Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love

I finally understood – only just today – what people see in Van Halen. I mean, they’re no Judas Priest, but then, they’re also all so very painfully straight, despite the pirate pants. Or rather, maybe it’s that I today realized how Eddie Van Halen can actually, truly rock, so I guess it’s good they named the band after him. Ideally, if I could listen and filter out all the David Lee Roth or the Sammy Hagar, then I would feel like I could like Van Halen, and I wouldn’t be disappointing Henry Rollins so.

They’re still no Judas Priest, though.


But then, not just anybody can be Rob Halford.

I'm kinda lucky.

I'm not lucky the way I want to be, but I find money like other people find gray hairs. Frequently it's silver. I found about 50 cents in silver this past weekend. I found a dime today. I can't even count the times I've found fivers. I've found tens at least 4 or 5 times in my life. And then there was the time about nine months ago when I found $56 on the sidewalk. I find unused metro cards. Monkey finds these more frequently than I do, but I still occasionally find them and treat them like found money.

So this morning, I found a nice, shiny dime, and I was thinking about my luck with the greater denominations of paper and coinage. A few minutes later I discovered that I won tickets to the one AFI Silverdocs offering that I really really really wanted to see.

I rock.

Just so you know.

...Maybe I am a little lucky the way I want to be.

Catching Up

It just seems that things are never going to reach a happy stasis. I know, I know… it’s stupid of me to even assume that that could ever be the case, but a girl’s gotta hope.

So –
I should preface by saying that I have not been to NYC since before 9/11. 1995 or 1996 to be exact, so while I knew that the city had changed and that the skyline would look different, I still wasn’t quite prepared to enter the city and actually see it different. As a child, you could tell you were approaching the city because the twin towers were unmistakable. Approaching the city as an adult, I felt like I was driving into just-another-large city. Something had obviously been severed from the city, and it was a little upsetting to me. But on to less sobering things…

My trip to the Apple was fun. I spent the weekend with PandaFanatic, and while it was in no way relaxing, I did eat my way across town and went shopping on the cheap. My first real bagels in almost two YEARS! …Almost made a girl cry. I have also learned that you can be absolutely broke and still walk away with extra food to take home if you eat in Chinatown. Chinatown also has goat bellies for sale. We even took a picture for monkey and sent it to him.

PF took me to a cabaret show, which turned out to be immense fun. If you happen to head north and are in the mood for the lyrical stylings of a man very much in love with The Mouse, check the Duplex.

We eventually made our way to an Italian Bakery so I could bring home to monkey a little taste of my childhood. We soon learned that my childhood was flavored with suburb-cookies – cookies still being made by immigrants – while the only thing available were city-cookies – cookies being made (deliciously, albeit disappointingly) by third gens. (Incidetally, I am third gen, so I mean no insult: I readily concede I could never make anything to rival the cooking or baking of Le Nonne Maria e Teresa.)

Suburb cookies take a lot of work because they come in more varieties than PF and I have fingers and toes. City cookies pay a premium for their storefronts, so they have a very small selection, though this means they can afford to make their smaller selection of goods exceptionally well. Where were the leaf cookies? Where were the pigniolis rolled in anisette jimmies? In City-cookie defense, I have never had such a good pignioli: fresh and chewy and delicately sweet. I’d never liked them as a kid, but these could definitely start making their way to the top. As well, I got a sfogliatelle (Lobster Tail) which was absolutely delicious. They were out of vanilla crèmes, so I got a chocolate one, even though I was suspect. I hoped that the chocolate wouldn’t have a washed out flavor. Oh, Ophelia of little faith! I don’t think I’ve ever had better chocolate crème. And I suspect that these sfoges aren’t even among the shining apexes of perfect sfogliatelle; I’ve heard the best are in Philly. The pastry shop was Veniero’s, in case you need to know for future reference. Be prepared to stand in line.

Since my return to the small-town streets of DC, I’ve been working on [still] trying to get my life in order. The apartment is a mess, but slowly shaping up. It’s time [AGAIN] to groom the children – they’re getting sharp, and I’m having to learn to juggle my morning routine with the Monkey, who is still getting into his own routine.

I’ve also decided to start doing some things to bring about change in my life. Among them is a goal to lose weight with PF while she visits this summer. We will see how this goes. I will attempt to give updates as necessary, but as for now, the only real update is that I am hungry, and I have no way to remedy that at the moment.

Cheers.

Irony, Farragut Square

I don’t particularly have an update since Monkey and I spent the weekend not doing things of note. But, I had to share this little tidbit which happened a couple of weeks ago and I vowed then that it would be part of an Ophelia update.

