Happy Friday. There’s a mosquito somewhere in the apartment,
which has bitten me approximately eight billion times today. I’m going to spent
the afternoon hunting it down and seeking grim vengeance. With insects, I
generally try to take an all-creatures-great-and-small leave-well-enough-alone
approach, but mosquitos are exempt from my mercy. It’s going down.
Last weekend, I replaced a faulty igniter in our gas stove.
I am not especially intrepid with household repairs—I live in constant fear of
electrocuting myself, accidentally blowing stuff up, or causing grievous property damage—but I’m getting much
better. This year alone, I’ve re-hung vinyl windows, replaced a broken window
lock, replaced a p-trap in the kitchen sink, and fixed a leaky bathtub faucet.
And now, of course, I’ve replaced the igniter. I watched dozens of YouTube
videos before starting the repair, which ended up being a little tricky, since
I had to get out the hacksaw to saw off a stuck machine-threaded screw.
Here’s
my #1 household repair tip: Always have a hacksaw on hand. I ended up using it
when I replaced the p-trap, too, as I had to saw the new PVC pipes down to the
correct size to get them to fit together. Anyway, the most valuable YouTube
video for replacing the igniter was the one below. I love this gentleman with his
crisp shirt and his calm air of quiet competence. I want him to calmly guide me
through every aspect of my life:
Anyway, the oven works like a dream. It’s still too summery
here to really cook or bake anything, but I tested the new igniter by roasting
up some broccoli and cauliflower. Toss the florets in olive oil and salt,
spread them out on a cookie sheet, and roast at 425 for ten to fifteen minutes, until
you start to get some good color on them. Scoop them into a serving dish, add a couple
spoonfuls of drained capers and maybe a quick grating of lemon zest, and you’re
done. One of my favorite ways to eat broccoli.
I picked up the wines in the above photo at the Whole Foods wine shop this
morning. I’m doing roast chicken with zucchini and potatoes for dinner tonight,
so I thought the chardonnay might be a good pairing. Mostly, though, I really
love that label. Absolutely gorgeous. Probably 80% of my wine-purchasing decisions
hinge upon whether I like the label, which I feel strongly is the most prudent and sensible way to decide such things.
My Wrong City
promotion is still going on! Buy the Kindle version from Amazon (or download a
copy free from Smashwords), then post a review—any length, any level of
detail—on Amazon by the end of September. Then let me know about it by leaving
me a comment here (or on any other post, or by Tweeting at me, or emailing me…
basically, just let me know that you’ve done it), and I’ll enter you in a
random drawing for a paperback copy of Demon
City, plus swag. Look, September is more than half over now, and not a
single person has taken me up on this, so if you do it, your
odds of winning are very, very good.
What Not To Wear’s
Stacey London wrote a surprisingly introspective piece recently for Refinery29
on figuring out how to dress when you’re in your forties and single. As someone
in that same position, I related pretty strongly with a lot of her
observations.
Video of the week: Tom Petty’s “You Got
Lucky”, which is kind of a cool post-apocalyptic video for a song about a bitter breakup.
See you next week.
Comments
not gonna lie, i thought you were going to link to the article where nick reveals that he shares your approach to purchasing wine. if you hadn't seen it before, now you have proof that you know what's up. (i'm guessing from their weeks-long absence that the duranalyses are done for now? they were nice while they lasted, but if you're not feeling it, then that's all there is to it.)
i just bought wrong city, and it's sitting on the newly-stickered and christened makoto kino the ipad! that's step one! (did i mention that bias cut got here, and right now it's propped up on a mini grand marnier bottle and i am america and so can you? because that's happening.)
I had never read that interview with Nick! That's marvelous, and I feel even more strongly than ever that I could hang with him. He's fun. You can learn so much about people by what they eat and drink.
Duranalyses! Ah... okay, here's the thing, and I feel a little weird and nervous and superstitious about letting this out in the world (seriously, I want to use a smaller font here or something), but for the past couple of months I've been very (very) hard at work on a lengthy Duranalysis book proposal, which I will begin shopping around very soon. So I've been working on Duran more or less daily, but nothing for public consumption yet. I hope to get back to Duranalyses for this site as soon as the proposal is out there in the world.
In other news, my other favorite "Bitter/sweet breakup song": The Cars: Drive (i.e. "You can't go on... Thinking nothing's wrong") Added bonus: the always awesome Paulina Porizkova, scrawling on the wall behind her with markers. Weird note: not sung by Ric Ocasek. Always thought it was.
I applaud you for attending to minor repairs on your own. I run into far too many people inept with tools or the concept of reverse engineering.
