O Canada
today an 80 year old woman asked me if i wanted to hear a story. here it is.
"i've been a nurse for over 60 years now, and a few years back i met another nurse from Vancouver, BC. she spoke of a young woman who came into the ER for an emergency appendectomy. this girl had purple hair, tattoos, funny clothes... and upon preparing her for her surgery they found her pubic hair had been dyed green! and above that there was a tattoo. it said 'keep off the grass'. so they prepared her for surgery, fixed her all up, and sent her off with a note written along her abdomen - 'sorry, had to mow the lawn'."
and just to be funny/gross i thought i'd find a nice pic to go along with this, but THIS is all i could find.
"i've been a nurse for over 60 years now, and a few years back i met another nurse from Vancouver, BC. she spoke of a young woman who came into the ER for an emergency appendectomy. this girl had purple hair, tattoos, funny clothes... and upon preparing her for her surgery they found her pubic hair had been dyed green! and above that there was a tattoo. it said 'keep off the grass'. so they prepared her for surgery, fixed her all up, and sent her off with a note written along her abdomen - 'sorry, had to mow the lawn'."
and just to be funny/gross i thought i'd find a nice pic to go along with this, but THIS is all i could find.
Honey Hole
Wondershowzen worthy, for sure!
Last night I joined Jarad, Jes & The Beard at Honey Hole. Jes & The Beard were chatting it up and Jarad was pretty hammered (J & J had already been to happy hour at CHAC earlier). I had a cherry popper, which was tasty - vodka, tonic, lemonade w/a lemon wedge and a maraschino. And I'm not much of a vodka person.
I watched Jarad down a sickening amount of chicken wings (he's paying for it today) and we all watched a little Daily Show for a bit.
Today is pretty stormy. There's supposed to be gusts of up to 40mph on land and 65mph on water! Made me think of my old Victoria Clipper days - near pitch-poling in an 8 foot CHOP in the Straits near San Juan Island. Beer bottles rolling across the upper deck and cleaning up pax puke. Good times. Those fancy jet engines on Clipper IIII actually STOP RUNNING when they're out of the water. So... all that... then the engines die. Keep Smiling!!! The pax are watching!
Tuesday Night Jig
I joined Jes and Jarad at Neumo's last night for a holiday party/Pogue's tribute/Sound Magazine promo party thingamajig. Some hot guy was hitting on Jes and Jarad was jumping up and down to the irish music. I joined them and promptly got trashed and started stomping around to old faves like "Heave away, haul away" and "Turkish Song of the Damned" played by about 8 musicians who were current and past members of Decemberists (current member Jenny Conlee pictured here), and the Eels, and Minus 5. There was no more than 100 people in the dancing crowd. It was very relaxed and a lot of fun.We then hit the Comet for more beer and Slayer, closed that place down, and walked to Dicks on Broadway with only $5. Jes got some food then we had to go get her car (get this - a convertible 2-seater Mazda MIATA! who woulda thunk?) so we could go to the JackintheBox drive thru. Yeah you're thinking "Hypocrite!" and you're right. There's sober standards and drunk standards, y'know. Jes hadn't had fast food in, like, years, I think. After all that I served up brownies w/ice cream, toasted almonds & hot caramel.
And now I'm at work again and they are out playing (in Ballard, I think). Ho hum :(
The Armada
Been listening to Groove Armada while traveling via foot & bus lately. They're really good for those activities.
Meat, Milk, and The First Amendment
Upon arriving at work today there was a copy of the Everett Herald, in which I found an article about students north of Seattle at both Everett High School and Cascade High School. The threat of censorship inspired them to create underground newspapers, and they're getting plenty of donations to operate the papers. That rocks. Yay for smart youth.
