This year will officially be the year I waited the longest to do my taxes thus far in my life.
And the clock is still ticking.
Maybe Sunday.
UPDATE 3/27
Well, I TRIED to start my taxes tonight after a rehearsal got cancelled, but I got all stopped up on a couple of 1099-MISCs, so I have to wait until someone smarter than me and better at tax crap (read: Matt) is around. But I'm 75% of the way there!
*sigh*
Friday, March 13, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
The internet: Inspirational or just distracting?
Eh, little o' column A, little o' column B.
Today I discovered a fun cooking blog.
(I say "discovered", like it was hiding in a hole until I found it.)
Cook Sister! is a rad little (read: huge and sprawling) blogsite with plenty of dishing on food, posting of pretty photos, and other things I enjoy. What really sold it for me?
This recipe.
Yup, I'm fo shiz making that this Friday night, my first Friday night free in a while.
What else has inspired me today? These damn shortie shorts! Damn you adorable, expensive little bloomers!
So now it's my mission to try and make them. Which should be interesting. I've also started myself a whole new category of bookmarks on my already overloaded toolbar called "Craftwant", filled with items I want to try to emulate and make for myself. Let's see if I ever get around to it.
For now, I'm going to go see what concoctions I can whip up out of the leftovers from this weekend's Watchmen shindig. I set up a bunch of fixins for pita sandwiches (inspired by "300"), along with a chimichurri sauce that went very nicely with the meat (and was a nod to South American actor Rodrigo Santoro). We drank cocktails made with (har har) ABSolut vodka, as a tribute to the 300 six-packs in the damn movie.
(Sidenote: I totally painted on my own abs with stage makeup. Everyone thought I had lost my mind. It was fun.)
If anyone had still been hungry (or didn't want anything I had already made) by the time "V for Vendetta" started, I guess I could have made toad-in-a-holes like V made for Evie.
As for "Watchmen"? Good. Really good. Jackie Earle Haley? Fantastic. Jeffrey Dean Morgan? Pitch perfect. Patrick Wilson? Very good as well, but even though they frumped him down a bunch, he was still too hot with his clothes off for the Night Owl. My only real complaint was with the music. It was REALLY jarring at times. "99 Red Balloons" does fit the themes of the movie, but was really out of place in that dinner sequence. And "Hallelujah"? Sure, hallelujah for sex, but WOW, did it come off cheesy!
Alright. Dinner for reals.
Today I discovered a fun cooking blog.
(I say "discovered", like it was hiding in a hole until I found it.)
Cook Sister! is a rad little (read: huge and sprawling) blogsite with plenty of dishing on food, posting of pretty photos, and other things I enjoy. What really sold it for me?
This recipe.
Yup, I'm fo shiz making that this Friday night, my first Friday night free in a while.
What else has inspired me today? These damn shortie shorts! Damn you adorable, expensive little bloomers!
So now it's my mission to try and make them. Which should be interesting. I've also started myself a whole new category of bookmarks on my already overloaded toolbar called "Craftwant", filled with items I want to try to emulate and make for myself. Let's see if I ever get around to it.
For now, I'm going to go see what concoctions I can whip up out of the leftovers from this weekend's Watchmen shindig. I set up a bunch of fixins for pita sandwiches (inspired by "300"), along with a chimichurri sauce that went very nicely with the meat (and was a nod to South American actor Rodrigo Santoro). We drank cocktails made with (har har) ABSolut vodka, as a tribute to the 300 six-packs in the damn movie.
(Sidenote: I totally painted on my own abs with stage makeup. Everyone thought I had lost my mind. It was fun.)
If anyone had still been hungry (or didn't want anything I had already made) by the time "V for Vendetta" started, I guess I could have made toad-in-a-holes like V made for Evie.
As for "Watchmen"? Good. Really good. Jackie Earle Haley? Fantastic. Jeffrey Dean Morgan? Pitch perfect. Patrick Wilson? Very good as well, but even though they frumped him down a bunch, he was still too hot with his clothes off for the Night Owl. My only real complaint was with the music. It was REALLY jarring at times. "99 Red Balloons" does fit the themes of the movie, but was really out of place in that dinner sequence. And "Hallelujah"? Sure, hallelujah for sex, but WOW, did it come off cheesy!
