Story Time

I'm several years late to this party, but do you read Tess Lynch's Tumblr?  It's so good!  She does a fictional feature called Story Time, and each piece is delightfully weird.  Funny.  Creepy.  Un-blog-like.  They remind me of A.M. Homes's short story A Real Doll, which I read after seeing it listed on a recently unearthed David Foster Wallace syllabus.  Yes, I mean that as praise, and yes, I am aware that my pretension is palpable and gross.

Why

 

No, seriously.  Why?  (Not, "why so much Photoshop?", although one could be forgiven for asking that.  On magazine stands this picture looks like a monochrome, flesh-toned pancake.  Like, why?  Why is this?  Is this person still famous?  What is the what?)

Totes Agree

Rev. Dennis Terry recently spoke at a Santorum campaign event.  His speech included the following:

"Listen to me. If you don’t love America, if you don’t like the way we do things I have one thing to say — get out!”

I SO agree.  But not when he puts it in to context:

“I don’t care what the liberals say, I don’t care what the naysayers say, this nation was founded as a Christian nation. There’s only one God, and his name is Jesus. I’m tired of people telling me that I can’t say those words. I’m tired of people telling us as Christians that we can’t voice our beliefs or we can no longer pray in public. Listen to me. If you don’t love America, if you don’t like the way we do things, I have one thing to say — get out!”  

First off... wait, is that right?  Can Christians not voice their beliefs in public?  I saw a lady muttering scripture on a subway platform just yesterday, and I'm pretty sure there's one psalm a day on my Facebook wall.  Wasn't he at a public event, voicing said beliefs?  Yeah.  I don't think that's accurate.

Santorum perplexes me because we have not even the most basic things in common.  Ie, usually you can say "Republican Candidate X has a lot of misguided ideas about education, but we both agree that school is important."  Santorum thinks that school is "anachronistic."  We should homeschool.  This is a big divide.

So, back to my point.  Rev. Terry: in America, we have freedom of religion, but it's freedom of ANY religion.  Even freedom of no religion!  I can worship at the altar of the Flying Spaghetti Monster if I want to (it's weird.  The Flying Spaghetti Monster says I HAVE to take birth control pills, so if you won't let my insurance cover it, you're violating my rights.  It's a sticky wicket).  The founders of the nation - those guys you were just mentioning - wrote that into the rule book.  So if you don't LOVE that; if you don't like the way we do things, I have one thing to say - GET OUT.

Stefan Urquelle

Jaleel White is on this season of Dancing with the Stars and I may have just voted for him.  The guy has spent the last decade+ dealing with daily Steve Urkel jokes: he deserves a mirrored trophy.

Does anyone else remember how Steve Urkel, in order to win Laura Winslow's heart, tampered with his DNA in a suburban basement lab, transforming himself into the smooth-talking Stefan Urquelle?  Of course you remember (if you are between the ages of 27 and 33).  It's basically all anyone talked about in 1994.  To reiterate: this family sitcom, which had heretofore focused on not lying, putting family first, and being kind to one another in a variety of very special episodes, introduced a subplot in which the neighborhood geek transforms his own genetic material in a neighborhood laboratory straight out of Young Frankenstein, and no one thought this was strange!  Can you imagine if this happened on Modern Family?  The internet would explode.  And they say we're in a golden age of television.

True

I so identify. 

Source - a very cool blog in general, actually

Panem

Someone has way too much time on their hands, and I love them for it.  Behold, a functional map of Panem!

Explanation from the creator here.  It's pretty spot-on.

My New Favorite Casserole

I made this last week, before I start subsisting on juice, and it's easy enough that I think even Dan could make it?!

Annie's Spinach-Cheese Casserole
box says serves 4 HAHAHAHAHAHAHA it serves 2

1 box Annie's Shells & Real Aged Cheddar (orange box)
1 cup frozen chopped cooked spinach
panko bread crumbs, olive oil

Fill a pot with water, add more salt than you think is necessary, and put it on high heat.  TIP: Water boils faster if you cover the pot.  Once the water is boiling, add the pasta from your box o' Annie's and cook for seven minutes.  Turn on your broiler.

While the pasta cooks, put the spinach in a strainer.  When the pasta is done, drain the pasta in the same strainer - the hot water will thaw the spinach.  Set the strainer, now filled with pasta and spinach, aside and return your pot to the stove.  Over medium heat, warm 4 tablespoons of milk and whisk in the cheese powder, also from your box o' Annie's.  Add some butter and/or plain Greek yogurt if you're feeling crazy (recommended).  Dump the pasta and spinach into the pot and stir to coat with the cheese sauce.  Pour the mixture into a pie plate, top with panko as desired, and very lightly drizzle the whole thing with olive oil.  Place under the broiler for about two minutes, or until the crumbs are golden brown.

You can also make a classier version of this with regular pasta, bechamel, and grated cheddar cheese, but that kind of misses the point.

Delicious!

When Dan's Away...

I mentioned this earlier, but Dan's in Israel for nine days.  And when Dan's away, Meghan will play... at crazy diets!!!!

 

Usually I do a hodgepodge Crazy Diet, where I eat kale salads with avocado chunks and carrot-ginger dressing for two days straight, and then go home and drink a martini with twelve olives.  This time, though, I wanted to get serious and actually lose some weight/break bad habits.  So I'm doing the BluePrint Cleanse.

