eat this

Jesika drove up from Portland yesterday and we commenced a 24-hour food and alchohol lover's exploratory tour of Seattle.


First there was lunch at Tamarind Tree, where we ordered perfectly. In the picture you see the green mango salad with prawns, $6, in the foreground and the chili lemongrass beef, $9, (chili-lem beef, greens and vermicelli) behind it. We had tea and water with this, and the tofu tamarind tree spring rolls as appetizers. It was all incredibly tasty. The menu descriptions aren't elaborate but what you get is full of awesomely spiced meat and very fresh, nicely julienned and arranged fruits and vegetables.

Then we hit up the Rhum Bar "Marazul" where not a soul was around - no bartender, hostess, customers... so we sat at the bar and contemplated all the rum we could make off with, still surprised that we'd walked into any bar with Dark & Stormies on the menu. When someone arrived a while later to make us a drink, I discovered that they even use Reeds Ginger Beer for their dark & stormies! Overall it was a weird corporate-restaurant vibe in an equally awkward location (adjacent to the lobby of a new hotel, not within easy walking distance to either downtown or Belltown) and the drinks were weak, but it was still refreshing to see so much rum and dark and stormies being served as a standard. We joked about the frat/yuppie/corporate scene there and how the fountains that made one think of giant wet vaginas somehow fit in perfectly.
I was in the mood for something sweet and not willing to pay the price or risk the disappointment with Marazul's dessert list, so we headed over to Top Pot Doughnuts, where they make their treats from scratch, including roasting their own coffee. We ate a variety of old-fashioneds and drank some americanos.
But it was only 7pm when we left, and neither of us having to work Monday, we were still in the mood to drink, so we parked her car at my place and walked over to the oldest bar in this corner of the world: Jules Maes Saloon. After a few cans of Oly and lots of nice conversation about boats and boys and american society and the food service industry, we walked home to finish the night off with a bottle of Vinas de Vila Tinto Fundacion red wine and some vbs.tv. That red is very much my current cheap favorite. approx $6 for a great south american fruity red.

Today we splurged on lunch (if you are like me and think a total of $22 each, plus tip is kinda spendy - but a lot of people don't think that's much for what we were getting) at the best french cafe in Seattle, Le Pichet. Le Pichet is by Pike Place Market and is the most authentically french cafe I've ever visited outside of France. Our order: baked thin sliced ham with eggs and gruyere (bottom left, $8), haricot & tuna salad with perfectly hardboiled eggs, beautiful tomato slices, endive and spices (bottom right, $9), breaded & fried sweetbreads with roasted pecans, julienned apples and cold boiled beets (upper right, $9) and a demi-pichet (equal to 4 glasses) of clos roche blanche sauvignon blanc ($11). after all this came the best dessert i've had in a long time: chocolate chaud - a cup of sweet dark melted chocolate served with a bowl of fresh whipped cream ($6) where you dip your spoon into the cream and then into the chocolate. yeah. awesome. before leaving the market Jesika bought some of her favorite chocolate milk and couldn't wait to try it. A day in seattle is not complete without awesome coffee so we went over to lighthouse roasters for americanos and some reading. jesika bought 1/2 a pound to take home and before she left for portland we stopped to take a photo of ourselves at the elliott bay marina.

roughing it

Yesterday I hung out with the people from work at a great little bar near my "neighborhood." I put quotes around that because most people barely know that there is any semblance of a neighborhood in Seattle's major industrial and shipping area. I didn't even know there was a neighborhood here until I moved here. While growing up the only landmark I attributed to this part of town was the big red Rainier Beer 'R' hovering next to I-5. It's still disappointing to see the Tully's 'T' there instead. Georgetown was actually one of the first places settled up here, back in the 1850's, eventually pushing out the Duwamish people and building a small town, including bars, the brewery, a racetrack, an airstrip, churches, a school, a theater, some brothels and even a grocery store. I wish there was a grocery store here now. The Japanese market and the convenience stores aren't enough. This is also where the first Seattle railroad was built - by volunteers! When Interstate 5 went in the little town pretty much died. No school, no grocery stores. Still some bars, though. One of them is now Seattle's oldest bar. about 1000 people live in georgetown, yet over 12 thousand come here to work every day.

