Should I Be Concerned?

Tonight, Bryan and I went over to have dinner at Mae Ploy. This was in his fortune cookie:

In case it's a little hard to read, it says "you are going to have a new love affair". I don't know, I think it's a little awkward to put that in a cookie.

My Golden Compass

I am a big fan of the His Dark Materials series (aka Harry Potter for grown ups) so I've been eagerly awaiting the release of the movie even though I realize it can't possibly live up to the books. Even so, I discovered today that I have my own daemon matched to my personality. What do you think? Is it a fit?

The Happiness of Fish

When I was in college, and longing for a dog, I got a fish. It was one of those multi-colored, iridescent fighting fish that will bash it's head against the walls of it's tank if you so much as place a mirror in front of it. Sometimes, when I'm reading coverage of the war, I think of that fish...

But this is not that story, nor is it an explanation for why it's been a month (!) since my last post (though I will say for the record that the SAT takes place this Saturday, that Presence still needs sound to be divided into takes, that I started working in an office part time, that Art of Tea needs posts and editing, and on and on).

This is the story of the fish I had in college. It was named by Jeff and it's name was Chinese. I can't remember now - but Jeff, if you read this, would you please remind me. So he names the fish a word that means "the happiness of fish". This term is from a Chinese proverb that I recently rediscovered in a Coetze book about animal rights.

The Happiness of Fish

Chuang Tzu and Hui Tzu had strolled on to the bridge over the Hao, when the former ovserved, "See hoe the minnows are darting about! That is the pleasure of fishes."
"You not being a fish yourself," said Hui Tzu, "how can you possibly know in what consists the pleasures of fishes."
"And you not being I," retorted Chuang Tzu, "how can you know that I do not know?"
"If I, not being you, can not know what you know," urged Hui Tzu, "it follows that you, not being a fish, cannot know in what consists the pleasure of fishes."
"Let us go back," said Chuang Tzu, "to you original questions. You asked me how I knew in what consists the pleasure of fishes. You very questions shows that you know I knew. I knew it from my own feelings on the bridge."


Let that be your wisdom from the east for the day.

I'm Moving to Idaho

Seriously. I was listening to Weekend America today while driving to a student's house, and there was a story about this one town in Idaho that normally has lows of 35F this time of year. 35 DEGREES!!! Last night we couldn't even sleep upstairs in our bedroom it was so hot. Mel moves about 1 foot every 30 minutes to find a new patch of cool concrete. It's pathetic. I hate global warming. It's all humid and sticky - NOT the SoCal weather I've grown up in.

Anyway...it's been crazy this week. Maria's Pirates and Ninjas show opened last night and I was at the theater all day yesterday helping to paint the floor and make the programs. Plus, my first blog is up at Art of Tea (I explain biodynamics!) and there's about a six hour window every day that it's just simply too hot to work.

But here's my latest addition to the online collection of Ginny Larsen photos:


I love it. It speaks for itself. I'm going to go stick my head in the freezer.

My Brain is Melting

One of the hazards of living in a cool loft/converted carriage house is the lack of literal coolness come summertime. While it's true that our place is probably cooler than other non-air-conditioned buildings in the city, given the nature of its design (let's hear it for cross-ventilation - yeah!), it still hurts. And you can't stop me from whining. But I promise this will be the only post in which I do so.

I tried to work on cutting the movie today. I couldn't even focus my eyes on the screen. Even writing this is making me cranky because the battery is hot and it makes my wrist sweat. Sigh. I bet Hemingway never had trouble with sweating wrists when he wrote. Or if he did, he probably just called for his Cuban butler to bring him another Mojito. Maybe I should start writing about bullfights.

Or get an air conditioner like people keep suggesting to me. Only here's the thing: how's a girl supposed to stay all righteous about the environment when she's using extra power to keep her wrists cool. She can't, and therein lies the rub. So with air unconditioned I write this. Don't be expecting any recipes anytime soon...as I'm barely willing to turn on the stove to make iced tea.

Boxes, Boxes Everywhere...

...and not a thing to pack.

Okay, so that's not actually very accurate. In fact there were thousands of things to pack. I have a new appreciation for the work David and Kevin (and once upon a time, Bryan) do. Packing up other people's things is hard work!

Basically what happened was that I spent Monday and Tuesday helping Kevin and his crew pack up this little garage behind a house in the Crenshaw area that was literally filled with the largest collection of black literature and cultural artifacts on the West Coast. That element of it was cool. The bummer was that the room we were packing looked like this:
And that was after we spent a day packing. Before we started you couldn't see past that pile in the middle. The first day they had a hard time even getting the door open.

It was actually really interesting because as I'd pack old newspapers and magazines I'd come across some incredible photographs or an original manuscript from a slave. Really incredible documents.

