34: Everything I Feel About This Season of The Bachelor Can Be Summed Up With...

"Oh, honey. No, honey."

Also, I want that lipstick. Thank you, Sharleen, for being our Canadian representative. 

33. Nevena Takes Off!

Rebecca Harrington's experience on Elizabeth Taylor's diet convinced me that Liz's weight-loss book, Elizabeth Takes Off, would be instrumental in my healthy-eating January resolutions. Particularly, her enjoyment of one of Liz's oft repeated lunches:

"Sheer hunger drives me to combine cottage cheese and sour cream and pour it over fruit, as Liz recommends. (Previously I left out the sour cream.) It resembles curdled milk, and tastes similar. Absolutely repugnant. Never try it." 

That combined with the discovery that my local library had it in large print, my favourite type of print that I had only previously enjoyed with Agatha Christie novels, cemented my decision that Elizabeth Takes Off would be my first book of 2014.

Though the combination of my word-a-day calender and Lizspiration makes it seem as though my New Year's Resolutions are as reputable as a kangaroo court, I have never found such delight in such simple, manageable changes. If Liz can do it, I can do it. We are equals!*

As Liz says, humour = good. 

Elizabth Takes Off is available on alibris.com for $1.21. Shipping to Canada is $14.

If you can get past her amazing talent at humble-bragging and the ridiculousness of some of her suggestions, I truly believe that this book will do you good. Embrace those larger-than-life delusions**. 

The success of this book is in Liz's name-dropping, gossip mongering and the encouragement she gives to her readers. Though in different economic positions she has her readers, or at least this reader, believing that they are just like Liz. Not that Elizabeth Taylor is a "normal person," but that we are glamourous and practically there with Liz in a Health Spa by following her dietetic tricks and tips.

Unlike Harrington, I will never follow Elizabeth Taylor's meal plan. Mostly, because I already kind of am. I had peanut butter on my burger for dinner tonight. I have friends and family members who laugh/are repulsed by my meal combinations. I already throw things in lettuce and call them sandwiches (except now I will call them "Taylor Sandwiches"). I am the person who brings dairy and grain free muffins to work and get told they taste like "hay." These aren't changes for me.

But there are a few things that I am introducing into my new healthy lifestyle.

Things I have learned from my friend, Liz. 

1. Poor people can use her meal plan as well. For her lobster dinner you can even substitute canned tuna! Instead of squab, barbeque a chicken or a pigeon or something, you vagrant!

2. Melon! No papaya for your breakfast? Use melon! No passionfruit for your second day's breakfast? Use melon! Melon makes poor people feel fabulous!

3. Potato Skins can be a healthy side...when you take the name literally and make yourself baked skin of potato. Mmmmm. Waste the entire delicious insides of two pounds of potatoes in two weeks!

4. When someone says "children are starving in China" go the route of Lauren Bacall's kid. Ask them to name two. Don't feel pressured to clean your plate, instead make a donation to a fund for starving children (I'm not sure what the poor people's substitution is for this, but I still do like that she said it).

5. "It's important to remember how easily fatties are hurt and to remember to be supportive rather than destructive." There is actually a lot of sound advice that is worded very poorly in this book. To go with this, Liz also reminds you to not to pretend you have medical conditions, and actually go to a doctor.

6. Mix sour cream with mustard and mayo. Voila dip! Also works with sour cream and seemingly every other low fat condiment in your fridge: ketchup, cottage cheese, lumpfish roe...

7. Your meals might be small and sad, but put them on lace doilies and decorate your table with flowers in jam jars. This is more so the part that is feeding into my delusion and having me believe that I am doing exactly what Liz did to get her life back on track!

8. When in doubt, exclamation marks!

Naturally the book ends with some summarizing and generic motherly guilt-tripping: Michael's kids don't visit enough, but thankfully Christopher's do. Because not only could Elizabeth Taylor go from 180 pounds to a 22 inch waist in her fifties, but she could segue into new topics with ease and self-congratulations.

This cake is not on the two-week health plan.

