Stepping
July 13, 2011
Everybody has a favorite place in their home, right? Whether you rent or own, house or apartment, there’s some place where you like to spend time. An obvious answer for me would be in my bed. I love sleeping. I love fading in and out on a weekend morning. But when I’m asleep, I’m not awake actually enjoying it. For the awake experience, I choose my front steps.
As you can see, beer once again is usually involved. That’s because a couple of years ago, two things came into play. First, I had been working out regularly since March and it was then summer and warm. After working out after work, I would then walk or bike home. Second, at some point I accidentally discovered that Sorella Wine & Spirits was a not inconvenient one block detour on that walk or bike home. I’d pop over for some tasty supplies for what I started calling Home Happy Hour. Because it was summer, I’d enjoy sitting on my front steps when the air was still warm from the day, but the sun had sunk behind the god-awful ugly high-rises and wasn’t directly cooking me. It became a favorite thing to do.
Last summer, I bought two cheap, low lawn chairs—I guess they’re known as “beach chairs”—and that transformed the experience for the better. The steps were good, but now I had a more comfortable seat with a chairback and which was low to the ground to facilitate stretching my legs out. Heaven. Then I discovered that the chair tucks nicely into my front door alcove and combines with the protection of the second level deck overhead to make for a wonderful storm-enjoying setup. It’s usually after dark when I sit outside for that, with or without tasty beverage.
It’s not always Home Happy Hour when I sit on the steps, but most of the time it is (oh, and a couple of gratuitous rabbits from the yard). What’s your favorite place at home?
The getting of the rabbit tattoo
July 6, 2011
Perhaps you read the tale of how I came to the decision, despite having professed for years that I’d never ever want one, to go ahead and get a tattoo. Here, then, is the account of the experience, from designing the perfect rabbit suitable for permanent emblazonment to, tee hee, Sparky McFuzznuts the squirrel.
I have drawn this rabbit a lot in the last year and a half, yet when it came time to draw one for the tattoo, well, I guess I experienced some performance pressure. I thought I’d whip one out in a maximum of ten rabbits. Turns out, it was fifteen pages of twenty-four rabbits. That’s just under one rabbit for each day of the year.
I didn’t love any of them on paper, but I picked the ones that passed as my favorites, cut them out and taped them to a single sheet of paper, and scanned them in. As a graphic designer, I was confident in the digital magic that could be done. I narrowed it down to parts of three or four rabbits that I knew I could Frankenstein together for The One.
In choosing The One, I practiced what I’ve preached to my mother on many a Teddy bear shopping excursion. It’s true that there are ten or twenty Teddies to choose from. And I know you want to choose the one with the cutest face. But once you get any one of the ten or twenty home and away from the other nine or nineteen, you won’t know the difference.
Once I got the rabbits to where I liked them, I employed the same strategy. It came down to one rabbit with two minor variations. I knew that once I got one away from the other, I’d never know the difference. Having also learned from playing Trivial Pursuit, I went with my first instinct.
The final decision was the size. After I had drawn a bunch of the rabbits, I started to think that maybe it didn’t need to be quite that big. I printed out the final rabbit in a range of sizes and decided to go just a little bit smaller.
Jers was my tattoo artist at Saint Sabrina’s. I tried to draw him out on some advice—he was the professional, after all—but he kept insisting that it was my tattoo and my decision about anything I asked him. Then I realized that the squirrel he was holding on his business card was actually his furry companion, Sparky McFuzznuts. Then I saw the back of the card.
During the process, I quizzed Jers about Sparky. I refused to look at what he was doing. It’s not that I’m afraid of needles or blood, but I just have this habit of psyching myself out and I didn’t want to take any chances. Learning about Sparky was the perfect distraction.
Jers said he rescued Sparky as an orphaned youngster. He nursed him to adulthood and tried to set him free, but Sparky just hung around the yard so Jers accepted him as an indoor companion. Sparky is about three.
It wasn’t too painful. I had figured it would be akin to when my cat CJ is in her basket just to the side of my mouse arm and decides that she needs to be in physical contact with me. She reaches out and doesn’t exactly dig in, but still she kind of grapples my arm and hangs on and it’s prickly. I anticipated that the tattoo would be heavy-duty prickly. It was more like CJ was scratching. Not painful, but quite noticeable.
I endured—adrenalin was definitely in play—but I was very happy when Jers let up and it seemed like he was taking a break. Then, before I could remark, he said, “You’re done!” What? It didn’t even take fifteen minutes. It is a simple design and I had no previous experience to judge by, but I sure wasn’t expecting to be finished that quickly.
It’s been a week and a half and, thankfully, I’ve not had a moment of buyer’s remorse. Jers did a wonderful job and I love my tattoo!
