Dr. Horrible, Act I

Yippee!! The first act of Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is online today. It is totally awesome!! Act II will be posted on July 17, Act III on July 19, and free online viewing ends on July 20. You can also download it on iTunes. Enjoy!

Fat ass in a bowl

Joker's away tonight for a Widespread Panic show in Philly. Since he took the train down mid-afternoon, I had a great opportunity to hang with the Bug - we had a fabulous trip to the park, and a super fun bath. But after she went to sleep, I was left with this burning question: "What in the hell am I going to eat tonight?"

That question was answered very simply, as follows. Boil water. Open a box of macaroni and cheese. Cook macaroni. Drain macaroni. Add to saucepan a little butter, cheese powder, and double the requisite amount of milk, the latter on accident. Add macaroni to saucepan. Wonder why it looks runny. Realize mistake. Figure out solution. Throw in a handful of shredded cheddar cheese and a handful of grated parmesan. Add a little more cheddar. Stir. Toss in an avocado. Douse with chipotle hot sauce. Wash down with half a bottle of white wine.

Board priorities

My first NARAL Pro-Choice Connecticut (NPCC) meeting was last night. I got to meet the rest of the board in person, and I have a bit better sense of what will be involved going forward. The biggest priority of the Board is definitely fund-raising. I'll be joining, and perhaps chairing, the Brunch Committee. Although it is probably the easiest of the fundraising committees, this will be the first time in my life where I will not only be responsible for rallying like-minded friends to an event, but also for recruiting them to become members.

This won't really change anything for me in the context of my blog, but I did want to let you know what's involved in my role at NPCC. Those of you who live in Connecticut can expect to hear from me from time to time, particularly in the spring when the Brunch is approaching. The rest of you will see notable updates, whether about key Connecticut legislative news or NPCC events, posted here from time to time.

Roadtrip to Our Nation's Capital

For the July 4th holiday, we took the Bug down to Washington, DC to visit Uncle Shane and Ali. We had a great visit, and got to see some sights, too! We started our 5-hour drive at Bug's bedtime on Thursday evening, in the hopes that she'd sleep the entire way. It worked great, though Joker and I were pretty tired on Friday.

We went to the National Zoo on the Fourth. The Bug really likes animals, and she was able to get good views of the red pandas, the sloth bears, the gorillas, and the elephants (baby elephant even went for a swim, which I'd never seen before). As always, the biggest highlights were the other kids running around. At lunch, she showed off her new skill: doing "Cheers" with us before taking a drink from her bottle.

Saturday we took a day trip to Annapolis: walked around the lovely downtown, went for a boat tour of the harbor, and cracked crabs at an awesome place called Cantler's. Downstairs at the restaurant, they had tanks of horseshoe crabs, and some gnarly old dude lifted a couple of them up to show the Bug and me their mouths and their claws. Pretty cool - it's like gazing into a creepy dinosaur.

Sunday we toured Mount Vernon, which is a fantastic museum. The house gives a really interesting tour, the grounds are beautiful, and the Bug loved the lambs and horses at the barn. We decided to skip the Mall, but after a picnic on the Potomac we stopped at the incredibly powerful FDR Memorial on our way back into the city.

Vacations with the Bug are certainly different than those we used to do, but the Bug's schedule gives enough us plenty of flexibility to see some sights and have some fun! Plus, I firmly believe it's good for her to be dragged along, she can see and do different things, and she learns to go with the flow.

The French Lieutenant's Woman

I've been wanting to read John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman for several years, not because I knew anything about it, but because it was in a box of books that used to belong to my Grandma D. I didn't love the book, but there were things about it that I really found intriguing, and I am very glad I finally read it.

The book, written in the late 1960s, is set in Victorian England. The noble Charles Smithson and his rich, shallow fiancee Ernestina Freeman come across Sarah Woodruff on a coastal walk. Charles becomes intrigued with the story Ernestina tells him, about the situation surrounding Sarah's jilting at the hands of a French seaman. Sarah and Charles meet accidentally, she engenders his emotional support, and they become involved. Romance, scandal, yadda yadda.

What made this book interesting to me was not so much the plot, but rather its writing. For one thing, it's written about Victorian times, in a style reminiscent of Victorian literature, but through a decidedly modern lens. Then, the narrator makes two appearances in the novel, after the first and second of the three proposed endings, to explain how the characters of a novel come to life and take off in directions one doesn't necessarily intend. While I am quite sure J.K. Rowling would not agree, it seemed an interesting perspective to me. And though when I finished the book I found the final two endings to be a bit unsatisfying, upon a night's reflection I really liked the vastly different outcomes that they proposed.

I like that the book's style has made me think, made me try to decipher the true motives of the mysterious Sarah. I'd particularly recommend The French Lieutenant's Woman for a book group discussion.

Like sands through the hourglass...

Sick Day #3 has also represented the third day I've watched Days of Our Lives in about ten years. Three episodes, and I know everything that's happened in ten years. The sum total of those happenings: not a damn thing. Sure, Sami thinks she isn't evil right now, but since both of her twins' baby daddies are in adjoining elevators having sex with her two arch-nemeses, I'm pretty sure ole Sami'll be evil again by next week. John Black isn't dead. Again. And he has no memory. Again. But every time that happens Doc finds a way to snap him out of it, no worse (or less vacant-looking) for the wear. The only real difference is that half of the screen time is taken up by the babies who were born ten or fifteen years ago, were rapidly aged, and are now twenty-somethings carrying on relationships with the other rapidly aged kids of the other characters on the show. The show's tagline should be "Like sands, sitting sedentary in a jar, so are the Days of Our Lives."

"Sick" is practically "suck"

I've been home sick the past two days. This is not the "sick day" you remember, where you watch TV all day and every time you ring a bell your Mom brings you cheese or juice or soup. Nor is it Ferris Bueller's sick day, complete with sexy cars and a sexy girlfriend and a best friend who completely loses his nut. My sick days have been pretty sucky.

Yesterday I barely got out of bed, and my fever ran between 102-103 for most of the day. This morning, my fever was better, but my tonsils had all these icky white splotches on them. So I actually went to the doctor for a sore throat, for the first time in I-don't-know-how-long. Not having a primary care physician, I went to the Urgent Care facility associated with my OB/GYN's office.

The facility and the staff were fantastic, but there were a few decided differences from the doctor's office of my youth (which I loved!!). First, there is now an instant strep test. They do a regular throat culture, too, but the instant one responds, well, instantly... very reminiscent of a pregnancy test, actually, complete with a little blue line. When the doctor came in, I had my second surprise. She was younger than me. I've had relatively young doctors before, but I checked the website, and this doctor is definitely about three years my junior. That was funny... though I'm pretty sure the ratio only goes one way from here.

Apparently the germs didn't get the memo that I am no longer a teenager. Despite the instant test indicating I do not have strep throat, its 90% accuracy rating (meaning it misses one in 10 cases), combined with my nasty throat and fever, made my doctor pretty sure that the lab culture will come back positive. I started antibiotics in the hopes that this is the case. If my lab test comes back negative, however, there is a decent chance that I have mono. I am having trouble grasping the lameness of that possibility. Mono at age 33? Strep at 33 is bad enough, but MONO???