i'd rather be in pittsburgh...

2010-04-18T14:16:00.000-07:00

i guess it's been an industrious weekend, in a laid back sort of way. i canned 15 jars of meyer lemon marmalade (with lavender), which is always satisfying. my only complaint about this six hour endeavor is that the jarring part coincided with the start of the season premiere of doctor who (on bbc america). due to our crappy direct tv dvr being hinky we were forced to watch it in real time, so some of the middle 15 minutes it i only heard and caught glimpses of, but enough to still enjoy it. like the new doctor. wasn't sure i would, what with my resistance to change and all.

today i mowed and weeded the front yard. doesn't sound like much but we let the grass get way too high. attacking that with an old fashioned rotary blade push mower was no fun but i prevailed! now it only looks kind of culchie. in a few minutes i will hem drew's new pants. can't have him back at work looking all shabby in pants that aren't comfy. that wouldn't do at all.

tomorrow will be three months since devin died. i still can't believe it. with how sad i've been you'd think i would. you'd think it would be pretty fucking clear to me, but it still doesn't seem real in a way. i miss him so much. that doesn't even begin to cover it. when i think about never seeing devin again my whole body feels heavy and my tummy hurts. and i start to cry, of course. i think that's what i need to do... i think i need to go curl up in a ball in the bathroom and have a good old cry. i don't know why i like to cry in the bathroom, sitting on the floor with my back to the tub. maybe because there's usually an 80% chance herbie will join me, if he's in the house. or hitachi-san... they are vying for supremacy in the bathroom turf war. why it's such valuable real estate is beyond me.

i worry about my family, too. i worry about my brother and his wife, and son and daughter. i worry that they won't make it through. i worry that the pain of losing dev will change them for the worse. i worry that losing devin will be the horrible disaster that will keep on giving. i am afraid it'll be the tip of an iceberg of loss that my family will never bounce back from. it's already been permanently changed by devin's death in such a terrible, painful way. i don't want more of that on top of it. maybe we are more resilient than that but i don't know... i don't feel very resilient lately. just tired and stressed, and sad and lonely - isolated and generally friendless. i guess i just need to keep slogging on and see what happens, and try not worry so much, which is hard. i come from a long line of worriers (on my mother's side). well, i guess that's it for now... on that cheery note i shall leave to hem pants. it's always something.

pooped

2010-03-29T12:35:00.000-07:00

i am pooped today. i didn't feel this tired when i got up but boy, my butt is dragging and the yawns are jaw-cracking! it was a busy weekend, though, so maybe i shouldn't be surprised. saturday i did a lot of gardening, which basically consisted of clearing out all the dead crap. there was a lot of it. i only hauled half of it out to the curb for recycling (or whatever they do with it). there's still a big pile in the garden. i did clean up the herb garden and dig out all the mint, which was taking over. digging out mint is hard, i can tell ya that for free! but i prevailed. the spearmint is going the way of the dodo but i'm keeping the apple mint, or some of it, in a pot. maybe i should go see if i can rescue any of the spearmint... we shall see.

yesterday we went up to san francisco. the weather was lovely and it was just a nice day to get out. first stop was the academy of sciences, which is always fun. we had a yummy but ridiculously expensive lunch there as well (it was a great ham sandwich, but still). then off to strybing arboretum in golden gate park. it's one of my favorite places in the park and drew had never been. it was fun to show it to him.

and today i rode my bike to work. bike to work = spring; it's official!

adventures in canning

2010-02-16T12:30:00.000-08:00

note from the blogger: i made this batch over the president's day weekend and am only posting it this week (3rd in march!). due to technical difficulties (or my incompetence, which is more likely), i got held up with the pictures. the story is still the same.

i spent the long weekend making marmalade. meyer lemons are a hybrid, a cross between a lemon and an orange. it's sweeter than a regular lemon but still tart enough that you realize it's a lemon, not an orange. it also has a thinner, more orange-yellow peel. last week i spied a meyer lemon tree in a neighbor's yard so on saturday i went by to see if they'd let me pick some. turns out they have two meyer lemon trees and they also said yes, so i was in business. i went home, got a five gallon bucket, and commenced to pick a wee bit over 22 pounds of meyer lemons. funny thing is, to look at those lemon trees you'd never know it.

i made some meyer lemon marmalade a few weeks back with the lemons from our little tree, i think i had about 22 of them, funnily enough. so far as taste went i was very happy with how it turned out and it was my first foray into canning, which really isn't hard and is very satifying - so much stuff to show for the work. the one thing i wasn't happy with was the distribution of the peel in the marmalade. the recipe i used said to chop the peel by hand and it ended up at the top of the jar. once you got through the peel it was more like jelly than marmalade. luckily i found a different recipe that recommended using the slicing attachment on the food processor to slice the lemons and not only did that work much better in terms of distribution of the peel throughout the marmalade, it also shaved off what i am guesstimating to be two hours of work. woo hoo! i've never used the slicing blade before so i feel confident when i say i'd never have thought of that on my own in a million years.

the marmalade cooks...

i made two kinds of marmalade: meyer lemon with lavender and meyer lemon with vanilla bean. in subsequent batches i have made plain (at my dad's request), and a combo lavender/vanilla bean. drew likes the combo best, i like the lavender best, lucy likes the vanilla bean best. they are all pretty damn good, imho.

some of the finished product...

a closer look...

you don't like marmalade? neither did i, until i had my first taste of lemon marmalade. i started making lemon marmalade years ago when i was living in berkeley with regular lemons from the tree in the backyard but i didn't go so far as to can it. i'd just make a small batch and eat it until it was gone, then make some more. i like meyer lemon marmalade better. the thinner peel cooks up softer and tastes better; less pith = less bitter. since meyers are a little sweeter it takes less sugar - but regular lemon marmalade is still pretty effing tasty. i have heard from many family members i've send the marmalade to that they like it, even those who have never cared for marmalade. i suspect, like myself, they only ever had orange marmalade, which i've always found too sweet. i also made some blood orange marmalade that drew and my lovely sister-in-law, val, both love and say is their favorite. it's not my favorite but it'll do in a pinch. my plan is to never be totally out of meyer lemon marmalade, if i can help it.

i will get around to posting the recipe and instructions soon, but right now i have to go walk the little dog. marmalade is easy and canning is easy, too. i was all intimidated by canning but it's not hard, just time consuming. drew and i are planning our garden, which will be replete with heirloom tomatoes. canning some of those lovelies is definitely in our future

better late than never

2010-02-10T11:10:00.001-08:00

i never did post a picture of my birthday cake, what with getting the news that devin was in the hospital and then, most unfortunately, having to go out of town to attend the funeral. it's the chocolate candy cane cake from the 2009 cook's illustrated holiday baking and it's amazingly good! some folks said it was the best cake they'd ever had and with the exception of the carrot cake recipe from my martha stewart cookbook, i have to agree. it's definitely the best chocolate cake i've ever had and i've eaten some good ones over the years. i got the squiggly candles at safeway after tromping to three party stores to get nifty candles to no avail.

this is a picture of what it was going to look like. i had planned to be just as fancy but once i got the news about devin i was on the phone with my parents, mick, justin, mary, teri and lucy for almost three hours solid, so i got a late start. i also had to tidy up the house, though drew really stepped up to the plate with the cleaning. he rocks! i almost ruined the white chocolate frosting with my impatience but luckily the freezer trick worked. guests for the party were already arriving and i was just starting to put it together, so i dispensed with piping and garnishes. i will make it again some day and it'll be really snazzy. i must say that mine had a lot more of the crushed peppermint candy sticking to it than this one, but alas! i don't think i got a picture before the candles were lighted and lights were dimmed and i can't find one online.

i did get a special birthday treat. diane, kira and shannon sang "happy birthday" to me in german after the first, english go round. that was really cool. i was so glad lucy and laurence's godchildren were at the party because they provided such uplifting excitement as only kids can. with everything else going on that day i don't think i could have enjoyed myself if they hadn't been there.

still don't know what i'm going to do with the bottle of champagne that mary and jeff gave me. i decided drew and i would drink it when devin woke up, but that didn't happen. now it just feels kind of, i don't know, tainted? as it is, it's sitting in my fridge, with the festive, curly streamers still attached. i guess i'll just have to think on it a while.

here is the recipe:

Chocolate Candy Cane Cake

Ingredients:
For the cake:*
½ cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder, plus extra for dusting pans
1½ cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. salt
1¼ cups boiling water
4 oz. unsweetened chocolate, finely chopped
1 tsp. espresso powder
10 tbsp. unsalted butter, softened
1½ cups packed light brown sugar
3 large eggs
½ cup sour cream, room temperature
1 tsp. vanilla extract

For the filling, frosting and garnish:
8 oz. white chocolate, finely chopped
1 lb. unsalted butter, softened
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
1/8 tsp. salt
4 tbsp. heavy cream
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1¾ finely ground peppermint candies, plus extra whole candies for garnish

*I made three 9-inch cake layers, and increased the amount of cake batter by 50%. I made the regular amount of filling and frosting called for in the recipe, and it was just enough.

Directions:
To make the cake, preheat the oven to 350° F. Grease the edges of three 8-inch round cake pans. Dust with cocoa powder and tap out the excess. Line the bottom of each pan with parchment or wax paper. Whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt together in a large bowl. In a medium bowl, whisk the boiling water, chocolate, cocoa powder and espresso powder together until smooth.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, 3-6 minutes. Beat in eggs one at a time, scraping down the bowl between additions. Beat in the sour cream and vanilla and mix until incorporated. Reduce the mixer speed to low and mix in the dry ingredients in three additions alternately with the chocolate mixture, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Mix each addition just until incorporated.

Divide the batter evenly into the prepared pans, and smooth the tops with a spatula. Bake the cakes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with a few crumbs attached, 15-20 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through baking. Cool the cakes in the pans for about 10 minutes, then run a knife around the edges, turn the cakes out onto a wire rack and peel off the parchment paper. Turn the cakes right side up and allow to cool completely.

To prepare the filling and frosting, melt the white chocolate in the top of a double boiler until smooth. Set aside and let cool until no longer warm to the touch. In the meantime, beat the butter on medium-high speed in the bowl of an electric mixer about 30 seconds. Add confectioners’ sugar and salt, and beat at medium-low speed, scraping down the bowl once, about 1 minute. Add the cream and vanilla and beat on medium speed just until incorporated, about 10 seconds. Increase the speed to medium-high and beat until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes, scraping down the bowl as needed. Transfer half of the mixture to a separate bowl and stir in the cooled white chocolate until smooth. Add ¾ cup of the ground peppermint candies to the remaining frosting.

To assemble the cake, place one cake layer on a cardboard cake round or cake platter. Spread half of the peppermint frosting over the cake. Top with another cake layer and spread evenly with the remaining peppermint frosting. Top with the final cake layer. Reserve ½ to ¾ cup of the white chocolate frosting in a pastry bag. Frost the top and sides of the cake with the remaining white chocolate frosting. Coat the top and sides of the cake with the remaining crushed peppermints. Use the reserved white chocolate frosting to pipe a decorative border around the bottom edge of the cake, as well as decorative swirls on top. Garnish with reserved whole peppermints as desired.

Source: Cook’s Illustrated, Holiday 2009

2010-02-04T15:27:00.000-08:00

beautiful darcy anne, my oh so dear friend for over twenty years though it feels like many more (did i ever not know darcy?), sent me the link to an article in the new yorker called good grief. as i just said to her in an email, i feel both better and sadder for having read it, but glad that i did. i'm lucky to have a friend like darcy. she helps me feel saner and i know she loves me when i veer off into crazy. fundamentally i don't think she really cares if i'm sane or if i'm nuts, and how many friends like that does a person really have?

the article talks, in part, about our culture's impatience with grief.... you're supposed to get through it and move on and if you can't, then at least have the good manners to not burden others. understand that when the vast majority of people ask how you're doing they don't really want to know and it's not even their fault. it's just how we do things. tomorrow will be three weeks since devin's accident. it's 17 days since he died and it feels like the blink of an eye. i suppose it is. being back at work is bizarre because i just don't give a shit. i understand it needs to be done and our bills need to be paid but who cares about research grants and quick vouchers? i can barely concentrate on anything except things that make me feel connected to dev and anything that interferes with that annoys me. half the time i want to hide in the bathroom. if i could i'd spend a month at home just being, which runs counter to everything i am culturally supposed to do. i'd sleep late and feel sad, and sometimes feel happy. i'd wander about aimlessly. the article mentioned that as something grieving people do and i identified with it so strongly. i don't know what to do with myself and i just feel myself drifting, but i can't do it as much as i need. it's easier to drift when everything is such a supreme effort. getting up is an effort. so is taking a shower, drying my hair, walking the dog, making dinner, doing dishes. talking. i'm exhausted and just want to wallow in it a while but day to day living interferes, and that tires me out even more.

moving on means different thing to different people, i suppose, but i'm in no hurry to do it. most people are talking about how the pain and sadness aren't so oppressive, so overwhelming, so sharp and raw and brutal. i know that will happen eventually even though it doesn't seem possible now. the things people say, the things i say to myself, just strike me as so odd... how do you ever move on, really, from such a loss? jamie died over six years ago and i think of him every day. every. single. day. why would i want to move on from that? why would i want to move on from devin? it just doesn't compute. it's not even realistic. i don't want to. i don't want to assure people i won't be sad forever, or manage their expectations that life goes on and that i get that. of course i fucking get it. i fucking hate it.

last night herbie wanted petted and instead of hopping into and then flopping in the tub like he usually does he flopped on the mat outside it. i petted his butt, just by his tail, gently digging my fingers into his fur. i petted his head, rubbing between his ears so that he tucked them down and back. it always looks to me like he's wearing a baseball cap backwards when he does that. when he flopped on his side i kept going, petting his chest, his side, even his belly a little bit, then went back to his chin and face and head. having beside-the-tub-time-with-herbie, petting him and listening to him purr like a motorcycle, was the best part of my day. i didn't have to re-assure him i'd be okay. i didn't have to feel self-conscious for being so down. i didn't have to worry that my delight in him was going to be misinterpreted as turning a corner or making progress. it was probably the only thing i did yesterday that wasn't an effort. i didn't have to do anything but enjoy how happy he was to be getting what he wanted and it was such a relief. i thought about how devin would have found herbie and his tub time so funny and how he would have enjoyed it, and how i was sad he never got the chance.

the beginning of after

2010-01-29T21:34:00.000-08:00

i am heading home for california tomorrow. i will be happy to get there and see my husband, who left for home on tuesday, and i'll be happy to see the furries again but it is bumming me out. it is making me so depressed and sad. it's the first step on the road to life going on without devin and it hurts.

all of my family were here except my sister-in-law, marie, who had to stay home in holland with her and patrick's little boy. otherwise we were all here... from pittsburgh, from san jose, from amsterdam. it was great and horrible to see everyone. seeing devin in the casket... i don't even have words to describe just how terrible that was. seeing and meeting his friends and all the people who loved him gather for two days and then pack the funeral to standing room only... i don't have words to describe how incredible that was.

if a funeral can be neat, devin's was. we couldn't do what his dad, my brother mick, and his brother, my nephew colin, said he'd really like - a viking funeral pyre - but we did our best. we had ziggy stardust and justin sane, friends singing aeroplane over the sea by neutral milk hotel and playing irish traditional music. we had grandpap singing danny boy, love and farewell messages written on an irish flag, memories shared and even devin's own words that showed his zest for life. we gave him as good a send off as we could and i believe we did him proud.

he died in a fall, in an accident. it wasn't hit and run, a drunk driver, nothing like that. a fall, an accident, a piece of horrible, terrible, dreadful luck, and that helps. it gives me comfort, truly. he wasn't left for dead. he wasn't left like a piece of trash. people did try to help him and even though it didn't make enough of a difference to save him they tried, and that's what matters. devin was an organ donor. right at this very moment someone has his heart. someone has his lung. someone has his kidney, and someone has his liver, someone has his corneas (i think, anyway), and that does NOT help. that he's helping others to live doesn't give me the slightest bit of comfort and i always thought that knowing your loved one helped others to live would be some sort of consolation, but i was wrong. i know it's right, but it doesn't help because it doesn't bring devin back and it doesn't give his death purpose or meaning. someone else gets to live for a while because devin and the rest of us were robbed and brutalized. it's not that i begrudge them and their loved ones, because i don't. it's just they aren't my loved ones. they aren't devin and they never will be and that is a very bitter pill, indeed.

i love you devin patrick geever. always have, always will, and i will always miss you.

devin

2010-01-19T23:30:00.000-08:00

in the generation after mine the geevers run to boys... of the eight grandkids, six are boys. devin was the third of my nieces and nephews and he died today. he turned 19 on january 17th, while he was in the icu of tallahassee memorial hospital. on the evening of the 15th of january he was, from all indications, the victim of a hit and run accident on the main campus of florida state university, where he was a freshman. someone hit him so hard they broke his hips, fractured his pelvis, broke and fractured his ribs, bruised his kidney and pancreas, mangled his spleen so badly it had to be removed, collapsed both his lungs and by the time he was found, caused almost all the blood in his body to hemorrhage out of him. at first we thought his head, at least, wasn't injured but we were wrong. two days after his birthday, after a CAT scan and and EEG determined his brain was no longer functioning, he was removed from life support. he was surrounded by his family and friends and i will regret until the day i die that i wasn't able to be there.

whenever a loved one dies everyone says how great they were, how special they were, and devin really, really was so incredibly, amazingly, wonderfully special. on both his personal and memorial facebook pages almost every single person mentions his sunny disposition and his wicked sense of humor. just like his brother, colin, he could have you laughing so hard it hurt, so hard you thought you'd never catch your breath. he was incredibly smart and could have done anything, really. he wanted to be an engineer. he was a sweet, loving, darling boy who i didn't get to spend enough time with. i let geography and money dictate how much time i spent with him and his brother and sister and my brother and sister-in-law. like everyone else i thought there'd be more time. i thought there was all the time in the world, but i was wrong.

so what do i remember most about devin? his smile. his laugh. how blue his eyes were. how tall he got! how funny he was. how he was the fattest baby and the skinniest young man. how much i loved that his birthday was two days from mine... i'm not sure i ever told him that but i did. i was so happy he was a capricorn, too. how he looked like the spitting image of his mom and his dad at the same time. his easy going, fun loving personality. how he and his brother, when they were little , used to bicker but how they always forgot about it and were soon thick as thieves again. watching him tease his sister, play with his dog, his delight at having the birds at butterfly world land on him. how much fun you had when you and your cousins were together... that was a delight to witness. i could go on and on and never run out of things to say. the hole his death has left in my heart, in my family, is impossible to describe. one of his friends wrote to him on his facebook page that a lot of her memories of him made her laugh but they all made her cry, and that is exactly how i feel. i simply cannot imagine the world without devin in it. it doesn't make sense to me... it never will.

i love you, devin, and i always will. i am sorry i didn't get to spend more time with you, and i'm glad that you seemed to like hanging out with me when we were together. you were such a blessing, such a delight, such a precious gift. my life is richer for you having been a part of it and poorer for your absence. there are not enough words in all the languages of the world that can express how much we all love you. how much we wish we had more time with you. i would trade places with you in a heartbeat if i could but i can't, and i hate it! so i'll just keep loving you, keep holding you in my heart, and hope that some day i'll get to be with you again.

psychomania

2009-11-28T15:57:00.000-08:00

when i was a kid there was a pre-runner to hbo called hollywood home theater, to which our family had a brief subscription. it must have been a free trial or something because we were the last people i knew to get a color t.v. and my parents still to this day get basic cable, and only because regular pre-digital air wave reception down in the valley was horrible. the idea of them paying for any subscription movie channel in the mid to late seventies just doesn't compute with my remembrances of childhood. at any rate, there was this movie that we (molly, joe, justin and i) watched many times about this english biker gang who all killed themselves and came back from the dead to wreak havoc and mayhem. it had this super mystical element, as you can no doubt glean from the picture above of the biker riding around the misty, mini-stonehenge. you just had to believe you'd return from the dead as you committed suicide but if you chickened out you were toast, as one member learned the hard way. i was thinking of this movie yesterday, wondering what the hell it was called and if i'd ever manage to track it down again when, lo and behold, i came across it quite by accident on one of the movie channels we get just as it was starting. the stars aligning in this way could not be ignored so drew and i settled in for what was no doubt going to be a really terrible movie, as so many fondly remembered movies from childhood turn out to be.

we were not disappointed. psychomania was silly, terrible and completely fun in a so bad it's good kind of way. made in 1971 it was all tripped out style-wise. the leader of the gang, tom, was not the anti-establishment rebel i remembered but a complete loser thug. he thought he was an anti-establishment rebel but tom, i've got news for you... you were a loser. you do, however, look very, very cool.

tom, like so many troubled children, didn't have a chance. his mom was into some crazy mystical toad shit ...

