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.

the answer is, probably

"i don't need a guy to get my shit done, to get what i want out of life," writes my friend, d. "so where is a guy going to add value? i need a guy who's going to partner with me and share the work. not someone who i have to take care of in addition to myself."

d and i were chatting today, catching up as she finishes her third year at a top law school, and as i flounder in a strange city, looking for work and questioning my direction. co-habitation was a common thread for both of us when we worked together nearly three years ago, she in a solid long-term relationship that was going well, and me in an unhappy, burdensome relationship that could attribute its longevity more to the american visa complications than any actual emotion on my part. now, as she has navigated her way around the dating scene in the limited pool of her law school, summer internship locations, and now a european exchange program, and i have (bravely, or foolishly, depending on the day) resigned from an amazing and overwhelming job in shanghai and relocated back to america to a strange city in the name of love and a future, we continue to commiserate.

two independent, intelligent women, we have always seen eye-to-eye on gender roles, simultaneously incredulous at what was expected of us as women in domestic partnerships or society in general, disgusted and critical of the apparent doubling of work for women in the doubling of apartment occupancies, instead of the division of labor that you one would predict mathematically, if somewhat naively.

we have sussed out that the type of male doesn't seem to matter. metrosexual, designer grooming product-using, french cooking technique-deploying boyfriends displayed similar feints at helplessness as the sports-loving, indiscriminate beer-swilling types. arrogant or humble, well off or deeply embedded in school debt, open or emotionally stunted, the results were always the same. when chores are split, say by the common i-cook, you-clean technique, we females seemed to create more work for ourselves. after meals are cooked and consumed - during which the majority of the pots and pans would be generously washed by the cook - the rest of the dishes would be blearily found the next morning to still bear traces - or outright remnants - of the meal from the night before. re-wash the dishes, sigh with annoyance. after a handful of these episodes, inquire politely about the dish-washing technique of the household male. dish soap depletion has accelerated, so it can't be that not enough soap is used. perhaps soaping the sponge and washing each item with the water shut off instead of throwing the liquid around and creating an ineffective and wasteful foam party would work better? snip, snap, the female is "nagging." the male doesn't believe that the dishes he washes require a second go-round. produce the proof and again we are nags. so the choice now is either to continue to inquire/guide/snap/nag, or to silently fume and re-wash dishes in silence.

i, for one, am not a martyr. he will learn to wash dishes properly so help me god. wanting a cereal bowl to be clean and not encrusted with last night's rice is not unrealistic. i am not going to compensate for his laziness and therefore add to my existing workload when he is the one that can correct his behaviors like the adult he is. ok, so perhaps it doesn't help that i frequently ponder aloud if he was raised by a pack of wolves, or just a single wolf. does he open cereal boxes with his feet or hand it to the nearest tasmanian devil for assistance? how many mornings will i stumble into the kitchen for a coffee mug and come away with grape nuts embedded in the soles of both feet?

interpreting the cleanliness level of the house is also an on-going discussion. at this point in time, i am the sole house cleaner (floor sweeper and mopper, laundry washer and dryer, bed maker, toilet scrubber and disinfecter) for the reason that i am unemployed and have nothing better to do, and the household male is in law school. i tell myself that when i find work, there will need to be a schedule mapped out and more guidance on what makes a sink disgusting and what makes it clean. how often a toilet should be scrubbed and why it is important. how to sweep hardwood floors where the dirt is actually captured and disposed of, and not just stirred around. call it nagging if you want, but we will not live in the continuation of a college frat house.

in doing this, in telling myself that the division of labor will be righted again when i have my own gig going on, i am soothing the equalist in my head. i am promising to her, no i am committing that i will not perpetuate gender oppression and will continue onward with my values and ideals. but every day is a compromise. now that studying for finals is upon us, i feel like an outright servant some days. i resent it, and being me, i let it be known. to be fair, he recognizes how dependent he is on my daily work, and how much more work i do than he, and how i feel about it, and even claims to feel badly. but how long will that last, and does that guarantee that the work contributions will change?

if i do procure a great, stimulating, career-forwarding job and the household male does the same, and we then outsource the domestic duties to someone else (who will likely be both female and of color), am i failing what i've promised to myself? am i perpetuating the oppression of another woman?

fatted and happy

oh brined thanksgiving turkey malurkey! how do i love thee? let me count the ways:

1. thy white meat dragged through pools of cranberry sauce and eaten with fingers
2. thy leftover scraps piled onto toasted wheat with mayo and black pepper
3. thy carcass the base of our post-thanksgiving jook
4. thy tail, cold and congealed and salty and delicious, excavated from the scrap pile at midnight and devoured in secret
   
5. other flesh of thine, mixed with stuffing and doused in gravy from thy bones, reheated for the next two days and eaten with flourish

we just started our leftover pillaging for the day and it has indeed been a most pleasurable exercise.

vroom vroom turkey

finding a brining container for a turkey is a bitch. i hit up three places before finding a stockpot big enough. i had an easier time doing this in china. i was hoping to find a version of the old school granite ware pot my dad uses, but apparently modern peoples who shop at target don't cook anything bigger than a chicken. i finally ended up driving to this weird restaurant supply office-slash-store-slash-warehouse and buying an industrial stockpot from this soft-spoken, dumbo-eared salesman. he's the type that acts polite to your face then probably makes really nasty female jokes behind your back. creepy.

