No, I'm not showing you my "beer-can" underwear, so don't even ask.

Random photos from the last two weeks, in no particular order and probably of no particular interest:

My half-assed christmas tree this year. I wasn't lying when I said that I just threw green lights in a potted palm and called it a day.

My pantry. It is still painted "little old catholic lady pink" and still has the shelf liner paper from the previous owner, Helen. I have grand plans to organize/paint/clean out the body parts I have stored in the corners while I'm on break, but knowing myself as I do I know I will pull everything out, get frustrated, then stare at it and order out for pizza for two days until a few glasses of wine inspires me to put it all back the way it was.

The other side. There's a George Foreman grill in there somewhere, and for some reason I keep thinking I'm out of sugar every time I go to the store, so I have two or three 5# bags of the stuff. Maybe we all can get together and make lollipops or fake crack or something.

We have a near- complete collection of superhero glasses from (I think) Burger King in 1973. We also have some Rocky & Bullwinkle and Looney Tunes ones. I (a.k.a. "wiggle fingers") am not allowed to use any of these- instead I get a nice, plastic Spongebob Squarepants sippy cup like the rest of my 30-something peers. I also have some vintage clown bowls that a friend gave me as she is terrified of clowns. I may have given them to her in the first place as a joke, I can't remember. I get it confused with the time I rented a creepy lady-clown for her birthday that surprised & scared the shit out of her while I laughed, and laughed, and laughed...

Good times.
There is also a Snoopy Sno-cone machine there that you can barely see, and a Farrah Fawcett insulated coffee mug and some misc. Pac-man glasses. I'm not sure what having all of these items says about us. I'm just going to pretend that it says we're awesomely cool.

For some reason I keep my 70's knit beer-can hat in there too. What? You don't have one?
I probably keep it in there because the pantry isn't heated very well, and in the dead of January I have to gear up with a snowsuit, moon boots and electric socks whenever I am cooking and spending any sort of time in there. One of you knitting-types really needs to bring these back.

Yes, I made another stupid fort for the kitties. Shut up.

In the "food porn" category, I made golden beet & beet greens risotto with chicken, loosely based on this recipe.

It was delicious.

I also had a bunch of cipolline onions that I wanted to pretty up somehow.
I blanched them first (boiled with skins on for 4-5 minutes, then cooled & peeled) then I got them nice and caramelized with olive oil & salt & pepper. Finally I cooked them with balsamic vinegar until they were a lovely color and the vinegar was reduced to a syrup.

They're like onion candy- so sexy and good that they make you feel like you might need a home pregnancy kit the next morning. We just ate them as is, warm.

I made shitloads of cookies this year (all on xxxmas eve-eve and xxxmas eve, no less), but my favorites are the simple butter & sugar cookies with almond-flavored icing. I love these ones as they look like snowballs. Damn evil, delicious, not covered in dirt and dog pee snowballs.

Someday they are going to find a way to get back at me- I can see it in their eyes that they're plotting and planning...
If I go missing, start with the cats- they're the ones with the motive. My body will probably be pretty easy to find as they'll most likely try and hide me in the litter box with all the other turds.

The other night I made a simple green salad with a warm dressing that had a tiny bit of bacon, some lemon, onions, a touch of jalapeno and some chopped up cipolline onions from the previous pic. Then I softish-poached an egg and sprinkled some roasted red pepper (from a jar) on top.
God, this was good. Slap your Grandma good. Lick the plate AND the table good.

Then Pan seared wild-caught Copper River salmon on black bean quinoa with a jalapeno-lemon-tomato relish.
Nom, nom, nom.

It was so good, Trouble licked my face clean. Good boy.

.

Ho-Ho-Hum.

On a scale of 1-10 I'd give this christmas a 4, maybe 4.5.

Good, not great.

I ate a lot, drank a lot, opened presents and was halfway naked in a hot tub. So, yeah. The usual.
The usual, except kind of lackluster, and at times- frustrating and irritating.

If this christmas was a TV show, I'd say it was like the last two seasons of The Love Boat- still marginally good, but kind of "forced" and with d-list instead of b-list celebrities. When Julie the Cruise director was replaced with "Judy" the cruise director they lost me. Sure, you still have Issac & Gopher, but where's the Julie? WHERE'S THE JULIE????

But...ahem. I digress.

To sum up- christmas? Meh, with a side of woo-hoo, a dash of bah and a smidge of neat-o.

If you haven't noticed, I've been avoiding the com-pu-tor as I'm just not feeling it at the moment. I'm still kind of sick and my head feels like it's filled with that jell-o with the fruit cocktail and cool whip in it that is slowly working it's way out of my body via my nose.

