SNOW!

Snow, yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Finally!

Air America

I was in New York for a few days only to return and find out that Boston’s Air America station has turned into a Spanish speaking station. I only started really listening to it last month, when my car stereo stopped reading CDs. I know Air America had previous filed for bankruptcy, but the fact that they can’t even make it in Boston doesn’t really bode well for them.

Apparently it’s happening all over, though…because Clear Channel isn’t really doing much promotion for the station. (No ads, billboards, etc) It seems that a lot of advertisers refused to let their ads be heard on Air America too. See list here. None of them really come as a surprise if you’ve ever been to Buy Blue.

I really liked the shows on Air America, but a lot of times they’d lose me during their lengthy and frequent commercial breaks.

Another complaint that I read about Air America (in Boston, anyway…not sure how it is in other cities) is its lack of live, local shows. Sure, a lot of the syndicated shows are good, but it would have been nice to have something live and local to listen to sometimes.

Air America’s signal was also pretty weak. At night and early in the morning I could hardly hear it and even during the day it was pretty spotty.

From Media Nation:

Here’s my theory: Clear Channel had a long record of donating huge sums to right wing causes, and when they wanted to buy some more stations last year, they knew they would get lots of opposition, so they wanted to show the FCC they were a bit more balanced; they threw progressive talk on some of their weakest signals and hoped it would seem as if they were now a more moderate company. The couple of stations with strong signals, interestingly, ended up getting good ratings and are still running the format. But now, CC is divesting of 400 stations, and there’s no longer a need to seem like they are behind progressive talk. Thus, they are pulling the plug in a number of cities.

Getting in the holiday spirit…

From the Globe earlier this month by Ralph Ranalli…

Then there are “People you love to hate at the holidays, Part II,” courtesy of Newton-based Krissy in Boston (krissyinboston.com) .

Hand me that garland; I’m going to strangle myself.

How nice that I get quoted in the Globe for the first time in months AND I get insulted at the same time! Go ahead, Ralph, enjoy the garland…I have some red shimmery garland along my banister that I’ll gladly offer up! :-)

Oh my darling Clementine…???

I was at the Shaw’s in Auburndale earlier today. They generally don’t have great produce (I bought bananas there recently and they never properly ripened!), but usually their crates of clementines are fine. Today their clementines were some of the saddest, most grotesque clementines I’ve ever seen in my life! Few were orange, some were green, some had spots, and most were a sickly sort of yellow color.

How disappointing! One of my favorite thing about winter is sitting in the living room eating clementines! I hope it’s not all clementines that are like that this year. I’d be so disappointed. :-( I guess it’s off to Russo’s now. I hope their clementines are in better shape than Shaw’s.

Also, I made the mistake I make every time I go to the supermarket. The self check-out line. I tell ya, every time I think it will save me a few minutes (”I only have a few items!”) but instead I always end up frantically looking for a cashier to help me figure out why I’m being yelled at by that robot voice telling me, “Unidentified item in the bagging area!” Oy! Oh well, I’m off to find suitable clementines!

What’s cooking, good-looking?

I am having so much fun cooking! Especially because I’m coming up with ideas for The Lazy Chefs! I made potato soup on Friday and it came out delish. Matt and I are working on weekly menus every Sunday. This week we’re making macaroni and cheese, pizza, chicken, etc. :-) Matt loves to cook too, so we’re having a great time.

I forgot how much I loved cooking. We really didn’t do much good cooking over the summer, with the exception of barbecuing. Our house just gets so hot that I didn’t have the patience to sit in the kitchen chopping veggies or god forbid turn on the stove or oven! A lot of times I’d end up picking some things up from Taqueria Mexico or Blue Ribbon and we’d eat it in the backyard.

But now it’s cold and I have a yen to cook. I can’t wait until we get more submittals on the The Lazy Chefs blog so I have more fun recipes to try out. I got a few simmer sauces from Trader Joe’s (some Indian and Thai) that I’m eager to try out too. We’ve tried the korma sauce before and it was terrific.

