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I’ve seen these miniaturized pictures before, but for whatever reason I was inspired to try it this morning…probably because I have a ton of work to do and I would like to avoid it.

So, check it out. Here’s the original, a picture I took at the Monster Jam (clicking through to the larger originals might make them easier to see):

And here are the monster trucks miniaturized:

Surely, these aren’t the best examples, but it was so easy and I am completely obsessed with miniaturizing pictures now.

I really like reading the cooking portion of Pioneer Woman’s blog, since I feel she and I share similar culinary challenges: picky eaters and a lack of “fancy” ingredients.

The similarities end there. PW takes very pretty pictures as she cooks and in the background, you can see her gorgeous kitchen, complete with big fancy appliances and stainless steel and, holy shit, counter space.

For serious, every time she posts a new recipe it looks like she’s on the set of a Food Network show.

On the contrary, here’s how I throw down.

Let’s see, we have Wal-Mart rice, some of which has spilled on the cookie tray, peanut butter, salt, salt…a waffle iron.

Of course, there’s a decent amount of evidence as to what I last cooked sprinkled on the stove top. You know, in case I want to recreate something and want to know what the ingredients were.

Ahh, my favorite. The knobs on my stove are organized in such a way that I don’t think is very intuitive. As I alluded before, I don’t have any counters, so one day while I was cooking, I set a Rubbermaid bowl on the stove and then turned what I thought was the front burner on to cook something. Yeah, it wasn’t. So, some of the bowl is still there. Coincidentally, that night was also the night we came to the dramatic realization that the baby had a tree nut allergy. It sucked, too, since I made this really yummy green curry with ground cashews. Not only were the leftovers cold and worthless when we got back from the hospital hours later, they were also deadly. Yay!

Also, this guy comes in and judges me.

For the record, I’m making apple butter pork tonight. Yum.

The baby, the sister-in-law, and I went to the record store on Saturday and spent a good bit of time in the Jerry’s portion of the store. The baby wanted to get some records to add to his tiny starter collection.

He dug through some crates.

Then he had to, of course, listen to his selection before purchasing. His pick? “La Di Da Di”.

When we got home he wanted to watch his Kraftwerk DVD and then went about fashioning his own little Kraftwerk performance set up, complete with stand, laptop, keyboard, and mic headset.

Crappy video of his performance here, although I didn’t capture the cutest part, which was the baby cupping his hand over his mouth to sing just like the dude from Kraftwerk.

I love that kid.

Guess what I did on Friday? It involved wheels and lots of testosterone and patriotism. Indeed, I went to Monster Jam with the husband, the baby, and the sister-in-law.

It was…alright. Certainly, the most interesting part of the evening was the prelude, in which the announcer came out and started paying tribute to all of the firefighters and policemen and “the troops in Iraq who are fighting for our right to be here at Monster Jam tonight.” No, seriously. He said that. That’s why we’re over there. Monster trucks. Now, I’m a cynical bizatch but if I was a soldier and someone told me that I was fighting for a bunch of jackasses to go see monster trucks, I would probably kill a whole bunch of people. Or myself. Of course, they then brought out an enormous flag for the national anthem.

(more…)

Obviously, I’m very happy that the Patriots loss. Do not like that team at all. As we watched the last minute or so, I said that the only way this victory could be sweeter is if it was the Steelers doing the defeating. Then the husband said that the Steelers could never beat the Patriots in a Super Bowl and I said that that wasn’t the point, it would still be sweeter, and he said that I had no point because it’s not possible and then I stabbed him in the neck. At least he’s quiet now.

What I thought was the most telling moment was when Bill Bellichick walked off of the field before the game was technically over. Real coaches go down with their ship, Billy. To the bitter end. Punks walk off with their heads down.

And it was pretty cool to see Plaxico Burress getting a big win. I like that guy, even if things didn’t work out with him when he was here.

ANYWAY, the other big victory tonight were these:

Green tea cupcakes with pomegranate frosting. Motherfuckers.

Hmm, I’m not sure why her frosting is off-white and ours is rosy pink, but whatever. It tastes good as hell. Bolt found that recipe the other day and today I declared that we had to make them. Bolt had the unfortunate task of procuring matcha powder. Obviously, she could have found it in an Asian market in the Strip but we had no idea what the hours were for those, so Bolt battled crowds and less-than-knowledgeable staff at Giant Eagle and Whole Foods, before recruiting the help of a friend at Starbucks.

One note about those. The recipe is for mini cupcakes and we made full size ones. The 12-minute baking time in the recipe isn’t enough, but I can tell you that 17 minutes is entirely too long. I think about 14 was the right amount of time for these. Go forth. Bake.

It’s mad frozen here.

The baby has a two-hour delay and when we walked outside this morning to take me to school, the husband gave a hearty, “Aw, hell naw.” So, we’re chilling in the house for a little bit. I am out of coffee. Go ahead and ask me how excited I am about that.

I’m not real sure when the school bus is supposed to get here. When there was a delay on Wednesday, the bus came at 9:30, but who knows because the driver’s kinda…I don’t know. I think he wants to fight me. Which is fine. We can throw down whenever, dude.

