Amy Stephenson's Journal
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Amy Stephenson's LiveJournal:
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| Friday, July 3rd, 2009 | | 6:41 pm |
New Blog is up
My new blog is up, the 107 Cookbooks project: http://107cookbooks.com. I'm going to cook my way through my cookbook collection by June 30, 2010. Or die trying. Maybe not die, actually, but wish I had when it's time to make Jell-O. Initial post is up; more to come before very long. | | Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 | | 8:29 pm |
I'm in the pool
Today was my Jeopardy audition, and I think it went very well. Those of us who showed up today are already in the contestant pool, we were told; and although the contestant wranglers were more circumspect than to say it in so many words, today was partly a chance to gauge how well we would do on the televised program--not just in answering questions, but in managing to buzz in and keep the game moving, and in bantering pleasantly with Alex between play sessions. Alex was not there, of course, but we did get to see a recorded welcome and overview from him and the Clue Crew. We got an overview of the whole thing and plenty of disclaimers (being in the pool does not mean we will be called for a taping; being called for a taping does not mean we will get on the show; we pay our own travel expenses), took another 50-question test about which I am sworn to secrecy, learned the tricks of buzzing in, and did a mock game and interviews. It was a lot of fun. I felt really good about the test, was able to buzz in pretty frequently, and thought I did well with the banter. So I could get a call any time in the next 18 months, offering a shot at a taping about three weeks out. Or I could not get a call, and be eligible to try out again in 2011. I got a good feeling from it all, but of course only time will tell. | | Monday, June 22nd, 2009 | | 8:28 pm |
I confess I have been neglecting LiveJournal more than I've been neglecting other online media and real-life friends, but I have been neglecting them all somewhat as well. Nothing personal, just how it goes. So of course I have a new blog project going; watch this space for details (if all goes well, further info by Friday). Tomorrow is my "Jeopardy!" audition. Wish me luck! | | Sunday, May 24th, 2009 | | 10:06 pm |
Back from Portland. It was a very good visit and not at all diminished by having to be up early enough to leave the hotel at 4 am local time today and spend 12 hours traveling. The cats are glad to see us, though Prince of Space will be gladder when Scott removes the computer from his lap and allows the cat to loll there instead. I am 26% of the way through uploading my photos to Flickr. Very glad we scheduled to come home today so we'd have tomorrow to recuperate. I would not be happy right now at the prospect of having to get myself ready to be in the office tomorrow. | | Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 | | 1:04 pm |
At the beach with Scott and a friend. Right now we're all off on our own, to regroup again for lunch. It's good to travel with people who understand the need for alone time. We're staying at a borrowed timeshare that we all feel is rather too nice for us, but we accept and enjoy it. Also: beach. Now I'm at an Internet cafe writing (well, as soon as I finish screwing around online). | | Sunday, May 10th, 2009 | | 12:52 pm |
| | Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 | | 6:23 am |
I'm so out of the habit of posting to LJ, even though I ready my friends list all the time. So here's the news I posted on Twitter and Facebook: I found out last night that I'm invited to a contestant screening for Jeopardy in June. I must have done OK on the online test after all. No idea how I'll do there, or what steps intervene between that and getting on the show, but fingers crossed--I'd love a year's supply of Fiddle Faddle. | | Thursday, April 30th, 2009 | | 7:50 am |
Wow, it's been a month since I've posted. I've been busy with a whole lot of other things; being sick early in the month didn't help much. I probably shouldn't take time to post now since I need to get going for work, but whatever. I've started a habit of going to the gym in the morning before work. (Not today; I left my gym bag at the office yesterday because I went to meet friends at a beer event at the Blind Tiger and didn't want the bag taking up space.) The other morning I was finishing out a song on my iPod as I headed back down to the locker room; the song was Janet Jackson's "Someone to Call My Lover." And with the earbuds in I could actually hear one of the lyrics correctly; it's fairly late in the song, where she's listing the "qualities/that I want in a man/strong, smart, affectionate." For years I've been hearing that as "strong, smart, facial hair." Scott and I would puzzle over whether that should be a series of three or if it should be "strong, smart facial hair," and just what it takes for facial hair to be strong and smart. Probably not the Williamsburg hipster goatee. So I'm mildly disappointed that the actual lyric turns out to make sense. I've also been doing the "vegan before 6" thing, which I plan to write more about on the Recipes of the Yum blog. Maybe tonight. | | Monday, March 30th, 2009 | | 7:20 pm |
If you don't talk to your kids about sheep huffing, who will?
