Top 10 movies of 2010

Every year, I look back at all the films I reviewed in the Weekend Pinnacle’s “Movie Lines” column. Each year, I am shocked at the number of movies I see in the theater and the number I also see on DVD or on TV. In 2010, I saw at least 45 movies in the theater and reviewed a handful more that were already out on DVD.

It was no surprise to me that a few of my favorite movies that I saw in early 2010 were actually 2009 releases. The top of the list includes “Crazy Heart,” “Up in the Air,” and “Invictus.” But since this is a list of the best movies released in 2010, I’ll leave those off and hope that I will have a chance to see some of the Oscar-buzz fare that is just now coming into wild release. For now, here is my top 10 of 2010, based on the few dozen films I had a chance to see.

10.) The Other Guys
This is the one “guy” movie that makes my list. Why? Because Mark Wahlberg is really funny and paired with Will Ferrell, I laughed more at this movie than any other movie I saw this year. Was it a good movie? Not really. Was it predictable? Yeah, pretty much. But it made me laugh as Wahlberg and Ferrell work together as two misfit cops who are the only ones who can unravel a mystery. Michael Keaton also earns a few laughs as their Captain, who moonlights at Bed, Bath and Beyond.

9.) Red
“Red” is another movie that isn’t really good, but I just can’t resist Helen Mirren toting a semi-automatic weapon. She’s played the Queen Mum and Tolstoy’s wife – now she is a former covert agent who knows her way around espionage. Mirren’s role in the movie is small, but still worth a watch. Bruce Willis is the lead character, a retired CIA agent who is the target of an attempted assassination, who tries to figure out who and why someone would want to kill him. His cohorts include John Malkovich, who always plays the crazy guy, and Morgan Freeman, as the distinguished martyr. Mary-Louise Parker plays Willis’ love interest who sticks by his side despite an unorthodox first meeting.

8.) The Fighter
Anything with Christian Bale is bound to be good and “The Fighter,” is a good movie that went a little awry into melodrama for me. The movie is about Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg,) a working class guy from Massachusetts who has his sights set on being a champion boxer. The biggest thing holding Ward back is his family, which includes an overbearing mother (played by Melissa Leo) and half brother Dicky Ecklund (Bale), who is more interested in getting his next score than training his younger brother. Amy Adams turns up as Micky’s girlfriend in a role that couldn’t be farther from her turn in “Enchanted.” There are no fairy princesses in this movie, though there are a slew of evil older sisters in the form of Micky and Dicky’s seven sisters who chime in together once in a while.

The movie is touching in that it is based on a true story, but the caricatures of the sisters and the melodrama between Micky’s family members just held it back a bit.

7.) La Mission
I might just like “La Mission” so much because I saw it at the Cinequest Film Festival in March, got to walk up some stars next to Benjamin Bratt, who certainly didn’t look in my direction, at the California Theatre before it screened, and heard the filmmaker talk in depth about it. In some ways, the movie reminds me of the more recent release “The Fighter,” but without all the melodrama. The thing that made the movie work is that all the heavy scenes in it are balanced with just the right amount of humor. Peter Bratt directed brother Benjamin Bratt in the film about a recovering alcoholic and former jailbird who is trying his best to raise his son on the straight and narrow in the Mission district of San Francisco. The problem is Che’s son Jesse (Jeremy Ray Valdez) is a great kid, but he’s gay, something that his father’s machismo won’t let him accept. The movie follows Che as he struggles with his pride and his desire to love his son.

6.) Easy A
As with romantic comedies, the pure comedy genre has also had its share of misses in recent years. I saw quite a few movies with what I would describe as “guy humor,” including “Due Date,” “Dinner for Schmucks” and “Cop Out.” The movies combined low-brow humor with lame plots and ended up less than entertaining. So perhaps it’s no surprise that my favorite comedy wasn’t a “guy comedy.”

“Easy A” is about a high school teen who finds her popularity increasing as she gets an undeserved reputation for being easy. She helps the nerds and geeks at her school by pretending to have relations with them to increase their social standing, but she soon finds her own status plummeting. Emma Stone plays the lead role in the film. It is witty and clever in a way that reminded me of my favorite ’80s teen comedies, and there is even a sequence in it that pays homage to John Hughes.

5.) It’s Kind of a Funny Story
Every once in a while I will see a movie that is sort of under the radar that really surprises me. This year it was “It’s Kind of a Funny Story.” It was the one movie with Zach Galifianakis that I actually liked this year and that is probably because he didn’t play is typical type. In it, he is a mentor of sorts to Craig (Keir Gilchrist,) a teenager who checks himself into a mental hospital and then immediately has second thoughts about it. While Bobby (Galifianakis) has real problems, Craig’s issues seem to pale in comparison. He just gets stressed about his schoolwork and anxious about his future. Even Noelle (Emma Roberts,) another teen in the hospital seems to have worse problems than Craig, as the bandages on her wrists attest. Gilchrist is sweetly likeable and comes into his own in a way he hasn’t yet on the Showtime series “The United States of Tara,” in which he stars as the gay son of a woman with multiple personalities (it’s a comedy, in case you couldn’t guess that.) Galifianakis is likeable as a mentally ill man who is trying to take the first small steps of starting over. The movie stays light most of the time, though it is dealing with serious stuff and it makes it understandable that even the best of us might sometimes need a little mental break from life.

4.) The Social Network
A movie about a corporate lawsuit has a lot against it in creating the kind of tension that keeps a film interesting. But “The Social Network” works nonetheless. The biopic follows Mark Zuckerberg as he creates the social phenomena we all know as Facebook. Luckily the movie doesn’t focus on the computer geek programming a bunch of code, but on the ways that he may or may not have screwed over friends and acquaintances on his way to the top. Jesse Eisenberg is perfectly awkward as the Harvard student turned Internet start-up owner and Andrew Garfield is well placed as his best friend and first investor. Justin Timberlake also proves that he has enough acting chops to make it in the business, with his turn as the creator of Napster, Sean Parker. The movie moves back and forth in time, between Zuckerberg’s time on campus and during the early stages of Facebook to the time period when he was facing two lawsuits. At the very least, it was interesting to watch one interpretation of how Zuckerberg got to the top and created something that people embraced so thoroughly in just a number of years.


3.) Babies
I’ll admit I don’t see a lot of documentaries. If I want to see a documentary, I am much more likely to see it when it comes out on DVD. Part of that is because documentaries aren’t very likely to play around Gilroy. But it’s also because a lot of documentaries can be dry and depressing, as was the case with “Waiting for Superman,” which chronicles issues with public school education. But there was one documentary that was a joy to watch and that was last year’s almost dialogue-less “Babies.” The filmmakers picked four families to follow through the first year of birth from different countries. The babies came from Africa, Mongolia, San Francisco and Japan. The parents’ lifestyles are all drastically different, but the movie really shows are similar the human experience can be as each baby takes the same milestones of crawling, talking and walking in stride. The thing I liked the most about the movies is how loved and content all the babies seemed to be, no matter where they lived.

2.) Toy Story 3
I am a sucker for a cartoon that can make me feel real emotions and this year’s “Toy Story 3” did just that. Of course, it is a Disney Pixar movie, and the filmmakers are masters at creating children’s fare that appeals to adults. Just remember 2009’s “Up,” which had grown men crying in the theater. “Toy Story 3” is the last in the trilogy and it’s been quite a while since movie No. 2 came out. Andy is all grown up and ready to head off to college. But before he leaves, he has to clean out all the childhood things he doesn’t want or need anymore. Andy quickly picks Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks) to come with him to college, but the fate of the other toys is less certain. The toys end up on another journey, but the thing about the movie is that it creates an emotional response for anyone who has put aside childish things as they grew up.

1.) Inception
A lot of movies I saw this year were bad or just mediocre, but there was one movie that stood above all the rest for me. I had high expectations for the film, which I know from experience can often lead to disappointment. But when I heard the director who was behind “Memento,” a twisted mystery thriller starring Guy Pearce, and the much lauded “The Dark Knight,” I knew I wanted to see “Inception.”

Christopher Nolan directed this more recent twisted story that had me still guessing what had really happened even after it ended. Leonard DiCaprio leads the cast as a master manipulator of dreams. Using high-tech equipment he and his crew of dream bandits can go into someone’s dreams and find their secrets. But when he is hired to perform inception, the act of planting an entirely new idea in someone’s mind, he and his crew have to go more layers deep than they have gone before. I am not sure that I really understood the movie, but it is one of those movies I want to watch again and again. The movie also had a profound effect on me, apparently, since I had some crazy dreams for a few weeks after seeing it. Now that it is out on DVD and Blu-ray, I am looking forward to watching it a few more times and seeing if I can find any new answers to the puzzle Nolan created.

