Ultramundane: It’s Just Not Natural

The Omnivore’s Hundred

1. Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2. Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3. Cross out any items that you would never consider eating (or eating again)
4. Optional extra: Post a comment at Very Good Taste linking to your results.

To make the filling out of this form and generating the HTML for it a bit easier, reddywhp has played around with some PHP. Go to http://reddywhip.org/lj/foods/ and fill it out there. After filling it out, you will be given the code to copy and paste into your blog.

Livejournal users, remember to use your LJ-Cuts!

(We’ll see how my WordPress-to-Livejournal plugin deals with this on my LiveJournal Feed.)

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I haven’t showered and dressed yet, so I am wearing Friday underpants at the moment. Perhaps it’s further evidence of my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, but I have certain pairs of boxer shorts that I choose from on Friday morning, in order to ensure that all of the white boxers will get washed in The Boyfriend’s first load of laundry on Saturday, regardless of my condition at the time. (Asleep, still drunk from last night, too busy alphabetizing my socks, etc.) Perhaps that’s not OCD, but during the week I mentally calculate how many potential Friday underpants I will have left while I dress in the morning, to ensure that I don’t accidentally end up in the Wrong Panties on Friday.

My favorite jeans survived the visit from my Aunt and Uncle. We were out at Pier 39 (I know, right?) after a tour of Alcatraz (I know, right?!) so we ate at the Hard Rock Cafe (I know! Right?!?) Unfortunately they sat us in a booth that had recently been refinished…my mother and I ended up with lines of red furniture polish on our pants, and my father had red-stained fingers for the rest of the day. At least they comped the meal for us. Three or four treatments with spray wash got them clean enough that you can’t tell unless you’re OCD like me.

I pulled my pinstriped suit out of the closet earlier this week to make sure it had been dry cleaned (it had) and to make sure it didn’t smell like dry cleaning fluid (it did.) I’m not sure that pinstripes aren’t already over by now, but I have always liked the look. Of course, I was debating for a couple of days whether I could get away with wearing a wide-striped shirt with it. I’d nearly talked myself into attempting it until someone on a PBS news show last night showed up in exactly that combination. It looked like we needed to adjust the horizontal hold on the TV. Time for plan B.

(Television sets don’t have horizontal hold on them anymore, do they? Damn, I’m old.)

I’m not sure that I’m going to want to wear a suit jacket in late afternoon in San Jose, but I’m also sure The Boyfriend doesn’t really want to drive down there and meet a bunch of people I knew in High School twenty years ago either, so maybe that will balance out.

The Chihuly at the DeYoung exhibit wasn’t extraordinary, but it certainly had a lot of pretty colors. Mostly it was amusing seeing the guards go into apoplexy every time a tourist perched over the expensive glass pieces with their phones and cameras dangling for a snapshot. That happened pretty frequently, especially on a Saturday.

The first of three days being a tour guide around San Francisco went pretty well, except for a long wait for a mediocre dining experience at the Beach Chalet.

Really, I don’t have much to say about it. Posting as an excuse to test out the WordPress iPhone application. Woo. Pretty exciting, huh?

On July 3rd The Boyfriend and I were discussing Jesse Helms and his status amongst the living. We didn’t think anything about it until the next morning when NPR wouldn’t stop crowing (as respectfully as possible) about Senator No.

We haven’t had any other coincidences pop up yet, but we’ll keep trying. If you have any other public figures you’d like us to discuss, let me know.

I keep forgetting that the hills around me, like many hills and mountains of the west coast, have been up in flames. I walk outside to go to work and have that homeowner’s panic. “Why does my neighborhood smell like smoke?” I briefly consider going back inside to compulsively check the iron, the portable heater, the toaster, until I remember that it’s from seven miles south of us.

On the other hand I have been encouraging the smoke coming out of our new gas grill. It’s amazing how quickly the first tank of propane goes. I do have the strange sensation of becoming my father as I stand over the flames grilling a steak. Granted, I’m grilling myself a portabella mushroom on the vegetarian side of the grates, so the comparison eventually falls apart, but for a brief moment I’m back on my parent’s patio tending to their gas grill.

However we’re now running low on fuel, and just haven’t quite gotten around to getting more. While part of this is us uncertain on how to get the thing refilled after 7pm, most of this must have been a weekend lassitude settling in and lingering, as it’s a little soon for this to be new appliance burnout…like what happens with the bread machine, or the ice cream maker, or the automatic hot dog cooker, or the three-in-one breakfast cooker, or any number of things in my Amazon shopping cart. I am nothing if not a good little consumer.

Or perhaps we’re just waiting until the rest of the sky is a little less smoky.

	21 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure)
	75 As a 1930s husband, I am Superior Take the test!

This isn’t going to help my case that I should quit my job and become the stay-at-home spouse.

I think I’ve posted before about my belief that we should increase the amount of profanity in the workplace. Last Friday I was hit with both a surge of energy and a surplus of obscenities—in short, I felt great. Suddenly it occurred to me to use the construction “[verb] the fuck out of [noun]” for absolutely everything.

“I’m going to mockup the fuck out of this webpage! I’m going to eat the fuck out of this sandwich! I’m going to update the fuck out of our intranet! I’m going to leverage the fuck out of our organizational infrastructure!

That worked great until the guy from Human Resources documented the fuck out of my behavioral disruption.

At the Giants/White Sox game this past weekend, they played the typical organ tunes (“Charge!”) and drum beats to get the croud cheering. Suddenly I realized that every time the drums beat:

Boom, Boom, Boom-Boom, Boom

I reflexively said:

Pon Pon Pata Pon.

“And in the bottom of the eighth, the Zigaton Crabs are down with three, the Eyeballs up with seven…”

No, I’m not affected by the media I play. Why do you ask?

We’ve also been playing Mario Kart Wii and Grand Theft Auto IV. So perhaps this isn’t the best time for me to borrow your car either.

Middle Age is when the mirror confronts you with bad zits and grey hairs at the same time.

Middle Age is when your car insurance premiums go down, but you still play Grand Theft Auto IV at home.

Middle Age is when you realize you could wear neon pink and green again now but really shouldn’t, because it was a bad idea the first time.

Middle Age is when you wonder if you’ve made this blog post before.

Somehow today I managed to leave the house in wrinkled pants, with unshaven spots on my face, without my breakfast and without doing the dishes that have piled up over the past few nights

My desk at home is covered with papers; I stuffed the most relevant ones into my bag and got to my desk here at work, which is also covered with papers. I predict that this evening I will stuff the most relevant ones back into my bag and take them back home again.

I am fielding calls about all the various projects I am late on; I am forgetting the things at the store that I went there for. I am not even certain where my lists are.

And yet somehow, I am in a great mood. With weekend plans for shopping and cocktailing, and maybe for art or exercise, I have a couple of days to find a balance point again.

Wrinkles and all.