In the spirit of “you’ll be a long time dead” in general things stay pretty busy over here at Mathom House. The past two weeks (possibly my first two week long vacation ever) went like this:

• Camping at Deschutes River over the weekend
• Came home, packed, left on Tuesday for Tales of the Cocktail.
• Spent 8 days attending seminars, hanging in bars with cocktail bloggers and eating myself silly. New Orleans was amazing and wonderful, and thanks to the ER docs at Tulane University Hospital for diagnosing Craig with gout. That rich food is no joke.
• Got home on Weds, crashed.
• Got up on Thurs cleaned the whole house in anticipation of arriving houseguests Humu and Rich. We had a ball trolling around, drinking at the Galley, then saw them off to the Coast.
• Saturday was spent staring off into space.
• Sunday was Teardrop’s 1st Anniversary party, which was lovely.



• Monday was back to work and lots of emails to answer.

Whew.

I met some lovely wonderful people at Tales, who I swear I will thank and link later but right now I am Zzzzzz.

Here I am, telling the story Ugly Fish to a room full of toddlers (and their kind parents) with my homemade flannel board. My friends are very kind to let me hijack a peaceful Memorial Day BBQ for my education. Enjoy!

No one needs to feel sorry for me, but I just got this 24″ iMac at work and it is hard to find good desktop pics! I can’t take Apple’s serene nature pictures for long.

Me in 2002, originally uploaded by tikimama.

I used to have long, luxurious hair, and acne. In 2002, I spent eight months taking Accutane, which is the atom bomb of acne drugs. It worked fine, but it took a lot of my hair with it (permanent hair loss is one of those things they don’t mention much, they’re busy telling you about all the awesome birth defects it causes). I chopped my hair and moved on to cute short cuts, but sometimes I really do miss all that hair.

This is somewhere between the really vivid red I used to dye it and my natural blond. I had forgotten how much hair I used to have until I randomly found this pic. Honestly, I think it looks better short (the fact that I lost 35lbs between those two pics doesn’t hurt).

Craig and I are binging (ha!) on You Are What You Eat on BBC America. I know it has been canceled in the UK already, but apparently BBC America has purchased all three seasons. You should watch it! The voice over is hysterical, and you can feel superior (like us) if your diet is better than endless fry ups and pasties and donuts.

It is played twice a day with How Clean is Your House? which should NOT be watched while eating.

Sometimes I don’t think I’ll get over the fact that I don’t live in England. Except we bought a house and stuff, guess I will have to be satisfied with vacations. We’re closing on the house on Monday, which is super stressful. We’re coping with heavy drinking (as usual).

I know everyone likes pictures, so here is a photo booth set I dug up from 2003, of me & Craig and Craig & Blair.

Last night Craig and I stopped in at Teardrop Lounge, a lovely place that Blair deserves nothing but praise for introducing us to. Also, Blair sucks because did I need a gorgeous cocktail lounge 15 minutes from work? No. Thank goodness they don’t open until 4, if I could go there for lunch I’d never come back to work.

We had a lovely evening - Teardrop really does have wonderful drinks. I don’t write about cocktail crap here much - I leave that kind of blather to the pros - but you all know I quite like drinking them. For reasons unknown (probably because I am the youngest in my family and the urge to be the bratty little sister never goes away) I kept giving Daniel (the Man of Teardrop) shit about his cocktails, calling then [unenthusiastic tone] “all right.” His revenge was to make me & Craig (who, being the smart husband he is, stayed out of it) a Last Word with Chartreuse VEP (Craig calls this a “Final Word,” Daniel voted for “Ultimate Word”). Killing with kindness, I tell you. Licorous (specifically the lovely bartender, Sara) gets all the credit/blame for finally turning me on to Chartreuse.

You guys should hit up Teardrop - maybe come to Tiki Third Tuesday on February 19th! - and be nice to Daniel (and David!). I’m allowed to be mean, but you aren’t.

Those of you who know me well (considering the extremely limited readership of this blog, that’s probably like 5 people, one of whom lives with me) know I binge on books/movies/tv shows/things. I get into something and just sort of wallow in it for while until I’m saturated in it, then I chill. Tragically, I haven’t done this with school! But I’ve been into some other stuff lately.

Here are my latest obsessions, in case you care:

• Doctor Who (I had never watched it before, I have no context. But it’s brilliant!) And it lead me to…
• Torchwood (Like X-Files except everyone sees the aliens!) And it led me to…
• John Barrowman (A happy gay man who sings? And he likes dogs? I’m sold)
• Julia Quinn (I like romance novels, sure, but I’d never really been honestly jealous that I hadn’t written one until When He Was Wicked).
• Three Dots and a Dash. Craig’s been keen on them lately, and I am sold. I’m also 2.5 sheets to the wind right now, thanks in part to said cocktail.

Lately I’m also sort of obsessing in general about food and cocktails. Of course there are a ton of cocktail and food blogs out there (see my blogroll) but it all seems so…pretentious I guess. I mean, I love good and good cocktail a LOT, but it doesn’t need to be so snotty. I guess I always think of my Granny, who made the most gorgeous wonderful food but never graduated high school (she told me once she got married (at 15 to my Grandpa, a really tall angry Scot with a drinking problem) because she was tired of picking cotton!). She never would have known the word “de-glazing” but that’s exactly what she did with bacon-cooked greens when she dumped vinegar in them. I guess the whole concept of “peasant food” is intriguing me (though how condescending is that term?). I just want to make good, real food that is pleasing to the planet and the palate, without making a big to-do about it.

Have you guys seen this commercial? I know they are trying to convince me to buy an overpriced electronic device, but I really want Sven!

Actually, any traditional valet/butler will do: Jeeves, Bunter, Ianto.