A tongue twister for the Fall Canning Season

Peter Piper (and his preppy precocious pal Beth) purchased pounds of pickles at Pike Place to pickle a peck of. And pickle they did, my friends.

Twelve jars of pickles made this weekend – which I believe translates to approximately half a peck. If you’re dying to know exactly how much a peck weighs, check it out here.

Spitesgiving 2006

It’s that time of year again, Gentle Readers. When the air becomes crisp and leaves start falling and the holidays start galloping towards us at full speed. And you find yourself, right in the center of your heart, becoming just a little more SPITEFUL ABOUT IT ALL.

I am pleased to announce the Second Annual Spitesgiving Feast has been scheduled for November and with it a slew of traditions and festivities is now being determined. The airing of grievances! The tasting of something truly foul! The roundtable of regrets! The feasting on our own bitterness! It’s all coming down the road in just a few weeks’ time. Do you have something you’d like to suggest we do for Spitesgiving? A brilliant idea we need to partake in that could become part of our annual tradition?

Let us know and YOU (yes, YOU!) might get an invitation to Spitesgiving 2006. Or you might not. Cause, you know, it’s not really a holiday about feeling warm and fuzzy…..

What I'm Watching

I’ve noticed that my blog actively advertises to share “what I’m watching,” and true to form I have a new favorite program this Fall: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. It’s smart. It’s got witty banter. It’s got what appears to be weird, dare I say slightly homoerotic tension between Chandler and Josh from the West Wing. It’s got the winding, mazelike sets with people speed walking through them conversing via the witty banter. It’s Aaron Sorkinalicious! Sorkintastic! Sorkintagious! I love his work, and have since the days gone by of Sports Night. (Don’t even get me started on Sports Night and the travesty that was done to that show or I’ll get out my can of Whup Ass...)

Anyhoo….I’m really looking forward to Studio 60 and hope it does well. As an added bonus, it looks like Amanda Peet has even trimmed her eyebrows for the job. Nice work all around, guys!

Not exactly Sex and the City

What do 3 single, sexy, intelligent, hipster ladies do when they have a sunny Saturday stretched out in front of them? Why, they head out to the country to buy farm fresh produce to make jam and pickles, that’s what!

The ladies might go to this place outside of Seattle called Remlinger Farms, in search of quaint country kitchiness and farm fresh produce. And then, because they’re already there, they might also pay a $10 admittance fee to go inside of the “Country Fair Family Fun Park” because, seriously, who can turn down a freakin’ Country Fair Family Fun Park if it’s RIGHT THERE, I mean, COME ON PEOPLE.

Except, as they slap on their hospital patient-esque wristbands, they realize they’ve entered an amusement park that is not so much tailored for single, sexy, intelligent hipster ladies, but rather for “farm girls” and “farm boys” that are, on average, three to four years old. But the ladies are already there, right? And they might as well enjoy it ‘cause they’re already driven into the country and slapped down $10 a piece for this Freaky Fantastic Family Fun Fair Park. So they continue to wind their way through the pint size petting zoo, the haphazardly assembled carnival rides, the waist-high hay maze, the “peacock enclosure” that featured a wounded, possibly paralyzed, peacock, as well as something called a “goat climb” that did NOT deliver on its promise of goats that climb, until they have reached their fill of Family Fair Fun Park Festivities.

These ladies would try not to pay attention to the fact that they’re the only Fun Park visitors without children and are, in fact, getting stared at by concerned parents who find it odd that these 3 thirtysomethingish single ladies are wandering around looking for the pony rides when they frankly should have just stayed in the city and drank bloody marys all morning like they usually do on the weekends.

Sigh. We followed all of these Funky Fun Farm Fair Family Festivities up with beer and appetizers at the Claim Jumper because we had already fallen so painfully, irreversibly far from our sexy hipster realm that we had no choice but to embrace it by eating an iceberg lettuce wedge with suburbanites wearing hummingbird sweatshirts and mom jeans.

It was, let’s just say, not one of our hipper weekends.

I hear Sliced Bread is pretty cool too

As embarrassing as this is to admit, I just discovered the joy of “Law and Order: Criminal Intent” and “Law and Order: SVU” this weekend. While the rest of the World at Large has been watching these shows for about a decade now (my own mom included), clearly I’ve been whooping it up in my cave not paying attention to them. Special snaps go out to my boyfriend TiVo for introducing us and making sure we keep all of our appointments. Seriously, TiVo, is there anything you can’t do?