A year in the making - 19 resolutions set and 15 squared away

There are a couple years left of the year, but the truth is I know I won't complete any of the resolutions that aren't already done. And the great thing about a new year is that it offers 356 new days to tackle the items that are left and to add some new ones.

When I started this list of resolutions early this year I wanted to force myself out of my comfort zone a little bit as well as get back to some things I really enjoy, but for which I don't always make the time. The list was also sort of a back up plan in a ways because the one thing I really wanted last year was to get a fellowship to study at Stanford, which I knew was a long shot. I thought the list would be a way to distract myself if the fellowship didn't come through, which it didn't.

I finished a lot of the resolutions, such as eating at five new restaurants and cooking with five new ingredients, early on in the year. Others took a lot longer to accomplish, like going on a date. Still others have yet to come to fruition - like clean out the garage. For the resolutions I didn't complete, I'll carry them over to next year. And there are some I did complete that I'd like to keep as a reminder to try new things next year. In the next few weeks. I'll spend some time thinking about new things I might want to add to the list, just to keep things fresh next year. Look for an updated list soon after the New Year.

For now, here is a recap of how things went so far in 2010:

1.) Read 10 new books
I actually just finished an 11th book a couple days ago - an early work by the author of "Bridget Jones Diary," "Cause Celeb" just wasn't quite as endearing as the later works to come.

Some of the books were by authors I know well, such as Nick Hornby. Others were by people I'd heard of, but never read before such as Chuck Palahniuk. I found that I have a habit of picking books on the serious side, so maybe next year a resolution will be to find a little lighter reading through the year.

Other reads included:
Hunger by Lan Samantha Chang
Lullabye by Chuck Palahniuk
Click by multiple authors
Bog Child by Siobhan Dowd
Passing for Thin by Francine Kuffel
Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby
Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro
A Version of the Truth by Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

2.) Eat at five new restaurants - I ate at more than five new restaurants this year and I am proud of myself for getting out of the regular routines of going to the same, old restaurants. The list is longer than what I have below, and includes some places I tried while on vacation in San Diego as well as a great breakfast place in San Jose called Bill's Cafe that has eggs Benedict served up in unique ways. This is a resolution I'd like to carry over into next year, especially since I still haven't gone to the fancy Los Gatos restaurant that inspired the resolution in the first place.

Rosy's at the Beach -Morgan Hill
Pluto's - Santana Row
Village Bistro - Santana Row
Lizarran Tapas Selectas - Gilroy
Knife and Fork Cafe - Hollister
The Mucky Duck - Monterey
Brickhouse Burger Company - Indianapolis - okay, this place has a pretzel bun for their burgers - enough said.
Champp's - Indianapolis
Kona Jack's - Indianapolis
Aqui - Campbell
Satura Cakes - Campbell

3.) Make homemade ravioli
The homemade ravioli should have been simple - had the pasta maker I have at home not been broken. Pasta is not meant to be rolled out by hand with a rolling pin so my ravioli were a little bit thicker and tougher than they should have been. But they still tasted good, especially with the homemade sauce.

5.) Take a trip somewhere (other than Indiana)
Now I thought this resolution was going to be complete in May, when I booked a flight to Denver and made plans to stay with someone I knew there. But it didn't work out and I ended up cancelling that part of the trip. I did, however, make two trips to Indiana two months in a row. The first was to surprise a good friend at her bridal shower/bachelorette party. She was surprised when I showed up at her house in a rental car. It was a whirlwind trip, where I flew in on a redeye and back out early the next morning, without any time to sleep. It was exhausting, but worth it to be with my friend and the rest of the wedding party. I flew back for the wedding and it was worth it.

Now for my trip somewhere other than Indiana, I spent a few days in San Diego to see my cousin graduate from marine boot camp. The extra time was spent visiting the San Diego Zoo and scoping out Old Town San Diego. One of the great finds on the trip was some artisan olive oil and vinegars from Temecula Olive Oil Company. In fact, the stuff is so good, we hardly want to use it because we have such a limited supply. It can be ordered online, so I might have to order some more.

6.) Cook recipes with five ingredients I haven't used before
Hoisin sauce - This tangy sauce is perfect with chicken, though a friend of mine argued that it doesn't really count as an ingredient. I think it did.
Swiss chard - This vegetable can be sauteed and served alone, or added into pasta dishes. It has plenty of healthy ingredients, though I prefer the regular chard to rainbow chard, because the latter tastes a bit bitter to me.
Quinoa - This seed has is a complete protein, but it was something I couldn't stomach. I am not sure if it was just the way I prepared it or if I had a bad batch. Whatever it is, the experience turned my stomach and now just seeing photos of quinoa makes me queasy.
Celery root - This root vegetable is perfect roasted in the oven with a little bit of olive oil. It was one of several new root vegetables I tried this year, and it's about time to cook some up again.
Golden beets - Until shit year, I had never cooked beets at home. For people who have only had canned beets, the fresh variety roasted in the oven is an epiphany. The vegetables and sweet and complex, and so worth the time of making them oneself.

8.) Write a short story - I actually wrote a few things, though I am not sure if they are complete yet so I don't really know whether to call this one done. I plan to continue working on this pieces of started and try to find time to start some new ones.

9.) Go on a date - I actually end up going on more than one date, with more than one person, in addition to a few kinda, sort of date situations. But at least last month, I went out with someone when I knew for sure it was a date and had a good time.

10.) Apply for a fellowship - I applied for the Knight Fellowship early in the year, and was disappointed when I got the news early in February that I had not made it past the first round of the application process. It's one of those things I could apply for again, but part of me feels like I was applying because I felt really stuck where I was and I didn't know what else to do. I'd love an opportunity like this in the future, but for next year I'm happy with where I am with the paper for which I work.

11.) Quit farmville - I had to give it up cold turkey - though I still received requests from family and friends for quite sometime. No more FB games for me. I can't do it.

12.) Take a class - I took a cupcake decorating class and I wasn't very good at it. I don't think I will be decorating many cupcakes, and in fact, except for the plethora of baking around the holidays, I don't really like to bake all that much. I will be using one of the tips I got, however, of using an offset spatula when I bake a cake for Christmas. Hopefully I can get the cake to look decent since I have a bad history with them not turning out quite like I'd like them to.

I'd like to keep this resolution again for next year, even if it is just a cooking class.

14.) Keep up the gym routines - I've been to the gym once in the last week - due to a cold that morphed into a sinus infection - but I am proud to report that since January, with the exception of this week, I have been an avid gym-goer with a record of five to six trips a week. I run everyday I go, I weight train, I ride the bike and I use the elliptical. At the end of August, I even started taking a boot camp class twice a week and it really seemed to add intensity to my workout. When I first started, I would be sore for days after class, from the squats and lunges and crunches, but it all started to get a lot easier and I started to see the difference in myself.

It helps that I have family who go with me a few times a week to keep me motivated from skipping all the time. And I love having a nike sensor that tracks my mileage for me so I know how far I've gone - since July I've run or walked more than 300 miles! I feel healthier, less stressed out at work and just feel better overall. It's a resolution I definitely plan to continue over to next year.

15.) Decide on what kind of car I want - My parents bought a car and I got their old car so I didn't really have to decide what I wanted. It worked out pretty well for me.

16.) Enter (and complete) a 5K run/walk
I entered my first 5K in March and was glad just not to be the last one in. My time was a mediocre 41+ minutes. But I kept running at the gym and entered another 5K in May, and one in October. For my last 5K, I came in just over 34 minutes, a vast improvement from my original time. Now, with the exception of the last week or so when I've been pretty sick, I run 1.5 miles five days a week and tackle a longer 3.5 mile run once a week. It's something I hope to continue to do, with the goal of whittle my time down a little for each 5K I enter.

18.) Have tulips or lilies in my garden
I missed the winter planting time for tulips last year, but I did buy some transplants when they were available at a local hardware store in early spring. This year, I am hoping to get some bulbs in the ground early in the year in hopes that they might bloom on their own in spring. I haven't had much luck with bulbs in the past, but I can always try.