i made the cornbread and pie crusts yesterday, and bought all the herbs and shit the day before at this joint called vitamin cottage natural grocers. wtf?! why does everything here have to have some sort of folksy reference in order to exist? that shit wasn't no cottage - it was a damn store. get over it.

anyway. i found nice chestnuts at the korean superstore (KOREAN CHESTNUTS on the sign in big letters. i guess they're better?) and they're roasted and ready to be peeled. drat. this sort of stuff is much more fun with my sister and my grandma at the breakfast table. here i have trevor cramming for finals, singing 'she's crafty' at the top of his lungs.

this afternoon i'll slide our 11-pound birdie into a vat of chez panisse brine and call it a day. TURKEY DAY!!!!!!!! the best holiday ever. i miss being at home, but since i haven't been home for 2 years on thanksgiving and my sister and cousin are in asia on vacay, i guess having a football-playing, kegger-craving bf who enjoys my food a lot but can't cook or chop to save his life is an ok replacement. he's a good cheerleader and is willing to accept that i don't want to attend a thanksgiving day kegger with some of his peripheral friends. the description of the meal as it was pitched to me went like this: "you should go to john's house for thanksgiving. they're getting a keg and a ton of red wine." no mention of food, and so i mentally vetoed our attendance right then and there. thanksgiving is a huge ordeal (in a good way) as i was raised, and it's all about the food. as a concession, we are going over afterwards with a pumpkin pecan pie to placate trev's beer cravings. i bet he just wants to do a keg stand or a beer bong.

i also don't like eating early. this other dinner will be at 4 pm, which i find bizarre. we always eat thanksgiving, christmas, and easter dinners at dinnertime, when it's dark outside and you're extra hungry. it's weird chowing down on piles of meat and grease-soaked carbs when the sun is still out. call me crazy, but that's my take.

anyway, off to peel these $)#%&^ chestnuts. at least they smell good.

catty is coming

not til late december or possibly january. southwest doesn't ALLOW animals now (wtf?) so i have to make other arrangements for her ass. but it's exciting! someone to keep me company during the days provided i remain unemployed through the new year. i just bought her a crate for her trip (finally), at the prodding of my sister who is sick of taking her ass to the vet all ghetto-style in one of these,


which is what i brought her home from the spca in. it's so battered she's learned to punch the top and work her way out.

we are really looking forward to getting a dog at some point, but it won't happen for a while since our building is cool with the felines but not so with the canines. sad. soon, hopefully. meanwhile we both gawk shamelessly at all of the pups that pass by in the park and the street, to the point where people probably wonder what the hell these two weirdos are staring at, and checking their noses and wiping their faces.

clean meat

a resource for you burgeoning beyond-organic / beyond-grassfed eaters out there, the best resource i have found thus far:

http://eatwild.com/

60 seconds

http://oneminutewriter.blogspot.com/

cute idea. the topic for the day is "writing. if you had the opportunity to write as a career, what would you write?"

go!

i would write a human interest column in a paper or a well-respected blog. i would have the freedom to write about my pets as much as a cool design firm. it would be interesting, personal, and rooted in fact when it needed to be.

time's up!

my dilemma

so i am reading this book, one that will likely assume the title of most influential book of the decade. for me, anyway. i stole it from my dad, with promises to bring it back at christmas since he's only about a tenth of the way through.

it essentially details the progression of the industrialized american food chain from inception (roosevelt-era legislation in reaction to the depression and WWII) to today, and details some of today's more radical beyond-organic farmers. it also takes a close look at USDA guidelines for organic foods and the business of organic industrial food raising. it isn't preachy, it's more of a long, leisurely inspection - i suppose a nod to pollan's extensive journalism background.

yesterday trev and i went to safeway for weekly food shopping and to poke around at the turkeys that safeway was offering for the unlikely price of $4.99 or $7.99. in the back of my head, i am constantly re-positioning my food purchase decisions based both on what i am reading in this book and what i have learned from being a bay area-ite and having friends who are deeply immersed in beyond-organic, sustainable farming and food philosophies, and what is realistic for a household consisting of one unemployed person and one student. is whole foods any better than safeway, really? yes, likely, but whole foods is still a warehoused chain with national distribution, meaning that the organically-raised greens or free-range chickens are still trucked an average of 1500 miles to reach me. i agree wholeheartedly that i need to stop expecting food to be cheap and start thinking critically about where it comes from. i went so far as to google CSAs in colorado in an effort to buy locally. but then i think critically at my checking account, and think about the possibility of being jobless for another 3-4 months, and head to safeway or king sooper and whip out my preferred shopper card.

i am eating beef that feeds on corn instead of biologically-appropriate grass, stuffed with antibiotics to minimize infections caused by wallowing in its own manure. i am eating chickens who have never seen the light of day and are slaughtered at 7 weeks old, and are fed scraps of its own kind mixed in with antibiotics . i am eating produce slathered in pesticides and herbicides, picked by vastly underpaid migrant workers who live in deplorable conditions. i am paralyzed in the snack aisle, trying to decide between kettle chips made in boulder (locally produced!) but more expensive per ounce, or kettle chips distributed out of oregon which i can find even in china, on sale 2 bags for $6. i take so long deciding which are less evil that the elderly woman waiting for me to get the @(%*$ out of the way sighs and moves on to the next item on her list. i mumble constantly to myself, and analyze the ingredient list on every package, picking out as many corn-based ingredients as i can in an effort to disqualify each product. i select the tabasco brand bloody mary mix because it doesn't contain high fructose corn syrup. (there's thinkin!) i buy yellow squash that's grown locally instead of the california-grown artichokes that cost nearly $2 a pop. i sigh when trevor comes home with those same artichokes because he knows i love them.

