Jenn Addenda

War of the ascii Roses

2007-12-07T04:22:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I texted him and said, "while I am unable to speak in words feeling 4 u, I am able to express it physically." And he responded, "Then I think I know how you feel..."

I didn't respond because really, I don't know how that is possible because I don't always know how I feel. Making it even more difficult is the fact that I don't always feel the same way.

There's this song by Sebadoh, Think (Let Tomorrow Bee):

Think (Let Tomorrow Bee) Lyrics

It's a song I've sent to other lovers. It's sort of like my penoir set. And yet... while I think it's time to buy new lingerie, Lou Barlow sums up my self-conscious and questioning nature nicely.

Yes. Love is the elephant in the room. But what color it is, what I'm going to do with it, and whether it's figured out how to apparate are entirely different matters. Today, tho... a line from the poem, Song, by Allen Ginsberg is repeating ad infinitum through my head:

"No rest without love, no sleep without dreams of love"

But I digress.

There's so much to share with you that is entirely un-related to the beloved boy y.

How is it possible it's only been a week since I last posted? Seems like a lifetime.

Okay, so the week before last was a rough one. I mentioned that I worked hard. Truly, I marketed my little heart out. People think of marketing as conceptual, right? You don't think of it as nitty-gritty, in the trenches, direct contact with your targets. Well, that's not always so. I was, in fact, in the trenches. Suffering the bombs and bullets of direct contact while praying for victory. At the end of the week, all my hard work paid off. I had two events that were full enough to viably run. I was the happiest girl in the world. Exhausted, but elated.

Experimental Tuesday of that week was... one of the best since the first piece I saw. The first piece was almost viral, I've never forgotten it. The speech, the colors - it didn't evoke much feeling but as a piece of art it evoked my love of aesthetics for aesthetics's sake. Nazuna, by Hitoshi Toyoda, managed that feat - and I'll tell you why it was a feat. This was not a film I went to see. It was a slideshow. An honest to goodness slideshow. So honest, that there was a scaffold set up in the back rows of the theatre which I watched the artist climb up to and load, reload, and reload again the merry-go-round. Still photos, a progression of still photos evoked tears from me. Amazing.

It started off inauspiciously. I've developed this allergy. To 9-11. Every time someone mentions it, every time it turns out to be a theme in a book I'm reading, every time the imagery from that day passes through my ocular web... I cringe. I turn away. There is a chain reaction inside my being that screams, "NOooooooooo! Not again! Stop it already!" It's sort of the way I feel about anything having to do with World War II. I'm tired of it.

Toyoda's slideshow began in New York. A few days before 9-11. It takes you through that day and then, mercifully, on a plane to Japan. We follow Toyoda as he goes home for the first time in 11 years. To Tokyo. Then to the mountains where he searches for a mythical group of Japanese Amish. Then to a Zen Monastery. And through the death of his mother. It was stunning. And I loved it.

The following Saturday the sky in Wisconsin exploded and the first flurry of serious snow hit the ground in Milwaukee. I decided this would be the perfect time to try out a recipe I'd seen in the Vegetarian Times. I've never made risotto before because it is an intimidatingly time and energy-consuming dish to attempt. But the recipe for Radicchio and Plum Tomato Risotto was too tempting to pass up. I was waiting for beloved boy y to come over, we'd planned to hibernate and to that end I'd rented 2046 and breathless and endeavored the risotto, bought wine. He was finishing up some things at work and running terribly late. I had no sooner gotten to the final, most delicate stage of preparation (the 1/2 cup addition and stir stage) when he arrived. Within minutes a series of text messages reminded him that a group called Korporate Media was premiering their series of shorts at the Hide House in Bay View. So I quickly finished the risotto, changed into something noteworthy and dashed with him out the door. We'll not discuss the terms of our transport but we made it in just enough time. We'd only missed one, most likely because we couldn't find the room and wasted some time dashing about the building. It was totally worth the rush and arrival-mishaps. Korporate Media is a hilarious group of geeks who produced an incredibly funny series of shorts. I highly recommend checking them out.

With the both of my events running last week, I was a whirling dervish. For any of you who've done event planning you know the "on the road dog n' pony show" event is probably the most energy-draining. I schlepped, I networked, I smiled, I trouble-shot, I did it all. The first event went over beautifully. The presenter was happy, the attendees were happy, and I was happy. Awesome. The second? Well, it was a bit of a comedy of errors. Presenter? Late. Attendees? Thin on the ground. Technology? Temperamental. None of this was my fault, but it's the stress it causes that tips the scales.

But...

I had originally decided to take a half day on Friday. But I need new tires like a body mod addict needs a new hole so I took the whole day so I could drive down to Farm n' Fleet on the south side, hoping to buy and have new tires mounted all in a morning's rush to get down there before 8:30. I waited in line with a group of middle aged white guys. Sore thumb effect, definitely. But there was tire sale on, and apparently Farm n' Fleet's Automotive division is operating half-staffed so it seemed it wasn't to be. Still, I stood around and chatted about technology, the changing workplace, prostate cancer with a couple of guys who worked respectively for Allen Bradley (back in it's heyday - the man was retired now) and Quad Graphics. Nice guys. It was nice to have someone to talk to. They thanked me as I left when it was discovered they'd lied to me on the phone. Not only did they give me the wrong price but they didn't even have my tires in stock. But I got a "Rain Check" which means I'll still get the sale price - buy 3 get one free. And with the price of tires for my car being quite high, this is a deal I can live with.

But the reason I'd decided to take a half day was so that my sister and I could journey down to Chicago to see a new exhibition at the MCA. I'm a member there and I don't think I've been back in the 3 years since I joined when my former Dutch lover came last to visit me. But this exhibition sounded too good to miss. An artist named Sara Schnadt was mapping search networks as they related to geographic locations. Plus, it was a First Friday. T2 and I have always wanted to go to one of those but we've never been able to work it into our schedules. And it was FABULOUS! I loved it! I need to go again. We hopped a train and then a CRAZY crowded bus. Chicago at rush hour is incredible. It was such a mad rush to see that many people out in the streets at night like that. I was totally exhilarated. We walked around near Michigan Ave, looking for a place to grab food and an ATM and found this little place called L'Appetit. An Italian bistro-deli type joint. Delicious sandwiches and cookies. After that we found the MCA, tucked away in it's little corner near Lake and Chicago Ave.

The exhibition was... well, less than I'd hoped it would be. But then, I only saw it being constructed, I'd like to go back and see the finished piece. Because while T2 made arrangements to stay in Chicago for the weekend, I had planned to head back on the last train. Forgetting that the last train in so goddamned early. I only got to stay at the MCA for like, an hour and half. But in that time, T2 and I got our picture snapped in a little attendee photo shoot after an MCA employee dragged us out of the crowd. And I got to see their more permanent exhibition of Japanese and Brazilian takes on American Rock n' Roll. Which was awesome. They'd dragged out Andy Warhol footage of Lou Reed, John Cale, and Nico. There were little rooms where little films were showing - The Spirit Girls film piece was probably my favorite oddity from that bunch.

It was an awesome, inspiring experience that I hope I can repeat. But I've made this mistake before. Most notably when I went to meet Beth and Anna. So, I think this time I've learned my lesson. Get down there on a Friday night, make sure to make arrangements to stay.

I suffered for it. I'm sick as a dog (heh, accidentally typed "god" first. heh.) right now. I think that's been creeping up on me all week. But it was so worth it. It's a crazy life and I love it when I get to run around and see cool things.

Anyway, I've given you all enough to digest. Muchos lovas to all y'all!

Trans-Orbital Torture

2007-12-01T07:47:00.000-08:00

Last Christmas I remember driving out to T2's boyfriend's mother's house for Christmas eve dinner. It's kind of a haul, way out in the styx of a far-flung suburb. I was listening to a Sound Portraits piece on Howard Dully, who had had the misfortune of having the "Trans orbital Lobotomy." It was an amazing piece. I got lost in farm country looking for Ms. Boyfriend's Mother's house, which I think was unconsciously intentional. It was an NPR driveway moment, only I kept moving.

I mention this because last night I felt as though somehow, during the two hours I slept on Thursday night, someone snuck into my apartment and performed this procedure on me. All day Friday I felt out of sorts and over-caffeinated. I was up, up, up all afternoon at work. Chatty, excitable. It's been another tough week but mostly from the perspective of how very, very hard I worked. It's paying off, but I just have to hope that it pays off enough to make a go of things. If you believe in that stuff, pray for me. You never know what might tip the balance of the universe ;)

So, after a long day of working to make it work I had intended to go home and nap. I had tried to entice the beloved to come and nap with me, but I was unsuccessful. We'd planned to meet up but I had a feeling that beloved, being in the same sleep-deprived position as me, would end up falling asleep and miss out on the evening's goings-on. And I would be disappointed to find I was right. I laid down around 6, hoping to blank myself out and recharge my batteries for at least a half hour. But my phone kept "sonnez, sonnez, sonnez" begging my attention. So when the sister-person "sonnez-ed" me and begged me to come to an event her museum was hosting because no one had showed up, I gave up the nap. I put on a beautiful outfit.

Like, serious.

There's this dress that I've had for years. I've always loved it but never quite known how to wear it. It's a billowy baby-doll type-thing that taken by itself, obscures my lovely figure. And I've had the idea to belt it, but never had the right belt. So, needing tights last night I ran over to Moxie (Entertaining sidenote: on my way there, I ran into Mr. Houdini. I wouldn't have noticed him, but he called out to me. He gave me a huge, wonderful hug which took me off my feet - literally. I was glad to smile at him again.) where I found not only the perfect tights, but also the perfect belt. So picture this: deep wine-y red velvet short dress with three-quarter length split sleeves and arrow-shaped pin tucks at the neckline, chiffon ruffles along the collar and sleeves. Belted with a deep wine-y red leather belt with a silver circlet buckle. Silver and garnet earrings, vintage silver bracelet. Deep wine-y red tights and grey leather boots. Gorgeous.

So, I went to the museum-thingie. It's called Allis After Hours and they have wine and food and a band. This event was their "Autumn Equinox" event. And when I got there, there were tons of people. I silently cursed my sister. So I drank a glass of wine, ate some food, listened to the indie-hipster band and hung out. There's this guy who comes to all the events at the Allis whom I adore - very gregarious, very animated and sweet and he is a go-er. By which I mean, he goes to everything. He finds all these fabulously interesting things going on in this city and he goes to them. All of them. As many as he can. Which I love. He was telling me about having gone to see this revival preacher on Tuesday night. Some guy preaching against consumerism, I guess. Go-er Todd isn't particularly religious and he'd never gone to anything like it before, but he found it fascinating. I found it fascinating to be told about it. He's such a delight. He's actually the one who clued me into Experimental Tuesdays. Bless his little heart.

Now, it is traditional that when T2 is quitting smoking that we avoid each other and the reasons are two-fold. One, she smokes. And two, we kind of tend to fight. Last night we didn't fight but in my weakened swimming brain-state I was unable to fend off some stuff. I was starting to get cranky just before we left the Allis. By the time we stopped at Balzac for a quick glass of wine before we attended an MAM event, I was officially in a bad mood. T2 is always very judgmental of the men who enter my life. One mis-step and her whole perspective on them can be altered. I spent most of the time we were alone at Balzac fending off needling attacks against the beloved. She made fun of my outfit too. ("I always hated that dress but it looks good with the belt, I guess." or my personal favorite, "You look like Courtney Love." Bah. Courtney Love wishes she looked as good as I did last night. Everyone else said I looked totally NYC. I prefer to go with that interpretation.) As she spoke I felt the pound, pound, pound of the ice pick in my ocular cavity. T2 trepanning. Heaven help me, I was so not prepared for that.

After Her Abby-ness, queen of my hairstyles showed up to rescue me, and Timothy the Gay Boyfriend just after, it took forever to extract them from Balzac to attend The Cedar Box event at the MAM. That was the one thing I wanted to do last night. I was about ready to leave without them when around 9:30 I finally managed it. When we got there, by the time we paid our entrance fee and checked our coats, we discovered that the exhibition had closed at 10. It was just after. Cranky meter raised to red level. The party was okay, there were people there I knew. Jon Jackson from the MIFF (such a cutie, but still needs a haircut ;), the wine-god from Downer Wine and Spirits, and one of T2's board members. It was fun, but I was really disappointed to miss the exhibition and in no mood for working the room - which is normally a delight of mine. The beloved slept the night away. I probably should have too.

Yes, I AM a silly girl

2007-11-23T11:13:00.000-08:00

Ah... zee life. She is so fickle this mistress. How kind! How cruel! How often unsettling. And yet, we brave on through the blasts and the pats on the head and the kicks in the teeth and the elbows to the ribcage and the warm, friendly smiles and the embraces of friends and loved ones and the wicked knocks on the noggin. Yes, how we brave on each day. Laughing in the face of idiocy. Standing at the top of our mountains, surveying all the beauty and destruction that surrounds us.

It's been a rough couple of weeks, kids. Like serious. I really wasn't sure how I was going to come out on the other side but here I am. Still standing. My soul's a little battle-worn. My heart's a little achy today but that's more my own fault than anyone else's. I drank a lot last night. *shrug*

I won't go into the details of the work sitchy that caused the battle scars. There's simply too much. But, through it all... through a massive screw-up on my part, through the WORST project of my professional life ever (which is not over and nor shall it be for a loooong while), I still somehow have retained the confidence of my boss and the confidence of the high-est up I have contact with (which is pretty high). I'm still not sure I want to stay where I am and may yet begin preparations for taking my leave of that joint - I'm not sure but this would be the battle that broke the camel's back.

Thanksgiving was... strange this year. I was someplace else all day long. I was bored. I was sullen. I wasn't really there the whole time. I sort of enjoyed myself, mostly in those moments I escaped from my brain. But, ultimately, the evening would end badly. I hadn't cried in months. I had been totally unable. Even when Jerome died. Even when Mr. Houdini left again. I didn't shed a single tear. During the worst stress at work, not a droplet. I'd tried. Laurel and I had had a couple of wine nights and boy o boy if there's anything just behind the dam, usually that'll do the trick but no, nothing. Well, last night the dam broke. I cried my little heart out. I sobbed into my pillow. All the stress and angst and fear and failure and cruelty and professional vendetta leveled against me at work came pouring out. All the fear and happiness and feeling like I'm maybe out on a limb where my "romantic" life is concerned came pouring out too. Baby-bathwater kind of situation. All the annoyance and family grievance. All the feeling like I'm not in control lately. All the everything. Oh, the everything of it all has stained my pillowcases. It felt really, really good. I started laughing in the middle of it. Laughing and crying at the same time. It seems like your head should explode in that situation. Kind of like sneezing and hiccuping at the same time but it was really wonderful. If you can ever manage it, I highly recommend it. Highly cathartic.

I woke up out of sorts, terribly early, brain churning. Alcohol and melatonin seems not to be the most intelligent combination. I'll have to remember that next time I'm drunk and haven't been sleeping. Big red letters: FTN! This is when I chose to send a couple of emails. Not the smartest thing but my brain was up-ending itself and I just HAD to communicate with someone in particular. *shakes head* Silly girl. Silly, silly, tweaky girl. And I wondered this morning, in the throes of it, if I was being tweaky and thought to myself, "No!No, you just have something you want sorted out rightnow so you just neeeeeeed to speak to this person who has a shared interest in the perspective." Perhaps. Yes, perhaps that is so but looking again at the messages... which I am about to do... just now, in fact... and okay, maybe it's not as bad as I thought. I was tweaking, though. Totally, totally tweaking. Rapturous of my emotions. Needed to evangelize. Puh. To quote myself: "...sometimes the universe does not accomodate my emotional schedule." It'll keep. Hopefully he will.

I Woke Up and it Was November

2007-11-11T20:47:00.000-08:00

Did you ever have one of those weeks where you know you lived out each day, doing what you were supposed to do, showing up at all of your appointments, accomplishing tasks, attending the events that made their way onto your schedule... but goddamn if you can pick out one day from another?

I just had one of those weeks. I can scarcely wrap my mind around the fact that it's Sunday. But it is. Let's see... what's gone on in the Jenn-iverse since last I blogged. Well, the way-back machine takes me back to pre-Halloween. I talked about the really interesting Experimental Tuesday film I went to see, but not the one that was so torturous that when I finally gave up and walked out one of the film department peeps - with a look of sheer disbelief written all over his face - said to me, "how did you make it that long?!?" I honestly don't know. So we can talk about that. I also haven't mentioned the great fun of going to see the Milwaukee Ballet's production of Hamlet with it's associated mooning. (Yes, mooning. I got mooned at the ballet. How many of you can say that, huh?) I didn't really get a chance to relate the details of Mariah's party, nor have I brought you all up to speed on boy y. Or the predictable hilarity of the woodwork debuts a few of my other boys have made.

Shall we start at the beginning? Chicago seems like the beginning, I think.

I took the afternoon train down to Chicago, arriving around 2:30, I believe. It had been my intention when this jaunt was in the planning stages to walk over to the MCA and see what's going on over there, since I am a member and haven't been since I last had an overseas visitor. (Which was a looooong time ago now.) However, Mariah called on my way down and said hey meet me on Dearborn and Adams my dad and I are going to a protest. And so I asked the obvious question: "What are you protesting?" To my amusement, Mariah answered, "I dunno, Dad, what are we protesting?" Somewhere in the background I heard Mariah's dad answer- "The war." Hilarious. So I walked down to the square by the post office at the appointed sculpture and watched as the SINGLE LARGEST PROTEST I HAVE EVER SEEN unfolded before my eyes. I can now say that on October 27, 2007 I attended a protest that 30,000 other people also attended. It was INCREDIBLE. Mariah has yet to deliver on pictures, so I'll have to pester him. Which I actually just did. Just now. I'll post what I receive.

The party was interesting. It's funny to me how different groups of people react to the presence of a new person sometimes. I remember when the aforementioned overseas visitor was here and I believe that his biggest complaint was that none of my friends seemed interested in talking to him. Personally, when I new person arrives in my midst I want to ask them a ton of questions and make them feel welcome. Not everybody does that, as it turns out. And the majority of Mariah's friends did not seem interested in me. A few people talked to me but largely, I was ignored. Mariah did well making up for that so I wasn't like, bored or anything. And observing his group dynamic and the perspective his current group of friends have on him vs the perspective I have on him was really, really interesting. My Mariah is quite different than their Mariah. I love those kinds of peeks into people's social universe. And how different phases of their lives produce different versions of themselves and it's kind of exciting to be outside the usual scope of his everyday life looking in. Ultimately, it was great fun.

The following Tuesday I attended another Experimental Tuesday at UWM. This was a Danièle Huillet memorial tribute. When UWM folks talked about it at the "I think there's something worth dying for" screening it sounded fabulously interesting. You say French film and I am there like a shot, strictly speaking. I love the French aesthetic in film more often than not. But this was not a French film. It was German. Based on a German play by Friedrich Hölderlin called Der Tod des Empedokles. And it was horrible. I have since, when asked, taken to comparing it to Vogon poetry. It was just that uncomfortable to watch. Danièle Huillet was part of a duo with her lifelong partner Jean-Marie Straub. The wiki entry describing these two is also fabulously interesting. But what I did not note is what their aesthetic was all about.

Here's a tidbit for you:

"Aesthetically, their films are often described as being "austere." They utilize long, immobile takes, often framed in an unconventional but seemingly primitive way. Key actions or objects are often not shown, leaving the audience instead to imagine them or have them described by the characters."

They also used non-professional actors. And did it ever show. The main character kept looking down as he was delivering his heroically long monologues. I imagine to make reference to the text. I can scarcely imagine a professional actor memorizing that entire script, much less some guy off the street. Now, most people are frightened off when a descriptor mentions long, immobile takes. But being a fan of the 70's film style, which certainly uses the aforementioned takes I embrace them. I am the only person I know who was able to not only stay awake for but also totally enjoy Equus. I've tried to share my love and no one has ever made it through. This stylistic choice can either be pleasing as in films such as Equus, Coffey, the French Connection or it can be incredibly unpleasant. At least for this film, it was more of the latter.

