Potatoes in the Mist

This is a little inflammatory, but I'll put it up. I've never tried cocaine, I promise... Your Personality Is Like Cocaine You're dynamic, brilliant, and alluring to those who don't know you. Hyper and full of energy, you're usually the last one to leave a party. Sometimes your sharp mind gets the better of you... you're a bit paranoid! What Drug Is Your Personality Like?

This morning Manhattan was like a ghost town. I think this is the beginning of the Hamptons season. I went out to go to the gym and the whole area was nice and empty. Except for a woman who started berating a (stopped) taxi. "Why have traffic lights if you're not going to follow them?" she screamed repeatedly. I jogged lightly for a couple blocks to get away from her ;) I bought 4 tank tops at Urban Outfitters ($10 each!) and considered getting the yellow panda T-shirt I saw there last time, but it was gone. It's probably a good thing, because yellow is not my color. Speaking of pandas, my mom just got back from China. It sounds like she and my sister had a fun visit. They did not end up seeing the pandas - I think they ended up going to the forbidden city instead - but she explained that the pandas in Beijing are black and gray, instead of black and white, because of the ungodly pollution. You're encouraged to wear a face mask there if you have respiratory proble...

It's really weird. Sometimes I have nothing to blog about, but I feel as if I *should* blog anyway. It's grossly hot and sticky here. D and I had dinner with a friend and now I am, yes, watching bits of Look Who's Talking on Oxygen. Kirstie Alley looked a lot different back then. Not too much going on. I taught twice yesterday and there were a few interesting occurrences. *A guy with a shaved head who kept yawning during backbends, then explained in a British accent that he hadn't slept in three days, and that he's not allowed to sleep. I didn't ask why, as I didn't want to probe. I thought of a number of possible explanations: --job hours - but he was at a 2:30 pm class, so his work can't be that demanding. At some of these corporate jobs, you're practically chained to your desk. --baby - but he didn't seem like a father. Besides, the mom usually gets up, right? --sleep study - but he could always quit. *During the second class I taught that day...

I can't sleep so I'll post the recipe I made for dinner. Courtesy of Jeanne Lemlin. Now, if you were going to be stuck on an island with somebody, Jeanne might not be a bad choice. She's a very good cook. Of course, ideally you'd have your husband/wife with you too. This was quite simple and yummy, and D enjoyed it greatly. (As did I.) You'll need: 1 lb rotini 1 28-oz can diced tomatoes, with their juice 1/2 t salt 1/4 t red pepper flakes 6 cloves garlic, minced 1/2 c chopped basil 1/2 c part-skim ricotta (approx) 4 T olive oil Bring a large pot of water to boil. Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Then saute the garlic and red pepper flakes for 1-2 min. Don't let the garlic brown. Add the tomatoes with their juice and the salt. Bring the sauce to a boil, and then let it simmer for 10 min, or until it's thickened. You can mash some of the tomatoes with a large spoon. This improves the consistency of the sauce, says Jeanne. Once...

Today I met a charming cat called Pars. We called her that because she emerged from the sidewalk dining area of a restaurant called Pars. Anyway, Pars wound herself all around me, then slid under my bottom and emerged on the other side! What a limber kitty. I read an MSN article about Madonna's new tour which basically gave away all the details of her first concert on the tour. Hopefully I'll forget all the details by the time I see her in July. Anyway, I know that she'll sing 9/12 of the songs on her new album, but will also sing songs from her other 9 CDs; there will be at least two political references; and at one point, she will emerge from a diamond-studded disco ball. Apparently the diamonds cost $3 million and the article speculated, "Perhaps that's why tickets to her concert cost as much as $350." We didn't pay that much, but we did get good seats: one level up from the floor, facing the stage. I can't wait... P.S. Let me know if you've rea...

Well, we went to see the Da Vinci Code and now I'm really...tired. I don't know what to say about it without spoiling it for people. It's much like The Crying Game: do you know "The Secret"? With The Crying Game , I knew the secret a long time before I saw the movie...and so did the guy in the movie, probably. I mean, he had to have known when he met her, right? I didn't have any problems with the casting. Paul Bettany (from A Beautiful Mind, also Jennifer Connelly's husband in real life) is a great albino psycho. Audrey Tautou was peaceful, serene and French, as usual; Tom Hanks was, as always, the "good guy". D read somewhere that no matter what kind of character Tom Hanks plays, audiences will like him. He's inherently likable, or something. The movie was too long. As for the theory behind it, I'll say this: maybe some would say the Catholic explanation is a little too pat; but the alternative theory is a little too crazy. I don'...

