Good Eats When I'm On My Own

Just kidding. On my own for the weekend, I didn't make anything great, what's the point? Who's gonna say "thank you, it was delicious" and kiss me? Nobody. So Friday, alone for dinner: store bought dunes: frozen meat dumplings with sour cream and soy sauce. Saturday night for dinner I spiced it up, cause I was tipsy. I made the other half of the dunes, but this time I used double the sour cream, figuring, I can use the extra sauce as dip for potato chips. But instead of eating the dunes and leaving half the sauce, I spiced it up even more, cause I'm an idiot. I decided to eat the dunes as part of the dip: take a couple chips, scoop up a dune, and eat it all! I need to hang up a mirror in the kitchen; it'd be interesting to see exactly what a culinary cretin looks like in action. Sunday morning I ate the rest of the chips for breakfast. For lunch I went all out: instant mashed potatoes with hot dog slices mixed in. I hate hot dogs, really hate them, but they're the only precooked meat I had. Good thing I wasn't on my own more than 48 hours, I probably would have died of malnutrition!

A Number (4) of Things to Watch Out For

1. When you buy tickets to the theater, make sure it's the drama theater, not the musical theater
2. Before buying them, make sure Fiddler on the Roof is less than three and a half hours long, so you don't have to leave during intermission and buy another pair of tickets to see the end of the show another day
3. When buying a bottle of tomato juice to make a cocktail to bring along, making the show bearable, make sure it's acutally juice; I accidentally bought a bottle of sauce (wtf?!) and ended up with a rather thick Bloody Mary
4. When you get home and make quesadillas, don't forget to put jalapenos in them

The week in clothes

Monday I wore my blue striped shirt, today it was the orance striped one. In between it was white Polo Ralph Lauren that Regan left at my place stateside once. I skipped the tie with the striped shirts, but forgot the tie with the white one. Luckily I keep a spare at work, a blue one I got free with a crumby shirt once. I don't wear suit pants during crappy weather, which most of the winter; it takes a toll on the pants bottoms. I wear a jacket, though, still, gray-brown-brown so far this weak. Tomorrow I'll go gray again, I suppose. Friday will be casual day at work (only for me), so I'll just wear a sweater. If anybody votes for which sweater I should wear, I'll strongly consider it. I can't believe I wrote this!

Tree Huggers in Lithuania!

Oh yes, we have tree huggers now, just like you Americans do, you think you're so special. Our tree huggers are very concerned about the environment and environmentalism and conservationism and clean air and water and animals. Not!

On the way to the bus stop this morning, I did see someone hugging a tree, but it wasn't to protest deforestation. I thought he was hugging the tree to keep from falling down drunk, and I still thing that's how his relationship with the tree began. He was asleep. The only thing he was trying to conserve, apparently, was his verticalism.

p.s. this Onion article reminds me of something awesome I made over the weekend: cheeseburgers with jalapeños mixed in! Lately I been mixing jalapeños or jalapeño brine into everything.

What's my IQ, I wonder.

Rachel's blog led me to this one IQ test, on which I scored a measly 117. Disappointed, I tried to find a more reliable one using the most reliable advisor I have, google. I took the test on the number one hit (non-sponsored), which scored me a whopping 144, one point short of "Genius (Less than 1% of test takers)." Well, I'm sure I did do extremely well on the test, I was certain or nearly certain across the board. But if it scores me that high, maybe it was too easy.

How can I actually find out online? And don't suggest anything that takes more than 15 minutes, I don't wanna know that bad.

Oh, and by the way, I tried this other one, and to make sure it would really give me my score for free I clicked finished without answering any questions at all, and I scored a 51. How's that? You get the first 51 points for being alive, is that how it works? My cat's got enough sense to do that, is that her IQ? Here's the stats:

Your age adjusted IQ score is 51 and the average score is 100.

Your Grade: Low

Total number of questions: 30
Questions answered: 0
Questions not answered: 30
Questions answered correctly: 0
Questions answered incorrectly: 30
Percentage correct answers: 0%

Try this to relax a bit for a minute when you're still working at 6 p.m.

