December 2007

I’ve heard a lot about how you shouldn’t take your game face off at the company Christmas party. You should act just as professional as you would inside of the office - remember: you are still surrounded by your coworkers, managers, and executives! Don’t drink too much wine, don’t take gross advantage of the buffet, and don’t giggle too much when someone tries to talk to you about a project! People will remember how you acted come Monday morning!

Well, I think it might be time for some different advice - advice for the people earning under $30,000 a year and with no company prospects. People like me. Personally, I see the holiday party as my one annual chance to eat and drink money away from my company - money that they are so stingy with when it comes to my paycheck. Sure, I might make $11 an hour - but you should see how many dollars worth of steak I can eat in an hour. Or how many $11 glasses of wine I can drink. I might not be very good at many things, but I am an expert passive-aggressive eater.

My own company holiday party is tomorrow afternoon. It’s one of those always-fun mandatory parties where you can either attend or stay at work and log hours, which I find always puts everyone in a festive mood. The mailroom people are never invited, and we’re never supposed to say anything about it. There will be a lunch buffet, and open bar, and a lot of forced smiling.

I’m especially mad because today I tried to mail a personal letter (a cable bill) at work and got called out for it in a company-wide email MARKED WITH A RED EXCLAMATION POINT! They really know how to push my buttons. They didn’t know who tried to do it and they are holding my cable bill hostage until I come forward and get a scarlet M pinned to my chest (The M in this case, would stand for Mailing personal letters at work). All for a 40 cent stamp!

I mean, they’re acting like not every single person here has mailed personal letters and packages from work. And if they think I’m going to come forward and confess just so that I can reclaim my unsent letter, they are so, so wrong. I’d rather wait for the next bill and pay a late fee. Instead, I’m going to go out of my way to eat an extra 40 cents of food tomorrow, even after I’m full.

Here’s the main point: you don’t have to act like you’re at work at your company holiday party. You don’t have to talk about work (it wastes precious time you could be chewing). Don’t hesitate to sample every dessert, maybe even without using the provided utensils. Giggle when the president pronounces Hanukah as if he were Jewish and also deaf and congested. Giggle loud - he should really know better. Most importantly, leave early.

I’ll let you know how things go tomorrow.

I’m not much into New Years resolutions, but I am into best-of end of the year lists. I mean, really into them. Not only do I keep detailed lists of what I read and listen to each year, but I also read everyone else’s top-ten lists and make my own. What’s the greater purpose of this, you ask? Well, I say, let’s not run around asking questions.

Since I don’t read brand-new published-in-2007 books all year long, I’m just going to highlight some of my favorite books and mention a few books you should stay away from at all costs. The complete list of what I read this year is down below - it’s shorter than most years because I spent a solid three months at the beginning of the year reading nothing but short essays. Not that I’m making excuses.

This might also be a good time to tell you about my favorite book website, GoodReads. If you’re on it, you should be my friend. And if you’re not on it and like reading (and making exhausting lists) you should join.

Also - if you read something awesome this year, leave me a comment about it so I can get my hands on it.

Without further delay…

The best book I read in 2007 that was published in 2007: Like You’d Understand Anyway by Jim Shepard.

Runner up: No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July. So I thought the movie that she wrote and directed You, Me, and Everyone We Know to be completely unwatchable. And I found her author photo to be one of the worst I’ve ever seen. And when I was feeling cynical, I found her stories to be trying too hard and a little too focused on some sort of weird Daddy issues she might have. HOWEVER (and this is a big however) she has an unbelievable ability to describe small moments and tiny emotions. It is amazing and it is worth reading through all of the other stuff for these alone. Ignore the Aimee Bender weirdo quirky Hipster-Realism stuff and focus on the little bits of humanity.

The best book I read in 2007 regardless of when it was published: A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. I had read most of Hemingway’s popular stuff over the years but hadn’t ever picked up this one. I read it while Ben was gone on a business trip and it might have been the most intense, weirdly isolating three days of my life. His writing style makes me want to give up. I sobbed while reading the last page - and I don’t usually sob over anything. I’m more of a whimperer.

Runner up: The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Ben and I have been nothing less than evangelical about making our friends, family, and strangers read this book. I’ve talked to weirdos about it on the train. Ben has mailed copies across the country. We should really make a pamphlet that outlines the major points about why this book will make you love the people you love just a little bit more than you thought you could. I don’t know anyone who has taken more than 48 hours to read it.

The other runner up: West With the Night by Beryl Markham. I love reading about totally badass women and I love adventure stories. And I love beautifully written prose. I just wish I had read this book when I was 12 - it might have formed me into a better person. Buy it for your daughters and nieces. Hell, buy it for your sons and nephews.

The worst book I read in 2007 that was published in 2007: Flower Children by Maxine Swann.

