TV

In high school, I got annoyed at my old friends for wanting to stay home on Friday nights and watch whatever show was on. At that point, I developed a motto: “Stick a tape in the VCR and live your life!” ...We have DVRs now. And Hulu, and Netflix and all that good stuff, so now, of course, there’s less reason than ever to be on your couch when you could be out doing other things. But, since we live in Montgomery for now, and since there’s nothing too exciting going on, and since I’m usually too tired to go out most nights anyway, we’ve started watching TV. This is what we’re watching. I’ll start with what we actually watch on TV currently:

The Office
An old favorite. I’m absolutely obsessed with the America series. The British one is great too. It knew what it was doing stopping after two seasons, right? But I’m such a sucker for Jim & Pam, and the whole gang that I can’t stop watching. Yes, I miss Steve Carell like woah. And the writing/producing loss of Mindy Kaling is noted for sure this season. It’s time for it to go, there’s no question, but I’m really enjoying the last season. It’s not as bad as everybody thinks...

The Mindy Project
I mentioned about how much I love Mindy. I loved her book, and I love that she’s such a powerful, strong woman doing her own thing in Hollywood. I think she brings that across through her character. This show makes me laugh. I would probably follow Mindy to the ends of the earth.

New Girl
In high school, I started getting called “Jovie the Elf” after Zooey played that character in the movie Elf. I’ve been compared to her ever since. I even got asked for my autograph (someone though I was her) in San Francisco once. I’m honestly not TRYING to look like her. I like the way I look with bangs, and I always have. I’ve lived bang-less for 7.5 of my 25+ year existence. She has blue eyes; I have green eyes. Her hair is dyed crazy dark; mine is its natural medium-brown for now. I do love her, though, and she’s hilarious in this show. I’ll probably freak out and throw something if Jess and Nick don’t get together in the next several episodes, though.

Go On
Hello, Matthew Perry! I guess this is another show I’m watching for the actor. I was the biggest Friends fan ever, and I’m so glad to see Matthew Perry back on NBC. I love the premise of this show for the most part. I love ensemble casts, and this show has a crazy one - literally. The one thing i hate is SEEING the dead wife. Like, this is not supposed to be a paranormal romance story, right?! We’ll see. I doubt it’ll go on much longer.

Gossip Girl
Gossip Girl is my biggest guilty pleasure at the moment. I watched all of the previous seasons on Netflix, but I finally caught up enough to start watching this season on Hulu. I’m bored at this point. Last season was so ridiculous, and I have no idea how they’re going to wrap up this series. It’s just....too much. But, I can’t stop. Don’t judge.

We’re also watching the first seasons of Downton Abbey and Game of Thrones on Netflix when we can, but all of this overshadowed by the FREAKING WEST WING! Aaron has been a fan of this show for a long time, and I love it now too. We’re almost done with the second season. I love all of the characters so, so much. CJ is the strong, female character I crave. Sam reminds me of Aaron, so of course, I’m in love with him. I also have a soft spot for Donna...and Josh. I want them to get together SO MUCH, but don’t tell me if they do or not. I don’t want any spoilers! I wish I could have voted for President Bartlett in the most recent election. If he existed in real life, or if Martin Sheen could just channel him somehow, I truly believe all of our problems would be solved...

Three day weekend

This three-day weekend nearly killed me a little bit. Mostly because of my sleep schedule being compromised.

We were so, super happy to have our first real visitor to our home in Montgomery. We've had couch surfers, yes, but this friend of mine came to visit US from Tennessee.

Of course, he stayed over because he was covering a game in Jacksonville, Ala. for the paper he works for, but I'll take an visitor I can get. Not many sane, normal people actually want to spend time in Montgomery for any reason.

Friday night was nice and relaxing: a spaghetti dinner and some West Wing.

On Saturday, after Aaron got off work and I got finished with yoga class, we watched some more West Wing and got down to the business of addressing our Save the Date postcards! We'll finally send them out later this week, and I am so excited to finally have that first big project done.

We also did laundry - a feat in itself because one of the washing machines in our apartment complex is broken - and we roasted a chicken, which I told you about before.

Then, we waited for Luke. We watched another episode of the West Wing and Aaron fell asleep. After that, I got a lot done: the dishes, writing a chapter for NaNoWriMo (though, I didn't write on Sunday, so now I'm behind on my word count for the first time this month, though hopefully not for long).

