breaking...

remember my stories about the stink in our office's lobby due to the dead mice in the ceiling/radiator/walls? well, in the past two weeks there have been random funky smells around the office, and a few dead mice have been found in radiators in private offices.

guess who's turn it is today?!

i knew something smelled amiss/gross when i walked into my office this morning. periodically i've been walking out into the hall and stepping back in, to see if i was just being crazy - or, horror, if it was perhaps me - but no, the air in the hall smelled different. still bad, but of a different magnitude.

so overhearing two coworkers discussing a smell in our area of the floor, i bounded out of my office, thrilled that others noticed this too, and joined them in a sniffing hunt. (for someone with allergies, i think i make an excellent bloodhound)

upon entering my office, one of my coworkers confirmed my suspicion announcing, "yes. there's something dead in here."

he could've been referring to my spirit.

but more to come when the undertakers get here. oh the excitement!

getting back on track.

before i mislead anyone, i'm only currently into ninjas because i think this 'ninja burglar' story is freaking hilarious. when it comes to that age-old debate, ninja vs. pirate, i am totally, 1 million percent, on the pirate team. ninjas, i assume, must have a commitment to fitness that i just can't handle. the carousing life of a pirate is entirely more my speed.

speaking of, i even missed Talk like a Pirate Day last week! a very happy belated one to all.

so what have i been up to that i've been so neglectful of my little patch of the web? tons. missy and i threw an amazing (if we say so ourselves) apartment-warming party, managing to squeeze a record 30+ people into our new place. i discovered the power of WD-40 and eradicated the vexing three-year-old issue of having a super-squeaky bed. i celebrated my one-year anniversary at my 'new' job. i learned how not to mop a wood floor and how to infuse my own vodka. i finished watching every eddie izzard comedy special that exists on dvd. i got my bangs back. i received a bossy bear**!

and, most importantly, i had my faith in the dry cleaning industry restored, when they lost a pair of my pants - my very favorite work pants - but then found them for me a few days later, with just about every employee at the cleaners leaving me voicemails to announce that my pants were safe and sound. (and no, i'm not just copying that recent episode of curb your enthusiasm - i actually lost my pants the day before it aired. i always knew i felt a special kinship with larry david.)


**missy calls me "bossy bear". but i'm not actually bossy. i'm just doing my job as the older, wiser, sibling. really.

does the second amendment apply to nunchucks?

a ninja burglar bill! oh this story just keeps getting better and better...

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime_file/2007/09/24/2007-09-24_ninja_burglar_strikes_fear_in_staten_isl.html


(i know. its been ages and the first thing i come back with is a mere link?? how rotten! but i needed to report the very latest on the n.burglar, plus i'm working on a post of substance recapping the whirlwind of the past two weeks. we'll be up and running again soon, i promise, dear handful of wonderful, loyal readers.)

they say you are what you eat.

we apologize for our absence, but its been an insanely busy week over here - the highlight? an awesomely fun night of irish music in philadelphia last night. the lowlight? loveandcyanide's first trip to the gastroenterologist.

i shall spare everyone the details of the trip, but i would just like to say that i've never filled out a more invasive pre-doctor visit questionnaire in my entire life. the highlight of this lowlight, however, was hearing a fellow waiting roomer comment that his answer to the question "what color?" was "like a benjamin moore chart". i am still torturing missy with that line two days later. you know how she hates bathroom humour.

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so while at wendy's today - figured this was the only logical segue after talking about my visit to a stomach doctor - i realized that they have changed the look of their menu boards, and have upgraded to a faux wood finish around the menus. snazzy! i always felt wendy's was the BMW of the fast food world, and this just seals it.

does your hometown have a ninja burglar?

coming across this bit of news about our darling home borough has made my entire week.


http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2007/09/his_fight_with_the_ninja_burgl.html

morning observations.

i hate carrying food onto the subway - in this particular case, a foil pan full of brownies that i made for today's office party. oh, chrissy, you domestic goddess, you! - because everyone just sits there staring at whatever wrapped item you're holding. clearly its not a suspicious package people, settle down. i decided that if anyone actually asked what was in the pan, since it seemed like it might come to that as a short man in a plaid cap sidled up into me/my brownies, i'd tell them it was my pet turtle.

