Signs your male aerobics instructor is gay:

1. He is a male aerobics instructor. (Heh. I crack myself up.)

2. He is married, and mentions his wife a LOT. (Note: if you EVER mention your wife during a one hour aerobics class, this is a lot.)  Overcompensating, buddy?

3. He is wearing a tight t-shirt that shows a little of his stomach when he raises his arms over his head.

4. He plays the song “YMCA” during the aerobics class. YES THIS REALLY HAPPENED. NO, WE CAN NOT GET ANY MORE STEREOTYPICAL.  Was I singing along in my head?  Yes.  But that is beside the point.

Numbers 1, 3, and 4 apply to my experience at my weightlifting for ladies class yesterday (it is called “bodyworks plus abs,” but we all know that it this is gym-speak for “weightlifting for ladies”). Number 2 is an experience from a previous step aerobics class.

Let me note that PERHAPS my instructor was not gay. Let me also note that I believe the odds are small that this is the case. Let me note a third time that all stereotypes contained herein are not meant to offend any straight or gay male aerobics instructors out there.  I enjoyed your class a great deal, gay-aerobics-instructor-from-yesterday.  Please don't hate me.

food for thought

i know i have mentioned ross douthat on this blog before, but i'll do it again: he's a conservative columnist for the new york times, and the only conservative columnist who i think makes any. sense. at. all.  but he makes sense.  and i read his columns.  and i really like this one.

"a good candidate is hard to find"

a quote: "The manager can play these roles, but there will always be a hint of irony, a touch of phoniness, a sense that he’d much rather get back to the inside game."

um, yep.  that's how i feel about mitt romney.

TIPsgiving!

every year my TIP friends (we met working at a summer program run by Duke TIP) get together for a weekend of telling stories, cooking, eating, playing board games, and acting silly.  it's wonderful.  we used to do it around the thanksgiving holidays, hence the name TIPsgiving, but the busy fall led to the reunion weekend happening in january this year.

i'm making stuffed shells for our dinner tonight, with this recipe that is DIVINE.  (and it's a great blog if you like this recipe and want to see more.)  i'll make it at home and transport it across town to bake at abby and aaron's house where we'll be holing up for the weekend.  the reason for stuffed shells: i made fresh ricotta again this week, after standing in front of the prepackaged ricotta at the grocery store and realizing i could not bring myself to buy it.  mine is so. much. better.  this is kind of a problem, since grocery store ricotta takes 1 second to open and my ricotta takes 1 hour to make.  whatever.  quality > convenience (most of the time), and the cost is about the same.

i also made pumpkin-walnut-date cookies, an applesauce cake with cream cheese frosting, and i've got a couple of bottles of wine.  my food contribution to the weekend: done!

what i'm listening to right now

i cannot explain why i like this song.

"downtown train," by tom waits:



at some point, nora put this song on one of her famous mix CDs and i have loved it from that moment forward.  his voice is so tortured, but so beautiful.  i don't own any other tom waits music, and maybe it's better that way.  nothing could beat this song.

this crazy-ass music video does it no favors.  just listen - try not to watch.

every year i like to take movie recommendations from the list of academy awards nominations; often they are great recommendations, and they definitely make watching the academy awards more interesting.  this year the following films are nominated for best picture.  i have grouped them into categories for you.

movies i have seen:
midnight in paris

movies i have seen that i loved:


movies i would like to see:
the artist
extremely loud & incredibly close (but i should read the book first.  which means i won't see it for 5 years because i can never get my act together.  ugh.)
moneyball
war horse


side note: movies i would like to see that are not nominated for best picture:
the iron lady
beginners

movies i really have no desire to see:
the descendants (the previews make this look...boring?  is that the right word?  i think so.  anyone seen this and can convince me it's worth it?)
the help (i found this book simplistic in its handling of race relations in the south.  summary of the book: white people (except one who is more eager than good) are bad.  black people are hardworking.  the end.  perhaps this book is not for history teachers.  there's no way the movie will be any more nuanced.)
hugo (um...it looks pretty?  but that's about it.)
the tree of life (i can pretty much guarantee i would leave this movie confused.)

now that i've offended just about everyone, i can go on my merry way.

blood drive fail

today, 8:15am: i check in at the blood drive on campus.  all is going well.  i haven't given blood since shortly after college, when i was denied for having too low an iron level.  womp womp.  but since the drive was on campus and we were encouraging students to give, i decided to give it a try.

