Frog Blog

B and i recently had some friends over for brunch. all of them are transplants to this city and all of them had something to say about this city's quirks. i said, you can't make fun of this city until you've lived here for 10 years. they laughed and hooted and rebutted but i was serious. quirks are what makes this city-- any city, for that matter-- interesting.

there is a local chain grocery/clothing/everything type store that has a sock sale the day after thanksgiving. all socks are 50 percent off. my guests laughed and scoffed at that. socks on sale! how lame! who thunk that up? but i think it's lovely. it's also an old time tradition, since the store opened up about 75 years ago. it's old school.

or how about the autoshop chain (also local) that gives out free beef in february when you get work done on your car? i'm totally down with the free beef and the "it's free beef time" commercials. quirky! cool! beef!

they griped about parts of downtown that are somewhat seedy and rundown. i said, yeah, uh huh, so? show me a true downtown in a medium-sized city that doesn't have a rundown section. it gives it character. the rundown section of this town is teeny and not as rundown as other cities. it has its share of cheap chinese restaurants and a couple of nudie bars. but i'd rather have that than another pottery barn.

i've been thinking a lot about france. it's been calling my name in my sleep. my mother told me i just got a letter from my friends who live there. they mailed it to her house. i can't wait to get it.

there are a ton of french blogs out there. and there's this website that compiles all of them. i can't remember the site's name but i wish i'd known when i was blogging more frequently.

i'm coming down with a cold and it's making me cranky and random and jagged.

if you've tried to post comments and cannot, please let me know by emailing me. hopefully if you know me you know my email address... i've had some issues with people being unable to see their own comments. most of them go to my junk mail folder, unfortunately, because i have so many spam commenters. you should be able to comment by just leaving your name and email address. it may still go to my junk comments, but i'm working on trying to make that not happen. :( you might try to sign up for a typekey account; that seems to guarantee that it won't go into my junk mail...

sick at home with a cold. i spent the entire weekend on the couch watching movies, bad tv, reading the paper, on the internet. and even though i'm feeling rotten, it was actually nice to have a true quiet weekend. being sick was an open invitation to relax and not worry that i'm not doing enough things. i struggle with this-- how to spend my down time. do i see my friends enough? do i have enough friends to see? do i shop too much and spend too much money on crap? do i get enough exercise? am i a big loser if i watch two movies on a perfectly nice saturday instead of geting out and enjoying? stuff like that. and somehow it always comes down to me berating myself for not being enough of a "doer."

now, though, facing the third day in front of the tv, i'm getting a little bored (and stiff). these days made me realize that i'm more of a doer than i think. i can't sit around for too long; my head gets all stuffy (literally and figureatively, in this case). unfortunately, i don't feel better enough to go for a nice long walk, which is a pity as today we're getting unseasonably high temps (it's nearly 60 out). oh well. it's rest time.

B is having a 30th birthday shindig this saturday night-- we're going to have about 23 people in our apartment! it's a good group of friends and family coming so we're sure to have a swell time. i'm not sure where everyone is going to sit, though. as large as our apt. is, it's not set up in the most condusive way for conversations pits. chances are, most people will be at the dining room table.

i've had a flurry of going out fun these past two weeks. last friday i met some gals for sushi and drinks. last sat. B and i went to a party at our neighbor's apartment. it turned out to be quite fun. i think we were older than most of the people by about 5 years. i could tell the girls were about 5 years younger than me because they all came to the party done up: too much eye makeup, straightened hair, abercrombie clothes. they all had too tight designer jeans that gave most of them the "muffin top" look. they were trying to work it. some of them succeeded. about halfway through the party i realized, with relief, that i was well past all that. not that i don't care about how i look in public, but rather that i don't feel this need to try to be and dress all cool at a social function. i showed up in the same clothes i'd worn all day: an old turtleneck sweater and some old jeans. and i felt great. it's one of the good things about being in my 30s. i can still rock the looks but i'm starting to feel comfortable in my own skin that if i'm not rocking a look, i'm still feeling fine. it's quite liberating.

back to the crossword.

