Happy Thanksgiving!

Highlights of my Thanksgiving Break:

1.  Great time at the track, I managed to lose every bet I made, but altogether I only lost 20 dollars, which is pretty impressive to me (considering I bet on every race).  My future betting strategy is to make bets on horses that are no higher than $2.  This way, I can bet on every race and still not lose a lot of money.

2.  Wii fit is an incredible invention.  You should all try it.  I learned that my wii fit age is actually 43.  This is not good at all.  My body is physically 20 years older than it should be.  How horrible! I don't know how this happened but now I am going to try to go on a few more power walks now because Wii fit has told me that I am 43.  I might even re-join the gym. 

3. I learned a new word: fratty.  Maybe this is a common word to all of you who went to college with fraternities and sororities but this word is brand new to me.  I was talking to one of my brother's friends and he was describing some craaaaazyyyy night at Emory saying how all the guys were getting real "fratty."  So I guess fratty means belligerently drunk.  Awesome.  Don't get too fratty tonight.  I don't like this word, just say belligerently drunk and incredibly ridiculous instead of fratty.

4.  Rockband video  game (thank you for introducing me Sarah) has confirmed the fact that I have no rhythm.  Which in turn, reconfirms the fact that I cannot dance.  Rockband consists of three parts, the guitarist, the drummer, and the singer.    Basically the screen just tells you what you should be doing during the song and you are supossed to follow the notes/words.  If you miss a certain number of notes/pitches then you fail out of the song and there is just no hope.  I could not get through one part without failing out of the song.   This is pathetic.  I am thinking though that maybe I need a Rockband because if I practice the drums, I might get a better sense of rhythm, and then I may become a little better of a dancer, which would be well worth it.

5. I learned how to peel and cut pearl onions.  This is very important to me considering I cannot cook.  My new strategy to learning how to cook a successful Thanksgiving meal is to learn one thing every year.  This year I learned about the onions.  I am thinking that in 10 years, I should have thanksgiving covered by the time I am 33.

6. D List Celebrity Siting at the DCA Reagan Airport!!!!! John King (the annoying map guy) and Dana Bash from CNN, who look just as fabulous in person as they do on TV were standing behind me while I was waiting for my bags.  

Horribly Heinous Holiday Houses

I am all for people putting their holiday decorations up the day after thanksgiving, but there is a problem with the majority of decorations in my neighborhood.  No one has any holiday decorating taste.  Bravo should run a Holiday Lights Home Makeover to show people simple, tasteful ways to express some holiday cheer.I could not believe the decorations and lights that I drove by the Friday night after thanksgiving.   Here are a few examples:

Terrible Taste #1: What is the goal of these lights?  Are they trying to see how high their electricity bill can go?  Are they trying to electrocute the neighborhood?  There are blow up snow globes, plastic reindeer, and various colored elves in the 

front yard.  Enough said.

Terrible Taste #2:  I think these people really are trying to electrocute a tree.  Also, this choice of lighted reindeer is awful.

Terrible Taste #3: Now when you look at this house you might say, "this is not so bad."  But look over to the left of the picture.  Yes, the driveway.  That is where the problem lies.  Is it a landing strip at an airport?  This photograph just does not do the actual driveway "airport runway" lights justice.  It is truly heinous.

I tried to get a better picture but it didn't work out.  

Terrible Taste #4:  At first I thought it was strange that a house would choose to make their driveway look like a runway at an airport; however, when I saw this house on the same road, it occurred to me that maybe this plane needed a place to land.

Great Location, Horrible Amenities

I hate my apartment.  One, it is slanted.  It's true, my apartment slants slightly forward.  This was the first thing my mom noticed when she decided to stay with me instead of in a hotel.  I can safely say, never again will she do that.  Every morning my mom woke up she said she wasn't sure if she was hungover or had vertigo because our apartment was so slanted.  Just look at the way the door fits into the frame.   

  

   

Shouldn't we get some kind of monthly discount?

The second reason I hate my apartment is because of the stupid gas stove and oven from the 1970's.  The pilot lights constantly burn out.  For example, today I walked into our apartment and smelled nothing but gas.  I thought I was going to die.  Our pilot light in our oven had burned out and our wonderful landlord, Dennis (who also turns out to be a calligrapher on the side), did not know how to light the pilot burner and suggested that I call the maintenance manager, Lewis.  After about 30 minutes of inhaling fumes, Lewis came to the rescue.  

After he lit the pilot light, I left to go meet a friend for dinner.  8th St in Eastern Market by the way has great places to eat.  This place, Cafe 8, I loved.  My friend said he's worried they may go out of business because it is always empty, so go try it.  I promise it is good food.  Anyway, when I got home, my apartment was about 800 degrees (I forgot to mention that the heat stopped working in my room a few weeks ago so normally it is freezing) and smelled kind of funny.  I immediately went to the kitchen to see what could have gone wrong with the 1970's stove/oven and saw that Lewis had left the stove on broil instead of turning it off.  I was hoping the whole oven and stove would blow up and we could get a new one, but unfortunately this was not the case.  Now it just smells even funnier.