New blog: The Lazy Chefs

Myself, along with my friends Liz and Beverly have began a new blogging project: The Lazy Chefs. The idea is that we will post recipes that are relatively quick and easy, but delicious. I like to eat well but honestly, after a day at work and going to the Y afterwards, I don’t have time to cook a big meal. So, we will focus on things that aren’t overly time consuming.

There’s not much there yet, but soon we hope to have daily recipes. Other people can join and post some, or they can submit recipes to me via email.

Dreams of evil cats coming true

When I was little, I used to have a recurring dream where I would let my cat in through the back door only to find out that it wasn’t my cat at all…it looked like my cat but its eyes were different. Sometimes they were evil! In some variations of the dream, the cat would turn into a crazed bird flapping its wings about the house!

Last night I had a dream that Matt thought he saw Levon, an indoor cat in our backyard. So, he brought him inside and it turned out to be some strange cat. It really freaked me out!

Anyway, it reminded me of something that happened when I lived in Watertown. We lived in a two-family home (each with our own basement) and our neighbors had a bunch of cats. And they had one cat, who looked like my Levon, but was EVIL. He was just a mean cat! Levon would be sitting on the windowsill inside, and that nasty little cat would try to attack Levon through the window. We couldn’t even keep the windows open sometimes and that mean cat damaged our screen!

We soon discovered that our basements had some sort of tunnel connecting them together. I came home one day, and I thought I saw Levon in the kitchen. But when the cat turned around, it wasn’t Levon at all! It was the neighbor’s crazy cat. And poor Levon was in the next room with scratches on his ear and nose. :-( I was so mad! And this cat was stubborn; he wouldn’t go back to the basement. I finally had to chase him down there and we stuffed the tunnel with some bags of clothes that some previous tenants had left in the basement.

This just goes to show you that even seemingly outlandish nightmares can come true! At least that cat didn’t turn into a bird. That would really be disturbing!

Cuddly Muppets

I’m a really big fan of The Muppets…all things Muppet! Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, and The Muppet Show of course.

While at a party recently, a “Sesame Street” video was playing on the TV. Big Bird was on, and I said that I always thought Big Bird was really cuddly and that if I had to cuddle with a Muppet, I’d choose Big Bird. A friend said that he didn’t think Big Bird’s feathers looked too soft.

What about Cookie Monster? He looks pretty cuddly. Matt said he’d be wary of cuddling with Cookie Monster because he thinks Cookie Monster would eat cookies while cuddling and get crumbs everywhere.

Oscar actually looks cuddly, but I’m sure he smells like garbage.

Herry Monster looks cuddly or maybe Telly…those are some possibilities. I thought that it might be nice to cuddle with the Two-Headed Monster, but Matt found slight concern with their horns. They could poke you.

Matt ultimately settled on Snuffy for his Muppet cuddler of choice because Snuffy could wrap his trunk around you. I think that’s a pretty nice idea.

I’d especially like a Snuffy to cuddle with and keep me warm today!

Furnace update

It was really smokey this morning, so we had to call the fire department! Four fire trucks came, the fire chief, a few police cars, and an ambulance. It was quite the ordeal. I was putting my contact lenses in when a fireman knocked on our door and he told us we had to evacuate. So I panicked and ran out, forgetting to grab a jacket. So I stood out there in my pajamas for a half hour. Our neighbors came out when they heard the sirens.

The fireman said we could sit in his fire truck to keep warm, but Matt declined. :-( So we didn’t get to see the inside of a fire truck.

Anyway, the furnace is kaput beyond repair. We’re getting a new furnace on Thursday. Or shall I call it Brrrrrsday, because we’re cold!

The joys of owning a 130 year old home

Our furnace went KAPUT. And not only that, the house is smokey, so we had to open the windows to air it out…AND it’s 30 degrees outside!!!!

Matt’s at Home Depot buying space heaters to get us through the night.