Monthly Archives: September 2007

Everybody’s Talking About It

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With premier season about to start, it is inevitable that we all start looking at our schedules and deciding which shows to check out, and which to avoid. While the CW isn’t the same without Gilmore Girls, a series I loved from the first, I have to admit that I’m intrigued by one of their offerings for the 2007-08 season: Gossip Girl.

Gossip Girl which was created by the same team responsible for The O.C. is, on the surface, a standard teen drama. It involves the lives of several Upper East Side teenagers, and their romance, angst, and explorations into sex, drugs and higher education. What makes it different, and what makes it worthy of my interest, as a blogger and follower of froufrou, is that the series is narrated by the Gossip Girl, and bookended by her blog entries talking about the lives of the people around her.

While we know that Kristen Bell provides the voiceover for Gossip Girl, she does not, apparently, appear in the series, or at least, we don’t know who the Gossip Girl really is.

I’m not sure if I like the thought of gossip as a motivating factor in storytelling. While I don’t really gossip on my blog (unless talk about the folks in my Starbucks counts), I’m no stranger to it, having worked in enough offices to know that where there is a group of people – male or female – gossip will ensue. Still the show looks interesting enough for me to want to take a look at it when it premiers on the 19th.

Nicest Plumber Ever

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The rescue rooter guy came on time, and even though he managed to fix the tub stopper – it was just a matter of screwing the handle back to the disc correctly, he cursed at the poor design of the tub. “It seems unfair,” he said, “even though it’s in working order, to leave you with something not designed to drain the tub correctly.”

Our tub is a deep soaking tub, no jets, just lovely hot water and a window to view the stars through…

I so want to clone this plumber.

Also…he liked my use of a butter knife to drain the tub, then apologized for using the same knife.

How cool is that?

All You Knead is Love

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Last night as I grilled a flank steak on our little George Foreman grill I had this urge to fling knives into the air and bang metal spice shakers around the way they do when you’re sitting around the fire table and restaurants like Benihana.

I’m not sure if this flight of fancy was brought on by the feel of the grill heat on my face – I always sit at the end when we go to Japanese steakhouses so am closer to the heat source – or the sound of sizzling meat, or the fact that I was half-listening to back-to-back episodes of Top Chef while I was puttering in the kitchen, but there you are, or there I was, imagining myself wielding very sharp knives with the same melodramatic flair used by John Belushi in old SNL sketches when he did his Samurai (Whatever) sketches.

Speaking of early SNL, my mind is also living in the early seventies this week, as the part of my novel that I’m working on involves a baby conceived during the Summer of Love, a cafe, and a VW Bus, and it’s made me really wish that instead of sitting in my uber-suburban Texas tract house, I was, instead, sipping percolated coffee while toasting my hands near a bonfire on the beach, or sitting at Haight-Ashbury staple All You Knead, where I remember getting $4.50 spaghetti as late as 1988, when I was in college, and where the menu is a funky but somehow perfectly logical mix of organic, vegetarian, and classic diner.

This novel would be so much easier to write if I were IN San Francisco, not just remembering it.

Happily Ever After…

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Once upon a time the hostess with the most-ess went digital. She founded a blog, and created an online persona who is both warm and welcoming, and a little irreverent but always with a twinkle in her virtual eye, and became the center of a vast online community of bloggers who may not all share the same world view, but do share an addiction to her games, questions, and weekend meet-n-greets.

She is Michele, and last week she issued a challenge to her readers: Write a 50-word fairy tale, and then vote on her top three picks. The winner will be featured as her Site of the Day – a feature in which she invites her readership to check out someone else’s blog. If you’ve seen comments that say “Michele sent me” on this or other blogs, you’ve run into her readers.

I’ve been honored. My story is among the three chosen for the vote. Please go here to check out all three, and vote on your favorite.

And tell Michele that MissMeliss sent you :)

Thursday 13: 0709.13

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Thirteen Things about MissMeliss, brought to you by the letter R

