Well, today my handsome real estate person Richard came over with a lovely guy named Doug and they proceeded to run all over my house with a tape measure to make a floor plan of it. Doug was also a lovely guy (though not a young looker like Richard), so we all had a lovely time listening to me explain that yes, at some point we really ARE going to take all those hearts and stars off the ceiling. Maybe. When I can get someone to haul out the ladder and do it, that is. As we all know by now, I am having a TON of trouble calling in all those offers of help made when I first said I was going to sell the house. However, Caesar has confirmed this coming Wednesday, and tomorrow night I am going to haul myself out to Williamsburg and completely upset Seth's (Sarah's boyfriend) birthday party by leaping on everybody able bodied, wrestling them to the floor, and not letting them up until they promise to come over on Wednesday TO HAUL OUT THE DAMN FURNITURE. And make them sign a pledge - in blood. Me to supply the baked ziti, of course.
Since Caesar isn't coming over tonight, and therefore I don't have anyone to feed but myself, I'm sitting here getting progressively hungrier and wondering what I want for dinner. I'm wavering between Chinese and pizza, neither one of which will be very good because our good Chinese places (both of them) have closed and so did our across the street pizza joint. This means that I'm stuck with either the cheap Chinese joint over on Christopher or Domino's...ah, wait. Vicky just mentioned curry. Now there's a thought...
Meanwhile, rehearsal again last night, exhausting as usual. But Ted and Philippe love my notion for the end of the show (no, I'm not going to tell you...I'll post the video or if you're in town, you can come see it), which is good.
I had every intention of getting to one of my upstairs closets, which contains more of Sarah's damn stuffed animals and God knows what else (it's hard to see under all those stuffed animals), but I just couldn't make myself do it. Not after watching all those Olympics last night, anyway. And wow! The Americans finally won men's figure skating gold! I happen to be a fan of figure skating, and really, it got depressing...every time you saw a Russian get on the ice for a while there, you just said, oh, well, that's the gold. And it was. But this was great to watch, and since it was live, you got to see our guy Evan when he read the scores and suddenly realized that he had won the gold. It was wonderful!
Ah, well. Time to look through my menus and decide what to eat...last night after rehearsal I was so tired that I had sardines on crackers for dinner, but tonight I really would like an actual meal.
Love, Wendy
Friday, February 19, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
All Alone On A Wednesday
Yes, that would be Wednesday. As in, the day all the big furniture bits can go out to the curb. As in the ONLY day all week that this can happen. And here I am, sitting in unabated solitude. I wonder what it was about Help Me! that no one understood? Ah, well. I'll try again next week.
Meanwhile, I have taken two weeks worth of garbage out to the curb, and now that I think of it, it's probably just as well that no one came to deal with the big stuff, since there actually isn't any more room out there. There were 10 bags of garbage and a box full of boxes...and there's still a pile of snow that I had to rather precariously balance it all on. Yes, definitely better to try taking out big stuff NEXT week.
Meanwhile, my brother-in-law and nephew and Sarah and Seth came over to dinner last night, and we had a lovely time, thank you. Not that my first husband's family weren't perfectly nice people, but their idea of filling a bookshelf was Reader's Digest Condensed Books. It's a pleasure to be a member of a family with whom one can actually converse.
So I did my usual chicken with its head cut off number all day, running through all the cookbooks looking for something cheap and filling, and finally gently kicked myself in the head and said, Martha's, you blithering idiot. What else?
I first tasted this casserole about 45 years ago, when friends used to make it for every cast party. It has a number of assets, such as: It's cheap. You can cut it in half or multiply it indefinitely. The entire process takes something under an hour from the time you start to boil water for noodles until the time it goes on the table, and it sits in the oven for half an hour of that time, which gives you a clear space to organize bread and a salad, which is all it needs in the way of accompaniments. And best of all, everybody in the whole world loves it. This includes a nice Chinese man who once came to have dinner with us when Sarah was a baby...he had a letter of introduction from somebody or another (my mother-in-law and one of my brothers-in-law were among the first 50 Americans invited to teach in China after the Cultural Revolution). Anyway, I was making Martha's, and I was somewhat disturbed about it because the Chinese not only dislike dairy products, but they tend toward lactose intolerance. He had three helpings, as I recall.
At any rate, without further ado:
Martha's Company Casserole (from my 1960's Good Housekeeping Cookbook)
8 oz. wide egg noodles
1 tbsp. butter
1 lb. ground chuck
2 8-oz. cans of tomato sauce
8 oz. cottage cheese
8 oz. whipped cream cheese
1/4 cup sour cream
1 bunch of scallions, chopped (1/4 inch chunks, more or less)
2 tbsps. melted butter
Preheat oven to 375. Boil, then drain the noodles. While they boil, mix the two cheeses, the sour cream and the chopped scallions (include some of the green for pretty). Cook the meat (breaking it up as you go) in the 1 tbsp. of butter, drain it, and add the two cans of tomato sauce and some salt and pepper to it. Then put half the noodles in a 2 quart casserole dish. Spread the cheese mixture over them. Put the rest of the noodles on top of that, then the meat mixture on top of THAT. Pour the 2 tbsps. of butter over the top, and stick it, uncovered, into the oven for half an hour. That is all. This makes about 6 servings...there were five of us last night, and there was one tiny spoonful left.
