Temerity Jane

Ok, Internet, I think I’ve reattached the top of my skull to my head.

(there’s a video here, click through your feed reader if you can’t see it.)

For those of you who are not [yet] Nerdfighters, do still feel free to chime in. My blog is not going to be turning into a wedding planning blog, so if you’d like to follow along with the plans, take these steps.

1. Learn how to be a Nerdfighter.
2. Join The Ning.
3. Find our page on The Ning.
4. Subscribe to our videos on YouTube.

Thank you to everyone who has sent such nice messages.

Ok, Internet.

So I was having my normal day, up way too early, working, etc, and Phil kept sending me nice text messages. I mean, not that he’s not normally nice, but just a lot of messages. He asked what my workload was like for the day, and I told him that it was heavy but that I’d try to free up some time this evening for us to spend some time together (I haven’t been feeling well the last day or two and have been a bit cranky). He said that would be great and said we should go to dinner.

Ok, fiiiine. I was a bit suspicious.

So back I went to doing writerly things, not so much writing as engaging in some ruthless editing that was endlessly frustrating as I was destroying my own work and repeatedly redoing it. Since I hadn’t gotten much sleep, and since we were going to dinner, I decided to take my afternoon nap a bit early. I have to nap every day, see. Oh, it’s not for ME. When I’m in the house, Brinkley is constantly around me. If he doesn’t get his afternoon nap, he seriously turns into a jerk, but if I’m up and active, he won’t sleep. So I have to nap, so the dog will nap. You understand.

So anyway, I laid down for my nap and woke up around 2 something and went to go to the bathroom, but Phil was in the bathroom, which was totally weird, since he wasn’t supposed to be home from work yet. I was bummed because I was planning to shower and fix myself up a bit before he got home, but as it was, I was in underwear and a salvation army t-shirt that must be from the 70s, which has a big sparkly decal saying “I’m not fat, nature just overdid a good thing!”

So I questioned why he was home early and he was evasive, but whatever, I told him I’d get around to showering and we could go to an early dinner a little later. I was walking through the living room when my phone rang with a number I didn’t recognize:

(there’s a video here, click through your feedreader if you can’t see it)

The video’s been edited a bit, thank god, but unfortunately you can hear that my initial response was “Oh shit!” and if you listen closely, you can hear me say, “I’m not even wearing any pants!”

And upon the asking of the question, I turned and Phil was down on one knee holding out the ring, which was lovely of course.

I then had to call everyone I’d ever met, and my parents were not especially surprised, since Phil, being a traditional sort, had already spoken to my father and asked for his blessing on the matter.

Then we went to dinner, and I had chocolate cake first.

And here is a better picture of the ring, as well:

You can click to make it bigger, and please excuse my bra strap. Wearing diamonds doesn’t make a girl any more classy, unfortunately.

Anyway, there is no date yet, but we will be planning the most Nerdfightery of Nerdfighter weddings possible.

Thank you very much to John Green for his enthusiastic participation, it was really, really awesome, and thanks to all the Nerdfighters who have added their congratulations here, on Twitter and on YouTube.

DFTBA!

PS - The blog doesn’t seem to be accepting comments at the moment, due to a crazy Nerdfigher influx. Sorry for the inconvenience, I’ll get it straighted out soon.

PPS - I will be responding to each and every comment and Twitter message and Twitter follow, please just give me a little time to, you know, pay attention to Phil, whose existence I seem to keep forgetting.

PPPS - Nerdfighters and other new commenters! Thank you for coming and/or delurking! Due to spam problems, the first time someone comments on this site, it is held for moderation. If your comment doesn’t show up, don’t worry - I’ll approve them as soon as I can, and I appreciate all the congratulations. Best wishes!

Internet, Phil just had John Green call me and propose live on BlogTV.

Details to come later. Lots of calls to make.

PS - Nerdfighters and other new commenters! Thank you for coming! Due to spam problems, the first time someone comments on this site, it is held for moderation. If your comment doesn’t show up, don’t worry - I’ll approve them as soon as I can, and I appreciate all the congratulations. Best wishes!

So, last week, Phil and I decided that we were going to eat completely vegetarian for a week.

There weren’t any normal vegetarian reasons behind it - we both like eating meat. However, as the person who does most of the cooking and list making for grocery shopping, I decided that I want to reduce our reliance on boxed/canned/frozen meals. Since we were going to be buying a lot more fresh food, I decided we’d also do vegetarian for a week because I want to cut back on the frequency and amount of meat we eat overall. The vegetarian week wasn’t a preparation for overall vegetarianism, but I wanted to see if we could come up with enough meals that weren’t so conspicuously vegetarian that we felt very aware of the fact that we weren’t eating meat. A solid week of eating no meat at all would force me to come up with more than just salads, and require some creativity, as I do not eat imitation meat products. There’s nothing wrong with them, I’m just not a fan.