Monkey and I go to Firehook for lunch, and as we walk in, we see a sample plate of pecan sandies. They don’t look so good, so we pass by and get our lunches. Afterward, as we sit and contemplate, we decide it would be fun to split a frozen custard to top off the lunch, so we head around the corner to Dickey’s. Custard in hand, we find ourselves on the corner waiting to cross the street, heading back in the direction of Firehook, and in the unfortunate position of having the most ABOMINABLE human beings behind us. That’s right: undergrads who get their fashion advice straight out of Abercrombie catalogs and Caddyshack movies and don’t understand why “Brah” isn’t an acceptable pronoun. There are two of them, significantly unshorn and over-tousled in that trendy “I’m-using-too-much-product-but-I’m-supposed-to-look-like-I-have-beach-hair-
(Even-though-we’re-in-the-middle-of-DC)” way*, and in serious need of either a belt or a wedgie (just for the hell of it… I mean, that’s what you’re asking for when you’re showing me your nasty old underwear, right?).

So, Brah, they’re going on and on about how stupid some people are and how “you wouldn’t believe what some people will do for free stuff, Brah.” I put this in quotation marks because it is a quotation, directly from the mouth of the donkey himself. They’re being very derisive about it and giving the air that they’re so far above it, but I really don’t understand how one can be so lofty when “Brah” is still part of your [active] vocabulary. Brah probably doesn’t even know what derisive means. Brah is still probably pre-pubescent.

At this point, finally and thankfully, the light changes, so we shuffle across the street.

As we approach the open door of Firehook, I imagine to myself that they’re heading there (so they won’t be in my ear with their wretched conversation,) when I think how funny it would be if they headed straight for the free samples (you see where this is going.) I barely have “How much you wanna bet…” out of my mouth before Monkey has SPOTTED IT HAPPENING. With eyes wide and mouth agape from being truly speechless, he stares and I turn from him just in time as we pass the door to see these two shining examples of the human male reaching into the sample box.

I find it kind of fulfilling when God shows me his sense of irony, and I especially like it when I have it all to myself or I share it only with Monkey. But on this day, God was just spot-on, and so I had to share with everyone else. Maybe you had to be there, but it was definitely the best laugh I had all month.

---

* I have only known one person to master the beach-hair look and that was because he truly had beach hair. Beach hair comes from a mixture of long immersions in salt water and a deep conditioning treatment of board wax. In high school, my friend Jonas would surf every morning before school... which didn’t leave a lot of time for a shower. (“But the ocean is water” I think he once argued.) This is not to say my buddy was not a clean guy; it’s just that he was clean with a perpetual coating of saltwater. And the conjunction of events to get beach hair was something that I seriously doubted was the case about these two, in the middle of the city, in the middle of the day, midweek, and whose rainbow sandals had obviously never touched water nor sand in all their existence.

Ophelia, where HAVE you gone?

It's finally time for an update.

OPHELIA has been far, far too busy. First, it started with being slammed at work from January 2 until about mid-way through March. The past few weeks have been making up for all the living and free time lost in that period, nursing away the eczema-that-won't-be-denied (progeny of the 2.5-month-slam) and trying to get back into a semblance of a balanced life. There was a vacation to The Great Nation, which actually helped the eczema some, but the vacation wasn't long enough. There was some working on networking skills and getting over the horrid fear of meeting people and making friends. Progress was made, but it's an uphill battle. I'm still getting up the courage to try the Washington Blogger Meetup. It's gonna be a while.

I've been neglecting a lot of things, too. Like projects that I promised to people, reading that's been piling up (though my schedule has not precluded purchasing more books), and a slight neglect of the children: they've needed to be groomed for a while now. We decided that the vet was too expensive and we could do it ourselves, but it's a matter of getting around to it. It ends up being more painful for us that for them... but that's usually because we're the ones that get bit.

Monkey has finally finished up for the year, so I've also been placing my priorities on spending time with him before he starts work at the end of the month. And I've been participating in a little Wednesday-night diversion that puts those evenings out of commission. I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.

Also on the evening-out-of-commission front, I've found religion. Or rather, I've decided that if I'm going to do this conversion thing, I need to get serious about it, which means Monkey needs to get serious about it too, which means services together. Eventually, I'll get around to the classes, but I have to at least show some initiative, right?

In the past few months, we've been a lot of places. We've eaten at a lot of places. We've eaten at some new places, and had both fantastic and abysmal experiences. I didn't bother to write them down because life has had other priorities. Soon, though, I hope to be back in full force, with scathing and lauding still intact.

This weekend promises to be jam-packed, and next weekend is a trip to the wild, frigid north. Or, as others like to call it, NYC. Now if only I had a palm pc to record all this on the spot...

Heros.

Rest well, Betty Friedan, rest well.

GRAH

Updates are coming, I promise, just as soon as I get my life back.