Jul
27
July 27, 2006
I’m sort of tempted to keep our food-tool conversation going (giant tureen-sized coffee cups, pretentious or strangely soothing? Discuss) but frankly, I’m too distracted by the fact that Jelly Belly makes something called a Sports Bean, which is candy that is “formulated with carbohydrates, electrolytes, and vitamins B and C to fuel your body during exercise”.
So if I am sitting in my chair and ever so slightly jiggling my foot, does that mean I’m cleared for a handful of Jelly Bellies? And do they have to be the Sports Beans exactly, or can they be, say for instance, Jelly Belly Chocolate Dutch Mints? And can “handful” mean “the entire bag”?
Mmmph. Can’t talk now. Fueling body.
:::
We bought a rug for the living room floor, in the hopes that it would help absorb some of the tidal drifts of dog hair, and maybe also provide a small buffer for Riley’s ongoing QA tests of Newton’s Law.
Finding a rug isn’t easy, because in my personal opinion the vast majority of rugs available in a non-astronomical price range are extremely ugly. I didn’t want much of a pattern, I don’t like pseudo-Oriental designs, I wanted to avoid a rough texture, and so on.
I also don’t care for shag rugs, but as it turns out, that’s all JB likes. Shaaaaag. Hairy, seventies-era carpeting. Because, as he says, “it’s cozy looking.”
We ended up with a plain white shag rug; white because I couldn’t decide what color would work best with dark, reddish wood floors, dark brown furniture, and one red/fuschia wall – the rest white or heavily windowed – which is the color scheme going on in the living room.
Now I think we should have picked something else, because the white rug sort of sticks out, like a lot. I hesitate to post this picture as I’m sure some of you will clutch your pearls at the very sight (be kind, pearl-clutchers), but here:
It looks too big to me, and too white. Like Rush Limbaugh.
I like this one better, but it’s NINE HUNDRED DOLLARS. Dag.
Also, after we got the rug settled, I noticed that I could smell a funny, chemical-y odor. So in my attempt to cushion Riley’s precious body and keep him safe from harm, I am now inundating him with many volatile organic compounds.
Well, hopefully it will trigger a helpful mutation – like X-ray vision, or the ability to levitate, or the growth of a strong, many-suction-cup’d tentacle – rather than turning him into Allergy Boy, He-Who-Requires-Inhaler.
I’ve started surfing around for an environmentally friendly, non-ugly, less-than-$500 replacement, but man, I don’t know. I think we might be sticking with the shag for a while. Which seems to be okay by Dog:
TILE UPDATE! TILE UPDATE! Whether you care or not!
The bathtub surround is done:
And the shower is done:
Today the Tile Guy is going to finish the grout work and I will be *this* close to taking a five-hour bath in that giant fucking tub. Come on by, there’s room for everyone! Unless you produce Mystery Bubbles, in which case you will be banished to roll on the off-gassing (ha ha HAAA!) carpet with Dog.
Jul
25
July 25, 2006
Bowls? Really? Bowls?
You guys should have told me how strongly you felt about bowls. God, here I’ve been going on and on about babies and ill-fitting jeans and lube and dog fur and getting all kinds of weird search engine referrals for things I swear I did not write (today’s freaky google hit as of 3 hours ago: “I wanna fuck my pregnant sister in law”; on a whim I just searched for that myself and would you believe the first hits are not porn related at all, but rather posts by, respectively, Julie, Julia, Amalah, and Jen? My personal blogosphere is taking over the entire internet, which is both awesome and faintly disturbing) when all along I should have been talking about BOWLS.
Like this one!
It’s enormously huge and I use it for eating vats of pho.
And this one!
It’s eentsy-weentsy and I use it for feeding Riley, or as a dipping bowl for soy sauce and wasabi, or for pretending I’m being dainty while devouring multiple servings of something super fattening.
Don’t forget my fanciest, most attractive-yet-spectacularly-utilitarian container of all!
Oh yeah. I totally eat out of plastic beer cups sometimes. None of this fussbudget Goldilocks too-shallow too-opaque too-candy-dish-70s servingware namby-pambiness for me, dammit, I’ll take a feedbag if you’ve got one.
I used to think JB was weird, not only for his distaste for our green glass bowls (you know…the UGLY ONES?) but also for his behavior regarding the larger of our two spoon sizes, which he refers to as “cow spoons” because they are tooooo big.
“I don’t want a cow spoon,” he’ll say, staring in dismay at the utensil, which is a perfectly normal sized spoon, a “place spoon” I believe, versus the smaller teaspoon sized spoon. It actually affects his eating experience in a negative way. A SPOON that is not misshapen, not a SPORK, not ugly or covered in spikes or dripping with antifreeze, but this exact spoon:
…instead of the preferred spoon, the superior spoon, the non-cow-spoon:
(See the difference? Oh, you don’t? Because it’s, like, MICROSCOPIC?)
Anyway, now I’m guessing that there are many of you who would wholeheartedly agree that the size difference would fuck up your entire meal and turn the creme brulée to ashes – yea, ashes! – in your mouth.
I’d call you freaks, but I guess we all have our own special issues: for instance, I can’t be separated from a tube of Burt’s Bees for more than twenty minutes without clawing at my mouth and screaming. Live and let live, I say. But if you come for dinner, do let me know if the COW SPOON bothers you.
:::
In other news, the last bugaboo of the remodel work is coming together this week. Behold, tile! Which we decided not to do ourselves, because while we may be picky about lip balm and glass bowls, we are not, as it turns out, completely batshit insane.
-
My product review site:
[