Hope you have waterproof sandwich bags!

Something clever from Ryan’s blog –

“And lo, Jesus came from Nazareth, and arrived an a hilltop. From the hilltop, our Lord looked upon the ground below, and saw a vast flock of people. They were sick, hungry, wanting of fresh water. These were the poor, the outcasts, those unwanted everywhere else, huddled together, looking for help. And seeing this, from the hilltop, Jesus summoned his disciples to his side, and, in unison, they all pointed and laughed like Nelson from ‘The Simpsons’. This is the word of the Lord.”

This was in regards to the offensive sign at the New England Baptist Church.

Ryan also says…

And shouldn’t you yourselves worry? After all, you are in Massachusetts, land of the sinful practice of allowing homosexuals to, gasp, get married. Bet there’s a tsunami with your name on it, people. Why stick around? Why not a sign that says, “Screw all, y’all, we’re heading to the Bible Belt, hope you have waterproof sandwich bags, you’ll need ‘em.”

Food snobbery

I was at work. It was about 1:30 and I was hungry. I had nothing to pack for lunch, unfortunately…so I needed to go grab something to eat. I didn’t want to spend much money, so I drove over to Dunkin’ Donuts for a bagel.

“I’ll have a toasted sesame bagel with cream cheese,” I said.

“The machine we use to toast things is broken,” said the woman behind the counter.

My first thought was, “Yuck! No way, then, man!” Dunkin’ Donuts bagels are actually decent, but frankly, they need to be toasted, especially since by 1:45 it’s unlikely that they’re fresh.

Annoyed, I put my orange juice back in the fridge and found some pizza place on Main Street to get food from. (It wasn’t as cheap as the bagel I wanted, but only $3.51!) Driving back to work, I had a thought, “I am a food snob.” And I thought of all the things I am snobby about, food-wise.

1) Bagels. Bagel BOP in Hillsborough, NJ has some of the best bagels. We used to go there all the time. Of course, there’s also good bagel places in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Long Island, etc. California has the worst bagels. They have a chain there called Noah’s and it’s gross! I was horrified the first time I bit into a Noah’s bagel. “What IS this?” I thought to myself. Dunkin’ Donuts will suffice when toasted, but I would really like to find a better option. There’s gotta be something…I live in Newton for god’s sake, there has to be at least one really real good bagel place. :-) If anyone can recommend something, please do.

2. Pizza. I love a slice of New York pizza. Grand Avenue Pizza in Astoria, NY is fantastic…as is Aldo’s Pizza off the Belt Parkway in Howard Beach. For Boston-area pizza, I like Napoli in Watertown Square; it’s as New York as possible. For Neopolitan Pizza, Sweet Tomatoes gets the KrissyInBoston seal of approval. ;-) With its thin crispy crust and fresh, fabulous tomatoes…Sweet Tomatoes has won over my heart.

3. Beer. Not really food, but it’s caloric and filling enough to qualify in my opinion. I don’t like Bud, Coors, Heinekken, Michelob, Miller, or Corona. Whew. Both California and New England are blessed with a plethora of options for local brews. Some of my local favorites are Harpoon and Magic Hat. This is one of my favorite beers that I can’t get in Mass. though…

Also, Matt brews his own beer which is always a tasty treat.

5. Italian food in general. I love Italian food, but it better be good!

6. Noodle kugel!! My dad makes the best noodle kugel ever. It’s a Thanksgiving tradition in my family to serve noodle kugel…we make the salty kind, not the sweet kind. Unfortunately, I am not spending Thanksgiving with my dad this year so I am going to try my own hand at making the kugel. I’ve never had noodle kugel at a restaurant that I enjoyed. The noodle kugel at Zaftigs does nothing for me, although I do love Zaftigs. They have fantastic potato knishes. Wondering what kugel is? Click here.

7. Vegetables. I think canned veggies are foul. I like them fresh, or high quality frozen veggies will do in the winter.

8. Mashed potatoes. Well, I love mashed potatoes, but they have to be good. Creamy, buttery…and NOT from a box.

9. Dry pasta. I like Ronzoni the best.

10. Orange juice. It can’t be from concentrate. I can’t stand that stuff. I love the fresh squeezed kind, and I do get that on occassion (and it become a battle between Matt and I, who can get more out of the jug?) but it’s expensive. I usually get Tropicana/Newman’s Own, Trader Joe’s/365…but seriously, nothing beats fresh OJ.

11. Chocolate bars. I no longer enjoy Hershey and Nestle as much. I like organic chocolate (it just tastes less sweet and more cocoa-y to me) or ridiculously overpriced fancy chocolate bars. And I like nuts or crisy rice in my chocolate very much. I especially dislike the cheap candy in chocolate Chanukkah gelt or Easter candy. Gross.

