i'll take allergy meds for $200.

almost every night that missy and i dine together at home we wind up watching wheel of fortune, since we're usually just sitting down at about 7:30. but we've actually been 'wheel watchers' from a very early age, since our grandmother loved the show and it was always on whenever we were over her apartment.

besides bringing back fond memories of our childhood, wheel also serves as a great confidence booster since we're excellent at the game. we know - its not hard. but it makes us feel smart nonetheless, especially when we solve the bonus round puzzles.

on the evenings when we manage to get dinner on the table a little bit earlier, we tune in to jeopardy, but unfortunately there usually aren't many bonus round victories for us then. until last night, when i discovered a category i'm an absolute master at -- "at the drugstore".

it was a clean sweep -- i actually might have broken the record in speed answering. i knew all my trips to duane reade would pay off at some point.

best. thing. ever.

we haven't done this feature in awhile...we're sure you missed it.

but notice the additional punctuation in the headline this time around - all for emphasis. we may say this a lot, but tonight we really were, really, privy to the BEST thing ever.

it was a little show called "Point Break Live!". yes, like the cinematic masterpiece. as if the movie itself wasn't enough poorly-acted, busey-filled, homoerotic fun, now there is a live-action version, featuring surfing, skydiving, meatball heroes, and ponchos for the audience members. oh, and the lead of johnny utah was played by a random audience member reading off of cue cards, ensuring the proper keanu-style delivery of the dialogue.

seriously, we haven't laughed this hard in weeks. if you're in the area, definitely check this one out.

weekend entertainment.

i'll start by apologizing for the irratic font thing we have going on - i like everything looking uniform, but lately i don't know if i'm tired of using trebuchet, or tired of the general look of our little site, or just getting old and blind and finding it harder to read what we've been posting, so i'm trying to change some things up. bear with us until we find our groove.

so a few snippets from this blissfully long and incredibly enjoyable weekend,

i knew i was being a bit of an ass on saturday when leaving the house in a pair of ballet flats, but i had a lot of roaming around to do that afternoon and evening and my feet have bored of being booted up all the time, so slush be damned, i trotted off in them. while on my way to the met (their 'glitter and doom' exhibition was awesome) i managed to find an even bigger asshole - the guy attempting to navigate his way around the snow piles on his segway. it took him about 5 minutes to find a way off the curb, as he circled around our fellow pedestrians and the mounds of snow piled up on the corners. i think segways are naturally hilarious, so spotting one in such a ridiculous situation had me in stitches for the rest of the afternoon.

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did you know that pharell's clothing line makes a hoodie with an all-over print of beepers and cigarette butts? i didn't either until this 12 year old (ok, he was 21 but looked 12, as missy and i learned when he approached us smirking and stating "i couldn't help but notice you lookin' at me" and missy informed him "yes, we were trying to figure out exactly how old you are. our guess is 19.") at a bar the other night was rockin one. we tried to steal it, to no avail, as it was definitely the most ghetto fabulous article of clothing we had seen in some time.
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i was addressed last night by a random stranger with "hey rockstar", which is definitely the most creative greeting i've gotten in awhile. and really if you're a male trying to get my attention in a bar, calling me a rockstar gives you a vastly better chance over those sheep using 'hey baby' and 'you're hot'.

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alternatively, what should you not say to a random stranger? while up at the bar getting us drinks my friend found this guy celebrating his bday and as we were out for a birthday as well, invited him over to our table. i somehow wound up being the one left to entertain him, which i suppose was fitting since it turns out he was in fact a 'rockstar' himself, a man in a band, wearing more eyeliner than i was and toting his drumsticks around. in the midst of chatting i noticed he had pulled out a pair of gloves and was putting them on. i could tell they were gloves for drumming, but as he wasn't going onstage and the only thing in his hand was a miller lite i thought this to be a little bizarre, and thinking it was amusing, inquired if he planned on murdering someone at the table. he gave me a short little 'no' accompanied by a scowl - not at all the reaction i was expecting considering i was laughing hysterically at this inside my head - and conversation died down shortly after. oh well. lesson learned - perhaps men in eye makeup don't take jokes as well as others.

winds are blowing southwest at 30 mph, right past the closet doors.

loveandcyanide learned an extremely important lesson about air conditioners this morning: you should cover them for the winter.

