My name is Elizabeth, and I am a neurotic housewife. This journal is somewhat less interesting than the average, since I don't enjoy having fun, but the spelling is likely to be better.

My old LiveJournal, defunct: psychodyke42
My DeadJournal, also defunct: beware (the lazarus joint)
My website, in dire need of updating: the sibyl of cumae

If you'd like to add me to your friends list, you should know two things:

1) I often miss being added until well after my new friend gets impatient and defriends me, and
2) I also frequently manage to add someone to my friends list but not to the proper viewing filter.

Therefore, if I don't add you back or comment on your journal, don't take it personally, because it may well be that I am a moron.

Kitchen is still dirty but snow is shoveled. I realized since Charles has the car it was really a better idea to get the whole driveway clear before he got home. You can hear the snow falling outside.

Here, this is excellent:



Does Old Spice make shampoo, too? Because having your man smell like manly body wash may be undermined if his head smells like girly shampoo.

Somehow, though, this is still way less chauvinist than 75% of the Super Bowl commercials. "I will give you my dead-eyed despair masquerading as tolerance if you'll let me drive a shiny car." Low-hanging fruit? As Justin said, "You don't even have to pick it. It's more like 'oh wait, there's a fruit, in my mouth.'"

MEET THE NEW BOSS
SAME AS THE OLD BOSS

The Who just trolled America I FUCKING LOVE IT

Went to B-Fest this weekend, it was amazing, I am completely burnt out now. Recap forthcoming.

If anything important happened in your lives I don't need you to tell me, because I will read back as far as it takes. I won't bother with communities, though, so if anything really stupid or awesome happened, drop me a link.

In lieu of original content, I present you with the world's most fucked-up teenager. I recommend turning off the annotations, as there are quite a few.

Second attempt at these muffins -- much better than the first. I ran my regular oats in the food processor for a couple of pulses, put in a half cup of walnuts, cut the salt to a half teaspoon, and baked them for about thirty minutes. The walnuts are really necessary. I think maybe an extra five minutes in the oven wouldn't hurt, either.

Per muffin: about 200kcal, 6g fat (less than 1g saturated), 33g carbs (2g fiber), 4.1g protein. Very nice with coffee.

I spent about five minutes in the store last night staring at various bags of walnuts and weighing the price per ounce vs the calorie cost of having extra walnuts in the house which I would eat by the handful. This is because, after a workout, my brain ceases functioning. Someone in gymrats suggested she needed a guide dog because she wanders around all shell-shocked after heavy lifts and gets in everybody's way, which I do all the freaking time. Seriously, I should have a minder who can keep me from tripping over people and drive me home afterward.

Annoying thing about gymrats and some other places, though: I always laugh when reading the lists of Stupid Gym People Tricks, but then someone always has to complain about people making noise while lifting some pathetically small amount of weight, which is almost always way higher than I can actually lift. Just a week or two ago, someone basically said "I hate it when people make noise doing 135lb deads, come on, you only get to make noise when you're moving real weight."

135lb? That is fucking hard for me. That is real weight for me and I'm probably gonna make some noise moving it. Sure, sometimes I make noise because I've whacked my legs with the knurled part of the bar, which winds up looking like someone gave me a knee hickey, but part of it's because it's really fucking heavy. For me.

This makes me feel really stupid when I'm doing these pathetic lifts and grunting and gasping and making "rrrraaargh" noises, because I'm positive people are looking at me all "god, what a drama queen." I'm self-conscious enough as it is! I've got these little bitty shorts and I am on a PLATFORM and it's like "hello, everybody, welcome to my butt!" Never mind the whimpering and pleading for God's mercy during squats.

Auuugh. I was going to work out Tuesday and Thursday this week, but the way my legs are feeling I may have to settle for Wednesday, or even just Thursday.

I've always had extremely tight hamstrings, to the point that I was once given rehab exercises (which I promptly didn't do). At that time, if I lay on my back and raised my leg so the thigh was perpendicular to the floor, I couldn't straighten the leg all the way. Since taking up weightlifting, I've seen a great increase in flexibility, but those muscles are still awfully cranky about being used sometimes; between Saturday's long walk, Sunday's squats, and a great deal of stretching both days, well, let's just say I've got a heating pad wedged in back of my knees.

