I just went to an office reception in the lobby of my building, a celebration of longtime HSPH faculty and staff that wasn’t as exciting as the FIESTA – replete with Mariachi band – that our last office reception comprised but that was still fairly exciting due to the overabundance of chocolate-covered strawberries served.
Being someone who gets excited about chocolate-covered strawberries and, accordingly, takes a lot of them but who also tires quickly of chocolate, I find myself now back at my desk, faced with the task of peeling the chocolate off a heap of chocolate-covered strawberries.
In doing so, I’m seeing evidence that those whose job it is to cover strawberries with chocolate tend to choose the less-choice specimens, probably reasoning that their mediocrity will be covered with chocolate. But what they DIDN’T anticipate is that someone other than DIGESTIVE ENZYMES would peel away the chocolate and discover that these babies are in a state that must be the strawberry equivalent of when you wear a band-aid for way too long and the part of your finger that’s underneath gets all soggy and pale and wrinkled.
Archive for February, 2009
A vote for chocolate-covered sombreros next time
Wednesday, February 25th, 2009Won’t anyone eat my vegetables?
Wednesday, February 11th, 2009I have a friend who refuses to eat brussels sprouts, which is something that I – as a serious brussels sprouts advocate – have been trying extremely hard to change. I mean, they are an awesome, awesome vegetable, rich in folate AND resembling tiny cabbages! What could be cooler?*
Anyway.
I recently presented this friend with a sample of them prepared in my most favoritest simple-yet-delicious way and was all “come on you have never had them like this just taste them” and he did and was all “yeah I dunno I mean they are less disgusting than usual but I just don’t like them can you please stop trying to make me eat brussels sprouts” and I kind of wanted to be all “FINE have a folate deficiency see if I care”…
…but then, last night, I happened to glance between my stove and my refrigerator and see the deliciously prepared brussels sprout that – you may recall – I accidentally dropped there a couple of weeks ago and have yet to successfully retrieve. And I also saw that said brussels sprout appears to have gone completely untouched by the mice who have so far seen fit to eat EVERYTHING, including – you may recall – my powdered soymilk and – I’m convinced – my left Birkenstock sandal.
Now I’m thinking now that maybe I really should just leave him alone, and maybe also get him some vitamins.
p.s. I really am going to try to figure out how to retrieve that brussels sprout.
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*I know – nothing. There’s nothing at all that’s cooler than tiny, folate-rich cabbages.
Resolutionism
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009At the gym just now, I noticed a new sign – a laminated one – posted in the area where there are stacks of folded towels for gym members’ use.
The sign read something like
Due to the New Year’s resolution season, our membership numbers are up, thereby rendering our towel tally inadequate. Please be considerate and take no more than two towels per visit to ensure that all members have an enjoyable gym experience.*
I read this and was kind of thinking that if I weren’t someone who does not really make New Year’s resolutions but who does make a concerted effort to go to the gym regularly regardless of the calendar, I might be pretty insulted by this niced-up version of “For those of you who are only here because it’s late January/early February and will have all but certainly defected by March, please do not use too many towels. Also, you’re fat.”
On the other hand, I of course DO think everyone in the world is way too wasteful with their gym towel (and, okay, everything else) consumption. But I don’t see why the starting point for a fix has to be the fatties.
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*In reality, theirs was worded way more poorly, if I do say so myself.
London, France, cheese graters, you know
Saturday, February 7th, 2009I’ve been gradually but steadily running out of underwear in recent weeks, by which I mean there’s suddenly been a very sharp increase in frequency of my retrieving a pair, seeing that there’s something hugely wrong with it – like, say, that it’s completely backless – and throwing it away.
I don’t know what this is about, why all of my underwear would suddenly be inclined toward group atrophy, but it clearly just won’t do…
…so, being both poor and imminently underwearless, I did something that I usually try to avoid at all costs: when my mother called because she was in some store and wanted to know if I needed anything, I told her that I did, and then I asked her to buy me underwear.
She happily obliged, and then packaged it up and mailed the underwear to me, along with a copy of American Medical News that my dad apparently wanted me to see and two cheese graters.
I am now wearing a pair of the new underwear, and I just looked at it and noted something weird going on with the stitching and I was about to be like WHAT IS HAPPENING WHY DOES UNDERWEAR COMMIT SUICIDE AROUND ME??? and then I realized that I am wearing it inside out.
p.s. Yesterday’s postal service also brought me a package containing a t-shirt like this one*
,
so it was a VERY good day for vestments-by-mail in the Rachelbank household.
p.p.s. That’s not a picture of me wearing the shirt. I would never wear my amazing new math shirt to a junkyard.
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*In case you can’t see it real goodly:
20 best places for a group make-out
Thursday, February 5th, 2009The Globe just published a photo essay entitled 20 best places to kiss in Boston.
I won’t say anything [else] about the awkward commentary. I will, however, wonder if this is going to be like when a newspaper prints a rave review of some previously unknown restaurant, which is immediately thereafter overwhelmed with patrons, each of whom thinks he/she is the only one to have read the review and will therefore easily get in. Like, is that one side of the Hancock Building now going to be perpetually mobbed by couples trying to simultaneously elbow their way into the nook and suck face?
Does anyone have any interest in joining me at one of these spots, where we will watch for people who show up to make out on the Globe’s recommendation…and then throw things at them?
E quinque, pluribus
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009I definitely ate way, WAY too much at lunch today. But, like any moderately superficial twenty-something woman worth her weight as she lies about it on exercise machines, I know that diet soda* is the opposite of having eaten too much at lunch, and so I just went downstairs to the cafeteria to procure one such calorie-free, artificial garbage-laden beverage.
En route, I discovered that I had only fives in my wallet and was understandably chagrined…until I got there and saw that our soda machines take fives!
I have my soda now, which is great, but I am a little less excited about the task of figuring out what to do with my $3.25 in quarters.
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*Technically, I think the opposite of having eaten too much at lunch is diet soda and a cigarette, but I don’t really dig on those bad boys even though they paved the roads I learned to drive on…
I forgot today is Groundhog Day
Monday, February 2nd, 2009I have since remembered and sought the verdict from my local newspaper, and while I am pretty unhappy to learn that we’ll have six more weeks of winter, I am definitely way more horrified by this photo:
I totally watched the football part, too
Sunday, February 1st, 2009Has anyone seen the new series of Geico commercials in which someone is doing something like eating in a Chinese restaurant or asking for directions in the Wild West and suddenly someone else points out “that’s the money could be saving with Geico,” after which the camera cuts to a little bundle of money with a couple of round things on top of it?
Past experience leads me to believe that I should be totally hilarified by these commercials, and yet I just don’t get them. Like, are those round things supposed to be eyes, maybe the googly kind? If so, the Geico people have – in my opinion – done a terrible job, because those round things look more like stacked iterations of different materials people can pick from if they don’t like walking on regular pebbles when they go from the car to the house. Geico should definitely step it up and invest in some real googly eyes, because EVERYTHING is totally way more hilarious with [successful] googly eyes. Please see Exhibit A: socks.
P.S. My bridesmaid dress will be Pomegranate. No word yet on what this means I am free to spill on myself during the wedding and subsequent revelry.