So we all got a bit trashed at the bar and I stumbled up Capitol Hill with a friend, where eventually we went our separate ways - I to the Egyptian to see Before the Devil Knows You're Dead and he went to meet a friend of his. The movie was excellent but also very dark and sad. Today I docked a 65' schooner a few times just to get the hang of it, on this particularly difficult dock. Oh and strangely I ran into some friends of mine, a couple, and the girl had a black eye. I said jokingly "has (he) been roughing you up?" and she laughed earnestly and said some stuff but didn't explain it. then i saw that he had two very deep scratches behind his ear. pretty crazy! at that point i didn't ask any more questions or joke around. i feel certain that this isn't some kind of ongoing domestic violence thing. i was going to ask them if they joined Fight Club but then considered that they might just like things rough every now and then ;) Regardless, I hope they weren't mugged or anything.

dear seattle pedestrians & bicyclists

you are all crazy.

i fly through the streets in a huge vehicle, it is raining, it is chaos. pedestrian, you like to dress in all black and run out into a crosswalk on rainy nights. bicyclists, you ride down rainy, flooded streets in the industrial section, full of potholes and no streetlights.

YOU ARE CRAZY!

and strangely, you are all Caucasian.

i gotta say it - the folks in the more ethnically diverse neighborhoods use a hell of a lot more common sense when exposing their tender human bodies to an unpredictable storm of moving steel, glass and rubber.

natural selection is not looking out for you, but i am. not out of kindness as much as self-preservation. i guess you are counting on everyone to be like me. i guess you are counting on everyone putting you above their supposed important cell call, dicks burger and lipstick. good luck with that. best not to venture outside this city, i think!

as for me, yeah... i ride my bike in the industrial area every day. on the sidewalk if i can. i practice defensive driving more when i'm exposed on a bike or motorcycle than when i'm in a big steel cage.

if i ever were to (god forbid) hit you, it'd be an accident, and i'd probably get convicted of involuntary manslaughter or something like that. if it was gross negligence on my part (ain't gonna happen) then maybe there'd be a fine and community service. but you... you'd be maimed or dead!

i wish seattle had the sense that portland does. i wish we had more dedicated bike trails devoid of car traffic. i wish everyone just rode their bikes! i don't even own a car! but all you folks who ride bikes and want cars to fuck off in general, well i can only speak for myself but that thing you just bought had to be delivered to the store somehow. it'd cost a hell of a lot more and more likely just not be available (seeing as how it's imported) if there wasn't a van to deliver it. i understand the loathing for car traffic in the city. i feel the same way. but as it stands now, i'd rather everyone just used some common sense or at the very least, survival instincts, and stay safe.

the almost winners

my official staff photographer for Jack Tar, carl rhodes gave me tons of pics that he took at the classic workboat show. that's me, colleen and carl in line for the bollard toss contest. colleen almost won. the next is of me almost winning the heaving line toss! the last is of colleen, myself and traditional sailor/environmental marine girl Laura watching other people throw. oh and hey! there's my new friend Lia sitting and eating on the bench behind me. i didn't meet her until 2 weeks after this was taken, but she's pretty cool - especially with those alaska slippers she sports (cutoff xtratufs).

a trip to the movies

was i not meant to sail this month? what is UP? the race was canceled today due to high winds, which weren't really that high (25kts).

