Also: I have started reading Twilight.

me:  i think i very much know how edward feels re: bella
SB:  lol
me:  because it is how i feel re: papa john’s cheesey bread
SB:  oh wow
that was poetic
me:  it just came to me
when i opened the cold box of leftovers
and couldn’t stop myself
SB:  except
he will kill bella
and cheesy bread will kill you

TOUCHE.

Fractions of a second later, a skinny young man in a very puffy coat with a hat on and his face otherwise buried in his GameBoy/PSP/Whatever pivoted from a side pole, shuffled a few steps while playing said Whatever with both hands, and flung himself, belly-first, into the pole I was holding, wrapping his right arm around it at shoulder level so he could lean his whole torso, up to his shoulder, against the pole while still playing the Whatever.

As my fist sank into the downy layers of his jacket, I allowed myself a few moments to ponder. Surely he didn’t do this on purpose, but can he really not feel my knuckles pressing into his stomach? He’s pretty skinny, and there isn’t much going on under there beneath the down.

Before I had time to think about how to extricate my now very cozy hand, whether he might get off the train before me, whether I should say something, I realized I was wiggling my fingers.  He jumped back and made a little noise and then apologized. I mumbled an awkward apology, too, like I tend to do when someone steps on my foot or lets a door close in my face. The woman in the closest seat facing me, who had apparently watched the whole thing, laughed out loud and covered her mouth.

It just took me five minutes to realize that those were dates and that the internet was not, in fact, giving me sub-awesome post ratings on a scale of 1 to 10.  I was indignant!  Just an 8.14??!  The internet hates me! (Not that we didn’t know this already). But then I realized, “No, freakshow, it isn’t all about you.  Sometimes it is about Aloysuis Lilius.”

The end, happy Fridays.

1) Passover has almost passed over, and I am ready. I have eaten way too many eggs in the last week, as well as some questionable combinations (peppers, onions, peppers salad, tater tots topped with nacho cheese and bacon–look, I eat bacon on a regular basis, so just because I keep Passover doesn’t mean I suddenly start keeping Kosher during Passover!), and my body is, as expected, revolting. It wants its staples–lean cuisine pizza and salads with ranch dressing, soup for dinner and organic yogurt. Seriously, that is all I eat. Oh, and also beer.

2) E! News Weekend (which I um, happened to catch yesterday) and all the celebrity blogs this morning were atwitter with the news from the hottest, latest nightclub in New York, where the likes of a bunch of blonde, pantiesless addicts with too much money, their manwhores, and Justin Timberlake (who is none of those things–kisses!) were spotted coming and going together and separately, all weekend long. It’s the new hot spot! Look at all the wunderkinden and throngs of photographers!

Normally I would not bother to mention this to you (Mom, KP, Tubby, Lowe, JC, other stumblers) because that’s not what I’m here to do. I am here, however, to point out that this NEW HOT palace of the priveleged is called PARC. If you went to Northwestern, that stands for nothing but the Public Affairs Residential College, aka the dorm for annoyingly ambitious prelaw and American Studies students and a handful of people who applied to the General Fun Residential Colleges (Willard and I guess Chapin?) but didn’t get in. I can say that because I am friends with some of them (annoying and rejected, NU’s student body in a nutshell. Oh hi, prospective students!). Anyway it’s funny. I enjoy picture Lindsay Lohan drunkenly standing in that weird concrete-walled area at Parc’s front door, frantically Sidekicking her people to get her in… to their newspaper reading room.

3) Look at this. I gave her my heart, she gave me a peep.

4) I want to be Liz Lemon when I grow up. I may have mentioned this here before, or just to some of you in passing. The moral of the story is that if you are not already watching 30 Rock, you should be. Yes, that is in addition to the Office. The rest (even Grey’s, in this drawn out third season, and ANTM, in Cycle 9,000 full of crazies and a mail-order bride, if you can believe it) is inconsequential.

5) I have read some books. My Goodreads will be updated in the coming week or so to reflect this, and then I will copy and paste reviews here, in case you are not already my Goodreads friend. Which you should be.

6) Yesterday, for the second time in a week, I fell off a treadmill with great zest. Yeah, I know you’re supposed to stop it before you try to get off, and you’re supposed to stand on the outsides and then step off, and the kicker is that I DO all of that stuff. Really! The problem is that I come from a tradition of “just hit Pause a zillion times when you are ready to get off (typically about 2 minutes into the cooldown) and it will think you are freaking out and stop and clear your info.” So far in my life, this has been a successful enterprise. However, apparently, some of the treadmills at the Meatmarket Bally’s disagree. They think that when you hit Pause once, you want them to pause, but that if you hit Pause again, you want them to restart.