So yes, folks, I am a food snob — but only sometimes. And with that said, I’m going to go make some ramen.

Why I Hate Football…or How I Become Invisible to Matt on Sundays and Monday Nights from September to Superbowl Sunday

Yes, I love the fall. But there is one thing associated with autumn that I detest, and that’s FOOTBALL!!!!

I don’t like football. I don’t like the way it consumes Matt’s life. In fact, there’s very few things that I enjoy about football.

Matt plays in a football league. So, on Sunday morning he had a football game at 8 AM. Then, he came home and played a football video game on the Xbox. Then, he watched an NFL football game. Then, after that finished he played another Xbox football game. Then, he watched another NFL football game. And then on Monday night, the Falcons (his team!) played so after dinner, on went the TV and invisible I became.

I tried to enjoy football. My dad tried to teach me all about it on several occassions. I remember the most frustrating football education session was when I was in junior high and a cheerleader. My dad thought that if I was cheering at the games, I should learn the rules. He sat me down, drew diagrams, everything. I got so annoyed! I didn’t last as a cheerleader for more than a season, either.

I even joined Matt’s fantasy football league. Tom Brady’s my QB, but my interest in football is so scarce that my team will inevitably stink, and so the team name is the Pungent Skunks. Last year I came in last place!

Here’s why I don’t like football –

1. The games are too long.

2. Matt feels the need to watch every single game broadcast.

3. Michelle Tafoya of Monday Night Football. She scares me to the point where no words could describe my fear.

4. Monday Night Football in general. At least I deserve some peace after I come home from work!!

And now, the ultimate reason why I do not like football…

5. THE COMMERCIALS!!! The commercials during football drive me totally batty! The commercial breaks are frequent and they seem to only have five commercials that they show over and over again. Beer, Viagra, and cars. The beer commercials are definitely the most irritating…and they’re always for the most disgusting types of beer.

Yes, folks, I am a football widow.

Hong Kong in Harvard Square

Oops! Apparently the folks over at Hong Kong — Harvard Square were not pleased with what I said about them.

To refresh your memory I said:

Can’t stand this place. Totally not my scene. One of my least favorite bars in the Boston area.

And they left a comment:

Thanks for the glowing review! Sorry we do not offer “live music”.

Um, okay. Boo hoo, so I don’t like Hong Kong. It’s not everybody’s scene. I don’t like dance clubs. I don’t “go dancing”. I tend to like bars that are either live music venues or pubs. Hong Kong is just not fun to me. They shouldn’t be offended and leave me a comment like that. Most of the folks who frequent places like Hong Kong probably wouldn’t be interested in any of my hobbies either.

Beware of jerks on craiglist

My dad got totally screwed getting tickets for the Decemberists off craigslist.

Katrina flood superimposed

When seeing maps of how widespread the flood damage was in New Orleans, it was hard for me to accurately gauge just HOW MUCH of the area was flooded, because I had never been to New Orleans.

Boston.com superimposed the New Orleans flood on a map of Metro Boston.

Amazing. If it happened here, we’d be flooded all the way out to FRAMINGHAM. I didn’t realize how many miles of New Orleans were severely effected.

Is it fall yet?

I figured out where that awful sound was coming from yesterday morning. It was someone mowing/hedge clipping/weed whacking whatever the park about 2 blocks away. Grrr. I guess that makes more sense, though, because what else would take three hours?

Last night we had some friends over and watched two hours of Muppets and ate pizza. It was a lot of fun. I’m a really huge Muppet fan. (All things Muppet: Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock) Jim Henson was a genius. Anyway, when we saw the last of our friends out, I noticed that the weather was kind of….cold. In fact, I could see my breath. I was so excited! This means that when I go out in the evenings and it’s chilly, I can wear long sleeves! I love sweaters, and I love shirts with funky sleeves.

I love summer because of camping, BBQs, festivals, etc…but autumn is definitely my favorite. :-)

*covers ears*

I am filled with much fury on this lovely Saturday morning.

I’m not really big on sleeping in. But I do like to sleep in a little on the weekends…maybe until 9 or 9:30. And while I’m feeling better than last night, I was hoping to rest a bit today and maybe sleep until 10.

Nope. This morning someone started using a weed whacker or something (I’m not up on my lawn equipment…it was loud and sounded kind of like a lawn mower, but not really) at 7:30!!!!! I kept thinking, “OK, whatever…it will stop and I can go back to sleep.”

