the details but i woke up laughing, and i really think that was why i was so determined to have a good day on friday despite all efforts to the contrary.

i got to work on friday with just enough time to spare to call carol and say hi, b/c 1) i hadn't talked to her in a while and therefore she could hear my voice and know that i'm still alive, and 2) i was still laughing about james' latest appearance in my dream. i told her about it, she laughed, and then she pointed out that it totally made sense for him to be on our minds more than usual b/c his birthday was coming up. i'm sure my brain had made that connection on some subconscious level, but it didn't really click until she said it.

my co-workers were slightly taken aback by my commitment to positivity on friday. i was not going to let anyone ruin my mood. in hindsight, you could say that this was my unofficial theme song for friday:



today? it's too early to tell what my theme song will be today. hell, it's too early to tell much of anything right now, especially considering that i'm writing this in bed and have every intention of going back to sleep as soon as i'm done.

but first...happy birthday, james. if heaven's real, hopefully the angels are putting together a kick-ass concert for you.

on: safe passages

the new "safe passages" signs are starting to pop up around chicago. the fact that 50 chicago public schools were closed but hey, let's spend money on signs that will probably have a minimal effect on curbing crime and violence around schools is just...ugh.
i was all set to write a screed in rahm's direction, but then i remembered that melissa harris-perry dedicated one of her "open letters" to mayor emanuel not too long ago, so i figured we could all watch it (again) and go from there.

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recipe redux: white bean soup with sausage and collards

so when i originally tried this recipe out, i figured it'd be a one-and-done kind of deal.

the other day, i picked up some bacon sausage (yes, such a thing exists and it's as delicious as you think it is) from urban orchard. my plan was to cook something today and hopefully have leftovers for after work tomorrow, b/c i am usually exhausted by the time i get home on sundays and don't want to expend my limited energy on cooking.

on thursday, i started thinking about meal possibilities for today. i went on big fork's site to see if they had any recipes that would inspire me, and while i totally plan on making the black-eyed peas and bacon sausage at some point, i wasn't really in the mood for it at that point in time.

but then i figured that using bacon sausage as a substitute for italian sausage could work in a soup, hence today's recipe redux. i used the hickory and applewood bacon sausage and removed most of the casings while crumbling it into bite-size pieces. the onion stayed the same, and i once again used a 16oz  bag of frozen cut leaf spinach b/c collard greens weren't available at jewel, and neither was kale, and neither was broccoli rabe. i smashed most of the beans with my hands, i only used 3.5 cups of water, and i skipped the red-wine vinegar again. oh, and i used salt, pepper, and a bit of garlic powder - no measurements b/c i was just eyeballing it.

this version of the soup might've been better than the initial batch. it's also possible that i was hungrier today b/c all i'd eaten was some popcorn and a bagel, and therefore anything substantive would have been deliciously wonderful. and i have leftovers for tomorrow and monday, assuming that i don't dip into any of them later tonight. i might have to make this again, maybe with the cracked black pepper bacon sausage.

happy birthday bff!

nothing i write this morning will be as eloquent as what i wrote 2 years ago. actually, nothing i write between now and whenever i eventually go to bed tonight will be as eloquent as the post i did 2 years ago. the only thing i can come up with right now is "happy birthday! god, we're old." which is true, but you see how it lacks a certain...well, eloquence. wait, eloquence is a word, right? brb, checking teh googlez...

ok, eloquence is a word. i wasn't sure. hey, it's early and i'm kinda in denial about having to work today. but it's friday and as long as the normal friday crew shows up, work shouldn't suck too badly.

but today is not about me! it's about my bff, who really is one of my most favorite people in the history of everything. thank you for not giving up on me. thank you for being there to talk me into or talk me out of things. thank you for being a sounding board. thank you for being you. i love you like i love ll cool j and books and chocolate and alone time, which, as most of y'all know, is saying a lot.

here's to a year of awesome things b/c god knows we both deserve it. :-)

dance break & other ways to unwind

i'm sure you've all seen this 5 times already, but you should go ahead and watch stephen colbert and jeff bridges and matt damon (among others) dance to daft punk's "get lucky."