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another thing i hate - clear bra straps. i have dear friends who swear by them, so i won't go completely off on how dumb/disgusting i think the straps are/look, but i will comment that clear does not equal invisible, ladies!! when you wear them with a tube top we can SEE THEM!! really, a tube top. holy cow, some people are stupid.

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a less hateful observation - a woman got onto the train this morning and when she turned around, i noticed that the back of her shirt read, 2007 US OPEN. HAIRSTYLIST TO THE PLAYERS. i found this curious. do the players have their hair coiffed before their games? do the stylists come around after the match to arrange their sweaty locks for post-game interviews? do all professional sports events have the luxury of hair stylists for the participants?

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and a final one - there was another, less curious but more entertaining, shirt of note spied during today's commute. the back of it featured two cartoon clams smiling at each other, with the line "let's shuck" printed above their shells. juvenile, sure, but i got a good chuckle out of it.

thursday shot of vitamin C.

as everyone around me has fallen ill throughout the course of the past 24 hours - friends, siblings, coworkers, friends' coworkers...i'm really not exaggerating, is there something in the air that i'm unaware of? - i think its a good time to talk about something healthy.

like fruit.

thanks to reader PH, i was introduced to a most interesting new fruit today - the plumpricot** - which is, you guessed it, the offspring of a plum + apricot. i'm a big fan of the plum, and not so much a fan of the apricot, so i figured my feelings on this new fruit would be mixed. but no - its absolutely delicious. great texture, great coloring, and great taste. nothing could ever knock the mango out of my top fruit spot, but this tasty little hybrid could possibly make my top 5 after having only one. i will be stalking the supermarkets for these little gems until they go out of season.

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its ironic that as i finish this post about fruit someone near my office is eating either fried chicken or fast food, and i'm seriously thisclose to drooling due to the deep-fried scent wafting through the air. sigh. i sit so precariously close to the edge of the healthy food wagon.



**after searching online, i've found this hybrid called a plumcot, pluot, aprium, plumpricot and plumicot. i personally think that plumpricot is the most fun to say, so even if its not the most agriculturally-correct version of the word, it'll be the one i use.

update.

since my last posting elicited such a response about pennies - pennies! what will happen if i write about nickels? - on the comments page, i wanted to follow-up and let everyone know that after 3 days of lurking at the base of the porcelain bowl, my toilet penny is now gone.

so either pennies require about 95 flushes before they make it down the pipe, or someone was in desperate need of change.

bathroom talk.

when missy and i were going over our criteria for a new apt, one of my top priorities was the quality of the bathroom - more specifically, i preferred for the tub to have shower doors. why would i care? well, since the age of 10, with the exception of the college years (and i blocked those gross showers out of my memory, so they really don't count) and various stays at friend's places and hotels, i've always lived in a place with shower doors. and once you get used to shower doors - the plethora of light they allow in to the tub, the fact that they don't billow about and ensnare you in their plastic grip like curtains do - its hard to downgrade back to a curtain.

as we could barely find a apartment that had a bathroom that looked like it had been remodeled anytime in the past 50 years, "shower doors" was quickly crossed off my wish list. and although in the end we wound up in a brand spanking new place, the tub was still doorless and required a curtain.

i quickly saw the good in the situation as i spent an entire workday perusing for curtains - who knew there were so many fun ones out there?! - and when missy and i hung up our awesomely clever new one and it totally made the room, i couldn't help but think that i might actually be swayed out of the door camp.

but i haven't been.

although my adjustment to showering with a curtain is going pretty smoothly thus far, there's still one major, major bother - what i refer to as the "psycho factor". i never had to worry about someone sneaking into the bathroom and attacking me when i had clear doors to look out of. now, its all i can think about. i actually obsess over it the entire time i'm in the shower, tacking on a good minute or two to my bath time as i constantly need to peep my head around the curtain, to make sure the door is still closed and no intruder is lurking near the toilet with a machete.

i know this sounds nuts, but its not just me -- missy is having this issue as well. we discussed our dilemma the other day, and it seems like our next curtain might have to be a see-thru one.