...and his dad tried to cross over and come back but chickened out at the last second. at the start of the film tom and his crew kill some (no doubt) conformist, establishment dude by causing his car to crash which sends conformist, establishment dude through the windscreen. tom then goes home and tells mystical-toad-loving mummy and her creepy butler (or is he more?) that "we blew a guy's mind today". no one bats an eyelash at murder as a mind-blowing experience. is it any wonder that tom and his gang, the aptly named living dead, come to a bad end?

and what do un-dead biker thugs do to wreak havoc in 1971 england, you ask? they intimidate publicans, murder the cute girl who paid for their drink at the pub as well as those who came to her aid in pub parking lots, kill police at the police station while breaking out their un-dead comrades, and, by far my personal favorite, terrorize shoppers at a grocery store...

psychomania is more fun than a barrel of monkeys and not to be missed, especially if you loved it as a kid. you can still love it, albeit for entirely different reasons, as an adult.

dreaming of thanksgiving

2009-10-31T12:41:00.000-07:00

yeah, yeah, yeah, i know it's halloween so i suppose i should be posting about that but to be honest, much as i like halloween and had the joy and delight of growing up in a die hard, spookiest house on the street halloween family (thank you big brother micky!), it doesn't really excite me all that much. maybe if i had little bambinos to dress up and take around i'd be more into it but as it stands... it's not speaking to my soul. don't get me wrong... i took great joy in watching it's the great pumpkin, charlie brown and am looking forward to the fun and merriment and what not, but it really doesn't excite me like thanksgiving.

thanksgiving is another matter altogether! i have always loved thanksgiving and at the risk of insulting my wonderful family in pittsburgh, i am really enjoying the having friends over for thanksgivings again since we've come back to california. family too, of course, since lucy and laurence are here and are awesome enough to celebrate with us, and this year we will also get the goodby clan! i loved doing thanksgiving at my parents' place in pittsburgh but i didn't get to do the cooking and that, for me anyhow, is the most fun part of the whole shebang. that said, i did do a thanksgiving dinner for our sorely missed dinner party friends every november so i guess i had the best of both worlds, family and friend dinners, now that i think about it. i was the official geever pie queen growing up and while we were living in pittsburgh and i get to do that, too! what can i say? i like thanksgiving meals and i like them a certain way so i end up doing most of it (control issues, anyone?). trump is always game for mashing potatoes, drew is a fantastic host who keeps everyone lubricated and entertained, and everyone pitches in at the hectic end. it's drew's favorite holiday and his enthusiasm and excitement have definitely rubbed off on me, but not enough to do a thanksgiving dinner every month, as he proposes at least that often. where there's life, there's hope. ;-)

so, what have i been dreaming of so far? a heritage turkey from the good shepherd farm, ordered via the wonderful folks at heritage foods. martha says if you get a fresh turkey you don't need to bother with brining as they're succulent to begin with but i don't know... i've kinda gotten hooked on brining. i think i'll stick with it. cook's illustrated is proposing dry brining this year but i hate anything that depends on loosening the skin to stick stuff under it. it's so easy to tear and then you're fucked, not to put too fine a point on it. i think i'll stick with the cook's country perfect roast turkey, which i've used before with great success and yumminess. salt pork - who knew? drew has requested the sausage, chestnut and mushroom dressing a la the good folks at williams-sonoma who still want too much for the much-lusted-after roasting pan. i'll do it as stuffing, of course, and w/out their $16.50 chestnuts. i'm going to get mine at our local zanotto's market; that's the one we go to on the site, as it happens. the chestnuts will be raw so i'll roast them, which i haven't done in a while and is half the fun. if you've never had freshly roasted chestnuts you are missing out on one of life's true gastronomic delights and they're super easy to prepare. sweet, warm, chewy roast chestnuts... i might have to do a trial run.

as for sides... roasted garlic mashed potatoes, this awesome acorn squash and apple bake recipe that i got from our new csa, farm fresh to you. i am super pleased with ffty... excellent produce and variety and they deliver! the potatoes we got last time were to die for. i wonder if i can request extras for thanksgiving? have to look into that. for veggies i'm thinking of martha's ginger sesame stir fried green beans that were such a hit at the dinner parties, plus something with broccolini. we love broccolini and i have to wonder just where it's been all my life until this past year or so. and sweet potatoes, of course. maybe the roasted ones from my low fat moosewood cookbook. haven't made those in a while and they're pretty darn good. sweet potatoes and squash both; too much? it seems sacrilegious to not have sweet potatoes but that'll be a lot with the squash. any opinions, oh gentle readers?

don't worry, i didn't forget dessert! i found a lovely maple bourbon pecan pie recipe in my martha stewart living cookbook last year that i plan to make again, though i was just comparing it to cook's illustrated perfect pecan pie and am making some adjustments, including using fresh vanilla bean instead of extract. i got some vanilla beans at costco a while back.... ten beans for $10, if i remember correctly. since they were practically giving them away i bought a bunch and really do want to use them. pumpkin and mincemeat pie too, it goes without saying. the wonderful belknaps will be joining us again this year so i hope dave is willing to tend bar again. our first year back he did so and regaled us with the wonders of the sidecar, a drink i had never heard of but now love. dave being the connoisseur and all he didn't just make us a sidecar, he made us three, all with different liqueurs (i think i liked the first one best). i hadn't eaten since breakfast and in a hot kitchen all day and was half way through my third when i realized i was getting rather drunk so had to stash my drink in the fridge until dinner was ready. good times!

i guess that's enough for the holiday after the current one, but ooh! i am excited! if you're in our neck of the woods be sure to stop by. i'm sure there will be more than enough.

the best stories are love stories

2009-10-24T10:54:00.001-07:00

so i finally watched gran torino last night and wow! seriously. wow. drew wanted to watch monsters vs. aliens, and i'm sure it's good, but i insisted on gran torino and we are both glad i did. i was under the impression it was bleak and couldn't have been more mistaken. if you are looking for a film that is hilarious in all the wrong ways as well as a completely life-affirming love story (not boy meets girl love story but a LOVE story), rent that dvd post-haste, grasshopper. clint eastwood was a complete revelation... God, but the man can act. and direct!

so what's on my agenda for today, you ask? well, first off i am going to bake another loaf of cranberry bread. i used to have this great recipe for cranberry orange bread that i got when i lived in noe valley in san francisco (circa 1994-ish). they used to include recipes in the pg&e bill - don't ask me why - and the cranberry orange bread was the bomb. i lost it about ten years ago after many happy years of yumminess. curses! i found a a recipe that is almost the same. the first loaf was good, close but no cigar. i am going to tinker with the recipe and see what happens. i am also going to sand out and stain the minor scratches on my new-to-me mission style furniture. it's so pretty!!! i found a leather upholstered couch, chair and ottoman as well as a coffee table and side table on craig's list that we picked up for $550; a total deal. this is really nice furniture... solid wood and heavy as hell (not that i moved any of it! drew wouldn't let me on account of the gimpy back.) the chair alone would cost more than we paid for all of it and best of all, it will not trap cat and dog fuzz like the old couch did. while i'm sorry to see the old couch go, because i loved the style, i am not sorry to leave the slowly falling apart, fuzz embedded part behind.

and after that, who knows? it's a sunny, mild saturday and there is nowhere i have be at any given time... just a beautiful day stretching out before me, full of possibilities.

the long hiatus is over

2009-10-19T09:55:00.001-07:00

almost a year seemed as good enough a reason as any to jump-start ye olde blog. if anyone out there might still care, that is.

life in california is treating me well, i am happy to report, though our cats are going to put us in the poorhouse. chiana has had vet bills out the wazoo lately due to what the vets euphemistically refer to as a "grooming accident" (my fault and yes, i am a terrible cat mom). of course it was after 10 pm so we had to go to the ER vet. now it seems tommy has some sort of infected bite on his face so we're going to the vet tomorrow. he and herbie were mixing it up the other day and neither escaped unscathed. the only silver lining to all the carnage is our aspca pet insurance. chiana's reimbursed bills this year alone (from the aforementioned incident as well as a sick-puking-episode) covered all of this year's cat policies (three), and who knows? maybe tommy's visit will pay for the dog's. the pet insurance itself is okay. i'd be happier about it but like any other insurance company they kind of suck. they discount amounts that they determine are "above usual rates" and then only reimburse 80% of what's left, to work out to a 55 - 65% reimbursement rate. it's still better than a zero reimbursement rate, but it's annoying.

there really isn't much else going on since we are pretty boring which, as i've said before, makes for bad stories but good living. it's not even halloween and i am already looking forward to thanksgiving and christmas! i got the latest williams-sonoma catalogue and was drooling over it like a pervert at a peep show. i am jonesing for their new roast pan but, sheesh! $280? is that really necessary? drew of course said "get it!" since he likes to encourage anything cooking-related and just likes spoiling me, but i cannot part with that much cash, even for all-clad. i am going to check it out at the store and compare the two sizes, then look on ebay.

i am also really excited about christmas, which is a change from last year. this year we're staying home, which means putting up a tree, decorating, watching christmas specials, listening to my charlie brown christmas cd, and setting up my fontanini nativity which i love in an almost co-dependent way. my friend sara calls it the club med nativity on account of the palm tree. i'd love to buy a few more pieces but i don't think i can indulge that whim this year, either. we have a few extra lambs and the shepherd carrying the lamb over his shoulders. i always loved that one as a kid.
and baking with my sister is another christmas festivity i am happily anticipating. we did the uber bake-a-thon last year, a good 12 hours of christmas cookie baking and decorating, last year. we decided we'd have to spread it over two days next time and that being the case i am going to make the mini panetonne from my martha stewart living christmas cookbook! i have been threatening to for several years but this year i'm doing it.

so, with christmas dreams and plans and roast pans on my mind, i bid you adieu. for now.

not quite in the christmas spirit

2008-12-11T10:10:00.000-08:00

seeing as how i'm going home for Christmas next week you'd think i'd be bouncing off the walls happy and excited, and i am excited, but i am also gripped by a very big case of the blahs. i am kind of bummed out. i am tired. i am missing jame. i am not quite getting enough sleep, but enough so that i'm not exhausted, just a little tired. i am bored silly at work, which this time of year isn't surprising; it's super slow. it'll pick up again later. i tweaked my back in pilates class about three weeks ago and i am still not back to normal. close, but not quite 100% back, which really fucked up my ability to get the things done at home that i need to before we leave. at this point i'm about two weeks behind, easy. i have so much to get done before we leave and i get home in the evening and all those things i was going to do are just too much and i get some of it done but not enough. i kind of like having a t.v. and i also kind of wish we didn't, which will never happen so long as i'm married to mr. r. all i really want to do is stay home, sleep in, do some laundry and clean my house. oh, and never have to work again. i guess i'm just really ready to be on vacation next week, to be home.

that's another thing... this whole home concept. i was at my sister's the other night and called pittsburgh home, and one of the women there said it was only home if you'd move back and would i? and i said yes, in a heartbeat. so that leaves me in a weird place because i can't move back in a heartbeat since my husband, in addition to being allergic to the town i love so well, also finds the career prospects there exceptionally limited compared to here. which isn't a fair comparison, since ALL career prospects are limited compared to here, but you can afford to live in places like pittsburgh whereas here it's just scraping by. that's the really fucked up thing about the bay area and why i didn't want to move back here. you can make what anywhere else is a lot of money, 100, 125, 150k and still just be scraping by. and if you've never lived here it's impossible to understand. my dad hears how much we make and i know he doesn't get why we aren't rolling in dough. the rents are outrageous - we pay almost three times the rent of our last place in pgh for a third of space, and if we were still there we'd have bought a house by now. if we're lucky we can do that here in like, oh, five or six years. health care costs are more, energy prices are more... all of it is more except the wages, which are marginally more, but nowhere near enough more to compensate for the cost of living. haven't even been here two years and i'm already getting that "living in california exhausts me" feeling. fuck. fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

i hate feeling like charlie brown at christmastime. i am looking forward to making christmas cookies with my sister but apart from that, everything else that i need to do is just way to much fucking work with way too little motivation. i don't know... i am excited about making cookies. maybe there's hope for me yet.

2008-12-02T14:00:00.000-08:00

i have totally fallen down on the blogging front. thanksgiving was great but no pictures this year, not a one. i tweaked my side/hip on my left side and now i am freaked out that i hurt my back again, since it's aching there, too. i seriously doubt that this is the case, but i can still worry about it incessantly. majorly unmotivated to do anything but loaf... ugh. thank god we're going to pgh on the 17th for almost three weeks of r&r!

brave little kitten

2008-11-14T16:31:00.001-08:00

i know i am only the tenth zillion person to post about this on their blog today but i just had to post this video of this sweet little kitten who survived a horrific attack by teenagers who were kicking him around like a ball. can't even wrap my head around that; just reading the words hurts my heart. the video doesn't show the attack, just the cute little fuzz ball and the vet who did the surgery to save him. i literally looked at the link on the ccn site for like three minutes, trying to decide if i should watch it, and then i did a search and read someone's comments on a blog which indicated there was nothing more horrific (as if it were necessary) than the poor little creature after his surgery, which saved him at the expense of his leg.

sigh..........

and you know what? i don't even care what led these particular kids to do this, because by the time they're horrifically abusing animals like they did this one it's too late for them. they had some sort of fucked up things done to them, or witnessed by them, and now they have no empathy for other creatures and have embarked on a life of abusing others, human or not human. some of them will even grow up to be serial murderers of humans, which is why it's so important to treat animal abuse and cruelty like the crime that it is. find them and throw the book at them, contain them as best as can be done, because there's no way to save them. that i know of, anyway, and i'm by no means an expert on everything (even though my husband might think that i sometimes think i am!) perhaps i am being a bit too bleak, but it's hard to imagine how it's possible to rehabilitate anyone so callous and cruel that they would kick a kitten, never mind injure it so gravely that it loses its leg.

yet it's so very easy to admire the little kitten... curious and playful and looking to explore things. a terrible start i wouldn't wish on any creature, and he'll end up in a very good home with people who really love animals and will really love him. first thing when i get home (after feeding the cats their nummies - delays make herbie frantic), i am going home to pet and fuss over and be thankful for my furry little babies even more than usual.

Obama - Yes!!!!

2008-11-05T13:51:00.000-08:00

YES!!!!
YES!!!!
YES!!!!

i completely stole that from an email from my brother, patrick, who lives just outside of amsterdam with his family. it completely sums up how i feel and if i'm going to capitalize anything on this little blog, the end of the reign of darkness we have fallen under qualifies more than anything else. whew!!!! seriously... i am so happy, so excited, so completely fucking RELIEVED!!!! i didn't know it was possible to be so relieved!!! about half way through obama's speech last night i started crying and just couldn't stop. 90% of it was sheer relief that, as gerald ford once said about completely different circumstances, our long national nightmare is finally over. i just didn't know how we could make it through another four years if mccain won and now i don't have to.

i am still kind of in shock. we have a black president - woo hoo!!!! this country will never be the same in ways that can only be great, wonderful, positive and thrilling! i never thought it would happen in my lifetime and i have never been happier to be proved wrong. i am so proud of this american experiment in a way i cannot even express, and i think of all the little kids who will grow up thinking that having a black president it totally normal, when everything in our history says otherwise. what an historic occasion, an historic paradigm shift. i love that these kids will think "why shouldn't the president be a black person? or a woman? or both?" it's just the first step towards finally starting to heal our country but what a first step!

drew and i were talking after he got home with the champagne - buying it beforehand was just too jinxy - while watching obama's speech and agreed that it felt so great to hear someone telling us we were going to have to sacrifice and work hard to restore our country, our world, instead of telling us to go shopping. what could be more crass, really, than telling a traumatized country to go hit the mall? but that's just what bush did. i distinctly remember reading how the president and first lady went to dinner at a mexican restaurant to let the country know things were "back to normal" when they were anything but and we were only just starting to tumble down the rabbit hole. i remember thinking "what the fuck do they mean back to normal?" it made my head hurt then and it still does now. i know that i am hungry for leadership that i can believe in, that restores hope to all of us, and i think obama can do it. as drew said last night, i am eating my words, even about the fisa vote (but man, he better fucking fix it pronto.) i think our country is so fucking starved for real leadership and is so worn out from the bullying, greed and neglect that bush tried to pass off as one and the same. i truly am more hopeful at this moment in history than any other... about my country, its founding ideals and principles which i truly and deeply cherish, and our place in the community of nations.

so say we all.

vote!!!!

2008-11-03T19:30:00.000-08:00

this is it, folks. if you haven't voted early, get thee to the polls tomorrow and VOTE FOR OBAMA! i didn't think it was possible that there could be a more important, more nerve wracking election than 2004, but this is it. it's not just who is going to president, but which direction our country will take. our democracy is seriously imperiled and it seriously frightens me what could happen if obama doesn't win.

so go vote! as cesar chavez used to say, we're gonna pray a little and work a lot! let's do it!

like a love note from home...

2008-10-31T17:33:00.000-07:00

anti-flag are up to their usual tricks... helping others, do-gooding, you know the routine. ;) if you are lucky enough to be in the vicinity they are holding a benefit show for the pittsburgh food bank on november 9th at mr. small's theater in millvale. there's a wee write up about it in the city paper, too. go enjoy the show for me, it's only $5! and don't forget your non-perishable food donation!!!!

2008-10-31T16:57:00.000-07:00

i have been a terrible blogger this past two months... sorry to anyone who tried to read and has found the well dry. it hasn't been intentional, there's just been a lot going on.

i am cautiously optimistic about the election next tuesday. i found out that the usually utterly useless attorney general refused to investigate the voter registrations of 200,000 people in ohio, as that asshole in the whitehouse requested. shit, the guy is not only a lame duck, but has presided over one of the most incompetent, corrupt administrations ever, and he's STILL trying to steal elections. your time came and went, fuckhead. you stole your two elections unfair and unsquare, so how about leaving the cleaning up of your monumental clusterfuck to people who are actually interested in cleaning and can actually do it?

that said, i'm not counting on anything, mostly because the republicans are willing to do anything, including breaking the law, to get their way. i do think that the tide of discontent has turned so massively against them that their dirty tricks won't make enough of a difference, but i also have a history of supporting people and policies that, to my sensibility, are good, fair and sensible but leave pawns of the practitioners of the politics of resentment frothing at the mouth. it's really amazing to me how two people can see the same situation and come to such different conclusions. so, i suppose we shall see. drew and i are going to vote before work on tuesday, so we may be late if turnout is anything like they are predicting. i will then sport my "I Voted" sticker proudly (the stickers are one thing about california i missed and am happy to have again) and check the news like a madwoman for the rest of the day, praying all the while. i think it will be an even longer day than election day 2004, when i was a poll observer, and i was fucking TIRED by the end of that day. making that batch of sangria the night before was a very good idea... maybe i should do that again.

work has been busy, home has been chaotic. we got the last of drew's stuff out of trump's place two weekends ago, so for the first time in seven years drew has all his stuff in one place - our living room - and trump's house is all his own, which has left it a little bare but he doesn't seem to mind. i don't know how we did the commute from santa cruz for as long as we did. i guess you do what you have to do and you know that it sucks, but you don't fully appreciate just how much it sucked until you don't have to do it anymore. riding my bike to work is so much nicer, and i get to ring my bike bell, which always makes me happy! rainy season is starting so i don't know how much i'll get to do but i am enjoying it while it lasts. it only takes five minutes longer to ride my bike than to drive, and all that exercise!!!! :)

anyway, i'll leave it at that, and i'll try to be more consistent in the future.

priceless!

2008-10-09T14:18:00.000-07:00

it's easy, sometimes, to think americans are idiots, stupid, gluttons for punishment or all three rolled into one. and then there are those other times when they pleasantly surprise, reminding one that the humor, ingenuity and color-outside-the-lines spirit of the american people is still alive and kicking. today that happy surprise was Rednecks for Obama. priceless.

check this out, it's brilliant. and kudos to the clever rednecks who started it all!

2008-10-07T10:32:00.000-07:00

sorry to be missing in action; the moving thing has consumed my life. happily i can report that the house is 90% together. still a few boxes to be unpacked/moved out of the living room and lounge. the bedroom needs a bit of work... several "no where to put them just yet" boxes have been dumped there, and i need to find a home for all the crap on top of the buffet. mostly my crap, not drew's, i have to be fair. not ALL of the stuff in the way is his. he's done a tremendous job getting his computer stuff stowed and out of the way, i must say.

so the last bit of moving will be on sunday. hmmm... guess i better reserve a truck, huh? it's the stuff in trump's garage and then we'll be totally out of santa cruz. where we are going to put any of this stuff is anyone's guess, though i suppose the garage is where. too bad we don't have a nice, attached modern garage like at trump's place. we have an old, detached, vermin infested garage. i suppose old fashioned charm comes at a price, and ours is a funky garage. drew put out rat/mouse poison, so hopefully we will see some improvement there. die little ratties, die! having rats in california isn't quite the same as having them, say, in pgh, but it's still gross. with the climate being so mild rats live in palm (and presumably other) trees out here, so a place doesn't have to be dirty to get rats, just unattended. i'm guessing the people before us in our place either didn't use the garage much, or the rats made a remarkable comeback in the two months or so it was on the market for rent. at any rate, we are hoping a sustained poisoning campaign and tommy, rat family killer, will do the trick. don't worry... the kitties and zinger cannot get into the garage unless it's open and we're really on top of keeping them out when it is. that's the last thing we need, believe me.

how we did the commute from santa cruz for so long is beyond me. it seems so far and such a hassle away. on friday we went home, walked and fed the dog, made and ate dinner and were watching a movie (american treasure: book of secrets; fluffy and fun) when i realized it wasn't quite 9 pm. drew had this realization at pretty much the same time i did and we couldn't believe we'd done all that stuff and it was still so early. if we were still in santa cruz we'd have been maybe finishing up, more likely eating, dinner. this 15 minute commute is rocking! i miss the beach, but not enough to do that commute anymore. and eventually we'll normalize and heading to santa cruz for the weekend won't seem so laborious. we're both so tired right now that even the though makes me exhausted. thank God the moving is almost done! :)

2008-09-12T17:33:00.000-07:00

next wednesday will be lovely, i am so looking forward to it. what happens next wednesday, you ask? NOTHING. a big fat nothing is happening. this weekend it's more unpacking crap, and then on monday and tuesday the two biggest events that we have here at work are happening. new faculty orientation on monday and the faculty recognition dinner on tuesday. don't let orientation fool you... there's the orientation from 1 - 6 p.m., followed by a reception, followed by dinner. it will be a long day, and me the little critter running around making it all go smoothly. tuesday is a little awards dinner for almost 300 people. again, i'm the little make it go smoothly gal. tons of planning goes into these things, so many thing to get finished, and it's almost done. as long as we have no glaring problems and no one gets food poisoning, it's all good. keep your fingers crossed. :)

perspective

2008-09-04T16:22:00.000-07:00

ah... perspective. my great pal jack always says if people could gain just an inch of perspective outside their own view, they might just see where the other is coming from just enough that the world might be a more tolerant, compassionate place. he could be wrong, but it's always seemed reasonable to me.