But my evening was saved. As I was walking home, I got a call from boy y. He wanted to come to where I was and so I met him at the coffee shop across the street from my house. As I walked the sidewalk in front of the shop, I could see him in the huge bank of windows. He'd just had his hair cut, he was wearing a crisp green shirt and he hadn't seen me yet. I could not help but smile. He greeted me as I walked in the door saying, "This won't work. I need to go to a darkened room." I remember being sort of taken aback. Thinking, "Oh yes? Really? Praytell what exactly do you have in mind?" He smiled at me and showed me his camera. I knew about this piece he's been working on, actually. Years ago, probably 4 or 5, I went to a gallery night at Turner Hall. There were belly dancers, and two very interesting projects one was film from the security cameras that are all over Milwaukee and the other was this non-stop stream of eyes. Irises, specifically. And I remember standing there in front of the film projection, transfixed.

After the photos were taken he plugged his camera into my tv and flipped my eyes onto the screen. I have wavy muscle in my irises. These long, undulating lines of blue and gold with big brown "freckles" up top and to the right on each. It was so interesting. He sat and explained to me what he knew about eyes. We discovered I have dusty eyeballs. Which is, you know, kind of freaky. And afterwards, after the picture snapping and eyeball perusing there was kissing. Really, really good kissing. Which seems to be a theme. Which is good.

Halloween itself was fun. Spent with boy y. First we went to see a reading of a play by a youth theatre group at UWM, then we met up with boy y's friends at Trocadero. The instant we walked in I knew we would get along - the boy friend was dressed like Kelly. Which, like... totally cool, right? We had a great time, we laughed, we talked we danced. A good time was had by all. And, whereas I had gone dressed in daddy duds to the Chicago paty, a la the letter jacket and sweater, for Halloween proper I went as "Edie Sedgewick, pre-Andy Warhol" (which no one got) dressed in my mother's dress and jacket. So, Dad for party, Mom for going out. Which was good because like, the mommy dress was red and short which is always good when in the company of a boy you like. I wish I could find some specific information on the youth theatre group who performed the thing so I can be a little publicity conduit for them but google searches haven't yielded good results. Maybe I'll ask the boy later.

Moving on to Friday...

I work with a woman who is a very curious person. I don't know if I quite understand her but we've some similar interests - namely men and dance. So, when she invited me to attend "Greet Your Seat," an event for the "Balletomane" season ticket holders, during which I was utterly swarmed by board members I jumped at the chance. And we had a good time. Then she invited me to the "Dialogue for Dance" with Stephen Mills, the guest choreographer from Ballet Austin and Michael Pink, the Artistic Director for the Milwaukee Ballet. Which was quite wonderful. We got to see a preview of the ballet, hear about its inception, and really be front and center for a gorgeous view of some of the male dancers' callipygian-ness. The ballet, Hamlet, sounded quite amazing and when it was revealed that the musical score for the show was Philip Glass... that was it, I was sold. I would've bought tickets. But I didn't have to, my co-worker offered them for free.

We had decided to get really dressed up, so I donned the beautiful dress I wore for the Milwaukee International Film Festival Gala. You can go ahead an look in the photo gallery for me, there were pictures of me from that event but it looks like none of them made it onto the website. *shrug* I loose. (My bet.) Boy y decided to work an in at the Ballet and got a ticket from a friend who works there. Boy y picked me up. I was running a little behind schedule, had wet fingernails, and was carrying a jumble of crap when I walked outside to the flash, flash, flash of a shutterbug sitting on the wall beside my driveway. Boy y treated me to a taste of celebrity with a paparazzi reception.

The Ballet itself was slow to start but huge in patience payoff. It was gorgeous, magical, enthralling. And I got to see ass. The lead, Hamlet, split his pants in the first act. It started small but eventually his ENTIRE ass was visible. Running, jumping, leaping was cheeky as hell. The co-worker and I loved it. After the performance we attended a champagne reception where I had the opportunity to speak with the lead. He was very humble and jovial about the "wardrobe malfunction." Which was great. After the reception, the co-worker, boy y and I all decided to go out to dinner at a new tapas restaurant called, La Merenda. The place is positively adorable with really great ambiance to begin with and the food is quite excellent. We had something with shrimp and something curry and something else I can't quite remember. Which is sub-par for my usual food porn, I know, but hey - I'm lucky I remember that much these days.

Now, fast-forwarding to the part where I talk about the woodwork and it's recent yield. Cuz that's the fun part ;) Well, for some of us, anyway. So, remember when I posted about how it was kinda upsetting how after you're newly single all of a sudden your guy friends who have been such very good friends suddenly start looking at you as a dating option? Well, as we all well know it works the other way too. Meet someone you like a lot and are kind of smitten with and watch as all your old flames suddenly wanna start something up again. I got a couple of emails from Houdini boy (now you see him, now you don't - now he's all bound up in chains and submerged in a cooling bath of his own pain), it may or may not have been a toe in the water of round 3 but we'll find out for certain when he does or does not respond to my last response in the email chain. He saw me with boy y on Friday night. Tried to sneak by me with his head down and his baseball cap pulled down. I thought about calling to him to say hello but I decided to let him sneak if that's what he wanted. Went out for drinks with another old flame and after I got home got a text message requesting the pleasure of his presence at my apartment. There was another one in there and it involved a late night face-to-face request but I'll spare y'all the details. You know, and the thing is - I'd love to be friends with Houdini. He's a great guy who I like a lot and while apparently he's not exactly relationship of any kind material I'd still like to know him and double-bubble geek-a-licious boy of the texting fame is a dear heart too whom I care for immensely. And the face-asker, well he's just one of those people I love. So what up? Huh? Do my pheromones change or something? I know they say it's attitude but I like to think I'm a generally happy and bubbly person anyway. I dunno, whatevs, right?

I think that pretty much covers the last couple of whirlwind weeks. Tuesday I leave for Orlando so y'all get to be real jealous of NWG. Heh.

Slut not Ho

2007-10-30T12:12:00.000-07:00

Gawker Shop

Heheheheheheh. Heh. What? I'm totally getting one for all of my favorite people. Heh.

I can haz keeeeeeeessez?

2007-10-27T06:15:00.000-07:00

secret by Hex photo by Ninjapants
lolsecretz

So the above picture is from lolsecretz, which I occasionally check and find kinda hilarious. Uhm, until I read the "legal notice." Oh, hai. Now I'z not so enchanted. Behold:

"By submitting content to Lolsecretz, you grant Lolsecretz a perpetual, royalty-free license to use, reproduce, modify, publish, distribute, and otherwise exercise all copyright and publicity rights with respect to that content at its sole discretion, including storing it on Lolsecretz servers and incorporating it in other works in any media now known or later developed including without limitation published books.

If you do not wish to grant Lolsecretz these rights, it is suggested that you do not submit content to this website. Lolsecretz reserves the right to select, edit and arrange submissions, and to remove information from the Lolsecretz website at any time at its sole discretion."

So, you know... if you'd like to maintain at least some creative control over your cat macro or you'd like others to be able to use, alter, or re-post with your permission (the AUTHOR) then I wouldn't suggest submitting your work to this site as the notice suggests.

*annoyance*

While I'm on the subject of cat macros, Danah Boyd blogged about lol last week. Apparently the bible has been translated into lol-speak. I was not aware of this particular meme. And so the LOL universe grows. (I can haz applez? No? Gawddamz!) I derive no small amount of secret joy when the "big brains" apply their skeeelz to analyzing seemly banal cultural phenomena like LOL. A linguist? Analyzing lol-speak? 0h n035!1!!1

So, let's see what's new and exciting in the Jenn-iverse, shall we? On Tuesday I attended an Experimental Tuesday screening of "I believe that somewhere, there is something worth dying for, and I think it's amazing" while I always enjoy experiments, especially of the cinematic variety (or videographic... uh, is that a word? No. Merde.) I have to say that I spent most of the film alternately being awed by the colors they painted the actors, the linguistic style they chose, and the extreme performance-art physicality of it; I did spend most of the film thinking, "Oh Em Gee, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. What in blue blazes is goin' on up in heya?!?"

There's a lot going on at the Peck Film school these days which I find exciting, titillating even. I regret missing Kimberly Miller's exhibition at Woodland Pattern last night... but... uhm... I was, uh... doin'... somethin'... else. Heh. You guys can ask all you want but I'm not ready to tell. When I'm ready, I'll explain why when asked how I am the consistent answer this week has been "excellent." Certainly one secret to my smile was the purchase of a new pair of shoes on Thursday but really, that's kind of minor comparatively.

I think the reasons I'm hesitant to discuss the source of my delight are threefold. First, there innumerable places on the interwebs that one can go to read all about the romantic adventures (tho, probably more in the mis-adventures vein) of girl x. How many times can one read "OMG, he like totally sux!!" before one yawns, stretches and re-directs their browser? Second, I've not made it to 31 without plenty adventures and one gets rather tired of recounting the above scene with their personal audiences. There's an element of pride in there insofar as one does not necessarily like people to know that their taste/decision-making ability is so terrible that they keep having all these mis-adventures with the suck-ass menfolk. Thus, until such time as boy y has demonstrated a viability where consistency is concerned I try not to open my mouth too far. Tho, this has been more public from the get-go than I am accustomed to and I'm trying not to let that bother me because this particular fascination is by nature more public than I'm accustomed to and I've been working on not caring about that stuff as much anymore anyway. (And it is here that I would like to point out that weirdly, I'm not sure I think... no matter the outcome... that this will turn out to be a "OMG, he like totally sux" sort of situation. I kind of know why I think that but this paragraph's getting a bit on the long side so perhaps I'll save that tidbit for another time.) Thirdly, I don't know exactly what I'm staring down the barrel of atm. There's a certain amount of fear mixed in with the joy, which is what makes it exciting. (But that's the nature of new things, isn't it?) But there's also a Shinkansen-speed, whirlwind-i-ness element that's occasionally making me feel like I've had the rug ripped out from under my feet. Which is a good thing. I'm good at rolling with the punches and putting myself in situations where there is no other choice seems like the best way to get better at it. So, until such time as I don't feel that trifecta of advisable silence is at play, perhaps I'll fill you all in.

Tonight I make the journey to Chicago-land for my friend Mariah's (Mariah is boy, just in case anyone was wondering. An old, dear friend of mine who I simply cannot wait to throw my arms around.) Halloween party. It's a costume party. *raises eyebrows suggestively* And to that end I have absconded with my father's letter jacket and sweater. I'll be donning a pair of skinny jeans and chucks, parting my hair like a boy and possibly stuffing my pants. With socks. Hehehehehe. Hopefully there will be pictures.

With sweet, secret smiles. A fluttery heart, and an over-clocked brain I wish you all a happy Halloween weekend.

In the Ether

2007-10-24T09:03:00.000-07:00

photo by hopelessly devoted

I'm up there somewhere today.

Made Up Holidays & Narrow Escapes

2007-10-22T09:19:00.000-07:00

photo by quinn.anya

Sweetest Day is bullshit. I just wanna say that right off the bat. A Consumerist conspiracy perpetrated by the Master Florists Association, Hallmark, & Hershey... Godiva and the National Fancy Helium Balloon Association (Filled & Unfilled brethren welcome) were there too. At the table. The diabolical table of "we don't think people spend enough money on our crap... how can we guilt the average American into blowing more cash on proving their love?" table. Of doom.

Apparently this bogus day where frightened-looking men toddle into florist shops, grocery store flower refrigerators, candy aisles, jewelry stores featuring short-term credit applications, and cheesy balloon stands in malls was Saturday. I didn't notice.

I was supposed to get together with a friend of mine that night. I bailed. Now I'm glad I did.

Ladies, have you ever noticed that so often you can be friends with a guy for ages and it seems like he's just such a dear friend and everything is happy and wonderful... right up until your boyfriend throws you over to pursue a law degree and skips town to Europe. (Which is the best place to skip town to, IMNSHO.) Then suddenly you're a walking, talking, cooking, physically appealing side of beef seemingly destined to be claimed for their own. (Do you have flag?) Because of course as Proposer #2, whilst declining my extended company so eloquently implied, I won't be happy until I've found that "special someone." At which time apparently I will begin residing in LaLaLand. Which is right next to Ubangy. And Neverneverland. They share a common border.

It's funny how a day like Sweetest Day or Valentine's Day can take such a hold of fear over men. (And gay couples? Is Phil mad at Steve if Steve forgets to bring home the rainbow carnations Phil lovingly admired in the arts district florist window? Is Tanya mad at Jan if there's no trail of rose petals leading her up to the bedroom?) Are other women/gay men really angry if their "significant other" forgets? I'd be waaaay more pissed if say, one of my entanglements forgot my birthday. (But you all know how I feel about my birthday. Best. Day. EVAR.) It's such crap. If you love someone you show them every day, as much as possible in a million small ways. Flowers and candy and sparkly things -while nice - are really quite irrelevant to the whole "love" thing. But maybe that's just me.

NOW. That being said, some horrible pink bear thing was just delivered to a co-worker of mine from some man in honor of Sweetest Day. And I can't help thinking... I can't remember the last time I got flowers. Truly, I can't. Candy's origins are parental. As for sparkly things... well I'm a farging crow and I scare up that sort of thing for myself. (Heh.) But flowers... odd symbol though they are... here, have something that'll be dead in two days. Fewer if you forget to add their embalming packet. But look! Fleetingly pretty! Just like you! Anyway, I'm kind of jealous. Which is totally stupid. I'm sure it'll be just as fleeting as that silly bear's existence.

Seems Like Such a Small Thing...

2007-10-16T09:15:00.000-07:00

...and yet, it could not be more annoying. Like a toothache.

I posit that silk underwear are not all they're cracked up to be. In fact, they're turning out to be rather uncomfortable. Elastic-squished lady-parts is for teh no.

Just in case anyone was wondering.

Ursula K. Le Guin is Kind of an Ass

2007-10-14T08:17:00.000-07:00

Last night I attended a session on Intellectual Property Rights at Barcamp Milwaukee, imagine my amusement when I visited BoingBoing and found this story as the lead piece. Misquoting, mis-crediting, and out-of-contexting aside I am more than a little horrified by Ms. Le Guin's reaction to the situation. This open letter is posted on her site, which I read with no small amount of surprise and disdain.

Of course, I might feel differently if I had ever been presented with the same situation but I think as long as I was properly credited I wouldn't really care and would only address the contextual mistakes in my own way. Ms. Le Guin's use of the asshats at the SFWA presents an ethical problem to me. As a writer, I would never make use of an organization which has made such grave mis-steps in their handling of digital copyright.

Don't get me wrong. I love Ursula K. Le Guin. I love the Earthsea series. I do not love her reaction to this situation. I do, in fact, think she's being an asshole. She apparently "remains upset" at Cory Doctrow. Which smacks to me of a cranky old lady looking for "gravy." Maybe she'd chill out if Doctrow sent her a check?

Any Volunteers?

2007-10-09T09:03:00.000-07:00

Dude, seriously - for like, the last week or two my shoulders have felt stitched together with barbed wire. I need a backrub so badly I am almost to the point of being willing to pay for it?!?!

In other news, I am now a Gawker commenter. Which may well turn out to be bad for productivity :D *sheepish*

In other, other new I am currently embroiled in a battle of wits with another department at work. Even though I'm wittier I think I'm still losing. (Which may well be the source of the dire need for a backrub.)

And in other, other, other news I can't wait for the MIFF Volunteer Appreciation party @ MOCT on Thursday. The bastids still haven't posted the pics from the festival to their site. Which sucks because I have a bet running that I'm in at least 5.

Finally, any Milwaukee-area Geek readers (Are there any? Hmmm, I wonder...) Should check out barcampmilwaukee2 - looks pretty interesting and like it'll be a boatload o' fun. If you've the time, check it out.

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder?

2007-10-04T09:59:00.000-07:00

Or forgetful.

Yes, yes I am quoting Disney's Robin Hood. Maid Marion to be exact. The title question is posed by the Mother Hen character. And the line above is Marion's response. Rather fitting right now, I guess.

My sister and I used to be able to watch that movie over and over again laying on the floor in front of the entertainment center (with it's VCR with the remote you had to plug in) me operating the face controls with my toes. Much to my parent's chagrin.

Well, I'm all grown up now. I have my own VCR, which largely collects dust but I definitely don't operate it with my toes. I've learned a lot of hard lessons over the years and some of them have only recently galvanized in my mind.

That left unfulfilled the starved mind does you no favors.

That being a grown up comes down to one very simple concept that my stupid ex-fiance told me years ago, but I didn't listen: Seeing what needs to be done... and doing it.

When given the chance to prove it, you'll generally find that not only are you waaaay smarter than you thought you were but you're even smarter in the eyes of the people who gave you the chance to prove it in the first place.

Simple concepts, all three... but oh, so easily overlooked. So easily ignored. So easily skimmed over out of laziness or fear.

I got the full-time version of the job I harangued over when I started this blog at the end of August. I am be-salaried and be-awesomely-benefitted. I have a metric TON of projects that I'm working on and I've also been invited to join a planning council for the local Young Professionals group.

I had another go-around with the boy from this spring. Which lead to disappointment and a sadness I am still working through. Yet another round with, "but I really liked him and thought that he liked me and then he had to go and ruin it."

But I've rebounded with not one, not two, but 4 new crushes. I won't name names but one works for the film festival, one works for a local arts organization, one is a little too close to home for comfort (like... in my building) and one works on my floor. The beauty of all of them is that they're all just out of reach. All it would take would be a chance meeting with one or any of them so I live deliciously on the edge. Being very careful not to get too close, lest I spoil the illusion that they're the kind of people I might like.

So that's life from the fast lane. Passing you on the left hand side, waving, singing along to the music only I can hear.

cough

2007-08-30T03:29:00.001-07:00

I'm still alive, I have not died, nothing much exciting has happened... I've just been busy. Except... I got the job when it went full-time so I am now be-salaried and be-benefitted. YaY!

I will return this weekend (or sooner, depending) with an exciting blog post.

Stay Tuned!

Bachelorette Living, avec Cat

2007-07-31T01:38:00.000-07:00

Last week Gawker posted about a Julia Allison blog-entry about "Singlefiers." Those clearly-girl items that enjoy a home as part of the decor only when you're single and live alone.

Piles of magazines everywhere, comprised of tons of pretentious ones that are clearly untouched and then severely thumbed-through Vogues and Luckys

Well, while there are definitely piles of reading material everywhere, (e.g. a whole basket full to the brim with some totally untouched Economists which is odd because I really like that magazine but never get around to reading it lately for some reason, a whole mess of untouched NY Magazines) the biggest offenders are both piles of books which are about 7 deep in the pile on the coffee table atm and the monster piles of New York Times newspapers. The reason for this is that Tim and I go to a coffee shop in the Third Ward every Sunday morning, the express purpose of which is *supposed* to be to drink coffee and read the paper. I think the only time in recent memory I've been allowed to actually sit and read has been the Sunday when Tim was absorbed by the Deathly Hallows. Generally what happens is that Tim picks up a couple of sections which he does not really read, instead he sits and chats at me while I struggle to continuously relocate where I left off in a given article. After a couple of hours I give up and we go to lunch. With regard to the pile... there can sometimes accumulate 2 months of those things. They have a spot between the couch and the chair. For some reason, I find it incredibly difficult to throw them away until they are quite old.

Overflowing shoe rack and nothing in the fridge

The former... totally. In the reader comments on Gawker there were bonus points doled out if your shoe rack hung over a door. Does it count if it's the inside of your closet door? And then also a regular shoe rack on the floor of your closet? And then a pile inside your closet? And then random pairs scattered about your apartment? Like say, 4 pair by the couch and 3 pair by the chair, and a pair of sneakers by the door?

As for the latter... uhm, no. In my fridge are the spoils of the farmer's market (broccoli, squash blossoms, corn, orange cherry tomatoes, 3 poblano peppers, tomatillos, a giant bowl of french filet beans, fresh eggs, rainbow chard, chives, sage), a bunch of stuff (most especially onions and halved lemons) in various stages of consumption in zip-lock baggies, a few deli containers from Beans n' Barley, a couple of bottles of mineral water, an un-opened bottle of white wine, 3 "company" beers, containers of strawberries and raspberries, a huge container of non-fat plain yogurt, one-quarter each of a watermelon and a cantaloupe, a couple of leftover containers with remnants of last week's meals, there is also the produce which has also spilled out onto the dining room table (giant bowl of orange and yellow tomatoes, a couple of enormous golden zucchinis (yes, that's right, I know what I wrote), a leftover patty pan and an heirloom tomato, and bowl containing an assortment of fuji apples, nectarines, peaches, and bananas. Also making an appearance is the biscotti jar full of flour that I've been too lazy to find a home for in the over-stuffed cabinet.