The worst book I read in 2007 regardless of when it was published: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. This is also the runner up. That’s how bad it was.

The complete list (highlighted books link to my blog reviews of them)

• Money by Martin Amos
• Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson
• Leviathan by Paul Auster
• March by Geraldine Brooks
• My Antonia by Willa Cather
• O Pioneers! By Willa Cather
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
• The Body Artist by Don DeLillo
• But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz by Geoff Dyer
• The Ongoing Moment by Geoff Dyer
• The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
• A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
• Modern Love edited by Daniel Jones
• No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July
• The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle
• West With the Night by Beryl Markham
• No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• Atonement by Ian McEwan
• On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
• Fooling With Words by Bill Moyers
• Despair by Vladimir Nabokov
• Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessel
• Three cups of Tea by George Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
• The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
• Like You’d Understand Anyway by Jim Shepard
• Great Dream of Heaven by Sam Shepard
• Caucasia by Danzy Senna
• The Best American Sports Writing edited by Glenn Stout
• Flower Children by Maxine Swann
• If the Creek Don’t Rise by Rita Williams

I have trouble with exclamation points in general - they’re very useful, but they lose their effectiveness if you break them out too often. This rule is doubly true for the Microsoft Outlook red exclamation point - the little symbol you can put next to the subject of your email that stands for urgency or high importance. My new boss has trouble with this concept to the point where I am not sure if she knows where the period is located on the keyboard or realizes that not all of her emails are highly important.

If you use the high importance red exclamation mark, say, twice a month, I’m going to understand the special pressing and critical nature of your request and treat the email accordingly. If you use it every single time you send me anything it’s going to start meaning less and less to me. In fact, I just might go to lunch before even opening your email in some sort of attempt to teach you a lesson.

What you’re telling me, with your dozens of red exclamation point emails, is that you think that everything you need is way more important than anything else I need to do for other people. It’s like cutting in line for no reason. I hate it so, so much.

In order to curb red exclamation point use, I have written a short two-example guide to help everyone understand when its usage is appropriate.

Inappropriate Usage

Subject: Book Order (!)

Hi Sarah!!!

Could you order the below books for me??
Thanks!!!
Appropriate Usage

Subject: Book Order (!)

Hi Sarah!!!

Could you order the below books for me?? :)

Also, I am badly wounded and can’t stop the blood flow!!! I am typing this to you with the remainder of my strength. If you could call an ambulance or fashion a makeshift tourniquet for me out of office supplies, that would be great!!! Please hurry!!!

Thanks!!!

When I was in college, one of my favorite things to do was go over to my friend Nick’s house. He would cook dinner for a few friends and then we’d play video games and watch Eddie Izzard DVDs. One of his specialties, curried chicken and veggies, was so good that I would head over to his house a little early and watch him make it. Although I’ve never written the recipe down and although it’s changed over the years due to my laziness and inability to purchase $9 spices, I still make it whenever I feel like drinking a beer and watching Delirious.

Just like so many other dishes that I love, this curry has a huge amount of wiggle room. You can put in any veggies that you can imagine - anything you have in your fridge — I’ve just listed my favorites below. You can also switch out the chicken for tofu or make an all-veggie curry (both vegan). You also shouldn’t worry if you’re missing a spice or two. It’s all delicious.

2 pounds chicken breasts (or thighs and legs) (or tufu)
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
1 large potato, cubed
1 head of broccoli
1 green pepper
1 14-ounce can of diced tomatoes, drained
1-14-ounce can of coconut milk
a big spoonfuls of tomato paste
2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
garlic, to your liking
a big palmful of curry
a small palmful of coriander
a small palmful of cumin
1 stick of cinnamon
a few whole cloves
dash of red pepper
salt
rice

Heat the oil and garlic in a large wok or saucepan. Cube the chicken and add to the oil. Add all of the spices and the onion and cook the chicken for a few minutes stirring often - the chicken should be coated in spices and bright yellow. Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, coconut milk, and potatoes. Cover and simmer for 10-15 minutes, to allow the potatoes to cook and the chicken to cook through. Add the veggies (whichever you choose - I’ve also used carrots, snap pea, regular peas, spinach, eggplant, squash, etc.) and cover again so that the veggies can steam (another 10 minutes or so). The veggies should be bright green. Poke the potatoes with a fork to check doneness. Serve over hot rice.

Play some videogames and watch some British comedy.

There should be a special word for the feeling one feels upon getting a “nice rejection.” It’s kind of like a combination of the back-handed compliment (I love that skirt - I barely notice your hammish thighs!) and the it’s-not-you-it’s-me breakup (I want to focus on my career. In fact, I want to focus on anything that isn’t your hammish thighs.). It’s like being on the waiting list when I was looking at colleges (We’d love for you to join us, if a certain number of people we’d love to join us more than you decide to go to better universities).

