Below are the 6 most recent journal entries recorded in Alex's LiveJournal:

Friday, May 8th, 2009
10:44 pm	Je comprends le français... un peu. The man on the Pimsleur Listen and Learn French tapes sounds so... forlorn when the woman he is speaking with runs off to talk to a friend... "Vous parlez français très bien!" There's a pause, and you respond, "Merci." Then another pause. You repeat. "Merci." Another pause. "Au revoir!" she shouts and waves back at you as she turns and runs off to talk to a friend she sees. "Au revoir, mademoiselle," you say, a twinge of sadness in your voice. "Au revoir," you repeat, a little quieter, almost to yourself, as you watch her run off across the wet sidewalk, clutching her thin jacket around her narrow shoulders with one hand, the other pressing her hat to her tête as the wind tries to pull it off. The rain that patters on the sidewalk falls a little harder as you watch her go. THIS IS THE END OF TODAY'S UNIT. WHEN YOU CONTINUE WITH THE NEXT UNIT TOMORROW, PLEASE START ON TRACK 2. Current Mood: weird (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 17th, 2008
2:04 pm	This is maybe one of the most wonderful things ever. http://whatyouseewhenyoudie.ytmnd.com/ I can't stop laughing. It just makes me so happy. Current Mood: giggly (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 13th, 2008
10:12 pm	How I talked with Alton Brown I talked to him. I talked to him! So I went to see Alton Brown at the Artsch center (is that how you spell it?!) and as soon as we got in we were directed over and got our seats vastly improved. Apparently, they hadn't sold out. We got moved so very close to Alton! But that's not the best part. Oh no! A lady asked me if I wanted to ask Alton a question. I thought, "oh shit, what can I ask him, I don't know?" But then... OH FATES! How you smile upon me! This morning, at our DnD session, we were talking, and Rev Mike asked a ponderous question: can you think of a food that would not be improved with the addition of cheese or chocolate? Truely a ponderous question! But, can you imagine? The coincidence! The question sprang to mind. It was perfect. Just silly enough, yet culinary and based in truth. A difficult question! I wrote it down and handed it to a lady, seated at a table. She looked at it and laughed, and immediately added it to the "chosen" pile. HOLY SHIT. Alton Brown is one of the funniest men alive. No doubt. There wasn't a moment when the audience wasn't laughing or cheering or shouting out answers to his questions or more questions of their own, and he made the interviewer blush several times. Brilliant man. Then he went and made crepes suzette, and squeezed some oranges, and threw a refridgerator full of bottled water on the floor. And then they came and got me! I saw them lining people up, so I stood and told them I was here, here I was, they wanted me, surely. And I asked my question, the very last one. They wanted to finish with my question! I walked up, and my heart was pounding, and my mind went blank. "I'm Alex," I said. AUGH, I SOUND LIKE AN IMBECILE. Well, always start with your name, as Geoff says. It's one thing you can't screw up. Then my mind went blank. What was my question? Oh god, what could it be?! SHIT SHIT SHIT. Panic. And then it came back, and I asked it, awkwardly, with way too much hand gesture. I was on two enormous screens. Oh lord. There I was. And he stared right at me. And he was smiling! But then I asked it, and he thought for a while. Thought and thought. He repeated the question. "Truffles." A pause. "Foie gras," he said, and then "lobster." And he thought some more, and laughed, and said something like, "yeah, that's... it's hard." And I sort of mumbled some sort of half commiseration, like, "yeah, they go with everything..." and then he asked me if I knew of anything. And I mentioned that I had had pickles suggested to me. There was a slight grone of acknowledgement from the audience. And then he said, "but, I have made deep fried cheese pickles." And everyone laughed. "They were good!" It was crazy. I nearly died. I can't believe it! I thanked him a million times and walked off, and the show ended after he let a little kid in one of the balconies ask a question, what his favorite episode was. The garlic one. Oh, it was brilliant. He is funny and full of information and very geeky and the internet! Oh how he mentioned the internet. It was a wonderful time. I feel like the belle of the ball, or Dick Clarke on New Year's Eve, or something like that. I can't believe it! Shit. In five years, perhaps we will meet again, and I will bring him a copy of the picture I took with him when I was still overweight and awkward and will remind him of the question I asked, and maybe he will remember. Maybe he will say, "oh yes! That question was great." Who knows? Perhaps we will meet again! Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. I am inspired. Current Mood: ecstatic (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 11th, 2008
6:00 pm	Like a banana had carnal relations with a pineapple. Let me tell you, dear friends: anticipation has a most singular taste. For months now, I have been periodically pacing past the rear windows of the University of Miami's library, periodically rummaging through the leaves of the plants that grow on the columns, the Monstera Deliciosa, attracting countless curious stares. But lo, I ignored them all, for I harbored a secret; secret children, hidden among the leaves, swelling each day more. I monitored their progress, waiting for that sacred day when the first of them would burst, throwing off its scales and exposing its sweet, tender flesh for me to consume. The monster fruit! A fruit that takes an entire year to ripen, a year-long masterwork of nature ready for taking by those adventurous enough to try it. Adventurous, yes; it is not for the inexperienced. The oxalic acid contained therein is enough to kill you; like rutabaga, their natural defenses keep of those predators who are not kin to the knowledge of the fruit. But no! That would not be me, that corpse. The scales containing the concentrated caustic would throw themselves aside for me, an intricate puzzle undone by time and patience. I twisted the fruit gently, its scales still falling, and it came off it's suckling branch easily; it knew its time had come. I rushed home, the single large flower pedal, now long dried, cradling the fruit with care. There, beneith the blistering scales, aha! Pale yellow kernels, falling off the fruit's bone. I dug deeper, deeper, the fragrance floating fluid, omnipresent, overpowering, collecting those kernels in a bowl to savor, and as I took my first bite, their sweetness exploded on my tongue, a delicious cross between fruits of all kinds; as though a banana had had carnal relations with a pineapple, while a mango looked on, shyly, from the corner of the room, not quite looking, only peeking once or twice. Glorious, but dangerous, the few bits of scale still left on the kernels biting, infrequently, into my tongue and lips. The taste of inexperience! But I am not to be blamed; after all, the anticipation was too great! I could not resist. If I am not dead by morning, you will all know the secret now; it is yours to cherish. For me, I have a new cluster of fruits to ripen; to watch, waiting, for that day when I shall rush home with that anticipation again, my yogurt and cereal once again enriched by the pleasant taste of the tropics. Four out of five stars. Current Mood: amused (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008
11:11 pm	I was walking to my car. It's night time, and I'm crossing campus. A crab scuttles slowly across my path, and into a bunch of bushes by the base of a tree. Yes. A crab. A CRAB. Nowhere near the ocean. Or water. Of any kind. This planet is weird. Current Mood: weirded out (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, January 30th, 2006
5:31 pm	Skyline The door was unlocked today. (7 Comments |Comment on this)