Elizabeth Takes Off is glorious. I haven't been so bewildered and invested in a weird memoir since Priscilla Presley's Elvis and Me. All at once I want to be both everything and nothing*** that Elizabeth Taylor was and take the world by storm. I feel the energy from a thousand malted milk protein shakes propelling me into all of the world's successes.

And if you catch me rocking back in forth while standing in one place, that isn't a mental breakdown, that's an Elizabeth Taylor "leg shaper" work-out. Eat your heart out, world.












*We will never be equals.
** They are delusions for us, for Liz, that's just her life. 
*** She really had no qualms about stating that she only really loved Mike Todd and Richard Burton. Even though those marriages seem to have been the scariest, she makes them sound as velvety and satisfying as an asparagus cream sauce made with low-fat sour cream and bouillon cubes that can be used over any protein, such as fish (fresh bluefin tuna flown in from the northern coast of Australia!) or chicken (cornish game hen!)!

32: Look At Me I'm Sandra Lee...

..lousy with sobriety.

By the time that I post this I will be on day sixth of Sober Month and though I am surrounded by alcohol at work, the only time I miss drinking is when watching my stories. How have I never noticed that everyone is drinking all the time? Perhaps because previously I was drinking with them.

Photo By Food Network

Last night,  while jonsing for my post-badminton glass of red wine I became convinced that I actually had a problem. That people were worried about me. That I must be the Sandra Lee of my social group.

I was sitting on my couch watching The Good Wife: Alicia Florrick in her kitchen and on my screen and I instantly thought: "whatever, you know Florrick/Agos ain't gonna last; y'all working out of an abandoned methhouse and Carrie Bradshaw hit that first!" All because of jealously. All because I wanted what that amazing multi-faceted, glamorously dressed, well-paid fictional character had: a glass of wine. A really big one.

That's the thing they don't tell you when you decide to do a Whole 30 (or at least as close to a Whole 30 as you're really gonna do at this point in time) : there might be coconut milk for your coffee, and coconut sugar for your coffee and coconut flour/flakes/chips/oil/water/whole coconuts for the other things you need, but there is no coconut equivalent of red wine or friendship.

Yeah, you will sleep better, feel better, have less weird digestive issues and cry less, but there will be a void in your soul. You'll feel like no one understands. You'll feel like no one has felt this pain before. You'll wonder if cavemen were really healthier than Ancient Romans or Chicagoan lawyers. And you'll look for a friend. Someone to say "it's okay, brah, I know how you do."

Someone to say, "yeah, that's what two shots looks like..." For body, health, mind and spiritual growth, there's the paleo lifestyle. For everything else, there's Sandra Lee.

31: Carrie Bradshaw and Carrie Bradshaw

Carrie Bradshaw. In the wake of my New Year's Resolutioning and the continuing horror of my Word-A-Day calendar (it's trying to teach me the words 'phlegm' and 'gambol.' I'm a week of one and two syllable words away from setting that bitch on fire), I have been thinking a lot about Carrie Bradshaw.

I was (FINALLY) linked to the Emily Nussbaum article, "Difficult Women" and got really into her discussion of Carrie as an anti-hero, because everyone who has re-watched the show at least once knows that Carrie is the worst person in the world*.

The first watch-through you see the world through Manolo Blahnik coloured glasses: everything is beautiful and nothing hurts; crop tops work with tutus OR overalls and you can wear them in the coldest seasons because cabs are a third of the price that they are in Canada.  The horrible relationships are fun and cutesy, because they come peppered with puns and euphemistic nicknames.

When in actuality, she is just the friend who lets this happen. In so many less obvious, metaphorical ways and then in this exact way, where you're naked, immobile on the floor and she sends her boyfriend to help you. Because in her mind, what's the difference? And she'll cheat on that boyfriend/fiance, and she'll let a Russian hottie fall down the stairs and break her face open and she'll do countless other crappy things, but those things mean less, because those people mean less.  

