The Good Dirt

Well, if *that* don't make you want to read on, nuttin' will.

Sunday: I spend the day on the couch, reading the paper, kinda, but mostly sluggish and feeling like I can't really wake up. I have a really nice run and a good evening with Sylvia. I write a really nice entry for Gr3en Sugar Pr3ss' blog and think, "It's going to be a nice week."

Monday: I go to the bookstore for my Very--Last--Day after three years (THREE years!), and, although my customers are all very sad to hear that I'm leaving, I get not a single word from management. The staff newsletter has gone out the previous Friday and no where is there a single mention of my leaving. To be perfectly, perfectly fair, I get flowers from Ailani, one of my regulars and daughter to fabulous friends David and Wai, and one of my regular nannies is suitably distressed, but aside from that, my storytime is peppered with new clients I don't know, and ... yeah. not a single thank you from management.
David says to remember that I did it for the people who came into the store to get good books, and he's right, but ... God! Insult to injury? When I leave, the bookstore has made four times what it made on the same day, all day, after my four hours.
Jim takes me to lunch to make me feel better. I order something that makes me feel sluggish later.
We move our swim workout to the evening. Somewhere between dinner and swim, I get a phone call from a family member that can only be described as aggravating, to say the least. It leads to a lot of thinking and a lot of soul-searching, and that is not something I can deal with at the moment.
I have a shit workout.

Tuesday: I skip the workout. The weather is crappy. We go to Sylvia's for The Biggest Loser and sample some very nice mead and hoppy beer; Syl buys dinner to reward us all for helping her in various ways. It's a nice evening. I feel like crap for missing the workout, especially since the sky eventually reflects a gorgeous sunset, but then it starts to hail. I sleep like shite because I'm still turning over the family-member thing.

Wednesday: I start off the morning talking to L about the various familial issues. She points me in the right direction--a letter, with various disclosures and ground rules, after a fashion--and I begin to take those steps. My brother and I get into a fight over something really stupid. We're still not really OK. I have lunch with an "irregular" friend--not that he's irregular, but that our occassional meeting is highly irregular. It's OK, and nice, even. I write another Gr3en Sugar 'Blog entry and think, "it's going to be OK," and "I'm really enjoying this process. I hope that I get to do it again and again, for a really long time."

Thursday: After another sleepless night, I get up at 4:30 and complete the steps I have to take in order for the family matter to rectify itself. I have specifically requested that we not speak on the phone, and that the family member wait and think very carefully before she writes back. I suggest a date after family member's forthcoming trip to another continent. I spend all of Thursday on vague pins and needles, but otherwise have a nice day with KFed on a workdate, and at the pool with Jim, despite the crappy run before the swim.
We finally, finally get an apartment in White Plains, after all the credit checks and everything. Some relief. More upheaval.

Friday: Decent workout in the morning. Fired from Gr3en Sugar in the afternoon, with nary so much as a good reason. I believe it was, "I just can't pay for a 'blog writer right now." Guys, I have had this contract for less than THREE WEEKS.

Even now, writing this, I'm pretty blue over it. The way he said it, it made me feel vaguely as if 'blog writing was all I did. Of course, I see it as much, much more than that. Even worse, I was infomed  that they'd be "hiring an intern" to do what I did. That's just fucking great. Thanks.

Damnit.

Probably the worst part of all this is that my plan--the one where I spend five hours a week doing something I really, really like, and the rest of the week working on my book, has gone to pot. I mean, it used to be that I always had the bookstore to lean on, but I'm moving, and crap, I left the bookstore because this was a better use of my time. And, as evidenced above, it is. I loved it, I was never bored, and I felt worthwhile. Now... I get to start over. There are a few bright spots, obviously--I found a green 'blogging gig that I may try to follow up on if the pay is right, and that has to do with 'blogging about green building and architecture, which I'm crazy about...but. Still. Still.

It's gorgeous out today, and Jim bought me a Cadbury egg yesterday. It *feels* like things are looking up, but I'm cautious.

here is the happy-making thing. i will get to the angry-making stuff later.
all in all it's been a good day: i have a nice re-start on my stupid novel. and i had lunch with a friend downtown on a gorgeou sfall-like day.

it is snowing like gangbusters.
i am *so* not amused.

...
what...
the...
f*ck!!
crikey.

Click here to download:

MOV06625.MPG (9069 KB)

sigh.

i have been a cookin' machine this past week.
it feels that way, anyway, although now that i'm lookin' at the photos below it really doesn't feel like much.
perhaps the two most interesting projects have been a Japanese pancake, which I realized after making is pretty much just mom's scallion eggs, only with a ton more veg instead of egg; and cobbling together a cocktail for a benefit party at Lisa's tonight.
Here are some photos.