I have to kind of "build up" to regular posting again. Plus, I didn't take any pictures of christmas stuff. Not one. You KNOW how I like photographic documentation of my mediocre life. I'll blame it on being sick, tipsy, apathetic or lazy- take your pick.

I'm going to go now and find what's left of the cookies and shove them into my face. I think a little sugar will get me motivated to- you know, bathe and pull my ass off the couch. Then I'll try and do something interesting to entertain y'all with. Maybe I'll do something crazy, like PUT ON PANTS.

Happy Monday, my apathetic little gelatanous blobs of holiday fun. Happy Monday.

XO
.

Oh, and I'm updating my links this week (long overdue). Some of you have gone private, so if that changes let me know & I'll move you from the bookmarks back to the link list. Some others have gone private & I'm not "on the list", so to speak. I can take a hint. Whatever.
If I remove anyone that I shouldn't, let me know.

Looks like I just stepped in a big, steaming pile of Christmas!

I know I've been notably absent from your action-packed lives as of late. I'm sorry I missed little Dottie's Christmas pageant, and I'm really sorry I forgot to pick your grandma up from her weekly poker game at the VFW (I sure hope someone finds her soon- how far could she have wandered in two days, really?).

I've been sick as a wino with whooping cough and a side of scabies, my dears. I'm achy, tired, and I'm pretty sure I just coughed up part of my spleen. Good times.

Since I'm just sitting here at home with kleenex stuffed up my nose and a warm mug of "special" tea, how's about I rummage through that big ol' box of photos and pull out some candy-coated christmas goodness for y'all?

A little "Whiskeymarie holiday retrospective bonanza starring Pheobe Cates as Whiskeymarie", if you will. Or, "Whiskeymaire's White Trash Hootenanny", if you won't:

Whiskey's first christmas, 1971. Poor little baby Whiskey looks confused. Perhaps she is overwhelmed by all of the sparkly things and packages, or perhaps she just pooped herself.

"That's right, fat guy. Keep those hands where I can see them. And give me a damn Barbie this year, will ya? And how about a Ken doll too, so I can play dirty Barbies again like my weird cousin from the South showed me. Thank you."

All I remember about this dog is that I tripped over him once and fell down the basement stairs.
You will note the awesomeness of the red/olive shag carpeting.

The year we got the BEST GAME EVER- Mouse Trap. This game had approximately 4,674 parts, and usually by the time you finally got it set up it was time for bed. Man, we LOVED that game.

My sister (the one with her tongue sticking out) may have just told me that Santa died in this picture. That would explain me screaming and running away. Well, that or she told me where babies come from. Either way, scary.

Christmas at the Farm with the Hee-Haw side of the family. The man in the Santa suit is Uncle Bucky, who you may remember from this post. I'd say that there is a 99% chance that Bucky is sweating cheap beer and brandy under that suit, judging from the sweat stains.

This is the year I was channeling both Dorthy Hamill and any random Charles Dickens character through my hair and wardrobe. I'm pretty sure this is also the year we got an Atari 2600 under the tree. Pong. Pong. Pong. We were the first people I knew that had an Atari.
Man, that was an awesome year.

Christmas morning in the early 80's. This is the year my Dad bought my Mom a Ronco Food Dehydrator in a sweeping fit of romance. That food dehydrator sat in the box in the attic for the next 8 years, unused. The following year I was recruited to do all of my Dad's shopping for him, including wrapping the gifts and acting surprised as to what was in them.

Look closely- I am this excited!!! to get a box of Love's Baby Soft Perfume. To this day, the smell of that stuff makes me barf in my mouth a little.

Pretty typical christmas eve with the menfolk at our house. Beers, salty snacks and a lively discussion about snowblowers, fishing lures and lumber.

Finally for today, Whiskeymarie on her way to the Snowball Dance at school. This is the one where the girls ask the boys to go. I asked a boy that I had liked (from Proctor- some of you know where this is), and he pretty much spent the night sulking and staring at one of my girlfriends. And- Yes, I still made out with him. Duh.

Between the gift wrapping, coughing up body parts and decking of the halls I don't know if I'll be back before Friday, my dears. I promise to say something socially awkward at an inappropriate moment at a family gathering if you will. Promise?

And, as a side note for Zibbs and Gwen- I believe I was supposed to post a crappy gift for a sick person here, but I'm pretty sure that as I am dealing with SARS or Avian Flu or the Whooping cough that I am the very person who should be at the receiving end of such crappiness. And don't give me that crap about needing to be "terminally ill" or something. Sheesh.

Have a happy Holiday, my beer-swilling, santa suit-wearing, sweaty sugar cookies. Happy Holidays.

XO
.