Days in the Sunshine State

Over the winter, I went on a trip to Florida with my mom, dad and brother. Poor Paul had to stay home and be a responsible working man. We did one of those time share promo deals, where we get to stay at the hotel on the cheap if my parents listened to a sales pitch. It was a really fun time, and it was great to get some warm weather in the middle of winter. It was the first time in a while that I got to spend significant time hanging out with my brother, which was something I had missed. I only took 2 pictures the entire week we were there, for whatever reason.





We went to Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. I had been there before, with the high school band/chorus, but the rest of my family hadn't. It was fun to share a new experience with them.

It's really interesting to compare the Universal Parks with Orlando's other titan, Disney World. They have such startlingly different "feels". Disney is all about creating an alternate reality, which is park of the reason I love it so much. It's this crazy, hyper-managed space, where everything is magically clean and friendly. They go through these secretive, pain staking efforts for you to feel like you're in another world, where characters from your favorite movies live.

The Universal parks, on the other hand, don't care if you feel absorbed into an alternate reality. They're not about the worlds that exists inside of their films, they're about the production and promotion of the films themselves. The place is designed to make you feel like you're on a set, like you're on the back lot. They also make no secret that they're trying to sell things to you. All over Universal, there are ads for other companies and brands and movies, emblazoned everywhere, and every ride dumps out into a massive gift shop. At Disney, you would never see ads like that in the middle of the park, and gift shops are designed to look like quaint little store fronts in Agrabah. They don't want to sell you their products, they're in the market of "experiences".

I guess my other gripe/ point of comparison is that at Universal, almost every ride is a motion simulator, which tend to make me nauseous. I think they don't have enough space to build rides that actually move around.

I also wish that we were taking this trip next year instead. They were building this while I was there, and I dearly wish that I could have enjoyed it. It looks like its going to be pretty cool. By the way, the poll question on the site this week sucks! Who wouldn't pick a personalized Olivander wand that chooses you? It seems a little obvious that that would be the most popular...

Commercials make me angry.

I take commercials very very seriously.

When I watch a commercial, I'm hyper aware of what message is trying to be put across. What psychological buttons are being pushed, and what sort of magic the products are promising. I'm so cynical, I'm like an ad firms worst nightmare. You cannot make me want a product. I guess all my communications classes really got in my head.

I've been like this since I was little though too. I would always refuse to wear clothes with logos on them because "why should I be a walking billboard?". This also had a side effect of making me wicked uncool. But whatever!

The ad that's bugging me today is the Alli commercial that was on the ABC episode player last night. We were watching lost (natch), we're like half way through the 2nd season now.

Alli is a weight loss drug. It inhibits the amount of fat your body takes in during digestion. It has similar side-effects to our good old friend Olestra, the fat substitute, in that it makes you poop yourself. Hooray!

Anyways, the commercial features a testimony from a woman named Cheryl, who has lost 30 pounds with Alli. The line that killed me was:

"When I look at pictures of myself from before?" As she covers her face in shame, "It's disgusting."

Yeah, thanks Cheryl. While I can understand feeling proud of your new body and ashamed of how you let yourself go, you don't need to broadcast these feelings of self-degradation out to the whole world.
By presenting your body with shame, you are proclaiming that all women that looked like you deserve to feel disgusted by their bodies, and creating a platform for so many other people to take on these feelings of disgust for themselves. You're creating a conduit for low self-esteem for everyone.

I totally get why the drug peddlers put this line in. It's to get into the heads of people who already feel this way, harness their shame, and make them feel like buying Alli is the answer. It has the sick side effect though of making people who are perfectly normal reassess themselves, and make them wonder if they need the magic loose stool pill. They want to make people think "Do people look at pictures of me and think I'm disgusting?" "Do I need to cover my face in shame?" "Maybe I need to go buy some pills."

(Just a sidenote, the PAL perscription advocacy group gave the makers of this drug an AMAZING award : "The with Allies like this, who needs enemas?" trophy.lolz)

Maybe I'm overreacting. But I do feel when people refer to their bodies as "disgusting" on tv, shit like this happens to little girls.

Wishbone

Wednesday Dinner #4- Chicken Minestrone Soup

This is another one from "100 Great Vegetarian Recipes". Although I de-vegetarianized it by making it with chicken.

Yesterday, I was at Big Y grabbing the ingredients for this soup before picking up Paul at work. I was super hungry, and didn't feel like cooking anything when we got home. I succumbed to the ready-made meal counter, and ended up buying a whole rotisserie chicken, or as Big Y calls it, "the super bird". It smelled really good, and I could see the real flames shooting up under the spit in the cooking machine.

Buying the whole chicken turned out to be a pretty sweet deal. It was $12, with a silver coin. The meat was really juicy and delicious, and satisfied my body's lust for complete proteins. Mmm...so many amino acids. It gave us enough meat for probably 2-3 dinner-type meals. Plus, the carcass made for about 8 cups of homemade chicken broth. I don't really feel bad about eating chicken. I'm not too strict about my vegetarian observance, which, i guess, shows that the animal treatment angle doesn't play too heavily into my eating decisions. People do ask me sometimes why I wanted to go veggish. I think it was mostly just wanting to eat a healthier diet, and wanting to save money on grocery bills.

