Dinner for four

I hosted my first dinner party thingy last night. I've never hosted a dinner like that and it was pretty cool. I made my typical dinner, pasta with sauce. Of course, I also only followed the recipe partly before getting distracted and chucking every herb I could think of into the sauce. It came out all right, and after a couple of bottles of wine it ceased to matter anyway.

PATTOTE - Better living through dinner time indoctrination

The One with all the Friends episodes.

Friends is one of those all or nothing affairs. You can't just watch one episode at a time, you have to get a stack of videos or dvds and watch them all together. It's the perfect way to veg out because those jokes never get tired, and neither do the plot lines. Except maybe the whole Ross and Rachel thing which got old about half way through the first season, although it had its moments (Phoebe: "See? He's her lobster.") Best thing about Friends - Chandler and Monica getting together. That ruled.

There are a lot of people who didn't like Friends because the humour was "forced". I loved it because it was sarcastic and occasionally mean. And because I would love to be able to just throw one-liners around like that. Then I remind myself that it was a tv programme and no-one talks like that. And that nobody talks like they do in Gilmore Girls either. Then I have to remind myself that I know that it's a tv programme and practising one-liners in the mirror in case I ever have need of them is totally unrelated. And then I have to go lie down because personality disorders are tiring.

Anyway! My favourite episodes of Friends are:

The One with the Football - (Chandler: "Mini wave in celebration of me!" /does ridiculous dance)
The One with Chandler in a Box - (Rachel: "It's like inviting a Greek tragedy over for dinner.")
The One with Phoebe's Uterus - (Monica: "Seven, seven, seven!")
The One with the Embryos - (There are so many great lines in this episode, and I love when Chandler and Joey ride into the girls' apartment astride that fugly dog.)
The One with all the Thanksgivings - (The turkey and Joey's head. Heh.)
The One that Could Have Been - (FatMonica is so brilliant.)
The One where Chandler takes a bath - (It's a boy bath!)

The early episodes look so bad now though. That's what you get for dressing Rachel up in "fashionable" clothes...

PATTOTE - Better living through snarky one-liners.

How to while away a long weekend.

I fully intend to do as little as possible this weekend. I'm going to start the festivities by eating calamari and chips tonight and watching old episodes of Friends. Tomorrow I'm sleeping late and reading. On Saturday I'm going to the book fair (free entry!). Sunday is the distant future and I haven't planned anything yet. I'm going to get as much mileage out of the public holiday as possible. I hate public holidays generally; they stuff up deadlines and make it that much harder to get the newspaper out on time.

It has been mentioned that I don't update frequentlty enough. I promise to try and add as many rambling passages as possible, starting Monday. Belowe, belowe.

PATTOTE - Better living when I'm in control cause then there will never be public holidays ever again after.

Scary dreams

I dreamt that Cape Town was flattened by a chemical explosion. I only dreamt it once so I'm assuming that I haven't supernaturally caused the apocalypse.

Pattote: Better living through preserving the planet and ensuring my infinite existence.

I hate these things but...

I got this meme from Marissa, the queen of these things. She knows I hate them and yet also knows that somehow I'm genetically programmed to answer them.

1. Three best movies you've watched recently.
Shopgirl (I now really want to read the book)
Memoirs of a Geisha (I really liked the book)
The Anne of Green Gables collection (I still read these books)
2. Three favourite songs at the moment.
Rascal Flatts - Broken Road
Olivia Newton John - Cry me a river (don't even ask)
P.O.D - Let you down
3. Favourite dessert.
Apple crumble
4.(a) Two physical characteristics you like about yourself.
My eyes and my freckles
4.(b) Two physical characteristics you like in a significant other.
Collar bones and eyes
5. The most unforgiveable thing anyone could do is:
Humiliate me in front of others.
6. If your were to dress someone up as yourself they would be wearing...
My pyjamas (the blue ones) with a Western Province cricket tshirt.
7. Three favourite magazines:
Cosmo, Time and... I actually don't read any other magazines. I really like Men's Helath when I get hold of it.
8. A new favourite bad habit:
Resetting the alarm clock until I only have an hour to get ready and get to work, at which point I convince myself that I have to take the car.
9. Dream house:
Stone cottage set among trees with a stream nearby.
10. Which five people would you have with you on a desert island and why?
Jacques Kallis, Herschelle Gibbs, Shaun Pollock, Mark Bouche and Daniel Vettori. Calypso cricket season mon!