anyway... i just got a big old dose of perspective from my wee brother's latest blog entry for blurt magazine. not sure if i mentioned this before, but after his fisa vote i literally could not think about voting for barack obama without feeling like i needed to throw up. truly. i am not making that up. i was so fucking angry i was spitting nails for weeks. again, no exaggeration, it was weeks. after several weeks of being just infuriated i realized that it was one thing to have bush and his evil cronies shoving all the horrible, evil shit down our throats whilst telling us it was for our own good when we knew full well it wasn't, but to have the person who's supposed to be the alternative doing it? and so crassly... just so he can say he was tough on terrorism? it was more than i could take. i decided i couldn't vote him, that i wouldn't vote for him, that he'd lost my vote when all he had to do was nothing so egregious that i'd feel like throwing up when i thought about voting for him. i'm not a purist by any means, i know it's all about compromise and dealing with facts on the ground. i just couldn't stomach it. literally.

but lately i've been thinking maybe i should take some dramamine and vote for obama because the alternative is just so horrible, as justin so eloquently said as he made his case for voting against godzilla-sized evil. i always liked godzilla and felt bad that they were trying to kill him. i mean, he's a monster, what else is he supposed to do but tramp all over tokyo and shoot his death ray? that's what monsters do.

but i digress... this is a race that shouldn't even be close. when 80% of the country says we're headed in the wrong direction, even with the "snatch defeat from the jaws of victory" d.n.c. running the show, it should be a cakewalk. but america is so incredibly racist, so it is. that's why the polls are so close. not because people don't know obama. that's code for "i'll never vote for a n*****." sorry to be crude, but it's true. there are lots of people who won't vote for him because he's black and has a funny name and they've never gone to snopes to check out if those ridiculous emails their cousin sends them are true, because they've never heard of snopes and basically have no critical thinking skills, but that's another post. but they'll never admit it. maybe to close family and friends, but i think the vast majority of white americans who won't vote for obama because he's black won't admit it - to anyone. they'll just say they don't know enough about him (he's black), or he's so vague (he's black), or whatever (he's black.) i hate feeling like i have to vote for someone i am not excited about (again), who wasn't the person i wanted in the first place (again), and who leaves me feeling queasy because there are too many stoopid, racist assholes out there. sometimes i wish we could just wish them all away somewhere and let them wallow in their own filthy mire while the rest of us go on and live in a nice, enlightened place. ah, to sleep! perchance to dream!

so i don't know... i guess i'll think about vote for obama, even though he's going to win california. even though i am still furious about his fisa vote. even though it makes me feel ill and i really am bone weary of voting for a candidate because they're not as bad as the other one. i think hillary would have had a much easier time getting elected, even though she's a woman, because she's a white woman. i wasn't so thrilled about her, either, but thank god my candidate of choice, john edwards, isn't the nominee. thank god he suffered from "just another white guy" syndrome when there were other more exciting, more historically significant people running. that's all we'd need... finding out the guy had an affair at this stage of the game. what a clusterfuck that would have been. i can't believe men are that fucking stupid, but apparently some are.

weddings, cousins, and chicago

2008-09-03T09:53:00.000-07:00

a few pictures from our trip to chicago for drew's cousin nina's wedding. there'd be more except we managed to forget our camera in the heaps of unpacked crap at our new abode, but luckily these were sent to me today. i wish i could say it was entirely the disorganization of our house that made us fall down on the pictures front, but drew and i kind of suck when it comes to taking pictures. we're making an effort to be more on it, but this time we fell down on the job. i plan to take pictures of the heaps of crap to post later, if only to make myself feel better once it's all more organized; too bad we weren't more on it for the wedding.

we had a wonderful time, though! we didn't see a ton of chicago because there were a lot of dinners and brunches pre- and post-wedding, and we were really tired from the first part of the move. it was nice to just be a bit of a bum, which we heartily embraced. we stayed at the hotel knickerbocker, also site of the reception, which was quite nice and just a block from michigan avenue so we stimulated the economy a wee bit. we were just a few blocks from lake michigan so we took in the sights there as well. it's really beautiful.

the cousins, l-r: nina, drew, robyn & joe

kind of obvious who married into the family, isn't it? i'm the addition on the far right.

i've always thought drew resembled both his parents, but it was amazing to see him with his dad's side of family and realize just how much he looks like his dad/dad's family. drew and robyn look so much alike they could be siblings, with the likeness in features that i always associated with his mom (nose, mouth, cheeks), so i guess it just depends which crowd you're with for the similarities to emerge. hopefully we'll get some more pictures from those who were more on the ball in the camera department. more pictures or no, it was a wonderful wedding, and it was so great to meet his cousins and see john & bobbie (their parents) again. we're planning (just in the thinking stages) of going to visit properly sometime in the fall or spring, when it's not so hot and humid there (humid wreaks havoc with my hunny bunny). we can hang out with the family in wheaton for a few days when they aren't totally maxed out and then go into the city for a few days. that will be a fun trip.

unpacking

2008-08-20T12:43:00.000-07:00

ugh. that is my foremost thought, my foremost reaction, as i contemplate the piles and stacks of things that need to be unpacked. how did we ever manage to accumulate so much crap? it boggles the mind. i couldn't believe what came out of our storage space. i swear to god that those boxes had babies - there's so much stuff!!! i plan to use unpacking as a good time to whittle down and sell or donate things we don't use or don't need because there's definately enough of it! i thought i did an alright job with paring down before we left but i can see that i could have done better. and to think we paid to move stuff i plan to get rid of - ouch. live and learn really stinks sometimes.

on a more chipper note, we are going to chicago this weekend for a wedding and i am really looking forward to it! it's kind of sad when you feel like you have to leave town to get a break from all the moving stuff, but that's how i feel and i'm really looking forward to waking up in the hotel and being absolutely unable to do anything related to moving. what a delicious feeling that will be!

do you know the way to san jose?

2008-08-15T17:02:00.003-07:00

for your viewing pleasure, a few pictures of the new abode. we are doing our first phase of moving this weekend - pray for us!!!

the living room (with and without zinger):

the tiny dining room:

the equally tiny kitchen:

the lounge (note wood burning stove through door):

the deck:

that's it for now. it's a blur of packing and getting ready. i often get sick after moving, so let's hope that doesn't happen this time!

argh!!!!

2008-08-11T18:04:00.000-07:00

can you say holy stressed out, batman? my mind is literally swimming with all the things i need to do for our impending move. change our address with the post office, friends and family, doctors and dentist, bills and magazines, register to vote, start service for utilities, rent the trucks for moving, line up help (have had a good response there, so far and thank God!), find a new mechanic, hair stylist, vet, and get tommy micro-chipped before we move. there's got to be lots more that i am forgetting, i am sure. the list goes on and on and on. my brain hurts.

that said, moving into a really nice place in a really nice neighborhood ten minutes away from work is indeed a quality problem. as my brother once said, it's not like i'm looking for a better cardboard box to spend the night in, so yes, it's stressful, but i realize it could be worse. i originally thought moving over two weekends would be good, and it may end up being so, who knows? but i'm starting to wonder. we're going to a wedding in chicago the weekend after this so we're mostly moving this weekend and finishing up the last weekend of the month. on the one hand it seems pretty helpful, a we've-got-so-much-time-don't-have-to-be-frantic kind of thing. and we don't have to be frantic insofar as moving out of our current accommodations since no one is moving in after us, and that's good because my honey has so much stuff at jimbo's it's not funny. he's gonna need months to move it all. but the downside of no pressure to be completely out is the move that never ends. i really don't want that move. i want to move, spend three weeks unpacking and organizing and then be DONE! no more moving for several years - at least. well, i guess i can shoot for what i want and see what i end up with. it'll probably be something in the middle of the two extremes. just so long as it's not too much more than my three week ideal. i like being settled. like herbie, i fear change, even as i rush out to make it happen. herbie is an anxious little creature and that's why we get along so well - i can relate! my anxiety just kicks into uber high gear when this kind of stuff is on the agenda.

well, worst case scenario i can always drink! not a long-term solution, i know, but a few strategic bottles of wine will probably work wonders. :)

home sweet home

2008-07-31T15:08:00.000-07:00

so after all that whining about an anticipated interminably endless search for a place that would turn out to only do, not be something we really like, it turns out drew and i got the first place we looked at (of a whopping two), and we really love it! as of august 15th we'll be the proud tenants of a charming two bedroom house in the willow glen neighborhood of san jose. i don't have any pictures to post yet, but we are very, very, happy and so relieved!!! you have no idea. i've never had house hunt go so quickly or smoothly. willow glen is a great neighborhood, eminently walkable, and so convenient to work. goodbye getting home at 7:30 p.m.! adios highway 17 daily commute - won't miss ya! we're so close i'll be able to ride my bike to work. how's that for reducing my carbon footprint? not to mention my ass, which is as big as it's ever been, but that's another story.

so, the house... well, it's a two bedroom, as i already said. you enter directly into the living room which extends on the left from the front door. on the right hand side wall by the door is a huge, built in bookcase that is almost the entire length of the wall. can you say totally rocks???!!!! there's also a decorative fireplace and windows, nice light and so on. walking towards the back of the house the next room is a very small but distinct dining room. i like having an actual dining room even if it's little; next is the kitchen. the kitchen is quite small but it seems like it'll be functional. it's a good layout and very pretty... granite counter tops, newer stainless appliances (gas stove!), new cabinets and for a small kitchen a surprising amount of counter space, partially because the kitchen opens onto a family room; the two rooms are separated by a step and a counter, as in more counter space. oh, wait, i misspoke, it's not the family room it's the lounge. drew doesn't want to call it a family room, so that's fine, lounge it is. the lounge has a wood burning stove and french doors that open onto a really nice deck, and then there's a big yard for little zing zing. the living and dining rooms and lounge all have hardwood floors, the kitchen is tile. just before you go into the dining room (at the end of that built in bookcase) is a little hall on the right; straight is the bathroom and then there's a bedroom to the right (front) and left (back), plus a nice hall linen closet. i can't remember about the hall but the bedrooms are carpet, but it's pretty nice for carpet. it's not that standard "rental" carpet, which is nice if we have to tolerate carpeting. i just don't get carpet, carpet = dust collector, but whatever. there's a one car garage, a nook by the back door/kitchen for the laundry (hook ups), and in the yard is a free-standing one room building, like an office, so for a little house it feels like there is a lot of space. it's not cheap, but nothing here is, and for that neighborhood we got a deal - so score one for ar²! woo hoo!!!

after drew's chiropractor appointment tonight we're going to look at washers and dryers, stackable front-loaders... i feel so chic! ; ) nothing like buying major appliances to celebrate, i guess. still, sears is having a great sale so we should be able to get a good deal - and they have free delivery, too. and then it'll be a whirl of packing and moving stuff, and then it's christmas in august because our stuff has been in storage for a year and a half so it'll be like it's all new again. can't wait to have our own stuff again!

thank you to all of you, because those positive vibes, prayers, and thoughts clearly paid off big time.

2008-07-24T11:53:00.001-07:00

there are times when i'd rather be in pittsburgh even more than usual. since we just started looking for a place to rent, just sticking our toe in the water without really planning to move before september at the earliest, this is definitely one of those times. it's more than just having to sift through all the listings and the prospect of spending lots of our preciously little free time looking at crummy places until we find a good one. it's the prospect of sifting through all the listings and spending lots of our preciously little free time looking at the exorbitantly priced crummy places until we find an even more exorbitantly priced place that will do. not a place that we'll love, just a place that will do, because something we'd love would be silly expensive.

welcome to the bay area rental market.

we need a place that's at least two bedrooms, because drew (well, we) needs an office. ideally we would like to rent a house with a yard so that little dog will have somewhere to frolic. and we need (and this really is need given the commute we've been doing) a place within thirty minutes of work. that'll be at least two grand, thank you very much, unless the heavens take pity on us and we happen across some little old lady who's renting her place severely under market rate because it's been paid off for thirty years and she wants to help a young couple out. townhouses are also in the same range, and for a two bedroom apartment low end might be $1650, but an apartment would be really difficult because they're so darn small and they're more restrictive towards pets. the rent for our three bedroom, two bath, all hardwood floors flat in highland park was $800, and that was more than some people's mortgage payments. it's easy to get despondent, i suppose, especially if you'd like to own a house before turning 50, but i refuse to let it get me down. at least we aren't looking under a deadline of needing to move by a certain date. that's usually how the new place search is conducted in these parts because who can afford to pay even part of the rent for two places at once? moving under a deadline adds an extra layer of hysteria to and already completely insane process in such a tight rental market. i am not looking forward to open houses with 30 other shelter-seekers, landlords who want a resume for you pet, and tying up thousands of dollars in deposits, but it is what it is.

wish us luck, say some prayers (st. joseph is the patron saint of house hunters), and i'll keep you posted. oh, and donations are accepted, too! :)

2008-07-14T09:28:00.000-07:00

it seems that barack obama is that guy. i supported john edwards for president and while i still think he was a better candidate than hillary or obama, i was prepared to vote for obama in november, support the party and all that, and send a little dinero his way as well. that was before his FISA amendments act vote last week. i can't remember the last time i was as pissed off about anyone's vote as i am about his. i don't even know if i'll vote for president at all, and believe me, i can't believe i am even contemplating such a thing. i remember gerald ford being sworn in as president and i couldn't have been more than four years old, that's how into politics my family is. i remember carter running for president and how exciting it was; i was in 2nd grade. i've always exhorted people to vote, if for no other reason than so many people in other countries can't or risk their lives to do so, but i just don't think i can stomach any more. it was one thing when it was bush and his cronies ramming this sort of shit down our throats (with the help of many cowed and useless democrats, lest we forget) but to have the candidate for my party, the candidate who's supposed to be the alternative to bush and his corrupt administration, shoving this shit down my throat? i really think that was the last straw for me, on top of the complete disregard for the Constitution and the principles and ideals that this country is founded on. maybe i'm a bit naive, but i take that stuff very seriously. it's very important to me that the Constitution and Bill of Rights be defended and exercised. rights are no good when you can't use them, and laws don't mean anything when they don't apply to everyone. when i think of voting for someone who went from "i'll filibuster this bill" to "it's flawed but trust me... i'll fix it later," especially after blasting hillary for making the politically expedient choice with her yes vote to authorize this fricking war in the first place, it literally makes me feel queasy and sick. i so sick and tired of being given the choice between this pile of shit and that pile of shit. i am royally fed up and disheartened. i honestly don't recognize this country i'm living in anymore.

obama didn't get where he is by pandering to the religious conservatives who won’t support him come november, or wearing american flag lapel pins, or reversing his stance on public campaign financing, or supporting this clusterfuck of a war, or supporting illegal spying on law-abiding americans and giving the companies who helped the government do it a free pass. i don't really care about the telecoms being held responsible per se (though they should be), but now that they're off the hook the lawsuits against them, which were the only chance to find out the scope and severity of the spying, are moot.

the problem, well one of them, with the democratic party imho is that they take the vote of liberal democrats and progressives for granted. in their political calculus, who else could we possibly vote for? certainly not john mccain, so no matter what they do, they have our vote. i for one am sick of being taken for granted. i certainly won’t be voting for john mccain in november but i don’t think i'll be voting for obama, either. he's done nothing to earn my vote and has, with his “yes” vote on the FISA, betrayed the very foundation and principles upon which this country is based. i don’t believe him when he says he'll fix this law if he’s elected president, and if it was so flawed why would he vote for it except for political expediency? why should i believe anything coming out of his mouth when, once he's got the nomination sewn up, he reverses himself on such important issues? i'm not a totally naive idiot... i know politicians pander and change their tune depending on which way the wind is blowing. i'm just tired of participating in it (don't worry, i'll still vote for other races in november for sure.) obama has shown me that he's exactly what he said you wasn't: more of the same old politics as usual. i never believed him when he talked about rising above it all - that's just not reality when it comes to politics - but he's gone and confirmed it in about the worst way possible from where i stand.

and it's not that i don't think having a black president would a paradigm shifting event for our country; it would. things would never be the same, and that's a good thing, a great thing! i just can't stomach voting for someone who's already shown that he won't preserve and defend the Constitution of the united states. i just can't.

drew and i decided the money we were going to give to obama is going to the aclu instead. they'll do something we support with it. at least we didn’t waste any money on obama.

sometimes i forget...

2008-07-07T13:07:00.000-07:00

sometimes i forget just how much of a pittsburgh girl i am. last night there was a really great episode of the american experience about roberto clemente. my parents, especially my dad, really admired clemente and while i wasn't old enough to remember his tragic death it was always obvious to me that both my parents felt the world lost a great person far too soon. i went out to tell drew how i'd taped it for him, and that i was going to burn a copy for my sister who i recently found out had love clemente as a kid, when he looks at me blankly and asks "who's roberto clemente?" the only thing i could say in reply was "i can't believe you. first franco harris and now roberto clemente?" drew hadn't known who franco was, despite rooting for the steelers as a kid, and when that came to light i said something along the lines of "you don't know who franco harris is? one of the greatest running backs of all time?!?!?!?!" i just took it for granted that if you were familiar with the 70s steelers you'd know who franco was, and that everyone knew who roberto clemente was. guess i was wrong.

i am really missing home. it's been far too long since i've visited (thank you stupid herniated disc for screwing up my trip in march) and it feels like christmas, when we're planning to visit, might as well be forever away from now. i suppose i'll snap out of it but right now i feel generally friendless, and i have so many friends in the 'burgh i could call up. i haven't really had the opportunity to make any new friends here, thanks to the soul and time sucking commute, so it gets kind of lonesome. thankfully we won't have this commute forever, but still....

the best blueberry pie in the world

2008-07-05T13:45:00.000-07:00

if, like me, you are a blueberry buying fiend who buys entirely too many pints at a time now that they are in season, you're probably looking for ways to use them before they get moldy in your fridge. if you ever thought about making a blueberry pie, i have the recipe for you! i've made it twice and it's been fantastic and has gotten tons of yummy endorsements. the recipe is from cook's illustrated magazine, one of the best cooking & baking magazines out there, in my humble opinion. my subscription is the best $20 i spend every year.

the directions for the crust seemed completely counter-intuitive to me as i'd never seen anything like it when it came to how to add the liquid, not to mention the use of vodka. i decided to just trust the recipe, which was one of the smarter things i've ever done. just do it like they say to and your crust will be magnificent! do not substitude water for the vodka (it uses some of both) because it's essential to the texture of the crust and you can't taste it since it cooks off. they don't say how it's essential, but i think it has something to do with the rate at which the vodka evaporates out of the crust being different than that of the water. whatever it is, i abandonded the martha stewart pate brise pie crust recipe that i've used exclusively for the past ten years without a second thought. this is seriously the best and easiest pie crust i've ever made. i did make one change to the crust re: assembly. they say not to make a lattice, and just cut some holes in the crust with a cookie or biscuit cutter, but being a purist when it comes to fruit pies i couldn't even consider such blasphemy. it has to be a lattice, end of story, so i did change the assembly step for the top crust. you'll notice the picture has their heretical top crust... pay it no attention and make a lattice. it's the only way to stay in right relationship with the fruit pie goddess.

tips and ruminations: both times i made this pie i found that when it comes time to turn down the oven that the edges of the crust have browned sufficiently, so cover them with foil so they don't burn. i didn't measure the lemon zest or juice, either. i used a small lemon so i just used it all. if you don't have a rasp grater, get one. they make zesting a breeze and you'll wonder how you ever got along without one. they're also unbeatable for grating fresh ginger. i used a mortal and pestle to grind up the tapioca, but it didn't seem to do much to it, so the next time i didn't bother with grinding and the pie worked out just fine. just make sure you use instant tapioca like the recipe calls for. c.i. says you can use frozen blueberries, so if you have a jones for blueberry pie in january you don't have to wait six months to satify it. we had people over tonight so i made the pie again (two times in two days) and added a pinch of nutmeg and a 1/4 teaspoon allspice and it was even better than before. i saw the allspice/nutmeg thing in another c.i. blueberry pie recipe. i put an asterik next to them in the recipe below as it's my addition but i highly recommend it. it's divine.

so... without further ado, the best blueberry pie!

Best Blueberry Pie - from Cook's Illustrated July/August 2008

Foolproof Pie Dough

2 1/2 cups (12 1/2 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon table salt
2 tablespoons sugar
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch slices
1/2 cup cold vegetable shortening, cut into 4 pieces
1/4 cup cold vodka (do not substiute)
1/4 cup cold water

Blueberry Filling

6 cups fresh blueberries
1 Granny Smith apple, peeled and grated on large holes of box grater
2 teaspoons grated zest and 2 teaspoons juice from 1 lemon
3/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons instant tapioca, ground
Pinch table salt
2 tablespoons unsalted better, cut into 1/4-inch pieces
1 large egg, lightly beaten with 1 teaspoon water

* 1/4 teaspoon allspice

* pinch of nutmeg

1. FOR THE PIE DOUGH: Process 1 1/2 cups flour, salt, and sugar in food processor until combined, about 2 one-second pulses. Add butter and shortening and process until homogeneous dough just starts to collect in uneven clumps, about 15 seconds (dough will resemble cottage cheese curds and there should be no uncoated flour). Scrape bowl with rubber spatula and redistribute dough evenly around processor blade. Add remaining cup flour and pulse until mixture is evenly distributed around bowl and mass of dough has been broken up, 4 to 6 quick pulses. Empty mixture into medium bowl.

2. Sprinkle vodka and water over mixture. With rubber spatula, use folding motion to mix, pressing down on dough until dough is slightly tacky and sticks together. Divide dough into two even balls and flatten each into 4-inch disk. Wrap each in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 45 minutes or up to 2 days.

3. Remove 1 disk of dough from the refrigerator and roll on generously floured (up to 1/4 cup) work surface to 12-inch circle, about 1/8 inch think. Roll dough loosely and rolling pin and unroll into pie plate, leaving at least 1-inch overhang on each side. Working around circumference, ease dough into plate by gently lifting edge of dough with one hand while pressing into plate bottom with other hand. Leave dough that overhangs plate in place; refrigerate while preparing filling until dough is firm, about 30 minutes.