I can splay my fingers on the floor when I do toe-touches now, though, which I don't think I could ever do before. Well, I could do it on Saturday night, anyway -- not sure I want to try it today. Woopsy.

... or maybe WHO DAT

When I was out walking yesterday, I could have sworn that I smelled spring -- there was this wet quality to the wind, it smelled like either spring or the ocean, and somehow it was reading as "cool" instead of "cold."

Of course I said "shut up, self, that's ridiculous, it's January."

Well, it got up to like fifty degrees or something today, so I guess I was partially right -- and it'll be back in the teens by Friday.

WOO MIDWEST WOO

Well, here's the thing: I don't like the flavor of regular Pepsi or Coke, because they both have a metallic taste to me. Mountain Dew has that weird vegetable-oil taste -- why they put brominated vegetable oil in there, I have no idea (to keep the foam down?) but it's gross.

None of these issues is addressed by replacing corn syrup with cane sugar. However, cane sugar has a distinct flavor that's very nice, and you can taste it in these drinks. I have no idea what corn syrup tastes like on its own, but each sugared soda tastes better than its corn-syrup equivalent.

I like the Coke a little better than the Pepsi, but I probably wouldn't buy either again -- though I'm mildly curious as to how a rum-and-Mexican-Coke would taste; the one time I ever tried a rum-and-American-Coke, I was grossed out. Using the one with cane sugar seems more logical, doesn't it?

I made this banana-oatmeal muffin recipe tonight and it's pretty good. No chocolate chips or walnuts in mine, though. I baked it about ten minutes more than the listed time and I think it may have needed even more, but it's so hard to tell if something's browning when the batter is already brown.

Also, I used regular oatmeal, which is a little bit chunky. Quick oats are probably perfect. I might also try throwing regular oats into the food processor for a second or two -- I have some I want to use up.

The nutritional information on that site is total bullshit, because the walnuts alone have more fat than they're claiming for the entire recipe. Here is the tally I came up with for plain, no-walnut, no-chip muffins: 146 calories; 1g fat; 18mg cholesterol; 303mg sodium; 180mg potassium; 32g carb, 1.6g fiber; 3g protein. 3 points, for the weight-watchers in the audience.

Most of the sodium in the recipe comes from the actual table salt, which is necessary, but I think you could cut it back to 1 tsp and be fine. Also, I think chopped walnuts would be awesome, but walnuts and chocolate chips would be an awful lot (plus walnuts have protein and unsaturated fats, whereas chocolate chips have sugar and saturated fats). If you like dried fruits, those'd probably be great, but I hate chunks of fruit in my baked goods so bad. Banana bread is awesome, and I make a killer applesauce cake with homemade applesauce, but chunks of fruit? Eeuuuugh. They're so squishy and fibrous, like blood clots.

Anyway, these are good muffins and I think you will like them.

Okay, so I had a fucking outstanding workout this evening, personal records all over the place, big ol' high from the elliptical, and then I injured myself TAKING OFF MY SHOE. MY GODDAMN SHOE.

Yep, calf cramp! I tell you what, I'm pretty stoic about pain, but if there's one thing that will get me to scream OW SHIT OW at the top of my lungs, it's a calf cramp. Some poor guy at the other end of the hallway was all HEY ARE YOU ALL RIGHT and I'm like YEAH I'M JUST AN IDIOT I NEED A BANANA. Which I got on my way home.

You know, this might also explain that trapezius cramp I got the other day. Pretty sure it's not water -- at least I hope not, because I drank five 25oz bottles during the workout, and I do not want to be that guy who carries around a gallon jug. (Yes, I'm a girl. I've never seen anyone with a gallon jug except That Guy, though.)

I also gave myself sewing-machine leg on the damn elliptical somehow, but interestingly enough it didn't affect my squat. I think that's because the squat drives through the heel and not the ball of the foot.

PRs: Squat 3x10 75lb (I was using this weight at 3x5, time to up it)
Deadlift 3x5 135lb (if I ever said I did that before, it's because I cannot do plate math to save my life)
Standing shoulder press 3x5 65lb (45+10+10, right? Ugh why are there all these 45s)

I cut the bench press for now, because my back is super-weak and I was having problems. Beefed up my back/shoulder workout instead.

I never hurt myself at the gym unless I'm stretching. Every single goddamn time. Tweaked my right trapezius muscle so now it hurts to move my head and my arm.