Now, I have always fallen hard for awesome female friendships in television shows. It's the only thing that explains my deep Grey's Anatomy adoration. And to add to that,  I am a total fig newton. So the only way I would like Sex and the City more is if it was called Friendship and the City, but that's not as sexy an HBO title and really sounds more like what Whitney Port's MTV show should have been called.

It's the friend betrayal in Sex and the City that stings the most. How could you do that to someone who trusts you so completely, shows you herself at her lowest, and is vulnerable enough to call you and confess when she's eating chocolate cake out of a garbage can?

"Your good friend has just taken a piece of cake out of the garbage and eaten it. You will probably need this information when you check me into the Betty Crocker Clinic." 

- Miranda 4.04 What's Sex Got To Do With It

And so I have fallen in love with The Carrie Diaries. It's all the whimsy and fun fashion choices without the heft and righteous indignation. Friendship... and screencapping outfits!**

Angry Carrie! and look overalls! Always a good choice.

She's wearing a rainbow slightly off shoulder tee with floral overalls and pastel blue nailpolish in a scene where she is suffering from food poisoning and yelling to her ex-boyfriend about her broken heart.  Because why not? It's not that serious. Of course, it's the most serious thing in the world, because it's Carrie Bradshaw's love life and she's a classic narcissist, but it's also not.

The Carrie Diaries embraces all the parts about Carrie that you saw in that first viewing. She's open and assertive enough to get the things she wants, but she's still calling Gossip columnists to retract the hurtful rumours she started. She goes after the things and people she loves and for the first time she is actually totally into a guy who MAKES HER A BETTER PERSON! She's Kelly Ripa and June Colburn and every optimistic person you can't help but love and wish you could be more like. She's a tiny spitfire with electric curls.  She likes her friends and she likes her 'enemies' and she... just likes everyone and is super swell to them all! Her bratty little sister has sex in her bed and it turns into a bonding moment.

The Carrie Diaries is not trying to be game changing television or equal to its prequel/sequel/whatever Sex and the City's relation is to it. It's the marshmallowy soft parts. It isn't canon, but it's using Sex and the City plot points wherever it's fun to do so. I don't care that Carrie Diaries Carrie didn't lose her virginity to Seth Bateman on a ping-pong table in a rec room like Sex and the City Carrie and yet I care a whole hella lot that she lost her virginity to Adam Weaver on a foosball table in a rec room. It's just enough to cement her as Carrie, no matter if it's Purse Carrie or Necklace Carrie.

2014 Nevena wants to have that carefree Carrie Bradshaw spirit.  So, I bought a pair of overalls and I'm gonna forgive that little sucker for today's "catchpole". I guess I have been using it in the wrong context.  

*slight hyperbole.
** it doesn't fit into the topic of discussion, so as not to detract from that I will put it in a double asterix afterthought. The true shining moment The Carrie Diaries is actually that there is a character called Donna LaDonna. Naturally she is Sam Jones' cousin and naturally she is fabulous. 

30: "The air smells of graupel and opportunity." - Using January 2nd's Word of the Day!

It is already the coldest day of the year, but I am still idealistic about my new year's resolutions. I could choose one gift to open early before Christmas (Orthodox, January 7, lightyears behind everyone else) and I chose my Word-A-Day calendar. I didn't want to get a week behind on becoming the person 2014 deserved me being.

Whitney Cummings. I've liked her hair ab initio.

Day One: I was watching the Comedy Central roast of Donald Trump and brainstorming ways in which I could use my first word: ab initio - from the beginning. To whoever called on the phone, "Whitney Cummings  killed it ab initio." Then later as I pictured myself a comedian on the dais, "Whitney Cummings has been sucking dick for fame ab initio. She has been gobbling cocks straight outta the womb!"

Alan's January 1st involved eating all 31 chocolates I had neglected in my 2013 advent calendar, but the plastic wrap and the cardboard openings were slowing him down. He only got through eleven. Maybe it's something about turning 25 and 30 that makes me conscious about dates and times.

This year we are going to be on top of things. Spending December in a frantic holiday retail working daze made me realize the importance of knowing which day of the week it is. I am gonna be accomplished this year, I am going to do things, be somebody, change the world and know whether to say "have a good weekend" or "have a good week." I ain't gonna mess shit up no more.