Scented candles

They're not scented... except the one in the bathroom ;) but there is definitely a candle presence in my apartment. Most of them were gifts. My mother has a fetish for this store called Winkie's in Whitefish Bay and every Christmas and St. Nick's (yes, my mother still gives us St. Nick's gifts) she gives us stuff like foo-foo writing tablets, little bags of honey sticks, tea mugs with little ceramic tea strainers (very cute, very useful) and such. For Easter we always seem to get candles shaped like little bunches of daffodils. So those are about.

Slovenly heaps of little-used makeups in the bathroom

My slovenly heaps of much-used makeups have found a new home on the bureau in my living room. I've recently been waging a war with my pissoir (poor maintenance guys have been here four or five times this year - I have, in fact, been putting off calling them for a new problem because there seems something conspicuous about a single girl constantly calling for a broken toilet, don't ask me why I think that because I don't know) and months ago when I came home to a little Sea of Galilee (which is not so much a sea as a very large freshwater lake) on my bathroom floor my makeups were found adrift in their cute little makeups bag (which was the real victim of the floods... it bled and isn't pretty anymore) so, much like many Katrina victims, they have yet to return to their home and instead have found themselves all spread apart on display for all (the people who never see the inside of my apartment) to see my girlie makeup secrets.

Stuffed animals in the bed

Oh... uhm... NO. Once upon a time in college I was the proud owner of a Paddington bear, an "everything" bear (which was given to me by the creepy older guy who kept semi-successfully trying to date me the summer before I left for college), and my childhood companion "Sugar." But I haven't kept stuffed animals in a loooooooong time. Having lived with several boyfriends, eventually the herd got thinned into extinction. I do have a small stuffed bunny who lives on the shelf under my nightstand, but he never comes near the bed.

Cat hair on the furniture

Kinda busted... I don't think it's so much the furniture as the hair that I never seem to be able to remove from the living room rug and tumbleweeds which used to be a combination of giant twining balls of my own long hair when I had it and Rowan's.

Cat smell

God, I hope not. Ew.

Cabinets full of mugs featuring the likeness of lady who looks like those hypertrophically-limbed Daily Candy illustrations, bearing the legend "I Love Shopping" or whatnot

Nope. What I do have is a "Michigan" mug and a hideous ginormous wine glass painted with the extremely colorful image of a lady with shopping bags which was a gift from a co-worker, and pint glasses bearing the name of their various giftors.

Anything pink

Wrong again. While I am a devotee, I do not consider pink a decorating element. Aside from the dream kitchen in my head featuring 50's style-appliances in the aforementioned shade which will hopefully never come to bear in reality.

Ornamental pillows

Guilty. Two on the couch. But they're olive green velvet and comfy as hell - especially since the arms of my couch are decidedly high.

Unedited bookshelves, esp. if they include He's Just Not That Into You or anything along those lines

Well, I do have a non-prominent copy of The Dictionary of Failed Relationships on the shelves. But that book is funny as hell.

Nair

Ew. No. Piles of worn out razor heads on the edge of the tub, tho.

Anything lite or diet around. Cases of Diet Coke. Weight Watchers 'Just 2 Points' bars

Wrong again. Unless you count the non-fat plain yogurt.

Inspirational or thinspirational things on the fridge

My favorite magnet on my fridge is the picture of the girl in the obviously ill-fitting 50's pointed bra which says, "when bad bras happen to good girls," which is meant to remind me of the importance of decent foundation garments after a stint in a crap one which mis-shaped the girls horrifically last summer.

Framed posters

Yes, of course. Some of us can't afford real art and are certainly not going to be making any herself as evidenced by the GIANT unfinished collage piece which has lived for like, 6 years behind the bureau at various residences. Reader comments make reference to Klimt's The Kiss being an offending item and I must admit to ownership of a small framed and matted copy in my bedroom along with the feather art pieces I lifted from a drawer at the cottage one summer. What? They were wrapped in paper towels and rubber-banded. In my book, that makes them fair game.

Handbag tree

Try a collection of them on the closet door handle and a pile of them on the chair in the living room. Does my handled farmer's market basket that lives on the dining room chair in the living room count as well?

As always, the Gawker reader comments are the best on the subject. My favorite being one by PIKACHUMCHEIDEGGER:

"By the bed a turquoise saucer, heaped with tarry clots of the poppy's blood, to kill the black dreams of a vacant womb.

Also, those high-fiber Wasa crackers from Sweden."

All in all I don't think my apartment all that terrifying. The biggest un-mentioned offenders being the piles of clothing on the chair in the living room, the pile of nail-maintenance paraphernalia next to the pile of books on the coffee table, the innumerable pots of Burt's Bees moisturizers lying all over the place, the coats on the dining room chair, the two bottles of red wine on the in-between counter between the kitchen and dining room (a good bottle and a bottle of $3 Chuck), the innumerable empty bottles of mineral water awaiting their fate as porch ashtrays under the sink, the little galvanized steel mini-bucket thingies from World Market filled with tampons and the oblong one containing q-tips, also in the bathroom a small pile of free moisturizer samples and a foo-foo box o' matches, early in the week the towel bar can be seen with its drying-underwear population, and the hook for hanging clothing from the always-open bedroom door that is full to bursting with work clothes, belts, and scarves - which have migrated for lack of room down to the door handle. Both sides.

Portobello Stackers

2007-07-19T03:44:00.000-07:00

Some sources suggest that the protein complexes found in cooked mushrooms may be as near complete alone as those found in conventional meats. An ex of mine who had worked on a mushroom farm (not the psychedelic variety) once said that mushrooms were as near to meat as anything in the vegetable kingdom ever got. Whereas most vegetarian dinners require combinations of foods to achieve a complete protein (e.g. nuts, seeds or grains with dairy; rice and beans) this is not considered necessary when serving mushrooms.

1 large portobello mushroom cleaned and stemmed
2 large carrots cleaned and peeled
1 young red onion
1 small tomato, sliced
2 garlic cloves
1 "handful" (subjective, would suggest approximately 2 tbsps) fresh Italian flat-leaf parsley
1 "handful" fresh basil
1 "handful" greens - escarole, watercress, spinach, frisée, radicchio
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2-3 tbsps dry sherry
black pepper to taste

Pre-heat oven to 400°. Use tablespoon olive oil to coat bottom of glass baking dish and bake portobello for approximately 10 minutes, alone. Dice red onion, smash garlic cloves with flat blade of knife, chop parsley finely. Add red onion and garlic to baking dish. Using tongs, tip portobello to drain accumulated juices, return to dish. Drizzle with balsamic vinegar and top with chopped parsley.

Using vegetable peeler, peel long ribbons of carrot- which can be done directly into small sauté pan. Turn heat to medium and add dry sherry, basil and black pepper to taste. Cook on medium until pan is dry, reduce heat to low and toss to dry out a bit.

When finished with carrots, remove baking dish from oven. Toss cooked red onions with carrot ribbons and chop caramelized garlic finely.

Construction:

First, evenly distribute finely chopped garlic on top of portobello. Then add cold sliced tomato, top with carrot ribbons and onions. Finally, add handful hand-torn greens.

Result: Very, tasty and quite refreshing. Carrots take on a much emphasized sweetness which is balanced with the hot crunch of fresh-ground black pepper. Portobellos seem to take on a slightly creamy flavor when roasted with a high-quality balsamic. I used escarole to top my stacker, which has a nice nutty flavor to it that works well with the earthiness of the mushroom. I suggest serving the tomatoes cold as the hot item/cold item balance is quite nice.

The Lake Trail

2007-07-18T05:55:00.000-07:00

Azure cotton voile hung in the sky
backlit with shades of apricot and pale orange
Horizon a melange of stripes
Buckshot clouds and frothing water
Along the trail I ride through piss-water hotspots
stinking of dead fish and pass an inky black man
who does not seem to know or care that the traffic of the trail sides right
I listen to the tink, tink of the ancient leather seat groaning under my weight
gliding over cracks that winter's bipolar freeze and thaw produces in this place
I think on muscles -just recently brought out of retirement- which propel my legs to move up and down like a marionette,
on the chain that sling-shots continuous the gears that turn at the command of my muppet legs- or so they appear as I look down and watch for a moment their movements
As I pass a gaggle of recalcitrant women, looking resentful as they compress to allow me passage
I smile out at the expanse of grass other side the boulevard and look towards the ancient bridge that hangs (or perhaps not) dilapidated and ignored over the river near the yacht club
Never before have I known beauty 6:00am on a summer morning breathing in the landscape too often forgotten in favor of crammed roadways
Back and forth to work and store and bar and friend's houses tucked away on easy corners
Comparatively, I've grown to despise life behind the wheel
The things I did not see too numerous to mention
And suddenly I hate to think of things I've missed

J. Turner
July 2007

Twelve Things

2007-07-14T03:39:00.000-07:00

Over at Alice Ayers there's a list going around (from last month, to view the current page click here... take a look, the photography is fabulous). Twelve things she'd tell a sixteen year old her. And everybody knows how much I adore lists, so here is mine.

1. You are not unattractive, at all, in the least. You are actually quite lovely.

2. Try harder. It does matter, actually. And later, you will care.

3. Not only will someone you want to have sex with want to have sex with you too, but you'll fall in love. Don't get excited yet, it won't happen the way you imagine.

4. When you're on your way to your interview at Contempo, don't check your wallet to see if you have gas money. You have enough gas to make it there, but the car won't survive your inquiry.

5. College will not live up to your expectations. It will be pretty much the same, just without adult supervision. Don't get your hopes up.

6. The new girl from Rice Lake you meet in your sewing class does really want to be your friend. Be her friend. Please, don't let your inferiority complex interfere. She is not just like everyone else.

7. Next year, when Jenny refuses you cigarettes do not take it as a challenge. She's right to do so. Not only will you smoke for YEARS to come but it will get more and more expensive and you will not be rich, even when you're thirty.

8. Touting your virginity in Mr. Hitchler's class will not get you a date to the prom. It just makes you seem a little too much like the girl who never cuts her hair and wears jean skirts with sneakers. But you're right, it is decidedly incomparable to a back rub. But that doesn't matter.

9. Choose your college wisely - here's a little tip, as it turns out, you hate living in the country.

10. Do more, daydream less. It's not just about surviving. It doesn't have to be this way.

11. Your mother loves you and she's not an idiot. Listen to her once in a while. If for no other reason than to make her happy. Nobody likes the screaming.

12. Watching movies in your basement with Julie on a Saturday night while consuming an entire pint of Ben and Jerry's is a very bad habit to get into. Go do something else.

Roasted Golden Beet Salad with Raspberry-Garlic Vinaigrette

2007-07-11T05:45:00.000-07:00

The other day an acquaintance of mine asked me; "Are you available for contract wifing? Because you cook the kind of things I should eat but wouldn't even think of making myself. I swear, I wouldn't ask for sex. Just food." The answer, of course, was no. I am available for catering services upon request but I am not in charge of anyone's daily meals unless the package includes the all-important arts of sexual gratification, various handyman services, hand-holding rights, snuggling and story-listening indulgences, the occasional bunch of flowers, and co-viewing of films of my choice both in-theatre and in-home. Oh, and smooching of both the public and private variety.

So, allow me to impress you with yet another feat of recipe change-up magic. I started with Bella Cucina's little beauty and worked from there. As the farmer's markets begin to present their vegetable wonders (it's been a bit thin on the ground until now) I've decided to pick some things I've traditionally not eaten to see if I still hate them. First up on the list was beets. Historically, I've been served the unnaturally-hued neon candied sort sliced up cold on the side of a salad. While kind of aesthetically lovely in their own way I don't find any enjoyment in their flavor. Perhaps I would enjoy them more if they were homemade but I think these have generally come from a can or store-bought glass jar. Anyway, the verdict has been - until now - that I HATE beets.

When I saw the amber-orange hue of the golden beets sitting on a table at the East Side Open Market I couldn't resist. I was told by the farmer that they were quite sweet as opposed to the earthy flavor of red beets.

I started off cleaning and trimming the beets, placed them in a glass baking dish with 2 tbps of olive oil, a handful of fennel seeds, several sprigs of rosemary, and three flattened garlic cloves. (Rather than crushing them in a press, I simply flattened them with the blade of a large knife and placed the peeled, crushed cloves in the pan.) I then roasted them, covered in foil as the starting-point recipe suggested at 350° for approximately 50 minutes. The last 10 minutes of their baking time I placed a sheet of raw walnuts in, checking and shaking every 2 minutes I toasted them as a topping.

After the beets were roasted to the point of easy pierceability, I set the beets and caramelized garlic cloves aside to cool. (And the recipe suggested discarding them! Can you imagine throwing away perfectly delicious caramelized garlic?!? Oh, the insanity!) I poured the liquid contents of the pan into a salad-dressing bottle and added 1 tbsp of tarragon and shallot vinegar, 1/2 tbsp of olive oil, a little black pepper, some lemon juice, a handful of smooshed-up raspberries (I did this in a plastic baggie with the back of a spoon in order to retain the juices), and gave it a good shake.

In a bowl I cleaned and stemmed baby spinach and basil leaves, added some healthy slices of heirloom tomato, thinly sliced yellow peppers, the toasted walnuts, thinly sliced pearl red onion, and a handful of whole raspberries. Then I tossed it with the vinaigrette.

When the beets were cool enough to touch, I peeled off their skins to reveal their gorgeous jewel-like color and the smell was delightful. I sliced them in half and then into half-moons as the recipe suggests. Then I took the caramelized garlic, chopped it roughly and added that and the sliced beets to the top of the salad.

Oh, my goodness gracious. Welcome to tasty-town, population me. Some might be so inclined to add some dollops of goat cheese or perhaps some greek yogurt to round out the proteins but I didn't find the addition of dairy necessary. Plus, I was afraid it would overpower the beets whose flavor is quite delicate.

New verdict: I love beets. I dunno about the red ones just yet but the golden beets are victorious.

It's summer and therefore my ice cream weakness has reared it's delicious head. While this weekend I indulged myself with Leon's Frozen Custard (their chocolate is to DIE for!), I can't do that every night. *le sigh* Thus, might I suggest, for dessert Purely Decadent's Pomegranate Chip "ice cream"? In the past I've made Rice Dream's Strawberry my favorite but it has a new and powerful rival. Purely Decadent's caloric, fat, sodium, and carb content is actually lower and the texture and taste are MUCH better. It is, in fact, quite wonderful and satisfies my craving for creamy goodness. I highly recommend it.

Next up on the try or die list: Ochra - traditional response: PLEH! Tune in next week and see if I can change my mind.

UII: Addenda/Update

2007-07-10T13:28:00.000-07:00

So two *edit: NO THREE! Three more of the little buggers showed up in my spam-box. I went to the website (which is definitely user-driven), plugged in the card ID code and it said ERROR! The card you have requested does not exist or has been removed by the sender.

Mmmmkay.

Like, you know, whatever.

UII: Unidentified Inbox Item

2007-07-08T05:01:00.000-07:00

There it was, sitting in my inbox titled "Hi, an old friend has sent you a greeting card!" Opening the exe file I was terribly curious. An old friend? I thought. Who could this old friend be? How old is this old friend? They can't be that old if they have my gmail addy. Right?

As the flash unfolded my curiosity would go unsatisfied by it's papyrus-scrawled contents:

A friend in need
Is a friend indeed!

(I'm here for you!)

Oh. You are, are you? You're not going to tell me who you are but you're totally here for me. Got my back, right? From a safe distance? Are you next door? East? West? Invisible?

Who the hell is this "old friend" person?!?!

I hate mysteries. Especially when there's no clues as to their answers.

So the most obvious questions at hand are as follows:

1. What exactly are you "here" for me for? The death of my ex? There's a lily in the background of the flash card that suggests such a theme... that's the only real recent tragedy and the only thing someone who hasn't actually spoken to me for a while would be able to publicly discover, I believe. Unless there's some new tragedy afoot I don't know about yet. It's not entirely unusual for me to be the last to know...

Alternative theories:

1.a. This person somehow found out I had to run interference between my grandmother and my aunt at a family thingie last weekend. They feel sorry for me because they know that you've really grown up when you find yourself watering down your grandmother's drinks so she doesn't shoot her mouth off. That's gotta be it, right? And they're going to help me lament the death of my innocence... except... I lost my innocence quite willingly looooooong ago. So maybe that's not it.

1.b. They heard I stubbed my toe. Flowers are forthcoming.

1.c. I was overheard keening the continued coma-state of my sex life. They're here to help.

1.d. It's a regular reader who'd decided my blog had gotten a bit on the boring side and generously wanted to give me something to conjecture about.

2. Why did this person decline to use their actual name? An "old friend," indeed. If you're "here" for me, wouldn't it help to know who you are? Were you planning on revealing yourself at a later date? Is this part of a larger "SUDDENLY SYMPATHY!" sneak attack? Someone is planning on showing up at my doorstep and offering me their shoulder to cry on?

3. Are they aware that the tragedy happened two weeks ago? That I've largely worked my way through it (and by largely worked my way through it I mean I haven't worked my way through it at all but I am possessed of an incredibly short memory and things tend to fade quite fast... until such time as I get completely inebriated one night and something reminds me of him and I end up sobbing like a baby, being utterly inconsolable until I pass out and wake up with very red eyes and a headache to beat the band... so history dictates) and am now dealing with the "I'm speaking to his sibling who is also my ex who I haven't spoken to in more than a year because he drives me kinda crazy" fallout. Which, is quite different and yes, in case you are wondering, I do need consoling for that.

Oy. I'll wait and see if details will be revealed as time goes long. But I wanna know NOW!!! she whined and wailed. Now, now Veruca. Have some patience.

Confessions in Consumer-whore-ism

2007-07-03T02:58:00.000-07:00

K: Anthropologie. Third ward. Early 2008. It's official

JA: Fuck. Might as well declare bankruptcy now.

K: I know right. And how wonderful it will be.

JA: Totally. I think we should consider hiding our credit cards and starting hooking. Blog title idea: Anthro-whores.

K: Works for me. We will only accept gift cards as payment for our dirty deeds. Amounts and quantity negotiable.

JA: We'd have to accept cash gifts too - we'd have to parade our fab kits. (What do you think I would have had to do to get the Doyenne boots from this winter?)

K: True. And I don't know. How badly do you want them?

JA: Somewhere between pack o horny midgets & aging swinging hipster couples. I'm not sure, I'd have to see 'em again.

(Retail: $798)

K: Not sure how easy it would be to find a readily available plethora of horny midgets... You might do better with hipsters. But you could definitely earn enough.

JA: OR we could just start a site for other anthro-whores to hook up and get their Anna Sui fix and get all our booty from the ad sales... just a thought.

K: We could be the new gofugyourself girls. Except instead of commenting on other's fashion faux pas, we could make them in the name of quality clothing stores.

JA: AWESOME!! Who would you pick as your avatar? Dude, I have to be Chloe Sevigny... or should I be Bai Ling?

K: Damn. If I can't have Bai Ling, I'd definitely take la-lohan.

JA: Isn't there a tacky Jewess? Well, I suppose nobody gives a fuck about Fran Drescher anymore.

K: Right. I can't think of any but I think we could make la-lohan honorary just for our cause.

JA: Very well. I dub thee la-lohanukkah.

K: Would that make you Bai Lingmas?

JA: I think I'm really more of a Scarlett-go-bragh-less kind of lass.

K: Well played.

Indeed. Amusingly, during the latter half of this conversation I was in the middle of reading an article in the Sunday Styles section of the Times. "Buying Into The Green Movement: Eco-friendly shopping may be fashionable, but critics argue it won't reduce global warming" I had just reached the section about a San Francisco group called Compact whose members have taken a vow of poverty, I mean, uh... they've vowed to live one entire year purchasing only food and medicine. I was just reading about a professional dog-walking girl who counted a new pair of running shoes among her errant purchases.

I hadn't even taken one trick and I still felt like a whore. I thought to myself, "If they knew how much crap I'd bought last month alone there would be a LOT of finger wagging."

Now though, I have a question - if you're only allowed to purchase food and medicine - what do you do if you have a cat? Homemade cat food? Or does that count among your food purchases? Or better still, what about kitty litter? Huh? Spend a whole year raiding children's sandboxes? Well, you can't. Because people caught on that strays were using them for just that purpose and filled everything with wood chips and sealed it over with recycled tires. And it said nothing of toiletries. Licking those girl's ears must be, erm, tasty.