Now, a couple of words about the recipe. It originally had some chopped green pepper in it, but I happen to roundly detest green pepper except on a street fair sausage sandwich, so I have always left it out. You may throw it in if you want it.
Now, this is very important. Peg Bracken, in the I Hate To Cook Book, remarked of one of her recipes something like, "You may be tempted to try and gussy this up. Don't. Some recipes were born complicated and some weren't, and this one wasn't." This is ABSOLUTELY true of Martha's. It is what it is. I have, over the years, been tempted to use some Bolognese sauce, maybe, in place of the plain old ground chuck, tomato sauce and salt and pepper. Or maybe throw in some garlic. But it just won't work. Martha's is for when it's been a cold, blowy, wet, snowy day and what you want is something hot and filling and plain ordinary good that doesn't take huge efforts. You may take your truffles elsewhere.
Oh, and one more warning, which may actually apply only to me. Please be careful shopping when you have been making a recipe for 45 years and usually do it with your eyes shut. I got as far as mixing the cheeses and the sour cream and the scallions last night when I looked down at the bowl and noticed some little odd yellow bits in it. Turns out that I had grabbed 8 ounces of cottage cheese AND PINEAPPLE. Luckily I got Sarah and Seth on their way over and asked them to stop at the store, so the day was saved. I had some strange notion of standing there and painstakingly picking every single tiny little pineapple crumb out, but then when I tried the cottage cheese, it still tasted all pineappley, and I assure you this does NOT improve the dish at all. The moral, of course, is READ THE LABEL, STUPID.
Other than that culinary exercise, I bounced off downtown for a couple of hours today, under the impression that I had a good two days at 21 bucks an hour (another transcription turned up for me to do), but the damn thing was so short that I knocked it off in two and a half hours. Well, rats because of the money, but good because of all the other stuff I have to do - top on the list, and coming right after breakfast and the papers tomorrow, is getting all my Medicare stuff organized and signed up for. Yay for cheap prescriptions!
So I am going to sit here and finish my beer and go to bed, because Sarah stayed over last night, and even though she woke herself up, God bless her, I (of course...once a mom...) woke up when I heard her in the bathroom at 4:30 am. I did get back to sleep for a bit, but broken sleep is broken sleep, and I'm tired. And rehearsal tomorrow night...I need to go to bed.
Hey, maybe I'll have cooked something else more or less interesting by the time I get back to this page...although I doubt it.
Love, Wendy
Meanwhile, I have taken two weeks worth of garbage out to the curb, and now that I think of it, it's probably just as well that no one came to deal with the big stuff, since there actually isn't any more room out there. There were 10 bags of garbage and a box full of boxes...and there's still a pile of snow that I had to rather precariously balance it all on. Yes, definitely better to try taking out big stuff NEXT week.
Meanwhile, my brother-in-law and nephew and Sarah and Seth came over to dinner last night, and we had a lovely time, thank you. Not that my first husband's family weren't perfectly nice people, but their idea of filling a bookshelf was Reader's Digest Condensed Books. It's a pleasure to be a member of a family with whom one can actually converse.
So I did my usual chicken with its head cut off number all day, running through all the cookbooks looking for something cheap and filling, and finally gently kicked myself in the head and said, Martha's, you blithering idiot. What else?
I first tasted this casserole about 45 years ago, when friends used to make it for every cast party. It has a number of assets, such as: It's cheap. You can cut it in half or multiply it indefinitely. The entire process takes something under an hour from the time you start to boil water for noodles until the time it goes on the table, and it sits in the oven for half an hour of that time, which gives you a clear space to organize bread and a salad, which is all it needs in the way of accompaniments. And best of all, everybody in the whole world loves it. This includes a nice Chinese man who once came to have dinner with us when Sarah was a baby...he had a letter of introduction from somebody or another (my mother-in-law and one of my brothers-in-law were among the first 50 Americans invited to teach in China after the Cultural Revolution). Anyway, I was making Martha's, and I was somewhat disturbed about it because the Chinese not only dislike dairy products, but they tend toward lactose intolerance. He had three helpings, as I recall.
At any rate, without further ado:
Martha's Company Casserole (from my 1960's Good Housekeeping Cookbook)
8 oz. wide egg noodles
1 tbsp. butter
1 lb. ground chuck
2 8-oz. cans of tomato sauce
8 oz. cottage cheese
8 oz. whipped cream cheese
1/4 cup sour cream
1 bunch of scallions, chopped (1/4 inch chunks, more or less)
2 tbsps. melted butter
Preheat oven to 375. Boil, then drain the noodles. While they boil, mix the two cheeses, the sour cream and the chopped scallions (include some of the green for pretty). Cook the meat (breaking it up as you go) in the 1 tbsp. of butter, drain it, and add the two cans of tomato sauce and some salt and pepper to it. Then put half the noodles in a 2 quart casserole dish. Spread the cheese mixture over them. Put the rest of the noodles on top of that, then the meat mixture on top of THAT. Pour the 2 tbsps. of butter over the top, and stick it, uncovered, into the oven for half an hour. That is all. This makes about 6 servings...there were five of us last night, and there was one tiny spoonful left.
