Orange Clove Head

It’s got nothing to do with me

2012-02-17T15:37:00.000-08:00

A little miracle just happened. I will go into detail in a moment, but I wanted to just recognize that the universe just made a lovely exception and intervened on my behalf.
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I am at home on a Friday afternoon waiting for the GE guy to show up and fix my oven. I can boil, and I can broil, but I cannot bake. Chickens have gone unroasted for a couple of weeks. This morning I ran up to Speedy Auto Glass to get a ding in my windshield fixed and then I went to the gym. It sounds like I had errands to do and I just took a vacation day, but that is not true. I took a day off because I had to get the fuck away from work. I got nailed for screwing something up this week. No, nailed would not express how I feel. Cut off at the knees? Thrown under the bus? Gutted? Yes, gutted is about right.

All week I have been thinking about the time that supposedly blond woman at the mermaid went berserk on me in a conference room. It was so awful, so personal, so…crazy. The rest of that week I was just kind of a zombie. I felt so violated. People kept coming up to me asking if someone close to me had died. Just my career. I left soon after and the rest is resume history.

I am not going to go into details, but suffice to say I had a really, really hard project that took over my life for the last two months. Nights, weekends, you know the drill. I got everything done on time, but because I was so consumed with that project I screwed up some deliverables on another high profile project. Mostly my fault, totally a bone head move, but easily fixable. The reaction from above however was personal, public, and humiliating. I spent all week working to clean things up. And I did. And I made the fools that I report to look really, really good to their alien masters, but I am still completely amazed by the initial reaction. I know myself well enough to know I am not going to get over this. You too should know me well enough by now to understand that no one on earth has a greater capacity to hold a drudge than I do.

So I have just been in this total funk all week. Then this morning I realized it was the two year anniversary of Cathead’s death. I wasn’t really conscious of the date. I just kind of had a feeling so I went out to my blog to confirm. Yep, two years ago today. The same thing happened last year. I had a good loud cry and looked at some pictures of him. Later I started crying on the freeway coming home from the gym. Yep, here come tears again right now. Fuck.
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Anyway, sob, earlier this week I was trying to process all this work crap so I started a blog about some of the awful mangers I have had in my life:

The 57 year old help desk manager at the mermaid with Margaret Thatcher hair and a JC Penny wardrobe who decided I was sexually obsessed with her and harassed me for two years.
The rat fucker director at Amazon who had it out for pregnant women, black women, and gay men.
The brown toothed hag at Boeing who threatened to fire me if I didn’t clean up and fix a project she had run into the ground.

I wasn’t really inspired by writing about these ass-holes so I didn’t pursue the post. Instead, and clearly a symptom of how depressed I am, I actually bought and started reading the new Anne Rice novel. Yes, I have in fact sunk to that level.

So, sitting around the house today on this rainy grey afternoon, reading Anne Rice, talking to myself and feeling old, thinking I’d like to quit, that nothing seems to fit, I started remembering that horrible old Margaret Thatcher look alike and her pant suits. There was one singular moment when I got over her. I had worked until 9:00 PM on a Halloween and I was driving over Queen Anne trying to get home and change for a party. I had the Aimee Mann album “I’m With Stupid” on my car stereo. I was upset because Mrs. Thatcher was begin her usual bitch to me and I was not really listening to the music. But then the lyrics to “All Over Now” snuck into my subconscious. It percolated for a few moments then bubbled up to the non-reptilian part of my brain and in that very moment I was cured. Her evil hateful behavior -- it had nothing to do with me.

Over the years, in dark horrible moments of self-doubt, blackest despair, and sometimes when I am just being a whiney pee pants, this album has literally saved my life. Over and over. And yet when I am in the thick of it I am always too upset to remember it.

So like I said, I was reading Anne Rice, sobbing about Cathead, freaking out over my job, and the song just came on over the KCRW music steam. Now listen to me, KCRW does not really like Aimee Mann all that much. They play her once in a while because they kind have to, but it’s not like she’s Sia or Adel or someone they love. This was random, odd, a total freaking miracle. A very welcome miracle.

I am better already. A few hours in the dark tonight with the headphones on and I will be good to go for Monday.

All Over Now

Though I let you steer

You a cavalier

Inch became a light year

It was pathetic
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Oh you can write the play

And every word I say

But I don’t have to stay

To see the credits
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’cause it’s all over now

Yes it’s all over now

And I’m free
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I was one of few

Who’d stick up for you

And so you never knew

You were a punch line

I could not convince or trust you

To pick up on my hints, must you

Leave your fingerprints

On everything I called mine
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Well that’s all over now

Yes it’s all over now

And I’m free

Yes I’m free
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From your interference

Which had the appearance

Of making it clear that

It’s got nothing to do with me

- angry guitar solo-

It’s got nothing to do with me

-really angry guitar solo-

It’s got nothing to do with me

It’s got nothing to do with me
..

-more really angry guitar solo-

And I warn you now

The velocity I’m gathering

Two years to the day

2012-02-17T08:42:00.000-08:00

Hey Mister.

Still love you.

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Winter grey

2012-01-31T08:52:00.000-08:00

So it’s’ the middle of winter and I do not have a trip booked any place on first class for 45 days. Winter after New Year’s Day is just stupid. It’s cold and grey, and if your artichokes and calla lilies have made it this far they are sure to be nailed soon by some artic Canadian air just waiting to plunge down. I hate artic Canadian air.

It’s easy to get depressed in this period of greyness before daffodils and flights to Kaua’i. Listening to NPR on the way to work contributes to this sense of despair and dread as it has devolved into a free of charge nonstop Republican campaign coverage machine. I just can’t listen anymore. Occasionally I tune into Democracy Now on Pacifica, but they can be a little strident sometimes, and then there’s the Diane Rehm Show. That thing just defies explanation.

What is a boy to do? Well this morning I put my car radio on scan and delved into the world of commercial FM radio. It’s not pretty. I cannot devote any time here to documenting the horror of drive time American radio. Just avoid it at all costs. But I did discover something quite wonderful this morning. Somewhere out there in the far flung exurbs of Seattle there is a little FM radio station that plays Mexican polka music. Put this on while you are driving to work and your whole world view will improve. Just go with it. Trust me.

Finally, just to brighten my day even more I saw this online and had to share it. No need for an explanation.

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A goat could save your life

2012-01-24T21:32:00.001-08:00

Do you know that moment when you have been on a diet for a while and suddenly you fit into your old jeans and you can reach that other notch on your belt that has been unattainable for a while? No this is not a Progresso Soup commercial, but I did have that experience this morning. Very motivating.

So if you are one of the two readers of this blog you will know that in the last couple of years I have struggled with my weight, my blood pressure, my glucose levels, and my cholesterol levels. This is because I am a pig. In England they would say that I am "greedy". That sounds a bit better, but the reality of the situation is I don't do well with moderation. All the more sad then that I studied Aristotle in college. I didn’t just study Aristotle, I majored in Philosophy. See, I couldn't even do that in moderation.

Last month I learned that an old friend of mine died of a stroke two years ago when he was the age I am now. He actually died on my birthday in 2010. This really shook me up. As such I have been on a no alcohol / no wheat diet since January 2nd. January 1st was necessarily spent with a magnum of Cava and an all-day AbFab marathon as it should have been. This recent abstinence is on top of me giving up meat last year and me stopping eating anything that is white.
Yes I really just typed that. No alcohol, no wheat, no meat, nothing white.

I was surprised how easy it was to give up meat. I never was that big of a fan of dead cow, but lamb? I love lamb. Giving up meat had nothing to do with my health though. I was in Maui last March at the Surfing Goat Dairy buying goat cheese and all these super cute little goats were running around and frolicking on their surfboards. There was just no way to look at these little goats and be OK about eating an animal. I am a total hypocrite though. I am still eating chickens and anything that swims. I probably will reach a point of ending my bird consumption, but I have no plans to quit eating seafood, ever, under any circumstances. I realise that in some karmic way this increases the likelyhood of me getting devoured by a shark exponentially.

I should fess up that massive amounts of dead pigs were consumed by me in Barcelona. And I ate and drank nearly as many bad things in San Francisco. I don’t care. I reserve the right to consume anything I want while on vacation. Fortunately all I ever eat in Hawaii is fish anyway.

Why am I blabbering on about all this right now? Because I went in for a checkup this week. Blood was drawn, fingers were inserted, knees where thwacked. As the news is? I have lost 14 pounds since the first of the year and my blood pressure is better. But there is a huge change though from a year ago. My glucose levels are almost normal and my cholesterol levels are normal too. This just goes to show that if you quit eating cute little animals you will live longer.

I am so relieved. I really, really do not want to get diabetes. Or have a stroke. Or die. Unless a Republican is elected president in the fall, but then that pretty much assures that the Mayans were right and the world is going to end in 2012 anyway so it won’t matter.

Seriously, I feel like I have dodged a bullet again. I hope I can stay on this diet for a while and actually lose some real weight. What would it be like to go to Europe and not be immediately recognized as an American because I am enormous and wearing white tennis shoes?

Goal for 2012: Try to stop looking like enormous American. And buy different colored tennis shoes.

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MEGASTORM 2012

2012-01-18T11:46:00.000-08:00

So we are in the middle of a full blown media crisis. It is snowing. In Seattle. In winter.
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There is live coverage on The Weather Channel. That buff reporter they send to hurricanes is standing at the bottom Queen Anne Hill mispronouncing things. Apparently all 4 inches of snow also warrants a front page mention on the BBC web site.
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This is so embarrassing.
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I am working from home as the entire city is shut down. Seriously. They closed my building. Busses are not running. All the hybrid taxi cabs are spinning out. Garbage collection is cancelled. They have let all the horrible children out of school.
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I was at the store yesterday stocking up on supplies lest I am housebound for a week and all the bottles of kombucha and the gluten free crackers had been pillaged! It’s the end of the world.
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My hummingbirds seem OK. I’ve had to clear some snow off their feeders, but this does not seem like a HUMMINGBIRD EMERGENCY even though it’s only 28 degrees outside.
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.OK, back to work now.

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Stupid Snow

2012-01-15T10:18:00.000-08:00

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I am sitting at my desk at home looking out the window.
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The hummingbirds are zooming around outside. It’s cold but not a Hummingbird Emergency. My birds have two feeders and a Mahonia plant in full bloom to keep them fed.
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Three small snowflakes have fallen down in the last 30 minutes. I am not going to turn on the TV news as I know they will be in the middle of a media crisis with its own logo and musical theme.
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Stupid snow.

I hate snow.
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Why do I hate snow so much? Let me count the ways:

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1. I live on the West Coast. This is not supposed to happen here. Every time it snows I just feel like we have failed somehow. You know that line of mountains that runs up and down the west coast? The one that is supposed to keep Republicans and religious people out? Snow is supposed to stay on the other side of the mountains just like Tea-Baggers, Baptists, and Nascar fans. Did three snowflakes fall in San Francisco this morning? In LA? No! See, we still have a long way to go before we become a real city.
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2. Too many years of work-based snow trauma. I have lived here now for 29 years. In that time I have gone through a handful of really awful snow storms that shut things down for a week. I have had to walk to work, walk home from work, one time I EVEN HAD TO TAKE THE BUS, but the worst of all was a bad snow storm when I was running the Help Desk at the mermaid. I could not get anyone to come to work for days. Seattleites do not come to work when it snows. With about 10,000 stores all over the world no one really cared about our little snow storm. I think I went 3 days without sleep. I am still traumatized by this. Bleck!
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3. Driving. Look, I grew up in Eastern Washington -- on the other side of the mountains -- where it is supposed to snow. I can drive in the snow. People from here can’t drive in the snow. When it does actually get icy and bad out, 89% of drivers just freeze up and don’t move. But 11% of the drivers turn into icy missiles. If you do not have four wheel drive, do not have chains on, are talking on your cell phone not paying attention, please do not drive down a big hill. Actually, please do try to drive down the big hill but make sure I am not in your way first.
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Ugh. Since I have started to type this more flakes have come down. We are up to a total of 11 fakes. None of them look like each other.
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Oh, one more thing I hate about snow. Skiing. Actually Skiers. This is one of those odd subcultures I just do not understand and think should be illegal. Now trust me, if I were 25 years old and pretty I would be happy to go put on some tight plastic pants and go stand around in a bar in the mountain lodge and get drunk with other pretty people in tight plastic pants. But the thought of actually going outside into the cold, and then consciously sliding down a mountain on two tiny skis at 100 miles per hour is just fucking crazy. Something is wrong with people who do this. It occurs suddenly to me that skiing does have to take place in the mountains, probably on the other side of the summit in most cases, so technically it is on the Nascar side. Guess they can do what they want over there as long as they don’t force it on me.
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We are up to 19 flakes now. Guess I’d better drive to the store and stock up on batteries, first aid kits, bottled water, and cans of tuna.
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Have I mentioned lately that I have two trips to Hawaii booked in the next few months?

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OK so now it's 5 hours later and several more flakes have fallen. Mark and I went to the store and to the gym. There is a lot of snow in West Seattle. Some buses were stuck going up the hill. It's a full blown SNOW DRAMA MEDIA CRISIS! Most people were driving carefully and slow, but there were several ass-hole drivers from Montana going fast and being bullies. There is always an ass-hole from Montana somewhere in the mix, isn't there. Anyway, here's a photo:

Yuck!

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It's Monday morning. 5:00 AM. I roll over and grab my iPad. It's 28 degrees outside. That is like -2.22 Celsius. How embarrassing! This is a fully blown HUMMINGBIRD EMERGENCY! I get up and replace the frozen hummingbird food before my birds have time to wake up. By 6:00 AM the birds are up and get a fresh warmish breakfast.

I search the internet for heated hummingbird feeders. There are none. Note to self -- get rich by inventing heated hummingbird feeders.

OK, that is all on this stupid snow. So depressing.

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Why do women wear boots?

2012-01-11T21:05:00.000-08:00

I was in this meeting today. Well not really a meeting. A “stand up”. Everyone does these 15 minutes “stand ups” now so it can appear that you are being agile and lean and you are able to turn on a dime and get things done quickly. It’s very annoying when your leg hurts.

Anyway, this was a “stand up” for an internal re-org that I am working on. There were four guys and probably six women there. Every single woman was wearing boots that came up to her knees and then either pants that were tucked in or colored leotard things.

I have said if before and I will say it again, here, now: Boots looks stupid on every woman except for Emma Peal.

I cannot figure out why women don’t understand this. This reminds me of the line from Buffy The Musical where Buffy says: “Well, I'm not exactly quaking in my stylish yet affordable boots, but there's definitely something unnatural going on here. And that doesn't usually lead to hugs and puppies.”

Wrong Buffy. There is no such thing as stylish boots.

Am I the only person who can see this?

Stupid:

Timeless:

Stupid:

Timeless:

OK, OK, I will concede that there is one more pair of boots that I like:

This is all I have to say today.

Not a mormon

2012-01-08T10:39:00.000-08:00

As you know, I am an atheist. I know that God is a made up person like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
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I do believe in Jesus. I have trouble with atheists who try to argue that Jesus didn’t exist. That just seems irrational and doesn’t really help with one’s credibility. It’s like arguing that Ronald Regan didn’t exist. One can hope, but it won’t change anything. Obviously Jesus was a crazy homeless person who wandered around the desert talking to himself, but that fact doesn’t negate his historical existence.

I quit believing in god when I was 14. That was a long time ago, back when the earth was created. Yes, there were dinosaurs walking around when I was a small child. Anyway, I think all people who believe in supernatural invisible things* are kind of stupid and wrong, but I don’t really belive that there should be national legislation against religion. I think it should be left up to the states. I don’t care if you are a Christian, a Jew, a Scientologist, a Buddhist, a Hindu, or frankly even a Mormon. I do a massive generalization and lump all of you people into a stereotype I call goo-heads.