One of the articles they put in their paper was about the Everett Massacre, which I had never heard of. Shouldn't we have learned about this in Washington State History? Back in freshman year at high school? It was a shootout between Wobblies and local authorities back in 1916. Interesting stuff. Click my links. The photo was found at heraldnet.com
My big adventure of the weekend was a trip to Whole Foods for MEAT. I bought $50 worth of pig, cow and chicken edibles. I'd been waiting a while to make this trip. Later on I bought some milk (for the first time in a LONG time). Safeway has an organics label called "O Organics". I of course bought it because it was cheaper than Horizon but I was a little wary of a Lucerne/Safeway brand that calls itself organic, especially knowing that under the Bush administration the definitions and restrictions on what's called organic has been way tweaked for the benefit of large corporations (more slack in the processing requirements, for the most part). But hey, we were making brownies so I simply HAD to have milk. When I poured the glass last night, well I have some kind of aversion to milk in general that started with my freshman HS biology teacher showing us highly magnified globules of milkfat on a giant screen - wait, no, I think it started when my stepmother forced me to drink dyed green milk on St. Patrick's day at age 9. The idea of green milk made me sick at the time, so she sent me to my room and forbid me to go to my rollerskating party. ANYWAY... I decided to research "O Organics" and found that the main difference between real organic and these take-advantage-of-relaxed-labeling organic milk is that the Safeway cows probably don't graze. They are probably being milked 3 times per day, with no time to graze, so they're kept in a lot and fed grain, which isn't natural for cows (according to the articles I read). That explains why Horizon milk tastes better and "O Organics" milk tastes more like regular crap milk. But I'll probably still drink more of this one carton. My budget doesn't allow buying all-organic, but I'm trying to stick to natural animal products, at least. I'd rather spend $5 for one pound of more natural ground beef, ground in the store and sold bulk, and spread out over a few meals and a stew, than 5 jackinthebox junior bacon cheeseburgers.
In other news, it's raining again...and.... Jesika comes up tomorrow! Yippee!
blogger & myspace = love/hate
blogger sucks and if i knew one damn thing about personal webpages and blogs and customizing them, and who's a better blog site to go with, i'd do it. but crap, i've written 2 novel's worth of junk on this page! blogger went "beta" and merged with google or something, and everything's kablooey.
i also hear that myspace is going to the dogs, which is no surprise, since myspace sucks too. it sucks, and yet i love it. seems a common theme in my life. here's a positive spin on that... yin yang, right? yeah but to such extremes?
ok i'll stop for now with the No Internal Dialogue problem. this is what happens when kim has such easy internet access AND daily coffee.
i also hear that myspace is going to the dogs, which is no surprise, since myspace sucks too. it sucks, and yet i love it. seems a common theme in my life. here's a positive spin on that... yin yang, right? yeah but to such extremes?
ok i'll stop for now with the No Internal Dialogue problem. this is what happens when kim has such easy internet access AND daily coffee.
rat tat tat
Seattle restaurant that I do NOT recommend: Jai Thai. I wasn't feeling very adventurous when I ordered phud thai, but they still botched that old standby. Slimiest noodles ever, except when my cook-boyfriend 10 years ago tried to make thai noodles at home and produced the most disgusting plate of squirmy yuckiness, and then got really ticked off at me for not thinking it was great. I couldn't eat thai for a YEAR after that. He was a good cook besides that, though. Oh yeah and ever since Fast Food Nation the idea of much meat intake makes me nauseous, and they put chicken in it instead of the tofu I requested. Jarad's been annoyed with my crap-quality-meat avoidance, which IS kind of a nuisance, considering our finances. After reading Diet for a New America at an early age, working in the natural foods industry, living in Seattle & Portland, then this year watching The Corporation and Fast Food Nation, it makes perfect sense that I would not only want to puke at the thought of eating mass-produced meat, not to mention the terrible KARMA that goes into that crap, which is made very evident in FFN.
Saturday we went to see Ratatat and The Faint. Ratatat is a little more my style. The Faint are very polished and flashy and professional. Very good, too, but not as much my thing. The Faint feel like heroin junkies from the '80's. In a good way....? Ha ha. I don't know. Ratatat's guitarists hid behind their hair and some blinding lights, and even altered their speaking voices with the echo effect. Except for the keyboardist. He was a neat guy. I instantly liked him for wearing an old wool sweater with holes in the elbows and dirty keds. He was also very into his playing, whereas a lot of keyboardists probably just sit there and plunk away - he moved in waves with each note towards the keyboard, kind of perched on a stool and hunched towards the keys. Later he danced around a bit, and shook some little rattle that nobody could even hear, but he seemed to be having fun. I thought I hadn't cared for the rest of their albums beyond "17 Years" but it all sounded great at the Showbox.
In bigger news, I HAVE A LAPTOP NOW!!!!! Nothing else needs to be said... other than my life just improved by, like 120% because of this development.
