I had originally meant to write a post on Turkey Day or directly after. But then I didn't. So now this post is going to be significantly longer and just as meandering as you would expect a post from me to be when it encompasses a week's worth of blogging.
This would be considerably more clever and apropos if I had written this post on time...
Hey, look! It's our Turkey Day spread. Time for me to show off. Except I hate that this picture is kind of blurry. But I am using it anyway because it displays our newly relocated piano (which was rescued from the depths of our now-so-fresh-and-so-clean-clean Room Of A Thousand Papercuts) complete with festive yet charming holiday decor. DON'T YOU LOVE IT?! That's right. Holiday decor ON Thanksgiving. Suck it, haters!
Here's a slightly better shot. Clockwise from the bottom: Unbaked pecan pie (I wanted it in the picture), roasted sweet potatoes and brussels sprouts, green bean casserole, lumpia (with sauce), can shaped cranberry sauce product, roasted organic happy free range expensive chicken and (center) bacony chivey cheesy potato thing. And it was good.
Here's you-know-who wanting some you-know-what (anything and everything).
Here's Schmoobs and our friend Doug about three seconds before we descended onto the table. Doug is a student at our university - in fact, he was in two of my classes last year - but he is in his late thirties and a returning student, which means that the line between student/faculty and friends becomes kind of blurry with us. But I did refuse to become Facebook friends with him last year until I wasn't his teacher anymore. Notice our Christmas tree in the background...ON Thanksgiving! Yes!!
Lumpia MACRO. Whoa Nelly. So, of all the things I forgot to buy for Turkey Day gorging, it was vegetable oil. Which means that I fried an entire batch of lumpia in extra virgin olive oil. I'm pretty sure it ended up soaking up a lot more oil in the process because of its lower smoking point (is that right?) but that's okay because olive oil is delicious and so is lumpia especially when it's my mom's recipe and wrapped in real actual lumpia wrapper and not inferior eggroll or spring roll wrapper.
Oh, and then a couple days later I made these for fun. Apple and bacon mini pies with cinnamon sugar. Tasty treat. Especially for when you are a sweet and savory craving insatiable hydramonster during your special Monthly Confirmation lady times...like I was last week.
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And now, backing up just a little bit. Schmoobs and I went to get Christmas decorations the day before Thanksgiving. I think it comes as no surprise that this quickly turned to...
...this in no seconds flat. Why are we so immature?!
And then Schmoobs got a little over confident when we got back home.
We also spent a lot of time visiting various puppies and doggies during the Thanksgiving break. This was when we visited our local dog shelter's adoption day booth. The shelter folks said this guy was a Chiweenie, but I'm really not sure about that. He has to have some other breed mixed in because he was a pretty good size. Really friendly and sweet, but super high energy. Deep blue black with amber colored eyes. If he was brown he'd look just like Santa's Little Helper, even though Santa's Little Helper is a greyhound. Maybe he is part greyhound. I also talked to the volunteers there about maybe becoming a bit involved with the shelter, as time permits. They are a no-kill shelter so I think my heart can handle it. Schmoobs and I talked about registering to become possible foster doggie parents next year after the holidays. And maybe I can do like one or two hours a week just to come by and walk the doggies or something. Time to load up on the Benadryl...
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Oh. And now I get to yell at tell you more about Shiny New Adjunct Person. Specifically about how she keeps adding MORE decorations to my previously pristine and comically tongue-in-cheek stark office. So last week before Thanksgiving break, we happened to overlap in the office - she came in a few minutes before my designated ONE precious hour of explicitly reserved office time and I allowed her presence - and she came in chirping:
SNAP: "Did you see that I brought in a floor lamp for our office?"
Ys: "What? Oh...no. I didn't notice..."
SNAP: "Oh. Well, no, I just carried it in. See?"
Ys: "Ah...great. Yeah. Cool."
SNAP: "It's just that...I know there's only two weeks left in the semester, but I just wanted the light to be better in here..."
Does she plan on being here next semester? Is this why she's bringing all this home-y craft-y Sandra Lee tablescape design ideas into my office?! And if she is here next semester, do you think I will be able to ram Department Head's truck with my 1998 200k mile Toyota Corolla at least three times before the campus cops come to arrest me?
AND THEN I CAME IN TODAY AND IT WAS LIKE THE TJ MAXX HOME GOODS SECTION EXPLODED IN THE OFFICE.
Here is the aforementioned lamp. Do you notice what's directly behind it? A kitty cat calendar. AN EFF-ING KITTY CAT CALENDAR. I mean, I love kitty cats. If I had a calendar made that was filled with purely pictures of Bela, I would hang the hell up out of that calendar because it would be hilarious. And also because Bela takes super debonair pictures like these and these.
