The Ankle Biter @ Quibbling.net

When I walked into my office this morning, I received a story, and a gift.  You can read all about it in my Metroblogging DC post.

By the way, I have 4 Vox invites.

Who wants one?

(Vox is a hosted service geared toward friends-and-family bloggers- per-post privacy settings, Flickr integration, yada yada.)

 

Sacked out With Mommy

Originally uploaded by tbridge.

The Bridge family is going through another crashing wave of missing Guinness hardcore. So because it’s my blog, and this is where I work out what’s going on in my head, I’m going to post this photo for y’all. It’s the one I was thinking about yesterday as Jack fell asleep in my lap for the first time in weeks, and I didn’t have another cat hovering nearby, angling for his share of the attention.

A couple of disconnected thoughts about all of this:

- First, the ridiculous. When Tom brought Guinness’ ashes home and we put the box in the window, I was deprived of my chief worry- that the container was going to be substandard. Now I have a new one- at some point, someone is going to pick up the box and ask me what it is (the window is in the dining room, where we now not only have a table, but also chairs, so shortly our friends will be spending time there). I’m going to have to ask them to put it down before I tell them. It’s not that I mind them holding it, it’s that I’m terrified they’ll drop it when I tell them and it’ll break open.

- Related: The box is the only thing Jack hasn’t knocked to the floor in that area of the house. He just sits quietly next to it in the window. I’m sure he’s not capable of knowing what it is, but it’s weird just the same.

- Lessons learned: I spent some time with Jeff this weekend, and the topic of Nelson came up. (His dog, not the twin blond hair band.) I confess that when I was reading Jeff’s blog during Nelson’s illness, I thought the range and intensity of Jeff’s reaction was Jeff being, well, Jeff. It’s not that I didn’t get it, and I didn’t think he was overreacting, it’s that I didn’t expect that I would cry so hard I could barely see straight on the ride home from the vet hospital when Guinness died. Now I know better.

- The theological: In my years of theological study, I’ve never run across any scholarship on the topic of afterlife for animals. I suppose that’s far too fluffy (no pun intended) a topic for us serious Presbyterians. Either that, or John Calvin didn’t have a cat. So I’m going to call this one a case of “I get to believe whatever makes me feel better because it doesn’t matter either way.”

• James Hill for Congress
  “Chain Whip Me if I Ever Ride in a Limo.”
  (tags: jameshill congress pirateforcongress)

Jack brought us a live mouse last night.

Tom had let him out late that afternoon, because the poor kitty is going stir-crazy with no one to play with.  So he went out for a while, and Tom had left the back door open so he could come back in at his leisure. 

After dinner, Jack comes trotting into the living room, looking very pleased with himself.  I spied a tail dangling from his jaws.

“Tom, he’s got a mouse.”

Being closer to the cat (I’m not terribly squicked out by the things Jack brings us, I was just across the room), Tom jumped up to praise Jack while convincing him to drop what was in his mouth.

It was then we noticed that it was still moving.

And then, after Jack dropped it, it RAN AWAY.  IN OUR HOUSE.

This does bother me.  I think mice are adorable little creatures, and don’t at all object to the little pet shop mice, but outdoor mice carry disease and are scavengers, and I just don’t need vermin in my home.  Jack chased after the mouse but didn’t quite catch it, so Tom picked it up and set it outside.

Jack must not have seen what happened, because he started frantically running around the area, trying to figure out where his mouse went.  Tom picked him up to try to calm him down, stroked him a bit, and took him to the kitchen for some (not germ-ridden) dinner-from-the-Iams-pouch.

Just the same, Jack was anxious and bouncing off the walls for a good while afterwards. 

Whilst out and about this weekend, Tom and I ran into more people than usual who asked us that standard question people ask newlyweds:

“So, how’s married life?”

I’m not sure what the expected response is.  We’ve been married just over two months- I’m sure people don’t expect much detail about, um, the ways in which we spend our free time. 

Do I tell them about how, although I thrash about and protest when Tom tickles me as I fall asleep, I’m actually enjoying the fact that he has the opportunity?

Or the ridiculous little things like the fact that we’re now in competition for the username “tbridge” on every service we both use?  (Even funnier is when I am auto-assigned the username “bridget,” which I think I might adopt instead whenever it’s available.)