not like our wise father hasn't told us this numerous times, but of course we've ignored his warnings. didn't the man know what an eyesore all that insulation would make on our lovely bedroom walls? while we were well aware of some air blowing in from time to time, we like having our bedrooms a little on the chilly side (Bear being of the polar variety and all) so it was never too big a deal.

i awoke this morning at 5:22am to the sound of the wind. i also felt my room, although usually kept at a cool temperature to ensure a comfortable sleep in a cocoon of down comforter - even in august - was excessively chilly. and i swore that in my slight line of vision from within my pillows and blanket that i saw little particles floating around near my alarm clock. but needing more than five hours sleep, i chalked it up to a hallucination caused by last night's vino and went back to bed.

two hours later missy appeared in my room and as we stood underneath our respective air conditioners, being pelted with wind and precipitation, we realized it had indeed been sleeting into our apartment all night.

and so we spent the rest of the morning cleaning up the aftermath of our very special visit from "nor'easter 07".

bird, watching.

so i was sitting here being a busy little worker bee just before, and suddenly had the feeling that someone was staring at me. i glanced at my door, and no one was standing there. so i looked the other way out the window, and saw two pigeons sitting on the rail of the balcony that runs outside my window. the little beasts were just sitting there, staring in.

feeling slightly flustered and on display, i went back to what i was doing. a minute later i looked up, and they were still there, glaring at me with their beady little pigeon eyes. really, how did they know that i inadvertently consumed* one of their kind recently?

this went on for a good 5 minutes until the birds flew away, presumably to go peep in on a fellow coworker.


*if your dining companion tells you that a squab is merely a "small bird", and it tastes really good, you eat first, ask questions like "do you mean 'small bird' as in 'domesticated pigeon'?" later.

nothing says love like a chicken ring.

http://www.whitecastle.com/ValentinesDay/

this is awesome. i have no idea if this is old news. or if this promotion has been a yearly thing, but it clearly wasn't around when i was in college or else i would have certainly been taken to the whitey's across the street from our campus for such a spectacle.

view from the top.

i wore heels today for the first time in about two months, so i got to experience life from a few inches up. it also reminded me of an enlightening conversation a friend and i had recently, about childhood height vs. adult height.

there's no nice way to put it - it sucks to be a tall girl growing up. beyond the standard reasons - you're always in the back of the line, and then there are never enough boys to make it to the back of the line, so you're stuck being line partners - and worse, horror, dance partners! - with another girl. you will inevitably have a boyfriend who is shorter than you, prompting you forever more to only fall for guys under 5'11 (or is that just me?) it will be difficult to buy clothing. and you will be mercilessly teased with height related nicknames like 'the 6ft wiener'. oh the lengths the boys went to find something that rhymed with my first name...

but worse than any of that, what my friend and i concluded, are the expectations. we have literally fallen short of what everyone expected from us.

i suppose that when coming into contact with a 5'2 fifth grader all most adults can do is comment and coo over the fact that the girl is going to grow up to be a supermodel. or basketball player. or something equally as exotic. making the child believe, yes! who cares that i suffer at the end of the line behind you short fools. i will someday be making millions on the catwalk. but when you hit your top height midway through high school, and its a mere six inches taller than you were at the age of 10, and its not anything that extraordinary, suddenly you realize all that anticipation was over nothing. sure, you're above average, but you're not going to be rewarded with a WNBA contract anytime soon.

a super day in the sty.

figures that we turn one and get all excited on our big birthday and then blogger goes on the fritz for a few days so we can't post nor leave comments thanking everyone for the bday wishes, making us seem like those classmates who only invited you to their sweet sixteen to make it look like they had more friends and to get more money and then suddenly no longer knew your name in the locker room after the hoopla of their day died down. what the hell.

so yesterday was our first annual PIGFEST. the roots of pigfest started last week when fresh direct sent us an email announcing that with every purchase of $75 or more you would receive a free superbowl platter consisting of: pigs in a blanket, knishes, and coney island pigs in a blanket (which are apparently pib's with relish and sauerkraut tucked inside the blanket as well. who knew.)

never ones to pass by a deal, more specifically a deal that involves hotdogs, we put together our $75+ shopping cart in record time and had our very special delivery sitting on our kitchen table by saturday afternoon.

