1) Milano is a go! Yay! Now, to find mia pasaporte (Ok. That may not actually be Italian, but it sounds good when you say it out loud.) Honestly, what I'm most excited about is not the shopping but the eating. I hear those Italians do know how to eat. Buon viaggio!
2) I'm reading a book called "New York," by Edward Rutherfurd. Eight hundred-some pages of fiction, moderately larded with the history of my town.
You know the style -- you have your main characters, fictional, of course, and as the author tells their story, Very Large Historical Figures appear on the sidelines to have some effect on moving the story along. It's a cheap plot device when used badly, but some authors do it better than others. I'm thinking of E.L. Doctorow in "Billy Bathgate," or James Michener in his epic period. It's a way to get your history spoon-fed to you without having to lie back and think of England.
This book is moderately engaging. I say "moderately" because I picked it up at JFK in early October when I needed something to occupy me on one of my flights to LA, then made it about ten pages in before sacking out for the rest of the trip. Ever since then, I've been half-heartedly reading it, a few pages here, a few pages there, sort of "feh" about the whole thing.
It's okay. (Talk about damned with faint praise. That's a "she has a great personality" book review if ever I heard one) It's not the worst book I've ever read, but it's not great, either, not by a long shot. There's nothing about it that makes me long for it, nothing that makes me wake up as if I'd been in a dream, having passed my subway stop, nothing that makes me stay up all night reading until I'm bleary-eyed, then fall asleep with my cheek on its open pages and reach for it in the morning like a new lover.
It's just "feh."
A month and a half down the line and I'm only 300 pages into this monster. And now the new Jonathan Franzen is sitting on my kitchen table, all hardcovered and alluring and giving me a wolf-whistle every time I walk by.
Someone told me this morning to look at the Franzen like dessert, and the Rutherfurd as the pile of Brussels sprouts I have to eat before I can eat my cake and ice cream. Really? Can't I just point at the Brussels sprouts and say, "But I'm full -- of THIS," then gesture at the cake and say, "I have plenty of room -- for THIS?"
What in the world is a girl supposed to do? I'm a grown-up, I can eat dessert first if I want, can't I?
3) I have no idea what is going on in a single television show that's on right now. This makes me a social liability in those ten minutes that get wasted at the beginning and end of every meeting talking about things like Justin Bieber's hair, those damned "Twilight" books and what happened on "Glee."
4) I know, I know, I've railed against white hosiery, but I just saw a tiny Asian girl wearing them and it worked. Two things -- no, four -- made it work for her. First, her Cyd Charisse stems. Most of the girls you usually see wearing white stockings have legs like eggplants turned on end. Second, she was wearing the most adorable pair of taupe suede shoes with a just-so chunky four-inch heel. Third, her cream-colored tam was tilted at just the right perky angle. And fourth, her very affectionate boyfriend was togged out in a fantastic Andre 3000-preppie getup, right up to his plaid newsboy cap. So the lesson here is, you *can* get away with a Glamour Don't if a) you're an adorable Asian girl with b) great gams, c) super-cute footwear, and d) an equally super-cute Romany Malco-looking boyfriend wearing an outfit as cute as yours. See how simple it is to have style? You can do it in four easy steps!
5) I've got the GC arriving next Sunday! Super-hooray with a stag leap and a triple axel-triple loop combination! I'm busy making shopping lists and plans, and appointments for secret girl stuff before he arrives. I'm not sure yet what we will do for the ten days of his visit, but I think it may be imperative for us to partake of some herbal enjoyment on Thanksgiving morning and go see 50-foot Bart Simpson skateboard down Broadway.
6) I went to see my pals at SUNY Optometric this week for an eye exam and to use up some more of my Flexible Spending Account ("We hold your money hostage, and if you don't use it, we get to keep it!"), of which I had spent a whopping 44 bucks so far this year (couple of prescriptions, I think for that uveitis thing with my eyeball). Well, it's official now -- I'm old. My new lenses for my glasses -- and this is just the lenses, folks, being put into my existing frames (which cost a pretty penny themselves) -- ended up being PROGRESSIVES (those are fancy reading glasses, crapola) and costing 350 dollars! Yipes! So glad I love my frames, because that about wiped out my FSA, leaving me with 67-some dollars to spend by the end of the year. I think a prescription for Xanax to help me get over the shock of spending nearly four hundred bucks on EYEGLASS LENSES might be in order with that last bit of money.
Well, I'm home now, my pasta is done al dente, and I've got on my eatin' shorts, so I'll stop here.
Ciao, y'all!
7 comments:
Yay for Milan! They do know how to eat. Each city has its own style. I like bolognese more than milanese but who cares. Just don't pronounce milanese with three syllables, it has four.
I found myself speaking Spanish a lot over there, trying to think up an Italian-like word or phrase and finding a lifetime's exposure to Spanish here out west coming out unexpectedly.
Take a day trip on the train to Venice.
How do you find your books? I wander into B&N sometimes and wander back out empty-handed. Book-shy from too many shitty novels, maybe. Or unable to make decisions. Or commitments.
If the book bores you and another book wants you, make the switch without delay. You're not married, fer chrissake. There will be lingering doubts and occasional desires to address unfinished business. Perhaps you can try being polylectic. Many do!
If anyone in a meeting ever talks about TV stuff and notices my silence I will say sorry, I'm not with it, I don't have teenage daughters. Hopefully that will embarrass them and they'll shut up.
I envy your opportunity to watch the MTDP in person and slightly baked!
Drugstore reading glasses are killing my eyes and my attempt right now to excuse not revisiting the doctor about it is coming up blank.
I always try to pronounce things correctly. I ordered spaghetti Bolognese in a restaurant in Colorado once, pronounced it correctly, and the waitress CORRECTED me, "It's Bolog-neez." The inside of my cheek was raw as I chewed it while maintaining a polite smile.
I'm going for the Franzen tonight, screw Rutherfurd. Plod, plod, plod, I just can't do it anymore. I am usually polylectic (great word, BTW), with two or three books going at once. I just know that JF is going to be a complete infatuation. I can't wait. Is that weird, that I get so excited about a new book?
Perhaps I should get a life or something.
Could have sworn I saw the word "cake" in this poast, dammit.
My Friday night was pretteh fuckin' exciting. Went to my dad's to pick up last year's tax shit so that Sharon can fill out college apps (must put down income ... hopefully less is more). Then came out to dead battery. AAA dude who showed up was incredibly yummy (for someone who could have been my son kind of yummy). Turned out battery was only dirty, not ruined, so I filled up watering can and he washed battery while I held flashlight. Had to drive for 25 minutes before turning off car, so took the long way home.
That's all I have. G'nite. :)
We tried to learn Italian for our Italy trip a few years ago. The waiter in Vernazza ended up asking my wife (in english) why she was speaking Portugese. We LOLed. Hazards of being a couple of polyglots.
I'm trying to blow my FSA money, but it's difficult to figure out how to get the money out of them.
Our FSA plan is actually great -- we get a debit card with the full amount in January and the money is taken out of our paychecks over the course of the year.
We get to floop ours over to the next year, which is great. Just got notice that from now on we can no longer use card for OTC stuff however... but I have been forgetting to use it for that all along goddammit.
Throx, can you buy some awesome shades?
I just got all my OTC reimbursed, thank goodness. Need to go to eye doc and order up a bunch of contact lenses before end of year, tho.
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