so i went to see a matinee of American Gangster

Awesome movie! if you took Blow and The Departed (sans narc) and threw in a lot more situations dealing with race, society and capitalism-gone-awry, you have American Gangster. All of the acting was great, including bit parts by Common, and Kevin Corrigan, who I fell a little bit in love with in the film "Walking & Talking" years ago. It would have been pretty sweet to see Mos Def and Andre in there too but Common is enough I guess :) It tweaked me in the wrong way a little when Lucas went to Bangkok and later when he fell for a sexy Latina, being so very similar to the Blow storyline, but that's how it really happened so it's not like they should have altered it or anything. I thought it was going to end even more like Blow but they didn't thoroughly explain what happened to his family and relationships. At first I liked the subtlety of how they showed him doing exactly what his dead mentor professed to hate, but they kept driving the point home again and again, which made it not-so-subtle. But it's a good point about capitalism and monopolies so it didn't ruin it for me. Denzel and Crowe give great performances. Russell Crowe is a great actor. He's so believable and charismatic.

Police Beat

i suppose i'm a bit of a narcissist/exhibitionist for even having this blog, but i only feel a fleeting twinge of shame for that when someone i respect hints that stuff like this is lame. only a twinge though, because i know that i like to write and i've never kept a journal for more than a month in my entire life, so there must be some reason, however fucked up, that i do this. maybe it's because i listen to everyone talk about their problems, their feelings, their passions, and i never feel quite as comfortable talking out loud to people about myself. i talk to polly and nanette and jarad about how i'm feeling, but i try to keep it short because polly's busy, nanette is constantly thinking about her projects and family and working towards a better future for everyone, and it isn't appropriate to talk to my ex-boyfriend about EVERYTHING, just because he will listen whether it's good for him or not. mentally i'm a bit of an emotional rollercoaster and just about every day i go from feeling pure happiness, driving my van along some gorgeous northwest tree-lined waterway to teary sadness while thinking about how in general relationships between most humans are unloving and disconnected. on thursday i drove through a windswept cloud of fallen red and orange leaves along chuckanut drive and thought the world was so perfect. on friday i was stopped at a light next to a construction site and some older construction worker smiled at me and i looked away. i instantly felt terrible, remembering how nice it is to have someone smile back, just for the sake of being friendly. i felt at that moment like i was perpetuating the whole unloving-human problem in the world.

now how could i sit with a friend and tell them that? with a straight face? it's easy to sit here and type it but to hear it out loud makes me wonder if i'm just waaaaay too emotional or bipolar or something. i know that every now and then i write things here that some might feel is too personal for public consumption, but very few people read this. those closest to me know i'm not totally off my rocker and the rest i don't care what they think.

today i practiced docking a big schooner and spent a lot of time in a cafe working on the zine. tonight i watched a local-made movie called Police Beat, which my roommates had ordered through netflix. i really liked it because it was set in many beautiful seattle locations, with a lot of crazies you might only find up here, and with an ethnically diverse cast. i think that last part is what truly makes this movie unique. i've seen movies which feature different groups of one ethnicity, but this had a distinctly seattle feel in that individuals from different races, religions and subcultures are all thrown together on a daily basis here. i don't know - it's probably like that in new york city too. i really like the main character and the script was good. there were a few bad actors with small parts, but not bad enough to ruin the movie.

on a lark

so i'm eating a "Ms.Piggy" pulled pork sandwich and sitting with some new boat friends at smarty pants last night and one of them is a cook. i tell him he should go check out these highly acclaimed and very pricey bistros on capital hill - the chef at "Lark" just landed sumthin like the nobel peace prize for chef-ing, but one visit is going to run about $100 per person. he asks me if I've eaten there and i laugh and say i don't see that happening anytime soon, then he says Ok, It's no fun to go alone, so how about I buy, you fly? and whereas normally i'd turn down someone i barely know spending that much money on me, i said Uh, Ok! because he seemed like a nice person who just wanted to try the place out and Wow I'm going to Lark. Nice.

dear diary...

