I can’t take it anymore, I just can’t. I thought I was doing ok, I made it through Christmas, the first week or two of January wasn’t bad, but now…

Oh, Winter. Why? Why?

I just want to wear flip-flops, for the love of god. I want to hear the little bastards that live across the street playing outside. I want to grill Tofurky Brats and have friends over. I want to visit the beach and silently judge the Lincoln Park crowd.

The point of this ranting is, maybe you can be the one to rescue me from my endless boredom, the one to pull me up and out of this chapped-skin, foul mood funk.

Presenting the First Official You Tell Me What to do!

Here’s how it will work - Email me (jessi at my99problems.com) or comment with a suggestion of something you think I should add to my goal list. It can be big or small, just keep it safe and not too embarrassing for me, please.

I’ll then take my favorite 3-5 (depending on how many I get) and next week we’ll have an Official 99 Problems Poll: What Should I do?, wherein you all vote for What I Should do. And yes, I get to pick the initial 3-5, it’s my blog and I should have some say.

Go, go! Email me now, go!

Oh man you guys, you don’t even know how domestic I was this weekend. Let’s take a look:

- I made vegan cupcakes, soooooo good.

- I made a delicious salad, to which Riki declared “This is delicious, even though you didn’t do anything.” So romantic. And yes, I made a red-wine marinade from scratch, fool! That’s doing something.

- I freaking MADE SALAD DRESSING. I know this doesn’t sound like a big deal, but 6 months ago I could hardly be bothered to heat up a boca burger, and now I’m making salad dressing. Hot damn.

- I hemmed a pair of Riki’s jeans, which are still too long. dammit dammit. But a good try indeed.

- I made a delicious eggplant stew, recipe from the fat-free vegan kitchen blog, here.

- I watched Oprah on Friday (I called in to work, which ruled, but I really was sick, which didn’t rule). Well, I watched as much of it as I could stand. Can I just say something, to the whiney ADULT children of divorce that were on Friday’s show? Seriously you guys, get over it. Or get in therapy and get over it whilst not in public. My god. Not to minimize someone elses pain, but yes, lets.

Blah blah, Anyway, you know how I was saying before that I didn’t ride my bike at all last week? Well, I also didn’t go to yoga. AH! I know, I know, I promise: next week, I’ll go three times, the week after three times to make up for being such a loser this week. And I’ll only slack off 5-10 more times this year, I swear.

Shall we go ahead and look at some photos of my domestic-ness in action? Alright, yes. (Oh, and this covers problem#43 for the week, make one new recipe. But you knew that.)

The salad is a recipe from Veganomicon, (and the dressing, which I made myself, no big deal, shrug shrug). And the stew from Fat-free vegan kitchen blog, as mentioned above.

Let’s take a look at the superstars, though - S’mores cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes take over the World… Oh man, heaven. Pure heaven. And, a day later… they’re all gone. A true success.

Tomorrow: I will ride my bike, I will, I will!

Remember how two entries ago I was all smug and said to my brother “ha-ha, I could drive when I was 16, you can’t drive for two more years you filthy Canadian” ?

Well, he sent me a facebook message and reminded me how at Christmas, Riki and I took him to Montreal, and we went into this divey sports-bar, and how we were the only people in the place, and oh - didn’t I remember that they served him alcohol? And it wasn’t just alcohol, it was tequila shots followed by 3 pitchers of beer, followed by drinking games. And then remember how at that other bar? In all his baby-faced glory, when the waiter said, “And howee a-booot yew?”  he casually, confidently, as if he’d had a drinking problem for 40-years, said “Yeah, I’ll have a Corona, bro.” (ok, he didn’t say bro, I just wish he did), and the next thing you know the socialist-jerk with bad facial hair brought him a Corona?

Yes. I remember.

Fine, Jacob. You win. Yes, drinking at 15 is cooler than driving at 16. Just don’t ever do them at the same time, promise me, your humbled big-sister that much.

Oh! and Amy and Simon - After talking it over with Riki a bit more, and since we’ll be in your neck-of-the-woods in August anyway, we decided, why not? Let’s make it an official problem:

#83) Visit Amy and Simon in Venezuela !

Hopefully it’s not too expensive to fly from Ecuador to Venezuela? At the very least, I’m sure we could find someone to pay us to take the trip if we just, you know, smuggle some drugs over or something.

I need to step it up.