24 hours later as we were heating up the contents of our platter, opening beers and wine, ordering appropriate platter-accompanying snacks from the diner and debating whether or not vanilla milkshakes should be consumed before or after onion rings, missy deemed our disgustingly wonderful gorge-a-thon "pigfest" and we decided to make it our newest superbowl sunday tradition. not like we watched the game - unless the "puppy bowl" counts - but who needs pigskin when you have PIGFEST?

nothing says 'birthday party' like a bag of salty pea pods.

well, we made it...it was a chilly afternoon a year ago today when loveandcyanide was born out of the extreme boredom of two sisters who's cable box was being reset. or shall we say "reset", as our paranoid parents still believe our landlord was installing a surveillance camera in it. don't they realize that no one - besides maybe jim henson - would be interested in seeing what goes on inside this living room?

but thankfully we didn't have the television to turn to for entertainment that fateful day, and decided to entertain ourselves via the internet. hopefully we've managed to entertain some of you as well. and perhaps we've even taught you a thing or two - we've come a long way ourselves in the past 12 months. we managed to stop using variations of song titles for every post AND even increased our font from "small" to "normal size".

baby steps!

so eschewing the birthday party norm of cake and ice cream, loveandcyanide opted to celebrate with an even more exciting bday snack food this evening --


Snapea Crisps - or "snappy crisps", as we like to call them - are sun-dried, baked, and salted pea pods. we are aware they sound like a repulsive snack a mad vegan scientist would invent to feed to/punish her badly-behaving children, but never ones to judge a book by its cover (and feeling rather adventurous/desperate in the fruit & vegetable aisle of shoprite) we serendipitously picked up a bag and found they are ridiculously delicious and addicting.

like, in-the-kitchen-fighting-each-other-over-the-last-salty-peapod-addicting. and the kicker - they are healthy. healthy snacks on our birthday! we are older and wiser.

rock candy. and winking.

one of my friends gave me a bunch of cool home fragrance presents for christmas. since my apt naturally smells like joy and wonderfulness with missy and i residing there, i decided to bring some of the items into work so their tranquil scents can saturate my office air, opening my mind, freeing my soul, and allowing me to write fantastic press releases.

hah. so, i set up the cute little bowl of scented beige stones on my desk, thought it looked sort of zen-like and pretty, was pleased that my office no longer smells like radiator, and got to work.

a little while later, sixpants comes to visit me. while playing with my awesome pseudo-penguin stapler, he notices my bowl of stones and asks me if it was candy. being the sweetheart i am i said "no, those are rocks.", even though a second later i realized it would have been insanely entertaining to have said yes. on further inspection we discovered the rocks sort of smell like mint, and being beige and sort of tooth-shaped, they totally resemble those mints you can take when leaving the diner.

i SO cannot wait for someone to come in my office and eat rocks.

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in further office entertainment, today we had a training class for the new phone system we're having installed. whenever we made mock phone calls to each other on the phones the 'trainer' leading the course would say how the flashing light signaling an incoming call was 'winking'. winking? is winking telecommunications speak for the word 'blinking'? i love it.

recent obsessions.

i don't think we've done one of these features in awhile - our latest obsessions, in no particular order:

netflix - sure its been around for some time now, but we only recently joined (out of a mixture of desperation and persistence) and OMG! how have we been living without this wonderful little system in our lives?? i'm seriously in love. the flix is more reliable than about 87% of the people i deal with.

absurdistan - yes, another thing that's been around for awhile. i swear i owned this book before it recently appeared on all the "best of '06" lists....finally have gotten around to reading it, and its wonderful. a tad too precious at times, but on a whole its a highly entertaining and well-written read. plus it gives loveandcyanide a chance to utilize the insane amount of knowledge about the russian language that we have tucked inside our brains.

plantain chips - isn't the old adage that whoever you kiss at midnight on new year's will be yours for the rest of the year? well i managed to consume almost an entire bag of plantain chips that evening, therefore making it my new favorite snack food for '07. thankfully our local supermarket is an 'international mart', so i can have my fill. oh, and amazing bit o' fate? my office snack machine stocks them too! what are the odds?

