I could do 12 days of Christmas in 12 hours.

Note: this post was originally started about a week ago.

Today was just all kinds of awesome.

 

The last couple of weeks have been insanely stressful.  Like heart-palpitations-every-time-I-do-something-as-strenuous-as-walking-to-my-car stressful.  I tried cutting caffeine entirely, and no improvement.  The only thing that helped was this week.  It’s the last week of classes, and I had a week built into my syllabus just in case we had a weather cancellation that would require making up a lab.  That means all I have this week are lectures, office hours, and catching up with grading.  And today, I actually have…<drumroll>…A DAY OFF.

 

Not only do I have a day with no classes, I got my lecture notes fully prepped for Thursday on Tuesday morning, so I can truly take the day off.  SO I DID.  Sure, I have lab reports and quizzes to grade, and a big game-show-style review to prepare for Friday’s last lecture, and a quiz to write, but dammit, I am doing NONE of that today.

 

Today, I shop.

Correction: Today, I drive an hour to find places in which to shop.  I did most of my Christmas shopping online last night, but there are some things that simply must be done in-person.  It began with an eye appointment.  I have not had one of those in nearly 6 years.  I have been wearing the same 2-for-$99 glasses for SIX YEARS.  While I can tell my prescription hasn’t changed much at all in that time, my sense of style certainly has, and my optical coverage DEFINITELY has.  Of course, that is also enough time for me to have forgotten how agonizing this process can be – nothing emphasizes the asymmetry of your face quite like applying stage makeup or shopping for glasses.  And I tried on absolutely every pair in LensCrafters and could not find a damn thing I liked.  SO discouraging.  Luckily, this mall also has a JCPenney optical and Sears optical, where the glasses are cheaper and…well…less stylish.  But seeing as how the current trends in eyewear are all tiny, rectangular things that look absolutely ridiculous on my incredibly large head, I’m okay with being out of fashion.  At Sears, my final stop, I found not one but TWO pairs of frames I actually liked, both of which were on clearance which means I didn’t even spend enough to use up the allowance on my optical plan.  WIN.

On my way out of the mall, $7 boots.  WIN.

Still getting over a sinus infection, so hit the appropriate part of town to get Asian groceries and a bowl of pho.  WIN.  On my way there, passed a World Market.  Found an absolutely perfect and very reasonably priced little wine bar that will most likely be lovely in my apartment.  Also picked up a couple of clearance wines and some spices I needed for Christmas present projects.  DOUBLE WIN.

Stopped at health food store to get essential ingredient for homemade cocktail bitters, which are going to be made into Christmas presents for Dad.  WIN.

Stopped at fancy cigar shop to get some good tobacco for a culinary experiment.  Very helpful salesdude had no idea why I wanted to make tobacco-flavored cocktails, but allowed me to sniff my way through the pipe tobacco jars until I was satisfied.  WIN.  (Also, got to this part of town 10 minutes after the meters became free.  WIN.)

Made my way home, and stopped for remaining project ingredients.  This involved a stop at the party store for a bottle of rye and a cigar.  As I pondered the stock and made my choice, another (perhaps chemically enhanced) customer at the register said something along the lines of, “firing up a cigar tonight, huh?  nice…” to which I replied, “not exactly.”  He responded with a nod of understanding, a chuckle, and an, “I gotcha…”

I can probably guess what he thought I was doing tonight, but I’m quite certain his thought process WASN’T, “duuuuude…she is totally going to make bitters out of that.”

 

I finally arrived at home, and started putting up all of my Christmas decorations, including my Tiny Tree:

Awww…isn’t it cute?

 

In short…I found my Christmas spirit. 

You know what else I found?  The fine print in the Target commercials.  I have been DYING to track down the music they’re using this year, but since I generally watch TV as background noise with my laptop or a stack of papers in my lap, I have never noticed the button at the end that tells you that you can download the music FOR FREE from their website.  Seriously, go.  Get it.  Best Christmas album I’ve found in AGES.  It’s hard to find such a good blend of miraculously non-cheesy and delightfully over-cheesed-in-a-good-way holiday music.  I particularly love the Toy Jackpot commercial (WHY OH WHY ISN’T THERE MORE GOOD CHRISTMAS HIPHOP???), but as a single girl living alone, Tiny Tree Christmas is kind of my theme song.

What?  My dad once found his Christmas spirit via an impulse purchase of “A Polka Christmas.”  I shit you not.

 

And now, a week after I started writing this post, I have given my final exam and am now unofficially on Winter Break, and those online presents have started to roll in:

Look!  Tiny Santa has come and left Tiny Presents!

 

So at this point, my bitters are brewing, my present-making supplies are en route, the ice has finally all been chipped off of my car, and perhaps most importantly, all of my brick-and-mortar shopping is DONE.  I even had to go back to Grand Rapids to go to a MALL… on a SATURDAY…and managed to keep my spirits up.  There are cookies in the dining room, egg nog in the fridge, and the new bar is well-stocked.  So when are you coming over?