it takes me over an hour to buy 10 items because i am constantly debating pros and cons in my head. mostly, the expense concern wins out. i tell myself i will buy locally when i have a job. when trevor's school loans are paid down. when we're middle aged and i'm writing books and he's negotiating mergers.

dilemma indeed.

um, just something funny

http://www.nonchalance.org/

i just linked from sherry's blogroll and i have no idea what this website is about or who does it, but i found the randomness to be hilarious.

let's take a moment (warning: rant)

very happy about most of last night's results, not only because of the historic nature of the major event, but also because for this event, we chose the candidate whose intellect, temperament, and unifying message were what we actually needed, not what was marketed down our throats.

however, to be a total downer, would like to draw attention to california voters, who approved by 52.2% to 47.8% the ban on gay marriage, effectively worded to define marriage as between one man and one woman.

the bored busybody segment:
on a superficial plane, i just don't understand why those (who aren't part of the religious aspect of the debate) care whom marries whom. don't agree with same sex marriage? then don't marry someone of the same sex! otherwise, mind your own business!

this segment of the gay-hating population remind me of a psychotic mother of one of my schoolmates (warning #2: a long-winded story), who absolutely loathed me for reasons i can only postulate on. one guess is that i dated her daughter's ex-boyfriend after he broke up with her. another is that she was a racist fucking bitch. and yet a third is that she had frustrations about her own personal failures AND was a racist fucking bitch. anywho, she befriended the mother of my best friend, and actually wanted to brainstorm with her on how to get me out of the picture. i think that's actually how she worded it. this weirdo wanted her own daughter to be best friends with my best friend. (actually, i think she actually wanted me to be killed, but that's just my take.) thankfully, my best friend's mom declined the invitation to brainstorm, but this insane woman could frequently be found sidling into our teenaged activities, trying to be the 'cool' mom who hung out with teenagers (? that's another issue altogether. see? i told you she was nuts). regardless, she was some nosy-ass weirdo who imposed her insane mental delusions where they did not belong, and made me ask myself, "why are there people out there so bored that they act crazy? why don't these people go and get jobs and work their asses off like my parents, who don't have time to attmept to engineer relationships between 16-year olds? why can't she use her time constructively, like volunteering at a shelter, or start smoking bomb and roasting chickens to satiate her munchies, or doing something more interesting with their time?" so my take on one portion of the prop 8 supporters is that they are fucking busybodies who need to get a fucking life and stay out of everyone else's.

the jesus freaks:
the major segment of same sex marriage opponents cite religion as the reason. i read that churches fear that prop 8's failure to pass will force their religious institutions to recognize gay marriage in their church, and will prevent them from disallowing gay marriage ceremonies. this makes me wonder about their core beliefs on homosexuality. i want these people to clearly state for me what you think of homosexuality (from where it stems, why people are gay, and etc.) and then answer my questions below:

1. do you believe that being gay is a mindset? that it is a result of watching too much tv or reading the devil's work or playing video games or hanging out with heathens?
2. do you believe that people can be de-programmed of their homosexuality?
3. do you believe that people are intentionally choosing to occupy a portion of the population that is discriminated against and continuously harassed? against whom there are violent acts every day? who are beaten to death in numerous countries as a matter of religious expression? why do you think a person would subject him/herself to this instead of taking the easy 'n straight road? you think they just enjoy a good challenge?
4. how does one rid oneself of gayness?
5. would you disown your child if he or she was gay? refuse to see him or her again?
6. bonus question: didn't god preach tolerance and forgiveness above all? don't most of you believe that the big jc got nailed to a cross and then forgave the people holding the hammers? did he withhold this forgiveness from the gay hammer-holders? does he only love his straight followers?
7. bonus + question: regardless of whether you bigots believe that a person "chooses" to be or is born gay, do you realize that you support stripping citizens of their civil rights? that they should not be allowed to do what straight couples can do in legalizing their bond for social recognition or legal protection?
   
8. bonus ++ question: what do you think of willa cather, ellen degeneres, rock hudson, abraham lincoln, elton john, harvey milk, kevin spacey, william burroughs, tobias wong, jodie foster, david sedaris, alan cumming, queen latifah, james baldwin, beth ditto, sheryl swoopes, tom ford, k.d. lang, annie leibovitz, cole porter?
   

OBAMA!!!!!!!

sunny and 60s

feeling low this morning. or slow. often they are one and the same, or just difficult to distinguish from one another, or one begets the other. i didn't realize that there were midnight trains that ran through denver, or that they were within earshot of our apartment, but ran they did last night. noisily.

after a double-workout sunday, the exercise slate is clean today. the apartment, however, is not. trevor is ever so fond of the falling leaves of autumn, and demonstrates this by leaving bits of twigs and leaves everywhere. they fall from his cuffs when he sits on the futon, dangle from his bike tires, fall from the hoods of his jackets. it's from riding to and from school every day, but sometimes i don't wonder if he makes a pit stop on the way, leans his bike against a tree, and rolls in piles of leaves when no one is around. after a few beers, maybe.

i'm new to the fallen leaves phenomenon. i think every bay area neighborhood had a couple of trees here and there that shed leaves, but nothing like the piles that accumulate under trees, on my car, in my apartment here. at the risk of sounding grinchy, autumn is leaving a very messy impression on me. so i suppose the agenda today will consist of standing up from the futon and the endless job search (and resulting soul search) and sweeping this joint down. i'm finding bits of leaves on my bath towel, for the love of god.