19.) Make homemade pasta sauce (entirely from scratch)
This resolution turned out to be a lot of work. With my mom's help, I roasted a bunch of tomatoes, only to get about 1/2 a cup of tomato sauce to use in the pasta sauce. It was tasty, but required a lot of work, especially since a glass pan exploded in the oven with the first batch of tomatoes, which then had to be thrown out.

To be continued next year:
4.) Learn my aunt's gnocchi recipe - My aunt has promised to show me the recipe early next year, so hopefully this will be in the bag soon enough. On the other hand, I did learn to make spinach gnocchi, which was a tasty and pretty easy meal to prepare.

7.) Watch all the Academy Award best picture winners - With this one, the truth is I was just watching too many movies in the theater and too many TV shows on DVD at home. I watched the complete series of Criminal Minds, the Gilmore Girls and Joan of Arcadia so that took up a lot of time. I rented "Hurt Locker" with someone once, but we didn't actually watch it so this is still one to work on next year, preferably before a new best picture is added to the list.

13.) Scan old photos of family and friends - I never got around to this one, but I'd still like to work on it for next year. I did print out some digital photos for my family, however, since my aunt wanted to know how to get "normal" pictures.

17.) Clean out the garage - My mom did some work on the garage on days when I wasn't home, but this one needs to get done but always ends up a last priority. So next year, I'll keep this on the list.

Resolutions No. 4 and 9 collide - gnocchi and a dinner date

When I started my resolutions last year, I thought some of them would be harder to complete than others. I thought making gnocchi (resolution No. 4) with my aunt would be easy enough. I told her I wanted to learn the recipe about six months ago and I mentioned it when I saw her for family gatherings throughout the year. But as the holidays rolled around, she has been busy with work and when she made gnocchi for a cousin who was home from marine boot camp, I happened to be out of town that day so I couldn't help. But she's promised to show me the recipe in January so I'll still get around to it.

But I did make gnocchi this year even though it wasn't my family's traditional gnocchi recipe. And strangely enough the gnocchi-making was tied to another resolution. I made a resolution to go on one date this year (No. 9.) And this is one of the resolutions I thought would be hardest to complete since it required someone else to make it happen.

I had a couple "was it or wasn't it a date" experiences earlier in the year and though my coworker insists that if the guy pays, its' a date, I didn't agree. The whole dating thing just seemed like a lot of work most of the year as I asked my friends to set me up on blind dates and tried other ways to meet people.

I needed something clear cut to clear the resolution. So when my sister's girlfriend asked if she could set me up on a blind date I agreed. I met the guy for coffee, and since it was a short 30 min. meeting at Starbucks, it didn't really feel like a date. But we followed up with dinner, so I figured that must count as a date. The thing is, when dinner was over after an hour, I was ready to go.

But a few weeks later, I made plans with another guy. We had lunch together, and when lunch was over, I wasn't ready to go. We walked around Santana Row. And when we'd walked around there for a while, he asked if I wanted to rent a movie and hang out some more. And I found I did want to spend more time with him. And after I left, I knew wanted to make plans with him again.

So a couple weeks later when he offered to make me dinner, I knew it was a date. And I really knew it was a date when I arrived and he was preparing to make homemade spinach gnocchi instead of pasta from a box with a jar of sauce (which is what I expected.) If he was trying to impress me, it worked. He did most of the work, though I offered to help. The gnocchi recipe is not much like the one my family makes which uses potatoes since it used spinach, parmesan cheese, flour and eggs to make the gnocchi. The only thing that was similar was the shape of the dumplings. I had a hand in putting in a few of the ingredients into the gnocchi mixture and I helped roll them into dumplings, though he did most of the work. I brought garlic bread and a bottle of my favorite wine. The recipes are definitely ones I would use again and it was nice to share a meal with someone else on what was clearly a date.

A literary endeavor

I finished reading "Hunger," by Lan Samantha Chang on Sunday marking the completion of resolution No. 1 to read 1o books this year. The short story collection by Chang includes stories that emphasize the isolation of the immigrant experience - from other colleagues, from neighbors and even from their own children. My favorite story was the title one, "Hunger," about a woman, her husband and her two daughters. The story is the longest one in the book, coming in at just over 100 pages, but her characters are as developed as if it were a full-length novel. The stories struck a chord with me as they stressed how the same people can experience the same things in such a different way. Though I am a second generation American, the stories did make me wonder what it was like for my grandfather when he arrived from Italy speaking no English, or for my father's parents who immigrated from Mexico as children. Though Chang's story is about Chinese immigrants, it seems that there would be some similarities to the experiences.

Book No. 9 was "Lullaby" by Chuck Palahniuk. The author is perhaps best known for writing "Fight Club," which was adapted into a pretty cool movie with Edward Norton and Brad Pitt. I'd never read any of his stuff, but I'd been warned that is writing is pretty dark. "Lullaby" is about a journalist who is assigned to write a series on crib death. As he goes to each crime scene, he finds an unusual connection at each of the homes. They all have a book of lullabies and the books are open to the same page. Little by little, the author reveals that the journalist knows has seen the book before - the night his own daughter and wife died. It's a culling spell - a poem that has the power to kill off those who hear it. The crux of the story is what the journalist chooses to do about it - use it to eliminate anyone who annoys him or rid the world of all the copies. In Palahniuk's world, everything is pretty complicated. The writing style was easy to read and the characters were well developed, but the actions of the characters is far from pleasant.

Book No. 8 was "Click," which has multiple authors. Proceeds from the book all went to Amnesty International, but the only reason I was drawn to the book is that some of the chapters were written by some of my favorite authors, including Nick Hornby and Roddy Doyle. The book has 10 authors who each write one chapter of the book. The book starts out focused on Maggie and Jason, two American kids who have just lost their grandfather. But from there the book scans continents and decades. My favorite chapters were those by Hornby and Doyle, whose writing in the chapters was similar to their writing in books I've written by them. I didn't like some of the chapters at the end, including one by Gregory Maguire, who is known for rewriting classic fairytales such as his novel "Wicked." Those chapters went a little too far into the realm of sci-fi for me and they didn't seem to fit with the rest of the book. Most of the chapters, however, felt surprisingly cohesive. At the least, the book is an interesting experiment.

Book No. was "Bog Child" by Siobhan Dowd. I was drawn to those book, which is a young adult novel, because it was set Northern Ireland. I studied there when I was in college and I'm always interested in reading books or seeing movies based on the emerald isle. The novel is set during the Troubles, the era in Northern Ireland with the most violence. I've read a lot about the Troubles, but its hard to whittled down into a simple explanation. That is one of the problems with Dowd's book - anyone who doesn't know about it might be a little lost with the book. The main character is Fergus, a high school student who is studying for his A levels, the British test students take to get into college. He wants to be a doctor and get away from his small village. More than anything he wants to get away from the cause his older brother has embraced. His brother is a member of the Irish Republican Army, a radical group that for many years tried to fight for independence for Northern Ireland, which was under rule of Great Britain. His brother is in prison on a hunger strike. The book focuses less on the political strife, however, than on Fergus' studying for his A levels, running and falling for a girl who visits his village for the summer. The story was a little bit too simple, but then again it was written for young adults.

Now that I've finished my goal for the books, I can start tackling the stack of "New Yorkers" that have backed up - all the way back to June.

A trip to Sunny San Diego

Thanksgiving is just past and that's a sign that 2010 is winding down. That also means my deadline to finish up my 19 resolutions is fast approaching. But unlike the news business where missing a deadline means the paper not getting out on time, life is a much more flexible endeavor.

I have actually finished quite a few of the resolutions and I am close to finishing some of them, though I haven't been that diligent about reporting on them. And I will continue to work on some of the resolutions I have completed, but for now here is a recap of one that is done.

I took a trip somewhere other than Indiana (Resolution No. 5). Last week I took some time off work to head to San Diego for my cousin's graduation from Marine boot camp. My parents and I went down a couple days in advance so we could stroll around the San Diego Historical Park, visit the San Diego Zoo and eat out at a few good restaurants. For anyone heading to Old Town San Diego, I recommend the Old Town Mining Company, which recently opened. I had an awesome burger there as well as a tasty vanilla wafer (a twist on the classic white Russian made with vanilla vodka.) The service was good and the meal was reasonably priced. Avoid the Acapulco restaurant. The mojito was made with Sierra Mist, instead of real lime juice, the service was slow and the food was just so-so.