Luke's game went later than expected, and then he had to watch his Kansas State Wildcats win their game. I can't blame him, but he didn't roll into Montgomery until about midnight.

On Sunday, we made our way to Birmingham to take Luke to the climbing gym and out for some Chipotle. Yum. We also hit up one of our favorite spots in Montgomery: Leroy for drinks, which turned me around even further.

These days, having three beers right before bed is more of a workout than running 10 miles. It seriously messes with me. Yuck.

Monday, my bonus day off was as dreary as I felt after a night of drinking. We ventured out in the drizzle for some Starbucks and Chick-Fil-A and to walk around downtown. Aaron snapped these photos of Boone and me at the Riverfront:

And we returned to the couch for a West Wing marathon! If you haven't noticed, I think the permeating theme of the weekend was the West Wing. We have been watching the show for months now, but it starts out super slowly, and took me awhile to get into it. We absolutely flew through season two, and have now started season three.

If anyone spoils me on any part of the series, I will not be a happy Callie…

How was your weekend? :)

These are a few of my favorite foods

There are now three things I like cooking more than any other things I cook. Two of these are recently-liked things. The one that’s not is soup. I like just about any kind of soup, stew or chili, and I love making them. I’ve decided I like making soup so much because it’s what I always thought cooking would be like when I was a little kid: just mixing things together in a big pot with lots of stirring.

I mean, I played a lot of House, so I pretty much got the stirring thing down pat by the age of about 6 or 7. Not that I’m bragging or anything.

Number two is scones. I started making them recently for no reason, really, except for that I like to bake and I like to have sweet treats for breakfast. So far, I’ve made cranberry/white-chocolate, chocolate chip and apple-cinnamon; and so far I’ve enjoyed the cranberry-white-chocolate and the chocolate chip. The apple-cinnamon scones met an untimely death when my small counter was too full, and I accidentally knocked them off of their pan while they were cooling onto the dirty floor. Tragic, I know. In any case, they are easy to make and delicious to eat in the morning with a cup otea.

My third favorite...wait for it:

Roast Chicken. But, not just any roast chicken. I’ve only made it one way, and I’ve made it that way three times now. I can’t stop.

Laura Vitale taught me how to make Roast Chicken. And for that, and for her meatballs and her pork chops and, you know, like everything else, I am forever grateful.

This Italian woman - who is actually MY age - is a beast in the kitchen. I basically want to be her when I grow up.

I roast chicken with yukon gold potatoes just like Laura and it comes out perfect every single time. I’m just amazed at how easy it is, and how delicious!

Fun Callie Fact: I’ve refused to touch meet my entire life, which is probably further evidence that I shouldn’t eat it. I don’t eat much, anymore, but I can’t imagine never having this roast chicken ever again, which is why I won’t be calling myself a vegetarian any time soon. So, Aaron gets the fun task of rubbing the butter all over the chicken and stuffing the lemon, head of garlic and sprigs of herbs up its butt. I can’t wait for this man to be my husband, by the way. He stuffs a mean chicken.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my little mini food rant. If you’re not watching and worshiping at the throne of Queen Laura Vitale, you should be. I hope you’ve enjoyed spending time with me! Visit www.carolinezilk.com to get things that will never be as awesome as Lara’s recipes. ;)

The good old days

So, lately I've been thinking over and over about how much I miss how the internet used to be. The days of yore, if you will, when things just seemed so much more fun. Theweb was new and shiny, and I was in fourth grade and in a special club of people who had brand new computers with internet connections...

Does anyone ever think about how FAST the internet is now compared to how it used to be? I just gave up watching a video because it wouldn't load fast enough for me. Back in the day, I would plan a whole day around loading an internet video, watch it in two minutes and then think about how cool it was to have just watched a VIDEO on the INTERNET. I mean, really.

And, I realized as I typed all that, that someday this will sound to my children like my mother did when she talked about her family getting their first TV back in the real "olden days" (just kidding!). But, I think something happened to my 8-year-old mind when I heard the AOL dial tone connect for the first time. It was like a drug I couldn't get enough of.

I embraced the dancing baby. My first favorite website was Ty.com where we could learn everything there was to know about my other favorite hobby at the time: beanie babies. Yup...

There was a creative group of young girls writing serialized stories on the internet and making pretty websites with beautiful, simple layouts and sparkly graphics.