But.

Tomorrow's word is "zillionaire," and I think I might boycott knowing my dictionary calendar has already anticipated my day one and two failures. At this rate day four is going to be "pony."

Pony
noun [countable]  /ˈpoʊni/   A pony is a small horse. (Equus ferus caballus).

Used in a sentence: "Nev wishes she had a pony."
Etymology: "Pony, originating from the Outsider's protagonist Ponyboy."
Fun fact: "Nev's parents would have gotten her a pony for Christmas if they were ZILLIONAIRES."

Suck it Merriam Webster, you don't know me. I could do this forever.

Going to Start Writing Something Every Week to Get Me Jumpstarted

I haven't decided what Skyfall is yet. I don't think it's a James Bond movie, but I'm torn between Batman, Harry Potter or a Home Alone.

That is all for now. Watch and agree.

28: Misogyny and Me: Television for the Masses!

I've been catching up on my television and it's got me feeling like I should stop catching up on the television I used to watch and just continue watching the Wire instead. It's the only show I'm watching right now that isn't disapointing.

It's just all the gosh-darn misogyny. Jane Krakowski is the best actor/actress on 30 Rock and yet Kenneth is getting more and more screen time . Over half what he says is woman-bashing, but it's okay he's from small-town Georgia! It's not okay. It's not even funny. It's like Pete 2.0 in disgustingness.

Next is the Big Bang Theory, which I've never watched before, but got dragged into by the awesome Barenaked Ladies theme song. (I love theme songs, even when marathoning dvds I do not fast-forward theme songs!) I cannot get past Raj's misogyny, but it's okay, because he has that hilarious selective mutism where he can't even talk to women! Hilarious. It's not okay. I should know better than to expect anything less offensive than Two and a Half Men from Chuck Lorre.

Then Skins season six. They just ruined any half-way decent female character they had. Even the ones that weren't so likeable just became fodder for male character development. Like Minnie and her relationship with Alo. I don't think "big dick" is enough to make up for paedophile.

I think I'm just going to give up on sitcoms (except Parks and Recreation) and borrow the Sopranos and the Shield from the library. Premium cable shows might be more emotional and upsetting but they're somehow less offensive and depressing. 

At the moment my big exception is Sons of Anarchy, which seems to create strong female characters just to pit them against each other or have them beat up and torn apart by the lame male characters. My personal favourite is when Jacks beat up a stripper because he and Opie both slept with her when they were in "monogomous" relationships. What a slut. That's totally her fault!!   

I was going to watch the new season of Sherlock, but I've heard plenty of bad things about it on this front too and I just can't handle any more now. Plus my darling boyfriend spoiled the end of the season for me because "you've read all the books, isn't that the same thing?" Balls.

Urgh, I just want to dance. Two days of "serious no gluten, nev, seriously!" and I'm cranky.

27: Summer Resolutions!

Well, I got into the masters program I wanted and my final exam is on Wednesday. I want to spend this summer saving money/working and becoming a better version of me.




 

And to ensure that, I already have my ticket to Fiona's July concert.

There's a scene in the first episode of the second season of Miranda, "The New Me", where she says:

“I’m gonna be the kind of woman who, you know the kind of woman who just does that *shakes out hair* and their hair looks perfect. They then grab a homemade muffin out of their polka-dot biscuit tin and head to work wearing trainers at the bottom of a skirt suit to show off they’ve power-walked in. They have pot plants that don’t die on them. Their fruit bowl isn’t full of three week old rotting pears, because they actually eat the fruit. They have day bags, evening bags and a clutch. Y’know. They just grab a wheat-germ smoothie in-between work, because that’s enough to keep them going even though at lunch time they jogged and enjoyed it, because they don’t have flesh that moves independently to their main frame and finally they have easy access to pens to finish a crossword at the bar when the man they decided to take as a lover the night before says ‘hey, last night was great’. You know, I’ll be that kind of woman.”

Summer Resolutions!