yesterday was the worst. i had a fever of over 100. my spine felt spindly and my head full of chalk and cotton. every joint ached. i almost lost it when B came home. i'm the biggest wimp/grump when i'm ill and all it want is comfort and someone to rub my head.

when i was a kid and stayed home sick from school, i would often lay in my mom's bed watching tv. my mom was both no-nonsense and sympathetic with a sick kid. i couldn't do too much loafing around and complaining but i know i could always count on a cool hand on my hot forehead and a glass of 7-up. it's the same thing i crave now: not too much coddling or cooing but definitely a certain amount of head rubbing and reminders that i'm not going to die from a fever. unfortunately, once "fever of 100" came into the picture, B wasn't too into rubbing my head or even sitting next to me on the couch. i don't blame him. his party is this weekend and it would suck if he got sick, too. but at one point i just crumpled and he finally rubbed my back. thank god. whenever i'm this sick i get so fatalistic. i feel like this strong body of mine will be unresilient to this virus and it's only a matter of time before the downhill spiral of being old and have osteoporosis and get pneumonia and my legs fall off and i die in my bed with all kinds of tubes coming out of my nose. see? i needed B to rub my back to get me back down to reality.

afterwards he went to the store and bought me a bunch of gatorade and kleenex. he also cooked me dinner. what a guy.

i'm pretty sure i'm going back to work tomorrow and won't need to go to the doctor. my immune system still works, thank god.

since i've been feeling under the weather, i decided not to stay up and watch "lost" last night. abc.com is always advertising how you can watch episodes the next day for free, so i logged on yesterday and watched an old episode to make sure it worked ok. it worked well-- only a couple times where the picture blipped and stopped, only to start back up again after about 10 seconds. i thought, ok, i'll watch it thursday instead of taping it; the picture will be clearer, i won't have to rewind, etc.

nope. not working tonight. this time it plays for about 10 seconds and stops completely. says i don't have enough bandwidth to support it. i think the problem is my wireless connection. i've been mooching off my neighbors since i got my laptop. they gave me thier password and i've repaid them with beer and cupcakes. the last time i was over there, however, they told me they'd given their password to another set of neighbors-- the noisy ones who have about 75 people living in the apartment who clomp up and down the stairs all night (and all day). i think there are too many pokers in the fire tonight. which is too bad- if i'd known, i woulda taped it.

funny how reliable the "old fashioned" apparati (VCRs, answering machines) really are...

most of my family and many of my friends live on the east coast and have recently been pummeled with true winter weather: snow, ice, frozen pipes (my brother's pipes froze right at the well, right after he lost power). the winter out here this year has me scratching my head. what winter? it's been so mild. we had a douzy of a snow storm the day after MLK day and a couple of wicked cold spells where our heat was always running, but aside from that it's felt like an extension of fall. or a cold indian summer-- we haven't even had much rain.

today, however, we were living in a cloud. it was most dreary. it wasn't raining, it was ... mist sheeting. we could see it coming in waves while driving home from the grocery store. the kind of rain/mist/steam room that gets your clothes and pants and shoes all kinds of damp but never quite wet. veritable trapped, claustrophobic winter weather.

B and i went to a giant asian grocery store. i stocked up on rice noodles, miso soup mix, golden kiwi, gen-mai cha, sencha green tea. i looked into getting some matcha tea but it was too spendy. today was an absolute perfect day for tea and slippers and television. so there.

presidents' day- i have it off. one of the perks of my job...

yesterday was my co-worker's birthday but we celebrated it today with marie callender pies. we had chocolate silk (barf) and lemon meringue (yum). i've always liked lemon meringue-- when i was a kid my parents and i ate at plush pippin, a piehouse/denny's sort of chain, and the first time i saw lemon meringue in the display case i was completely fascinated with the four feet of meringue, like a baker's hat, on top of all that translucent lemon curd. plush pippin closed years ago. for a while, you could still buy their pies in a few grocery stores around town, but not anymore. pity.

at the party today hardly anyone had pie. apparently i'm one of 2 people in my office that likes lemon meringue. bummer for everyone else. i would have been in lemon curd heaven but the truth is, i'm sugared out. i'm a sugar addict and always falling off the wagon. lately, though, i've been feeling the adverse effects of sugar.