sizzling

this ain't our radiator. ours are covered in someone else's cat hair and peeling lead paint. in order to move in, trevor actually had to swear to our landlord that we wouldn't eat paint chips and sue them later.


so. yesterday i burnt my ass on the radiator in the bathroom. the fucking thing is located across from the toilet, so when stepping out of the tub, you have to dry off in a tiny little area between the searing hot radiator or the toilet (ewwww), so of course, being me the girl genius, i choose to stay closer to the radiator. i've bumped into it dozens of times before, and may i just say in my own defense that it's never been that hot before. i look like i sat on a george foreman grill. seriously. kudos to trevor for keeping straight face when i burst out of the bathroom shouting a string of curses and pointing accusingly at my own right glute.

i can't be mad at the radiator, though, no matter how hard i try. i've never lived with such a device before. they are hard-working and they keep my ass toasty! (bing! sorry, couldn't resist.) yesterday's temperature high was FIVE fucking degrees, and you could wear shorts in our apartment, despite its old-as-dirt windows that are basically sieves. i can't stay mad at the radiator. it keeps us warm despite the myriad obstacles threatening to freeze us.

californians don't know shit about radiators. we have really dumb heating systems like central forced air, or those lame electric wall units that basically just roast the wall around it. my first suspicions that non-california areas had it good were when my sister, who went to law school in boston, got fed up one day with our freezing-ass cold apartment in san francisco and started shouting, "what the fuck?! why the fuck is it so cold in here? i had an apartment in boston and i was never cold! it's 60 degrees outside and 40 degrees inside! what the fuck?!"

i remember when she called me at the start of winter her first year in boston, and she was like, "dude. cw. there's ice on the ground here, and the sun shines on it all day long, and it doesn't melt." i was impressed. that was indeed some cold-ass shit she was living in. but at least her apartment was warm!

because i appreciate being warm indoors (having been deprived of it most of my life), and because i am so thoroughly impressed with how effective these damn radiators are, i am willing to overlook such shortcomings as the drum solo / boiling kettle whistle noises that are apparently required for steam radiators to work. trevor occasionally gets annoyed when the radiators kick on in the middle of the night (there's one near the foot of the bed), but if i wake up to the sweet noise of heat coming on, i consider it a lullaby and continue to snore. so what if it looks like i grilled my ass on a weber. my eyes have been opened.

spectacularly... exhausted

my friend dana convinced another friend and i two years ago to head down to the post street williams-sonoma for the mario batali book signing. so we dutifully purchased our new molto italiano copies, stood in line, and met the famous chef batali ever so briefly. he was very nice.

since then, i've cracked the cookbook dozens of times, thumbing through the recipes and dreaming about a day when i'd have guanciale at my disposal, or if i'd ever head to a specialty butcher and fearlessly request those special lamb shank cuts. i've braved one or two of the simpler recipes - pasta, always - and today i decided to put the snowy, freezing day to use and make some food.

i decided on the turkey meatballs and basic tomato sauce. easy enough, right? cut to five hours later - i'm dead on my damn feet. his recipes are awesome, but i feel like i need to go into retirement for a bit just to get some energy back. damn. down an emergen-C just to replenish my electrolytes and shit.

i informed trevor that we are eating sandwiches or whatever the hell tomorrow that doesn't require cooking or dishes. call it the post-batali effect.

mixed pancakes, mixed news

sunday mornings are good when you have pancakes and coffee. trevor this morning asked how i felt about making pancakes or omelettes, which i indulge because i love the hell out of some breakfast and getting him to skip his uber-healthy kitchen sink breakfasts (yogurt, banana, grape nuts, whatever nuts he finds in the cupboards, possibly more fruit, chocolate chips on occasion) for a leisurely sunday eye-opener is just fine with me. i found the image online because we killed the entire batch, leaving not a one to photograph. yes, the recipe was supposed to yield about 12 pancakes, and we ate all of them. don't say i didn't warn you. i dug some random recipe for lemon pancakes out of the Joy of Cooking. I love my dad's half-wheat buttermilk blueberry pancakes, but i don't have blueberries or buttermilk or a hand mixer to beat the shit out of egg whites. once in china out of desperation i beat egg whites into soft peaks by hand with a whisk, and that was not fun. shall not repeat. i'm old school about things, but not commuting by horse-drawn wagon old-school.

so i'm heading back to see the fams next week, with trevor in tow. we have happy plans to see the redwoods, see the wineries, and gulp some oysters at one of the farms. i can't wait. i called and talked to my grandma yesterday, who, not surprisingly, didn't realize i was gone and where i was calling from. her senility is charming in small doses, and i'm anticipating in a somewhat evil manner how she'll take to trevor. i'm assuming she'll keep mini-forgetting who he is, and hoping that she'll be rude enough to ask, "who YOU?" preferably while we're eating. grandmas are fun that way.

in other non-pancake news, i received from cyn the very sad news that our favorite girl has cancer.



she is our love, and shy of her ninth birthday. her funny knee knob turned out to be a sort of fast moving cancer - we're guessing bone cancer, but mining info from vets in podunk, china is retarded. one of our friends from college lost his rottie to a rare cancer when she was quite young, so neither of us is surprised, but it's so sad. she's the best girl ever, and the smartest dog i've ever known. cyn's going to spend xmas hanging in podunk with kodi odi odi and her dad. i'm trying to dig out the corn cob-eating vid, but no luck as of yet.

a little entertainment

just a general discussion

it's been snowing lightly all day, the temperature in the teens and dropping now that the sun has gone down. after today, the weather on the weekend will be back up in the 50s and 60s. it was in the 60s two days ago and i wore a t-shirt in the park. all of this yo yo-ing can probably account for my current outfit of long johns, cutoff shorts, wool socks, and flip flops. i can't decide if i'm hot or cold, and my sinuses got pissed trying to figure it out and went on strike again. so i've had the blinds pulled up and have been watching the snow blow by with what feels like cement setting in the little cavities situated around my head. i'm already prone to being spaced-out, but having more or less a constant sinus infection can really push me into the alternate universe.

i did manage to fashion the trough of leftover canned pumpkin and the large bowl of leftover cranberry sauce into some damn good pumpkin cranberry bread. this is one of my questionable talents: when totally spaced out and left to my own devices, i tend to decide that random-ass shit is a good idea, like baking double batches of holiday treats. at least i execute the task well. trevor came home from his admin law final, crashed out for a couple of hours, and is now happily plowing through the loaf.