1. Be Punctual!

2. Do not eat food that makes you sick/pass out (i.e. gluten!)

3. Do not go outside unless dressed like a fuctioning human!

4. Do physical activity! Become one of those healthy people you hear about in magazines.
5. Update blog regularly.

Generally, I just want to feel better. I'm sensitive to a lot of food and I get sick very often. I want to change that and while I'm at it, I should stop dressing in oversized hoodies and stop being late for everything. I feel like these are reasonable goals that will benefit me and everyone around me. Huzzah!

In a somehow related vein: why does poutine taste so much better than chilli cheese fries but photograph so much worse? I tried it for the first time the other day from Burger's Priest and was mega disapointed, but they looked so good. On the other hand, my poutine from Poutini's looks vile in photos, but was mega delicious. Oh Canada! 

Wish me luck!

(she says after posting photos of fries and while watching Laguna Beach season three, not even a good season)

26: Lolz

I am so excited to finish my Masters applications just so that I can finish reading the Jessica Darling young adult series. This is my life. I am okay with that. I promised I would finish one more today and that it what I am going to do now. I am going to take control of my destiny! Or something.


Also, as soon as I finish one I am allowing myself to go to Indigo with Alan to get my Christmas gift. I want Chuck Klosterman's new book, even though his novels are terrible, the new issue of Fables and a book about dinosaurs, something legit educational but also with awesome photos. We'll see what I end up getting. I wish I was one of those people who are really good at buying people gifts, but I'm really terrible. I think I've given out two gifts so far. My fallback excuse being "well, my Christmas is January 7th. How awesome would it be to celebrate then instead?".

Pop Culture Addictions December 2011

Teen Mom 2 Season 2:

Jenelle laid charges against Keiffer for domestic abuse and it's a truly emotional scene, I'm sure, but all I can focus on is the hideous flip flop and socks combination. I'm not one to talk, my birkenstock love is so great that the tiger striped birkenstock tanlines on my feet haven't faded yet, but really. Is this socially acceptable? I guess if you're going to jail for domestic abuse people already hate you and appropriate footwear isn't going to do any good.

Joe Gilgun



When Robert Sheehan left Misfits I was uberbummed, but when Joe Gilgun joined I forget about him. It didn't help that his goodbye cyber clip about Las Vegas was lame. Joe Gilgun is fabulous (I wish that swastika wasn't in this picture though).  After Misfits I watched all of This Is England, even though there are scenes that are incredibly hard to watch. 

I just love scenes of people becoming friends and bonding and being adorable, even if they're skinheads and several of them are terrible racists. In similar news, I now have several skinhead autobiographies on hold at the library and the librarians probably think I am a white supremecist. It's the same feeling I had when my friend and I were at the library doing research for essays and the stack of books next to her were about Nazis and the KKK while all of mine were about black baptist churches and had titles like "spiritual american coloureds".

 

Final Destination Movies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOLDUQCESmE&feature=related

It won't let me embed, but it's an amazing opening. It acknowledges the previous three movies and gets you hyped for more ridiculous deaths!

Ignore the fact that I am 500 years behind on this trend. I watched the first one when it came out, but Devon Sawa wasn't in the rest of them so I never had a reason to continue. Well I finally did and I loved them. In the same way that I love Scream, except less, because I like happy endings. They're campy, they're ridiculous, but they're not really scary. It's exactly the type of "horror" movie I like: silly, fun, attractive people, several nineties fav actors and other recognizable actors before they really are recognizable/only recognizable to people who watch disney channel movies about mermaids or Pretty Little Liars (I fall into both categories). However, the movies totally add to the list of things I am afraid to do because of the implausible ways in which I could die:


1. laser eye surgery? no thank you, i will get a monocle when old righty really gives out.
2. one of those knife blocks? no thank you, plus they are crazy full of bacteria and HOW DO EVER YOU CLEAN THEM?
3. airplanes? aww sheeit.  i will continue with my airplane anxiety meds, since a transatlantic boat ride is even scarier. 

