It's cold and stinks of pork

This year, Hanukkah and Thanksgiving fall on the same day. It's weird how we can extrapolate holidays to infinity--I could find out the date of Hanukkah for the next 200 years with a nanosecond Google search--but every year there's some temporal coincidence like this and we all have to read lifestyle columns about how to plan an appropriate theme party. Maybe I've watched too much Doctor Who at this point in my life, but do we need to coo and marvel over this sort of thing as if it were genuinely unexpected?

With that cynical attitude, I clearly haven't watched enough Doctor Who. Happy 50th Anniversary, fellow Whovians!

Happy Thanksgivukkah, anyway. No reason we shouldn't take pleasure in the simple things. I'm just a little grumpy because I cooked hot sausage for stuffed mushrooms, and now I have to leave the windows open to let the grease smoke out. I already took the smoke detector off the wall (and this time, I'm going to remember to put it back on, because that is how the Great Bra Fire of 2012 escalated so quickly). It's 30 degrees out and windy as fuck, so my apartment is freezing cold and stinking of pork to boot. Days I'll have to live in this pork-stink. DAYS!

Yes, it's that time of year again, when I make my one fancy dish: stuffed mushrooms. Like that guitar player in the park who only knows "Hotel California," I've got one good thing to offer the world and by god, I'm gonna do it!

One time, for the department Christmas party, I tried to make Spanish rice, and no one ate any of it--rightly so, because it was super-bland haole food that even I didn't want to eat. I'll never embarrass myself like that again. Everyone loves my stuffed mushrooms, and why wouldn't they? You can't go wrong with full-fat cream cheese and spicy sausage. I can already tell I'm going to have some of the stuffing mixture left over, and I'm looking forward to having some on a microwaved potato for dinner tonight. I'll shut the windows, crank the space heater, and stuff my gullet with delicious pork while I anticipate the office Thanksgivukkah party.

UPDATE: I ate too much cream cheese and sausage and now my belly hurts and everything is cold and stinks of pork. I'm going to watch more Doctor Who.

Snowmaggedon

Geez, the marketers don't try very hard. "Snowmaggedon." Pretty sure that's what they were going to call the second Star Wars movie but went with "The Empire Strikes Back" when they decided not to shoot the whole thing on Hoth.

We're supposed to get a buttload of snow dumped on us this evening, and since New York is apparently the 3rd worst city in the country for winter weather, I guess that means we all have to curl around our space heaters and weep quietly now. My office has already declared tomorrow a snow day, which is great for the student workers and great for the salaried crew, but the Mighty Temp here depends on those paid hours. Bummer for me and the latest mushroom growing in my apartment.

Seriously, where do these things keep coming from? This one was under my Dustbuster. Tomorrow I'll have to declare Mushroomggedon and Windex the hell out of it.

Mushrooms, Car Bumpers, and Aging Punks for 2010

And for your New Year, here is a double helping of everyone's favorite game, "What the hell is that?!" It's more difficult to play now that I live in my own apartment and don't have roommates, but fortunately, this is still New York, and there are many opportunities to wonder at life's great mysteries.

First: a Christmas Eve puzzler. Where did this come from? Why was it dropped here?

And does the wine bottle have anything to do with this situation? Writer for scale.

Second: from under my window. Is this edible? Will it aid my "spirit quest"? Why is it growing inside my apartment? Wine cork for scale.

Finally, here is a wonderful article in Honolulu Weekly, my old employer, written about and by someone who would say something sarcastic if I called him my good friend. Dean Carrico reunited with his old punk band, Preachers That Lie, over the winter season and opened for the Misfits last night at the Pipeline Cafe in Honolulu. Seems like as soon as I move to the coolest city on the planet, all the cool stuff starts happening elsewhere.

Oh, well. Go Dean!

Happy New Year.