Read recipes on Epicurious. When you find a comment about an intention to experiment with something recipe related, suggest to the commenter loudly, out loud, that is, and not keeping your voice down, that he experiment with something else, something much more vulgar, "Why don't you experiment with ______ instead?!" Utter something so vulgar that once you've suggested it you have to look around quickly to make sure nobody heard you, despite your being the only English speaking person in your office. That's what I call relaxation!

An interesting thing to see outside a Children's Hospital

Patients smoking!

Do you ever see someone with a mole with a long hair sticking out and you just grab it and yank it out? If yes, know this:

When the mouse is away, the cat will...not do the dishes very effectively. See my special lady and I, we live the good old fashioned way, by splitting up responsibilities so as to specialize and be more efficient. Also old fashioned is that I consider myself the cat. The non-traditional thing, as you must know if you read this blog, is that I do the cooking. Anyway, the point is I don't normally do the dishes; I only do them as a pledge of reconciliation, which is very seldom. Now that I'm on my own for a bit, though, I've developed a very good system for doing the dishes, which I'd like to share with you:
1. rinse dish with water (no soap); if clean, set to dry in rack
2. if not clean, leave to soak for 24 hours; if dish is necessary for cooking, scrape with spatula and use immediately
3. if not clean after 24 of soaking, soak for another 24 hours
4. repeat steps 2-3 until clean

P.S. I made sweet and sour pork last night, it was unbelievably awesome.

Usually, no, whatever, I was gonna write about what I had for dinner, but then I realized all I do anymore ir write about food, so forget it.

Instead I'll write about drink. In Lithuania, we drink kefir, or kefyras. I'll tell you why that's funny after you read this Onion article.

Read it? Well, I'll explain what kefir is now then. It's chunky sour milk. It's milk, it's sour, and it's the consistency of drinkable yoghurt, with big old chunks! Is it good? Yeah, it's ok from time to time, especially with Cepelinai. Why do I drink it every day? It's wicked healthy: if you drink five liters of it daily, you can eat all the red meat you want and it won't raise your cholosterol or blood pressure.

Cepelinas Recipe for Cepelinai

Cause you never eat just one, right? Especially if you're pregnant. Not that I'm pregnant, or anybody else I know, that's just something I heard, once. Well, one of my former students is, but let's stay on target. Stay on target!

Here's my not-a-complete-success recipe for Cepelinai:

1. 5 pounds potatos for two people (that's enough if you don't want left overs...which we did): 2/3 grated, the rest boiled and mashed (the proper part to grate is more like 4/5 or greater)
2. no salt (you should add plenty of salt)
3. forget the egg (don't forget the egg)
4. 1 g. crushed vitamin C (try five grams: with only one the Cepelinai turned very dark; you can also add a bit of milk to the mashed potatos to combat this)
5. skip the added potato starch (don't skip the added potato starch; rolling the Cepelinai in it will make them look much more proper, i hear, and less like gypsies rolled into the trailer park for the holidays)
6. use a normal amount of flour in the mushroom sauce (go very light on the flour you add to whatever sauce you make, unless you like eating potato sandwiches)
7. do add lean bacon to the cooked ground meat filling (yeah. that's the only thing I did right!)

I took a photo for posterity, but I'm not including it...it's...not appetizing...

We ate 'em though, and I'm confident that next time they'll be fantestical.

Maybe...I need another hobby?

Birthday presents:

"I know you like cooking, so here's a potato grater!"

"I know you like cooking, so here's a meat thermometer!"

"I know you like cooking, so here's a pizza cutter!"

They're awesome presents, but maybe having only one hobby (playing Alpha Centauri doesn't count, does it?) makes me shallow and boring to shop for?

p.s. anybody got a recipe for Kėdainių Blynai???

Dry, you mother scratchers!