  1. Rabbits – I’ve always wanted one as a pet, but Fuzzy keeps reminding me that Miss Cleo would view such a creature as lunch. I enjoy watching wild rabbits on the lawn, when I have the opportunity, generally when we visit his family in South Dakota.
  2. Raccoons – Three of them the size of Ewoks raced across our lawn a few weeks ago as we were coming home from CSz. I like raccoons, they’re adorable, and dangerously clever.
  3. Radiators – Central heat is great, and I like my bathroom space heaters, and the baseboard heaters I’ve had, but there’s something really cozy about one of those radiators under the window – you could warm your socks on them, or dry out wet shoes beneath them.
  4. Railroads – We’ve been playing Ticket to Ride a lot, which I enjoy because I’m a railroad buff, thanks to my grandfather who got me hooked on model railroads. I like full-scale railroads, too, however, and have fond memories of my friends and I sitting in the top of the Georgetown Loop caboose.
  5. Rain – No other sort of weather inspires me as much as rain does. I like sunshine in reasonable doses, but rain is my absolute favorite, whether it’s a light, cooling mist, or a heavy downpour, or a whole day of on-and-off rain and clouds, so that I can make soup and turn on the table lamps before evening.
  6. Rattan – I like the texture of rattan rugs, and the casual artiness of rattan furniture. I was once treated to a lesson on the difference between rattan and wicker, but I don’t remember the fine points any more.
  7. Reading – I’ve been a bookworm since dirt, really. I read in the bathroom, the tub, bed, the couch, the car, planes, the back yard, the kitchen table, wherever I happen to be. I also read a very quickly. Right now, I’m reading Bright Lights, Big Ass
  8. Recipes – The first time through, I do exactly what they say. After that, recipes become just a guideline for me. Right now, I’m looking for the perfect butter cookie recipe, one that can be infused with lemon and still be sweet enough as a tea biscuit. Anyone have something that might work?
  9. Rhubarb – Fuzzy’s favorite pie is strawberry rhubarb. I’m allergic to strawberries, but I like the rhubarb part. His sister-in-law makes an amazing rhubarb cobbler.
  10. Ribbons – I’ve had long-ish hair most of my life, so I have a special attachment to hair ribbons, but I also like package ribbons, and decorative ribbons, and I even thread lengths of ribbon through my Christmas tree each year, as filler.
  11. Riddles – brain-teasers, puzzles, guessing games, I love riddles. There’s a dark, quirky movie called Nemesis Game that wasn’t particularly good, but had riddle solving as an important part of the plot, and that, and the fact that it starred Adrian Paul were enough to give me a reason to watch it. I’ve seen worse films. Oh, and riddle me this:

    The poor have it.
    The rich want it.
    God fears it.

    It is more evil than demons.
    If you eat it, you will die.

    What is it?

  12. Roadsters – Nothing appeals to me more than a vintage roadster with the top down, tunes cranked, and the ocean outside the car window. Think Eric Carmen’s “Make Me Lose Control” for cheesy mood music.
  13. Rockets – I love rockets. It doesn’t matter if they’re a NASA project or a back yard model, there’s something just seriously cool about counting down to blast-off.

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Open Drawer Policy

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We all have them – those drawers in the kitchen that don’t hold knives or wooden spoons, or even potato chip bag clips, but instead provide a home for all those odds and ends we keep thinking we might use some day, and never do.

Mine is the drawer in the wet bar, under the counter where I have the coffee maker set up. I have no use for a wet bar, but I’ve often fantasized about installing a restaurant-quality espresso machine in the space. For now, my regular coffee maker will have to do.

Within our drawer, the “junk” drawer, we have expired coupons for products we don’t use, boxes of flea and heartworm medicine for the dogs, stray and possibly stale batteries, a spare garage door opener, an assortment of less-than-pristine rubber bands (I think the wide purple one might have once adorned broccoli), a package of birthday candles, and four – FOUR! – unopened boxes of peppermint altoids.

How do I know this? Because today I had cause to rifle through said drawer while hunting for the one item I expected to be there, that was not: the scotch tape.

What’s in YOUR junk drawer?

BPAL Not-So-Anonymous?

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I’m eagerly awaiting my en route order from BPAL despite the fact that I tallied my collection of imps a couple weeks ago, and found that I had 96 different scents, plus bottles of a bunch of Limited Edition and Lunacy scents, plus one General Catalogue scent – Intrigue – and then today I found a handful of little tubes I hadn’t tallied, had not, in fact even removed from the last box, which was still sitting on my dresser from when I pulled “Singing Moon” out of it a few weeks ago.

If there was a sort of drug rehab equivalent for perfume, I would probably be an excellent candidate. At this point, I’m spending almost as much at Black Phoenix as I am on books. And we all know about my addiction to books.

Actually, I’m very proud of myself for ordering a mere three bottles from the last release, though my next bunch of blog money will probably be spent on some of the Halloween scents.

Yesterday I wore Intrigue.
Today I’m wearing Thunder Moon.

I find these perfumes to be incredibly inspiring – the descriptions as well as the scents.