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Video Archive

oh, and jenni over at chronicbabe put together a "100 ways to reboot" download that may be of interest to some of you. happy thursday. :-)

skating down memory lane

i had the foresight to record last night's "nine for ix," which was about katerina witt's rise to stardom. i watched it this morning and learned that katerina & her coach essentially made a deal for her professional freedom - if katerina won gold at the 1988 olympics, the east german government would give her permission to continue her skating career. she won gold and then went on to shoot "carmen on ice" in spain with brian boitano, which led to this exchange on twitter:

@queeneulalia http://t.co/PNuVk3NfCn

— Brian Boitano (@BrianBoitano) August 7, 2013

pre-teen me had no idea about the political drama going on backstage at the '88 olympics, though. i was all about debi thomas. i still can't skate to save my life but debi thomas was (ok, still kinda is) one of my idols. here's her long program from the '88 olympics:

and while i was remembering that, a memory from crc came back to me of a group of us watching the '98 games and actively rooting for surya bonaly to do a backflip. in our defense, bonaly was already out of medal contention and she knew it, which kinda makes the backflip even more awesome as a "fuck you" move:

can't write a real post b/c i haz the brain-dead

i mean, i could bitch about the annoying guy i dealt with at work today, but i tweeted about that earlier. ugh, tuesdays, especially tuesdays when i'm supposed to be working on job apps (like right now) after work.

i suppose it could be worse. back when i was in quasi-nanny mode, every other tuesday would look like this: get the kids' breakfast going if they hadn't already eaten, go to work, come home and give the kids dinner, make dinner or at least help with dinner prep, get the kids to bed (which might've included a bath), eat, maybe clean up a bit, and then go up and work on job apps until i passed out. exhausting, i tell you. at least now i can just come home after work and then do job apps after dinner and a bit of procrastination.

so, yeah. brain-deadness, i haz it. is brain-deadness even a word that exists? i don't know and i think i'm too tired to care, and besides, i need to send out my updated resume to people who will hopefully be dazzled by my skills and make me a job offer i can't refuse. whee!

how the internet has changed the way i read

back in the day, i would read a magazine or newspaper and if i saw something interesting, i'd cut it out and save it for future reference. if i came across a word in a book or in an article that i didn't quite understand, i'd grab my dictionary and look it up.

now? i can barely flip through a magazine w/o having my laptop handy so i can look up things as i'm reading. if there's a book or article mentioned that i want to investigate, i research it right then and there. i have a folder of articles that eventually i will print out and read b/c they're just a little too long for my a.d.d. tendencies to tolerate reading in one sitting. a good chunk of the books i read are from reviews i've read online, or from recommendations via twitter and other folks' blogs/tumblrs/etc. if i'm reading a book and see a word/phrase that's new to me, off to the laptop or to my phone to look it up.

and let's not even get into how teh interwebz have changed the way i cook. i have a metric fuck-ton of recipes saved on my computer, thanks to reading magazines and cookbooks and being able to copy/paste and/or save pdf files. whenever i'm ready to try a new recipe out, i do a search of my folder first, and then i dig through the folder of hard-copy recipes i have stashed. that's not counting the binders of recipes that are packed away in a box somewhere. i may or may not have a problem.

so, yeah. remember when folks were worried about the internet having a negative impact on reading habits? not for me! i definitely read more, i think, and my reading material has become more varied/diverse. thanks, al gore! :P

football's back, but it's not like i need to worry my pretty little head about it

so i was flipping through the september issue of family circle the other night when i came across this gem:

"Game Plan
Football season kicks off this month, but that doesn't mean you have to be glued to the TV screen. Let the guys get their game on while you organize a girlfriend get-together to celebrate National Rum Punch Day (September 20). Think of it as the BFF Bowl."

um, WHAT?

so of course i had to take to twitter to vent some of my outrage:

"football season kicks off (in sept.), but that doesn't mean you have to be glued to the screen." actually, that's exactly what it means.
— eulalia (@queeneulalia) August 1, 2013

that same snippet says to let the guys get their game on while i organize a girlfriend get-together for national rum punch day on 9/20.
— eulalia (@queeneulalia) August 1, 2013

um, september 20 is on a friday, so unless the guys in question are watching high-school football, this is all moot and also kinda sexist.
— eulalia (@queeneulalia) August 1, 2013