sharing space

living with someone is always tricky. i've had a few roommates in my time - not many, thankfully for both them and me - and most of the time i spent at home was furiously cleaning up after them while i muttered constantly under my breath. i'm sure they were being normal people in terms of neatness and general hygiene, but i enjoy the rituals of unrealistic expectations.

i've lived with boys a few times, also. some were fine, others were less fine. i've made the discovery over the years that the more metro a guy is does not equate to a similarly high level of cleanliness at home. some dudes wear fancy clothes but are unrepentant slobs. living with trevor has been fine so far - he is pretty messy naturally, but pays a lot of attention to what pisses me off and doesn't do repeats. most of the time. it's admirable, actually. if someone told me one of my habits irritated them, i doubt i would spin a 180 that quickly, if at all.

i've always had a very specific set of notions for how things are. both my sister and my parents are bewildered at this 1950s stepford wife mentality and from where it came. some of it is an offshoot of my ultra uptight, stepford wife grandmother. others involve the fact that expensive things should be treated nicely. i have a number of textiles and home accessories that ostensibly cost an arm and a leg, even if i got them for $5. regardless, it all snowballs into an ocd-inspired set of values and procedures, my internal set of guidelines, how things are. you don't wait until the next morning to wash dinner dishes. you fold towels in thirds. you scrub your ears with soap and a washcloth every day. beds have hospital corners, not to mention you always use both types of sheet, plus a blanket, plus a comforter, when you make your bed. the flat sheet cuff is turned over the blanket and pinned in place. sheets and towels are washed every week. anything containing lycra does not go into the dryer. a meal must be accompanied by napkins. you take your shoes off when you step on the bath rug. you don't wear outside clothes on or in bed. it goes on.

as trevor has made many concessions for my sake, i've made a few of my own. hospital corners are completely unrealistic and essentially ensure that i will be kept up all night, with the possibility that trevor will earn a black eye. i don't know if he was frustrated egyptian royalty in his past life, but he has issues with tucked-in sheets and feeling bound. he now gets the flat sheet to himself to do as he pleases; often i wake up and he has fashioned a rather dashing sheet scarf that wraps around his upper section and dangles on the floor. this i do not understand. he apparently believes that comforters are 5-cornered stars, because he pulls only corners towards him, which explains why everything is sideways when i inevitably wake up at 3 am, uncovered and exceedingly irritated. i bash him on the back a few times, then straighten the comforter to proper plane vs. angle positioning. bathroom rugs are for complete fools, especially if they are light colored, or god forbid, white. the first day that my parents arrived, i unpacked a white-patterned bath rug and put it on the floor. about 30 minutes later it was trampled, embedded with leaves and twigs, and shoved into a corner. i repeated the shake-out and straighten for 14 more of these days before giving up, something i rarely do. we do not have bath rugs on the floor. they are clean and folded nicely in thirds in what i like to call the linen area.

i don't know by what miracle of fate or what odds exist, but i have found likely the single person on earth who finds these "quirks" - i.e. how things should be - endlessly amusing and not a problem. it's strange - sometimes i feel that he actually wants to learn how civilized, rigidly unbending people live. it's more puzzling to me that after receiving a few kidney punches in the middle of the night for a crime of which he is not aware, he takes to giggling before falling asleep again. anyway, i don't know but i'll take it.

when i start working, i'm sure my tone will change, since i won't have the leisure time that i do now to ponder the bath rug struggle, or the retirement of hospital corners. i'll probably resort to alternating grumbling with yelling, as i am known to do. we'll see.

lists

chatting with sherry this morning. the usual ball of creative energy that she is, her questions for me:

• so have you joined any clubs?
• why don't you get paid to write?
• did you go to the rally?

normally, i can confidently swat down any suggestions for me to harness my "talent" for anything useful or productive. but every now and then, a little voice - usually named "cyn" or "sherry" - tells me i need to shit or get off the pot. i'm afraid of a couple of things, namely:

1. whether turning a past time into a job will make me hate it
2. failure

the failure thing is a projection, too. i'm overly confident about myself in certain areas, and this is one of them. i fear failure because i probably should, not because i actually do.

anyway, just considering a couple of things for today, namely:

1. a new, much less personal blog that i can post on my multitude of social networking site profiles, mention on job applications, or whatnot. looking at the different hosting sites for this one. not because i'm unhappy with blogger, but it'd be nice to see what else is out there.
   
2. the other item i'm pondering is whether i should tell the business world to pound sand and instead start looking for blogs to contribute to and start my own writing shit. i'm crazy unmotivated on this one, but i can't deny this sneaking suspicion that keeps lurking in my noodle that i really actually kind of hate working in an office and having to wear this "aggressive" disguise to be "taken seriously" in the sort of jobs that i attract.

so those are my musings for this lovely monday in denver.

weekend of hiking

i didn't have nearly as terrible a time breathing during our weekend hikes as we thought i would. on friday we drove about 50 minutes to golden gate canyon state park and did a leisurely 4 mile stroll along raccoon trail:











we missed the fall colors peak a few weeks ago, but it was still really pretty. it's nice to take advantage of the time we have as a student and an unemployed person as well as see colorado for the time we'll be here. afterwards we decided to unwind from all of that unspoiled beauty by stopping by boulder for some beers and food, taking a small, 2-lane highway called something like the boulder canyon highway. we had just passed some reservoir when a friggin mountain lion loped out onto the highway, about 5 yards in front of my hood, and continued on to the other side of the road.