Whatever. I'm sure my "carbon footprint" is dark and indelible. *le sigh* A thousand lashes with a wet spelt-flour noodle.

Triple Vanilla Cupcakes - Magnolia Cred

2007-06-29T05:39:00.000-07:00

Welcome, friends, to another edition of cupcakery a la Jenn. Today I present to you the pleasures of the famous Magnolia Bakery Vanilla cupcakes.

I started with this recipe, the only additions/changes I made were to use about half a teaspoon extra of Spice House Double Vanilla Extract and top it all off with Pure Vanilla Sugar.

I had planned to make my own vanilla sugar, but as I'm a working girl with a social life, that never quite materialized. Ah, well... the best laid plans, as they say.

I must say, homemade sugar or no, everything turned out rather gloriously.

I think the most entertaining part about all of this is seeing for absolutely certain what went wrong with the frosting my very first batch of Easter cupcakes. In my inexperience, apparently I didn't realize that a) that this is an old-fashioned butter and sugar icing recipe and not exactly buttercream, thus it is functionally different b) the order in which you add the set of mixing components was INCREDIBLY important and c) that you do in fact have to add a shit-ton of confectioner's sugar before you reach the desired consistency(I believe there was 6 cups to 2 sticks butter and a cup of milk) d) that it's texture and appearance changes as the frosting "sets". Not "sets up" as in hardens totally like cone dip but similarly.

I haven't tried one yet, since it was 10:30-ish when I finished and my guinea pig pooped out. But I have a feeling they're fabulous. I'll probably have one for breakfast or something.

While I Slept, He Died

2007-06-19T15:19:00.000-07:00

A little sick to my stomach, a little sad, a little -too little- time spent remembering whatever I could. I dated him years ago. Probably about 5 or so. Maybe 4. I haven't seen him for at least two. I knew he was in trouble. I didn't know how bad things had gotten.

I guess he was trying to get help.

I guess he was trying to go clear.

That's what I'm told.

I'm also told the coroner determined his time of death at about 4am on Saturday morning. So... while I was sleeping, he was dying.

It breaks my heart. He was so young. I really robbed the cradle on that one but he was fun and funny and sexy as hell. Like his older brother when we were much younger and intimate. God, so young. Younger than my sister even.

I remembered on my way to the bank this afternoon that he would sleep in my bed after I would go to work and while I was out on errands I would stop home (supposedly briefly) and we would do what the truly young do when you swear you won't take very long to do it. I remember when he took me out for a really nice dinner one night, someplace where they charged you separately for the salads and what a good time we had. I remember listening to him DJ once or maybe twice at a local bar. I remember the half tattoo he gave my ex-fiancé before my ex-fiancé figured out I was shagging him. (Ah, sweet revenge. That's for the half computer you left me, I thought at the time.) I remember his scar. I remember his lips and his voice.

It's messing with my head that someone I slept with is dead. I can hardly believe it. I'm as much too young for that as he was too young to die. It's just such a damned waste.

And the worst? I haven't really let myself cry. I cried a little. I think, though, just to show myself that I could. But it didn't feel very real.

Points of Interest - Link-o-Rama

2007-06-12T03:25:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine sent me a link to this weirdness. Some of you may have heard of "Math Rock." Which I tend to find to be a nonsensical, discordant, a-rhythmic collection of noise. (My personal opinion is that it's far more about the instant indie-geek cred you're handed when you say you love math rock. Certain people perk up and think, "Wow, you're really committed." Nobody really likes it. It's just further evidence in my "Culture of Exclusion" theory. Which is part of the larger "Differentiation" campaign of the individual in an effort to establish social niches based on a disdain for conventional culture. I blame the marketing industry for forcing people to market themselves in everyday life. But more on that some other time. Thank you, Danah Boyd.) Think Animal Collective on crack. Sometimes it can be interesting, certainly, but it's generally nothing I go out of my way to listen to.

On to comics:

Cover shots courtesy of Amazon.com

I understand the Battles YouTube vid link came to him via Warren Ellis, my favorite outcast. I read Fell last night, which is a collaboration twixt the aforementioned Ellis and Ben Templesmith, creator of one of my absolute favorite series, Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse. His artwork is rather stimulating and his hero irreverent. Just like I like 'em. And Fell is fantastic. Nab a copy on Amazon if you can.

Moving right along I take the long way round to my next point - despite the fact that Ramon Perez & Rob Coughler have seemed to be taking a rather long vacation from any heft as far as their comic is concerned, I've always enjoyed Butternut Squash. It's definitely worth a read through the back-posts if you've never read it. (I am soooo glad they're done with the Rob & Cola's adventures in other people's comics "plotline." It was worse than the top 3's - Questionable Content, Scary-Go-Round, Sam and Fuzzy - occasional week of a thousand guest comics that I never read because at least that special torture generally has a clear end in sight. The Rob & Cola thing went on forever. Although, I find it kind of amusing that during the worst of their "vacation" they won a Canadian webcomic award. For which they totally whored for votes.)

Ah... here we are, welcome to my point - I find I am particularly sensitive to June 8th's posting. I personally vow to spare the local coffee-slinging set my whining.

Munkey Brains & Other Delicacies

2007-06-09T05:17:00.000-07:00

More than 5 years ago now I wrote a story. It has no title. It has never been typed. But it is a singular work I have been saving until I can wrap my mind around a concept I have no conception of quite yet. But when I find it, I'll know. This I believe. (She said to no one in particular, but most especially not NPR.)

The story is about one's notions about other people. How they take on a shape and a life of their own inside one's mind as you think about them. The story is about a monkey who lives in a jungle that has invisible boundaries. He is mourning, he cannot remember where he came from or how he came to be in the jungle. He is alone there. The jungle is stormy sometimes and tempestuous and sometimes a princess comes to visit him. Eventually, though, she always leaves and does not come back for a long while. The monkey is sad and has a deep desire to understand his origins.

One day he asks his princess about his mother. She laughs and replies that he has no mother. The monkey does not understand this.

So he asks, "Where did I come from then?"

"From me." She replies, without elaborating.

Eventually, having had enough of the princess's mysterious replies the monkey decides to go exploring. He finds a cave. Which turns out to be a long passageway or tunnel, with roots sticking out everywhere. The monkey climbs, upward, until he arrives at a door. On the other side of the door is an office. It's dusty. And messy. There are file boxes and cabinets everywhere. Some of the cabinet drawers are open. Files are everywhere. Pieces of paper litter the floor. But, somewhere in a musty corner he finds a pile of boxes. They are wrapped with beautiful paper and tied up with ribbons and bows. Some are old, very old - some look quite new. Not knowing what to make of them, he chooses one. It is small-ish, the wrapping paper is a faded purple and the ribbons are white. Slowly, carefully he undoes the ribbon and then even more slowly and more carefully he peels back the fragile yellowed tape. The paper unfolds like a flower opening. Inside is a pale pink box. He opens the flaps of cardboard and inside are pictures. Snapshots. Candid and still. They are all of the same person. A man with dark hair and a wide, easy smile. Silvery pieces of metal seem to drip from his nostrils. On his arm are dark blue depictions of something or another. In one he wears a vest and is walking, expressionless. In another he sits at a red table, holding a cup, laughing. Another his mouth is wide, his arms outstretched with lights set upon him. There are little slips of paper too. With things written on them. Some are typed. But the monkey cannot read.

The monkey is now utterly confused.

He gathers together the contents, finds a broken old chair and sits down to look at them. He isn't sure why, but somehow the pictures feel... significant. As he studies the snapshots, despite her absence, he feels the unmistakable presence of the princess. Somehow, he thinks, she involved. That is certain. He looks at the man, who really is little more than a boy and feels a sort of... affinity. Yes, an affinity with him. Though he isn't sure why. He feels somehow familiar. Something about the way his eyes crinkle up when he laughs. Something about the way he looks at the photo-taker. Something, about the eyes. Yes, the eyes. The monkey stares and stares but gets no further. Finally, he feels his brain is running in circles and takes one of the snapshots, tucks it away and carefully puts back together the box.

This is a clue, he thinks. It must be.

He climbs back down the passageway and back into the forest. There has been another storm in his absence. And when he arrives at his tree, he finds the princess. She is sitting on the tree he once called home. It has been uprooted. Felled. She isn't smiling. She looks rather unhappy, in fact.

"Where have you been?" She asks, petulantly.

"Exploring." Says the monkey.

"Well, don't do that. When I come here to see you, I want to see you - all right?" This does not sound very much like a question to the monkey. No, it sounds a great deal more like an order. Or a threat.

"I'll remember." He assures her.

"Do that. I have to go now, I have other things to do but please be here next time. Though, I may be a while." With that she rises, turns on her heel, and begins to walk away from the monkey.

"Wait! I found something that I want to ask you about!" He cries.

She stops in her tracks. "You found something? What do you mean, you found something? Just where did you go?!"

"I don't know where I was. I found a cave and went in and when I came out I was in a new place I'd never been before. And I found this."

The princess snatches the picture away from him. She looks hard at it and he watches, frightened, as the color drains from her face and her expression hardens. Anger makes her eyes alight.

"Found this? You found this. Was it simply lying about or did you go digging through my things?"

The monkey looked at her. His mind raced. He'd never lied to the princess before. He'd never had occasion. But now, suddenly, there seemed no other option. He knew instinctively that telling her he'd opened one the of the boxes was the worst possible thing he could say.

"Yes. I found this. It was on the floor. There were lots of papers and things on the floor. It's kind of messy in there."

The princess stares hard at him. She cocks her head. She considers. Finally, she softens.

"Okay. You found it. Don't ever go exploring again. You live here. No place else. This is yours and no where else. Do you understand?"

"Yes. I understand. This is mine. No place else. I understand."

The story goes on. The monkey goes exploring again despite the princess's warning. He finds two more rooms. But none are so fruitful as the office.

I wrote this story about someone I had been thinking about for years. Many, many years ago I thought I loved him. Hell, I even thought I knew him and understood him. That, it turned out, was pure fantasy. But still, he had been an albatross that arrived and flew alongside sinking ships. Whenever a relationship was about to end, my thoughts would turn to him. As things grew worse in the relationship, my state of panic would increase. I would feel a burning need to see him, to talk to him. What exactly that would've accomplished at that time I wasn't sure. I wasn't even sure what I would have said if I had seen him. Maybe I would have come to this realization sooner but I suppose it came when I could understand it.

One night, years ago now - maybe 6 or so - I went to a friend's house and he was there. I believe he had just gotten out of a relationship - sort of. I was still engaged. My affianced had decided to go home. I had decided to stay. He and I talked and talked. I was enjoying it very much when our hosts decided it was time for them to go to bed. We still had more to say, I guess, so we decided to take a drive. Our conversation ranged over a variety of subjects. He said things that confused me. Things that didn't make sense in terms of what I thought of him, what I thought he was all about. And then suddenly it dawned on me. This person that I had been thinking about for all these years, this person I still fancied myself in love with had NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the real, living, breathing him. They could not have been more different. I remember feeling the love seeping out of me, into my seat, down to the floorboards, and dripping - like water from an old car's exhaust pipe - onto the pavement below. I was leaking love and ideas built on falsehoods. At an alarming rate.

Now there is a new monkey in town. This one's a howler. It's nothing so dramatic as the first, I learn my lessons sometimes. And at least now the monkey is as aware as I am that he's a figment of my imagination. One day "poof," he'll get sick of performing for me and be gone in much the same fashion as the first. Though, I wonder why it is my brain chooses monkeys. I suppose because the individuals they represent made a big noise in my head without ever saying anything. Like the din of primates. I suppose I could think of them as inanimate objects - like giant rocks heaved into the freeway run-off pool of my mind - but that doesn't hardly seem appropriate. They are organic and mutable. They change to suit whatever tack my thoughts are taking. Rudderless sailboats lost at my sea.

I finally finished Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle early this morning. Things happen in an alternate reality that effect the physical world and that set me to thinking of this story. I hadn't thought of it in a while. Murakami's Mr. Wind-Up Bird set me thinking of myself. Kumiko, of the monkeys that live in my head. Perhaps there really are alternate realities for each of us. Perhaps we are all quietly living other lives we know nothing about. Perhaps the true alternate universes exist in the ideas and memories of us that live in the minds of other people. Maybe somewhere there is a meaner me or a sweeter me. A me that has absolutely nothing to do with the consciousness that peeks out at the world from behind this particular pair of eyes. That moves these particular limbs and thinks these particular thoughts, that creates these particular ghosts to rattle the window frames in the night.

Chocolate Cupcakes with Blueberry Cream Filling

2007-06-05T00:34:00.000-07:00

Recently, one of my friends asked me how someone so skinny as me could be so cruel as to take up a fattening cupcake hobby. I've been asking myself that question a lot recently as I rack up the mixer mileage and I think the answer is simple. I love to make cupcakes. Truly. I do.

Will my new obsession undo all the hard work I've done? Perhaps. I tend to think that the muscle I've accumulated over the last year or so will hopefully make it possible for me to ably process the added caloric intake of the one or two cupcakes I eat out of every batch I make. But I'm not sure, really.

Anyway, ages ago when contemplating what to do with my life I seriously considered attending the culinary arts program at the technical college here in town. At the time I was afraid to have to start from the very lowest end of the totem pole in the professional kitchen and also afraid that undertaking my passion professionally (i.e. - be a slave in someone else's kitchen) would kill the joy. I may have been wrong but I guess at this point I've chosen my path and I'm more than fine with it. But the fact remains, I love coming up with new and interesting ways to serve food and lately that love presents itself in a little brown natural paper cup. With frosting.

So today I present to you a rather cobbled-together recipe. It's worked before a la some pumpkin-dark chocolate cupcakes I made last fall for my ex's friend's birthday party and here's hoping. The cupcakes are in the oven now and soon I will attempt to adapt a cream recipe using a random blog entry and a solid recipe. Let's see what happens - shall we?

I present for your consideration the method:

Coconut & Lime's Chocolate Cupcake recipe - with a few noteworthy additions

Basically I followed the recipe verbatim excepting:
1. I added about 1 tbsp. blueberry juice concentrate to the milk & vanilla mixture
2. I added about 1.25 oz. of Trader Joe's Belgian-style dark chocolate, very finely chopped to the final batter

Here's one of the first batch out of the oven

I think I underfilled the cupcake wrappers on the first batch. I think they look a little anemic.

But apparently, the second time's the charm.

On deck, Chockylit's Basil or Mint Cream recipe becomes Jenn's Blueberry-Lemon Cream by way of mixing Chockylit's recipe with a blog entry from Joseph Hall on the subject of simple syrups. Noteworthy additions being that I used 1 cup blueberry juice concentrate, the juice of a whole lemon and about a full tablespoon of rosewater, which I heated until 1 cup of sugar dissolved. I will mix this with the whipped cream.

Now, the cream recipe I doubled. Two cups of heavy whipping cream and I think I actually only used 8 tbsps of the blueberry syrup to fold into the cream, however.

Results:

Well, as it turns out, over-working your cream can be... uhm... interesting. One moment it's fluffy and light and glossy and gorgeous... and the next... it's REALLY fluffy and heavy. As I beat the simple syrup in to my cream I discovered this interesting little tidbit. I think next time I'll just fold it in with the spatula. None the less tasty for the wear, tho. I'll say that about it. I may or may not have sampled a, uh... little bit.

I spooned the "fluff" into the cupcake cavities. Another thing I learned - if you make small cupcakes like I do, use a small knife and be quick and shallow with your cuts. Otherwise you end up digging a little hole in the poor thing anyway and possibly take out a sidewall. After putting the tops back on, I turned my attention to making the mint chiffonade and melting my white vanilla chocolate. (God bless Green & Black) It melted nicely and I then spread a small circle of white chocolate on top. For this application I melted about 3/4's of a 3.5 oz. bar in a double boiler and worked it a bit until it was smooth.

For the decoration I used up almost a whole package of the mint leaves you find in the produce section, and created a chiffonade, I rolled the leaves the long way to create the long ribbons. And pressed some dried organic blueberries on top of that.

Here is the final result

Behind the little piece of gorgeousness you'll see the evidence of my pack-rattery. I could NOT bring myself to throw away the bits of chocolate cupcake that I cut out to make room for the cream. Why? What am I going to do with them? I don't know. And also, I don't know.

I must say I'm pleased with the final result. (A single girl standing alone in her kitchen, shoveling a cream-filled cupcake into her maw late at night might traditionally be cause for concern on a man-related depression issue, but I think I deserve an exception. Slaving for 6 1/2 hours seems to me to create a justified sense of entitlement.) Although you can't outright taste the lemon and the rosewater, you can taste a tang which might be attributable to the lemon. The cupcakes are light and fluffy so thank you again for a great recipe to start from, Rachel at Coconut & Lime. Hopefully the retiree I baked them for appreciates how hard I worked for her. It's 12:30 now. I have to be across town by 7:30 - 7:45 tomorrow which means I need to be up around 5. And this morning I had to be AT an event at 7:00. I woke up at 4:00. Yikes! Sleepiness.

Revenge of the Montreal Hungarian Blacksmith Metrognome Gimp Drum Circle Gang

2007-05-31T04:19:00.000-07:00

So, as my punishment for talking smack the Montreal Hungarian Blacksmith Metrognome Gimp Drum Circle Gang, as I have just now taken to calling them, have left town but not without leaving me a present. I came home last night to discover their treachery. I mentioned in my previous post that I could only hear them in the bathroom. Upon entering my porcelain chamber yester-evening everything appeared normal as I tread the tiled path. Right up until the stepped on the bathmat. I would point out again that everything else appeared totally normal, e.g. DRY. This is not the condition in which I found my bathmat. It was, in fact, utterly sodden. There was no evidence of any malfunction with the fixtures. Pipes are still dusty - check. Le toilet appears normal - check. All beauty-related items sitting on the sink are dry - check. Tub is as it should be - check. So apparently, the Montreal Hungarian Blacksmith Metrognome Gimp Drum Circle Gang snuck into my apartment and made water on my bathmat. And my bathmat only. Oh, but wait! There was another watery casualty - my makeup bag. Which, I didn't figure out until later had been massively moistened in the attack. I would assume this meant war if the front wasn't totally quiet. But perhaps this is their strategy?

Clang the Dumb

2007-05-30T06:59:00.000-07:00

I think there's a gimp living in the boiler room of my apartment building. Either that or a drum circle from Montreal has moved in. The last two mornings when I've gotten up there's been this mysterious clanging noise echoing through the building. It's fairly rhythmic, thus the drum circle suspicion. And it goes on forever. I heard it in the bathroom at 5:00am and it was still going on while I was in the shower at 7:00, and even still at 8:15 when I left the house. I usually leave through the back of the building and there's another level to the back stairs that leads to the boiler room - which is where the mysterious "clang clang" seemed to be coming from. I might suggest that it was the heating system but, as the heat isn't on anymore due to the magnificently warm spring temperatures it simply can't be that.

I will work on further theories as the day progresses.

Cupcake Addenda

2007-05-28T21:55:00.000-07:00

They're even pretty BEFORE they go in the oven! Stay tuned for more Lemon-Strawberry Delight ac-tion! *claps hands* *giggles*
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________

And... we're back. It's evening now, post-cookout. And for the first time in the very brief history of my cupcake obsession I am cupcake-less within one day. Every last one of the little suckers got gobbled up because they are rockin' good delicioso. Seriously. Mine even had a mis-adventure in the car - wherein my friends decided that on the way to the cookout that we had to stop at the mall and I had no choice but to leave the cupcakes in the warm car which melted the buttercream frosting I made so they were decidedly unlovely but they went over like buttah at the cookout. I got soooo many compliments.

Anyhoo, here is a shot of the finished product, pre-frosting:

Aren't they pretty? They were a bit tricky to get out of the cupcake pan, and the cake part of the cupcakes split a little on one or two when I tried to lift them out but they managed to make intact. They were just itchin' to get naked and shed their papers too!

I followed Coconut & Lime's basic buttercream recipe, adding the juice of a whole lemon and some zest as recommended and it is absolutely DELISH! So very tart and tasty. And the lemon cupcake is really lemon-y and the strawberries I got were wonderfully ripe and sweet. I couldn't wait until we got to the cookout to eat one - I just had to. Here it is on it's way home to my belly:

I am so very pleased with the results. I'm going to have to make another batch because I've promised them all over town. I'll probably do that tomorrow because I'm totally exhausted now but I have PLENTY of frosting left over so that's one less thing to do.