Disassemble? No disassemble!

Dear World Market,

 

As a single girl, I have put together a lot of flat-pack furniture in my day.  I am no longer fazed by the words “assembly required”…nay, I am thrilled by them because it means I can buy furniture that fits in my car, and enjoy the satisfaction of putting it together when I get home.

 

When I got my prized purchase home this evening, my first sign of trouble should have been the box.  The only easy way to open it is at the end.  The first rule of Flat Pack is…you don’t talk about Flat Pack.  But the SECOND rule of Flat Pack is that the box opens at the top, so that you lift that gorgeous big flap and find the directions at the top of the stack, nestled comfortably in among your flat parts and looking like they are quivering in anticipation of seeing daylight for the very first time inside your apartment.  They should NOT be found at the bottom of the box, after you have carefully extracted every other piece via the small end.

 

Little did I know, my ordeal was only beginning.

 

I don’t know what the official language of World Market is.  Perhaps in your language, “assembly required” actually means “apprenticeship in cabinetry required and ownership of power tools may be for the best.”  But this was the single-most difficult flat-pack I have EVER assembled.

 

While I do appreciate the fact that this assembly was done with a screwdriver instead of the ubiquitous hex keys that Ikea holds so dear, and that you actually include some extra hardware just in case, I do have a few bones to pick with you.  First of all, your pilot holes are not all in the correct places.  You have no idea how disorienting that is when you have counted your pieces and counted your hardware, but neglected to count your holes.  Second, why do you call it part A when it is the last one to be installed?  Third, why, DEAR GOD, WHY? do you force me to install my own hinges?  I will gladly pay the sweatshop-dwelling orphans an extra 5 bucks if it means my pilot holes will be properly located and I don’t have to install hinges.  Their tiny hands will probably do a better job of it than mine anyway.  At this point, I would have been happier had you just packed up a bunch of boards and assorted power tools and let me go to town.  DAMN YOU, YOU FAIR-TRADING SONS OF BITCHES!

 

Perhaps this is karmic retribution for opening a bottle of wine and watching Celebrity Rehab before assembling my bar.  But seriously, should it have taken THREE HOURS to build this???

 

 

Yeah, I didn’t think so either.

Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.

One of the great things about my Thanksgiving trip was the revelation that I could take a train from Grand Rapids to Chicago.  Any time I plan a trip, I always check the Amtrak just in case.  Just in case it’s cheaper, or easier, or just plain better than a TSA patdown or a full day in the car.  And it never is.  Like, NEVER.

 

But this time it was!  I could take a train directly from GR…no transfers!  The train station is right off of the highway, which is a straight shot from where I live!  The train takes 4 hours…less than an hour to get to the train station…this is not looking like a bad alternative to my 4 1/2 hour drive to my aunt’s house in the ‘burbs in unpredictable holiday weekend traffic!  And it’s under $100!

 

Beside the not-having-to-drive factor, and the comfy-seats-with-lots-of-legroom factor, and the not-having-to-be-there-2-hours-early factor, and the fear-of-heights factor, the best thing about taking the train is that I officially had two things:

1) an excuse to hang out downtown for an afternoon.

2) an Exit Strategy when leaving town.

 

Regarding #2…I dearly love my aunt and uncle.  But the Princess is VERY bad at hiding her disappointment.  She thinks she is very low-pressure, but as soon as the last day of your stay arrives, it’s all, “do you want to come to church with us?  We were thinking we’d go out to breakfast after.  Don’t you want to stay for dinner?” 

 

She has a hard time letting go.

 

Enter, “My train leaves at 5:00.”

This is substantially less negotiable than, “I want to hit the road in time to get home in time to do such-and-such” or “I want to beat the traffic.”

 

Regarding #1…I also dearly love the city of Chicago.  And hadn’t been there in almost 2 years.  I would move there in a heartbeat. 

And I LOVE eating there.  Hot dogs and pizza to haute cuisine, and absolutely everything in between.  I now have a good reason to…<drumroll>…HAVE LUNCH IN CHICAGO. 

Whatever.  If you lived where I live, you’d be excited at that prospect too.

Perhaps most importantly, Chicago is home to Rick Bayless, one of the only celebrity chefs at whose temple I actually worship.  I love the man, and I love his food. 

So I send an e-mail to the local cousins.  Say that I am taking the train into town.  Ask if it’s okay if I take a commuter train out to see them that night in their new lovely home that I haven’t seen yet.  One writes back to say that she will bring her toddler out so we can have a lunch date and take the train home together.

THIS IS WHY I LOVE MY COUSINS.  Truly effortless social planning.

