How to gain back all the weight you lost when you had food poisoning

Chess Pie

• 1 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 stick butter, melted
• 3 large eggs, beaten
• 1 tsp pure vanilla
• 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
• Combine all ingredients in bowl and whisk until smooth
• Pour into lined pie shell and bake at 350 degrees until golden brown and center is set when touched with finger, 55 – 60 minutes.
• Cool before serving

This is sickeningly sweet and unbelievably delicious. I only eat it when I’m back home and my favorite aunt makes it (which she does better than anyone else on the planet).

Between this, the turkey, the dressing (my sister snarled at me when I called it ‘stuffing’. Apparently, stuffing is declasse these days), the eggnog, the three gallons of gravy and all the other crap I ate while I was gone I’ve gained back that 5 pounds.

Oh, well.

Since I still don’t have a car and am having to bike everywhere I should lose it quickly, although since I have a sneaky suspicion that they’re not going to be able to fix my car and I’m going to have to buy another one (a thought that makes me very unhappy) I really feel like consoling myself with chess pie and rum-laced eggnog.

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday.

Filed under: Non-Work, eating, food, holiday, pie, turkey

Happy holidays, everyone!

I’ll spend tomorrow crammed into an airplane being sneezed on by my seatmate, and will spend a few days listening to the same old stories and arguments that I’ve heard a hundred times before.

Also, my sister has informed me that it’s really, really cold where I’m going – which should be fun as I don’t own any clothing that’s suitable for weather hovering near 0 degrees since I live in Southern California.

Hope all of you have a very happy holiday, whichever one you celebrate.  I’ll be back on Saturday.

In the meantime,  enjoy this short video that’s been making the email rounds:

http://video.canadiancontent.net/96156021-sugar-grip-fairy.html

Filed under: Non-Work, holiday, link cold, plane, travel, video

Friday Photo and Apology

This is the extra steep stairway to the perms – a few times up and down these and my knees will hurt for the rest of the day. At least it’s got good handrails. Some of the stairways have old wooden handrails which throw off weapons-grade splinters – which, of course, renders said handrails useless.

I’d also like to apologize for the disappearing act – I’ve been having car problems.

Not normal car problems, but car problems so teeth-grindingly annoying that when the tow truck finally drops me off at home all I can manage to do is drop to my knees, shake my fist and scream a word so bad  I’m actually afraid to type it.

The problem is that they can’t figure out what, exactly, is wrong with my car.  It’s started dying for no reason and the mechanic determined that it was a bad fuel pump, which he replaced.  The car ran fine for a couple of days and then died again – at a location 30 miles from my house. At 10 pm.

I had it towed to the mechanic (who was, of course, closed at 10 pm so I had to have the tow truck driver drop the car in a parking space in the street and push it in the next morning after they’d opened), who determined that they’d installed a bad fuel pump and put in another one.

The car ran fine for about a day, and then died again. At 2 am on the way home from work in the middle of a busy street. A kind policeman used the push bar on the front of his car to push me off to a side street and said pushbar tore off the rear bumper cover which might have really irritated me any other time but I was just too tired and beaten down to care.

Then, they decided that the aftermarket fuel pump was the problem and ordered one from the dealer.

The car went 20 miles before dying again, but at least this time it was during business hours. Okay, it died 40 minutes before the mechanic closed for the night, so I had to beg the auto club to get a tow truck there quickly and we barely made it.

At this point the mechanic sighed heavily and admitted that he hadn’t a clue what was wrong and was planning on opening the hood and replacing damn near everything he saw.

To date, they’ve replaced the fuel pump relay, the oil pressure sending something-or-other, a couple of other doodads and have scraped a shitload of carbon out of something called the EGR valve. At this point, he thinks he’s got it fixed, but he’s going to keep it and use it as his daily driver while I’m out of town in an effort to put this whole nasty mess behind us. For now.  He’s a nice guy and he’s trying his best, so I really do hope that he doesn’t get stranded in bumfuck in the middle of the night.

My friends and co-workers have been well-meaning but spectacularly unhelpful in informing me that I need a new car.

Tell me something I don’t know.

I know with every fiber of my being that I need to buy another car. I know it every time I cross my fingers and hope I’m going to get home. I know it every time I get stranded in some gas station parking lot in the middle of the night. I know it when I walk into the rental car place and the guys that work there greet me by name.

The problem is that until our friends at SAG get this strike business resolved, I can’t afford to buy anything more involved than groceries.

If the actors walk and I’m out of work for another four months, I’m going to be so broke I’m going to have to put McNuggets on layaway, so buying a car right now is completely out of the question.

I have to work tomorrow and the rental places are all out of cars (fucking holidays), so I’ve got to hitch a ride with a co-worker, which I hate because I always feel like I’m putting someone out.

The lack of car has foiled my plans to overeat at a few holiday parties Sunday, but on the bright side it gave me an excuse to turn down an invite to a screening of a truly dreadful movie.

Filed under: Non-Work, angry, auto, breakdown, car, stranded, traffic, urban, Work

I’m feeling somewhat better now

I’ve had post-salmonella syndrome for the past week – not sick anymore, but not hungry at all and no energy to do anything. I worked two days, but luckily they were short days – one insert day and one day changing fluorescent tubes in an office building.