I knew I had to be apart of it. But, back then, creativity was what made you cool on the internet...because we had to be so much more creative back then.

We had to teach ourselves HTML to make a website and come up with things to post there. We had LIVEJOURNAL and eventually XANGA, which became our outlets for expression.

You had to try harder. You had to know more. You had to sit in a chair at a desk with a mouse and a keyboard and a slow ass printer to get anything done. But we had Geocities, where you were assigned a web address based on what community you wanted to put your site in. There was Heartland Prairie and Enchanted Forest.

That helped connect you to a whole community of nerdy people learning the same things that you were...

And if you needed to be connected any more than that, there were WEBRINGS. Sometimes you had to be super popular for your site to be in a web ring, or sometimes you had to know the owner of it or your site had to be about a certain topic. In any case, it was amazing.

These days, you can put any old crap online, and since putting crap online is basically what I do for a living now, I'm honestly getting kind of bored of it.

To alleviate this, and, you know, if the whole world listened to me, I'd say we should bring back Geocities 1.0 - before Yahoo even played a role. We should bring back floppy disks (because the old versions of my treasured first websites only exist of floppy discs). We should show down connection speeds and have an internet renaissance.

We would all be better for it...

What are your favorite old internet memories? We should share them before we get too old and forget, right?

Voting in Alabama

I didn't research anything until the day before. Aaron said he doesn't care about most of the local amendments, but I still want to do the best I can for this place before I inevitably leave it.

I decided I wanted to vote for Bob Vance for Circuit Judge because he has the name as a semi-reoccurring character on The Office, and I just imagine him introducing himself to people as, "Bob Vance, Circuit Judge."

I voted YES to Amendment One, which will "Keep Alabama Wild," and preserve an important environmental program, which is important to me as a person who enjoys being outside in Alabama at the present time.

I voted YES to remove racist and terrible language from Alabama's constitution, which was apparently written in 1901.

I voted NO to combine a small town's water system with the city of Mobile, because I figure the small town wants to keep it's little water system and some people want to keep their jobs.

I voted to decrease the length of time between elections for county officials from 6 years to 4 years, because I think everyone gets bored after 4 and needs a change anyway.

And yes, I voted for four more years of Obama, even though the state is going to go red, and even though I apparently agree more with Jill Stein's position. I still support the President.

…I went to vote with Aaron when he got off work at 1:30. Our polling place is about a mile from our apartment on the campus of Huntingdon College, a cute, little Methodist school. There was no line, but a steady stream of people going in and out of the student center on a chilly, gray day.

I learned that all of the old people in Montgomery know each other. They say, "Hello theya" to each other when the hobble close enough to recognize their similarly old friends.

I just said, "Hah." to the old poll volunteers. They don't seem impressed that I'm the last name in their book and still have my Arkansas ID. They don't care that this is the last time Caroline ZILK will vote for a president. Next time, Caroline NEWTON will. She sounds like an old, English grandmother to me, but I'm sure I'll get used to that.

I had an hour off work, paid, to go do my civic duty, and since it didn't take that long, so we went to the cafe down the street that we usually only go to, to get some gelato after we have pizza at their sister restaurant. I got a cappuccino, and of course I wondered why I haven't been drinking this cappuccino for the almost-year that I've lived a mile from this cafe.

And now I feel all jittery… And now I've told you my whole election-day story. The end.

I don't even care anymore.

A week ago, I was talking with my boss's boss…my "big boss" or whatever, I guess. And, like office conversations so often are, our conversation was, by default, about the weather.

"It's been so nice lately," she said, of the rapidly changing weather.

"Yes ma'am. I've been loving it."

I told her spent my weekend rock climbing in Northeast Alabama and she because we were in the office, she brought up the weather again.

"You know," she said. "They get real snow up there in the winter! Isn't that crazy? I mean, I know you're from a place that gets real snow too, so…"

"No I'm not," I quickly interrupted.

She thought I was from Missouri, even though we've had this exact same conversation before.

"No," I corrected. "I'm from Arkansas. I just went to school in Missouri."

"Oh, well then you still get real snow in the winter."

"No."

"Yes you do."

Um…she was fighting with me?! Come on.

"Nope. Arkansas' weather is pretty much exactly the same as it is here," I said.

Looking back on this conversation, I probably should have gone along with her.

"Sure. It snows BUCKETS in Arkansas," I should have said. "it's like a freaking blizzard every year from November until fuckin February."