Alright. Dinner for reals.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
The Portland Theory
... Well, it's actually less of a theory and more of an observation, but "The Portland Observation" sounds like an old timey newspaper.
Basically, I keep observing that many, many things I enjoy have origins in Portland (Oregonian Origins?) or some kind of links there. The lady who writes Angry Chicken, for example? Lives in Portland. And the other day, I heard an NPR piece on how some of the nation's most prestigious operas are in danger, followed up by a lighter editorial on lessons we can learn from opera, and how when we look at our hardships compared to those of classic operatic characters, ours might not seem so bad. The piece was written, read, and (damn triple threats!) sung beautifully by Marc Acito. I scrawled the name of one of his books, Attack of the Theatre People on my hand at a red light, and put that and his first book, How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theatre on my LAPL hold list. After tearing through How I Paid..., I checked the book jacket and saw the sentence, "He lives in Portland, Oregon."
Of course he does.
There have been other such discoveries, and I'll take note of them more staunchly in the future.
I did have the good fortune to visit Portland for a weekend (my very first "business trip"!) and had a HELL of a time. For one thing, they were having a beer festival when I got there. Seeing as I was A) alone in a strange city and B) had to be up at 5:30 the next morning to be on camera, shooting an infomercial, I figured I should sit that bad boy out. But I did stroll into a Thai restaurant, strike up a conversation with a table of people who (having already visited said festival) were feeling friendly and invited me to eat with them. They invited me to go out to some local bar that was having 80's night, but I pleaded Article B and went back to my (really nice) hotel room. The next day, I wandered around the really cool area they put me up in, the Pearl district, and roamed the streets as well as the 4-story Powell's Books. SO AWESOME. I really dug that city. Then, having walked for about 3 hours straight, I went back to my room, sat in my big empty king-sized bed, and watched "Pretty Woman" without any boy-roommates to give me shit about it. Later, I met up with some girls from the shoot and we blew a good chunk of our generous per-diem on a fancy dinner and excellent martinis. The best was one called the Smoky Martini, made with Grey Goose and Glenlivet, garnished with a blue cheese-stuffed olive and a piece of pepperoni. Dear god.
I've got a pretty high opinion of Portland.
Stay tuned for more from The Portland Observation...
Basically, I keep observing that many, many things I enjoy have origins in Portland (Oregonian Origins?) or some kind of links there. The lady who writes Angry Chicken, for example? Lives in Portland. And the other day, I heard an NPR piece on how some of the nation's most prestigious operas are in danger, followed up by a lighter editorial on lessons we can learn from opera, and how when we look at our hardships compared to those of classic operatic characters, ours might not seem so bad. The piece was written, read, and (damn triple threats!) sung beautifully by Marc Acito. I scrawled the name of one of his books, Attack of the Theatre People on my hand at a red light, and put that and his first book, How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theatre on my LAPL hold list. After tearing through How I Paid..., I checked the book jacket and saw the sentence, "He lives in Portland, Oregon."
Of course he does.
There have been other such discoveries, and I'll take note of them more staunchly in the future.
I did have the good fortune to visit Portland for a weekend (my very first "business trip"!) and had a HELL of a time. For one thing, they were having a beer festival when I got there. Seeing as I was A) alone in a strange city and B) had to be up at 5:30 the next morning to be on camera, shooting an infomercial, I figured I should sit that bad boy out. But I did stroll into a Thai restaurant, strike up a conversation with a table of people who (having already visited said festival) were feeling friendly and invited me to eat with them. They invited me to go out to some local bar that was having 80's night, but I pleaded Article B and went back to my (really nice) hotel room. The next day, I wandered around the really cool area they put me up in, the Pearl district, and roamed the streets as well as the 4-story Powell's Books. SO AWESOME. I really dug that city. Then, having walked for about 3 hours straight, I went back to my room, sat in my big empty king-sized bed, and watched "Pretty Woman" without any boy-roommates to give me shit about it. Later, I met up with some girls from the shoot and we blew a good chunk of our generous per-diem on a fancy dinner and excellent martinis. The best was one called the Smoky Martini, made with Grey Goose and Glenlivet, garnished with a blue cheese-stuffed olive and a piece of pepperoni. Dear god.
