Hello, this is Joanna, can I speak with the cutest little girl in the world?

It’s day 30 and I am all but tapped and so will again turn to the well of “little kids make writing easy” to complete my month of blog posts.

Everyone remember Miss D? In case there was any doubt she is still the most adorable person on the planet and I am still a complete sucker. And if you’re wondering how these two facts have combined in light of the upcoming holiday in honor of gluttony and shopping let me just say that the credit card companies have called my brother and asked him to please have as many children as possible. (Kurt: if you are working on this I do not want to know.)

Miss D is recently fascinated with talking on the phone much to the pleasure of her smitten aunt (aka me). A few weeks ago when she was playing sick at Grandma’s in between teaching my parents to sit, shake and beg she announced a need to call me (obviously aware that I have the power to cure colds from 3000 miles away) but when mom put her on the phone she was completely silent. Luckily I know how to fill a conversation lull (she is really going to wow the other kids at daycare with her knowledge of Beauty and the Geek (oh god how much do I hate everyone in the final 2 except for Nicole? A lot. Especially Jasmine. Also I think that being forced to watch 10 minutes of LARP-ing has perhaps turned me off geeks. The CW has a lot to answer for.)). But lately she has developed more of an appreciation for the art of conversation. The last two times we’ve talked she has started with yelling my name (note: she thinks my name is Joanna but I have it better than my mom who she insists on calling Grandma Horst (you know, the wife of Grandpa Horst)) and then answering every question I ask with “yeah!!!” until she bores of me and yells “BYE!” usually this is when I’m mid sentence (“What do you want for Christmas? “yeah!” “Did you tell your daddy to buy me a wii for Christmas?” “yeah!” “Have you given much thought to coming to live with me because I have LOTS of cookies at my house” “YEAH!!!!” “Wonderful, I’ve also been thinking a lot about the best way to track your progress on learning to make vodka gimlets because…” “BYE!!!”). I can only assume that she is mimicking how she hears adult phone conversations, clearly (and understandably) her opinion of most adults is pretty low. Next up? She’s spending some quality time with me at Christmas so she should be blogging in the new year.

Going for the much coveted "international guest poster" award

Hi, everyone. It's me, Mike. You know. Mike? Yeah, that's me.

I’m filling in for Brianna today*, who couldn't be bothered to live up to the rules of NaBloPoMo which require a person to post every day. Okay, so it doesn't say that person has to do the posting, but let's just infer that so that we can all mock Brianna for a while. Done? No? Okay, I'll wait.

Anyway, she offered me endless gratitude (or something) to pen a post for her today, and being the good friend that I am (see me abuse this privilege already?), I just couldn't help but be helpful.

And do you know why?

Because I'm Canadian.

It's a little known fact that Canadians are nice. I know, you didn't realise that, did you? Sure, we use extraneous vowels and generally avoid the letter "zed" because we're still a constitutional monarchy and we have this latent fear that if we stray from either of those habits, the Queen will come over and hit us with one of her hats, but deep down, we're loveable. It's an even lesser-known fact that Brianna has a cosmic destiny with Canadians. She seems to run into them everywhere. I, personally, believe that somewhere deep in her soul, she's in some way Canadian (don't listen to her when she tells you that's "German", not "Canadian").

So, for the sake of a post, and our international friendship, I present to you the Top 10 reasons Why Brianna Wishes She Was Canadian.

10. Lots and lots of snow.

9. Lots and lots of reasons to drink hot toddies in front of a fire because it's so damn cold outside.

8. Sweaters. [Perhaps this isn't coming from her, exactly, but trust me on this one.]

7. We're exceptionally friendly up here.

6. Cool accents.

5. Her singsongy voice would fit in nicely north of the 49th parallel, and not just in that one corner of California.

4. Finally that whole exchange rate problem has been solved.

3. Blue Rodeo.

2. She secretly wishes she could use more French words in casual conversation.

1. Endless opportunities to wear toques in an array of fashionable colours and styles.

And, for the sake of completeness, the Top 10 Reasons Why She's Probably Glad She Isn't.

