Butter Chicken

To anyone who has ever feared trying a new ethnic food before, let me comfort you with these two simple words: butter chicken. Several years ago we became big fans of the Indian restaurant a mile from our house. It was tucked away under a Comfort Inn and you'd never have thought there would be good, authentic Indian food there, but that's right where it was.

As we explored the menu, I came upon two mystifyingly familiar words: butter and chicken. They were together - not just incidentally - in the name! It was like a fantasy. 

I will make you chicken and the most descriptive thing I can say about it is butter. 

In an instant, Indian food and I were bonded for eternity. I think it must be like what some Chinese villager must have experienced when one day a missionary rolled into town speaking The Word  - for in that instant the universe made sense and the search for meaning was over. Only for me that Word was butter.

Recently I made us butter chicken at home. I confess to using a jar of sauce. I do not condone licking your bottle of sauce clean. I did miss the allure of getting to declare, 

"I will have the Butter Chicken."

These Eyes Have Seen

Apple Class at the Clarendon store. The Oldsters are learning how to use their iPhones. I love it. It makes me happy. It makes me want to embrace a fogey. 

And yet, fogies, pffft. This lady at Anne Arundel Medical Center was in such a huge damn rush in her retirement that she was all scoot scoot scoot in the elevator. Usually I'm all for elderly speed, but the elevator is only going to go so fast.

Oh gosh, I am really not picking on the Oldsters, but at lovely Pentagon City Mall they have this unbelievably irritating parking system. Not only do they charge you for the pleasure of parking to shop, they also have made it your job to pay an electronic cashier. For me this is fantastic and goes about 6000% faster than dealing with a human. 

Unfortunately, for some people, all interaction with technology is an afternoon at the IRS under bright lights. I couldn't share with you the 10 or so photos I started taking of this lady after the assembled masses had been waiting 10 minutes for her to handle her EZ Pay (it's EZ remember???) transaction. 

People tried to help her, but all she wanted to do was yell into the box at the "support" at the other end of the line. It seemed she couldn't get $1 back. The exchange ended with her giving the machine an air boxing and storming off muttering under her breath.

Of course, in the end they win because as Kirk Cameron said, "We have a 100% chance of dying." and I end up sounding like Andy Rooney chronicling my daily encounters with the Greatest Generation.

Return of the Creepy Flower Lady

I give you... The Creepy Flower Lady. Yeeeears ago, as in before we moved to this house, Jac gave me a beautiful bouquet of flowers. They came in the oddest, creepiest, weirdest, 200 level art class vessel I can fathom. The hunchback creepy-face flower lady distresses me. Why is she blushing so? Is it because she has been lobotomized? Is she shy about her thinning hair? A little self-conscious about her now completely cylindrical figure? Has she just arrived at a hot party only to find herself dressed as a frumpy hausfrau with lousy taste in costume jewelry? Is the huge hunchback she's developing due to the fact that her arms are seemingly nothing more than an illusion? What dark secret troubles this creepy flower lady?

Almost from the moment I saw her, I wanted her away from me. Out of our happy home where our arms are real, and we try really hard not to mix our polka dots and stripes. But she would not go. First I had to tackle crushing Jac's soul down to it's very core as I let him in on the news that creepy flower lady is not cool. I brought it up gently, but he was obviously wounded. He'd picked that out - oh my Lord, tell me he did not think that thing reminded him of me! He didn't say that, fortunately, or this story would have ended long ago. But, he wanted me to want her. 

I couldn't do that, but I could hide from her. I tucked her in cupboards, closets, basements... but every time she would resurface and chide me with that blushing creepiness. For nearly a year, she sat in our old kitchen. I just trained myself not to look up. It was good for her and the spiderwebs. Then we moved and somehow she found her way into our dressing room. Now the creepy flower lady could see me naked. This was just too much. 

But life was more important (marginally), so she held her post. The last few weeks I've been moving her around the room, down onto the floor, making her face the corner, flirting with the trash can. And tonight, she is in the big secure trash can in the kitchen. You have to step on it to open it, so I know she can't get out without assistance. There's some gross stuff in there so I hope any would-be rescuers will be put off by that.

Now, normally, I would send an unwanted item of any potential use or enjoyment out into the world for someone else to take a turn. But creepy flower lady has caused enough damage. She has made her mark. She has seen me naked.

Creepy Flower Lady

Jac and I have been together more than 8 years. We've had many happy occasions to shower each other with gifts. He's surprised me with beautiful earrings, thoughtful albums, mountains of Amazon wishes and a million sweet notes. I'd done my share too - in particular the Christmas I took him to Best Buy and said he could get anything he wanted. Being Jac he chose a stack of DVDs over gadgetry or other high dollar investments but whatev, if he ever makes the mistake of making the same offer to me we better rent that pickup from Home Depot for an hour first.