The biggest stress of the trip was renting a mid-size SUV. I drive a Saturn, which is not a big car. It doesn't take up a lot of space. It's easy to navigate into parking spaces. The Suzuki Vitara I rented from Budget had the benefit of being high off the ground so I could see easily, but I also had no feel for how much space I actually needed to switch lanes or park it. To exacerbate things, I planned to use the GPS feature on my MyTouch phone during the trip. But San Diego roads around downtown and Old Town are just weird. The GPS kept giving us strange directions and heading us in circles. Luckily, the amount of driving on the trip was limited, and as for parking, I just parked far away from other cars.

The main purpose of the trip, however, was to see my cousin graduate from Marine boot camp so much of the trip was spent at the Marine Recruit Depot. It was great to see my younger cousin, for whom I started babysitting when he was only four months old and I was 12, look so grown up and mature. It was a busy, and tiring trip, but worth it.

Picky eaters something to be studied

Duke University's Medical School is conducting an interesting survey online of adults who are picky eaters. According to the blurb on their website, "Most people have foods that they dislike or will not eat. However, for some people, unusual or picky eating leads to distress or problems."

I've been told by many people that I am a picky eater. Friends and co-workers like to point out when I say I don't like something, which apparently I do a lot out at restaurants or when talking about meals.

Even though I write a food column each week in the Life section of the Weekend Pinnacle, I am certainly not adventurous in what I eat. Anyone who reads the column on a regular basis will probably notice the almost complete absence of seafood recipes. It's not something I eat, so it's not something I cook and it's not something I write about. Others who know me personally will also know that anytime a recipe calls for dark chicken meat, I substitute white meat. If it has bell peppers, I pick them out of my serving. If it calls for jalapenos, I leave them out or substitute in a milder pepper. I don't eat tofu, eggplant, zucchini or anything that has an unpalatable mushy texture. I avoid pork chops, pork shoulder, pork tenderloin but am totally fine with pork sausage and ham.

The main things that make something not appealing to me are texture and smell. The smell of curry is enough to make me nauseous and the smell of fish is equally appalling.

I don't eat anything that comes out of the water - except perhaps rice. That includes fish, shellfish, seaweed and anything else someone might come up with. The last time I ate fish I was probably 7 years old and it was probably a tuna fish sandwich at my grandparents' house. I've had friends who have tried to cure me of my dislike of fish. I tried a bite of teriyaki mahi mahi once at a restaurant. It tasted good - but it still brought about a gag reflex and made me lose my appetite. I tried a tiny taste of fish in South Africa at a friend's insistence and again the gag reflex kicked in. He said he didn't realize I actually have a physical reaction to it and asked me to never try fish again. A few years ago I ate a stuffed mushroom that a friend assured me had to crab in it. I swallowed it and ended up sick for days - which perhaps could have been a food allergy but since I never ate shellfish I didn't know about it.

So I thought I might be a candidate for the survey and decided to take it a few days ago. It's sort of the first step in gathering information so there is no long-term commitment to follow up studies or any requirement to taste test things in front of researchers. Once I started taking the survey, I realized that perhaps I am not as picky an eater as I thought. The questions include things about avoiding social situations or not going to restaurants.

I will admit that I do dislike potlucks because I don't like eating dishes when I don't know exactly what is in them. But it is also because I think a lot of people just aren't very good cooks. When I do have to go to potlucks, I generally stick to what I brought and scout out a few other safe dishes. If I am going to a new restaurant, I do check out the menu on the Web site to ensure there is something I like. There almost always is, unless it is a seafood restaurant. So I wouldn't say I stay out of situations because of picky eating habits.

It does ask if you lie to people about your eating habits and I emphatically say no. I am open about all the things I don't like to eat so people know not to offer them to me.

I did try to break out of some of my pickiness this year by making resolutions to eat at five new restaurants and to cook with five new ingredients. I did get a few ingredients I liked, but I also got one that I will never use again. When I made quinoa at the beginning of the year halfway through dinner the gag reflex kicked in and I couldn't finish my plate. Now the sight of quinoa turns my stomach so I've added that to the lengthy list of things I don't eat.

Homemade tomato sauce and ravioli offers quite a challenge

It wasn't easy but New Year's Resolutions No. 3 and 19 are now complete. The task involved dozens of tomatoes, an explosion of glass in the oven, a broken pasta maker, and eventually a tasty meal.

The resolutions were to make homemade ravioli and pasta sauce, neither of which I've done before. I have made linguine and angel hair pasta so I figured it would be easy enough to use the same basic recipe to make sheets of pasta that could be folded over into raviolis. For the filling, I wanted something simple such as ricotta, Parmesan cheese and herbs mixed together.

I figured the complicated part of the meal would be the pasta sauce since I wanted to make it as much from scratch as possible. That meant starting with a homemade tomato sauce that would be slow-roasted in the oven. Back in the spring, I planted three Roma tomato plants specifically with my eye on the prize of homemade tomato sauce. But the weather did not cooperate this summer. While I have tons of cherry tomatoes, we only had a dozen or so small, misshapened Roma tomatoes.

So on Saturday, I went to the Morgan Hill farmers market and bought a bunch of vine-ripened tomatoes. They were expensive, but looked delicious. With help from my mom, I spent Labor Day chopping garlic, herbs and slicing tomatoes. The tomato sauce recipe called for slow-roasting the vegetables with olive oil, garlic, onion and other herbs for two and half hours in a glass baking dish.

Once everything was in the oven, the house started to smell like a pizza with the mix of tomato, garlic, oregano and thyme. But at 15 minutes, there was a loud explosion in the kitchen, like nothing I've ever heard before. At first I assumed the cats had climbed on the counter and knocked something done, but as smoke started coming from the oven we knew it was something more. One of the glass pans had shattered inside the oven, leaving none of the three pans of tomatoes viable.

We had to wait for the oven to cool off before we could start cleaning it up. My mom took the lead on the clean up and went out to the store to buy some more tomatoes. These tomatoes were smaller than the ones from the market and not as ripe. My mom prepped batch No. 2 and put them in metal pans we knew would not explode. At the 15-minute mark, there were no explosions so we figured we were okay.

As the cooking time neared an end, we heated up a deep skillet with olive oil, then tossed in onion and garlic. Into the mix went ground beef, fresh mushrooms and eventually the strained tomato sauce. The recipe called for using a food mill, which I don't own. So I put the roasted tomatoes into a wire mesh strainer and squished out as much liquid as possible. Out of 24 tomatoes, we ended up with 1/2 to 3/4 c. of liquid - not so much for all that effort. To the sauce, we added a cup of white wine and two large beefsteak tomatoes, diced. In the end, I broke down and added just a little tomato paste left over from a meal earlier in the week. The sauce smelled and tasted excellent.

The next step was making the raviolis. I started mixing up chopped basil, chopped spinach, ricotta cheese and Parmesan cheese for the filling. As my mom was working near the stove, she accidentally knocked over a bottle of balsamic vinegar, that then shattered all over the kitchen. For the second time that day, we had to clean up a huge mess of glass.

After the clean up, we got to work on the pasta. The pasta dough is a simple one that uses 2 c. of flour and three eggs. Then I went to get the pasta maker, which I gave to my sister for her birthday last year. It had been used once. I tried to clamp it to the kitchen table, but the clamp didn't fit right. So my mom held the pasta maker still as I tried to crank the first ball of pasta through the rollers. But the pasta wouldn't go. We soon realized that only one of the rollers was rolling and it was just not going to work.

With the pasta sauce already made, not making the raviolis didn't seem like an option. Instead, I got out a rolling pin and rolled the pasta out as thin as I could by hand. It certainly wasn't as thin as it would have been with the pasta maker. And I am sure the pasta got a lot tougher from all the handling. We only got 18 raviolis out of the pasta, but they were pretty big so I just figured each family member would just eat a few. The pasta squares weren't perfect, but I did feel good that the raviolis did not pop open when I tossed them into the boiling water. The filling tasted great and the pasta tasted fine. It just wasn't quite the right consistency.

We each had our fill for dinner, and then cooked up some frozen raviolis to toss with the rest of the sauce for lunch.

I don't think I will be making either of these recipes again, but at least now I can say I have.

Cheese ravioli with meat sauce - a photo essay

Cheese and spinach ravioli with tomato and meat sauce

First I grew some Roma tomatoes.