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in further bathroom news, there has been a penny in one of our work toilets for the past two days. this doesn't necessarily bother me, as i kind of like the wishing well effect it lends to our otherwise disgusting women's bathroom, but my question is - why won't it flush down the toilet? is it a chemical thing? or did some creep glue it there?

full circle.

forgive me for being a slacker this week, its been an exceptionally busy one. its ironic that i manage to find an awesome new apartment that i just want to sit in, all the time, and then fall into an especially busy social period, so i wind up spending no time in it at all.

so, in a rather amazing coincidence, not one, but THREE things i've mentioned in recent months came back to haunt me today (and its only the early afternoon) :

1. as i walked to the train this morning, there idled a small commercial van. outside the back of the van was a cardboard box containing ice...and fish heads.

really. i couldn't make this stuff up. while wondering about the usage of cardboard and, again, conditions that i believe the USDA would not consider sanitary, i also prayed that maybe a horror movie is filming in a nearby building and that would explain all the miscellaneous early morning animal parts. if not, i might rethink all the dinnering we do in our local establishments.

2. my office mate, the mutant fly, has returned. and this time he's brought an equally monstrous friend.

i've resorted to playing music to drown out the racket they are making as they buzz through my blinds. i will also be adding "purchase massive fly swatter" to my weekend to-do list, as i just had to use Kleenex as weaponry when throwing my tissue box at the blinds. which made an even louder racket. i really am thankful for the fact that no one was passing by my office to witness my (slight) freak-out. but the flies are actually making me nuts - another hour and i see myself tearing the blinds off the windows, wildly waving files, and flinging office supplies in attempted insect murder.

3. the kicker - about an hour ago, the back of my chair fell off. the comedy gods must be off today, as i happened to be leaning forward when it happened and thereby escaped a tumble to the floor.

on a positive note, i finally figured out where that "extra" knob goes.

i'm just the yin to you noisy, nosy, yangs.

"you're so quiet"

i can't tell you how many times i've heard that line throughout my life. why, i just heard it again about 2 minutes ago, making it the catalyst for this rant.

is this an insult? i've never understood what someone is trying to insinuate when they come upon me, standing there/sitting there minding my own business, and make that comment. yes, i am pretty quiet - some people are. does my peacefulness bother you? does the fact that you can't hear my voice reverberate around the office annoy you? what exactly is the problem? if you're just trying to begin a conversation, i can think of 100 better starters than that one.

under certain circumstances i can understand being told this, but those are mainly all personal situations, where the person telling me "you're so quiet" is saying it because they want to know whats on my mind. totally acceptable, especially when the other party knows me well enough to know that only 70% of what goes on in my mind comes out of my mouth.

but i just do not at all understand being randomly told that i'm quiet by someone who doesn't really know me. it would be rude of me to comment to another "you're so noisy", wouldn't it? this is technically the same thing.

oh this irks me to no end.

i believe this model came with some spare parts...

while twirling around in my office chair earlier today, there was a clang and a knob and some washers (father is handy, or else i'd have no idea what those things are called) appeared on the floor. fearing i was about to find myself in a similar position, i got up, flipped the chair over, and attempted to reattach them.

no dice. having examined every single little inch of the base, back, and sides of this chair, it doesn't appear that this knob can be screwed back in anywhere. which is strange as it had to fall from somewhere... so i'm going to pretend that it was just an extra knob that had been taped to the bottom of the chair in case of emergencies.

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speaking of emergencies, an incident occurred yesterday morning that had me briefly considering vegetarianism. (i know...i didn't think it was possible either)

as i did my short little walk to the train i passed by some men unloading items from a truck. as i approached the truck, i noticed one man passing what appeared to be a whole, skinned, duck down to another man on the ground, who then placed it in a shopping cart. thinking i was hallucinating - wouldn't that be unsanitary? - i shifted my gaze onto the cart, and found that i was unfortunately correct. it was filled almost to the brim with duck carcasses. and, atop the ducks, a giant cow head. the cow gazed accusingly at me while i climbed the subway steps, wondering if the burger i had saturday night might be my last.

it won't be. i somehow managed to bounce back from the traumatizing 'shopping cart of horrors' experience within a few hours, and found myself cheerfully helping missy cook steaks later that evening.

but i did have a nightmare last night.

a new level of multitasking.

having already expressed our love for supermarkets many - some may say too many - times here, you are well aware of our support of the industry.

that said, i'm not quite sure how i feel about this:

check out.

a singles event at a supermarket. in one respect, i think this is sort of clever - a shopping cart full of goodies makes for an easy conversation starter. oh hey, you prefer rice pasta too?

on the other hand, i think its sort of creepy (and not just because i think all forced singles events seem sort of creepy). and really, what are they going to do about the harsh supermarket lighting?

we haven't done an animal post in awhile.

since the death of our beloved cat tigger two months ago there's been a dearth of all things cute and fuzzy in our lives. thankfully, a new season of meerkat manor (or meeeeeerkat manor, as i so like to whiningly say) is starting up this week, so cute/fuzziness will be restored.