It is now 10:19 AM and they’re still going at it. It’s been nearly 3 hours. I’d be surprised if I were the only one in the neighborhood awoken by this. I can’t even tell where it’s coming from…it’s not from any of my direct neighbors. It sounds like it’s about a block away, maybe even two. But it’s LOUD!

I can sleep through most of the sounds I deal with …I can sleep through the cars on the Masspike, cars honking, the train…just not this awful sound or lawnmowers!

Aren’t there sound violations? Noise pollution laws? I wouldn’t mind if this began anytime between 11 AM and 6 PM. I think there should be a law that you can’t do stuff like that before 9 AM.

Things like this make me excited for winter. I can sleep through snow plows and shoveling.

Costco

When I was a kid, I loved going to The Price Club, now known as Costco. Nothing excited me more than when my parents would announce, “We need to go to the Price Club!”

I loved it. It felt like a little bit of a car trip to get there. (But, MAN, it was worth it!) They had those shopping carts that you needed to put a quarter into. We’d push it in through the doorway, my dad would flash his Price Club card at the bouncer-type person, and then the fun would begin!

My sister and I would go nuts trying all the free samples. Pudding, pizzas, juice. I remember the pudding sample tray vividly, because I kept going back there hoping that the employee would not remember me.

The food section excited me. Giant boxes of granola bars, crackers, cookies. The frozen food section was even better. I loved frozen/microwavable food as a kid. Which was ironic, because as tech-savvy a family we were, we had a really embarrassing microwave. It was bring orange and it had giant popcorn kernals on the door. It was a popcorn microwave; there was no timer, just the automatic timer for popcorn. It was actually completely mortifying. Whenever friends came over I would hope they wouldn’t notice it. But how couldn’t they? It was bright orange. I didn’t understand why we couldn’t get a black or white microwave with a timer on it. Instead we had this popcorn microwave.

But, I digress! I loved prepared foods. I loved the frozen sandwiches and fish sticks my parents would get. Frozen pizzas were particularly a treat. I liked Elio’s, which is now disgusting to me. But Elio’s pizza was a fantastic treat.

I loved the double-sized boxes of Cheerios. (Or on special occassions: HONEY NUT Cheerios!) I used to drink a lot of milk as a kid, and I remember begging my parents to get the double-sized cartons of milk. “You can NEVER have too much milk!” I remember saying and hearing all of the other adults around chuckling at my remark. My parents did get the milk. I don’t think we used it all fast enough after all.

My parents liked the clothing section. The clothing section was a bummer to me. I remember my dad bought some purpley red polo shirt there with a denim-like collar. I thought the collar was funny because it was denim and the rest of the shirt was not. I hated clothes shopping.

We never spent enough time in the toy department of The Price Club.

I didn’t like waiting for my dad to look at CDs. It was agonizingly boring. Better than going to Nobody Beats The Wiz or Crazy Eddie’s though, because those places didn’t have free pudding samples.

We would have sometimes two wagons filled with stuff by the time we were done. My dad would wait in line while my mom would take my sister and I to the food court.

Ahh, the Price Club food court. I usually opted for a soft pretzel and frozen yogurt. At the time they had a terrific flavor: white chocolate mousse.

We’d load up the car and go home. It would be like Christmas. These would be packed in my lunch for the next 6 months:

Yum.

When I was about 19, my dad gave me a beautiful purple cashmere sweater for Christmas. I noticed that the tag said: KIRKLAND. Yes, Kirkland. The Costco brand. The same brand that produced the cookies I had eaten prior to unwrapping the gift. The sweater was great. Soft, pretty, and lasted me until about a year and a half ago when my mom did my laundry and shrunk it. I bet you didn’t know that Kirkland makes very nice cashmere sweaters.

Yes, so, Matt and I went to Costco last night for the first time in a year. I now have my OWN Costco card so I can go there without Matt. (Matt vetoes everything I want to buy. I wasn’t even allowed in the socks and pajama section. Costco has fabulous socks, did you know that?)

Costco hasn’t changed. Every Costco I’ve been in is just like the Price Club I used to go to in Jersey. I still get excited, fluttering about the warehouse, thinking of all of these giant boxes of things I could get. I suddenly revert to a 9 year old. “Matt, Matt, can I get this?” “Matt, Matt, can I get that?”

I love Costco. I love stocking up on non-perishables. They have some good stuff too, like these frozen mini-quiches that went over very well at the Mahoney-Munroe Halloween Party o’ 2004. And Costco’s blue.