But with all great things, there are some misses. I think my greatest misses with Jac were early attempts to guess what action figures he would really like instead of just getting the ones he specified, and a few sweaters he really had strong, strong feelings about. Each time we pack up a load for Goodwill there's at least one sweater I've given him (uhh, mental note ix-nay the rolled collars and zip-fronts). He gives them away unashamedly. He DOES NOT LIKE. That should be enough for me, he thinks. It doesn't mean he likes me any less. (Of course had I invested the $35 in comics or action figures we would be indisposed right now - actually there probably would be no blog at all for he could not contain his love for me. But no, I bought the stone mock turtle zip-front metrosexual sweater which just will not be gracing his shoulders anytime this fall.)

And yet, as with most things, there's quite a double standard. I am not allowed to part with gifts from Jac (I am the girl who saved lottery tickets purchased with an ex-boyfriend for years but that is beside the point.) I must save, love, cherish all the gifts he gives me. If he put thought into the gift, it must be treasured. So most of the lesser hits have found homes somewhere. But not the creepy flower girl...

His and Hers Bandages

Last Friday I bit it, royally, right outside our front door. I didn't have appropriate bandages chez magniferous so I drove 30 miles out to the conference site where I knocked over a CVS and came away with bandages that almost covered my whole wound. A couple days later, Jac was getting the dogs into the house from the car when K-man made a mad dash for the door, raking the leash over Jac's knuckles and peeling away the flesh in a most unappealing manner. So he joined me in the bandaging. Now there are four boxes of bandages on our bathroom sink (WTF? You only have ONE bathroom sink, haven't you ever seen House Hunters? You have to have double sinks or....FAIL!)

Wayward Blogger

First, and I feel I must just say this, it is August in Washington and people do not do things that are taxing in Washington in August. There's a reason for this, it is unpleasant here during this time of year. I cannot fully explain how I came to choose this month to marry five years ago, only that I did, and it was hot.

So let's get around to lowering those expectations, shall we? There, that feels better. So what exactly has been going down chez magniferous since I left you hanging with the delectable egg roll escapade?

1.) Olympics Thank you Olympics for coming in the depth of summer to give us something exciting to watch and "do". I started out at the Olympic buffet a complete omnivore. I consumed whatever was on indiscriminately. It was good for a while, but after a few good gorging servings, I started going back just for the tastiest bits. Diving, swimming, gymnastics, beach volleyball. I am really not down with the running except for the exceptionally short dashes. I think this aversion has to do with a) my complete physical and mental prohibition against running unless I'm in an Indiana Jones movie and the stone walls and floors are collapsing behind me b) the relative boredom going on during lap after lap of indeterminate people circling a track and c) the discomfort of watching a skeleton with muscles cross a finish line (more in the marathon than track events - where I do appreciate the existence of thunder thighs). And I admit to being consumed by Phelpsmania. I can't help it. I like game-changing, hot, winners (like um....). So that is part of the problem resulting in my absence.

2.) God Bless Work The second biggest timesuck of late is work. And all I have to say is: Amen. We went a long time waiting for contracts to come through and now that they are, the last, and I mean LAST thing I would ever do is complain about them. Late night work call? Take a look at that roof over your head and say, Amen. Early morning meeting? Suck it in and be glad there's a car to get into. Doing somebody else's job because it absolutely positively has to be done right and now? Praise be that there's a computer on my lap to do it, because hey, it could be worse. But seriously, the days are running 12-18 hours quite a bit lately. And when my brain opens up for a moment and there's a chance for recreation...

3.) Wordscraper and Wordtwist and My Little Sister It's our fault really, we told my sister Banana all about the joys of WordTwist. I enabled her by setting up her wi-fi and managing the acquisition of an easy-peasy MacBook. We may have challenged her to a few Word Twist matches to get things rolling on Facebook. And yet, before I knew it, I'd see I had 12 new Word Twist matches waiting for me to play. And of course effing Scrabulous was taken away on Facebook. And then we were lost. I tried the ridiculous "real" Scrabble application but there is just no excuse for the level of crapiness that program has. They have been making the computer program for more than a decade, how come they can't figure out how to put the damn thing on the web? But then, lo, there was WordScraper, and all was well with the world. Jac and I have been playing each other, while in the same room and watching the Olympics. Good times.

4.) Poor Mama Magniferous She's back in the hospital yet again. I've lost track of how many times she has been there in the last 14 months. But it's many. We hope that this time things will go right and she's really on the path to licking this thing once and for all.

Olympics, I'd Hit That

Wow, it's obvious by now, but the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Beijing was spectacular. For some reason I am amped for the Olympics this year. It's the summer doldrums and there's not much else going on so it seems like a good diversion for the next couple weeks. I made a Chinese food feast for us for the opening of the games. (Thank goodness they're in a country whose food I can reasonable facsimilate.)