Then I sliced them in half, seeded them, coated them with olive oil and seasoned them with onion, garlic, oregano, thyme, salt and pepper, to roast for 2.5 hours. All with help from my mom.

Then one of the glass pans exploded in the oven. So we waited for it to cool and then started over with the second batch of tomatoes.

The tomatoes came out of the oven roasted and caramelized just right.



I sauteed onion, garlic, ground beef and button mushrooms.



Then, I squeezed as much liquid out of the tomatoes as I could - it wasn't a lot. Then I added in white wine.

While the sauce simmered, we mixed up a filling of cheese, spinach, basil and garlic for the raviolis.

But then the pasta maker didn't work. So we had to roll the dough out by hand.

The dough came out thicker than it should have, a little tougher from all the handling and the ravioli were a little malformed.

But they stayed together in the boiling water and tasted fine. The sauce was great, but next time I want to make homemade pasta sauce I'll just use canned.

A Sunday afternoon game of croquet

I learned something new about myself yesterday. It was something I never would have suspected, especially given my lack of hand-eye coordination in most instances. But apparently I am a pretty good croquet player.

I went to a friend's birthday party in Salinas yesterday and they had a few activities planned. Most of the time, I stay away from any sort of competition, especially with people I don't know. I tend to get super competitive and I don't like to lose, so I often subscribe to the attitude that I should just not play at all if I am not going to win. It's my attitude with board games, card games, video games and most athletic endeavors.

But I didn't want to be a spoil sport - and the hosts said it was "mandatory" to play - so I lined up to see if anyone would pick me for their team. Since no one at the party knew my name, except for the hosts, I thought I might be picked last, but I was selected in the first go around. Maybe I looked like I knew my way around a croquet ball.

First off, let me just say that the croquet "arena" wasn't the best. Actually, it was set up once in a wily nily fashion by one guy at the party. Then another guy actually read the directions and set it up according to the diagram included in the game rules. Then a little kid came along and pulled out all the "wickets," the white plastic things you have to get the croquet balls through. For a while it seemed like the game might not happen, but then the birthday girl insisted that we play.

The course includes two sticks at each end and six wickets. You have to go through five in one direction and five in the other direction. The last two were staggered because we didn't have enough space before running into the pavement. Parts of the course were also close to dirt, tree roots, sticks and piles of leaves. But we managed.

I was on the green team with two other girls. For our first round, the first shooter, or whatever players are called in croquet, ended up a little off course. See, if you go past the wicket, you have to back track around to the front of the wicket. Luckily for me, when I was up, there were plenty of croquet balls in my path. I hit two on my way back toward the wicket, giving myself two extra hits. The rules say you get an extra hit for passing through a wicket, two for hitting another player's ball and one for hitting the stick at the end.

My team was ahead for most of the game. We avoided the death trap that was the dirt area near the edge of the arena. It sloped downward and many a player ended up in it. The one down side to being in the lead is that there were not that many other balls nearby to get the extra strokes, so we mostly ended up with one stroke each, while our opponents were often getting three.

In, the end, everyone's interest in the game waned as it headed into hour two. My team members stopped taking their turns and finally the team that had been in last place for most of the game ended up in first. We were going to continue competing to see who would take last place. But everyone kind of lost interest. At the end of the game, green was the further behind on the course. But at least prizes went to the winning team and the losing team.

I'll probably never play croquet again, but it would be interesting to see if my early shots were just beginner's luck or if I actually might have some sort of skill.

A little heavy reading for the summer

I like to read. I do it at the gym when I am on the treadmill or a bike or an elliptical machine. opting for "People," "Entertainment Weekly," "Esquire" or "GQ." I do it every night before I go to sleep, lying in bed, with a "New Yorker" propped up on my pillow . I do it at work as I edit my stories or those of coworkers, or when I take a break to read a few L.A. Times articles online.

The problem with all this reading is that it leaves little time to read books, which I also love to consume. So that's were resolution No. 1 came in for the year. I've already reported on the first four books I read this year: "Juliet, Naked," by Nick Hornby, "Her Fearful Symmetry" by Audrey Niffeneger, "Too Much Happiness," by Alice Munro and "A Version of the Truth" by Jennifer Kaufmann and Karen Mack.

I've been better at the reading than blogging about the reading, as I have read three other books so far this year to bring the total to seven. Here is a summary of the others:

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel - I picked this book up because my sister had it on her computer desk and said it was pretty good. Even though it's a graphic novel, I still think it counts as a book. Besides, this little graphic novel had more baggage than an 800-page Wally Lamb story.

The book is basically a memoir of Bechdel's odd family life. First off, the family lives in a funeral home, which her father runs. Second, her father is apparently gay and has a thing for barely legal men. Third, Bechdel discovers that she herself is gay. All of these issues are convoluted by her father's tragic death, a death that could have been an accident or a suicide, something Bechdel is still trying to figure out. Overall the book is depressing and Bechdel's humor is on the dark side.

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood - I've been a fan of Margaret Atwood's writing since I was a high school student. I devoured her books in college and always look forward to a new release from the Canadian author. Her latest book, "The Year of the Flood," is a prequel to her novel "Oryx and Crake," which featured a post-apocalyptic world. It's been a few years since I read it so I don't remember all the details, but there were elements and characters in the latest novel that felt familiar to me.

Atwood's genius is that she creates future worlds in her novels that are just enough like the modern day to be believeable - it's just a world were so many of the negatives are stretched to the limit. For instance, the main characters in the book are vegetarians who have rebeled against a culture that eats meat at all costs - and it is meat of questionable origin. It is a world where endangered animals have become delicacies at restaurants and genetically mutated animals have escaped from science labs.

The book has an ensemble of characters and the point of view switches from chapter to chapter. Most of the narratives are told from a female point of view, which is one thing I've always liked about Atwood's work, that she pays so much attention to the female persepctive. The novel follows a few characters who join up with a cult - some because they are believers, some because they want the protection of a group and others because their parents have forced them into it.

I can't say that this book was a fun read, but it is another example of Atwood's good works. It made me want to re-read "Oryx and Crake," which I might do as soon as I complete my resolution.

Passing For Thin: Losing Half My Weight and Finding Myself by Frances Kuffel - I found this book in a box from our storage and started reading the first few pages when waiting for my mom to get ready to walk the dog. I put it down and forgot about it until I had a few hours to myself last weekend. I figured I might as well use it to read a book and I picked it up again. It was a book my mom had bought, but she only vaguely remembered reading it, commenting that she didn't remember it being very good.

The book is a memoir by Kuffel, who discusses her addiction to food, which led to her all-time high weight of 338. About half the book focuses on her "fat" life and how miserable everything was. The second half of the book focuses on her "thin" life and how miserable she still seemed to be. She mentions a tough childhood, but never really goes into the details of it except to talk about an older brother who picked on her. Still, she refers to the family home as the place of her soul and seems to get along just fine with her mother and father. As a compulsive eater, Kuffel never really delves into the reasons for her addiction.

When I picked up the book, I thought I might relate to Kuffel's struggle as someone who has realized that when life gets tough I tend to give up my gym routines and turn to junk food. I rededicated myself to working out this year and eating healthy and have been happy with the results of weight loss, less stress at work and good health.


But there was really nothing in Kuffel's story to which I could relate. One, I found her food plan of eliminating all sugar and flour to be impossible to maintain (it turns out it was, as Kuffel has a 2009 book out that chronicles gaining half of her weight back and then trying to lose it again.) If I want a cookie, I'll have a cookie and I don't feel guilty about it. Two, she didn't exercise at all during most of her weight loss, which I've found to be important to me. It lowers my general stress level and just feels good to be building up muscle.

The biggest issue with the book was just the "woe is me" pity party Kuffel wants to throw for herself. She's unhappy because she was adopted, her older brother was mean, her job sucks, she's never had a boyfriend. But even after she takes the first step of losing the weight she still seems unwilling to take responsibility and change the other things in her life that she doesn't like.


Even when she takes the first tenative steps into dating, she choses only men she thinks are unattractive because she still believes that is all that would actually like her. The most frustrating moment in the book is when she describes a date with a guy who at the beginning of the date says she should have listed herself as "a few extra pounds." And then she continues with the date AND goes back to his apartment, where he continues to insult her until she finally leaves. I just can't imagine having such low self-esteem as to be someone's verbal punching bag, even for the duration of one date.