i'm a big silly dork. bright but not brilliant. cute when i'm pretending to be but never Ultra Hot. i act immature and ridiculous and dress in stupid clothing all because i don't really care and i think it's funny, but in retrospect i can see why non-sailor (and plenty of actual sailor) guys aren't very attracted to me. i'm barely civilized, not well-read... but i can still carry on a good conversation with just about anybody. i'm in fine shape and look great naked, i'm good in bed... but that isn't really discernible because i actually look kinda fat in clothes - hippy, y'know, not hippie... wide hips... plus i'm not graceful or classy in actions or looks. i guess none of this matters much when i imagine myself on my own little boat with a dog and lots of friends to hang out with in every port, but like anyone i meet a person i admire and am attracted to and begin to think warm cuddly kissy thoughts of watching dvds and drinking wine on rainy nights. maybe getting a massage. damn, do i need a massage! plus i listened to sappy david wilcox in the van yesterday... "when i lived so free alone, i had an empty harvest..." BAD IDEA. i like being single, it's true. i like the privacy of it because i'm so inherently attentive and accommodating with other people around that i lose track of my own needs. what i want is a guy to hang out with one night per week. i'm pretty busy with sailing stuff now, and work and the zine. and i have friends i like to hang out with alone. it'd be fun to look forward to that one night all week. and then who knows, months and months down the line maybe it'll turn into something else. but one night per week sounds awesome to me.

this is all coming from thoughts about how i haven't really "dated" anyone in well over 2 years. i went from landon to jarad and then started seeing someone again whom with i'd had a weird relationship before i even met landon or jarad. so i met someone who is intelligent and kind, is my age, humble yet confident, with nice eyes, a sweet smile, and strong legs. (what can i say? i like a guy with strong legs! i don't know why it's that in particular!) and after a few weeks of thinking about it i ask him out in a half-assed way via voicemail (he was watching a movie at the time). when he called back i was at a bar with friends and he left a voicemail that gave me absolutely no hint that the interest in hanging out with me was mutual. so... yeah. that sucks.

for a brief moment i thought maybe i should try to act more classy - you know, not swear as much, not talk about puking and porn, not broadcast private stuff as though it's nothing (like i am right here) maybe not get any more dumb tattoos. but then who would i be? not myself. maturity is for the most part overrated, but when it's necessary i rise to the occasion 100%. and the most important things to me are how genuinely i give and receive love from those closest to me, not living in a way that causes much harm to this world both physically and karmically, and being the kind of person who dives right in to scary or unknown situations in order to enlighten myself or help others. nothing else really matters, so why would i try to conform just to land a few dates with a guy who didn't value those same things as much as me?

tamarind tree

the crew of the noaa research fishing vessel, Oscar Dyson, invited me out for vietnamese food last night. i joined colleen, carl, kurt and dennis on a trip to "tamarind tree" in the international district. besides going out for pho, i'm not too experienced with vietnamese food, so i left the ordering up to colleen. she ordered the restaurant's special spring rolls, lemongrass chicken, make-your-own spring rolls with various skewered meats and tofu, and a beef salad. the food was awesome, the atmosphere totally kicks ass along with the prices. my gin and tonic was strong... and those were the best spring rolls i've ever had in my LIFE. (refer to the picture on that page)

fall back

i have 3 day weekends so usually i manage to fit a lot of stuff into them. this weekend wasn't much different, although much of it was spent lounging around at nanette's. on friday the people from work and i went out for drinks and food and mostly talked about movies. then i went to see Into the Wild, which could have been one of the best movies ever except for one major deal-breaker. i have always hated jena malone. enduring her presence in great movies such as donnie darko, united states of leland and the dangerous lives of altar boys was hard. i can suffer through her playing a small part, but ANOTHER MOVIE using her to narrate just makes me want to break something. they could have left out her narration altogether and this movie would have been excellent. in a lot of ways it was excellent - especially the first hour. the main character reminded me a lot of ozzie, nate, and shawn j; friends who have gone on similar adventures, with the same attitude and probably had the same affect on strangers. this type of guy isn't too new to me, after working traditional boats. i also felt a lot of kinship with him in the way he related to his dysfunctional, materialistic parents. the film editing was awesome in the first hour, and then it seems as though maybe someone else took over. it got a lot more erratic halfway into it, but i loved the shooting style of the opening scenes - the subject of every shot was left mostly out of the picture, making me imagine what was going on over there...