Yesterday was Cathy's birthday, and a group of us gathered at her place to knit and spin and have a good time. Good beer? Check. Chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting in honor of the birthday girl? Check. Fleece being carded and spun into yarn? Check. At least one knitter patiently unknitting a section gone awry? Check. (Not me, for a wonder.) At one point the newest spinner was sharing a yarn she had dyed and spun, and the first person to examine it sniffed it and found it sheep-y. So we all sniffed, and yes, it was, in a very good way; despite washing and dyeing it still had a gentle aroma of grass and hay and autumn. The scent brought me back to standing in the sheep pens at Rhinebeck in autumn chatting with a breeder of Blueface Leicesters. Another spinner then offered around a fleece she had recently washed and combed; because of the herbs with which she had cleaned it, it did not smell sheepy, but rather hinted of spices. Holiday blend fleece! Then Cathy pulled out a not-yet-treated fleece that smelled even sheepier than the yarn had, though again not in a bad way, just with a richer tang of lanolin and grass. We pronounced all of this "sheep huffing" and began to get giggly, though the barleywine may have played a role there as well. Today I got up about 7, pulled on clothes and got to work on the computer, organizing my thoughts and writing. Made some progress on a character bible for my fiction project, and laid out a schedule for the other things I want and need to work on this week. I worked solidly through until 10:30, then headed for the gym. After that, lunch with Scott, and then laundry (time to wash the things we think are too complicated to drop off for the nice laundry man). Now I'm roasting chicken parts and brussels sprouts in a cast-iron skillet, and after I've eaten it will be knitting time; I'd like to finish the slipper socks while there still might be cold weather where the recipient lives. I will be repeating my writing and workout schedule all week, and expect great results. | | Friday, March 20th, 2009 | | 7:22 am |
First day of spring, and it's snowing. That's auspicious. | | Saturday, February 28th, 2009 | | 4:46 pm |
I've been sick with a cold since Wednesday; I felt it coming on at midday and headed home, and have been working from home since then. Luckily work has not been terribly busy this week and I've been able to take shorter hours. I would have just called (or e-mailed) in sick on Thursday and gone back to bed, but another editor is far sicker and a third editor has started his parental leave (the baby came about 12 days early), so I felt like we needed some veterans on hand. This cold has been less about congestion and more about deep fatigue. So that's fun. Last night I went to be about 10:30 and woke up about 12:45 today. About 14 hours of sleep, and I'm a lot better than I was but not quite ready for prime time. We went out for breakfast (at 2 pm? shut up) and then to a local cafe to do notebook writing, and now I'm feeling kind of tired. From walking less than 10 blocks and sitting up in chairs. Ugh. I do need to rouse myself enough to do a bit of cleaning; the bathroom and kitchen are in rather desperate straits. But then I think I can fling myself on the couch for a few hours. Fortunately we have enough food on hand that I can wait until tomorrow to do grocery shopping; I think trying to navigate FoodTown today would be beyond me. | | Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 | | 7:51 pm |
I seem not to be able to keep up a regular habit of posting. I can barely keep up with reading Live Journal and Facebook and the blogs I like to follow, and I've been terrible about posting to this and the Recipes of the Damned blog. I'm making very slow progress on my knitting projects, making virtually no progress on my writing projects, and cooking less often than I would like. What have I been doing? Some work, lots of reading e-mail and keeping up with the news (more or less), barely enough housework to keep us from drowning in our own filth, some attention to the cats (less than they would like, though some of that is a function of time, as in "NO, IT'S 4 AM, GO TO SLEEP"). I can't really tell what consumes my time, but there it goes. There's a Wii setup at our office and we have a schedule of bowling games. I haven't actually bowled yet--the person who did the scheduling did so without consulting anybody's calendar or commitments and there have been a few rearrangements--but tonight I did get to try out the tennis game. I turn out to be pretty good at Wii tennis, though it also does a good job of representing on-screen the times that I am really just flailing around spasmodically. Weird how it can capture that. But I'm far better at serving in the console game than I am in real life (though I haven't owned a tennis racket in more than 10 years and don't think I've actually played since some rather rule-free college pickup games with Gluten-Free Girl. Those were fun). Right now I am perching on the front of my desk chair while Radical Edward sits behind me, purring. I reach back as often as I can to scratch her belly, which makes her purr louder and squirm around. She loves this, but it does tend to make my butt fall asleep. Am also trying to decide whether to fix myself something to eat or wait a bit and see if Scott gets home soon enough that we could go to a neighborhood diner. We forgot to synchronize our schedules. Oops. | | Sunday, February 1st, 2009 | | 4:18 pm |
I'm on vacation this week. I'll have a chance to catch up on writing, knitting, housework, and maybe tax preparation. (We use an accountant, because Barbie is right that math is hard, but we still have to pull together all the information.) I fully expect that I will not get done half of what I'd like to, but I'll still get quite a bit done. I'm not paying attention to the Super Bowl. My only shred of interest is that we have a betting pool at work, so if my numbers match the last digits of the scores at the quarters, half and final, I might win money. But I don't really care about it. We'll be watching the Puppy Bowl on Animal Planet, or perhaps some MST3K. Of course this post is merely a tool for procrastinating the housecleaning I need to do; I'd better just get that over with so I can get on with more interesting things. | | Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 | | 8:12 pm |