not my image... but you know that. pretty, eh?

we were so shocked, i think the only noise i made was ummmmmmmmmmmm.... whooooaaaa... or something to that effect. mountain lions are relatively common in the east bay, but i've never laid eyes on one, and i've certainly never had one run in front of my car. jesus christ that was cool. we still can't stop talking about it. they are bigger in life than i pictured in the dancing cartoon world that is my head.

saturday we decided we needed to see more mountain lions, and drove about 2 hours to rocky mountain national park. as warned, this joint is fucking busy on weekends so we had to check a couple of alternatives before landing on the bierstadt lake option, and then hiking down to bear lake. no bears, sadly. or fortunately, if you're smarter than me.

that hike was pretty long, about 7-8 miles, and after the five hours were over, i was ready for a huge amount of food and a hot tub. hiking is fun because you can eat about 4-5 meals in a day, and you can include those salt and pepper kettle chips without feeling bad about them. the scenery can be nice, too.



view from the top of the 1 mile of switchbacks right after the trailhead



bierstadt lake



a lot of the trail was this idyllic, foresty shit. nice.


we didn't see any more mountain lions, but we did see little twerpy things like a chipmunk, and this little thing -




which trevor claims is a chipmunk despite the fact that we actually saw a chipmunk and it was normal and stripey looking. i maintain that this is some sort of alpine squirrel. but anyway, they're ballsy little fuckers, but i guess you have to be if you live at 10,000 ft. and are the size of a holiday cheese ball.

for these hikes, i broke out my only piece of fleece wear, in the form of pants. pants that flood, too.


hungry human species in native fleece wear

applause. yes, i know, i really need to shoot down to my nearest patagonia and rectify the lack of fleece in order to fit in here, but i'm putting it off as long as possible. to be fair, the few coloradoans that i have actually met weren't wearing fleece... just football jerseys. this town is filled with avid sports fans to the point where i definitely stick out for my sports ambivilance. but that's another post altogether.

our apartment

let's get down to business. despite the fact that i am not yet employed and trevor is in school, it continues to deeply bother me that we still have our tv / vcr / dvd craps on the floor, and that we are sitting on a red futon that is actually broken besides being very ugly.

yesterday i took the second step towards civilization by ordering this:





from west elm. yes, i used to work for the company that owns this brand. anyway.

i bought the one in the front - as it was the one on sale - with the idea that we will put our old 25" tube tv on it, with components to the side. it is not a media stand in any way, mostly because it is a shade too tall for the idea tv height, about which i don't give a shit. i care that it will give our electronics a home, plus i can put the cable modem and wireless router and all that other crap a place to live that is NOT a stack of old new yorkers on the floor. and have some cubbies to spare for some of my own shit, since trevor has DOMINATED the shelves in the living room with such worthless titles as, if it pleases the court, civil procedure, and administrative law. i had to bully him into a 18" space for my cookbooks and a framed photo of a japanese horse. don't ask.

i dragged trevor to the brick and mortar store yesterday to see if the 'rolling storage' is strong enough to support a heavy-ass tv, and we think it is. unfortunately, this version on sale is not available at the store, so i had to blow an additional $54 on shipping surcharges and the shipping itself. i try not to be bitter because i know for a fact that companies - concerning furniture - do not make money on shipping. they usually lose money. but shipping sure is damn expensive when you don't have a 40% discount on everything any more.

i digress.

of all of the unexplainable forces in nature, denver does not have an ikea. the entire fucking state of colorado doesn't have one .utah has a goddamned ikea and colorado does not. i really don't know where to begin on that one so i won't, but suffice to say it's an incredible bitch. say what you will about ikea, but it really is the place to go for people on an incredibly tight budget. anyway, so i have to be creative and open-minded about things. we went to this horrific store called american furniture shithole warehouse for a cheap couch and ended up fleeing in horror. trevor couldn't identify what exactly he found wrong about the place, just that it was filled with ugly and scary things: "why is that leather couch two-toned?" "wow, they make couches in turquoise pleather?" "are those CUP HOLDERS built into a couch?" and etc. you COULD purchase a sofa for around $300, but, as i pointed out, you would then want to shoot yourself in the head every time you came home and saw it. so, we ruled out daily suicide and continue to sit on the red futon monster. it does make your ass fall asleep after an hour, but it was free and from a reliable source - thanks, fagas! - and, what's more, it was already sitting in the living room when i arrived.

on a random note, when i first arrived here in d-town and started shopping around for home decor ideas - as i will do even though i have no job - i discovered that west elm has knocked off the niche modern lights that i (and the rest of the world) love:





each of these babies costs about $1000, so i guess i see why, but i won't do it. i will wait until i can afford the real deal. those and one of the george nelson bubble lamps... one day.

cold snap

oops. i guess my last post seemed pretty bummed and i may have mildly alarmed some folks out there. compounded by my jokingly sulky pics on facebook. not to worry, i'm doing just fine. one day of boredom and loneliness (a couple of hours, really) is bound to happen when moving to a brand-new city, no?

