What Have You Been Up These Days?

Book

Voyager by Diana Gabaldon. This book has 1200+ pages so it's taking me a while to get through it. When I reached page 600 I felt like book 1 was done and I was starting a whole different book. I gave things a 10 day pause and picked up the book again yesterday and it's really terrific. I feel like instead of reading one great book, I'm reading two.

Song

Someone to Watch Over Me. I decided you should be hearing what I hear all day, so I put a clip at the end of the post with Katherine McPhee, from a couple of Idol seasons ago, singing the song in her own special way, my favorite way.

TV Show

With all the show starting again and new shows coming in, some of the ones I was most looking forward to a year ago, I'm not holding my breath for now. True Blood and The Mentalist are two shows I can't get enough of. Another show that has me coming back for more is Mad Men. I don't know why but it's strangely addictive.

Last Movie You Saw and Loved

Australia. A good epic with great people and a good story. I loved everything from start to finish.

Makeup

Shiseido sunscreen powder foundation and MAC lipstick "O".

Perfume

Eau de 4 Reines from L'Occitane. I'm using the soap and EDT. Love it. It makes me feel like a fresh rose garden.

Food

Cold salads and sandwiches.

Drink

Iced Tea. Can't get enough of it.

Guilty Pleasure

Long cold showers to wash off the excessive heat. Although, between you, me and the fan, I'm not that guilty about it.

Bane of my Existence

The construction being done on the outside of my building. I'm living on a prayer.

Anticipation

I don't remember a time when there was no banging or particles flying into my apartment. So what I anticipate is the end of the construction and the end of summer. The combination of the two is torture. Oh God! Why hast thou forsaken me?

Random Thought

Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event. - Oscar Wilde

Northanger Abbey

Northanger Abbey is Jane Austen's first novel and truth be told it's pretty clear that as time went on and she matured in her writing, so did her characters. The main character in this novel is Catherine. She is a very silly, very young little girl. She reads many novels and because of this she lets her imagination carry her away to her dream land.

Because she is so very young, she is not a very good judge of character, and because she is so naive about things, she misinterprets interactions, situations and people. Whenever there's a question mark about someone, or something she doesn't understand, she leaps to her own conclusions and ends up making some pretty embarrassing if not serious mistakes.

She is not an annoying character, by any means. She's cute and endearing, and because of this we forgive her. Her love interest, Mr. Tilney, is a very lovable character and although he indulges her naivete - he too, finds it endearing - he eventually steps up and puts her in her place. He's a real gentleman and although he doesn't have the strongest character around, he's right for her.


The book is more about Catherine than anything else. There are of course misunderstandings, attachments, betrayals, accusations, friendships and relationships in the novel, but more than anything it's a study of Catherine. Some say it was Austen's attempt at a "Gothic" novel, and I can see how that would be an apt description, although it's probably more accurate to say that Catherine was created to resemble a heroine from a Gothic romance novel.

In all, it's a fun book, with good people, written by a special woman. It's interesting to compare Catherine and Mr. Tilney with her characters later on. You'll see what I mean when you read the book. By the way, if you can stand it, go to Youtube and catch the TV movie. It's pretty accurate and well made.

Here's the trailer. I'm not sure it's the best quality, but it's the best I found.

How to Survive Construction in Your Home

The long and the short of it is, you don't. Our condominium has decided to do some renovations on the outside of the building. They're changing all the tiles. This means incessant banging and innumerous peeping Toms.

Our side of the building was lucky enough to get the hottest time of the year for this little project, which to us translates as hot, humid, stale, dusty air for months and months. Great. Our kitchen is closed off (the wall which is actually a huge open window is closed off with a plastic curtain blocking air and construction debris) so yesterday when I went in there to check on the chicken I was almost knocked down by a wave of air that was so hot it fogged up my glasses. It was like I lifted the lid of the pressure cooker. I'm serious.