Actually, you go do your thing, leave me alone, and I will quietly judge you but I will leave you alone too. That usually works. But then there is the presidential campaign this year. The non-stop and totally unchallenged coverage of the Republican fuckwits on NPR is impossible to avoid and very disturbing. It is! Sometimes it’s really hard to find a Pacifica station when you are stuck in traffic.

Santorum is the personification of the worst that America has to offer. No need to really talk about that shit here. Fortunately Newt is so evil and vile there is no way he will be the candidate. Romney is more interesting. Clearly a liar, evil, stupid, and a total fuckwit, but I am fascinated by the Mormon thing.

As much as I dislike all believers in unicorns, the Tooth Fairy, and other mythologies, I have always been uncomfortable with this idea that it is socially acceptable for Christians to make fun of Mormons in public settings. It happens all the time. Someone will just say something really horrible about Mormons without even stopping to think who can hear them. It’s so rude. It’s like having a blog and just writing what ever comes into your head and posting it on the internet.

I have known plenty of Mormons in my life and they seemed about as annoying as any other group of religious nut jobs, so why single them out? But then there was the whole gay marriage thing in California. Betty will explain if you do not remember this. Pretty easy to become a hater after that whole deal.
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Everyone knows the reason Romney can’t get over 25% in the polls is because the hard core Republican / Fascist / Tea-Baging freaks won’t vote for a Mormon. Don’t you just love this? Please keep fighting boys. Make it as mean and nasty as you can. We’ll just keep watching the unemployment rate drop.
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Why did I start this post again? Oh yes, Mormons. There are these Mormon billboards along the West Seattle Freeway.

So annoying. Please, there are no black, Asian, soccer playing, or motorcycle riding Mormons!!!
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I am going to cash in my retirement savings and put up my own billboard:

*This does not include vampires, zombies, or sandworms.

Happy New Year!

2011-12-31T10:43:00.000-08:00

As 2011 comes to a close I am finding that I am totally freaked out that my old friend died at the age of 48. I am 48.

Also, isn't the world supposed to come to and end in 2012? Mayan Aztec bird flu or something?

This is adding to my stress level, which probably is raising my blood pressure and contributing to an early demise.

What is a boy to do?

Guess.

No really, guess.

Buy First Class airline tickets to Hawai'i?

Of course I did.

Memorial Day Weekend, 2012.

I feel better already.

Geoffrey Arcand

2011-12-30T10:33:00.000-08:00

I woke up this very early this morning, like I always do, got a drink of water, and then looked at the time. 4:00 AM. Wow. Really?

“It’s four in the morning, the end of December. I’m writing you now just to see if you are better…”

Leonard Cohen’s Famous Blue Raincoat.The Jennifer Warnes version. The definitive version of this song.

The album of the same name, along with some early Rickee Lee Jones this is some of the most important music to me. I think back to when I first heard this. It was 1987. I was just out of school. Working is restaurants, trying to figure out what to do with my life. A radio station, KEZX, was this weird beacon of …what to call it? Progressive? Eclectic? Thoughtful music for grownups? Whatever, it was my station and it was very important to me. Over the years I have scrounged together a playlist on my iPod of music I learned about on KEZX. Music I never would have known had I not been in Seattle then. Jesus, this is where I first heard Lucinda Williams. Wonderful old gut wrenching lesbian music like Claudia Schmidt or Cheryl Wheeler. Kooky Christine Lavin. Randy Newman blowing up London and Paris. Latin Quarter signing South African protest music before Mandela was free. Chrissie Hynde sining her Hymn to Her. Bonnie Raitte back when she was still good before she got sober. Even Roxy Music. There was no place else to hear this combination of music anywhere. When KEZX when off the air in the 1990’s I was kind of lost for a while. Maybe that is why I love KCRW so much now.

But back to Famous Blue Raincoat. I had this friend, Geoff. Geoff Arcand was a waiter. Short, hairy, funny, loud mouth, total pot head. I think he taught me how to drink. He got me started on these horrible peach flavored wine coolers. “They’re fuzzy!” he said. Geoff was straight but he had a little bit of a crush on me, and me on him too I guess. We hung out for a year or two. One night we were in the U District shopping at Tower Records. I had heard Famous Blue Raincoat on KEZX, so I bought the album. Driving him back to the Eastside that night he wanted to know what I had bought. I was a little embarrassed that it was a Jennifer Warnes album so I wouldn’t tell him. This pissed him off and we got in a big stupid fight.

We didn’t talk for a while. He called me a few months later but I was on the phone with some boy that I had a crush on so I asked Geoff to call me back later. He never did.

I ran into him in the late 1990’s. He was waiting tables at some restaurant in Belltown and I was in there on a date drinking martini’s. We both saw each other but didn’t say anything.

So all this went through my head at 4:00 AM this morning as the words to Famous Blue Raincoat were ringing in my head. My iPad was next to my bed so I decided to Google Geoff. The first thing that came up was post from Nancy Leson’s Seattle Times food blog. It showed a picture of Geoff opening wine at some restaurant in Wallingford. I smiled and thought it was good to see his face and I hoped he was well.

But then I looked down farther and saw some obituary notices. Nancy’s post was from 2009. Turns out Geoff died on my birthday last year after having a stroke.

So now I am sitting here listing to sad old KEZX music and crying. 24 years is a long time but right now I can vividly remember lots of nights sitting around watching David Letterman after work with Geoff and his roommate Nile.

Geoff had this distinct sense of humor. Direct. Crass. Almost always in appropriate. Some quotes that come to mind:

“I could totally quit this fucking job and just go be the night clerk at 7-11.”

“I don’t even know these people. Why are they being so fucking rude?”

“I wouldn’t fuck her with your dick!”

Remembering these makes me happy.

I really can’t believe that he is dead. And how fucking weird is it that I found out by thinking about the very music that ended our friendship.

There is a line in Famous Blue Raincoat, “Did you ever go clear?” This has been the source of some humor and discussion over the years. To me it means did you leave your demons behind, get out, start over, do what ever it takes to be happy.

So, Geoff Arcand. I remember you. I mourn you. And I really hope you went clear.

Holiday Greetings

2011-12-28T17:06:00.000-08:00

So this was my holiday greeting to people this year. No big production, no US mail, no stamps, just a simple email with this photo of me attached and a subject line of "Ho!"

What I got in response were actual pieces of physical media. Mail. Generic year end recap letters that included photos of people's stupid children and comments like, "Little Sally is at the top of her class and on the championship soccer team and she does ballet on the weekends. Carole and I are planning a trip to Vegas in February!" Well, little Sally pisses me off and so do generic year end recap letters from people I have not seen in 20 years.

I decided to reciprocate, via email, with as obnoxious a recap letter as I could come up with. I hate stamps. FIlthy things, the stamps.

Dear Friend or Family Member,

As 2011 draws to a close and we face the prospects of yet another bleak year without Hillary Clinton as our leader, I feel that I must take a look back at the year that was.

2011 started off on a creative note as both Fred and Hyka started interpretive dance classes. These take place at a trapeze school south of downtown where small plastic balls filled with catnip are hung from the ceiling by long strings of yarn. An ingenious computer-based system manipulates the strings to pull them up suddenly at random intervals, thus helping the kittens to develop faster reflexes and paw-eye coordination as they dance about.

March was a warm blast as we headed for the tropical isle of Maui. Shocking, I know. We took long walks on the beach, drank Mai Tai’s, and ate crab dip pizza and loads of ahi poke! The kittens stayed at the trapeze school for the week where they learned bamboo dancing from the choreographer who did Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

April was drama filled as I gave notice at that large commercial airplane factory which had employed me for nearly 5 years and accepted a potion at a largish charitable foundation near the Space Needle where they have Fresca flowing free from fountains.

May required a mini-break bop over to Oahu for dinner at Nobu and a spa day at the Halekulani Hotel.

June, July, and August were spent in my newly remodeled back yard drinking slightly fizzy green wine from Portugal and cooking Catalan food in preparation for my trip to Barcelona in September / October.

Barcelona was a blast. We landed first at the Paris airport where, while sitting in a restaurant, I actually asked in French for another espresso! Mais oui!

The Catalan Capital both met and exceeded many of my expectations. The food? Truly outstanding. The city? Gorgeous, of course. The locals? Badly dressed but a friendly lot, mostly. There was an attack by some football hooligans, Nubian prostitutes, and a bicycle terrorist, but that all pales in comparison to tapas bars, the cava, and Gaudi.

November was another little mini-break bop down to San Francisco where we had the most amazing dinner at Aziza, lunch at the Slanted Door, and outstanding cocktails everywhere.

But now as I look to 2012 I am off the alcohol for a bit as my liver is now larger than my head.

The kittens are continuing their ongoing education, now having branched out into polka and secured themselves highly-coveted scholarships, thus eliminating the need for me to save any money for them to go to dance college.

Mark continues to be younger than me and is now making much, much more money than I over at that online bookstore.
What about travel, you ask? Of course there is a trip booked to Kauai for March. A mini-break to Maui over Memorial Day is a distinct possibility. Europe seems unlikely this year, however. The Basque Country in 2013 then? Why not!

Here’s hoping your 2012 is everything you want it to be!

Love,
OCH

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No holiday

2011-12-16T13:01:00.000-08:00

It’s Sunday morning and I am at home listening to Radio Nova from Paris on the ancient PC in my office. I am thinking about Christmas in Paris two years ago. These memories are stoked by two things:

One:
Work. You know that wonderful, glorious feeling you get when you walk out of work the day before you leave for a two week vacation to Europe? I just love that moment. That feeling that it’s all behind you, that you can relax, that you got everything finished. Friday afternoon was not that moment however. I am not going anywhere. I just finished working 13 days in a row. More than a few of which lasted until midnight. I had five projects all line up at the same time in a harmonic convergence of multitasking terror, drama, fire drills, and egos. I am so tired. But I think I got it all done. I have that feeling now that it is all behind me, that I can relax, that I got everything finished. I so wish I was getting on a plane. But no, I have not paid off Barcelona.

Two:
My mother called yesterday and asked if I was coming over on Christmas Day and what I was cooking over here on Christmas Eve. As I thought about what to cook on Christmas Eve it occurred to me to that I should just cook what I made in that time apartment in Paris two years ago. I made mark re-read my Paris blog post out loud last night. For that dinner I made these little birds:

“Coquelet jaune pret a cuire” with stuffing, potatoes, and green beans and radishes in butter. Totally did not suck. I think we will have that on Christmas Eve.

So back to work. Part of the reason I am so exhausted is I had this ongoing this battle this week with the business analyst who is completely and totally unable to multitask in any way. She gets psychotically scary and mean when interrupted or asked to do more than one thing in a day. Not surprisingly she also hates schedules. We don’t see the world the same way. Plus no one can multitask better than I do. Can you put on a facial mask in the shower, put conditioner in your hair, and then masturbate while brushing your teeth with your Sonicare toothbrush at the same time? I didn’t think so.

That reminds me of the scene from “While London Burns Sammy and Rosie Get Laid” where Sammy is laying on the couch snorting coke, eating MacDonald's, wacking off, listening to Pakistani music, and watching a nature show on TV all at the same time. I could do that. Well not the coke. And not MacDonald's anymore either. I would do vodka. And spicy teriyaki.
.

Re-reading that Paris blog post made me remember how pretty much crappy the food was in Paris. That reminds me of how amazing the food was in Barcelona. Did I write yet about the Basque tapas bars? About the pintxos?

The tapas menus that look like sushi?

The tapas.
.

The tapas.

Did I write about the seafood paella?

Did I write about the seafood fiduea?

The bread with tomato and oil oil?

Did I write about the ham?

Are you sure I did not write about the ham?

What about the goofy fruit drinks?

The pastries?

Did I write about the seafood?

The tuna?

The langustines and razor clams?

The mushrooms?

The olives?

The cat?

The foie gras?

The best sandwich in the whole world?

I think I did already write about this amazing bouillabaisse.

And this squid.

God I want to get on a plane.

Well, at least I have something booked for March. It's number 19!

Steely Dan

2011-11-30T21:42:00.000-08:00

Well this is weird. I meant to sit down and write about Florence + The Machine and now I am writing about Steely Dan. Bear with me here for a moment. I might even get some Kate Bush in here.

First I am stuck by the limited number of cultural references I actually have in my life. Buffy being the primary influence of course, but the lack of others seems kind of sad. This will become evident if you actually keep reading.

So Florence + The Machine were on Saturday Night Live last week…maybe the week before…. TiVo….anyway, I like her. I heard Dog Days Are Over on KCRW in late 2009.When I first listened to the song all I could picture was Buffy.

Buffy and Zombies.

In London.

When I listen to the song I see The Slayer running through a green field. Running fast, but happy, smiling. Then in the distance I can see a large city. It’s surrounded by a green belt. Then there is a zombie. Then another. They are the slow kind. Buffy does not care. The Slayer has got to get where The Slayer has got to go!

Buffy plows through them with her super powers, ripping off their stupid zombie heads without even slowing down. Carnage to the beat of the song. She keeps running, faster now, entering the center of the city and then there are way more zombies. Buffy keeps on running and pillaging. At one point the song slows down and I see in slow motion a zombie head flying up in the air, then an arm, then a leg. Buffy it totally smiling still. You know that smile. That calm weird relaxed happy smile she had in the very last moment of the very last scene after Sunnydale had been destroyed.

Finest moment of television history.

Oh hi Faith! Yes Faith is on Oxford Street dancing to her own zombie death beat by the way.

Five by five.

Oh shit. I have become one of those Steely Dan "My Old School" people. You know what I mean right? There are all these sad lost old people stuck in a period that was "their time". Usually college or a backpack trip to Europe when they lost their virginity. They still talk about that tribe of friends from back then, actually go to their reunions, give money to their school, get drunk and dance to whatever crap music was playing back then. Fuck me.

No, no, no, Buffy is not like that for me. Really. Anyway, he said, changing the subject quickly, Florence + The Machine were on SNL last week. Her performance was amazing. She is so fantastic live. But now having bought the album I must say it's all kind of the same song.

I want to hold a candle up high and sing along and cry while and I am blasted by a tornado of vocal energy and a wall of giant sound. This is anthem music. Yes, its anthem music with a harp, but still, it’s too much. I like her, but she should not do it this way. It’s almost impolite.

I can’t help but think about another female singer from the UK who knew better. Kate Bush? Why on earth would I think of Kate Bush here? Because I am gay and every gay man in the universe loves "The Man With The Child In His Eyes!?!?!? Well, OK, every gay man on earth does love that song, but Kate Bush has nothing to do with this, you judgmental homophobe.

I really am trying to bring this full circle so stay with me.

Florence has a great voice, a super-powerful voice in fact. She can evoke weird Celtic energy even while referencing American soul music, but it’s just too bombastic. There is no subtly. It’s not polite to use your super powers all the time.

If we go back to ancient times, before Steely Dan, there was a woman who had even stronger super powers, and a pretty name.

She wanted that wall of sound around her that Florence uses now, but she was a mature performer at birth. She knew just how far to push it. She could show you how much power she had with a single phrase, but never crossed the line. She took us just up to the limit and then backed off. What class. What style. This is what it really means to have super powers.

Go now, buy I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself on iTunes and just....listen. Listen to the sound of super powers under control. Picture a slow, gentle walk through Hyde Park. Buffy is smiling. That same smile. She is walking slowly, like the zombies. She pulls off an arm here, a leg there, some fingers, and gently tosses them in the air. It is summer time and no one is in a hurry.

“Oh hi Faith!”
.

"B! Toss that one over here and I’ll break its neck."

"Five by Five."

Rainy Days and Sundays

2011-11-27T12:01:00.000-08:00

It's late Sunday morning. 50 degrees and raining outside. I am trying to avoid going out into the rain to go to the gym so I am listening to the audio book of the latest David Rakoff collection, Half Empty, on my iPhone. He is my hero and I love him.

The Kittens are sitting at my desk freaking out as the wind blows leaves up against the window in my office. These are leaves Kittens, not missiles from the Soviet Union. Fred just bounced off the window and then fell off the desk.