on saturday i went sailing on a j24. well no i didn't really go sailing... we took the boat out in 25 knots of wind and couldn't get the main up. on this boat the luff bolt rope slides into a track on the mast, and the mainsail holds up the boom cos there's no topping lift. so there we were - attempting to set the main, with the boom sagging into the cockpit and even getting stuck under the main traveler there, with a green sailor on the tiller who had only sailed lake washington, with 25 knots of wind and a 2-3 foot chop outta the south and me never having been on a j24. but i'm thinking what the fuck this can't be that hard... it seems as though the helmsperson is never heading the boat up enough to set this thing, so the skipper and i are constantly yelling back at her, poor thing. the halyard was bizarrely difficult to haul so i figured there must be something wrong with this main rigging. apparently with a setup like this the boat has to be straight into the wind because since the actual SAIL is in the track, drag created by the bolt rope up against the track can work against the upward motion too much. so the helmsperson is freaking out and i'm trying to keep the floppy sail on the boat and i yell back at her to just let everything go so the boat will head up on it's own. instead, as if it didn't have a keel, the boat turns abeam of the wind and heels over about 45 degrees! later we find out that this boat is "finicky" and never heads up when left to it's own devices. we bring the sail down and decide to return to the marina to drink wine. an hour of listening to a sail luff really hard, while manually holding the boom in place is enough on the nerves to give up on a little daysail. two hours later the three of us were drunk when the other two boats in our group pulled in. they all went out to eat but i headed over to nanettes.

today i visited a friend who wants to advertise in my zine, and PAY for it (!!!) he hosts a brunch in his basement and backyard every year, and today was the day. whenever i'm in ballard now i see all these condos going up, all these neo yuppies or whatever they are walking around, often with cute babies or dogs, and inevitably i start thinking about how ballard used to be. i grew up partly in ballard and greenwood when my mom still had me, and my mom went to ballard high school. nanette lives across the street from where my kindergarten was, and there's condos there now. i used to run around golden gardens and the locks. the neighborhood was full of old Norwegians. every time i move back to seattle now i feel a deeper divide between the grungy blue collar seattle that i grew up in and respect, and the northern version of LA that we are turning into. but a walk past all the condos and restored craftsman homes to visit adrian is always refreshing...

this house was bought by he and his girlfriend about 5 years ago for just under 400K. it's now worth twice that. it doesn't matter that it's trashed, there's 2 shades of blue paint randomly covering the siding, there's chickens in the front yard and a tore up backyard. somebody would pay that much for a 3 story solidly structured brick home on this very valuable piece of property. back when he and his gf were still together, the house didn't look like this. they held sopranos dinner parties and we all drank wine and sat at a big dinner table. now he holds shows in the basement, huge parties that offend his neighbors, he doesn't allow clothing in his hot tub, and he rents his rooms out to really fun folks who enjoy hanging out as much as he does.

so i get there and noticed the chickens were loose and going over to the neighbors and so i corralled them back to the yard, then went to the basement to find adrian cooking up eggs, bacon and hashbrowns on a big grill in the corner. he had a bucket full of bloodymary with ice in a pan on top and a bowl of celery sticks and olives next to it. (that's adrian cooking and the girl on the right is a researcher for UW Fisheries and wants to be photographed in her waders for my calendar!! LoL) a few chairs were in the basement along with a big folding table for everyone to eat at. the crowd was made up of maritime folks, some baristas, local musicians, and some other young people who have office jobs. after eating we eventually migrated to the backyard where adrian started a burn pile - dry brush and futon frame. i hung out with john, an older dude who works on longliners in the bering sea. erin, who has a dog named latka. this is latka guarding erin's cigs by the hot tub. erin told us how she had to spend a night in jail a few weeks ago after a swat team got called by accident to her boyfriend's house and she flipped one of them off. i really liked erin and also lia, who invited everyone to a squidjigging and whiskey party at one of the piers downtown next month.