The first thing that we noticed was that, when doing the shopping, the weekly grocery bill wasn’t significantly higher than it is when we buy our normal types of food. Since I had always assumed that buying fresh food was more expensive, I was pretty pleasantly surprised. The majority of the items in the cart were from the produce section, with a few frozen items like snow peas and edamame, a few general ingredient type things that obviously last for more than one meal, and some snacks and such. Fresh food can be more expensive when you have a habit of letting it go bad in the fridge, which we had in the past, but our grocery shopping is largely planned around a meal plan for the week, so nothing has really gone bad.

Secondly, the recipes we used were largely a success as well.

On Sunday, I did a normal stir fry with rice. We have my rice maker, we had sushi rice in the fridge and I brought my sushi vinegar carefully from Maryland when Phil told me months ago that he wasn’t really sure of the closest Asian market. It was an easy recipe with fresh ginger and just a ton of vegetables, and aside from making the actual sauce, I didn’t really follow the recipe. I mean… it’s vegetables. That one was nothing remarkable, but it was good, and next time I might cook it a little longer for squishier vegetables. Also, I made rice balls out of the leftover rice, and the grocery store on base - I’m sorry, the cooooooommissary - only had nori flavored furikake. Phil liked it, but we’re going to have to get some other flavors as well.

On Monday, I made this recipe from the Pioneer Woman. It was so easy, I actually got it right. After months of eating “almost right,” “only slightly fucked up,” and “hey, it’s edible, isn’t it?” renditions of recipes, I actually didn’t mess it up. And it was so good. Oh my god, Internet. It is so good. The only reason that this took as long as it did was because I took the time to cut up all the cucumbers, green peppers, celery, and carrots that we had bought so we could put them in salads throughout the rest of the week. Otherwise, it was an absolute breeze. It was so easy, but so good, that it will probably be the recipe I’ll use if I need to make food for other people or take food anywhere. After we make some friends. Which we might, some day.

Tuesday was another Pioneer Woman recipe and it wasn’t new to us. We’ve made these sandwiches several times and seriously love them. We must eat them at least once every two weeks or so, and will continue to, vegetarian or not. They’re a little tricksy and I have yet to turn out two perfect sandwiches, but I’m getting closer. We only burned one side of Phil’s sandwich this week. That is another one that you must try if you haven’t yet.

Wednesday was a flat out disaster that I don’t even really want to talk about. It was something I made successfully for myself in the past, Phil hated it but ate it anyway which just made me mad, I put my thumb through an egg, broke the yolk of another egg and burned myself. I couldn’t be spoken to for about 20 minutes and then Phil made me a peanut butter and jelly.

Thursday we had baked potatoes and salad, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but we’ve been using these Sargento potato finishers, which really make them pretty filling. I also usually pick pretty large potatoes as well, and we had big salads. They were definitely lacking something without using the included bacon, though, so we’ll be glad to have that back.

Friday we had our normal frozen pizza, which is our habit.

We decided to continue through Saturday just to make a full week of it, so I made us a whole bunch of scrambled eggs with cheese for breakfast/lunch-ish. I made Phil his first EVER peanut butter and banana sandwich for a snack at one point. Seriously, he had never had one. Insanity. Then, for some reason Saturday evening, I decided I was going to bake bread. BREAD. From SCRATCH. And it actually worked, imagine that. It was delicious, and it’s mostly gone. I used this recipe, and we’re planning on trying a couple of different kinds in the future, though we also plan on getting a breadmaker at some point, though the whole world claims we’ll use it once and then never again.

Sunday, of course, we ate a metric asston of bread and decided it was finally time for meat, so we went to Outback.

Ok, it was delicious while we were eating it, but once we were home, we were some seriously unhappy campers. We were both sluggish and uncomfortable and unhappy.

While we still really LIKE meat and will continue to eat it, we learned a few things this week. One, it’s not significanly more expensive to eat fresh food as compared to our normal boxed/frozen/mix type food. Even if not all vegetarian, we’re definitely going to move more away from pre-prepared stuff. Two, there are plenty of good non-meat options available. One failure meal out of 7 is better than my usual weekly record, even. Three, it’s clear that while we don’t want to eliminate meat completely, we’re definitely going to cut back on the frequency of meat eating, as well as cutting back the amount of meat we eat on the days we do have it.

One week’s worth of recipes is not enough, however, especially considering one was a hopeless failure and one was us stuffing hot bread into our mouths. I especially need to find more side dishes than just rice or steamed vegetables, not that there is anything wrong with either of them, but with cutting down the amount of meat we will eat, we will need more filling side dishes as well.

So, Internet, whether you are vegetarian or not, I am certain you have some recipes and ideas that we can make use of in the future. I would greatly appreciate your input on the matter of cutting back not only on meat, but on our reliance on convenience foods as well. Recipes, vegetable-picking tips, and ideas with regard to replacing our taquito habit would be greatly appreciated.