I have not ridden my bike to work once this week, not once! It has been sooo cold, I just couldn’t. I heard the forecast this morning on NPR - it was something like this:

“Do not go outside, or you will die! If bare skin hits the air, death! If you ride your bike, you will die, but in a more slow and painful way than the other circumstances!”

So you see, I just couldn’t. This means I have 3 make-up days ahead of me. Oh, and I forgot to mention that when I was walking to the train this morning I saw about 70 people on bikes. You fool! You baby! Change your diaper and get on your bike!

This weather makes me want to add the following problems to my list:

1) Never leave the house again, and especially never change out of these sweet zebra print pajamas.

2) Never have to go to work again, which means never having to ride my bike to work again. In order to do this, I first need to:

3) Find a bag of money in the bushes. Like in No Country for Old Men, but without the 70s tracking device, and without that creep hunting me down.

Ok, but I do have a real new problem, and I’m really excited about it. I don’t really know where it fits, but for now, I’ll put it under Get Smart.

#32) Visit and animal sanctuary with Amy, and pet animals, and think about how I’m glad I don’t eat them.

I met Amy almost a year ago, in a way that is embarassing for me. Basically, I kept seeing her around town on the most amazing pink bike ever, and I secretly was so jealous, but also wanted to meet her, but I didn’t want to seem like a creep. One day, I came across her bike on flickr, and sent her a message that was something like this:

“Hi, you dont know me, but I know where you live, and work, and how you hate spagetti, and always dreamed of being a ballerina dancer, anyway, I like your bike, do you want to ride bikes with me one day?”

To make this a little shorter, we did meet up, and with a few other amazing bike riding ladies that we had never met before, and they ended up being the coolest bunch of girls I could ever hope to meet, and we all became BFF’s, FandE.

God, where is this going?! So, Amy is vegan, and I had been vegetarian for over 12 years, and hanging out with her got me thinking. She made amazing cupcakes that were vegan, Check. Earwax has an amazing chocolate peanut butter vegan smoothie, check check, I visted Peta.org and met my meat (well, dairy). Check check check check check and check.

I decided to go for it, and I’m so glad I did. I feel great, physically, and morally, and I’m learning to cook! So Amy suggested we go to a sanctuary as part of my problems, so we will. Because that’s what vegans do.

That and meet up in the park and play with those sticks that have the rubber balls on the end and get baked.

Before I get to the action-packed, heart-pounding, rock em’ sock em’ ride that is this weeks recipe problem, I’d like to say a couple of quick things that will warm your cold Chicago heart. (And mother-effer it’s cold here.)

See, told you. Cold.

Sixteen years ago today, January 22, 1992, my littlest brother Jacob was born, and I have such a clear memory of it. My grandfather picked me up from the 6th grade early, which I thought was pretty sweet. Little brother or not, I was getting out of school before all the other suckers.

I was wearing my favorite pink V-neck sweater with an evergreen turtleneck underneath, the sweater that got me invited to all the sleepovers where there were no boys. We drove to the hospital and met baby Jake, and here’s where it gets fuzzy - I mostly remember looking at my mom and thinking she was about to die, since she was white as a sheet and talked in a whisper. I guess at this time I had no real idea what child birth was like, and you know, with zero kids and all now it’s much more clear.

So with the fear of God in my 11-year-old self that my mother was dying, onward we went, my grandparents and my otha’ brotha’ Zak, to Brown’s Chicken, where we consumed our weight in fried yard-bird and other delicacies.

He is so cute I can hardly take it. Also, nice costume mom.

To my baby brother: Happy Birthday Jacob! And, ha-ha, you still can’t drive for two more years because you live in Canada! (Did I mention to you that I could drive with an adult when I was 15? I could.)

Also off topic, I want to wish the best of luck to Amy and Simon as the head to Venezuela today for Adventures in PHd Research! Amy is 1/6th of the girl bike gang I belong to, which is now without direction and entering a deep depression.

Enough with the mushy stuff, on to the problems. For this weeks vegan recipe, I chose another one from Veganomicon, Red Lentil Cauliflower Curry. It turned out pretty well, but I admit it was a bit of a cop-out, as I’ve made a few other curries before and there’s not much to it. I was feeling a bit lazy a the time, and since it was 1 degree F out, I wanted something warm and toasty… overall, it gets an “Eh”.

On a positive note, I did get to buy Parsnip for the first time, which I had to Wikipedia first to even see what it was. I was really proud, I bought Parsnip.

I know, I’m bored too.