I say this, of course, because I got a kind rejection in the mail yesterday - this time from Meridian, a mid-level lit magazine. It’s hand-written and signed by the editor, which is good. However, it is a rejection, which is bad. It says, and I quote, “I regret the delayed response. I was trying hard to find a place for this in our magazine, but it hasn’t worked out. Please try us again. Best of luck.”

Granted, these always make you feel better than the dozens and dozens of blank photocopied mass-mailed business-card-sized rejections, which make me picture the magazine’s submissions readers reciting sentences from my piece out loud and laughing at how outrageously bad it is. However, can’t they think of a lamer excuse than, “I couldn’t find a place for it in the magazine”? How about on a series of blank pages? Why not just tell me that you think we’d make better friends and should take a break from one another?

It always makes my heart feel… something confusing: they almost wanted me. They almost did, but they didn’t. Le sigh.

I got it - it’s the same exact feeling when you get picked not exactly last for a team sport in gym class - let’s say basketball. Sure, it feels bad to stand there for so long while the girl with the glasses gets picked, followed by the girl with the skin thing, followed by the girl who wets herself. But then you hear your name right before the very last girl is picked and run to join your team, giving them high-fives one after another, thanking god that they built that wheelchair ramp to the gym so that Margaret could participate.

The weather in Queens isn’t pretty today. The meteorologists are calling it a “wintery mix” but that is nothing more than a blatant euphemism for, “like hell, if hell weren’t so hot. You will definitely fall on your ass at least once.” The stuff falling from the sky has been changing every hour or so - we’ve seen snow, sleet, freezing rain, regular rain, ice and everything in between. There are a good two inches of a substance on the sidewalks that I would describe as ice soup.

We walked like lame, miserable penguins to the gym and then walked like lame miserable tired penguins home from the gym. And just as I was about to comment on how glad I was to be inside for the night, we both realized that we didn’t have anything to eat. Sure, we could call a delivery boy, but we’d probably have to tip him $20 and look directly into his sad eyes, which would have inevitably been creepily frozen open.

Perhaps, I thought, we would starve.

But, thinking back to the sexy tight-jeaned hero of my youth, MacGyver, I was inspired - MacGyver, who could build a bomb out of a pen cap, a water hose, a lamp stand and a piece of chewing gum! MacGyver, who could do anything he set his mind to as long as he had his Swiss Army knife and a roll of duct tape! This icy dinner-less situation was my own personal Murdoc, and I would hunt down a solution to the problem just as McGyver hunted down international assassins.

I started through the cabinets, the awesome MacGyver theme song running through my head. I found the only real protein we had in the house: frozen shrimp pushed up in the back of the freezer. I went through our dried goods and rustled up some whole wheat pasta.

In a large saucepan, I did what any good Louisiana girl would and started up a roux - I didn’t have any butter (and like cooking healthy) so I used two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and two table spoons of flour. I browned the oil and flour while whisking it on medium heat. Then I added 1 and 1/4 cups of 1% milk and kept whisking, until it was as thick and smooth as McGyver’s silky mullet.

To the white sauce I added a small chopped white onion and a well-drained can of diced tomatoes. To season it, I added a small bay leaf, parsley, garlic, salt, and pepper. After letting it simmer for about 15 minutes (to cook the onions and mix the flavors) I added 1/4 cup of parmesan cheese and the shrimp. (I know you’re not supposed to mix seafood and cheese, but I’ve seen Red Lobster do it and, obviously, The Lobster is the leading authority on cooking seafood.)

I added the pasta to the sauce, and I was done. I didn’t even have to use chewing gum.

Meanwhile Ben, who was acting as Macgyver’s closest friend Pete, created a delicious salad with vegetable odds and ends he found. Within 20 minutes, we were sitting in front of a full hearty and healthy meal. It wasn’t half bad.

The best part of the experience wasn’t the food at all. It was using my analytical thinking and my creativity in order to forge something unique yet functional. Its simple, obvious moral was perhaps even as simple and as obvious as the morals that MacGyver learned at the end of each episode.

You might think that I date Ben because he’s loving and supportive. Or because he’s an ambitious and successful sports writer. Or because he’s smart and hilarious and inquisitive and fun.

But you’d all be wrong. I keep Ben around because he used to be a personal trainer and for years now I’ve been taking advantage of his free advice and training sessions. The way I look at it, I’m practically making $60 every time we go to the gym together. Sure, when we go out I have to deal with girls flinging themselves at his chiseled six-pack like how birds fly into windows and sure, I have to deal with making him feel better every time someone makes fun of the place where his neck is supposed to be - but it’s all worth it for the free health and fitness advice.

