Crackberry - without which it would all be too much.

I wish I woke up in the morning feeling as rich as P. Diddy....

Anyways, let's do this again. I wake up in the morning and first thing I do is grab my phone. That's not because I am addicted to it. Ok, I am lying. However, my phone serves as my alarm and I need to turn it off. :) Besides, I have been phoneless for the last day and a half. I don't know how I am doing it. I have a headache right now. Methinks its a withdrawal symptom. I did just borrow my neighbor's charger to juice up my phone and I am literally watching the battery bar fill up with white blocks. I feel reinvigorated. I am almost afraid to stop watching it for fear that it might cease charging.

Back to waking up, I turn off my alarm and check my emails. My emails all come to my blackberry so I delete what needs to be deleted and attend to what needs to be attended to. Next, I grab my computer. Facebook is already open of course. A quick glance at my homepage tells me who I need to wish happy birthday. Another quick glance at my blackberry tells me who I need to wish happy birthday that is not on facebook. I compose wall posts and emails as necessary and then it's back to the blackberry for a quick glance at twitter. Gotta love ubertwitter. After attending to my @'s and DMs on twitter, I proceed to hulu.com. Once upon a time, my morning routine included music while I was dressing up but now, I watch a tv show while getting ready. I have music for the road after all so why not?

On the way to work, I am constantly checking my phone to reply or delete emails and facebook notifications as they are received. I don't even consider myself a busy person by normal standards. What will happen if I have kids and some multi millionaire type job? I guess I'd have a personal assistant then. However, I do think I'd like to check my facebook notifications and blackberry emails myself. I check my emails like text messages that my dad's emails now go like this: "Good Morning Ese, are you feeling well today?" and after I reply with a one liner, he gets down to business.

Twitter to facebook to blogspot to emails. I used to have one million email addresses but everything goes to my gmail account now thanks to automatic forwarding. I don't even remember the passwords to some of the numerous email accounts. Its driving me crazy. I want to delete some of these connections to the black hole called the internet but I keep making myself believe that I need each one. I am leaning towards eliminating twitter but how would I vent those random times when a maniac is being maniacal on the street? Or when someone blows smoke in my face on a Pittsburgh sidewalk? As for facebook, God forbid I have no where to post my pictures when I resume my photography habit! Flickster isn't as interesting. My dear dear blogspot. It's like facebook note visible to everyone so I don't really know why I need blogspot. I must admit that I do like to write and given that facebook can import blog spot notes... that kills two birds with one stone. However, I do think I am going to leave twitter. If i feel the need to vent randomly, I will .... er.... hmmm... twitter stays. Shit. As I reinstall ubertwitter again for the 3rd or 4th time, I wonder, how I ever survived 10 years ago.

All I can say is Thank You Crackberry for being the one tool I need to access the one hundred facets I have created in my life.

Have an awesome April.

Leeza!

Tales from the Kitchen - The Metal Spoon vs. The Non-Stick Pot.

Naturally, this post is about food and cooking in general. Before I begin, let me point out that I am not the best cook in the world. However, I am not the worst. When I cook, more often than not, it tastes good. The only problem is the state of my kitchen/pots/pans when I am done cooking and the energy I have to expend to bring order back to the chaos. Hence, I'd be the first to admit that if I ever venture into a kitchen and it somehow emits a force field that keeps me out, I will not be surprised. Here goes....

First things first, I believe I am one of the not so many people out there that can very definitely describe the taste of burned eggs and metal. This one was simple. I placed an egg on the stove to boil and went to my room to quickly tidy up amongst other things. "Quickly" took longer than I expected and by the time I returned to check on my egg, I had to scrape it off the bottom of the pot with a spoon. I ate some of it anyway...out of curiousity. My pot was never the same after that.

I once fried an egg and it came out green. Till today, I don't remember putting curry in it. If I remember correctly, when I closed my eyes and ate the fried egg, it tasted normal. It just looked kinda off. There was no disaster here, just a mystery. Do eggs spoil? Or expire?

We have all seen our grandparents take pots off the stove with bare hands, right? Well, I tried it at home. Let's just say that no matter how coated a pot's handle is now, I will use a napkin. On that note, I tried to use a napkin to rescue a pan of oil that was on fire and the napkin caught fire - not from the pan - but from the stove. Mind you, it was an electric type stove, not exactly a fire burning type. That's a story for later.