8:30am: i am seated in the chair.  i tell the phlebotomist (vocab word of the day!) that sometimes (read: usually) they have trouble finding a vein, and that sometimes (read: a couple times) i've gotten dizzy while donating.  she seems unconcerned.

8:40am: she tries to find a vein.  for a while.  then she calls over another lady who also tries to find a vein.  for a while.  this doesn't feel good, if you've never experienced it.  lady #2 eventually finds a vein.  life is good.

8:45am: all of a sudden, i am about to throw up and the world is going grey.  awesome.  as this has happened before, i'm not necessarily freaking out, just feeling tragic.  before i can even alert them of this fact, bad-vein-finder asks me if i feel okay.  i tell her i do not.  she tips me back, saying my lips had turned blue.  bad-vein-finder is really nice to me.  i am friends with her again.  i continue to feel tragic, while another woman gives me sips of blue powerade.  i spend approximately 5 minutes here, trying not to die.  i do not die.  i feel better!  my veins do not.  they stop giving blood.  bad-vein-finder-friend tips me forward.  approximately 1 minute later i feel tragic again.  i am tipped back.  they are making me cough (um, why?).  i am making a small scene.  TRAGEDY.  i am still diligently pumping my fist.  they laugh and tell me to stop.  the needle is out.  I HAVE FAILED.  but i am alive.  in this moment, that is all that matters.

i have never failed before.  i have felt bad, but always been able to make it through and donate a full pint.  this is important, because they prep the bags with the anticoagulant (i kind of made that up - they prep the bags with something) that is pre-measured to work with a full pint.  if you don't give a full pint, they can't use any of it.  ugh.

so...i know that giving blood is a good and important thing, and i want to give blood.  i think, now, that i need to throw in the towel.  good try, miss claire.  but this is not for you.

what i'm listening to right now

counting crows, "friend of the devil":



i love this song - my dad used to play it on the guitar when i was little - and the counting crows do a pretty great version of it.  life is good.

Tuesday, 9pm

State of the Union Bingo!

(You KNOW you want to play along with me and my AP Government classes!)

Directions:

1.     Watch the State of the Union address.

2.     Listen carefully to the President’s speech.

3.     When the President says one of the key words or one of the actions is carried out, mark your card.

Iraq	Taxes	Iran	Uninsured	Supreme Court justice applauds
College	“The state of the union is strong” (or words to that effect)	Afghanistan	Veterans	Congress
Economy	Jobs	FREE SPACE	Speaker of the House stands up	Unemployment
Any gay rights issue	Safe	Poverty	First Lady	Responsibility
Someone in the audience boos	Constitution	Election	Stimulus	Osama bin Laden

I adapted this from the National Constitution Center's State of the Union Bingo.  Theirs is pretty awesome.  Mine is better.  


I can pretty much guarantee that the State of the Union address will be more fun to watch if you're playing this game.

grandma jane's 90th birthday

this is part of my mom's side of the family, in florida for my grandma's 90th birthday!  yes, that beautiful (and TOTALLY with it) woman on the right is my grandma jane.  my sister and i lamented (once again) not being related to her by blood (she's my step-grandma) because she has got some AMAZING genes.  slim, mentally there, well read, kind, patient.  we love her.

we played three holes of golf on sunday, both for fun and because grandpa would have wanted us to.  jeans, flip flops, and bare feet?  grandpa would NOT have liked that.  another person who didn't like that?  an old dude in his condo on one of the holes who called to report us.  oops.

in my first attempt to actually play golf, i made a par three hole in six strokes.  i'm calling that a victory.

in case you needed more reasons to watch downton abbey: Why Americans Connect With Downton Abbey

the season 1 finale did NOT disappoint.  on to season 2!!

here is where i tell you that if you aren't watching downton abbey YOU ARE MISSING OUT.  i was missing out until about a week ago, when i started watching the first season on netflix (watch instantly - the best!).  the internet cannot stop talking about how amazing this show is, and the internet is not lying to you.  it is funny and so terribly sweet and there is romance and scandal and Bad Guys (capitalized to show that this they mean business with their badness) and pretty costumes and historical-ness.  it is amazing.  i knew i was hooked when the end of the first episode caused me to yell at my computer screen.

tonight i will watch the finale of season 1.  I CAN'T WAIT.  and then i can start right in on season 2, since it premiered a couple weeks ago.  (note: i'm behind, obviously, so do not tell me what happens!)

also tonight?  jeopardy online test.  one of my life goals is to get on jeopardy, so here is attempt #3 to make that happen.  eeee!