Now, for my next trick - I go in search of the perfect vanilla cupcake. I think it will involve homemade vanilla sugar *raises eyebrows suggestively* because I am just that fou-fou.

Adventures in Cupcaking

2007-05-27T04:00:00.000-07:00

So for the last several months I have been obsessed with cupcakes. I blame Rachel Kramer Bussel for this obsession, for it is her site Cupcakes Take the Cake that started it all. Since then I have branched out to Coconut & Lime, Chockylit, and The Cupcake Underground. All fabulous sites that you should check out when you get the chance.

These days I wait patiently for my next excuse to steal my mother's hand blender, dig out the cupcake liners, and my $30 muffin pan and make beautiful cupcake. The first chance I got was on Easter, when I attempted to adapt Cupcake Underground's Chocolate Lavender Cupcake recipe to suit me and came up with Flourless Chocolate Cupcakes (via Epicurious) and Underground's Lavender frosting recipe - which is not so much a recipe as it is some very vague instructions. Sort of like Camilla Engman's instructions on how to make her adorable critters (which I WILL attempt someday, when I learn how to knit and crochet.) The major problem with the frosting, I believe, is that I was attempting to adapt a vegan recipe to be dairy-based.

Normally I would have checked out how to do a traditional cream cheese frosting and I think I might have - I can't quite remember - but one way or another there was no butter involved when I did this. A rookie mistake. I bought cream, cream cheese, powdered sugar, hibiscus blossoms, and lavender flowers. I adore cooking with lavender so this was an exciting chance for me to integrate it into a dessert. I put the cream on the stove and the lavender and hibiscus blossoms in, and attempted to simmer the cream. Oh, what a bad idea. The first attempt was a total flop. Everything appeared to be going well until all of a sudden - the cream clotted. It looked absolutely awful. I'll spare you the detailed description because it might spoil whatever meal you happen to reading this near. The second attempt was not so bad. The cream turned a lovely pinkish-purple color and didn't clot (though, the blossoms when removed did not exactly escape unscathed by their harrowing creaming experience). Then I started blending the cream cheese and powdered sugar, which was going pretty all right until I added the cream. That was when everything went wrong. Little dots of sparkly powdered sugar started forming, giving the appearance of snow - which, while kind of pretty in its own way, was definitely not what I was going for.

The cupcakes turned out fabulously. They were very dense and tasty. Another rookie mistake I made was frosting them as soon as they'd cooled. And, being slightly nervous about the idea of leaving cream cheese frosting out of the refridgerator I immediately stuck them in a container and into the fridge they went. I didn't research enough to know that that was pretty much all right but that I needed to bring them to room temperature before I served them to anyone. Otherwise they were like tiny fudgy-brownie-like matza balls. They were very pretty and the purple was very Easter-y. I put a few little lavender blossoms on top for decoration (no pictures of the results, sorry) - unfortunately the only way you could taste any lavender at all. The frosting swallowed any hibiscus or lavender flavor the cream simmering had attempted to give it. Lessons learned. Next time, I make a simple syrup I think.

I took my lumps and the next opportunity I had to get my hands in some batter was my friend Tim's birthday. Every year I do a southern-themed cooking extravaganza and this year I chose Red Velvet Cupcakes. I chose a recipe from Coconut & Lime and used her Cream Cheese Icing recipe as well. This time, I beat the hell out of that frosting. It rocked. It was perfection. These were the results:

I was very, very proud. I shared them with anyone I could convince to take one. Last time, I ended up throwing out a number of leftover cupcakes. This time, I threw out not a one. And Tim was verrah happy -

My new adventure is about to begin today. Ages ago, I saw a picture on the interwebs of a cake with sliced strawberries inside and I thought, could I not do this with a cupcake? And could not the strawberry be whole? I thought about doing a lemon chiffon cupcake with a whole strawberry sunk inside but I could not for the life of me find a lemon chiffon cupcake recipe. I do not pretend that I am experienced enough to take a cake recipe (which is all I could find) and adapt it to anything. I am a newbie. I must accept my limitations. So I went to the expert, Rachel at Coconut & Lime and requested help in locating a recipe. I related my idea and she had some thoughts - 1) That chiffon cupcakes are tough to do all by themselves and 2) That chiffon might not be dense enough to support the strawberry. Now, I had actually wondered about the second point but I hadn't thought of how the upside-down cooling process might work with a cupcake. But Rachel volunteered to test drive the idea and the results are posted on her site.

I'll post my results after I've made them, which should be this afternoon. But three cheers for Rachel for being a great sport and for helping me out!

I'll have a Nottie-Hottie, please waiter...

2007-05-24T16:11:00.000-07:00

I don't know if I want to tell this story, truth be told. I feel like I told it a lot - I really haven't, just to a few close friends in the hopes of mashing it out and reconstructing it into something I can understand but at the core of the matter is the glaring fact that it's really only facts that matter. I can conjecture until I turn blue in the face but all that makes me is a girl. And a silly one at that. That it's the things that were not said as much as the things that were said. And what my experiences say about those things.

It's weeks later. After I should have stopped thinking about it at all. But, after all, I am me and this is what I do.

See, there was this boy I liked. I really liked him a lot and thought that I connected with him in a way that I hadn't connected with someone for a long while. I guess it's in those moments that expectations are born with or without one's knowledge. Even despite one's best efforts not to have them at all in the first place. But more often than not my brain has its own triumphs over me so I really shouldn't be surprised I guess.

But I digress.

I liked a boy. And it was wonderful. For about a week. And then it turned to shit. And then it turned to fertilizer for the weed-bed of my aforementioned willful brain. For about a week he sent me silly text messages and weird pictures and called me every night. I wasn't sure about the whole calling me every night thing. I hate sitting on the phone but he made me laugh so it was okay. And then it all stopped. This isn't unusual. I don't mean for me specifically, I just mean in general. I don't know why when faced with these situations I feel somehow unique. And resentful. He never promised me anything so I knew I didn't have any right to be upset. Besides, we both had a lot going on in our lives. The semester was concluding, there were projects afoot. Work was insanely busy - I put in waaaaay more hours than I am supposed to be working. But there was still a bit of contact. He hadn't disappeared totally. Yes, his communications were less frequent and more terse but I thought it situational and decided not to be offended.

Then, one night we were on the phone. Where he had been funny and interesting before, lately his conversation had been disjointed and didn't give me a lot of room to find my own thread to follow and respond. Which should have been a bad sign. It was late, I was tired, I had just gotten home from a business trip and to be honest I wasn't really giving him my full attention. But all of a sudden I found myself in the middle of a yarn. One which turned out to be a very tangled ball of incredibly stupid yarn. I don't remember the specifics but there was something about hurt feelings and possibly about different goals. It was, in fact, a break-up speech. And I had no idea if he was talking to me, not talking to me but talking to me, or really not talking to me at all. In my exhaustion, my solution was to get the hell off the phone and deal with it tomorrow. Which, I attempted to do via that lovely, crazy, undependable interweb playground we all know and love - myspace. I wrote him a message asking him what the conversation had been all about, told him my thoughts on how our "association" should go. I said that I enjoyed his company, would enjoy continuing to enjoy his company - no pressure, no expectations, talk to me when you want to talk to me, don't when you don't - and don't feel guilty when you don't. I hate that. I never want anyone to do anything for me because they feel guilty. Do only what you want to do, that's the only thing that has ever meant anything to me. Guilt-tinged gifts of time or words or whathaveyou feel dirty to me. They stink. That was the gist of it anyway. It's all I remember.

So I sent this message. And then I waited. Three days went by and I was going crazy. I couldn't look at the message I sent and analyze it's content for potential offenses or craziness. It was suspiciously absent from my sent folder. Now, historically I don't use myspace's messaging system. Most everybody I want to talk to I can just email. For some reason that's changed lately but when it didn't appear in my sent folder I thought, "maybe there's a checkbox you have to click." "save message to sent folder" is not entirely unusual. And I was unwilling to just mail someone to find out. It made me feel obsessive. Anyway, on the third day after I sent the message I couldn't stand it anymore. So I sent him a text, something to the effect of "My curiosity is getting the better of me - am I a) a whackjob or b) are you simply too busy to respond?" He sent back the message, "End of the semester crunch". Now, that wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been something I distinctly remember writing in the message. So it felt like my words were being thrown back in my face. I don't remember if I responded or not. I think I tried not to, but I may have. The next day I felt totally ridiculous. I thought to myself, why o why did you have to go and expose yourself as caring enough to send the message in the first place? You're a headcase. It lasted a week. LET IT THE FUCK GO, you dumbass. Jesus, how I browbeat myself. Feeling stupid I sent yet another fucking text message. Confusing him even further and further cementing my status as a headcase.

The following Monday I sent a friend a message. I checked my sent folder and there it was. Glaring evidence that he never got the message. So I sent him a message relating that. I also said that I wasn't going to text him, or myspace message him, or call. That if he wanted to contact me, he knew where to find me. There was no response to that one either.

I think I quit there. I decided I was done feeling stupid. That this was enough evidence of disinterest to sweep all this mess back under the rug and get on with my life. I had plenty of life to attend to anyway. It didn't stop me fantasizing about him a great deal and wishing things had gone differently because I had liked him so much. Silly girls dwell. I was to charge on and forget about it.

And I nearly had. And then he messaged me over myspace again. Essentially apologizing for his silence. I messaged back and said it was all right, that it was probably for the best, that it had allowed me to focus on the things that really needed focusing on and that again, if he wanted to, he was welcome to call me. He has not.

And yet, there are the fantasies. Cropping up at the oddest moments. I was walking down the hall at work the other day. One of the last times I saw him he had just shown me his new tattoo. I had this flash, this twenty-second quickie involuntary daydream. I licked his tattoo. I literally had to stop in the hall, shake my head to get it out - like there was a bug in my hair, reprimand my brain. And then I started walking again.

Now, aside from the obvious craziness over the lost message I think I maintained myself as a fairly reasonable girl. There's really nothing for me to feel all that badly about. I behaved like a grown up, I attempted to communicate like a grown up, and he decided he didn't want to communicate with me. So what, right? Big deal. It happens all the time. I am not special. Most especially I am not special to him. Also not a big deal. Who cares? Certainly not me... am I right? Brain, am I right? Can I please fucking be right for once? No? You're not willing to let this go? You're gonna subject me to all these little fantasically sexy vignettes of increasingly frustrating bodice-ripper fodder over someone I can't have? Really? Do you have to? Can we just not and you can say you did? Please? No? Well dammit. Fuck you then.

So this is where I am. Caught in a mental k-hole of imaginary two-person sexy parties to which I am not actually invited. Goddamn it.

Two Poems

2007-05-24T13:01:00.000-07:00

These two are old poems. If you're an RPer, you saw them years ago. But I drag them out of the deep because they've both been stuck in my head recently. The why of this condition perhaps I'll explain later, but for now... simply enjoy if you choose. And if you don't, don't mention it to me.

The Sharpest Blade

The slice of a blade is definitive, one good chop and no one questions what’s happening
Metal meets… anything- skin, tomato or otherwise and red runs
It separates things from each other. It’s division, quick and easy- if the knife is sharp
The top from the strawberry, the bits of celery, the cheese from itself, bread from bread
The flesh of the fish from its skin, meat from bone
But time is the best blade. It slices beginnings from ends. And makes sections of moments live eternally within its boundaries like a good piece of crusty french.
Distance is as effective as a dull blade and overcome with determination. Also, ideas and beliefs, rage and alienation, anger and anguish, but can be foiled by hope and heartening.
Though the sweetest desires and deepest longing are nothing against time. Nothing but the flesh of some strange fruit given to the mercy of human hands, minds and designs. Tossed with greens and the bitter vinegar of geography and swallowed down with oil and wine, and merely, the first course.

J. A. Turner 2005

Touched with Flirted Finger Felt with Fondness in Flouted Heart

Little languid illusions and spritely reverie
Come knocking at my consciousness
And this is what it seems
The search for connectivity
Yields little in the hunt
But forgetfulness provides the catalyst
For heart-strung smiling shunts
I draw a line to you and you one to me
Realizing, not too late, how foolish can we be

Allusions, pathos, joie de vivre and cosmology
Symmetry and balance often stumble Irish-drunk into the mean, cold streets
Yet in our dread we go a-riding to the fray, the black and burbling fire
To view the anointed bodies of each wasted day and hour
And though the pulp and refuse find us defenseless in our sleep
We travel on the path to dawn and mark out each new peak
In our memory we leave a little pyre
For each concept and each choice, each discalced dream desire
That cannot meet the standards set by waking acumen

And so in softest reticence I surrender to the truth
That the line that's drawn to me- too long- can never reach the girl
Existing as she does in her own frith to churlish burg
A heart, a mind, a body planted firmly within its world
Travelling day and night to a city in the clouds
I give a piece to you and you a piece to me
A gift born out with no small part of soul-meat honesty
Given with the suggestion that this, my friends, is who I am
And I ask myself this question, am I melting in its heat?

J. A. Turner 2005

Save Net Radio

2007-04-29T18:43:00.000-07:00

Contact your congressperson before May 15, 2007 to save internet radio. Sites like Radio Paradise and Somafm are in danger of going off the air. And then my work days would be oh, so sad.

Visit savenetradio.org to make your voice heard.

Slidin' it in at the last minute, heels smokin'

2007-04-22T19:15:00.000-07:00

That seems to be the theme for this week. This week was a crrrrraaazy week. I burned the candle at both ends and it did indeed give a lovely light. Though, I paid for it dearly. I'm kind of all stuffy and my throat was pretty sore on Friday and Saturday, I still have a bit of a cough but I seem to have gotten over whatever little bug I picked up quite quickly. For a moment there I was certain I had gone and gotten myself bronchitis. Or maybe tuberculousis. I would make such a lovely consumptive.

Addenda: The succeeding paragraphs regarding research and writing and such relate to grant proposals. I know what's going on in my head, sometimes I forget other people don't. :D

So, my week. Last week at work I spent the whole week gathering up secondary data. I didn't know exactly to what end but I kinda had in idea of the purview of what it would be used to support. I acquired a healthy amount of data and was quite pleased with myself right up until a conference call on Friday when I was told, much to my chagrin, that the data I really needed was regional. So made some phone calls and got some really good stuff from the local commerce association. In less than 8 hours I doubled my research pile. Go me.

Now, I had spent all week eating, sleeping, and breathing this research. Many nights last week I spent sitting on my couch with one of those highlighters with the little flags inside. Which, I would like to point out is an invention that TOTALLY ROCKS. (I'm such a geek.) It was a good thing I was on break because I don't know how I would have found time to study and deal with the massive pile of paper I was sorting through. Then, on Saturday, I was going to start writing the statements of need. I spent most of the morning refining some of the earlier sorting for content I had done - before the view-narrowing conference call - and kept putting off starting writing. The sheet my boss had given me with the "tips" for writing the statement contained a rather ominous sentence. "The statement of need is the most important section of the grant." Holy intimidating, batman! Jesus. All I could think was, "this is the most important section and my boss gave it to me. TO ME. Is she crazy?" So I paced, and I agonized. I wrote, and then I deleted. Finally, I decided that maybe just sitting down and writing them was too much to ask of myself after spending so much time with the research. So I started putting up bullet points with the research I was planning on using for each of the grants and points I thought I should make. Before long I had one partly written and one with bullet points and an opening paragraph.

The next day I was a little on the useless side. The next day was the day I posted Locational Dysphoria. And, well, you can imagine that I was a little cloudy-headed. I had planned on going into work and looking up some stuff since my own internet has been bitchy at best lately but I changed my mind and instead got a bunch of errands run. Which brings to me to where I had intended to go when I started the previous paragraph - this week. Monday was a 12 hour day. I came into work a little bit early and started writing right away. Before I knew I had I re-written and completed the one I started writing on Saturday and gotten part of the second bullet-riddled one banged out. I thought I was waaaay behind. I thought we were going to turn them in on Monday and when my boss showed up I was in a state of emergency (which seems to be a condition I work well under anyway - the greater the pressure, the better I perform) and she was floored that I had gotten as much done as I had. After quelling my fears she also gave me a bit of good news. We had planned on writing 5 grants, but we were only going to write 4. And the beauty is that the one we dropped was the one I couldn't really dig up any specific research for. Awesome. So, I spent my week switching gears between where my brain is supposed to be for school and mired in grant-writing.

On Wednesday, the morning I did my Barack Obama post (the first of the two), I woke up at the obscene hour of 3:00am. I have this thing lately where when I get up since it's just as dark at 3:00 as it is at 5:00, I tend not to notice the hour and get up. I have usually made coffee, gone out for a cigarette and have just sat down at the computer with my first cup when I see the time and just decide I might as well stay up. I think I was a bit on the cranky side which might actually go a long way to explain the generally bitchy overtone of the post. But Wednesday, Wednesday was the best day. Seriously. I had a friend from Cleveland coming into Chicago and another friend coming to meet her, I had planned to drive down to meet them both for dinner but I was concerned about costs, and about driving in downtown Chicago by myself, etc. Basically I was a bit worried about how I was going to manage the trip until a lightening bolt hit me - I could take the train! So, I spent Tuesday evening on the Amtrak site checking out the fares and the times the train ran and the next morning I bought my very first state-side train ticket. I was coming into Chicago on the 1:00 train and would be back off to Milwaukee on the 8:05. It's funny, I've taken the train overseas but not at home.

I went to work that morning terribly excited, and struck out at noon for my parent's house. Which is where I parked my car for the afternoon, and my mom had agreed to drive me to the station. Amusingly, Mom has this lovely new red Toyota that Dad bought (and it is the very first car that she has ever had with the title in her name) so that while he was out spending hours at the gym and doing whateverhaveyou else that Mom would have a way to get around - but she never drives it. She was all tweaky-fied when she was driving me to the Amtrak station. She was a little worried for me, I think and I guess so was I - I always get butterflies in my stomach before a new experience like that. Shoulda been in my belly the day I boarded my first plane by myself. Oy! But oh my lord - the train is awesome. I felt so cool. I got to sit and study for my exam the next day. It worked out beautifully. An hour and half of solid studying and then I got to meet up with my friend Beth, who walked over to the Amtrak station from the Wyndham. Which is apparently quite a long walk. We took a cab over to Beth's hotel (I wanted to walk) to meet up with Anna because Beth had gotten a blister on the walk over.

We arrived at very nearly the same time and we were all starving so we walked up to the courtesy desk in the hotel, told them that we were looking for "small, quirky, reasonably priced" and the daughter of the Hot Wheels guy answered us. (What a fast-talker, oh my stars!) She directed us to a Spanish tapas place over on Erie and LaSalle. Which was a fracking fabulous suggestion even if it was delivered at 90mph. The place was perfect. It was good wine, good food, and very good company. After consuming healthy amounts of scallops with saffron rice, marinated mushrooms, goat cheese with pesto, chicken, and clams we decided to walk down to Miracle Mile. Chicago was lovely with a low cloud cover so that little whisps of atmosphere hung around the tops of the tall buildings. It was grey-ish but reasonably warm and the colors weren't quite so washed out in the afternoon light as one would think on such a cloudy day. I always forget how much I love downtown Chicago because it's usually spoiled by the time I get there driving through it. We walked down Michigan Avenue gawking at all the shops and stopped by the river and had a wonderful talk. Then we walked over to the Grand Lux for dessert. We had beignets and crème brulée and these pomegranate champagne drinks. Oh man... talk about sumptuous. Talk about decadent. And then, as soon as we had finished luxuriating in the deliciousness of our indulgences, we had to run back to Beth's hotel, stuff ourselves into a cab, and get me back to the train station. It was a short visit, but it was most certainly sweet.

From the Grand Lux:

I studied more on the train home - but I have to say that I preferred the afternoon commuter train passengers on the way there. There was a gaggle of women near me who were talking quite loud and did not shut up the whole way. Of course, the idea to move never crossed my mind but hey, I was pretty darned tired by that point. May I remind you that I started my day at 3:00am? So yeah, I studied amongst the din. We arrived in Milwaukee at 9:35 and while I could have called any number of people for a ride I resolved to walk. Now, all the people who are mothers (and probably some who aren't) will probably yell at me for walking through the city after dark like that - mine certainly did. But honestly, I rather enjoyed it. I never, ever walk through downtown hardly. I am almost always behind the wheel of a car. And I've come to the conclusion that that is no way to see the world around you. You miss far too much. It probably wasn't a good idea because it was misting/raining a little bit and that may well be what got me sick but it was a nice walk. A long walk - a really long walk. According to google maps, it's about 4 miles. My feet hurt a little bit when I got to my parent's house, I have a bone bruise (but not one on the skin, figure that) on my ass where my big-ass bag with my textbooks in it was hitting, and a real bruise on my shoulder from the same bag. But even with the mist falling in my face, making my shoes squeak... the calm and quiet of the city on a week night was like walking around on a movie set, I so enjoyed it.