I also discovered that for every hour that I spend watching CI and/or SVU that I need to spend at least 2 hours thinking of baby pandas or reading InStyle or doing something non-violent to get the grittiness out of my brain. I also find myself staring into the bathroom mirror and asking myself a barrage of intimidating questions. Is that weird?

Good Grief, Beth, where've you been??

I know this has been a burning question for many of you and Lord knows the bushel of mail from my adoring fans has proven this to be a hot topic. So, what the heck has Beth been up to?

I joined the broadband revolution! After living without cable and high-speed Internet for a month, I broke down and hooked myself up with Comcast. I'm back to my normal, drooling slugging self watching the Food Network and Family Guy, but dang if I am not enjoying this broadband thing on the Internet. Niiiiice.

I went to Denver! Having not been there since Christmas, the parental units were pleased to see me, and this trip was waaaaay overdue. Highlights included purchasing a schnazzy sexy olive green purse from Tar-jay, having my mom buy me back-to-school clothes at age 32 and ask me outloud in a store "Do you need underwear? Do you HAVE enough underwear? We're here. You should get some underwear if you need it," and devouring fondue on the Pearl Street mall in Boulder. Good stuff.

I had Special Guest Stars! After ten years of my ceaseless nagging, my junior high buddy Chrissy finally made it to Seattle, which was delightful. Highlights included GORGEOUS weather, a ferry ride to Bainbridge Island, 3 hours spent in traffic to Vancouver, and the fiercest game of "Would you Rather?" EVER.

I went to LA! For a wireless trade show. Okay, that one's not so exciting.

I cleaned up Mrs. Puff's poop!

Okay, this list is rapidly deteriorating. That's a good overview for now. Hope to be posting more regularly...

Guilty (Musical) Pleasures

Recently, my office gave each of us $10 gift cards to iTunes, which was exceptionally cool of them. My little gift card sat in my Inbox gathering virtual dust for several weeks, which is QUITE an accomplishment for me, but I've finally renewed it.

So for those of my co-workers that actually read this thing (waddup peeps!), I share Beth's Guilty Pleasures Mix 2006:

1.) Mama Told Me Not to Come (Three Dog Night) - Mama knew what she was talking 'bout. I'm just sayin.

2.) Girls Just Want to Have Fun (Cyndi Lauper) - It's literally impossible not to grin and shake your groove thing while listening to this song. Viva Captain Lou!

3.) If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out (Cat Stevens) - For a suspected terrorist, this is a pretty warm and fuzzy song. For my high school peeps, I'd like to dedicate this song to Paaaaaaat and his pet rock.

4.) Annie's Song (John Denver) - As embarrassing as it is to admit, I tear up every time I hear this song. You can't fight the power of the cheeseball. I'd like toplay this song at my wedding while attendees pelt my new husband and I with corn-covered cheeseballs.

5.) Tangled Up In Blue (Bob Dylan) - Good stuff. A particularly ironic purchase since Dylan's all riled up about digital music.

6.) Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand (Primitive Radio Gods) - I listened to this song overandoverandover while mending a broken heart. Good for driving in the rain while contemplating the sad state of your life.

7-9.) Colors, Arms of a Woman, and Keep it Loose, Keep it Tight (Amos Lee) - Props are due to my friend Katie who turned me on to Amos Lee. I like what I'm hearin'.

10.) The Passenger (Iggy Pop) - I've got particularly fond (and slightly dirty) memories of this song. Turn it up loud and sing along.

Standing on the street with my fists raised this morning

I’m just sayin’ I had to wear a sweater to work today for the first time in months. It’s officially the beginning of the end of summer. I will have none of this madness. YOU HEAR ME, AUTUMN? YOU HEAR THAT, PUNK?