Just a few years ago, I wanted to make some oven baked chicken. I bought my chicken, cleaned it up, spiced it and boiled it a little. After this, I placed it in my glass baking pan and put it in the oven. 30 minutes later, the chicken wasn't looking brown enough for me so I increased the oven temperature. About 10 minutes later the chicken looked perfect. I take out the baking pan with my napkins and set it on the counter top. After rescuing my chicken from the pan, I place the pan in the sink and ran a little water just to cool the pan a bit because I like to wash dishes as soon as I am done. Let us just say, I started out that day with 2 glass baking pans and injury free hands. At the end of the day, I was one baking pan short and I had glass cuts on my hands. I did however wolf down the delicious chicken.

How's everyone spending their tax returns? Well, I spent some of mine shopping and I am saving the rest for ...you guessed it, Kitchen repairs! I went over to my neighbor's house and she gave me some ripe plantains that she said she wouldn't have time to fry. I excitedly went home intending to fry them myself. I got home, placed a pan on the stove with some oil and then ran upstairs to change out of my work clothes. I honestly couldn't have been more than 5 minutes. I took off my jacket and my pants and off went the fire alarm. There's a difference between the fire and smoke alarms, trust me. I ran downstairs through the fog of black smoke that was filling the house. My pan of oil was on fire! I used a napkin to grab a hold of the pan and the napkin caught fire too. I think the stove top thing just got way too hot. Maybe oil spilled on it? Who knows? Anyways, the fire department didn't have to come. Black soot settled on everything that wasn't covered. I spent the next few hours scrubbing black soot off surfaces in the kitchen but the worst part is, I mentally kissed my tax returns good bye as I trashed the evil frying pan. Now, I am afraid to use that particular stove top because I believe it is against me. The good part about that night was that I ended up roasting my ripe plantain in the oven and eating it with red oil and imaginary groundnut. *sigh* I miss bo-le and Naija.

Last but not least, I got back from work earlier tonight. I had purchased some rice, tomatoes, pepper and onions from the grocery store and I decided to make enough jollof rice to last me for a while. Given that I eat rice a lot, that is a lot of rice I was thinking. I measured rice into my biggest pot and went upstairs to take a shower. I know what you're thinking...No, I put the heat on very low so it wouldn't burn or over cook. By the time I returned downstairs, the rice was not over cooked. However, it was too much for the pot. I didn't realize this until I added my blended concoctions and the pot threatened to overflow. I transferred some of the rice into an empty pot while trying to stir this pot such that all the ingredients got to the rice at the bottom. No matter how much I stirred, the rice at the bottom still seemed white. Even worse, it began to stick to the bottom of the pot. I stirred even harder and it made no difference. That was when I realized what I had to do. I threw my plastic cooking spoon into the sink and reached for the cooking spoon drawer. I grabbed the gleaming stainless steel cooking spoon and went at the rice with all my might. The rice at the bottom began to give and soon enough, my rice was evenly toned. The rice was also well done at this point and it hadn't turned red-ish. I didn't want to add more tomatoes so I went for the curry. Moral of the story is, man proposes but metal spoon and non stick pot dispose. I ended up with curry rice - it wasn't red. (Don't ask what that means, just come and taste it). My metal spoon is my hero. My non stick pot...well, I don't think it deserves that title anymore. At this point, I must have scraped off all the non stickiness from the bottom. Hmm, maybe that explains the metallic taste of my rice? Nah, just kidding.

Don't be afraid when I enter your kitchen; disasters only occur in mine.
XO
Leeza.

The Fake Nigerian

How many times have you heard this age-old Nigerian story: a person (a Nigerian) goes to a foreign country most likely the United Kingdom or say the United States for a period usually a short time like 3 months - 2  years and poof!!! they speak different. And usually it is the wackest accent possible.

Today, I was sitting by myself reading a book (Somewhere in Lagos) and this fairly handsome Hombre asked to sit next to me in his fake NIGERIAN american accent, emphasis on Nigerian) and we start talking and somehow the conversation goes to "In America..." and I sat there listening  and thinking like 'dude what do you have to tell me about "Hamerica" ' (as I like to call it) but I sat quietly and was nodding . You can trust I was already turned off, I tweeted about him mid-coversation. and then he goes "What School did you go?" and I respond "Washington State University" then I asked "what school did you go?" He goes "Covenant University" and then I smile my evil "hehehe" smile. Then I tweeted "Trust me to break down the fakeness."

The End

Shola