Thursday was a blur, I was so tired, but I managed to make it through the day and get a lot more work done. I refined and completed the second grant and got most of the way through the third. By then I was getting a little worried because I hadn't shown any of my work to my boss so I wasn't sure I was even doing it right. I was, in fact, a grant virgin. So I gave her the one I thought I had done my best work on and held my breath. She read. She paused and said, "Now, I'm not reading this for editing, I'm just reading for critique of the work." I said, "Okay." She kept reading. She finished. Then she looked up and said, "This is good, this is really good... this is graduate dissertation level writing Jenn." And really, I still don't believe her. I sometimes wonder if she thinks I need a lot of praise and is blowing sunshine up my butt but... read on.

So I walked out of work a little worried on Thursday. There was still one grant I hadn't even started yet. And it was one I knew was going to be a little tricky. The angle at which I came at my research was a bit different than what I required for this particular grant. So I was kind of going to have to make it work. I thought I'd work on it on Thursday night but when I sat down to write, I just kept staring at the blank spot on the page where it was written in red 14pt font, underlined "Jenn will draft". Uhm, eep. So I putzed again with the research looking to see if I could extract anything I could twist a little bit. I found some stuff, I threw up some bullet points, and called it a night. I was exhausted after all. I laid down to sleep with phrasing rattling around in my head. I get a little obsessive about things sometimes and this was definitely one of those times. Words were roiling in my brain. But I was so tired that when my head hit the pillow, I was unconscious. But I woke up again at 3:00am. So I got up, made coffee, and started writing. I banged that thing out in 2 1/2 hours. By 5:30 it was basically done. I just had a little bit of demographic research to do and then inject into the other grants and it was all over with. So I got to work, I sent off three of the drafts to the office through which we submit these grants and started working on editing the statement I had written that morning and reviewing the others for editing and opened about 6 IE tabs and started googling for the demographics. By 11:30 I was done. And all the office we were working with had to say to me, the only criticism of my work was that I hadn't included enough regional information in one of them. That the national data I had used probably wasn't what they were looking for. That they were probably only going to end up using the first paragraph. And that was the one that I had to spin the data to make work. Not bad for a first timer, I should say. I ducked a luncheon because I could've spent a couple of well-heeled weeks in New York with the bags under my eyes, instead I hung out in the office putzing until my boss got back, talked to the office we were working with, made certain there was nothing more to be done for them and walked out the door at 2:00. I was flying. And floating. And exhausted. And elated. I went home and slept, like a rock, for the next 3 hours.

Friday evening, I decided, was an ideal night to pamper myself. So I walked over to Whole Foods, got myself a little baby french loaf, an avacado, a clove of garlic, a couple of lovely heirloom tomatoes, a bunch of grapes, and a bottle of wine. I roasted the clove of garlic, made a little dish of olive oil and this freaking fantasic balsamic vinegar I bought at one of the foo-foo stores in the mall in a funny little post-christmas cheapie grab bag, and made myself a lovely meal of french bread dipped in the oil and vinegar, spread with the roasted garlic and avacado and topped with tomatoes and ate a WHOLE LOT of grapes. I enjoyed my dinner slowly, leisurely, drank a couple of glasses of wine, read and then had a loooooong warm bath with salts.

Saturday night, on the other hand, I spent in a most unusual place. A girlfriend of mine, Abby, who is just the cutest thing and the last bastion of theatre-i-ness I have left in my little world, was having a 007 "Goldfinger" birthday party at The Safe House. I haven't been in there in many, many moons. I believe the last time was at least 7 years ago for a work birthday function. It's not someplace anybody could usually drag me, kicking and screaming into but there I was. Drinking a slightly warm cosmo with a girl entirely covered in golden sparkles. But there were cute boys in tuxes, and a guy wearing a wetsuit with waterwings and a dildo shoved in his pants so I guess that sort of made up for it. And we escaped fairly quickly, I only had to stay for one overpriced lukewarm drink. We then went over to Trocadero where we met up with my friend Tim's friend Jen - who is adorable. Anyone who's ever watched the Homestar Runner Teen Girl Squad cartoons would be terribly amused by her. She does the best Teen Girl Squad voice like, evar. So we hung out there for a while, had a HORRIBLE gateau. I said it that night and I'll type it out now - the thing was so hard we needed a spade to eat it. After that we went over to Cafe Hollander to meet up with Tim's equally adorable friend Katie. I actually got to have girl talk. (I never really, technically get girl talk - girl talk with my gay boys doesn't exactly count.) I'll say this though, the power of group girl thinking is nothing to be triffled with. It is both powerful and dangerous. I am very glad I did not commit a drunken act of text messaging. I almost let myself get carried away with the conversation. Never let drunken bitching translate into action. It can only end badly.

Well, that pretty much brings things up to date. Here I sit, making a blog post to break up the monotony of working on a PowerPoint presentation for a project for one of my classes. A class that I will miss on Tuesday because tomorow night I drive up to Wisconsin Rapids with my co-workers for a symposium. Should be interesting. And I have a new dress to wear. I'll have to make someone take a picture for you all.

A Moment of Retraction is Humbling

2007-04-19T03:40:00.000-07:00

So this little tirade I went on yesterday... I wake up this morning and the new story is that the gunman sent a tape to NBC between his first and second murderous rampage. And my first thought is, "oh, crap." And I just asked if people thought that because my classroom was noisily ignorant of the campus-wide moment of silence, that the people of VT's feelings might have been hurt. Maybe I shouldn't have said that last thing. Boing Boing is calling it Cho's "Multimedia Manifesto".

I still think Obama should have given the people who contributed to his campaign what they paid for on Monday, that hasn't changed. But my vitriol seemed to spill over in an unseemly sort of way and for that I'm sorry. Somehow this package story makes everything feel so much worse. It adds a dimension of vanity that's currently making me queasy.

Thusly, I would like to retract the following statements:

"Barack Obama ruthlessly soldiered on in his campaign of terror despite the horrors of this morning's events"

But I will always fail to see how "observing a moment of silence" or stopping whatever you're doing in order to appear solemn and in solidarity makes very much difference at all to the people suffering on the other side of the country.

the president of the college requested that we observe one of these "moments of silence", I was in class at the time and there was no silence at all in there. Do you think the people of Virginia Tech were hurt?

Please forgive me my moment of obnoxiousness, when I get a on yarn sometimes I follow it a little too far. As I did manage to mention I feel for the people who are currently directly suffering under the weight of Monday's events. And light of the recent development I would like to deepen that sentiment and extend my deepest condolences and my heartfelt sympathy.

A Moment of Silence is Golden

2007-04-18T01:38:00.000-07:00

Okay, so as it turns out, I'm a heartless bitch.

At the end of last week the work folks announced that they had reduced-price tickets to see Barack Obama at the Milwaukee Theater on Monday night. Curious to see what the man is all about, I happily bopped down and bought a couple and found a willing companion.

Now, we all know the story that broke on Monday. It was all over NPR, it was all over everywhere. I don't watch TV (especially CNN since it turned into Access Hollywood), but I know there was a constant loop of "Disaster!" that kept the networks abuzz all day and night. (Even Boing Boing was a-light with long-ass post after long-ass post) Still, I had work to do and while I feel for the poor souls at Virginia Tech, I didn't really have time to pay the story much mind.

As the day drew to a close and I grew weary of staring at the project I've been working on for like, the last week and half, I tore myself away from my desk, sauntered over to my companion's office and we struck out in search of dinner. By the way, just in case anybody is wondering... I do NOT highly recommend the cuisine at Bar Louie. Worst salad I've had in an ice age. Non-stop disco iceberg and faaaaaar too much dressing. Also, the waitress kinda sucked.

After dinner, we took a nice stroll downtown, walking from Water St. to the Milwaukee Theater. The sun was setting and that funny pink building was ablaze with the sun's fading light, the river looked less disgusting than usual, and the air felt almost warm. We approached the Theater and were waved through with our fabulous "white tickets". (Seriously, it was funny... we approached the ticket-takers and every time we walked up they'd say "White tickets? White tickets, go on through." I felt like a VIP. And I should. Because I am.) We found a seat and spent the next hour scoping cute politico boys (and trust me, there were some hot numbers out there - from a hipster in a Value Village tee to a bearded campaign-ite in a suit the place was hopping), attempting to identify prominent Milwaukee figures, and generally behaving as Statler & Waldorf from The Muppet Show.

We waited and waited, watching the turkey-necked channel 12 newscaster prepare for the start of the show, endured Willy Hines's singing children (okay, okay... brief concession... Hines's little boy is pretty damned cute), and watched as Mayor Barrett prostrated himself with his ringing endorsement of Obama. "He's from Illinois, he's a young senator, with a young family, so you can see why I'd like him." (Oh... I can, can I? Please to explain what that's got to do with you, old man? Has anyone mentioned to you that your hair is nearly white? And grow back your mustache, your crazy Tom Selleck look amused me during the campaign.) He mentioned that in observance of the recent tragedy, that Obama had considered canceling his appearance.

Now, I don't understand this. After waiting for an hour to see him - and the front rows were full, you know those folks got there early so there were others waiting longer than us - Obama spoke for maybe... maybe 20 minutes. I consider that kind of thoughtless and such a maneuver. Oh, and did I mention that the $ we forked over for the priviledge of hearing him went directly to his campaign? So, explain to me what the political implications would have been in taking a moment to acknowledge the pain the people of Blacksburg, a moment of silence, and then continuing on as normal? Do you really think the local news would be reporting "Barack Obama ruthlessly soldiered on in his campaign of terror despite the horrors of this morning's events"? I mean, I don't put anything past the local news in their undying quest for stupidity in reporting, but c'mon. I fail to understand what one thing had to do with the other thing. Fine, leverage the tragedy a little bit to take some time to talk about your stance on violence and gun control. That I understand. But to cut short your commitment to helping the voting public who specifically in this instance helped pay for future endeavors of this nature to understand who you are and what your values are, I think, is contrary to your purpose. He talked about how usually during these types of appearances there were flashing video screens and loud music designed to get the audience pumped up. Fine, trim it down to basics. Appear before a ginormous American flag (hell, swath yourself in it for all I care - oh, and by the by - he did appear before a ginormous American flag), have children sing the national anthem (check), quote Dr. King (yep, check, that one too), do what ya gotta do but but do it for more than 20 minutes. Dammit.

Cho Seung-Hui did something terrible. Yes, I know. It is terrible. I do feel for the staff, students, residents of Blacksburg, the family of the staff and students who lost their lives. I truly do. But I will always fail to see how "observing a moment of silence" or stopping whatever you're doing in order to appear solemn and in solidarity makes very much difference at all to the people suffering on the other side of the country.

So I guess I'm heartless. At noon yesterday, the president of the college requested that we observe one of these "moments of silence", I was in class at the time and there was no silence at all in there. Do you think the people of Virginia Tech were hurt?

Locational Dysphoria

2007-04-15T10:11:00.000-07:00

I know, I know... it's been a while since I was here. Again, the world is a very busy place and I right along with it in that very fashion. Never enough hours in the day.

I come here to share with you a very unusual feeling that I am having. Right now, at this very moment, I feel a stranger in my own land. Here I sit, in my little apartment that I scarcely saw fit to leave yesterday and many days before when evening fell and it was time to leave my desk and venture here, home. It feels familiar, and yet, it doesn't. Like a house sitter. Neither appraising nor critical, everything simply is as it is. As though I had nothing to do with the placement of things.

I did not sleep here last night.

I slept someplace else.

In a dark room, with warm air flowing across my face, a nest of comforters upon the dark-sheeted bed. A door just behind like a headboard- tiny points of light streaming through, the light of the hallway beyond.

At first I felt over-elaborate. Like a Rococo statue in the middle of an urban park. Teams of angels trumpeting down about my shoulders, streams of ribbons and flowing cloth, arm held aloft to the heavens. Eyes up-cast. Park benches of plain plank, covered in graffiti at my feet. Girls in tight jeans and many pigtails secured by brightly-colored plastic bubbles laughing in warm sun.

Yes, I felt... fancy. In my new little shoes nestled in cocoa-colored carpet and my $35 t-shirt. There was a girl sitting next to me, she came with us and stayed for a while until a cab carried her to some unknown destination. We spoke of our cats. They spoke of work. I watched as his eyes darted back and forth between her face and mine.

She has very white skin and those large, clear eyes that protrude slightly. As though taking in the world were too much for them from behind the architecture of the ocular cavities, they needed a front-row seat. She wore a white thermal tee and jeans, her hair swirled around into a low ponytail. When she laughed I thought, this girl has brothers. Her teeth are strong and she is possessed of an animated smile, all pink and white. I don't know what time it was when she left. I never can seem to find the clocks in other people's apartments. They're never where I expect them to be.

After she left we watched a movie, his body stretched out across mine, the bones of his shoulder blade pressing against my bottom left rib. Then he moved across from me, our eyes meeting and catching each other, playing tag, talking as unconsciously and freely as our stomachs seem to do. I spoke, haltingly describing some of my previous evening's happenings, muddling through the story despite a feeling in the pit of my stomach that I was saying the wrong things. As though he expected an undesired conclusion, he watched me from behind black-rimmed glasses.

Later, in the dark, an unexplained grin spread across his face. I'm still left wondering. It was a broad, cheshire-cat-ish grin. What was he smiling about?

Now, four hours later I still feel out of sorts. Discombobulated. I know it will pass and that everything will start to feel like mine again eventually but it's so unusual. And accompanied with an antsy-ness, a feeling of not knowing what to do with myself, like I left something important behind. I was totally unable to read the paper I bought before I crossed into this alien territory. This sort of dysphoria seems to be a theme lately. I do so wonder what it means.

I Don't Practice Feuderia

2007-03-21T19:58:00.000-07:00

As Athena leapt from her father's head fully cloaked in armor, so too was Mr. DeWinter squeezed from the neck of his mother by a dermatologist by the name of "Arnie". As pictured above, just moments before he emerged dressed in his infamous White Linen Pants, coated in a fine layer of chocolate dust, an unlit cigar in his hand.

As he dusted himself off, surveying the look of shock, horror, awe, more horror, and utter disgust displayed in the faces of his mother and "Arnie", Mr. DeWinter looked about exam room #4 with its pale yellow walls and its large photos of various skin diseases (the most prominent of which being the photo of a particularly bad case of psoriasis complete with magnified inset, as "Arnie" was considered something of a specialist in the field), smiled politely and asked, "What are the chances that a guy can get a match around here?"

Despite an overwhelming urge to vomit when she found herself in his presence, Mrs. DeWinter took her little bundle of joy home with her. As time went long, Mr. DeWinter took, much to his mother's dismay, to calling her "Ma." As in, "Hey Ma! What's this cassarole shit? What's a guy gotta do to get a steak around here?" Or, "Hey Ma! I told ya a dozen times, starch on my white shirts, see, STARCH."

Each and every time he opened his mouth it became a greater and greater burden to bear. And she wondered to herself what the protocol was for having "birthed" a full-grown man. Do they stay for 18 years, or could she make him get a job and an apartment and relieve herself of her suffering?

I believe the final straw came one bright sunny day when upon returning from 18 holes with the retired neighbor, Carmine, Mr. DeWinter threw down his clubs on the living room floor in front of her weaving loom (she was currently working on a highly satisfying depiction of the senior Mr. DeWinter expelling their demanding son from their cape cod via the front door with what might have been considered by the neighbors as undue force, but she never really cared what the neighbors thought anyway) and in a state of great agitation announced that she obviously didn't have her heart in cleaning his clubs. "This nine iron is disgusting! And there's still piña colada on one of the woods! Do you take no pride in your work, woman?"

The particulars of Mr. DeWinter's expulsion from the familial homestead need not be gone into here. Suffice to say that the DeWinter family parted ways on the best terms under the circumstances. He's still allowed in their quiet little cod on holidays or birthdays, anniversaries and such. And Mr. DeWinter makes due with giving orders to his cat army for fetching of fine chocolate, clean linen pants from Morty the Dry Cleaner, and exotic cheeses. Ah, the politics of compromise.

Temporal Dysphoria

2007-03-20T05:43:00.000-07:00

So I've been having this thing lately, where weather conditions or smells or some such thing are causing me to experience moments of Déjà Vu. Where I feel like I'm someplace else - to wit:

Couple of weeks ago, walking to my car it was early morning and warm, smelled like spring outside, the sun was shining brightly through what little greenery there is and it felt like Madison. That same week I walked outside on another warm and sunny morning, my car was parked far away and it felt like my morning walk to grade school.

A week or so ago, I walked outside, I was downtown, the air smelling of food and paint, it was sunny but cool and I was inadequately dressed for the temperature and it felt like Prague.

Just now, just this very minute I walked out onto my porch - the sky a diffused opalescent shade of blue, cold with my ankles exposed and it felt like Whitewater.

This keeps happening lately and I'm not sure why. It's been kind of weird, kind of comforting, and kind of sad all at the same time.

Random Web Travels Amusement

2007-03-20T03:52:00.000-07:00

Hehehehehe. Found on BoingBoing, which was mined from R. Stevens's News Post, which is an original by Mike Cina. Which is, in turn, made approximately 3x's as amusing when one considers my previous post. Stay tuned for an exciting blog feud entry, which is currently in the works.

Blog-Slap

2007-03-10T09:19:00.000-08:00

So apparently there are some people reading my blog that I don't talk to on a regular basis or are RPers... 2 of them to be exact. One being my aforementioned ex-boyfriend, the other, a close friend of his. I am suddenly very glad I don't allow anonymous comments.

Remember how I mentioned that I told my ex that I still wanted to be friends? Well, in the final, dwindling days of February I contacted him to wish him a happy birthday and invite him out for a birthday drink on me. To that end, (I totally forgot about the birthday drink when we got there... ooops) I got together with him last night. We were having a fine time, if slightly scrambling for things to talk about. I believe it was when he hit his 3rd or 4th beer that he brought to light why he came to meet up with me. He had a bit of an agenda.

Now, there are opposing opinions as to whether I've actually done something wrong in this situation. He was quite upset with me over some of the details contained in the "File Under" post. He was very hurt and said that he would never post such personal stuff about me online. I didn't think it was that bad, neither did my friend. My mother, however, thinks I've definately tresspassed against him and that I should redact the details in the first couple of paragraphs. That people have forgotten how to be nice with the supposition of anonymity as their shield. But I know, quite well already, that there is no anonymity on the net.

Did I feel bad? Yes, and I still do. I wanted to crawl under my bar stool or creep on my belly out of the bar and into the chill, wet night to find some rock appropriate to my amphibious status. I didn't intend for him to read that. It honestly never even crossed my mind that he would. Which was both stupid and ignorant of me. I know him, I know how he rolls on the interwebs, I should have known better than to think he wouldn't find it.

Now, I'm posing a few questions to my readers - One, do you think I did something wrong? Or is it, as I said later that night when I'd had too much wine and I got a little angry, a situation where if you go looking for it you kind of deserve whatever you find? Two, am I furthering the offense by posting this? And lastly, should I delete the offending details out of kindness and consideration of his feelings?

I'm honestly left wondering. Is it a terrible fault in the blog-o-verse that we post things that contain details about other people? Should we only post about things that have only to do with ourselves? Is that how other people do and I just didn't know it? Did Rachel Kramer Bussel set a bad example for me and I blindly followed it when she posted exhaustively about her feelings about her last relationship? (okay, that's just really an opportunity for some link love and vain attempt at passing the buck, probably) But truly, is this a huge flaw? Did I have the right?

I don't know what I think now. I felt so sure last night but now... dammit Mom, makin' think about my actions and stuff.

Battle Royale

2007-03-04T15:02:00.000-08:00

This, my friends, is an artist's rendering of Mr. DeWinter's ultimate woman. Four arms to hold him, a belgian beer in each of her many hands... toenails good for scratchin' his back.

