Booorring...

boorring me. Fall's creeping in, and while I love this time of the year, it turns me into a homebody. As opposed to my usual on the go 24/7 self. Ok, it turns me into MORE of a homebody. Which means there is really not a hell of lot interesting to report. I voted two weeks ago. Urban Outfitters opened a branch in Hamburg so I bought a belt. The Guitar Hero and I spend a great night here and ate the most wonderful food here. I burnt the hell out of my tongue yesterday on some tea. Umm, yeah. That's about it.

On the other hand, sometimes no excitement is a good thing. It means I'm not some shitheel manager or politician responsible for fucking up thousands of jobs and investments or, even worse, one of the many now worried about making ends meet because of the idiotic moves made by a lot of shitheel managers and politicians.
I'm thankful for that.

Life in the slow lane

We're back and to put it succintly, our vacation was great. We just chilled, doing tons of reading, eating and going to the beach. As I feared, snorkeling didn't work so well for me. Too complicated. Proving once again anything beyond walking is too much hand-eye-foot coordination for the Doctor. But the Guitar Hero got snorkeling time in and even learned to scuba dive. Yay, Guitar Hero! Next time we need a week or two to re-coup, we know Fuerteventura's the place.
Some things we learned while there:
- I only rock at Yahtzee every other night
- Check the map listing the gas stations BEFORE setting off on a road trip across the island.
- Salted butter and baguette make a great breakfast.
- And bread and aioli and papas arrugadas with mojo sauce make a great dinner.
- Read the label when buying orange beverages. Orange drink is NOT orange juice.
- My high school Spanish is still good enough for me to understand the Spanish InStyle. Marie Claire, on the other hand, is somewhat more difficult.

And the best lesson:
- We can spend 10 days without internet or tv and not kill each other.

34

The trip to Kansas went well. I successfully brined a turkey, all siblings and family were well-visited and we took advantage of the great exchange rate. Although maybe I should have made more use of that as I stand in front of my wardrobe and bemoan not buying that cute $12 camisole at tar-jay or that beautiful $40 sweater at express. Hate my clothes. Hate my clothes. (Actually like most my clothes, just feeling uninspired).

Since our return I turned 34 and we celebrated in true thirtysomething fashion: sushi, Japanese beer and falling asleep in front of Seinfeld DVDs at 11:30. Blame the early night on the jetlag.

In other news, I have resurrected the ole Laptop Lunchbox and am enjoying lunching on food I like and not MSG-laden cafeteria food or overpriced mediocrity.

Did I mention that the Seinfeld DVD set is autographed by none other than Mr. Jerry Seinfeld himself? What would I do without the Guitar Hero? Yes, I'm lucky.

Vacation holiday

5 days to go til we're off to Kansas for two weeks.
It'll be Thanksgiving time when we get there and I think we're going to try out brining a turkey for the family dinner.
It's gonna rock!

Estonia here I come

Going to Estonia, going to Estonia, going to Estonia. Just a few short days. Can't hardly wait.

In other news, Verkaufsoffener Sonntag is a good thing, especially if you need to buy business clothes at the last minute. Because you lost weight and your other business suits no longer fit properly. Unless sagging is in when it comes to business suits.

And in other other news, saw David Cronenberg in person at the Hamburg Film Fest. He seems like a cool guy. He's at least able to give a decent speech unlike the moron from Spiegel who obviously had not read the speech some intern had written for him before going on stage.

And in other other other news, adding peanut butter to chocolate chip cookie dough makes some damn good cookies.

Innernets cookin'

As I mentioned a few posts ago, the cooking hormones have kicked in again. And even though I have shelves full of cookbooks (seriously, around 50 of them are taking up precious bookshelf space), I've been wandering the net looking for simple but delicious recipes. So far, I've tried out these three:
- chick pea salad. Perfect because it only calls for 4 ingredients. Making it takes all of five minutes.
- cold sesame noodles. Maybe not perfect, but damn good. Simplest peanut sauce recipe I've come across. BTW, I used vegetable broth instead of chicken, and I added carrots and dropped the scallions (not a huge fan of the onion family).
- maple breakfast loaf. Perfect because I always have the ingredients (in one form or another) on hand. Also perfect because it doesn't have eggs, which I hardly ever have in the house. Have I mentioned my egg aversion?

