Crap in the mail: an update

a week ago today, i wrote this.

i was expecting them to send me a bag of cereal.

but no. the package arrived this morning.

it was a CASE.

12 bags! (and that stuff ain't cheap.)

plus an apron and recipe cards!

SCORE! :-D

why i love Homeland

1. this show is smart. i love a smart show. it doesn't dumb-down its content in a bid to appeal to the widest possible audience base. in fact, just the opposite: it's a wonderfully tricky and complex web that asks viewers to be smart, to pay attention, to play armchair spy. nothing is ever clear-cut or simple or so obvious as to make it almost insulting. in the making-of documentary included in the season one DVDs, the producers explain that they purposely wrote, shot and scored every single scene in the show so that it could be interpreted two ways: brody is guilty or brody is innocent. genius.

2. claire danes, as CIA operative carrie mathison, is fantastic. like, katey-sagal-as-gemma-teller, ass-kickingly good. having a strong female lead is one thing; having a strong female lead who isn't afraid to be unlikeable, unpleasant, volatile and unsympathetic on occasion, is another. carrie is terrifically flawed on so many levels and is, therefore, immensely watchable.

3. it is never, ever* boring. i never finished an episode and thought, "meh." my first thought was always: "OMG, are there enough hours left in the day to squeeze in one more episode???", followed fairly closely with "and do i have to get up to go to work in the morning?" i couldn't wait to find out what happened next, and i did a good job of keeping myself unspoiled (even though season one ended last year for the rest of the world). i'm fairly certain there was a chunk of the first-season finale during which my heart was pounding at twice its normal rate. [*except for the last 20 minutes or so of the season-one finale, which i thought were uncharacteristically uninteresting and which sort of undermined what came before.]

4. there's no such thing as "good guys" or "bad guys." the producers have done a fine job of fashioning every character with enough breadth and depth that their actions never unequivocally fall under "good" or "evil." that goes for terrorists and government officials alike -- no matter where you think your allegiances lie in any given moment, they might shift based on what happens in the next few scenes. and, no matter what you think you know about any given character, you're bound to be surprised by something unexpected down the line.

5. it's just really well-written and well-acted and well-produced. i have no idea what season two will hold, or whether it'll be a step up or down from what i just finished watching, but i can't imagine it being a disappointment. these folks (the writers, directors, producers and actors) are churning out some really amazing television, and i'm looking forward to diving in to the next chapter… right after i watch all of SoA season five. :-D

five things i could have written about tonight if i hadn't started this blog entry at 9:07pm

1. why i love Homeland.

2. what happens when you make assumptions about people.

3. adventures in exotic produce.

4. how i think my life might be different if i spent my time more wisely.

5. getting into the holiday spirit.

instead, because i got home later than expected and then loafed far too long, i'm now tired and don't feel like writing about any of the above tonight. BUT, on the upside, it looks like i've just given myself five blog topics for the coming days!

workplace vignette: fun with Crap

yesterday, i interviewed the founders of Holy Crap™ cereal. they were absolutely lovely and funny and generous of spirit, and our chat was great. after we finished, i emailed their communications rep (who'd set up the interview) to thank her. the founders had also asked that i give her my address so they could send me some of their cereal. so i did, and our brief email exchange went like this:

me: thanks so much for all your help! and here's my mailing address, as requested!

her: great! your cereal is on its way!

me: thanks! i love getting Crap in the mail!

fin.

tasks & transitions

* yesterday, mom and i went shopping so that i might buy a new pair (or two) of shoes for walking. my keens are dying, one pair at a time, and they need to be replaced... but the keens of today aren't made as well as the keens of four or five years ago, so i'm less inclined to buy another pair. especially with canadian pricing. anyway, we drove to the west pole -- first, to drop off some soup and chili with a friend of my mom's, who's kind of a recluse and who's still recovering from hip-replacement surgery because she won't actually do the exercises that would help her get back on her feet (pun intended). so, mom drives about half an hour once a month or so, to bring her friend crossword puzzles and fresh-baked bread and frozen meals. after that, we hit a big outdoor-adventure store, but i found no shoes. there was a fabulous pair of keen winter hiking boots that were on clearance, and i tried them on and they fit perfectly, but i couldn't justify buying a second pair of keen boots (i have a pair of kick-ass growlers that i love) when what i need are SHOES. we did, however, each buy a pair of nordic walking poles... also on clearance.

