Been a long time gone

At last, I'm back! I haven't really been gone... I started the new job, and it's interesting and actually keeps me busy. So, before I head into work today, a bit of an update...

I feel bad for leaving you all hanging since August 26, wondering whether or not my dinner for the boyfriend was a success or not. I'm sure you've all been kept awake nights for the past month, wondering.

Well, it started out OK. Went and bought the groceries, remembered everything. (Even with a shopping list, I'm a notoriously bad shopper, always forgetting stuff.)

When I got back to the boyfriend's house, he asked if I wanted any help. I said, "No, you can just go relax and watch TV." (Which is Angie-speak for, "Get out of my kitchen, I don't want any witnesses to this impending catastrophe.")

Cooking in the boyfriend's kitchen is a challenge in itself. While his house may no longer be a swingin' bachelor pad, it is still a bachelor pad. Which means he had no cutting board, so I had to chop onions and red peppers on a old plastic lid I found. When I went to cook the vegetables, I had to put them in a 9"x9" baking pan, lacking other cookware. But, it worked.

The menu was pretty simple. "Italian chicken stirfry," which was pasta, red peppers, onions, garlic, chicken cooked in Italian dressing. Complicated. ;-) I used bowtie pasta, mostly for its aesthetic value. (As if the boyfriend would care!)

On the side, we had broccoli (its vegetable-ness disguised with cheese) and strawberries (their fruitiness disguised with a teensy bit of suger, which they hardly needed). I discovered during this cooking experiment that I was doing what my mom has been doing to my dad for 26 years -- sneaking healthy food into his diet! Hey, somebody's gotta do it.

We also had a nice Shiraz. The wine snobs would probably say it didn't "go" with the meal, but we'd had it before and I knew we'd like it. Tasted good to me!

The recipe for Italian Chicken Stirfry said you could make it in an hour. Unfortunately, I'm no Rachael Ray, so it took me a good hour and a half, plus the grocery trip.

Plus there was my one-track mind, getting in the way. At one point, the meal was almost ready, and I realized I still had to heat up the broccoli. (I'd put it in the microwave about 10 minutes earlier but forgotten to hit "start.") About this time, the boyfriend came upstairs from watching TV... I think he could tell I was starting to get frazzled, so I put him to work slicing strawberries.

The end result was worth it. Not fancy, but definitely good! The boyfriend had two helpings of the pasta, and he took the rest to work with him the next day for his lunch. I took a photo of the end result to send to my sister and prove that I can cook. But, it's on the boyfriend's camera... maybe I'll post it later.

In other news... I think I might have found an apartment! I'm going to look at it later this week.

That's all I've got for today, because my cat is nipping at my bare feet in my computer chair. (That means she wants her breakfast, NOW! The cat has never questioned my culinary skills, unlike some people.) Off to work... My posts will be less few and far between in the future, promise. :)

Oh, and a shout-out to my good friend Jill, off in Paraguay doing the Peace Corps thing. I have a multinational readership! :) Check out her link on the sidebar.

More fun with police scanners...

Not only are they good for coordinating law enforcement and rescue
efforts, they keep you up-to-date on the gossip, too!

Man 1: "Did you know he got married?"

Man 2: "Yep, one in the oven."

Something's fishy

Haven't felt like blogging for a while. While I'm waiting for my muse, I
present you with this column I published in my college newspaper
about...my goldfish. (That's what I loved about being editor of the
college paper; I could print almost anything!) And, yes, he's still
alive! (knock on wood.)

***

Life's tough...especially if you're a goldfish

"He’ll be lucky if I don’t kill him."

That’s what I said my freshman year when I first laid eyes on my goldfish.

Now, you might be thinking, "Seriously, Angie - a column about a goldfish?"

But this is no ordinary goldfish. He’s a survivor, a death-defying shark
in a goldfish’s scales. He’s looked death -- and my cat --- in the eyes,
and endured.

