I came home from class tonight to the news that Teddy Kennedy died. He'd already been a Senator for 20 years when I was born and of course remained my Senator until I moved to Chicago. Whatever else can be said of him, he was a great Senator and will always be remembered as such.

So I tried my hand at making peach jam. It's the first time I've ever made my own jam or home canned anything and it came out rather well if I do say so myself. The pectin set right so it wasn't to stiff or too soupy. I just haven't quite master mixing it so my peach pieces don't float to the top. And taste wise, well, I think I want to bathe in it.







Of course finding mason jars to put everything in was the hardest part. I spent Friday afternoon wandering aimlessly around Chicago trying to find jars. On the suggestion of the manager at Walgreens I finally found them at Menards, which was a bit of a haul for me. Would have preferred if they were at my neighborhood Jewel. Apparently though, Jewel immediately sells out of them whenever they come in, but can't be bothered to get more, so all they had was boatloads of lids.

Dear RTD

There better be a reset button hidden up your ass somewhere. I'm so not even playing.

Much Love,
Elizabeth

I'm completely addicted to bloggingheads tv. I can't help it, even with people who I know are talking completely out of their asses (and lord know there's a few) I can't help but watch.

I've been going through a new phase where I actually cook semi complicated things for myself. Made rye bread on Sat, which turned out great especially since it was odd rye bread without carraway seeds (which I'm not so fond of). Yeast bread, not as annoying to make as I thought. I was going to to make cookies today, but I decided I'd try to make banana empanadas. All in all I'd say they turned out alright, they're not fit for a bakery or anything, but tasty none the less. It's the first time I've tried to make pie crust type dough from scratch since I was about 8 years old and baked with my mom. I'm wondering now if I should have filled them with sweet potatoes since I have boatloads of them that need to be used soon, but so did my bananas. Tomorrow me and my friend Lauren (on a high from our quality joint meal last week) are making tres leches tomorrow, so I think I'll be overwhelmed with dessert this week.

In awesome news:
My douchebag roommate has decided to move out finally! YAY!

I wish we had spring here in the lovely midwest. Because bouncing in between freezing and nice weather until it settles on hot kinda doesn't do it for me. Couldn't spring be more like fall?

So I decided to reread Mists of Avalon. You know, I remembered really hating Gwenhwyfar. I remembered my friend not even being able to finish the book because she found Gwenhwyfar so infuriating. But now I realize I didn't really remember these things clearly enough. Now I'm at the part where she goes from merely very annoying to foot stompingly, teeth gnashingly, pull your own hair out enraging! There are certainly characters who do worse things than her in literature, but I can't think of any character I've hated more.

Is there any Mary Sue fic where readers travel into the book, grab her, shake her, and then strangle her to death? There should be.

A bit old, but I thought I'd post this since I'm so glad at least part of it was posted on youtube. Technically you can watch the whole thing on the Check Please website, but that's a pretty annoying format. Since this was made in 2001 it unfortunately has the older crappier host (Alpana Singh is my secret tv girlfriend).

So I started watching Fringe. Umm do they have a Bos-Wash corridor/eastern Mass teleporter? Because they do some serious traveling without taking up any time. Also an obsession with name dropping towns, but always saying MA after it like we'll forget where they are (ie "There's a man in Worcester, Massachusetts", they could just say Worcester, I think we can figure out for ourselves that it's not Worcester, England or Wooster, OH).

So today is the first full day of having Pat Quinn as our governor. My roommate would like to note for everyone that they both went Fenwick High School in Oak Park so umm, Go Friars! Oh yeah and that Pat Quinn's brother was Colby's AP History teacher.

After Blago's national media blitz last week I'd like to revisit one of the governor's statements. You know, the one where he says he found a way to get free public transit for seniors and that's why he's being impeached (and convicted bitch!). In it's own twisted way that's true (and totally justified). You know though dude, I wouldn't exactly word it that way. I'd say you held desperately needed legislation hostage and forced unfunded crap onto it that will only create more funding problems for the CTA later.

Brown Line is sad that Blagojevich lives by my Kimball stop.

Is it wrong that the emotion that having my governor arrested for trying to sell off Obama's senate seat is less outrage and more just embarrassment that he had to get arrested now? You know, when the world still has one eye toward Illinois and Chicago. I'd really prefer if he had just served out his term doing assy things to get attention and finally being convicted and sent to jail for the Rezko stuff afterwards. You know, like our last governor.

What the hell was he thinking. Courting publicity with his grandstanding about BoA, while doing really corrupt things. Or more importantly, continuing to start new corruption when you're already under investigation for the old corruption.

What the fuck Rod!
Seriously, what the fuck

So instead of being sent to St. Louis (as they didn't want my nondriving self) I'm off to Toledo tonight. Oh Ohio, I cannot escape you this time of year, at least on Presidential election years.

Okay, so I know admitting this doesn't exactly cover me with glory, but a little piece of me was of so happy to see WaMu go under. If I didn't still have friends working there it would make my day. Even though, you know, it further collapses the market. Since it's been bought by Chase I wonder if they'll keep my old branch open. It's a great location and it's a mile from any Chase branches (a crazy distance between branches on the north side). I hope they do.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

I've been trying my hardest to go to St. Louis to work for Obama for the rest of the campaign, but they're end is a bit messed up. Hopefully I'll be going Monday as I've finally actually gotten calls back from the relevant people in the Missouri office, they just have to assign me someone to stay with.

How much is a pack or carton of cigarettes in Missouri, or specifically in St. Louis?

I was wondering if people were taught in school that there's one continent called America or if they are two continents called North America and South America. I'm particularly interested in answers from people from non anglophone countries so I'm putting up separate polls for each (obviously I know I'm drawing from a small pool of people since this is in English, but it can't be helped). Further comment would also be helpful.

Poll #1251550 America
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 34

Non (primarily) English Speaking Countries. One continent or two?

(primarily) English Speaking Countries. One continent or two?

My tomato plants have finally decided they want to grow tomatoes. I was really beginning to worry that they wouldn't come at all and my plants would remain giant mutant window treatments.




( Yay! )

First there was this this Language Log post, which lead me to this hilarious BBC post of random Brits doing American accents with varying levels of failure. It has since metastasized into a full blown obsession. I discovered the scary underground world of people doing American accents on YouTube and I listen to all of them. And like an asshole I comment on several year old posts that are clearly people just goofing around like they're a serious academic exercise. Because I am where fun goes to die.

It's a strange yet wonderful world of bored people out there.

I feel so ashamed. I wanted to hear the full version of Miley Cyrus's cover of Girls Just Want to Have Fun (which was kinda awful) so ended up downloading Breakout. Much to my chagrin, I quite enjoy that Fly on the Wall song. I swear I'm not 11.

Really, I'm not.

Finally got to see The Dark Knight last night. It was awesome and totally lived up to the hype. Yay!

I'm not going to review it or anything, just talk about how it filled me with civic pride to see my home on a really really big screen. You know, even though it's a metropolis of evil dark badness (which apparently still has 30 million residents, who would have thought). My favorite bit was the CTA bus, it looked like they spent maybe 10 minutes repainting the C to make it a G. The sunburst pattern on the G is really what made it Gotham though. In Batman Begins the city didn't really look like anywhere, but in The Dark Knight it was just so unbelievably Chicago. So much so that in the escape the possible city apocalypse bit I couldn't help but think, "Oh I could totally walk home from there. Sure it would take me an hour, but it would be before dark, so I'm not dead."