Thus, I have concluded that stretching is bad for you.

Also, I saw a guy doing squats in a cage with the bench still in place. I don't think you're supposed to be able to do that.

edit: Excuse me, but why do I smell like wet laundry that's been left in the washer too long? It's not my clothes, it's me.

Last night I dreamed that I had a supporting role in some sort of 18th-century French farce; I was playing one of the heroine's rivals, the sort who's comically gauche and not very attractive but still poses a threat for some reason, and it was actually a pretty good part but I was having trouble learning my lines. That's a pretty common anxiety dream for me.

What made it unusual was that, just before opening night, the Powers That Be intervened and said they wanted a young actress they were promoting to play the role instead because I wasn't attractive enough. Said actress bore a striking resemblance to Scarlett Johansson, which made her more attractive than anyone else in the play, including the heroine (who freely admitted as much) and also the role wasn't supposed to be attractive in the first place. (I know this sounds like a huge self-esteem problem, but my main feeling was "I'm a character actress, damn it, there are plenty of ingenue roles out there for the pretty girls." No amount of goofy comic makeup can hide an ingenue properly.)

So, on opening night, not-Scarlett secretly helped the costumers put together the most godawful pink ruffly costume possible for one of the stagehands, who was about six-five and built like a very paunchy gorilla, and sent him out on stage -- much to my surprise and delight. Ruined the show, of course, because nobody could stop laughing, but afterward it came out that the company had tried to screw me out of a contract and everybody loved the response.

Of course, the net effect was to make not-Scarlett way, way more famous than playing the role would have, and in a way that really appealed to people's sense of fair play, while I was still stuck with crappy rep roles -- but that's okay, it's not like I can ever learn my lines in dreams anyway.

Pro: No one will laugh at you if you drive to the gym.
Con: To drive to the gym, you have to shovel the driveway.
Pro: Shoveling the driveway is a great workout.
Con: It's such a great workout, you're too tired to drive to the gym.

So I'm trying to make a station on Pandora that actually does what I want. Here are my song seeds:

Folk Implosion, "Natural One"
PJ Harvey, "One Time Too Many"
Toadies, "Possum Kingdom"
Tori Amos, "Professional Widow"

It's really difficult, because I have this specific thing in mind, and I have to be really careful what songs I put in. "6 Underground" by the Sneaker Pimps and "Exit Music (For A Film)" by Radiohead pulled it too far techno. "Red Right Hand" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds dredged up some godawful twelve-minute thing about a bunch of dead people and a carnival. "Big Empty" by the Stone Temple Pilots turned it into '90s Alt Rock, which I have a station for already, thanks. At this point most of you could probably do a better job recommending stuff, but I persevere.

I've had a lot of head-scratchers pop up, like a peppy John Mayer song and several mellow, wistful tracks by people who could easily be described as "singer-songwriters." I guess that's Tori's fault, except a bunch of this crap came before I put "Professional Widow" on there, and anyway, that song is neither mellow nor wistful. Still, okay, I can maybe see what happened there.

But why, why, for God's sake, WHY am I listening to IRON MAIDEN right now??

I have a station for heavy metal. This is not it. I don't see how on earth they got to Iron Maiden from Tori Amos. It's like if I put in Fiona Apple and it kicked back Dio.

... now there's a collaboration for you.

edit: Does anybody, by chance, have the Folk Implosion song "Nothing Gonna Stop"? I think it's off the Kids soundtrack but it might've also been on the "Natural One" single. I like it a lot but I had to take it off the seed list because I was getting a bunch of Arabian trance all of a sudden. (Again, nothing wrong with that, but not what I'm going for.)

edit again: JESUS CHRIST HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO FIGURE OUT I MIGHT WANT TO HEAR SOME PJ HARVEY

nmdrkangl is complaining that everybody on his friends list is making delicious food posts.

Well, I just finished off a split-pea-and-ham soup that's so thick a wooden spatula will stand up straight in it. HAHAHA TAKE THAT.

The secret is potatoes, which is good because occasionally a box of instant mashed winds up in my pantry and I never know what to do with it. Barbara Fisher told me to make it with lots of extra milk so it's a liquid itself, then stir it into your cream of soup and cook down to preferred texture. Works great.