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so at our rather raucous family gathering this weekend we were treated to two very different, yet equally ridiculous, animal stories from family members.

first up was the tale of the seagull - "the little bastard", as my mother called him - who menaced my parents for their funnel cake on their recent weekend down the shore. inching closer and closer as they ate on a bench, the "brazen" seagull infuriated my mother so much that she threw her napkin at him in an attempt to distract him from his cakey target. unfortunately, the tossing of the napkin prompted a seagull swarm, and my parents were chased from their bench by about 20 seagulls diving down to see what had been thrown at their leader. and my dad wonders why missy and i prefer to vacation without them.

never one to be topped, my aunt launched into her recent encounter with a garden snake - an encounter that included screaming, a 10-minute weed killer shower for said snake, the apparent death of snake, joyous celebration by aunt, and then the subsequent discovery that snake had disappeared, meaning she either vaporized it with the weed killer, or, most likely, simply maced the thing into a temporary stupor.

its really no wonder i can't handle killing a giant fly when i see how poorly my relatives react when put in man-vs-beast situations.

mr. met might have a harder time stalking me now that i've changed my address.

well, mr. met isn't personally stalking me (i wish! i would love to see that giant baseball head ducking into bushes and behind cars as he followed me home), but his organization is.

for the past few weeks i've received a 'courtesy call' on my cell about every 3 days from the mets. why?? i think i've purchased mets tickets maybe once in my life, and i know that i didn't give them my cell phone number. whenever missy and i have to give out numbers, we offer up our parent's. hee.

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so besides the MLB harassing me, all has been going excellently - most especially, the move, and the new apartment. i know we were complaining, and everyone complains, about how hard it is to move - but we were never informed about how glorious it is to actually use movers. to stand around idly while your stuff magically gets from one place to another. in our valid attempts to help them - having grown up with our mother, its impossible for us to feel anything but guilty as we stand by and watch others do things without pitching in - the guys actually took items from our hands and carried them out themselves. of course this could've been because the moment i picked up our decorative metal wheel i managed to knock it on the floor, where it made a deafening clang in the near-empty room, but nevertheless, it was absolutely amazing how efficient these guys were.

missy even commented that she intends to hire movers to get her kids to and fro college. which, if they have even half the amount of crap she and i managed to cram into our dorm rooms, isn't really as outlandish as it may sound.

is shoe-free the way to be?

so i know i was bitching last week about the barefoot old woman on the bus, and we all basically decided that she was just a crazy old bird that i shouldn't concern myself with, as it wasn't my feet touching the dirty bus floor.

well, now its more than that. its no longer just one batty old woman...its a whole epidemic of shoeless people running around NYC.

yesterday i was on the circle line for our office's "summer outing" and i spied a young woman walking around barefoot. ok, so we were on a boat. but it wasn't a private yacht, it was a tourist mecca that i am certain has seen the soles of thousands of passengers tramp across its floors.

then just before as i was walking to the deli to pick up lunch i passed a boy wheeling his scooter down the block while wearing only white socks. i did a full examination of his entire person and there wasn't a pair of sneakers in sight.

seriously, did i miss some memo that the streets of new york are suddenly super clean?

the great ______ caper.

the _____ in our headline is for our last name, which, to protect the innocent, we don't use here at loveandcyanide. if you do happen to know it - i believe 3 of our approx. 7 readers do - feel free to insert it in the blank when reading it throughout this post. if you don't know it, just use some other two-syllable word. we suggest muppet since "the great muppet caper" is a fantastic movie (and our favorite charles grodin film).