But do you know what kind of person puts up a non-ironic calendar of cutesy kitty cats?
But enough about the kitty calendar. If that was all, I would have maybe thought it was weirdly charming (because continuing to hate isn't earning me any higher of a salary...harumph) in a "you are way too young to be the designated cat lady of the office" kind of way. Oh. But that wasn't all.
There are now two pieces of framed faux-inspirational self-affirmation wall gunk. "LIVE LAUGH LOVE," one implores. The other one reminds you to "CREATE HOPE IMAGINE." Ugh. I mean...it would be better if you left one of those up and then put up a second matching one next to it that said, "PUNCH BURP FART" or " SLURP SQUEAL POOP." Who's going to notice? Cool people, that's who. And do I even need to mention that giant monster painted metal butterfly sitting on my music stand?
Here are just SOME of the Fall Harvest themed fabric squares I mentioned before. Please notice the coffee mug on the bottom left corner with a picture of an F#7 chord on it with the caption underneath, "To B or not to B?" GROOOAAAN.
And the Circle of Fifths faced pastel clock. Looming over the large framed photo of family members who are not mine resting on yet one more Fall Harvest themed fabric square. I spared you the picture of the teddy bear wearing her alma mater t-shirt among other things. Yes, there were other things.
The thing is, one of these pieces of kitschy schlock? Great, whatever. Two? Eck, fine. It would have been nice if she had asked me first out of courtesy...but fine. But ALL of this? It's... a bit much. And I know that there are plenty of people who would find this decor inoffensive. Because it is. It's cliche. It's pleasant enough. But it's not me. (And this is MY office!) No, seriously, I just assume there are certain matters of protocol that one would expect to follow when coming into a brand new work environment and inhabiting somebody's existing workspace. /grinch
Am I being a grinchy poopy head? You can tell me if I am. I'll just kick you in the shins anyway.
Is it Festivus yet? Can I start celebrating Festivus early? Because I feel like this post is going to be all about the airing of grievances. Oh, hell. I think this whole blog is about the airing of grievances. So I'll proceed.
Our next door condo neighbor is a young, well-to-do couple who are about our age, maybe a bit older. They have one young son. They own three gigantic shiny black SUVs (as in, Hummer, Escalade, etc.) with matching personalized license plates. They also own one golf cart because people in this gated community like to drive around their golf carts even though there is no golf course nearby. It, too, has a matching personalized license plate. The lady also has very large non-organic expensive boobies.
This is not a grievance, per se, but more of an uncalled-for judgment that I am going to make anyway: If you are wealthy enough to have fake boobs, designer track suits with matching designer sunglasses and designer handbags and four vehicles (for two people of driving age...) with matching plates, why do you live in a condo next door to two music educators who drive Toyotas? I've been trying to figure it out for the longest time. They don't seem to own a house elsewhere since I haven't noticed them being gone for any lengthy period of time. Why not own only two giant gas guzzling matchy-matchy SUVs and invest or save your money? I don't get it. Maybe there's a perfectly good reason, but I don't know what it is.
Anyway, this here is my grievance: They have a little dog. I think it's a Yorkie. It's cute (not as cute as BB). But it is also very yippy (so not like BB). AND. The owners just let this dog out without a leash to walk around on our shared balcony/landing with no supervision. Do you know why? Because they don't walk that freaking dog. I have NEVER seen them walk the dog. Not once. So when the dog goes out and decides it wants to piss or crap somewhere, guess where it does it? On our door mat. Literally. Or on the concrete landing walkway that leads to our door. It has left a giant pee puddle on our mat. It has twice left a pile of poo by our front door.
Every time I've noticed it (I've never seen the dog actually do it, but I regularly see it walking around by our front door unattended and then seen a pile of crap later on. Also, there are only two other condo units on our floor and neither of them own pets.), I have made it a point to not clean it up. In doing so, I am risking our other neighbors mistakenly thinking that the pile of poo is our doing. But I refuse to pick up another dog's poop, especially when its owners can afford three new SUVs but can't be bothered to care for their pet properly. Anyway, sure enough, the poop gets picked up a few hours later. So, clearly they know that their dog does this because they at least realize that they should pick up the mess after their freaking dog craps all over their neighbor's property...why don't they just walk the poor little annoying yippy dog?! Ugh.
This morning, as I left the house at 6:45am to go to work, I was greeted by a pile of poo right on our front mat. Because our mat is dark brown, I didn't want them to NOT know their effing dog shat on our walkway again, so I picked up the mat and shook the poo over to where our two units meet so they could clean it up. It felt like some cliche sitcom plot about battling neighbors. Whatever. Walk your dog already, geez.
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Two more weeks of classes, then one week of finals, then it's back home for the holidays! Wheee!
