Last night, I started thinking about how little time there was in the day, and I started doing the math and trying to break up my day to more effectively fit everything in. It was a little discouraging, especially since I feel so often that I do so little and everyone else seems to do so much, and it turned into a little brain teaser to play with all day. Anyway, this is a roundabout way of describing how I started thinking about quick and simple dishes for dinner and reminded me that I should jot down this recipe for spicy shrimp.
- 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
- 3T sunflower oil or EVOO
- 1t paprika
- 3/4t cumin
- 1/4t ground ginger
- pinch of cayenne or ground chili pepper
- 1/2 pound large frozen or fresh shrimp, peeled
- salt
- 2-3T cilantro or parsley, chopped
- Saute 2 cloves of minced or crushed garlic in oil
- Stir in spices
- Add shrimp
- Season with salt to taste and add herbs.
- Fry about 5 minutes or until shrimp is a nice healthy pink.
The movie certainly fails to convey the historical context that the book provides but to be fair that's not what Coppola sets out to do. This is not a period piece. What the movie does show is how very young Marie Antoinette is when she enters France and how strict the court rules are. She can't even reach for a handkerchief without breaking etiquette. The movies does a good job of showing how lacking any avenue of expression Marie Antoinette, like many young girls, parties and shops because there is very little that she is allowed to do - and politics have no interest to her so she doesn't bother to understand it. Marie Antoinette and her companions party and shop so extravagantly and spend so little time on anything of substance that it's no wonder the country is in trouble when Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette become monarchs. And because the movie only captures the bubble that Marie Antoinette inhabits, we see precious little of the rest of France (the mob's arrival at Versailles is quite sudden and almost cartoonish). There are various deliberate anachronisms throughout the movie to link it to the partying of Marie Antoinette's day with reckless young celebrities today but it's not sufficiently compelling to justify two hours. The sets were pretty since the film was shot in Versailles, and Kirsten Dunst performs well with the little material she has to work with but it just wasn't enough. The party is over by the movie's end, but I just can't help but think that the film could have had something - anything - more to say.
Vox Gripe: There's a new ad on the sidebar when I try to compose a new entry. It's very distracting because it flashes constantly and sometimes it moves and interferes with my mouse. It gets especially confusing when I try to add an item from my library into the draft. And No, I do not want to know who in Petaluma has a crush on me. It's terrible but I suppose the price one pays for a free blog. I don't recall the ads being this annoying and hope it's not the start of a trend.
Anyway, I had meant to write about Office Space, which is one of those movies that a lot of my friends would quote or refer to but which I had never gotten around to seeing. The movie is a bit dated now in terms of pacing although not in terms of the sentiments and work situations. I remember seeing the fax machine scene on television close to when it was released and finding it hilarious but the movie is much more muted by today's standards. I still enjoyed it though.
The ad in the sidebar is still moving around and flashing at me. Very annoying. It works as an ad, I suppose, because I keep staring at it but I get very disgruntled when I look at it, which is probably not what they intended.
The work week is blending into my weekends, so today I woke up 2 hours before I needed with a list of all the things that I needed to get accomplished today for work. April 1 will be nerve-wracking to get to and I'll be quite jittery on that day but it will also be a relief.
KF class was canceled today because the instructor hurt his foot or ankle somehow. We told the admin that we hoped the injury was not too serious. She replied blithely that he knew qi gong and that he would recover quickly. I'm a bit down because there was no class. It helps me calm down and shake off the stress.
Yesterday, I saw the allergist. M drove me because he's tired of my coughing, wheezing, and sneezing all night and of waking up to see me dry eyed and unhappy. The allergist prescribed two different types of pills and two different types of eye drops. I'm going to go back and see him after the summer when I no longer have symptoms so that he can test to find out what I'm allergic to. To test now would mean I'd have to be off all allergy medication for one week, and he'd rather not put me through that misery right away. Nice doctor. I hope that some combination of what he prescribed works.
After the allergist, I adopted sprat's worms. They're red worms that she's been using for composting. M is a little fearful and a little confused about why I took them in. I've raked through the dirt a bit but haven't found any worms yet although I haven't looked terribly hard. I did some web research on worm bins and vermicomposting and saw close up shots of the worms. Yeah, I really am not that keen on seeing them but I do want to make sure they're there and ready to do their jobs. And um, the web turns up strange folk; some people are absolutely obsessed with worms.... In the end, I hope I'll have something good to feed Meyer, our lemon tree, who will actually bear fruit this year!
I've been sick and rather lazy so we've been watching a lot of tv lately. We don't have cable or even broadcast channels so tv is kind of an event at our house even if we watch the shows well after everyone else has.
We finished watching the first season of House. I like Hugh Laurie as House - such a different character from the ones Laurie played in the Blackadder series - but I don't like the women in the show very much. I'm hoping that will change but I didn't like Sela Ward's character either - at least from the appearance she makes at the end of the season. Laurie is worth watching though. He's such a nasty character, a bit of his own villain, but he does what he thinks he should do and makes no apologies. I also like his relationship with Wilson. Is the second season good or am I better off stopping after the first season?
We also tried watching the pilot to the Sarah Connor Chronicles. It could turn into a fun sci fi series maybe but the terminators are a bit too dramatic. I loved the terminator in the second movie because he was rather sleek and clever, but the first bad terminator in the pilot didn't have much cleverness and was just rather brutish.
I haven't had the time or the focus to write - mostly because I had a very nasty cough and cold which has stolen my voice and took me out for much of last week - but just a general update. A lot of minor changes, nothing major, but I'm generally happy not to have any major drama.
We painted our living room and hallway last week. The living room is brown and the hallway is light brown. If anyone had told me that I was fated to paint any wall in my house brown of all the possible color choices, I would have been very puzzled and probably a bit annoyed. But brown it is. Actually, it's more of a beige. It was the best looking of the colors that we had up. I may re-paint, but the living room looks much nicer, like a place where grown-ups live. Anyway, I've decided on bright colors for the rest of the house. It's nice that after 2 years my house is beginning to look like a home.
I have new glasses! They're thick and black but the cool part is that the arms pivot in any direction I want. I have no idea if there is any functional purpose to being able to bend them in any way I like it - the only thing I can think of would be that they're less likely to break off - but it's a fun feature. If I must wear glasses, I might as well pick frames that I can play with.
I did learn that my little brother has a scary memory. I told him which company made my frames and he was able to tell me which glass showcase my frames were stored from his one and only visit to this particular optical shop 6 months back - a visit that lasted for less than 10 minutes.
Finally, I signed up for a kung fu school. It's nowhere near as intense as my old school, but I'm nowhere near the shape I used to be in. The instructor is patient and very clear even if he doesn't speak English. The emphasis is much more on stretching than cardio, so I'll have to do cardio workouts on my own, and the general pace is much slower. It's a class where I'll have to push myself to improve rather than have other people yell at me to push myself harder, so it'll be a bit of an adjustment. The moves are familiar though: a crescent kick is still a crescent kick, but I do wish my body would remember how to do sweeps and the varying sequences that we run through in class because I know that I've run through them before. I do feel generally better after class though.