Saturday we went to see Ratatat and The Faint. Ratatat is a little more my style. The Faint are very polished and flashy and professional. Very good, too, but not as much my thing. The Faint feel like heroin junkies from the '80's. In a good way....? Ha ha. I don't know. Ratatat's guitarists hid behind their hair and some blinding lights, and even altered their speaking voices with the echo effect. Except for the keyboardist. He was a neat guy. I instantly liked him for wearing an old wool sweater with holes in the elbows and dirty keds. He was also very into his playing, whereas a lot of keyboardists probably just sit there and plunk away - he moved in waves with each note towards the keyboard, kind of perched on a stool and hunched towards the keys. Later he danced around a bit, and shook some little rattle that nobody could even hear, but he seemed to be having fun. I thought I hadn't cared for the rest of their albums beyond "17 Years" but it all sounded great at the Showbox.
In bigger news, I HAVE A LAPTOP NOW!!!!! Nothing else needs to be said... other than my life just improved by, like 120% because of this development.
Isabel Allende
Last night I stood in line for over an hour to hear a reading by my favorite female author of all time, Isabel Allende. She read from her new book, Ines of my Soul, which is about the only Spanish woman to travel with the conquistadors to Chile. Almost all of Allende's books are based on true historical events, as she herself was the daughter of a diplomat and served as a journalist back when Pinochet was in power. Many people have seen the movie "House of Spirits" which in no way does justice to the book. Anyway, she was a personable and fun woman to listen to and answered each of the questions very frankly and sometimes with cool stories from her past. There were at least 1000 people at the reading, in a huge old building perched on a hill near downtown Seattle. And she signed hundreds of books.
One thing she said that I liked, and know to be true, was this: "the less people have, the more they share". She was referencing third-world hospitality, but it's true everywhere.
One thing she said that I liked, and know to be true, was this: "the less people have, the more they share". She was referencing third-world hospitality, but it's true everywhere.
dessert!
hmm... the fruity dish on the left is a "trifle" with cream, grand marnier, nutmeg poured over chunks of poundcake, fresh cranberries, and garnished with orange shavings! then there's a REAL pecan pie (none of that pecan flavored goo with a coating of pecans). it's nuts! through and through. the pie in back is made from real butternut squash, pureed and topped with toasted nuts.also, check out my cousins' blog:
chrisandcallie.blogspot.com
can't wait for dessert
The best homecooked Thanksgiving food EVER was cooked and served today by the Brown-Clampitts, to me and another grateful guest. Check out that plate. Yukon Gold mashed potatoes with shredded carrots and garlic, fresh sauteed green beans in hazlenut-lemon butter, sweet potatoes & yams glazed with maple syrup and nutmeg, sausage-apricot-sage stuffing (to die for), and whole organic cranberries turned into a luscious cranberry sauce over turkey that marinated for 10 hours in an apple cider/allspice/ginger brine while stuffed with orange slices...before being cooked to perfection!Oh yeah and that's me and my mom up there. She looks like she's stoned (it's just tryptophan).
pre thanksgiving
the stranger came out today. there were some great articles. everyone else probably knows about some of this stuff, but i guess i get most of my news from the stranger! yikes.
check out thestranger.com
i'll add links later, but the best stuff was about
eric keroack
o.j. simpson
PS3
pot butter recipes
orkestar zirkonium (they wrote about the park performance we happened upon last weekend)
check out thestranger.com
i'll add links later, but the best stuff was about
eric keroack
o.j. simpson
PS3
pot butter recipes
orkestar zirkonium (they wrote about the park performance we happened upon last weekend)
Fall Treats
Special things about today:
Sleeping in
Morning coffee with Fran's caramel sauce
Long talk with Polly on the phone
Walking all over downtown & Capital Hill
Getting caught in Schmancy when the power went out
Tenderloin sandwiches and Pilsner Urquell at Can Can with friends
Seeing a wiener dog in a coat and hat, on his leash, crossing a street downtown
Chocolate Raspberry Torte at B&O Cafe
TONS of free zines/publications found at Everyday Music on Broadway
Finding a band playing, Romanian style, in the park by our apt at about 10pm. Following the band, with a few dozen others until we broke off and strolled back home.
Sleeping in
Morning coffee with Fran's caramel sauce
Long talk with Polly on the phone
Walking all over downtown & Capital Hill
Getting caught in Schmancy when the power went out
Tenderloin sandwiches and Pilsner Urquell at Can Can with friends
Seeing a wiener dog in a coat and hat, on his leash, crossing a street downtown
Chocolate Raspberry Torte at B&O Cafe
TONS of free zines/publications found at Everyday Music on Broadway
Finding a band playing, Romanian style, in the park by our apt at about 10pm. Following the band, with a few dozen others until we broke off and strolled back home.
borat and foot traffic
I read today that Sasha Baron Cohen is Jewish! I wonder if any Jews were offended over his movie?