Now, a couple of words about the recipe. It originally had some chopped green pepper in it, but I happen to roundly detest green pepper except on a street fair sausage sandwich, so I have always left it out. You may throw it in if you want it.
Now, this is very important. Peg Bracken, in the I Hate To Cook Book, remarked of one of her recipes something like, "You may be tempted to try and gussy this up. Don't. Some recipes were born complicated and some weren't, and this one wasn't." This is ABSOLUTELY true of Martha's. It is what it is. I have, over the years, been tempted to use some Bolognese sauce, maybe, in place of the plain old ground chuck, tomato sauce and salt and pepper. Or maybe throw in some garlic. But it just won't work. Martha's is for when it's been a cold, blowy, wet, snowy day and what you want is something hot and filling and plain ordinary good that doesn't take huge efforts. You may take your truffles elsewhere.
Oh, and one more warning, which may actually apply only to me. Please be careful shopping when you have been making a recipe for 45 years and usually do it with your eyes shut. I got as far as mixing the cheeses and the sour cream and the scallions last night when I looked down at the bowl and noticed some little odd yellow bits in it. Turns out that I had grabbed 8 ounces of cottage cheese AND PINEAPPLE. Luckily I got Sarah and Seth on their way over and asked them to stop at the store, so the day was saved. I had some strange notion of standing there and painstakingly picking every single tiny little pineapple crumb out, but then when I tried the cottage cheese, it still tasted all pineappley, and I assure you this does NOT improve the dish at all. The moral, of course, is READ THE LABEL, STUPID.
Other than that culinary exercise, I bounced off downtown for a couple of hours today, under the impression that I had a good two days at 21 bucks an hour (another transcription turned up for me to do), but the damn thing was so short that I knocked it off in two and a half hours. Well, rats because of the money, but good because of all the other stuff I have to do - top on the list, and coming right after breakfast and the papers tomorrow, is getting all my Medicare stuff organized and signed up for. Yay for cheap prescriptions!
So I am going to sit here and finish my beer and go to bed, because Sarah stayed over last night, and even though she woke herself up, God bless her, I (of course...once a mom...) woke up when I heard her in the bathroom at 4:30 am. I did get back to sleep for a bit, but broken sleep is broken sleep, and I'm tired. And rehearsal tomorrow night...I need to go to bed.
Hey, maybe I'll have cooked something else more or less interesting by the time I get back to this page...although I doubt it.
Love, Wendy
Monday, February 15, 2010
Well, At Least I Bought Some Paint...
Boy, this "getting the house in shape" crud is difficult. I actually damn near killed myself by trotting off to KMart and buying two gallons of paint (two bathrooms and the kitchen cabinets, that is) and all the other stuff one needs...paint brushes, rollers, spackle...you know. I'm here to tell you that that shit is HEAVY. Also, just so you know, KMart bags are fragile in the extreme. One of mine broke before I even got into a taxi. That was a damn nuisance.
Then of course, nothing could be done about taking the garbage out last Wednesday because of our "blizzard." 10 inches of snow. I am invariably amazed at the hysteria New York (and New York weather people in particular) can display when confronted with actual weather. They seem just fine with fair and warmer and a little rain, but anything after that brings forth a barrage of references to the "storm of the century," "blizzard," "massive amounts of rain," and other forms of completely unwarranted craziness. I mean, it's winter. You get snow. It's spring. You get rain. It's summer. You get thunderstorms. And the rest of the city just goes leaping along behind the weather people...all the newspapers and news stations, for instance, warn you about water in the subway system. Um, people, have you ever noticed those grids in the streets? Have you ever noticed that you can hear (and feel) the subway through them? Has it ever occurred to your cute little pea sized brain what might, just MIGHT possibly happen, if you pour water over the grids? Gee, it goes into the subway? Ya think? Sheesh.
So trying to paint has been iffy, what with all that garbage lying around waiting to be taken out, and giving my living room a faint background aura of "bar the morning after," with all those beer cans...oh, and did I mention we had a Valentine Day's party on Saturday? This means, aside from the eau de booze drifting around my house, I have to get Sarah and/or Vicky to take down the hearts they stuck on the ceiling...not to mention the stars left over from New Year's Eve, which they decided to leave up for Valentine's Day. Oh, yes, and all those hearts taped to the walls, although I can reach those.
But I could hardly paint things the day of a party. So that got put off, and I was going to get to it today, but Sarah informed me that my brother-in-law and nephew are coming to have dinner with us tomorrow night...so I couldn't very well paint today (it has to dry, obviously) and I can't do it tomorrow. Now Wednesday might be a good day, except that I think people are coming over to move out my furniture (the junk I'm getting rid of)...and Thursday night I have rehearsal.
