Drink your way to efficiency

There's a round of Champions League this week. Today is the big day for the Bianconeri. ADP has been training "hard" in front of the press for the big game.




Bunny has to wait for The Man to come home from work so she can watch it. Fortunately, ESPN thinks that Chelsea is a big enough opponent to actually broadcast the game. I'll be busy tonight. Don't call me. Bunny HATES Chelsea. I'm all excited and upset. There will be imbibing tonight fer sher.


There was also imbibing last night as Bunny and The Man watched yesterday's Champions League matches. Did you know that, despite its alcohol content, eventually Bailey's Irish Cream goes bad, as in all clumpy and gross? You can drink it that way if you want, but I choose not to. In this phase of the Economy Plan, Dirtbunny is working through the liquor cabinet. Warm weather is coming, and that's when we stock up and make sure that we have enough gin, diet tonic water, tequila, and triple sec to make it through summer time. (I crack myself up. Last summer, we drank exactly zero G&T and zero margaritas. We have two big bottles of gin, two big bottles of tequila, four liters of diet tonic, and three opened bottled of triple sec.) Also, the holidays are another big drinking season for cognac and liqueurs, and it occurred to Dirtbunny recently that there's a lot of stuff in the liquor cabinet that has been around for a while.

"Liquor cabinet." Snerk. Actually, it's two plastic milk crates with bottles in them sitting on the floor of the coat closet.


Anyhoo, what's in there? Do we like any of it? We like the cognac. The good stuff is gone, so we need to replace that, but we won't until after we drink the second-best cognac. We need the Calvados and Amaretto because we bake with it. We like the Frangelico and the Cointreau and the Kahlua. The vodka stays. The rum stays. The peppermint schnapps? We drank that and probably won't get any more. Ditto on the Chambord, the Grand Marnier, and the Jagermeister. The Kirchwasser and the peach schnapps were repulsive. Why did I ever buy that in the first place? It went down the sink, along with the clumpy, curdled Bailey's. The only dubious bottle left in there now is the creme de cassis. I used to make a decent number of Kir cocktails, but I haven't done that in a long time. I'd rather just drink the wine instead. But it's there, all dusty and sticky, and I'll have to taste it because I can't just dump it without finding out if it's any good or not. And once that question is resolved, my liquor cabinet will be fully economized.


But tonight there will be no fucking around with questionable alcohol. Tonight is Chelsea v Juventus, and tonight I will be drinking something I like. I have discovered recently that, yesterday's trashing of Milan by drunken Manchester United fans notwithstanding, English soccer hooligans may be on to something. I am finding the ups and downs of the beautiful game much more bearable when I'm just a leetle toasted (although I must say my knitting suffers for it). Especially when Juve is playing. I'm sorry. We're all au courant with the lingo now, and all the broadcasters are from the UK, so the "correct" construction would be "when Juve are playing." Also, one does not guard or defend one's opponent, one "marks" him while wearing one's kit on the pitch playing for one's side during the fixture, etc. And speaking of UK broadcasters, they use vocabulary words that we don't get much here in the US of A once we are finished studying for the SATs. Yesterday's word was "discomfit." I KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS! It was awesome. In the US of A, we use words like "gutty" and "homely," neither of which mean what the broadcasters think they mean.



Where was I? Before the tangents on drinking and language snobbery, I was trying to make a point about something. OH YEAH! I REMEMBER!

CHAMPIONS LEAGUE

Our cable sports package is decent enough that I get to see pretty much all of my Azzurri boyfriends no matter which team they play on. Except one. Because he plays in France, poor bastard. But he plays for the best team in France (8 consecutive French championships), and they are in the Champions League this year, and they played Barca yesterday, which ESPN has deemed interesting enough to broadcast to American fans, so I got to see Fabi, and I adore him, so today he gets a call-up to FC Dirtbunny.


