Twilight Saga – New Moon

How can a movie that was made after such popular books (and is itself SO popular, granted that with a population I no longer belong to) be SO poorly cast??? HOW?? the supporting characters are the best things this movie has seen, and the two leads are one worse than the other. I don’t think I’ve seen such poor female lead acting since… no, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such poor acting. Every actor or actress I ever considered poor fades when compared to her!

In three words: Kristen Stewart Sucks. SO BAD!

She is empty – has no personality, no facial expressions, and no chemistry with the guy she is supposed to be in love with, both on AND off screen! There is more chemistry with the unfortunate (and hott) underdog than with her supposed lover. WTF people? Really?

Well, it seems to be working, since the poor quality hasn’t stopped people from swarming the theatres to see this one, or the one before. Oh well…

And yet, the movie was strangely uplifting… I don’t know why. Maybe it was the superficial nature of it, which doesn’t make you think, or overanalyze, but allows you to make endless fun of the actors/characters (I haven’t been so mean in at least 4 years!) and to speak during the movie. Not that that’s ever stopped me before, but during this movie, there really wasn’t much to miss.

Maybe company also made a difference, my friend was totally there with me when I made comments. That was cool!

Since when do they let total nullities into Hollywood? I bet they could have found much better looking, better actresses to play this part.

Am I annoyed? Maybe a tad… But do go see this movie if you need a break from everything intellectual (which does feel good sometimes). It’s really good for that!

Also, and totally unrelated, LOOOL, my blog made it on a website of links about mushroom (drug) addiction due to my post “Mushrooms are addictive.” You gotta love the large wide web

Compatibility

There are some people you can just talk to… there are other people you hope or think you can talk to, maybe because of some common heritage (like the fact that you’re both Romanian) or experience (like the fact that you both went to Dartmouth). And when you realize you can’t connect to those people, sometimes you get scared and wonder if you’ll ever find someone you’ll feel truly compatible with again…

How many people are there out in the world that one can feel absolutely at ease with? I’m hoping, for my own sake, that the number is unlimited, and that the best is not behind me.

Sorry seems to be the hardest word

Is it though? Is “sorry” the hardest word? Everyone seems to think that an apology makes everything right, and people throw them left and right with flair and ease.

“I am sorry” – what does that really mean? How much do words count after the fact?

I was watching an episode of one of my shows tonight, and there was the story of a family. They had a baby when they were teenagers, the woman was a drug addict who couldn’t give up and ended up giving the little girl to the father (who loved her, but didn’t get custody during the trial) in return for money for drugs. In the end the mother went into rehab, then the two got married (they weren’t) and moved in together. One day he was getting into his car to go to work, when the house exploded: his new wife was cooking meth, the girl was in the house, and they both sustained grave injuries. The little girl got carbon monoxide poisoning but recovered, the mother sustained third degree burns and died. Before she died she said “I am sorry, I never meant to hurt our little girl.”

All this preamble was to ask: how much do the words “I am sorry” count after the mistake has already been made? How about if you made the same mistake several times? What is the threshold after which those words hold no value whatsoever any more? And should things be forgiven? Is there anything that shouldn’t?

I don’t have an answer to this question right now. I am a very strong advocate of honesty – of all things, I would probably be least likely to forgive a lie (so what I am saying is that I probably woulnd’t have forgiven my spouse if s/he had lied to me and put the life of our child in danger). Or one of the least likely things for me to forgive would be a lie, I would probably not look too kindly upon murder either.

What do you think?

Happy Unification Day, Romania! Dec-1-2009

Today was the National Day. Kinda like Romania’s birthday (one of them, she has many!). Happy National Day Romania!

What better way to celebrate, thought I on my way to work, than buy myself a nice sweet breakfast? To tell the truth, I had been planning this for a while, and sneakily waited until the new month, and clean budget, to shell out. What a cheap-skate! But the day was finally here!

As such, I stepped into the Dunkin Donuts at the corner of the street (no, I don’t live in New York, and Dunkin Donuts places are not as numerous here in Boston, and yet there is one on the corner across from where I work, lucky for me – or so I thought) and bought a large hot chocolate and two Boston Kremes – my favorite donuts. I got to work and rushed around to prepare for our weekly research meeting.

