Monday, July 26, 2010

Inception

I told Husband that I love him, but I am going to watch Inception by myself. Two weeks from now seems like a long time to wait for such a blockbuster. Armed with high expectation from the reviews of internet reviews and real life people, I pushed myself to be out of bed at 9 AM last Sunday morning. I freshened up, drove and bought my ticket at the counter. Matinee show was at 10:20 AM.

The studio was small and at 10:15 AM it was almost packed. It was no problem for me. I was just by myself, I didn't have to ask people to scoot over to make room for my party. I seated myself on the middle row by the aisle, giving an extra seat in between me and a couple.

To tell you the truth, movie goers at 10 AM Sunday morning were interesting. I spent more time people watching than paying attention to whatever it was they were playing before the lights were out. This one woman in moccasins and a matching jacket particularly caught my attention. She was sporting the look of just got out bed and was thoroughly confused looking for her husband who was already perching up there on the second from top row close to the projector. They ended up going to the bottom quarter of the seats, a decision I still didn't understand. I call those rows Looser Rows, that's what you end up with when you are late to a movie.

Going to a movie for me requires ultimate effort to be on time for a good seat. At church, there's always a seat somewhere, provided that you just have to face the eyes of the congregation on lookers. At work, well, everybody is always late for work, plus you are already designated a place, so who cares.

Then, there were a group of four teenagers headed by a queen bee. They got there pretty late when the lights were about to be dimmed. As time progressed, the group went on to become band of teenagers. Queen Bee decided that the front rows were just not good enough for them. She directed everyone and their popcorn and drinks to sit on the stair aisle effecting themselves as fire hazard.

One of them who sat on my side of the aisle had a little problem breathing. It seemed that he had a little stuffy nose going on, even so, he still tried to breath from the one that was free. Added that breathing problem to his soda slurping and popcorn munching and I could not really concentrate on what was going on with the movie. One minute the Inception team was in Paris, in another in Africa. One minute they were working on one dream, next minute they were two stages into.

Not long after, a security person evaded them from the stair premises. The band was left with either taking the front rows or demanding their money back. If I were one of these infantile baboons, I would take up that offer and come back for a midnight show next weekend. They, however, took the front row seats but not before leaving trails of popcorn and candy wrappers behind. But, hey, at last, I can concentrate.

As for the movie, I don't mind watching it again with Husband. It has all the necessary ingredients: cool special effects, a simple story for a mind boggling concept, good actors, and, ultimately, a very low cost per minute (at 248 minutes, it sure worth all of my $6). At first, I thought what more do I want. And it dawn on me. It could have been better. A better movie would not let me winch my eyes from it even for a split second, not band of teenagers, not people went back and forth, not my hungry and thirsty self. It will afford me to concentrate on more thought provoking aspects of the movie, how Leo became this good, the gidget character, the psychology, technology and fantasy behind, and, finally, how I would like to go working for this team.

Friday, July 23, 2010

Yawn

A couple friend of ours got pregnant. She had this splitting headache for months and finally gave up to see a doctor, a cousin of hers.

"Dude, you don't know you are pregnant?" says Doctor Cousin after she was done examining her. My friend had been carrying four months without realizing there is a fetus growing.

My friend is a typical happy-go-lucky. At least around that time, she sure had a certain uneasiness about the pregnancy. It is long due. They have been married for almost four years and have been together longer. Both sides of the family have been crying for grand baby all those years.

When I told husband the story, he said, "Well, it sure is cheaper than IVF."

"You are mean. Don't say that, we might need it." This is after he spelled out what IVF stands for.

"Yeah, I know."

Our conversations these days are typical of married people. It revolves around planning a family which right now mostly consists of babies and house. I have melodramatic tendency around these two topics.

"Maybe we should move out of California, there's no way we can afford anything here."

"Of course, we can. I will get a good job and we can start saving."

"Yeah, we can, but not on my time line."

"Gee, you are like one those people who want to drive a Beemer."

"What? I don't want a luxury car, I drive a [insert expletive] Saturn."

"No, I mean, you are just set to have a house."

"Yeah, it's the American dream, isn't it."

"OK, maybe we will move out California. Take it easy, Tiger."

I, for once, think it is a wife's job to drive her husband forward. We hope we will be okay eventually, it looks like it will be a bumpy road ahead.

PS:
Re fertility, even Facebook agrees with me. LoL. Are you married? Are you in your 30s? Do you need to get pregnant? Do you want bubbles with that (since this is CA)?

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Baking Frenzy

Continuing with keep-the-refrigerator-clean theme, I have just baked a Banana Blueberry Bread tonight. Yes, I store bananas in the fridge to keep them from ripening, I love the raw taste. Unfortunately, banana bread recipes usually require ripe ones. Since, there was no spare bottle of acetylene around, I microwaved the banana to induce ripening, of course, it did not work.

