Archive for the ‘Huge Dork’ Category

Least Literate English Major In The History Of English Majors

20 October 2008

Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels (Board’s List)… A Decade Later

Let’s just say that I fare much better with the Reader’s List, as opposed to the stodgy Editors’ Board picks.  Honestly, how much Theodore Dreiser do I really need to read?  Then again, what kind of “Readers” select Ayn Rand and L. Ron Hubbard as the paragons of English literature?

Want to play along?
1. Copy the list on your blog.
2. Read through the list and mark the books you’ve read in bold.
3. Italicize any you started, but didn’t finish.
4. Underline the ones you loved.

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Using Amazon Prime Is Even Faster Than Buying Things From A Real Store

10 September 2008

I placed an order with Amazon.com yesterday, and took advantage of the free Amazon Prime express shipping trial.  I figured that since this was such a large order, and I was very excited about many of the new purchases, it might be fun to get them early.  Early is an understatement: I placed my order late yesterday afternoon, and I already had more than half of the items before noon today.  A girl could get used to this kind of service.

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I Have Glimpsed My True Inner Soul, And It Looked Back At Me Like An Angry T-Rex

7 July 2008

I just learned that one of my close friends gets the exact opposite result that I do after taking the Myers-Briggs analysis.  There is a different and specific relationship between each personality type, and I couldn’t remember how they described the phenomenon of opposites, so naturally I turned to the internet for the forgotten answer.  En route to confirming that Jamie is my Anima (not enema), I got distracted and found a list of Adjectives That Describe INTJs… and we all know how much I love lists.  This one is pretty bang-on, and I found myself nodding in agreement after pretty much every comma (except “does not think they are weird but others do,” since I know full well that I am a Special Person, and “familiar with darkside,” because I am not a Sith lord.  Yet.)

loner, more interested in intellectual pursuits than relationships or family, not very altruistic, not very complimentary, would rather be friendless than jobless, observer, values solitude, perfectionist, detached, private, not much fun, hidden, skeptical, does not tend to like most people, socially uncomfortable, not physically affectionate, unhappy, does not talk about feelings, hard to impress, analytical, likes esoteric things, tends to be pessimistic, not spontaneous, prone to discontentment, guarded, does not think they are weird but others do, responsible, can be insensitive or ambivalent to the misfortunes of others, orderly, clean, organized, familiar with darkside, tends not to value organized religion, suspicious of others, can be lonely, rarely shows anger, punctual, finisher, prepared

And now, after that mess of lowercase and commas, a sentence with Capital Letters and a full stop.

New Year’s Resolutions? Oh, Yeah, Those…

17 June 2008

It’s been nearly six months since New Year’s… and in typical INTJ fashion, I have not forgotten about those pesky Resolutions.

  1. Lose inches
    Since committing to a strict diet about a month ago, I have already lost about 10 pounds, and continue to shed weight by the week.  I can finally fit back into the clothes I wore when I first interviewed in the big city; in fact, they’re actually a bit large now.  Logging everything I eat in a public online profile has made me accountable for my nutrition decisions; knowing that anyone and everyone will know that I had six Oreos for dinner makes me think twice about eating garbage.

    I’m most proud of how I’ve stepped up my fitness routine, however.  Realizing that I averaged just two taekwondo classes per week during my first year and a half with my school, I made a vow in February to start attending every class I could, only skipping when I absolutely had to work late and couldn’t make it back home in time.  As part of that, I even go to class on Saturdays now.  The extra practice is paying off: at the last promotion test, Master Song commented that I had improved since the last time he saw me!  Last but not least, joining the New York Road Runners made my goal of running the NYC Marathon a lot more tangible and real, and incorporating running into my life has probably been my favorite accomplishment so far this year.

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I Am, Like, So Totally California

9 June 2008

Disclaimer: I STILL have never been to California.  (This may be remedied as soon as July or August, when I am tentatively planning a trip out to the Left Coast.  In my dreams, I fly out to Seattle to visit Jess #1, and then spend an awesome week on a rented motorcycle, driving down the coast towards LA–via Portland and the Northern California redwood forests and the San Francisco Zoo–to visit Jess #2.)  In any case, though, you came here for a quality story based on actual real-life events, not a list of my vague summer plans.  So, onward.

I first read about the existence of date shakes in National Geographic.  They had an illustrated sidebar about regional American food specialties, and I noticed that in addition to a variety of foodstuffs I was intimately familiar with (Beef on Weck, Coffeemilk, Kringle), there were some peculiar delights I had not tried.  One of those was a California treat, the date shake.

I’m not really sure what else besides sitting in front of this pinned-up article for more than eight hours a day inspired me to actually make my own date shake this week, but I decided I had a craving for one.  In fact, I’d never actually eaten a date prior to this week.  Mom would occasionally bake date bread for Grandpa on Father’s Day or his birthday, but I am pretty sure I never ate any of that.*

Based on some half-hearted Googling and a quick search on Seamless Web, I determined that there were really no reliable date shake vendors in NYC (kind of surprising, actually, given how many other California trends seem to get imported).  Instead, the minute I finished up at work, I booked it to Whole Foods to pick up vanilla protein powder (thick and frothy without the saturated fat of ice cream) and dates, which were not available fresh, to my chagrin.  (Not that I would really appreciate the difference at this point… I just heard the fresh ones were good.)  I settled for the dried, pitted variety, billed on the plastic container as “Nature’s Candy.”  This was a promising slogan.

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This Blog Is Quickly Devolving Into A Sad Knockoff Version Of “Midtown Lunch”

28 March 2008

When I Googled “Rocky Mountain Cobb” to see if anyone else on the great wide Internet has publicly sung the praises of my favorite Chop’t specialty salad, no relevant results turned up. I remedy that today, with the first known post about this tasty lunchtime delight.

Chop’t is a relatively new NYC-based chain, and their key point of differentiation is that they will hack your custom salad to bits with a mezzaluna, and not just once, but as much as you direct them to hack it.  (I haven’t asked for extra hackage yet, though; stay tuned to see if I can make the staff reduce my salad to discrete atoms.)

Several weeks ago, I went for the first time, and finding the wall-sized list of potential salad toppings (er, “choppings”) too daunting, I ordered the Rocky Mountain Cobb off the menu.  I’ve been back many times since then, but I have yet to order a different salad.  I fucking love this damn Cobb salad.  It’s just Romaine lettuce, bleu cheese, cranberries, walnuts, and roasted chicken, with their slightly-sweet “secret recipe” House dressing, but I’m already getting regular cravings for the specific taste combination.

So yeah.  Rocky Mountain Cobb.  Delicious pile of chopped goodness.

Further Expanding My Gaming Horizons Beyond Tetris

11 January 2008

Morrowind, Oblivion, and a shiny new trackball arrived at my doorstep today.  Guess I’m not going to taekwondo sparring tonight.

Party Like It’s MMVIII

1 January 2008

Felix sit annus novus!

I Am Now Halfway To A Career As A Professional Gamer

19 December 2007

Neverwinter Nights has been successfully installed on the new box.  Now I can learn the unbelieveably complex basic principles of Dungeons and Dragons, master naviagation by keyboard, and practice peacekeeping between the members of my virtual party of fighters by selecting the correct dialogue choice from a list.

Something tells me that I should’ve started my career with Halo instead.