4. FOR THE FILLING: Adjust oven rack to lowest position, place rimmed baking sheet on oven rack and heat oven to 400 degrees. Place 3 cups berries in medium saucepan and set over medium heat. Using potato masher, mash berries several times to release juices. Continue to cook, stirring frequently and mashing occasionally, until about half of berries have broken down and mixture is thickened and reduced to 1 1/2 cups, about 8 minutes. Let cool slightly.

5. Place grated apple in clean kitchen towel and wring dry. Transfer apple to large bowl. Add cooked berries, remaining 3 cups uncooked berries, lemon zest, juice, sugar, tapioca, and salt; toss to combine. Transfer mixture to dough-lined pie plate and scatter butter pieces over filling.

6. Roll out second disk of dough on generously floured (up to 1/4 cup) work surface to 11-inch circle, about 1/8 inch thick. Using a sharp knife, cut 1/2 - 1 inch strips, depending on width desired. Work in a lattice pattern, leave at least 1/2 inch overhang on all sides.

7. Using kitchen shears, trim bottom layer of overhanging dough, leaving 1/2-inch overhang. Fold dough under itself so that edge of fold is flush with outer rim of pie plate. Flute edges using thumb and forefinger or press with times of fork to seal. Brush top and edges of pie with egg mixture. If dough is very soft, chill in freezer for 10 minutes.

8. Place pie on heating baking sheet and bake 30 minutes at 400 degrees. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees and continue to bake until juice bubbles and crust is deep golden brown, 30 to 40 minutes longer. Transfer pie to wire rack; cool to room temperature, at least 4 hours. Cut into wedges and serve.

you can also eat it warm with ice cream, it'll just be runny, but it's worth it. :)

their system doesn't work for you

2008-06-30T19:24:00.000-07:00

justin sane is writing a blog for blurt magazine, so check it out and leave a comment or two if you have something to say. scroll down and you'll see the blogs on the right hand side of the screen. i could have done a direct link but i wasn't familiar with blurt so i thought some of you might want to check it out, too.

the late, great george carlin

2008-06-26T11:43:00.000-07:00

we lost a great comedian and great american recently, none other than george carlin. here's a brilliant piece about him from the nation magazine blog that explains not only why he was such a good comedian, but also such a influential person.

rest in peace, george. a lot of us will miss you.

go amir, go!!!!

2008-06-23T14:59:00.000-07:00

for those of you who have no idea who the heck amir is, he's this year's ultimate fighter!!! and woo hoo hooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! amir was by far my favorite guy on the show and is a total class act. very funny, very unassuming, lots of self-deprecating humor, just a very likable guy who i was rooting for from the beginninng! yes, we're back in the land of mixed martial arts (mma), my newest passion.

for the uninitiated, the ultimate fighter is a reality television show (this was the 7th season) where mma athletes compete to be the last man standing (literally) at the end of the season. the teams are coached by current mma fighters, this year they were forrest griffin and quinten "rampage" jackson. the winner receives a contract with the ultimate fighting championship and they get fast tracked for a title fight. this year's winner is the dishy gentleman in the picture, amir sadollah.

i just have to say right here that forrest griffin and rampage jackson were really great. i've only seen the ultimate fighter 6, last season, and those coaches, matt hughes and matt serra, couldn't stand each other. they were really, really, really just tolerating each other, barely, so while that made for some drama it was also kind of, well, it was just kind of icky. made for crappy dynamics between the fighters in the house, and that kind of sucked, i thought. forrest and rampage were the complete opposite. they obviously like and have a great regard for one another, so the overall atmosphere this year was just so much better and so much more fun. they were also both very funny. rampage would say stuff sometimes that was completely obvious but the way he said it was so funny, and forrest would say what you were thinking but might not say. they were really great, forrest has a great talent for coaching which was impressive to see, and i can't wait to see their fight july 5th. it's gonna be wild!

back to the fight at hand! it was a really exciting fight, and the first re-match for the winner of the show, ever. amir had already defeated cb dolloway in the semi-final. both drew and i really disliked cb. he's a good fighter, i'll give him that, but he's also an arrogant, cocky, self-important jock and he really rubbed me the wrong way (and judging from the comments on a youtube video of one of amir's kickboxing matches, i wasn't the only one.) anyway, amir was supposed to fight a different guy, jesse taylor, but jesse got kicked off the show after it finished for some bad, drunken behavior. i felt really bad for him because jesse's basically a good kid. not the brightest bulb on the christmas tree, but not malicious and a seriously good fighter. we'll see him again, to be sure. to figure out who amir would fight they brought back the two guys who lost the semi-final matches and they fought each other. i liked cb's opponent in that match, tim credeur, so much better than cb. tim was another guy on the show we really liked, but it was so satisfying to watch amir kick cb's ass - again. using the same move, too! you'd think he'd have figured out he couldn't let himself get stuck in a standing arm bar, but he didn't.

the championship fight was on saturday but i didn't see it until last night because i was waiting for drew to get home from his trip to seattle so we could watch it together. i'd watched the last episode of the regular season, the amir v. cb semi-final fight, the night before. fuck, it was nerve wracking!!!! i was squealing and jumping around and almost biting my fingernails, and i quit biting my fingernails in third grade. it went almost the whole three rounds, too, but amir caught cb in an arm bar half way through the third round! it was an illuminating fight, because the rest of cb's fights during the show didn't go very long and he gassed by the end of the first round, which was but really wasn't kind of surprising, if one thinks about it. even more surprising was his inability to do much of anything once he had amir on the ground. he could take him down (which was frustrating) but he only passed his guard twice and for the amount of punches he was throwing very few actually connected. amir, meanwhile, was throwing very hard punches and great head kicks and his ability to defend himself when cb had him on the ground was really fucking impressive. drew reminded me that he is a jiujitsu guy, which i had kind of forgotten because he's also a kick boxer and i'm partial to kick boxers. don't ask me why, i just am.

i was so seriously thrilled when amir won the final fight. ask drew - i was shouting and jumping up and down and doing the happy dance until drew reminded me i should really be watching my back. so i quit jumping up and down but seriously, i'm still fucking elated!!! it was so great to see someone who is a really nice guy, who's obviously intelligent and reflective and so un-jock like, win the show. and amir hadn't had any professional fights before getting on the show, which was also pretty unusual. amir was just so unassuming all the way through the show that i really think people underestimated him. he wasn't doing the whole "i'm gonna clean up the floor with him" b.s. that so many fighters do, and it was a refreshing change.

the other thing i like about amir, which caught my attention at the start of tuf7, is that from his full and 3/4 profile he looks exactly like my friend, jamie. jamie would never have been caught dead doing something like mma. i just can't even imagine it. but it was really neat to see this guy who turned out to be such a likable, nice guy who also, on occasion, looks so much like my dear friend who i miss so much. i'll always have a soft spot for amir because he looks like jamie. i'm just so glad he won. i've never been so excited about anyone winning a fight, ever, not even gsp. woo hoo, amir!!!!

adventures in bee keeping

2008-06-15T14:47:00.000-07:00

well, okay, we don't actually have any bees that we are keeping (yet) but you can learn some of the basics in this really awesome book that drew got out of the library, a slice of organic life. i LOVE this book! i bought a copy on amazon, it's that neat-o. it's full of all kinds of nifty things you can do to live greener, whether you live in a city apartment or have a few acres in the country. it covers everything from growing herbs in pots to keeping bees, chickens, milk cows and pigs to making preserves to using natural cleaners to making your own beeswax floor polish!!!! i really like the floor polish one. when i was a kid we had this floor buffer, which was kind of like a vacuum cleaner but it had these two round brushes and it was kind of out of control wild when turned on. you had to hold on tight or it could totally spin away from you. i have no idea where my mother got it. anyway, it was really fun to use and i remember going through a phase where me and my brothers, joe and justin, andi think my sister, molly, too, would polish the kitchen, dining room and hall floors. there we were on hands and knees putting polish on the floors and then breaking out the buffer. i know it's hard to believe that this could have been any fun for kids but we had a blast doing it and the floors looked so nice. i don't even think you're supposed to wax linoleum floors like the one in my parents' kitchen, and it's the same floor that they have now. they've had that baby for going on 34 or 35 years and there's just this one tile that's a little smashed in one corner. i remember being a squirt when my dad was putting it in and leaning up against his back so i could peek over his shoulder. it's amazing parents get anything done. how that floor has lasted so long i have no idea but perhaps the recreational waxing had something to do with it. if anyone wonders how i grew up to be a martha of the first magnitude, this post should clear that right up.

speaking of which we have a ton of tomato plants! there are the five that jimbo bought that are planted in the garden and they've gone wild! one of them is over three feet tall and most of the rest are not far behind. ironically, it's the smallest plant that we got our first two tomatoes from and they were delicious! then we have the eight or so "volunteers" that drew was experimenting with on the other side of the house in the rose bed. he wondered if we'd get any tomatoes if he just threw some old ones we didn't get around to using on the ground and guess what? they grow. there are easily eight tomato plants over there (roma tomatoes) and that's after me thinning them out. if i'd realized he was going to throw so many tomatoes around i'd have suggested he toss them somewhere other than the rose bed, but oh well.

i've decide i need to learn how to can things because we're gonna have a glut of tomatoes and i use chopped tomatoes so much for cooking, and it would be a crime to let them go to waste. besides, there's nothing like an in-season tomato fresh from your own garden. my mom used to can tomatoes all the time when i was a kid so i will get some tips from her and research it a bit at the library and on the internet. i hated canning tomatoes when i was a kid. the fricking things would make your hands burn after a while because they're so acidic, and i didn't eat tomatoes or any other vegetables if i could mange it, so it seemed doubly unjust that i was being forced to toil over the tomato grinder like some orphan child in dickens story. i also felt very oppressed when i had to pick green beans. it's pretty hilarious now since i love both green beans and tomatoes and can't wait to do some canning. just goes to show... you can never entirely escape your upbringing, not that i've tried very hard.

no moon in june for me

2008-06-08T14:20:00.000-07:00

there is still not much going on with me at the moment which is why i haven't been blogging. i have also been kind of bummed because this weekend is the annual moon in june event up at kowana valley ranch near yosemite and i am obviously missing it! lynn & richard are a really awesome couple who own kowana valley ranch and host a mostly irish music and dance festival every year that is loads of fun. i missed it for the five years i was living in pittsburgh and was delighted to be able to go again last year. it was fantastic, as usual!!!!! i have been looking forward to it all year and my stupid back prevented me from attending. argh!!!!

seriously... you have no idea how bummed i am. i forbade drew making any other plans all year so that he could come with me because i knew he'd love it and i really wanted him to come. he gamely agreed to go along with me, because really... those of you who know drew know that there's really no way to forbid him doing anything. he's so contrary he'd do whatever it was just because you said he couldn't. there are so many awesome people who go to moon in june, lynn & richard are so wonderful, there's music and dancing and singing and campfires and hikes and swimming and more amazingly yummy food than you can imagine! it is so much fun!!!! you can always count on a good bottle of bourbon making the rounds of at least one of the campfires by midnight, too, which i mightily appreciate. i took up a bottle of knob creek bourbon last year as a birthday present for richard and it was very entertaining to watch people taking a slug as it made its way round the campfire because the bourbon drinkers really appreciated it while the novices made horrible faces and thought it was yucky. can you imagine anyone thinking knob creek is yucky, fellow bourbon lovers? even thought it was utterly wasted on some folks the amusement factor was definitely worth it. i was planning to bring along several good bourbons this year, but alas! well, i always have next year to look forward to and my brother mick, who is an amazing irish musician, and his wife are tentatively planning to come out for it, which would be awesome! i know they'll love it. it's just next year is so far away. sigh! then again, lots of people never get to go to anything like moon in june, ever, so i guess i should count my blessings.

anyway, that's it for me. hope all is well in the wider world. :-)

2008-05-27T12:10:00.000-07:00

no wild news here, but felt like i should post and check in with everyone. i kind of feel silly saying "everyone" as i think there are about fifteen people who read my blog, maybe, and of that, probably three who do so consistently. i have no illusions that i am setting the blog sphere on fire. but still, it's fun and i enjoy it, and anything that keeps me feeling connected while i'm stuck home on my own is a worthwhile exercise.

i am feeling better and better everyday - thank God for surgery! i have a follow up appointment tomorrow and if that goes well i'll be starting physical therapy thereafter. i can't imagine it won't go well since i've been doing what i was told to do and have only overdone it twice since starting to really feel better. for an overachiever wanna go-go-go girl that's pretty darn good. apart from the aforementioned over did it incidents, a door to door hour long trip to the grocery store (i didn't carry anything) and a walk, i've been very conscious that even though i'm feeling better, i'm not. i don't want to do anything that will imperil my recovery... like, say... down hill skiing three weeks after surgery. i actually heard a story about someone who had the same surgery i had who did just that. guess what he ended up needing to do again, only more complicated and involving fusing bones and putting hardware into his spine? man, you kids are sharp! as much as i am profoundly grateful and thankful and thrilled that surgery has been able to help me, i don't plan to make a habit of it.

oh, i forgot to thank dave & diane for the get well card they sent me in my last post, so thank you!!! it was a funny one, too.

that's it for me as i need to get out of this chair... no sitting for more than 30 minutes or else i turn into an bad, achy pumpkin. i like pumpkins as much as the next gal, but i really don't want to be one. :)

surgery (aka gimpy no more!)

2008-05-18T11:31:00.001-07:00

hallo everyone!!!! sorry it has been so long since i posted but i have been rather busy. a week ago tuesday, may 13th, was my surgery. i have to admit to being completely freaked out by the prospect but i'll do something before recounting the tale that i generally hate: give away the ending. it was a great success!!!!! i feel so much better it is not funny!!! yes, my back hurt a lot at first - it was cut into after all, but that shooting nerve pain down my leg and across my back that made it impossible to walk or stand up straight or enjoy life in any way is gone. hasta la vista, baby. yippee!!!!! all the numbness and pins & needles in my foot and leg were gone immediately after surgery. then they came back, but that is normal. it was actually freaking me out, but the same day that i got confirmation from the doctor (again) that is was indeed completely normal was the day they seemed to start going away. coincidence? i think not. it takes a while for things to settle down with the nerve is what i was told.

anyway, my surgeon, dr. blumenfeld, said he had never seen a disc herniate in quite the way mine had. even though i heard this afterwards, when it was clear that the surgery had been a success, i have to say... it's still not something you want your surgeon who has done over 1,000 back surgeries to say to you. i can't really explain well in writing just how it was different, apart from the direction it took upon herniating was obviously bizarre, so i won't even try. the other way it was different was that a piece of the extruded disc (the jelly-ish inner disc stuff that had herniated out through the tough outer disc) had broken off and migrated to the nerve root so that the nerve was getting pinched from two directions - from that little piece and from all the crap extruding from the disc. poor little nerve!!!! there was no way that was going to get better on its own so i am really happy i didn't bother with the epidural cortisone shot. i'd have ended up needing surgery once it wore off and it would have been two to four more weeks of fucking around beforehand.

i am so happy that i had surgery!!!!!!!!!!!! fifty years ago i'd have ended up a cripple in constant pain (or an addicted cripple in constant pain), and that's no exaggeration, so let's hear it for medical science and science in general!!!! i don't care what those flat-earther "intelligent design" folks say: science is our friend!!!! it's funny, that, because it seems to be the protestant "born again" denominations (in the u.s. anyway) that have problems with science. the official stance of the catholic church re: science and faith is that they are totally compatible, because science helps us better understand God's creation. it took a couple thousand years but is some ways my church is downright civilized. :)

but i digress...

i was pretty freaked out going in, barely slept the night before because of pain, and cried at least three times on the way to the hospital. my poor husband is all i can say. once i got checked and was being cared for by the pre-surgery nurses that all changed. they gave me painkillers and valium (i was so thankful for the valium i started laughing and saying thank you at the same time) and by the time they took me out to the operating room i wasn't really caring much what happened. i mean, i did care, of course but i wasn't anxious about it. the anesthesiologist, dr. kennedy, was very nice, explained things to me, told me how i was going to be put on my tummy and showed me the thing they were going to put my face on, even pressed it on my face so i'd know what it was like. dr. blumenfeld said hi from the other side of the operating table, which i wasn't on yet (they knocked me out for that, merciful creatures!), then dr. kennedy told me he was giving me a shot to help me relax and the next thing i knew i was in the recovery room! i had been freaked out about the general anesthetic, and i realized later that i was freaked out about knowing it was coming. i had envisioned what you see in all the movies... the mask coming down over your mouth and nose and being told to count backwards from ten. the way dr. kennedy did it was perfect because i had no idea he was starting to put me under with that shot.

so, i've been home since a week ago wednesday, may 14th. the nurses, everyone in fact, at good samaritan hospital were fantastic!!!! i've never been in the hospital when i've been really sick or debilitated before and they were just awesome! i felt so cared for. i hope you never do, but if you happen to herniate your disc in the san jose area and need to see a neurosurgeon, i highly recommend dr. blumenfeld and good samaritan hospital. the first two days home were kind of rough but drew and my sister, lucy, took very good care of me, and after that it started to get a lot better. by sunday i was able to get in and out of bed by myself. i'm able to take walks (in fact i am supposed to take frequent short walks) and have even taken solo walks around the block. the walks with drew are a lot more fun, but the poor guy has to go to work sometime. only bummer with the walks around the block is that unless i take it during the middle of the day i can't take zinger with me. i took one around 5 pm and that was a mistake in that she and baby, a little dog in the neighborhood, started barking at each other and i realized were zinger and a dog she might actually get into with would be a disaster, because i couldn't reel her in or intervene. won't make that mistake again. luckily during the day nobody's dogs are out, since they're at work.

that kind of brings me back to my big pet peeve about santa cruz and dogs: many people think leashes are optional and fireworks are mandatory. don't ask me why because for the life of me i can't figure it out.

in other news, i finished in two days a sensational book, lonely werewolf girl, by martin millar. you simply must read this book - it's hilarious!!!! and the chapters are all of three to four pages long, so even though it's about 230 pages you just rip through it. the short chapters kind of remind me of another of my favorite books, the serial, a year long tale of life in marin county in the seventies. it might be thirty years later, but a lot of things about marin, not to mention the bay area, have not changed one bit. :)

i also got some very pretty flowers. i forgot to take a picture of the ones from mom & dad while they were looking good, but i got these from lucy & laurence:

and these from kendra and andy:

THANKS!!!! and i got cards from arlene & don, christie & david & evelyn, and i know i'm forgetting someone else but drew is ready to throw me out of this chair, so i'll get you later. promise.

happy to see you all again.
(((((hugs)))))
anne

not as bad as all that

2008-05-09T18:58:00.000-07:00

well, i'm having surgery next tuesday and between you, me, and anyone else who might be interested, I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! yes, i am looking forward to surgery! after an enlightening consultation with the neurosurgeon yesterday and confab with my husband, we decided to go for it. some of the reasons are:

1. i have numbness and pins & needles in my left toes. i've probably had the numbness all along but i was in such pain before last week that i just didn't notice it (i did notice the p&n).

2. i have significant muscle weakness in my left leg, a result of the nerve impingement, which has been getting progressively worse since the injury. i've noticed this all along, but i didn't realize how bad it was until yesterday. the surgeon is concerned that such long-term impingement (3 months and counting as of this week) could lead to permanent nerve damage, which could in turn lead to muscle atrophy and possibly permanent muscle damage, even if the nerve got better eventually!!! so how did this all become super duper clear to me especially so yesterday? i was asked to stand on my left foot only, hold the wall to keep my balance, and then stand up on my toes. super easy, right? wrong. trying with all my might i can maybe get my heel about half an inch off the floor. that shocked the shit out of me!

3. the epidural shot might work, but it might not. it's another week just to have the consultation, i have no idea how long after that until i could get the shot. they do it as an outpatient procedure in an o.r. with sedation, so it has to be scheduled. if i had the shot and it didn't work my only option is surgery, just with another six weeks of fucking around beforehand.

4. i have a mother of a disc herniation. it's severe. i'd never seen an mri before and sure as hell don't know how to read one, but i picked it right out. it looks like a fucking solar flare. seriously, no exaggeration. my g.p. said it was severe, so i was kind of surprised when the neurologist didn't seem to think it was, but the neurosurgeon agreed with my g.p.

5. it's been three months since my injury and i'm not really improving. the oral steroids have helped, but i finished them and their effect is already wearing off. doesn't seem like an auspicious sign for the success of an epidural steroid. also, i have smaller than normal bone openings for the nerves to pass through in the first place, so inflammation is probably not the entire story.

6. recent studies that followed people w/ disc herniation for five years after they either had the surgery i will have (microdiscectomy) or didn't have any surgery found people who had the surgery had fewer recurrences of subsequent, similar injuries. maybe that won't bear out at ten years, but i'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. the funny thing is, drew mentioned to me today how the neurologist we saw last week, who told us that he himself has a herniated disc that he had treated with the shot, not surgery, mentioned several times subsequent problems. i hadn't really thought about it until drew mentioned it today. the surgeon said microdiscectomy is to back surgery what an appendectomy is to general surgery: common and routine, and if you have to have surgery, that's the kind you want to have. also, he's done over a thousand of them, so i'm not getting a novice.