I've got a pretty high opinion of Portland.
Stay tuned for more from The Portland Observation...
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
"It's not delivery, it's DeRuyck!" and "Old friends, beware!"
One of these days, I'm going to dig up a whole bunch of old photos of I have of friends I have loved, inevitably moved away from, and reconnected with through the glory of the internet. And I'm going to post them next to pictures of how they look now, so all the world can be as freaked out as I am every single time I discover how a person from my past has changed/not changed since I knew them.
I will have to find some that I'm not in. I'll be damned if I want pictures of my awkward adolescence rolling around online. Then again, they can only stand to make me look better in comparison.
Oh, and here's a pizza I made this weekend.
I'm still too lazy and topping-centric to make my own crust (someday!), but I wasn't entirely snoozeville on this one. Inspired by the meatball pizza at Robbie Mac's, I decided I wanted to make my own meatballs, slice 'em up and bedazzle a pizza with them. However, I realized that this would leave me with many different, unsatisfying sizes of slices... so I made meat-logs and sliced THEM up.
Haha. Meat-log.
I seasoned up some ground turkey with a bunch of salt, garlic, red pepper flakes, ummm... some stuff I can't remember, eggs, wet bread and panko to make it smooth and sticktuitive, and some spinach for... like, health. Good stuff. The red stuff also on the pizza is red bell pepper.
(Who knew?! So foreign! So exotic!)
Shut up, sarcastic-inner-monologue.
And the crust is Trader Joe's superb Garlic & Herb Pizza Dough. Love that stuff.
I DID, however, cook the pizza on a proper pizza stone. I've had the stone for a bit and have made cookies on it (bad idea, hence the little round grease-stains) and bread on it (fared much better), and now an actual pizza.
Hot damn.
Thinking happy thoughts. I've got a bunch of crap lined up ahead of me, so I'm trying to stay positive. If you see me and I'm not being positive, you should probably punch me in the face. Because nothing makes me smile quite like a nice right hook.
(Clearly, I'm hungry and not making sense.)
I will have to find some that I'm not in. I'll be damned if I want pictures of my awkward adolescence rolling around online. Then again, they can only stand to make me look better in comparison.
Oh, and here's a pizza I made this weekend.
I'm still too lazy and topping-centric to make my own crust (someday!), but I wasn't entirely snoozeville on this one. Inspired by the meatball pizza at Robbie Mac's, I decided I wanted to make my own meatballs, slice 'em up and bedazzle a pizza with them. However, I realized that this would leave me with many different, unsatisfying sizes of slices... so I made meat-logs and sliced THEM up.
Haha. Meat-log.
I seasoned up some ground turkey with a bunch of salt, garlic, red pepper flakes, ummm... some stuff I can't remember, eggs, wet bread and panko to make it smooth and sticktuitive, and some spinach for... like, health. Good stuff. The red stuff also on the pizza is red bell pepper.
(Who knew?! So foreign! So exotic!)
Shut up, sarcastic-inner-monologue.
And the crust is Trader Joe's superb Garlic & Herb Pizza Dough. Love that stuff.
I DID, however, cook the pizza on a proper pizza stone. I've had the stone for a bit and have made cookies on it (bad idea, hence the little round grease-stains) and bread on it (fared much better), and now an actual pizza.
Hot damn.
Thinking happy thoughts. I've got a bunch of crap lined up ahead of me, so I'm trying to stay positive. If you see me and I'm not being positive, you should probably punch me in the face. Because nothing makes me smile quite like a nice right hook.
(Clearly, I'm hungry and not making sense.)
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
The best laid plans of Dana DeRuyck often go awry.
But that doesn't stop me from laying them.
Wait, that didn't sound right.
Oh, forget it.
Here's my new idea.
I bought these really pretty bangle bracelets (4 for $1!) from a really sweet gas station attendant in Burbank. Apparently, she realized that her clientele could be easily distracted by cheap, shiny things. I couldn't resist, so I bought a set. They came in all kinds of terrific colors, and I chose a pale goldish-green bundle.