 

While I’m waiting for their train to get in, I take a wander through the French Market…and WISH it were going to be open on Sunday so I could pick up some things to take home.  (I’m not going to haul charcuterie around the Midwest in my luggage when I am headed to homes with fridges already stuffed to capacity.)  Because I am deprived, I pick up a couple of pastries and some macarons.  The pastries are meh (but WAY better than what I can get at Meijer), but the macarons are actually rather good.  I am a happy camper.

On the way back to the main train concourse, a random dude on the street stops me to quietly let me know that there are…um…strings hanging between my legs.  I explain that those are just from my scarf.  He is suddenly very embarrassed, because he thought they were…I’m sorry, what, exactly?  Did he think that I had some sort of turbo tampon with several pieces of YARN coming out of it that was actually escaping from my pants of its own accord?

(Seriously, based on his level of embarrassment when I clarified the situation, I think he thought it was some sort of alien feminine hygiene product trying to crawl out of my crotch.  I shit you not.  But he still had the balls to let me know.  Thank you, crazy courteous stranger.)

While waiting for Cousins’ train, I decide this is the time to buy some Garrett’s popcorn.  (If you haven’t had it, then you DON’T KNOW.)  Unfortunately, they are having production issues.  Namely, it will be 15 minutes before they have caramel corn.  Which is a shame, because all I want is a small order of the mix.  This would be a mix of caramel and cheese popcorn.  Like I said…you DON’T KNOW.  It’s one of Oprah’s Favorite Things, and you would be too if you contained that much butter.  So I leave.  And come back.  Behind a woman who orders three giant bags of caramel corn.  You know what that means?  15 minutes before they have caramel corn.  BITCH.  Note to self: NEVER.  GET OUT OF LINE.  NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOUR SHOULDERS ACHE FROM YOUR LUGGAGE.

I get up to the head of the line.  I can SEE more kernels in the bin than I need for my tiny order, which is only half caramel anyway.  I ask the guy if I can please have what I want.  He says no.  I say fine, just give me cheese, with the saddest, most resigned sigh you can possibly imagine.  He thinks better of his response, saying he will give me as much caramel as he can, and somehow I wind up with a medium order, perfectly mixed.  Can we say, “Wahooty was right”???

After my cousin extracts herself from the bizarre automated doors at the platform, we make our way to lunch, braving the sleet to walk 20 minutes with a stroller filled to capacity.  Read: Cousin keeps her eye on the road and kid, I keep eyes akimbo for scattered mittens.  Luckily, Frontera Grill is toddler-friendly – they have crayons, and should you ever go there, take a kid because the kid’s order of guacamole is the perfect appetizer for two adults for only $2.50.

(Said toddler is impossibly adorable, btw.  Rather than eating the guac, she dipped chips and handed them to us.  At one point, I ducked my head under the table looking for dropped blueberries, and looked up to realize she was mimicking me perfectly from her booster seat.  She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she was helping, goddammit.)

Despite our desperate pleading with the cabbie, we miss our train out to the ‘burbs by about 5 minutes.  So we pack ourselves into the next train, which doesn’t leave for half an hour (no small feat with said toddler, stroller, and all of my luggage and..um…how exactly did I amass this many snacks, anyway?).  Cousin gets a call from her husband (who is my actual, biological cousin) and suddenly decides she needs to run out and pick something up for me before our train leaves.

“<Husband> just had a GREAT idea for an anniversary present for you.” (I first met her on one of those long-ago days-after-Thanksgiving bar nights, a few years before she married into my family, when she was just the “awesome, awesome girl” my cousin swore he wasn’t serious about.  Sucker.)

The Awesome, Awesome Girl returns with a cold tallboy of Bud Light. 

“<Husband> and I like to drink a tallboy on the train home on Fridays.”

What can I say?  We are Classy Broads.

I arrive in the ‘burbs toting an empty tallboy of crappy beer. 

I am Home. 

Thank you for letting me be myself again.

Thanksgiving always seems to be good fodder for blog posts, whether they be of the nostalgic or culinary variety.  And this year is no exception.

 

I miss Toronto like crazy.  Seriously, sometimes in fits of homesickness I wonder if I should have stayed there unemployed rather than moving here to take a job.  Oh, sure, reality eventually sets in when I realize how much I love my damn job and how little I actually hate the small-town Midwestern life, but I do miss Hogtown dearly.  But the one time of year that always made me second-guess moving there in the first place was Thanksgiving.  I had four Thanksgivings across the border, and they were hard.  I’m not sure I realized just how hard until I came back.  One of the perks of moving back to the Midwest is that I am now close enough to Chicago to go back to my old Thanksgiving routine.