7. but probably the biggest factor at this point after the first two reasons is that i am tired of being fucked up. i've been injured for three months, off work for six weeks at this point; i am tired of being disabled. i can't even walk to the corner and we're the third house in on our cul-de-sac. i can't walk the dog, i can't help her up onto the bed to sleep with me, i'm not supposed to pick up the cats because at 12 and 14 lbs they're heavier than i should be lifting. i can't walk to the beach, i can't sit in a chair for very long, go to a movie, go to dinner, or ride in the car w/out it hurting like fuck. i can't do laundry, go to the store, or, depending on the day, take a shower. fuck, i can't stand up straight! all i can do is pop pain killers, lie flat on my back or my right side, watch t.v., read & knit, eat, and that's pretty much it. i can't even reliably include sleeping on the list, because sometimes it hurts so much i can't sleep. my quality of life at the moment sucks and isn't getting better. i've talked to several people who've had surgery for herniated discs of both neck and back, my lovely cousin lisa among them, and they've all said it was worth it.

so... that's the surgery thing. it'll be next tuesday, may 13th, at 11 am. prayers and positive vibes accepted! and please, don't one of you waste one millisecond of your time searching the web for alternative options to the horrors of back surgery, because my mind is made up. if you must trawl the web on my behalf, do it to send flowers or something.

i'm over the crushing disappointment of the resident ministry rejection. yes, it sucks, and i hate not getting what i want, but quite frankly i have bigger fish to fry at the moment. i don't know how things will play out now with this new development, certainly not as i had envisioned them for the last several months, but it will all work out in the end. several years ago i was lamenting about a romance i thank my lucky stars did not work out (can you say dodged thermonuclear armageddon?) when a friend of mine at the time told me, "anne, things always work out in the end. if they haven't worked out, you just haven't reached the end yet." he was right, so i'm just coasting until i reach the end of all this, when it will all be worked out.

my stars are not aligned

2008-05-08T13:48:00.000-07:00

got word today that i didn't get the resident minister job. i called my mom and had what will no doubt be the first of many huge bawling sessions. i feel marginally better after talking to her but i cannot even begin to express the depth of my disappointment and sadness. i really, really, really wanted this. i thought i'd be good at it. i thought it would help me get where i'd like to go. i have a fricking masters degree in ministry but apparently it didn't count for all that much. a grad student was probably chosen over me. how humiliating. i wish i could say it was an honor to be considered at all, but i am not there by a long shot yet. ever.

how much do you want to bet i end up needing surgery after all?

a tumble down the rabbit hole

2008-05-07T22:53:00.000-07:00

our health care "system" sucks so bad it's not funny. i had to wait six weeks before my doc would order the mri for my herniated disc because he said the insurance wouldn't approve it before that, and i'm sure he's right, he does this kind of stuff all the time. week seven of this effing saga is when i finally get my mri. why do i need an mri? so i can go to the next step: see a neurologist.

i see the neurologist last week. he gives me oral steroids and an anti-seizure medicine that is supposed to work on different neural pain pathways. they've both been surprising effective at moving me from barely being able to walk and in pain all the time to being able to mange the pain (along with the percocet) and being more ambulatory than before. chairs are still a problem (i'm lying down with my laptop to write this), can't do much or it hurts, but still, better than before. he also recommends that i get an epidural steroid shot. next step: see an anesthesiologist to get an epidural steroid shot.

so... i call the referred approved anesthesiologist (because it's all go to be approved and referred, which took two days) to make that appointment and the woman tells me they're scheduling for june 12th. i was absolutely speechless. truly. i was stammering as i told her i'd already been off work for three weeks (actually it's going on five, and that's just the medical leave), that i was in pain, that i, i, i... that i was going to call the neurologist and see what he thought i should do because i can't wait another month. the neurologist had said to call him if i couldn't get an appointment quickly and he'd call them and talk to the doc for me.

i got off the phone with the neurologist's receptionist, who was telling me part of the problem is that there aren't that many anesthesiologists who take my insurance group - my really good employer-sponsored insurance group - when the anesthesiologist's office calls back to say they can see me a week from tomorrow. hallelujah!!!! don't get me wrong - i was very happy and thankful that the receptionist took pity on me, all on her own without me having to beg, even, but shit! it's another week, just to do the consultation. the procedure is another appointment and who knows when the fuck that will be? at this rate i'm thinking i'll be lucky to get the damn thing before my leave ends on may 22nd. if my leave has to be extended again i'll cry.

just to make the whole scenario even more kafkaesque, i have an appointment with a neurosurgeon tomorrow. for some reason it was no problem to get an appointment with the surgeon! we made it so we wouldn't be caught waiting if surgery becomes necessary. in a perverse way, i almost feel like if the surgeon says "yes, surgery will help you and we can do it next week" it would be easier to just have surgery. i know that's silly and dumb after having such encouraging results with the oral steroids and the anti-seizure medicine, but at least it wouldn't be more of this interminable d - r - a - g - g - i - n - g it out. it's so frustrating to try and get the care i need. it's not like i'm bitching about not being able to get an appointment with the plastic surgeon to get liposuction and a boob job i don't need! i just want to quit hurting, get well, get back to work and back to my life. i'm not asking for all that much.

i remember hearing these two middle-aged men talking at the gym before the 2004 election, and the one saying to the other, "and the middle class don't want that much. all they want to is a good job so they can own a house, raise a family, and give their daughter a nice wedding." he was right, and maybe that's the problem with this country... that the working people don't want all that much, because the people with the money and the power want it all - and they're not interested in sharing.

thank God drew is coming with me for my appointment tomorrow or i think i'd have a nervous breakdown.

steroids are not always bad

2008-05-06T09:48:00.000-07:00

i had my appointment with the neurologist on friday. i could barely walk, i was in so much pain, and i am not exaggerating. i was in so much pain that when he suggested trying less radical options before surgery i was really pissed off and annoyed; we both were. that's how much i hurt. however, being the good girl i am (the guy is a neurologist so he might know what he's talking about), we got the oral steroid and another prescription filled - some epilepsy drug that he said works on different pain pathways than narcotics (i.e. the percocet that i have been gobbling down), and took the medicine. i also started the process for getting an epidural cortisone shot. that particular procedure involves shooting the cortisone right into the herniated disc area. it's a big rigamarole... i have to get sedated and i am sure some other crap too, but i have heard they're quite effective.

i woke up saturday feeling, well, okay. i wasn't wracked with pain because i'd slept past taking my percocet time, which was my life these past two and a half weeks as i got progressively worse. i wasn't completely better, but i was a lot better than i'd been. it seemed nothing short of miraculous. that's when i decided that steroids, because of people who abuse them, get a bad rap. kind of like pit bulls, which are a wonderful breed (petey from "the little rascals" was a pit), but when owned by reckless assholes can be trained to be aggressive.

i felt pretty weird and tripped out on saturday, let me tell you. our neighbor, nate, came over with his adorable children, liam and emma, for a bbq and i spent most of my time on the couch during the entire event, that's how tripped out i felt. drew told me on sunday it was nice to have me happy and cheerful again, which was nice, but it made me realize i must have been horribly bitchy lately and i was trying so hard not to be. drew is so sweet.... he said it was okay because being in chronic, horrible pain just sucks and he knows that, and part of taking care of me was to not let on that i was being bitchy and miserable. sigh...... i love that man. he's just so good. :)

i am hopeful that the epidural cortisone shot will be all that i need to recover. now that i'm not feeling like i'm going to die from the pain, surgery again seems like a last resort option! it's also a measure of just how much this thing has sucked my will to live. my medical leave was extended by my doctor until may 22nd (totally demoralizing, let me tell you), but i'm hoping that my epidural shot can be scheduled soon, and maybe, if it works as well as the current stuff has, that i can get back to work before that. i really like my job and i miss it. i love to think that should i come into massive amounts of cash i could just be a complete and utter dosser but the reality is i'm the kind of person who needs a place to go. maybe not every day, but most days. i probably wouldn't need a job to accomplish that, so don't get me wrong... i'm not chaining myself to the 9-5 world should it ever happen, but the chances of that are about as good as the chance of brad and angelina popping in for a visit. ah well... to dream!!!

here's a picture from the bbq... trump and emma playing hockey!

drew and nate manning the grill :)

craftiness abounds...

2008-05-01T18:04:00.000-07:00

there is one aspect of the gimpy back situation that has, in fact, been rather nice. i have been knitting and crocheting like a mad woman. first off, i finished owen's hoodie!!!! woo hoo! they are all visiting at the ancestral home in lovely but freezing cold pittsburgh, where the hoodie arrived in plenty of time for their departure home to holland. i'm just happy that i managed to finish the fecking thing before he finished high school! i had jokingly started thinking of it as his graduation present, since it was supposed to be for his first birthday and he turned two in january. i think it will be big for him, but he can grow into it.

i have also finished my first felting project and lemme tell you, felting is fun!!!! well, it's not actually felting... technically what i did is called fulling, but in the common parlance of the crafty world at the moment it's called felting. it's all about marketing in the end, i suppose. i made the backpack below and gave it to my niece, rachel. it was great to get a call from her telling me how much she loves it! yeah!!!!

i added a little inside pocket, which the pattern lacked. it was kind of accidental... i realized i screwed up the little outer pocket, so i just finished to so i could sew in a zipper and voila! you can see the side pocket there, with the blue edging. there's one on the other side, too. my flower petals aren't as round as in the picture for the pattern but heck if i can figure out what i did wrong. i can't for the life of me figure it out, but they look nice so no harm, no foul. i guess i could have sent drew for my crocheting books, since i wasn't going to run around the house for them with my back and leg hurting. i had to wrestle them into shape after pulling them out of the washer as they still looked like deformed star fish but i think they look enough like flowers, even if they are skinny petaled.

right now i am working on a baby blanket. drew's cousin had a baby so i thought, seeing as how i've got all this time on my hands, that i could make a baby blanket. i am getting there... i have to make about twenty more granny squares and there will be pictures, just not today.

sorry for the huge time gaps between posts. last two weeks have been pretty chronic with the herniated disc, but hopefully that will change. eventually.

zinger + skunk = smelly

2008-04-10T12:41:00.000-07:00

she waited until she was ten years old, but zinger has finally made one of the more infamous canine rites of passage: she got skunked. drew took her on a walk last night and calls me starting off with "i've got bad news... (l - o - n - g pause)" and then proceeded to tell me the completely un-bad news that she'd been skunked. BAD news is she got hit by a car and is dead, which is what i immediately thought given his tone, so getting skunked, while undoubtedly something better avoided, did not seem so bad. that said, i'm not the one who washed her. that became the exclusive purview of mr. drew when he fired me from said task upon coming to live with us in pittsburgh as he thought i wasn't sufficiently gentle. my lack of incorporating a nice massage was deemed cruel and unusual. no good deed goes unpunished, ha ha ha! this is how he spent his evening.

in other equally stinky news, figuratively of course, anti-flag was in town recently for their show and i couldn't go on account of my gimpy back. curses!!! i was pretty bummed, but drew was right (as usual) that i shouldn't go. i did get to hang out with justin the next day, as he decided to fly up to portland so he could get some rest at lucy's house, so that took away a lot of the sting of missing the show everyone else was at: lg2, trump and his friends, mike & galen, cindy and her boyfriend, my cousin kenny; i missed them all. ah well... not much to be done for it.

and last but not least, my first interview for the resident minister position was on monday. it went alright. i was feeling a little bit off my game, what with my back and all, but overall i think it went well. hopefully they'll invite me back for a second one and then hire me, so please, all prayers and positive energy to that end are appreciated.

the bright lights of america!!!

2008-04-01T14:48:00.000-07:00

hey everybody!!! anti-flag's new cd, the bright lights of america, is in stores TODAY!!!! i've been listening to the album on their myspace page pretty much non-stop the past week and while im might be slightly biased, i've gotta say it's a lot of fun. i especially like vices, go west, and good & ready. and the title track. and spit in the face... i guess i could keep going and just say i like them all, because i do. GO BUY A COPY (or ten) TODAY!!! or at least this first week... strong first week sales are very important, and you know you'll have my eternal gratitude.

also, they put out a spoof newspaper (it is april fool's day, after all) of all the news that we wish was real, and it's very entertaining.

ouch!

2008-03-29T10:12:00.000-07:00

hidy ho, boys and girls! as you may have noticed, i've been MIA most of this month, and i owe it all to my herniated disc. yes, i have a herniated disc, and take it from me: it blows. not only does it hurt like a mofo - nothing like shooting pains down the outside of the left leg from the nerve the bulging disc is pinching! - but it takes about six to eight weeks to get better. can you believe that? couldn't i have managed to injure myself in a less time-consuming and debilitating way?

i'm at week three, so i'm looking at another three to four weeks of recovery time. what have i been doing? well, i missed most of the past two weeks of work and will soon be starting a short-term disability leave. i have become well-acquainted with the tried and true ice pack, and when i just can't stand it i take a painkiller, though i try not to unless i'm really dying because those things scare me. getting addicted to percocet is the last thing i need. the activity that kills most, besides walking, is sitting in chairs. kind of hard to go to work in an office and not sit on a chair for very long. i did try this past wednesday & thursday, just to see if i could hang in there or if i needed to take the leave, and thought i would die yesterday; instead i stayed home, iced, took pain pills and watched the boob tube. the best position in terms of avoiding pain, thus far, is laying down, flat on my back. sadly, it's not quite the same as "woo hoo - i'm getting lucky!" flat on my back - ugh, ugh, ugh.... and i had to cancel my much anticipated trip home. wah!!! that really sucked, though i was very happy all my friends got together for the dinner party that christie and david had generously volunteered to host (in my honor? that sounds too pretentious. how about in order for us all to get together and visit? i like that a lot better.)

i am trying to look on the bright side. first off, it's not like this is fatal, just a complete pain in the ass (almost literally). oh, that reminds me... drew was teasing me when i was feeling quite sorry for myself one day that maybe i'd need a buttectomy, which was really rather funny. my boss has been absolutely sensational, which just takes a load off my mind and makes me appreciate working for him even more. i can catch up on my knitting and reading and sleep, spend some time with the furry critters, and basically be shiftless - at least until i start physical therapy. the thing is, being shiftless is a whole lot more fun when you're able to go do things. i haven't gone with drew and zinger on walks in four weeks - easy - and forget the beach. it's only a ten minute walk away but that might as well be ten miles at the moment. i haven't been spending as much time with tommy as i'd like because that usually involves sitting on the floor in the garage with him, and that's just not so comfy. but the weather is starting to get nicer (the wisteria is starting to bloom!) so perhaps he & i & zinger can hang out on the deck.

worst case scenario i can always call my dad for an attitude adjustment, and re-visit the year i gave up self-pity for lent. it was pretty successful, and i've never gotten into feeling sorry for myself in quite the same way since. :)

happy birthday dad!!!

2008-03-03T13:05:00.000-08:00

i'm a day late with the post, but i wasn't with singing happy birthday to the answering machine! yesterday was my awesome dad's birthday - happy birthday, dad! you can see him in this slightly outdated picture (in terms of years, not the wife. that part is still up to date!) drew and i sang happy birthday into the answering machine, since we missed the birthday boy in person, which was a lot of fun. it is not uncommon in my family to get anywhere from one to six messages from people singing happy birthday to you. drew was bummed that we didn't get dad on the phone in part because he has come up with some new angle to harass him. those two were made for each other. i think my little brother outdid us, though, as he got the crowd at their show in manchester to sing happy birthday for dad, and that was a whole lot of people... several hundred at least. way to go, baby bro!!!

happy birthday, pops! we'll talk to you later today!!!!

busy, busy, busy

2008-02-26T11:24:00.000-08:00

i am making progress on the hoodie i am making for my nephew, owen, aka mr. cute, as you can see for yourself. mind you, this is an old picture so i'm sure he's a lot bigger. aforementioned hoodie will be way too big for him as i'm making the three year old size and he's just two, but seeing as how it was supposed to be a first bday present, i decided it was better err on the side of caution, and he'll grow into it soon enough. damn, he really is a cutie. :)

apart from that, i'm not really busy, but drew, poor boy, is crazy busy with work and school among other things. he's starting at a new client location on monday up in milpitas, of all fricking places. milpitas = much longer commute, fyi for the non-bay area crowd. and longer for him means longer for me, so i can only hope this next contract is short and/or we get our act together to buy another car. i guess we'll see.

i have some pictures i need to get off my phone from the weekend. there was a storm and while it didn't seem too bad in terms of rain, the beach was just wild. never seen the waves so big and you couldn't actually go onto the beach because the water was coming the whole way up and over the road into the little lagoon across the way. very cool, and we were completely safe, no worries of getting swept away. :) i mean, you could have gone onto the beach, but you'd have had to run back pretty quickly or else you'd have been wet up to your knees or mid-calf, and nobody wants to bother with that in february, even in nocal.

politics and puppy dogs

2008-02-15T15:02:00.001-08:00

ah... there's nothing like eating a little crow, is there? after my big old rant in the "it's a bummer edwards withdraws from the presidential race" post a few weeks back i have to come clean: barack obama is slowly sucking me in. i said as much to drew last night and was relieved to hear him tell me it was happening to him, too. whew! i am not sure what it is or what to make of it, because while i admire the idea of healing the divisions in our country and changing the tone of the public discourse as much as the next person, i also believe that nothing short of being completely committed and willing to go to mat and be just as ruthless as they are will work when dealing with the current crop of right-wing conservatives who have made the uber-partisan, nasty, fearful and intolerant america of today possible. i also think paul krugman, nytimes opinion writer and economist, is correct in his analysis of the slight but important differences between hillary clinton and barack obama's policy positions.

and yet. i think obama has a better chance than clinton in the general election. there's none of the "clinton baggage" that is so popularly bandied about at the moment, and that's unfortunate because it's such bullshit. the "clinton baggage" is misogyny for the most part, imho, especially from the right-wingers who hate her with an irrational zeal. there are people who dislike her because of her politics, although they tend toward the more rational end of the spectrum. i personally think she and bill are nothing more than reagan democrats who were good for the clintons but really quite bad for the democratic party, and consequently i haven't been too impressed with either of them. hillary is vilified for staying in her marriage, but she'd have been as equally vilified had she left bill because of the out of bounds blow jobs. it's their marriage, let them decide how to proceed; i have my hands quite full with my (happy) own, thank you very much. i can't come up with any good reason why the right-wingers get so rabid about her, except that they're threatened by what she stands for: smart, intelligent, forthright women who don't necessarily want or need them. the rush limbaugh's of the world wouldn't have anyone to make them dinner and make sure they take their oxycontin pills on schedule. i am sure poor rush just trembles at the thought of it.

but it's more than just that. i listened to obama's "call to renewal" speech (june 2006) today, which was the keynote address for a call to renewal/sojourners meeting (they've merged as sojourners), a christian faith and justice group that i am a member of, actually. you have to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the video clips on the obama for president site to get the entire speech, btw. i agree with what he says in this speech. i agree that progressives who refuse or are afraid to talk about how their faith/spirituality informs their politics are making a mistake of colossal proportions, because they're letting the jerry falwells and pat robertsons of the world define what politics informed by religious faith/spirituality is in america. that's incredibly dangerous because speaking to people in religious terms, as obama goes on to say, is a form of communication that is readily accessible to americans, especially as so many of the great reformers in our history have been people of faith of one form or another. they've spoken in religious language in part to give their arguments moral authority, but also because it's something people are familiar with and understand. i'm a theologian by training and this has always been my problem with progressives who are uncomfortable, unwilling or unable to engage the politics informed by faith/spirituality question. it's not either church or state, it's a balancing act of both. you don't have to have politics informed by faith/spirituality, but you can't pretend it doesn't exist for most other people and that it's important in american politics. not just today, either, but historically it always has been. if you won't even try, or even acknowledge this reality, you let the other side define the terms, and whoever defines the terms in politics will always do it to their side's advantage. it's not rocket science, kids; it's human nature.

i guess, as much as this makes me feel like a sheep to admit it, it's nice to feel that someone is at least trying to be positive and stay above all the republican sleaze. i mean, if he does get the nomination the sleaze machine will hit him like a runaway train, make no mistake. but i keep getting this funny feeling that he might just manage to deflect it. or enough of it. so i don't know... i've always said americans will elect a black man for president before they'll elect a woman. maybe it's my brutally dim view of the open-mindedness of america that's nudging me along. in any event, it's not like i have to make my mind up now.

as for the puppies part, well, if you're an animal sucker or tender hearted you might want to skip this new york times article about the best friends animal society's efforts to rehabilitate the poor doggies that were part of michael vick's dog fighting ring. there are other groups, too, like BADRAP, who are doing similar work, but best friends is the organization profiled in the article. you read about some of the Mengele-esque abuse the poor animals suffered which is simply horrifying and heartbreaking, but you also learn about all the really committed, wonderful people who are trying to help, too. that made it worth it for me to read it. that and the great picture of one of the shelter staff crashed out with one of the dogs. totally sweet and hopeful.

i only came across the nytimes article yesterday and was astounded to learn, because i didn't follow the story too closely because it was just so appalling, that instead of euthanizing the poor victims at the center of the dismal affair, i.e. the dogs, as is usual in these cases and was urged by both the humane society and people for the ethical treatment of animals, that the authorities decided to evaluate the dogs for their potential to be rehabilitated. the american society for the prevention of cruelty to animals was one of the animal welfare groups that urged this course of action, which made me happy as i already support them but now i will increase that support. as for peta, they'll never see another dollar of my money ever again, the self-righteous hypocrites. i know that's not entirely fair, i understand where they're coming from on the one hand because they're high risk dogs, no doubt about it. it's just the horribly-abused = unsalvageable-summary-execution argument coming from them is more than i can stomach. pits are such wonderful dogs and i definitely want one someday, and that whole unsalvageable attitude/rationale just reinforces all of the misperceptions about the breed. did you know petey, the good rascals dog, was a pit? well, he was, so think on that! but i digress...

most of the dogs will, eventually, be able to be adopted, even though it could be quite some time before they've healed enough. those that can't be adopted will have a permanent home at the best friends animal society's animal sanctuary. it's being paid for courtesy of an almost million dollar fine that vick, the evil fucking scum bag loser who hanging is too good for, was ordered to pay as part of his sentence. all i can say is he's lucky i wasn't his judge. i am hard-pressed when it comes to my christian duty to have any sort of compassion for someone who abuses the most defenseless among us. he's probably more to be pitied than scorned, given that his inner life must be so devoid of any compassion, richness and beauty that he thinks it's okay to treat animals in the manner he did, but people like him make it awfully easy to scorn them.

new anti-flag music!!!