….yeah. I wasn't in the mood.

And so many days, I'm not.

Being down here is just wearing on me lately.

BUT!

There is light at the end of the tunnel right now, which is a good thing because I'm currently drinking my LAST Boulevard Wheat that I've been boarding in the fridge for months. (Hey, Boulevard is based in KANSAS CITY … that's in MISSOURI … it snows there SOMETIMES…)

The day after tomorrow (holy crap) I'll be driving to Arkansas, and on Tuesday I'll board a plane to Bozeman, Montana with Aaron to climb, camp and see all the western beauty for sixish days! After that it's back to Little Rock where we'll hang out with family and friends before heading up to Jasper for 24 Hours of Horseshoe Hell, a climbing competition at Horseshoe Canyon Ranch in Jasper.

I could not be more excited about this trip. I also could not be more bored now…because Aaron is already out of town (he'll get back Monday before we drive to Arkansas) in Las Vegas for his brother's bachelor party. Woooo.

And I'm suck here in this God-forsaken state. The game (Us vs. Alabama) is about to start.

I'd basically rather be anywhere else.

I'm gonna go finish my Boulevard now…

lets go to the movies

I'm actually in a terrible mood this Friday. I can't wait for the weekend, and hoping something will pull me out of the funk I woke up in soon.

But, to expedite that, I thought I'd blog about something that does make me super happy: all the great movies I've seen lately.

Back when Aaron and I lived in Little Rock, we almost never went to the movies. We saw True Grit on our third date, and I don't think we went to another movie for well over six months.

Lately, we've been to the theater five times to see four great movies. Back in early June, I listened to a piece on NPR about all the great summer movies coming out, and I'm glad to say that we've crossed these off our list:

The awesome thing about this film was that there were basically only three [great] actors throughout the whole thing, and apparently, they got to improvise a lot and influence the creative direction of the film, which is really amazing. The story was intimate and personal, which made it uncomfortable at times, but it's the kind of film that really makes you feel things.

It was shot in the beautiful pacific Northwest, which made me long for cooler weather and beautiful scenery and simplistic times.

The ending was perfect! It leaves a lot up to your own guesswork.

We got to see this film at our local indie theater, The Capri, on our first visit there. It's an adorable little place just about 1.5 miles from our apartment, and everything there feels really classic. I love it.

Next we saw Moonrise Kingdom, which is probably my favorite of any of the movies I'll mention in the post, because I"m such a huge sucker for Wes Anderson's work. Once, a new friend I met traveling said to me, "Do you like Wes Anderson? You look like the kind of girl who would like Wes Anderson." I'm still not sure what that means, but I guess I'm "guilty".

This was very typical Wes Anderson style: strong female main character, perfectly and beautifully detailed sets and costumes, complicated relationships, love...

Perfect. That's all I can say.

We saw the latest Batman movie on Friday evening. We would have been at the midnight showing if we weren't all old and tired, but I felt kind of weird about going after the Colorado shootings.

In any case, this trilogy of films is one of my favorite in what I consider the "action" genre. I think, initially, I got into the films because of Christian Bale. I know he's an asshole, but he's also a very beautiful asshole ...one of the only celebrities I actually kind of drool over.

Again, a perfect ending to this film and to the trilogy.

Aaron really wanted to go see this in IMAX as well, but I think we did something better: we saw it at the drive-in! We discovered a drive-in theater pretty close to one of our regular climbing spots, and decided to go see a movie the next time we went camping, and we did!

Besides raining for a few minutes at the beginning of the movie, it was a great experience. I fell asleep about halfway through in the bed of the truck on our crash pads...oops. And Boone even came with us! ...He fell asleep too, of course. And I'm still not sure if dogs are technically allowed or not, but we were pretty discreet about having him there, and I hope we go back to see something else soon!

Just last night, we returned to the Capri to see this film on its last night there, and I was not disappointed.

I heard a lot of comparisons to Woody Allan's last film, Midnight in Paris, but I liked it better than that...

I think it was all tied together better - by not really being tied together at all - and, with the exception of Alec Baldwin's role, not including time travel, technically.

The lack of Owen Wilson was also a plus for me, as I am not a fan....

But yeah. This may or may not be a spoiler, but I'll just say one thing about this movie: an opera singer, mortician in the shower. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time.

In conclusion, I'm really glad we see more movies these days, and I hope we keep it up!