10. Celine Dion. [We're sorry. We didn't know it would get so out of hand.]

9. Can't use the whole "international allure" angle on Canadian boys.

8. Low, low wages for smart computer-nerdy people.

7. Horrible, horrible "Mexican" food.

6. Hockey dominates the television on any given night.

5. Still cold even in the summertime.

4. Seriously, what's with all the hockey?

3. Doesn't want to be blamed for all those "nor easters" that hit the eastern seaboard.

2. What do you mean the booze has a 19% surtax on it?!

1. Now that she's of legal drinking age, she'd risk picking up guys who aren't even 21 yet, though still legal in the bars.

So there you have it, folks. Two lists, two countries, 30 days of NaBloPoMo. And if I may say so, I think she's done admirably through the month -- meme-less, lets-review-NaBloPoMo-so-far-less, and highly entertaining. She did, however, resort to joining Facebook, a decision she may regret if she doesn't get to blog about it a few more times.

*Hey, this is Brianna -- I'm a big follower of the rules so I'll actually be posting my own thing later today but it will suck much much much more than this post.

City Songs

On Sunday Peter of PeterDeWolf.com made the huge mistake of leaving a comment on my blog indicating that he loves theme based mix tapes (ok, fine, cds. FINE, playlists but I won't pretend to like that magic-less nomenclature.). Seeing an opportunity for free music AND the chance to disappointingly write about music for the second time in one month I jumped on him with the request for some theme based music trading. And (likely mistake number 2) he agreed. Fool! Barely 24 hours later I had the following collection of songs with cities in their title delivered to my inbox

Bobcaygeon -- The Tragically Hip
Newcastle Jam -- Crowded House
Kreuzburg -- Bloc Party
Atlantic City -- Bruce Springsteen
Rio -- Daran Duran
New York's Not My Home -- Jim Croce
Jackson -- Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash
Luckenbach, Texas -- Waylon Jennings
L.A. Woman -- The Doors
New Orleans Is Sinking -- The Tragically Hip

You'll immediately notice that Peter totally cheats.

My first issue was with the song called Bobcagen but while at first I thought this was some Canadian word likely having to do with maple syrup processing or beavers it turns out to be the name of a town (though notable a town that even the (presumably Canadian) guy on the intro has never heard of) and since I come from a place that insists on calling itself a city despite having only 4000 human inhabitants I’m apt to let a lot of things slide. It helps that of the 5 new songs on the list this was by far my favorite.

The second cheater issue is that Peter includes 2 songs by the same band. This was not an explicit rule for the creation of this mix but I was fairly certain the all reasonable people knew that mixes have a MIX of artists. Peter tried to defend his behavior using the following pathetic excuse, “But it’s The Tragically Hip!” Which is Canadian for “but it’s AC/DC” which is Australian for “My country only has one famous band” (cue half of Canada calling me names -- save it folks, I am actually a huge fan of your country's contributions to auditory stimulation and I'm not even mad about the Celine Dion thing.).

There are 4 songs on this list that are songs that I forgot that I loved which means that I spent most of my listening time rewinding (fine, clicking the little back arrow) and thinking "Oh my god I DO want to move to Luchenbach and raise some fine youngin's and then maybe dress up like a bird of paradise and take a side trip to the Rio Grand and dance on a keg in some bar to make my husband jealous!"

Of the remaining 6 remaining tunes I already knew and sort of liked "Atlantic City" (though it's no "Thunder Road") and I'm sure I had heard "L.A. Women" at some point in the past and generally found it too much like the kind of song the fake stoner in the WASP-y frat loved. I was surprised to like Kreuzburg and I can tolerate Newcastle Jam and New Orleans Is Sinking. I know that come some dreary day in February when the subway smells particularly bad and the streets feel particularly harsh I will be very glad to have New York Is Not My Home to commiserate with.

Peter tells me that NaBloPoMo posts are supposed to suck. Thank God. One more day.