i love pop art, and this is pop art-y.  the best movie posters of 2011.

so...i arrived in florida on friday evening to find out that my grandpa had passed away just a couple hours beforehand, with much of his family (also in town for my grandma's 90th birthday celebration) by his side. while it was sad to lose him - and to miss seeing him by just a couple hours - i spent the weekend with 15 other family members, catching up on each others' lives and enjoying being part of this family, as we remembered my grandpa's long life.  he died peacefully.  the 16 of us did not process the news alone.  the timing was, in many ways, perfect.  there is a great deal to be thankful for.

i'm headed to florida this weekend for my grandma's 90th birthday celebration!  (this is, perhaps obviously, not the same grandma as the one in connecticut whom i visited over christmas break.)  there will be a lot of family there, and i'm excited to see them.  my grandpa is not doing well, though; while i am really glad that i will get to see him, the weekend is a little tinged in sadness because his health is failing.  sigh.

off to florida i go...with the season 3 finale of dexter to keep me company on the plane!

in class this afternoon i got off on a tangent (not the first time), and got on the topic of my love for joni mitchell.  NOT A SINGLE ONE OF MY STUDENTS KNEW WHO SHE WAS.  ugh.  this is obviously needed in the universe right now:

like every child of the '80s, i loved the cosby show.  LOVED.  it came on at 8pm, if i recall, which was a good thing since for a while my bedtime was 8:30, meaning i had to miss the second half of murder, she wrote on days that it was on, a tragedy i remember well.

fast forward: during college, at a duke basketball game, the student section spotted bill cosby in the best seats in the house, sitting next to the president of the university.  maybe we were playing temple?  at halftime he came down to the court, someone handed him a microphone, and the first thing he said was "hey hey hey!" in his fat albert voice.  we may or may not have gone crazy.  it was amazing.

this is a pretty cool collection of bill cosby moments throughout the years.  i did some reminiscing.  you can, too.

last night i had a dream that was very complicated and i have no memory of...up to the point where i looked down at the ground and there was a HUGE spider and it was mitt romney (it just was - don't ask questions) and the spider scurried around and then jumped up on my neck to attach me.  i woke up in a PANIC, frantically brushing the dream-spider off my neck.

anyone else dreaming about republican presidential candidates?  no?  hmm.

best. day. ever.

saturday was pretty much the best day ever.

on saturday afternoon i went to a duke game, which is a VERY exciting event in and of itself.  even better?  we scored free tickets in the first row, center court.  now, we'd bought tickets already (which we then gave away so as to keep the karma gods happy), so these were not really free tickets, but they were incredible seats.  with four friends.  and duke won in a nailbiter.  all of this leads to a happy claire.

in this photo that i took of a tv screen (embarrassing, but true), you can see us - upper right hand corner!  put on your glasses!  i'm above the "e" in "applebees," behind the woman in the ref's shirt (she's the official scorer).  thomas, mike, and andy are to my left.

after the game we met up with three other friends for a late lunch, and while there we realized that no one had plans for the evening.  a plan was hatched to make dinner - free pasta (thomas and lindsey learned how to make this a couple years ago)

+ made-from-scratch sauce (kelly is a pro and made a meat sauce and a veggie sauce - love her!)

+ fresh ricotta (yours truly with kelly as my assistant)

= ravioli!

lindsey made two salads (one for the girls, with delicious things in it, and one for the boys with...cheese on it).

joey and his dad bottle wine, so we had "homemade" wine (or, as mike coined it, "homo-made" - which i hope offends no one, as it did not offend the gay man - we're the kind of friend group that can say this with total love and humor).

kelly did double duty and made tiramisu, as well!!  (kelly - i need this recipe!)

mike promised to clean up afterwards, which he did, and other claire brought beer.

it was honestly the best night ever in a long list of best nights ever.  i have an amazing group of friends, and we laughed our way through the preparation of this feast.  how the food tasted at the end almost didn't matter (though for the record it was delicious).  signs that you're getting old: this is more fun than going out to a bar.  eek.  i can't believe i just said that.

today is the one year anniversary of being snowed in together (you may remember my live-blogging of the occasion).  i'm reminded day after day, year after year of how truly lucky i am.  have i found myself a hot/kind/funny/special man yet?  no i have not.  but i have found myself some best friends for life.  and i'm doing pretty well.

when i was in connecticut at the end of december i helped move my grandma from her apartment into her assisted living "studio apartment."  there wasn't room enough for most of her books, so the nostalgic ones were saved and the rest were donated to charity.  except!  i grabbed 5 in the process.