 

Unfortunately, my old Thanksgiving routine is no more.  Gone are the days of big dinners at my aunt’s house, and nights on the town the day after.  Most of the cousins are now married off and procreating.  So my weekend is more about making lunch dates downtown with toddlers when my train gets in, and packing up the car for a trip to Green Bay to see the twins I haven’t met yet and the cousinlets I haven’t seen in more than 2 years.  One of them, at 6 years of age, remembers the monkey noises I made on the monkey bars when she was 4.  Her little sister channels my grandmother with eerie authenticity.

 

And even through the cold/flu/sinus infection I’ve brought home with me (courtesy of one half of that set of twins), the memory of a redheaded 2-year-old lighting up on a Sunday morning as she notices you in the room and exclaims, “<Wahooty> is awake!” makes me unbelievably thankful.

 

I give thanks for my job.  I give thanks to the people who took care of me when I didn’t have one.  I give thanks for my beautiful new nephew.  And I give thanks for a family that remembers that they love me, no matter how long I go without visiting them.

Request Week: Stop trying to make “fetch” happen.

Courtesy of Melissa Davey:

“Lindsay Lohan.”

To be honest, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about Lindsay Lohan at this point.  Sure, I think she actually has a great talent somewhere under all of the booze and blow, and it’s sad to see all of that go to waste.  And Mean Girls is still a movie I will watch any time it’s on TV (although, to be fair, that probably has more to do with my devotion to Tina Fey than anything else…I will also probably end up watching Baby Mama every time it’s on TV as well, even though it was fairly awful).  But who knows, maybe someday she’ll go the way of Robert Downey, Jr., and I LURVE him.

In the meantime, I can’t say I’m capable of working up a whole lot to say about her, aside from my fervent wish that she would just go away, get help, and make another movie with Tina Fey.  I anxiously await my invite to the premiere of Mean Baby Mama Girl.

But, while I’ve been putting off this particular request until I could think of something appropriately clever and insightful to say (because I happen to dig Melissa D’s blog, she’s brave enough to use her full name on the internets, and she’s one of only two people to make any requests for RW), I’ve been occasionally checking in on my webcounter to see how many hits I’m getting (answer: not many, but far more than I should given that I never post), and what keywords people are Googling to get here.

In my keyword analysis, buried amongst all of the variations on “agnes, agatha, jermaine, and jack” and “wahooty blog,” etc….one entry that read:

“orange granny panties”

You know what the first hit is when you Google “orange granny panties”?

A story about Lindsay Lohan.

Best. Birthday present. Ever.

I.  LOVE.  THIS WOMAN.

 

Watch the full episode. See more Mark Twain Prize.

You’ve got a bright future in sales…

Dear Maurices,

 

Why is it that you (and other clothing stores) seem to require my name, rank, and serial number before you will sell me a t-shirt?  When I was living in Canada, I never had to have the following conversation when purchasing clothing:

 

Well-Meaning Salesgirl: Phone number?

Wahooty: um…<racks brain and eventually comes up with phone number>

W-MS: First and last name?

Wahooty: No.

W-MS: <confused and mildly distressed look> (her manager never told her how to handle this in training) It’s just so we can keep track of…

Wahooty: No.

W-MS: <more distressed> Do you know what it’s for?

Wahooty: I know what it’s for.  There is no reason my stores need to ‘keep track of’ anything.  I just want to buy my t-shirt in peace.  I am a big girl – if I need to return something, I will either find my receipt or suck up the loss.  I will not, under any circumstances, just turn over my first and last name and my unlisted phone number.  Your corporate marketing team will just have to respect the fact that I like my privacy, and my identity-theft-free existence.  Here’s the thing – I pay with a credit card.  If you keep records of your transactions, like you are supposed to, YOU ALREADY HAVE MY FULL NAME.  IT IS PRINTED ON THE RECEIPT.  Why on earth would you have any need to manually enter my identity into your computer for any other reason than for tracking my purchasing habits, which just happen to be MY OWN DAMN BUSINESS.

 

Okay, so I usually stop around that second sentence.  But really, darlings, as though your hard-sell salesgirls weren’t irritating enough.  “Do you have a Maurice’s card?  How are you doing?  Is there anything you’re looking for today?  Well, just to let you know, we’re running XXX promotion right now.  How did that work out for you?  No luck?  You’re still just one item away from <insert special promotion>!  No seriously, didn’t you want to pad my commission just ONE MORE TINY BIT????”

 

As far as I can make out, this is the only store in my town that pays on a commission basis.  It is also, unfortunately, the only halfway decent place to purchase clothing.  But I will suck it up.  I will resign myself to driving my ass to Grand Rapids to purchase clothing, and to tolerating the Bitchy Banana Republic Guy because at least I’m not worried about him asking for my social security number the next time I want to buy a scarf.  I will not buy anything else from your store.

 

Even though you make my all-time favorite t-shirt. 

 

It’s over, buddy.  Don’t call me, don’t e-mail me, don’t peek inside my window to try to get a glimpse of me naked.  And above all, don’t try to sell me a damn thing.