What ensues, then, if you are me, and a repeat-Pauser in hopes of getting a full stop, is that if you hit Pause an even number of times, the treadmill actuall restarts. So let’s say you’re me, and you step to the sides and you pound the Pause a few times and take a sip of your water and then (fortunately) screw the top back on, gather your iPod in your other hand, and move to get off the treadmill. What happens if this is a Meatmarket Bally’s treadmill? You obviously drop your water and your iPod as your legs are dragged out from under your unprepared torso. And then you have to get on the treadmill next door (thankfully unoccupied), since yours is just now getting up to full, un-paused speed, and fish out your iPod from underneath the flying band of death. And just to make things a little cooler, you bang the back of your head into the armrest thing on your way up.

Anyway, try not to be me. And if you know how to stop a treadmill the real way, the way that works, please let me know. I am tempted to hit the emergency button (that is for emergencies only, right?) attached to the cord you’re supposed to attach to yourself. I like that treadmills come with emergency buttons and pullcords like they are jetskis or something. Even workout machines have delusions of grandeur!

That is all for now, for monday. Some ends are shorter than others!

So yes, world, I went to the Kevin Federline concert. Obviously, I am not running from this fact. But I am still offering the disclaimer that I only went because it was free. :)

Here’s the concert recap I emailed to Trent, my favorite celeb gossip blogger:

He and the guy he raps with were both inviting everybody to the afterparty at Cabaret (I hope you get a report from that… yikes), and Kevin made a few remarks about the fine ladies of Chicago, how we should come to the party because he’s a free man now. Stay away! The world doesn’t need more K-Fed offspring! Other than the guy he raps with and his DJ, K-Fed also brought along two sub-par dancers. He did join them to treat us to a very short dance break, which was fine… otherwise they were pretty stupid and random. K-Fed started getting a little agitated, it seemed, toward the end of the show. I think people were yelling stuff at him, and there were definitely projectiles–beer cans, a sweatshirt, a blown up condom balloon bouncing around. Everybody was pretty much egging him on and heckling him all night.

Anyway, K-Fed took two breaks in his “set,” I got kicked out about 30 minutes into it for taking pictures–oops! I was pretty pissed, but five minutes later, the friends I’d gone with called and said it was already over. So that was it! 35 minutes of Federline glory. I feel pretty sorry for him (because seriously… nobody there a) paid or b) cared about his music), but I gotta say that he’s not a bad looking guy. He’ll drift into obscurity and marry some nice ho. :)

PS: if you go to www.ajc.com and scroll down to the “Kevin talks about Britney” link, you get a video that includes me and my boyfriend talking about the awesomeness. At the end of the video, he enters the afterparty and you hear some guy in the background say “Oh my god, it’s K-Fed” and then a girl laughs maniacally–that pretty much captures the spirit of the night.

That’s my tale of K-Fed… I survived, my ears didn’t bleed, and there’s photo evidence that I attended. Something to tell the grandkids, for sure.

This evening when I got home from work, I removed the fuschia sweater and put on a t-shirt. This was an exceedingly good idea, as tonight I attacked my beets.

When I first picked up my box from Newleaf Naturals, I thought I had been short changed. I thought I was missing both my cilantro and my beets, but it turns out, they were in the plastic bag, hiding behind the kale (see below). Additionally, they were HUGE. Little did I know, beets can be the size of… I dunno, a very small fist? A medium onion? No idea. Know why I didn’t know that? Because I thought beets were radishes.

I mean, I knew there was a difference. I just didn’t know there was SUCH a difference. Or rather, so MANY differences. Radishes, for one, are white on the inside. They are often eaten raw in salads. Beets, on the other hand, are fuschia throughout. Behold, my boiled, peeled beets:

I am having some trouble with lighting in the ol’ one-butt kitchen, so I hope you can see these. They are dark, happy maroon. But when you touch them, or when they touch anything, your hands (or your anythings) are immediately, semipermanently stained hot pink. So I have no action shots of the beet process, because I like my camera without pink fingerprints.

But what to do with beets, huh? Good old FoodNetwork.com led me to a Dave Lieberman recipe for beet and goat cheese salad with watercress. But what if you’re me, and you get watercress and water chestnuts confused like crazy?