Today was the first day that I’ve actually had any energy (although I still kind of feel like there’s a rock in my stomach), so I had to cram everything into one day since I’m working tomorrow. I worked in the garden, got the car smogged, went to the gym and the grocery store, paid bills, and cleaned the kitchen.  Sort of.   Right now it looks like a messy kitchen and not  a science experiment gone horribly wrong, which I guess is an improvement.

Also, it took me forever to get home because there was a shooting on the next street over. Note: not the movie kind of shooting. The gun kind of shooting.
The entire  neighborhood was festooned with police tape and it took me what seemed like half an hour to convince the LAPD that I was a resident and should be let into my house.

As I was unloading the groceries, my neighbor rushed up to me and breathlessly announced that a guy had shot all his kids, but further questioning revealed an unreliable source, so I guess I’ll have to watch the news if I want to find out what really happened.

I’m exhausted now.

Were in not almost bedtime, I’d take a nap.

Filed under: life in LA, Los Angeles, Non-Work, daytime, errands, neighborhood, police, shooting

Saturday Photo

I would have posted this on Friday, but I was completely wrecked after working all night Thursday night (and getting food poisoning from the catering truck. Again), so here it is a day late.

Shooting in office buildings means contending with dropped ceilings – most of the time they’re just a pain in the ass (and full of territorial spiders), but every once in a while some joker somewhere decides to be efficient and put fiberglass insulation above the panels.

You know, for extra points.

Unfortunately, that means that when we (or the building’s regular maintenance guys) have to get up above the panels for any reason (like to hang lights), we get a face full of fiberglass.

Have I mentioned that fiberglass insulation makes me itch like crazy? I don’t mean normal itching. I mean clawing at my skin until I bleed itching.  I kept having to abandon my co-worker while we were hanging lights to go to the ladies room and rinse off. Fortunately we were doing this near the end of the work day, so I didn’t have to itch for very long and I’m reasonably certain that my co-worker will eventually forgive me.

At least there’s no worry about asbestos in newer buildings.

Filed under: locations, Photos, Work, building, fiberglass, insulation, photo

My big fat Thanksgiving hangover

It was the deviled eggs that did me in.

Thursday, I had dinner at a friend’s house. Earlier in the year, we’d decided that since times are tough all over, we’d do a potluck this year – normally my friend does all the cooking and won’t let anyone help, but this year she gave in to peer pressure and just did the turkey while everyone else handled the sides and desserts.

One friend brought deviled eggs. I love deviled eggs – even the garden variety pickle juice/paprika kind. I’d eat them all day, every day were I not so afraid of cholesterol poisoning. I’d have been happy to see any kind of deviled egg on the table, but Ms. Overachiever went all out and did three kinds: Curry deviled eggs, BLT deviled eggs, and Caesar deviled eggs.

Oh. My. God.

I scarfed.  And I drank, since the beaujolais nouveau is out. Then, our hostess brought out the heritage turkey- which I guess means ‘weapons grade tryptophan’ because about five minutes after I shoveled it into my gaping maw (amazing I had room after all those eggs) I needed a nap.

Note to non-Americans: You’ll see a lot of gibberish about Thanksgiving being a holiday about family time and togetherness and all that Currier and Ives misty-eyed nostalgia crap. It’s a PR stunt, so feel free to ignore it. Thanksgiving is about food. And eating as much of it as possible. It’s the one time when outright gluttony is not only excusable, it’s expected.

So we eat. And eat and eat and eat.

Friday I felt like one of those giant Macy’s parade balloons – even rolling out of bed was a supreme effort. I went to the gym and struggled through a rudimentary workout and a pitiful excuse for a swim, but I felt better afterwards.

Shame the feel-good moment was just that. A moment. On the way home from the gym, I stopped into a local cooking store looking for muffin pans, and spied Vacherin cheese, which is extremely tasty and until recently was illegal in the US (or so I thought) but there it was and I couldn’t resist.

Yes, I know what cheese does to me. Sometimes it’s totally worth it.

Saturday I really wanted to go out, but I was busy eating cheese and drinking the rest of the wine – hey, it’s new wine. It doesn’t keep. I have to drink it.

Sunday, in an example of really bad planning, there was a Jonas brothers concert on the same day as the Hollywood Christmas Parade. The annual parade closes many streets in Hollywood and creates a traffic snarl that must be seen to be believed, which, combined with several thousand hysterical tweens running amok in the streets makes for.. well, I’m not sure but I’m glad I didn’t have to drive.

I walked around and took some photos and chatted with some of the really nice folks who were participating in the parade, and then dragged my cheese-bloated carcass home.

Total weight gain for my holiday weekend bacchanal (with optional pig-out package): 2.5 lbs.

Could have been worse.

I’m eating extra healthy this week and going to the gym every day to work off those damn eggs.

Mmm… deviled eggs… I wish I had some right now.

Filed under: Non-Work, deviled eggs, food, gluttony, holiday, Hollywood, parade, Thanksgiving, traffic jam, turkey, wine