veronica mars - loveandcyanide is utterly distressed that we didn't discover this little gem two seasons ago when it first began. call it a teen show, or mock it because its on the CW, but its seriously one of the most entertaining and cleverly written programs on tv and we cannot get enough of it. especially when people are getting tasered, which is often. not to mention, if it weren't for our obsession with this amazing slice of television, we'd never have been introduced to netflix.

beyond balderdash - thankfully boardgames are making a reappearance in our lives. an evening of bb was one of our most entertaining lately, and if there were ever a game absolutely tailor made to loveandcyanide (make up absurd statements about fake words/people/things, and then attempt to influence others to believe your statement is true? why that is what we're best at!), its this one.

the cold - sure its fun to wear tanktops in january, but our 60 degree winter was getting a little creepy. so we're thrilled to have had a few days lately that have been below freezing. if we wanted a warm winter, we'd live in florida. and hey, if we all remember disney world circa 1989, we all know how my bangs and our father's temper get when in constant heat. not pretty. welcome back, winter.

cabbie in a box.

i went to a comedy show last night - i use the term comedy here loosely, since only about a 1/3 of the performers evoked anything resembling a laugh out of me. yes, its harsh and you can say i'm just jealous because only 3 people think i'm funny and one is a stuffed animal and the other is a sibling with the identical sense of humor. but really, it isnt that hard to make me laugh, especially when drinking. - and similarly to how they will let just about anyone on tv these days irregardless of talent, i discovered that the same holds true for the comedy circuit. i should have guessed what i was in for when i was ushered into a room the size of my living room for the show.

in any event, a few of the comics were entertaining and i did come away respecting everyone involved in the show for loving their craft so much that they will eagerly perform for a mere 15 people, all of whom are somehow connected to them. so it was a fun night that wound up turning into an AWESOME night during my cab ride home. and no, i was not in the "cash cab", a show i just learned about last night. why was i not aware that this program existed? cabs and game shows - two of my favorite things in one.

yes, i'm really into cabs - i don't know why. i guess its because in general i really, really, like car rides (i'm so easy to please. that doesnt say much for the aforementioned comedians, now does it?) and since i'm no longer chauffeured around as much as i was as a child, i take whatever i can get these days. anyhow, the regular crown victoria cabs are alright, but what really delights me are the larger cabs - mini-vans, SUVs, etc. those elusive hulking beauties, standing out in the sea of yellow. if i see one of those newer cabs coming my way i'm immediately on the curb, arm in the air.

but last night surpassed any cab experience i've had before - actually i should say solo cab experience, since when i find myself in a group setting during a cab ride home, especially after 2:30am, it usually involves popping through the drive-thru of McDonald's, which is always a ridiculous time. - in terms of car aesthetics.

while standing on the corner waiting for an open cab, i spied an SUV one coming my way - score! the cab pulled over, and when i opened the door to get inside i was pleasantly surprised to see that the driver was ensconced in a plastic popemobile*, as instead of the usual glass partition between the front and back seats, his was only around the driver's seat. perhaps these cabs are quite common - they should be, as the front passenger seat opens into the back, which is thoughtful, since no one likes to be the sucker stuck in the front while your friends are chatting in the back behind the partition, especially when the cabbie doesnt even let you play with the radio as consolation for being stuck in the front with him - but this is the first one i've been in. and it was marvelous - i was completely entranced by watching my cabbie move around inside his little box, like a hamster with a steering wheel in its cage.

*i'm not sure if other people are as into the popemobile as loveandcyanide is - as we were dragged by our mother to giants stadium in 1995 to see the pope (yes, i left school early to see the pope. thank goodness i went to a technical high school so this didnt make me any more of a loser than i already was.), in torrential rain, the only highlight that we got out of it was seeing his little plastic vehicle amble around the stadium. so we're quite partial to that little cart - so if you have no idea what i'm talking about, next time i'm in one of these cabs (hopefully, like, tomorrow) i'll take pictures.

special thoughts from today's troubled youth.

this isn't a review of the new flick freedom writers - as *inspiring* as the ads for the movie make it seem, we probably won't be catching it. loveandcyanide doesn't need hollywood's sanitized version of inner-city education - our mother is a teacher in one of the worst elementary schools in nyc, so we get to witness firsthand what is really going on in the mind's of today's youth.