Aside from going to the gym, and to Rite Aid to pick up my prescription for anti-balding medication (the one that gives me man boobs) , I should probably go to Loews and buy an extra hummingbird feeder so that I can start up my annual HUMMINGBIRD EMERGENCY ritual once it gets cold.

This is so depressing. I could quit my job, spend 12 hours a day just writing and I would never, ever be remotely as good a writer as David Rakoff is. I should think about food instead. That will make me happy. Should I make Cioppino or Bouillabaisse for dinner? Hmmmm....I think its going to be my own version which I will call Pazuzustrone as it will not quite Cioppino or Bouillabaisse. Let me make up a recipie here:

2 big cans of San Marzano tomatoes
Onion
Garlic
Carrot
Celery
Fennel
Maybe some turnip
Maybe some Jerusalem artichokes
Why the fuck to people call those Sunchokes. So stupid.
Some fish
Some shell fish
Some white wine
Some clam juice
Safron

Yes, very pazuzu.

Alright, I need to go. Here are some pictures that I have downloaded off of the internet that I have been meaning to share. Enjoy:

Off to buy anti-balding medicine now....

Wet Wide Spot

2011-11-23T15:03:00.000-08:00

Friday:

It’s 36 degrees outside with thick icy looking rain falling down as I drive into work this morning. I am listening to the new Sandra Bernhard album, “I love being me, don’t you?”

She’s singing about San Francisco. “…make sure you wear some flowers in your hair….”

What a week. I was in this training class most of the week with all these young NYU graduates that have rather high opinions of themselves. My limited self-esteem has been crushed. I am old, fat, and stupid. I knew I was old and fat, but I didn’t really know how stupid I was till this week. How depressing. I have got to get out of this rainy depressing city. What is an old fat stupid boy to do? Hmmm…go to San Francisco for the weekend? On Virgin America? Well OK!

Monday:

I did not wear a flower in my hair, but I had a great time and now I am sad. Every time I come home from San Francisco, Seattle just seems like a wide spot in the road. I feel that way this morning. What am amazing city. So dense, so much street life, so much warmer. I know most people would laugh at the idea of San Francisco being warm, but it’s a good 15 degrees warmer down there than this place. Also, it’s warmish in the people sense. People are just way friendlier down there. And prettier. And the food…the food…the food! I had some of the best food of my entire life this weekend. Let’s recap shall we?

Friday:

6:30 AM: Go to work.

11:00 AM: Leave work, go home, pack.

12:00 PM: Go pick up Mark and Lynnette.

12:03 PM: Arrive at Sea-Tac and check in with Virgin America.

12:05 PM: Go through security, find place to start drinking

12:07 PM: $12 corking fee at a wine bar that sells bottles of wine?!?!! Screw you! We’ll go get martinis and French fries down in shiny new Concourse A.

12:30 PM: Have now had third martinis and am feeling a little woozy but am enjoying the French fries!

1:31 PM: Am now drunk and have to wait 3 hours for flight to San Francisco. Did we get here too early?

3:31 PM: Virgin America is pretty. Mood lighting and pink headphones.

3:32 PM: Oh fuck. This is still coach. Tiny, tiny seats. Vile woman in front of me reclines her seat so she can sleep. Her chair is 3 inches from my face.

3:33 PM – 4:33 PM: Watch reruns of 30 Rock via live satellite stream of New York television station while continually applying large gobs of spit to the exposed coat sleeve of vile woman in front of me.

4:34 PM: Can’t make no more spit so I start taking the straw that is sitting in my vodka on the rocks and applying a small stream of Stoli to the exposed coat sleeve of vile woman in front of me.

5:34 PM: Plane lands. Watch look of horror on vile woman’s face as she put on her coat.

5:45 PM: Pick up bags, find driver, dive into rush hour traffic heading north on Highway 101.

OK, I can’t keep doing this time check thing. Making me crazy.

Traffic is a little bit bad has as we head into the city. We’re staying at the Hotel Triton, which is an old favorite of mine. I am a little sad to see that the Beetlejuice decor been replaced with some sort of Hippy vibe thing. The rooms are tiny but cheap and the location is perfect. Right next to Chinatown and Union Square.

After we check in and drop off our bags we head to a wine bar next store. Seems to be a post-work crowd of 20-somethings. Nice to see gay boys making out on the couch.

I have some Albariño from California (who knew?!?!?) which surprisingly does not suck. I note that every song they are playing here is on my iPod. This make me feel really cool and hip. We order some cheese and duck foie gras. The foie gras is really, really good. Unfortunately I post this on Facebook. Soon the animal rights people start sending me hate posts. I reply back that the duck was a Republican and this seems to shut them down.

Back to the hotel for a shower and a change of clothes and we are off to dinner at Aziza. We walk through Union Square to go get a cab. There is an ice skating rink. What a real city this is. Our taxi driver is fast. Very fast. Scarily fast.

Aziza. Wow. Where do I begin? Magic cocktails of muddled pomegranate, lavender, sugar snap peas. An amuse-bouche of salmon row, then a bottle of incredibly crisp Grüner, then some weird bean curd in pretty bowl, then squid with fennel in broth, salsify with mushrooms, and spreads of chili, yogurt, and roasted eggplant, and more Grüner. Then a duck egg in Moroccan bbq sauce and potato foam, then duck confit rolls with a magic brown onion reduction, then more Grüner, then branzino in shellfish sauce, raw pigeon with blueberry and horseradish, and green faro with scallops. Dessert is a bit of a blur but I think it was quince sorbet and chocolate ganache and mint something. It’s after midnight when we stumble outside. The hostess runs out into the street and whistles down a cab for us. I did not know it at the time, but this place has a Michelin star. It should. I cannot think of a better meal in my whole life. Really. Wow.

Saturday:

Do you know that wonderful Julie Delpy movie, Two Days in Paris? Of course you do. Remember when the American guy is lost in Paris and he goes into Burger King and this fairy talks to him for a while and then the fairy blows up the bathroom? Well, on Saturday morning I was on the elevator at the Hotel Triton when a guy got on who looked just like the fairy in the movie. He turned around and looked at me and said, “Do you want some gum?” I said no thanks and got off at the lobby. When I turned around the fairy was gone. Nothing got blown up though.

We walk down to Market Street and then down to the Ferry Building. This was not the grand cathedral to locally grown sustainable food last time I was here. It was just a ferry terminal. Now it’s filled with wine and cheese and bacon and gorgeous people with well-behaved children. I have some really good lox with fennel fronds on bread with goat cheese and a roasted beet salad. We wonder around for a while and then it’s time for lunch at the Slanted Door. I start with a yummy Negroni and then we share some rice cakes in an amazing fish sauce, some crispy rolls in a lettuce wrap, a papaya salad, and some cellophane noodles with crab. This was all great food and the service was outstanding.

We are batting 1000 with the restaurants so far.

After lunch we wander up to North Beach and the City Lights Bookstore, then through Chinatown. On the street we hear some man arguing with a woman about why gravity is just a theory and he does not believe in it. That makes me take a step back for a moment. Normally when I encounter some lunatic who thinks that Evolution is just a theory I point them to Electricity and Gravity as examples of other “theories”. Clearly this man is a right wing Christian fundamentalist who is upset that he is going to have to vote for Mitt Romney. I wish Gravity really was just a theory so people like this would just float away.

Anyway, time for a quick disco nap and then we take another speedy taxi to the Top Of the Mark, the bar on top of the Mark Hopkins hotel. I am a little hesitant as this is kind of touristy and I am worried it will be schlocky, but the drinks are good and the views are amazing. It’s really hard to describe just how beautiful San Francisco is.

Dinner tonight is at a place in The Mission called Locanda. It’s supposed to be Roman food. It’s packed when we get there so we have drinks at the bar. This is the third restaurant with amazing cocktails. That is about where the goodness ends. We are seated at what we think will be a nice table in the corner. There is a painting of a giant hand crushing the life out of some little birds. This does not bode well. We are under a speaker that is blaring angry, hateful rap music really, really loud. Our waitress appears. Blond, nice, totally inexperienced. She doesn’t tell us what they are out of so of course that is what we try to order. The music is so loud and vile that I barely remember what we ate. The pasta was OK I guess, the sauces a little better, but the waitress’s timing was bad and there was blood pouring out of my ears due to my eardrums shattering. This was really an awful experience. I would never go back there and would encourage both readers of my blog to avoid this place as all costs. Afterwards we stand out in the rain and wait and wait for a taxi. I wonder if my hearing will ever return. I start to cry but then I remember the amazing meal I had the night before.

Sunday:

We are up by 9:00. We check out and leave our bags at the hotel and take another speedy taxi back to The Mission of brunch at The Universal Café where I have a pomegranate belini, good coffee, pumpkin French toast, and some homemade sausage. Soon this place is packed and there is a line out the door. This place is fine, perhaps not worthy of the fantastic reviews it gets, but then again maybe I am just not a brunch person. You should be in your twenties and have expensive designer glasses on to do brunch. I feel totally uncool sitting there. Old, fat, stupid, without glasses. Soon we are waiting out in the rain for a taxi again. I am not sure I like The Mission so much.

We taxi over the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and wait in the rain for it to open. There is a long line. Lynnette disappears for a long time in search of a bathroom and Mark gets upset. I leave them alone and go look at art. I have been to this museum a couple of times before but I didn’t remember that the permanent collection was so good.

We need to go back to the hotel to get our bags so we have lunch at a little French place next door. I have oaky chardonnay and butter for lunch.

Finally we are back at the airport and we get an upgrade to First Class on the way home so there is no need for me to get spit on anyone’s coat sleeve. I am reading the New York Times on the way home and I see that Anthony Bourdain says, “Anyone who doesn’t have a great time in San Francisco is pretty much dead to me.” Then he says, “You’d have a hard time finding anything better than Barcelona for food….” I may be old, fat, and stupid, but at least I know where to go to eat.

Melancholia

2011-11-11T22:57:00.001-08:00

I feel like something is going to happen or something is coming...like the Stay Puffed Marshmallow Man.

Maybe I am being weird because I have had a lot of work stress. I have five projects and I am trying to cover the work of two bad managers and I have a new analyst working for me who is actually a Russian spy. But Fresca still flows from fountains and I had a salad with Gorgonzola, organic pine nuts, and Asian pears in champagne vinaigrette for lunch in the cafeteria today. A bad day at this place is like a sliver in my finger compared to a bad day anyplace else I have worked. More on those places in a moment.

Her Hiney Ayny popped up this week. I saw the movie of Atlas Shrugged. So not what I it was going to be. I expected the stilted Objectivist verbiage that I sucked up when I was 17. Sure, it was there, but not always in a head exploding kind of way. Mostly I saw a kind of OK made for TV movie that made me remember the good stuff. Hank was hot and that chick that played Dagney was pretty much spot on for what I want from my railroad tycoons. Tomorrow we are watching the Italian version of We the Living. I will be a blubbering sobbing fool tonight at the end of the movie. It did occur to me that I have been treating people much like Ayn Rand did towards the end of her life lately. That does not bode well for future visits in a nursing home. I should ponder this.

I started reading Rosanne Cash’s twitter feed this week. Damn I wish I was part of that little Manhattan salon / cabal. Against my every atheist brain cell, she always somehow manages to get me to think there is a worm hole in space / time so things from the future and the past can just come up on you from behind and boink you.

Ouch! What was that? Oh hello mermaid. It is 11/11/11. Six years to the day. It was even on a Friday. Just great. Really no need to rehash this, but it’s annoying that she is always out there waiting to sneak up on me from behind and @#$% me in the @#&. Bitch.

Talk about sneaking up on you from behind, I started reading Sandra Bernhard’s twitter feed this week too. Sandra gives me hope for American culture: "Wait why did they promise me the Oscar hosting gig and then turn around and give it to Billy? Was it my impression of Sammy?"

Ruth Bordain also gives me hope: "Woke to full moon. Memories slowly fade of last night's rampaging as an oatmeal-eating werewolf. Covered in butter, brown sugar, cream."

We watched the new Lars Von Trier movie Melancholia tonight. Claudia the child vampire was fucking amazing. Really. Remember when I sat by her at the Old Lahaina Luau in Maui? The film was sad, depressing, gorgeous, maddening. It has that stupid nihilist Euro world view that you see in French movies where a small child gets hit by a car in the first 5 minutes, but it did not get to me. I think I have a shield of Reardon Metal around me right now. Anyway, this whiny pee pants of a bride cannot get over herself and screws up everything and then this errant planet named Melancholia sneaks up on Earth from behind and destroys everything.

All this stuff is connected somehow. The Russian analyst, the reappearance of Ayn Rand, the mermaid anniversary, my impending sense of doom, and Melancholia. Something is coming out of the worm hole. I stand in my backyard and watch thin clouds flying by a very full moon. Very dramatic and very similar to the movie. I look to see if anything is sneaking up on me from behind. Just high blood pressure and glucose levels. After a bit the clouds clear more and I can see the man in the moon looking at me. How come no one has ever noticed this before:

More on Barcelona

2011-10-30T10:28:00.000-07:00

I am so not in Barcelona right now. It's Sunday morning. A grey 49 degrees outside and raining.

I just ate a six minute egg on sprouted wheat toast with a big squirt of sriracha and a cat hair on it.

That same cat is now trying to take a nap on top of my keyboard.

I was trying to catch up on my podcasts and flipping through the pile of magazines that arrived this week, but I know I should go finish up my Barcelona blog. I am procrastinating.

Can you judge a boy by the kinds of magazines he subscribes to? Let’s see:

Wallpaper, Architectural Digest, Elle Décor, Bon Appetite, Travel + Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, Cooks Illustrated, Saveur.

Why yes, yes you can. Clearly I don’t have to mention that Out and The Advocate are in the pile.

I feel bad that I subscribe to Bon Appetite and Conde Nast Traveler because they are published by Conde Nast, the rat-fuckers who cancelled Gourmet. I really miss Ruth Reichl. I have been reading her wacko twitter posts lately.

Gray clouds scudding past. Leaves falling. Chilly wind. Fire in the mouth: A bowl of bright red chillied tofu on pure white rice.

Do you know about Ruth Bordain, the twitter love child of Ruth and Anthony Bordain?

Gray clouds. Fall fucking leaves. Chilly ass wind. Fire in the hole: As I sit on the bowl, paying for last night's bright red chillied tofu.

So Brilliant.

Can you judge a boy by the twitter feeds he subscribes to? Let’s see:

Ruth Reichl, Ruth Bordain, Sandra Bernhard, Rosanne Cash, Aimee Mann, Mark Bittman, Anne Litt.

Maybe.

What else can I not write about Barcelona about?

I met Mark and Chris for drinks after work on Friday. It was “bring your fucking germ bomb of a kid to work and get it all hopped up on sugar day” at work so I needed some hard alcohol. We met at Artusi, the newish bar connected to Spinasse.

I left at 3:30, but did not get there until 5:15 because of the Viadoom global gridlock. 2.2 miles. Mark was already there and Chris showed up soon after, also traumatized by traffic. So Artusi is this Italian themed cocktail bar. You can’t get food from Spinasse, but you can get fun little appetizers.

I started with a Punctured Bicycle: Campari, Cynar, soda, lime. I was really craving Campari so this was perfect.

I had:

semolina wafer with roasted cauliflower puree, toasted cumin and sesame

and then

another Punctured Bicycle

gorgonzola piccante with Kurt's apples & mint flower honey

and then

winter squash, parsnips & golden raisin caponata with toasted pinenuts

and then

another Punctured Bicycle

tripe* with bone marrow* & local black truffles

and then

we went to a great little wine bar called Poco.

Cute tiny gay boys work there at Poco. Mark got an Albarino from Yakima(?!?!?) and I had some yummy Muscadet. Chris had some oaky red sludge. I did not see any wine from Barcelona on the menu.

