reckless

i cooked and ate an entire package of bacon.  thick cut and peppered. dripping with grease. my morning vitamins were gulped down with a swig from a random can of day-old diet doctor pepper. i poured an entire bottle of tinkerbell 'white citrus' bubbles into my afternoon bath.  bathing in chemicals is my fave.

clearly i have some kind of death wish.

as i write this my arteries are hardening, the lining of my stomach is dissolving and in about twenty minutes i am going to break out in shingles. 

my back is already itchy.  so just in case i croak, here are a few pearls i gathered over the weekend:

listen to this:


read this: painful in the sense that you relive the worst parts of junior high school.  beard nails it, right down to the paranoia about getting your period at school.  i liked it, i have masochistic tendencies.

eat this: cheese like butter only better.  if you like it, 'you are a genius,' or so say the experts at murray's cheese shop in NYC.  buy it in SLC at tony caputos.

lather this: worth.every.penny. so good even michael aaron carey has been persuaded to use conditioner.

recent statistics*

places traveled:

1. Calgary for some family time.
2. Phoenix for some hot yoga.
3. Las Vegas for all things that stay in Vegas.
4. Los Angeles for a wedding.
5. Boston to remind me of how much i miss the east cost.
   
6. Rhode Island to remind me that there are places where the people are bigger hicks than in Utah.
   

books read:
the trouble with physics
(the trouble with this book is it is BOOORING.)

a fine balance
(the indian version of anna karenina and a must read. MUST MUST MUST.)

the man who ate everything
(by jeffery steingarten of iron chef fame. god put jeffery steingarten on earth to make fun of' stupid food phobias. even though i am faily certain he would make a lot of fun of me, i still love him and his book.)

teach like a champion
(bought because my primary class is going to drive me to drink. the book is supposed to help with classroom management. the only thing it is helping with, however, is my resolve not to have children.)

sense and sensibility.
(favorite line: like him? esteem him? use those insipid words again and i will leave the room this instant.)

TV series watched
deadwood.
a dead-good western. don't watch if you are offended by colourful language.

the wire.
makes you wonder why you ever wasted time on law and order reruns. also don't watch if offended by colourful language.

the good wife.
based on the elliot spitzer/rod blagojevich scandal. i real gem of a show.

keeping up with the kardashians.
it is free on on demand. i blame on demand or a lot of poor tv habits.

Jobs Quit:
bridal store employee

Jobs Gained:
Ghostwriter (seriously).

*i mention all these things for a couple of reasons. first, i like lists. second, lists make me feel like i am doing something with all my time; the illusion of productivity if you will.

Northanger Abbey

now i know why masterpiece theatre isn't falling all over itself to show their film adaptation of jane austen's northanger abbey: catherine morland is an idiot!

ok maybe that is harsh....

after all this is not supposed to be the story of a mature woman but a naive teenager. i should have known to adjust my expectations when austen describes her character as being "as ignorant and uninformed as the female mind at seventeen usually is." (p.12).

i shouldn't hold the fact that she isn't anne elliot against her. i mean after all, she can hardly help the fact that she is young, not particularly well educated, and inexperienced in the ways of the world.

here is the thing though. if i was going to sit down and spend some time with a friend, i probably wouldn't choose a naive polyanna type 17 year old. spending two days with catherine morland just reaffirmed my predjucides against these kinds of women.

being annoyed with people who don't take the world with a grain of salt probably says a lot more about me than it does about catherine morland or women who think like her. i'm serious. i am cynical. hmmm this isn't sounding terribly flattering.....

anyway needless to say, not my favorite austen, but it is probably better than a lot of the other drivel out there so if you haven't read it yet, it is kind of annoying but not a complete waste of your time.

Good Read

I just finished Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susana Clarke.

Do yourself a favour and RUN to the nearest bookstore and get yourself a copy.

This book is the kind of good that makes you want to dance around the house singing about how wonderul it is to be able to read. It is so good, you might prefer reading it to eating cupcakes (the majority of the cupcake consumption came post book completion). It is so good you will wonder why you ever thought Twilight was a book worth reading...

Trust me.