Dog logic

Sappy sounds

God Bless the Broken Road by Rascal Flatts

I set out on a narrow way many years ago
Hoping I would find true love along the broken road
But I got lost a time or two
Wiped my brow and kept pushing through
I couldn't see how every sign pointed straight to you

Every long lost dream lead me to where you are
Others who broke my heart they were like northern stars
Pointing me on my way into your loving arms
This much I know is true
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you

I think about the years I spent just passing through
I'd like to have the time I lost and give it back to you
But you just smile and take my hand
You've been there you understand
It's all part of a grander plan that is coming true

Every long lost dream lead me to where you are
Others who broke my heart they were like northern stars
Pointing me on my way into your loving arms
This much I know is true
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you

PATTOTE - Better living through- damn, I have dust in my eye.

Concrete evidence

This weekend I dug foundations and mixed concrete. I never knew that concrete was such a complex substance with so many finicky qualities.

Did you know:
1) That concrete can take up to seven years to set completely?
2) That concrete dries properly when it is kept wet?
3) That if it sets too quickly it will crack?

Neither did I.

PATTOTE: Better living through knowing the chemical make-up of cement shoes.

The Red Rocket

To know me is to know that I wax lyrical and swear vociferously at my car in equal measure. My lovely car, a red Chrysler Colt built when Noah walked out of the ark and Moses wore short pants. It leaks in the winter on the driver's side and makes nice squelchy sounds when I change gears. In spring little plants grow next to the clutch where I've tracked in mud. The back is a neverending morass of dog hair; the back window (attached to the door that doesn't work) is a morass of dog spit. The boot lock ripped away from the metal (probably because of rust) and is now tied down with some wire. This doesn't help the already flooded tool box which houses a couple of miserable rusty spanners and a hapless yale lock that only The Father knows the reason for.

My car, my beloved car, which for several months now has refused to go up De Waal drive in anything other than second. Which tackles speedbumps with a will but crumples on the way. Which has a second hand petrol cap that can only be replaced by me because I have the knack but makes all the petrol guys paranoid because now they think I don't trust them. Which had an irreplacable oil cap (although the tow bar cover worked for a couple of months) and now has one that cost me an arm and a leg and a fortune in petrol, driving around from spare shop to spare shop, where seedy men checked me out or gave me bewildered looks. An oil cap that still doesn't fit and has to have a bit of cloth fastened under it so it will stay shut.

My car, my beloved car, which had a nice service last week but stopped in a spectacular fashion on the M3 the other morning when I was already an hour late for work (typical). I had to call a tow truck, take it to a mechanic, the whole tooty. It's fixed now for the forseeable future.

The best part of the story? And why I love my decrepit, heap of shit, gift from my awesome parents car? Because the mechanic said when they test drove her she backfired so badly that people were ducking on the pavements. I would have paid good money to see that.

PATTOTE - Better living through rusty red cars with cool wing mirrors.

Another Harry Potter phase

I go through these Harry Potter phases every so often, when all I want to do is submerge myself in the Potter world and I voraciously suck up every iota of information I can find. There are other books that do the same thing; it's not just a Potter thing, it's a Liz obsessively getting into whatever interests her at the moment thing. I had the same dedication to Star Trek in high school.

The worst part about these little lapses into obessession is that I find it very hard to switch off after I've read the book or whatever. So I can keep worrying about the characters for hours after I've actually put the book down.

My favourite character from the Harry Potter books is Remus Lupin, the tragic werewolf with a heart of gold. I've loved him since JK Rowling first introduced him. She's written him perfectly as this lovely person with a horrible disease that makes him into a monster once a month. The rest of the time he's this mild mannered, quiet man who keeps a tight grip on his feelings and never lets anyone get close.

Maybe the reason I feel sorriest for him is because, like Harry, he has lost everything. I'm hoping the last book will bring the two of them closer (Harry is leaving school and he will need Lupin I think) and that JK Rowling will stifle any desire to kill him off.

The man seriously deserves to be happy. It's pretty cool that a writer can create this completely imaginary character that the reader ends up caring so much about.

The books I love the most are the ones where the characters are so alive I feel like I've lost close friends when the story ends. That's why I can read them over and over again.