Ah, yes. Rehearsal. We're fully into it now, and it is exhausting. I made the guys (director Ted and playwright Philippe) quit in the middle last week because I was dropping. This is the period of rehearsal (right after the first read-throughs) when the REAL work begins. Line by line by line, getting out every single meaning, every single shape of a thought, every single possible interpretation...you can, in a role as large as this one, easily spend an hour on a single arc of the script. My script is beginning to look like a real working script, peppered with notes, which is great, because it means we're getting somewhere...one of those notes, I noticed today, reads, "Think Funny Face." Yes, well, I know what I mean, and nobody else has to...they'll see the effect of the note. They don't need to know how I got it.
Boy, it's satisfying, though. Movies are lovely in terms of giving me nice money and feeding me food, but they don't feed anything else. As I always say (ad infinitum, as a matter of fact), background work isn't acting. This play is ACTING. And I love it.
I am going to bed...tomorrow morning I have to get up and actually get dressed and figure out what to cook for dinner tomorrow night (something cheap, that being where the finances are) and then go buy it, and pick up prescriptions, and go to the library because for reasons that escape me, New York State no longer sends out income tax forms. No, I don't know...you have to go to the library, of all odd places, to get them. You're supposed to be able to get them at the post office, but our little branch never has them.
So a full day. I think I'll sleep late Wednesday.
Love, Wendy
Then of course, nothing could be done about taking the garbage out last Wednesday because of our "blizzard." 10 inches of snow. I am invariably amazed at the hysteria New York (and New York weather people in particular) can display when confronted with actual weather. They seem just fine with fair and warmer and a little rain, but anything after that brings forth a barrage of references to the "storm of the century," "blizzard," "massive amounts of rain," and other forms of completely unwarranted craziness. I mean, it's winter. You get snow. It's spring. You get rain. It's summer. You get thunderstorms. And the rest of the city just goes leaping along behind the weather people...all the newspapers and news stations, for instance, warn you about water in the subway system. Um, people, have you ever noticed those grids in the streets? Have you ever noticed that you can hear (and feel) the subway through them? Has it ever occurred to your cute little pea sized brain what might, just MIGHT possibly happen, if you pour water over the grids? Gee, it goes into the subway? Ya think? Sheesh.
So trying to paint has been iffy, what with all that garbage lying around waiting to be taken out, and giving my living room a faint background aura of "bar the morning after," with all those beer cans...oh, and did I mention we had a Valentine Day's party on Saturday? This means, aside from the eau de booze drifting around my house, I have to get Sarah and/or Vicky to take down the hearts they stuck on the ceiling...not to mention the stars left over from New Year's Eve, which they decided to leave up for Valentine's Day. Oh, yes, and all those hearts taped to the walls, although I can reach those.
But I could hardly paint things the day of a party. So that got put off, and I was going to get to it today, but Sarah informed me that my brother-in-law and nephew are coming to have dinner with us tomorrow night...so I couldn't very well paint today (it has to dry, obviously) and I can't do it tomorrow. Now Wednesday might be a good day, except that I think people are coming over to move out my furniture (the junk I'm getting rid of)...and Thursday night I have rehearsal.
Ah, yes. Rehearsal. We're fully into it now, and it is exhausting. I made the guys (director Ted and playwright Philippe) quit in the middle last week because I was dropping. This is the period of rehearsal (right after the first read-throughs) when the REAL work begins. Line by line by line, getting out every single meaning, every single shape of a thought, every single possible interpretation...you can, in a role as large as this one, easily spend an hour on a single arc of the script. My script is beginning to look like a real working script, peppered with notes, which is great, because it means we're getting somewhere...one of those notes, I noticed today, reads, "Think Funny Face." Yes, well, I know what I mean, and nobody else has to...they'll see the effect of the note. They don't need to know how I got it.
Boy, it's satisfying, though. Movies are lovely in terms of giving me nice money and feeding me food, but they don't feed anything else. As I always say (ad infinitum, as a matter of fact), background work isn't acting. This play is ACTING. And I love it.
I am going to bed...tomorrow morning I have to get up and actually get dressed and figure out what to cook for dinner tomorrow night (something cheap, that being where the finances are) and then go buy it, and pick up prescriptions, and go to the library because for reasons that escape me, New York State no longer sends out income tax forms. No, I don't know...you have to go to the library, of all odd places, to get them. You're supposed to be able to get them at the post office, but our little branch never has them.
So a full day. I think I'll sleep late Wednesday.
Love, Wendy
Monday, February 8, 2010
The Machine Lurches Slowly Into Action
Well, I seem to be actually selling my house. Yes, yes, I know I've been maundering on about this for quite some time now, but today my actual real estate person came to see me! His name is Richard, he's absolutely gorgeous and absolutely gay, and absolutely WAY too young for me even if he wasn't, but what the hell. If I'm going to have a real estate person, he might just as well be decorative and charming, right?