Moustache Ride

The New York City Movember Gala was last night and me and my comrades (aka coworkers) made a good show of it. There were pastel leaisure suits, there were over priced drinks, there were Playboy Bunnies (sadly no Girls Next Door), there were boys in cowboy hats (one of whom was in The Villiage People), there may have been some booty shaking.

We garnered 3 Mo superlative nominations.

Best Team Mo










Lame-Mo











And... Yes, the rumors are true-- yours truly was one of 3 finalists for Miss Movember. It is also true that some other chick won just because she was hotter than me. This being essentially a beauty contest I suppose I can't claim I was robbed but given how much more awesome my outfit was than hers I'd like to at least claim to have had my crown borrowed without permission.


















Prostate cancer has never been so much fun -- or gotten me in so much trouble.

The Mean Streets of Florida

Thanks to my job and JetBlue I spent Monday in central Florida and while I enjoyed the 84 degrees and this Italian meal from a cute little place called Olive Garden (where they give you unlimited bread sticks! have you heard of this?) the majority of my time in Florida was devoted to desperately digging through the bottom of my laptop bag in search of change. You know what they have a lot of in Florida? Oranges? Oldersters? Mickey Mice? Sure, I suppose, but it is a little known fact that 64.7% of the Florida population is made up of tollbooths. This is the main reason why there was so much voter confusion back in 2000 – tollbooths are notoriously bad at using punch cards.

In my short visit I estimate that I donated roughly $700,000,000.82 to the Florida tollbooth association and quarter appreciation society (on the Florida quarter? A tollbooth with Mickey Mouse ears). While I’m sure that if I lived in Florida and had to get a second job at the local Orange Julius in order to afford the cost of tolls I’d likely be pretty pissed off but for my one day visit my main complaint had less to do with money and more with annoyance.

The tolls on a Florida highway are not for any uniform amount – this means that as you sit at tollbooth #37 praying that your aim is good enough to toss $.62 into the maw of the FL Transportation authority and you peer down the road and spy tollbooth #38 about 700 feet ahead of you there will be no way of knowing exactly how much money you’ll be asked for next. I assume that this random toll system was adopted to offset the monotony of living in a climate that hands you 80 degrees day after day all year long and while I appreciate a surprise even more than your average senior citizen I worry that the system could lead to confusion, car accidents and me defacing a tollbooth with lipstick and spit and the leftovers of a 12 ounce can of Diet Pepsi (which I totally would not dream about doing even once officer.).

As fun as the surprise price tag is the absolute best feature of the Florida toll system is the “exact change” rule that is enforced at roughly 40% of tollbooths. The first time I came across one of these machines changeless I panicked. Afraid that my picture would be snapped and Hertz Rent a Car would hunt me down and throw me into some Florida prison where inmates are forced to accurately toss dirty coins into metal baskets or go without their nightly mai tai I dared not driving through without paying. My first instinct was to get a dollar bill out of my wallet, smile pretty and stare at the basket hoping for some sort of bill accepter contraption. By the time I realized that there was no such input device (and that tollbooths are impervious to the “but I’m cute, please forgive me!” smile) there was a huge SUV pulling up behind me which caused further panic in the form of dropping the dollar bill out the window. I immediately opened my door and started to exit the vehicle before remembering that Florida is technically the south the person behind me was probably armed and FOR SURE wanted to kill me – I left the dollar on the highway and slowly got back in the car. Of course I still had no change and I could see Bubba in the rearview looking for a clear shot. While my travel companion (aka He who Never has ANY Change) dug around in the muck at the bottom of my bag (would that you could pay your tolls in ATM receipts and bobby pins) I twisted around to grab my jacket from the back seat and fish desperately through the pockets while wistfully dreaming of the huge can of change that lives next to my front door back in the heaven of New York City where I’m never expected to drive and everyone takes credit cards. I was eventually able to scrape together the $.50 getting off the freeway fee and for the remainder of my stay in the penis of the USA took to keeping a dollar in coins on the dash at all times.