 

love and kisses,

Wahooty

"Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything."–Kurt Vonnegut

 

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday dear me-eee, happy birthday to me.

 

I am now in my 33rd year.  That’s right, my Jesus Year.  While the answer to WWJD? remains to be seen, let’s at least hope that I’ll manage to skip that whole crucifixion thing.

It has been a hell of a year (emphasis on the Hell).  This is a weird birthday since I think mentally I’m still somewhere in early October.  I’d usually spend about a month buying myself birthday presents and planning the dinner I’d make myself (or, alternately, make my friends take me out for)…instead I find myself saying, “huh?” when the cashier at Meijer wishes me a happy birthday after carding me for my wine.

 

So in case you’re wondering, this is how I will be celebrating #33:

1.  Sleeping in.  Making omelet/home fries breakfast with Good Coffee.

2.  Department meeting.

3.  Lecture.  I suspect my students are up to something, as one of them asked me about a month ago when my birthday was and what my favorite color is.  And today said student asked again in class, then sent me an e-mail with the subject “random question” and the text merely read, “So we were just wondering what you favorite candy is haha”

Cute little buggers, ain’t they?  Regardless, in spite of their best efforts, I will try to teach them something about dipole moments and valence bond theory.

4.  Office hours.  Hoping nobody shows up.  May cancel – we’ll see.

5.  Home.  Birthday bicerin.

6.  Birthday boilermaker and smoked fish.

7.  Steak.  Mac and cheese nirvana.  Rapini.  California cab from Meijer clearance rack.

8.  Glee. 

9.  Possibly a cookie with a candle in it for old times’ sake, since this is feeling like a Lenny year. 

 

And that’s about it.  Such is a midweek birthday in a new town, when you really don’t have people you can call friends yet.  Single girl empowerment and all that shit.  Whee.

I was born a poor black child.

I recently made a new online friend.  No, not Friend, just friend.  I now live in a small town in Michigan, where there is no Fine Dining.  Hell, there’s barely Dining – this is a place where people merely eat.  Luckily, I am less than an hour away from Grand Rapids, second-largest city in Michigan, and home to, among other things, a damn good brewery and….<drumroll>…RESTAURANTS. 

 

Okay, not terribly EXCITING restaurants, but places where people will bring you food on which you will not regret spending $15-20.  The problem is that if I’m going to drive nearly an hour for dinner…I’m going to need company as part of the deal.  So I rustled up someone to have dinner with me.  And as part of the dinner conversation, I mentioned that I have, in the past, written a blog (as I sometimes do when talking to people whose only knowledge of me is my online persona).  The response was an excited, “is it a food blog???”

 

No.  As a matter of fact, it most definitely is not.

 

Oh, sure.  If you read my posts, you can tell I am mildly obsessed with sustenance.  But as a general rule, this blog has no theme.  Thus my very small readership.  I learned back in college when I figured out every e-mail account came with a certain amount of bandwidth for building a personal webpage that, if you want to attract readers, you need…a Focus.

 

I, however, despite my best efforts, have never been very good at staying On-Topic.

 

But tonight…TONIGHT, I will be a Food Blog.  Because dammit, there is something the world (i.e., the five of you) needs to know.  And that thing is:

 

Jerk Chicken.

 

Every time I decide it’s time to make jerk chicken, I nearly talk myself out of it.  I try my hardest to convince myself that it is not worth the time and effort involved.  Not worth juggling chicken parts on my tiny grill.  Not worth the day of marination.  Not worth choking myself to death trying to chop extremely hot chiles.

 

And every time I am incontrovertibly, indubitably, undeniably…WRONG.

 

Here’s the thing…I had heard about this “jerk” stuff when I still lived in Indiana.  The Food Network was my primary source for information on dishes I had never tried.  When something struck my fancy, I would look up a recipe and try to make it.  But the problem was, I never knew if the way I was doing it was Right.  I had made “jerk pork” once upon a time.  Perused several recipes, figured out what they all had in common…picked one that seemed a strong candidate for the all-important title of Authentic…and tried it.

 

The ingredients went something like this:

 

1 tablespoon cracked black peppercorns
3/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1 1/2 teaspoons ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
2 tablespoons salt
1/4 cup muscovado or dark brown sugar
3 to 9 Scotch bonnet or habanero peppers, seeded and chopped
4 teaspoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon minced ginger
2 bunches scallions, finely chopped (green and white parts)
1/2 cup oil
Zest and juice of 4 limes
1/4 cup white vinegar
1/2 cup dark rum

 

(This particular recipe is lifted from the L.A. Times – there are many variations, but this one strikes a reasonable balance between too-simple and too-damned-complicated-to-ever-have-been-developed by-island-people.  The directions are pretty much “Combine all ingredients in food processor.  Careful, the chiles are burn-y.  Marinate for ~24 hrs.”)