Speaking of potatoes, freezer find: about a pound and a half of diced potatoes, with minced onion and bell pepper mixed in, aka potatoes O'Brien. Cream-of-soup casserole topped with shredded cheese is the obvious answer, but one I want to avoid at all costs. My other thoughts involve pan-frying for fajitas or scrambling up with eggs. Any brilliant ideas?

Was there a better response to this?

Perks of living alone:

You can cook whatever you want and eat it all because NO ONE CAN STOP YOU AAAAHAHAHAHAHA.

Okay, so I had this Alaskan salmon courtesy of friend Steve, and it's been hanging in the freezer for a couple months because Charles doesn't really like fish, so I pulled it out and baked it with crushed red pepper and butter and a splash of Scotch (shut up, Charles, it was only the Dewar's), and then I pulled it out and put some horseradish mustard with it, and it was sooooo good, you guys, I think it was like half a pound and I ate the whole thing.

This is something that happens when Charles is gone: for the first day or so I miss him like fury, and then after a couple more days I feel like it's going to be really weird when he comes back because I've been doing my own thing and eating ridiculous fish, and the prospect of trying to fit him back into my life is daunting in the extreme. However, by Saturday morning at the latest, I will have shifted back into "oh my god I miss him so much WHY ISN'T HE BACK YET." So it goes.

Lucky for me and Charles, I spent some of my now-abundant free time cooking a whole bunch of stuff, and I've got a split pea soup in the works right now, so I will easily be able to give up the "here's a pile of fish" approach to meal-making. Unfortunately for him, I am now 100% back on the Healthy Bandwagon, which means smaller portions of healthier foods for all. Yep, I fell off for about three months, but I'm back, just in time for all the other resolutionistas buying vegetables and queueing at the gym!

Actually, the K gym isn't so bad as long as you know the class schedule (which hasn't changed since I was there, and is online anyway) and go right in the middle of a popular slot. Monday I was an idiot and went around 5:30, thinking people would still be at dinner, only to find myself surrounded by basketball players. I also overworked myself... well, no, I don't think I really did. I would have been horribly sore no matter what I did, and I have no joint pain. Still, it was bad enough yesterday that I focused on cardio to stretch myself out, did a few light lifts, and then dorked around re-racking all the plates left on machines. (I consider that light circuit training.) I'm happy to report that I've lost only 5lb on my bench press since September, with the other lifts holding steady.

As a reward for my virtue, I seem to have come down with some sort of creepy-sleepy stuffy nose crud. Hell, I probably got it from touching a bunch of plates some gym bro put his gross hands all over. At least I have this new bathrobe my mom made me for Christmas, which is not only floor-length and super-warm, but also comes in a fetching green-navy-black plaid that just so happens to coordinate nicely with the green, navy, and black pajama pants we already had. My mom is psychic.

Domino's CEO quits to become athletic director at University of Michigan

Over at Consumerist, where I got this, several commenters are pretty shocked. I saw this part:

Brandon, 57, played on three Big Ten championship football teams under coach Bo Schembechler while earning a communications degree in 1974.

and it made perfect sense to me. At first I was going to say it's a Michigan thing, and then maybe a Big Ten thing, but then I realized there are college programs all over the country where this rule applies: it is more prestigious to be AD at The Big College Program than it is to be CEO of a multinational corporation. OSU, Nebraska, Texas, Florida, Alabama, USC... if you're from one of those states, you played at one of those schools during the glory years, and you have the opportunity to be AD, you fucking take it, you know?

Here's what cracks me up: this guy was the Domino's CEO. In Michigan, Little Caesar's has a weird stranglehold on sports; its owner, Mike Ilitch, also owns the Tigers and the Red Wings, and his company recently took over sponsorship of what was the Motor City Bowl in Detroit. That bowl has official tie-ins with the Mid-American Conference and the Big Ten Conference; for instance, in 2007, MAC champions the Central Michigan Chippewas played the Purdue Boilermakers, who were 7th in the Big Ten but still bowl-eligible with an overall 8-5 record. Yes, it's stupid that a team ranked 7th in its conference gets a bowl game, but bear with me here.

Given Michigan's poor showing recently, and its limited but extant prospects for improvement, it is entirely possible that the Domino's Wolverines will be invited to the Little Caesar's Pizza Bowl within the next few years.

The BCS is stupid and I hate it, but if this happens I will laugh and laugh and laugh.