Update on the Man-Sitter, a.k.a. Three Seat Spread

You may remember that I posted about the obnoxious habits of men on the NY subway. That post was inspired by one particularly obnoxious leg-spreader, who also decided to carry on a loud cell phone conversation. If any of you are 30 Rock watchers, you'll know that tonight's episode featured the much anticipated "Asif" character.

Thankfully, the Man-Sitter did not get the part. I also learned that my eavesdropping skills need a little improvement, although I was a forced eavesdropper in that situation, not a voluntary participant. When Man-Sitter was talking about his audition, I thought I heard him say that the role was for a "copy writer (copyrighter?)," so I assumed that Asif would be a new writer on the show, and shortened it to "writer" in my previous blog. Well, what I heard as "copy writer" turned out to be "cab driver."

I wasn't paying close attention to 30 Rock tonight, but I'm also pretty sure they didn't use the Asif/As if joke that Man-Sitter talked about. That's probably a good thing, because although I'm sure it would have been funnier on 30 Rock than it was coming out of Man-Sitter's mouth, it still seemed a little weak.

Hopefully we can all take something away from tonight. 30 Rock should learn to stop calling Man-Sitter back to try out for parts, because he loudly divulges information about the show on the subway. Plus, who wants a nobody actor who feels the necessity to spread out and publicly air out his mangina? Certainly not the small female riders on the NY subway! I have learned that I need to improve my eavesdropping skills if I'm going to accurately report subway happenings on my blog. And I hope that Man-Sitter has learned to shut his legs. Just air it out at home dude.

Noise that doesn't come from 6N

On Saturday, I discovered that it's not only the sounds of apartment 6N that can wake me up and bother me. The apartment doesn't have a great deal of temperature control, so Joe and I usually leave the windows open at night to keep the temperature comfortable. On Friday morning, Joe (who usually sleeps quite late) was woken up by the sound of some pigeons on our fire escape. He got up, closed the window, and left me to sleep for another hour or so, since I can usually sleep through a lot more noise than he can. Unfortunately, on Saturday morning, I woke up to the sound of pigeons on the fire escape. I was worried that they would wake up Joe and make him cranky, so I quickly got out of bed and went to shut the window. Once I got to the window though, I promptly woke up Joe by saying, "Ewwwwwww!!!!", because when I looked out the window, I saw two pigeons having sexy time on our fire escape. As soon as I said, "Ewwwww!", the pigeons promptly separated, like teenagers being caught doing something they're not supposed to be doing.

I could still hear the pigeons on the fire escape after I went back to bed, and I was kind of disappointed that I didn't have my camera near the window to get a video to post on the blog. I'll be ready next time.

That noise upstairs is definitely drums, and we met one guy from 6N

Last night I was sitting in the kitchen trying to finish my homework. It was about 11 p.m., and I kept getting distracted by the drumming coming from upstairs. There was drumming coming from 6N the night before as well, until 1:30 a.m. It might have lasted even later than 1:30, but eventually I fell asleep. As soon as Joe walked in the door last night, I pointed out the drumming, and he decided that he would go upstairs and confront the neighbor. I decided to go with him, just to make sure we all started things off nicely, and to be there to call 911 in case someone from 6N mistook Joe for an extra instrument and started hitting him with drum sticks.

Joe headed out the door pretty fast, so I didn't have a chance to grab my camera to get a picture of 6N, and I also didn't have time to grab the switchblade out of my nightstand. I really do have a switchblade in my nightstand, not for protection or anything, but because one of my friends has a crazy family, and her family mailed her a bunch of knives. She showed me how to flip it out and look like a badass, and every time I've gotten out my knife to play with, it's totally freaked out Joe. He's convinced that when I'm flipping it open, I'm going to let go of the knife and somehow stab him. What this all means is that I have no fun pictures of me standing in front of apartment 6N with my switchblade to post, sorry.

Anyway, the guy took a long time to answer the door, and informed us that he had just gotten his drums that day. Funny that we heard them the night before....maybe he was banging on some pots and pans all night since he couldn't contain his excitement? I asked him to please not play drums after 11:30 or 12 at night. I think that's more than reasonable.

What was most disappointing about the experience though, is that Mr. 6N left the chain lock in place when he opened the door, (because obviously Joe and I are an extremely intimidating pair), so it was impossible to tell whether there really are 18 people living up there. We were pretty sure that there are six people living there, but based on where the drums sound like they're coming from, we're no longer certain of our hypothesis.