The cat???s the thing
June 4, 2011
Do you live with a cat? Then you know that if you put something down on the floor, they will come. A good box is hard to resist. Maru knows it, my cats know it. This, then, is the story behind the photo above, which I think ranks second of my all-time favorite my-cats stories.
A few months ago I finally joined the 2000s and got a large, flat-screen TV. I had been lumbering along with my old 21-inch CRT television that I think was close to twenty years old. I unpacked the new beauty and set it up, and put the box in front of some bookshelves in my middle room while I decided if I was going to keep the TV and then, having decided yes to that, whether I thought I needed to keep the box. During the time in which I was ignoring that monumental decision, my parents came to visit and I moved the box to the front room because I needed to get it out of the way.
(Even if you just started reading my blog a week ago, you can picture this, can’t you?, since I helpfully shared my floorplan on May 26. If you read that post—in which I semi-whined about the cool temperatures we’ve had so far this spring—please know that the forecast for the next week doesn’t show highs below 80F/28C. That’s how it goes in Minnesota. You can’t quite bring yourself to stash your winter coat, and then all of a sudden you’re screaming for air conditioning. But I digress.)
In the evening as we all were lounging in the front room where the large, flat TV box now was, none of us humans were really paying attention to what the cats (and rabbits, mine and my parents’) were doing until Dasie perched on the arm of the chair next to the box with obvious intent. She’s very athletic, generally, but somehow she managed to be in some weirdo position so that when she finally did vault herself into the box, she ended up doing a backflop into it. Not a bellyflop, but a backflop.
I grabbed for the iPhone because I knew there would be a photo opp. According to my mother, during the three seconds that I had my back turned, the cat came leaping right back out of the box, only it wasn’t Dasie. Unbeknownst to anyone (Dasie included judging by the look on her face), CJ was already in the box. My mom started howling with laughter at the sight of a black and white cat going in, and an all-black cat coming out. I just managed to snap this photo as Dasie surfaced, confused by any or all of the above.
This might be my favorite photo that I’ve ever taken of any of my four cats (two past, two present). It’s the gift that keeps on giving partly, I suppose, because I know that it fits right in with the rest of her personality. It makes a wonderful lock screen on my iPhone.
It’s not my favorite cat story though, because I didn’t actually see the cause and effect. Favorite story of all time goes to my original cat Dhia, pictured below also in a box. When she was just a squirt (read, young and spastic) she was lounging on the back of my bed, not asleep but not paying attention. I snuck up on her and smacked my hand down on the bed very close to her. She launched straight up into the air. Well, apparently not quite straight up, because when she came back down, she slid right down into the six-inch gap between my bed and the wall like a piece of bread in a toaster. The look of utter surprise on her face was priceless. Priceless. Mind you, I don’t make a habit of laughing at others’ misfortune but right now, twenty years later, it still makes me giggle out loud.
Just like I chuckle every time I look at this photo of Dasie.
May 21, 2011
The busy life of a rabbit
June 2, 2011
In 2003, when Robbin was just a bun, I captured ten minutes of still photos of him just going about his important rabbit business. I had printed out the photos and bound them together in a little book. I wanted to take a movie of me flipping the pages—because it sort of makes a little movie like a flipbook—but I moved five and a half years ago and I couldn’t find it. So I did the next best thing, made a quick video of the photos. That’s my former cat Dhia hanging out with Robbin.
Evolution of a tattoo
June 1, 2011
A year and a half ago, I drew this marker tattoo of a rabbit on my wrist. As the day wore on and then it was still there, albeit somewhat faded, after my shower the next morning, I slowly decided that I didn’t mind it. It faded from my thoughts until six weeks ago when once again, the rabbit appeared on my wrist. And I really liked having it there. (Blog post / TT mission // Blog post / TT mission)
It was then that my friend Lauren (the same one who had us thinking about cover songs the other night) gave me the old peer pressure one-two.
She lives in Philadelphia, but whenever she’d come to Minneapolis to visit our friend Rob (the one who moved to California, remember?), the two of them would always pay a visit to Saint Sabrina’s Parlor of Purgatory to get something pierced.
Lauren is coming to town later this month for a family thing on her husband’s side. She has made a case for me to take over for Rob in accompanying her to Saint Sabrina’s (looks like they’ve dropped the Parlor of Purgatory from their name). She has a new tattoo that she’d like to get, and I am just about sure that I will get the rabbit. I submitted a request for an estimate and if the price is less than the arbitrary cut-off point I’ve set, I’LL DO IT!
As I was looking back through my Tweak Today submissions, I saw how often this rabbit has made an appearance, and in what varied mediums. Its appearance has also evolved somewhat, from the kind of pensive fellow in the original marker tattoo to the rather more coiled fellow in the second marker tattoo and the recent chalk drawing.
Here, then, is a gallery of … The Rabbit.