Due to Richard's arrival today, I have been hysterically cleaning house, and I must say it does look reasonably decent in the parts I was most worried about...i.e., my bedroom and the bathrooms. There's nothing much I can do about the living room because it's where all the bags of garbage are going to die. Our garbage schedule around here is regular garbage goes out on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings, and the stuff for recycling can only go out on Wednesday. For those of us who give parties, or for that matter just have friends over, this is a horrible nuisance because it means you have to live with bags and bags of beer cans and wine bottles...and if you give a party on a Saturday, you can imagine. And naturally, a large part of my cleaning effort is THROWING SHIT OUT, so there's lots and lots of garbage. Seven bags of it went out tonight, which pleased me. Happiness is things actually leaving the house. Unfortunately, I have Vicky, which is lovely because she's a perfect roommate, but she's also an artist, so every time I drag out more garbage, Vicky turns up with large bags of various things for art installations to be done at some future time.
Meanwhile, as Vicky remarked a bit earlier when she stopped by to pick up her bags of empty cans, empty cigarette packs, and the little bag of cigarette butts (she's set decorating on a new sit com...no, I don't know what the hell the set must look like if those are props), since I took down the curtains to wash them, my house now has a distinctly Rear Window flavor. You can see in the window straight through into the kitchen, which does make me feel quite oddly exposed...so I'm staying thoroughly dressed until I get upstairs to bed. Tomorrow I'm going to wash the window and put the curtains back up.
Other than all this mad housekeeping, I actually went uptown to the theatre last night! City Center has a program called Encores, which resuscitates old musicals. It's almost invariably well reviewed, and almost invariably impossible to get into, but one of my discount theatre sites emailed me with an offer for a $40 dollar ticket for last night, and I leaped at it. It was a show called Fanny, which is one of my favorites, and of which I know every line and every song backwards and forwards, and I've never seen it before. And in case this sounds somewhat odd, ask an actor...the reason I never saw it was because I fell in love with it when I was IN it, of course. And it was just lovely. It was made into a movie later with Leslie Caron and, I'm pretty sure, Horst Buchholz. It's very romantic and melodic (Harold Rome) and I had a wonderful time, thank you.
Rehearsal tomorrow night, sleeping late tomorrow morning (because I cleaned my adorable little bottom off all day, thank you).
And a very good evening to you!
Love, Wendy
Due to Richard's arrival today, I have been hysterically cleaning house, and I must say it does look reasonably decent in the parts I was most worried about...i.e., my bedroom and the bathrooms. There's nothing much I can do about the living room because it's where all the bags of garbage are going to die. Our garbage schedule around here is regular garbage goes out on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings, and the stuff for recycling can only go out on Wednesday. For those of us who give parties, or for that matter just have friends over, this is a horrible nuisance because it means you have to live with bags and bags of beer cans and wine bottles...and if you give a party on a Saturday, you can imagine. And naturally, a large part of my cleaning effort is THROWING SHIT OUT, so there's lots and lots of garbage. Seven bags of it went out tonight, which pleased me. Happiness is things actually leaving the house. Unfortunately, I have Vicky, which is lovely because she's a perfect roommate, but she's also an artist, so every time I drag out more garbage, Vicky turns up with large bags of various things for art installations to be done at some future time.
Meanwhile, as Vicky remarked a bit earlier when she stopped by to pick up her bags of empty cans, empty cigarette packs, and the little bag of cigarette butts (she's set decorating on a new sit com...no, I don't know what the hell the set must look like if those are props), since I took down the curtains to wash them, my house now has a distinctly Rear Window flavor. You can see in the window straight through into the kitchen, which does make me feel quite oddly exposed...so I'm staying thoroughly dressed until I get upstairs to bed. Tomorrow I'm going to wash the window and put the curtains back up.
Other than all this mad housekeeping, I actually went uptown to the theatre last night! City Center has a program called Encores, which resuscitates old musicals. It's almost invariably well reviewed, and almost invariably impossible to get into, but one of my discount theatre sites emailed me with an offer for a $40 dollar ticket for last night, and I leaped at it. It was a show called Fanny, which is one of my favorites, and of which I know every line and every song backwards and forwards, and I've never seen it before. And in case this sounds somewhat odd, ask an actor...the reason I never saw it was because I fell in love with it when I was IN it, of course. And it was just lovely. It was made into a movie later with Leslie Caron and, I'm pretty sure, Horst Buchholz. It's very romantic and melodic (Harold Rome) and I had a wonderful time, thank you.
Rehearsal tomorrow night, sleeping late tomorrow morning (because I cleaned my adorable little bottom off all day, thank you).
And a very good evening to you!
Love, Wendy
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Hi, Guess Who's Back!
I wish I had a madly glamorous reason for having disappeared like that, but unfortunately, what happened is that I was flat on my back with the flu from hell. I found this deeply annoying. Well, first of all, it's annoying to have flu just in general. And then all the newspaper articles about this year's strain kept saying that the people least at risk were my age group. And thirdly, I haven't even had a bad cold in three or four years. Oh, yeah, a couple of days of feeling under the weather here and there, but nothing like this. Anyway, what with the chills, and the fever, and the (ongoing, damn it) cough...somehow a cheerful blog just didn't seem likely. And who wants to listen/read about somebody else's fever? Dull, dull, dull.