the great _____ caper occurred last night around 9:30pm. slightly delirious from a long day of work and packing, missy decided to clean out the pantry and discard any and all old food items (the winner of the Ms. Expired pageant, a rather close race between a bag of rice, boxed mashed potatoes and a few packages of jello, went to the packet of pistachio jello, dated 6/05). in retrospect, this was entirely too arduous of a task for this time of the evening, being in our current state of affairs.

so i had a bad feeling when missy squealed with excitement over discovering an unopened - and still edible - jar of capers in the pantry, and i therefore wasn't all too surprised when a few minutes later i heard the melodious tinkle of glass hitting the kitchen floor. ordered to put on shoes, i arrived in the kitchen to a salty stink, and saw the little green guys rolling all over our floor amongst shards of glass. shoeless missy stood in the midst of it looking forlorn, and it took a good two minutes for us to decide exactly what our plan our action would be. i believe someone suggested just leaving it on the floor for the new people.

a short while later the mess was (mostly) taken care of, the kitchen only smelled slightly briny, and as we skated back and forth on paper towels drying the floor, we had a good chuckle over our tuesday evening 'caper'.

which was slightly messier but certainly less serious than our monday evening caper, which involved the unplugging of our nintendo and the subsequent destruction of our satellite tv service. we have no idea what missy did with the wires, but it is now impossible to hook everything back up. and so we're tv-less.

lesson learned this week: do not turn back on sister during packing.

revisiting first crushes.

i try not to get suckered into reality series, but a new one started up that i'm finding impossible to resist -- scott baio is 45...and single.

scott baio was my very first celebrity crush. according to various family members, i was completely obsessed with the show joanie loves chachi - well, i guess as obsessed as a 2-3 year old could be with something she clearly could not at all understand - and when people used to ask me who my boyfriend was, i used to answer, "chachi!". i wonder if my parents found this adorably precocious or just plain frightening.

so they nicknamed me 'joanie' for awhile, and although i don't completely remember watching the show or the feelings of chachi love i apparently held in my itty-bitty heart, i can vividly recall the old ladies who used to frequent my family's grocery store calling me joanie whenever they came shopping. so apparently most of brooklyn was aware of my crush.

but regardless of these nostalgic reasons, it's actually a pretty compelling show and mr. baio makes for a rather sympathetic almost ex-womanizer as his life-coach helps him along. AND, and, the kicker is one of his best buds and the producer of the show is...jason hervey! older brother from the wonder years and another former celeb crush of mine. i know, i know - why did i like the chubby asshole brother while everyone else liked adorable little kevin arnold?

perhaps scott baio isn't the only one in need of a life-coach.

moving is tough.

last week's excitement over discovering an awesome new apartment has waned the past few days. while the packing part of the process is a little less stressful than the initial hunting part, i wouldn't call wrangling three year's worth of stuff into bags and boxes easy. or fun.

so while we declined plans with friends all week in favor of packing, there is nary a filled box in site. instead we've managed to:

• update Bear's myspace page
• get drunk
• make ice cream sandwiches
• watch Beerfest
  

we will clearly do anything to avoid packing.

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so in an earlier post i mentioned about the plethora of shady real estate agents we dealt with. seriously, i had no idea what i was in for as my last apt was by owner. not like he was a prize - more like a pervert and racist - but at least we didn't have to fork over 1 month's rent to him.

but in the past few weeks we've come to meet a variety of evil agents - liars, cheats, scoundrels. how do these people sleep at night? (with the exception of the kindly greek santa claus-like broker who we would've been happy to give business to. we're sorry we just didn't like anything you showed us, manny!) i understand they're just trying to make a buck, but really, there has to be more ethical ways to go about it. missy and i came home practically in tears some nights.

thankfully the broker attached to our dream apartment turned out to be a reputable guy. he also knew the right things to say, as after showing us the apartment and giving us an application he said, "and thank you girls for the entertainment".

we're thinking that's what catapulted our application above the rest. thank goodness for our shtick.

ick.

dear older woman in yellow sundress on the bus this morning,

i understand it was raining - no, POURING - earlier today and that wet shoes can feel really really really gross on one's feet. trust me, it's over an hour after i came in from the rain and i am still completely regretting wearing open-toe flats...

but did you have to take the city bus BAREFOOT????? the sight of your bare feet squishing on the presumably filthy bus floor almost made me lose my breakfast.

please invest in galoshes.

your concerned fellow commuter,
chrissy