did i need more books?  hellllllls no.  but i think by this point i ought to just admit that i'll have a lifelong "problem" of owning too many books...

ricotta rollercoaster

for christmas becky got me a cheese-making kit!!  on monday i decided to try making ricotta - this seemed to be the easiest of the varieties that the pamphlet would teach me to make.

milk + salt + citric acid + stirring + watching the thermometer slowly rise:

not pictured: the 10 minutes i stirred it and worried about it after the milk had reached the goal temperature.  turns out the pamphlet didn't tell you how long to keep it cooking.  ugh!  are these curds?  shouldn't there be more of them?  nothing is happening!  argh!!  fine: i'll just pour it into the cheesecloth and cross my fingers.

um, should there be more of this?  but it is coagulating nicely...:

i am a culinary genius and i made ricotta and it looks and tastes just like it's supposed to!!!!!!:

it was a rollercoaster ride, if you couldn't tell.

also not pictured: the amazing meal of good bread, ricotta, and roasted tomatoes with an arugula salad that i had for dinner that night.  not pictured because i did not have time to take a photo before inhaling it.

last night i made pasta with broccolini and onions in a vegetable broth sauce with ricotta on top.  also heaven.  also no time for a photo.  after my whole "is this all the ricotta it makes?" statement, i have a lot of ricotta in my fridge.  it keeps a week, according to the pamphlet.  it will be a week full of one woman ricotta parties.

i survived my first day back to work.  this is a victory in and of itself.

then i took an accidental nap.

then i ate some eggplant curry with some naan, both from the frozen foods section of trader joe's.  INCREDIBLE.

now i'm anxiously awaiting the iowa caucus results.  birdie on one shoulder: but you don't even care about these republicans.  birdie on the other shoulder: but you must know who wins!

it's a truly glamorous life that i lead...

2012 book challenge

in 2011 i challenged myself to read 25 books.  it was a great success!  i read 38 books, exceeding my goal by a margin i honestly couldn't have imagined a year ago.  let's not forget that in 2010 i read 15 books.

an accounting of those 38 books reveals that:
26 were fiction and 12 were non-fiction.
18 were by women and 20 were by men.
i read two serieses of books (probably not the term you're supposed to use): the 3 hunger games books and the 5 game of thrones books.  i love a good series - if you like the first book you know that there are more to enjoy.

and i loved that i was refocusing on reading more.  life is/was good.

because i can't just appreciate a good thing, i'm taking the challenge a bit further this year.

in 2012 i am again challenging myself to read 25 books.  (this is the official goal.  i don't feel compelled to pressure myself to read more than that - if i do, i do, but 25 was a manageable goal during the busier months.  but of course i'd love to read 30 or more again this year if it's in the cards.  do you like what i just did?  said the goal was 25 when we all know it's really 38+?  ugh.  pull yourself together, miss claire.)  so: 2012 - 25 books.  but!  10 of those books need to be ones that have been on my bookshelf for a LONG time and i've never read.  actually, i won't force myself to read them if i hate them.  but i need to attempt to read them...and then i can donate them to goodwill if they aren't up to snuff.

i've picked the 10 books off my bookshelf that have been there for quite a while - 5 fiction, 5 non-fiction.  they are:
mountains beyond mountains, by tracy kidder
naked economics, by charles wheelan (i started this one, but never finished)
the nine: inside the secret world of the supreme court, by jeffrey toobin (ditto)
papillon, by henri charriere
when victims become killers, by mahmood mamdani
the palace thief, by ethan canin
the cider house rules, by john irving (ditto, and i've never seen the movie because i'm "waiting to read the book first."  how long can one use this excuse?)
the march, by e.l. doctorow
postcards, by e. annie proulx
vinegar hill, by a. manette ansay

blog readers, have you read any of these books?  please give me hope, as this is a daunting prospect.  these books have been sitting on my shelf for a reason - i don't WANT to read them.  but you know what?  i either need to read them or i need to get rid of them.  so 2012: here we come.

(note: yes, i am trying to go to grad school beginning on the fall of 2012.  yes, this might (read: will definitely) get in the way of my book challenge.  yes, we will cross that bridge when we come to it.)

what i'm listening to right now

in love with this song - listening to it on repeat.

"a widow's toast," by neko case:



happy new year, everyone!  i had a lot of fun at a party last night and just ate the most incredible scrambled eggs, cheesy hashbrowns, and buttered toast that $4.76 can buy.  life is good.