Also, I seriously suggest you try the recipes I linked above, if I can make them taste good, I am sure you will be successful.

Some day, I want a giant canister on the counter in my kitchen.

I’d put some sugar, a hammer, a couple of golf tees, maybe some superglue, definitely some duct tape, a bit of dog food, 16 ponytail holders, yeast, a cat toy, all those vacuum cleaner attachments that never seem to stay with the vacuum, a Paula Abdul cassette tape, rubber bands, some dead batteries, coffee grounds, all those extra buttons and thread that come with shirts and jackets, and some sunscreen.

And I would label it “SCRATCH.”

And then I would MAKE things from it.

Hey, Internet,

I’m working on a big post that’s been requested several times. I’m hesitant to turn this into a freelancer blog, because I do indeed have a lot to say about the industry in general, but there have been several emails and comments asking questions about what I do and various other details.

This has never been a “work” blog and I hope to keep it that way, even though my line of work is different and does lend itself better to Internet discussion, with no company rules against blogging, etc.

As I said, though, there have been a significant amount of questions, enough that I’m passing firmly into asshole territory by ignoring them. I am only (hopefully) going to do this one time, so if you could please do me a favor and email/comment/tweet/smoke signal any *specific* questions that you have, I would love be able to answer as much as I possible can in one fell swoop. General “how did you get started, etc” will be covered of course, but understanding that my experience has been somewhat different than most, it would be more beneficial to share my experience through specific questions about the work/industry in general. I can and will tell you what I did and how, but it is unlikely to be of specific benefit, since, as I said, everyone is different with their experiences.

THANKS.

Your pal, TJ

PS - Phil is up to something. There’s a plot afoot. More details as I uncover them.

So Phil and I are nearly positive that we won’t be having children, though not in the “NO WAY NEVER EVER” kind of way but more in the “Eh, I don’t think so, but life is long, so who knows?” kind of way, more like if you asked us right now, and told us we had to decide immediately, now or never, and the choice would not be ever offered again, we’d say never, but absent such a situation, we say unlikely, but not never.

So, walking out of the mall the other day, I inform Phil that I have come up with a new name in case we do have kids, since I am female and even though I have no plans to have children, of course I have had potential names picked out for years.

“Oh yeah?,” he says.

“Yeah. Remy.”

“Remy? Is that for a boy or a girl?”

“I dunno. Either. Whatever. I read it in a romance novel AND it’s Dr. Hadley’s name on House.”

“Oookay.”

So anyway, that leads to more discussion about names, continuing the whole way home and Internet, by the time I reach the end of this, you will understand why it is probably better than we just not.

“Fine, what would you pick?”

“I dunno. Jackson.”

“Oh, so now you like Jackson. You didn’t like it when I picked it!”

“Well, mine wouldn’t be after Jackson Browne, it would be after Dr. Jackson from Stargate.”

“That’s like my dad telling people my brother is named after John Kruk! HE’S NAMED AFTER OUR GRANDFATHER.”

Ok, Internet, if you think it is nerdy so far, brace yourselves, because it only gets worse.

“What about girls?”

“Andrea.”

“No.”

“Natalie.”

“No. What about Olivia?”

“Olivia Munn. That girl you hate from G4.”

“Oh, yeah. God. Gross. I hate her so much. Olive?”

“Too many Os.”

“It’s only got — oh, right, the last name. Well, no Bs either - B.O.”

“Samantha?”

“No. Hmm… We could name a kid Whedon!”

“Haha, yes, we could.”

“Or Mal!”

“Not Serenity, though. That’s a stripper name. So no Inara, either.”

“Echo? River? Not Buffy.”

“Definitely not Buffy.”

“We could name a kid Alpha and tell him he’s a bad seed.”

“I think our kids would hate us.”

“Yeah, definitely. Hi, we’re huge nerds. These are our kids Whedon, Firefly Serenity, River and Doctor Horrible.”

“Doctor Horrible Oriol?”

“And if he went to medical school, he’d be Dr. Doctor Horrible Oriol!!”

“Oh, god.”

“I’ve got it. I’ve GOT IT.”

“What?”

“First name: NPH.”

“NPH?”

“Yeah, we’d tell him that he was named after the most brilliant comedic comeback of all time!”

“I can see his life. Your parents named you NPH? Please don’t ask, also, I hate them.”

“We could dress him in little suits! His first words could be “suit up!” I want some… wait for it… milk!”

“I don’t think we should have kids.”

****

That happened this past weekend. Today, I got a text message from Phil saying, “I think that Olive Oriol would be a great name, the more I think about it.” If I get knocked up, Internet, you heard the name here first. Unless it’s a boy. Then we’re naming it NPH.