* afterwards, we drove to YB's to help her with yard work. while mom raked leaves (she LOVES raking leaves), trix yanked up plants and i trimmed the giant bonsai tree. it was very meditative... until i had to try to trim the top cluster, which required a ladder and a lopper and upper-body strength that i do not possess. when it was done, i was tired but the tree looked great.

* in the evening, trix and i set out for what was to be a "quick grocery shop." instead, it stretched to nearly two hours, included a stop at whole foods and resulted in each of us coming home with three bags of groceries! i am most excited about two finds at whole foods: a garnet yam (which is like a red-skinned sweet potato) and a purple potato! i've never found purple potatoes in bulk anywhere here, so i was over the moon and willing to pay $1 for the potato. at a different store, i bought a bunch of baby brussels sprouts, and am very much looking forward to the multi-coloured, roasted-vegetable dinner that awaits me later this week.

* today, mom gave me a lift home with the aforementioned three bags of groceries + three other bags of groceries i'd procured, and we stopped at gryfe's bagels to pick up some fresh, warm, chewy poppy-seed bagels. they are AMAZING, and they are best when fresh, eaten on their own, with either a barq's root beer or a cherry coke or cherry pepsi. so good.

* i spent the bulk of today cleaning my apartment. one of the renovations that took place in the building earlier in the week involved the removal of all the milk boxes. since this building is quite old, each unit had its own (long since sealed shut) milk box, and those boxes all protruded from the hallway walls by about two inches. evidently, the new management company felt they were unsightly, so these decades-old boxes were yanked out of the walls. even though they'd been sealed -- from the inside and the outside -- years ago, i decided to check the inside of my closet (where the interior milk-box door is) to see if they'd also removed the inside door. they hadn't, but there was a nice pile of dust and debris on my closet floor and inside a couple of pairs of shoes. so, i pulled out everything on the closet floor, vacuumed... and then just kept going. because it was such a beautiful, sunny day, i just kept cleaning and cleaning -- moving furniture, washing things, dusting stuff -- and my place is now Vickie Clean™. i love it when it's like this!

* much to my dismay, ABC has cancelled 666 Park Avenue, a show i'm pretty sure only YB and i were watching. too bad. so many mysteries and questions will be left unsolved and unanswered. in related news, i think this is the week that i'll start Homeland.

* this is also the week that my new editor starts at one of the magazines. i can barely bring myself to call her that. "my new editor." feh.

food finds: behemoth burrito

even though i've been working at the publishing company for about 18 months (take that, "five-week assignment"!), i haven't really done much exploring as far as lunch-hour eateries are concerned. partly because i hate fighting lunch crowds, partly because i don't want to drop $5 (or more) a day when i could bring lunch from home for about $1.28, and partly because -- on the days when i do need to buy food -- we've got a subsidized cafeteria and in-house tim horton's that fit the bill nicely* (*toenail soup notwithstanding).

but, yesterday, i decided to find somewhere to buy lunch. i'd been very good all week, and had brought sandwiches with cut-up vegetables on monday/tuesday/wednesday, so i didn't feel guilty about treating myself. the only problem was: WHERE?

i debated walking to whole foods (about a 20 min. walk in each direction), which would have been fine except that any "hot" food i might purchase would be decidedly un-hot by the time i got it back to my desk, and there wouldn't really be enough time to sit down at whole foods to eat there.

i thought about stopping at a little crêpe shop for my fave -- a nutella crêpe with sliced bananas -- but couldn't really justify forking over $7.50 for what would essentially be a glorified snack.