 

The result?

 

A resounding, “Meh.”

Here’s the thing about the recipes…here’s what they don’t tell you: jerk…is BARBECUE.  And I don’t mean throwing hunks of meat on a grill and daubing it with sweet tomatoey sauce, I mean actual, honest-to-God BBQ.  JERK IS MEANT TO BE SMOKED.  Now, not necessarily 6-hours-low-and-slow BBQ, but this is meat that is really meant to be prepared over coals.  Preferably coals resulting from the burning of Jamaican pimento wood, aka the allspice bush.  Recipes will tell you you can either grill it “or just bake it.”

No.  No, you most definitely can NOT “just bake it.”  It will be “meh.”  Is that what you want???

You grill it.  Over charcoal.  Indirect heat.  For a long time – I do, at minimum, 20 minutes per side indirect, then direct heat for crisping it up.  This works well for drumsticks, but thighs take longer.  Don’t even talk to me about breasts – this is a strictly dark meat dish as far as I’m concerned. 

Now, here’s the thing.  You need smoke while you do this.  Right now, I’m using oak chips and allspice berries (the closest you can come in most of North America to actual pimento wood is to just use the berries and…other wood).  I’ve also been known to use hickory for its spiciness, but that’s as heavy as I’ll go.  Mesquite is just too overwhelming.  But all of that time on indirect heat is sloooowly cooking your chicken while that spicy coating on the skin is absorbing all of that delicious, spicy smoke.

Baste with some reserved marinade and crisp up over the hot part of the grill.  It turns out looking something like this:

It ain’t necessarily pretty, but it is DELICIOUS.  Smokey, and juicy, and damn-near-pullable in tenderness.

Serve it with a fairly basic slaw, some rice and peas (aw, crap…that’s another post), and a basic lager.  We’re going for thirst-quenching, heat-cooling beverage, not a pairing here.  I happen to like a Dark ‘n Stormy for dessert.

Now…if you don’t like it this way…you just don’t like it.  End public service announcement.

Contact.

I know you’re out there.

 

Requests have been made.  My webcounter is suddenly showing hits again, from all sorts of interesting places.  Among other things, there appears to have been a sudden resurgence in interest from Down Under…you people have GOT to get lives.  But your cries are not falling on deaf ears.

 

I’m just busy as all hell.

 

Soon, things will change.  Soon, I will be SO.  FUCKING.  BORED. that I will have no choice but to write.  Soon…I will have my furniture.

 

But in the meantime, bear with me.  I am too busy writing lecture notes and quizzes and unpacking boxes to write blog posts.  But my views on Slurpees and Lohan and teenage fashion can only be contained for so long, and I am bursting…positively BURSTING.

 

Cheers,

Dr. Wahooty

Request Week: Over the River and Through the Woods…

Growing up, my mom was always very frugal.  It was a revelation somewhere around 9th grade when she told me it was okay to do my back-to-school shopping at…gasp…the MALL instead of K-Mart, and that I was getting to an age where I wouldn’t be growing out of things as quickly so it was okay to invest a little more in my clothing and buy a little more of it.  But, to keep things in perspective, my local mall still laid claim to the title of World’s Largest Outlet Mall at the time, and this was a time when Outlet Malls contained knock-off versions of the real stores that sold mostly factory seconds, and didn’t even bother knocking off GOOD stores.  There was no Gap…no A&F…no Bath & Body Works at my mall.  I still remember that one of my favorite shirts that I wore through most of high school came from Ross Dress 4 Less. 

 

But even on our Fruit of the Loom budget, my underwear drawer had long ago graduated from briefs to…well…high-leg briefs.  Just fashionable enough to avoid emasculation in the locker room.  It wasn’t until my first year of college that two of my best friends introduced me to the joys of Victoria’s Secret.  One worked for Express, which got her an employee discount at VS and Bath & Body Works.  The other firmly believed that every woman must own a pair of black silk panties.  So guess what I got for Christmas that year?

 

*blush*

 

And so began my new addiction: Good Underwear.  They created a monster, really.  Like so many women before me, I fell victim to the so-called “sales” that inevitably lead to an underwear drawer so overstuffed that, in the event of zombie apocalypse, I will surely survive because I can go approximately eight years before emerging to do laundry.  Even plain cotton underwear, when well-made, is SO MUCH BETTER THAN K-MART UNDERWEAR.

 

But somehow…during the lightheaded, frothing-at-the-mouth frenzy of a Semi-Annual Sale, I wound up with…

A pair of bright orange.

Cotton.

GRANNY PANTIES.

 

In retrospect, I think I know how this happened.  In a previous visit to Vickie’s, when I needed a black bra to go with my black silk panties, some sort of evil 2-for-one or buy-one-get-one-half-off deal had convinced me that I did, in fact, need a bright orange satin bra.