i love the mix of people i always find at adrians, especially in what seems to be a more and more pretentious and cliquish city. anyone who doesn't have too much of an attitude is welcome there.

wrapping my brain around a tough situation

today i was able to visit with my grandma for the first time since june. it was only a 15 minute visit, as she lives near my thursday delivery route and i was slightly ahead of schedule today. i can't say enough good things about my grandma (on my mom's side). she's almost 70 years old and totally fit and pretty and smiley and active. lately i've been more worried than usual about how in 20 years i might end up as paranoid, argumentative, self-absorbed and living in denial as my own parents... especially when i think about how my dad's mom was always that way and then died of alzheimers, and how i don't even know my mom's dad because he was murdered in indiana at a young age. but my dad's dad was sweet and kind right to the end, and my one living grandparent, my mom's mom, is healthier than most people i know, no matter what their age. mentally AND physically. and she even smokes!! LoL. here's hoping i have her genes.

i can at least look back and justify the teenage angst i had. it'd be different if i could have grown up and realized how wise and responsible and morally sound my parent's were, and that i'd been a silly rebellious teenager all those years. as it turns out, i was already probably more wise, responsible and morally sound by age 21 than they will ever be - if for no other reason than i didn't bring a life into the world that i couldn't do right by, and i don't force others to take care of me. but trust me... there's a lot more evidence than that. i don't need to carry on about that here.

my father's paranoia, poor memory, and confrontational behavior is so extreme now that often i cannot communicate with him at all. it's akin to visiting an elder in a home and have them start accusing you of spilling your milk when you were five. he's totally functional otherwise, but this has become very upsetting to experience and observe, and i'm not at all capable of dealing with him. i asked my grandma what to do about it and she said there's nothing i can do. unfortunately his new wife has some issues herself and perpetuates his paranoia and negativity. it's all very sad and awful. he's only 55 years old.

note to self: don't die.

had a visit with my dad yesterday... we spoke about christmas and there's some problems with figuring all that out but it looks as though it'll all work out and my friends from michigan and i are heading out to the methow valley for a wintry christmas holiday! so that's something to look forward to.

right now i have so much to do. finish issue 3. design both student and volunteer sail training programs for this sail non prof i'm volunteering for. finish an online newsletter for same non prof. work on my docking skills... all within a week! yikes.

off topic, today i was listening to my fave local radio station, kexp, but they're talking a lot during their week of fundraising. so after continuing to listen to that most of the day, i decide to turn the dial to "the end" which is what i listened to in my early 20's, before kexp existed. some dj called laslow or maslow is talking about some hospital worker dude who's being accused of having sex with a dead body. this dj goes on to say that in his (the dj's) opinion, dead bodies have no rights and necr0philia shouldn't be illegal. it kinda made me sick. and it definitely made me turn it back to kexp and happily endure the pledge drive chatter. oh yeah... i forgot to mention how the "107.7 the end" dj followed up all this gross banter with nirvana's "rape me."

cookies and parties

Finally I had a friday where I didn't fuck up too terribly at work. Well, actually I still fucked up a lot but substantially less than usual. Sometimes my fumblings and forgetfulness make me think I have MS or early onset alzheimers or sumthin. Even though the guys at work had other plans they agreed to go out drinking with me for a bit, which was fun as usual. I had plans to go see No Fi Soul Rebellion at a club by my house, but my friend convinced me to not go see a show with a cover by myself, and instead come see him and partman play at a private halloween party in fremont. I didn't really want to go because I didn't know anyone there and it's not my "scene" but I was really looking forward to seeing the bands. At 9pm he called to say it was totally dead there, so i didn't bother trying to get a cab until 10:30. no cabs. i hop a bus to downtown and hop a cab on first street, then i get all the way there JUST as the last band wraps up. i actually stepped in the door as they sang their last note. lame. there's all these hot 25 year old cap hill folks from the same large extended group of musician friends... when the opportunity came to sneak out unnoticed, I bailed.