Actually, I haven't done anything interesting anyway (mostly because, you know, I had this flu). However, I am in a position to recommend movies, which is pretty rare because I tend to wait until they come on cable. But with my lovely largesse from SAG, I feel really up to date now.
First up, to get the thing out of the way. I wouldn't recommend Inglourious Basterds to a blind dog. It is sickeningly violent. The only good thing I can say about it is that Christophe Waltz, as the Nazi officer, richly deserves his Golden Globe and anything else he may win. He's a wonderful actor. As for the movie itself, it is nothing more than a celebration of blood and gore and horrendous cruelty. Ugh.
Up In The Air: Oh, come on. What's not to like? We've got George Clooney here. I enjoyed the hell out of it...perhaps more so as it has some interesting twists that startled me in what I assumed was going to be your basic romantic comedy. It's great fun to watch, and most certainly doesn't end the way you think it will.
Precious: See it. It is NOT easy watching, but it's absolutely worth it. As in Christophe Waltz, above, MoNique deserves everything they can award to her - she's amazing. And Gabourey Sidonie (which may or may not be the right spelling) is superb. The whole movie is spectacularly good, and so is everyone in it. And bizarrely, it's very hopeful.
I still haven't watched An Education or Julie and Julia, because of the damn flu...I couldn't focus on anything without getting a splitting headache.
In other news, I seem to be meeting with a real estate agent in the next week or so, so things are moving right along there. Now that the holidays are over, I'm getting really itchy about getting out of here and starting the next phase of my life. Naturally, people are jumping in on me...Sarah and the gang were sitting around the other night telling me I absolutely couldn't decorate the way I wanted to because it wouldn't go with the couch, or some damn thing...personally I think a black leather couch will go with anything I choose to throw at it, and anyway, whose apartment is it? And the whole thing is kind of wildly premature...how the hell do I know how I'm going to decorate until I see WHAT I'm going to decorate? For all I know, I could walk in the door of my new place and it could immediately demand mid-Victorian, or high 1960's camp, or Second Empire French. The places I've been seeing online seem to be modern bland white boxes, which I can throw anything at, but when I start working with a broker, I know I'll see other types of places. Anyway, the couch stays.
I'm still transcribing, at least for this coming week. I'm about to finish a German gent who speaks beautiful English, and the next and (last) one is either American or British, so a quickie...and then I am free to submit for more film work and study my script for the one woman. Oh, yeah, and clean this joint. The other reason the flu annoyed me is that I had just started on a thorough clearout of my bedroom (which is the place in the house where all things go to die), and it's just been sitting there looking even worse than usual for two weeks. Growl.
Meanwhile, Joshua called from Thailand and is still trying to move back in with me. This is going to happen as soon as I become 25 again.
Love, Wendy
Actually, I haven't done anything interesting anyway (mostly because, you know, I had this flu). However, I am in a position to recommend movies, which is pretty rare because I tend to wait until they come on cable. But with my lovely largesse from SAG, I feel really up to date now.
First up, to get the thing out of the way. I wouldn't recommend Inglourious Basterds to a blind dog. It is sickeningly violent. The only good thing I can say about it is that Christophe Waltz, as the Nazi officer, richly deserves his Golden Globe and anything else he may win. He's a wonderful actor. As for the movie itself, it is nothing more than a celebration of blood and gore and horrendous cruelty. Ugh.
Up In The Air: Oh, come on. What's not to like? We've got George Clooney here. I enjoyed the hell out of it...perhaps more so as it has some interesting twists that startled me in what I assumed was going to be your basic romantic comedy. It's great fun to watch, and most certainly doesn't end the way you think it will.
Precious: See it. It is NOT easy watching, but it's absolutely worth it. As in Christophe Waltz, above, MoNique deserves everything they can award to her - she's amazing. And Gabourey Sidonie (which may or may not be the right spelling) is superb. The whole movie is spectacularly good, and so is everyone in it. And bizarrely, it's very hopeful.
I still haven't watched An Education or Julie and Julia, because of the damn flu...I couldn't focus on anything without getting a splitting headache.
In other news, I seem to be meeting with a real estate agent in the next week or so, so things are moving right along there. Now that the holidays are over, I'm getting really itchy about getting out of here and starting the next phase of my life. Naturally, people are jumping in on me...Sarah and the gang were sitting around the other night telling me I absolutely couldn't decorate the way I wanted to because it wouldn't go with the couch, or some damn thing...personally I think a black leather couch will go with anything I choose to throw at it, and anyway, whose apartment is it? And the whole thing is kind of wildly premature...how the hell do I know how I'm going to decorate until I see WHAT I'm going to decorate? For all I know, I could walk in the door of my new place and it could immediately demand mid-Victorian, or high 1960's camp, or Second Empire French. The places I've been seeing online seem to be modern bland white boxes, which I can throw anything at, but when I start working with a broker, I know I'll see other types of places. Anyway, the couch stays.