I have just enough of the required (despite fresh) second name sake of the recipe. On another note, I have been unfortunate with blueberries these past two weeks. They were tasteless, as in there were not enough of tartness or sweetness. I will mix some spoonful of sugars and splashes of lemon juice or balsamic vinegar to alleviate the dull taste of the berries next time.

The recipe I used is courtesy of this website. Now that I am rereading the recipe, I found out that I forgot the oats. I like the moist texture as it is, I might not incorporate the oats on purpose on the next try. Also, I will add more salt to keep it interesting mix of tart, salt, and sugar.

1 stick of butter
1 cup of granulated sugar

2 extra large eggs
1 cup ripe bananas
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup quick cooking oats
1 tsp
Watkins Pure Vanilla Extract
1 cup frozen blueberries
2 tbsp flour

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour 2 loaf pans. In medium bowl cream together butter and sugar. Beat in eggs. Mash bananas until smooth and add to sugar mixture.

In large bowl mix flour, baking soda and salt together. Add in oats and mix well. Fold banana mixture into flour mixture. Stir in
Watkins Pure Vanilla Extract.

Sprinkle 2 tbsp. flour over frozen blueberries and mix until all blueberries are covered. Add to batter.


Transfer batter to the loaf pans. Bake between 50 and 60 minutes. Let cool slightly and serve warm with your favorite whipped cream or ice cream.


I am sparing officemates from this baking experiment since I deem the bread pretty successful and thus needs no outside forces to devour. I hate throwing good stuff out. The brownies two weeks ago, on the other hand, were slight disappointment.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

We Are Jaded and Tweeting

Best conversations these days are still with that Dianosaur gal. Here is one of them, edited and translated to protect the innocence.

Me: You go softie, I go jaded, what's wrong with us

Her: Its called growing up, we become bitter

Me: I know

Her: Maybe we should all move to tibet, find our inner being

Me: Follow @DalaiLama first, baby step you know

Her: hmpft

Me: LOLOLOL

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Another Recipe

Wow, I finally had a chance to clean up the refrigerator. Practically, more than half of them are thrown away. Yuck. How did I amass this mess? Easy, it's because I never did any cooking when NY and Mama were here and I didn't resume cooking after they were gone. I didn't aware of the state of my own refrigerator.

Among the perishable, I found a bag of washed spinach still intact. It has been almost three weeks since I bought it. It had been intended for me to get back to salad-for-lunch bandwagon, but it has never happened. Amazingly, the spinach leaves in bag were still fresh. I also found a can of fire roasted tomatoes and a half pint heavy whipping cream. An idea for some kind of spinach pasta sauce comes to my mind.

The other day I watched Julie and Julia and was amused to find how their cooking adventures got so integrated in their daily lives. I wish I have that much passion for cooking, for now it is just a mean to survive and to cut cost. The only thing that tied me with the Julia Child phenomena is the dutch oven I used to whip up this sauce. My mother and NY gave it to us for our wedding gift.

Without further ado, here is recipe, from my kitchen (with half junk full of a refrigerator) to your kitchen.


Spinach Tomato Sauce

Half a bag of 9 oz washed spinach (trick is spinach has to be fresh)
1 14.5 oz can fire roasted tomatoes (preferably chunky)
1/3 cup heavy cream
1 jalapeno pepper
1 sweet pepper
3 cloves garlic
1 tbsp onion
1/2 cup water
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp basil
1/2 tsp sea salt

On food processor, put the spinach, tomatoes, jalapeno, sweet pepper, garlic and onion. Puree accordingly. Do not over puree the mix to a thin liquid consistency.

On skillet or sauce pan, pour the spinach-tomato-peppers mix and heat up to medium heat. Add the heavy cream and water. Add spices and salt. Stir. Adjust spices and salt to your own taste.

Pour over pasta. It should work well for dipping sauce too.

Picture below is of the sauce sans pasta. I had lunch already when I cooked this.



Baked fish fillet crusted with cheddar, parmesan cheese and panko bread crumb to eat along with pasta and the sauce above. Modified from this recipe.



Crunchy oven baked croutons from left over sourdough, maybe I will eat salad again one of these days. Recipe here.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Ms. Behavin

Husband put his furnitures on sale on Craigslist. He is finally moving out here with me.



He has a lot of reponses. He forwarded one of them to me.


So, I texted him.
"LOL. You pass the test."

He didn't response, so I called him while bursting in laughs.

Yeah, I am one misbehaving wife. LoL. He didn't fully grasp that he's being pranked by his own lovely wife.

Thursday, July 08, 2010

Overheard by the Hot Tub

Guy 1: I think she's pretty cute.

Guy 2: Nah, she's not.

Guy 1: You don't think so?

Guy 2: I've seen her in pretty bad light.

I wonder what the two bears gonna do tonight.