By the time I realized how much I disliked the book, I was already half down with it and decided I might as well finish it. I didn't find the book that engaging and I found parts of it a little hard to follow. Kuffel uses a lot of little inside jokes that were not well explained. The book just didn't have a flow to it.


I probably will never read Kuffel's second book, about gaining back her weight and losing it, or her book on dating. But I do wish her well in her attempt to keep her weight off because I know how easy it can be to fall back into the old routines.


Even though summer is nearly over, I think I might pick one of the books from the easy summer beach book lists just to read something a little lighter. After these three books, getting back to the "New Yorker" will actually seem like lighter reading.

A few more resolutions complete

When it came to making my list of New Year's resolutions back in January, I didn't put a lot of thought into them. I just listed off some random things I wanted to do this year - and thought making it public might help keep the pressure on to actually do them.

As I wrote yesterday, some of these resolutions have been a little bit harder than others - like the date thing.

Since it is nearing the end of August - with really only four months left to complete the list of 19 items I made for myself - I thought it was time to check back in and see what I have left to accomplish. I have to admit, I didn't spend too much time thinking about these resolutions during the summer. There was just so much else to do - graduation parties, baby showers, weddings, watching back-to-back-to-back episodes of "The Gilmore Girls."

I was pleasantly surprised to find that I have completed 8 of my 19 resolutions and that one of them is kind of obsolete now. One of those resolutions had been to decide what kind of car I wanted to buy, but since I sort of took over driving my mom's Saturn when she bought a new used Saturn I didn't really decide anything. Still, I think it should count as complete.

I also quit Farmville months ago. I was torn because so many of my relatives and friends were playing it - so for weeks I would still log on to send supplies and gifts to all the people I knew who were playing it. The game was never fun. I mean, it consists of clicking on squares to "sow, seed and harvest" plants. It's much more exciting to pick real vegetables in my backyard. Finally I realized I just had to give it up cold turkey. It has been months since I've started up the Facebook game and I no longer feel bad for ignoring all those requests I get from other people. It was just too much of a time suck. Now when I see all those please for help, I just ignore them.

I also feel like I should be able to claim No. 14 on the list - keep up the gym routines. Since January, I've been going to the gym an average of six days a week. I run about 10 miles a week. I've completed two 5Ks and have plans to do another one next month. I even signed up for a boot camp class at my gym that has been kicking my butt twice a week and have a gift certificate for one-on-one sessions with the same trainer. Though it's not the end of the year quite yet, I feel confident that I will continue with my rigorous routine. The benefits of it have been too great to ignore - sleeping better, getting down to the same size I was when I was 23, not feeling super stressed at work and having visible muscle mass - so the routines came with a lot of motivation.

I've read a couple books I haven't reported on yet and I am nearly complete with another one. The sad thing is I have only really enjoyed a couple of the books I've read and a lot of them just haven't been that interesting. More on this resolution when the next book is complete.

Some of the other resolutions haven't really gone quite as well. I have yet to watch any of the Academy Award best picture winners - aside from ones I've watched in the past. I guess I just got too wrapped up in getting "The Gilmore Girls" from Netflix, and a few other TV series, so I haven't put much effort into it. As soon as I finish with "The Gilmore Girls" and perhaps the last season of "Criminal Minds," I promise to add a few movies to the queue.

I have not learned the family recipe for gnocchi though I made it known to my aunt that I want her to make them with me. I am sure it will happen before the end of the year. I also have not made ravioli from scratch or pasta sauce from scratch. The goal was to use tomatoes from my garden to make the sauce and then make the raviolis. Unfortunately, of the two roma tomato plants I put in the ground, one died of and the other has just now begun to produce ripe tomatoes. The weather has just been off so much this year we only have cherry tomatoes in abundance and those wouldn't really work well for sauce I have in mind. I still haven't decided exactly what I will do about the sauce since even tomatoes at the farmers markets haven't been that good this year.


But I still have four more months to make some progress so here's to hoping I can finish up the last 11 resolutions.

Navigating the world of (not) dating

When I made a list of 19 New Year's Resolutions, I'm not sure exactly what prompted me to go on one date on the list. The truth is I've never really dated much. I generally hang out with guys as friends, have crushes from a distance and on rare occasions it turns into more.

So perhaps this resolution was influenced by the three weddings I had to attend this year or all the unsolicited advice I've been getting about dating in the last few years. Mostly I think it was just an opportunity to challenge myself to get out of my comfort zone, like a lot of my other resolutions.

But this resolution has been a little harder to complete than any of the eight I've crossed off the list. It seems like a simple enough resolution, one date, but it really hasn't been. I have to admit that I am not the most social person. I spend a lot of time at work and a lot of time at the gym and a lot of time at movie theaters, so I probably don't open myself up to many opportunities to meet people. But I swear, I have been making an effort.

First, I started telling friends about my resolution in hopes they might set me up on a blind date. All of them seemed to think it was a good idea, but most of them said the only guys they know who are single are jerks. So that avenue hasn't been very fruitful.

Early in the year I created a profile on okcupid.com, a website a friend recommended since he knew someone who met a girlfriend on the site. It's basically the same as any other dating site - except its free and the creators maintain an interesting blog that mines data from the site.

The free thing seemed like a plus to me since I would have to shell out $30 or more a month for a dating site that probably wouldn't work. But as it turns out, the free site is also a bastion of men who are in the middle of a career change, figuring out what to study in school or taking a break (all those things translate to unemployed.) I haven't had much luck on the site, whether it be because of my photos, my master's degree or my reporter's salary, but I have gotten a few laughs out of it.

I got a message from one guy who in the first correspondence asked if I wanted to be friends with benefits. A quick look at his profile revealed he was unemployed, living with his parents and unattractive. So yeah, it was easy to pass on that one. There was also a guy who e-mailed me multiple times in between each message I sent him, and within the first week of communicating with me told me about his very ill mother. I had images of him being frantic to get married so dear old mom could be there for the wedding. His over eagerness was just too much for me.

There was one guy I actually considered meeting in person - he was funny over e-mail, well-educated and cute in his picture, even though his listed height was a bit on the short side for me. We actually got to the point of talking about getting together. I mentioned we could see a movie together - so I could get a resolution and a movie column out of the way at the same time, even if the date was a bust. He said it would be fun and he was available in a couple weeks. And then when I wrote him back to confirm a date, he went silent. There was no response back - ever. Guess he changed his mind.


Personally, I haven't been a fan of my online interactions so last month I decided to try something different. I saw a posting from Solis Winery on Facebook about an "It's Just Lunch" singles event. It was only $15 and it was in Gilroy so I wouldn't have to drive far on a weeknight. The cover included wine tasting, appetizers and a chance to meet new people. I figured I would go and check it out. My one hesitation was that I worried it might be just a long pitch for the "It's Just Lunch" dating service, which sets up busy professionals on lunch dates.


When I arrived at Solis Winery, it wasn't a long pitch at all. It was a strange crowd, however. When I walked into the tasting room, most of the people there were at least 20 years older than I am. Some of the women came across as very much on the prowl. And with some of the others, I could see why they were single. One talked about how many dating services she has joined through the years and another talked about her divorce - 13 years ago. Really didn't seem like first meeting topics to me, but what do I know as I can't even get one date.


I was getting ready to make an early exit when two guys who looked more around my age walked in. I noticed them because they seemed so out of place. They were both kinda cute, but I probably would never have walked up to them on my own. One of the guys came over to the group of women I was talking with and introduced himself. It seemed like a perfect opportunity to get to know him better - but one of the women would not stop talking. Basically no one else could get a word in. I was again thinking about making an exit again. But then the group I was stuck in decided to buy a bottle of wine and take the conversation outside. I thought it might be a chance to get to know the only guys there around my age a little bit.


Unfortunately, I had consumed only a little wine so all the other women, who were still drinking, were a lot more talkative and flirtatious than I was. They were, perhaps, also a little charmed by the fact that they had the younger guys at their table. I talked a bit, but didn't add much to the conversation. I did, however, find out that the two guys, who were friends did not really belong. They had been invited to the event by a friend who worked for "It's Just Lunch" who wanted to increase the male-to-female ratio.


At the end of the night, the one guy asked to exchange business cards with me for a potential story for my newspaper. The other guy exchanged numbers with all the women at the table, programmed the numbers in and then called so we would all have his number, too. A week after the event, I texted him and asked if he wanted to hang out some time. He said sure. We exchanged a couple more texts - and then he went silent. I guess I could have followed up with him again, or suggested a specific date, but I think I read too much of the book "He's Just Not That Into You" because he seemed clear to me he wasn't that into me. And maybe that's one of my problems with dating - I just don't want to waste too much time on people who aren't interested in me.