This confusion caused a kink in my plans to whisk in and out of Treasure Island to pick up the ingredients I didn’t already have, but a helpful, friendly neighbor and a less helpful but no less friendly produce weigher pointed me in the right direction and saved me from buying celery root (the recipe said “a bundle of watercress” and I was looking for something that grew in bundles that looked like it could have water chestnuts hiding in a bulby feature. Yeah.). So I got home, put my beets in some water to boil them up…

… and got to work on my SINGLE GIANT YAM, also courtesy of Newleaf:

This baby got peeled, sliced, into semi-uniform fries, slathered in salt, pepper, rosemary and Mazola all natural spray, and tossed in a 400 degree oven on a cookie sheet for about 40 or 45 minutes. I flipped them once following a suggestion from Tubby, and they came out tender and salty and flavorful and rosemary-y. I managed to not eat about 6 or 7 fries to save for lunch tomorrow… yum. Also, in the process I turned portions of my tiny kitchen counter, my fingernails, my socks, my floor, my hand towels, my face and my pajama pants PINK.

So here are the finished products: Beets and goat cheese on a bed of watercress (with lemon and thyme vinaigrette… I got a little zealous with the lemon, so… a little rough, that part) with rosemary sweet tater oven fries on the side!

All that’s left of this week’s Newleaf box now is cilantro, an avocado, carrots and the pears and apples I’ve been working through every day at lunch. Not bad. I guess tomorrow I’ll do something with the avocado (maybe onion-free guac, just for Miss J.) and cilantro, and then I’ll anxiously await Saturday, when my next box comes!

Friday night, Dan and I had a lovely date. I was kind of in a rush to get a prescription filled after work (Elbows, back, meet an unidentified irritant and sudden-onset winter. Now meet the dermatologist. Now meet Mr. Greasy Cream. Now pretend you never met that irritant and winter.) and lugging home leftover cookies and things from the office, so it was a delightful surprise to find Dan there standing on my block with a bottle of wine and a great, crazy fall bouquet. Apparently we had been on the same bus (they grow ‘em big up here), and apparently I was the envy of many little old ladies both at the florist and on the bus. It was a wonderful surprise. Anyway, I changed from my work clothes and put on some makeup–if I’m gonna go on a date, I might as well look the part–and we went to Rick’s Cafe, a small, romantic hideaway of a restaurant, complete with a giant Bogey mural painted on one of the back walls. I think there was one four-top table in the whole place, and it filled up as we sat there. The kitchen is run by one chef, one sous chef and a dishwasher (you learn this when you go to the bathroom, which involves walking through the middle of the kitchen), so the food take a little time. But we were there a little before the rush, so it wasn’t too bad. Dan had some delicious salmon, and I had a little spicy shrimp with linguine. We shared a chocolate mousse dessert. Frankly, it was all completely ridiculous, with Edith Piaf playing in the background and candlelight and the ensuing giddiness, but it was wonderful. It was a date. And then, it was Saturday.

On Saturday morning, I rolled out of bed around 8:30 to feed the screaming kitties. I dusted, I vacuumed, I sorted, I put away, I folded, I hung, I wired, I scrubbed. I cleaned out the fridge and went to the store to stock up. Then I called Dan, and we drove up to this delightful little organic grocery on Loyola called Newleaf Natural. I ordered a $15 fruit-and-veggie box (one-person appropriate) during the week, and Saturday was my designated pickup. The shop is like a little bitty Whole Foods with a hint of those old school health food stores that Mom would drag me to before health food was commonplace or even cool. However, thankfully, it doesn’t have that smell. If you know what I’m talking about, you know. Anyway, a few minutes later, after dragging Dan away from the chocolate display and resisting a scone, I was happily on the way back to Lakeview with some Bartlett pears, globe grapes, apples, bananas, carrots, kale, beets, an avocado, cilantro and one giant YAM. Luckily, they also give you a newsletter with some recipes, because uh, some of us don’t know what kale IS, much less what to do with it (boil, then sautee). I came home and had a pear immediately–and it was perfect. I am pleased and greatly looking forward to next week’s box!

