52 Weeks of Dresses -- Week 27

Otherwise titled: dinner in Ethiopia

The dresses are back!  I finally have a little bit of order back in my life, and the weather's nice again.  So, without further ado...

T and I went to dinner last Saturday night with some of his friends at Meskerem.  (Apologies for the delay.)  Meskerem is an Ethiopian restaurant on South Grand.  I'm not sure that I had ever had Ethiopian food before, but it was quite good.  It's similar to Middle Eastern or Indian food in that it's sort of a big pile of meat, veg, and sauce all cooked together, which you scoop up with bread to eat.  Lots of dirty hands by the end of the meal.

There were five adults and four kids at the table, so there was lots of food.  It's done family-style, so we ordered about half a dozen things off the menu, but my favorite was the lamb, although I can't remember if we got the one cooked with curry or turmeric.  Curry, I think.  Also we got a couple of vegetarian combo platters which had some really good sauces and veggies.  Everyone who likes fish really liked the tilapia as well, but that's not really my jam.

The bread was interesting.  It was a soft, spongy, sort of sticky thing.  The best description I can give is this: picture a large crepe, folded into quarters, but it's served cold out of what seems like slightly undercooked crumpet dough.  That sounds unappetizing, but it wasn't bad.  It was just a bit unusually textured, and a little sour.  I think I was expecting something more like naan, which is fluffy and a tad sweet.

After dinner we crossed the street to the Gelateria for dessert and coffee.  My salted caramel gelato was quite good, but the caffe gelato could have used a little more kick.  (My actual coffee, a decaf vanilla latte, was just as sugary and dessert-like as I hoped.)  T got Mayan chocolate gelato, and that cayenne/cinnamon combo was a real winner.

After all that excitement, this was me (and a curious Radar):

Happy Birthday, Grandma!

Technically Grandma's birthday was Monday, but we celebrated late.  Last night, T and I went to Robust with G&G to celebrate the big day!  The food was delicious and we had so much fun!  There was live music which was a bit loud, but the selection of songs was good, so I suppose it can be forgiven.  Happy belated birthday!

What I Watched -- Downton Abbey, Season 1

Technically I'm not actually finished with the whole first season of Downton Abbey; I still have one episode to go.  But I don't care because I love it!

Maggie Smith is hilariously British and fantastic as the Dowager Countess of Grantham, and I also really like Michelle Dockery and Jessica Brown Findlay as Lady Mary and Lady Sybil and Brendan Coyle as Bates.  Really though, the whole ensemble is quite good.

As of now, we're still pre-WWI at Downton.  Elsewhere in the outside world, politics are starting to shift and it won't be long before women have the right to vote.  Inside the abbey, the ladies of the house struggle to figure out their relationships and find the proper matches, while the servants fight their own battles against the position and each other.  Drama, drama everywhere, but in the most restrained way.

I can't wait to get started on season 2!

What I Watched -- Elizabethtown

Over the weekend, T and I watched Elizabethtown.  I had it, neither of us had seen it, and we were in need of something not at all serious to entertain us while I halfway paid attention for a couple of hours.

Elizabethtown is the story of Drew (Orlando Bloom, who makes a better elf or pirate than love interest) and Claire (Kirsten Dunst, who would be adorable if she weren't for some reason so irritating in this movie).  I have many criticisms.  Two are in the previous sentence, and the third of which is that the movie totally underutilizes its stellar supporting cast.  Susan Sarandon plays Drew's mom, but she's relegated to about three scenes, in one of which she makes a total bumbling fool of herself.  And the whole starting point of this movie is the death of her husband.  Just one or two scenes of heartfelt (or at least well-acted) sorrow would've done wonders (with or without Judy Greer, who plays Drew's sister).  Alec Baldwin has one scene in which he basically plays Jack Donaghy, his character from 30 Rock.  It might've been nice to let him stretch a little. Longtime actor Gailard Sartain also has a bit part.  I know the movie is a love story between Drew and Claire, but at least give the supporting cast something to work with!

Despite those negatives, the movie wasn't actually unlikable.  Unfortunate in life though he seems, Drew had a few funny moments, mostly upon encountering the small-town side of his family. 

As for the aforementioned love story, though I found Claire's overly adorable persona to be a bit much, both Dunst and Bloom at least kept to their characters throughout the film's more outrageous scenes (a fire at the memorial service, being welcomed into a wedding party with open arms).  They do manage one charming, early-relationship, all-night phone call, which is perhaps the most winning scene in the whole film.

The movie is directed by Cameron Crowe, who has such musically-inspired goodness as Say Anything and Almost Famous to his name, as well as documentaries of Tom Petty and Pearl Jam.  The music in Elizabethtown will not disappoint.  It is wide-ranging and generally great; I didn't know nearly all of it, but it always suited the scene and the mood.  The whole thing is capped off with an intricately planned road trip and an ode to the wonders of a good mix of music to go along with it.  A truer point was never made.

Bottom line: listen for the music, watch it only if you have nothing better to do.  (Let's hear it for the mix tape.)