He met her in the Ukraine the summer of '89 and he's never forgotten her since. Her sweaty breath, her stringy hair, her elephantine limbs. She was a vision in rough-weave undyed sack-cloth. At night, when the hour is late and he is alone in his bed he dreams not of sugarplums, but the sight of four hairy armpits flying towards him as she reaches out for an embrace. Lips curled with anticipation, eyes blinking back the rivulets of sweat her bushy eyebrows couldn't hold back. Gerzerka, Gerzerka, won't you be mine.

Creative Cuisine Solutions: Get the Bread Out!

2007-03-04T10:14:00.000-08:00

Okay, everybody is on this "low carbs" thingie... still. And while I certainly don't shy away from the bread, I think it's important not to eat it with every meal. I believe 21 grams of fiber is the magic number and 1 serving of bread per day will do that if my memory serves me correctly. I usually have Whole Foods' Seeduction toast with peanut butter (and sliced banana this morning! YUM!) for breakfast so when it comes time for lunch I'm usually staring down the barrel of another salad or a wheat-free veggie alternative tortilla or something like that. Just now, just this afternoon, modeled after some fast food joint's lettuce wraps (can't remember which, I try to be responsible for everything that goes into my mouth and yes, that does sound dirty) which are modeled after a Thai creation I can't think of the name of, I just created the following:

Tuna Salad Spinach Wraps

1 individual serving-sized can white albacore tuna packed in water
2 tbsps Vegenaise
2 finely chopped stalks celery
2 finely chopped scallions
2 tsps dried cilantro
4 finely chopped fresh basil leaves
pepper to taste

Mix it all up in a bowl and yank out your spinach - I used organic stuff from Whole Foods cuz some of the leaves are appropriately enormous for wrapping purposes. Wash and roll, it works cuz the ends of the leaves kinda curl under so you just roll 'em up and munch 'em down like dolmaldes. Super tasty, super easy. Just watch out for the sodium content in the tuna - if you buy Chicken of the Sea you're looking at over 300 grams.

This is Why This Blog is Called Jenn Addenda

2007-03-04T08:11:00.000-08:00

Addenda to the Previous Post:

In going back and obsessively reading all of my previous posts I came to realize that some major things have happened between posts about my personal life that I didn't exactly make really clear on the blog... many of you probably already know about these things say, if you actually talk to me in RL or if you are an RPer you probably know these things from my posts there, but anybody (not that I'm suggesting that people outside those circles necessarily read my blog but hey, a girl can dream, can't she?) else might not. So here is a list of things that have happened since my original post that started the blog in the first place:

1. I accepted the position the acceptance process of which drove me to the brink of insanity. I accepted it at the offered rate of pay, despite a rejected counter-offer because, as I mentioned, it is a great opportunity for me.

2. I am back in school part-time.

3. I agreed to continue working for my former employer, one day a week until the end of June when my new position has the possibility to go full-time and the office overhaul at the old job takes place.

I know readers could probably have figured those things out from the preceeding post but it's nice to have everything laid out in #000033, ya know? ;)

Question to my readers: When I go back and edit previous posts for grammatical, spelling, and various other small errors, does it send subscribers an update message? I'd hate to think you guys are getting 3-4 messages for such tiny little changes... if this is the case I'll either try and be more careful when I publish the post or just leave the imperfections alone. (Which might, truthfully, prove difficult.)

...And We're Back

2007-03-04T02:46:00.000-08:00

Oh... my... god. Where did February go? One day it was smack-dab in the middle and then suddenly I had to decide if I wanted to send my ex-boyfriend a birthday card on the 28th and now it's freakin' March! How the hell did that happen?

Not that I necessarily need to apologize to you guys - you all understand, right? I was crazy-busy with work and school, and totally exhausted in the time in between all that. Every time I sat down to write I felt like I had so much to tell you guys that I'd get overwhelmed and write nothing. I'd go read a book instead. Or watch Scrubs re-runs on the couch, splayed out like somebody dropped me from the ceiling.

This "working two jobs" stuff is tough. For one thing, the new job should so definately not be a part-time job. I feel like I have so much to do and practically no time to do it in. And getting the IT department to get me all set up has proven to be a part-time job in and of itself. It took me two weeks of constantly pestering them to get me a log-in code for my computer and email (they killed my student account and I was forced to use my gmail for professional purposes for like, a week - how professional is that?), and I still don't have my voicemail or access to the shared drive. Or speakers. Or a printer that works. Despite my best efforts.

All last week the office manager was on vacation and she submitted the requests for my speakers and for them to fix my network portal on the printer, try as I might I couldn't find the helpdesk tickets - so I wasn't able to do anything with those requests. But you have no idea how many emails I sent that started out, "I know you asked me to be patient, and I do very much appreciate the help that you've given me so far... but can you tell me the status of ticket #..." She's back on Monday so hopefully next week those two things can get resolved because HOLY CRAP do I hate working without music. The percussion of the ergo keyboard and mouse alone are a bit repetitive. Oh, dear... somewhere, somehow I've given Mike Patten an idea.

As for school... dear god do I hate intro classes. I'm doing well, so that's something. We recently had our first exams and in my morning class - 100% which is awesome - and for my afternoon class I got the highest score in the class, after he added back points because so many people had done so poorly, I had a 94%. Class average for the morning was an 88, I believe. It was a 75 for the afternoon. Lazy no-readin' or note-takin' young'uns. Anyway... the classtime is fairly worthless. Dude starts every class with "Current Events" wherein students are invited to bring in and summarize class-related news articles for discussion. These discussions usually last the whole first hour of the class and involve him (the "prof") finding some way to get up on his political soapbox and "tell us how it is" - which may work for the people in the class who just graduated from high school and don't really have any opinions about these things, but for me, I have opinions about these things and they quite differ from his. For the sake of the class and my sanity I've decided to keep my damn mouth shut but lemme tell ya, sometimes it ain't easy. Otherwise he talks about his personal life. I know it's a thing now for teachers to talk about themselves to eliminate the air of stodgy mystery that has traditionally surrounded profs... the austere orators of old... I think I miss that. I don't care how much he paid for his new Ikea lighting system, or what his father died from, or what his girlfriend does for a living, or how is daughter did in her gymnastics competition. TEACH THE DAMNED CLASS. We maybe get 25 minutes of actual instruction. I'm learning waaaay more from the book than I am from that dingleberry. He covers the same material a number of times... he doesn't remember whether he assigned us work. Seriously, what the fuck?!

And just to add insult to injury, I am now the class goody-two-shoes. We had an assignment last week and walking up to the classroom the students were congregated outside, the prof hadn't arrived yet... as I rounded the corner one of the students said, "there she is, I'll bet you did the assignment, didn't you?" Well, yes, of course I had I said. "Nobody else did." I sat in class while the people on either side of me marveled over the sheet of printed paper they'd asked to read, not only had I done it - but it was typed and well-organized. "I like how you did this." Said the girl that sits next to me - when she comes to class - in the open-toed shoes. (Wisconsin - not warm in February or the beginning of March. Weird-looking girl, Wisconsin. Wisconsin, weird-looking girl. Maybe you guys should have the little convo about marginally appropriate footwear usually involving toes. Here's a little guideline - if it's snowing, try boots.) The guy on the other side of me started copying stuff down - I gave him the stink-eye. He gave my paper back. Bastid. And stranger still, on Tuesday the prof said, "Who wants to volunteer for an assignment?" My hand shot up. He picked me. WTF?!? Who am I and what have I done with the little rebel who was absolutely convinced she could coast along on her smarts? When did I start taking school seriously? When did I turn into one of those girls?

So I stayed up late on Wednesday night, taking this little assignment possibly all-too seriously, doing research and re-reading the chapters we were (Probably he'll push it back AGAIN now keep reading to find out why - last time we had the test a week and a half after the original date because he kept pushing it back owing to the fact that a lot of people had missed the class before the test due to insanely cold temps outside... it was driving me crazy. I'd study, I'd come to class, no test. Next time. Repeat.) going to be tested on next week and then read one chapter ahead. Then I got up at 4-fucking-am to type up the assignment and work on my notes. It was a nasty morning. It had snowed early and then, for the last hour before I left it turned to sleety rain. The roads were decidedly not pleasant to drive but I got to school in enough time to print out my assignment and a bunch of articles in the lab (my printer's totally dead). I ran into a couple of people in class who said they had heard class was canceled today. I was actually disappointed. Not having seen for ourselves, one of the guys from my class and I walked up to the room. Sure enough, two pink cancellation sheets were affixed to the doorframe. I thought about going home and going back to bed, I thought about going and getting some coffee and reading for a while in the student center. But ultimately, I ended up going in to work 3 1/2 hours early. It turned out for the best, I managed to be there for a budget meeting. Though, I was so tired I felt like I was floating. Then my boss asked me to verify that she had allotted me enough in my line items. This is so strange guys, I feel like grown-up and yet... often, I feel like a fraud. Like they're gonna find out soon that I have NO IDEA what I'm doing. I've never written a justification before. With the old job's budgets I simply raised the budget by 2% every year. That's all. Modified last year's budget forms. This time, I had to actually get people on the phone get estimates (which, I have to say, is NOT easy around that joint), and admit that I had no plans for one of the line items yet.

And this waking up loooong before the sun stuff... it's become a thing. It's been going on for more than a month that I wake up between 4:30 - 5:30. I have not, in my adult life, been a morning person. I have NO idea why the sudden change. It even bleeds over into the weekend. On one hand it's nice, I have PLENTY of time to get ready and putz and read comics, the news, various blogs, AND get stuff like the dishes done in the morning. On the other, I normally hate morning. Hate waking up. Long to stay in bed. I'm not kidding, people... what happened to me?

And the last bit of news... I know some of you probably don't want to hear about this, especially in the form of a complaint but be advised I'm not complaining about my figure but some of the side-effects of having my figure... but... I've now lost so much weight that I hardly have any clothes that fit. I do have some, from like, 5 years ago that are nice enough for work if slightly out-dated. (I'm probably the only one who notices that. Flare-legs are always flattering.) Not only can I not afford to go buy a bunch of new clothes, but I'm afraid to buy a bunch of new clothes. What if this is a fluke? What if it doesn't stick? What if I get lazy again and stop working out and gain back 10-15lbs? It's crazy. I worked so hard. So very, very hard. I totally overhauled my diet, I severely limited my alcohol intake (from the girl who used to go through 2 bottles of wine a week on her own... yesterday I read about a surpressed NIH study that in the 70's uncovered the health benefits of red wine, at the end of the article the author says you should be drinking one-half to two glasses of alcohol a day. A DAY! Two glasses of alcohol a DAY?! I can't drink that much! I thought... WHO AM I?!?!), I have actually stuck to a workout schedule (mostly), I do research to make sure that I'm getting enough protein, enough vitamins and minerals and enough fat so that I can digest them. But now... now I've got my mother after me. "You've gotten too thin" she says. "We're worried you're not getting enough protein since you don't eat meat during the week" she says. "You're enjoying this too much" she says.

I'm enjoying this too much? What the hell does that mean, exactly? You're goddamn right I'm enjoying this! I worked VERY hard for this. (In November of last year I was comfortable in a 10, now I've dropped to a 4. I probably weigh in at around 110 but I'm only 5'2" and I wear a size 5 1/2 shoe - I was never meant to carry around much more weight than this, I don't think.) And you know, I did a lot of reading when I started this "journey". (I hate using that word, it's so cliche, but it fits.) And one of the things that I read was a blog post by Chris Pirillo, (Chris Pirillo, Chris Pirillo) a well-known blogger and technology writer. In it he makes a point of saying that you shouldn't necessarily listen to the people who love you when they decide "you've lost enough weight". I don't know if my parents are jealous of my success. It's possible. My mom has struggled with her weight all of her life. We both have this mental defect where even when we are quite in our targeted weight, or just slightly over, we feel like cows. Neither of us has (for the most part) ever been happy. I still look in the mirror and sometimes I'm almost positive that I'm not actually seeing the reality. I still look and see problem areas. But for the most part, now I'm happy. I need to work on toning up and that's coming along more slowly than the actual losing the weight part but it is happening. Point being, she's recently been struggling with losing weight and had some success but certainly not to my level. She's older (obviously, she's my mother... duh) so it's going slower and watching the way my parents eat I still see problems with serving size and pre-packaged foods. I guess it is possible she's jealous. And that it's that emotion that is driving her to harass me EVERY time she sees me. My Dad's taken to calling me "bony", and recently told me that I now have no ass. Which differs from when he told me I had a square ass in high school.*le sigh* I'm trying to shrug it off, I'm trying to assure her (repeatedly) that I AM actually eating and not skipping meals, I'm trying to let her know that I am doing research and working hard at making sure I'm getting proper nutrition. I'm not pasty-pale grey and malnourished-looking... I was able to donate blood last month, so I'm not anemic... what more does she want from me? Oh yes... to gain back at least 5lbs. *double le sigh*

One would think that now in my newer, sleeker form I'd be popular with the gentlemen, right? Uhm, not really. I guess it doesn't help that I've been a total homebody but when the thing that most of your friends are doing is drinking and that's one of the things you're trying to avoid, this is how it works out. I've been reading A LOT. (I have a blog entry brewing about The History of Love... I do, in fact, have to eat some of my words. Dammit. Just some though.) I've been watching a lot of movies, taking a lot of baths, making a lot of really nice dinners but I'm kind of missing out on the human interaction quotent. Most Friday and Saturday nights I spend at home, alone. (Which one would think would lead to more blog entries, but not so much.) So now I guess I need to develop my hobbies. Aside from reading and listening to NPR. And watching movies. Or walking to the theatre to watch movies. Or hanging out in the bookstore. I would love to sign up for ballet classes to help in my toning quest but I don't think I'm going to get a date there either. And then there's that whole funding issue popping up again. I've also been thinking of signing up for writing classes at indie bookstore in the bohemian neighborhood, but I think their schedule is about to have run its course. Mebbe I should do something sporty over the summer... volleyball league or soccer or something. But truth be told, I've never been the sporty sort. I dunno, I just got out of a relationship-thingie at the end of December and I'm working really hard at putting my life together which means I'm not really looking for a relationship since I know how I behave and that behavior is NOT conducive to what I'm trying to do. But a date once in a while would be nice. Kisses would be great. Makeouts are teh awesome and well... you can imagine what else I miss. I know I'll find my way through this. That things will keep getting better as long as I can hold it together and "fake it 'til I make it". But it's rough, and I'm a little lonely lately. I had some really close relationships at my last job and I don't think it's going to be the same at the new job. But maybe that's good.

Wow. That's quite the post. I think I've brought everybody up to date on what's going on in my universe. I'll try and make more time for this so I don't have to bombard y'all with ginormous posts. And stay tuned to see if Wikipedia is right and if you mention Chris Pirillo three times in your blog post, he'll come and comment! I hope it works! Bloody Mary never did. Puh.

Fucshia Snapper with Dinosaur Kale

2007-02-16T13:09:00.000-08:00

Welcome to another installment of Friday night fish recipes for the single girl. Tonight I bring you a gorgeous, girlie-pink, deliciously spicy-sweet recipe fit for a queen. And yes, yes it is snapper. Again. What? It just works. Plus, it's like... my favorite. Aside from grouper, which seems to be difficult to get your hands on around here. Well, really I'd just have to get into the car and drive uptown but I'm a lazy biotch, okay? I, uh... like to... support my local... uhm... giant chain organic grocery... which, uh... may or may not drive out my favorite locally owned joint.... uhm... just... uh... shut up.

Seriously, I had sole last week... it wasn't exciting enough to post so I decided not to bore you with the details. It was very tasty... it involved potatoes, shallots, and wood ear mushrooms.

But this! This is going to come out the MOST gorgeous color AND be tasty AND be eeeeeaaaasssssy as a $2 hooker.

You will need:

1 handful still-firm thusly slightly tart and fairly acidic kumquats
1 blood orange
1 lemon
2 tbsps garlic & chili infused olive oil
1 small bunch dinosaur (lacinato) kale
1 small onion
1 healthy snapper fillet

Same cooking drill as before, 400° oven, yada yada - I put mine together by putting all the liquids in a bowl so, the juice of 1/2 blood orange, the juice of 1/2 lemon, and your infused oil (with some chili flakes for added punch).

Then, slice your kumquats into 1/4" slices (very thin), slice your onions very thin and make a chiffonade of your kale - being careful not to take any of the bulky stems).

Make up your packet and slap in your fillet. Pour your liquid over the top making sure to coat the whole piece. Lay your sliced onions over the top (look, I'm the daughter of a girl of norweigan decent... onion goes on absolutely everything - I even make an onion pie when I feel so moved), then your kumquats, then your kale chiffonade.

Close up your packet, toss it in the oven and wait for the aromas to start overtaking the kitchen. Ultimately, probably a whole half hour depending on the size of your fillet.

Truly delicious. And so damnably pretty, such color in such a grey and white and crunchy world. Even the blue sky felt hard as a marble today. Anyway, I enoyed this with a nice Luzon Jumilla.

Atomic Snark-Beasts

2007-02-05T18:47:00.000-08:00

This little gem showed up at the bottom of my weekly email from the record shop near my house that I adore.

Heheheh... it amused me so greatly that I felt I had to share.

As the news from Boston keeps trickling in, what with the state insisting upon referring to the ads as "hoax devices". And the arrest of the installers. I wonder how long before a bunch of people end up at Gitmo. So I have to laugh while I can. Before it makes me want to cry.

Woo Hoo! I'm a Hack!

2007-02-05T12:34:00.000-08:00

... And suddenly, I feel slightly vindicated for this post. Thank you, Stefan Beck for making me feel wholly righteous (and hip!) in slamming a book I haven't finished reading yet.

Hollalujah!

2007-02-04T05:44:00.000-08:00

One of my absolute favorite workday distractions is a little blog called Go Fug Yourself. I only just started reading it this (well, budget) year, so this is new to me but I guess they've done it before. Anyhoo, those crazy ass bitches is coverin' the Fall NY Fashion week for New York Magazine's Fashion Blog.

In the oft-mourned absence of Ab Fab, I find these girls refreshingly hilarious, unfailingly evil, and truly creative in their critique. So when I stumbled across their work during some pre-dawn perusals, I just felt I HAD to share it with you.

I read one of their posts this morning, The Collection for Prostitutes We've All Been Waiting For and laughed my damned ass off watching the Rock & Republic Slideshow. Seriously. Here are some examples of some severe tresspasses against good taste:

Can you not see Cate Blanchett donning this tragedy on some red carpet somewhere?

____________________________________________________________________________________

And look at this poor bastard - he knows

It's written all over his face, "Yes, yes I am wearing a metallic sweater and a yuppie knotted scarf. It's not my fault. I was dead at the time."

This poor guy also had the misfortune of being selected to walk for the Lacoste show. And holy crap, WTF is going on over at Lacoste? First of all, the guys are in these Jungle/Hiking boot nightmares - tucked in to their pants. And half of the women's collection appears to be stolen from the Spiegel Together® catalog. But where are Rachel Hunter and Elaine Irwin and that weird-looking girl from the Victoria's Secret catalog (from like, 5 years ago) with the really short neck? Laughing and pointing. And wondering if Demi Moore knows they raided her closet circa 1985.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Fergie and Sienna Miller had a baby and they named it Rosemary.

Model: So they're lace. And they're pants?

Michael Ball: Yeah! See, Sienna rocked this last week but she did it with a fuzzy sweater and panties, you have a tiny leather bomber jacket so it's FIERCE.

Model: Shut the fuck up.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Is it me, or does it look like an unseen Wookie is hugging this guy?

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Hehehehehe... and lastly,

Somebody get this guy a fluffy white cat and a big chair, STAT!

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Well, that was fun. I certainly enjoyed being a Fugger for a morning. Wait and see if any other heinous shows tickle my funny bone - Fashion Week ain't over yet!

File Under: Well, That Was Weird

2007-02-03T15:15:00.000-08:00

On NYE morning I broke up with someone. It was painful, but necessary. I hated doing it, but my superstitious self couldn't get on board with the idea of giving him my NY's kiss. I had avoided him all throughout the holidays because I couldn't bear doing it so close to Christmas. I had planned to, about two weeks before, but that Friday night while I was out having a good time and he was sitting at a nearby bar waiting for me (I never called, just to add insult to injury) he got his new (to him) car sideswiped. And then he got sick - really sick. And well, I just couldn't turn his life into a country song.

The following week we'd had a mutual friend in town. I couldn't do it then either. I knew that we'd end up seeing each other under the recently-parted circumstances and I didn't want to make my friend's first visit home in a year awkward. Nor did I want him to have to explain to our friend the awkwardness. Then it was Christmas and it seemed heartless. So, I waited it out.

