Filed under: Uncategorized
The gist of this long post is that I am testing out a new place to host my blog – http://blninja.tumblr.com/
The rest of this post is a discussion of why and hopefully will get others on the bandwagon to join Tumblr and try it out!!
So for anyone who has checked it out, I tweet way more often than I blog here at WordPress. Sometimes I just feel like I don’t have enough time to blog and I think that is because blogging suggests thinking about a post, sitting down, writing it out, editing it for errors/length, etc. . . That is a lot of work when you are busy.
Twitter provides a quick place to update but you are limited to 140 words a post which suggests the other extreme:
post: “I’m at the coffee shop”
post 2:”now I’m leaving the coffee shop”
post 3: considering taking a poop . . .
You get my drift.
I have found what might be the perfect in-between – Tumblr
Tumblr is fairly new and has been neglected thus far due to the popularity of Twitter and Facebook. Tumblr also provides updates to my Twitter if I would like but I have the option of whether or not to post to both. I like the idea of being able to update friends and family without forcing my updates on other readers who may have no interest (ala Facebook news feeds/Twitter).
The best part, the posts are clearly intended to be smaller than typical blog posts however I can write as much as I want and I am able to upload movies, pics, even audio files without any hassel.
So I’m going to give it a fair shake and see what Tumblr is all about. Catch me at my newest place on the net: http://blninja.tumblr.com/
I’ve been lacking in updates lately but can you blame me?
Bar review began this Tuesday, I have a trial coming up, oh, and did I mention Brian lives with me now??
Yup, we got Brian almost all moved in on Saturday. He is still paying rent on the old place for a couple weeks – his old roomie is still there until the 10th so we haven’t gotten everything out of there yet, but all of the important stuff has been moved.
We utilized a storage unit because my place is fairly small but I am pretty impressed with how well everything has fit so far. We are making it work. We are getting ourselves situated with the new arrangement and it is going along fine. The only clear downside I have noticed so far is that the housework, dishes, and just general daily upkeep has tripled. If I were to just toss my clothes from the day on the floor or bed in the evening like I used to, things would get out of control in no time. I’ve worked hard so far to keep the place as well organized as I can and it seems to be working out pretty well.
Things are good otherwise. This is going to be a very busy summer with studying for the bar but so far it hasn’t been too bad. I am sure things will start to get hectic this weekend/next week.
Well, I wish I was better at updating but right now I need to do some cleaning, check on supper, and organize a plan for weekend studying.
Ciao!
Filed under: daily grind
Today was a fairly crap day. . . frustrating and lame. I thought about telling you all about it, I’ve decided it isn’t worth reliving in too much detail but here are the highlights:
multiple technological issues from printer to phone to computer,
having to smile and make small talk with guy who deferred me from job,
bumping into the girl who I think got my job,
deposing incompetent detective from hell,
and having to haul a 35 lb box across 3 city blocks in a skirt and heels.
All while in the midst of the most mind-blowing cramps and back ache known in PMS history.
Needless to say, I was not a pleasant camper today.
Fortunately, after a long afternoon nap, I have managed to be fairly productive tonight getting the rest of my packing complete.
Now I just need to get to bed and forget this whole lame day.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Got news on the job yesterday – essentially deferred. I don’t plan to dwell on it. I am going to study like mad for the bar (because if you don’t pass that, who cares what kind of job you have lined up!) and the MPRE and do my best and look for jobs in whatever spare time I have.
As for today, I have Brian’s future closet, the linen closet, and the bathroom all prepared for his arrival over Memorial Day weekend. Now I just have to finish organizing my closet and the bedroom and pack up the bar and barware. Everything else will be taken care of when he moves in; the bar, bed, tv, trunk, boxes, and maybe some other random items will be moved into storage. Brian’s fabulous bed and television will be moving in here. The only other really large items coming here will probably be his dresser and desk. It will all be good.
Otherwise, I am working on a case that will likely go to trial in the next two weeks. I will know for sure if it will go on Monday after we see who shows up for our depositions – we aren’t expecting much.
Well, that is it for now – ciao ya’ll!
wow, that was quite the closing combo . . . .