Drawn in condiments. Hershey’s chocolate syrup and Readi-Whip, to be exact. (Blog post / TT mission)
Cut paper picture, recreating a way I used to make art as a kid. (Blog post / TT mission)
Connect the dots. (Blog post / TT mission)
Blaze orange duct tape 3D sculpture. (Blog post / TT mission)
Hopping mad. (Blog post / TT mission)
A woodcut I made, art for the sake of art. (Blog post / Blog post 2 / TT mission)
Carved on a zucchini. (Blog post / TT mission)
In a picture to hang on your refrigerator. (Blog post / TT mission)
Chalk drawing on the bike path. (Blog post / TT mission)
[Update: The tattoo price estimate did come in within range and I did get it. Read all about it in this later post.]
Chillin???, er, chilly
May 27, 2011
It is May 26 and I have just turned my heat on. Why, you ask? Is it because I live in the southern hemisphere and it’s winter? Is it because I forgot to shut the refrigerator door? No, it’s because my place is old and drafty.
I live in a rowhouse which was built in the 1890s. It’s very solid and heavy, but I have a feeling that the ground it occupies is not all that solid. Consequently, the building must be constantly shifting as it settles its 115-year-old self. I’m on the ground level and my cement floor has become more and more uneven as my five and a half years of residence have passed.
We are in the northern hemisphere, and spring has been a little stingy about having consistently seasonally temperatures. The sun is high and warm if you’re basking in it, but the air temperature has mostly on the cool side of the average. But I was still running the heat regularly until two weeks ago. And it was just five days ago that I allowed myself to be publicly excited about not having had it on for a whole week! Then, a couple of chilly evenings and tonight I’m reaching for the On switch.
My place takes its time warming up in the spring. I suppose that’s mostly because of all the tiny cracks that must exist in the walls and door and window frame from its age and unsteady footing. Sometimes I wonder if the floorplan has a little to do with it, too, although I can’t imagine that would really be relevant.
Being a rowhouse, the space is long, narrow, and open, with no full interior walls. The floorplan was one of the things that attracted me to it. Of course the bathroom is enclosed, and there are a couple of nice walk-in closets with walls. Three half walls help with the rest of the load-bearing duties. But I have no rooms and no doors. Privacy is tricky when I have visitors.
I drew the diagram above when I bought the place so that I could plan things. You’re seeing the paint color layer. The sitting room and living room have since become known more basically as the front room and the middle room. I’m nothing if not practical.
Practicality is probably part of causes me to whine about turning the heat on tonight. By the end of May, you’d sure think you wouldn’t have to any more. It’s a psychological thing. But I sure will take this kind of weather any time over the inevitable temperature destination that will have me turning the air conditioning on.
I myself step up in tornado relief
May 26, 2011
I’m not trying to make it sound overly grandiose, I was just going for parallel construction with the title from Monday night’s entry because this is a related story. As the big scheme goes, it was only a baby step.
Tonight, I joined the Smack Shack food truck crew in north Minneapolis and helped dish up free food for tornado survivors for three and a half hours. It was nothing fancy—hotdogs with or without chili, some Hamburger Helper pasta, and ice cream. Chicken nuggets and chicken wings also made brief appearances. But for the neighborhood people, many of whom literally have no roof over their heads, or who asked for extra to take back to the people who had stayed at the house to safeguard it, it was plenty alright.
The important thing here for me is that this was the first volunteering of any kind I’ve ever done in my entire life. For some background on how out of character this is for me, please take a minute to read this recent post, the theme of which was a fortune cookie fortune which read “conscience is a man’s compass” and which involved some self-examination on the topic.
I can’t claim that it was some bolt of lightning striking that got me out there tonight. It’s true that when I see accounts of disasters on the news, I sometimes wish I was in a position to be able to jet off to the location and give some man-hours to clean-up, recovery, whatever. My thinking is usually in terms of physical labor versus interacting with people. I am uncomfortable around people a lot of the time.
My reason was much more mundane and self-serving. Smack Shack is one of my favorites of the food trucks that began appearing in the Twins Cities last summer. As a loyal customer both to the truck and to the bar in whose kitchen they wintered, I have established an acquaintance with the proprietor and chef, Josh Thoma. The trucks fascinate me because all of the chef-proprietors turn out amazing food from a kitchen that fits in the back of a UPS van.
When the tornados hit last Sunday and I watched the live feed from one of the news helicopters, I again had the stirrings of the feeling of wanting to help, and wished I didn’t have a really big project at work that was due yesterday (and which I’ll finally finish tomorrow morning) so that I could take a couple days off for this local disaster. But I did have to go to work, so all I did on Monday was make a donation to the org GiveMN.org.