There's something I'd like everyone to know;

I'm going to print on my business cards from now on;

I'm going to have a sky writer proclaim this fact white on blue;

I'm going to include it in a p.s. in every letter and email and sms I write;

I'm going to mention it every time I introduce myself;

I'm going to tatoo it on my forehead;

It's going in my blog desctiption:

I DON'T DRINK SWEET WINE OR CHAMPAGNE!

Over the past few months, I've received a few bottles of champagne as gifts, and I've been served wine and champagne at several parties. I don't drink it sweet! I don't drink it semi-sweet! I can barely gag it down semi-dry! I need my wine and champagne dry! I want it dry as the Mohabe desert, I like it as dry as vampires like blood, which they do, alot!

But I can never receive a gift, look at the label, and say, I'm sorry, I can't drink this...it's not kosher. So I'm letting everybody know now, let's not have any mix ups in the future. Thanks for your cooperation.

what's up with levi's jeans? they only last for a year now, has it always been like that?

Stupidest trip of my life, I there's no emoticon to describe how stupid public healthcare is. On some days I work in places public transport won't take me, so I take compensated cabs. Today I didn't take one all the way back to my normal workplace though, because I had to go to the polyclinic. I had to, told me my special somebody...

I had to go get my record to bring to her. I go to the dermatologist, and there's literally 20 people waiting there. Hoping they were waiting for somebody else I just went in, and she said I have to wait, and I asked if that wait would be very long, and she said yes, she's got a lot of patients. Can I make an appointment? No: first come, first serve. Everytime you go to the doctor, you risk spending the whole day there.

I went there Monday, incidentally, and waited; she was absent for at least 15 minutes at 9:30 a.m. before I gave up. And then I gotta go to work by bus, cause I can't get two compensated cabs for one trip. So I've sacrificed two mornings this week to public health care, and I'd just like to say, go to hell.

Me? Slap Happy!

I laughed so loud at the third guy's response, I reminded myself of Lokys...

The Onion American Voices

Gender Bender Weekend

This weekend I finally bought a cordless drill. I been lookin' around for one for half a year. Where's the one I got my old man for Christmas 12 years ago for like $30?! They're all at least $150, that's the cheapest at most places. I finally found one for 142LT (~$60) Saturday, which was lucky cause I really couldn't wait anymore, I had to fix this desk so I could rearrange the furniture to make a play area for someone, dammit. I fixed it up, with a greater than 50% success rate for drilling a hole in the right place on the first try. Owning the drill and operating it successfully made me feel like a real man in a new way.

Also this weekend, I created bread for the first time in my life. The only thing I've whipped up with yeast before is pizza dough. Creating pizza isn't flamboyant, as long as you top it with dollops of spicy sauce, dabs of flesh and sautéed vegetables, and dashes of pepper flakes. Which I do, with aplomb. But what about bread? It was potato bread, is that a deviation from normal, pure baking? I don't know. Cooking may be manly, but I'm afraid baking is feminine. As good as the bread tasted, baking it make me feel like a fertile, delicate woman.

I guess I should post something, though I find it hard to believe anybody's reading this, since the politeness one didn't get any comments...

So New Year's Eve was a blast. On Christmas we found out that our special baby's special grandmother offered to take her for a week, leaving me and my special lady to fly anywhere we want to celebrate n.y.e. Every flight out of Lithuania till that time and into Lithuania after that time was booked solid, leaving us in the "party town" of Klaipeda, and yes, I'm using rock-n-roll quotes, not regular quotes, that's my thing but you can use it, cause I know you're going to steal it anyway. Luckily though my buddies Ed Pečiulis and Vytas Juškys came into town to celebrate along with some celebrities. We joined them to catch up and party. Tons of fun in Klaipeda Hotel, one highlight was Vyto room with a window from the room into the bathroom, leaving him on the can in perfect view of everyone in the room. Nice. Yummy drinks and stuff and out to dinner, luckily early enough for three of us, but Ed didn't call with his order in time, everyplace closed at 9, what the fuck? He had to make himself sandwiches. Then down to the Incluto show in Honolulu, which was awesome, then out to the street for midnight, then back for the rest of the Incluto show, which was awesome. Got to the point when dancing is still possible, but not standing up. Good New Year's!