Mah Broth Recipe
1 Whole Chicken, with the meat carved off
1 Onion, chopped
2 Celery, chopped
1 Tbsp Rosemary
1 Tbsp Thyme
Salt and Pepper

Place the chicken bonez in a big pot. Cover them with cold water. Add everything else, seasoning to taste. Bring to a Boil.
Once boiling, reduce to low heat. Simmer for 4 hours, stirring occasionally and skimming excess froth off the top.

Drain the broth into a bowl. You can save some of the meat that got boiled off of the bone, and add it to your soup. There are two big benefits of making broth like this. One, homemade broth is delicious. Two, it makes it easy to find the wishbone!

I haven't done the wishbone since I was really little. It's currently drying out on the windowsill. That was always the hard part as a kid, waiting for the bone to dry to play the game. I'll let you know who gets a wish once Paul and I match our thumbs in battle!

Now, on to the soup. This Minestrone is a great soup for summer, because it has all these awesome seasonal vegetables. It's loaded with so many delicious goodies; veggies, taters, noodles, beans...and it's actually healthy for you too. It serves 4.

4 ripe tomatoes, diced
3 Tbsp Olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
1 potato, peeled and chopped
3 stalks of celery, chopped
1 zucchini
1 can of canelli beans
4 cups chicken broth
1/2 cup pasta

Heat the olive oil in a large pan. I used the awesome wok that Meredith and Matt gave us as a wedding present. It's the perfect size for this.

Add the onions, and cook until they are transparent. Add the carrot and potatoes next. Stir them often for about 4 minutes. Then add the celery and zucchini, and cook for about 3 minutes more.



Finally, add the beans and the tomatoes. Stir well. Add this final mixture to your chicken stock and bring to a gentle boil. Reduce the heat again, and simmer for 40 minutes. Add the pasta (uncooked) and heat for 10 more minutes.

This soup is extra tasty with fresh grated parmesan cheese on top.

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but this soup came out amazing. It was so so good, Paul and I both had seconds. I think a big part of the extra deliciousness was the homemade broth, it made a difference. It was fun cooking something completely from scratch too, it made me feel very domestic.
The best news of all is that there are leftovers!

Also, I finished reading Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternack today. I give it a 5.5/10. I'm thinking I might of enjoyed it more if the translation was a little better. It had some awesome scenes, some good plot twists, and interesting characters. But so much of it was heavy handed and ponderous. and sad. Too sad for the first days of spring. I do feel like I know more about the revolutions in Russia now, and that's a plus.

Blue Yarn Shoes

I am victorious! I finished the booties that were giving me so much grief. The gift for Amy and Peem's baby is now complete. Our good friend Mr. Bear models the whole set below.



After working on that scarf with the button holes, this pattern was actually a breeze. That side project taught me about working in smaller row within the larger series of stitches. With that under my belt, I was able to make each of these little socks in about 2.5 hours each.

I'm quite pleased with how they came out, other than the seams. I still haven't quite figured out how to make them look all invisible and professional-like. I think I might have done it inside out, because the inside parts look a lot neater.


I still have a ton of this yarn left over, as you can see. I'm trying to decide what to do with it, and have been scoping out the interwebs for a fun pattern. I'd actually really like to try to do this guy, but I'm worried that it might be a little out my league right now, skill wise.

Other Projects I'm hoping to take on soon:
1. A hat for husband
2. A Present for my friend James, who is moving soon to Boston. Perhaps a scarf?
3. Something for my brother, who is turning 17 in July. (wow!)
4. Husband has also said he would like a stuffed cthulhu. There are lots of patterns for this out there, like this one, this one , and this one (my personal favorite), but they're all crocheted, not knit. I did find one knitting pattern for it, but I don't really like it as much as the others. Maybe it's just the yarn color the person chose, I dunno. I may have to learn a new yarn slinging technique to satisfy this wish.

Caturday III

LWV

Good News and Bad News!

Good News, the league of women voters book sale has returned to Amherst. I love the book sale! It's where I stock up on reading material for the rest of the year. Pictured below are Paul and my takings from today.

I would really like to go back again and to find some more treasures, but that's where the bad news comes in.
The bad news is that 6 likely cases of swine flu have been discovered and quarantined at Amherst College, which is obviously, not good. PS: the LWV book sale is held on the common right across from campus.
We probably would have made off with even more fine literature, but the paranoia of being in an enclosed tent with potentially ill strangers for too long was setting in. It's weird to have this thing hit so close to home.
When I passed a girl wearing an Amherst College sweatshirt on the sidewalk, I held my breath. When I got home, I washed my hands immediately.
Paul and I have been joking that we're going to write "quarantine" on the inside of our door, like Lost. And later maybe we'll blow it up with some sweaty antique dynamite that we found at the Black Rock.

At any rate, it made doing stuff in public this weekend seem a little scarier. At least we've got lots of books to read now to pass the time!