saturday i met up with a sailing group i just joined. that was pretty nice. i guess i'm just as stuck up as any cliqueish person sometimes because i'm not that interested in meeting new people who aren't into boats. although i like hearing everyone's different story and even hypothesizing the psychology behind their behavior or attitude (not too seriously though. i know people don't like to be categorized. or 'figured out'). oh oh i also watched the freakin crazy movie "Deadbeat at Dawn" by jim van bebber. i don't even know how to explain it, but it's AWESOME. awesomely bad!!! it's a tie between bad/badass. so fun to watch. not truly bad like TROLL 2 (sorry, austin folks). A much better kind of bad than that for sure.

today i went to salmon bay with nanette and proceeded to spend FOUR HOURS making my delicious special oatmeal cookies. three batches, fools! AND homemade chai. hmmm mm. i'm LIVING on oatmeal cookies this week.

tomorrow it's lunch with dad and a trip to the OD.

youre my favorite

there was a lull

i have so many pics i'd like to post and explain, but i'll probably end up just putting them on flickr instead of waiting for blogger to upload them. doing both takes forever. until then, this girl took a lot of nice photos.

the Classic Boat Show was a success. i almost won the heaving line throwing contest. almost. i definitely sucked at the "throw the eye around the bollard" contest. but my new friend colleen from a noaa boat almost won that. i saw Morgan Schneidler amazingly enough. it's been years and years. i saw some noaa crew that i hadn't seen since last spring, made a friend named jennifer from bounty and hi. sea. took some videos (check my youtube later).

i escaped right after to enjoy happy hour with cass and eric, then returned for a nice dinner aboard Virginia V. a lot of people that i haven't met before seem to know about my magazine, which is cool.

that was pretty much my weekend. besides last night when i bought some leg warmers from american apparel. i've been doing a crappy job at work lately - breaking stuff by accident and screwing up my deliveries, but hopefully that'll stop soon.

mytube

i posted several old videos to my youtube account. check them out here - but all the ones of a chanty sing on the Bill are black because there was no light. it's hard to find regular old sailors singing chanties on the net, so i thought i'd post them anyway.

internal diablogue

jarad said he read that rant/post, and told me i am too nice and when i "turn" i have such an unexpected commanding presence that a guy can't help but go screeeeeeech! what the fuck did i do? oh shit! my only argument to this is that number 1, i think people should ALWAYS treat me well if i'm treating them well... a few bad days being the exception of course. and number 2, before i "turn" there's plenty of subtlety proceeded by clear communication (i'll draw pictures and instructions and really give you the benefit of the doubt for a long time!). yeah not to start ranting again, but that shit seems to go unnoticed. it's the claws and teeth that really do the job.

ACTUALLY no. you know what i'm missing? that there IS a point between kindly copious instruction and full on confrontation. it's the firm but calm I'm Not Taking This Any More tone and sticking to that. resolved!

this week at work was standard. friday deliveries were super-fucked in the morning, though. i deliver to a lot of places where i have to wait around for the receiver to show up, and one place is notorious for keeping me waiting, then sometimes sending me back without even receiving my delivery. friday morn found myself and 3 other drivers hanging out in a hallway for half an hour waiting for the receiver to show up from her coffee run. the wait was ridiculous but it was entertaining to hang out with the other drivers. later i had to take several heavy boxes up 3 flights of stairs. have i mentioned that i'm leaner than i've pretty much EVER been in my life? thanks to this job. oh oh and i found a STUMPTOWN coffee up on cap hill yesterday, thank god. that coffee was one of a few things i miss about portland. to quote Geoff Carter in this article: "You'll want to wear this stuff like cologne and breathe it in lieu of air." and also... the best chocolate chip cookies in all seattle! so work was done around 3pm and later went to the taco truck and watched the movie "chumscrubber." pretty dumb overall but they did accurately capture the selfish and retarded social attitudes of suburban parents. kid throws knife in wall, parent says Who Did That? Yr Gonna Fix That! not What's wrong? What made you do that? Are you OK? nobody believing or even listening to any kid speak, so the kids, sensing the dumb confused look on parents' faces, just say it's a "school" thing. everyone taking tons of prescription drugs, etc. etc. Strangely there were LOTS of big names in the film, like Ralph Fiennes, Glen Close, Rita (tom hanks wife..), carrie ____ (trinity from matrix), and several other recognizable faces. The adult actors did a good job. Maybe this was pitched to them as social commentary regarding the fucked up hotbed of dysfunction known as upper middle class Suburban Life. in that respect, it works, but most of the dialogue/plot/acting involves the teens and it sucks.

