I’ve recently realized my workouts go by a lot more quickly if I read. And so I’ve been re-reading The Return of the King on the exercise bike. Thing is, whenever something exciting happens in the story, I can’t help but pedal faster. And last night I was at the very action-packed part of the Siege of Gondor, when all hell breaks loose. Literally. Every paragraph is more exhilarating than the previous one.

Needless to say, I was dead when I got off the bike. What can I say, it’s a rough job, defending the world from evil. I still feel the ache.

Bill has the sweetest way of sullying my reputation.

Reason why I need to be bitchslapped today: I managed to write the sentence “To modify a plan in order to modify it, click Open”.

Reason why I need to be bitchslapped hard: I’m seriously considering doing a certificate in Management. Ugh.

So I was half-watching some show during dinner tonight, seemingly about the stupidest things people have said on game shows. Things like “No, I didn’t get any snow on my wedding day, but I got eight inches on my honeymoon. Oh, let me rephrase that.” Things like “Name an Arab country”. “Israel”. “Name the month during which a pregnancy starts to show”. “September”. You know.

Reminded me of a guy I once knew, whose name I’ll withhold to protect the innocent (in the Québécois sense of the word). We were talking about last names, and a friend of mine said, “Prescott is a great last name”. To which he replied, “Prescott, yeah, nice. Whose last name is that?”.
- It’s George’s.
- George who?

I didn’t know what to do to make chicken interesting but healthy, and I didn’t want to get complicated, so I tried this. It was very easy to make and turned out to be quite good.

Cut a large onion into slices, and cook in a little olive oil and a little water until tender, not brown. Add two sprigs of fresh rosemary, two boneless chicken breasts and about half a cup each of red wine and water. Pour the wine right onto the chicken. Add crushed garlic if desired (I used powder). Cover and let simmer, adding wine and water if liquid runs out. You will probably have to add a full cup of water and another half of wine before the chicken is done.

When the breasts are cooked through, cover with slices of white cheddar, then heap onions and red wine gravy onto the chicken breasts and remove the cooked rosemary. Serve with steamed greens, and a fresh sprig of rosemary as garnish.

They moved our offices this weekend, and they lost my crate. That sucks. Gone are not only the things that make my working environment livable, such as my cubicle worm, CDs, pictures, Ikea lamp, Wonder Woman mug and Spider-Man pencil holder, but also the things I absolutely need, such as the notes on the course I’m developing, reference manuals, business cards, etc.

What a pain in the ass. I’d eat lunch, but my fork was in my $%#&*@ box.

UPDATE: my stuff has been found. They had shoved it under a desk instead of moving it. Sigh of relief.

The night before Valentine’s Day I decided to make some chocolatey treats.

I chose a recipe wherein you bake a hollow “cup” made of dough, then fill that with chocolate mousse and a few raspberries, and let it cool and harden. Then you cap the thing by dipping the top in melted chocolate and letting it dry and harden again.

I thought to myself, “Come on Jo, you’re a crap cook. You can’t make an omelet. This is way too ambitious.” So I decided to be wise and make some heart-shaped chocolate chip cookies instead.

Well, I managed to mess that up too. See, chocolate chip cookie dough is really sticky, and it’s not the type on which you can use a cookie cutter. I only realized that as I was trying to spoon the stuff onto the baking sheet and it wouldn’t come off the spoon. I then tried using my fingers, but only got my forearms, face and sweater were covered in chocolate chip cookie dough. And it wasn’t even kinky.

Put the heart-shaped cookie cutter around one of the little glops of dough, hoping that as it cooked the dough would spread and fill the cookie cutter.

I put too much dough in it, though, and it ended up making a thick, soft, heart-shaped chocolate-and-butter sandwich. And about six big, respectable chocolate chip cookies.

Took me too long to make the second batch, though, and the dough had hardened. So the glops didn’t spread as they cooked, even when I left them in the oven longer. I was left with charred balls of dough.

Eventually, the heart-shaped chocolate-and-butter sandwich hardened. It would probably be inedible, but it was cute.

An evening of cooking, 24$ worth of ingredients, yielded a chocolate-and-butter sandwich, six ok cookies and eight charred doughballs.

But strangely enough, T loved them. He was even disappointed I threw out the charred ones.

Impatience is my trademark. For those who don’t know, that’s why they call me lightspeedchick. Today is a serious test of what little patience I have.

It’s my birthday. It’s Valentine’s Day. I’m psyched and I can’t wait to get home and start celebrating. With my Valentine tonight, with my friends tomorrow, with my family Sunday night. A three-day run of fun, food, drink and good company is about to start, and I can’t wait. Jumping out of bed this morning, I rejoiced that at 31, I could still be as excited as a kid about my birthday.

Today feels like the last day of school. We’re moving to our downtown offices and everyone’s packing, nobody’s working. At least if we were working, the day might go by more quickly. I’m jitterbugging on my chair, eagerly counting the minutes before I can leave and start enjoying this weekend.

invented the word journel (journal électronique) as a French term for blog
thinks it’s very clever
gets teased by my friends for being trendy
can make beige work
will have been tolerating me for three years this coming April
doesn’t drink coffee, but makes a mean cup of it
drew the cartoon on this page
can float down rapids without getting his cowboy hat wet
hated avocadoes until he tasted my Mexican chicken
got lost at Universal Studios – I had to tell security he was retarded so they’d help me look for him
likes aquariums
doesn’t like law and order
likes the beach
doesn’t like it when I burp
likes to cross-country ski
gave me a lava lamp for our first anniversary
sometimes reads this blog, but never posts a comment
wants us to go to Greece this fall
not only tolerates my gross way of eating Doritos, but has adopted it too
once tore apart a VCR in anger
is way too polite with his landlord
designed a plush toy for the Stockholm planetarium
is the only French Canadian I’ve ever gone out with
is the only artist I’ve ever gone out with
gets disturbingly excited when blueberries are in season
is way hipper than I am
would like to call our first cat Dix-huit
gets really bad hay fever
lends me comic books
likes it when I put a disgusting amount of vinegar seasoning on movie popcorn
turns 30 this year
assures me we’ll someday have a boston terrier
recycles
has a groupie named Bill
is making me my favorite – chicken with leeks and havarti – for dinner tonight

And yours?

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

Last night T and I felt like indulging in some brain candy, so we went to see The Recruit, the movie whose preview constantly repeats the phrase “Nothing is what it seems”. Ironically, the movie is exactly what it seems. The preview gives away most of the story, and makes every possible plot twist obvious; if the constant repetition of the tagline “Nothing is what it seems” didn’t give it away for you, you were probably sleeping.

I’m usually very slow at predicting what’s going to happen in a film, but even I could have told you the story (”Nothing is what it seems”) almost right from the beginning. At some points, we even guessed what the characters were about to say, thanks to the use of the same lines over and over again.

“I’m a scary judge of talent”
“Nothing is what it seems”
“Everything is a test”

Al Pacino even has his usual, predictable angry diatribe summing up his character’s motivation.

Mildly entertaining, but not surprising in the least and utterly forgettable.