my sister called yesterday to check in and was sad to learn that i am living without cable, even. that's right, we have rabbit ears on top of a vcr that sits on the floor next to our tv. i've been spending my days on the internet (countless hours), emailing and reading celebrity trash blogs and the ny times. i'm three days and two classes into my free week of yoga at a great studio nearby, which has made me feel immensely better about things. trev and i are looking into bikes for me before the weather gets too cold. i test rode a couple of treks last week and although i should afford this one, i really want to afford this other one. of course i test rode both and why test drive the bmw when you can only afford a pinata? don't ask. i just had to know how it felt.

i've also been cooking a lot. doing quite well considering the lack of affordable produce compared to california. stuffed yellow zucchini? check. roast chicken with garlic and lemon and thyme? check. vegetable soup and baked butternut squash? check and check. tonight i'm enjoying the pedestrian delight known as a baked potato stuffed with broccoli and pecorino tuscano. it's yummy and simultaneously giving me lsd flashbacks. (long story.) trev and i had a huge vietnamese feast for lunch, which i topped off with a 5:30 tea time of jamon serrano and havarti on crackers. yes, i am not suffering for eats here.

anyway, talk soon. blogger has a scheduled outage in 2.

dark room

never mind the beetlejuice reference, but my whole life is a dark room. ok not really, but i do spend an awful lot of time butt-down on our ugly red hand-me-down futon in the living room, which is damned dark as rooms go. it's a rainy saturday afternoon and i'm taking stock of my sitch. not nearly as melodramatic as it sounds, fortunately. trevor just left for the bars to meet with one of his friends who has called at least 5 times since i arrived to hang out, and whom he has turned down each time. we agreed that it was time to show his face. ideally i would have been sunshine cheerleader and cried out, 'YES! that's exactly what i want to do, babe! let me go put on my face and grease up my hair so i can sit on my can in some rank-smelling dive spending $4 per beer to pour into my inert listless body!'

predictably, i instead opted to give him the silent treatment until he tried that tres annoying tactic of cheerfully suggesting wholesome activities i could engage in while he was racking up a bar tab. oh no. i told him not to bring up yoga in all of its sacredness just to assuage his guilt. if i felt like sulking, bored out of my mind, in a dark room, listening to gen y suicide-inducing grunge tracks while cruising dog-rescue sites, i will do just that. if i want to drive myself to cherry creek mall to inhale the smell of commerce (no, not in the morning, but you already knew i was heading towards that mallrats reference), then i will do that. if i felt like going and twisting myself into a pretzel, i would do that, as well, but i sure as hell don't need captain america to suggest that shit to me. i'm alone in a strange city where i know no one but the eternally reliant person i am directing my insults towards. i will be sulky if i fucking feel like it.

thankfully, trevor is acres more cool than i am - i just make up for it by being articulate and clever, and he overlooks the bitchy part, what a good deal - and feels guilty and bad for ditching me for a bar, which fulfills my goal of making him feel shitty for abandoning my ass on a rainy saturday, while i secretly distract him from my outrageous childishness by stating all of the above out loud. cleverly, of course. (it's really funny and somewhat sad and terrible how well this tactic works to detract from your less-than-perfect personality.) anyway, i send him on his way amidst promises of text messages from bar stools while hanging out with people who wear patagonia fleece and crocs. ok, ok, the patagonia fleece is just a guess, i've never met these people, but i know about the crocs for sure, and that's worse than the fleece. they sound very nice, but i'm just not in the mood to hide the horror in my eyes when i see their outfits.

i need some friends. i need them so badly that i am too emotionally immobilized to contact the friends that i do have. what a conundrum. anyway, all my lazy bitches over there spread across a couple of continents do is read my blog for updates, anyway. it's a one-way valve, this blogisphere. alright, i guess that's not fair. i do get comments now and then. those are nice. i'll stop feeling cynical and somewhat sorry for myself. i knew what i was getting myself into.

on another note, isn't it a BITCH that knowing what kind of shit you're headed towards does absolutely nothing to temper the shittiness level? shouldn't recognition count for something? all it really does is make me look out at the pine tree next to my window and think, 'for fuck's sake! this really does suck as much as i thought it would!' i wish i could be a habitual drinker or dope smoker to sort of complete the pathetic-ness of the picture, but i never really took to either very well. free-flow at launch parties is another thing altogether. drinks go down so much more nicely when you're in heels.

trevor and i mention every once in a while (translation: daily) what we miss about china. trevor, being the fob that he is, misses not only his friends, but china itself, its language and surroundings. (i know what you're thinking - what surroundings are those?) i don't miss stupid china at all, but i miss my friends. i miss having a group of people around me full of ideas and energy who always have something interesting up their sleeves. maybe new york is different, but where i'm from and where i currently am don't have that same dynamic. there is something about being a transplant and needing to get something out of being in a foreign place. the fuel of temporariness, i suppose.

otherwise, things are going well as expected. i actually am not being as much of a brat as i was today. i've been making some damn saucy dinners, too. and yet, i don't feel like the brat description is accurate, really. it's not horrible to me that i don't feel obligated to go out and be in some stank bar in the middle of the day for the sake of getting out of the house. i really don't begrudge trevor ditching my ass (i just like the ring of the phrase) to sit in a bar with croc-wearing friends. it's just that the reality of it is that i am essentially in a city with no friends and no family. the one person i do know is great and supportive and fair and sunshiney to the point of needing a xanax, but i require more than one person on earth to keep me stimulated and happy, and more than one location, and more than one task. it's just how shit be.