Like yesterday, for example, when we completed the Dread Circuit. The Dread Circuit is the hardest workout routine we do - and we do it probably two to three times a week. It consists of 20 minutes of throw-up-in-your-mouth ab work and 40 minutes of cardio weightlifting. Cardio weightlifting, for those not familiar, is exactly like regular weightlifting except that your body is on fire and you can’t breathe the whole time.

Still, even though this sounds bad, it’s probably the most challenging and rewarding physical undertaking I complete all week. And it makes the next day’s workout (cardio and light lifting) feel as easy and free as eating a tub of popcorn while watching Dr. Phil in my underwear.

And that’s just one of the many really general things I’ve learned. Here are some more:

A gym buddy makes everything better. I really don’t know how people go to the gym every day alone, without someone to hold them accountable. As totally awesome as I feel on my way home from the gym, I usually feel a lot more like huddling in the dark in a fetal position while moaning when I get home from work. Ben confirmed it: the people who are consistent and the people who succeed almost always have a buddy to help them out along the way - to honk with the car running in the driveway, to spot you when you’re weight-lifting, and to keep you in check.

Routine is good, but so is variety. Before I knew Ben, I did the same exact things at the gym every time I went. Even though it’s good to consistently show up at the gym it’s not good to consistently do 30 minutes on the elliptical and then do the same ten ab exercises. You have to constantly shock and surprise your body - and make sure you’re working everything and not wearing out the same six muscles day after day. For cardio, mix the elliptical with the stationary bike and the treadmill and the stair climber, for example. Ben, who is a superstar, mixes weights, cardio, boxing, jujitsu, yoga, circuits, and Pilates.

If you’re a girl, don’t be afraid of bulking up. Ben said something he always heard from women who were starting workout plans was that they didn’t want to lift weights because they didn’t want to look like a man. To which Ben said, seriously, don’t worry about it. Unless you’re really lucky, the only things weightlifting will do to you is tone your body and distribute your weight better, help you burn fat, and strengthen your bones. Oh, and it makes you feel awesome. It won’t make you look like the Hulk - women have a natural layer of body fat, not to mention we just don’t have the hormones to jack up like men do.

Really, don’t be afraid of the gym in general. In my pre-Ben years, I was certain that everyone at the gym 1) looked like models 2) knew exactly what they were doing 3) would stare at me for a moment, then nudge their model friend, then point, then laugh. But now I know that the gym is filled with helpful, normal-looking people who are generally excited that you, too, are at the gym. If you don’t know how to use a piece of equipment, don’t hesitate to ask someone - I recommend the funny, supportive guy with neck-esteem issues.

…and don’t be afraid of the free weights. Even after I was comfortably going to the gym, I was terrified of the free weights section, where the grunty men with back braces would congregate. I made up excuses not to learn free weights (which I now love and prefer) because I “didn’t want to encroach on their space” or “look like an idiot with my 8-pound baby weights.” To which Ben responded, “Screw them.” It’s a good philosophy in general.

Just because you went to the gym doesn’t mean you worked out. You have to push yourself even after you’ve motivated yourself to walk through the door. There’s this one woman I see at the gym every day reading a fitness magazine and pedaling on the reclined bike like she’s driving her grandfather to church. This woman probably thinks that she works out for an hour everyday when in fact she’s only doing some light reading. There’s also a guy who is there everyday who stands around where the weights are in his badass workout outfit, not doing much except talking about how much he can bench (if he ever tried it out). He should at least be looking for wherever his sleeves went.

Don’t feel bad if you miss a day. Don’t sacrifice your social life. Don’t miss that totally awesome Lifetime Movie about kidnapping newborns. Don’t beat yourself up if you just feel too tired or sick or just need a break. However, try not to miss two days in a row (if you’re not sick or injured), because two days usually turns into three. This week, for example, I want to go out after work on Friday when I’d usually be at the gym. So I’m getting up a little early to do some living room yoga.

Know the difference between “the burn” and pain. It’s good to work hard, but it’s just as important to know when to stop or when to take a day off. A good rule of thumb is that you should have to take a shower when you get home and possibly burn your gym clothes. You should not have to cry while taking the shower. Being uncomfortable isn’t always bad, and pushing yourself is the only way that you’ll improve. On the other hand, an injury will keep you out of the gym for days or weeks and set you back.

Take advantage of your free personal training session. You usually get one when you join a new gym, and if you don’t you can usually ask for one and get it. He or she will show you how to use all the machines correctly and give you a basic routine that’s right for your goals. For free! You probably don’t even have to sleep with him if you don’t want to.

Exercise makes you feel awesome. Duke did a study recently that showed that exercise works just as well as antidepressants. And while I don’t recommend you drop your meds and start jogging, I’ve found going to the gym feels to me very similar to meditating. You clear your mind and focus on your body. After a few weeks, even though I looked almost exactly the same (and even put on a few pounds because I was building muscle), I had so much more plain love for the awesome and wonderful machine that my body was.