nothing happened today. unless you count that i can now DIGEST EGGS!!!!! yippeee!

g.r.a.p.e a.d.v.e.n.t.u.r.e

Yesterday I joined Brian Clampitt to go check out the Arthur Foss hauled out for an annual check-up at the Northlake Shipyard. There were a few people working on seams and paint and getting ready to splash at 3pm. I took pics but of course I can't upload them.

JB was in town so I met him for lunch at the 5-spot on Queen Anne, where he's staying with his sister, and we walked around and eventually went to buy a bottle of wine for him to drink on his train ride later that night. I suggested he buy Owen Roe's Sharecropper's Cab, and he offered me a glass before I rode my bike home. It's pretty good - not worth $20 though. I definitely should have let it breathe a little longer before that first sip. Owen Roe's Abbots Table Red is still my favorite lately. Although I have a bottle of Terres Dorees Beau Blanc and Bellevue La Foret Fronton Rose in the fridge so I should check one of those out tonight. I'm learning more about wine, and for anyone reading who was as ignorant as I when it comes to picking wines, know that you CAN find really good wine for between $8 and $15. Abbot's Table is not that cheap, but there's a lot of good ones that are. I'm so done drinking Gato Negro, Fetzer and all that other bottom shelf crap. I drank it for a year and got burnt out on wine altogether. I'm willing to spend an extra $4 for a decent tasting wine. Especially since it doesn't make me bloaty like beer does, and it has a higher alcohol content. It's kinda fun, too. If anyone reading this is going out to buy wine soon, domestics by Owen Roe winery and Syncline are great. The french wine Les Heretiques, the italian wine "Boira," and a champagne called "Godme" are all really popular. I still don't know much about wine, but I wish I'd had someone to tell me what kind to take to dinner parties over the years!

another weekend not spent learning InDesign

this weekend i joined my friend fluffz at the wedding of his bandmate. somebody posted an entire album of pics on flickr. it was pretty fun. i like events like that, even if i dont know very many people. plus the coconut coolouts played, and i've wanted to see them for awhile, after hearing a few songs on the radio. highlights of the reception for me: the couple's dog trying to jump on them during their first dance as a married couple, cupcakes with frosting that looked like the groom, catering made up of delivery pizza, sparks, a keg, peanut m&ms, and plenty of booze, the groom taking over the job of bartender (one shot for you, one for himself) and calling out to everyone when his mom came to the bar "EVERYONE, THIS IS MY MOMMY......SHE MADE ME!!!..... YOU SHOULD ALL THANK HER!"

we then went to ballard to see a band called PartMan PartHorse for the "Reverb Festival" and got there too late. so fluffz said we should go see The Lights but instead we sat in a dirty alley waiting for the show time to come around, then ended up leaving anyway and taking (waiting for) the bus. anyway everyone seems to think the band Partman parthorse is amazing, so maybe i'll check them out another time.

the arthur foss is hauled out so i might go take some pics of that tomorrow.

bitchiness reigns on Mars

thanks, men of the world, for teaching me that i'll get your attention and respect if i act irritated or bitchy... (but nothing during the majority of time we know each other and i still really care).

and the funny thing is that i often befriend or date the type of guy who says "girls don't like nice guys like me... they always go for assholes!"