CongAgra foods makes Banquet PotPies. We always had some in the freezer when I grew up. Well they were tainted with salmonella not so long ago making many people sick. CongAgra tried and tried to figure out just what ingredient it was that was at risk of killing their customers but dagnabit, they just couldn’t find the culprit. That isn’t surprising considering the fact that they don’t even know who supplies most of their ingredients or if those suppliers actually check the foods for contaminants! ConAgra’s solution? To put your health into your own hands (where it ought to be) and tell you to check several spots in your potpie with a food thermometer and check the internal temperature for a reading of 165 degrees.
I have a better idea. Literally take your health into your own hands and tell ConAgra where they can put their potpies.
I would like to give a product shoutout to Amy’s Kitchen - the maker of wonderful foods including MANY frozen entrees and pizzas which are healthy, organic, sometimes vegan (but not always), and tasty. I haven’t had any Amy’s product that I wished I hadn’t bought and I am in love with their Roasted Vegetable Pizza. The products are sold at most major retailers – no need to go to an expensive health food chain and they appeared on the Food Network at one point with a look into their factories – clean, beautiful, safe, and sanitary in appearance.
While I can’t deny that owning a food thermometer is not a bad idea and I won’t suggest that no Amy’s product could ever be contaminated by some food borne pathogen, I will suggest that it is probably safer (and will make you feel good) to purchase products from a company that really seems to care and at the very least knows who supplies their ingredients!
Oh, bonus: I see that Amy’s now features diet plans on their website – a regular plan, gluten-free plan, vegan plan, and others for those of you with illness or allergies. You could most certainly lose weight eating their products which are very filling, nutritious, and not full of empty calories. I think I might just give that a go!
Filed under: Uncategorized
I’ve decided to do something I have read about on some other blogs a while back – a pantry challenge. I will only use up the foods that I already have in the house. This is really great timing for such a thing – Brian moves in less than a month from now and I have lots of good food that will go bad unless I take the initiative to eat it up. I figure I will allow myself to purchase one ingredient per meal if I need it but otherwise, nothing else can be bought and brought into the house (besides Diet Coke 
). I’ll keep you all updated as I am sure things will get . . . interesting here soon.
In other news, Oliver is feeling better and can now see out of both eyes.
Here is a picture of Oliver on Friday:
versus today:
Feeling much better apparently
Not much going on around here this morning. I’m getting ready for some taped statements later today. Oliver is sick. I came home yesterday and he greeted me at the front door with a meek “arg”, one of his eyes total glued shut with goo.
I hauled my little pirate off to the vet and we came home with an arsenal of all things cats hate; the pink stuff that usually ends up all over me rather than in the cat, ear drops for both ears, and an eye SALVE. Yea, try holding open a cats eye so you can smear something on it – that is going over real well.
He seems a little less lathargic this morning fortunately. Yesterday afternoon he was like a limp rag.
Otherwise, I’ll be doing taped statements today and then studying the rest of the weekend for my final final on Tuesday!
By now you all know how much I enjoy odd, bizarre, and ridiculous vintage items. One item I was particularly proud of owning was my Popeil Spiral Slicer.
The box is certainly great fun, but it did not compare to the pathetic little tool that was inside:
It you are uncertain of what that is, let me help you out. It is a screw. Yes, a plain old screw attached to something that looks like the end of a broken tool with a semi-sharp filed edge on one side.
The object is to stick the screw into the top of your vegetable or fruit, sit the vegetable upright, stick your finger in the finger hole, and begin to circle around and around your food item until you have spiral sliced through the entire thing.
I was convinced it was a joke and had ZERO intention of using this thing. Even now I wonder if it was really smart to stick this thing into something I intended to place in my mouth. It looks like something that you should find in a tool box, not in a kitchen for crying out loud!
Either way, last night for some dumb reason I decided to destroy one of my little zucchini that needed to be eaten up. At least destruction was what I expected to happen.
Instead, this is what I ended up with:
Yea, a beautifully spiral sliced zucchini.
Even cooked it all still stayed pretty much together and wrapped around my fork just like pasta. If I had thrown marinara on it, it would have sufficed as a carbohydrate sub.