Pop Culture Things I Still Hate or Have Started to Hate December 2011

People in any way supporting Roman Polanski

tv: christoph waltz: blah blah blah blah hilarious stoic blah blah
nev: oh i like him
tv: christoph waltz: well, working with roman polanski is a blessing.
nev: nope, done. change the channel.
alan: what?
nev: done done, roman polanski can suck my balls. i'll watch his movies when he does his jail time.

I can't get past it and I don't want to. I don't want to listen to anything he has to say or anything about him. I don't want to hear actors waxing poetically about him. I don't care about his movies or his problems. He can sit the fuck down. 

I can't get past people's private lives to see their work. I'm sure if media was more present in the past I wouldn't be able to stand Roald Dahl, as it is I still can't help thinking "oh, but you said that thing about Hitler and all the anti-semitism and I don't know about that, but Sophie Dahl is so endearing, i like her."

(Hitler quote in question: In 1983, Dahl was quoted as saying: "There's a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity ... I mean there is always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere; even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason."⁾

Seriously, it's getting to the point where I don't want to watch anything Johnny Depp's in. I understand that people give interviews to promote their movies, but it's getting to the point where they're doing the opposite:

"You wanna watch the new Johnny Depp movie? You won't after you see this new interview of him hating on america, but not wanting to pay France's taxes and making insulting comparisons to rape! Stay tuned!"

The Time Traveller's Wife

The only good thing about this book is I can imagine a situation where a child would be like

"Man, wouldn't time travelling be awesome?"
"Would it? Read the time travellers wife."
(This could also just be because I am a terrible babysitter. Yesterday I tried to convince a child that a city 17 hours away from us was further than the moon. This works very well with politie children, who think disagreeing with their elders is rude so they say "hmm, I don't think so, but I will google it later to see.")

I feel like Audrey Niffenegger just wanted to write a book about sexual exploration. It's not a love story. Was I stupid in expecting it was one?

My dislike in four bullet points:

1. Henry's backstory with his mother was lovely and the idea of him time-travelling and getting to know his dead mother through minute, everyday interactions was a thrilling idea, but instead more of the focus was on the type of sexual propabilites that drunk people converse about:
"Yo, yo, if you could time travel back to your past self, would you have sex with him or would that be gay?"
"If I cheat on you with you, is it cheating or is it awesome?"
"Dude, dude, when are you a paedo and when is it like 'it's cool guys, she's my future wife' "
<B>Answer:</b> I think you're still a paedo, this seems like an argument fundamentalist mormons in those culty campsites make.
2. Everything being cyclical makes everything too easy and boring:
a) They fall in love by telling eachother that they are already in love in the future, which means I didn't get to see characters falling in love.
b) Henry ruins every fun experience by being like "I know, we're house shopping, but this isn't the house that we end up buying" and (I can only imagine) "Really? Do those earrings really go with that shirt? Cause I saw a picture of tonight four years from now and you're totally wearing studs."
3. Henry is so obnoxious; I know you're a librarian and shit and you can't watch television like the rest of us, but the things that come out of that character's mouth are annoying as all hell:
"The geneticist looked like D.H. Lawrence."  Really? Cause alongside John Steinbeck, D.H. Lawrence was one of the studliest authors (I might be alone in this opinion) and you're not really describing that. Plus... I can't even do a plus, I'm frustrated.
"I was so embarrassed reciting Rilke in front of the doctors and nurses. They probably think I'm a pussy." Because you are a pussy. Am I supposed to believe he was a womanizer reciting Rilke to chicks? Oh shit, a punk rock librarian. I'm unimpressed.
4. The woman portrayed as constantly waiting around for the man; particularly the last page. So disheartening, pre-Victorian.

Unforunately, I still want to see the movie, because after Chopper I want to see everything Eric Bana does. This list can't be doing wonders for my credibility.

This is depressing so I'll leave with a movie recommendation: A Film With Me In It.
Two reasons:
1. Dylan Moran
2. It's pretty much a movie version of 13 Dead End Drive (the boardgame).



"Is he dead because you did a murder?"