Goal #13

Goal #13: sort lost bookmarks.

What? More bookmarks?  Yes, more bookmarking fun!  Now that I've sorted through the bookmarks on both my personal and work computers, I feel pretty organized in that regard.  They're grouped together, I deleted all the links that no longer work, etc.  But I also have a whole bunch of links saved in Evernote (my life saver!) which need to be double-checked and organized as appropriate.  A lot of them are links someone sent me in an e-mail ("Check out this awesome site!"), but I never got around to.  I made a big long list of them, and now it's time to tackle it.

Recap of Goal #12: Success!  My work computer is now organized, and cleared of a lot of clutter that frankly should be on my personal computer.  But I get a lot of e-mails and do some of my surfing during the day, so unfortunately a lot of that junk ends up on my work computer.  No longer!  At least not until tomorrow.

Happy Birthday, T!

I hope you enjoy your day!

What I Watched -- The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

Actually, just kidding.  I tried to watch The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, but the DVD wouldn't work in my computer or T's.  Bummer!  But since I don't have a DVD player and just plug my computer into the TV (now that Dell finally fixed my HDMI port!), we were out of options.

T asked why I got this DVD from the library, and the truth is that I can't remember.  Probably I watched something else that had Tommy Lee Jones in it - The Company Men, maybe?  Since I like him, I wanted to watch a movie of his that I hadn't seen yet.  That sounds like something I would do.

Better luck next time.

The Song I'm Loving Today

Sorry, I'm not loving any songs today.  Where have all the songs gone?  Why am I not loving any?  Sad face.

What I Watched -- Friends With Kids

I got back early yesterday morning from 10 days out of town and T wanted to see a movie.  That's cool, and I'm pretty sure I can stay awake despite my overnight bus trip (that's right, bus) and my 5:30 a.m. arrival time.

However, the only movie currently in theaters that we both had any desire at all to see was Friends With Kids.   (Despite what those of you who know me might think, this was not, in fact, my first choice.  The Artist was.  And sadly those were the only two movies that looked even remotely worth seeing, at least until The Hunger Games comes out.  The Artist was vetoed.)

The parts of this movie that were about having friends with kids were both funny because they are true and tragic because they are true, but that was only a small percentage of the film.  Mostly it was about Jason (goofy-looking Adam Scott) and Julie's (Jennifer Westfeldt, who is lovely in a vaguely unconventional and high-cheekboned way) decision to have a child despite their total lack of romantic interest in one another.  They are friends with a kid.  Their story was great at the beginning, then frustrating, and the end was just...well, there's no other word for it.  It was stupid.  VAGUE SPOILER: If you've ever seen Speed and hated the last scene in that movie, you'll hate this one too.

But the movie seems to have it backwards - more time should be spent on the friends with kids, less time on the friends with a kid; the others' characters are better, their stories have more to them (or at least seem like they could).  Jon Hamm and Kristen Wiig are great playing a once overly-lusty couple whose marriage is unraveling.  Maya Rudolph and Irishman Chris O'Dowd hold their own as the (somewhat clownish) couple trying to keep theirs together.  (The Hamm-Wiig-Rudolph-O'Dowd quadruplet was also featured in Bridesmaids.)  As for Jason and Julie, there's really nothing surprising about their story, except that Jason for some time manages a relationship with Megan Fox's character.

There's actually one thing about that lack of surprise that works for me though.  It's Ms. Fox herself, because in some ways she reminded me of me (looks excepted).  She has a busy life and likes it that way.  And now, I'm going to do something I rarely do (actually, have I ever done this?): I'm going to pilfer from someone else's review (the horror!).  I think her review takes an interesting perspective (that this movie is actually designed for people with kids, not without - see also my point in the paragraph above, about where the focus should be), and this bit from her review underscores that.  From Lisa Hymas at the Huffington Post:

"There's one resolutely childfree character in the film -- Mary Jane, Jason's girlfriend. 'Honestly, I've just never had the urge, and I love my freedom,' she explains. But in her last scene, she's supposed to come across as selfish and pouty -- because she isn't happy about being seated in high-end restaurant next to a family with three squirrelly kids. Overall it's not a terrible portrayal of a childfree person (Mary Jane is played by Megan Fox, so at least she makes the childfree look smokin' hot), but in a movie in which almost everyone is presented sympathetically, M.J. gets the shaft."

You can hear Megan Fox's take on Mary Jane here (skip to 0:46) and here (skip to 1:08).

In other news though, did I mention the film is set in New York?  Many bonus points there!  It relies on the old cliche of having kids and moving to Brooklyn, most fabulously featured in Sex and the City.

Bottom line: mostly cutesy and not bad, but the ending was terrible.  Good for people with kids and/or people who <3 NY scenery!

Goal #12

Goal #12: might as well carry on with Phase II of organizing the bookmarks, this time on my work computer.

Recap of Goal #11: I made a fair bit of progress, despite the fact that I was out of town all week.  I didn't get totally finished with my personal computer though, so I'll keep working on that this week as well.