It do not feel like October
The breeze today feels warm, and the sun is out, so it feels a little more like mid-June. I know, however, that it is October, for the Halloween decorations are going up in front of our little owner-occupied two flat. Wait, that's a little passively constructed... Our landlords are putting seasonal decorations up in the front lawn of their building. They are most certainly au courant in their choice of decorations, as their inflatable ghost popping out of the pumpkin and the giant blow-up Tigger dressed like Dracula have both also been erected by the house down the block.
The house down the block, it should be mentioned, makes my landlord's efforts look like crap, shoddily applied. The house down the block is either occupied by someone who works for the electric company or by someone who is wealthy enough to retain the services of a personal electricity consultant, as there is always a truck from National Grid parked at the over-lit, overly whimsical house, with its alternately delightful and completely stupid pastiche of funny, cute, and scary Halloween decorations. They have the flattened witch-n-broom plastered to their tree, to imply that this wholly non-threatening creature has mistakenly flown into the tree and sustained injury. They also, in contrast, have the newspaper-stuffed front stoop zombie and the simulated grave stones in the side yard. This cemetery simulacrum is next to the inflatable Dracula-Tigger, though, so it gives one less pause than it might otherwise. Strings of sticky-looking cotton spider web and of orange colored Christmas lights (are they still called Christmas lights out of season? Methinks it's like calling a tissue a Kleenex...) hang from the trees, the porch, and the chain link fence. There is even a mummy. The house down the block has been decked out in this manner since mid-September.
By these standards, our landlords are, at least from this modest start with the two trendy inflatable objets d'automne, phoning it in. Unless they have something else up their sleeves, I'm going to have to conclude that Christmas is more their house-decorating occasion. Can't wait.
+ + +
I also can't wait for our landlords to cash that rent check we wrote 17 days ago, along with the one we wrote on the 1st. Our checking account looks falsely awesome, and I can't handle that right now.
+ + +
Last night's dinner featured my very first attempt at scalloped potatoes, cribbed with a few alterations (smaller size, added onion and turnip, tripled garlic content) from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1. It worked, which pleased me. We ate it with a perfect roasted beet each and a small dish of Brussels (Brussel? brussle?) sprouts with dill butter.
Today, however, I tried to make cream of tomato soup out of a can and something went horribly awry. This hasn't ever happened to me in my nearly three decades of Campbell's Tomato experience: the milk curdled, stuck to the bottom of the pan, and in general, precipitated disgustingly out of the soup-solution. I trashed it and ate a granola bar for lunch instead. Adult.
The house down the block, it should be mentioned, makes my landlord's efforts look like crap, shoddily applied. The house down the block is either occupied by someone who works for the electric company or by someone who is wealthy enough to retain the services of a personal electricity consultant, as there is always a truck from National Grid parked at the over-lit, overly whimsical house, with its alternately delightful and completely stupid pastiche of funny, cute, and scary Halloween decorations. They have the flattened witch-n-broom plastered to their tree, to imply that this wholly non-threatening creature has mistakenly flown into the tree and sustained injury. They also, in contrast, have the newspaper-stuffed front stoop zombie and the simulated grave stones in the side yard. This cemetery simulacrum is next to the inflatable Dracula-Tigger, though, so it gives one less pause than it might otherwise. Strings of sticky-looking cotton spider web and of orange colored Christmas lights (are they still called Christmas lights out of season? Methinks it's like calling a tissue a Kleenex...) hang from the trees, the porch, and the chain link fence. There is even a mummy. The house down the block has been decked out in this manner since mid-September.
By these standards, our landlords are, at least from this modest start with the two trendy inflatable objets d'automne, phoning it in. Unless they have something else up their sleeves, I'm going to have to conclude that Christmas is more their house-decorating occasion. Can't wait.
+ + +
I also can't wait for our landlords to cash that rent check we wrote 17 days ago, along with the one we wrote on the 1st. Our checking account looks falsely awesome, and I can't handle that right now.
+ + +
Last night's dinner featured my very first attempt at scalloped potatoes, cribbed with a few alterations (smaller size, added onion and turnip, tripled garlic content) from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1. It worked, which pleased me. We ate it with a perfect roasted beet each and a small dish of Brussels (Brussel? brussle?) sprouts with dill butter.
Today, however, I tried to make cream of tomato soup out of a can and something went horribly awry. This hasn't ever happened to me in my nearly three decades of Campbell's Tomato experience: the milk curdled, stuck to the bottom of the pan, and in general, precipitated disgustingly out of the soup-solution. I trashed it and ate a granola bar for lunch instead. Adult.
posted by Nora Rocket at 3:33 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home