At one point this super fit blond gay man in his late 40’s came in with his little tiny Japanese boyfriend who was wearing a black veil. They had the waiter take pictures of them. So fun. I really need to get out more. Like in Barcelona.

I have been kind of obsessed with Julie Delpy lately, so we Netflixed her movie called The Countess where she bathes in the blood of young virgins to make herself look younger. We drank Campari and watched her torture people. The boy she was in love with in this movie was born in Barcelona. He was also in her absolutely perfect movie, 2 Days in Paris. Do you know she has a sequel coming out soon: 2 Days in New York.

Who else am I obsessed with right now? Shelby Lynne. I am listening to her amazing new album right now. A quick Google search shows she has not played in Barcelona recently, but it does confirm she plays every instrument and does all the back up vocals and should be rich and famous at treated like Mozart or something. Really, please go buy Revelation Road.

So now that I have worked on my Barcelona blog some more I am going to clean the house and then go to the gym .

More later…..

*Yes I did quit eating meat last March, but this was special. Like in Barcelona.

San Francisco!

2011-10-24T07:59:00.000-07:00

I have just booked a mini-break to San Francisco because…

….because I can.

Virgin America has these little $79 each way flights right now. Pretty hard to resist. I can get a big old queen sized bed at the Hotel Triton for $150. So, a mini break in November seems perfect.

I don’t know what I would do if Virgin America was not flying down there. I hate Alaska Airlines with their creepy Christian propaganda. I so do not need a little flier with a printed prayer tucked in under my pretzels.

Then there is United and their crazy ass. I have not flown them since the Santa Fe fiasco and I never will again.

So Virgin America it is.

San Francisco.

I was always supposed to live there you know. When I was a small child I would listen to KGO Radio, 810 on your AM dial, on my small transistor radio late at night. Through the pre-dawn crackle and pop I would hear traffic reports and dream about being stuck in traffic on the Bay Bridge someday.

My first tiny taste of San Francisco was after I escaped from that psycho Linda Silberman in New Orleans. I had to change planes at SFO. I still remember flying over Death Valley and seeing the wall of the Sierra Nevada coming up out of nowhere. Then I got my first glimpse of downtown San Francisco from the air. That still kind of gives me chills.

When I got home I immediately started my new job at the Mermaid which had me traveling nonstop for a long time. In the 1990’s I was in San Francisco probably 15 times, usually with an expense account.

Then came the turn of the century. I discovered the Hawaiian Islands. I was not the first human being to discover the Hawaiian Islands, no, but I did discover them for myself and that forever changed my world. I am coming up on trip number 19 to Hawaii in March.

For a while I went through SFO to get to Hawaii so I could use United Miles. But then I discovered Hawaiian Airlines. No, I was not the first human being to discover Hawaiian Airlines, but I have never looked back since that first purple flight.

Oh and then came the Europe thing. UK, UK, UK, Italy, France, France, Spain. These are expensive trips man.

It was not intentional, but at some point I just kind of quit going to San Francisco.

But my left my heart there.

Doink.

More later……

.

Welcome to Barcelona

2011-10-09T11:07:00.000-07:00

As I type this I am sicker than a dog. Bad cold. Sneezing like every 6 seconds. This is because I was in Charles De Gaulle airport near Paris a few days ago. Last time I was there I immediately got very sick and my doctor asked me, “Have you just been in the airport in Paris?” That seemed kind of random as I had not mentioned I was traveling. I asked why he asked this and he said. “The Center for Disease Control has issued a warning about CDG. Thousands of people become lost in that place every year because the signage is so bad and they wander around without showering and they live on croissant crumbs and water fountains. It’s a worse hot bed of disease incubation than the Congo.”

I was there and now I am sick. So there you go.

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I don’t really know where to begin on Barcelona. What a truly amazing city. It does not seem right to start this way, but for me at least some comparison to Paris is inevitable:

Both cities have beautiful broad avenues lined with gorgeous six to eight story flats that make them super dense cities. This means there is really incredible street life. People out all over the place day and night.

Both have a strong culture of dining out – probably because their kitchens are tiny and dining room space is at a premium.

And I think that is about it in terms of commonality.

Paris is a really big. 2,200,000 in the city and over 11,000,000 in the metro area. It’s a national and world capital. People are tiny, attractive, mean, pretend they do not speak English, dress very well, and as you know, the restaurants really suck. As does the weather.

Barcelona is not little by any means. 1,700,000 in the city and 5,000,000 in the metro area. It’s the capital of a nation, Catalunya, that really should have no connection to Madrid. Spain is a made up thing like Santa Claus or God. People are also tiny, very beautiful, and do not dress well at all. The restaurants are amazing. People try hard to speak English, especially if you meet them half way. This is asking a lot given that they have to speak both Catalan and thtupid Casthilian. Oh and the weather is perfect.

People are genuinely nice. This is immediately obvious when you notice they don’t jaywalk (jackass anarchist tourists with no respect for anything do jay walk in Barcelona but fortunately they get hit by cars sometimes). Also see few of of the bicycle terrorists that you see breaking the law in a city like Portland or Seattle. They are bikes for rent but they are mostly unused. Mostly people walk in Barcelona. The subway system is fine if you are cheap and like the smell of poor people, but if your feet are tired or you have any sense of self worth Barcelona is the best place for catching a Taxi I have ever been to. Plus they are friendly and super cheap.

There is art and gorgeous architecture everywhere. There seems to be a design esthetic that touches everything. Even warehouses in the port are beautiful.

There are mountains outside the city than gradually slope down to the Mediterranean where there are beautiful man made beaches that were created for the 1992 Olympics.

I could pontificate on and on about how wonderful Barcelona is. So I will.

-----------------

Mark and I flew from Seattle to Paris, then Paris to Barcelona. So much drama with Air France on this trip that I can’t even begin to tell that story here. Suffice to say we lost over 100,000 in accrued miles, had to fly “Premium Voyageur” which is some sad nether region wedged between Business Class and the cattle and chickens in the back. Not my most favorite flying experience ever, but I got to see the Woody Allen movie Midnight in Paris and I was able to sleep a bit.

At one point Mark got up to use the bathroom and went back to where the cattle and chickens are. He came back and said, “Never again. It’s so wrong. Man’s inhumanity to man. I don’t want to be a part of it.” Fortunately for me I don’t like going to the bathroom in airplanes or foreign countries. I just wait till I get home.

Charles De Gaulle airport is a mess. I have already written several times about the fact that it is actually in Belgium, but regardless of its location it really is almost impossible to figure out how to get from one terminal to the other. Sometime you have to take this kind of land tank thing, sometimes you can walk, but the signs are all incorrect. CDG is just inherently stressful.

As we landed there were these poor American’s who were trying to get to their transfer flight to Rome or Florence or someplace else in the 15 minutes Air France had given them. There is no physical way you can make a connecting flight in Paris with the time the airline gives you. Mark and I looked on with informed pain, having gone through this our first time too when we went to Italy. Not this time. We had a good two hours to get lost. We found a coffee shop and I spoke French to the woman behind the counter. "Bonjour madame. Je voudrais deux expresso et aussi deux croissants, si vous plait." She was an immigrant and did not try at all to pretend she did not understand me. Mark and I slipped crumbs under the table in the hope that the lost souls of CDH would find some nourishment.

There was drama before we could leave France. After we got on the plane some passenger named Juan Ibrahim apparently disappeared, like into a worm hole or something. There was concern that this could be some arcane terrorist plot. Some passengers were vocally upset that we were delayed, but I am in full support of my plane not exploding. Finally they figure out what Juan’s deal was and we took off. The flight to Barcelona is short, maybe 90 minutes. I got nice views of the Pyrenees and Barcelona’s suburbs coming in:

Then the Mediterranean.

I think Barcelona’s airport is the nicest one I have even been to. Really. It’s new, shiny, pretty, easy to get around in. Good signage. Great shops. No need to take a land tank anywhere. No lost sick people walking around at all.

We got our bags quickly and then headed out to find our towncar. We hired a car to take us into town because we didn’t know how great the taxi’s were yet.

The drive is was fun. Your standard six lane Euro-freeway. . Here’s a photo of a close in suburb called Hospitalet.

Even in the burbs the design esthetic is everywhere.

As we get into town we see the miles and miles of apartment blocks.

So beautiful.

Our flat, Ghost Apartment was super cool. All white furniture, minimal clutter.

After a quick nap and a shower we head out to Café De L’ Academia, a restaurant recommended to us by a woman who works at the Spanish Table near Pike Place Market.

It’s 9:00PM on a Wednesday night and thousands people are out all over the place. Our restaurant is in some ancient old medieval warren or something and it takes a bit of time to find it. There is a large table of loud American’s from Kentucky sitting near us. They seem to have already been there for a while which seems odd since restaurants don’t start serving dinner till 9. Anyway, our gorgeous Catalan waiter comes over and we order glasses of cava while we look at the menu. I start with a Catalan style bouillabaisse called Bullabessa. This was just unbelievably good. Like I am going to leave my body good. I hold on to the side of the table so I won't float away. I have to stay in the moment.

Then I had this raw white fish covered with Romesco sauce and chive oil. I have to hold onto the table again.

This went so perfectly with our bottle of Verdejo.

I finished with this duck leg confit in an amazing sauce.

Mark gets what has to be the best thing either of us have ever had, ever. Yes I am including crab pizza in Maui and magic potatoes in France. Its squid, cut up like fettuccini, then quickly grilled, then tossed with some squid ink.

There really is no way to adequately describe how amazing this is other than to say its light, not chewy at all, and just tastes of the sea. This is the best thing I have ever had.
And I have had a lot.

Fuck. This is the dinner I never had in Paris. As I am sitting in the corner wiping tears from my eyes because the food it so good the fuckwit American’s won’t shut the fuck up. They are three couples in their 40’s mixing beer and red wine and making disparaging comments about the Euro and Obama while they talk about going golfing the next day. Golf. In Barcelona. Really!?!?! They are loud and horrible. Their waitress has this pained look of horror on her face.

Our beautiful waiter comes back and we order some dessert. I have this lime / ginger sorbet and then an espresso.

The American’s are so out of control now their waitress has fled. They have been loudly arguing over the pros and cons of bisexuality and why you can't get Margaritas here.

Our waiter is gone to. I think he went after their's to comfort her. Or he has just left the county because he cannot stand American tourists anymore. We find someone to get us the check and leave a 30% tip in hope of countering the amount of evil in the universe.

I blame Lincoln.

As we are walking home we get lost and some drunken soccer hooligans come up and start rubbing all over me to terrify me. They can tell I am American because I am fat, and they want to freak me out by making me think they are going to pick pocket me. Mark starts walking slower and stares down at his iPhone instead of helping so I am on my own. I kind of laugh and push them away but they come back and rub on me some more. Finally I grab a cute one by the butt, lift him up as I fondle his testicles, and toss him forward about 6 feet. This seems to work and they go away. I am a little bit freaked out but also feel good about how I handled this. It was a nice butt.

We are drunk, tired, and lost and end up at the waterfront at the end of La Rambla, the big pedestrian street that runs through town to the water. We know we can get back to our flat if we walk up La Rambla, so we do. It’s past midnight and La Rambla is active with scum and villainy. There are gypsy boys out selling single cans of beer for 4 Euros. Other boys are shooting these blue skyrocket things into the sky and then trying so sell them to tourists when they land on their heads. Some Nubian prostitutes come up to us and ask if we want sex. I say. “Please leave us alone, we are gay and very tired.” Without skipping a beat they say, “No you aren’t.” I'm like, queen PLEASE, I am too tired, plus those boots are terrible. Right then this little dwarf dressed like Yeti comes up alongside of me to make fun of the way I walk. Why do I always attract these clowns? Remember the clown incident in Provence? We keep walking and eventually we find our flat and crash around 1:30am. What a rocking great first day!

I'm back

2011-10-06T13:03:00.000-07:00

----------------------

I am dreaming about a glorious city on the Mediterranean with amazing food and beautiful architecture and friendly people, then something…. no… two things...are sitting on my chest licking my nose. Oh, hello kittens. It’s cold here. I must be home. Yep, as I look at the alarm clock I see its 4:00AM on Thursday, October 6th. Time to get up and get back on Pacific time. Brrrr! I am not in Barcelona any more. But I was. I was. For seven days!

I’ll start to work on a real blog posting over the next couple of days, but what a glorious city. Here’s a few photos while I work on that:

OK, I will stop now. I could go on forever. Glorious city!

More later…..

More later...

2011-09-27T07:00:00.000-07:00

I am off to Barcelona today. Did you want me to type that again? I am off to Barcelona today.

I probably won't post much while I am there, but I will do a full write up when I am back. See you in about 10 days.

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Barcelona on Tuesday

2011-09-23T04:55:00.000-07:00

What is it with me, international travel, and global drama?

I was in England when the first case of bird flu was discovered and they had to kill thousands of chickens in the town of Cellar Dyke.

Then we were in Provence when the banking crisis hit and the global economy tanked. That was so surreal. Do you know that people scream on CNBC in Europe just like they do on CNBC here?

Then we were in Paris when that terrorist tried to start a fire on a flight headed to Detroit from Amsterdam. It was so much fun being the first flight out of France back to America that next day. It was! I got body searched 9 times.

Did anything bad happen in Italy?   Roxanne was supposed to go buy wine and she didn’t. And she yelled at me for making breakfast. And she was pissed off during that Proper Lunch in Cortona, but what else is new. We didn’t have TV, so that probably helped, but I certainly created enough drama with that drive down the ancient Roman ally in Pregio the middle of the night, with a stupid manual transmission car, but oh the tartufo! So much drama over the tartufo. Good drama.

I am going to Barcelona on Tuesday which of course means that the economy is going to collapse or terrorists are going to do something or that some Paltrow killing global pandemic is going to develop.

And right on time I see The Dow is down almost 400 points today. On the bright side I see the Euro is down to $1.34. Wasn’t it like $1.67 in Italy?

I cannot wait. I have been watching Barcelona TV online and listening to Barcelona radio for months. I have been cooking Catalan food since the start of summer. I kind of forgot to learn some Catalan phrases, but I still have a few days.
Here is what I posted on Facebook today:

I LOL at myself! It tickles!

I am hoping my ability to sort of read French and the fact that everyone in American now sort of reads Spanish will help me figure out some Catalan.

Anyway, I will post some more later, but for now I just want you to be super jealous that I am going to Barcelona on Tuesday…..

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Venting while the world comes to an end

2011-09-07T12:33:00.000-07:00

Weird shit has been happening lately that is starting to make me think the end of the world is coming. I will give you examples in a moment, but maybe the Aztecs were right and 2012 will be it….

Nah, that is crazy superstitious anti-science nut job thinking just like the Tea Bagger Party agenda. Which is a great segue into my next point. NPR.

I have had to start aggressively turning off NPR in the last few months. I feel like they are so concerned with being impartial that they have turned themselves into this free microphone for Tea Bagger lunatics. More often than not this happens during Morning Edition when Steve Inskeep is hosting. Inskeep is a loud fascist menace with his nose stuck up Tina Brown’s ass. And don’t even get me started on Tina Brown’s war of lies about poor Amanda Knox.

I think the debt ceiling and potential default are what put me over the edge. So often I would turn on NPR only to hear some right wing nut job pontificate on and on and not be called on the carpet for his (or her) lies. I know that good people do not go into politics, but if anyone sane is listening, PLEASE raise my taxes and increase government spending so we can fix the economy. I am so sick and tired of these stupid people whose grandparents had it rough in the Depression and are now are obsessed with having no debt. Debt is what powers the world, you fools. Republicans are going to take us all down. Down. Down. Down. Really, what kind of an asshole embraces anything their grandparents did anyway? I am going on vacation, OUTSIDE OF AMERICA in a couple weeks to eat and drink myself into a state of bliss and you know what, I AM GOING TO CHARGE THE WHOLE THING! Suck on that tea bag.