Instead, I tossed the “zucchinasta” in olive oil, lemon juice, thyme, salt, and pepper and ate it right up.
Who knew.
However, I am still quite skeptical about the idea that little tool could go through a hard carrot, beet, or pineapple like the box suggests . . . but I might be inclined to find out for myself.
Just hours after his latest episode of the Daily Dish, Oliver made the decision to leave my blog and create his own space on the web: The Daily Dish. He told me that I wasn’t updating enough for him and it was holding his creative juices back. Good for him . . .
He is currently chilling on the couch, flipping between CNN and Fox, taking notes on various stories for his next post. I’m guessing he will not be updating much while I’m taking my finals – he often helps me stay organized around here. But we’ll see how he does staying on top of his own little web blog.
As for me, I am just thinking about going to bed. I had a pretty productive day today but Monday is going to be SUPER busy for the clinic. Tomorrow I head to Brian’s family gathering for the April birthdays and then I will be right back here creating deposition questions.
Good evening ya’ll!
Filed under: Daily Dish
In response to a recent e-mail about humans and their bathrooms, I decided to do a live report from the bathroom in my own house, and yes, the bathtub was filled with water and in prime condition to attack. However, I managed to escape from the bathroom high and dry.
Here is a look at my adventure in the bathroom.
Daily Dish Episode 1 – Bathrooms
Filed under: blog
A long, long time ago, I told all of you I had a Twitter account and a Jaiku account. I have since deleted THAT particular twitter account (which was kind of stupid since I will NEVER get that lucky for a username again!) but I have another Twitter account and I kept the Jaiku account.
Anywho, what I am getting at, since I have had trouble updating the blog for lack of time, I think I might be able to keep up with Twitters MUCH more easily for the time being. My Twitter address is twitter.com/citychicken. The Jaiku account I am letting “cool off” – I had made the all time fatal mistake of using my real name on there so when you would google my full and very unique name, boom = Jaiku. I don’t want every potential employer and all of my nosey classmates to know that much about me. In the future once that account is no longer associated with me, I might make it open again.
Ciao!
[EDIT] Look over to the left on my blog – you will see “Twitter Tweets” where my Twitter updates will appear on my blog now!!! Woot! So that means if you come here first and see I haven’t updated the blog, you can easily and quickly check out any Twitter updates – and if you click on “Twitter Tweets”, you will instantly be taken to my Twitter page (which is useful since the update here on the blog is NOT instantaneous)[/EDIT]
Filed under: Daily Dish
This is Oliver and welcome to another edition of the Daily Dish. I’ve been very busy lately but just because I haven’t been updating does not mean I have not been working. I have faithfully been reading all of my fan mail and that is what this update is all about. I routinely get questions from readers about the my editorials, myself, and most of all, humans. Today I would like to share my response to one such question. This e-mail came from Snuggles, who prefers to be called “Jim”.
Dear Oliver,
I would like to know more about bathrooms. Why do humans use them, why do humans insist on putting us in the water torture device, and is it ever safe to even go in a bathroom? My home has THREE bathrooms and I find it hard to feel safe anywhere in the house.
Thanks,
Jim (O.G.N. “Snuggles”)
P.S. I am jealous of your name.
Thanks for the question Jim. First of all, I feel for you on your owner given name. I got pretty lucky. As far as your question goes, I have had quite a bit of experience in the bathroom at my house. I only have one such room to contend with but I actually spend quite a bit of time in the bathroom of my own free will. I insist on accompanying my human into the bathroom unless she is running water in the torture device (which has the rather tame human name of “bathtub”). I have found that once humans are IN the bathtub, they must be subdued by its powers because I have never once been put in the bathtub while my human is also in it. So yes, there are safe times to enter the bathroom and even safe times to enter the bathtub.
As for what humans do in the bathroom, I honestly can’t say what their purpose is in there. Granted, they have their version of a litterbox in there, but other than that, it seems to serve little purpose other than for torturing themselves with water (which I will never hopefully understand).
As for potential ways you can avoid water torture, my suggestion is to simply stay as clean as possible and if you do get dirty, hide until you are clean again. This will not protect you all of the time and there is no rhyme nor reason for why humans insist on putting us in the bathtub when they do so when that time comes, your best response is to fight to the death. If you draw blood before you get wet, that will often deter any further attempt by the human to continue the struggle.
