Bottle Shock

While rolling $13 worth of pennies this past Sunday night, I watched Bottle Shock with my mom. She is a very amateur wine connoisseur and enjoys watching movies in which real wine life takes place.

Sideways was, perhaps, the beginning of this new start in her life. I can still remember sitting with her on the sofa and watching that movie, parts of which made me feel very awkward.

This movie was, however, much more accessible. You do not need to know nearly as much about wine to enjoy Bottle Shock, and it was a lot less adult (always a plus while watching a movie with a parent).

Alan Rickman’s dry British humor can’t help but make you laugh. Chris Pine was a relatable, hippy-esque teenager just trying to find his place in the world. It was nice to see Bill Pullman in a movie again. And I am sure we will see Rachael Taylor in another movie very soon.

For those of you enjoy a good laugh and an interesting twist to the American dream, check it out. By the end, you will be rooting for Napa Valley.

"Wine is sunlight, held together by water." -Galileo Galilei

Mini-Pizzas

I have worked at Napoli’s for about six months now. I love the job, I enjoy most of the people that I work with, and I make enough money to sustain myself. The one thing I wish I could change would be to make the customers treat me better. I deal with a lot of crap at work.

On Friday night, Kylie, Courtney, and I have started to make mini-pizzas. They are fun for us to make, take less time in the oven than normal pizzas, and are so much fun to eat. The simple things in life make me happy.

It began with the idea that we could conserve the excess dough from things and use it at the end of the night. The past Friday, however, we just made six mini-pizzas out of a medium dough ball. Why we didn’t just make a medium pizza? That is a good question that will forever go unanswered.

My question is, why hadn’t Kyle and Courtney thought of this before? They have both worked there for a long time, Kylie since they opened almost six years ago. When I asked, they just said that they had done other things with it, just never this.

Lately, that has become the highlight of my workweek. I deal with so much crap, and this has become my reward. No longer are the tips the best perk of the job, the mini-pizzas are.

The Wonder that is Language

This semester I am taking a linguistic anthropology course. I know I should probably talk more about school since it is such a big part of my life; however, that is beyond the bounds of this blog entry. Back to the story…on one of the first days in class, we were asked how we would go about drawing, “he is not standing next to a giraffe.”

Think about that for a minute.

I have become a fairly decent doodler since joining the ranks of TCU students, so my mind went racing. The only thing I could think of was to draw a stick figure next to a dotted-line giraffe.

The lesson was that we can say so much with words that we cannot communicate any other way.

I am not sure what made me think of this, but I want to send a message out there. Be thankful that we have developed speech over the years since our species appeared on the Earth. Or else, how would we tell the person next to us that they are an albatross trapped in a human body (which, by the way, I am).

Vegetarian

I was a vegetarian for five and a half years. It was a big part of my life. Almost a third of my life I was a vegetarian, and yet, I hardly remember eating meat before that…

I remember liking hamburger and steaks, but not much else. It seems like forever ago that I decided to become a vegetarian in the first place. What I remember about that night is that I was at the hibachi restaurant and the plate was still full in front of me, but it made me sick just to look at it because I was so full.

So, I gave up meat for a week. Which became a month. Which became a year. Which became a significant part of my life.

Part way through, it wasn’t about the food anymore, it was about the meaning. The idea of killing a living, thinking thing just to sustain myself when I could live just as healthfully as a herbivore. Seeing or smelling meat just made me sick to my stomach.

Being a vegetarian made me learn a lot about myself. It opened my eyes to so many new kinds of food. I attribute my taste level to this period in my life. I learned how to live a more healthy life. In the beginning I ate simply junk food, by the end I made my health educator of a father proud.

Going into college seemed like a good point in my life to transition back to eating meat. It is a feeling that you cannot explain. It was just the right thing to do.

I still don’t eat all that much meat, I am still not completely comfortable eating it. And when I do, it can only be chicken or fish. Red meat will probably never be part of my diet.

I have to convince myself to put the meat into my mouth each time. It feels so unnatural for me, at this point, to eat meat, even though I’ve been eating it for six months now.

Never Good Enough

I have always been the person who could never do anything quite well enough.

I am as smart as my sister, but was never quite able to live up to the standards she set at school. She excelled at the things she loved and I stayed stagnant, never quite being able to improve.

My parents would never tell me to my face, but I have let them down in my life. I could have done as well (if not better) than her, but I didn’t.

Maybe I am setting the bar too high for myself. Maybe I should just give up. Accept that I am destined for nothing but mediocrity.

I am mediocre at school: I am about to lose my scholarship, I may not be able to make it to law school, I may be ruining my entire future.

I am mediocre in love: I have never been good enough for anyone.

I am mediocre at work: I work so hard and still get crappy tips, I deal with so much crap for nothing.

Bleached Cucumber

I know my way around the kitchen, but when a website told me to bleach the fresh veggies that I give my fish, I was a little taken aback.

I do not know all that much about fish, but I know for a FACT that bleach kills. It has nothing to do with fish, bleach will kill all living things.

Upon further research I find out that this simply means to put it in boiling water. Boiled cucumber. Sounds tasty. Who am I to judge the taste level of my fish.

I have been worried that my bottom feeder has not been getting enough food. Whenever I put algae pellets in the tank for him, the goldfish eat it before he does. I was told fresh veggies would be a nice snack for all three, but they floated and so Pleco didn’t get any since he is a bottom dweller. Another conundrum.

This is the solution. By boiling the cucumbers, they lose their buoyancy and float to the bottom. I put three in, so hopefully there will be some for him at some point in the night.

Here’s to hoping…

Tiger Kitty

I have exciting news.

My mom’s boyfriend has cats that live outside his house. He feeds them and takes care of them. Occasionally one of them will get knocked up and have a litter of kittens on his porch.

Generally he just gives them away to people, or lets them join the procreating pool…but this time, he is going to save one for me.

Perhaps my nagging has finally paid off. My mom does seem genuinely excited about getting a little kitten. Before my sister and I were brought into the family, my mom’s babies were her two cats. My sister ruined those poor cats’ lives.

The kitten (who is yet to be named) will live upstairs in my room. I will miss Dakota sleeping with me, but perhaps this cat will like to snuggle…either that, or it’ll just be there to stink up my bathroom and stare at my fish.

No, little tiger kitty. Those fish are not for eating.

I am very excited about the new addition to the family. I just hope the pack leader (A.K.A. my dog, Dakota) will accept her as part of the pack.