wild card: book anxiety

i have book anxiety. there's a bookcase in my front room, and more often than not, that bookcase goes through a thorough inspection whenever someone new comes over to my apartment. i always feel a little anxious about it, because in all honesty, i don't have a very large collection of books that i own. the same goes for movies. most of the books that i own were given to me or were given as gifts or were purchased because they were my absolute favorites and i borrowed them so many times that it was stupid that i didn't have them.

a book is a Very Important thing to me. a book on a bookcase says something about the person who put it there. it says "this is me, this is what i do, this is what i like, this is something important to me." and, in some strange way, they're like pets to me. you bought it, you have to take it off the shelf and exercise it every once in a while.

and i have commitment issues.

i'm a borrower. i'm a very frequent patron of my local library and read quite a lot, but my home library is... sad. small. however, i received $60 of gift certificates to various booksellers for my birthday this year and am now faced with the task of overcoming my fear of commitments and expanding my library a little. i purchased four books yesterday-- two classics that i know i love, one book i know i'll love based on previous books i have from that author, and a cook book that i have been lusting after for a month. (links go to the books) only $25 left to agonize over.

top fiveish: top five most awesomest shows ever (when i was eight)

for today's top fiveish, we're going to take a look at my favorite tv shows from when i was a kid.  (it was remarkably hard to narrow it down to five.  well... six. okay, seven.  i may revisit this list later.)  read on!  you know you want to. 

in the kitchen: sloppy joes

i decided that the picture post counted as news day.  (IT'S IMPORTANT. IT COUNTS.)  so, moving on to wednesday in the kitchen.  today's recipe: sloppy joes.  i made these for myself on my birthday because there are few foods i love more than sloppy joes.

update: photos!

lots of pics beneath the cut, so slow-connection-sufferers, beware!

update: birthweek

last week was my birth...week. i know it's generally constrained to a birthday, but the festivities for my birth were kind of spread out throughout the week. and it was awesome.

retro movie flashback: titanic (1997)

title: titanic
year: 1997
rating: ★★1/2

books and biscuits: peter pan review

look over at my other blog here for a review of peter pan!

wild card: the doom of the girlfrind

a couple of weeks ago, i came home from the library with The Devil in the White City, which is about serial killer H. H. Holmes, and In Cold Blood, which is is a true crime book about a murder. the next trip to the library yielded Mystic River, which is a novel about murder, and Stiff, which is about, well... cadavers. i was half-certain that i was going to get a knock on the door after a very concerned librarian contacted the police. but the thing is, this is not a recent development. i have always been a little morbid, fascinated with the macabre. when i was in the second grade, R.L. Stine was pretty much my idol. by the third grade, i'd graduated to the "masterpieces" of Christopher Pike. i was obsessed with vampires and ghosts and mummies (oh my!), as well as zombies, voodoo, witches, and other such subjects.

i was an aspiring author at the time (which is another thing that still hasn't changed), and so, naturally, the subject of my reading and the subject of my writing were the same. yes, i was a third-grader writing about death and zombies. and a few years ago, i found evidence of this. tucked away in a box filled with drawings and report cards and old spelling tests, there was a little gem that i had penned called "the doom of the girlfrind." and here, for your reading pleasure, is a transcription of that masterpiece.  including a stunning cover illustration.

(the tagline says "Rob is dead... or is he?"  also, please note that the tissues depicted are puffs plus. only the best for my characters.)

top fiveish: my top five favorite earth-related things

happy earth day! to celebrate forty years of earth-loving tree-hugging, today's top fiveish will be my top five favorite earth-related things.  (i know, it's a really vague category, but what do you want from me? logic?)

okay, new plan! (or: a gritty blog reboot)

new year's day might technically be january 1, but some traditions are made to be broken. when i was a kid, the new year started in august or september with the start of school. now that i'm older, my personal new year's day is april 20, when spring is springing and birds are singing. so in the spirit of renewal and growth, i have decided to make some changes to this here blog. namely... i'm actually planning on updating it. (whatWHAAAT?!)

i've tried to decide what kind of blog i want this to be. do i want it to be literary and gorgeous and beautifully-written? of course i do. but if i hold off on posting until i have the brainpower to create something literary and gorgeous et cetera, i will never update. and what is the purpose of a blog if it's never updated? i mean really.