2008-02-12T19:08:00.000-08:00

in case you've been living under a rock, the new Anti-Flag album, The Bright Lights of America, is coming out on april 1st. you can hear the title track on the Flag's myspace page. and you can hear another track, good and ready, on the alternative press web site. as for the rest, we have to wait, even me. since i'm not at ground zero (the beautiful 'burgh), anymore i don't get to hear anything beforehand... sigh! :_(

p.s. to the garage cat

2008-02-10T11:07:00.000-08:00

don't anyone worry that we will abandon mr. tommy when we get our own place! if i'm lucky enough to get one of the resident ministry positions for next year we'll be in a small one bedroom apartment, which is not my idea of a good place to try to introduce hostile kitties. however, because it will be so small (we saw two of them on friday; small but doable) and drew wants access to his computer data center equipment (i wish that was a joke but you all know it isn't), we're going to rent a small commercial warehouse space (1500 sq. ft. or less, no more than $1000/month). drew can put all his stuff there, plus our stuff that's in storage that we can't access unless it's right at the door will go there, too, and since one or both of us will be going to the warehouse everyday we are going to make tommy our warehouse cat. we're paying almost $250/month for the storage space already, so it won't be that much more for his space, and being able to actually get to our stuff will be very nice indeed, and we can take tommy with us. we have our eye on a place less than five minutes from campus. maybe we should try to introduce them, but i guess i'd have to read up on it. i guess it's theoretically possible but i've seen these nuts fighting outside when our kitties were indoor-outdoor cats, and boy oh boy were they ferocious! that's the plan as it stands and whatever happens, mr. tommy is coming with us.

the garage cat

2008-02-09T12:49:00.001-08:00

don't bother to say because we already know. drew and i are completely aware that we are the hugest fucking animal suckers on the planet and we have managed to adopt another cat. his name is tommy and he is a lovely fellow. it all started innocently enough. he was a neighborhood kitty that we'd see around when walking the dog, perhaps we'd give him the occassional scratch behind the ears or pat on the head. we assumed he was somebody's cat, but then found out that he had been abandoned when a couple in the neighborhood split up and moved. assholes. then it got cold (for here - down to low forties at night) and we'd see him in a semi-cozy spot, bedded down for the night. God, but the sorry state of it all, and the guilt that we had happy, warm kitties at home! first we started feeding him, near his cozy spot, but then I started thinking that someone should get him vaccinated, at the very least, so he wouldn't get rabies or distemper or something equally horrible. there didn't seem to be any someones stepping up and doing it, though. then we made him a cozy bed on the porch and started feeding him there. then he discovered the doggie door to the garage during the last round of horrible storms and we came home to find him happily camped out on zinger's bed, looking like he'd fallen asleep and woken up to find himself in shangri-la. zinger the zeta dog had meekly slunk off, conceeding the bed.

the upshot of all this being a new bed for the dog in the garage, a $200 vet trip and a bare bones "accident" pet insurance plan later, we have another cat. we can't bring him in because he & herbie & chiana only want to mix it up. we know they all did so when they were allowed outdoors, and in fact we think it was tommy who bit herbie's butt, which occassioned his little surgery and ensuing confinement in the house. we got the pet insurance because he likes to fight, the little fucker, it's the only bad thing i can say about him because he is otherwise completely charming. i've had to clean up and put neosporin on his ears twice in the past two weeks and belive you me, you haven't lived until you're sitting with a cat in your lap sticking warm compresses to his head... the things i do for these furries.

you wouldn't know it to look at him, but he's only a pound less than herbie. he might put on some weight now that he doesn't have worms, we'll see. his coat has gotten super soft now that he's getting fed regularly. well, and he's not kipping outside, either, so i suppose that's part of it. herbie and chiana can often be found sniffing at the garage door because they knows he's there, or, in herbie's case, glaring through the front window if tommy is hanging out in the yard. i have to wash my hands if i've been petting tommy because if i try to pet herbie smelling like "the interloper" he gets all pissy. we joke he's worried about being replaced with a younger, skinnier model.

i used, well, still do say that i grew up in a house that has this ten foot tall, flashing neon sign that only animals can see that says "SUCKERS LIVE HERE" and i guess drew and i have one too. much as it pains me to say it, i think there's a slight chance ours might be slightly bigger than the one in glenshaw. ah well... life is a twisting, unpredictable journey with unforseen ups and downs. the least one can do is have sweet, furry, loving companions along for the journey.

bummer

2008-01-30T16:57:00.000-08:00

as most of you already know, john edwards has formally withdrawn from the race for the democratic presidential nomination. he was the only real democrat of the three front runners in my humble opinion and i, for one, was looking forward to voting for a candidate i actually respect, instead of the lesser of two evils, in the california primary on february 5th. so fuck it all to hell and back, and a big "pooh" to the national media whose reporting of edwards was so bad that there are still people who think clinton came in second in iowa.

i do not get what people find so inspiring about barack obama. he's a great orator and he has great rhetoric, but his actual proposals... they're not all that different than clinton's or edwards's are/were, they're just more conservative. i'm including links to some paul krugman op-eds that have influenced my opinion, and no, krugman isn't the only person i read and consider, it's just he makes so much darn sense! anyone (well, okay, some people) can give a good speech, but if barack thinks that his good intentions to change the tone in washington are going to make the partisan atmosphere go away, or make the insurance companies play any constructive role in providing universal health care, he's day dreaming into that fairy tale that bill clinton was talking about. then again, his health care plan doesn't actually provide for universal health care, so as it stands, he doesn't really seem to think it's important (this krugman op-ed, the mandate muddle, is quite good and i can't find anything else to link it to, so it's in-artfully inserted thus.)

that said, he's pro-choice, he was against the war, but i truly think he's in for a rude awakening about how he can change the tone by playing nice. republicans and right wingers don't play nice. that's how they've fucked this country up so much in seven short years. they will not go down without a fight, and a good old-fashioned, bare knuckles political battle is something that democrats seem to have forgotten how to do. where's lbj when we need him? he understood how to get legislation passed and it wasn't by playing nice all the time. if lbj had played nice there wouldn't be any civil rights act or voting rights act, and there certainly wouldn't have been the war on poverty. but who am i kidding? poverty is so passe these days anyway. if one brings up how the middle class and poor people are systematically screwed by the wealthy elites in this country, well, one is accused of waging class warfare, and that's just not done in polite society. but if you wage your class warfare silently, steathily, and with such subtlely that the vast majority of people don't even know it's happening, well, that's okay. in fact, it's not really class warfare when it's from the top down, it's just the way things are.

christ on a bike! i mean, really, how else does one respond to that shit?

i think hillary sucks, too. don't get me wrong... she and barack, republicans lite that they are, would be vastly better than even the most progressive of the republicans who are actually members of the republican party. i want to be excited at the prospect of getting to vote for black man or a woman who is a viable candidate for president, for the first time ever!!! or in my voting lifetime at least. but hillary and barack... they're raining on my parade. that said, me liking a candidate is, i am coming to fear, the kiss of death to their candidacy, so we may well end up with hillary or barack in the white house.

i'm just so tired of choosing between the lesser of two evils, because in the end, it's still choosing evil.

m.i.a.

2008-01-29T20:47:00.000-08:00

wow... things have been busy and not in a lots going on that makes a good story way, just every day busy. been knitting a little, we went up to the san francisco saturday to have dinner with our friends wendi and john, which was just lovely. so nice to get a taste of civilization! we have some news on the pets front but i need to take some pictures before i go into that. it's all good, don't worry.

one of the most fun things that happened to me today was getting my anti-flag google alert and finding this really great video of justin, 2 and the night watchman (aka tom morello of rage against the machine, but acoustic solo) doing a cover of beds are burning at one of the big day out shows in australia. fucking great song, fucking great cover. there's also this one where billy bragg joins in, but unfortunately the video (sound and picture) isn't nearly as good as the first one.

goddammit!!!! i was just looking to see if there are any new comments to old posts and my daemon changed to a raccoon!!! from a tiger to a raccoon! fuck! i liked my tiger! fuck fuck and damn it all to hell! wah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

my daemon

2008-01-16T11:07:00.000-08:00

okay, i realize i am outing myself as a huge fantasy geek, but i don't care and those of you who know me well know this about me already. drew and i are great fans of the his dark materials trilogy by philip pullman: the golden compass, the subtle knife, and the amber spyglass. if you have not read these books, do so. immediately. i cannot even begin to tell you what you are missing out on by not having read these books and entering the many magical worlds contained within their pages.

anyway, they made a movie out of the golden compass and it's quite good, we thoroughly enjoyed it. i was looking at my friend darcy's blog today and on the movie web site you can find out what your daemon is!!!! so here's mine, his name is callum, and i think he's just beautiful. :)

daemons are physical manifestations of your soul. we don't have them here in our world, but in the parallel world that lyra, the main character in the golden compass, lives in, people do. mine was chosen to reflect my personality, which came out as modest, sociable, shy, assertive and outgoing. you can take the quiz and get your own daemon, too. you can ask people to tell you what they think, and i guess if enough people disagree your daemon changes. in the book that's when your daemon settles but it's not based on what other people think of you, obviously. only children's daemons change form from one animal to another, depending on the person's mood and the situation. when they hit puberty, bam! then they stay in their one, ultimately true, form. thing thing is, i have always had a thing for tigers, i just love them, so i think i am going to be a control freak and not let anyone mess with my daemon, because i was so thrilled when it came up a tiger. and i like the name callum, too.

so... that's what i'm doing today. i hope you're doing something that's just as much fun. :)

happy happy to me

2008-01-15T16:39:00.001-08:00

that's what my niece used to call "happy birthday" when she was quite small. it's my happy happy to me day today. wish i could say it's been great but to be honest, i'm going on my second night of not enough sleep (completely self-inflicted) and i've been a crab-ass extraordinaire. blah! the day has gotten better as it's progressed, thank goodness! i got a great rendition of "happy happy to me" on my cell phone all the way from holland from my brother & sister-in-law. sil even said "happy birthday" in dutch! and they included birthday wishes from their son, who, as it happens, is having his happy happy to me day today, although he's only two, so i've got a bit of a head start on him. what good taste the dear little guy showed when he arrived on my birthday. can't think of a better pressie than that! and we're going to dinner at the naglee park garage with my sister and brother-in-law tonight. love the garage - such yummy food! and on saturday drew is taking me to dinner at the fanciest restaurant in capitola-by-the-sea, shadowbrook. i told him i think i'm going to have to go get a new dress to go to dinner at a place called shadowbrook. doesn't it make you think of a sweeping antebellum plantation or english country manors?

all in all, it's shaping up to be a tasty birthday. so much for the three pounds i've lost...

a lovely weekend

2008-01-14T13:06:00.000-08:00

sorry i haven't been blogging much lately, but there hasn't been a lot going on. this weekend i went to a knitting meetup and had a wonderful time! i've been to two so far, but this one was the best. they changed the location to kelly's french bakery, which is a simply lovely den of baked goods temptation at swift street courtyard. kelly's has a great patio and about twelve of us knitted and gabbed and had a great time, and i was so good - only a cup of tea! the other thing that makes the new location so great is that a yarn shop, the swift stitch, is two shops over from the bakery, so if you need to buy needles or some such supply, or simply want to go drool over the yarn like a pervert, you can do it! can't remember what i did saturday night (isn't that sad?) oh, wait, i must have done some knitting, because i realized i needed some double point needles. alas, i had none, and was stymied until the following day.

drew and i had a yummy lunch (thai - ummmm!) and then we hung out at kelly's again. i got my needles, and we hung out some more. i think we were there for like two or three hours, just knitting and reading and eating goodies (yes, i totally fell off the diet wagon with a little raspberry chocolate mousse thing, but it was little!) i eventually gave up knitting and read my book too, and drew managed to meet the only germans there (from munich, where he has lived before and quite likes.) eventually we had to go inside because it got cold and while it's a little noisier it's still nice. i hope next time we get to sit next to the stove... i guess it's gas, but it looks like a wood burning stove. all in all, very cozy. i suggested we have kelly's be a sunday tradition, and it's right near natural bridges park, and a few miles south of big basin, so we can take a hike and eat our goodies with abandon!

otherwise, nothing is new. the stupid car needed fixed and cost a grand to do so (ouch!) but we did get a cool rental car. don't laugh too much, but it was a kia rondo; we sheepishly admitted to one another we liked it right about the same time. i'd never even heard of a kia rondo but man, it was a really nice car! well, we called it a var, as drew was insisting it was a mini-van, and i was insisting a car. according to kelley blue book it's a micro-mini-van... thus var it is. anyway, we loved it! so much so it's on our short list of cars to consider when we buy a new one sometime this spring, and wouldn't it be hilarious for the happily childless people to own some sort of mini-van? we thought so. then again, we're both pretty easily amused. keep a rondo in mind next time you have to rent a var - you just might like it!

still can't believe it myself

2008-01-03T17:34:00.000-08:00

just in case i haven't talked or emailed to some of you in while, i thought it was high time i come out of the closet - about loving ultimate fighting. it's soooooo cool! i LOVE it!! i still can't believe i am so into it. this is even more surprising than my dear friend lb becoming a football maniac, and i was pretty surprised when that happened.

that said, did anyone else watch the pay per view of the georges st. pierre/matt hughes fight? we did and it was great! gsp kicked matt hughes' holier-than-thou ass, which you can see happening in the picture. matt hughes is really annoying but one has to give him his due, he's a really fantastic fighter and beating him in the second round (of five) and dominating the whole fight like gsp did is no small accomplishment. not only was hughes beaten, but at his own game, too... gsp completely out-wrestled one of the best wrestlers in mixed martial arts today. and (does this feel like a ginsu knife commercial? "but wait, there's more!") i got to watch gsp prance around practically naked which is always a plus; the boy is seriously smoking hot. he also seems like a pretty genuine and down to earth person, which i realize also outs me as a freedom hater, seeing as how his first language is french, but i've hated freedom for a long time now, so i can handle a bit more. the lack of a link to matt hughes' web site wasn't an oversight, it was on purpose, just in case you were wondering.

the other big fight of the night was the chuck liddell/wanderlei silva fight. silva has fought in the pride league, in japan, one of their best fighters; this was one of his first ufc fights. liddell won the fight, but silva really made him work for it, and drew says it wasn't a fight that was utilizing silva's style (i.e. explosive) to its fullest. i am by no means an expert on mixed martial arts, but i am enjoying learning. it was nice to finally see a liddell fight, too, as he's the one who got me interested in ultimate fighting. when anti-flag played on jimmy kimmel live , chuck liddell was one of the guests. we didn't know it at the time because we were on the other side of the stage, but chuck came out to hear them play and justin said after they finished the first song he looked to that side and chuck put his fist over his heart and gave it a friendly shake in his direction. after the flag got back on the road we went back to our hotel and watched the show, and i at least was curious about chuck liddell after hearing justin's story (drew was already an aficionado, so he was curious too, just not like me, being clueless and all.) apparently he was an accounting major in college! it was so funny! he seemed like a pretty cool guy, and he'd given anti-flag the ultimate fighter version of a high five, so i was intrigued. and thus my odyssey into the world of mixed martial arts began...

the new year

2008-01-02T16:13:00.000-08:00

happy new year! it's 2008! a new year, new start, new beginnings! if that's all true why have i managed to waste an inordinate amount of time today just futzing around? i've got stuff to do, it's just not as riveting as the new york times (which isn't, really.) i guess old habits die hard?

well, i've decided to use the illusory fresh start and clean slate of the new year for some resolutions. i normally don't make new year's resolutions, but drastic times call for drastic measures. :) i am renewing my commitment to being physically fit. i have allowed myself to get disgracefully fat and out of shape and i just can't stand it anymore. i can chalk up the first ten pounds as happy-just-got-married fat, but beyond that it's just not cool. i refuse to buy any more fat clothes, and could i ever use a shopping trip or two for some new threads! but i am not getting any until i fit into all my stuff that's too small just now, which will be like getting a whole bunch of new clothes, and at the right price. the next time i put on a bikini (i started buying bikinis exclusively in my late twenties) i will NOT feel embarrassed! i was up at a friend's place near yosemite this past summer and i felt like a beached whale in my suit as we all sat around the frigid swimming hole, dangling our feet and chatting. i am just not up for another round of such humiliation.

to that end i've come up with a plan! first off, i am going to keep my lunchtime workout routine simple. monday, wednesday and friday i will do cardio; tuesday and thursday i will do weights. i tried taking a few classes last quarter and it really made it more of a pain to go to the gym, and trying to do some cardio and some weights each time just left me feeling rushed and like i wasn't doing a good job with any of it, and then i got sick and that was that for the year. i also plan to get in at least one full work out (cardio & weights) on the weekend, and if i cancel one of my weekday workouts to go to lunch with someone then i'll shoot for two on the weekend. i need to give myself some wiggle room to go out to lunch once in a while. i am also cutting out sweets until i lose this weight and that is very hard for me! i can cut out the booze so easily... if i'm not drinking it i don't miss it, but the sweets! i am so addicted to sugar! i am using honey in my oatmeal, but i have to use something in oatmeal otherwise it tastes like crap, and that's coming from someone who likes oatmeal. i figure honey is better than brown sugar. the only refined sugar i will be eating will be in my morning tea, one and a half teaspoons. i have tried other sweeteners for my tea and there's nothing that works like sugar. i'm not going to use artificial carcinogens, either. if i get cancer i'm going to get it the old fashioned way. and last but not least, i have gotten myself a fitness buddy. i subscribed to SELF magazine, which i love, and i found someone on the fitness forum to be my fitness buddy. never mind that she lives in dallas, it's already working! i got to malley (scu's fitness center) today and found out it's closed until tomorrow. i started thinking about where to go read my book when i realized that i'd have to tell my buddy that i skipped working out, and for such a lame reason, too. so i changed my shoes and took a very brisk walk for an hour. according to the SELF web site, that walk burned 268 calories, and i got to enjoy the lovely weather. woo hoo for me and double woo hoo for my buddy keeping me honest! and then there are the usual things, like getting enough sleep, making sure to stay in touch with my awesome friends, playing more with my pets, and making time to practice an attitude of gratitude. let's face it - i live in america, i'm white, i have a masters degree, thanks to drew we own about twenty computers of one sort or another, and we've both got well paying jobs, which makes us better off than 99% of the world's population. i am always grateful for that fact, as fucked up as this country is, i'm still better off than so many others.

i guess the gratitude rant is a good segue way into getting philosophical... pondering the last year, thinking about the events that have taken place and decide if they have meaning or if this crazy little life is just a random crap shoot. i generally choose between those two choices depending on my mood, so of course the answer fluctuates wildly. after making a move across the country that i didn't want to make, leaving behind my family and friends and the prospect of buying a reasonably priced house, not to mention having a fantastic job with the united steelworkers' political dept dangled in front of me mere weeks before leaving, i can honestly say that my husband still rocks my world. i guess that is the difference between being married to the right person versus being married to a bozo. he's starting to feel better and that makes it worth it, and we really do have a lot of fun together, even if it involves watching too much t.v. i still feel generally friendless since my friends here all live in civilization (i.e. san francisco, oakland and marin) and i live seventy odd miles south, but we'll be moving closer over the summer; i can hack it for eight more months. i really do like my job at scu and i am excited at the prospect of applying to be a resident minister (cross your fingers and say a prayer for me, please!), and our kitties and doggie are well and sweet and the beach is a ten minute walk away, although i don't get down there as much as i should. whenever i'm at the beach nothing seems as bad as it might in another setting.

so i guess all in all that 2007, while a completely tough bitch of a year, was also a good year when measured by the things that really count in life: love, family, friends and laughter. i don't know if i'll ever be rich in ducats, but i am certainly rich in love - the one thing money can't buy.

so much pretty yarn and so little time...