when she's not too busy warding off threatening parents, scrubbing curse words that were written in white-out off her car windshield, and/or writing suspension notices, our mother is a superb teacher doing her best to try and teach children who are high on ritalin/need ritalin/too damaged from the crack they ingested in the womb/can't speak english/are abused/just don't care all they need to know. she puts a big emphasis on writing, trying to help the kids use their brains and express themselves. an arduous ordeal, for the most part.

so imagine her delight when the other day she was informed by one of her students that his friend, we'll call him timmy, was upset with the substitute teacher they had had the day before and had written down how he felt about it. mother checked in with timmy, and indeed he was quite upset about the substitute teacher, and he got all bent out of shape while telling her how much he disliked the sub, and how she wasn't nice to him, etcetc. he confirmed that he had written down how he felt about the situation, and my mother commended him on having listened to her and taken the time to write down his emotions.

she asked if she could see what he wrote. he handed over a piece of paper that read:

slap that bitch. choke that ho.

these 9-year-olds today. what will they come up with next?

rapper wrapper.

so i just read that 50 cent is launching a new condom line - first vitamin water, then books, now prophylactics. a logical evolution. - which reminded me about something i have noticed recently (no! i am not going there.) during my copious trips to the drugstore.

last week while waiting on line the young woman in front of me - with baby and toddler in tow - was purchasing a box of condoms and i couldn't help but snicker about how it was a little too late for that. but then last night the woman in front of me was buying a box, and the kid with her looked to be about 7 years old.

i couldn't help but think that was vaguely inappropriate. isn't that sort of telling your child "hey, look, i don't want any more of you?"

on pantyhose.

i'll start off by saying in general i've never really liked stockings. i have issues with clothes i consider binding (socks, gloves) and hosiery completely falls into that category. had i been around in the olden days, i am certain i would have been publicly ridiculed for refusing to wear a corset.

i also think i was somewhat turned off of stockings from a slightly scarring experience from kindergarten (yes, age 6. my ridiculously excellent memory can be a bit of a curse at times.): while in the bathroom with a classmate, i was washing my hands and she was in the stall. she opened the stall and as she was flushing the bowl and fixing her clothes i realized she was pulling on her underwear while her tights were already up.

being a little clone of my mother i was already a card-carrying member of the 'inappropriate clothing police', so i asked her why she was wearing her underwear over her tights. she told me that was the way you were supposed to wear them. i left the bathroom feeling a little skeeved and slightly confused, but confident in my mother's dresing abilities that i was indeed right on this one. poor stupid little girl.

so its taken a lot of effort - as well as a sister with a boot obsession - for me to currently own about 15 pairs of variously patterned tights and stockings. and i'm actually enjoying them. sort of. here is my big quandary/complaint to our readers who work in the hosiery biz - how come they are never long enough?

i buy the tallest ones. the pair today says they fit heights 5'8 - 6'0. now, i'm just about pushing 5'8 these days, so shouldn't these things be pooling up around my midsection? no. i can barely get them to stretch up to where they are supposed to be - so how on earth is a 6'0 woman supposed to get her amazonianly long legs into them?

stop the discrimination against us taller ones, pantyhose industry.

cat and mouse.

have we all heard about the Tigger debacle? the story has of course had loveandcyanide tickled pink the past few days, since along with our immense appreciation for the idea of plush characters rising up and rebelling against the stupid kids who bother them for photographs (Bear especially liked this tale, and has been beating up on missy and i more than usual the past two days), our most beloved pet cat is named Tigger, and since most people who meet her find her evil and abusive, its only fitting that her namesake would act in a similarly dastardly manner.

my favorite article on the incident:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1985831,00.html

________________

in breaking news, and what could possibly turn into the biggest story of my week, there has been a constant wheezing squeak noise in my office since i turned on my radiator this morning. in a parallel work environment i would blame it on the pipes. however after previous experiences here, i'm most concerned that there is a baby mouse in the heater, pleading for me to rescue it from the flames of hell.

stay tuned.

duane reade: fun bandit.

i found myself in duane reade last week - not like that should come as a surprise. if i had a financial advisor, i'm certain the first thing he'd tell me to lose is my fixation with pharmacies. i'd probably be a millionaire in no time. - on the hunt for some fun-tak, to aid in my sprucing up of the new office space. we all remember fun tak, right? that awesome blue stuff that superbly held up all our NKOTB Big Bopper posters? exactly.