I've really come to be a fan of my own egg rolls. I don't do pork, egg, or shrimp so my egg rolls are pretty basic: finely shredded cabbage, minced cooked chicken breast, and shaved or minced carrots. 

After cooking the chicken, I add the cabbage/carrot mixture to the pan and cover it, letting the cabbage sweat until just tender. Then into those heavenly little wrappers everything goes. I let the oil temp get a bit high this time, between 375-400 and I'm convinced that's the secret to those perfect little egg roll skin bubbles.

I made Jac some crab wontons which reflects my profound love of the man because I am about as averse to seafood as I could be. Fortunately when I asked him what he thought was in crab wontons he said, "Cream cheese?" because that was the very recipe I had. Our store bought scallion and onion cream cheese allowed for frightfully Semi-Homemade wontons. 

Since we can't just eat pu-pus, (Well I can, but we try to follow some rules around here.) I stir-fried steak, steamed veggies, and managed to forget but remember just in time to make some rice. It was a treat for the tummy right before we watched the opening ceremony delight for they eyes.

Fall Approaching

It was all coming together this morning. Sure, I hadn't slept. I got a new work assignment that I had to do between 6:30 and 7:30 a.m., and I was on my way to go give a presentation out in the middle of nowhere. But right after that I was headed to the river. I may have had a bit more stuff in my hands than is really advisable when trying to lock the front door. And in an instant, I looked something like this.

The Vigilance

I tend to think I'm a pretty active and vocal consumer advocate, but man, check out the comment I got on a 2 year old hotel review. It arrived in my email box today.

I recently stayed at the Hampton Inn Northlake and just read your review that you had written back in October of 2006. I understand that your stay might have been unenjoyable but the review threw me off at first because of the date it was posted. I believe that a complaint about a hotel while under renovation is now, no longer relevant. Also, the comment about the hotel being in a business park is inaccurate as it is a couple hundred feet from the main road and is right beside the Northlake mall. I was curious as to what you saw that believed you to believe that it was even close to a business park. And also, how are you going to complain about something going on next door to the hotel eventhough the hotel probably had no way to prevent it and doesn't reflect the service of the hotel itself. I respect your opinion if you didn't have good service as this does help people like me but I think that your review from 2006 is irrelevant. Also, you ended with "this hotel is quite a way from downtown Atlanta. Dont' you think if this was a problem then it is your fault. Didn't you look it up on a map to see how far away it is, which actually isn't all that far away if you have good directions. I greatly enjoyed my stay and the building is beautiful, so consider removing your post from 2006 so it doesn't wrongly influence people such as me when traveling.

Unclear of the Concept

This graphic appeared on the local news the other night. On the one hand - video editors and graphics people are notoriously bad at grammar, spelling, all things involving the English language. On the other hand, WHOA. How Would Wilfred Brimley handle this diabeet... uh, crisis?

It's especially embarrassing because I hold other cities' local news folks to the D.C. standard. Everyone knows NYC news crews are trying to go national and they can be a bit too Shepherd Smith for my taste. D.C. crews are rooted but largely experienced and able to speak the English language. Just a few miles down the road in Richmond, the same can not be said. Heading up to Baltimore? Watch out for some wild-ass accents. 

All the same, I understand how things work and I would never say, "Greta Kreuz called it diabete's." Because although she appears in the same frame with the words. She didn't make the graphic. Lately though, we've been dealing with a family listserv member who would assert that very thing, and she'd send it atop an email forward claiming Greta Kreuz had killed Wilfred Brimley over a bowl of oatmeal at Union Station. 

When you'd finally stop laughing, you'd start crying because by now it was clear from the four more screaming emails she'd sent that she is DEAD CERTAIN that D.C. newswoman took the life of America's National Treasure Wilfred Brimley on Thursday at 5:48pm. The amount of underlining and bold was growing at an alarming pace.

Something would have to be done, but who would step forward and rebut these slanderous remarks? Finally, the response would be out there - concise, well sourced, no confusing multisyllabic words like that one.

Greta Kreutz did not kill Wilfred Brimley. She appeared in a television news report about Diabetes Risks. At 5:48pm that Thursday she was in Rossalyn, Virginia broadcasting from WJLA, NOT as the email forward suggested, at Union Station killing Wilfred Brimley. (Attached link to time-coded footage.)

In fact, the email would continue (providing multiple credible sources) Wilfred Brimley is still alive and has disavowed the Internet legend that bears his name. Further, he claims not to have eaten any oatmeal since he stopped being the Quaker spokesman and took up with Liberty Medical.

But the accuser would not be deterred, besides, she heard Greta Kreuz was related to Germans!!! Besides, Wilfred Brimley cannot be trusted as to the veracity of his continued life, live video footage is notoriously biased about time and dates, and there is a picture of Greta Kreuz on the Internet eating oatmeal.

Sigh. Give us strength Internet it's going to be a long political season.

My Wordle

My Wordle