Yeah, I don't know. I hate to be prejudiced but I can't help too in this situation. I was walking to the gym by bypassing apartment's pool area when I overheard these two guys sitting on the hot tub talking about some girl. I like to imagine that they changed their conversation topic because of me.

So what if they are homosexual. I have to give a slap to myself sometime.

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Recipe

Apparently, I am not dead yet. So while I am waiting for husband to call (I doubt he will, this is already close to 1 AM his time), I have a pseudo recipe for a flatbread pizza. Speaking of the devil, here he is calling!

To be continued...

Here it is. Note on why I call it a pseudo recipe. All ingredients are store bought so it is not even qualified as a Semi Homemade recipes like those of Food TV's Sandra Lee's. Also, where you get the stuff determines the end results. Me of course, I got mine at good ol' Trader Joe's.
Another thing, even though there's no meat used in the recipe, I still refuse to count its calories, fat and sodium contents. It's just way delish to be worried about all those.

Try it!

Ingredients:
1 flatbread or pita bread
1/2 cup of any kind of shredded cheese (blended Mexican is recommended)
1/2 cup canned heart of artichoke
1/4 cup roasted red (or yellow or both) peppers
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup chopped jalapeno
2 tbsp pesto

Direction:
Smear pesto on to bread. Cramp all ingredients except for the cheese onto smeared bread. Sprinkle cheese on top. Bake on a cookie sheet at 350F for 20 minutes.

Make 1 serving

Unusual Day

What a weird day today is. I woke up this morning and just wished I didn't have to. As I dragged myself out of bed three minutes after the alarm went off, I thought that 07/07/07 was such a good date, while 07/07/10 is not.

The day being unusual started with my drive to work. First, I almost hit another car turning left just went I was turning out my apartment complex. Gladly, he stopped before he actually turned left and gave me the right of way. Second, I was late to switch lanes and was trying to hit on the gas, I thought I did a good job but the car behind me honked. I rarely got honked.

Then, there were uncountable mistakes I did at work when I was the one operating the machine. Seriously, those mistakes were too many to count. Luckily, I didn't break anything or kill anyone over the 10+ runs. They were petty mistakes and can easily be fixed or got rerun. I just never made that many mistakes in one day.

What else? Husband butt dialed me twice and didn't pick up my return call. This was the first time he butt dialed me ever.

All in all, I have a premonition that this is God's telling me that something "big" is coming my way. O Dios mio.

So, good bye, just in case I manage to stupidly kill myself tonight. I would like to have this epitaph on my tombstone:

"She'd only hope she did a much better job leading her life."

Monday, July 05, 2010

#tellingonsecretivehusband

I am telling you a dark secret.

Yeah, what?

It's what I think about 60% of the time.

Go on.

That I am unique, there's no one else like me.

Wow. I thought that is like 10% of what you think all the tine. The other 90% being...so, now you switch.

Well, now I have it on a regular basis...

Wow. LoL.

Sunday, July 04, 2010

Still Depressed

While we are still talking about the depression episode, I figured I needed to record tonight. In attempt to clear my mind, I dragged myself this evening to a neighboring market place. There are a nice grocery store, fast food restaurants, cafes, bakeries and many small businesses in the area. It is quite a convenience. So I walked across the manicured neighborhood. Blooming agapanthus greeted me all the way. I even smelled some fresh flowery scent in the air.

At the store, I picked up a couple of odd ends of stuff, mainly junk food, and rented a DVD from the box. This evening, it was 2012. I had had strong premonition about the movie, not only on the cheesiness of the story but also on the non-sense science, it was confirmed. At least, the shrimp burrito was a perfect dinner. At the end, I feel the need to neutralize the built up negativity. I found that endless dose of The Muppet Show was just the answer.

Yes, there is little difference in my life two months into the marriage. Husband, we both know, I need you here pronto, lest, I am going crazy.

Saturday, July 03, 2010

Blah

I don't know what it is about this summer. I have been feeling depressed, very depressed. I am feeling ungrateful of all worldly things (and this marriage). At first, it seems that I don't care about the past, present and future, and that I am slowly losing my faith. But at a closer look, it is not that I do not care about the present and the future.

Being helpless usually instills nothing but fighting mechanism in me. As such, things eventually got better. This time around, I am just mad and being frigid. I refuse to correct the situations instead I act in ways that is destructive.

I'd like to think that this is merely a post wedding melancholy, but maybe I just lost it.

I don't like this and I don't like talking about it with any real person so I am channeling it out here.

Blah.

Thursday, July 01, 2010

Married Life

We were watching this, totally not my cup of tea, by the way. The scene was a guy proposing to a girl.

"What more do you want?" The man character said after the whole walla walla.

Yeah, what more do you want? Husband said to me.

"A house...and a baby," I fluttered my eyelashes and ooggled my eyes. He rolled his eyes.