in the first DR i went down the ravaged school supply aisle, and while finding a whole sleeve of duane reade brand "putty tak", there was no fun-tak to be found. i was a little disheartened, but figured they had just run out of the superior tacky substance, and i'd find it in another outpost.

so later in the day i hit up another DR and was completely dismayed to only find packages of putty tak. has the company forsaken fun-tak for their more blandly-colored, infinitely less enjoyable sounding putty tak?

i haven't had the time to investigate this matter fully yet, but trust me, i will be. i'm loathe to think that DR has taken all the fun out of my wall decorating.

now it can be officially officially over.

although we so nicely stated 12 months ago that we considered 2006 over --

10. We have declared 2006 officially over after only a month based upon a series of actions showing lack of judgment on one of our parts (who shall remain nameless) and the sale of a friends nipple via ebay. Really. We're finished with this year.

time unfortunately did not heed our plan and '06 marched right on as scheduled. there were many ups and downs throughout the year, but on a whole it wasn't too shabby.

as we all know i've had this lingering, annoying, and - most importantly - award-winning! - allergy/cold type thing the past few months, so it wasn't too shocking that on my way out for last night's year-ending festivities i found myself in 7-11 purchasing a bag of cough drops and a packet of Benadryl along with bags of ice. thinking that was not nearly enough meds to get me through the evening/next afternoon, i also popped into CVS to procure a bottle of cough syrup. anyone peering into my car yesterday evening would have assumed that a drug overdose was my celebratory new year's activity of choice.

as i'm getting on line to wait at the register, i notice the man in front of me is completely eschewing society's norm of being somewhat dolled up for the Eve, and is instead decked out in a long navy bathrobe, a pair of plaid pajama pants, and a set of woolen tan slippers. as i snicker about his outfit, i immediately fall into one of my coughing fits. as i'm hacking away behind him, the man is called over to the next register, and as he goes to walk up to it he turns around, raises his prescription pill bottle towards me as though in toast, waggles it, and says "happy new year!"

really, i couldn't have imagined a more perfect ending to '06.

goodbye panic!, hello sasquatch!

this week i was moved into my own office - a christmas miracle! - so i will no longer be tortured by panic! at the disco and their ilk.

along with your standard office perks like a door, giant window, and heating/cooling capabilities, i also received a few special bonuses from the guy who occupied this space before me:

a half-eaten box of cereal. (and we wonder why we have mutant roaches?)
a gray H&M scarf.
a book about scrabble. (score!)
3 jars of rubber cement.
a pile of magazine cutouts of pictures of madonna.
an issue of W magazine with madonna on the cover.
a pin that says "i am loved".

i'm keeping the scrabble book and the pin.

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speaking of keepers, missy and i hit the gift-giving all-star list this year with our present to our uncle (see: fireman of monstrous proportions) - a sasquatch doll. the fuzzy brown flocked vinyl little guy has movable arms and comes wielding a chainsaw. we haven't seen our family this collectively excited over a present since our nana decorated our barbie dream house with garland. the little guy was a huge hit. within minutes after opening, squatch was named benjamin, posed for pictures, and was made an aluminum foil axe.

running a close second in the present popularity contest was nana's new deli slicer - a giant, gleaming machine that prompted our mother to have a fit of hysterics as she envisioned her mother and sister making hundreds of turkey sandwiches and selling them outside their driveway to passing motorists.

loveandcyanide wouldn't trade their family for the world.

a far cry from a membership to the jelly of the month club.

i really can't get over the whole story about the Goldman Sacks guy who is receiving a $53 million bonus. that means he made more than 900X more than me this year. not kidding - i know i sometimes (basically always) exaggerate numbers (simply for kicks, not for harm. all in good fun, kids.), but i actually took out the calculator for this one.

do we really think he did more than 900X the amount of work that i did? the poor man won't have any time left to actually play with all those millions...

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in other mindboggling news comes my new favorite story:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16298548/

if i myself ever spawn, i'm definitely teaching the kids that the miracle of christmas had to do with the virgin dragon and the reptilian nativity.

my fave quote of the article:“Komodo dragons seem to be able to switch ways of reproducing to deal with a shortage of suitable boyfriends."

if only it were that easy!!