I'll have to try the broccoli/cauliflower dish sometime; its sounds good.
speaking of cool things that could potentially be related depending on your answer: my friend alex and i were doing an unboxing-of-sorts of the astronaut tour book (aka the most ridiculous thing ever made) last night in our line chat. she may have discovered something downright shocking to both of us on one of the pictures i took of nick's several-list-form bio, but we thought we'd run it by you just to be sure since you probably know more fictional characters than we do. do you know any yatens in movies/tv(/comics?) other than yaten kou?
Illesdan: Mosquitos always seek me out and try to destroy me. The one lurking in our apartment has bitten me probably somewhere in the realm of eighteen times thus far (I still haven't found it); it has not bitten my sister at all. Dreadfully unfair. And yeah, capers and a bit of lemon make roasted broccoli and/or cauliflower really pop. I highly recommend trying it.
Ingrid -- Hell, I always assumed Ric sang "Drive", too. You learn something new every day...
okay
brace yourself
this is part of one of nick's bio pages
also, the astronaut tour book is something you should absolutely look into buying, it is trying so hard to make you like it and it will steal your heart. it has two pop-up pages! two!!! one of them features a lighting rig doohickey that you can make twirl around like a pokestop! there's also a flip book! and trading cards! and a mango version of the careless memories anna may, in newspapery-style paper and with no guide kana so i can't read it! (oh, and the actual tour book part of the tour book isn't bad either.)
modesty blaise was one of the ones that leapt out at me as well, because (from my limited perspective) that is a really deep cut in terms of what comics characters you could choose. i feel like you'd be more likely to find someone saying "black widow" instead. (though it makes more sense that he'd run into her naturally, now that i think about it; it's just someone my age who has to have been waaaay into comics at some period to become aware of her.) and now i'm going to have to look up captain scarlet! (maybe i should finally buy steve malins' book.)
yeah, feel free to take that picture and discuss it further on friday. you're right, it's extremely important.
the tour book is actually not that expensive (relatively speaking, anyway, the shipping costs more than the book) new from the official webshop, which is where i got it. i'm not sure if i'd get it secondhand if you want all of the tiny band that goes on the first pop-up page, because andy, john, and simon were just floating around when i first opened the book, lol. (nick and roger were behaving themselves and staying in the pouch the band members are supposed to be stored in.) you can get basically any tour book from the last 16-17 years, including let it flow's (the last 90s-lineup tour), which is both really weird and pretty intriguing.
I'm going to have to look into getting the tour books! I've never thought of that.
i'm having trouble ordering more tour books, i'm not sure if the problem's me or them. but itunes got through to my credit card just fine yesterday, so i'm suspecting it's them. i'll find out in an hour when i go pester the credit union about it, i guess! i started wanting to pick the tour books up because it sounds like they're full of interesting tidbits even when they aren't essentially three mini-books in one, but nobody ever scans them. (and astronaut was full of interesting tidbits, as well as being three mini-books in one.)
(As I have long maintained, the correct answer to "Who is your favorite Sailor Moon character?" is always Haruka, though I'm willing to give Nick partial credit for Yaten, mainly because the correct answer to "Who is your favorite Duran Duran member?" is always Nick.)
wow, no wonder the second installment of moon animate make-up was in japanese. i thought it was weird that the first one used the dic dub and the second one was in japanese (and the mouth flaps suffer in places because of it), but it's a very chibs-heavy episode.
supers just sounds so... baffling, on all levels. i was told the stuff about the amazoness quartet being chibiusa's senshi team gets cut, too, but if the season is all about chibiusa then i'd think that would be something they wouldn't want to cut.
i...sorta agree? i remember reading the manga my favorite was minako (all that time to herself in the sailor v manga basically amounts to giving her the most characterization outside of people named usagi, plus she gets some cool moments in the sailor moon manga) and then various outer senshi, followed by i think usagi and ami? while in the anime, i feel like minako's another one hurt by the transition to what is a lighter and more comedic show (she's no longer the leader of the inner senshi! her most memorable cool moments don't happen! by the time s happens, they've kind of thrown out the "more experienced" part that helps differentiate her from usagi!).
so in the anime, haruka edges her out on account of remaining rad and michiru gets more unique stuff to do so i like her more in her own right in the anime. in the manga haruka and michiru felt more like a set instead of two individually functioning characters, which i know is just because space was limited, but it's still really nice to see more of michiru and have more backstory for both of them. (and both figuarts are still for sale at epcot mitsukoshi and eventually i'll probably get my hands on them, especially since ami and michiru can share the water effect parts. oho ho ho ho ho.)