It's a wonderful time for the Oscars and Oscars and Oscars and Oscars and Oscars and Oscars and Oscars and Oscars and Oscars and Oscars

Last year, I took the plunge with the Oscars and watched all the movies that were nominated for best picture. As well as most of those featuring the nominees for best actor/actresss or best supporting actor/actress. It was... a lot of freaking movies. I seriously watched more movies in the month of February than I had for the entire rest of the year.

On the plus side, it made the whole award season much more fun to watch. This year I was going to try to do it again. The nominations are coming out bright and early this Tuesday morning. I was really looking forward to the nominations announcement, but then I remembered that this year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will be nominating TEN films for the best picture category.

Seriously, try and make a list the last ten movies you saw in the theater. In the last six months, I think I've seen two. In the last year, I've maybe seen 10 and that's including last year's Oscar nonesense. How the heck am I supposed to watch at least 10 Oscar nominated films in a month?

I can already see the headline, "Philadelphia woman affirms a little known fact that it is, in fact, possible to subsist entirely on a diet of movie theater popocorn, peanut M&M's, and Diet Coke. More at 11. "

Wish me luck!

Dude, where's my good mood?

Have you seen my good mood lately? I seem to have misplaced it. I know it's around here somewhere.

I feel like I've looked nearly everywhere. It's for sure not hiding in between the DVD's on the shelf. It's not hiding behind the milk in the fridge, but I cleaned out the fridge just in case. I looked for it in my dreams, but it's not even showing up there. In a moment of total desperation, I looked at the bottom of the ice cream carton, but still no good mood to be found.

What do you want to bet that my good mood is hiding in my running shoes? Lazy little shoes have been lounging around my gym locker lately, eating bon-bons, and watching soaps. That's it! Tomorrow I'll gently suggest to them that they help me find my good mood! Brilliant.

Short and ridiculous.

Earlier this week, I had a follow-up appointment to get my new contacts checked out. All told it was a successful little appointment. I got a new prescription and what amounts to a Do-It-Yourself chemistry set. Can't really complain. The only issue I had was (big surprise) in the waiting room.

I arrived a five minutes before my 9:15 AM appointment to find a pretty long line at check-in. This doctor is located in a major eye institute and all the morning appointments were coming in at the same time. The five women working the counter were moving at the speed of light and there was still a line, but it was moving.

At one point the woman in front of me flopped on the floor in a huff. Crossed her legs. Crossed her arms. Exclaimed, "This is just ridiculous!"

Ridiculous is certainly the word that came to mind, but perhaps for a slightly different reason...I looked at a clock and noted that we had been waiting for precisely 7 minutes.

The miracle of modern technology...

Have you ever seen these things?

They're staws filled with cookie pieces.

You plunk the end of the straw in a cup of milk and slurp! slurp! slurp!

Sarah looks understandably skeptical.

Then she realized that this is just another incarnation of cookies and milk.

Simultaneously bizarre and delightful.

Kinda like me!

It's official, I'll just have to sleep when I'm dead.

Seriously, who has time to sleep? There is so much goodness to be had and so many fun things to do. I can't help but think I'm missing something, all the time. It's getting to be a problem becuase no matter what I'm doing, I almost certianly want to be doing something else. And, not something else INSTEAD of what I'm doing at the time, but I'd rather be doing something else, too. Take for instance this very moment: I would like to be writing this post, reading this fantastic book that's sitting next to me, watching the movie I can hear playing in the living room, curled up on the couch with my boy, planning a party, and sleeping so that I have enough energy to get through my day tomorrow. I suppose I'll just have to try to fit it all in tomorrow!

Veggies are cool.

I heart the food network. It's really too much to get into here, but I am completely obsessed with it. I don't even have cable and I watch it all the time. When I'm at my boyfriend's house and we're watching television, I switch the channel everytime he walks out of the room. I'm the sadist who even watches the Barefoot Contessa while jogging on a treadmill. It's sick, I know.

Sometimes it's exceedingly cool. The past Sunday was a prime example. On a show called "Iron Chef America" they did a special show highlighting the talent of celebrity chefs Bobby Flay, Emeril Lagasse, and Mario Batali. They worked with a lesser known, but infinitely cooler chef Cristeta Comerford. She runs the kitchen at a place in DC called the White House.

The challenge was the typcial 60 minutes to create a mulit-course feast highlighting the secret ingredient. This time the secret ingredient was anything from the White House garden. If you're like me, maybe you've heard that Michelle Obama planted a garden at the White House. I thought little plot, some basic veggies, nothing to write home about... So. Not. The. Case.





This garden is a-mazing. It's huge with crazy varieties of veggies. More than that, it's yielding a serious amount of edible, organic crops. Per White House Assistant Chef, Sam Kass, the garden has produced over 1,000 lbs. of produce since it's planting earlier this year. It cost about $200 to get started. Not only are White House visitors mowing on the uber local veggies and honey, but the surplus food is being used at a DC area soup kitchen. Seriously, it's really cool. I highly recommed reading up on it a bit.

Well done, Mrs. Obama.

Oh Christmas tree!

Oh Christmas tree! Oh, Christmas tree! How you mock me.

You were once so pretty, fresh and green.

Now you're a big browning, fire hazard.

Your rotting needles keep sticking to my feet.

Stupid tree.