After wearing and ogling them for a while, I realized how cool they might look strung together into a garland or beaded-curtain-esque configuration. I dismissed this, asking myself, "Where the sweet blue Jesus would I put that?"
And then I decided I would make a "curtain" of them for the little window in my kitchen. They'll look pretty when the sunlight hits 'em, will add a splash of color, but won't block any valuable natural light.
Now I just need to go raid that gas station.
Wait, that didn't sound right.
Oh, forget it.
Here's my new idea.
I bought these really pretty bangle bracelets (4 for $1!) from a really sweet gas station attendant in Burbank. Apparently, she realized that her clientele could be easily distracted by cheap, shiny things. I couldn't resist, so I bought a set. They came in all kinds of terrific colors, and I chose a pale goldish-green bundle.
After wearing and ogling them for a while, I realized how cool they might look strung together into a garland or beaded-curtain-esque configuration. I dismissed this, asking myself, "Where the sweet blue Jesus would I put that?"
And then I decided I would make a "curtain" of them for the little window in my kitchen. They'll look pretty when the sunlight hits 'em, will add a splash of color, but won't block any valuable natural light.
Now I just need to go raid that gas station.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
I'd also like a pack mule!!!
I have a tendency to collect quotes. I just came across a computer file with a bunch I had cut and pasted, and I came across this one:
"You can't give up hope just because it's hopeless. You gotta hope even more and cover your ears and go 'blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah!'"
Futurama was so awesome.
I also came across an email that I sent out... I think it was my sophomore year of college. Yeah, because I wrote it while working the front desk at Jewett Hall. Anyhow, this was my April Fools joke that year:
My dear friends and colleagues-
I have been doing a lot of thinking and soul-searching lately, trying to figure out who I am and what I'm doing in my life. Ive been kind of out of it lately and I apologize. I think I have found the solution.
All this time, I've been trying to be someone I'm not. I've been trying to be a serious academic, and it's making me crazy. I've been under a lot of stress lately and school is the reason for it. It has always been my belief that if something is making you miserable, there is no point in doing it. Therefore, I have decided to drop out of college.
At this point, you're probably thinking, "What are you doing? You can't just quit school? What will you do?" I have a plan. Sort of. I'm moving to New York to become one of the city's many out-of-work actors/waiters. Sure, I may not achieve fame and glory. Sure, I'll probably be broke for the rest of my life. But who cares? This is what will make me happy. This is what I need.
I don't expect you to understand. However, I would appreciate your support, as this is not an easy choice to make. This is something I need to do. After all this time of putting myself through hell, trying to achieve a dream I never wanted in the first place, this comes as a huge relief to my psyche.
Thank you for understanding.
-Dana
Ha. Ha. Ha.
Irony!
"You can't give up hope just because it's hopeless. You gotta hope even more and cover your ears and go 'blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah!'"
Futurama was so awesome.
I also came across an email that I sent out... I think it was my sophomore year of college. Yeah, because I wrote it while working the front desk at Jewett Hall. Anyhow, this was my April Fools joke that year:
My dear friends and colleagues-
I have been doing a lot of thinking and soul-searching lately, trying to figure out who I am and what I'm doing in my life. Ive been kind of out of it lately and I apologize. I think I have found the solution.
All this time, I've been trying to be someone I'm not. I've been trying to be a serious academic, and it's making me crazy. I've been under a lot of stress lately and school is the reason for it. It has always been my belief that if something is making you miserable, there is no point in doing it. Therefore, I have decided to drop out of college.
At this point, you're probably thinking, "What are you doing? You can't just quit school? What will you do?" I have a plan. Sort of. I'm moving to New York to become one of the city's many out-of-work actors/waiters. Sure, I may not achieve fame and glory. Sure, I'll probably be broke for the rest of my life. But who cares? This is what will make me happy. This is what I need.
I don't expect you to understand. However, I would appreciate your support, as this is not an easy choice to make. This is something I need to do. After all this time of putting myself through hell, trying to achieve a dream I never wanted in the first place, this comes as a huge relief to my psyche.
Thank you for understanding.
-Dana
Ha. Ha. Ha.
Irony!
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