2007-12-21T09:52:00.000-08:00

ah, yarn! there's just so much pretty yarn out there and lately i have just gone on a yarn buying spree. or would binge be a more accurate characterization? a few nights ago i bought a book called romantic hand knits. i was intrigued by the title and man, does it have some beautiful (and sexy) patterns! i didn't get that great amazon price, i paid the $27.50 list price, but i also bought it at an independent bookstore, so it's all to the good. when i lose the weight i've put on (first time in my life i've ever needed to lose weight - egad!) i will be making that skirt.

i also ordered some donegal tweed from patternworks, in garnet, which happens to be my birthstone. :) i have been lusting after this yarn for several years now and not buying it because i didn't have a specific project in mind. i hate buying odd skeins and then not doing anything with them, so even when i impulse buy i'm usually getting at least five skeins or so, and when i'm in for that much dough (the donegal tweed was around $11 a skein), i hate to just have it sit. i am a somewhat weird knitter in that respect, i.e. i don't want my stash to get too big. then it went on sale and i figured to hell with it! i don't care if i don't have anything specific in mind, i'm getting some! so i did.

i also bought some double twist from green mountain spinnery a few weeks back, with a project in mind. i got a gray color, not either of the ones listed. it's actually a little more of a taupe-y gray than i wanted (damn you inaccurate computer monitor!!!) but it's still quite nice. i might not use it for what i bought it for, ironically, as it's a little scratchier than i want that particular sweater to be. the tags say it will soften up a lot upon washing and i do tend to trust the tags, especially when they're from the mill that makes the yarn in question. whatever it ends up being, you can't beat $7.35 for a 250 yard skein of 100% wool!

we also did the complete splurge of my knitting career buy a few weeks back... debbie bliss pure cashmere from littleknits; black for drew and morning sky blue for me. drew really wants me to make him a cashmere sweater and they're having this bag sale, ten skeins for $76! seeing as how the skeins are all of 45 yards/250 grams (i.e. tiny) and retail for anywhere between $23 - $25 per skein i just couldn't pass up $7.60 a skein. couldn't do it. and they let you mix colors to get a full bag, too! mind you, with what we were spending i'd let the customer mix for a full bag too. i can't bring myself to say how much it all cost... let's just say a huge fucking sum of dough, and leave it at that.

and drew, bless his immensely generous heart, got me alice starmore's in the hebrides, which is out of print and consequently quite expensive and hard to find. it didn't cost quite what the cheapest one listed did, because i got the cheapest one - woo hoo, hoo hoo hoo (that's the vonage jingle woo hoo, fyi.) it hasn't arrived yet - i can't wait 'til it gets here! i have one of her books, the celtic collection, still in print i think, which i bought years ago at straw into gold in berkeley (a great yarn shop, now sadly defunct). it was one of those "if i open that book i know i'm going to buy it, so i'm not going to open it. shit! i opened it!" situations. i hadn't even realized most of here her books were out of print now... some sort of blow out with the publisher. it's a crime, really, her designs are just magical and she's pretty much the authority on fair isle knitting. you can still get new stuff from her web site, virtual yarns, which is good. i'll have to find a picture of me in my cromarty sweater to post here. it's the blue one with all the intricate cables, you may have seen it.

ooh! and i got some blocking wires and a spaceboard, again from patternworks. not glamorous but completely essential. i didn't understand that blocking was as important as it is when i started knitting, but it really is so i decided to invest in the tools. not having the blocking stuff is like trying to sew, or block, for that matter, without a good iron, i.e. a really bad idea.

and i am working on a pressie for someone, too, but i can't say what in case they might figure it out. when it's been given is when i'll post a picture. :)

2007-12-18T09:20:00.000-08:00

there is so not anything going on at all that i'm not even sure why i'm posting! i'm finally getting over the flu, which is nice, but it means i've done jack for the past ten days or so, thus having nothing to really capture anyone's imagination with. i got a flu shot, but managed to get a strain of flu that wasn't in it, which is just insulting, as was getting sick on a saturday. wah wah wah!

it's very rainy here in nocal which is all to the good as we need it, but you know what? it's not just pittsburghers who can't drive in the rain. there are so many yahoos on the road here and people just get stupid in the rain, going too fast or too slow. my favorites are the folks who, in already slow traffic, somehow manage to be left-lane bandits. i think you need a God-given talent for that one.

one cute christmas-y story for you, about a christmas card delivered 93 years late. who says the u.s. mail doesn't get the job done? :)

sniff, sniff

2007-12-09T10:02:00.000-08:00

i have a cold. sore throat, stuffy head, sneeze-o-rama - ugh! some way to spend the weekend.

there is absolutely nothing interesting going on. i've been reading some really great books by s.m. stirling lately; dies the fire , the protector's war (there was no war in the book, however), and now the third in the trilogy, a meeting in corvallis. the premise for these books is for an unknown reason, could be a freak natural occurrence, could be aliens, who knows? everything mechanical in the world stops working; in the book this event is called "the change". gun powder and explosives don't burn right, either, so guns, dynamite and the like are useless. most of the people in the world die, and what happens to rest is what the book is about. i love these kinds of stories, alternate realities and such, and this kind of ties into my love of zombie movies. even though there are no zombies it has the element of little pockets of people thrown together because of a cataclysmic event trying to survive. i have always liked to think that should there be a zombie attack, i'd be one of the survivors. then again, i don't know how to shoot a gun and we all know only a head shot will kill a zombie. i did decide i should learn how to shoot a gun after watching the dawn of the dead remake a few years ago. my brothers, joe and justin, sat with me and the rest of the viewers after the movie coming up with our plan to survive. joe and justin had just bought a canoe at the highland park rummage sale that weekend (for like $50 bucks - sweet!), and justin and joe were living in lawrenceville just a few blocks from the allegheny river, so both figured prominently in our survival plans.

on the way home i called drew, who was away on a business trip, to tell him i wanted to learn how to shoot a gun, because you never know when zombies might attack and while i was never a boy scout, they're onto something with the whole "be prepared" motto. he of course thought this was hysterical because he thought i should know how to shoot a gun just in case i was ever in a situation where i might need to shoot one, and i'd always said i had no interest in guns nor learning how to use them. he's kinda got a bit of a survivalist streak, my sweetie; again, something that will come in handy during a zombie attack. in the midst of our conversation my cell phone cut out on the section of wible road it always does, and i thought to myself, if this was a zombie movie this is where i'd bite the dust. i collected the dog and slept at my folks' place that night, and when i got up in the middle of the night to pee, i thought to myself "i am so glad i came down here!" i have no pride when it comes to such things... my overactive imagination gets the better of me sometimes and it was better to just indulge it by going to my parents' house. drew also thought this was hilarious, and pointed out we lived a minute's walk away from the local police station. i replied, "yeah - a police station filled with armed zombies!", so he gave up trying to dissuade me.

as long as i'm on zombies, there's an excellent zombie book that you might want to read: world war z: an oral history of the zombie war. fucking excellent book! i think they're making it into a movie... i hope they don't fuck it up. i wonder who's in it... must do a google search.

well, that's it for me folks. and my advice to any of you who, like me, are a little chubby and out of shape, or who don't know how to shoot firearms or live on nuts and berries in the woods... perhaps we should all make a new year's resolution to get in shape and learn a few new skills, because if the change ever does happen or zombies attack, i'd hate for any of us to bite the dust because we were the sick zebra in the herd.

herbie, wounded warrior

2007-12-01T16:30:00.000-08:00

herbie, our wonderful orange tabby, is wearing a cone and sporting a shaved spot with a straw sticking out of his backside, courtesy of surgery wednesday night by dr. nicki at santa cruz veterinarian hospital. he's fine, don't worry, if not a little frustrated; he had an almost abscess near the base of his tail. it wasn't actually an abscess yet, but was heading that way fast. there were two bites (we think from tommy, the other orange tabby in the neighborhood who he has been fighting with) & apparently there was a pretty big infected area so the vet thought he'd need a drain in it. we knew something was up because he was walking sort of funny, like his butt hurt, but more than that he was in a most un-herbie-like foul mood... hissing at us when we tried to pet him and that's just not our little love bug at all. when he wouldn't eat, when he turned his nose up at his evening nummies (a small scoop of fancy feast), an event he eagerly anticipates every day starting at 4:30 pm (and nummies aren't until 6 pm at least, usually) we knew he was sick. so off to the vet at 11:15 pm, where we stayed until about 12:30 am, probably closer to 1:00 am, before heading home without the herbster. the vet called the next morning to tell us the surgery went well (they were only going to call overnight if there was a problem, and there wasn't, praise God!) and that he had "a robust appetite" this morning, so we know our guy is back! :) and his dad stayed home on thursday to look after him. he's really settled down (he was pissed when he got home), but he's bumping into things and walking backwards so he won't bump stuff. i just had to re-do his collar. he'd managed to get the plastic part undone at the place where it's put together. i felt bad when i'd finished as he just sat there, head down, like a bowed and beaten man.

but the cone and the drain will go bye-bye on monday, so if he can just put up with us until then. i gotta say, he's loads better about taking his medicine than chiana was when she had a really bad abscess a few months ago. in general she's a lot easier going, so much so that her temperament combined with her fluffiness meant we didn't realize she had such a bad abscess until she was really sick; the vet said there was necrotic tissue in her wound (and necrotic tissue = totally disgusting!) herbie, on the other hand, was pissy and miserable and it wasn't even an abscess yet. then again, he is one smart cat and he's not into suffering.

hating me for documenting his suffering:

the reason he needs a cone

success at finally getting to clean his tail! and his drain. i'd just done warm compresses on him, which is why his fur is wet around the edges.

please send herbie healing prayers and vibes, as he is finding us very trying. as to his sister, she's doing great!

thanksgiving

2007-12-01T11:15:00.000-08:00

sorry to take so long to post about thanksgiving, but i just now woke up from the turkey coma. and if you believe that, i've got a bridge i'd like to sell you. :)

well, thanksgiving was wonderful!!!! yum-a-dum-dum! the turkey was so great that i ordered another for christmas (since it was frozen it was $10 less - mad savings! not!), and i am already looking forward to it! we had excellent company and our own private bartender (thank you dave!) i had three versions of a sidecar, a cocktail i had never before drunk but it's really darn good! dave seriously has a gift for mixing drinks, and that's not something to be taken lightly. anyone can mix a drink, but not anyone can mix a drink like dave can. whoever happens to be mixing your drinks, don't be like me and start drinking it when dinner is almost done and you haven't eaten for a good five hours. i had to stick it in the fridge half way through because i was getting tipsy, and nobody wants a tipsy person making the gravy or mashing the potatoes.

without further ado, here is our turkey before going into the oven.

this is the heritage turkey we got from reese turkey farm. as farmer reese says, the best way to save these rare breeds is to eat them, and i am happy to say he has recruited five new volunteers to eat these birds into every day commonness. seriously though, we paid a lot of money for our 11 lb turkey, though we weren't just paying for the turkey: we were also paying for preserving and helping to foster genetic diversity, which is very important to us, altruistically and from an enlightened self-interest standpoint. farmer reese's turkey was so good that we'll never get another turkey from the supermarket if we have anything to say about it. fortunately for us, we do! i brined this bad boy for twelve hours using williams-sonoma apple & spices turkey brine, mostly using water but also about six cups of apple cider. i made a maple syrup and herbs (sage, rosemary, thyme) compound butter, which was rubbed not only on the skin but also under it. i worked the skin loose from the meat, which it tougher to do on a heritage bird than a conventional one, and then deposited dollops of the butter underneath. if you look closely you can see some lumps under the skin. they're easy to see on the legs. stuffed the heck out of him with my usual stuffing and we were off to the races!

and after a few hours, this is how he turned out:

pretty magnificent, huh? we sure thought so, and for those of you reading here, can i just tell you how great the heritage turkey was? i thought i'd discovered the secret to making delicious turkey when i discovered brining, but a heritage turkey goes up to eleven, maybe even twelve. on its own, it must be wonderful, brined it was just paradise. i seriously didn't know that turkey could taste this good! i wasn't sure about brining, as a lot of sites said not to, but for strictly comparison purposes i thought i should, otherwise it would be comparing apples and oranges. i also read another blog where the cook faced a similar dilemma and decided to brine and her turkey turned out great, so that clinched it.

the biggest differences that i noticed between heritage turkey and conventional ones (i.e. factory or even organically raised broad-breasted whites) is that the meat in general is darker, even the white meat. the legs are a little longer and the wings are much more developed. also, the skin is a lot thicker on the breast, perhaps because these turkeys live normal lives doing normal turkey things, like flying, running and scratching around (and even having - gasp - sex!!!!) if you're a big fan of the skin, the breast skin doesn't crisp up where it's thicker like on a conventional turkey, so you'll want to get your crispy skin fix from the legs or another part of the bird.

of course, we had great company and i had many helpers, so here are a few more shots for your viewing pleasure:

preparing mr. turkey for his date with the oven:

a chef is only as good as her sous chef! his people might not know potatoes like mine, but he can sure peel a mean potato!

mashing the spuds. i have to make a product plug at this point. i'm an easy mark for williams-sonoma. i drool over the catalogues, wanting one of almost everything, and if i were ever to get stuck working retail again, i'd want to work there. always looking for new gadgets that will make food yummier and easier to make that way, this year i tried out the potato ricer that williams-sonoma was selling (it's not available on their site anymore; hopefully that's not a permanent situation.) folks, if you like mashed potatoes, you need this gadget! you still mash them up with a masher once they're through the ricer, but that ricer makes them so smooth and so light... i never knew mashed potatoes could be like this, and i'm irish!!!!

we all need somewhere pretty to eat.

how's this for happy diners? diane and dave were nice enough to join us (trump is taking the picture)

mmmmmm.......... pie......... mmmmm!!! one mincemeat and two pumpkin, with fresh whipped cream of course! kind of hard to tell but i bought these cute little pie cookie cutters for that i used to decorate the crusts. another williams-sonoma product... it includes a maple leaf, oak leaf, acorn and pumpkin cutter. if you look very closely at the crusts you can kind of see the shapes, and i used the oak and maple cutters for the steam holes in the mincemeat pie.

and as herbie demonstrates, this is what happens when you eat too much turkey.

i hope your thanksgiving was just as good and just as much fun as ours!!!!

pooped

2007-11-26T14:24:00.001-08:00

i can't believe how tired i am from my days off. so sad. well, i also had trouble sleeping last night on account of my bum shoulder... it kept me awake for at least an hour at one point, and it makes getting to sleep hard, too. i think i'll have to take hubby's advice and see about getting PT for it.

at any rate, lots to tell and lots of pictures from thanksgiving (yes, actual pictures!) but i can't do it now. just wanted to send up a sign of life. love to all...

it's not all doom and gloom

2007-11-19T11:52:00.000-08:00

as you no doubt know i have been pretty bummed about my friend jamie, but life does go on, so if you're at all inclined to, don't get worried about me. :)

i am really looking forward to thanksgiving! it did make me a little homesick for a while, but i've rallied. drew and i did the first round of shopping yesterday and despite forgetting my list i only forgot to buy two things, which i can easily pick up on my vegetables shopping trip on wednesday. our tom heritage turkey is arriving tomorrow via fedex, so drew is staying home to receive him and put him in the fridge. so far our yummy menu includes:

turkey (of course!) brined in williams-sonoma apple & spices turkey brine (i can't find it on their site anymore... totally annoying), a baked ham (one of drew's family traditions), mashed potatoes (using my potato ricer; i'll report on it soon), stuffing, gravy, sesame green beans (these are seriously yummy, a huge hit at our dinner parties), roasted asparagus, a blue cheese salad our friends are bringing, and of course pumpkin pie w/ whipped cream and mincemeat pie, plain or a la mode. :) i was so stoked to find the nonesuch mincemeat at save mart yesterday; safeway only carried that brand i don't like, the crosswell something or other. totally inferior to nonesuch imho. even better, it's the little boxes, the kind you have to cook up with some water which smells divine while cooking!!! that's such a childhood memory... my mom cooking up the mincemeat on the stove. it's funny how much of what we do for holidays has to do with what we did (or in some cases didn't) do as a child. luckily for me it's a case of what my family did do that influences me. :)

all of this writing about food is making me hungry! i think it's time for lunch.

oh, and if you've never had brined turkey, you have no idea what you're missing. the article includes the chez panisse turkey brine recipe. i've never had turkey there, but i'm betting it's pretty excellent.

2007-11-18T21:57:00.000-08:00

i have spent the weekend being supremely bummed out about jamie. fuck, but everything they say (you know, that undefinable "they" that we all refer to), about anniversaries is true. all the sadness and missing comes right up to the surface and it just sucks, sucks, sucks. it's different from other times when i talk about him, when it's not sad at all, because i'm remembering him, and it helps keep his memory alive. it's fun, even, though other people don't necessarily get that. beth and i had a talk about this just the other week. one of the few times i've been really glad i missed someone's call, because the message she left was just lovely.

but i digress. i had a long, well, not long, but a talk with jame today, while i was cleaning my bedroom. just sat on the bed and took five, and told him how much i miss him. and i do. it was one thing to hang out with him when he was sick, knowing he was going to die even though he was in complete denial about it. death wasn't an option so far as he was concerned, and who can blame him? it's quite another to live with him being dead, knowing that every real conversation i'll ever have with jamie bevilacqua has already happened. there won't be any more. i know it's true and yet i just can't wrap my head around it. it just seems so impossible.

at my wedding reception jamie's mom was really bummed out. not that i knew it from talking to her. she's way too thoughtful for that. beth told me, and even though it hadn't occurred to me (duh) i realized it was true. i remember talking with her at the reception, making sure to go see her, holding her hand, and she said to me "he's here." and if he was going to be anywhere that day my wedding reception would have been it. jamie loved a good party, especially if it was celebrating the happiness of someone he loved, but i just couldn't feel it. i couldn't feel anything that might give me an indication that jamie's spirit was with us, or me, ever, since he's died. i've had a dream or two... saying goodbye dreams, that kind of stuff. in fact, i had one that was so real that it woke me up and then i got up to pee and it took me about five minutes to figure out that yes, jamie really had died. i was so confused waking up from that dream that i thought he was still at his mom's house, sick, but still with us. but i have to honestly say that i've never felt his presence, ever, not once since he died. i've only felt the brutal, non-negotiable absence.

jamie, jamie, bo bamie

2007-11-15T21:01:00.000-08:00

my best friend jamie died four years ago today and i really miss him. i can't believe it's been four years since he died. metastatic melanoma, aka skin cancer, at an entirely too young 33 years. it was a very weird day... we were moving into the place we rented on wetzel road in glenshaw that day. jame's sister, gina, called me that evening using his phone, while we were in the toilet paper aisle of the glenshaw giant eagle no less (i've always thought jame would have gotten a chuckle out of that.) i remember seeing the caller id and saying to drew "jamie's died" before i answered the phone, and being so worn out from the week leading up to that day that i couldn't even react right.

but, i was lucky. i was jamie's friend for at least fifteen years and he was was always what a good friend should be: funny, loyal, good about staying in touch and keeping you in the loop about life even if it was kind boring because nothing exciting was happening, and someone i would laugh with until my sides hurt. i got to see jamie that week, on tuesday night, i think (he lost consciousness that night and went into the hospital the next morning), after he'd gotten back from california - the last ditch treatment with a different doctor. if only it had worked even though i knew it wouldn't - and we had a great visit. it was really hard for me, as he looked dreadful, and his mom and step-dad's hearts were just breaking, anyone could see. it was so hard to see and experience but he was still the same old jame. wanting the gossip, even though he was tired, looking forward to when he could eat tomatoes again w/out them wreaking havoc on his system, and setting up physical therapy for later in the week. he didn't go of course, anyone could see he wouldn't be going even if that hadn't been the last week, but jame was having none of it and there is something very admirable in that spirit that refused to surrender.

but...

i don't think he'd approve of me going on and on about my loss, and i could, believe me; not a day goes by i don't think about him. i think he'd approve more of the "jamie, jamie bo bamie" stuff, which is why i gave this post that title. some of the most hilarious times i had with jame were:

homecoming night of his senior year, 1988. i was his date that year - he'd left it too late to ask the girl he had his eye on - and he was also the chairman of the choir float, which basically meant he was working on maybe two hours sleep a night for the entire week leading up to homecoming. so off we go to dinner and the dance, the choir float won and jame and i did a celebratory dance to "lady in red" (remember that one, children of the eighties?) afterward we went to our friend amy's house. jame proceeded to pass out on the floor of her family room and when it was finally time to go home it took our combined efforts to wake him up. so what does he do? he grabs his docksider shoe and walks into the powder room with it, then comes back and i think he sat down. amy and i were just dying of simple chronic hilarity... it was so funny... he had no idea what he was doing. we go into the powder room and he'd set his shoe on the sink! i seriously thought we were going to pee our pants, and of course jame found all this laughing really annoying, even though he had no idea we were laughing at him. he was so embarrassed when we told him the story, too. ah, youth!

and... thanksgiving, the year before he got diagnosed, so that would have been 1997, 98? he came down to berkeley and were were cooking away. my dog, zinger, had her doggie bed in the back by the deck and when the doorbell rang she would bolt out through the kitchen to go see who it was. well, she had so much speed going that when she went to make the turn into the hall she started slipping on the linoleum, but her feet kept going and it took her a full twenty seconds to accomplish the turn, all the while looking like something out of a cartoon. jamie and i were laughing so hard we forgot about the asparagus we were steaming and ruined it, but it was totally worth it. to this day thinking about it makes me laugh out loud.

and... kennywood, my senior year, so 1987. we all went for the school picnic, the usual suspects: darcy, amy, ted, me, jame, christie and maybe even a few more. ted won this penguin and it was kind of overstuffed and funny looking. jamie pokes at it and says "he's stuffed to the gizzards!" stuffed to the gizzards really hit darcy's funny bone, hard, and she proceeded to laugh about it for the rest of the day. not giggle, but full out belly laughing, and this phenomenon continued for several years. all you had to say was "stuffed to the gizzards", no matter how completely out of context, and she'd lose it. he never said so, but i think jamie was secretly tickled at how much it made darcy laugh, and of course we all got many hours of enjoyment out of it.

last but not least: singing that song from sesame street with jamie, the "ma num a num" one. you know, ma num a num, beep beep bedeepity, ma num a num, beep beep de beep". i'd forgotten about the bridge part of the song, the middle part that i'm not even going to try to phoneticize here, so i stop singing and jame just starts belting it out, top of his lungs... it was great. and i always think of him whenever i hear or sing that song ever since. hearing jame belt it out like that, at the best of his goofy form, was a real treat indeed.

so... here's to you, jamie! i miss you, my dear, and love you, and know we'll meet again some day (and if we don't i will be so seriously pissed off it'll be good that i'm dead or i'd probably kill somebody.) we can have some more stuffed to the gizzards laughs then, and just imagine the gossip that we'll have to catch up on. i expect there will be lots of simple chronic hilarity to go 'round. :)

heritage turkeys, oh my!