So D and I are going to see The Da Vinci Code tonight. It got bad reviews, but D read the book and loved it, and bought the tickets in advance. If it's really bad, I can just leave. Right? Yesterday was, um, a day to remember. I taught 2 classes in Brooklyn. I've only taught there on the weekends before, and there's always been the same subway mess - take the 2 from 34th to 14th, wait for another train, and the second train runs local all the way to Brooklyn. For that, you have to allow 90 minutes. So I allowed 90 minutes last night...but there was a reverse glitch: the 2 train ran normally, express from Manhattan to Brooklyn, no need to switch trains. So I got there FIFTY MINUTES early. I decided to loiter in Prospect Park and found a little mommy-baby section (there are many, many nesters in Park Slope) and sat down on a bench. It started raining. So I fled, along with a nanny pushing a stroller. I took shelter under a gazebo near the entrance to the park. There was a gu...

Well, I taught at the crack of dawn today. It was fun, though I went through the rest of the day in a bit of a trance. I probably got about 5 hours sleep, maybe less. I am so not cut out for motherhood (though I like kids). I can't imagine operating on this amount of sleep all the time. Anyhow, I went for a walk after dinner (baked ziti, cooked by me) because I felt like I had a "food baby" after eating that dish. When I came back, D had My Super Sweet Sixteen on. Can I say that show is weird and disgusting? And hard to look away from? Memorable moments: *When one girl says, "It is such an heiressmobile " (referring to the BMW her daddy got her). *When a boy pats a tiger, and the tiger licks his face! This was cute. But then he got all sulky when the tiger trainer explained NJ's strict liability laws for wild animals - got to keep him in a cage. "This will ruin my party," he explained. Wow. Then they showed a snippet from Tiara Girls - they were a...

I thought you should know, I bought a garlic stripper. It dances on a garlic pole and wears clear plastic garlic heels. Actually, you can roll a clove of garlic in the stripper and the skin comes off the garlic. Isn't that nice? It works very well. My website is up and running - it's just to show people when I'm teaching. D wanted to show it to a web designer friend of his so it may be tweaked, but I actually like it as it is. Here's the link: katieyoga.com . There's an additional class I'm teaching tomorrow which I didn't put up because it's at a "private club" - members only. My goodness! I'm probably going to be kicking myself tomorrow for agreeing to teach it, because it's at 7 am. But it can only help my sleep schedule.

Well, we went for a Mother's Day dinner with D's mom, dad and sister. My own mom is in Beijing...I sent her an email but I'm not sure if she's checking. I really hope she doesn't get sick again. She and my sister will go to Hong Kong too (it's all related to my sister's work), and then they'll come home. "Hong Kong is so bright !" my mother enthused before she left. (They went there last year.) "M went out alone at night and I wasn't worried at all. It's like daylight." I guess it's lit up brighter than my own city. The dinner went off pretty much without a hitch. D's sister's feelings were a little hurt after she described her friend T's matchmaking website. His website lets people get to know each other "on a deeper level" WITHOUT PHOTOS. I think this is an awful idea because: 1) people, especially men, want to know what their date will look like. 2) apparently the people can ask for each other'...

So we went to dinner with AT and one of his friends from church, C, tonight. They went on a date before but now they are both pursuing other people. She is from Louisiana and into fashion, so we were sort of expecting Britney Spears, and were pleasantly surprised ;) She was more into drinking than us - she told us about "$2.50 big girls" (17-oz beers) but otherwise didn't seem like a crazy party girl. She has a poodle that she's entrusting to AT in early June. I definitely want to meet it! We went to the Candle Cafe , which involved two trains for me because I live on the West Side, but it was definitely worth it. I had looked at the menu online and planned on getting either the Paradise Casserole (sweet potatoes, black beans and millet over greens) or the ginger miso-stir fry; but they had specials, which added options. I ended up getting the Indian Plate - potato-cauliflower curry, dal, date-raisin chutney, and slightly sweet cabbage. The description probably doesn...

Generally, I like dogs better than cats. This may have something to do with the fact that I'm violently allergic to cats. But mainly, I think it's because they're aloof. They take you or leave you. When you say, "Here, cat," they might come over or they might ignore you. What kind of manners are those? But today I met a cat I liked. I was on my way back from Pilates and this cat adopted me. It came out of a shop full of crumbling flower pots and I said, "Hello, kitty," fully expecting it to ignore me. But it raised its tail like a greeting (I was hunkered down on my heels) and then started to walk around me in slow circles. It rubbed against me and kept walking in circles. I felt honored, like it was marking me as its own. I also met a cat I liked in Venice. We were eating in the outdoor dining room of our hotel. It was open air, and this cat was wandering around. Finally it decided to join us, and jumped up on a chair at our table. I have a picture of ...