Wait a second, I thought mid-step, let me sip a little of this super-sweet-smelling hot chocolate, it will help me start my day well.  So I did – and promptly felt my tongue scorch inside my mouth – the drink was scalding hot! Instead of celebrating, I spent the rest of the day drinking cold water and not being able to really taste anything. The stir fry I had for lunch tasted slightly ashy, and the pasta at dinner barely made its presence felt, only because the taste buds that handle pesto are all over my tongue, I am sure. The least I could do was save a donut for tomorrow – when I will eat it along with ICED tea.

Why is today the National Day of Romania? Initially I wanted to tell a nice story, but I am soo tired (I’ve really been working hard lately, which makes me very happy! I think I’m loving my job more and more!), so I will once again resort to Wikipedia. Here is what we find out about our national day:

Great Union Day (Romanian: Ziua Marii Uniri, also called Unification Day) occurring on December 1, is the national holiday of Romania. It commemorates the assembly of the delegates of ethnic Romanians held in Alba Iulia, which declared the Union of Transylvania with Romania.

This holiday was set after the 1989 Romanian Revolution and it marks the unification of Transylvania, but also of the provinces of Basarabia and Bucovina with the Romanian Kingdom, in 1918.

Prior to 1918, the national holiday of Romania was set to be on May 10, which had a double meaning: it was the day on which Carol I set foot on the Romanian soil (in 1866), and it was the day on which the prince ratified the Declaration of Independence (from the Ottoman Empire) in 1877.

In Communist Romania, the date of the national holiday was set to August 23 to mark the 1944 overthrow of the pro-fascist government of Marshal Ion Antonescu.

Happy Day everyone!

Good bye November!

Another month went by. Where does time go? I had an amazing month, with unique moments and interesting experiences, but the passing of time inevitably makes me think about all the things I didn’t do… I really need to get my act together! It’s almost the end of the year, time for new year’s resolutions. Or at least planning them

In the mean time, Happy National Day Romania! (for tomorrow)

Thanksgiving 2009 – the party

After all the work and sweat in the kitchen, it was time to enjoy the feast. We had turkey with mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce, stuffing, green bean casserole, broccoli with cheese sauce, and wonderful rolls fresh out of the oven. We even had homemade gravy! That was the only time I broke my rules of “homemade or dead” and made some more gravy out of a can, and good thing too, because my gravy, which took the longest to make (turkey notwithstanding), ended up being the least tasty of all treats. But it was there, nonetheless. Next time it will be better.

We drank wine (the father had bought a HUGE bottle of rose wine that none of the others wanted to drink (not then, anyway), but I sipped most of it by the time I left three days later). I had started the previous night, while cooking, continued that morning, and settled into the drinking at lunch. I thought the taste went great with turkey. Not many agreed. Oh well, more for me. We told stories (it did get a little morbid when the father talked about his recently deceased wife – I felt really sad for him, it must be hard especially at times like these), praised the food (hihihi) and enjoyed the company. What a great time!!

Two hours later, it was time for desert. The valiant 8 people crew managed to clear the table and clean the dishes in record time, so that when the pies came out, they were well received. Between the 8 of us, we had 5 pies. I had made pecan pie that day (I actually only supplied the recipe and some guidance, Cori’s friend, the other Diana, put in the labor with delicious results). The father had bought a lemon pie (again, delicious), our guests had brought a lemon tart, super good and tart, and a pumpkin pie (the black sheep of the evening), and Cori’s bf made a chocolate pudding pie. I put away so much pie, I thought I wasn’t going to get out of that chair. YUMMM – the pink wine went deliciously with that too, I don’t know why others kept insisting on opening one or another red or white wine. I was fine with my hugilistic bottle for the night.

