stories! of my life!

So, sorry to only have lame internet personality quizzes to talk about, but... uh, that's what I've got, so... deal.

ANYWAYS, the particular thing I was finding interesting:

Chart

Aw, guys, the internet thinks I'm a loser!  The funny part is how much of this is true, I laughed pretty hard when I got to the part about " Now, quickly go and delete everything about "theoretical questions" from your profile page,"  because I totally have one (or two).

Your result for The Brutally Honest Personality Test...

The Brutally Honest Personality Test

Fuck.  Why do we do things we KNOW are a bad idea?  Why do you EVER do something whilst simultaneously thinking, "I shouldn't do this"?   How can a person as brilliant as me be so incredibly stupid?*  Tonight, for the first time in my life, I went out to a bar and drove home when I didn't feel like I should be driving yet.  I'd only had 2 beers over the course of 3.5 hours, so, by the numbers I should have been all right, but I didn't FEEL all right, and I did it anyways.  And bumped into somebody.  We were all turning left onto the entrance ramp of a main freeway, and they stopped suddenly in the middle of the intersection, and I stopped... less suddenly.  Yes, it was snowing, and slippery, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have hit them if it weren't for the booze.  We got onto the freeway and they went zipping off at top speed, so basically I got away with it, there were no real consequences (well, there's a new tiny crack in my front bumper, but frankly, I can't bring myself to care about that much), but I feel so ashamed.  I left and got into my car because everybody else was leaving, and I didn't know what else to do.  But I could have done something else.  I should have invited myself over to the apartment of a friend of a friend who was there and lived within walking distance...  Sure, he would have thought I was hitting on him, and it would have been awkward, but I should be able to deal with awkward, I live most of my live in awkward; hurting someone by an action of mine that I KNEW to be wrong, that I don't think I could deal with.  I guess the best that can possibly come out of this is a very concrete example to use with myself if I ever contemplate trying it again.  It was only a couple miles, I thought I could be careful and everything would be ok (while knowing that wasn't really true), and it wasn't.  Idiotic.  Must NEVER do that again.

* Whee, obviously I am still under the influence, what a self congratulatory sentence (combined with an interesting dash of self loathing, do those often come intertwined? somehow I feel like they might...)

I was tagged by Miss Snarktastic!

The rules:

1. Grab your nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag 5 different people

Well, it was a close tie between "Once Upon a Time in Ghostly Japan" (bilingual collection of Japanese ghost stories), and "Programming Perl," but I'm guessing that the Japanese Ghost stories will be more widely appreciated (luckily, the odd numbered pages are the ones in English).

" 'Maybe she got lost,' he thought.  Finally, he decided he couldn't wait any longer.  Convinced that something terrible had happened to his wife, he ran up the mountain path as fast as his young legs would carry him."

~ from the story "Baby Grandma," in which an old man stumbles upon the fountain of youth, and his dear wife of many years has a bit too much to drink.

But... well, I got a rather enticing message from a young man (brief interruption here to explain: I'm in an online dating service thingy.  Yes, apparently I am that desperate. Really though, I just don't know where else to meet people, chatting up random boys in the library is a little intimidating, I don't really "do" bars, and although almost everyone I work with is male, they're old or married or in most cases, both.  Ok, back to the story.)  So, anyways, this is actually someone who caught my eye a while back (on said dating thingy), and I actually almost messaged him, even though the gender balance there is such that I was getting more responses than I could keep up with even without sending out any of my own (that isn't actually as many clamoring males as you might think, I'm pretty introverted, so being sociable with even 2 or 3 strangers a day (even online) is kind of a lot for me), but then I read one of his blog posts about being disappointed that so few of the people he's messaged replying, and I knew he'd visited my profile, but he hadn't messaged me, so I got all "oh, he doesn't like me, wah," and didn't. 

Good grief, that was an excruciatingly run-on paragraph, here's the summary for anyone who doesn't want to wade through all that:
 1.  *whine*  Dating = bad, I don't want to anymore, I'll just be lonely and happily single forever!
 2.  Random cute internet guy sends admiring message after reading dating profile thingy.
 3.  Cue spontaneous fantasies about falling in love and living happily ever after.

What can I say?  I'm a hopeless optimist...

(P.S.  Just as back up though, I did go through with the metaphorical kitten adoption.  Her name is Sophie, and she is an adorable tiny fuzzy grey imaginary kitten with the prettiest green eyes.  Also, she is telepathic, shy, very smart, and trying to talk me into letting her be able to breath fire.  I haven't decided if that's a good idea yet.)

Arrrgh.  I give up.  I am just going to go ahead and start adopting cats and quit all of this dating nonsense (only, they'll have to be metaphorical cats, because I'm not allowed to have pets here, and I have friends who are allergic).

What brought this on, you ask?  Strangely enough, a string of really nice dates.  I met this nice guy, we went sledding, and to a fun comedy show uptown, he made me homemade clam chowder and FRESH BISCUTS people!  We are both sort of geeky (ok, honestly, I'm probably more than "sort of" geeky, I'm planning on spending my Christmas break learning Perl.  For fun.  And I'm excited about that.), and interested in photography, and cooking, and rock climbing, and rhubarb pies being made without strawberries in them.  And how did I feel about this?  Mostly - panicked.  And pretty much entirely uninterested.  So despite the fact that he keeps coming up with these great things to do, and he's super sweet, and interesting, I decide to break it off.  So, I get an email from him inviteing me to lunch someplace cool, and rock climbing afterwards, and I'm trying and trying to figure out what to say in reply, beyond "no."  I figure I've got a bit of time to figure it out though, since he's going home for the holidays for a couple weeks.  But then tonight he calls, I guess he hasn't left yet, and was wondering if I was up for dinner.  Luckily, I have plans with my sisters, so I could say no to that without going into everything (since he's caught me off guard, and I'm absolute crap on the phone at the best of times).  But then he asks if he can just drop by to give me a little Christmas present.  And I can't think of anything to say but sure (see above parenthetical), and here's my address, and here's how to get here.  So he comes, and I pull it together and tell him that I can't accept the gift and that I'm apparently not ready for dating anyone right now.  And he's of course all nice about it and says he understands, and would still like to do stuff with me once in a while as friends...