Two Things

1. My classroom has transformed into an uncomfortable sauna overnight. The heat is unbearable. Yesterday I became very irritable because of the extreme heat. It is comparable to a gym sauna that urges you to spend no longer than 15 minutes inside due to health reasons. It was so hot yesterday that I had to change my outfit today to prepare for the heat. My roommate was appalled at my outfit this morning consisting of a school t-shirt and jeans.

2. M's back! M has decided to take the month of November off school. My assistant considers her a part-time student who is auditing preschool. Part time is an understatement because she has missed over 27 days of school and recently decided to return after having a meeting with her mother.

Stage Directions: Read M's part with the highest pitched voice possible.

M (to my assistant): Hey you. And Where is Ms. P?
(Walks over to my classroom)
M: Um hi. I'm back!
Ms. P: Where were you?
M: I was sickin. I was at home.
Ms. P: Well M I am just so glad you are here. I was wondering where you were!
M: You been looking for me all day? I say I was just at the house. But at the house I was saying to my mommy, Where's Ms. P? Where's Ms P? But I couldnt find you.

SOOOO GLAD SHE IS BACK!

Her written excuse from the doctor: "Viral infection symptoms that lasted for 1 month to 1 1/2 months." I did not know this was possible.

Teaching is bad for the bladder

I say this because looking back on my day today, as well as many other teaching days in the past, I realized that I NEVER go to the bathroom.  This is horrible.  It doesn't even cross my mind, it's not that I don't need to go, it's just that I never have the time to think about going.  My dear dear friend, Molly who works at a company called Wedding Wire (which for any of you who are getting married/know someone getting married/want to get married---you should definitely get on this website!).  Anyway, Molly says she goes to the bathroom around 5 times a day.  This is crazy to me.  Maybe she is just healthier and drinks more liquids.

On another note, I told a friend I would post this hilarious article about a man trying to pay his bill with a picture of a spider.  She said it would redeem me slightly for "entering the blogosphere."  I didn't know this was such a horrible place to enter. On her behalf, here it is.

On Blogging

I decided to create this blog because I was mildly obsessed with Ms. Mindless's blog. Actually, I never understood people who spent their time at work sitting in cubicles reading blogs, until now. What a great distractor. Ms. Mindless's blog actually served as an incredible source of procrastination for writing my two grad school papers due last Thursday. If it wasn't for Ms. Mindless, I most likely would have gotten my papers done slightly ahead of schedule. At the same time, if it wasn't for Ms. Mindless I would not have been as entertained while writing my papers.

Ms. Mindless also introduced me to a fabulous jcrew search. You should all check it out. I call it the price search. Just go to jcrew and in the search section type whatever price you are interested in paying. I personally think $29.99 is a great number--right now there are many great shirts for that price. I love this search because it brings up everything that is $29.99, even things that may not be in the sale section if you search there. This is another great time waster.

Reactions to my new blog:

My brother:
me -Douglas I have a blog!
http://storytellingsofanitaliannoncook.blogspot.com/
my brother- why?
me-beacuse, i thought it would be fun
me-would you like to be a follower?
my brother-i'll check it occasionally

My mom: "Cool..." She actually enjoyed this video about monkeys waitering more than my blog: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/11/23/lah.jap.monkey.biz.cnn because this was her email reply to the monkey link: "WOW – thanks for sending that!"

My friend, Nora: (written in an email) "oh wow. you are one of those people now...."

My friend, Emily: "i'm famous!"

And my favorite reactions of all, thank you Altair and Erin, I really appreciate it:

"i cant stop laughing. you are great" and "i love it!"

From these responses, I am anticipating at least 2 followers and 4 occassional followers.

Why I am a Noncook

My friend Emily is a cook cook.  Well I guess I don't need to say it twice, my friend Emily is a cook.  She can easily take all these really great fresh ingredients, combine them together and come up with something really really wonderful.  For instance, last night Emily made this incredible dinner: roasted chicken, mushroom risotto, and an incredible salad with pomegrante seeds and goat cheese.  I could not even replicate this dinner if I tried.  I know this because I have tried before and the only thing that ends up eating my food is the trash can.  Sometimes I can't even eat it.  Another friend of mine who is a good cook once told me that all you have to do is put things that you like in your cooking.  He said as long as you put the things you like in what you cook, then  you are bound to like the result.  I have to disagree, from my experience, this is definitely not the case.

I wish I had taken a picture of the delicious dinner Emily made last night.  The salad looked something like this: (but pretend that the blueberries are pomegrante seeds, get rid of the almonds, and add a really really incredible balsamic dressing)

Unfortunately I do not have this talent of even making delicious salads.  Emily can create salads where there is a perfect proportion of all the ingredients (except dressing, I am a firm believer that you can never have enough dressing on a salad).  Me, as a noncook tonight, created a lovely meal consisting of frozen tortellini and frozen pesto sauce that I bought at the local italian grocery store down the street.  I prefer to cook frozen foods because I feel that they are very hard to mess up.  And thus, this is how I got the name of my blog, storytellings of an italian noncook.  I consider myself a wonderful noncook because I am very good at not overcooking or burning most frozen items.  I am hoping that this blog will also serve as a means of reducing the number of used minutes on my cell phone bill.  I down sized to a smaller plan and my goal is not to go over 450 minutes a month.  Last month, I was incredibly unsuccessful.