I’d purchased my first fish a couple of months before. Poor Charlie.
Despite my best efforts, he barely lasted two weeks. I quickly bought
another and dubbed him simply "Fish." I didn’t want to become too
attached, you know.

It was a good idea, because Fish barely lasted two weeks, too.

That’s why I doubted the wisdom of taking on another victim -- ahem, pet
-- a few short weeks after Fish’s death.

But my sister, a student of veterinary medicine, had an aquarium full of
lively, rapidly-growing goldfish that she wanted to give away, and she
wouldn’t be deterred.

"These goldfish are out of control," she joked. "I keep expecting them to
die, but I just can’t kill them!"

"Oh, if you want to kill fish, I’m your woman," I told her, picking out a
solid gold beauty.

Tongue firmly in cheek, I named him Lucky.

Two and a half years later, he’s still merrily swimming in his tiny
one-gallon aquarium, lost in his own Technicolor world of neon gravel and
green plastic plants.

He’s been my companion on the three-hour road trip from home to school and
back again, never uttering a single complaint. (Sometimes I feel very much
like Bill Murray in "What About Bob.") And I haven’t killed him.

Not that I haven’t tried.

Lucky’s first brush with death came only a few weeks after I adopted him,
when I took him home to northern Indiana for spring break. I’d poured out
all but about 4 inches of his water for the ride home. Since someone had
told me that hard water is bad for fish, I’d filled a gallon jug with
"city water" from Franklin and put it in my trunk.

Once I arrived at home, I filled his tank with the water from my trunk and
forgot about it - until twenty minutes later, when I passed his tank and
realized he wasn’t moving. I stuck a tentative finger in his water.

Ice. Cold. I tapped the tank. He just sat there, eyes glazed over.

Angie the Fish Slayer strikes again. Let this be a lesson to all you fish
owners out there: Always allow the fish’s water to adjust to room
temperature before inserting fish, especially if the water’s been in your
trunk for three hours and it’s 20 degrees outside.

I placed his tank on the kitchen table in direct sunlight, hoping to thaw
him out, and sat staring and silently pleading for him to twitch his
little fins.

Then I made my second mistake of the day - I left to unload my car.

When I came back, my carnivorous cat, Lucy, was nose-to-glass, her
menacing little paws mere inches from the surface of the water.

I moved Lucky to a high shelf to defrost.

Lucky’s most harrowing road trip was yet to come.

On my way home for Christmas break my sophomore year, I decided to stop at
Butler University in Indianapolis to visit my best friend. I’d placed
Lucky on the floor of my car on the passenger side and sloppily wedged a
towel around his tank to keep it from tipping over.

I’ve never been very good at physics, so the chain of events should have
come as no surprise. I was going a little bit too fast for downtown
Indianapolis, trying to make a green light. I made the light and turned
right…going about 40 miles per hour…and out of the corner of my eye, I saw
Lucky’s tank fall on its side.

"Ahhhh!" I screamed, imagining my poor goldfish buried alive in a tidal
wave of neon gravel.

Trying to keep my eyes on traffic, I grabbed his tank and sat it upright
as best I could. I couldn’t see him in the tank, which was nearly empty of
water. I suddenly remembered the bottle of water in my cup holder. One
hand on my steering wheel, I blindly poured the bottle into his tank with
the other hand.

"Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die," I chanted.

After the longest two minutes of my life (and probably Lucky’s life), I
found a place to pull over. I braced myself for the carnage and peered
down into Lucky’s tank.

He was darting around the tank in about two inches of water, glaring at
me. I could almost hear him saying, "Took that corner a little fast,
didn’t you, Ang?"

Whew.

I’ve always considered myself a dog person, but goldfish have a lot going
for them. They’re quiet, cheap and cute. They have a memory span of about
three seconds, so they don’t remember murder attempts. They’re never
bored, because by the time they complete a lap around their plastic
plants, they’ve already forgotten where they were going.

And until I met Lucky, I would have said "easily replaceable." Now I’m not
so sure about that.