I just took the online Jeopardy test. It was fairly fast-paced--or at least, the questions I didn't know were! And it was over much faster than I expected. Which I think means it was actually pretty short, but maybe I just did that poorly? No, I don't think I did that poorly, but I definitely drew a blank on one I should have known. (ARGH! Just thought of the answer. Oh, well.) I may or may not ever hear from the Jeopardy people again. They make no promises even if you do pass the test. I think it'd be fun to go on the show. This is where I pause and give big props to Bob Harris and and a plug to his memoir Prisoner of Trebekistan, in which he tells the story of being a Jeopardy champion and learning that the money and the Fiddle Faddle are far and away the least of the things that the experience gives him. It's a great book and everyone should read it. Go on, run out and buy a copy or two; I'll wait. | | Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 | | 9:06 pm |
Happy Day
Not the most productive day at work--between about 11 and 1 I really didn't even pretend, just gathered at the TV with most of the other folks in the office and watched the coverage. I loved Michelle's dress, Barack's speech, and Aretha's performance. I thought Rick Warren's invocation was better than I'd expected, even if it did start to show serious threats of running longer than the inaugural address was going to. I loved seeing the unbelievable throngs of people stretching along the Mall--and how happy everybody looked. Also, did Dick Cheney seriously pull his back while moving? Didn't they have people to do that for them? Didn't he trust anybody else to deal with the man-sized safe? I was also extremely amused when whichever babbling head it was (probably Chris Matthews) pointed to Craig Robinson, Michelle's brother, and said "Oh, he's wearing a Princeton scarf." Dude, the man is head basketball coach at Oregon State University; I'm pretty sure it's an OSU scarf. Eastern elitism, I tell you. I was still holding my breath a bit right up until Biden was sworn in. And then I thought, OK, no last-minute powerplay by Cheney, I think we're home free now. I think I didn't quite trust that Cheney would let the Constitution play out, but he did. And we are now ready to stand up and take on our responsibilities in a truly free society, to really build something great again. | | Thursday, January 15th, 2009 | | 7:21 pm |
What's more fun than coming home in 18-degree weather? Knowing it's warmer than the forecast high for tomorrow! Yay! I can't complain too much. Our office is very warm (supposedly that's being looked into; it wasn't quite as kiln-like today as yesterday), so I think the residual heat from that kept me going until I got into Grand Central; on exiting the train in Queens I made a quick dart into Key Foods, then hustled home. It feels comfortable in here, and I think I've been home long enough that it isn't just the contrast with outdoors. Can I say how grateful I am that the furnace is working? It was out for a few days over Christmas, when it wasn't that bad out. We're in good shape here. I'm also really glad I didn't have to fly today. Because, landing in the Hudson River when it's 20 degrees, not so fun, I bet. We heard about it at work--I think someone saw a Twitter before an actual news update. My thoughts were a) Thank heavens everyone escaped safely, b) I'm never going to fly a regional jet again, and c) Wow, the life rafts and stuff really work? That's great; who knew? I suppose if you're going to ditch into a river, the river to pick is an intensely populated one with lots of ferries nearby. I'm also glad that none of the execs who had been visiting our office were on board. This week is our office's grand opening. We had a big party last night at a space in SoHo. It was fun, and the food was good, but it was really loud. Part of the atmosphere was also a colored-light background that would keep shifting: now we're all bluish, now we're all green, now things are rosy, etc. Some of the guests found this a wee bit uncomfortable; the blue-green shift was especially troubling. But it was nothing a few more vodka tonics couldn't fix. OK, time to eat some leftovers and catch up with my online world. | | Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 | | 12:36 pm |
VH1 Classic has been showing 2009 videos in a row to kick off 2009, in alphabetical order by title. Last night they were in the "The" section, which made for a good random mix. My personal favorite: Spinal Tap's "The Majesty of Rock." When is Michael McKean going to run for Senate? Or for president on a ticket with Christopher Guest? | | Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 | | 9:14 pm |
OK, while we still have Live Journal, this is my chance to point you to http://www.recipesofthedamned.com, where I am picking up my efforts to write about bad ideas in food, as well as the things that we could be doing right. Since I now get my evenings back--tonight is the first full one!--I am cooking and blogging about it. I've also bought http://www.amydstephenson.com, but haven't yet decided what to do with it. If LJ goes belly-up I'll start blogging about things other than food on that site. Happy new year! | | Thursday, January 1st, 2009 | | 11:11 am |
| | Thursday, December 25th, 2008 | | 11:18 am |
Happy Holidays!
Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Atheist Children Also Get Presents Day, the Non-Sectarian Day Off Work, or the Day to Get Paid Overtime, a joyous holiday to you and yours! |
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