And then he still wants to give me the present - it's a gift card, to a new yarn store that just opened that I've been wanting to go to.  Why??  Why such a sweet gift?  I still didn't take it, not sure if that was better or not.

I had expected to feel relieved, once it was over, and he was gone.  I don't.  I cried my way back up the stairs.

What's your favorite thing to drink when it's cold outside?

Hot buttered rum.  Yum.  Hot and sweet (but not too sweet) and creamy and boozy.  Perfect.
Here's how you do it:

Batter:
1  pint vanilla ice cream (I use Haagen Dazs, if you're going to do something, do it right)
1  stick butter, softened  (for the love of all that's holy, use real butter, I am serious folks)
1/2 cup  brown sugar
1/2 cup  white sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg*

So, you mix up the dry ingredients, and then cream them together with the softened butter, then mix in the ice cream.  Easy-peasy, and that's the challenging part.  Now you keep that mixture in your freezer, and whenever you feel like a lovely cup of buttered rum, you put 3 Tablespoons of the batter into a cup, add one shot of rum (I use "Meyers Original Dark Rum," yum), and then fill the rest of the way with boiling water.  Stir and enjoy.  You're welcome.

* The nutmeg is very... nutmeg-y.  If you're not crazy about nutmeg, you may want to omit it, or substitute with something else.  The last batch I made I substituted chai spices, tasty.

(Thanks to the Food Whore, from whom I stole learned this recipe)

It has been an exciting week for my love life.  And by exciting, I mean tragical.  Hm, I'll start with the least tragical story (I am aware that tragical is not an actual word, however, I feel it adds drama </grammar snob>).

There is this dating site that I joined right?  And it's pretty cool, there are a lot of interesting looking guys in my area, and the ratio is tilted in my favor, which is nice.  So, there's this one guy who would keep talking to me, and he sounds pretty interesting, but he's a bit older than me (which is ok,  but he looks... like a grown-up, you know?  And I'm a grown-up - pay my own bills, make my own food, buy my own toilet paper and light bulbs, take myself to the doctor, but I'm not a Grown-Up. There's a difference.)  But he's persistent, and easy to talk to, and one night when I'm feeling unusually extroverted (and therefore somewhat lonely), he convinces me to meet him nearby for coffee.  And I do, and he's better looking in person than the photos he put up, and I have fun.  He's easy to talk to in person too, and we laugh (o.k., so getting me to laugh isn't hard actually, but still, enjoyable).  So, things seem kinda good, right?  So, we're both pretty busy for the next couple days, and then it is Thanksgiving, so we chat online a bit and agree to grab a drink Saturday night.  And we do, and we play scrabble, and he introduces me to a very tasty new beer (the name of which I can't remember, shoot), and at least once I laugh until I'm almost crying, and he invites me over for a piece of pie.  The pie was good, he offers to marry me when I reveal my deep love for rhubarb pie (*NOT* rhubarb strawberry damn it! Those stupid strawberries RUIN it!).  And then he kisses me.  He seems perfectly competent (uh, except maybe for judging the level of my desire to kiss him), but... meh.  To make a long story short (too late!) there's nothing WRONG with him, I'm just not really interested.  I want to be, but I am not.  This is disappointing.

Ok, slightly more tragical (but also kind of good).  My one and only ex, the man I dated for nearly 6 years, the last three of which were spent mostly apart due to him being in the military, and me stuck at home sleeping alone and being ridiculously faithful, that man, is now married.  As of this weekend.  We broke up at the end of February.  Bastard.

And the most tragical thing?  I'm in love.  Have been for the last year.  With a coworker.  I also like his wife of 12 years very much.  It is entirely unrequited, I would not have an affair with anyone, if he were to seem to return my interest, I wouldn't be very interested anymore.  So, basically, it's pretty hopeless.  This really may be the most tragic thing to ever happen to me. (He is so great!  He is brilliant, and funny, and hopelessly geeky, and adorably scruffy.  He may possibly be the least sexist person I know.  He is interested in life and willing to look at things from an entirely different perspective on a moment's notice.  He admits when he's wrong.  He comes up with the most amazingly horrific puns. I am scared that I will never find anyone else so wonderful.)

You know, I just love sauteing things.  The colors and smells and the relaxation of just stirring now and again - so very satisfying.  Triple points if it involves garlic... mmm... garlic.

I'm making this soup.  Looking super tasty so far - I haven't technically had a bowlful yet, just licked the spoon, it's still getting heated through after adding the last ingredients.  If you're not an incredibly slow food chopper-upper like me (or just have a little more faith in  your food processor), it'd even be pretty quick to make, I think.  It'd also help if you don't decide halfway through that your corn smells freezer-burnt and decide to run to the store to get some more.  Also if you don't pause during cooking to be a refresh monkey - new chapter comes out every day now for Tales of MU (fantasy/coming of age/sexual politics/I-don't-know-how-to-categorize-this-but-it's-cool story) (start at the beginning, but if you have anything else in your life that has to get done, like, oh sleeping or eating, you should probably stay away... but not really, cause it's worth missing a meal or two for, really).