As always, til next time…

This week, as I said I would in goals #20 and #21, I rode my bike to work three times, and went to yoga twice.

In summary:

Yoga:

class 1) I hated this class. I have never hated a yoga class before, but I hated this one. I hated it so much that I was feeling rage during the class, the kind of rage that starts quiet in your belly, and the next thing you know you want to yell the F word as loud as you can. That kind.

I will say, that I still have very little strength in my right arm from the bike accident and surgery. (I promise I won’t mention the accident in every post. My god, I do not want to be one of those people…) I mean, I can barely use the curling iron without needing to use my left hand to hold up my right arm which is holding up the 10 ounce curling iron. Maybe this is why I hated the class? Because I have the upper body strength of an 8 year old boy? Who knows, but man, it was the worst.

class 2) I just returned from this class about an hour ago (all inner peace has since left the body) and this one was much more my speed. The instructor was the Hippie’s Hippie, going slow and talking about feeling our blood run through our soul and other things like that. He even played the guitar and sang. If I was a record exec from a yoga/meditation label, I would have signed him on the spot. That dude could sing. So yes, this one was a success.

Bike Riding to work

day 1) Monday. Fine, everything was fine, nothing to report. I probably cursed a few drivers for having been born under my breath, but yes, fine.

day 2) Thursday (I don’t remember how I got to work Tuesday and Wednesday…) It started to get cold as a mother on Thursday, but was nothing compared to…

day 3) Friday ahhh!!! It was soo cold! I hate Friday, hated it!! But, I did get to wear the fancy face mask, which smelled like death, but was ok after I sprayed it with Anna Sui’s Secret Wish. They are not lying when they say it’s a magical sent of sparkling summer fruits. It is, it really is. Anyway, I survived, and I even have photos to prove it:

Which kind of reminds me of someone….

and I get to start it all again tomorrow…

What a perv.

But wait - before I continue, let me say that my Dad sent me an email in response to my parent disclaimer from this post. It went something like this:

Dear Jessi, You are the coolest, smartest person in the world, etc. etc. Also, Loved your “balls” photos. You really don’t think you
have to “apologize to your parents” for “balls jokes”, do you?! I’m all about the balls jokes! Love, Dad.

The last part was true at least. So now you know.

Anyway - back to the matter at hand. Even though I haven’t offically opened up the “You tell me what to do” category for reader submissions, Aaron left a suggestion as a comment that I liked so much, I decided to make it official. So here it is:

You tell me what to do category, #69: (In his words)

Record a hip-hop record (at least 4 songs) with Riki and make a myspace music page for it.

Riki and I used to live with Aaron, so he knows what we can do. He knows. Stay tuned, this will be a fun one.

Last June, as I mentioned earlier in this mess of a blog, I was in a cycling accident, broke my collarbone and later had surgery to fuse the bones together with a titanium plate. For the first two weeks I was a mess, sitting on the couch with nothing to do but watch Heroes, take Vicodin, and feel sorry for myself.

Now, despite the insane mood swings and general hatred of life it brought on, vicodin was a lifesaver, except for one horrible incident. During that first week’s drug haze, I somehow, someway, managed to throw away my brand new fancy glasses that I had just ponied up like $500 for. I know for sure that I threw them away because I’m constantly knocking things into the trash in the bathroom on accident; make up, hair product etc. When I realized they were missing it was too late, and all that was left was me, cold and alone with a broken heart, a broken collarbone, and my Pearl vision glasses left over from my glory years in the 90s.

That brings us to this, a brand new problem in the Random category: #91 Get new glasses. Have respect the new glasses. Wear the new glasses always, and never lose them again.

It’s a big day today, the day of my very first real post!

If you’ve read the “What’s my problem” and “Full List” pages, then I thank you for making those 10 hours worth my time. If not, a quick run-down: I will define 99 problems (read:goals) to solve this year, and will blog about them as I go. But also go read those pages, I beg you.

Which brings me back to this post, Problem 43. For Christmas I received two cookbooks: Veganomicon and The Complete Vegan Kitchen. (TCVK includes recpies from Carl Lewis, who is vegan. Who knew!?) Last night, Riki and I decided to make Beanball subs from Veganomicon. I’d like to apologize for the balls jokes to follow, especially to my parents, but how could I not?

mmmm, delicious beanball recipe.

#1 gross, in both looks and taste.

and then! there were balls.

oh man, success!

And Riki agrees.

Til the next problem…