@FamilyCircleMag also, the blurb on p. 20 of the september issue about national rum punch day? kinda sexist.
— eulalia (@queeneulalia) August 1, 2013

no response from family circle as of this writing. i mean, honestly. y'all know i love me some football, so much so that i'm typing this while the hall of fame game is on in the background even though i don't care about either team (#anyonebutdallas notwithstanding). and i definitely love football more than i love rum, which isn't saying much b/c i'm not that big of a rum fan, honestly, and if i were, i'd just get some of my fellow football-loving girlfriends together for a football and rum punch party b/c omg we're women and we like football and the next thing you know cats and dogs will be living together and down will be up and up will be sideways.

it's 2013, for fuck's sake. i have to hope that at least one family circle staffer read that copy and thought "hm, that's a little bit sexist," but decided not to rock the boat for whatever reason(s). i mean, it's bad enough that the nfl is trying to alienate its female fan base by restricting the size of bags that can be brought into stadiums, but now i need to give up on watching football altogether and go have a hen party so the guys aren't disturbed during that game? allow me to quote from "the wire" here:
 

 my name is eulalia, i'm a woman, and i like football. fuck you and anyone else who thinks that's impossible.

and now, your moment of lolz for the day

one bonus of waking up earlier than necessary on saturday is that i get to take a shower and get dressed in time to watch the melissa harris-perry show, aka #nerdland. during today's show, kim, nick, and i have been entertained by some of the commercials, like the dura wallet. i mentioned the wax vac, which is really one of the most hilarisad commercials i've seen in recent memory, and it turned out that kim & nick hadn't seen it, and then kim found this gem, and omg you guys are so NOT ready for the things you are about to see:

like taking food from a 6 y.o.

i didn't think today was a rough day at work, but by the time i was halfway home, i was sleepy and hungry and just wanted to eat something and go to bed. since i haven't been grocery shopping in what feels like forever and since i was feeling extra lazy, it was quite possibly going to be a toast for dinner kind of night.

but then i remembered the stash of chicken nuggets in the freezer. i asked elena if she'd be willing to share some with me, since i was really tired and didn't feel like cooking. elena said yes, i thanked her, and then proceeded to sit on the couch for a good 10 minutes b/c i was exhausted and couldn't drag myself into the kitchen.

after i actually got up and ate the aforementioned chicken nuggets (delicious, by the way, and they were shaped like dinosaurs and therefore were even more awesome, thank you very much), the following conversation happened on twitter:

@queeneulalia It should be about taking food from a six year old.
— William Lee (@therealwilllee) August 3, 2013

and since i really was/am too tired to think of anything else, i decided to go with it and here we are.

out of the mouths of other people

i went to the movies to see fruitvale station after work today. i'd planned on seeing it earlier, but i needed to let some more time elapse after the zimmerman verdict so i wouldn't be an angry sobbing mess. spoiler alert: that said, i was still throwing my hands up in the air and kicking the back of the empty seat in front of me out of frustration when the bart cops started in on oscar and his friends. end spoiler alert

during the end credits, while i was trying to wipe the tears from my face so i could see well enough to dig into my purse for my bottle of aleve b/c a migraine had decided to take hold during the last half-hour or so of the movie, an older couple behind me were having a discussion that, when i tuned in, went from being surprised about octavia spencer being a co-executive producer to the following exchange:

"actually, i'm kind of surprised that they didn't go into more detail about the aftermath of what happened."

"well, there's really nothing more to say, is there?"

i had to leave the theater after that b/c my head was really pounding and i felt a wave of migraine-induced nausea coming on and i was still trying to get my tears down to a respectable trickle, but also because a part of me wanted to turn around and yell "yes, there is still plenty more to say!"

there is still plenty more to say, and to do, and to watch, and to listen to, and to pray about if you're into that kind of thing. 

a note for any other daddy's girls who've lost their fathers and who haven't seen the movie yet (and i suppose this warrants another spoiler alert): the footage of tatiana grant at the end of the movie may very well reduce you to a puddle of tears. i think i'd just about managed to calm down by the time she appeared on screen and i started bawling all over again.