1. I am not a food photographer. Neither is Jim, apparently, A cabbage-and-leek mixture is dusted in flour and then mixed with egg and then pressed into a pan to cook on both sides. The whole thing is cut into wedges and served with toasted almonds on top. I don't know why the recipe calls for toasted almonds. The only excuse I can think of is that it was put together by the brilliant cook at 101cookbooks.com, and she is from California. In the land of my people, which is close enough to Japan, well, we boil almonds. We don't roast 'em. Oh. This little concoction is called Okonomiyaki, or "as you like it." So I guess she could darned well put cinnamon sticks and meatballs on top, and it'd still be Okonomiyaki. :)

2. Cabbage-and-egg, up close. I didn't have any leeks, so I substituted a smaller ration of green onions. I figured the smaller amount would mask the sharper flavor of the green onion, although I did catch myself thinking of the nice, meaty bite of a good leek. Oh well. I'll invest in 'em for mussels, which I'd like to make sometime soon, because it's ASS-COLD again here in Chicago and a girl will need something warm and Belgian-like. I digress.

3. This evening's cocktail is made of a powerful ginger simple syrup, a couple of dollops of apple sauce, vodka, and some filler I haven't thought up yet. Maybe lemonade. Hmmm. Anyhow. The thing calls for a garnish of apple chips. Since the recipe has ginger in it, I dusted the slices with nutmeg instead of the obvious cinnamon. Here are the slices before they go into my oven on low heat for something like five hundred hours. Okay, five. (It'd better be five hours, anyway. My day is *packed.*)

What's that? You want to know what's on the agenda? Fine:
11-1: Spin
3-4:30: Self-defense class
5-6: Pal Pierre's championship hockey game
7:30 Lisa and Ron's party

Somewhere in there I have to shower. Phooey! It's already 10AM . Better get a move on.

     

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foodstuffs_wot_i_made.zip (4057 KB)

Here are some random pictures.
1. Jim and I take our very first photo together in front of Wrigley Field. Yes, ever. EVER.
2. I finally visit the bunny that Bor endowed for me at the Chicago History Museum. No signage with my name on it, and it's still up for adoption by other people. I am confused, but happy about my bunny.
3. Jim's cousin came to visit us with his friend. Here are the friend, Jim, and Dylin, left to right, in front of Wrigley.
4. Kristin came over to watch The Biggest Loser. It was a highly aggravating episode, and there was yelling at the TV screen and snuggling of Sprocket.
5. Sprocket seems less than motivated today. Hmmm.

         

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some_photos.zip (7186 KB)

1. I am considerably more attached to Isabella than I thought I was.

2. I could probably be friends with some people that I just can't work with.

3. By heresay, I've learned that one of my upstairs neighbors has referred to me as a "chink," and asked if I've made "rice and dumplings" for my downstairs neighbors, who are good friends of mine. This is highly offensive. I didn't actually know I'd be this offended, or this annoyed, but the reality is that he's got rocks for brains and I oughtn't think anymore of it, especially since I've only met him twice. The first time, I gave him a bottle of wine and welcomed him to the neighborhood. The second time, I asked him to turn down the idiotic rap music he had pumped up to five hundred thousand decibels, but he was already shit-faced drunk at 4PM and probably doesn't remember it as anything other than an annoying occurence. Is this karmic payback for the day I unleashed my saxophone on the former downstairs neighbors? I don't know.

At any rate, I'm mostly so annoyed because I haven't been called a chink since I was in grade school. I'm tempted to do something really juvenile and look up his name and then plaster all of the things he's ever posted, written, or commented on with derogatory comments, but that would put me in a category of something I'd rather not stoop to.

4. Perhaps even more annoying than the blatant racism is the fact that he was wasted when he said all of this, and I wasn't there. So there's no accountability. In other words, if I was to walk up to him and, say, punch him in the face, or reach down and rip off his teeny tiny set and then feed them to my dog, there wouldn't be any obvious reason to do so. Hmmm. [Me weighs pros and cons.]

5. I'm about to take a self-defense class. I think it's going to be very, very interesting, and I'm looking forward to it.

6. Over a month with no running is a bad, bad thing. Tomorrow's workout is a track workout, and today's workout is a longer swim than we're used to, with lots of kicking. Oh, Yuck. My quads hurt like hell today. I am officially a Wimp.

Here's the photo of that fun gutted building, properly rotated.
Also, I promised Lara a review of a tool I bought for counting laps.
She introduced me to it, and I laughed my ass off, because Lara has these long, gorgeous hands, and she kept on pantomiming reaching out with one hand to touch, very lightly, her other hand, where she was pretending to have this thing on, and the whole thing looked either like a yoga exercise or some sort of balletic move.
I kept on telling her that I'd much rather whack a lap-counter, with authority, but then I read someone else's review on it, and I realized how nice it'd be to not count--THREE-hee! THREE-hee! THREE-hee!...TWE-helve! TWE-helve!...--
Anyway, I really really like the thing. It's super easy to wear the thing on one hand, on its side, like I have it pictured below, and just press the button with my hand when I turn in the pool. I don't flip-turn, so it's quite simple to do this.
Also, I'm convinced that, because I'm not as freaked out about counting, I can concentrate on swimming better, and faster, and more efficiently.
No, I'm not over the whole bicycle thing. I'm really very angry.

   

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so_you_dont_have_to_crane_your.zip (6895 KB)

...Not because it's raining, or because I'm at the bookstore, but because Isabella, my beloved mountain bike, was stolen FROM OUR STORAGE SPACE.
It happened sometime this weekend. I'm totally heart-broken, and so is Ed, because they stole his bike too.
I so hate it when this happens.