Tonight we had dinner with D's cousin J, who turned 35 (gasp). He brought a friend G, from work. They're both lawyers but still nice people. I guess now they are doing non-legal work - or at least G is. Claims adjustment. J told G, "She's a lawyer too," when I walked in, to which I immediately said, "NO!" and J amended, "She went to law school." I was thinking it would be nice if I could sell my degree, and its associated loans, to somebody who wants to be a lawyer. But I guess it doesn't work that way. The dinner was really good. I had aloo tikkiyas (potato cakes) and saag paneer, plus gulab jamun for dessert. At this place I worked one summer, I introduced them to gulab jamun. "Honey balls," they called them. They're kind of like munchkins in honey. Tomorrow is my and D's anniversary. We'll probably go to Saigon Grill for dinner. My mother is in China with my sister. She went there for work last year and my mom accom...

Here are some pics from my weekend. First off, though, I'll say that we went to see Mission Impossible: 3 with my mom. I was kind of underwhelmed by the movie. It confirmed a few things for me though: 1) Tom Cruise is nuts. 2) Philip Seymour Hoffman is a great villain, and still more sympathetic than Tom, the ostensible hero. 3) Certain conventions are followed in all action movies. Betrayal (good guy turns out to be bad), mistaken identity, implausible plot turns, 10,000,000 explosions, each bigger than the last, time pressure, exotic settings, and macho men rescuing women from difficult situations. Blech. 4) I like rom coms better. Their conventions are: humor, good dialogue, obstacles temporarily preventing the couple from getting together, misunderstandings that are later remedied, and secrets that come out in the end. Here is my mom with her chocolate frogs. The chocolate frogs up close. They came from Whole Foods if you are interested. My nephew waiting in a room at the chur...

We had a long day. The Amtrak train arrived early, but a trip wouldn't be a trip without some snafu. The subway supplied it. There was a "disabled car" at the Davis (Tufts University) stop and that messed everything up for several stops. So we were 40 minutes late for my poor mother, who picked us up at Alewife, and I couldn't call her because my cell phone wouldn't work underground. The chocolate truffle frogs were a big hit...I'll probably upload a photo when I get back to NY. After dinner I went for a walk in the dark. My hometown is actually scarier at night than Manhattan, because it's not so well-lit and all the houses are silent, and occasionally football hoodlums tear by in their cars. Anyway, I sensed some movement as I passed one house, and then I saw TWO BUNNIES on the lawn! They sat stock still, as if that might prevent me from seeing them. Then an evil-looking cat stalked them. It lay on its belly and switched its tail from side to side. I was...

Aargh! Technical problems. Hate them. It took me TEN MINUTES to reply to an email from my friend Carpe. Ten minutes, people. I called Verizon and they dropped me like a hot potato when they learned I had a Mac...or transferred me, rather. Macs are apparently more popular than Windows because the Mac customer service department was suffering "unusually long wait times". So I'm going to Massachusetts tomorrow for my nephew's First Communion. I got him a couple of shirts from Old Navy as a communion/birthday gift. I also got my mother her Mother's Day gift in advance because she'll be in China on the actual day. I got her a cookbook called Souped Up and three chocolate truffle frogs. I think D liked the frogs the best of all the presents. (And if you're wondering, Mom doesn't read the blog. I think she's afraid to. Her friend H was all, "Let's look at her blog!" and Mom was like, "No.") I'm reading Bed Rest by Sarah Bilston...

This was too strange not to share :) I just finished A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore. The jury was out as to how much I liked it...for most of the book. But I guess you have to love a book that has lines like the following: "Audrey was waiting in the hall with fifty-three squirrel people" (p. 360). The "squirrel people" were little creatures, fourteen inches high, reconstituted from squirrel bits and sometimes duck claws, etc. I was thinking, wow, Christopher Moore has one heck of an imagination. But he actually drew his inspiration from Monique Motil's sartorial creatures . I particularly like the Victorian Alligator . Monique also performs as a zombie lounge singer and links to a page that includes a zombie version of Marilyn Monroe . Ah, San Francisco.

I have had slight blog drought; I apologize. I did, however, win Quiet in the Stacks Pictionary TM . Yay! I was helped by Carolyn 's guess. I taught today (and last night). AT attended my class today and said it was "my best class ever". The class today was in a rather yucky time slot and only attended by 5 people. The class last night, by contrast, was packed with people practically breathing down my neck in the front row. I guess it's good to get practice in all different situations. After class AT and I swung by 71 Irving Place, a coffeehouse that "is everything Starbucks is not" (according to a clipping on the wall). It's apparently frequented by Ben Stiller, but I have yet to see him there. The same clipping mentioned "early morning spottings of celebs at their worst". I wonder if they stumble in, hair unbrushed, Rice Krispies in their eyes. Sorry about that image. AT also gave me a book called "Dog Food"...various vegetables car...