so here's the plan. i am planning on posting every day. this plan may change after a few weeks when i go "what the heck was i thinking," but for right now, this is the plan. but just wait, there's more! there's a schedule to help me think of things to post! oh, this is exciting, isn't it? so here's what you can expect day to day at madam b's emporium of thoughtful thoughts:

sunday: retro movie flashback. on sundays, i will be rewatching and reviewing the "great" films of my early life. this will include movies i was obsessively in love with as an adolescent (such as the mummy) and movies that were wildly popular that i never saw.

monday: life update. this is the day that i'll post updates on my super-exciting life. topics will include: work! friends! family! crimefighting! (okay, i made that last one up.)

tuesday: newsday. i'm obsessed with news, especially weird or interesting articles that pop up in world newspapers. tuesday is the day i'll share some of my favorite articles with you!

wednesday: in the kitchen. in case you haven't noticed, i love cooking and i love sharing recipes. wednesday will be the day i share some of my old and new favorites with you!

thursday: top fiveish. on thursdays, i will share a list of my top fiveish (meaning it could be five or three or ten) list of something. favorite books, favorite movies, least-favorite words, etc.

friday: wild card. the sky's the limit! this could be anything.

saturday: books and biscuits. i actually have another blog. it's located over here.  the idea of the blog is to review books and then to provide a recipe of something in the book or related to the book.  you may notice that there's nothing there.  this is because it is a very ambitious effort, to say the least; however, i'm hoping that i'll be able to get something up every saturday!   i'm planning on alternating saturdays-- one saturday will be the review, the next will be the recipe.  fingers crossed!

recipe: crustless quiche

as if i could update without putting up a recipe. puh-leeze.

ah, my dear crustless quiche. this recipe has stood by me through my month of madness. it was used for my sister's bridal shower, a coworker's baby shower, and at least one quick dinner. (not counting tonight. it's sitting on my stove cooling as we speak.) it is truly a wondrous thing, this quiche. it's been adapted from a recipe found originally on allrecipes, as so many of my recipes are.

• 4 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups milk or half and half (or some combination of the two)
• large pinch of salt (yeah, i honestly cannot be more specific. maybe like... half a teaspoon? a teaspoon?)
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour (whole wheat works as well)
• 4-ish strips of bacon, cooked and crumbled
• 1 1/2 cups-ish of shredded cheese such as cheddar or swiss
• tasty ingredients (chopped reasonably small) such as sauteed onions, shredded carrots, sauteed zucchini, tomatoes, blue cheese, or whatever else you have in your fridge that you think will be tasty in a quiche. experimentation is fun! or, if you don't feel like experimenting, it's still darn tasty with just the cheese and bacon.

preheat the oven to 350. spray a pie pan with nonstick spray. sprinkle the bottom of the pie pan with the bacon and the cheese. in a large bowl, whisk together the eggs and milk. add the salt. slowly whisk in the flour, then stir in your other ingredients. pour this into the pie pan and bake at 350 for... oh let's say 30 minutes, and then check it to see if it's done. generally my oven takes more like 40 minutes. take it out and let it cool for about ten minutes. it can be served warm or cold and makes amazing leftovers.

update: coming up for some air

oh my stars and garters, where have i been for the past month and a half?

actually, let me tell you some of the places i've been.

• in the kitchen, making tiny cupcakes and cheesecakes and cucumber sandwiches
• in my office, writing page after page after page of information about my company, parroting my own words from project to project and trying to be excited every time
• in my apartment, sitting on my ugly-but-comfortable couch with those pages all printed out and a red pen in hand until i'm too tired to think anymore
• in a reception line wearing a pink dress, standing beside my sister, who looked the most beautiful i have ever seen her
• in zion national park, with rock walls rising up around me and the river humming from the spring thaw
• in vegas, losing my mind over acrobats and high divers, plasticized hearts, and tea cups that were on the bottom of the ocean
• in bed, dreaming of hot air balloons

i'm back now, as far as i know. life is still hectic, but i'm trying my best to draw a clear line between work-life and life-life. i'm trying to cut out places that i can fill with what i want-- catching up on books and movies and writing, my own projects that i've been putting off day after day.

fingers crossed that it can last. today it feels like it will.