By the end of Day 2 the front room looked like this:

(in the background is the room from the upper picture). They still had at least two and maybe three more days to go. The deal was that they had recently acquired a space to house this collection in a permanent organized way. But because the mold and silverfish were so bad in this old space, all of the books and papers have to first be frozen to kill everything. So Kevin and his guys had to literally double plastic bag every individual box (and by the end we were figuring that it would be about 500 boxes).

This is me, Kevin and his crew at the end of a LONG day.

I think I'm going to stick with writing and producing and leave the moving to the people with stronger backs.

If You Give A Guest a Chair...

...they're going to need another.

It's funny because it wasn't even his fault. All he did was sit down and the chair shattered underneath him. The unavoidable diet jokes were bandied about, but in truth he's a fairly slim guy. It could have happened to anyone. Now we're down to 5 of the 20 year old chairs I grew up with. Sigh. I don't know what I'm going to do the next time I have a dinner party for more than five people.

Thank goodness the food, at least, was good.

Thanks Greg

I don't know if you've noticed but Green Urban has a new look thanks to the technical wizardry of my brother. Seriously, I look at a page of html and see gobbledy gook, he looks at it and speaks its language. Crazy. But thank God we have one in the family.

Also, when I was at Auna and Jake's new house I noticed that they were both running firefox as their web browser. I assumed this was because they are scientists and know about this sort of thing. I, in turn, switched, and discovered that firefox supports all kinds of fun features of Blogspot that I didn't know were there. Like a formatting palette.

So thanks Auna, Greg and Jake, for understanding computers, so that I don't have to.

Oh and in case you were wondering, yes that is Bryan sitting on the floor of our house. I think he's eating a burrito. This picture was taken before we painted the walls and stripped the floor.

Goodbye Ranger

It's official, we're selling the Ranger. That's right. The car that got us safely to and from the Yukon (via Alaska of course) is now up for grabs.


If you know anyone looking for a truck, let us know. It's a good truck, we've never had any major problems with it.


Oh and there is this little dent in the fender, so it would be ideal for someone who may be new to driving or just wants a truck to beat up.


It's sad to see it go, but the Kramers just generously passed on their 4Runner to us, and so the time has come to part with Randolph the Ranger (I just made up that name - it is NOT Bryan-approved).

All Better

Two weeks later and I now have a new windshield, hood and headlight.

In other news, Bryan thinks I'm getting obsessed with baking bread. Moi? Obsessed? Just because I said I was going to read every word on every page of this bread book before I mixed flour and water again? I thought that given how many of my loaves have met their maker, and then been thrown on the compost pile, it was a good idea. He assures me he agrees.

I already know a couple of places I went wrong:

1. FLOUR. I was using regular ordinary Pillsbury Flour from the grocery store. Apparently this is a big mistake as only stone ground organic flour will give you the good tasting old world style breads that I want to make.

2. Temperature! Temperature! Temperature! Apparently this whole baking thing is a VERY PRECISE science, involving not only measuring spoons (which were only added to my repoirte in the past year) but also thermometers. In order to get the yeast to behave just right, it's important to have the correct temperatures for the flour, water and air. Not to mention factoring in you friction factor (which is how much the dough is heated by your individual kneading style). Yikes! So I can't say exactly where I went wrong in the past because all I have is a candy thermometer, and I only used that for the water (with the thinking, 'well it's within 10 degrees of what the package says, that should be fine')

3. Baking Sheet. Silly me for thinking I could use a cooking sheet to bake bread. No in fact I need a piece of stone or brick or tiles to get the crust nice and crunchy.

These things will be gathered before my next attempt. I'll keep you all posted, as I'm sure you're all routing for me right? right? Come'on you know I'm going to show up to the holidays with a loaf of bread, and if I don't have your moral support it will be inedible. Just be glad you're not my guinea pig - I mean husband.

So Sad

I can almost understand breaking a window if you're going to steal something. But just smashing my windshield for no good reason? So uncool.

There goes buying plants for the fall.

Sigh.

The Music Coming Through My Bedroom Window

They practiced for hours.

Farmer's Market Dahlia

Life is good.

A Nose by Any Other Name...

would not smell as sweetly.



Yesterday I worked 16 1/2 hours on a State Farm commercial as a PA - not the most glamorous work but it helps to pay the bills. As I was in the midst of logging about 300 miles in office runs and misc errands I watched this happen...


It occurred to me yesterday, that unlike ALL of the union guys, the longer I worked, the less money I made per hour. This sunset made me feel better.

Why I HEART Trader Joe's

$3 in the cute blue pot, ready for my desk.


$2 basil plant. For what it costs to buy a little container of basil that will last maybe 4 days, they have these big basil plants right now.

'Nuff said.