I'm still transcribing, at least for this coming week. I'm about to finish a German gent who speaks beautiful English, and the next and (last) one is either American or British, so a quickie...and then I am free to submit for more film work and study my script for the one woman. Oh, yeah, and clean this joint. The other reason the flu annoyed me is that I had just started on a thorough clearout of my bedroom (which is the place in the house where all things go to die), and it's just been sitting there looking even worse than usual for two weeks. Growl.
Meanwhile, Joshua called from Thailand and is still trying to move back in with me. This is going to happen as soon as I become 25 again.
Love, Wendy
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Walmart - The Family Store
I just had to get this down before I forgot about it again.
I saw a commercial for Walmart that says that it costs $45 to take a family of four out to dinner. This causes me to assume that these people are eating at McDonald's, of course, or something of that nature. Well, they'd have to be, wouldn't they?
The commercial goes on to breathlessly announce that if you bought one of Walmart's frozen entrees and ate at home just once a month, you'd save $475 a year! (Or some such figure.)
Are there people like that? Who take the family to McDonald's or KFC or something EVERY SINGLE NIGHT for dinner? Good God.
Meanwhile, as I'm housecleaning my brain here, I spent New Year's weekend watching the Lord of the Rings - all of it. TNT had it on, one movie each on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I must say, I admire the scope and vision of the whole thing - what a monumental undertaking! (And what thousands of background actors.) And it was quite fun to watch. But...seeing it more or less all at once like that made me really, really tired of orcs. And battle scenes. And oh, my heavens, those movies are long. But I did it! There's a New Year's resolution for you. I am going to spend a total of something like 12 hours watching orcs fight. I don't know...somehow I feel it lacks gravitas.
But tomorrow's movie watching will be much more fun. My nice union (Screen Actors Guild) has their awards coming up, for which I vote, as a member. And to make sure I vote correctly, nice people are sending me movies - free. Today I opened my mail and found Up in the Air, which is tomorrow's treat. Upcoming are Precious and Inglourious Basterds and a couple more. Yay, SAG!
And the tree is down, the ornaments are packed away, and now all that has to be done is getting rid of the New Year's Eve decorations - my kid is great at putting things up and lousy at appearing to take them down again. Then I can go back to cleaning the house for sale...sheesh.
But I've got work tomorrow and Friday, unfortunately not the movies, but the transcription stuff. Also unfortunately, this interviewee, I found out today, is Chinese with a slightly offbeat grasp of English...and the tape is 40 minutes longer than the others I've done. Ouch. Ah, well...it's all money in the bank, right?
Love, Wendy
I saw a commercial for Walmart that says that it costs $45 to take a family of four out to dinner. This causes me to assume that these people are eating at McDonald's, of course, or something of that nature. Well, they'd have to be, wouldn't they?
The commercial goes on to breathlessly announce that if you bought one of Walmart's frozen entrees and ate at home just once a month, you'd save $475 a year! (Or some such figure.)
Are there people like that? Who take the family to McDonald's or KFC or something EVERY SINGLE NIGHT for dinner? Good God.
Meanwhile, as I'm housecleaning my brain here, I spent New Year's weekend watching the Lord of the Rings - all of it. TNT had it on, one movie each on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I must say, I admire the scope and vision of the whole thing - what a monumental undertaking! (And what thousands of background actors.) And it was quite fun to watch. But...seeing it more or less all at once like that made me really, really tired of orcs. And battle scenes. And oh, my heavens, those movies are long. But I did it! There's a New Year's resolution for you. I am going to spend a total of something like 12 hours watching orcs fight. I don't know...somehow I feel it lacks gravitas.
But tomorrow's movie watching will be much more fun. My nice union (Screen Actors Guild) has their awards coming up, for which I vote, as a member. And to make sure I vote correctly, nice people are sending me movies - free. Today I opened my mail and found Up in the Air, which is tomorrow's treat. Upcoming are Precious and Inglourious Basterds and a couple more. Yay, SAG!
And the tree is down, the ornaments are packed away, and now all that has to be done is getting rid of the New Year's Eve decorations - my kid is great at putting things up and lousy at appearing to take them down again. Then I can go back to cleaning the house for sale...sheesh.
But I've got work tomorrow and Friday, unfortunately not the movies, but the transcription stuff. Also unfortunately, this interviewee, I found out today, is Chinese with a slightly offbeat grasp of English...and the tape is 40 minutes longer than the others I've done. Ouch. Ah, well...it's all money in the bank, right?
Love, Wendy
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
A Slightly Belated Happy New Year
Well, all went as planned at Christmas. Then we suddenly had a very large New Year's Eve party (Sarah and Vicky's idea, of course) which went until New Year's Day. I was a very good girl...I had about four drinks and went to bed around 1:30 or so. My God, there must have been 80 people in and out of the house.
Now it's back to real life. My unemployment ran out, so I reapplied. You know, I have to wonder how the government thinks - if, that is, it does, which I'm finding less and less easy to believe. Now that my jobs have dwindled to almost nothing, unemployment has cut my weekly rate. I had a net of about $260 a week - now, because I have so few jobs, they've reduced it to a gross of $103 a week. This is just enough to buy my weekly prescriptions. I do know that the rate is tied to what your employers contribute based on your service to them...but it does make things a bit difficult.