This whole obsession with debt is a made-up Republican thing and I do think this is largely NPR’s fault. Something changed after the whole Juan Williams fiasco and now they are acting like a bunch of scared little babies. Well, not Terry Gross, but everyone else is.

OK, good, I feel better now. So back to evidence of the pending end of the world. A couple weeks ago my kitchen sink clogged up with while the dishwasher was running. I did not know this as I was in the living room watching live CNN coverage of the humongous 5.8 earthquake that destroyed the eastern seaboard. Stinky dirty water filled both sinks and then started overflowing onto the floor. My cat Fred alerted me to trouble by coming into the living room and standing on me with wet feet and then screaming. As I stood over the ever-growing lake that had been my kitchen floor, I tried the toilet plunger but it did not help. I ran to the laundry room to get a bucket and then put it under the sink and unscrewed the pipes which were clogged with large chunks of old fish curry, pasta, and rice. Water flowed down from both sinks and quickly filled up the bucket. I had dropped the connector piece of pipe in the lake and it floated away, so the only way to stop the water was to hold my hand over the open pipe. So I could either sit there in the water with my hand over the pipe or let my hand go and have an even huger amount of water flood my kitchen.

I sat there crying for about 10 minutes until I realized I could hold the pipe closed with my left hand and reach into the cupboard with my right hand and grab my big metal popcorn bowl and place that over the full bucket and let the rest of the water into the pan. That worked and the water stopped right when it reach the top. It was like 95 degrees in my house, I was still covered in demon bites (see earlier blog post), and both cats were screaming their heads off while they were trying to eat old fish curry off the floor, and CNN was screaming about a stupid total nonevent earthquake. I know, I know, you are asking what is the point of all this? The point is, how do large chunks of fish curry, pasta, and rice make it through your garbage disposal intact and get stuck in a pipe? Obviously this is some kind of supernatural phenomenon that defies science and warrants a religious pilgrimage. Seems about as supernatural as turning water into wine. Am I right? I think so!

But wait! There’s more! On Saturday Mark and I drove to Kirkland to see Michelle and Chris. We were a little bit early so we decided to go check out the new Metropolitan Market store there. It’s all nice and new and fabulous, and has a much better chilled wine section than West Seattle. As we were getting ready to leave this Asian woman with a large fuchsia colored streak in her hair walks by. I could hear country music pounding in her iPod headphones. She turns around, pops out the headphones, and says:

Her: “Hey! Are you guys from here? The GREAT NORTHWEST?”

I hesitate, as the GREAT NORTHWEST is an old fashioned term for the upper Midwest back when America stopped around Minneapolis or something. I wonder if this is a trick question, and that I could point out we are in the PACIFIC NORTHWEST, but I decide not to test the waters as she seems a bit wacko.

Me: “Um, yes, we are from here.” Oh God what if she thinks we are from the Eastside?

Her: “Well then can you tell me where in the hell I can get some Wonder Bread? I have been to seven stores here in the GREAT NORTHWEST and I can’t find any!”

Me: “I think that Gai’s white bread right there is pretty close.”

Her: “No! It does not stick to the roof of your mouth like Wonder Bread. So you cannot help me?”

Me: “Well….”

Her: “I hate you guys!” as she pops her headphones back in and walks away.

Golly. Clearly there is some direct connection between eating white trash Republican food and going insane. I think the same thing can happen if you eat communion wafers, which also stick to the roof of your mouth.

Now back to NPR. I have been in a funk on Sundays since May when Liane Hansen left NPR to retire. I think she just could not stand working for a company that would employee Steve Inskeep. Anyway, Liane quit after being the voice of my Sunday mornings since the late 1980’s. I was in Honolulu at the time and did not really deal with it. This weekend the new permanent host, Audie Cornish, took over. She is fine, no complaints, but I am really trying to deal with my newfound disgust of NPR and the loss of Liane at the same time. But then today, A MIRACLE. It’s 5:45 AM and I am in my laundry room ironing clothes for work. I have NPR on because I am not awake and it’s still my routine. Andrea Seabrook comes on and starts this story about how Republicans are anti-science. She cites lots of examples of Republican presidential candidates not believing in Climate Change or Evolution. It’s well researched, smart, direct, and utterly rips them to shreds. I actually stop ironing, look up, and think, “Wow. That was really good. That was my NPR, just like the old days. This is why I give them so much money every year. Maybe the world will be OK after all.”

So there you have it. One good bit of journalism and I am now hopeful that the world is not coming to an end.

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Demons

2011-08-21T21:22:00.000-07:00

As you know, I did a little bit of magik in the last few weeks to banish this goblin that was in Mark’s house. Now, as I feared, what goes around comes around. Yes, I am being haunted. Some sort of invisible supernatural force is torturing me. For about a week I have had just horrendous bites on my legs. Mosquitoes? Fleas? Bed bugs? No. Demons.

So trust me here. I have done my internet research. There is no smoking flea gun. No telltale blood stains from bed bugs. Nary a mosquito noise has been heard. Some demon is poking me in the ankles with long steal needles with real sharp points as I sleep. I supposed I could use my new wireless web cams and their infrared night vision to document this, but I don't really want to see it. I just want him to leave. Plus a boy just needs private time in his bedroom.

In my spare time, when I am not having private time in my bedroom, or spraying my entire body with Deep Woods OFF, or taking a bath in baking soda, or just scratching my legs till they bleed, I have been doing research. Wicca.org has been somewhat helpful, but really I had to go to the Wikipedia page for Buffy to figure out that what was going on. They have access to the books, the texts. A few clicks in and it was obvious that this is a Flanjoid Demon. Wikipedia -- very helpful with the identification, but not so helpful with the solution. So I rerouted the encryption algorithms at Wicca.org and was able to get behind the firewall and find the schematics for the underground sewer system in Los Angeles. But I kept searching and found that Flanjoid Demons have a hard exoskeleton like a potato bug, or Björk. They like to attack human feet with their pincers. So gross, but it turns out they are easily taken out by a combination of cedar and diatomaceous earth. You can buy the diatomaceous earth at the pet food store on California Avenue in West Seattle, and you can find a plethora of cedar products at Bed Bath and Beyond, also in West Seattle, which is right by where my gym is! So convenient!

As I broke through several layers of encryption I found ancient texts that has a lot of letters and words in them. I focused on the pictures and learned that this is a somewhat complicated operation:

Place “sachet” of cedar is strategic positions around your home such as:

Under your bed.
On your coffee table.
On the shelf next to your collection of vintage Fiestaware that you paid $5000 for in the 1990’s that is now worth probably $700.

Take your bag of diatomaceous earth and draw three concentric rings around your home. A big daddy ring. A smaller mommy ring. And a smaller still baby ring.
Light the daddy ring on fire and step into the mommy ring.
Quickly light the mommy ring on fire and step into the baby ring.
Light the baby ring on fire and scream out at the top of your lungs. “Pulu Si Bagumba!"
Take a bath in baking soda.
Spray Deep Woods Off on your ankles.
Drink some bottles of Provencal rosé, take some Benedryl, and go to sleep.

We are on step 8 right now. More later....

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Wireless Web Cams

2011-08-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

I just got these wireless web cams for my house. I am not sure why really. I guess that recent incident where thug stole my garbage can was the impetus. The idea was that I could install a camera in the window of my upstairs office and then I could spy on potential thugs from my iPhone or iPad. Turns out that while they do have infrared night vision, like Superman, they don’t work at night if you direct them outside. Something about the range of the infrared vision. So I cannot see potential thuggery unless it comes inside my home. So now I have two little cameras looking at my living room and my back door.

Of course I am unable to look at the live stream at night. I am afraid I will see some kind of horrible supernatural face like the ones they flashed on the screen in the Exorcist.

That or some dark shadow moving about.

I can stand to look in the daytime however and I am seeing something quite odd. I have this painting from Vietnam. It’s of a monk in a brown robe holding a candle.

I love this painting. I went back to the gallery like 5 times to look at it before I coughed up the cash. Well, that’s not true, I am sure I charged it, but whatever. Anyway, I can see the painting on the camera in my living room. And guess what? The monk moves around in the painting. Sometimes he just walks around, and sometimes he just moves his arm that is holding the candle, but there is definitely movement going on. So odd. It’s just like one of those paintings at Hogwarts.

I wonder if I will now get a letter from JK Rowling’s lawyer telling me to cease and desist since I just used the word Hogwarts without permission.

You would think I could see my kittens moving about the house, but they apparently sleep all day long and do not eat, drink, or pee unless I am home. I do hear a lot of airplane noise. Oh, forgot to mention they have a microphone so I can hear and see what is going on remotely. I think someone is mowing the lawn out front. The phone just rang. God my house is boring. Except for the Vietnamese monk who lives in my painting.

What Kind Of Thuggery Is This?

2011-08-10T19:16:00.000-07:00

Garbage can was stolen last night.

I assume this was some kind of sympathy thuggery in support of those wretched urchins who have been setting London and Manchester alight.

I am not all that upset actually. Garbage can had been containing old shrimp shells all week. Got really, really stinky and then flies showed up, and then little white worms. Mortified and gagging I dowsed garbage can in some DDT, both inside and out. The thug that stole garbage can is sufficiently infused with DDT now unless he was wearing rubber gloves.

I assume this is the same thug who steals my barbeques every summer. You remember, he comes late at night, dumps the ashes in my driveway, and then walks away with my latest grill.

This year, after installing slate tiles in my backyard and getting a new high end Webber for my birthday, I got a big ass cable lock for Webber. He is not going anywhere unless thug wants to take the fence along with him.

I would imagine thug came by last night, could not get Webber, so it a fit of teenage rage just stomped on down the alley with garbage can.

Mark is not convinced this is entirely plausible and thinks something more supernatural is afoot. Earlier this week he was thinking that his house was possessed by a goblin. In his own words:

There has only been one physical manifestation of said goblin, which was my shaving mirror popping off the wall and flying at me in the shower, attempting to knock me back into my shower curtain and out of the bathtub. However, the following things have flown into my face in dreams the past week or so:

• Crows

• Pythons

• Demonic faces

• Giant buzzing insects that are not bees

• Giant buzzing insects that are definitely bees

The insects, bees or not, also attempt to go down the back of my shirt after flying in my face.

Now you may or may not be aware that I have always thought that I have some kind of supernatural power. I see auras around things. Sometimes I can make mine move around and do tricks and stuff. While I can see all this stuff it does not seem to interact with the physical world. I see this energy but I can’t make it pick up pencils or change the channel on my TV or anything like that.

Recently I have become obsessed with this iPhone/ iPad based game called Shadow Cities. It’s this GPS based game where you cast spells and kill demons or people on the other team. The way you cast a spell is to draw a rune in the air, then wait as you pull little bits of magic out of the universe towards you. Once you have absorbed enough magic you can blast things. This is a very different way of thinking about magic. I always assumed magic came from the inside, like thuggery. It never occurred to me to try to get more energy from the universe before I tried to change the channel.

So ANWAY the other night Mark was talking about his goblin and I decided to try to pull in some energy and then blast the goblin. I did. It worked. Goblin went away.

Now Mark is convinced that goblin is after me and has garbage can. I can see the logic. Everyone knows that messing with magic is tricky. Like if you bring your dead cat back it will be a zombie. Or like how Willow got black hair and black eyes and black veins in her skin when she was using too much magic on Buffy. Or like how that Boner dude in the House of Representatives is orange. Or like how poor Pam’s face is melting off on True Blood right now. God I love Pam. I don’t think there has been a character on television that I have loved so much since Buffy ended. It really upsets me that her face is melting off.

Where was I? Oh, right. Thug. I think I will just call the garbage man people and tell them to bring me a new can. I will probably try to suck in some more magic soon and see what I can do. Maybe I can block Fox News from my TV.

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Back to Black

2011-07-30T12:38:00.000-07:00

Amy Winehouse is dead.

What kind of fuckery is this?!?!

I don't know how to write about this without coming off like some sad fan boy. But I am fan. And I am a boy. And I am very, very sad.

For a week I have been listening to Back To Black constantly. What an amazing album.

Go watch this. It's the stuff of Edith Piaf...or Billie Holiday....or maybe Judy Garland....well, that one might be kind of gay. Anyway, if I can paraphrase a Sophie Tucker reference, "She's gone, but she won't be forgotten, at least not by me." Hopefully not by anyone else either.

Everyone keeps bringing up the foreshadowy and sad lyric:

And I tread a troubled track

My odds are stacked

I'll go back to black

But really, this is my favorite:

I shouldn't play myself again,

I should just be my own best friend,

Not fuck myself in the head with stupid men

Just brilliant. All of it. The voice. The lyrics. The hair. When I am 80 people will be talking about her still. I will make sure of it.

RIP Amy Winehouse. You will be missed.

Cords

2011-07-15T13:30:00.000-07:00

I have a problem with cords. Actually anything long and string like. Anything that can get knots in it.

Headphones are a constant example. I can be using my headphones, walk away for five minutes, and come back to a tangled knot of costly Bose horror.

Dyson is another one. I can vacuum the house, wrap the cord up nicely, and put Dyson in the closet, only to open the closet a week later and find the power cord tied in tight little knots and the knots tied in tight larger knots.

And it’s not just expensive name brand cords, no. There is an old black fan in my laundry room whose power cord keeps getting into the drier.

Yesterday I very consciously placed my keys on the passenger’s seat of my car and left my card key badge in my bag. When I got to work and reached for the badge to get into the parking garage I found it had crawled out of the bag, onto the driver’s seat, and attached itself to the key chain, the stretchy cord thing wrapped around keys and tied in knots. Traffic backed up behind me as I tried to untie the stupid thing.

I know cords are conscious and they do this just to piss me off. Last week I found and old pair of iPod headphones wrapped around my Sonicare Toothbrush. This happens all the time, but this time I had had enough. I screamed at them, “Really?! Really?! Well fuck you then!” I ran downstairs to get a pair of scissors to put an end to this torture but when I got back to the bathroom the headphones were nicely rolled up and in their little plastic case. Fuckers.

I have this old plastic box that I keep needles and extra buttons and thread in. A few months ago I bought some new spools of thread. I put them in the box, still sealed in their little plastic wrappers. Last night when I opened the box so I could get a needle and thread to reattach a button on a shirt the spools were gone and the threads had copulated their way into one giant ball with needles poking out in all directions. I set the box on fire.

I was thinking that I should end this by typing something like “The author was found dead at his computer two days later. Several yards of yarn were wrapped around his neck. He had been strangled. Kittens were playing with the yarn.”, but I know the cords would really rather keep me alive to torture me. Yep, see -- my mouse just wrapped around the base of the monitor and is now mixing it up with the telephone hand set cable. Fuckers.

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Fab

2011-07-13T09:04:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I found about Fab. Fab is like Overstock.com for people with expensive eyewear who listen to NPR.

So far I have had to buy:

• A bright orange iPhone case

• A bright orange iPad case

• A bright orange metal wallet (with RFID protection?!?!?)

Right now I am thinking about these bright orange designer cat food bowls:

You love design. You love your pet. Finally, there’s a product that combines these two passions. Chicago-based furniture designer Luke Wong has created deluxe cat food bowls that combine clean and contemporary shapes with an ergonomic design that doesn’t strain furry necks and hips. Form and function meets feeding time

It would it mean that I don’t love the kittens if I don’t get these right?!?!?!

Lately I have also been on a quest to get new bar stools. Tomorrow some go on sale. Here’s a quote from the buyer:

“I take the ritual of eating very seriously, and the dining room furniture is an important part of the meal. These plush and comfy chairs offer the kind of grown-up, bourgeois sophistication I secretly dream about at a reasonable price.”

Oh my god how on earth can I not buy something that has grown-up bourgeois sophistication?!?!?! If there are orange ones it’s a done deal.

What else?

Wooden jewelry painted orange?

An Orange Tivoli radio?

A new orange laptop bag? OK, OK, it’s actually a big purse, but I need a big purse.

