All right, y’all, the Farm Fresh Delivery peeps sent me some rainbow chard and dill fenouil this week. I only know that they sent me rainbow chard and dill fenouil because that’s what the labels say on these odd, green, leafy plants. If someone had asked me to name 100 vegetables last week, I would not have listed either rainbow chard or dill fenouil because I had never heard of them before. Any suggestions on how to prepare these veggies are welcome. I would especially appreciate any warnings, like if the fuzzy ends of the dill fenouil are poisonous or if the rainbow chard only turns rainbow colored when it’s gone rancid. Thanks!

Learn more about Jennette’s rosettes when she reviews Igigi’s L’Amourette dress.

• Continue reading “Review: Igigi L’Amourette dress”

I went to a party in Wisconsin last weekend. Yes, Wisconsin. They know how to drink there, and they put cheese sticks in their alcoholic beverages, at least in the mornings.

It was fun to escape into a bubble universe for the weekend and live in a land where everyone is happy to see you and there is much dancing and revelry and ass-squeezing. (I’m looking at you, jenfu.) I am a bit disappointed no one flashed me or made out with me, and the raw food restaurant made my face so splotchy that it caused my fellow diners to frantically search for an antihistamine, but overall it was a high time. It was a place where my only responsibility was to make sure my bus buddy wasn’t left at the laser tag arena.

But now I am back in my day-to-day life and there are many responsibilities, like scheduling a conference call and picking up a friend from the mechanic and finishing a client’s site. It is tempting to contemplate a life where every week was a party week, yet I think the regularity of such revelry would destroy the properties that make those events so magical. It would also destroy my liver.

If every weekend was a party weekend, it wouldn’t be special at all. It would just be the weekend. Part of the fun of a party is that you get to escape from your regular life. If the party became your regular life, eventually you would seek to escape that. Anything that is fun and fulfilling has the potential to become a rut. It is an endless, annoying, vortex that circles around and around and sucks you in before you knew the whirlpool had formed.

And as much as I liked everyone who came to party, I know that if we all hung out 24/7, eventually there would be fights and disagreements because that is just what happens with human beings. There are very few people I could hang out with on a daily basis without beginning to fantasize about smothering them in their sleep.

So, it was a good weekend, a weekend I’d like to have again, but all the weekends in between are what make the fun never end.

Someone will have to explain this sign to me:

Doesn’t the drive-thru exist so you don’t have to park? Or is this for people who go through the drive-thru and then eat in their cars? And if so, isn’t that sort of sad? It makes me imagine dozens of lonely people eating Big Macs in their cars.

I named my netbook Mini-Macaroni because I am the PastaQueen and I absolutely adore alliteration. Mini-Macaroni traveled to London and France with me, and took a trip to Chicago and South Bend, when suddenly he DIED. His little green light went out. Kaput. I would turn on the itty bitty computer and after 45 seconds it turned itself off before it could even finish booting up.

“Sounds like a cooling problem,” my smart, techy friend said.

“Oh, God,” I said. “That’s what I get for buying refurbished.” And, alas, I did not buy the extended warranty!

So, I unplugged Mini-Macaroni and let him sit in the corner of my office for four months, not ready to bury him, but not ready to try resuscitating his silicon soul. This week I was organizing all my to-do lists because I am the type of person who likes to organize my organization. I decided to take another look at Mini-Macaroni to see if he was salvageable, so I plugged him in, turned him on, and waited for him to shut himself off from the world.

But he never did!

Yes, Mini-Macaroni has miraculously come back to life! I do so love it when problems fix themselves, especially $300 problems. I pampered him by updating his virus software definitions and installing seventy Windows XP system updates. No, seriously, seventy updates. That’s not hyperbole. He took it all well, and appears to be functioning normally, but I am concerned he could flip himself off again at any moment. Hopefully he will survive my upcoming travels. Please pray for Mini-Macaroni and me!