Dan dropped me off at home, and I went back to cleaning. I decided I wanted to shake out the rainbow rag rug in the bedroom, so I pulled my shoes on and went out to the fire escape. I do this every now and then, no big deal, but the fire escape in my building is not one that is used for… anything. It isn’t a socializing opportunity. Members of conflicting clans don’t sing to one another on it. I don’t even know if I’m supposed to be out there at all, but it’s great for shaking out rugs and blankets, old lady style, so I do. And as I was shaking out my sizeable, heavy rag rug on the windy, windy fire escape in the chilly, chilly late afternoon, the door slammed shut behind me and I was stuck. I could see my bedroom from up there, and I could see Bear sitting in the window, staring at me. Some help she is. I didn’t have my phone, so I couldn’t page the building managers. There are no knobs or locks on the outside of the fire escape doors, so my keys (had I brought them) wouldn’t have done me any good, either. And I had left the deadbolt thrown on my apartment so I could get back in without them, anyway.

I leeeeaned out and tapped on the window of the apartment closest to the fire escape. No luck. I looked up to see if any higher doors looked cracked. No luck. I started walking down. On the 2nd floor landing, the lowest the escape goes before the retractable stairs start (which I wasn’t about to try), I could see into the building managers’ office, where the building managers were not. So I started yelling to people walking down Cornelia. I realize I might have looked a little strange, a girl on the fire escape with a giant rainbow rug waving her arms and yelling at you, but a good 10 people, after hearing me yell, “SIR!” or “MA’AM!” at them and looking at me, kept right on walking. Finally a girl stopped. “DO YOU LIVE IN THIS BUILDING?!” I yelled.

“Yes…?” She hesitantly yelled back.

“CAN YOU COME LET ME IN? I LOCKED MYSELF OUT! HA HA HA.”

Luckily, she did. She was not interested in how, or where, or why I was on the fire escape with a giant rainbow rug, but at least figured out that I was on the 2nd floor, and saved me from certain death/cold extremities. It was a little mortifying, but certainly motivated me right into a very warm shower. After the shower, I made about 9 zillion piggies in a blanket, threw on my pretty new green dress, and hosted a delightful party. I wore my new boots, which I regretted heartily at 7 AM this morning when I woke up to volunteer at the breast cancer walk and couldn’t. Walk. Anyway, about 35 people were here at one time or another, and the evening ended with an M&M tossing fiasco. Also, when I say BYOB, my friends listen. So um, if you need any beer… you know where to find me.

After brunch and finishing party cleanup (I firmly believe in night-of trash and food clearance. Dishes and crumbs can be dealt with the next day), I decided to make use of last week’s bananas and to tackle my kale. I dorked around at Treasure Island (yarrrr) and picked up some ingredients I needed to make Mom’s banana bread. Miss J came by to pick up the leftover grits from the party (she made them… delicious!) and whatever else I could get her to take home to her roommates (cookies, M&Ms, beer), so around 7:30 tonight, I got rolling on the b-bread. Once I had it in the oven, I got started on the kale. FYI, here is what you do to kale:

1. Cut or tear it away from the hard stems.
2. Trim to bite-sized pieces.
3. Boil it till it’s soft (10 minutes).
4. Sautee it till it tastes like something (10 more).

Anyway, kale has a sweet, delicious smell. I sauteed it with some tomatoes and onions and then tossed in some red wine vinegar, as suggested by the ol’ Newleaf newsletter. It was pretty good warm, and tomorrow… we’ll find out how good it is re-heated at work. Basically, kale seems like a scarier, but more flavorful spinach alternative. Raise your hand if you don’t want e. coli! Tomorrow, I’ll roast my beets and throw them into a salad with goat cheese and arugula. We shall see.

The banana bread came out of the oven and looks (and tastes!) delicious. Obviously there is chocolate involved. This photo was taken in the spirit of Miss Kate C., who is a real cook with a great blog and some wonderful adventure:

And that’s where it is now. I’m about to wrap it up for the night, now that it’s cool, and head to bed. This weekend has meant a lot of dirty dishes, but I kept pace with them. The only thing in the sink is the pan I baked the bread in. The kale pot, the party dishes, everything’s clean and put away. Dan’s gorgeous bouquet is safely on the kitchen counter, where no curious cats will decide to taste it, and my apartment, overall, is clean and homey and ready for winter. Yay.

Oh, Jo, these pictures are for you. Please compare to your “tiny” Montana kitchen and let me know if that descriptor still applies:

This is the door to the kitchen. And basically the kitchen as a whole. Sink, stove. Fridge on the left, cabinets above.
On the right, the “pantry.” A Pier-1 bookshelf. Also, that little thing in front of the toaster oven is my counter space. All of it.On the left, my fridge. Some counter space to dry dishes on. Some counter space behind the fridge… for… tchotchke storage. Mini cuisinart. Air popper. More empty wine bottles.