Orange toilet paper?

Renova is a European company that’s transformed toilet paper from something merely perfunctory into a vibrant décor element for your bathroom that still performs its intended function. These tissue packs are great for your home and terrific as humorous gifts.

On no. Just found bright oraange drawer knobs!

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Mean girls suck

2011-07-04T11:06:00.000-07:00

I was out buying sage for my garden a couple weeks ago. My old sage just died and I asked the woman at the nursery why that might be. In a mean and loudish voice she said, “I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA!” Then someone else who worked there asked, “Do you know when Susan will be back from lunch?” Sage woman said, “I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA!” As we were leaving I asked Mark why we came to this nursery and he said loudly. “I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA!” We laughed.

Asked me what I am going to blog about today. Ask!

I HAVE ABSOLUTLY NO IDEA!

I am listening to that Aimee Mann song since it’s the 4th of July.

Doesn't it seem like it's always the 4th of July? The world moves fast when you get old.

I was watching a rerun of 30 Rock last week. Someone was taking too long to explain something and Alec Baldwin said, “Take your time, I am going to live forever.”

Alec Baldwin helps my self esteem.

I was informed this week that Lucinda Williams is a Dark Girl. So true.

Speaking of girls, I had some over for dinner that other night and they turned into haters and got abusive and mean about my fuchsia plant. Why do girls always, always get abusive and mean when they are guests in your house and you are feeding them?

I HAVE ABSOLULY NO IDEA!

I moved the fuchsia out of the sun and onto my back porch and now it has new growth and tiny new green leaves.

Suck it mean girls.

There is one girl I am not annoyed with right now...

Oh crap I have not planted that new sage yet. Off to plant. Gonna put on some Lucinda.

My new favorite dark girl

2011-06-24T16:12:00.000-07:00

Blah, blah... vampire emergency. Blah.
I have been lucky enough to watch the first three episodes of this season's True Blood early, before they are shown on TV.

It is good. Super good. Bloody good. BUFFY good. I will pontificate on this later, but for now I just need to call out that I have a new favorite dark girl. Pam.

I don't know what it is about me that makes people think I want to hear their problems. Maybe I smile too much. Maybe I wear too much pink.

Wax

2011-06-20T15:06:00.000-07:00

I just got up from my desk and went into the coffee room to get some coffee. There is a bowl of chocolate in there so I grabbed a piece. Normally I would not do this, because as you know, chocolate is for girls.

Usually when I put a piece of chocolate in my mouth all I can think of is wax. Cold, dry, flavorless wax. Now don’t get me wrong, sometimes, rarely, chocolate is OK for dessert. Like if you are at Roy’s in Waikiki and you preorder your chocolate soufflé and it comes out 40 minutes later and the molten chocolate pours out of the little cake and into your raspberry sauce and vanilla ice cream. That does not suck too much. But eating chocolate is not like that. It's like eating a candle that you got from your grandma's house.

I have bought these expensive high cacao content chocolate bars before. Usually these are just more intensely and costly flavored wax.

I buy my parents Fran’s Chocolate for birthdays, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, etc. Once in a while if I am over there I eat one. I am sorry, but, wax. The salted caramels totally do not suck, as long as you pronounce the word caramel correctly. Car-mul. Car-mul. Please! No one on earth has ever eaten a car-a-mel apple. God!

I can eat anything with vanilla in it and just close my eyes and float away in tongue ecstasy, but chocolate? No. Wax.

How can I just not get this? Half the world is girls. They can’t be all wrong can they?

Actually, while vanilla is fine, I’d really rather have salt. Crab dip, magic potatoes, some morel mushrooms sautéed in garlic and butter and tossed with some good pasta and a white Bordeaux. Just a piece of Stilton on a cracker whilst drinking a martini or two. Now that can make a boy fall down and wet his pants.

Chocolate?

Chocolate is for girls.

.

A Brief History Of Dark Girls

2011-06-19T09:45:00.001-07:00

dark girls on Prezi

Barcelona and Catalonia facts

2011-06-14T12:13:00.000-07:00

I have been doing lots of reading on Barcelona and Catalonia in preparation for my trip. I have learned that I and perhaps others have some misconceptions…..

1. The “Th” thing is Catalon and is a lisp.

No. The “Th” thing is not Catalon, it’s Castilian. And it is not a lisp. No one in Catatonia says Barthelona. People in Madrid say Barthelona. Do not say Barthelona in Barcelona. Even though it is funny to say I am going to Barthelona in Theptember it is so not cool and it is wrong. Apparently this whole thing is an urban legend that someone in a royal family (king, queen, princess, gay prince…depends on who is telling the story) had a lisp so everyone started talking that way so as to not embarrass the royal and get their head cut off. The real reason is mind-numbingly boring, but here is what I plagiarized from the internet:

• “Firstly, the ceceo is not a lisp. A lisp is the mispronunciation of the sibilant "s" sound. In Castilian Spanish, the silibant "s" sound exists and is represented by the letter s. The seseo comes in to represent the sounds made by the letters Z and C followed by i or e. In medieval Castilian there were two sounds that eventually evolved into the ceceo — the ç (the cedilla) as in plaça and the z as in dezir. Choke…snore….The cedilla made a /ts/ sound and the a a /dz/ sound. This gives more insight into why those similar sounds may have evolved into the ceceo. Obviously, the spelling of Spanish has changed in the last few hundred years. Choke…snore….Although the ç is used in some other Romance languages — including Catalan, Portuguese and French — it is not seen in modern Spanish….snore….choke…snore.”

2. Catalan is a dialect of Spanish.

No. This is not true either. Catalan is not a dialect of Spanish nor is it a mixture of Spanish and French. Catalan comes directly from “Vulgar” Latin and is as old as the rest of the romance languages. Vulgar Latin is the uneducated sloppy language of prostitutes and soldiers just like southern American English. It is very closely related to Provençal, spoken just over the border in the south of France where they have really great pink wine and the best olive oil. And cicadas. The internet that I am now plagiarizing again also tells me that Portuguese is more similar to Spanish than Catalan and that Catalan has common elements with French. Look at this sentence "I want to eat eight apples" (which I would totally never, ever say by the way. I am from Yakima, I hate apples):

• Spanish: Quiero comer ocho manzanas

• Portuguese: Eu quero comer oito maçãs

• Catalan: Vull menjar vuit pomes

• French: Je veux manger huit pommes

• Itlalian: Voglio mangiare otto mele

• Latin: Volo edere mala octo

• Pig Latin: Iway antway otay eatway eightway applesway

3. It will be hot and dry.

I don’t know why but I have this idea in my head that it will be hot and dry there. Here are averages I stole off the internet also:

September:
High 78(f) / Low 62(f) / Rain 3.35 (inches)

October:
High 70(f) / Low 54(f) / Rain 3.38 (inches)

It will rain. I can live with this.

4. Marseille is just up the road to the right, Valencia is just south over the other hill, and Blibao is on the other side of that hill to the left.

No. Nothing is really all that close. It’s not like how you can see London from the top of the Eiffel Tower.

• Marseille is 211 miles away

• Valencia is 205 miles away

• Bilbao is 380 miles away

• Madrid is 313 miles away

• Seattle is 5431 miles away

OK, this is all I have learned so far.

.

Home sick

2011-06-13T10:03:00.000-07:00

Part 2

I am still sick. I spent most of the day sleeping.

I have a small question however. Hypothetically, if your fuckwit fascist Republican Christian cousin-in-law had been filling up your email box with hateful megabytes of propaganda for years, would it be a bad thing to allegedly take her email address and perhaps sign her up to receive email from MoveOn.org, The Democratic National Comittee, or let’s say, maybe, The Daily Kos? Just wondering. No particular reason. Just a question.

Tonight I felt better and went out to get my mail and look at my yard. There was a crow storm going on out there. Dozens of crows screaming and flapping around in the air. It occurred to me that they did not like my new owl, which is EXACTLY WHY I BOUGHT IT.

I got the owl down off his pole and started holding him up to the sky while I shook him and made hooting noises. This was not well received and the crows who got even more agitated. Two of them swooped down and crashed into my neighbor’s garage. Unfortunately they were not hurt. I shook the owl and hooted for a bit and then I saw a crow sitting on my neighbors back porch. It was not moving. It was a fake crow. Well no wonder the real crows were all upset. This was probably some kind of hot, sexy Barbie crow and it was ignoring them. I put the owl back on his pole and went to get my camera to take some pictures of my flowers.

I looked up at the fake crow. It looked as if it was staring at my owl in some kind of fake game of chicken. I took some more photos and looked up at the fake crow again. Then it yawned.

OH MY GOD. What an ass hole crow!

I feel like Tippi Hendren!

Not that that is a bad thing.

I am going to enjoy a big mug of TheraFlu and go to bed now.

------------

Part 1

I am home sick today. I coughed up my right lung. That hurt. I have an earache in my right ear also. I think I am going to stick a chopstick in there so that the pain stops. I also have an ingrown toenail on my right big toe. I hate the whole right side of me today.

I had to turn the heat back on the morning because it was FREEZING!!!

I hate the weather here.

I am watching TV from Barcelona on my computer and fantasizing about my upcoming trip. They are having like the coldest, wettest spring in 50 years too.

Catalan looks more like French to me than Spanish, but it sure does not sound like French. Català es veu com el francès per a mi, però no sona com el francès. It sounds like Spanish. Sona com l'espanyol. Is that terrible? Will they hate me for saying that?

There is this news story on about a Spanish centric competitor for Facebook called Tuenti. Like for people who are Twenty. Whatever.

The traffic report just came on, it's called Transit. I can't tell if black colored roads mean the whole freeway system is in gridlock or if there is just one little stretch of slow that is yellow.

I have been watching lots of Catalan TV and Barcelona travel shows since we bought tickets last week. I also spent about $100 on guidebooks. Last night we tried to cook Catalan food. Mar i Muntanya. Surf and turf? Earth and Ocean. Chicken of the Sea? It rocked. You brown chicken then cook it in a big pot for an hour with sweet vermouth, onions, tomatoes, garlic, parsley, saffron, and smoked Spanish paprika (pimentón as they say in Spain). At the last minute you put in shrimp and almonds. This totally did not suck.

We also made this variant of paella with toasted noodles instead of rice, Fideua. Super good too. AND we discovered my new favorite wine, Alella! It's a rocking good white table wine that costs $8.

Have I whined about STUPID Air France yet? OK, Mark and I have been flying STUPID Air France to Europe since 2007. The intent was to pay for Business Class on a few trips then start upgrading to Business Class, because, as both you and god know, I will not fly coach. The problem is they will not let us upgrade?!?! There are seats available in business class, I keep checking, but they just won't give them to us even thought we have about 140,000 miles to use. Yes, this is a HATE CRIME.

We found this rocking cool apartment to rent (more on that later) but it was going fast so we needed to book the flight. Last week business class tickets were about $4800 each. Even I am not that silly. We found this thing called Premium Voyageur which is in a separate cabin from the wretched refuse, has good seats that do not get in your face when someone relines back, and lets you check two bags. The chair does not turn into a bed and you have to eat the same food as the wretched refuse however. Alas, Premium Voyageur was our only option. $2000 a pop.

This has really had an impact on my self esteem. Sometimes I just forget where I am and I stare out into the distance while I think to myself "OH MY GOD, I am flying coach for like 10 hours?!?!?!" Mark will just come up and slap me and say, "You are not flying coach, you are flying Premium Voyageur! It does not help. I can't even make eye contact with myself in the mirror right now.

Just to show you how STUPID Air France is I just tried to buy the same tickets just now and here is what they cost today for 1 person:

Coach - $1262

Premium Voyageur - $4837

Business Class - $4836

First Class - $22,612

OK, so to point out the obvious here:

Premium Voyageur now costs $2837 more than it did last week.
Buisness Class costs $1 less than Premium Voyageur, but in Business you get real food and your chair turns into a bed. WTF?!?!
First Class costs $22,617. They do not have First Class on these flights. Seriously. They are letting you sign up to pay $22k for a flight and they don't tell you that they don't offer it untill you click all the way through to the point of putting in your credit card.

STUPID Air France.

Oh here is the apartment, Ghost. Isn't this cool?!?!

OK, I am off to go stare into the distance again for a while.....

What is new?

2011-06-05T18:34:00.000-07:00

Sunday night. Listening to Nic Harcourt on KCRW. It’s just started and he’s playing that Robby Roberston song from Until The End of The World. It’s the one at the end when Claire is in the Space Station looking down on earth. Thanks for making me cry Nic! God!

So let’s see, what is new?

Went to Oahu last weekend. We went for four reasons:

It was Mark’s 45th college reunion again and he did not want to be in North America so that he would have a good excuse not to go.
It was Michelle’s 45th birthday again and she was in Kauai anyway so decided to meet her in Honolulu for dinner at Nobu.
We wanted to go back to Nobu.
Honolulu is in Hawai’i.

You know #4 is not really fair. Honolulu is an amazing city and I would go there every year even if it were in North Dakota or Utah. Great great food, great restaurants, gorgeous people, amazing farmer’s markets, wonderful skyline. Plus Portuguese Sausage and beaches. It’s all good.

Here is some food porn from Nobu (sorry, photos are from my phone):

Oysters with a Japanese peach

Kampachi with chilis

I don't remember but this was but it was fucking wonderful

Wagyu Beef

Asparagus and Lobser (not my fav)

That clam on the right was vile, but the rest was great

Dessert

The next night Mark and I had our own little food porn at Roy’s. They tweaked the Butterfish recipe. Truly fucking amazing now.Mustard in the sauce I think.

Here are a couple other photos from Oahu:

What else is new? I am itchy to have my next trip booked. We talked about this in Honolulu and Barcelona kept bubbling up. Gueth what?

Yeth?

Yeth!

It lookths like we will go to Barthelona in Theptember. More details thoon.

Work is still good. Bosses are great and the Fresca never runs dry.

Finally got my ass in gear today and bought some plants and stuff for my backyard. Do you know that instead of paying $300 to have a giant Buddha head delivered to your home you can just buy one from some Mexicans on the side of the road?!?! All the Mexican Roadside Buddha stands these days take Visa so you can get Hawaiian Miles whilst buying Buddha heads.

I also got an owl in a desperate attempt to keep crows from eating my blueberries this year.

Owl and Buddha are not talking.

What else? My inside Buddha collection is growing.

As are the masks. I don’t think I have shown you the masks in a while. They are creeping onto the side walls.

This guy is is the newest addition.

Al righty. That is all that is new.

Update

2011-05-24T08:40:00.000-07:00

Guess it’s about time to write something.

The back yard is finally done.

I am so happy with how everything turned out, especially since my neighbors are super jealous. Now I have to figure out what to do about plants. I do have all summer to work on that. I want to focus on hummingbird friendly flowers.

So far no sandworms have managed to resurface. Or mint.

I ordered a fake owl from Amazon.com.

I am going to put it in my blueberry bush so that the stupid crows don’t eat all my blueberries again this year. Stupid crows.

What else…..

Still loving the new job. I just feel so lucky to be here. How on earth did I end up with a good boss, in a brand new building, that has FRESCA FLOWING FROM FOUNTAINS, is in the middle of the city, and is saving the world all at the same time?

What else…..

Oh yeah, bopping over to Oahu for the long weekend. Mark does not want to be on the continent of North America for his college reunion, but actually we normally bop to Honolulu for Memorial Day anyway. Major focus will be having dinner at Nobu for Michelle’s birthday, then spa day at the Halekulani.

This is number 18 since 2001.

Life does not suck.

.

Fresca Flowing From Fountains

2011-05-06T16:00:00.000-07:00

It’s my fucking birthday again tomorrow. I suppose it's better than the alternative, but it still bugs me.

Am I 50 yet?

No, not quite.

Couple years to go….

All week I have been waking up in the middle of the night screaming. The kittens are getting used to it but still they just stare at me like, “Dude, chill.”