2007-11-08T10:05:00.000-08:00

gotta say i am feeling so much better the past few days it's not funny, so thank you all for the positive vibes and wishes after my last homesick post. so nice not to be down in the dumps. nothing like talking to mom to get the old head on straight.

well, we took the plunge: we ordered a heritage breed turkey for thanksgiving after reading this article in the nytimes. the turkeys are raised by a farmer, frank reese, jr., who is trying to preserve rare/heritage breeds of turkeys and genetic diversity overall. since the slow food movement and genetic diversity, not to mention good food, are very important to me and my honey, so we decided to get our turkey from farmer reese. we need to start living out our values in the realm a lot more, and what more patriotic way to do so than on thanksgiving? i am really looking forward to our turkey, and if it's half as good as i'm expecting, it'll be worth every frightfully expensive penny. call it enlightened self-interest.

another reason for the great mood is i went to lunch yesterday with a colleague to find out more about scu's resident ministry program and left so excited and jazzed! my colleague is currently a resident minister (rm) and had to lots of valuable information and many insights. the things i was worried about as obstacles are not, in fact, going to be a problem. indeed, one of them (pets) she thinks will be an asset as it's a good way to connect with students. whew!!!! that was a deal breaker. we're a "no pet left behind" kind of family. people who view animals and pets as expendable really make me so angry, but that's another post for another day.

anyway, i am so excited about applying to be a rm! keep your fingers crossed.

last, but by no means least, we just got home after attending a really great lecture by gary macy, professor of religious studies at santa clara university. it was based on his new book, the hidden history of women's ordination, but it covered so much more than that, since he's a historian at heart. gary is such an engaging speaker, really funny, and having met him i can attest to what a completely lovely person he is as well. drew and i enjoyed ourselves immensely.

more later...

maybe it's just that time of year

2007-11-05T10:40:00.000-08:00

man, but am i homesick the past few days... i miss everyone: my family, my friends, our old flat and walks around highland park, admiring all the pretty old houses. stopping by the unofficial dog park to hang with fellow members of the doggie set. i miss riding the 73b into work every day, not even because it was such an easy commute, but because it was fun, too. thanks to "chatty cathy" drew we made a lot of friends on that bus. i miss our dinner parties, and know a lot of you do, too. even the grammatically atrocious, way too loud conversations of yinzers from la-ville would be welcome right now. that it's the gray time of year, as my good friend beth put it, doesn't dampen my desire to be home at all.

i am missing a sense of place... a sense of permanence and belonging. everything is too transitory and ambiguous right now, and i don't like ambiguity. i like things to be clear and defined. living in santa cruz is temporary, and while i am really thankful for that because the commute sucks (in terms of time) and it's too far away from everything despite being a lovely town, it means more change. it's too soon to know what moving up to the south bay will be - will it be getting our own place or starting as a resident minister here at scu and living on campus? both have their pros and cons... our own place would be expensive, but it would be our space, with our stuff, and that has great power and appeal. resident ministry would mean getting to use my masters degree, which is exciting, a great commute (a few minutes walk) and an opportunity to save some money, but it also means our stuff staying in storage, which is so discouraging to me at times that it makes me almost want to sell most of it on ebay and craig's list and save that money to start again later (a bad idea, i know.) rm would also mean a small apartment, close physical confines. after living in someone else's house, which we are very lucky to be doing, it would be so nice to feel like our new space is really ours.

i guess i'm also feeling a bit worn down by the unforgiving nature of life in northern california. yeah, it's beautiful and there's lots to do, more opportunity work-wise for both of us, but it's so expensive that the opportunities don't make up for the difference in cost of living. they just don't. any mis-steps or set-backs can mushroom in no time flat to something incredibly unpleasant. that was one of the things i really liked about home... much more forgiving in that respect. even though i really love my job and i'm very grateful that drew isn't having the sorts of problems he was having in pittsburgh, it feels like we're losing ground. i was a very late bloomer when it comes to career. i didn't get it, if that makes any sense, until recently. maybe it's partially a product of being the first generation to go to college in my family combined with living at home while going to school, but i didn't understand, hell, i didn't even know how to go about building a career. i didn't understand what it took, never mind how to get there. i didn't know how to leverage my degree to my advantage so i just kind of drifted from one thing to the next. i'm way far behind in that respect, which a little over a year shy of forty can be kind of depressing if i let it. and how the hell did i end up pushing forty? that is just way too bizarre. i usually don't let this stuff bum me out, but you know how it is when you're already feeling low. i can do better from here on out, of course, that's the beauty of life, but i wish i'd understood it all earlier.

i guess, fundamentally, i'm feeling lonely right now. i have so little free time during the week that i don't have time to connect with the few friends i still have out here, never mind making new ones. i'm so fucking tired by the weekend that i never seem to get everything i need to do done. thanksgiving is coming up and we still don't know what we're doing. i can't seem to pin my sister down about what they're planning/do they want to plan something with us... i need to call her today about that. several of the friends i do have here still have been part of a book club for over fifteen years that does thanksgiving together, others have moved on to have families and are doing their own thing, so they're out. i was always the one who invited the strays to dinner; realizing i might actually be one is pretty discouraging. combine that with wanting to cook and fuck! no wonder i'm blue. drew and i can always have thanksgiving together, but let's be honest, it's kind of pathetic to have two people for thanksgiving.

ah well. believe it or not, i am actually feeling better that i was yesterday, thanks to the efforts of the homesick/discouraged/weeper support network (aka beth, kendra and judy). and i know i'll feel better soon, i always do. :) at least i don't delude myself thinking i have to get life figured out. i don't think that ever happens, really, even when you're eighty three. you have some stuff figured out by then for sure, but LIFE? it's too big to figure it all out, but it sure is interesting trying.

a new look

2007-11-02T09:57:00.001-07:00

"i'd rather be in pittsburgh" is sporting a new look today. not exactly how i want it, but the template options are pretty limited, and at least the pictures aren't scrunched up and cropped awkwardly, which was driving me nuts before (the best part of the "oh happy day" picture is all the guys, imho, and half of them were cut out before!) i do like the purple and green, i must say. i must also get cracking here... the day's a-wasting away and here i am, fucking around with my blog. ah well...

fireworks 101

2007-11-02T09:12:00.000-07:00

no offense or anything, but people in santa cruz are retarded when it comes to fireworks. and firecrackers, bottle rockets, roman candles etc. it's not that they don't love them, because believe me, they do. if anything, they love them too much.

when you think fireworks, you think.... forth of july, new year's even, a winning pirates game (so few and far between they have to do something), and on the west coast or nyc, you might even think chinese new year. am i right? well, in santa cruz, they think fireworks any time from the forth of july on, and while i love firecrackers and bottle rockets as much as the next gal, my dog, zinger, does not. after all the trick or treating excitement was over on wednesday, drew and i took zinger on a walk. and it was a really great, spooky, halloween-y halloween too... totally socked in with fog, so it pretty creepy. especially for those of us with over-active imaginations. we made it out of our cul-de-sac and almost to the end of the next block when some genius sets off a firework. i think it was a bottle rocket, based on the acoustics (high pitched and fading wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, followed by a loud POP!)

what the fuck, people? since when are fireworks, crackers, rockets, etc., fair game for halloween? halloween is jack-o-lanterns and fake cobwebs with over-sized spiders in trees and signs that say "spooky lane" by the front walk, next to the fake tombstones for count dracula and frankenstein. these maroons (thank you, bugs bunny) are continually freaking my dog out! i expect this on the forth of july, and a week before and after. shit, let's be generous and say i expect it for the entire month of july. but october? for fuck's sake! i must say, the little dog really rallied and surpassed my wildest expectations this time. usually, after the initial startlement (complete with tail & ear tuck and pulling on her leash (with a pinch collar) until she's gasping for air), she'll give it to the closest pooping spot (in this case 1.5 blocks away) do her business and then turn around, indicating none too subtly that she is finished with her walk and wants to repair to the safety of her beneath our bed lair. and who can blame her? not only did she pass the poop spot, but she didn't pull on her leash until gasping (though it was taut), and while she did an initial tail and ear tuck, she got through the whole walk, and even managed to wag her tail after a few minutes. if there'd been another firecracker all bets would have been off, but as it was we didn't have any additional displays of santa cruz genius, thank god.

much as i am looking forward to thanksgiving (even though we have no idea what we're doing yet, apart from cooking) if we're in santa cruz i hope it doesn't include fireworks. i hate to think of myself as a bah-humbug kind of gal, but my poor doggie just can't take it.

another reason why i love my job

2007-10-29T16:32:00.000-07:00

so i get into work this morning tired out of my mind. we're talking jaw-cracking-uber-yawn tired here, not your regular garden variety tired. not only was my truly lovely and wonderful niece, rachel, in town and staying with us since last wednesday, but i came down with a really bad cold the same day. thus, i was dragging my all-i-want-to-do-is-sleep-and-blow-my-nose-ass all around the bay area to go and do cool things. can't let a cold, even a nasty one, get in the way of helping rachel see some of the local wonders.

so i come into work bleary eyed and tired, definitely in a "we really need to hit the lottery because i am so over all this working shit" frame of mind, when i notice it. there's a bag of biscotti on my desk that was definitely not there on wednesday. i'm standing there wondering how it got there, and who did the getting, when i read the tag and see that it's from enrico biscotti, which as all pittsburghers know is some of the best biscotti in the world. now how the heck did that get there? after a moment or two (or three or four - i was tired!) comprehension dawned as i realized my boss, bill, got it for me. he was in pittsburgh for a conference last week, so i did what any self-respecting pittsburgher would do: i gave him a list of things to see and do. he didn't have time to do most of what was on the list but he managed to go to enrico biscotti and bring a bag of it back for me. i know i'm easy to please, but it was such a lovely suprise and totally made my day! bill, you rock! :)

since i started my new job i have often felt that i've stumbled into an alternate universe so pleasant and so humane, especially when compared to another work experience i won't mention in detail, that it must be a dream. i mean, it feels like there can be no other explanation. i've decided, for as long as it lasts, that instead of pinching myself to see if it's real, i'm going to make a cup of tea and munch on some biscotti, and think about what i'm going to do and see next time i'm home.

crab-asses of the world, unite!

2007-10-23T09:32:00.000-07:00

warning!!!! you are about to enter a verified crab-ass zone! beware!

nothing like a little sleep deprivation to improve my mood - ha ha ha....

seriously though, folks, i am one tired little chicky and it's making me so crabby it is unbelievable. i owe it mostly (though not entirely) to my attendance this past weekend at the bioneers conference. it was a great experience but one that didn't allow me to sleep in at all, thus serving as an eye opener about how much i depend on those lazy weekend snoozes with wake up times of 10 a.m. at the extreme earliest. that said, the conference was really cool. it would have been cooler if my little brother had been able to attend as planned, but apparently playing flag football and ping-pong can be pretty hazardous to one's health; he was sidelined with injuries from both (and he was pooped - he works too hard and much.)

so while the conference was good, it was the second day before i realized that my number one reason for going was to get to hang out with him, as i don't get to enough, and maybe that was why i wasn't experiencing a paradigm-shifting event like he and my sister, who also went, have as a result of attendance in years past. in any event, not all was lost as my sister and her husband, not to mention my niece and her tutor, were there. the plenary sessions were great and i was introduced to so many interesting people and their work, like jay harman, founder of pax scientific, specializing in bio mimicry design - very cool stuff; van jones from the ella baker center, which is working with disadvantaged youth in west oakland, california, training them for green collar jobs; eve ensler, playwright of the vagina monologues fame; and the amazing husband and wife team ka hsaw wa and katie redford, founders of earth rights international, the organization that successfully established the ability to sue corporations, in this particular case unocal, in u.s. federal court to hold them responsible for human rights abuses committed as a result of their business dealings. again, in this case, during construction of their oil pipeline in burma. unocal settled once they went all the way to the supreme court trying to get the case thrown out, so it's the same difference, and they established that it could be done, not with standing katie's many law professors telling her it not only couldn't be done, but was unconstitutional. they are now suing shell for the heinous human rights abuses being committed in nigeria, including the murder of activist ken saro wiwa. and so, so many more that i am not going to write about here or it's all i'd do. so many inspiring people and their work... it makes me feel like i really ought to be doing more and that my accomplishments in life are meager indeed. i know that's not the intent of conference, but still... i really need to do more. but first i need to get rid of the two-ish hour commute every day (round trip, i'm not that crazy), which is sucking my will to live right out of my body.

not much else new. got some new yarn and am expecting more to do some felting projects! when i'll have the time to do so, well, that's another matter for another day. at least i have the raw materials. was reading how my dear friend lb's blog about the entire room she is devoting to her knitting projects (and possibly others) and i just about had to wipe the drool off my keyboard. i can only dream of such spacious accommodations at the moment.

anyhoo, that's it for me just now. send all kind of love to the world and all of her inhabitants, people. if ever a planet needed it, she's it.

craftiness frustration

2007-10-16T09:06:00.000-07:00

sorry to be m.i.a., folks, but i have been busy, and mostly with work, of all things! i still love the job, though, i am happy to report.

so... i have been re-inspired to take up making candles again, after the beautiful story in the november 2007 issue of martha stewart living, Candles Take Shape for the Holidays. however, i do have some frustrations... namely, the buying guide tells you where to buy most of the products needed to make the items in the article, like the turkey molds and the wax, etc. (and boy did i ever do some buying), but not where one can buy the molds for the pumpkins! all of the pumpkin molds i've found so far by googling are lame... nothing so beautiful and charming as those pictured in my idol's publication, especially the larger ones. shame on them, really! i've decided i'll have to write the crafts editor, and a good old-fashioned letter, too, since it's proving impossible to find her email address.

i am still working on the same sweater i've been working on for months. i carry my knitting with me but rarely have the time to do it - frustrating! i also have yet to receive my order for this cute little backpack from patternworks. i've changed the color scheme a bit and replaced black for the brown, and a pretty blue for the orange; i'm not really a brown and orange kind of girl. the missing order is frustrating not because i'll be able to start it any time soon, but they're usually so on it. i don't know, maybe it got lost in the mail, which is one of the disadvantages of them using regular mail: no tracking numbers. they said if i didn't get it by yesterday they'd re-send my order, so i hope they have because it still hasn't arrived. :_(

in other news... well, that will have to wait, but i promise i won't be so long in getting back to you. :)

california dreaming...

2007-10-06T11:58:00.000-07:00

i love magazines... martha stewart living (and martha stewart weddings when i was smoking the wedding crack pipe), cook's illustrated, vanity fair, national geographic, sunset, dwell... all full of cool stuff i love, and yes, we have subscriptions to all of these but two - can you guess which ones? i'll give you a freebie: sunset, which brings me to california dreaming. in the latest issue they have their annual sunset idea house, and this year's house, in lake tahoe, is a doozy. wood everywhere, concrete walls that are to die for (really, they are), slate floors, wood floors, outdoor shower in the master suite, rammed earth walls surrounding the most gorgeous patio (complete with sunken fire pit), a mud room, and a beyootiful kitchen with counter space that doesn't quit, although i'd need to see the chandelier in person - it wasn't speaking to my soul in the picture. basically just the most gorgeous, multi-million dollar home i've seen in a while, but it's from sunset magazine - of course it's gorgeous! i'm still in love with and dream of building a sunset breeze house some day, the house that totally changed my preconceptions of what a pre-fab house can be and made me think, yes, i could live in a modern design house.

in a nut shell, this latest issue of sunset has set off a huge pang of wanting to be so rich we could build such a gorgeous house in any gorgeous location of our choosing, when not shopping in paris, and such pangs are just so unproductive. for me, anyway. but then again, maybe not, if our little plan works out. one of the more interesting aspects of my new job at santa clara university is the resident ministry program. the basic idea is that you live for free in one of the residences in a one bedroom apartment and get paid a stipend, and put in 10 - 15 hours a week as the resident minister - helping students with spiritual development and engaging in the tradition of jesuit theology, which is hard core on social justice and human rights, so just up my alley. that appeals to me, and it also made me realize in a much deeper way that while i was living in pittsburgh, for all of its many wonderful traits, it was a very spiritually impoverished time for me. very. i couldn't hack going to mass there because it was so conservative so in terms of spiritual practice it was all on a personal level and i really missed the community participation. back in california i've found a parish i like, have met many progressive people there... i mean, let's face it: it's easy to be catholic in northern california, with it's progressive social norms. the resident ministry program just captured my imagination, though, and has rekindled an interest in ministry that i had pretty much written off. maybe i'll go in a direction of campus ministry, maybe not, but i'm going to try to get hired as a resident minister. there could be some snags for me, not quite sure just yet, but by hook or by crook i will give it my best shot (so i am requesting all positive vibes and prayers, please, for as long as it takes.) it'd be a drag to not be able to unpack our stuff, though we would most likely move it from its present location, or at least pull it all out and dig through it so we can have our kitchen stuff and other things that i, quite frankly, don't feel like doing without for years on end. one year, even eighteen months i can handle, but much more than that and we might as well just sell it all and be done with it. and of course in addition to all of the spiritual and professionally appealing aspects of the work we could so save mad cash if we didn't have to pay those progressive, social norms northern california rental prices. heck, we might be able to buy an exorbitantly overpriced house of our own after a few years!

so maybe the sunset idea house isn't such a bad thing after all, in terms of motivation for longer term goals. it's open to the public weekends thru october 28th, and i'd like to go see it. oh, and that brings me to another great side bennie of the resident ministry program: a five minute walking commute. our living situation here in santa cruz is amazing and we are so lucky, and grateful for it, but the commute is a bummer. i can do it for a year, but even if i don't get into the resident ministry program we have to move to south bay sooner rather than later because two hours of my day driving to work is too much. the worst part about it is that i don't want to go anywhere on the weekends if i have to spend more than twenty minutes in the car. i'd like to go see the house, but shit! a five hour drive up to tahoe is long as it is; after a week of our commute it starts to feel punitive. that's the basic problem with santa cruz, which i've actually come to quite like: it's just that bit too far away so that going anywhere involves way too much schleping oneself way too far. it takes an hour and a half to get to san francisco or the east bay on a good traffic day, so we just don't do it much. i mean, it's 45 minutes w/ good traffic to lucy's in san jose. santa cruz would be perfect if it could just be in los gatos.

ah well... obviously the universe didn't have my needs in mind when forming this beautiful world of ours. selfish s.o.b.. the universe, not having my needs paramount while creating itself! and perverse as all get out, too, but that's a post for another day.

almost friends for all these years

2007-09-25T22:50:00.001-07:00

today i had one of the most delightful, hilarious, surreal experiences in quite some time: lunch with my "new employee" buddy. part of the orientation at santa clara university is being paired up at the end of orientation with an employee buddy who takes you out to lunch (on scu's dime, too! how cool is that?! i love scu!) my buddy, vid, and i couldn't meet for lunch that day as he had a meeting and i had new faculty orientation, so we finally went to lunch today. in the meantime we'd met, since vid's office (he's the assistant director of the study abroad program) and mine are across the way from one another at cesar chavez commons. cesar chavez commons are trailers, a and b, with a big deck between them, and while i like it just fine i hope that maybe some day a cool building can be built there. maybe it's just me, but i'd like cesar to have something more, well, impressive, than two trailers and a deck. but who knows? he was by all accounts a humble man, so maybe he'd like it the way it is.

but i digress...

so vid and i go out to lunch and it starts. i live in santa cruz, and guess what? he lives on this side of the mountain, too. he mentions his wedding anniversary is coming up, and i mention mine is too. damn, but you kids are sharp as tacks! we have the same wedding anniversary; he and his wife have a year on me and drew. i ask about what he went to school for his masters for and he mentions he was a jesuit for about ten years and went to the jesuit school of theology at berkeley (jstb), which is a graduate theological union school just like my school, starr king school for the ministry. yep, right again - he was there the same time i was! in addition to the fact that we may have even had a class together without knowing it, i found out that the nickname at jstb for starr king is starfish, which i thought was pretty hilarious. i think my other starr king pals will think so, too. and last but not least, we both went to the newman center - holy spirit chapel in berkeley. heck, probably the 10 pm mass, too. talk about a small world that it took us only ten years to finally meet in. all in all it was a really fun, hilarious lunch with tons of (as my 18 and dateless friends used to say) simple chronic hilarity. and my hat is off to whoever it is in hr who did my background check, because dang! they were mighty thorough! :)

i also had a very cool evening, but it's after eleven and i have to get up early, so you'll have to wait for the next installment. try not to let the suspense get to you. ;)

week four in the bag

2007-09-21T17:40:00.001-07:00

hidy ho, boys & girls! well, i've just finished my fourth week here at my new job and this is the first day i've felt in any way competent - thank God!!!! i was wondering if that was ever going to happen. i am sure i'll still have those days, but it's nice to feel like there's some light at the end of the tunnel.

i am trying to read a book on canine acupressure, so as to help the little dog in her advancing years. she gets a little stiff after going to the beach and running around, not all the time, but sometimes. we started her on glucosamine, so hopefully that will help. i guess i'll start looking for a doggie chiropractor. yes, i admit it, i am the personification of the childless by choice yuppie who dotes on her pets as if they were human. in point of fact, zinger is better company than a lot of humans i know, so of course i am going to take her to see a chiropractor if i can. she loves the running around like a crazy dog at the beach, even if she ends up stiff afterwards.

anyway, that's all for now. :)

sigh.......

2007-09-17T13:01:00.001-07:00

is there anything more depressing than writing a sympathy card? well, yeah, of course there is, i suppose. kind of a self-absorbed question, if i think about it.

a friend back home, karen, lost her husband, joe, last week. he had leukemia and was all of 33. the second 33-year-old man i know who's died way before he should have, in my humble opinion, and it's that, and having to acknowledge such a monumental loss for karen and their families and everyone who loves them that makes the card writing such a bummer. necessary, of course, and often overlooked in our ever-declining society of manners and civility, but a bummer none the less (but my husband is hale and hearty, so what the hell am i complaining about?) i can't imagine what i'd do if drew went and died on me, which is another part of what makes joe's death hit so close to home. our mutual prohibition against dying and leaving the other high and dry just isn't providing the comic reassurance it usually does. a silly rule, and completely unenforceable at that, but we like it.

take a minute out of your busy day and let the people you love know it. it's good for the immune system, it's good for the soul, and life is just too unpredictable not to. :)

be careful what you wish for

2007-09-14T20:24:00.001-07:00

my husband, drew, basically rocks my world but has this annoying habit of telling me periodically for the last two years or so that i really ought to blog. i've resisted thus far, but what can i say? it's a friday night and i'm still at work at 8:26 p.m., not because i'm working, but because drew had something blow up at work and he's still working. i'm hoping he'll finish up soon because if boredom has produced the long sought after blog, who knows what else will happen?

that said, i am thinking this might be fun. and so much happening, too. i just started a new job, at santa clara university, and i really, really love it. just finished my third week so it's early, true, but this place had a good vibe since the interview that just hasn't gone away... it's gotten stronger, if anything.

i think i'm getting used to used to living in the bay area again (san francisco bay area, fyi). northern california is a strange and wonderful place... so much that's great about it, so much that's just soooooo californian, and then the stuff that sucks. like traffic. and real estate prices. but that's such well covered ground by everyone in the world that i refuse to go there; it is what it is. the thing is, when i moved back to pittsburgh, my hometown, in 2002, all i could think about was moving back. by the time thinking about moving back out here rolled around, there was nowhere else i wanted to be than exactly where i was. my family was there, my friends were wonderful and many, i loved so much about the down-to-earth sensibility of the 'burgh. true, i was stuck in my old job, which i affectionately refer to as "the viper pit", but, i knew that couldn't last forever. alas, my one true love is literally allergic to my little slice of heaven and it became painfully obvious that if his health was going to improve we had to get out of whatever it was in pittsburgh's pollution that was making him sick, to pollution that while not much better in terms of particulate matter in the air, was more agreeable to his system.

and now it's sunday, and i'm finishing this inaugural post. not a good sign, perhaps, but, there you are. more later...