Or about high-fiving Tom at my cousin’s wedding when they called “all single ladies” to the dance floor for the bouquet toss?

Or having the elderly couple I sat next to in church telling me what a lovely voice my husband has and how much they enjoyed his offertory solo?

Or maybe about sitting on the couch, watching a Food Network promo about a dream wedding contest in which they ask, “Planning a wedding? Overcome with details?” We yell in reply, “Not anymore, SUCKERS!”

In the end, we just smile and answer, “It’s good.  We’re very happy.”  It’s not a particularly interesting answer, particularly considering that people who ask the question are just trying to make conversation.

But it’s accurate.  We’re very happy.

There has been a request to provide more detail about why Snakes on a Plane is worth seeing. 

First, it’s best to see it the first time in a theater with people who are as enthusiastic as you are.  The crowd we saw it with cheered wildly for Samuel L. Jackson’s name appearing in the credits, Samuel L. Jackson’s first appearance onscreen, the plane’s first appearance, the snakes’ first appearance, particularly egregious examples of product placement. etc.  We shouted along with Samuel when he said, “I am SO TIRED of these MOTHERFUCKING SNAKES on this MOTHERFUCKING PLANE!”  At a particularly touching moment between two characters, we all “Awww”ed together, and then laughed riotously when Tom shouted, “FIRST to die!”  We screamed and laughed during the scary parts and made no efforts to be quiet so other people could hear the dialogue.  After all, it’s not like we were missing much.  Seeing it with others to mock it with is the first step to enjoying the experience.  Sort of a roll-your-own-MST3K experience, or a Rocky Horror showing.

Essentially, you spend the whole movie marvelling at how incredibly bad it is, and the only hint that it might be intentional parody is that Samuel L. Jackson has this irrepressible twinkle in his eye for the whole movie which indicates that he’s just having a lot more fun than anyone else.  It’s like when they decided to make it a parody, he’s the only one they told. 

Also, the whole feel of the actual film and camera work is so low-budget you can practically see the date flashing in the corner of the screen.

And you can imagine the director and screenwriter sitting in a room with a whiteboard saying, “How can we make this ridiculous premise more scary?  I know, let’s make a list of all the especially horrifying places to get bitten by a snake, and have snakes bite ALL of them!”  *shudder*

Samuel L. Jackson’s self-parody is worth special note here, too.  It was almost like he was playing himself in a Saturday Night Live sketch. You’ll see what I mean when his eyes get wide and he says, “Oh great!  Snakes on CRACK!”  Trust me on this. 

Snakes on a Plane is quite possibly the worst movie ever made.

It is almost certainly the worst movie I have ever seen.

You must see it immediately.

We also caught Invincible, the movie about the Philly bartender who makes it onto the Eagles’ squad when Dick Vermeil holds open tryouts. It was really quite good, and I recommend it just as heartily, for completely different reasons.

Tom and I were standing at the Wegmans deli counter on Sunday, trying to decide what kind of cheese we wanted and listening to people order around us, when I was struck with the not-very-original observation that a supermarket is emblematic of the benefits of modern, developed-world life. 

I live in a time in which it is possible for me to develop a preference for one type of cheese over another.  More than that, it is possible for me to develop that preference to the point where I choose one type of cheese for a turkey sandwich, another for putting on my spaghetti, and still a third for serving on crackers. 

I can have fresh vegetables in the dead of winter, and popsicles in summer.  Seafood that’s flash-frozen on the boat allows me to have things people used to only get in Alaska.  I can buy mortadella imported from Italy and just a few aisles over get seaweed crackers from Japan and guava nectar from South America.

And yet there are people out there who actually grow up and go to college having never eaten more than 6 different meal menus in their lives.  Who are these people?  Why do they disrespect the embarrassment of riches available at even the smallest local market?

When we’re busy, Tom and I do tend to fall back on the recipes we’re comfortable with, but we have so much fun experimenting with new things.  I can’t wait to test ‘em out on y’all on our new dining table.

After

Originally uploaded by tbridge.

We picked this up at Upscale Resale in Falls Church. It came with four chairs that we weren’t wild about, so they’ve been re-consigned and we’re hoping they sell. It seats 4 in this configuration, but there are leaves we can pull out to seat as many as 8, if we’re willing to block the door.

As soon as we have chairs, the Hacienda Bridge dinner parties will commence.