25: Broken Computors and Blondie

I'm sick and pretending to write an essay, but at least I have found a solution to the second computer that has been broken under my watchful eye (my fault this time. red wine + keyboard = no blog posts). 

Also I am now platinum blonde. I would post pictures if I wasn't also sick and gross. 

For now, I will share the reason I am, once again, blonde. Even though there are clearly other colours that suit me better.

I think that the youtube recommendations would be a lot less successful if I was in charge.  Right now I am getting. "Gwen Stefani: What You Waiting For,  recommended because you watched Four In The Morning". It should really say "Gwen Stefani: Four In The Morning, recommended because you have just watched it 47 times in a row, and by now we have realized that you aren't going to switch to a new video". 

Take it under advisement. You're welcome, youtube.

24: Leopard Print and Sadness

Nevena: What did you do?

Big Al: I thought there was a footrest underneath the computor.

Nevena: There isn't. What did you do?

Big Al: I thought I was putting my feet on the foot rest.

Needless to say, I do not have a footrest underneath my computor. Al kicked something and my computer exploded*. This is to say that I am using my father's laptop and the amount of emotional attachment I have towards my computer is phenomenal and phenomenally pathetic. I miss it. I miss that my keys go a little higher like a typewriter. I miss the really old version of microsoft word that I have and understand. I miss doc. docx is a nightmare. Mostly I also miss having a printer. 

Somehow the death of my computer** triggered a domino effect and now all the printers in the house are broken.

NOW FOR SOMETHING HAPPY!

This is my family. From the back to the front:

 

My mom: my floor length leopard print coat from Black Market.

My gramma: My three quartered length sleeved Talbots leopard print coat.

Me: My short, short sleeved leopard print coat from Anthropologie. 

My dog: Her leopard print coat from the Clothing Show. 

I have to go change, wearing skin tight snakeskin*** pants is not a good idea after eating tons of pulled pork sandwiches.

*Not literally. Just figuratively in the same way that my heart is now exploded from computor loss related sadness.

**The sad thing is that after typing computer seven times in this post, I still cannot spell it. The computer has to keep red underlining computor with two o's. Computer and beginning are the two words I cannot spell subconsciously, I have to stop and think about it every time. Yet I can spell subconsciously subconsciously. Figures.  

***Of course it's an animal/reptile print.

23: Food Food Food Part 2

in memoriam part two

Siena:  Pizzeria Trofea. Porcini and Sausage. Best pizza ever. I have so many pictures of various slices of this pizza that I ate over the course of five weeks. By the end of the trip the pizzeria lady started to give me the biggest slice/the slice with the most porcinis. It was the only three euro pizza at the two fifty place but it was so worth it. 

Cinque Terre: Pretzelly super salty bread and all I never need in my sandwiches is salami.

Roma: Super thin mushroom and sausage pizza. I think there was supposed to be olives on this one but I couldn't find any.

Roma: The only filling salad we could find in Italy. Avocado, salmon and rocket.

Firenze: Salmon and cream cheese bagels from the Deluxe Cafe. I was in love with their bagels

Train: Prosciutto cotto, pecorino and paprika pringles. (I love chip sandwiches).

Siena: Seafood cous cous. 

Siena: Tagliatelle with truffles. THis and the cheese filled gnocchi were my favourite. I originally ordered it just because the English translation on the menu simply called it "noodles to the hypocrite" and I thought that was funny (plus it had truffles) and I stand by ordering it because it was delicious, but my waiter was much nicer to my eating companion who ordered Sienese pici. 

Viena: We didn't have time to go on a gondola so I bought a pizza gondola and it was delicious. 

Venice: Tagliatelle with porcini mushrooms. I'm easy. I have favourites.

Verona: Porcini mushroom pizza.

Siena: Wurstel! "Nev, why would you order that at the pizza place?"  "WURSTEL!"

Roma: Ravioli with cherry tomatos.

Siena: Last meal at the I Maestri. Seafood Spaghetti.

And finally, rest in peace Jeff Conaway, because he already got left out of the Emmys' in memoriam and that can't happen twice.