Oh and can I rant about Seattle pedestrians? The pedestrian right-of-way law is out of control here! I think more people are dying in the streets because they assume that all cars are going to stop for them. I'm hardly going to put my life in the hands of someone eating a cheeseburger and talking on the phone while fiddling with their iPod, speeding towards a sidewalk at 45 miles per hour just because the law says they have to stop. I think some degree of common sense should come into play, if you are walking, and not in any rush, and your ambling across a sidewalk is holding up 7 or 8 cars either waiting to turn or waiting behind the cars waiting to turn... just HURRY UP! Around here, motioning for the cars to go is fruitless - they're afraid of getting a ticket for not yielding to you. Sometimes if I'm standing at a corner I turn away from the street so cars don't stop and wave me on. I guess the road rage that stems from waiting endlessly for pedestrians to stumble around on their phones, talking to their friends, etc, might promote more people to just take the bus and vote for mass transit?
Oh and can I rant about Seattle pedestrians? The pedestrian right-of-way law is out of control here! I think more people are dying in the streets because they assume that all cars are going to stop for them. I'm hardly going to put my life in the hands of someone eating a cheeseburger and talking on the phone while fiddling with their iPod, speeding towards a sidewalk at 45 miles per hour just because the law says they have to stop. I think some degree of common sense should come into play, if you are walking, and not in any rush, and your ambling across a sidewalk is holding up 7 or 8 cars either waiting to turn or waiting behind the cars waiting to turn... just HURRY UP! Around here, motioning for the cars to go is fruitless - they're afraid of getting a ticket for not yielding to you. Sometimes if I'm standing at a corner I turn away from the street so cars don't stop and wave me on. I guess the road rage that stems from waiting endlessly for pedestrians to stumble around on their phones, talking to their friends, etc, might promote more people to just take the bus and vote for mass transit?
Jarad's 25th
Last weekend was dedicated to Jarad, who just turned 25 yesterday. On Saturday we hit the happy hour at "Can Can", a new burlesque club under Pike Place Market. Jarad likes whiskey so I ordered him a shot of The Balvenie along with a few Pilsner Urquells and some great food. We were pretty tipsy and warm enough to brave the wind and rain during our walk to Open Circle Theater to see "The Colour out of Space", an HP Lovecraft adaptation. Jarad schooled me on many things Lovecraft. It was an interesting night.
Sunday we visited the worlds best film rental spot, Scarecrow Video, for a DVD sale, and then went to Jarad's (and mine) favorite coffee roaster - Lighthouse Coffee - to buy a pound and have a few lattes. After that it was off to Cupcake Royale for apple spice and pumpkin cupcakes, and hot caramel apple cider. Cupcake Royale was crowded as hell, probably due to all this CRAZY RAIN. Jeez, even today it was windy and stormy - still! Umbrellas turning inside out, branches and leaves littering the sidewalks, and I guess the power was out all day in a few neighborhoods. After braving more downpour and leaping over streams that crisscrossed all roads, we ran to the Metro to see Borat! Everyone should see Borat.
Yesterday morning we went out to breakfast with some friends of mine, and then last night we hit a late night sushi happy hour by our apartment and one of Jarad's friends from work came too. The sushi was awesome and strangely went along great with PBR. I tried Jarad out on some Lagavulin. He prefers The Balvenie. (oh yeah this is scotch i'm talking about. landon and jesika have taught me about good scotch!)
Halloween
Not much has been happening lately... Halloween has come and gone, somewhat uneventfully. Last saturday Nanette and Thadeus came over. She prepared a leg of lamb with this yummy pear & pine nut sauce, plus potatoes and salad. I made bread and then afterwards we walked around Capitol Hill, checking out all the people in their costumes. Saw a couple dressed as Meg & Jack White, which was my idea that Jarad wasn't really going for... probably because neither of us looks anything like the White Stripes. But neither did that couple we saw on the street! There were a lot of pirates and devils. I think our favorites were Pink Panther and Tigger in full-on mascot style costumes, in character, bouncing around down the sidewalks and waving to everyone. I also got a kick out of the gang of bicyclists dressed up as cows. They were cruising all over the hill, moo-ing a lot. Once we saw them stop for hotdogs at the hotdog stand by the clubs on Pike St. The four of us had dessert and coffee on Broadway while watching more costumed folk walk by outside, and this is where we saw the creepiest costume, a petite asian girl dressed like THIS:
