Netflix Picks: No Strings Attached

No Strings Attached, 2011

Summary: She's a busy doctor with no time for a boyfriend and no desire to deal with potential heartbreak. He's an ex-frat boy whose dad just started dating his ex-girlfriend. They both have their reasons for wanting a physical relationship without the emotional element, so they embark on a friends with benefits deal that works out just fine for a little while. Until he really starts to fall for her.

Opinion: I mean, wouldn't it be fun if one of these rom coms actually ended with the star couple splitting up, instead of oh-so-unwittingly falling in love? Just for the change of pace?

That is not this movie. But that's okay, because this movie is lots of fun either way. I expected a little less raunch, but I wasn't disappointed by it. It made the movie that much funnier. Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher play the "friends," and it doesn't hurt the film at all that they're both spectacularly charming, witty, and good looking. And though Natalie Portman strikes me as kind of an *ahem* uptight bitch in real life, she's silly and self-effacing here, and I have to say, she's a lot more likable with that stick removed from her nether-regions.

** Rent it! (This is my new rating system. I'll keep it simple, with films falling into one of two categories: Rent it, or Skip It.)

Sweet sister stories

My younger sister, Katie, is 26 today.

I hope you'll all join me in wishing her a happy birthday.

And in honor of her big day, I thought I'd tell you a couple sweet sister stories about the two of us.

Haha. Just kidding. We don't have a lot of sweet sister stories. We were the kind of sisters that fought a a lot growing up. Like fought, with weapons. There was occasional bloodshed. I remember one particularly jarring incident in the back of a minivan that left me bleeding quite profusely from the ear. Girl was feisty. But let's be honest. I was kind of a bitch, too.

Anyway, in addition to ear-scratching, there was also biting, hitting, kicking, cursing, and hair-pulling. God bless my mother's heart. I would have given us both up for adoption. But not mom. Nope, she was a trooper.

Anyway, 26 years ago today, I became a big sister, and I apparently took the responsibility very seriously. I immediately took it upon myself to make sure that baby got fed. I'm not sure how I got my two-year-old mitts on one, but the story goes that I attempted to force-feed Katie a tuna fish sandwich when she was freshly home from the hospital.

Over the past two-and-a-half decades, she's gotten her revenge.

Like the time I went to visit her at college, and she locked me out of her dorm and then gave me a black eye. True story. I may or may not have done something to deserve it. I can't remember.

Another time, she forced me to ride every roller coaster in an Ohio amusement park in one afternoon. And then demanded we go to Outback Steakhouse, land of the Blooming Onion, for dinner. Pregnant women have nothing on my nausea that night.

But it hasn't been all fights. There were times, over the years, when we'd just forget all of our differences and completely come together in sisterhood. Like the time we forged an alliance against a naive babysitter, and told her that she was not our mother, and her attempts to exercise her authority would not be tolerated, thankyouverymuch.

When my parents got home and asked her how things had gone, the babysitter burst into tears.

Sucker.

Happy Birthday, Sister. Thanks for the memories.

I love you.

Netflix Picks: Babel

So I'm a huge fan of movies. And of movie reviews. Every time I finish a movie, I have to head over to imdb.com to read the reviews (I don't usually read reviews before I see a film, because I feel like they influence my reaction. I prefer to go in with an open mind.) I also like to write my own reviews, but I frankly can't keep up with the new releases. I just don't have the time or money to go to the movies that often. But I do have Netflix, and watching rental movies is one of my favorite "school night" activities. Still, the huge selection makes it tough to narrow down my options. Since I assume others have the same problem, I thought I'd start reviewing the movies I rent to maybe help you all find something you'd like.

There's no real theme to this. You might find a review of a classic, or a western, or a comedy, or you might find a review for a contemporary indie. Whatever I rent, I'll review. Hope it helps you find the next title for your queue!

Babel, 2006.

Summary: Four different storylines are woven together by a single tragedy that has a sort of ripple effect, and causes unseen consequences in the lives of those connected to it. A boy shoots a gun, the bullet ends up piercing a woman's shoulder, and her children are left in the care of a nanny while the woman and her husband struggle to save her life. The nanny makes a potentially harmless decision that ends up having dire consequences, and the story comes full-circle as the gun-shooting boy's life becomes irreparably damaged by his mistake. And the communication issues that stem from language and cultural barriers are the root cause of all of the tragedies. This film shows how our words and our ways of life can cause such confusion that our intentions are lost.

Opinion: So the first time I watched this film, the subtitles for some reason did not automatically pop up, and I spent the first hour or so watching people literally babbling at each other in various languages. Judging from the title, I thought that it was a deliberate touch from the director -- and that we viewers were supposed to garner what information we could from the visuals, as opposed to the dialogue.

But that got old pretty quick, and I never did finish watching the film. This time around, those handy subtitles provided a whole different experience (duh), and I was captivated by the entire two-plus hours of it. I've heard many critics made the argument that the Tokyo sequence seems a little thrown into the mix, and I have to agree. It was also the most uncomfortable portion to watch. I am not a fan of seeing all the ways a very disturbed young deaf woman can humiliate herself inside of one day.

Saddest was the story of the family living on the Moroccan countryside. The careless, immature actions of a young boy set off a chain of events that spin quickly and wildly out of control, and his family pays the ultimate price, in the end. But really, much as you want to scream at him while he's making his horrible mistake, I think anyone who has ever known an adolescent boy can understand the reckless things they are capable of. It doesn't make them monsters. In this case, the boy is far from evil, which makes the consequences of his actions that much more unbearable to watch.

Coffee buzz

Yep, I know I'm drinking white wine out of a glass made for red,

but it's the last wine glass left in my cupboards.

Read on to get an idea of what happens to all of them...

You know how some people drink coffee to try to sober up?

Well I'm doing the opposite right now. I'm drinking a glass of wine at 4:30 in the afternoon to try to reverse the effects of the high-octane coffee I drank this morning. I'm telling you, I feel like I'm on drugs. I gotta make it stop.

Our morning ritual generally includes making our own coffee. But we woke up to find only enough milk to either make pancakes or garnish our coffee. Pancakes won. I got a Starbucks gift card from the PR rep of a writer I interviewed this week, so Alex and I set out to the cafe around the corner for our morning joe.

I never drink Starbucks. Ever. I think their coffee tastes like burnt compost, frankly, and also that they're stupidly overpriced. I'm a make-your-own-coffee kind of gal. Or at least a funky, independent coffee shop kind of gal (you know, like the kind of coffee shop Starbucks used to be, once upon a time in Seattle). But I recently gave up sugar in my coffee, and today I was just craving something fancy and a little bit sweet. So I ordered the Skinny Vanilla Latte. Um, the thing tasted like a Snickers bar melted into a coffee cup. It was super sweet. And not in a good way.

The pancakes looked a little deformed this week,

but I assure you, they tasted damn good!

And the bad news doesn't end there. Hours later, I am literally flying from this thing. I am jittery, cranky, and fidgety. And so is Alex. He got the Mocha Latte. Apparently Starbucks doesn't know the difference between coffee and liquid chocolate bars. And his jitters are even worse. After he poured me my first glass of wine, it ended up in shards all over our living room floor. He tried to set it down on our coffee table, but apparently his own jitters had other plans for the wine glass (one more in a long line of wine glass losses due to a sprinkle of jitters and a touch of clumsiness.)

I thought I was used to strong coffee. I mean, we drink French press every morning. Isn't that supposed to be the potent stuff?

In other business, I know it's been a little while, but I finally got around to trying out a Topsy Tail at this lady's suggestion. I did the modified version, but I think it came out pretty well. I'm still trying to get used to having my hair down, though. It's been so flippin humid here that it ends up in a knot on the top of my head, every day.

So here are today's results. What do you think?

Hope everyone is enjoying the weekend!

McKensie Elizabeth

Mmm, mmm good.

Yep, she's my dog. At least she was my dog, until she became my parents' dog. I dream about a reunion every day.

Our love story began when I was 21, an immature, out-of-college (by choice, not by graduation) bartender living alone in Charlotte, North Carolina. I also had a highly inconvenient soft spot for fur-babies and no idea how much actual care they require.

So one day some friends of mine showed up at the patio bar with a tiny little black lab mix named Karma. I was smitten. Really, it was all over from there. I asked where they'd adopted her, recruited a couple fellow food- and drink-slingers to come along, and headed down to the South Carolina pet rescue center to get one for myself. A day later, we were all proud pet owners. I named my little lady McKensie.

Adoption day! That's me and Kensie, second from the left, in our very first photo together.

First of all, I lived in an apartment that didn't allow pets. Second of all, I worked weird hours as a bartender, and wasn't home as much as I should have been to raise a puppy. I was also used to being free to do as I pleased, stay out as late as I wanted, and party 'till the wee hours. Suddenly, I had this tiny creature to take care of. She needed me. Mostly, to clean up her poop. But also to slop wet kisses all over, first thing in the morning. And of course, for access to an entire shoe collection to mercilessly chew through. There were many, many casualties in my closet. Including the closet itself. She also happened to have a taste for woodwork and door frames.

Things got easier when we moved back in with my parents a couple months later. After that, we kind of moved around a lot, but the circumstances remained fairly conducive to having a dog. I'll admit, though, there were days when I was just overcome with guilt walking out the door, knowing she'd be home alone for many more hours than I'd like. I'd re-enrolled in college by then, and with my classes and my nearly full-time waitressing job, it was tricky to make enough time for my little angel.

Things changed quickly when I settled on spending a semester abroad. My parents agreed to take McKensie, knowing she'd be good company for this guy:

My little brother Seamus. He is a cute little bugger, no?

Inevitably, Kensie and my dad fell madly in love while I was away. She really is just this high-energy, affectionate little princess. Plus, she's totally boy crazy and takes a shine to any male that crosses her path. Every morning, she'd help my sleeping dad greet the day by climbing up on top of him and licking his face until he finally crawled out of bed to take her for a walk. He played annoyed, but she got her way every time. She totally won him over. And when I returned home from South America and moved back in with my parents, my reunion with my little girl couldn't have been sweeter.

Fast forward a bunch of months. I was offered an internship on Martha's Vineyard, an Island with a prohibitively high cost of living. I was thrilled that my aunt and uncle, who live on the Island, invited me to stay with them during the internship. Of course, they had three dogs of their own and there really wasn't room for a fourth, so I had to leave McKensie with my parents once again. When I did move out into my own place the following fall, it was tricky enough to find a place with reasonable rent, let alone one that allowed a dog. McKensie and I seemed destined to be apart. I hated it, but there wasn't much I could do.

My little lady, all growed up.

So my baby girl has been living with my parents ever since. I dreamed about bringing her with me to Chicago, but with my work hours, she would have been largely neglected. And how would I take her home for holidays? I couldn't imagine crating her for a plane ride (she has never been crated. I was not a disciplinarian dog mama). And there's no way I was making the 11-hour trip in a car every time.

So sleepy.

Fireside.

So for now, we cannot be together. I know now that it was impulsive and probably very irresponsible to adopt a dog when I was barely mature enough to take care of myself, but I can't bring myself to regret it. I'm lucky enough to have parents who adore her just as much as I do, and were willing to take her into their home so that she wouldn't have to pay for my poor judgment. It's now been six years since I adopted her, and though I don't get to see her every day, I still think about her all the time. When we do get back together, on holidays and the occasional random home-visit, there are many, many face kisses and fetch sessions. I can only hope that one day my circumstances will be such that she can come back to live with me.

Postscript: I have a tendency to call everyone by their first and middle names when speaking to them. However, in my opinion, everyone's middle name is Elizabeth. You are not Sarah, you are Sarah Elizabeth. You are not Annie, you are Annie Elizabeth. McKensie, naturally, became McKensie Elizabeth. It really stuck. You have no idea how hilarious it is to hear my dad bellow "McKensie Elizabeth" loud enough to echo throughout the neighborhood whenever she's misbehaving. Which is often. Oh the simple joys she brings!

Almost-red flowers

I've always had this thing about red flowers on my windowsill.

There's something so appealing about waking up to a pot full of brightly colored flowers sitting on the sill next to my bed. I imagine sitting up and burying my face in them first thing. What a lovely way to start the day.

I don't know why this image has stayed with me so long, but red flowers in a well-lit window sounds like happiness to me. It probably has something to do with the fact that I am a plant-killer, and the likelihood of my being able to keep those red flowers pretty and perky for more than a week is quite slim.

Exhibit A. My mother had a pot of the sweetest fiery-red buds sent to my office the day I was hired for my first full-time reporting job. At the time, I was living with my aunt and uncle, but the newly permanent position (I'd been working in the newsroom as an intern prior to being asked to join the staff) meant I'd be looking for my own place. The flowers took up temporary residence on a little table in my aunt's living room while I house-hunted. I often forgot, so she watered them. But by the time my flowers and I moved into my new home, they were not long for this world. They never did make it to my bedroom windowsill, because there wasn't enough light to feed their poor sorry little stems. Eventually, they went out with the trash.

My now-apartment has lots of pretty plants, all of them carefully tended by Alex. I try to water them when he goes out of town. But usually I forget, and he gets back in the nick of time to revive them.

I'm hoping he'll do the same with these guys, so I can keep them around for at least a few weeks:

Pretty, pink (almost red!!) flowers

I arrived home to those last night, along with a very cute note that, among other things, included very sweet and supportive words about this here blog effort. After a quick phone photo session, my blooms found a new home on top of the pile of books in my windowsill. And sure enough, I stuck my whole face all up in them as soon as I woke up this morning. It was just as good as I imagined it.

I don't know about you, but I thought it was awfully sweet of him to remember my little flower fixation.

So my flowers were pretty much the highlight of my whole day. But dinner was nice, too. Quick, easy, delicious. We planned our meals well this week, because halfway through the week we're usually scrambling to put together all the wayward ingredients that didn't make it into our well thought out meals.

Portobello veggie burgers with provolone and grilled onions.

Smothered in ketchup for me, of course.

Strangely enough, I used to hate onions. Grilled, raw, and otherwise.

Now I love 'em. Can't get enough. Put 'em on/in everything. Yum.

This has to be the most unappealing name for a beer ever (it's Moose Drool, in case you can't see the M).

Tastes pretty good, though. Mine's the Vinho Verde. So perfectly light and sparkly for summer.

Weekend recap

I actually considered blogging all through the weekend. I know some gals prefer to take the two-day break, but I don't suppose I need a break just yet from a blog I started like five minutes ago. I'm still in the excited stage (hope it doesn't fade!) and I want to get as much content out there as possible.

But, eh. I got busy.

I never did tell our buddies about the blog. We didn't end up taking many photos, because we ended up leaving Alex's camera behind, so we weren't suspiciously over-photoing the whole night. We were going to be doing a lot of walking in a crowded place, and the camera bag is just a lot of luggage to tote around. Instead, we relied on my camera phone.

I managed to score some free tickets to a Friday night show at Navy Pier called Cirque Shanghai. I went expecting it to be the poor man's Cirque de Soleil, but since I haven't even seen Cirque de Soleil, I had nothing to compare it to. Let me tell you, I was blown away. These were the teeniest little kids (at least they looked like kids -- I'd be surprised to find out any of them were out of their teens) jumping and tumbling and swinging around like crazy little monkeys. I'm honestly not sure what those folks at the fancier Cirque might do to top the acrobatics I saw Friday. Alex said they probably just have a bigger costume budget (which was true, the Cirque Shanghai costumes were ta-cky).

At Chicago's Navy Pier before the show

This is the only photo I got of the show -- no pics allowed! But at one point,

that thing was filled with dudes zig-zagging around each other on motorcycles.

Danger.

Saturday turned into one of those long, lazy days of leisure that I just love, but those don't make for great blog fodder. It was Sunday that really stole the show. Sunday, beach day.

First, there was Flirt. I call him that because that's what was printed, in sparkly letters, across the boo-tay of his royal blue bikini. Which he accessorized with Ugg boots. In 90-plus degree weather at Hollywood Beach (aka Kathy Osterman Beach aka the Gay Beach, according to the boys that brought us).

Flirt.

Oh what a beach day it was. It was our first beach visit of the summer, and that is huge considering we used to live on an Island where we spent just about every non-working moment at one beach or another. But Chicago doesn't have an ocean. And despite that it's only a couple miles from our apartment, it's a surprisingly large pain in the ass to spend a day at the beaches that line Lake Michigan. Mostly because of parking. So anyway, The last day of July was our first day at the beach.

Flirt spent a lot of time flitting around another much larger boy called Richard, who broke out in song at every new soul tune that played on a nearby radio. When he wasn't singing, he was cursing. Or rather, he was stringing together curse words to form the dirtiest sentences you can imagine. Oh, the spectacle.

I had some awesome drinks for the Richard show, too. Alex and I concocted some strange version of a berry margarita that turned out twice as refreshing and a fraction as calorific as a regular one. I don't know the exact measurements, but here's an educated guess:

• Crystal Light Raspberry Ice drink mix -- mixed with 2 quarts of water
• 1/2 quart of limeade
• 1/2 quart of tequila (we used cheap-o Suaza silver something or other)
• Fresh lime wedge, squeezed

Oh my were they delicious. And really, a tart lime and tequila drink minus most of the sugar and all of the salt? I'll take it.

For dinner, I borrowed this recipe from one of my favorite bloggers, and added a couple items of my own. Delicious. I highly recommend it.

I used completely different vegetables than Bridget, and added chicken. Still. So. Good.

But it sure couldn't beat breakfast that morning. Pancakes with Girardelli's bittersweet cacao chocolate chips, topped with real maple syrup and sliced peaches. French press coffee with soy milk on the side. Um, yum.

So how was your weekend?