nearby food courts are depressing and smelly, so those were out. i didn't want a sub or sushi, which crossed more than a few nearby options right off the list. burgers? no. pancakes? no. a salad? come on.

so, a friend of mine and i decided to just go and wander. our initial plan was to head towards whole foods and then stop if we found something more enticing along the way. we weren't more than seven minutes from the office when i remembered one of our co-workers raving about a nondescript, super-small burrito place where he'd bought a giant, delicious burrito for $5.99.

suddenly, that's what i wanted.

we arrived at the nondescript, super-small burrito place and, honestly, it looked a little fly-by-night (even though it's been there for more than a year). "signage" was large vinyl tarps, the "kitchen" was an area at the rear of the retail space and the front counter was kind of just that -- a counter.

but, let me tell you... it was amazing. first, as my friend excitedly pointed out while my made-to-order burrito was being assembled, they were not stingy with the ingredients. they asked me if i wanted guacamole.

"is it extra?" i asked.

"not with the veggie burrito."

"then, YES!"

and, omg, you should have seen the heaping spoon of fresh-made guac that made its way onto my burrito! by the time they'd finished loading in the ingredients, the girl making the burrito could barely wrap it halfway closed. when they handed it to me, i swear it weighed at least three pounds. i handed it off to my friend while i looked in my knapsack for a plastic bag, and she said, "this is as big as a baby!"

when i got back to my desk and opened the foil wrap, the beautiful, behemoth burrito sat before me. i surveyed its girth and had no idea HOW i was ever going to finish it. i cut it in half, reasoning that (in the event of an emergency) i could always wrap part of it for later, and then dug in.

it was FANTASTIC.

so delicious.

so rich in flavour.

so filling.

and, somehow, i managed to eat the entire thing. all of it. when i was done, i threw my hands up in the air and wheeled my chair away from my desk, as though i'd just finished a competitive eating challenge. i was very proud.

and very full.

what's been cookin'

* last week, i thought i wouldn't be back at work full-time until, probably, the new year. turns out, i was wrong, and i'll be doing the monday-to-friday thing for the next few weeks already. it's been busy. but i'm very glad to have the work. right now, i'm working on four stories -- one interviewing a slew of famous businesspeople, one about eating colourful fruits and vegetables, one about multivitamins and, my favourite for obvious reasons, a five-page feature on room-by-room spring cleaning.

* this past saturday, my parents' furnace stopped working. (thankfully, the weather was very mild in the two days it took before it was fixed.) watching my father work himself into an annoying, antagonistic stressball gave me some insight into where i get some of my own anxious behaviour.

* overnight saturday night, i had a nightmare. well, the dream itself wasn't scary, but it was distressing. i woke up crying and couldn't shake the feeling for most of sunday. i woke from the dream at about 4am and it took me almost an hour to calm down enough to go back to sleep. but, about 20 minutes after i woke up and when i was most certainly fully awake, a very weird thing happened: i saw a glowing blue orb in my room. the room is PITCH dark at night, thanks to blackout shades, but, as i lay there with my eyes open, i suddenly saw this blue dot. i opened my eyes wide, thinking maybe i was seeing things, but the blue dot remained. i moved my eyes around the room in the blackness but, wherever they'd land, the blue dot eventually appeared. i wondered if it was a ghost, or if i was imagining it (but i was WIDE awake) and then i thought maybe it was the start of a migraine (it wasn't). it only lasted about a minute, but it freaked me right out.

* the weather is supposed to be cold, crisp and sunny all week, so i'm taking advantage of the clear skies -- and dry streets -- to walk to and from work each day. i love starting the day with a brisk walk!

* earlier this afternoon, i handed off all my paperwork to the new broker. she figures it'll take a couple of days to get me pre-approved, and then i can relaunch the home hunt. i'd put it on hold between brokers, but the market has been bone dry over the past week, anyway. barely any listings. so, i'm hoping there's one last real-estate surge before december hits.