Anyway, check out my kid doing his breathing treatment.

Cute, no? Thankfully, the cough and congestion and the runny nose finally seem to be going away. As an added bonus, the prednisone gave him an actual appetite. He’s eating like a normal human being now and not like…Amy Winehouse.

Aside from my culinary misadventures on Friday evening, about 6,000 other ridiculous things happened in those 24+ hours.

In the morning

The husband and I set out toward work/school and soon discovered that there was massive traffic jams on Pioneer and West Liberty due to a fire in the Fort Pitt tunnels. Our alternate route was also clogged with traffic and we sat in the same spot for about 45 minutes. The driver of the car in front of us had left his keys on his back bumper, so we alerted him to that, and I spotted a yinzer with a really fantastic handlebar mustache. When the traffic finally let up, we saw that a car had rammed into a school bus and the car behind that one swerved to avoid the wreck and ran into a guardrail. I got to my lab class 30 minutes late and sat down at a computer to discover that some jackass had switched all of the keys around on the keyboard. I discovered something interesting about myself: I know the QWERTY row and the home row, but that bottom row is all murky for me.

After dinner

We took the baby to the mother-in-law’s house so he could hang out there because the husband was playing records at a club downtown as part of a gallery crawl. My sister-in-law and I apparently become violent once we cross the threshold into downtown, because our plans for future visits to the cultural district involved machine guns. Just sayin’.

The husband started playing records and was in some kind of mood. Artsy types in Pittsburgh don’t do much dancing, but prefer standing around, sipping $13 “martinis,” and arguing.

Jwan was there, smelling his heavenly beer.

The sister-in-law and I made our way to the bar and made friends with this fabulous boy tending the bar who poured with a heavy hand. While waiting for my drink, a guy leaned over to me, jerked his thumb toward the husband and slurred, “What do you think of this DJ?” Bolt guffawed and walked away and I said, “Oh, I think he’s awesome.” If I were quicker on my feet I would have said something clever like, “I think I’m going to sleep with him tonight,” or “I think I want to have his baby!” I asked the guy what he thought and he replied, “I have my doubts.” Fair enough. I grabbed my drink and spent the majority of the evening bobbing my head and talking to various people that I haven’t seen in a couple of years.

I commented that the worm at the end of the event’s logo kind of looked like an “nj” and snotted that we weren’t in New Jersey.

I had four of these. One could argue that this picture was taken from my perspective at this point, in which my head was resting on the bar. You’d be half-wrong.

I went to the bathroom as things were winding down and was in a stall next to a girl who was working at the event, who couldn’t have been more than 19 years old. I realized that I didn’t have any toilet paper, so I reached my hand underneath the stall divider and said, “Hey, could you spare a square?” A moment of startled silence followed before she finally replied, “Uh, I’m sorry. I don’t do drugs.”

I nearly died laughing and explained that I needed toilet paper. When we exited the stalls, I asked her if she ever watched much Seinfeld…you know, when she was a baby. She hadn’t but we parted on good terms. After washing my hands, I looked to my left and discovered a drink that someone had abandoned on the sink. Score!

I sauntered out to the main area and found Bolt. “Look! I found a drink!”

“Awesome! I found a Blackberry! Someone left it here. It’s mine now!” Awesome! Bolt, undeterred that the Blackberry was password-protected, stuffed it in her purse (Edit: we returned the Blackberry to the bar the next day) and we split the drink, rationalizing that if it had rufies in it, we were with the husband so we should be cool.

On our way home, we realized that there was an important stop that we needed to make:

The O has hoagies.

The O has Runts.

But that’s about it for candy.

We feasted on fries at home and I passed out on the couch. I woke up in bed the next “morning” (read: 12:30 p.m.) and wondered why I was so sweaty and why my chest felt so constricted. I don’t remember much about actually going to bed, but I managed to remove my bra. But instead of removing the shelf-lined camisole I was wearing, I just put another one on top of it.

Dang. Belly is full. I made Apricot-Stuffed Pork for dinner. One fatal flaw of this recipe as it is: roasting the potatoes and brussels sprouts for 15 minutes before plopping the pork in the middle for 30 minutes results in burnt potatoes and brussels sprouts. At least that was my experience. I also tend to blame my culinary fuck-ups on my electric oven/stove.

I also need to clean my oven. Dig if you will, the picture of me frantically flapping my oven mitt at the billow of smoke while trying to get the fucking ceiling fan on and shouting, “Everything’s fine! Really!”

I rock at all things domestic.

This is what I saw when I woke up this morning:

Know what that is? Here’s a closer look:

Yes. Yes, indeed. I’m at the beach with some dudes. Let me tell you, being able to hear the ocean as you fall asleep is definitely how life should be.

The kids are playing Godzilla: Unleashed on the Wii and that is several kinds of awesome.

Hearing them develop their little trash talkin’ tactics is simultaneously adorable and annoying, since it still involves a healthy dose of whining.

Everyone else is like:

Of course, I have a headache because I wore my glasses most of this morning and I bent the shit out of them the other day. After I took them off I got all dizzy from being too used to the crookedness. They are 9 years old. I should maybe consider investing in some new spectacles before I go completely blind.