Christmas Dish Miracles (made by me)

Top of the list: Eggnog! Homemade is way better than store bought, especially since there isn't any in Lithuania. Compared to this, the other miracles are merely hocus pocus.

In fact, why don't I skip writing about the other things? I mean, the cod was awesome, but not compared to the eggnog. Nothing is awesome compared to my homemade eggnog, not even white russians or margharitas or Fry's dad's special eggnog. The eggnog was fantastic. I was afraid it would suck, like homemade whisky sours, which made it even more awesomer when it didn't.

Hint: 28 servings might be too much for 5 people or even 7. You'd think 5 people could kill a gallon easy, delicious as it is, but not after a long, long day and a long, long dinner of 12 dishes. You'll just want to go papa.

They gotta learn politeness

I have a second job at the moment teaching advanced English to a few groups of professionals. So in class this morning, I ask each student as I go through role call "What's new? Anything interesting happen this morning?" Each student talks a bit, it's like a warm up activity. One student went on for about 15 minutes about a chat he had with his CEO about why it's vital for them to have alternate energy sources. We got through all the students, and I asked if they had any question. The point is, I choose a question for role call that I'll have an answer for myself. They have to learn to be polite and ask the same question back, like: How you doing? Good, how you doing? Finally one does, and I say:

Something certainly did! I got in a cab to come to work, and the driver didn't know wher Soc. Mokslo Kolegija is, so I just to him to go down Minijos gatve. He was trying to figure out where it was, but I just told him I'd explain it along the way. Then I'm thinking, when we get there I'll point out the college next door, so he knows where it is for future reference. That'll be my good deed of the day, or whatever, and then I screamed at the top of my lungs "ATSARGIAI!!!" And then BAM (I punch my right hand into my left palm) we hit this lady in the middle of the street. She rolls up agains the windshield, then off the hood onto the street. We both just sit there silently for what seemed like about 30 seconds, then he got out to help her up. I could tell before he even got out that she wasn't dead, she was already moving around on the ground. What was I supposed to do at that point? Get out and help? Get out and run away? I didn't know. I was in a state of shock. When she stood up I could see something sticking out of the top of her purse, a large bottle of vodka. A cop stopped on the other side of the street and came over. They put her in the back of the cab. Finally I got over it and got out, told the cop the driver wasn't at fault, gave him my phone number, and just walked away.

Student goes, "That was your cab?! Traffic's backed up for miles!"

Another student goes, "So...you had an intersting morning?"

"Labas...WTF?!?! WTF!!!"

That's what my special lady said when I came home yesterday...

It was a normal day at the office, I intended to stay til 6:30. Two of the things I had to do stat were create two literature tests for my students to take today and tomorrow, and correct their last batch of esseys. After I explained what the test would be on (everything--ten time periods with an author from each, and even the best student in the group goes to her friend, "palauk, kas tas Whitman'as?"), they were very nervous. They don't understand the bell curve concept, which i use as a flexible guideline with my small groups here. They actually believe it's possible for everyone to fail, and no amount of explaining calms them down. So I made an offer to let them take the test after winter break instead, and they pounced on it.

Those two stat jobs put off, I was in a good mood...jolly, if you will. I started talking to a colleague about Christmas, and Christmas trees. She explained how easy and cheap it is to get a tree, and I was feeling so jolly I decided to do it, unbenounced to my family. Getting a tree hadn't been a priority, since we're not celebrating in Klaipeda. So it'll be a jolly surprise.

My buddy Egle's in Klaipeda for the week, so I asked her for a lift to a place near home where I'd ask my special lady's brother, whom I hadn't ever met before, to meet me to help with the tree... "Tell you brother to meet me at Maxima, I won't say why..." Luckily, I didn't have to go through with that bizarre request, cause Egle wasn't busy and offered to help with her car.