However, I got a lovely call from one of my temp agencies today - the one with the nice transcription work. They've got at least four more interviews for me to transcribe, possibly starting this week, so that will keep me going until I get my Social Security and can rejigger my budget (my what?) a bit to compensate for the almost total lack of unemployment money. It'll all work out. (Anyway, if I get depressed this early on, it's gonna be a looonnng year.)
But that means that I've moved into high gear about getting the house together for sale...and lo and behold, housing prices are going up again! Yay!
And for the last two days I have managed to do exactly (with one exception) the tasks I've set myself. Yesterday was the library, the grocery store, the cash machine and the drugstore. Today was clean the cat litter and start work on my bedroom, which is the worst room in the house. I also planned to get to that damned script for my show, but that will have to be done tomorrow, when perhaps there will be a little less wind. I suppose I should explain that, because it sounds loopy. The big sliding glass doors in my bedroom which lead to my little balcony are old and leaky, and my desk is right there next to them. The result is that if there's a stiff wind outside, it blows right in on one. Since I have found over the years that the easiest way for me to learn long speeches is to type them over and over again, this causes rather a problem, as you can see. However, tomorrow I shall wrap my legs in a blanket and pound away. Promise!
The reason for all this planning of each day's goals is that I am a natural winter hibernator. If I don't force myself to achieve something or other, it's back to bed with a book for a nice nap, and that doesn't get much of anything done - although frankly, it's a lot more fun than scrubbing my bedroom floor.
I got lovely books and a gorgeous sweater and neat new spatulas and wooden spoons and stuff (to replace what Joshua ruined, of course) and - the best news of all - I have mostly solved the ongoing cat shit problem!
It turns out (and an old cat owner like me should have thought of this ages ago) that the cat simply wanted his box back in the downstairs bathroom where it always lived. Joshua (who else?) insisted it be moved upstairs, and that's when the problem started. Oh, we've had a couple of little mistakes, but nothing like the unending daily slog of chasing the cat around with a roll of paper towels and the Lysol. So now the cat food and box are downstairs and everyone is thrilled to the very cores of their beings.
By the way...it just made my year so far when I saw the headline on the NY Post regarding the underwear bomber: 'GREAT BALLS OF FIRE!"
Love, Wendy
Now it's back to real life. My unemployment ran out, so I reapplied. You know, I have to wonder how the government thinks - if, that is, it does, which I'm finding less and less easy to believe. Now that my jobs have dwindled to almost nothing, unemployment has cut my weekly rate. I had a net of about $260 a week - now, because I have so few jobs, they've reduced it to a gross of $103 a week. This is just enough to buy my weekly prescriptions. I do know that the rate is tied to what your employers contribute based on your service to them...but it does make things a bit difficult.
However, I got a lovely call from one of my temp agencies today - the one with the nice transcription work. They've got at least four more interviews for me to transcribe, possibly starting this week, so that will keep me going until I get my Social Security and can rejigger my budget (my what?) a bit to compensate for the almost total lack of unemployment money. It'll all work out. (Anyway, if I get depressed this early on, it's gonna be a looonnng year.)
But that means that I've moved into high gear about getting the house together for sale...and lo and behold, housing prices are going up again! Yay!
And for the last two days I have managed to do exactly (with one exception) the tasks I've set myself. Yesterday was the library, the grocery store, the cash machine and the drugstore. Today was clean the cat litter and start work on my bedroom, which is the worst room in the house. I also planned to get to that damned script for my show, but that will have to be done tomorrow, when perhaps there will be a little less wind. I suppose I should explain that, because it sounds loopy. The big sliding glass doors in my bedroom which lead to my little balcony are old and leaky, and my desk is right there next to them. The result is that if there's a stiff wind outside, it blows right in on one. Since I have found over the years that the easiest way for me to learn long speeches is to type them over and over again, this causes rather a problem, as you can see. However, tomorrow I shall wrap my legs in a blanket and pound away. Promise!
The reason for all this planning of each day's goals is that I am a natural winter hibernator. If I don't force myself to achieve something or other, it's back to bed with a book for a nice nap, and that doesn't get much of anything done - although frankly, it's a lot more fun than scrubbing my bedroom floor.
I got lovely books and a gorgeous sweater and neat new spatulas and wooden spoons and stuff (to replace what Joshua ruined, of course) and - the best news of all - I have mostly solved the ongoing cat shit problem!
It turns out (and an old cat owner like me should have thought of this ages ago) that the cat simply wanted his box back in the downstairs bathroom where it always lived. Joshua (who else?) insisted it be moved upstairs, and that's when the problem started. Oh, we've had a couple of little mistakes, but nothing like the unending daily slog of chasing the cat around with a roll of paper towels and the Lysol. So now the cat food and box are downstairs and everyone is thrilled to the very cores of their beings.
By the way...it just made my year so far when I saw the headline on the NY Post regarding the underwear bomber: 'GREAT BALLS OF FIRE!"
Love, Wendy
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)