And as it turns out, the hard sell for "It's Just Lunch" came a couple weeks later when the cute guy's friend called me five days in a row when I was busy at work to talk about my interest in a membership. Seems the woman who barely talked to me at Solis except to mark me off as present had told the sales girl I was "really interested" in learning more about the membership. I finally called the woman back and said I might be up to more pay-as-you-go events, but the special $200 off membership just wasn't for me. And three days later she called me again to say she remembered we had a conversation, but couldn't remember exactly what we talked about. I reminded her that, no, I did not want to join. Solis and "It's Just Lunch" paired up for another event last week, but I skipped it.


As it turns out, I am beginning to think this might be the one resolution I don't resolve this year. And to be honest, that's just fine by me, since all this not even really dating stuff is kind of a roller coaster ride in itself. I'd rather just stick to having a crush from afar, say on the cute guy I see a couple times a week at the gym. I don't know his name. I don't know what he does for a living. But he smiles at me and says hi when I see him.

Addicted to the Gilmore Girls

A few years ago, a co-worker whom I loaned dvds quite frequently kept telling me that I should watch "Gilmore Girls." He - yes, it was a he - said the show was great and he was always supposed to bring in the DVDs, which he owned, for me to borrow.

I never watched the show when it was on TV because it was already on for a few years before I realized it existed. It seems to be a trend with me, to wait until a series has gone off the air to then get the DVDs from Netflix and watch the entire series at once.

That's how I watched Sopranos, which was loaned to me by a cousin who had all the seasons. That's how I caught up on "The Office" when it was already a few seasons in. I watched it on DVD, and then watched the most recent season on NBC online so that I was eventually caught up and ready to start the new season. Ditto with "30 Rock."

I did the same thing with "Criminal Minds" this year. My mom started taping random episodes of it when there wasn't much on TV. It was a mix of episodes from different, seasons, out of order. We finally decided to rent the series DVD by DVD from Netflix so that we could watch it from start to finish. It was a chance to get to see the relationships between the agents of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit grow. Plus we didn't have to wait months between the cliff hangers at the end of each season. The best part with "Criminal Minds" is we still have one more season to watch on DVD - last year will be released in September - and then we get to start with the latest season.

So now that we got caught up on "Criminal Minds," we decided to start watching "Gilmore Girls" and "Angel." The "Girls" we are getting from Netflix, and Angel we are watching on instant stream from Netflix. I have to say, though, my coworker was right. If I go a few days without watching an episode of the Gilmores, I feel a little bit of withdrawal. I love the quirkiness of the show and the sarcasm of mom Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and daughter Rory (Alexis Bledel.) The pair grew on me quickly and I like the supporting cast, including appearances by actors who appeared in other shows later in their careers such as Milo Ventimiglia and Adam Brody.

The one bad thing about watching a series that has already ended is that once I get to the last disc of the last season, there is nothing left to see. For now, I've got a few more seasons to go.

Emptying storage leads to some interesting finds

It's amazing sometimes the kind of things people will box up and store in the garage, or in the closet or under the bed. Or maybe it's just amazing the things that I will box up and store wherever I can find space.

I'm not quite as much of a pat rack as my dad or my sister, but I definitely hold on to things more than other people I know. I think it runs in the family because I remember visiting my grandmother's house when I was a kid and the counters were piled high with stuff. I don't really remember what the stuff was, but it was always there.

When my parents bought a house a few years ago and we moved from a townhouse to the new place, I thought I did a good job of purging all the necessary things in my life. I donated tons of books, DVDs and videos. I emptied out my closet to just the bare necessities. I got rid all the textbooks I'd been holding on to for years - after all, I didn't really need my psych textbooks from 10 years ago.

But it turns out the purge wasn't as good as I assumed it was. Just a few weeks ago, my mom finally decided to empty out a storage she rented before we moved. It was supposed to be a temporary space to throw some stuff until we cleaned the boxes out of the garage and could move it all back home. The garage is still pretty full - and we need to deal with that at some point - but now the contents of the storage are in the living room.

I had a box of old papers from elementary school and high school. I don't know why I would possibly have packed English papers and overheads for biology presentations. But there were a bunch of notebooks with poetry and journals, and creative writing projects, and I couldn't bring myself to toss those out. Even though I write all the time for the paper now, that stuff reminds me that someday I want to get back to that creative stuff.

I also had a bunch of programs from different theater productions, tickets from movies and brochures from when I was in Ireland. I also couldn't bring myself to through any of this stuff out. It's the kind of stuff that would be perfect for a scrapbook - if I scrapbooked. Instead the notebooks and the memorabilia is piled on the floor in my room until I have some free time to sort through all of it and put it with the other stuff stored under my bed.

I also found a pile of old VHS tapes, including a bunch with videos recorded from MTV. One was even labeled as my high school best friend's favorites. There were also about four boxes of random CDs, which I am slowly trying to go through and add to iTunes. Some of the music is really bad stuff - a soundtrack to Young Guns II, Jasmine Guy, Bell Biv Devoe - but some of it is decent. I've added some Beatles, Elton John and a bunch of old school dance music to my iPod.

The one nice surprise in the bunch is that I had a plastic tub full of clothes. It was slacks and shirts from when I worked at San Jose State before graduate school, and none of it fit when I packed it up. But since I've taken up running and working out again, all that stuff fits again. Some of it is out of fashion or I just don't like it anymore, but you can't really go wrong with gray slack pants.

Most of the stuff from the storage is going to be donated, and as for the CDs, anyone who wants some random music just let me know because we're not quite sure what to do with it all. It always feels good to toss out some of the clutter.

Cupcake class should grade on a curve

So when I made my list of New Year's resolution and I put on the one (No. 12) about taking a class sometime this year, I was still hopeful that I would get that fellowship I applied for and be auditing awesome classes at Stanford. But since I am not enough of an egghead for Stanford, I had to have a back-up plan.

Last Friday I took a cupcake decorating class. While I like to cook, I am not much for baking. I like to bake and I like to reap the rewards of baking, but I get a little overwhelmed at having to measure everything out precisely and waiting patiently for things to cook. A friend of mine said he likes baking because you just follow the instructions and you can't go wrong. But personally, I find that I can go wrong - and do - all the time. In fact, a few months ago when my mom and I baked a strawberry cake for my aunt's birthday, we improvised a little on the frosting. In the end more frosting ended up on the cake plate than on the actual cake. But I guess we didn't follow the instructions.

The class was offered through the community class offerings at Gavilan Community College. I've taken a few cooking classes and enjoyed them so the cupcake class sounded fun. Last fall, the class was offered and registration booked up before we could get in so this time I rsvp'ed early on.

Penny Perluss, the owner of Pennycakes in Gilroy, teaches the class and she kept it to the basics. Each classmate received six cupcakes - two chocolate, two lemon and two vanilla - and a bag of supplies. We had three types of icing and three basic cake decorating tips, three colors of fondant and a cup of buttercream frosting to share. We also had a square sheet of plastic on which to practice our designs before putting them onto the cupcakes.

The first design was a daisy, with a green leaf, pink petals and a yellow center. The petals and center were easy enough. The tough part was getting the leaf tip to look like a leaf and not like a snack or random squiggle. It was a bit frustrating. After practicing, we did the design on our first cupcake and then practiced on one more. It was surprising to see how much better the second one looked than the first. For the next cupcake, we practiced a design with three dainty flowers. This design required use of a 5 or 4 point tip, and as it turns out, it requires a lot of pressure to push thick icing through a small hole. My arms got tired doing it. We also made a sunflower design, with the leaf tip, which I found the hardest to use. My sunflower looked a bit saggy compared to the one Perluss did as an example. But as she said at the beginning of the class, there's no doing anything wrong in cupcake decorating. I am sure, however, if the work were graded, I would definitely be below the curve.

I was pretty good with following along - as long as someone was telling me what tip to do and where to put things. But at the end, Perluss let us loose to play around with fondant, with only the guideline to create three different flowers. For anyone who doesn't know, fondant is sort of like surgary play-doh. It doesn't taste good and it gets really sticky if you handle it too much.

