Biscuit: Tasty Doesn't Get You A Date To The Prom

Despite the fact that the whole exploding-whale thing has been my favorite story for the past week, it is a little late to bring it up here now. Other people have already babbled about it enough that it would look like I am just following along behind, which is not something that I do. I will rest easy in the knowledge that I brought the joy of exploding whales to plenty of my friends in real life.

Slightly more current, and therefore more topical, is the subject of Janet Jackson and her Superbowl boob, with its attendant nipple-cozy. I will not discuss this either, as I try to refrain from discussing boobs at all times.

Besides, since when has this space been for regurgitation of random news articles, anyway?

I should be telling you about the two-weeks-old news about our fantastic first year anniversary and how the utterly amazing Bill bought us a very fancy and utterly impromptu gourmet meal at Blue Ribbon, wherein we ate oysters and foie gras and creme brulee and drank champagne, and at which my amazing boyfriend gave me a teddy bear that he made for me. Yes, made for me, with his own two hands and a sewing machine, complete with cute little pads on the bottom of his adorable little feetlets. I named him Bruno, which I think might be an homage to the "chocolate bruno" we ate for dessert that night, but might be a completely unrelated product of my confusing brain. And now Bruno lives in my bed along with Blue Bear and Mildred the Sheep.

I could also talk about how last night I felt like maple syrup, in the slow, languorous, sweet, sleepy, drippy kind of way, where all I really wanted was to be warmed and spread out on something.

I could talk about my gigantic nephew who is five months old but as big as a toddler, or about the fact that I just got in touch with my favorite cousin, or about how much I hate my new phone's voicemail capabilities, or perhaps I could make a passing self-deprecating reference to the number of hours I have spent combing Apple-related rumor sites to see if there might be an upcoming 20th Anniversary computer.

I hardly know any more. I am falling out of the habit of this writing thing, but I do not really want to stop. I think I have just run out of interesting topics. I need to shift gears, do something to jumpstart both my brain and my diary.

If anyone felt like buying me a cabin on the newly-launched Queen Mary II, I promise I would write about it every day, as I bask on sun-drenched promenades and dine on tropical fruit and tea.

Today I went shopping and bought a reuben sandwich, garlic and chickpea puree soup, a pair of behind-the-head earphones, and a gold-and-silver foil map of Middle Earth that is far more tasteful than it sounds. Also, New York spit on me the entire time, and managed to get one or two particularly cold ones right down the back of my neck.

Whenever I eat my soup-and-sandwich combinations, and both are particularly tasty, I am always left with the problem of which to finish first. Basically I have to choose what taste is going to remain on my tongue after I am finished eating, which could very well affect me for upwards of two whole minutes. Hard life, I know.

I am now accepting submissions for suggestions as to where I want to take a vacation. Technically, Flex has decision-making rights on where we actually go next, but I figure I still have full control over what I dream about. As previously mentioned, a cruise on the Queen Mary 2 is very high on my list, for including such amenities as oceans, butlers, salt spray, luxury, walk-in closets, decadence, and tea. Can you top it?

Also, for those of you who are interested, I chose to leave my tastebuds with a lasting impression of the soup.

I've been sitting here for a while, trying to think of a...I don't know, a clever way of talking about this, but I'm not having any wonderful ideas so instead I'll just say that my boyfriend broke up with me this evening. It wasn't exactly a surprise, given the way he's been moping around lately, and in retrospect, it's pretty clear that I've been the only person in the relationship for quite a while. When he tells you, in passing, over an otherwise very nice and romantic dinner that he couldn't ever move in with you because of your little idiosyncrasies that drive him crazy and because he doesn't like your cat, that probably doesn't bode well for the long-term health of the relationship.

I also just realized that it was almost exactly two years ago, February 11, that I started this diary because I was pining after some boy. Maybe I've gotten stronger over the past two years, because I haven't gotten weepy over this. Shaky as hell, sure, to the point where I almost dropped my little cup of sake after he left with his garbage bag full of clothes and toothbrushes and hair gel, but not weepy. Maybe it's the fact that I know that I put everything I had into this relationship, and nothing else I could have done would have fixed it. Maybe it's the fact that now I know I'm capable of sharing my life with somebody -- capable of letting them into everything I do, and enjoying it more because they were with me. Hell, maybe I'm still just in a state of shock and I'm going to break down crying tomorrow at the office coffeepot.

Whatever. He hasn't been happy with me for quite some time now, for reasons that I don't think I'll ever really understand. And yes, I'm sure you're going to read this, and no, I don't want a fuller explanation.

So that's it. I guess this means that no, he won't be attending your dinner party, Miss Rain. And it means that Little Owl and I will be having a fabulous evening together on Valentine's Day. Also, I think I deserve a GIGANTIC fucking chocolate-coated medal for my restraint. Thank goodness for my friends who will curse and spit for me, when I'm trying so hard not to.