This has made me contemplate moving to quieter and cooler places like the Sahara Desert or the surface of the sun. I'm not saying that our situation is unbearable. Picking pieces of tile out of one's hair is definitely my idea of fun, but I'm a little worried about my friend, Blor. She can't take this heat. The 3 inches of dust that have accumulated on the desk (and this is just in the last hour), the beady little eyes staring into the house from the scaffold, the bits and pieces of tiles that fly into her eyes, the constant banging (she can't tell when the banging stops and when it begins), are getting to be a bit much. Anyway, my friend's sanity is at stake here and I can't guarantee she'll make it through the week without a meltdown, much less months.

When really buckling down to think of how she can survive this construction phase I draw a blank. I don't have a clue. The only thing I can think of to recommend is for her to go to her happy place. Just go there, and stay there. Take a little "mind" vacation there. Don't worry about making cohesive sentences, or removing the glaze from your eyes. She doesn't need to worry about trying to keep the house clean (this will be the death of her as surely it would have been for Monk or Howard Hughes). Just concentrate on getting better. The most important thing right now is for her to go to her happy place and get better.

Jennifer Hudson

You know how some people have "it", and others don't? Well, Jennifer Hudson has "it". I don't know how the American Idol judges didn't see it. They consider themselves the utmost authority in what's in and out in the music world, but they didn't see it. They trampled all over her like a herd of wild buffalo, completely blind to the fact that she was what they were looking for all along.

If all American Idol did for society was to find her, that would have been enough. The thing is they did and they didn't. They didn't because they criticized her and made fun of her clothes and basically kicked her off the show early on. They did, because she would never have gotten anywhere, or had any recognition of any kind had it not been for Idol. Idol gave her the opportunity to go to that audition for "Dream Girls", but she got the part all on her own.

I'll leave you with Jennifer's first public appearance after her family tragedy. Here she sings the National Anthem at the Superbowl. It'll take your breath away, so prepare yourself.

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Lord, what fools these mortals be!

In a world of financial uncertainty and generally bad judgment on the part of our government I didn't think anything could surprise me anymore. I was wrong. It seems like once again the minions of evil are working around the clock to come up with creative ways to waste good money stolen from the hands of the tax payers and the mouths of children.

Were we to have a say in how our hard earned taxes would be spent I'm sure that none of us would choose anal lubricant. I know you're doing a double take right about now because you can't believe what you just read, but I assure you, I'm not making this up.

One of my readers sent in a very hilarious/sad and disappointing news clip about a man - no, hero - who is trying to fight against the waste of our nations taxes on such frivolous, definitely questionable and - dare I say - stupid things such as anal lubricant. If you think I'm tripping, check out this article (if you speak Portuguese) and see for yourself.

It seems some jokester in our nation's capital is laughing his head off right now as his bill has just been passed authorizing the purchase of 15 million (million!) water base lubricants, which roughly adds up to R$40 million, to be handed out to the gay community.

It's interesting that education, health, blah, blah, blah are of no concern to the nation's most foolish people - our government. I weep for the future of our nation when this kind of expenditure is authorized. When this is what we consider to be our nations highest priority. When this takes precedence over everything else. Anal lubricant. Really?

I know that this is more than enough fodder for the most hilarious post in the world and possibly even a book or major motion picture starring Adam Sandler, but sadly, this is a true story and this is happening in my country. These are my idiot people who prioritize anal comfort above everything else.

I have no response to that.

I believe when it comes to our government and the people involved in making these life altering/morally dubious decisions they should heed the words of the wise ones in the Great Book that basically says that it's better to be quiet and be thought of as a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. No one's got a shadow of a doubt that they are all gigantic fools who will have to answer for their folly and if I had any say so in what happens to them, they would live in everlasting shame and contempt.

Unfortunately, the way of things is much more sinister than that, and they will all be sipping mojitos while been fanned by scantily clad cabana boys on their lounge chairs by the pool in their enormous Miami mansions this time next year, making good use of the lubricants we paid for with our blood, sweat and tears. Meanwhile we will all once again be taking it from the next generation of fools to make it into government but thankfully this time around we'll have all the lubricant we need.

