take it downtown

A few nights ago, during the Suns vs. Lakers game, a commercial for the KFC Double Down Chicken sandwich came on. After it finished, W* and I looked at each other and confessed our mad desire to at least try it. We should have listened to A*, who immediately pronounced it the sickest thing she’d ever seen.

Today was the day of fulfillment. Sure, I enjoy a little grease fest every once in a while. I never thought I’d say no to fried chicken and bacon (mmm, bacon). But KFC’s marketing crew was spot on for this one: it did make me unhungry. Plastic cheese, stringy bacon glued between two slabs of cardiac arrest-chicken…



540 calories. They have to be lying about that number.

These photos were on the first bite, when we were still excited about it:













So...next?

dance tutorials

I was born the year I should have been in my prime.

Two of these (one, two, three) songs use the word 'bacon.'

Bring it home.
(Ahem, jean on jean.)

do the hustle

I ordered a new phone today. My only requirements going into the process were that it had to be free and have a good battery life. The first was definitely achieved and the reviews are promising for the second.

So I spent lunch e-mailing myself all the photos that I just can't live without. Take a look at some of the goods:

Here's looking at you, kid.





You give me the strength to succeed.







Frank- you were the first and the best.








A house on stilts, overlooking the edge of Nantucket Island. I covet.









The first drive.








It's almost hard to determine the real from the fake.








You tasted so good.







PYT







The latest and greatest addition. Memo to myself to superimpose my face on this.

i now make $5.75 more a week.

I've had quite a few questions on my mind over the last few days.

First off, why does my towel get warm when I dry my hair off in the morning? Noni thinks it's because the water is warm but I'm wondering if friction plays any sort of role.
...I should ask The Board.

And...if I go over and compliment a fellow worker on her designs because I genuinely like them and because it will eat up time...is that selfish?

You should tip me

"If confirmed, Kagan, 50, would be the youngest member of the current Supreme Court, the third Jew, the third woman, and the 9th Ivy Leaguer. She once clerked for the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, who called his 5’3” clerk “shorty.”"

Visit here for the definition of "shorty" (alternate spelling: 'shawty').

A Calm, Raging Storm

Minus the 12-hour workdays, I still feel like I’m on vacation. I wake up so early that I have plenty of leisure time for a run before 8am. My route ends on the same corner as normal and I stand for a few seconds before turning and running the extra two blocks back to my starting point. Then there is the unfamiliar shower and rummaging through boxes and bags for an outfit. I’ve verbally been blaming my laziness but the truth is that I don’t want to unpack; it would mean settling in and I want to hold on to my nomadicity for as long as possible.

Leaving the boxes behind, I’m enjoying the outside weather with my current book of choice: Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose, and Diary Excerpts by Sylvia Plath. Although I just purchased the book last year, I’ve had the quote from the back cover written in my high school notebook since I first discovered SP when I was sixteen:

“What I fear most, I think, is the death of the imagination…If I sit still and don’t do anything, the world goes on beating like a slack drum, without meaning. We must be moving, working, making dreams to run toward; the poverty of life without dreams is too horrible to imagine.”

She’s not the greatest role model, to be sure, but midst her somewhat disturbed prose, there are lines like these:

“If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I’m as neurotic as hell. I’ll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.”

And, simply enough, this quote is probably why I love SP: “There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.”

In closing, as I set off to finish that dreaded grad school essay over the lunch hour, I echo her prayer: Let me live, love and say it well in good sentences.

Edinburgh

Well I ended the trip just about the same as how I started it--- running into a friend. Saw good ol' Mikey Baby at the Holyrood Abbey today.

The Countryside

I've successfully avoided stepping in the sheep poop. And let me tell you, there is a lot of it.

We hiked up a hill, through sheep pastures and next to 'ha ha' walls, to this tower a few days ago. From the top, you look out over rolling hills and small stone villages. Next to the Jurassic Coast (with its white cliffs), it was the most incredible view I've ever seen in my life. I know we have some massive landscapes back home, but I've never seen anything so green as the hills here.

Photos and movies to come. When we get back.