Eat my dust, Michiko Kakutani

Since my blog promises to uncover “what I’m reading,” I feel I need to share a few recent discoveries that I’ve quite enjoyed over the past few weeks:

She Got Up Off The Couch, by Haven Kimmel. I freakin’ love Haven Kimmel. If you haven’t read anything by her yet, then close out of this window right now and haul ass to a bookstore. Seriously. Her quirky essays about growing up in Moorland, Indiana, are amazing and touching and hilarious. This particular book features one about her older brother Dan literally took my breath away. On a side note, Haven’s also friends with Augusten Burroughs, which frankly elevates her street cred in my mind Quite A Bit.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer. This guy’s previous book was all over the hipster bookstores in Seattle for a long-ass while, but I never really paid attention to him before this. I’m definitely paying attention now. Okay, so he’s like twelve and that's annoying, but I try not to think about it. This book is about the weeks/months after 9/11 written from the perspective of a nine-year-old trying to make sense of his father's death. He comes across as vaguely Owen Meany-esque, which is not a bad thing at all. Um, did I mention Foer’s kind of adorable for being twelve?

Little Earthquakes, by Jennifer Weiner. Once you stop giggling about her last name and wipe the tears from your eyes, this is a good book to pick up and read. It’s all about new moms and babies, a topic that I usually find incredibly boring, but this one is interesting even for the most die-hard singletons out there. I love Jennifer Weiner. I want to have coffee and doughnuts with her and be her BFF while we watch bad infomercials together in our stretchy black pants. Did I mention she has a nifty (albeit sometimes too blatently commercial) blog?

On Life Without Cable

I’ve been at my “new” place a month now and have yet to call Comcast to hook up my cable. Part of me enjoys this because it means I can be one of those smug bastards that say they “don’t watch television” and instead spend my evenings reading or knitting or having people over and being sociable. The other part of me (the larger, more dominant part) hates not having cable with every fiber of my being because it means the only channel I get clearly is the WB, a channel not really known for its, well, programming.

Last night, for example, I had to choose from a snow-filled episode of “Mama’s Family” and a repeat of “7th Heaven” that was so saccharin I almost spit up my frozen burrito. I chose instead to turn off the TV and cut the matted fur off of Mrs. Puff’s chest. This past weekend I had the choice of either a snow-filled televangelist barking at me, or an episode of “The Parkers” which was so dumb it actually made my brain cells seize up. As a side conversation, what is Blossom’s BFF Six doing on The Parkers??

I really need to take some action here so I can get caught up again with my friends at Animal Planet and the Food Network. Cesar Millan, what have you been up to?

What I have learned from self-help books about relationships/dating (see previous post on Drunk Shopping)

• Every single book about dating starts out with the disclaimer that it is “like, so totally different from ‘The Rules’.” Note that every single book about dating will then go on to offer a new set of complicated, and likely very offensive, rules for the reader to follow.

• The more blatantly ridiculous title your self-help book has, the more likely Drunk Beth is to pick it up and make loud comments about it in the bookstore. Special thanks go out to “If I’m so Wonderful, Why I Am Still Single?” (“Awwwwwwwwwwww. Oh dude, that is saaaaad”) and “Men are Like Fish: What Every Woman Needs to Know about Catching a Man” (“Holy, holy, holy, holy cow”).

• If you’re happy and you know it, go on a date. Clap your hands afterwards. Apparently the dating world prefers happy people to self-loathers who skulk around staring at the floor.

• The key to going on more dates is to actually leave your house/apartment/trailer/mountain shack and go on more dates.

A few questions for Frozen Burritos

1.) Frozen burritos, why do you taste so frickin’ amazing?
2.) Why are you so satisfying and so easy to prepare?
3.) Frozen burritos, do you have any idea how much I adore you?
4.) Frozen burritos, can you explain to me how a little spicy pocket from heaven such as yourself can have so much fat and sodium tucked inside of you? Where do you hide it, my friend?
5.) Really, frozen burrito? 370 calories? You are so small and tasty. I love you so much. Are you trying to break my heart?
6.) Frozen burritos, our relationship cannot last. I know this. I have pants I must fit into. Why must you taunt me from my grocer’s freezer aisle, calling to me like the sirens to Odysseus?
7.) Again I ask, frozen burrito, how and why must you pack so much deliciousness into your 5-ounce self?

More random gifts!

I’ve got to shout out to not just one but two loyal readers who recently bestowed fabulous gifties my way! Garsh, you guys……you done near outdid yerselves.

Now I can begin my Dirty Martini Fest 2006 in style, as well as procure some lovely home accents from my local Pier One. Niiiiiiiiiiice work, both of you.

Your Daily Dose of Oeniphilia

Okay folks, settle down. It means one who is freaky-deaky about wine.