As Shakespeare once said, "Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

90's Flashback

Do you remember several years ago when boy bands were all the rage? Well, I do. I also remember that we still a lot of had cassette tapes back then as CDs hadn't yet taken over the world. Back in the olden days we were big into Boyzone. They're an Irish band and we thought they were all that and a bag of chips. We picked out who we liked best and kept all of the "tapes" of each of their albums in a safe place. I have no idea why we only had their tapes and not the CDs. I guess it was just fate (you'll see why).


Around that time we starting moving around a lot. Putting everything into boxes was such tedious work (and we would do it so often), that in order to take the edge off we would turn it into a bit of a party. When I say "we" I mean my sister Meury, Larissa (her friend and exchange student), Gabs (my sister's friend), and myself.

We were pretty ridiculous back then - if I'm not mistaken we wore dark lip liner with light lipstick (yuck!). So, in order to make moving around all the time a little funner, we would crank up the music as loud as we could, have plenty of snacks and go to town packing for hours, and hours and hours. Then after the packing there was cleaning. OMG the cleaning!


Fukui-san and I had brought back a CD/tape player from our travels when we came back to the land of sugar cane and poverty, but our CD player broke early on and because this technology was not readily available yet, it was too expensive to fix. Instead we would listen to our cassette tapes. All we had was Boyzone and some other 90's disasters, so Boyzone it was. We would sing and sing for hours. Good times!

I think we must have moved 5 or 6 times, and every time we would break out the cassette tapes and player and listen to Boyzone. We never ended up getting that thing fixed because we got a DVD player and that plays music CDs as well so there was never any need. Eventually it became a "thing" with us and we never play any other music while we're packing, we only listen to Boyzone. We're really grateful to them as they turned a truly uncomfortable situation into a pleasant event.

I leave you with a clip of a very cool song from the soundtrack of the first Mr. Bean movie, and wish you a fantastic weekend! Cheers!

A SAG Awards Moment

I watched the SAG awards the other night and frankly there were no surprises. Everyone you thought would win, won. I could go into detail about all the winners and get into who was this and who was that, but are you really interested? Probably not. This is why I've decided to spare you the details and show you my fave dressed of the evening.

Most of these images are from sites like SocialiteLife. I don't think she'll mind. Her blog is good for when you feel like you need a healthy dose of frivolous or mind-numbing stupidity. It's a great Saturday morning read.


Evan Rachel Wood. She's just so, so gorgeous. Her dress is more than stunning and I love that she paired it with purple shoes and clutch. Did you know that she's Marilyn Manson's girlfriend? Yeah. He's got pretty good taste, right? Either that or Rose McGowen, Dita Von Teese and Evan Rachel Wood all have really bad taste. I'm thinking it's more likely he has evil sorcerer powers and he hypnotizes them. He casts a spell on the most gorgeous women so that they have no idea what they're doing and they're madly in love with him. Once he tires of them he releases them from their spell and they're left reeling from the after-effects and have no idea what's up or down. Dita Von Teese recently said she's into better looking men now. She must have had one hell of a shock when she woke up one morning and realized who she was married to.



January Jones. If any of you watch Mad Men you'll see that she is always picture perfect. Like a Stepford wife. She's beautiful and her choice of dress is bold and stunning. She looks like she went for an exotic "Cleopatra" style dress and it worked. She doesn't have the face of a femme fatale, she has more of an "angelic" face, but that dress is killer!


The Indian actress from Slumdog Millionaire, Freida Pinto, was stunning as well. The contrast of her sky blue dress and that ethereal fabric up against her mocha skin is amazing. Mark her face, because you can be sure we'll be seeing her a lot from now on.


Kate Winslet. I couldn't find a decent full length picture of her to show you her dress, but I think this is ok. At least you can see what color it was. Just picture it all the way to the ground and you're good to go. She is a great beauty, an English rose and I love to see her act.


This picture is not exactly a picture of my favorite dress, but it is my favorite picture. Do you see the way he's looking at her? My God! It's like she's his world. His face lights up when he sees her. It's a candid shot. The photographer wasn't trying to take a picture of them, he was focusing on the back of Angelina's dress, but what he captured on film was much, much better.