That is all! Welcome to late October :) Fall is my favorite!

Anyway, needless to say, Dan and I have consumed more Crab Rangoon, Pad Thai, Pad Prik, Pad See Ewe, Golden Noodles, MooShoo Wraps and Crazy Noodles than should be allowed. Not to mention the gallons and gallons of peanut sauce we order on the side of all of these things. So last weekend, in the car (surprise!) we decided we would make dinner one night this week. A very wholesome, good idea, no? For me, making dinner usually means one of two things:

1) Cous cous topped with some combination of sauteed: broccoli, chicken, tofu, onions, garlic, beans, spinach and a generous helping of peanut sauce.

2) Pasta topped with some combination of sauteed: broccoli, chicken, tofu, onions, garlic, beans, spinach and a generous helping of olive oil and Parmesan.

Needless to say, these are generally things one can find in my kitchen and things that wind up pretty tasty. But when cooking for the boyfriend, I decided, one must do something different, something delicious but not too complicated but certainly purposefully different.

So I said, “Let’s do fish.” And he said, “Okay!”

But on my way to meet him at the grocery store, the little, rusty wheels in my head started turning and churning out thoughts of cilantro salsas and black beans and warm Mexican goodness. So by the time I found Dan in the wine section of Treasure Island (yarrr), just had to grab his arm and say, “WE’RE MAKING FISH TACOS!” He gave me that look that says, it is a good thing I like you so much because nothing sounds more disgusting to me than fish tacos and then said, “Um… Riesling?” And I said, “NO! Too sweet!” And ran off to fetch my ingredients.

Forty dollars and half an hour later, we were making progress back in my “kitchen.” I concocted a crust for my fish out of bread crumbs, taco seasoning and chopped cilantro. To jazz it up a bit, I decided I would fine chop one of the two jalapenos I’d purchased for the evening. The other, I decided, I would rough chop and add to my black beans.

Oh smart little me. I watch so much Food Network that I can just plunk together 9 zillion ingredients into a fast (come to think of it, I think we did do the whole thing in 30 minutes), easy fun, delicious meal. Aforementioned bread crumb mixture. Jalapenos + hot sauce + beans. Corn + cilantro + lemon + red onion for homemade Chipotle corn salsa. La la la. It is all so easy. Toast up them Ortega taco shells, grab that bag of pre-seasoned Sargento cheese and the tub-o-sour cream and let’s eat!

But wait. How can you eat when your lips are ON FIRE? That must have been a really spicy bite of beans you just had there, self. Hmm.

Delicious tacos consumed and dishes done and table cleared (thanks, honey), we settle onto the couch to watch Sweet and Low Down, which I had never seen (and rather enjoyed). Except that like 10 minutes into it, hands now dry post-dish, I realize that my fingernails feel funny. And you know, it isn’t just my fingernails. It’s kind of my whole fingers. They’re… burning. Aloe? Doesn’t help. Itch cream from the dermatologist? Doesn’t help. Soaking wet rag? Kind of helps. Gets me through the movie, at least. By the end of the movie has become apparent that I am suffering from some kind of allergic reaction to something. To the internets!

Google points me towards somebody’s story about chopping 5 POUNDS of jalapenos and feeling burned up to his elbows for 18 hours. This, my friends, is Jalapeno Burn. Or, as I like to say…

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My mom recommended benadryl. Dan’s mom recommended benadryl. The internets had already informed me that this would not work, but it did at least knock me out. So here I am, 12 hours later, still with a little burn in my fingers, and this is after sleeping with my hands in a plastic bag containing the wet rag full of ice. Last night I thought maybe I had mysteriously cut myself a zillion times and then got lemon juice in it. Nope. Just the jalapenos sizzling their evil evil souls into my skin cells. It felt like I was gripping a hot poker. Seriously.

The morals of this story are:
1) Try not to spend $40 on one meal’s worth of groceries.
2) Do not let your boyfriend drink the entire bottle of wine he picked out, because when you are screaming in agony from your jalapeno burn, he will do his very best to be helpful, but there is still a pretty good chance that he will accidentally drop benadryl in the toilet.
3) Terrorists should be trying to convert jalapeno burn into bombs, as that seems way more feasible than like, baby formula.
4) The next time you try to impress your boyfriend with your southwestern culinary prowess, WEAR RUBBER GLOVES.