DangerChicks (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} dangerchicks) wrote,@ 2005-02-01 13:59:00 |
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| Current mood: | busy |
| Current music: | Song:Great Peace March - Artist:Holly Near - Album:Musical Highlights |
Marcy: Wanting to get this in before you go to China....
I had a very relaxing holiday, actually. I slept a lot, relaxed a bunch, and then slept some more. I might even be caught up with my sleep at this point. Of course, catching up took most of January.
It seems like the theme around me is alcoholism, even though I personally hardly drink at all. Between people deciding that they are possibly having a drinking problem and having dinner with someone celebrating 25 years of sobriety, the topic seems to be everywhere just now. I find myself thinking about the notion of "bottom" a lot.
In case you are not familiar with this idea, "bottom" is where an individual has to get before she is really ready to do something about her drinking. The idea is that different people have different bottoms. For one, getting so drunk that they miss a day of work might freak them right out, and cause them to re-evaluate their drinking habits. Other people have to lose a spouse, a house, and a career, and end up on the streets before it occurs to them that the cost of drinking might be too high. These latter people are called "low bottom drunks". (I assume one would call the other kind a "high bottom drunk", but I personally have never heard this phrase used.)
Anyway. I was also thinking that people in marriages have bottoms. For instance, some people leave the first time they get hit, while others stick around and try to work it out, taking beatings for years. And some of those beaten people leave the first time the spouse smacks the kid. Some people tolerate years of infidelity, while others have a zero-tolerance policy for that. What interests me is the set of people who have admittedly difficult marriages who just suddenly seem one day to hit their bottom. From the outside, it's just the same old, same old. You know, honey, that man has been boinking other people in your bed for years, and you've known about it and whined about it, but never left him, so why is this incident, which looks the same to everyone out here with our noses pushed up against the glass, so different?
Well, onto less depressing topics....
You had questions, so let's see if I have answers....
1. How many variations of Monkey Bread do you figure we can come up with?Thousands. Yours sound good. How about chorizo and pepper jack cheese? Or caramelized onions and swiss cheese? Or cloves, orange rind, and mint? (I didn't say they would all taste good!)
2. What's your favorite emergency snack? Sliced pepperoni, microwaved for 30 desconds until it gets crispy. Fakes me into thinking it's real and warm. If there are hardboiled eggs in the place, it's not an emergency! I make devilled eggs out of them and snack away.
3. What's your favorite Christmas gift this year? I dunno. My mother got one of the authors of a book I wanted to autograph the thing with a quote from my "About You..." page at amazon (the thing about reading too much, thinking too much, and sleeping too little), which just tickled me pink. The book was pretty good, too.
4. What is it that disturbs you most about all the destruction from the tsunami? That it much of the loss of life was preventable, if only the early warning systems like we have on this continent had been in place.
Now feel really obligated to think of something more cheerful to say. Well, now that you-know-who is gone from TAR, I have two excellent reality shows to watch: TAR (of course) and Project Runway. Also, I am over my previous TV-grrrl crush on Debbie Travis, who lost me forever when she said that a particular episode of her show proved that "men" cared about their houses less than "us girls". That's just all kind of wrong, starting with the fact that she's forty if she's a day, and the woman she was talking to was well into her thirties. I'm looking for a replacement, but haven't found her on HGTV, Perhaps I need to check out other channels.
And in the best TV news of the decade, that Elizabeth Rohm chick finally got kicked off L&O.
What? Me? Watch too much TV? Why? What makes you say that???
And now it's my turn!!!
Not that I have a lot of creative ideas for questions, which is one reason I slacked off so long....
1. How do you cook brisket? I used the recipe in the recent Cook's Illustrated and it made the best (non-BBQ) brisket i ever had. It's sort of a pain in the butt, but totally worth it.
2. How do you cook flank steak? I usually make a stirfry of some kind. Right now, I am sort of craving oyster sauce beef, and that would be a good thing to make from it. When I have way too much time on my hands, and it's warm enough to open all the doors while the beef boils (because I loathe the smell of boiled beef), I make vaca frita. Yummy, amusingly named, and a whole lot of trouble to cook. On extremely rare occasions, I stuff it, roll it up, and grill it.
3. Read any good books lately? My favorite recently is What's the Matter with Kansas?
4. Where should I go on my next vacation? I was thinking of Nepal, but the place is under martial law right now and turning away flights. So what should I adopt as Plan B?
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