 

Nothing goes with a bright orange satin bra.  Certainly not any of the underwear I had at the time.  So come sale time, when hideous orange things turn up in large, poorly sorted bins…you grab whatever goes with that damn bra.  And when you are young and inexperienced…sometimes you forget to check the style as well as the size.

 

This is how the giant panties end up in the back of your underwear drawer. 

 

Oh, they got worn.  Every now and then, when it was getting a little too close to laundry day or I REALLY wanted to wear underwear that was completely unflattering to everything about my skin, hair, and eye color.  Once I came home to my parents’ house for fall break, and in a panicked laundry emergency threw them into the washer with a forest green sweater.

 

I now had a pair of…shall we say…burnt sienna granny panties.

 

I wish I could say that this is where I threw them out.  But back in the drawer they went.  Even though they no longer matched ANYTHING.  Because, let’s face it, every woman has at least one pair of grannies haunting their underwear drawer.  For a while, I think I had four – Ms. Burnt Sienna, and three pairs given to me by, of all people, a college boyfriend’s MOTHER (strangest. present. EVER.).  There are just times when you want them – when you’re PMSing and feeling too bloated for your thongs and string bikinis, or in the event of those apocalyptic laundry days.  And I think we all know that those bitches REFUSE TO WEAR OUT.  Underwear, or undead?  Too close to call.

 

But…wear out they did.  Slowly, but surely.  Or at least they got thrown out, one at a time, to make room for a couple of younger, cuter pairs of underwear.  There may have been a cricket bat involved…I’ll never tell.  Such is the circle of life.  But Burnt Sienna hung on.  Due to her quality and superior breathability, she was the last survivor of the Granny Panty Apocalypse in my underwear drawer.  Until a few months ago, when she too succumbed to the great Trash Can in the Sky.  The same scaling-down process that led me to give away half of my furniture in anticipation of a major move meant Burnt Sienna finally bit the dust. 

 

Or did she?  A cold, lifeless waistband may have just scurried out of my suitcase, muttering something about “BRAAAAAAAAIIIIIIINNNS…”

Finally got a piece of the pie.

With apologies to Em and granny panties and slurpees everywhere (topics that will be addressed soon)…I have an announcement.

 

Ahem.

 

The aforementioned verboten topic of “Jobs” is once again open for discussion.

Since we last left Wahooty, she has, quite frankly, been through a lot.  Made friends, lost friends, remade lost friends, made money, lost money, made dinner.  But to make a long story short, she has applied for, interviewed for, and received an offer for…<drumroll>… an Actual Paying Job. 

 

I know.  About fuckin’ time.

 

This APJ was posted around the time I last posted…here’s how things went from there:

 

Aug. 1 – job posting closes

Aug. 4 - phone interview

Aug. 10 - on-site interview

Aug. 14 – hired. 

 

Oh, and on August 11, I became Aunt Wahooty.  Please, adore the sacred child:

He is precious.  And already smarter and better than your niece, nephew, hedgehog, whatever the case may be.  (On an unrelated note, I am still trying to figure out if my brother and sister-in-law actually deliberately placed the crib in the front window because it has FABULOUS lighting for flash-free pictures.)  He will henceforth be addressed as Roo ‘round these parts.

 

So anyway, the timeline continues:

Aug. 16 – begin househunting and dialogue with potential landlady

Aug. 16 (continued) – begin to think potential landlady is potentially certifiable landlady

Aug. 17 – resume househunting

Aug. 18 – fly to hometown to (theoretically) pick up Mom and Dad’s old car but (in reality) visit Roo.  Take many, many pictures, most of which are flash-free.  At least they are when I remember to turn the flash off when the little bugger starts to look alive.  Want to hug him and squeeze him and call him George, but…

Aug. 18 (continued) – have to drive out to Mom and Dad’s to get theoretical reason for visiting.

Aug. 19 – drive back to Toronto.  Leave @ 5:30am.  Sweaty arrival @ 5pm…swanky dinner with friends @ 6:30.  Brutal.

Aug. 20-22.  No idea.  Seriously…total blur of car-based errands and teary goodbyes.

Aug. 23 – drive to undisclosed location of new job.  Will only reveal that I am in small town in Michigan where beef jerky can be purchased in parking lots in front of mattress stores.  And Leinenkugel’s Red is readily available.

Aug. 24 – report to work.  Open bank account.  View potential (non-certifiable) apartment.  Purchase first BlackBerry (Torch.  You want one, you just don’t know it yet.) as it will be major guilty indulgence of new job.  Commence getting my head around the fact that I have to stand in front of actual students on Monday.  Go to BW-3 because it is across the street and it is Wing Night.

