Lizzie, Interrupted

I have the curtains drawn aside and the blinds open and some windows cracked and two fans blowing to circulate the air. I’ve got tea brewing but some stronger stuff available if you’d like. Let’s sit and enjoy some time together.

The week started off tastily when I saw someone online say to treat hot dogs like any other cut of meat and suggested using marinade or steak seasoning (depending on he type of hot dog). Since I had hot dogs to use and buns that were threatening to go bad at any moment I decided to give it a try – and I’m kind of mad at myself that I didn’t think of doing this before, because hot dog if these weren’t the best hot dogs I’ve ever had.

This made enough for eight hot dogs:

• 1/4 c. olive oil
• 2 Tbs soy sauce
• 1 Tbs Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1 Tbs brown sugar

I scored the dogs diagonally and marinated them for about 5 hours before grilling on my grill pan and here’s how they turned out:

Work has settled down a bit from the fall registration rush, which means that instead of in-person interaction my focus has shifted to back-end technical projects, ending with an end-of-day email just before the long break from my VP saying “can we talk about [x] at our next meeting” – which just so happens to be at 8:30 on Tuesday morning (and we’re off for the Labor Day weekend). But since I am a professional, I’m ready for that meeting (at least that’s what I tell myself).

There are mushrooms at work that I’ve enjoyed seeing on my once-or-twice daily walks, and I’m glad they haven’t been cut, kicked, or mowed down.

Also at work this week I went to one of the vending machines (a rare occurrence) to get a snack and decided on cheese puffs. To my dismay it looked like the bag was going to get stuck, and then I’d have to go and talk to the Accounts office to get my money back and still be out a snack but at the last moment the bag kicked out and when it did it brought the next bag with it, so I got double snacks.

Last night I remembered I had the second bag, and recalled seeing someone say you could use chopsticks to eat them without getting the cheese dust everywhere (like on books and screens) and like the hot dogs, I am upset that I didn’t try this before because it worked so well.

After work Friday I wanted to go thrift shopping but only made it to the Goodwill when I started having a panic attack. There weren’t even a lot of people there, but all of a sudden it seemed Ike everything was really loud and the walls were closing in/spinning and my fight/flight response was telling me to leave quickly as my heart began to race. So I went to the car and did some breathing exercises until I could drive home.

I stopped to get a sandwich on the way, and ran into some coworkers and family and had to act like nothing was wrong even though my insides wanted to be outside. And if you’re one of the two people I saw that day and you’re reading this, hello!

I made it home and ate and went to sleep and had very strange dreams, like being told we were broke because somehow we’d accidentally ordered thousands of dollars of Band-Aid adhesive bandages from Amazaon and they weren‘t allowing us to cancel the order.

But I felt better enough about six hours later to go out for a date night. We went to a local place that’s recently done updates to both their kitchen and their menu and it’s always been good but now they’re focusing on the things they do well and we had a really good experience. I had meatballs and french fries and Krystal had a Greek burger (which I had a bite of) and then we went to see a local production of the rock-musical Lizzie.

We ran into the director as we waited for the doors to open and he saw my shirt and asked “is that an Interrupters shirt?” and it was and that’s how I found out that we both like the band The Interrupters. Folks on the street got an impromptu a capella rendition of “She’s Kerosene”.

This was actually the second time this week that something like that happened. At one of our rehearsals I was talking to a castmate and we started talking about shows we’d seen and she mentioned that The Interrupters were one of her favorite openers for one of the concerts she’d been at. That time we sang “She Got Arrested”.

And of course, in terms of music, the big nes this week is that Taylor Swift got engaged. I’m thrilled to see the wedding but coming to terms with the fact that now I’m, going to have to tolerate the abomination that is American football appearing more and more in my feed. What’s ever worse is that Travis Kelce seems like an okay guy – but why did he have to play football?

But anyway, back to the theatre. I paid a little too much money for a drink that claimed to taste like an orange creamsicle. It was close enough and was good. The show was great and reminded me just how much talent we have in our town; my only quibble is with the premise of the show itself (which is not anyone’s fault but the person that wrote it) in that it assumes Lizzie Borden’s guilt. I am firmly in “the uncle did it” camp.

Saturday I managed to go thrifting and do my groceries. I did my thrifting first so that my groceries wouldn’t go bad, and one of the folks behind the counter welcomed me in and then said

You look familiar. Were you at [restaurant] last night? You and your girlfriend looked like you were having so much fun. I hope it works out for you two.

When I told here we’d been married almost seventeen years (come this January) she was pleased as punch, as they say.

Unfortunately not everyone was so pleasant. I was at a smaller grocery store and they were short-staffed with only three workers keeping things running and this couple behind me were getting irate and started complaining about the service (or rather lack thereof) in German and were overall being quite rude. So I turned around and told them

Halt dein Maul

Which isn’t the rudest way I could have told them to shut up, but I did in fact imply they were animals, so pretty rude coming from a stranger, but they deserved it. What fallowed was awkward silence followed by their talking about their plans for the day.

Today I’m paying for what I had for supper last night: six cheese-filled pretzel bites, two pieces of garlic Texas toast, two pieces of regular buttered toast, and a bowl of Lucky Charms with whole milk all washed down with a can of ginger ale. But to be honest nothing really sounds or tastes good as of late, and that’s thank to the sparkling depression brought on by the state of things here in the US, what with he descent into fascism and a not-insignificant number of people blaming trans and nonbinary people for somehow being the “common denominator” of gun violence despite being responsible for 1.3% of mass shootings since 2014 (or is it 2018?) while 99% of mass shootings have been carried out by straight men, 57% by straight white men, and 100% carried out using guns – yet somehow none of those things are worth being considered.

Anyway, I’ve spent several days finding new ways to shut down Christian Nationalists and gun worshippers. It helps that I know the arguments since I was raised in those circles (and, to my shame, used to believe some of their lies).

I’m not sure what I’ll be doing today, but it’ll probably involve doing some journaling and running lines since we’re now three weeks from opening night.

How are you doing?
What have you been up to?