* the renovations continue at my building. the driveway to the parking garage STILL isn't finished or close to finished. i have no idea what people with cars down there are doing -- if they didn't get them out before the work started, they're stuck down there until it's done. the entire complex looks like a mess, and i maintain my theory that the new owners are trying to drive people out so they can jack the rent in the vacant units and rent them to new, deep-pocketed tenants.

* i love the christmas season. every last bit of it.

startin' fresh!

so, i fired my broker on friday and fully ended all my dealings with him on saturday morning. then i spent the rest of saturday with trixie, preparing my parents' garden for winter. i thought that was a very nice metaphor for clearing the air, cleaning the slate and getting ready to start fresh.

i have a new broker on deck -- she came highly recommended by a couple of people whose opinions i trust, and i had a chance meeting with her last friday afternoon, when we discovered we had back-to-back appointments at the chiropractor. (yes, pun intended.) she seems very nice, and she was understanding when i explained that i wanted the dust to settle on my previous broker arrangement before moving forward. it's now almost a week later, the dust has settled, but i remain gun shy. i'm finding myself hesitating to make the call to set up an official meeting (and to get the mortgage ball rolling again), even though i know i should.

in other news:

* i went back to work this week. it was initially supposed to be two days this week, but i found out there's a huge, company-wide charity bake sale on friday... so, i'll be going in. it's always odd switching gears – either from being in the office to being at home, or vice versa – so i'm still getting myself up to speed. we're still in a relative lull, but i already know i'll be working pretty regularly at least until the end of 2012. and then, in 2013, i've been told it's going to be "REALLY busy." we're launching a new magazine (drop date: spring 2013), which is very exciting and which will give me a chance to do a little less advertorial writing and a little more editorial writing.

* unfortunately, one of the downsides to the impending publishing season is that i'm getting a new editor on one of the existing magazines... and it's someone of whom i'm not really a big fan. when i heard she was applying, i voiced my concerns (i think i said something along the lines of, "NO! anyone but her!"), but i've been told she's the most qualified candidate (of THREE! one of whom declined the job!). and, technically, i will now have to report to her. even though i'm the more senior staff member, i'll have the (technically) junior position. i'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, but i'm also expecting her to pull her weight. i also want to make it clear that she only got the job because i didn't want it, either. i know how much work will be involved, how much will be fielding client complaints/concerns/requests (a LOT) and how much will be actual editorial writing/editing (precious little, since it'll be done by me). my suspicion is that she's going to bolt once the realities of the job set in. we shall see.

* mom will be doing a bunch of pre-christmas baking this weekend in preparation for a church bake sale. that means: vickie the helper and, more importantly, vickie the batter tester. :-D

* i have season one of Homeland sitting on my coffee table and, now that my week as a nielsen family (did i mention that? i was chosen to document ALL my TV viewing for seven days last week!) is done, i can get started. i'm "worried" it's going to be so addictive that i will not be able to turn it off.

* today, i got my flu shot, bought a lottery ticket and decided to treat myself to an expensive chunk of cheese. not really knowing what to get, i chose one at random after reading a bunch of labels. it was a beemster vlaskaas, and i felt all fancy when the cashier rang it in. i'd also bought some finely shaved black forest ham, a freshly baked baguette and a deep-red pepper. when i got home, i made myself a pretty kick-ass sandwich.

* right now, i am listening to jackhammering. VERY LOUD JACKHAMMERING. one of the (needless) renos happening at the building is the resurfacing of the driveway leading to the underground garage. this involves getting rid of the old driveway... which is maybe 25'x9'. this work began on monday and is supposed to be finished tomorrow. yet, they are clearly nowhere near being done. so, my floors, windows and desk continue to vibrate, and i can barely hear the TV over the noise. good times.

* later tonight, i think i will turn on my christmas lights for the first time this season. :-)