halftime

kimchi ramen in an unfamiliar place restores faith in mankind. makes the scary and new a little less threatening. granted, colfax avenue's got nothing on the haight - or downtown oakland, for that matter - in terms of sketchiness, so i shouldn't be weirded. safe and benign is supposed to be good, right? is it wrong to feel reassured to see a crack ho wandering down the street? and double points if she's not white?

the apartment is working out - it's a building that was constructed in the 1920s, and some things are still original. like the kitchen sink. and the tile in the bathroom, which i actually like. i'm managed to cram my clothes into the bedroom closet plus half the hand-me-down wardobe, plus outerwear and sporting equipment in the front closet where trevor has his more modest accumulation of clothes. i bought shoe racks and a hamper at the container store. a mattress pad at bed bath + beyond. i am adjusting to being in the states, i think. slowly.

the co-habitation thing i am taking a day at a time. i think it's going well, never mind the nearly-lost house keys yesterday, and the door left open and unlocked while we were out. i have to get used to the fact that not everyone - ahem - is as obsessed with checking that the housekeys are still on their person as i am. and that the door is indeed not only closed, but locked. right? erm... right...

anyway, i've been watching more football than i've ever watched in my life, and beer has become a food group. sigh. i've only been here a week.

up and at 'em

morning after super 8 motel in winnemucca, nv



salt flats approaching salt lake city, ut







mormon temple, salt lake city, ut



pretty fall colors driving through wyoming


well, we're here! setting up the place and such. tv still on the floor, but at least our bed is in place and we're getting there.

countdown week

my food schedule for the remaining time, sent out last sunday:


monday: yaki closet
tuesday: marc's cooking
wednesday: issimo or tian jia
thursday: dingtaifeng or hotpot
friday: my ayi's house (anyone who wants to come is welcome... she ruvs people, but her place is the size of a coffee table)
saturday: par-tay! we are thinking spicy sichuan
sunday: jean georges bar menu


optional swaps or lunch dates:
jia jia tang bao
yang's sheng jian bao
southern barbarian
pane e vino
azul brunch



marc made us an amazing meal last night. we limped home holding our swollen stomachs. it was too good! we weren't worthy. we even started off with an appetizer, which was in addition to the award-winning cheeses and cured meats smuggled from home. when have you actually had a true appetizer not in a restaurant? one that included a seared scallop?

tonight is issimo. my first time; i'm quite excited. all of the cooler kids have been to issimo multiple times, but i am uninitiated. seriously, tho, it was dumb to kick off this week of eating with yang's sheng jian bao. six of them. they are no joke, and sherry went and bought chicken wings to top that off. and then i went to southern barbarian with the boys after muay thai that night, to get down on some yunnan fried goat cheese and more chicken wings. yes, because i am unabashed. that's how i roll, as jason would say.

i told jill last night that maybe i'd just order salad tonight, and she was like, yeah right. and i had to agree.

vermin

one of my favorite topics that i've touched on in the past posts is the gender divide; between trevor and myself, specifically. i write about it a lot because sometimes i'm incredulous about how eye-wash boys can be - as opposed to my every-single-iota detail focus, aka OCD - and other times it's just hilarious. trev roars with laughter when i start pointing out his more bizarre habits, which just makes me laugh, too. it's good he's so good natured about things, seriously, because there are a lot of habits and i am nickity pickity. and by gender divide, i am aware that i am generalizing - there are more than enough dudes who do NOT do as he does, and plenty of girls who are nothing like me. i refer more to our specific dynamic, but the 'trevor-carolyn' divide is too long to type.

so he gets the keys to our new place in the C-to-the-O tomorrow, and per our agreement based on my boxes of stuff, my particular tastes, my particular aesthetic, his particular lack of boxes, his particular disinterest, and his penchance to defer to me for the interior decor aspect of life, trev will be living without any dishes, glasses, flatware, linens, and very little furniture until i arrive in denver a month from now. he will sleep on a hand-me-down futon and watch a hand-me-down tv, but other than that the apartment will be empty. most people would find this unliveable, unbearable, sub-human, but you, ladies and gentleman, do not know trevor. in his words: "i'm like a cockroach, baby. i don't need anything to survive. i just exist."

truer words have not been spoken. an amazing talent for surviving on basically nothing, as long as he is relatively warm and there is food that is edible, this boy will survive. edible is also a negotiable term. as cyn puts it, "he can eat newspaper." he likes good food but tends to err on the side of cheap. it's of the deprive-now-for-later-benefits mentality. when i would fly up to beijing on weekends, he would frantically ask around for decent food spots from his more upper crusty friends (or i would arrive armed with places i wanted to see / experience / eat at) and he was always happy when i was happy. and now, the philosophy is much of the same - save money as much as possible until carolyn arrives with stuff and opinions. it sounds one-sided, i know, but if you know me and you know him... it makes sense. one of the things we like about one another is that we can do street stalls of ghetto dirty chinese, or martinis and steaks. he likes that i seek out nicer things and prettier, cooler spaces, but that i enjoy cheap hotpot or 2 am egg pancakes in front of parking lots. i like that he strikes a balance in me, lest i get too fancy or too wrapped up in materiality as i have the capacity for.

should i have saved this post for valentine's day?

olympic fever!

our favorite pic of the year!

now i don't feel so guilty

photo by dan washburn

for rolling in at 10:30 due to some serious storming. this was taken this morning not far from my old apartment (ha! i can say that now).