Good luck Jim and be sure to stay turned for my next edition of the Daily Dish in which I will share a video of my recent report from a bathroom which ended with me leaving dry and getting a good look at the torture device in action!
Filed under: daily grind
I can’t believe that a whole MONTH passed in between my last two posts! It is amazing how fast time flies. The reason for the lack of updates is that the last month has been downright painfully busy. Things aren’t going to get much easier any time soon either.
Brian and I went over to the hospital a few nights this past week to visit his dad. On Monday, Brian’s father had some pretty major surgery. While I doubt if having to have surgery is ever a “good” thing, his went really well. He is ahead of schedule recovery wise and is leaving the hospital tomorrow. We are all just thrilled he is doing well and are just hoping things continue on this very positive path.
Things are looking good on the job front – I don’t really like to discuss that stuff too much on the blog for privacy reasons but just in case anyone is curious, I am well into the interviewing process and I am feeling pretty good about it.
I managed to log quite a few hours at the clinic this week – the two cases I currently have both should provide me with quite a bit of work which is something I am pretty happy about.
Moot court is over with for anyone who was following that story. I can’t say I wound up unscathed though. The competition itself was fine – it was well run, competetive yet fun, and I received some great critiques from the judges which I always appreciate. The entire process of getting to the competition though and the arrangements I had while in NY left something to be desired. It isn’t a complicated story, but it would involve me complaining a lot and I’d like to avoid being “that person”. I’m just trying to pretend that whole thing never happened and move on with my semester!
Speaking of my semester, it is almost over!!! WOohoo! Just 2 weeks of classes left and then about three weeks until finals AND graduation are all done with. Sadly, that won’t be the end of school for me. Due to some issues with clinic hours, I had to back up my graduation date until August. I don’t have to take any additional classes or anything, I still walk in May, AND I will still be able to take the July bar exam – I just will have an August date on my diploma rather than a May date.
Well, I am getting in loads of clinic hours this weekend and preparing for another interview later this week (which is basically a portion of a mock trial) so I will continue to do that.
Ciao!
Filed under: sad excuse for an update
UGG! This has been one very busy, crazy, nutty semester! I can’t remember the last time I had this much STUFF to do. Bar applications, resume updates, interviews, client issues, and most of all – READING for class. My first year of school sometimes doesn’t even seem to have been as bad!
Tonight is no different but I thought I should take a moment out of my day to just say hello to my faithful followers (who probably have stopped following at this point) and say – I’m alive, well, happy, and just crazy busy.
There will be good news in the future to share I am sure and I will try to keep this more up to date I promise.
Hope everyone is well and I will be back soon!
Filed under: random info
White donut boxes adorned with red Polish eagles piled high in the bakery isle of grocery stores – it must be that time of year. Well, actually, that day has passed but I was too busy to write last Tuesday. “Paczki” the boxes say. Doesn’t sound terribly appetizing . . . that is if you are even able to sound it out. The first time I saw one of those boxes and was served the corresponding boring donut from it, I was skeptical. This is NOT what it is supposed to be. “Poonchky” is the way we said it and after googling just that, I have discovered that isn’t just some bizarre word I picked up from childhood – that really is the way Paczki is pronounced. But it sure as sun isn’t the way they are supposed to taste. You see, if it was just supposed to be a donut, you would be able to get them year round. But this is no donut. You can only eat them just before lent because if you ate them more than once a year, 5 year olds would be having heart attacks in Poland regularly. So how can you tell if you were served a donut or an authentic poonchky? Oh, well just picking one up should be an indicator. It ought to weigh about 3 lbs yet be the same size as the typical filled donut. After eating one, if you haven’t yet decided what to give up for lent, you will be tempted to say “food, I just give up food in general!”
I really have nowhere to go with this conversation . . . I haven’t had a poonchky in years and short of traveling to Hamtramck, I don’t know where I would be able to find a real one. If I ever end up in MI right before lent, I know what I will be doing!
For now. . . I am busy working on school crap. I am uber sleepy at the moment though and ready to call it a day.
Night ya’ll.