Then it was time for games. Thanksgiving is usually a time when family comes together to celebrate, have fun and rejoice, so of course most families have family oriented games. This Thanksgiving, it was time for me to try Pictionary for the first time – it’s like Sharades (or Mime), but with drawing instead of miming. SO much fun!! Our team lost, which I hate, but we were so close, and so good, I didn’t even mind that much. I was also pretty happy (meaning pretty far gone) by that time, so nothing really bothered me at all. I was all warm and fuzzy inside

And this concluded a perfect, PERFECT Thanksgiving. Nothing could have made it more perfect – I got to cook, people enjoyed my food, we were together, we played, we drank, and we had an overall wonderful, warm, enjoyable time. A weekend to remember!

Thanksgiving 2009 – the preparations

When my alarm went off on Thanksgiving morning, I was in the middle of a wonderful, enticing dream. For the life of me I can’t remember what I was dreaming about, but I know it was great because I clearly remember not wanting to wake up. Seriously though, who would want to get up at 8:15ish on their first vacation day in a month? The only thing that pulled me out of bed was the thought of 8 people who depended not on me, but on the turkey that no one else had the guts (no pun intended) to pull the guts out of. I had been called to the line of duty the night before, told that I needed to take the insides out of it, and that no one else had been able to do it. I had tried, looking, poking, spooning… Even shoving my hand up its ass didn’t seem to do it, so I had gone to bed wondering where the darned turkey’s guts were. The next day I woke up with an epiphany: turkeys have two holes it seems, one on each end, and I had only checked one. A thorough check in the neck cavity did in fact turn up a paper bag with its heart, liver and gibblets, hidden by a skin flab. Wonderful!

Cori’s boyfriend had had the genius idea to buy one of those oven bags you can put a turkey in and forget you even have it in the oven (well, until the timer goes off anyway). So, since he didn’t want to touch the turkey, not even with the tip of one finger, he was in charge of preparing the spice mixture to rub the meat with, while I placed the turkey bag flat in the oven pan, spread out some onion, celery, apple, garlic and grape tomatoes on the bottom, then put the turkey on top. I then stuffed some garlic cloves between the skin and the meat of the bird (and some under its wings – I mean, if your armpits are going to smell, they might as well smell like garlic) and the rest of the veggies (some more onion, apple and tomatoes) inside its thoracic cavity. I them rubbed the aromatic spice mixture all over the beast, as I affectionately called it (someone did comment on the pleasure I seemed to be taking in fondling its breast – I gave up men cold turkey, what can I say?) and locked it in with some oil. Finally, we tied the bag (I wondered wether we should remove the plastic tie from the turkey’s legs, but it seems that it’s oven safe) and in it went!

Then it was time for the actual cooking to begin.

I asked Corina and her bf to peel potatoes while I cooked the cranberry sauce (10 minutes – the easiest thing I had to do, really!) and prepared the broccoli and cheese for broccoli with cheese sauce. The cranberry sauce, even though it only takes 10 minutes to make, takes a while to chill and coagulate, so I wanted to get that out of the way. By the time we boiled and mashed the potatoes, and boiled the broccoli, the other guests started to arrive. We were joined by three Romanian (mostly) friends – Corina’s former Mt. Holyoke friend, her bf and his cousin (which I had confused completely until someone cleared up the misunderstanding – must have been all the wine I had while cooking – adds to the fun). We immediately put all our friends to work: one was making the pecan pie stuffing, the other one was cutting some lettuce for the salad, the third one was assisting with advice and good cheer

Finally, at about 2:30pm, we were ready to sit down to eat (not before I snapped plenty of pictures to document my first Thanksgiving feast! I think the only reason I was humoured for so long was because of my previous contributions in the kitchen – as I then found out, the father is not a very patient man, so he really must have swallowed his feelings while I was arranging the food platters in “nice” and “esthetic” patterns and asking for the fifth picture of the whole group, because the lighting changed). Mind you, I had been awake since 8:15am, so I felt like it was a great accomplishment that we were eating lunch… well… for lunch.