I’m finding that one of the biggest perks to having a new apartment is that when people come over they usually bring wine. This is especially useful if you’re working to build up an addiction to alcohol. With my new place, rather than having to sit knee-to-knee in a cramped cell of a studio apartment, we’re now able to take said wine out to the patio and chat for hours and make fun of my neighbors while gulping down (okay, maybe more like sipping) wine and sinking into a happy, sloppy wino haze. My friends are classy like that.

Two individuals have now come totin’ offerings from Erath, which I felt compelled to research this evening. Methinks I sense a weekend trip in the making, hint hint hint.

On an sort of related note but not really, I also check out Purple this week and was quite, quite pleased with the floor-to-ceiling “fort” of wine. Yes, that was the word our waitress used. A fort of wine. Nice if you have disposable income pouring out of your pockets, but probably not a good option for those of us with, well, food and housing to think about.

Karma flicks its finger and whacks Beth sharply upside the head

Lesson learned by yours truly this week – when you mock someone about a task that you’re totally sure that you could have done a better job on (such as making a couple dozen mix CDs for a party), and then later on life actually gives you that specific task to complete, it’s pretty certain that you will manage to screw up that task way worse than the person you were mocking in the first place ever did or could.

So let’s just take a lesson and keep the mockery down a bit lest Karma come and kick your booty.

Cleanup in Aisle Five….

After dropping a bottle of red wine in the major thoroughfare at Costco yesterday, thereby spilling wine all over myself, my shoes, my fellow shoppers and the floor in front of the coffee grinders, I’ve decided to camp out at home today and spend the day with my head buried in my favorite cookbooks.

Oh how I’ve missed my BFF Mark Bittman and his “How To Cook Everything”! My Williams-Sonoma Soup book! Even my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook that features nothing but Midwestern comfort food. I’m getting incredibly motivated to throw more fabulous dinner parties since more than 2 visitors can be in my place at a time now. Stay tuned, world at large, while I contemplate the various themes I can offer….

The Buffet in Heaven

Special snaps and golf claps go out to my recent hostess with the mostess who, after taking a class in wine and cheese pairings (hello? why was I not informed of this??) decided to share her findings with a group of cheeseheads. I’ve determined that when you arrive in heaven you are promptly served a glass of chilled Prosecco, given a hunk of triple cream brie the size of your head, and asked to retire to the French Bread sofa right next to the bathtub of cheese fondue.

Oh, and for those of you who are not already acquainted with the Sofia mini cans of champagne, you may learn about them here. Beware the bendy straw. No good can come of alcohol with a bendy straw, let me assure you.

More pictures of Beth's Happy Places

Immediately upon typing that subject line, I became filled with regret, as that's not really a subject line one wants pasted all over the Internet.

Anyhoo, here are more of my smiley, giggly happy places in the new apartment. My plant-filled, Bay window-adorned reading nook, and of COURSE, the World's Best Washer and Dryer.

Behold the most charming place on earth

Um. Okay. I didn't really mean to post TWO pictures of my most-charming patio, but clearly Blogger feels the need to bring it to you all in Quaint Double Vision....Why is this damned program so easy about so many things, and then randomly difficult about others? Siiiiigh.

Okay. I digress. Here are some sneak peeks at the new place. Doesn't this just invite you to soak in the charm, the adorability? Can't you just smell the lavendery goodness on that little side table while you sip from your icy beverage and relax with the latest US Weekly?

Consider the invitation now fully open for y'all to join me on the patio -- appointments are now being taken at Casa de Beth. Unless you happen to know Philip Seymour Hoffman or Hugh Grant and in that case we can rush you right to the top of the guest list. Stop on by!

A gift from the kitchen cabinet gods

Last night I was engaging in my new favorite pastime, which is going through my kitchen cabinets and reorganizing my crap. Seems that when Beth moved in, she sort of just haphazardly threw everything into drawers and cabinets just to hide them, but once you actually open the doors you will immediately discover what a disaster area they actually are.

I digress.

So there I am, sitting on the floor, organizing my cleaning supplies under my sink, and I find this little guy sitting there, being all adorable and cute and functional. Who doesn't need a little froggy sink stopper? Did you notice the little webbed feet scattered all around it? Siiiigh. Big, moist, amphibious thanks go out to the cabinet gods (or, more like, the previous tenant) that left behind a little goody for me.