china's guy

this is cool:


http://tinyurl.com/3erplk


the cynic in me says that you can't piss off a consumer market of (potentially) upwards of 1 billion people, but i'm going to pretend nike / pingan et. al is feeling for him and the sentiment of his fans. yeah, i know, hearts and flowers shit is going to my head.

i have left the building

and i'm all moved into jill's place. the last installation in project goin'-back-to-cali.

pretty happy with my digs here. my own room (i'm surrounded on all sides by a ridiculous amount of my shit - remind me to get rid of some) and my own bathroom. sweet! and even a proper shower that doesn't leak.

one more week of work and one week of play and i'm out!

hilarious

some of the best copy i've read in a while. oh yeah, and they sell products. all 2 of them:


http://www.helpineedhelp.com/bored/

i want this

my own personal cloud!









http://www.momastore.org/museum/moma/ProductDisplay_Crystal%20Cloud_10451_10001_47773_-1_11557_16651_null__6H100

my turn - VGT's the omnivore's 100

http://www.verygoodtaste.com/ is a food blog based in the UK, and co-author andrew wheeler created the 'omnivore's 100,' or a list of things that every omnivore should have tried at least once in his/her life. i am not only an omnivore, i am a foodie from the bay area, so i think my results are both decent and underwhelming for my creed. my friends will all score evenly or higher i would think. anyway, for those of you who want to participate, here are the instructions:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at http://www.verygoodtaste.co.uk/ linking to your results.


1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile (i'm guessing alligator doesn't count?)
6. Black pudding (blood sausage and straight up blood count?)
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp (this one i am truly unsure about. chinese people eat everything.)
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper (highly unlikely... but you never know)
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar (i've had them separately... neither was too compelling)
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O (college and recent days, as well, sadly)
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk (does goat milk yogurt count?)
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer delicious
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV (those belgians)
59. Poutine (nope, but sounds delicious)
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin (i'm pretty sure i have had some kaolin-based medications)
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu (oh, china. thanks, steph!)
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant (for a future anniversary? trevor?)
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee (delicious. thanks, dinx)
100. Snake

amazing amazingness

it's been one of those weekends where i don't even know where to begin. sherry and i flew up to beijing to meet steph- who has been up there for the past 10-ish days for work - marc, her bf who flew up a day earlier to meet her, and our friend viv who is up in beijing to see her mom and catch some olympics.

it was somewhat of a small miracle i ended up going, what with the budget constraints and then a late-arriving and fairly debilitating flu that hit me friday morning. at any rate, come 4 pm, sherry came and picked me up in a cab, we made our way to beijing with only a 2 hour delay on our flight. directly from the airport we went to mao live, one of the live music venues in beijing, where steph's work was throwing this fucking amazing show/party featuring seven awesome local punk bands (more on that below) and z trip out of new york. he spun a fat show. i danced my flu away:










v for vachina








i finally left everyone at about 2:30 am outside of a bar in a hutong district nearby because my extra-strength tylenol wore off and my fever was back with a vengeance. so much fun. i must have scared the shit out of my flu, because the next day i woke up chipper and ready to roll to our FIRST olympic event - athletics qualifying rounds. thanks to sherry and her superior planning skills, we procured these tix the day before for about half what the other scalpers were charging:




women's 400 meter



the torch



herzog & de meuron's bird nest, sherry admiring in foreground







after at least an hour of post-olympic giddy times,




steph in purple, marc in red


we headed to the legation quarter, which is a project that my company did some work for to see maison boulud, daniel boulud's newest restaurant. not only did we get to hang out with chef boulud himself, who toured us around the restaurant,








the red room, ready for al roker!








that's chef daniel boulud to marc's left


thanks to marc's contacts - marc is an amazing chef also - we also got to see the kitchen, chat with the chef de cuisine, brian reimer, and managed to invite ourselves back for drinks that night. stoked! we are all intense foodies, so this was an incredible honor as well as being just an incredible experience. i mean, look at that kitchen! it's spotless. there are glass tiles on the walls for god's sake. the building restorations are really mind blowing, and i work for two exceedingly talented and famous architects, so that's saying something.

and on... we then went to boxing (light and midweights):



prelims

which were cool, but after a while, suffice to say the crowd got bored enough to start singing 'the star spangled banner' during a match when neither opponent was american. our favorite fight was india vs. thai, because we were able to stretch the curry vs. curry joke the entire night.


we went to pick steph up from mao live again, and caught the most fucking amazing beijing band, queen sea big shark. steph has been insisting on their greatness for months now, but only last night did i realize how stupid i was being in not immediately dropping everything i am doing and following them around everywhere. they are an incredible show. i now insist you visit their myspace page and listen to their stuff. 'man on the moon' was what got me, being a girl and it being a ballad and all. in fact, it's constantly looping as i write this.






after that, we made our very late way back to maison boulud, where we caught the chef at the bar drinking a beer, the restaurant completely empty. the extremely kind man that he is to us so very imposing group of people, he had his bartender make us delectable martinis from lychee / raspberry / rose-infused vodka, then disappeared behind closed doors to reappear with plates and plates of food that he had chef brian reimer prepare. i'm talking foie gras, country pate, three types of bread, and a impromptu terrine made from the leftover suckling pig from al roker's birthday celebration held there earlier that evening. i wish i was kidding (no, i don't), but it was that intense of a day. we were beside ourselves with joy. it was about 1:30 am at that point and i hadn't eaten dinner, so i was especially grateful and ecstatic.



my martini, with a formed ice cube encapsulating a rose petal. awwwww





what a weekend.