If you've been on the Internet between 2007 and the present, you know that the BPC is a juice-based "nutritional cleanse" involving six "fresh-pressed" juices a day.  Allegedly, three days of BPC-ing will "gently rid your body of impurities, regain an alkaline balance and normalize digestion and metabolism."  This mantra allows people to believe they aren't on a liquid diet to lose weight.  It's for health reasons!  I'm totally Zenning!

Anyway, I'm on day two of juice and feel pretty good.  I was a bit tempted to eat something yesterday, but upon remembering how much cash I forked over for these g-d juices, I decided the salad wasn't worth it.

I'm pretty sure that thought process is the main reason this works.

Confessions & Photoshop

While I am very happy with the vast majority of our wedding pictures, twenty-one months later I can finally admit that the family portraits are a bit disappointing.  One part is my own fault: in making a list of shots to take, I left out a lot of combinations that I now wish I had (ie, a photo of me with my older sisters, or ANY photos with Dan's aunts and uncles, etc.).  The second part is that I feel like the photographer could have corrected people when they posed awkwardly and made sure everyone was looking at the camera.  Also, why did I listen when she said we should have chairs out for the group shots?  It worked for this one:

But was seating really necessary for smaller groups?  We look like guest speakers at a corporate retreat.

YAWN.  I don't know.  I mean, they're fine.  And like I said, I love all the pictures of the ceremony and reception.  But at the same time, the pictures that people print and frame on their walls are pictures of you and them, looking at the camera and smiling, so when those pictures come out kind of meh, it's disappointing.  So, while I'd already edited portraits with a basic let's-get-rid-of-those-undereye-circles eye, I decided to try my hand at further improving some of the family shots.  Also, Dan is out of town and I was bored.

In this family portrait, I decided that Scott and Biz should face their fears of standing closer to the bride.  Also, let's lighten and soften that backdrop.  This was a spring wedding - why are all the portraits in front of high-contrast pine trees?  Are we goddamn Karstarks?  Were we wed in a land of Endless Winter?

Before:

After:

Also, in no picture are me, Dan, Mom, and Scott all smiling at once.  But with a little surgery...

Yes, I cut and pasted a Mom-and-Dan out of another photo and glued it into the one you see above.  I'm awesome.

Now moving on to the special torture that is the bridal party pictures.  WHY are all the bridesmaids leaning forward?  Whyyyyyyyy???  (Pretty sure the answer is: because they were told to).  This is a FORMAL PICTURE.  We couldn't have just had people stand next to each and ZOOMED OUT?   To put the cherry on it, the leaning didn't even work - in every single shot, Matt is hiding behind Kate's head like this:

Listen, I'm not a professional.  I can't fix rampant purposeful slouching.  Well, maybe if I spent a reeeeeealllllly long time cutting and pasting, and who knows; Dan is gone all week!  But I can cut Matt and Kate out of the picture and then move them around like paper dolls, and also find a shot where Katie and Biz are leaning less... so I did.

Meghan's inner OCD-freak: you're welcome.  Now print and frame away.

Hi, I'm American

Dug into my purse for a lip gloss and found not one, not two, not three, but nine glosses/lipsticks/chubby pencils/whatever, including two tubes in the same shade.  

It's only a small sample of my collection.

Royalty

Here, Kate Middleton is greeting the manager of a train station before taking a short locomotive trip.  

The picture reminds me of the ubiquitous framed photos displayed on every pizzeria wall in Manhattan, of smiling, sweaty men in aprons flanked by Anne Hathaway or a sixteen-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio, smiling tightly because can they have their goddamn piece of pizza and get on their way, already?  Anne probably wasn't even supposed to be having pizza.  The celebrity is also almost always wearing a winter coat.

Not that I feel bad for the wealthy and famous, but greeting and posing with the employees of every single establishment you visit for the rest of your life has got to be kind of annoying.

Pictures From My Phone

When bored on the subway, I go through the photos on my phone. Here are the results.

I tested a scone from the fruits of my best-goddamn-scone recipe search (this one won) and the sight of a single solitary scone on my giant half-sheet pan was pretty funny: 

A guy from work defaced this Mad Men poster at the Nassau G station:

I experimented with green eyeshadow and took this picture in which you can see none of it:

Shenanigans at the Standard Beer Garden:

Cats, obviously:

Another co-worker cut out the entire suite of Downton Abbey paper dolls whilst on a conference call:

More cats (Bianca found a new sleeping spot):

A surprisingly unterrible picture from New Year's:

This awesome photo from the Aimee Man show we went to:

Super Bowl party aftermath:

And finally... more cats.  I have problems, and no desire to fix them.

Find Your Curve ID! Or Better Yet... Don't

Due to my thick Irish potato-farmer legs, I wear through jeans quickly.  My favorite pair are about to bust, so I thought I'd check out the offerings at Levi's before jumping straight to the $200+ price point.  They have a new feature to help you find your "Curve ID," whatever the fuck that means, and after answering some kind of humiliating questions about how big my ass is, the website deduced that I am a "Bold Curve."

These are the styles recommended for the "Bold Curve," as shown on models with "Bold Curve" proportions.

Yeah, the fit models and their itty-bitty hips are making me feel AWESOME about my "Bold Curve."  I figured they must have gotten my type wrong and looked for the "Fatass" section (presumably this is where they would have models who look like me), but they don't have one.  Off to Diesel for me.