Here a few others I have bookmarked for future cooking runs:
- biscuit muffins - biscuits but without the pesky rolling-out part
- tuna pasta salad - I think I'd make it with the edamame. Could be good in a laptop lunchbox.
- eggrolls - not what I would categorize under simple, but it sounds delicious. Maybe I can con the Guitar Hero into taking over head chef responsiblity for this one.

And this one could be good, but I wonder if I would actually go to the trouble of making them. I think gorging on regular potato chips once in awhile is perfectly acceptable.

Cravings

I'm lusting after
... rich, fudgy chocolate brownies
... crumbly peanut butter cookies
... melt-in-your-mouth oatmeal butterscotch cookies
... greasy cheesy pepperoni pizza from Minsky's
... wheat thins and vegetable thins and, oh my god, triscuits
... melty cheese quesadillas with fresh guacamole
... hot from the fryer cheese-topped tator tots
... Cap'n Crunch and Crunch Berries and, damn it, Peanut Butter Crunch
... and a large Diet Dr. Pepper followed by a pitcher of margaritas to wash it all down.

Yep, the Doctor's feelin' kinda klassy today.

Good and bad

Some completely non-life-changing good and bad stuff from the past few days:

First, the bad: Veronica Mars got cancelled. Which sucks. Why oh why do TPTB have to hate us so much? Will the Guitar Hero and I be stuck watching According to Jim come fall?

And the good: My cooking hormones have kicked in again. Finally mastered a hummus recipe, baked some chocolate chip cookie bars AND made a kick-ass rice salad that you should go make now. Seriously. It's just rice, chickpeas, celery, dried cranberries, pumpkin seeds, tomatoes and parsley with a dressing of tahini, olive oil and lemon juice. So simple, yet so delicious. It's the type of salad that's perfect for a laptop lunchbox.

Now should I torture the Guitar Hero tomorrow with the fresh asparagus I picked up at the market?

Damn, it's May

I feel like the laziest frigging blogger. It's been almost two weeks since I've updated, and for that I'm sorry. We went to Paris and had an awesome time. Two words: Sephora; cheese. Damn, what more could you want of life? More on that later, once I've uploaded my pictures. Can I just say I hate the administrator function this damn laptop has? I have to jump through 45 fucking hoops to down- and upload pictures. Not cool. I am lusting after this cute mac.
Want it, want it, need it. If I go back to free-lancing full-time, it's definitely mine. It's called a tax write-off, people. If it were available in red, I'd already have it, that's how much I want it.

What else is going on here? I made some fucking delicious hummus. It only took me 6 years of trying. There are epic novels that cover shorter periods of time. You cannot, however, eat them.

I discovered this cool site, The Slow Roll. I could suggest so many films for it, but that might be because the Doctor's a bit of a film bitch. I can totally deal with crap films, and can, in fact, even enjoy them, but the mediocre ones make me crazy. Mediocrity's for jackasses, my dear friends. I think that one entence may have had two or eight too many commas. Once again, can't get the Kansas out of the girl.

Newest sucky thing about Hamburg: Blades of Glory is NOT showing in English. Bastards. Why's the city gotta be hating on me like this?

Got some ideas for some future posts. Let's see if the idea to fruition concept can come to pass...

Wassup? Nuttin'!

Well, my big ole movie star career has been postponed YET AGAIN. Is the Doctor happy about this? Not really. Is the Doctor mad about this? Not really. I'm really working on not flipping out about every little thing. The eternal postponements of the zombie castle film are just getting a bit old. The upside to this is that by breaking my back over the past few weeks work-wise so that I could disappear for shooting has opened my schedule up this week for things like having coffee with friends. Wow. If I can overcome my natural laziness, I might even get around to opening that flickr account I've been a wantin'.

Speaking of free time, the Guitar Hero and I baked a cake yesterday. A cake so delicious you must try it. You can find the recipe in Sophies Cakes (German edition) or Sophie's Sweet and Savory Loaves (US edition); it's the cake in the fall section calling for pecans and maple syrup. Mmm, maple syrup.

On that note, I think a piece of cake is calling my name from the kitchen...