All cats are not dicks

I posted a couple weeks ago about adventures in pet-sitting, and how the cat was too much of a dick to ride on the dog's back. I got a comment from a reader that all cats are dicks. As a general rule, I agree with that, but my family has a cat in Maine that is an exception. Her name is Binky (don't remember how we came up with that one, but I was only 12 when we got her), and she doesn't really have much of a personality. She's been very timid her whole life, still is, and is 15 years old now, so that's probably not changing anytime soon.

What wound up to be so endearing about Binky is that she almost died. She suddenly stopped eating and drinking, and had some sort of kitty tumor in her stomach. The vet tried all kinds of crazy stuff for her, but she was just getting more sickly, and finally the vet determined that the answer was to euthanize her. My parents decided that we could keep her at home for one last night. Later that evening, after dinner while my mom was taking my brother to karate, the vet called and told my dad that he thought of one more thing to try for the cat, but that it probably wouldn't work. My dad drove back to the vet, picked up the prednisone, and by the time my brother got back from karate, Binky was eating again and was back to her old self. Yay steroids! So, the cat was on steroids for a few years, we eventually had to wean her off, and she's been in excellent health ever since. She even developed a little bit of a personality after her episode, and she has a shoe fetish now:

If you take your shoes off, within 30 seconds, Binky will sidle up and promptly stuff her head in the shoe. While I was in Maine over Christmas, I was bored one afternoon and thought about taking 12 seasonal photos of Binky with her head in different shoes (slippers in December, boots in January, red shoes for February, etc) to make a calendar. Then I realized that the black lab calendars are way cuter than a calendar featuring a cat with her head stuffed in a shoe, so I went back to watching television.

EDIT: My family does have another cat, Trixie. She is definitely a dick, but an amusing one. When she was a kitten, I got a little kitty leash for her and would try to take her for "walks." She was so well trained at one point that I could just take out the leash, and she would immediately run to the front door and sit and wait for me to put on her little harness. Unfortunately, cat harnesses/leashes are a little different than dog leashes, and don't have any give. So she'd dart out the door really fast, reach the end of the leash in under a second, and since I couldn't shut the door and run after her fast enough, she'd snap to a stop. Sometimes when I go back to Maine and I'm bored, I'll take her out on the leash again, which almost always results in her somehow escaping the leash, numerous scratches on my hands and arms, and her hiding under the deck hissing. Last Christmas, she wouldn't come near me for the whole time I was home, because I found some old Pokemon toy of my brother's that made a noise, and it totally freaked her out. She hid in the basement for days. Wait, maybe I'm the dick?

Cinnamon Swirl Bread

Today I decided to switch things up with my bread making and try to make cinnamon swirl bread. The recipe I found was on this blog. The dough turned out to be a lot stickier than other bread that I've made, and it left me with with some unpleasant bread dough dingleberries between my fingers after I was kneading the dough. The bread rose more than others that I've made, but I think I used more yeast than the recipe called for. I need to work on my yeast conversion skills, between packets and out of a jar, or maybe it's all just the same. Alton Brown should do a show on bread baking.

Anyway, once the dough was done rising the first time, I spread a little melted butter on the dough, then sprinkled on a bunch of sugar and cinnamon. I added a little bit of brown sugar to the mix too, because I like it.

The instructions said to bake this loaf at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. I started to become a little suspicious of the recipe at this point, but I'd already made the dough. Normally, bread bakes for about 35 minutes at 350 degrees, at least in my kitchen, with the recipes I've been using. Sure enough, I read a few reviews of the recipe, and one person found the inside of the loaf to be raw and gooey. Reasons for that could be that the person used too much butter, or let it rise too long. I wound up baking it for about 35 or 40 minutes, and I tested for doneness with a thermometer (generally a loaf of bread baked in a loaf pan is done at about 190 degrees F).

This is what it looked like when it was finished:

Although it looks pretty delicious, I don't recommend this recipe, and I wouldn't make it again. I've made this bread the last couple times I baked bread, and I found it to be a much tastier recipe than the current one. The cinnamon swirl part tasted fine, but the bread itself was flavorless and not really worth eating. I'm thinking it might have something to do with the lack of butter/milk/oil (i.e., fat, a.k.a. flavor) in the recipe. In the future, I might try to make the regular white bread and swirl in the cinnamon. Or maybe I'll just try wheat bread next.