With these shoes:

And I haven’t been able to wear them, because we had a freak snowstorm this morning. Might be able to tomorrow, but they require stockings or trouser socks, and it’s going to be wicked cold.

Yes, they were spendy, but I think they’re gonna be worth it. Yay!

Just saw The Returner, with Takeshi Kaneshiro. The movie was fun, and Takeshi is my nomination for the Most Beautiful Man Ever:

Don’t believe me?:

Is it wrong that I am so excited about the Frampton boys decamping to South Jersey this weekend, leaving me alone in Brooklyn?

Because I am really excited.

So the 10 Year-Old is back in school (Him: “all teachers hate boys.” Me: “All 10 year-old boys make sweeping generalizations.” Him: “Hmmph.”), and I am back in the groove, only it’s cooler, and there are fewer beach days.

I am still loving my bike, I rode 10 miles in the park today and stopped off at the library to pick up a book on cycling (oh! the irony!) for the Spouse. And I am hoping to cobble together some sort of Goal Action Plan, so I don’t waste my days with banal blog posts and such–oh, well, oops.

So there you go. Not much, but it’s something. Oh, and I took a walk to pick the Son up from a playdate and listened to Richard Armitage read Georgette Heyer’s Sylvester. A walk never went by so fast, le swoon. I like that he does little voices for the characters, made me giggle.

Me! I’m snappy and short!

I’ve just returned from the dentist, three new fillings, the Super-Smart Lawyer is coming over tonight for an Evening of Historical Film, Ogling Brits and Dinner, and I wish I had more time to write. But right now, I don’t. Although it can’t help that I’m kinda stuck on a plot problem, and am having trouble moving forward.

Plus there’s the no news from the agent front. Le sigh.

BUT

I have a bunch of ideas for new projects, and I like what I’m writing when I get a chance to do so, and Spring is coming.

Okay. More later when I have more to report, or more to rant about.

(I have been watching a mooseload of MI-5. I know it’s a sickness that I like it when Adam Carter loses his temper and starts beating the crap out of people).

For some reason, I really want to play Trivial Pursuit, any kind, not just the Book Lovers’ Trivial Pursuit, which I play with the Picky Vegetarian and now with Shoulder Guy (Goedi, for those of you keeping track at home).

But the one flaw, as I see it, here in Minnesota with my relatives is that there is a decided anti-intellectual bent, so I don’t even dare to suggest we play a game that requires knowledge of things. First off, my uncle doesn’t have that kind of knowledge; dyslexic, he focused on dealing with his disability, not in knowing all kinds of trivia that doesn’t mean anything in the real world. And who can blame him?

My aunt reads a lot, but has already accused me–quite a few times–of being an intellectual snob. It could be she is right, although I think she might just be protesting too much, and that she’s biased against people who may know things she doesn’t.

So I will keep my wants to myself.

Not to get all Barbie Dreamhouse here, but if I had a different bathroom, and a different husband, wouldn’t this be neat on my toilet?

Toilet Tattoos has some cool designs.

Meanwhile, still packing . . .

Am I obsessed with Osi Umenyiora because he is a New York Giant, and apparently there is some sort of big game this Sunday? Because I saw him on the Bob Costas show, and he was way charming (not my choice of program, btw, which you probably figured out. The Spouse does an admirable job of making sports more Megan-friendly by pointing out guys who love their moms, or are really hawt, or have interesting lineage)? No. I am obsessed with Mr. Umenyiora because he has ALL THE VOWELS IN HIS LAST NAME ONCE AND ONLY ONCE, and HE’S EVEN GOT A ‘Y!’

Love that. And I know I’ve mentioned it before, but the Picky Vegetarian has a similar deal, she’s got all the vowels in her full name. Like Julia Roberts. Or sequoia. Or education, cautioned and auctioned (which are, of course, anagrams of each other).

Good luck, Mr. U. I’m rooting for you.

Today’s entries at the Devil’s Food Dictionary:

deep-fried turkey
A common form of insurance fraud disguising itself as holiday dining. Perpetrators of the deep-fried turkey scam typically erect a homemadedeep fryer, capacious enough to accommodate a large turkey, within six feet of their home. When extraction of the cooked bird inevitably results in the tipping-over of the apparatus, the furiously boiling oil spills onto the heat source and catches fire. The flames spread rapidly and consume the entire structure in minutes. The average American’s well-known fondness for Thanksgiving turkey makes arsonous intent nearly impossible to prove.

macaroni
A small, tubular pasta whose bent shape earned it the additional name “elbow macaroni.” Curiously, the word’s final syllable
is pronounced “knee.”

shellfish
A range of aquatic creatures that are divided into two categories, crustaceans and mollusks.

Tip for the Home Cook:
To determine a given animal’s classification,try to picture where it might wear epaulettes, if it suddenly got the urge to do so. If such an image does not readily come to mind, the creature is probably a mollusk.