I work down the street from the Waltham Costco. I can’t wait until I go there alone. Shhh, don’t tell Matt. You don’t read this thing, do you, Matt? Well, when I go to Costco (alone) I’m going to buy socks and cookies and cheese and frozen pizza and crayons and a dollhouse.

Well, socks, cookies, cheese, and frozen pizza, anyway. They really do have terrific socks.

Boston-area Nightlife

Yes, yes, I love to see live music. Here are the places I’ve been.

The Attic — A groovy little Newton Centre club. I saw a horrible band there back in January (I mean HORRIBLE!) but the bar itself is pretty cool. Spacious, decent menu, lots of beer. I’ll definitely go back there when I can be assured that the band there won’t be horrible.

Avalon — a cool place. A moderately sized venue, but they tend to oversell tickets so you feel like you’re in a can of sardines as opposed to a live music venue.

The Burren — That’s a pretty cool place too. I’ve only been there once and saw a mediocre band who did mostly 80s covers, but I do like the venue quite a bit.

The Cantab Lounge — I love the Cantab! Their open mic nights are loads of fun. They also have blues jams and bluegrass jams. I haven’t been to the latter, but the blues jams are a lot of fun. Pretty inexpensive food and really friendly staff and crowd.

Club Passim — Club Passim is a great place to see folk music. It’s in an intimate setting and they usually have good performers there. They’re attached to Veggie Planet restaurant, which has some great stuff. Mostly fair trade and organic food. Try their pizza, or for dessert they have good ice cream.

Harper’s Ferry — despite being in Allston, all of the shows I’ve been to there were free of that fratty crowd. It’s a cool place with good bands that go there…lots of jam bands. However, Harper’s Ferry has three strikes against them. 1) They will not give you a glass of water. They force you to purchase bottled water. 2) They have a dress code. The bouncers may or may not enforce it. 3) Surly employees. The bartenders are sometimes too busy gossiping with each other to serve you. A lot of the bouncers are twerps on a power trip.

Hong Kong — Can’t stand this place. Totally not my scene. One of my least favorite bars in the Boston area.

Jillians — Jillian’s is pretty cool! Huge, though. They’ve got pool and bowling. And who knows, maybe you’ll run into a celebrity!

Johnny D’s — Johnny D’s is so cool. One of my favorite places. I’ve seen a handful of bands there, including Beatlejuice (a really awesome Beatles tribute band with the dude from the band Boston), Velvet Elvis, and Garland Jefferys. (A little background there, Garland Jeffreys wrote a song called “Christine”, and that’s the song I got named after. I got to meet him at the show and I told him I was named after his song. It was really cool!)

The Middle East — This place is cool! They’ve got a lot of room different bands playing. I really dig this place. They have food upstairs, too, so go and get yourself a falafel before the show, man.

PA’s Lounge — A pretty cool place. I want Matt’s bands to try to get gigs there. It smells kind of funny, though.

Paradise — A VERY cool club. It would be awesome to see the Talking Heads or the Clash here or something. Totally rock and roll. Poor beer selection. When I went there it was 18 and up and the 18-20 crowd was a real bummer. They were popping pills (ecstasy, I think) and being really obnoxious. But the Paradise is awesome.

The Reel Bar — Eh, it’s in Allston so the quality of the crowd diminishes during the school year. But Matt’s bands get to play there and the bartenders are really nice. It’s kind of small though. But they have cool artwork that hangs on the walls and is changed regularly.

Regatta Bar — Regatta Bar is a jazz club inside the Charles Hotel. They have good acts there, such as Oteil Burbridge (bassist of the Allman Brothers) and Charlie Hunter! They also have Chimay, a fantastic beer!

SoHo — Grrrr. This place is fine until 9 PM when it turns from a place to grab a drink and munch on appetizers to scantily clad 21 year olds and the 35 year old men who try to hit on them. Matt’s coworkers really dig this place so we go there sometimes, but we always leave before it turns into a club. And avoid their chicken soup like the plague. It was about as tasty as downing an entire container of Morton’s Salt.

T’s Pub — Another place I don’t like. Too collegey. I went there for karaoke once and was really bummed out by the crowd.

Top of the Hub — I’ve actually only been here once and it was during the day. The views are spectacular.

TT the Bear’s — Another cool club in Central Square. Good bands there. It’s a pretty small venue, but a great place to see local bands.

Wally’s — That reminds me, I haven’t been to Wally’s in ages. Wally’s is a fantastic and funky little jazz club. I love it. They have a great band that plays there on Sunday nights. Apparently they have board games, too!

Alright, I’ve been to more but that’s all I can think of right now. I’m suddenly feeling pretty sick again, so that’s the end of this blog post! Adios!