Here he is: Fabio Grosso, the world's best left back, indispensable Azzurri starter, and current star of Olympique Lyonnais:

Did Lionel Messi score a goal yesterday? No he did not. Why not? Because Fabi was defending him, that's why. How good is Fabi? Good enough to keep Lionel Messi from scoring, that's how good he is. And no futbol player on earth really needs to be better than "good enough to keep Lionel Messi from scoring." That's all the reason I need to put him on the team---oops, I mean side.

.

His hair is shorter now, but he used to wear it longer. Here he is from last summer, defending--oops, I mean marking---Rino during an Azzurri training session. Check out the trailing spiral curls.

OK, so there's a little mutual fouling going on there. This is futbol, not golf. You have to be tough. Fabi is tough. And tall.

And he rocks the stubble and the hair product, too. Pleeeeez come back to Serie A, Fabi, so we can actually get to see you play.

Bunny Checks up on the Economy Plan

So way back when, Dirtbunny was freaking out because of this:



She was very upset that, in this time of economy (before the car wreck, the no-oil-pressure car repair, the Kirby seizure, the doggy neurologist, and the canine MRI), she had no actual money but lots and lots of skin care products in the cabinet. How could this be?




Well, Bunny has been diligently cleansing, masque-ing, toning, scrubbing, and exfoliating ever since. What does she have to show for it?

Hmmmm. That didn't turn out quite as I'd hoped. Here's a more Obsessive-Compulsive way to look at it:

Now we're cooking with Wesson!

By the way, my skin looks the same.

Now what?

I am done with my job for the year. I have done my gift-shopping and wrapping. I have made my menus, done all of the food shopping that can be done in advance, stuffed The Man's stocking, finished the decorating, and put all the detritus back in the basement closet. The laundry is done. The dogs have had baths. We are fully stocked on coffee, sugar and other goodies, booze, and firewood.

The only things I have left to do are all food-related (last-minute shopping for perishables, baking goodies) and, therefore, enjoyable at least in theory although sometimes I can tire myself out and start feeling cranky and unloved. I do and do and do for you people (The Man) and this is the thanks I get! That kind of irrational crap. That usually leads to nap time and then The Man gets some peace, and it all tends to work out.

So, with basically nothing left to do except enjoy the season, I have all this time in front of me that is not crammed full of to-dos. I am at a complete loss. I have constructed this very neurotic world around myself in which my (lack of) value and (lack of) happiness is tied to the (non) recognition I get for my (so-called) accomplishments. If I don't get enough admiration and recognition, it must be because I am not accomplishing impressive-enough achievements. I have weathered a number of professional disappointments this past year, and it has been a pretty thin year for recognition, so I've been feeling really bad about myself. And now, I have time to devote to all the fun things I can think of and I have no idea what to do if it isn't achievement-oriented.

I asked The Man I sez Hey The Man, what should I do with myself? Should I finish up the two knitting projects I have left that aren't very interesting, or I should I start something new, fun, and exciting?

The Man and I have been together since 1873 and he still doesn't quite know what to make of me. This, for example, was a serious question reflective of a deep-seated fucked-up-ness in the Dirtbunny mindset.

The Man sez, do something fun, duh. Like it was an easy question. Leisure time is not so much of a problem for him.

So I am considering what I have in the stash, and I am going to choose something cool to do. Also, I put together some cookie dough that can be sliced and baked later, and I'm making more biscotti. I'm not really going to keep almond flour and candied ginger around until next December, so I might as well use it up in light of the Economy Plan, even though no one here needs any more biscotti. YB is pretty sure he'd like some, though, given how he's sniffing around the oven and licking flour off the kitchen floor. Perhaps I'll pack some up to share with, what did they call themselves? The "old folks in the South"?

Here is our Christmas tree when it was half-decorated:

Check out the serious tilt, especially of the star on top. We're a real Land of Misfit Toys around here. By the way, as I promised, GK has thoroughly checked out the tree and he is no longer askeered of it:

YB is too busy hanging out in the kitchen hoping I'll drop something to show much interest in the tree. For now.