During the "free design" period of the class, I noticed that some of the other people in the class were doing extravegant or elegant designs. I was just trying to get three flowers done to meet the requirement of the teacher - even though this was a non-credit class. I made one flower that the teacher described as a mosaic, with petals and leaves shaped the way I used to make them when I'd doodle on my notebooks in class. Then I just made a simple flower with circles and a stem. For the last piece, I made a toadstool, but unfortunately the fondant cap was too heavy for the fondant stem so it kind of fell over.

While I probably will not work with fondant again, if I ever bake a cake I might try to use some of the design tools to make borders or flowers or stars. It was easy enough and it might make people think I actually know what I am doing when it comes to baked goods.

The best part of the class was eating a cupcake when I got home - although half a dozen was a bit too much for one so most of those went to waste. The worst part was my hands still smelling like buttercream and vanilla the next day. Apparently vanilla extract can get under your skin just as much as garlic.

Photos by Melissa Flores

A cupcake is decorated with pink and yellow flowers.

Fondant can be used to mold decorations, such as this toadstool.

The movies that nearly made the list

For a while now, my editor has been joking about all of the editorial staff writing a top five list of their favorite movies. At least we thought he was joking. I think it all started when the new reporter, who is straight out of college would stare at us blankly when we mentioned certain movies we all loved.

In fact, most recently his response to a comment made by another co-worker about "It's a Wonderful Life," was "Isn't that a Christmas movie?" Well, yes, but it's so much more. So we finally published our list this week, two reporters, a sports editor, a photographer, the editor and me. The list can be viewed online at the Weekend Pinnacle Web site.

I learned some interesting things about my co-workers. One person had no movies that were more recent than 1971 - not because he's so much older than the rest of us, but because he grew up in an era without VHS or DVDs. He said movies came on TV once a year and it was a big event, like watching the aforementioned "It's a Wonderful Life" during the holidays each year. Another person had what I referred to as a typical guy list - lots of action/comic book movies. My list, I was surprised to find, was composed of movies that aren't the best ones I've ever seen. Instead, many of my pics reflected some personal connection to the movie and people in my life. Number 1. on any good movie list has long been the first movie my best friend and I saw after she got her driver's license - it was our first moment of freedom from parents shuttling us places and I still think it's a pretty darn good movie after all these years.

But sticking with our strict five movies only policy, there were quite a few movies that just didn't make the final cut. I think most of us started with a list of a dozen or so movies and then culled it down. Here are some of the ones that didn't quite make the final cut and why - although as with any favorite movie list, ask me next week and the answers might be different.

Flirt - This is a strange indie film that is basically divided into three parts in which the exact same story is told with different actors, in different places and with different languages. The essential plot line is that a person is torn between two lovers and not sure which person they should chose. It's set in New York, Berlin and Tokyo. I loved this movie when I was in high school, but I haven't watched it in years so opted to live it off the top five list.

Wings of Desire - I really like this indie foreign film, too, in which an angel falls in love with a human and decides to trade in his wings for mortality. It's a little odd with random appearances of Peter Falk, but it is so much better than the "City of Angels" rip off of it with Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan. But I left it off the list because it seemed unfair to list this Wim Wender movie and then leave of the sequel, "Far Away, So Close."

Bend It Like Beckham - I really liked this movie when I first saw it. It was a cool girl power movie. Parminder Nagra and Keira Knightley were great as soccer phenoms whose moms are both unhappy with their choice to play the sport. Plus Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is extra cute when he uses his natural accent. But, alas, there was no room for a sports movie at the top of the list.

About A Boy - This movie was probably the closest to making it into the top 5. I loved the book by Nick Hornby and it is one of the few times when it felt like a film did justice to an author's intention. Hugh Grant did well as a selfish man who somehow finds himself engaging with a middle school kid after his mom attempts suicide. Though he's just a kid, Nicholas Hoult is great as Marcus. Will learns that no matter how hard he wanted it to be true and unlike the Simon and Garfunkel lyrics, no man is a rock or an island. The film was just inched out by No. 5's "Say Anything," because Lloyd Dobler was sympathetic from the start.

Four Weddings and a Funeral - Another Hugh Grant movie to nearly make the list, this movie was exceptionally funny the first time I saw it and it continues to be funny every time I see it. I can relate to it a bit more now that I've been to my share of weddings and worn some bridesmaids dresses. I love the way that Charles (Grant) blinks and stumbles over his words (and who knew that was going to be Grant's trademark) and pines over Carrie (Andie MacDowell) not quite long enough. But what really makes this movie for me is Matthew's (John Hannah) reading of a W. H Auden poem at Gareth's (Simon Callow's) wedding. The movie is full of unrequited love, but also offers the lesson that true love is worth the wait. If only Grant didn't act the same in every other the movie, this performance would have remained more meaningful.

Clueless - I love this movie about Cher (Alicia Silverstone) and Dionne (Stacey Dash) navigating the teenage world of Beverly Hills while trying to do good deeds like makeover the new kid Tai (Brittany Murphy.) Paul Rudd is great at Cher's stepbrother. But one movie from when I was 15 was enough and my No. 1 pick got the slot.

Up in the Air - I really liked this movie and it was my pick to win the best picture at the last Oscars. But I've only seen it once so it seems unfair to put it on an all-time favorite movie list. I've seen all the movies that made the list at least a half a dozen times, some more, and I will be watching them all again.

I can't quit this f*$&^ng bad habit

I have a problem, and I swear I've been trying to work on it. Well, maybe I haven't been working on it exactly, but I feel like I should be. I have a problem with cursing. I do it at work, at home, on aim, over text. I just can't help myself - curse words just come out. Mostly it's to express a sense of frustration, sometimes it's to express a sense of amazement and sometimes it's just because I am so used to cursing.

For the longest time, probably until a few years after college, I was pretty good about keeping the curse words to a minimum. And I never, ever cursed in front of my parents. Sure, something would slip out occasionally, like a g*#dammit when I stubbed my toe or dropped a glass of juice on the carpet. But it was a rare thing.

I don't know quite when cursing started to become a regular occurrence. It was probably in graduate school when everything was so g%$damn hard all the time and I was under a lot of stress for two years. And then there was my first job as an intern, where I had to bust my a#$ in hopes of landing a permanent job.

But I think things really went south when I started to work at the paper I'm with today. I had a few coworkers who were under the impression that the newsroom hadn't changed much since the 1950s in that they liked to curse like sailors, tell off-colored jokes and would probably be smoking in the middle of the office if it weren't against the law. I had two coworkers in particular who are no longer at the who were especially bad at dropping the f-bomb. They started a curse jar in hopes of curbing their enthusiasm for off-color language - but just ended up dropping a few dollars a day at .25 a word into the jar. It was enough for a nice gift for our reception when she retired.

Now I've always been a little bit of a mimic when it comes to language, meaning that I often pick up expressions or phrases that other people say without really realizing that I am doing it. So the summer I was home from college and my younger sister and best friend started using the term butt hurt that became part of my lexicon. And when I came home from Ireland I kept saying I was a wee bit tired or a wee bit cold or a wee bit something or other. Or when I refer to freeways, when I talk about ones in Los Angeles I use the native "the" before them, as in "I was driving on the 405 or the 101. But when I refer to the ones from Northern California I say, "I was driving on 101 or 85 or 680." I even started using "hehe" instead of "haha" over aim and text because a good friend always used it as his short-hand expression of amusement.

Most of these little catchphrases work their way out of my everyday use after a while, or some separation from the person who brought them to me. But for some reason I can't shake this f*#$ing cursing. I'd blame it on working in an office full of men, but to be truthful I know I cuss way f%^&ing more than they do.

So what occasions elicit a curse from me? I find a mistake in the paper - the day after it's gone to press - and it's "Oh s^&t." My computer freezes for the 15th time while I am on deadline and it's "G*d$%mit." Someone calls me when I am on deadline - and it's "I don't have f^&*ing time for this right now" - not to them, of course. Someone reads the latest wacky headline from yahoo news - "That's f^&*ing crazy."

I told my coworker this week, right after I had said some sh#$ in the newsroom that I was trying to cut down on the cursing. And then I admitted, I'm really not trying to cut down on the cursing but I feel like I should.

I can stop it, really, I swear. Like if there are kids in the room or my 70-year-old aunt. But mostly I don't try that hard. So for the next week, I am going to make a pact to watch the words and use some alternatives to the salty languge like freaking or goshdarn or sheesh. And I'll report back soon on my f$%#ing progress.