Traditionally I wake up screaming due to one of several recurring nightmares:

I am being chased by ZOMBIES and one just got snotty blood on me.
SAND WORMS are eating my house and the whole thing is about to get sucked down into sand worm hell.
I have lost my JOB and have to become homeless and I can’t afford cat food.
I am almost 50 and am a big ass failure and have nothing to really show for being on this planet for this long.

That last one has been more frequent that last couple nights. Usually my heart is pounding and I am covered in sweat. It’s between 2:30 AM and 4:30 AM. As I try to calm down and go back to sleep I usually try to tell myself that I am probably not that big of a loser. I have traveled a good amount, right? That counts for something….right? New York, London, Paris, Italy, Hawaii, Hawaii, Hawaii, Hawaii.

I don’t know how to explain this psychosis other than to say it is an ongoing feeling that I should have accomplished more at this point in my life. I have always felt this way I guess – even at the MERMAID when I was staying at a swanky hotel in Miami and buying dinner for famous New York architects. All I did the whole time was ask myself why wasn’t I doing this 5 years earlier.

Well, we all know the MERMAID messed me up pretty good. AMAZON did not help either. Having finally gotten a BIG JOB at the AIRPLANE FACTORY and then realizing it was stupid and soul killing has left me weirded out. Thus the screaming I think.

So now I am at my dream job. I make plenty of money, everything is wonderful, yet I am still waking up screaming. Clearly there is only one thing to do.

LOBOTOMY.

I probably should document a bit more about the new job before the lobotomy as I don’t expect I will be all that good of a writer afterwards.

Some initial thoughts:

The building is amazing. It’s so nice to be someplace NEW. By design there is a ton of natural light. The bathrooms look like spas and there are PRIVATE civilized toilets like they have the UK. When I leave the parking garage in the evening I simply swipe my badge and all the traffic lights up the street turn red so that I don’t have to wait for the normal people to get out of the way so that I can make my right hand turn on to Mercer. It’s the little things like this that give me a warm feeling.

The food in the cafeteria meets my expectations. Normally I have a salad of baby arugula, sprouted faro, fresh organic pea vines, and baked curried tofu, then tossed with a light champagne vinaigrette. There is a wood fired pizza over, but you know, carbs.

OMFG did I mention what it was like on the first day here?!?!? First they had buckets of champagne just sitting around so we could take a little nip, at 7:00 ON A MONDAY MORNING?!?! Then they had waiters walking around with trays of mini breakfast burritos filled with tiny scrambled quail eggs and little chunks of local goat cheese, then eensy beentsy pancakes with apple chutney or smoked salmon, then small corn muffins filled with little eggs and little bacons, then really petit French toasts, then tiny tofu triangles dusted with pistachio pollen. PISTACHIO POLLEN PEOPLE!?!?

At each desk was a gift box with a laptop holder, a reusable QFC shopping bag, a pound of MERMAID, a coffee mug, a wireless mouse, and gift certificates for neighborhood businesses.

There are really good coffee makers on each floor that grind and brew your own personal cup of MERMAID for FREE, but if you want to pay there is a coffee bar downstairs with a CLOVER machine. Did I ever bitch here about the old fashioned pots of FOLGER'S that sat on burners all day at the AIRPLANE FACTORY? We were supposed to put 50 cents into an empty FOLGERS tin each time we have a cup. I always just dumped out the coffee and turned off the machines.

Back to the new job. If you get hungry outside of lunch time there are bowls of organic sustainably harvested dark cacao chocolate or potato chips sitting around all over the place. There are also soda POP fountains with DIET DR. PEPPER (unbelievably satisfying) AND the world's most perfect liquid, my most beloved FRESCA! I work at a place where FRESCA! literally flows from fountains!?!

And then there are the people. Everyone is so nice. People actually make eye contact and say hi to you in the hallway. They hold doors open for you. Best of all my boss and my boss’s boss use the F word (i.e. FUCK) in every other sentence. I can’t tell you how much I support this kind of behavior. The F word (i.e. FUCK) is my favorite word, really. This reminds me of that scene from Sex, lies, and videotape:

Why do you have to say that?

Say what?

You know what. You say it just to irritate me.

I say it because it's DESCRIPTIVE.

I just checked and I can go down to the parking garage and make all the nearby stop lights turn red and I don’t even have to move my car! I am going to go do that now.

Happy birthday to me!

Zombie at check stand 3!

2011-04-29T17:30:00.000-07:00

I only had to work a half day today. We were getting kicked out of our building at noon for the big move to the new campus.

Oh the new campus. Sigh!

I got to go to a special sneak preview the other night. What an amazing evening. A certain richest couple in the world walked by and smiled at me. I could tell what Bill was thinking, “Wow, we hire fat people now? Old fat people? Old fat gay people? Oh right, Every Life Has Equal Value. Hello old fat gay person, welcome.”

The building is amazing. I can’t even really explain just how over the top the whole thing is or how lucky and honored I feel to work there. I could blabber on about my la la mood for hours, but I will spare you.

OK, I am not making this up. Right when we came in and grabbed a glass of wine the sound system started playing Madonna singing Jump. Mark elbowed me and said can you believe that? Of course I can. The spirit and power of Madonna touches our lives every day in ways we don’t even know. I just about managed to keep from crying.

Actually everyone at the event was on the verge of tears. How could you not be? The whole thing felt like something out of a movie. We really get paid to work here?

Speaking of music, because you know I need a sound track for everything, and because Jump was the theme song for the last 4 years, I do have another anthem for this point of my life. The new k.d. lang album, k.d. lang and the Siss Boom Bang, is amazing. There is a song called Habit of Mind that I have in non-stop rotation right now. It even makes this cute little reference to Aimee Mann. Really. It's glorious and perfect and sums up this whole experience. Go buy it.

Where was I? Oh the building. The work spaces are all open to support collaboration. AND THEY ARE ORANGE! The coffee rooms have cool ethic art in them. There are mid-century modern couches scattered about in case you want to sit down and read. Free food and coffee everywhere. And Aeron chairs. The parking garage has plants growing on the roof to help mitigate the carbon footprint of the cars inside.

The whole thing is just fricking amazing.

Oh speaking of the parking garage and carbon footprints, they really want us not to drive to work. I get an Orca card and a Monorail pass and I get paid $3 a day for every day I don’t drive to work.

chirp

chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp

chirp chirp

Why yes, that was the sound of crickets you just heard. Parking garage crickets. I may be in love with my new job and what we do, but I am, after all, me.

The first thing I did when I got my new computer was to log in and sign up for parking. I had heard that it was based on seniority and it would be likely that I would need to park in the Seattle Center garage with tourists if I got anything at all. I wrote an incredible funny email to coordinator of my department and begged her to lobby on my behalf. I heard she was a Madonna fan and I made several funny references using song lyrics. I got word late yesterday that I have a spot in the real garage, safe from the tourists. Thank you Madonna.

So ANYWAY, I left work this morning and headed to Ballard to visit the eye doctor and get new glasses. $1000 later I left, eyes dilated and surrounded in yellow stain, wearing a pair of those giant square sunglasses they give you so you won’t crash your car. I had to go to the store to get kitty litter. While I was paying I had to take off the sunglasses so I could see what to type into the pad for my debit card. The poor little cashier looked at my eyes and screamed. Yes it was a girly scream. I explained that I had just been to the eye doctor but she was not having any of it. As I left I heard the scared girl's voice quivering over the loud speaker, “Manager to check stand 3 please. Zombie was just buying kitty litter. Manager to check stand 3!”

This fat old gay zombie is humming Habit of Mind and is very happy right now.

.

My back YARD?!?

2011-04-23T12:03:00.000-07:00

Yes, yes, I posted an earlier version of this a few days ago and I also posted this on Facebook today (without pictures). This one is funnier so suck it.

My entire back yard is a SWAMP. All the grass has been eaten by moss and SAND WORMS:

My eucalyptus tree froze to death this winter:

My giant rosemary bush froze to death this winter. I had that rosemary bush for 10 years!

The STUPID MINT that I also planted 10 YEARS AGO that is eating the foundation of my house DID NOT freeze to death this winter.

So.......I have put out for bid a job to have NAPALM dropped from BLACK HELICOPTERS, then cement trucks will come in and PAVE IT OVER as if there had been a nuclear meltdown. Then I am going to a team of local sustainable artisans cover the cement with a layer of differently shaped pieces of slate so that I will get some kind of Buddhist spa like party space/bbq/veg-in-pots thing back there. Here are samples:

THIS IS GOING TO COST $$$. I am wondering how long it will take the SAND WORMS and STUPID MINT to come back and destroy it all.
.

I don't know what I am going to do with these fools:
.

Early COLOR analysis?!?

2011-04-21T16:39:00.000-07:00

Since you all are asking, here is my initial reaction:

8. Free pop, junk food, candy, and oat meal.

7. Aeron chair.

6. Free really good coffee.

5. Amazing technology – latest and greatest of everything.

4. So (206).

3. Super cute boys everywhere.

2. Really good boss.

1. Everyone is nice.

WEEKEND?!?

2011-04-18T05:30:00.000-07:00

Many of the links below are NOT SAFE FOR WORK. Or your HOME.

***********

Well golly. 8:45 on a Sunday evening listening to Nic Harcourt. This long weekend of being unemployed has been about 3 things:

• Washing the suburbs out of my hair

• Food

• Shoes

Friday was up early to meet some guy about ripping out the SWAMP that is MY BACKYARD and putting in some kind of slate based Buddhist spa like party space/bbq/veg-in-pots thing in my backyard. SUPER CUTE gardener dude came over to work out a bid.

SUPER CUTE but very (425).

$5000?!? OUCH?!? Also I think my eucalyptus tree that is like 30 feet tall froze to death this winter. As did my huge original 10 YEAR OLD old rosemary and even my bay tree which I thought was TOTALLY FIERCE.

WHY AM I TALKING LIKE THIS?!? Because this weekend I discovered that that little Unicorn Guy is in FACT David Mason of Slick It Up. His blog, HOUSE OF VADER, is SO TOTALLY FUNNY that I cannot stop talking like him. He is my new SECRET boyfriend.

********************

After the $5000 estimo-visit I went downtown and was very good for the economy. LETS RECOUNT shall we?
.

Shopping spree at Di Laurenti. Faro. Faro pasta. Olives. Roasted red peppers. CAPERS?!?

Then:

Shopping spree at The Paris Grocery. Anchovies IN A JAR. Harissa in a TUBE. Harissa in a CAN. Dried garbanzo beans. And wine, rosé, many.

Then:

Shopping spree at the Pike and Western Wine Shop where I bought all the same rosé wines I bought at the The Paris Grocery. Hello my name is OrangeCloveHead and I am a bit of a rosé fan.

Then:

Lunch at Le Pichet with Beth and a jug or two of rosé with some pâté and cheese.

Thén:

Off to Nordstrom for more shoes and a couple shirts for the new job.

Then:

Off to Brooks Brother’s for some pants for the new job.

Then:

Off to the gym.

Then:

Dinner of rosé and some mix of what I bought at Di Laurenti and The Paris Grocery.

Saturday and Sunday were almost identical to Friday.

I'm exhausted.

*************

Oh did I mention today is the first day on MY NEW JOB?!?

Could that be why I am up at 4:00AM on a Monday morning?

More later…….

Finally

2011-04-15T08:38:00.000-07:00

Well, it’s all done. Finally. I am unemployed. For three days.

I think this is how it’s supposed to go. People take you out for lunch or drinks and say thanks. It’s cringey and sad and nice.

I was consciously being very Joseph Campbell about this. We have these ceremonies for a reason you know. If you don’t follow them you will have nightmares for years. Trust me, the mermaid still haunts me.

How lovely to leave a job this way. Even people who I thought hated me came out of the woodwork this week.
.

Now no laptop, no Blackberry, no budgets, no employees. I can sleep tonight. Off to do that now.

*****************

Sorry to have made such a big drama out of all of this. But it was kind of a big deal for me. Kind of up there with getting a brain transplant or moving to Maui.

Now that I have some time to think about the new job I can’t wait to take what I have learned in the last 4 years and apply it over at the foundation. I know the grass won’t be greener, but it will probably be different. A quick Google Image Search confirms my suspicion that there are many kind of grass:

See? OK, more next week. Off to lunch downtown, Nordstrom for some long over due new shoes, and then to the gym.

Never Meant To Be

2011-04-12T13:26:00.000-07:00

Today was my last day in Bellevue. I am not looking back fondly.

That first day, July 30th, was rather telling. I drove up I-5 expecting to see the skyline. Nope, all covered in fog and gloom.

Crossing the lake I could not see the water, the mountains, or Bellevue’s skyline. All covered in fog and gloom.

You will recall there was nothing here that day. No people, no computer, no monitor, no phone, no manager. There was fog and gloom. And a zombie loose in the building, but I digress.

The last 8.5 months have been more of the same. Isolating, depressing, gloomy, stupid.

Today I decided to drive up I-5 again instead of sneaking through Rainier Valley to get to the bridge. The morning sun was just hitting the tallest towers. Quite dramatic -- suggesting a future of hope and accomplishment. I felt like Yentl. Coming out of the tunnel onto the bridge deck the sun had just made it over the Cascades and was bathing the lake in an orange glow. Florence + The Machine were belting out You Got the Love to me. Perfect.

I have absolutely no doubt that I am doing the right thing.

But I am still scared shitless.

------------------------------

I am leaving Bellevue now to head to Renton to have a goodbye lunch with my team there. I have packed up my stuff and head out. Because I always need a sound track for everything single thing in my life I put on So Long Loney Avenue by Rickie Lee Jones. This is the song I listened to as I drove out of Yakima en route to my first day of collage. I don’t fuck around with Rickie Lee Jones. She is the singular big gun for emotional drama soundtrack in my life. No Madonna today. Not even Aimee Mann or Lucinda Williams. Rickie means this is big shit.

Just as I update Facebook to announce the I am leaving stupid Bellevue for the last time a bear walks up and scratches my car. So perfect.

----------------------------------

Lunch with the Renton team was actually fine. I had been dreading this because I hate them and did not want to have lunch with them, but they bought me presents and paid for lunch and did the appropriate amount of thanking and acknowledging. I surprised that I enjoyed this. Nice way to close an emotional door here. Very Joseph Campbell.

Sinead O'connor's Last Day of Our Acquaintance is my music of choice on the way home.

OK, two more days…..

Done With Week 2

2011-04-10T12:12:00.000-07:00

Week two is over. 4 more days to go.

People started taking me out to lunch last week to say goodbye. I got to go to Din Tai Fung, that Shanghai soup dumpling place that takes 90 minutes to get into. The food was amazing, contrary to what the stupid Stranger has to say.

The next day I got taken to Oh India, a southern Indian buffet. That was good too.

This next week will be two more lunches and a little goodbye party. I am going to cry and make a fool of myself at all of them. Its been 4 years and 8 months since I came to the airplane factory. This is a big change for me and I am freaked out.

The younger people who work for me keep asking if I have words of wisdom, like if I should tell people if they should stay or if they should go. I am being very adult and politically correct and mostly skirting the issue. I have nothing against the airplane factory, mostly. I do tell people that I have always felt that I have not fit in here. What I don’t tell them is why. I do have a list:

• Support of torture under the Bush administration.

• Plan to build a wall to keep out Mexicans.

• People asking me where I go to church.

• People asking me what my wife’s name is.
• Driving to Everett, Bellevue, Renton, Tukwila, Auburn.

• And of course working for fuckwit karaoke sining boss Rasputin.

The torture and racism are very hard to swallow, and have really bugged me since I found out, but to be honest with myself I would have given this current job a year if the Foundation had not popped up.

It has always been weird to see people wearing crucifixes around their necks at work. There is a law against this in Seattle.

The driving is hard and as you know I don’t like to leave the 206 area code unless I am on an airplane, flying First Class. But that is not the main thing either.

OK, here it is. The main thing. I am a Seattleite.