They sell trees at the kebab place right near College, but I need to get a stand first. How can I buy a tree when I don't have a stand? So we go to Acropolis. They didn't have trees in the parking lot, which is where they're supposed to be. Turns out they only have them in Maxima, but they only have imported ones, which are expensive. Information told us that only the Old Market has cheap Lugan trees, and the Kebab place. Well, as least I'll get the stand here. There was one type of good stand, but there was no price tag. How much does it cost? Noone will tell you. Apparently, Christmas time is Bitch time in Klaipeda. Normally the employees there are at my beck and call, I've always been pleased with the service there. Not now. "Can you help me find out how much this costs?"

"No, we can't do that," or "No! Can't you see I'm busy?" or "You'll find out at the register."

I go ask at information, and the employee making copies goes, "What, should I put everything I'm doing aside just cause you need help!?"

"YES! Of course you should! Jesus, don't you know who I am? I'm the customer! I'm the client, I need help, who cares about copies when there's a customer in need?! Everyone's always been helpful before, what, Christmas time rolls around, and Maxima doesn't give a shit about its customers all of a sudden?"

He led me to a scanner for customer use that's conveniently located on the back of a pillar, facing away from the middle of the store. The only way you could happen upon it is if you're looking for discount yarmulkes in that little nook corner of the store. I bought the stand. On the way back to the car Egle goes, "don't you need ornaments too?" Oops.

We have to drive all the way back to the Kebab place, cause the Old Market seems to be closed. I get a good tree, with a pedagogue discount. For ornaments we went to another Maxima, on the other side of town a farther than where I live. As we drive in, Egle goes "Jop tvai mat... Jop tvai mat!!!" (Terrible Russian curse words) The parking lot's full of Christmas trees. Whatever, we loaded up on ornaments and skedaddled back home. We got the tree out slowly, since it was a big fudaker and it was jammed in there all the way up to the windshield. My special lady hears us coming and opens the door and says,

"Labas"--massive intake of breath--"WHAT THE FUCK!? WHAT THE FUCK!!!"

And my special baby's jaw drops, eyes wide, and she starts screaming "KAS ČIA!? KAS ČIA?! KAS ČIA!? KAS ČIA?! KAS ČIA!?" (What's this!?) Good thing I got the plastic ornaments, since her understanding of "Let's decorate the tree" is pretty similar to her understanding of "Let's bounce these orbs on the floor!"

Dos and Don'ts of a Trip to Portugal

Do help the old couple who don't speak English or German get to their terminal with you; it'll make you feel good, especially when you find out they're Lithuanian!

Don't expect many people to speak even basic English.

Do bring sandwich stuffs, since the closest pizzaria is on the other side of the mountain.

Don't buy the wifi service for 20 euros/day, you won't use enough of it to be worth it, especially since it doesn't work in the fucking rooms, you have to sit in the lobby or bar.

Don't order the sausage and cheese platter, unless you like things that smell and taste like vomit.

Do be honest with the waiter when he asks you if you like it; an assertive "no!" will win you a free seafood salad that they were probably going to throw away. It'll be very good, actually, what you (I) should have ordered in the first place.

Don't be a pussy, bitch about the flash being broken on the disposable camera you got at the hotel until you get all the way up to the manager; he'll give you your money back, let you keep the camera, and state that he's canceling the hotel's agreement with kodak!

Do respect the fact that you're in a great wine making country: buy dėž for your golf flask! (photo to come)

Don't hesitate to return the dėž after it gives you a pounding headache!

Do ask for pedagogue discounts; I got up to 20% off from street vendors.

Don't go looking for Zemarin (locally made clothing, always my gift of choice) on foot and after six; you won't find it and your legs will hurt for days.

Do have cocktails before the Oceanarium; it'll be much more intersting if you're going alone.

Don't have cocktails before the National Confectionary; you'll accidentally spend 30 euros on sweets for your colleagues.