In California there are no such thing as toll roads (And the streets are paved in gold. And everyone has their own personal ray of sunshine that follows them around. And the cows can talk) so my experience with tollbooths didn’t begin until I attended college in western New York – the land of the NY Thruway. The Thruway may place ridiculous expectations on drivers like “speed limit: 55” and “30 miles for only $75!” but at least they don’t force people to stop every 5 miles to pay a toll. You’re handed a card when you get on the road in Schenectady and you pay one toll when you exit the road for an evening of debauchery in Oneida. This allows traffic to keep moving rather than shuttling cars through a tollbooth once ever 17 feet. Can someone tell Florida to get with the program?

Template*

Grand statement. Flippant comment that negates grand statement. Mock serious comment that negates flippant comment. Grand statement.

Obvious fact. Huge leap of faith. Coy rewording of grand statement.

Devil’s advocacy. Brief exploration of implications of devil’s advocacy. Contemptuous dismissal of those who dare to go against grand statement. Fools. Reference to Beverly Hills 90210 that proves grand statement.

Self deprecation. Just kidding, I’m awesome. Look how quirky I am! Swear word. (edgy!) You wish you were me. And if you want to be more like me might I suggest grand statement?

Witty banter (astute but still funny parenthetical comment). Song lyric by band you’ve never heard of that vaguely references grand statement but which I am mostly including as a pathetic attempt to seem hip. Wry contradiction of grand statement.

Declaration of success.

*the first person to actually use this as a template for a blog post gets either a picture of my knee cap OR free promotional quote in support of the blog your your choice – your choice!!!

Slurping My Way Through Chinatown

I love a good theme. Mix tapes containing only songs with cities as their title. Costume parties where everyone has to dress as their favorite rock star. I’m always in. And today? A Chinatown soup dumpling crawl. This afternoon of theme based gluttony was sponsored by a coworker who, earlier this year (during a time of much warmer weather), also brought me the Chinatown pan fried dumpling crawl. He is fast becoming my favorite person.

For those of you not living in an area with a thriving Chinese community might I recommend moving? Because seriously you people are missing out. Soup dumplings are a dollop of meat filling (usually pork) floating in a sea of rich broth encased inside of a thick dumpling wrapper. They are amazing. During our romp around Chinatown there was much talk (between the slurping and moaning in pleasure) about just how they get the broth tucked away in the belly of the dumpling (a more ethnic and perhaps higher brow version of the “how do they get the crème in the twinkie?” debate) and the most likely answer seemed to involve a cube of frozen broth instead of a stock filled syringe but Wikipedia claims that both hypothesizes wrong. Apparently the broth is the result of a meat gelatin alone which when heated melts into a satisfying greasy sauce -- this might not sound appetizing but does explain the richness (and also exactly why the broth drippings were so quick to congeal on my plate). I promise that if you eat a soup dumpling you will not find that last sentence anything other than delicious.

The first stop on the soup dumpling crawl was the overflow location for New York’s most famous soup dumpling-ary Joe’s Shanghai, Joe’s Ginger at 25 Pell. We were brought 2 orders of traditional pork soup dumplings and one order of a pork and crab combo both of which were lovely though there were some incidences of perhaps less than well done pork.

Our next stop at Goodies at 1 East Broadway offered the most impressive showing for soup dumpling variety and we took full advantage ordering FIVE types of dumplings. Sadly when the bamboo baskets arrived at the table all of the dumplings had such a uniform look that we were unable to distinguish the three delight from the seafood until the broth hit our tongues. No matter since all were also uniformly scrumptious. Goodies also brought us a bowl full of fortune cookies at the end of our second stop on the dumpling-fest via which I received this notification.

By 2pm Shanghai café at 100 Mott was so packed that we elected to take our dumplings on the road. And so the crawl ended with the 9 of us munching on pork and pork and crab dumplings in Columbus Park. The broth in the Shanghai dumplings was by far the most flavorful and gently sucking it from our its doughy pocket while sitting under a clear November sky was a wonderful way to end a long American weekend that honors gluttony.

I love turkey and mashed potatoes and most of all stuffing but this year I am thankful to reside in the land of exotic edible delights. God bless New York City.