I am snotty, arrogant, fully of myself, judgmental, liberal, artsy, and pretentious. Mostly all I think about all day is cooking, traveling, drinking, buying furniture, internet porn, shoes, cool music, and NPR. I do not care about your fucking children, your church, your wives (or husbands), or your where you went to high school.

Yes, I am a caricature of myself.

If you look at the suburban ring around the city that I have had to travel near for this job there are nearly 3,600,000 people out there who do not live in Seattle proper. Many work for the airplane factory. To quote Sandra Bernhard quoting Theresa Heinz Kerry, “I never wanted to be a part of it.” I am sorry, but have you seen the shoes these people wear?

Here is a great example. On Thursday I was eating dumplings with these two kids who work for me. One of them moved here from Costa Rica via the Bay Area last year. At lunch it came up that he "has never been to Seattle". He said he had heard that there were no good restaurants and that is was dangerous. I accidentally inhaled my soup dumpling. It went into my left lung intact and then squirted its super hot soupy contents into my superior bronchi as I gasped in horror. Not at the pain, no, but the fact that this seemingly smart, talented, funny kid has not driven the 8 miles over the bridge to the real world.

That sums up my time at the airplane factory. I am not like these people. I have had great opportunity, been paid well, made some friends, had some terrible bosses, but in the end, I do not fit in.

I am going to miss some people a lot, but this is the right thing to do.

However...I am somewhat concerned about what will happen when the people at the Foundation find out I hate poor people....

More later.....

Done With Week 1

2011-04-03T09:50:00.000-07:00

Week one is done. Everyone knows. Some people are mad, some people are sad, some people are genuinely excited for me, some people are overjoyed that I am leaving. This has been difficult and exhausting. Strangely I cannot sleep so I am up at 6am on a Saturday. I just donated to KPLU. $1 a day for the rest of my life. Those of you who have complained that I don't give away enough money can suck it.

After some coffee I decide to take a bath and hopefully fall asleep. I have one of those alarm clocks in my bathroom that lets me play music from my iPhone, so I stream the Diego Garcia album from KCRW ( I also give $1 a day to KCRW so you can suck it again.)

Oh Diego. So dreamy. You don't know who he is because you are not as cool as me, but wow, what great music. He's like an Argentine Fyfe Dangefield.

Soon I am sitting in the bathtub trying to relax. I have exploded one of those lemongrass bath bombs from Lush.

Fred comes in and jumps up on the little shelf behind the bathtub. Now he is standing on my head giving my hair a bath.

I can’t tell if he is trying to be supportive or if he just likes lemongrass. I flick water at him and he goes off to lick it. It is the lemongrass that he cares about. Soon I am snoring away with Diego serenading me in the background. Then I awake with a start. Work nightmare.

I don’t know if the next two weeks will be easy now that I have told everyone or if it will be awful. I wish I could say that I am just going to relax and not take anything too seriously. “We are $1 million over budget? Golly, sorry, what are you going to do, fire me?" I am so not wired that way. I can’t seem to turn it off or start to let it go. I try to fall back asleep but Diego is done.

None of this has started to sink in yet. One of my people….a short, fat, 95 year old Chinese guy from Aberdeen who has these disgusting little plump fingers that I always stare at instead of looking him in the eye….he said to me with genuine excitement, “Wow! Dude! This is a once in a lifetime opportunity! You get to go do good things and get paid for it. Why would you even hesitate? This place sucks. Congratulations!” You don’t normally hear things like that from 95 year old Chinese guys. I am really glad I saved him from getting laid off last year.

I saw Rasputin for the last time yesterday. He’s off having surgery for the next two weeks. Well, no, he is not actually having surgery for two weeks, but you know what I mean. He spent the hour trying in his own dysfunctional way to explain to me that he is a dick and he knows it and he is working on it and that, perhaps, sometimes, my approach of motivating people by telling them what they do right might, maybe, sometimes work just well as intimidation and temper tantrums.

Two more weeks. I really just want to be done. Maybe I will just use up those 80 hours of sick time and stay in the bathtub.

Jumping

2011-03-25T08:20:00.000-07:00

Well, it’s a done deal. I passed the background check, (table dancing arrest in Tex-ass aside), said YES in a formal way, and told the Airplane Factory I was out of there. You have to go online and “Self Terminate”, which is a little disconcerting.

I was pretty nervous about talking to my boss, Rasputin.

Rasputin has been a total dick lately which made this much easier. Actually the conversation went fine. He didn’t get mad and was pretty supportive about my move. A little too supportive perhaps. I am giving him 3 weeks notice. Mostly because I have worked really hard to clean up the train wreck I inherited and I want it to stay cleaned up, but also he has to have surgery and he won’t be around after next week. I can’t start at the Foundation till the 18th so I may as well get paid for the duration. I will get 3 days off before I start. Wow. it just occurs to me that I will not be on call 24 x 7 anymore. No more need to carry my stupid Blackberry around. Stupid Blackberry.

None of this has remotely begun to sink in yet.
.

I did get a request from my new manger for a short bio that he could share with the team. Here is what I wrote:

OrangeCloveHead comes to us from the Airplane Factory where he has worked for the last 4 and a half years as an Application Development Manager and Project Manager. OrangeCloveHead’s experience in the last several years has focused around agile software development. He is a certified Agile Scrum Master and certified Agile Product Owner. Most of his current employees feel strongly he is certifiable.

Prior to the airplane factory OrangeCloveHead worked as a Technical Program Manager at a large online retailed named after a large river. But mostly, really, OrangeCloveHead comes from the Mermaid where he spent 16 and half years as a program manager, project manager, help desk supervisor, and ever so briefly as a barista while he was giving his youth away to the Mermaid. OrangeCloveHead started at the Mermaid when he was 14.

When OrangeCloveHead is not working he obsesses about cooking and traveling, writes short stories, spends lots of money buying hip indie music, and listening to NPR . OrangeCloveHead will readily admit that his life has become somewhat meaningless since Buffy the Vampire Slayer went off the air.

OrangeCloveHead is very embarrassed that Mary Hart of Entertainment Tonight fame is his second cousin and will deny this fact at every opportunity.

OrangeCloveHead is very excited to be joining the Foundation.

Do I come off like a goon?

The new boss thought it was funny.

OK, off for 3 weeks of great fun…..

.

Linda

2011-03-21T16:23:00.000-07:00

Right when I found out Linda died last year KCRW was playing a song called “Is There Nothing We Could Do?” by a British group called Badly Drawn Boy. Actually Badly Drawn Boy is a person named Damon Gough, not a band, more of a one man band maybe, but not the kind like with a drum set strapped to his back and an accordion and a harmonica on a pole and a pet monkey playing cymbals…..but I digress.

Anyway, the timing of the song with Linda’s death was kind of weird but also pretty meaningful for me. The title is self explanatory, but more importantly there is a line that just floors me:

Oh I am sorry,

Oh I am sorry,
This page in your story won't turn

That pretty well sums things up. Except that I am still thinking about you. And I miss you.

Wow. Am I telling your story?

The song popped on this morning and of course I stopped what I was doing and just started crying. Sad crying for sure but also just nice to think about you. I wish I believed you were floating around out there.

Oh crap now I am putting on Copenhagen. Hadn’t really thought about that in the context of Linda. Here come the tears again.

But you, have disappeared
You have been released
You are flecks of light
You are missed

Somewhere, spinning round the sun
Circling the moon
Traveling through time
You are missed

yes

2011-03-15T17:23:00.000-07:00

So…that little “foundation” over by the Space Needle made me an offer.

This just boggles. Are they sure they actually interviewed me? Me? What about all that drama with the mermaid?

Apparently they are “Very excited and really want me.”

Finally, finally, for once in my life I negotiated and got more money. Then I sat on it for the weekend. I did big ass Catholic guilt. Then I said it.

Yes.

What?

Yes.

What?

You heard me.

They are running a background check on me now. I really regret that table dancing arrest in Tex-ass in 2004. I can’t tell the airplane factory until I can hold a hard copy of an official offer in my fat, short little fingers.

I am numb and stunned and excited and scared and overwhelmed.

More later…..

Copenhagen

2011-03-08T10:40:00.001-08:00

I just traveled through time backwards and forwards again in 4 minutes and 30 seconds. I was in 2011, then 1989, then back here again.

Everything I loved about you in 1989 is familiar and comfortable again. For a moment I am 26 years old.You're talking to Terry Gross while I drive over the mountains to see my family.

22 years…wow. 22 years of missing you and kind of being mad at you. OK, not really 22 years as there was Sweet Old World in 1992. Still, 19 years…Buyin' tomatoes for a casserole....

Car Wheels never worked for me. I was happy for your success, but I was not OK sharing you with the rest of the world. I never liked that album. I am sure it was me, not you. I hope you got a house out of that whole thing.

I tried Essence, but the cover art freaked me out.

I haven’t tried very hard since then. Then the other day, KCRW of course. Copenhagen. I literally stopped cold in my tracks. I was crying before I even knew what the song was about. It’s been three weeks. I still can’t listen to this without balling my eyes out. Crying about the sadness of the song, about your loss and pain, about how happy I am to hear you and feel so connected again, about seeing 22 years flash by my eyes in a moment.

Do I have another 22 years left to do this again?

I am going to go listen to Side of the Road and try to send a message through this worm hole you have opened to that 26 year old who loved you so much. Maybe somehow I can convince him that he was in fact skinny and kind of cute. And that he had great taste in music.

Thank you Lucinda.

I am going to Maui tomorrow

2011-02-28T16:13:00.000-08:00

Shocking, I know.

I think this is my 17th trip to Hawai'i and my 10th trip to Maui in 10 years.

I am nothing if not consistent.

Am I Flying First Class?

Have we met?

More later.........

.

Cathead

2011-02-18T16:07:00.000-08:00

Hey Buddy!

Hey Mister!

Cat #1.

Somehow I knew it had been a year without really knowing it. Hard to believe. Some passed time has made it easier to remember you before you were sick.

I don't feel like I did a good job of mourning or saying goodbye. It was just too painful and I had to shut it out for a while.

I had the house painted and new carpet put in. Painted over the spots on the walls that you had rubbed up against and stains you left on the carpeting. It felt like I erasing you.

I have known for a while that I needed to have a great big cry and spent some time thinking about you. How weird is it that I did this one year later.

Sometimes at night I can still feel you nestled in my armpit.

I don't miss waking up to you biting my nipples.

But I miss you.

.

Anchovies

2011-02-02T08:35:00.000-08:00

I had dinner last night at Anchovies and Olives, Ethan Stowell’s Italian Seafood place on Capitol Hill. This is the same chef as Tavolata, which had been my favorite Italian restaurant until Spinacce popped up. Anchovies and Olives has gotten a good amount of local and national press and I have been wanting to go there for a while.

I had been posting on Facebook before I got there that I was hoping for an out of body experience. It was not to be had, the astral projection, but the place was OK. Just OK? Just OK.

So first, parking. The last time I was in the neighborhood I was at Spinasse and I don’t remember having to use cash to pay for parking. I don’t use cash. Cash is dirty and very 20th century. Normal people put their debit card into a little machine which kicks out a chit of paper that you place on your dashboard. Cash? Really? I had to park over near the Space Needle to find a parking lot that took debit cards.

Shockingly, even after walking over from the Space Needle, I got to the restaurant a few minutes early. The hostess was very gracious and sat me right away. A quite gorgeous waiter came over. Young, short cropped hair, slight beard, and an ass so tiny you could fit it in a tea cup. I ordered a Vesper (shaken not stirred) and started to look over the menu. I take a sip. Lillet! Hello Lillet. Suddenly I noticed the music. Hotel California. The Eagles. Wow. I hope this is some kind of ironic hipster attempt to be funny. I fear not. I as the evening went on my ears were doused in Stevie Nicks, Journey, Led Zeppelin, and Rod Stewart.

Beth arrived and also ordered a Vesper but she needed to have one made with potato vodka (gluten problems). We started off with oysters. I don’t like oysters. Gross little uncooked slime balls. However, I will eat (and enjoy) oysters at Nobu, so I thought, “Why not?” These were those Petite Kumamoto oysters from Olympia with a little sherry vinaigrette on them. I picked up the little snot ball and dropped it in mouth mouth. "Briney, winey, the essence of the sea." LOL. They were quite yummy. New rule: little oysters = good, big oysters = scary.

I switched to Gavi and Beth switched to potato vodka on the rocks.

We got some Crudo – which is basically Italian sashimi…or maybe a little like ceviche. Raw fish with some olive oil, salt, maybe some lemon juice. First came Hamachi with some prosciutto and avocado. This rocks. Then Escloar with some crispy little fried things sprinkled about. Faro? Cranberries? Again, quite good.

Next we ordered some fried sardines and some more oysters. The sardines never arrived, but the oysters did. Good thing the waiter was so pretty.

I didn’t know Beth could not eat pasta (or we would not have come here). She ordered some mackerel while I was torn between squid ink spaghetti or bucatini tossed with anchovies, chilies, and bread crumbs. Bucatini won. This was good. I did not astrally project, or even fall down and wet my pants, but it was a really solid pasta dish. I think I could make this though.

For dessert we got some panna cotta with pineapple and fennel. Sounds weird but it worked really well. Also got a big chunk of gorgonzola. So good.

So to summarize here:

The gorgeous little server was better to look at that he was a waiter, but he was OK.
The music, very annoying.
The food had its moments, but not enough of them.

I’d grade the whole experience a solid B.

After I left I realized that this was kind of a Seattle attempt at that Mario Batali restaurant in New York, Esca. While the food there was amazing, really amazing, that was the worst service I have ever had in my life. Ah flashbacks.

Not sure that I need to come back here. Spinasse is a block away and the food there really does promote astral projection. Tavolata is a more fun to go to.

There you go. My review. Not expecting Food and Wine to ring me up any time soon for some freelance work, but I had a lovely evening.

Morning

2011-01-31T10:25:00.001-08:00

So I had to have some homework done for an early morning training session today. Part of the homework was watching some videos and taking notes. The videos were off line yesterday, plus I wanted to drink martinis and donate lots of money to Anne Litt at KCRW, so instead of getting finished yesterday like a normal person I got up at 3:30AM this morning with the intent to power through the home work and then be in Bellevue at 6:00AM. I got up, took a shower, and then was doing what remains of my hair and applying moisturizer to my fine lines and wrinkles when I heard Fred in my bathroom shredding toilet paper so he could then eat it and throw it up. I stepped into the bathroom to yell at him. I scared him and he jumped straight up and into the toilet. This scared him more and he ran out and into my new cat door but he saw his reflection coming at him in the plastic and this sacred him even more so he stopped short but his momentum carried him through the cat door, across the carpeting, and directly into Roxanne’s door. I have no idea what she heard. I did not see him until later when I was ironing my clothes and he jumped on the washer and into my cup of coffee which spewed coffee everywhere and scared him. Somehow I managed to get everything cleaned up, including little coffee colored paw prints on my new carpeting, and still made it to Bellevue by 6:00AM where I promptly dropped the left ear bud of my $100 Bose ear phones to my cup of coffee right as my training class was starting so everyone on the line from St. Louis and Minneapolis heard me say “Oh my fucking god!” Great. Good thing I have that interview with the Foundation near the Space Needle on Friday. And that I leave for Maui in 28 days.

Oh no! Does that mean that I will have to title my first blog post from Maui as 28 Days Later?

Weekend

2011-01-16T20:38:00.001-08:00

Alcohol units consumed: 4000

Tobacco units consumed: 0

Dead cow or lamb units consumed: 0

Cheese units consumed: 0

Drunken music purchased off iTunes: $164.34

Kitchen stuff purchased at Bed Bath and Beyond: $2164.34

Drunken viewings of Green Wing: 12

Trips to gym for viable cardio: 1

Chapters read for book report due at 7am tomorrow: 0

Crying over Italian DVD of Sammie and Rosie: 2

Right.

Not my worst.