Aug. 25 – attend first faculty meeting.  Deal with minor BlackBerry-related crisis.  Confirm that will not be homeless as of about one week from now.  Congratulate self at happy hour at hotel Bennigan’s.

 

WhatEVER, bitches.  It’s $2 domestic drafts.

 

So…yeah.  I now live in a place that doesn’t have a mall, but does have a farmer’s market where the farmers actually wear overalls in a non-ironic fashion.  “Ethnic food” is not even a vague category of cuisine, let alone a culturally insensitive generalization.  There aren’t liquor or wine stores, so much as Walgreen’s and places with signs proclaiming them to be “Party Stores.”  But the people are insanely nice, Evan Williams is $11.99/bottle, and I am gainfully employed.  I have good benefits, and my apartment will be about twice the size of the basement cave I had in Toronto for the same rent.  AND I have a dishwasher.  AND a balcony for my grill.  AND I can even have a puppy if I want.

And I won’t have to leave the apartment to get to my bathroom.

 

I started this blog when I moved to Toronto…to document an entirely new phase in my life.  I’m starting yet another, so it would seem it’s time to truly reboot The Alchemist.  I’ll start with granny panties and Slurpees as promised, but I’m thinking I’ll have a lot of free time on my hands now, so I’ll try to channel all of my small-town angst constructively here.  I’m going to be crazy busy for the next few weeks while I get settled…but football season is imminent and it’s going to be a loooooooooong winter.

 

Bear with me folks.  But in the meantime, I am still taking requests if anyone other than Em is still reading.

The Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman. Nor an Empire. Discuss.

So I’ve been a little verklempt lately.  I suppose it's time for me to explain myself.

If you've been reading for any period of time, you've probably noticed that my posts can generally be grouped into the following categories: Shit That Amuses Me, Shit That Pisses Me Off, and Shit That Makes Me Very, Very Sad.  Sometimes, I can even manage to be Very, Very Sad about something that Pissed Me Off and tell you about it in an Amusing manner.  I’m a good little multi-tasker.

I put things out there - it's who I am.  Talking about my shit helps me deal with it, and for some reason, talking about it publicly is much more cathartic than writing it in some squirreled-away journal that only I can see.  But I try to only put my shit out there to the people who will care to read about it - if you're here, it's because I told you how to get here, or you were curious enough to try to find me, or you Googled something one day and found either something that amused you or a trainwreck you couldn't look away from.  I have a Facebook friend (who is really just an acquaintance) who puts all of her shit right there in her feed - between her status updates and notes, I know how nasty her divorce has been, what medication she is on, and just how often she drinks for the wrong reasons.  These are things I don’t know her well enough to know, and never asked to know – it just comes to me.  This is what is known as Oversharing.  I don't smear my neuroses all over the Facebook feeds of 250 people on a daily basis.  My psyche is more like a speakeasy - you have to either be invited, or at least try to figure out the password, secret knock, and supercool handshake.

So why haven’t I been writing?  Well, it started for good reasons.  Last fall, I was just too damned busy to write.  Running a course I had never taught before for over 100 students meant that between lecture prep, lab supervision, and answering the constant e-mails from students and TAs I was working 50-60 hour work weeks, sometimes more.  And loving it.  Add about 2.5 hrs of commuting time every day, and the occasional bit of socializing, and there’s just not much time left to write pithy observations about the meaning of life or the vast metaphysical paradox known as Tila Tequila.  It also doesn’t leave much time for searching for a new job come the end of the semester.  Not that there are many academic jobs that start in the middle of the year anyway.  But I digress.

And since then…well…most of my life just hasn’t been For Public Consumption.  I used to have a fairly no-holds-barred, warts-and-all approach to talking about my life, but when everyone’s conversational opener at every social occasion is, “so how’s the job search going?” I really don’t feel the need to explain yet ANOTHER time that it fucking sucks.  And I think you all might understand why I’m now keeping my personal life…well…personal.  As entertaining as the soap opera of all of my crushes and near-misses has probably been, it’s not really something I want to put out there at this particular time in my life.

The problem with all of this is, in addition to the complete silent treatment you’ve all been receiving, I have now completely lost track of who might still be reading, and what you might want to read about.  And I miss writing.  And quite frankly, I’m starting to go nuts and feel as though I might require something more stimulating than the Tyra show to keep my days occupied.  So I’m going to try something I attempted once before and never fully succeeded at.  We’re going to try All-Request-Week again.  Except this time, I will write on any and every topic* you people suggest.  I can’t guarantee they’ll all be long.  I can’t guarantee they’ll all be good.  But at least they will all BE.  And I think that will be good for me.

Talk amongst yourselves.  Give me a topic.

 

*Excluding aforementioned verboten topics.  Any subject matter that falls under categories including but not limited to: Jobs, Boys, Boys with Jobs, or Giving Jobs (of any sort) to Boys will be immediately disqualified.