I think I found a new friend.

Now it comes down to what color he should be, and where I can buy him. Especially the little Cinnamon one. Look at his little wrinkly disgruntled face. Look at their tiny hands! Their itsy little noses. I am trying to decide what to name a hedgehog, and the only thing that comes to mind so far is Mrs. Tiggy-winkle. While I find that name very funny, I have doubts as to its continued entertainment value, over time. Also, who are they fooling with all of their different color-names. Those hedgehogs are clearly brown, brown, brown, brown, and brown. And then some white ones.

At least I have something to focus on today. There are people at work who actually expect me to do work or something, but telling them all to back off because I cannot think because I just got broken up with is not really an option.

I can't believe I am thinking of getting a hedgehog to be my rebound guy.

Happy Second D-Land Anniversary To Me.

The title of this entry? Those are birthday candles.

Also the thing I said before? About not being weepy this time around, like I was two years ago? Yeah. I was wrong.

Sometimes, against all expectations, life gives you a rewind button.

This isn't even a diary any more. It's just something that I write in when I feel guilty for not writing. Tsk tsk, I say to myself. Tsk tsk.

New facts: my back is all kinds of screwed, and appears to be squashing my sciatic nerve in my right leg, which as a result also feels pretty screwed. I wonder how long it will be until Google picks up the fact that I used the word "sciatic" and strats directing people here.

I generally find it entertaining when my mom suggests that I might have sciatica, and then tries to explain where and what a sciatic nerve is. I had to interrupt her and let her know that not only do I know what the sciatic nerve is, I also spent many many afternoons removing sciatic nerves from the legs of teeny little rodents a few years ago. All in the name of science, of course, and as part of my actual job in a neurology/physiology lab. (I just felt that I should explain that, lest anyone think that I am a crazed, maniacal, nerve-excisor for no good reason. What else were we supposed to perform our immunocytochemistry on? I mean, honestly.)

Also, a Valentine's Day present led to an hour and a half massage this past weekend, plus a manicure/pedicure combo, all of which left me so deliciously jellylike that even though my back still hurt, I could not even make myself care. It was more an abstract idea of pain than any actual sort of discomfort that I might actually, you know, notice. MMmmmm. Ninety minutes of rolling hot stone massage. I will be visiting you again soon. And just in case I have not said it often enough, thank you thank you thank you to Flex for the day at the spa!

And yes, there is still/again the Fulminous/Flexible duo. And no, that decision was not based on receiving a day at the spa.

Only a few more hours until I can lie down on something. Bitchin'.

Also I forgot to mention that last week I made nibbly bits for my roommate's gallery opening. I would like to say that I "catered" except now that word is making me very nervous, as I will explain in a moment.

So, nibbly bits. About 100 each of blood orange tarts (by which I mean "blood orange," a type of citrus, not "blood and oranges" which is creepy), avocado bruschetta, baklava, and mahi-mahi ceviche with red onion, jalapeno, and toasted coconut. The first three items had vanished within the first half hour, the cups of ceviche lasted a while longer than that, and I filled in the resulting gaps with cookies and carrots brought by the girl with whom ArtStudent shared the gallery space. While I was clearly less nervous about the evening than my roommate for whom the food was prepared in the first place, I still managed to scurry around the room in my brown suit and my pink hair, picking up used napkins and rearranging Pepperidge Farm products with more than a touch of nervous twitchery.

Based on that experience, I started thinking about what it would be like to be an actual caterer. Where I do that sort of thing for, you know, money. Looking at a lot of the menus caterers post online (think Swedish Meatballs and Buttered Noodles and Roast Beef au jus), I have a feeling that I might be able to offer something a little more out of the ordinary.

Of course, as soon as I get to that point in the thought process, my brain leaps out of my head and starts gibbering and running around in increasingly panicked circles. It is an idea that is at once a) huge, b) terrifying, c) very very grown-up, and d) mystifying in terms of what one should do to begin it. So today after work, I am taking my increasingly distressed sciatic nerves to a bookstore to pick up the equivalent of Catering For Dummies to see if I might actually be able to pull this off.

My sister suggested "[insert word here that completes the phrase '____ silver' and usually describes your fancy flatware] Catering," as both an homage to my teensy nephew, and a way of evoking a perception of high-class. Little Owl has suggested "bee pie catering" (all lower-case, of course) because I think that bee is a very funny word and pie is a very very funny word, so "bee pie" together just might be the cutest phrase ever coined.

I can see it, though. A while down the road, of course. Catering an event taking place on a rooftop somewhere in Manhattan. City lights all around. Music floating on the breeze. Tapers everywhere. And me, directing the flow of food and waiters like a conductor.