whiskey in a teacup . com

Raise your shofars, people:  it’s the new year!  Have a healthy and happy one.

My new hobby is going to the neighborhood Korean/Japanese market to purchase tea, rice, and snacks.  They have a dizzying array of products that, unfortunately, I will probably never buy because the packaging is all in kanji.  (Although today I did buy some miso soup because it also had English on the label.)  I don’t mean to be xenophobic, but I have dietary restrictions and some of that shit is not what it looks like.  Until I asked another shopper, I thought kimchi was organ meat, and there’s a lot of stuff that looks like vegetables but could actually be some kind of dehydrated squid or what have you.  I guess if there’s something that looks especially appealing, I’ll ask for help.  (When I asked about the kimchi it wasn’t because I wanted to buy it.  I was just confused that there were so many different brands of what appeared to be bloody intestine in a jar.)

When I go there I am usually the only white shopper, which is surprising because there are plenty of sceney Japanophiles in this city.  Anyway, it’s good to know that there’s an endless supply of Pocky right down the street from my home.  I am partial to “Men’s” Pocky, which is the dark, bitter kind (hey, just like me! ) although I do find it offensive that as a non-man I’m apparently supposed to cover my mouth with my hands and giggle softly before daintily consuming only the sweetest, milkiest chocolates.  What can I say, I’m totally genderqueer when it comes to my trendy Asian snack foods.

We eat this at least once or twice a week in the feralteacup household.  It takes like fifteen minutes and is both delicious and nutritious.  Even though it’s a very simple meal, it always impresses Jared, and that makes me feel all wifely and shit.

two cups whole wheat pasta (we use penne or rotini, usually)

a bunch of pasta sauce (keep it simple; tomato with garlic or basil)

one froyo container’s worth of morningstar farms meatless crumbles

Bring some water to a boil and throw the pasta in for ten minutes.  Put the pasta sauce on low to medium heat.  Nuke the crumbles for about a minute and a half and then add them to the sauce.  When the pasta is done, drain it, then take the sauce and crumbles off the heat and mix it all into the pasta.  Serves two moderately hungry adults.  Enjoy!

In the sixth grade I had a massive crush on the kid who sat next to me in homeroom.  Time has blurred his features in my mind’s eye, and I recall him mainly as a very pale boy with white-blond hair and blue eyes.  You see, throughout my life my romantic interests have focused on males who fall into several archetypes: when I was younger, I had a vaguely disturbing preference for blond Aryan boys; later I developed an affinity for tall, skinny, faggy types; and later still my affections narrowed squarely towards Jared.  This kid from the sixth grade, who we’ll call A. (because, conveniently, that’s his first initial) came along during the infancy of my Aryan period.  One could suggest that he was my own personal Annabel Leigh, adored when we were just too young, and that the string of strapping blonds I liked after him were my amalgamated Lolita.

We were in the same science class, and the teacher made us play a game wherein one student would stand next to a model skeleton and recite a list of major bones, in a cephalocaudal manner, as quickly as possible.  These trials were timed, and whoever could name all the bones the fastest was granted the respect of their eleven-year-old peers.  I was very good at this game, and I remember standing at the front of the class, reeling off cranium maxilla mandible atlas axis and making my way through the whole list in record time.  My crush, A., raised his hands above his head and applauded boisterously for me.  As you can well imagine, my young heart was quite aflutter.

Alas, that was as far as our relationship ever went.  A decade and a half later, all I knew about A. was that he grew up and got married in the Mormon church.  One day his name came up on a social networking site and I added him as a “friend”.  The site has an annoying “feed” feature that alerts you when your friends add photos to their profiles, change their relationship status, or join groups.  Recently I was notified that A. joined the following groups, all within a few minutes:

Protect California Marriage
I Support the California ProtectMarriage Constitutional Amendment
Justin & Amber are Getting Married…fast!
Aaron and Kristen’s Vegas Adventure!!!

My former crush opposes gay marriage so vehemently that he would seek to actively return it to illegal status.  However, he is fully in support of what is presumably a shotgun wedding (incidentally, Justin and Amber live in Provo, UT) as well as the sort of wholesome, one-man one-woman fun that we all associate with Las Vegas (Aaron and Kristen have ties to BYU and jocularly note in their group description that “Elvis will not be our sealer!”)

I don’t choose my friends on the basis of their political or religious beliefs, nor do I discard them on such a basis.  However, when certain pieces of data combine in such a way as to suggest that someone is a zealot and a hypocrite and thus at least partially a douchebag, it fully cools the embers of the crush I once enjoyed.  My memories of A. clapping for me as I identified the bones of the skull and pelvic girdle are now forever ruined by the knowledge that he’s got his head way, way up his ass.

The company that manages our condo employs a maintenance guy who we have had to call upon several times.  I like him and all, but there’s something off-kilter about our interactions, something that turns a simple exchange of pleasantries into a surreal, vaguely uncomfortable tableau.  He does good work, though, and is quite reliable.

I arrived home one recent day and was parking in front of the house when I noticed him backing his truck into our driveway.  He waved me over and we chatted briefly (i.e. I spoke to him while he peered quizzically at me and slowly offered responses) about the broken water heater in the basement.  I asked him to please not turn off the water for a few minutes so I could take a shower, then realized that his maintenance visits often occur when I’m either just getting out of the shower, or just needing to go in, and almost always when Jared is at work.

Upon further rumination, I compiled the following additional facts:  He’s blond and foreign, he goes by a strange name that is obviously fake, and I’ve only ever seen him in work boots and carrying tools; thus, he is obviously a direct parallel of Karl Hungus, star of the movie-within-a-movie Logjammin’ from The Big Lebowski.

Anyway, he did indeed fix the water heater - don’t be fatuous!

I just (read: two days ago) returned from taking a three-day clinical exam in Utica, NY.  The exam was pass/fail, where “pass” meant “perform with 100% accuracy for three days” and “fail” meant “wait several more months and spend more thousands of dollars to re-take it, and in the meantime, you won’t be graduating or getting a more advanced nursing license”.  This was a requirement for my degree and it had been hanging over me like a nebulous fog for the better part of two years.  My stress was remarkably minimal before and during the experience, especially considering my personality (which is a little nervous, I think), but as soon as I passed the exam all my semi-repressed anxiety started to manifest itself.  I’ve felt pretty fried ever since, and I’ve been sleeping like a champ, which is totally unlike me.  I expect to be back to my insomiac, clear-thinkin’ self sometime soon.

One of the things that definitely helped me get through this successfully was psyching myself up by playing Gob Bluth’s magic act in my head over and over.  It may have been the single cheesiest, silliest, most effective stress management technique I have ever tried in my life.