Posts from — April 2008

We’ve been watching a lot of movies and I have failed to be impressed by any of them. What is it with movies sucking so hard lately? I mean, I guess none of them sucked, they just weren’t very good, and they were supposedly the best movies of last year. Eh.

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Today I registered for the Toronto Waterfront Half Marathon 2008! Woo! On September 28, 2008, I will possibly be succeeding at running, like, 13 miles… I think. How long is a half-marathon again? I should really work that out before September I suppose. Actually, speaking of distances, there seems to be some sort of bizarre tendency in Toronto to hold races of indeterminate distance. I’ll see a pamphlet or a poster or an ad on the train for some race/hike/walk for charity and I’ll think “Sure, I’ll do that. It might be fun.” So I look closer to see how far the race/hike/walk might be, as I dread accidentally getting involved with things like that walk for breast cancer that is something like fifty miles long and takes three days. But they never says the distance! Wouldn’t you think this would be a crucial piece of information to include? This has happened to me four or five times already. Sometimes the information concerning the location or the date is also omitted. Sometimes you go to the website and the information isn’t there either! Who are these people designing these pamphlets and posters and ads and websites? Perhaps we should hold a charity run to benefit them, as they clearly must be too stupid to fend for themselves.

So anyway, now that I’ve paid 70 bucks for this damn thing, I have to do it. It’s like when Stark used to ask me if I was going to change my mind and not move to Canada and I would say “Honey, of course I’m coming there, I have non-refundable tickets.” This story makes me seem like a real bitch, doesn’t it?

Besides the boring running crap, nothing much is new. I’ve been plugging away at the website, but there is always more and more to do. I have a million photos that need processing and I never read the instructions for this new recording device that Stark bought, even though I keep saying I will. I wasted all of yesterday trying to compress movies (again!) and failed. I hate compressing movies so much! Wahhhhhh!

This is a recipe for a soup that I adopted from something my mother came up with. Her recipe uses escarole, chicken broth, and no onion. My version uses broccoli rabe (rapini), which is a much more bitter green, and changes the flavor quite a bit. It’s a very versatile recipe – this particular version makes a lot of food. You can cut it down to 1 can of beans, 1 cup of broth, and 1 head of veggie, and it will still make quite a bit of food. Sadly, if you only use one can of beans, you lose the exciting tre colore effect, and thus don’t get to celebrate the glory of the Italian flag and its heritage of yumtastic food.

It is also a versatile recipe in terms of ingredients. Any hardy leafy green will do, depending on what sort of flavor you’re into. Rapini is bitter, escarole is more neutral. I think you can probably use kale, too, although I haven’t tried. I bet you could even use bok choy! Hah! It’s a party in my mouth and every leafy green is invited! You can cut out the onions, if that’s what you feel like doing. Or you could add more! Or more garlic! If it were up to me, there would be, like, five bulbs! Some people seem to think that’s too much. Hmph. Fools, I say. And season it any way you like. Mmmm… food. So here’s the recipe:

Pasta Tre Colore: Broccoli Rabe with Cannellini Beans

Ingredients

- 2 heads of broccoli rabe
- olive oil to cover bottom of a large pot
- 1 bulb of garlic (or MORE! Hah!)
- 1/2 red or Spanish onion
- 1 1/2 cubes of veggie bouillon cubes or 1 can (14 oz) low-sodium chicken broth
- 1 1/2 cup ditalini (raw)
- 2 cans cannellini (kidney) beans, one white, one red
- Seasoning (pepper, salt, oregano, rosemary)

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I finally finished reading George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. I started reading it way back in March, right before we left for Quebec, as I thought it would be great train reading. It was. But it was too long to finish on the trip, and then eventually it seemed like it would be too long to finish ever.

I think this book is probably the longest prologue ever written. It clocks in at 807 pages, plus an additional 25 page appendix. I knew it was the first book in a series when I started reading it, but I didn’t realize that a novel of this size was going to focus almost entirely on setting the story in action. I found that aspect of the book frustrating – so much time invested, and absolutely no satisfaction gained. It’s really not a standalone story, it ends on a cliffhanger, and you either buy the next book or never find out the fate of any of the endless numbers of characters. Although I’m not a huge Tolkien fan, I do think The Hobbit is a fantastic book because it both serves as a prologue for a series and as a standalone story. In fact, and I know this is blasphemy of the highest order, I never got very far into the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I found them boring. But I read The Hobbit three times when I was a kid.

I have to admit, though, that by the last few chapters of A Game of Thrones I was pretty well engrossed in the story and despite all the complaints I am about to spout, I do want to read the rest of the books. Maybe I’ll get around to them one day when I’m retired or stranded on a desert island somewhere.

So, some general commentary: The first thing that annoyed me about this book was the structure of the universe that the author has created. I really don’t know why pretty much every fantasy book, from Tolkien to the billions of entries in the Forgotten Realm series, have to be set in a world that’s basically feudal England with different names and a few magical additions. C’mon, people, you can create any type of universe you want, why must you hew so closely to Medieval Europe? What is so appealing about the subjugation of women? What was so great about feudalism? Why must all the heroes be white people in armor and all the colored people be exotic Others and barbarians? Sheesh! It’s so damn frustrating.

