Milquetoast!!!

Happy new year! I hope 2014 is treating you well so far. I'm on holidays still, and have spent most of this year (ha) reclining on my couch watching Bored to Death on DVD and chuckling heartily. 

It's a comedy about a heartbroken, struggling writer called Jonathan who lives in Brooklyn and moonlights as an unlicensed, bumbling, but actually-quite-successful private investigator. My favourite character is Jonathan's boss/friend/father figure, George, who's played by Ted Danson. He's a heavy drinking, pot smoking, several-times-divorced magazine editor, who is far less jaded and cynical than one would expect. He detests boredom and gleefully helps out with some of Jonathan's cases. 

Anyway, I'm not writing  a review here...this post is about word nerdery. 

In the first couple of episodes George uses the word 'milquetoast' (a timid, spineless person) twice. 'Don't be a milquetoast, Jonathan," he said. I already liked the show before that, but I liked it a lot after George said milquetoast. 

Then I got 'milquetoast' stuck in my head like a one-word ear worm. A wordworm. It kept popping into my head randomly and often. (This happens to me sometimes for some reason. It used to happen with 'antimacassar' and 'amygdala'.) 

This morning I woke up early, fell asleep again and milquetoast featured in my dream, but I don't recall what actually happened. I woke up thinking about milquetoast. If only I could work it into a conversation...without people thinking I'm saying "milk toast". 

I have also watched two seasons of Girls. It only occurred to me after I started watching Bored to Death that both series revolve around the lives of struggling writers living in Brooklyn. Total coincidence. 

I was prepared to find Girls irritating, but I didn't. I liked it a lot and chuckled heartily at it. 

PS I have left the house this year. 

NaBloPoMo Day 4: Dinosaurs, day off, delish

We hired a DVD on Saturday night. Yep, we still go to the store and hand over a few dollars to take home a movie to watch. We're techno dinosaurs. But I'm in no rush to swap hiring for downloading because the store we go to is a little independent business that has been on Swan Street in Richmond for at least 20 years. We don't hire movies very often, but when we do, I like the idea of supporting a local business. 

Plus, when we went on Saturday night, there was a big tabby cat in the store and you don't get to pat a cat when you download a movie, do you? The store owner said the cat wasn't fat, it was "big boned". 

Tomorrow is a pubic holiday in Melbourne for the Melbourne Cup horse race. Yay, a day off work! I'm not fussed about the race, although I did go in the $10 sweep at work just for the hell of it. My horse is called Sea Moon. I have no idea whether it has any prospect of doing well. 

We had my new favourite salad for dinner tonight. So fresh and tasty. It's just avocado, tomato, cucumber, feta and coriander chopped up with a dressing of lime juice and tiny bit of sugar. We had it with lamb fillet, which I managed to cook just right. Delish.   

Jacaranda and a cool change

There's a jacaranda tree in the Flagstaff Gardens! See? I never knew. I don't get over that side of the CBD very often. I love jacarandas. It's a whole tree of purple and purple is my favourite colour.

When I lived in a small country town, there was a little white weatherboard cottage up the street from us with a green tin roof and a jacarandah in the yard. The purple looked so pretty against the white and green house.

Cool

Our spell of hot weather came to an end today with a stormy cool change and a little rain. What a relief. Love the smell of rain on hot bitumen.

There's meant to be more rain tomorrow. Yay for rain.

Angel (hee, just as I typed 'Angel' then, Gin Wigmore sang the very same word!)

I got the Angel DVD box set on my lunch break today. I didn't let the 37 degree heat deter me from my mission.

Happily, I have a relatively free weekend coming up and I plan to spend quite a bit of it lying on my couch watching Angel and his cohorts slay vampires, demons and so on.