Thanksgiving 2009 – prelude

I got off the bus at the New London stop, in the middle of nowhere. When I told people at work where I was going to spend Thanksgiving, everyone reacted the same way: “There’s a New London in New Hampshire? Oh…” – then they nodded thoughtfully and moved on. I could tell that this town was going to be poppin’.
It was dark, and as I was waiting for the driver to hand me my backpack, I was reviewing in my head the list of things I had to do that night: make stuffing, make green bean casserole, prepare all ingredients for more cooking in the morning, try to get some sleep. Sleep had to be on the list, otherwise it might have gotten lost in the excitement. And excitement there was, once I got to the house where I was going to spend Thanksgiving, and I took in the perfect kitchen. The counter space seemed infinite, there was a large island in the middle, there were drawers with everything I could possibly think of, including a salad spinner (!) and a MANUAL EGG BEATER (OMG, when I saw that my eyes almost popped out of my head with enthusiasm – I had to place them back in with my fingers). I kept pulling out things from drawers, and yelping at their sight.

I wanted to put everything down and start cooking right away. Introductions? House tour? Changing into more comfy clothes? Who cares about that anyway?
Eventually I had to show that I was house- and people-trained. I got introduced to the owner of the house (my friend Corina’s boyfriend’s father), and to the house in general. The house was huge, I had a nice, small bedroom on one end, they had the master bedroom on the other end. The upper floor also had a fully equipped kitchen (in addition to the lower level one) and a bathroom for myself (the master bedroom had its own bathroom), so I felt like I couldn’t wish for anything more.

Except for time and space to cook.

I changed into comfy sweats and hoodie and, armed with my previously printed 5 page recipe list, I headed downstairs. Corina’s boyfriend, his son and his father stood at attention. Ok, they didn’t really, but they did tell me that I had free reign over the kitchen (actually they said that was “my kitchen,” which entertained some interesting fantasies of the time when I’ll be able to design my own perfect kitchen) and that they were there to do whatever I told them to. Now tell me it’s not every woman’s dream to hear that from not one, but three men surrounding her (feel free to overlook the fact that one of them was underage, the other one much overage, and the third one taken). So I started on the two dishes that I had planned for that evening: the stuffing and the green bean casserole. I figured that if I make the two dishes that we would need the oven for, that would give me enough time to screw up on the turkey in the morning.

I had everyone do something: clean and cut the green beans, clean and cut onion and celery, break some (a lot) of bread, and mix ingredients in bowls. I hope they felt included, and not exploited.

We ended up using a food processor to dice the onion and celery (between Corina’s giggles that they were turning into mush, and my pleading with her boyfriend to stop pressing the button), which was ok, because as it turns out, I slightly undercooked the onion before adding the bread to the mixture, so the smaller the pieces, the better, we decided post hoc.

Then I melted a stick of butter in a pot (Julia Child would be proud of me) and added everything in, leaving Corina to stir the stuffing while I dealt with the freshly cut green beans. Who knew the casserole would be so easy to make? You just open a couple of cans of mushroom soup, add the beans and some chicken broth, and there you are. I wanted to take it up a notch, so I added some cheese – Jenny told me I use cheese as a condiment, so I thought I would confirm her opinion. Then we stuck both dishes in the oven. They looked so good and endearing, it was all I could do not to run up for my camera (I left the picture-taking for the next day). Finally, by 1am we were all in bed, ready to sleep… The next day was the final challenge.

Life is wonderful – Jason Mraz

Here is one of my favorite songs. I play it on repeat on YouTube (how annoying is it to always have to push the button to listen again?). I need some honey after all that vinegar!

Precious

I am SO tired! But I am not feeling down, as I do sometimes when I am tired. I know it sounds horrible, but seeing people in worse circumstances than my own makes me feel… hopeful and good about my life. I guess there are always people to compare yourself to who are in worse circumstances, so this should probably not be my standard, but tonight it is. I am too tired for anything else.

I just went to see “Precious” – the movie – and it was SO hard to watch! So raw, so jarring, so sobering… there are people out there who struggle to get out of the house every day, who struggle to believe that they deserve to be alive when the same people who gave life to them are then unspeakably cruel.

“Love aint done nothing for me. Love beat me, raped me, made me sick.”

Who am I to sit around saying I don’t believe in love? People like Precious suffer so much more, and still have the strength to get up and move forward. Her mother beat her, her father raped her and gave her two children.

It broke my heart. But it also put it back together.