The rest of the review is spoiler free.
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The following photo of me with a visa application was taken in January of 2007:

I am proud to announce that today, over a year later, I have finally sent in my application for permanent residence in Canada. Stark and I have been working and working on that damn thing all this time, and every time we thought it was done, suddenly a new requirement would manifest itself. First there weren’t sufficient numbers of photos, so more had to be taken. Then the FBI had to be contacted, the doctor had to be seen, tax forms received, certificates ordered, essays written, calls to the Canadian Immigration HELP! Line made repeatedly, bottles of wine consumed out of stress. In the end, the application was one hundred pages long. One hundred pages! Look at this monster:

Up until this morning, we were totally overwhelmed by this process. Look at what this process has done to poor Stark:

But today, at approximately noon, we mailed that sucker off to the Case Processing Office. It is now officially out of our hands. We can stress no more about it, now it is Canada’s turn to be stressed! And let me tell you, this whole thing better work out, because I can’t afford a second application.

I don’t know why I’m on such a project kick lately. I think because the weather is improving. All winter I basically sat on the couch and stared at the wall. But now it’s Spring!! The sky is blue and it’s (almost what could be considered) warm outside! The squirrels and the dogs and the birds are at play! There’s some jackhammer that keeps waking me up at ridiculously awful times in the morning! All these factors have me all excited and eager to complete all these projects I started, like, two years ago.

First there is the Teta family photo album. This album was assembled by my grandfather, who seemed to think stapling photos into a spiral notebook was the way to go. My idea was to remove all the photos from that crumbling acidic paper, but not before preserving the book as it was originally assembled by scanning the pages. I also wanted to make some sort of animated book with turning pages for a website, but alas, that seems to require… programming. Ugh. So that’s a no go. But I’m still planning on making some sort of online album. Possibly I could use image maps to make it so that if you moved the mouse over certain sections of the pages, it would bring up a close up of some of the individual photos which I will have restored. This might be completed let’s say… ten years from now. I’m just writing this down now as a record of my ideas.

All that has been completed so far is resizing six of thirty-three pages and adding black backgrounds. Yes! ::pumps fist::

Here is the cover and a couple of pages. Click to make them bigger.

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I’m thinking of starting a new photo project, and by “new,” I mean “I already have a bunch of photos on one theme and nothing to do with them.” This new project will be along the lines of “Saints in a Bush,” but using with signs instead of lawn ornamentation. I’m thinking of calling it “Signs and Wonders.” Y’know, all my projects seem to have such a religious theme. Oh well, moving on.

I have a bunch of photos of motel signs from the Road Trip of Champions, but I can’t decide whether those should remain separate from the photos I’ve taken elsewhere, like the ones I’ve taken in Toronto.

Some recent signs seen in Toronto:

This dead or dying palm tree was spotted on Spadina, in Chinatown:

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Stark and I spent all last weekend painting our living room wall Erotic Exotic Red. It’s a color from Benjamin Moore, and as we couldn’t figure out exactly what was “exotic” about it or why, we decided what Benjamin Moore really meant was “erotic,” but didn’t call it that for fear of backlash from the conservative elements in North America. Also, the guy at the hardware store totally typoed the name on the can. Hah!

This week we went over to the less than amazing Canadian Tire in search of shades for the windows. Ideally we wanted curtains, but no one seems to sell the kind that use those little wheely runner things anymore (or possibly no one understood me when I asked them if they had curtains with “little wheely runner things”), only the kind that hang from curtain rods. As the apartment came with a pre-installed wheely runner thing track above the window, we didn’t feel like drilling even more holes for a curtain rod. Thus we ended up with “Roman shades” (Indeed, I can almost taste the Italian food every time I look at them), which we installed last night. They fell down three times and are now entirely supported by twist ties. Yes, we are classy like that.

We watched The Kingdom last night. I was a bit disappointed. It was a decent movie but I had been expecting more. My mother had billed it as “the best recent movie about the Middle East.” I am guessing that either my mother has very different tastes than me or (and I think this is the more likely option) all the other major Hollywood releases about the Middle East have sucked royally.

Things The Kingdom had going for it:
1. Chris Cooper
2. Chris Cooper
3. Jennifer Garner with a gun
4. Chris Cooper
5. Jamie Foxx’s freakish, all-encompassing hairline

Things going against The Kingdom:
1. Not enough Chris Cooper
2. Peter Berg as a director

I blame the lack of Chris Cooper on Peter Berg, who is a sixteen year old boy with a directing style most closely resembling dropping anvils on people’s heads. When I saw his name pop up in the credits I knew there was no hope for subtlety or intellectualism. This is a man who thinks suspense can be created solely with quick cuts. This is a man whose only semi-decent contribution to the world of directing was Friday Night Lights, which I’m sure was only possible because he is, as previously mentioned, a sixteen year old jock in a scrawny man’s body.

Witness the special features. In the car chase featurette, Peter Berg sits in a stunt car, wearing a t-shirt for one of his Friday Night Lights high school football teams (we get it Peter, you directed a popular movie, thanks for the reminder), and declares “This car would be great for picking up chicks.” He never gets to test this theory as no woman appear on set in any capacity until the section where Peter Berg admires the final footage of some big explosions. He is impressed with the results and remarks that even though it took a long time to set up, it was worth the wait. He then proceeds to compare the several days it took to set up a special effect to the two years he had to wait to get into some girl’s pants when he was sixteen. He even says her name. Classy, Peter. Very classy. I’m sure that woman is very grateful that you compared her relationship to you to a car chase.
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