I know there's never any good time to break up with someone. That no matter when you do it, it sucks. For both parties. It hurt me to hurt him, immensely. I don't know if he believes that, but I guess it doesn't really matter. When the dam finally broke I was relieved by his reaction. I've had all manner of undignified breakups. My first long-term boyfriend (status achieved by on-again, off-again-ness not continuity) threatened suicide the night that I ended our relationship. He had been staying at my house because his apartment had had a fire a few weeks ago. He told me was going to sleep in an alley. Then he came back, over and over - this time for a pillow, this time for his bass, this time for his sleeping bag. When I woke up the next morning I found the ruins of a night spent on my side porch. There was a soggy sleeping bag, a six pack of Mickey's (I should know better than to date people who drink Mickey's, but I was young), and an endless amount of cigarette butts. My neighbor told me that he spent all night out there, playing his bass. It took me months to throw away that stuff.

This guy faded more quietly. He told me he loved me, that we ought to stay together even though we knew in the long run we'd never succeed as a couple. We had different goals and, in my mind, we were simply marking time together. We fought like cats and dogs over what to have for dinner - can you imagine buying a house? Ultimately though I cared for him. I respected him. Enjoyed his company. But those things are never enough when you know that your weaknesses are his weaknesses - those relationships are simply doomed.

Anyway, we'd talked a bit over email. Nothing big and nothing recent when, upon waking up from a brief nap I got a phone call from him. He had a few books of mine and knew that I had a few books of his. He suggested an exchange. He was on my side of town and if I wasn't otherwise occupied he'd stop by. I said sure.

As I walked into the lobby of my building I saw him there, leaning against the mailboxes. When we were together he never came to the front door. When he came to my building he came with all manner of acoutrements. A case of Negro Modelo, an army bag filled with clothes and toiletries, another messenger bag with books and movies and travel Scrabble. He'd park his car in the non-spot near the back door and unload. Because when he came to my house, he came to stay for the weekend. Damned close to a year together and I generally only saw him on the weekends. It was like a long-distance relationship, except he only lived across town. So I thought of that when I saw him, leaning there. We walked up the stairs to my apartment silently. When we got to my floor, unable not to speak (imagine that), I asked him how he was - we exchanged simple pleasantries... like neighbors. We walked into my apartment and I offered to take his coat. He said he wasn't planning on staying. I said, "Oh, uhm, okay." I walked over to my dining room table and grabbed his (uncracked) vegetarian cookbooks - he handed me A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and Evolution Man. He turned to leave directly. Surprised, I protested, "Hey, no how are you doing what are you up to?" He looked uncomfortable but fed my question back to me. "How are you doing, what are you up to?" I told him about the job and school. He seemed impressed. "Wow, usually when people totally turn their life around they don't do it so quickly." I could tell he didn't want to be here. So I asked him, "What about you? What have you been doing?" He smiled weakly, "Oh you know, same old same old."

With that he practically turned on his heel and bruskly walked out. "Gimme a call sometime." he called out over his shoulder. It was strange. The whole thing took maybe 10 minutes - maybe even less. But I was left standing there in my living room, looking around, wondering what had just happened. It was good to see him. But I guess he's still not ready to see me. I told him when we broke up that he was one of those people I didn't want to lose. You always want to keep intelligent, kind, good-hearted people in your life. Maybe next month, huh?

This History of Love: Jealousy, Prejudice, and the Holocaust

2007-02-03T12:08:00.000-08:00

What is it about January and February that feels so conducive to reading? Is it the blanket of (finally) snow outside? The freezing temperatures? The friends that opt to stay home and rent movies because everybody blew too much $ on Christmas and New Year's? In the months leading up to the holidays, the pile of books on my coffee table and nightstand remained unmoved. Too much to do, too many places to be. However, in the last couple of weeks I've found myself drawn to the quiet comfort of reading. One glass of wine, one Soma stream and it's an evening.

I started just after the holidays with My Heart Laid Bare by Joyce Carol Oates. I have only recently discovered how much I like Ms. Oates. Before I started reading her I admired her. Romance-novelist turned literary heavyweight. Now, that's something to aspire to. Like Margaret Atwood (who probably holds the place closest to my heart) Oates has developed this very unique, spare, detached, and serene voice. Both of them break the mold of the "female writer" by allowing themselves to look at their characters with an objective eye while still allowing their warmth and love for their creations to seep through the page. My introduction to her was with The Falls in December and adored it. What begins as a blood and thunder romance novel- passionate, erotic, moving turns... ever so slowly, such that you barely even notice... into a treatise on the criminally careless environmental blunders of Northeastern chemical companies and it's effect on the poor populace that lived and worked in their shadow. I borrowed Heart from my sister immediately after. It's a HUGE book. Honestly, I love huge books because when books are too short I tend to go through a mourning period as I grow closer to the final pages. I don't want to let them go.

But as I was drawn closer into the macabre philosphy of the grifting Licht family, Oates' cool aloofness and heart-rending keening began to wear me down. By the half-way point I needed a break. And, for a couple of weeks now, two books have been staring at me from my coffee table begging me to open them and find out what's inside.

The first I read about while rummaging for information on an author upon whom I entertained a brief crush after reading Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and falling in love with both Jonathan Safran Foer's style and adorable pic, I was disappointed to discover that he was married to a fellow writer, Nicole Krauss, who wrote a well-hailed novel by the name of The History of Love.

Now, with a title like that it better be a really, really, really good book. I mean life-altering. Because seriously, that is the most pretentious title I've heard for a critically acclaimed book since A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. And I hate Dave Eggers. I wanted to hurl that self-indulgent piece of crap against the wall and have it break like an egg. There have only been two other books that evoked such strong reactions from me - one is Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, which I wanted to put down the garbage disposal and the other is The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq for both it's impact on my life before I read the book and the anger it evoked while I was reading the book. But I digress.

History of Love - pretentious title with pretentious insides or pretentious title with deeply meaningful insides? Answer: Both - maybe. Unfortunately, I'm not entirely certain that I'm not hating it because I want so badly to hate but I can say with a fair amount of confidence that as spouses begin to resemble each other physically over time, apparently so too do the writing of spouses. I see many echoes of Foer. In the style, the humor, and the whimsy. It's a bit boring thus far and while I like my female writers austere a la Margaret Atwood and the aforementioned Oates, I do not like them cold. Krauss is like yesterday's pizza. I'm not too far into the book and I complained a lot to no one in particular but I really don't see why it's been so well received. Although...

I read a blog called Jewcy and a little over a month ago The Daily Schvitz posted an article by Hal Niedzviecki called Nothing is Illuminated: Jewish fiction writers must let go of the Holocaust. And honestly, Foer (as you can glean from the title) is their top offender. Is the Holocaust critic gold? Is it like a black writer writing about slavery or a WASP writing about their fucked up families, or women writing about rape? The Lovely Bones was a huge hit and I admit I loved it. The writing was absolutely fantastic. So was The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing and I loved that too. Is my crush on Foer and jealousy over the fact that she wrote a book and I haven't blinding me to a genuinely good work or is she riding a wave? Because Krauss' book does feature the Holocaust. It's there in the main character's background running like a sub-routine. Intermittently becoming the story. Updating the character. And I gotta say, I'm not pulled in this time. Everything is Illuminated stunned me. Truly. Foer is an amazing writer. I was transported. So far, Krauss does not live up to her New Yorker pedigree, in my mind. But we'll see.

The second book I picked up because of article I read on Gawker about two weeks ago. Entirely unrelated to literature it was an article about West Village wannabes from an article in the Real Estate section in the Times. They introduce Lauren Daitch and Jules Spehar, a yuppie roomie combo forking over so much in rent to live in the Village that they can't afford their own groceries and still consider themselves financially independent. I got a good snicker out of it, realized I could so be that girl (and have been in the past - without the Village apartment or the ability to afford half of $3,800 rent) given the same circumstances and when they posted an update (as they are wont to do) with Jules Spehar's Friendster page (she's soooo coooool), I noted with interest that one of her favorite authors is one that I've heard mentioned before. I can't remember where or when but the source was remembered as reliable and positive.

So I picked up Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. The recommendation from the Schwartz's people was Kafka on the Shore but after a bad experience with My Misspent Youth by Meghan Daum, which was a really frustrating experience for me, I flatly refuse to buy it if it's been recommended by a staff member. I simply don't trust them anymore. Because while Daum seems to have all of the potential in the world, somebody let her publish a book with some serious story-wrapping problems, thematic problems, her amazing arrogance, and above all her very obvious immaturity. On the back of the book someone compared her to Joan Didion and seriously, I spat out my coffee with indignance.

Anyway, if I get too annoyed with History of Love, I may well take a run at Bird Chronicle. Hopefully I'll fare better with that, I hate having too many books going at one time. While it's not unusual for me to have between 3-4 books going at one time I still find it vaguely dismaying. It's like my annoying habit of pausing films when I don't like what's going on. I know I should re-train myself in that area. At some point I'll have a guest over for a viewing of something or another and it will annoy the crap out whichever poor soul agrees to subject themselves to watching a movie with me. But for now... really... who gives a crap. For now, "pause away, dear girl, pause away."

Red Snapper with Deconstructed Salsa in a Packet

2007-01-26T20:32:00.000-08:00

I'm a single girl and I love, love, love quick and easy. So every Friday I treat myself to some tasty fish. Tonight, the victim of choice was a beautiful snapper filet from Whole Foods. It was worth having to lie to the bum that followed me into the store to talk to me, I think.

Anyway, the easiest and most fool-proof way to do fish is in an aluminum foil or parchment paper packet. It's nearly impossible to dry it out and it marinates it beeeautifully. It happened that I asked the (very cute, very young) fish counter guy what herbs he thought would go best with snapper. I've done mushrooms and potatoes with rosemary, thyme, and garlic. I've done Thai style with curry, coconut, and lime. But tonight, he mentioned that snapper does well with salsa. So I thought, "ah, ha!" Why buy a jar of salsa, or waste time with a food processor I don't own when I can make own deconstructed salsa, I ask you, why? So, here it is, eat your heart out Rachael Ray. (Also, if you want to make the recipe for two... I suggest you double it. This here cookin' is for the single ladies... can I get a "HEY LADIES... get, get funky.")

Now, the foodies around here won't need nearly this much instruction, but you never know who's going to stop by...

1 lovely red snapper filet
7-8 grape tomatoes cut in half
2 crosswise slices of a small yellow onion (we want rings here girls, and not the kind you wear on your finger)
1 quarter section of a yellow pepper cut into *very thin* slices
4 jar jalepeno rings, diced
1 garlic clove, diced
2 tsps cilantro (I used dry, though I prefer fresh)
1 tsp salt
juice of 1/2 lemon
juice of 1/2 lime
1 tbsp olive oil (we need a little fat)

Pre-heat your oven to 400° and start slicing and dicing your vegetables. Take out a piece of aluminum foil or parchment paper and fold up sides to make a little box-like structure and throw in your fish. Dump all of your other ingredients over the top. Since I like a little presentation, I lay the yellow peppers over the fish first on an angle with the onion rings over that, in sort of an arty way. Then the halved grape tomatoes and finally the diced jalepenos and garlic. Sprinkle the cilantro over the top and the salt as well. (If you're not a cilantro fan, and I know a LOT of you out there aren't, you can try to find Mexican oregano. Try your local Mexican grocery, that's where I've been successful. It's more fragrant and pungent but very tasty - use sparingly.) Then drizzle the lemon juice, lime juice and olive oil over the top, wrap it up and pop it in the oven.

Now, the filet I got tonight was a little thin so I only left it in the oven for about 20 minutes. For fatter filets I go a full half hour.

Amazingly, because of the tomato I imagine, I suggest a red wine pairing for this dish. I enjoyed a glass of Barons de Rothschild 2003 Bordeaux and it was perfect. It offset the citrus and tomato acidity quite nicely and was just mild enough not to exacerbate the tiny fire in my mouth because I actually used about 7 jalepeno rings instead of the 4 I suggested to you. But it was still bold enough not to be intimidated by the onion and cilantro.

Enjoy!

Drama Queen?

2007-01-26T16:58:00.000-08:00

The last couple of weeks have been tough. The holidays were equal parts wonderful and difficult. I've heard it said that we pay in equal measure for each moment of joy we experience with a moment of suffering and I've definately felt that to be true recently. It feels like the scales have been tipped in favor of suffering, but I'm trying to be Danish about it.

Recently, my employer announced that there would be cutbacks. They told us that they were planning to dissolve our office this month, that a new shrunken pool of positions would be created and that they would open them internally for us to apply for (and pretty much everyone else - with "some preference" for us) and that they would like to have everyone in place by May and that we'd be given our official walking papers then. And anyone who chose not to apply for one of these new positions would be done at the end of June. They would be given a severance package and sent on their way.

The instant they announced this, I put my resume out. I worked on cover letters, and started hunting. This job was always intended to be a sort of layover. A resume-building experience and it has been. But I've stayed too long as it stands working for an employer I don't believe in. So when a friend of mine gave me a posting for a job at a great organization, I was psyched. I put in my application and resume and waited. And waited. And waited. I heard nothing. Just when I had written them off, I got a call for an interview. I was thrilled.

I researched the company, I read interview tips, I talked with my bosses. (Who backed me 100% in my search for a new job. They've always known that I was better than my position.) I walked into that interview totally prepared and looked fantastic. I interviewed fairly well, I think. To be honest, I wasn't really sure. I flubbed a story about a challenge I overcame, I was obviously nervous. But I'm my own worst critic. Whatever, right? The nice part was that one of the panel members interviewing told me that I had done very well as I was shaking hands and walking out the door. Being a pessimist, I assumed she said that to all the candidates. Hey, there are people out there like that who have some sick compulsion to make everybody feel better. I've met them.

In this interview they talked little about the position itself. They talked mostly about their office, went through the obligatory behavioral questions. (The idea being that you have a better idea about someone's future if you understand their past and current habits.) Which, I must say I infinately prefer to the old interviews where they asked you that dreaded question. That question to which there is no good answer save tired cliche. The question that you could never be truly honest about. "What is your greatest weakness?" Now, once upon a time the fashionable answer was, "I'm a perfectionist." Or, "I'm too hard on myself." When the honest truth is probably something like, "I'm 15 minutes late to work everyday, I play online when I'm bored, and I sneak an extra cigarette in the last half hour of the day to make the time pass more quickly." Or, "I release SBD's into the wild like they were going out of style." Or, "Seriously, I'm just a complete mess. I cry at the drop of a hat."

A week later I get a call for a second interview. I blow off an all-staff meeting announcing all the changes in our offices and others - which I felt really good about. While everybody else was enduring the painful news I was out getting a new job. Good for me.

I looked even better for this interview. Seriously, it was 60° outside the last time I condescended to wear stockings and a skirt. And it's cold in this city in January. But I threw on my best cashmere coat and shiny little flats and walked in that office looking kick-ass. It was the best second interview of my life. I sat down with the Director of the office and she told me right off the bat that mine was the only name the panel put forward for a second interview. That I had come highly recommended and that meeting me, she was inclined to agree. (Kinda makes you wonder what a sorry bunch the other applicants were, doesn't it?) She told me all about the position, what would be expected of me, what I could expect from them. Then... she mentioned the pay.

Now, I had walked into the interview being rather curious about the P/T LTE tags on the posting. I knew P/T was Part-Time and that LTE was Limited Term Employment. How part-time? How limited was this term of employment going to be? So I asked about it. I was given a reasonable number of hours per week, sometimes more when an event or project that I was working on required it. And that the LTE tag was kind of meaningless at that office because everybody was technically limited term and served at the "CEO"'s whim. From budget year to budget year. I left feeling pretty good.

When I walked into the second interview, the hours changed. They were less than originally thought - but when she mentioned the pay, everything was okay again. I did the math when I got home and I was still doing just fine. So, I walked out with a new job. Thrilled. Pleased. Proud. They said the HR Department would contact me with a formal offer and I was on my way to meet up with my considerably less than thrilled co-workers for a "Pink Slip" party.

So I waited. Friday went by without word. Monday like Friday before and on in this fashion until finally on Thursday (Putting us at a full 5 business days) I had gone neurotic and called. The HR Laision apologized, said that they were just overwhelmed in his office and that he'd either get back to me by the end of the morning or the early afternoon. That I should have my offer on paper today or tomorrow.

The morning passed and nothing. I had meetings but I was still on pins and needles waiting. I'd been crazy for days. Word had spread like wildfire in my office (trust in the office gossip mill and you will never go wrong) so much so that the day before I called I had no less than 9, yes - I counted, 9 people asked me if I had gotten my formal offer yet. Finally in the afternoon the HR rep calls me back and gives me some unsettling news. He said that the Director should never have mentioned pay. That she had overstepped her boundaries and that pay was determined by the HR Department people and they were having to take another look at my experience and qualifications. That without being able to mention specifc figures, given her word, I would have been paid more than a position above me and that person had already accepted their offer. They either had to find a way to justify that, or they were going to have to offer me less. Needless to say, I was not thrilled.

I was, in fact, completely furious. I raged to my friend who had given me the post, the friend who had worked there forever, "THIS IS BAIT AND SWITCH!" I said. First the hours, now the pay? How can this many people have their heads up their asses? How can this many people be so woefully misinformed? How can they do this? This is bordering on unethical! I raged. I thought about it all night. Woke up at 2:30 in the morning still angry. But by morning, I was just completely depressed. Terribly disillusioned. I had been so excited, so proud. I was getting out of my hell-hole. I was moving on to a great opportunity. This position, I was told in the second interview, had the possibility to move to a full-time salaried position and the salary mentioned was FAT. Now, it wasn't for certain... but she was pretty sure. Again, I had been thrilled. Silly me. Really, how silly I felt. If it sounds too good to be true... what a fool.

So, I got to work in a state. Where I had been holding my head up high as walked the halls late last week and early this week, strutting. I was limp as a wet noodle today. Near tears, wondering just how low this new lower pay was going to be.

I had changed my Gmail tagline to "Bait and Switch" and my sister IMed me over gmail. (We call it GIMPing. Gmail Instant Messenger Pimping. I love my sister... mostly.) I told her what was going on. How upset I was, how angry. She commiserated for about two very short sentences and then told me to "Quit being a drama queen, the woman just made a mistake." I told her I was surprised she would say something like that. That I expected sympathy. She pointed me to three words. I said, well it was the drama queen thing that I took exception to. She said she thought she was giving me a pep talk. I said, well, I can't hear you and I read that as chiding. She basically said that she could hear what I sounded like and she wasn't dealing with it and signed out. That sent me right over the edge. I started tearing up. I wrote her an email telling her everything that was going on why I felt like that was a hurtful thing to say and she responded with defensiveness, reproach, by repeating her indictment of me as a drama queen (which I might be but you don't want to hear that when you're upset), and indignity. I was so angry I sobbed. (If this sounds like a bunch of girlish idiocy to you ((it is)), you don't have a sister. "And she was like, and I was like, OMG!" is kinda par for the course.)

I waited until afternoon to do anything with the offer because I think I just totally had a meltdown that morning. All the poison in our office, all the fear in my co-workers eyes, some personal things I have going on, the stress of this whole new job snafoo just got to me. I'm not sure I'm sorry about what happened with my sister but by the time lunch was over I had pulled it together enough to send an email to the Director and the HR Liasion asking about the future of the position (I'd kinda like her to put something in writing about that this time, ya know?), and called the HR guy to put in a counter-offer. We had discussed the possibility of some wiggle room with the pay and I wanted to see if that would pan out. I got no response from either but hey, it was Friday afternoon. My office looks like a ghost-town by 3:00 and I didn't get a chance to put out that stuff until after 3:00. So, it's a wait and see.

But honestly, I really have to wonder what's going on there. How in god's name do you send a panel in to an interview without them knowing, unquestioningly, what the hours are? How, do you as a director, walk into an interview not knowing what you can and cannot mention? And how do you, as an HR Liasion make it so that I can deduce within a few dollars, what the other person they've hired is making? When I get their counter-offer, should it be more, I'll have an even better idea. A little questionable in my mind. But the job still sounds like a great opportunity but I definately keenly feel that I'm taking a chance. If I fall... there are always other jobs out there. And school is looking more and more attractive all the time. But even school, I don't think... you know, degree or no degree, won't protect me from this kind of stuff. It's just disheartening.