Then in the afternoon, the tweets started to come through. Several food trucks, including my three favorites, were going to make their ways to the tornado zone to hand out free food. I instinctively thought that offering my labor to one of them would be an easy way to help for a few hours and give me a little brush with food truck fame and allow me to importantly note that I worked side-by-side with Chef in tornado relief. Unfortunately, I was busy Monday night.
Due to not finishing my work project on time I didn’t feel I could go out Tuesday evening either, which I found particularly bothersome after Chef Thoma tweeted for helpers at Smack Shack. Finally tonight, Wednesday, I was available and got myself to the truck right after work.
So that brings me back to what I wondered about at the end of the “conscience” post. My reasons for being this evening’s hotdog bun stager extraordinaire were at least seventy-five percent selfish. But would the people who got some free food and could watch their kids being delighted by a small bowl of ice cream with sprinkles have cared if they knew why I was really there? Isn’t it okay that whatever my motivation, everybody got something out of it?
I can’t say explicitly that it was a life-changing experience and that I’m going to run off and join the Peace Corps or even that I’ll start volunteering at some local soup kitchen. What I can say is that at the moment, I seem to be overcome with an unusual peaceful, semi-fulfilled, extremely mellow feeling.
Photo by Smack Shack
Liquid love: now a 3-way
May 25, 2011
Over the course of various posts, you have learned how much how much I love Bell’s Oberon beer. I’ve extolled its virtues and touted it as a favorite sign of spring. Well, as of a year ago, Oberon has had to share the spotlight. It’s like Cate Blanchett’s character in the movie “Bandits” said—”What if I don’t want to choose? What if, together, you make the perfect man?” Well, Oberon and, now, Odell Brewing’s St. Lupulin extra pale ale make it impossible for me to choose my favorite spring seasonal and both have me anxiously awaiting spring.
I was first introduced to St. Lupulin a year ago during an enjoyable outing to a Minnesota Twins game with a good friend. We stopped at another of my favorites, Pizza Lucé (downtown), for solid and liquid refreshments before the game. Pizza Lucé has a decent beer list and they have a couple of spots that they rotate with seasonals and limited/special editions. I chose the Odell St. Lupulin because theretofore I had never had an EPA other than Summit’s completely delicious one.
Well, one sip in and I was in love.
I learned that Odell was new in town a year ago, and as new varieties appeared in various places, I made sure I tried every one of them. And as with the other five of my favorite breweries*, I have yet to meet one I didn’t like even if, generally, I don’t like that variety. I love all Odell beers, it seems.
As such, I’ve made it a point to follow their happenings around town. And in doing so, I’ve been getting to know the people associated with bringing this fine product to me, including Doug Odell himself.
Okay, so it was more a brush with fame with Mr. Odell than “getting to know.” In the last couple of years, I have made it my mission to get a photo of myself with the owners of each of my favorite breweries. Thus far, I have four and a half out of six. I am missing Sierra Nevada, and for Surly, I have Mr. Ansari, Omar’s dad. Guilt by association.
A week or two prior to my meeting Mr. Odell, I had attended the release party for another of their seasonals, Red Ale. Coincidentally and very happily, that event was held at the very same Pizza Lucé.
That was the same evening that I got to meet a local online friend, Holly, in person for the first time. Holly is an online acquaintance of my friend Rob’s friend Sara. Rob is my best friend from here who moved to California. Sara is one of his best friends there. Keeping up?
Holly took off and I stayed for one more. As the Odell people were winding things up, I introduced myself to two fellows, Hanszee from Odell’s distributor Capitol Beverage, and Todd the local Odell rep. It was the end of the evening and maybe they were looking to get rid of the rest of their stuff, or maybe they just appreciated my enthusiasm for their product. Hanszee gave me an Odell bottle opener key ring and a Red Ale t-shirt.
That was the start of my beer t-shirt collection.
A couple of weeks later I was excited because Doug Odell was coming to town and his meet-and-greet was being held at another of my favorite establishments, Brit’s Pub. I dorkily showed up in my Red Ale t-shirt, and it was about an hour before anybody came over to talk to me. Happily, it was Hanszee, and I explained to him my desire to get a photo with Mr. Odell, but that I was having a shy attack. Hanzee took charge and marched me over to Mr. Odell and my mission was accomplished.
There was no contact between me and the Odells for months after that. But then, spring drew nearer and I had a concrete date for the release of St. Lupulin. In quite the anticlimax, it turned out to be a week later than I had been led to believe but when it happened, the release party was thankfully at an establishment downtown and I was able to attend, barely. My parents were arriving for a visit at about the same time. I ignored that fact to go get a taste of springtime nectar.
Hanszee and Todd were there, as well as some other Odell associate who physically resembles Todd, and oddly, Nate the local Stone Brewing guy. Huh?
I was recognized and greeted, and though I would have loved to stay for two or three, I had to get going. On my way out, Hanszee offered me my snazzy St. Lupulin t-shirt. I was very excited!
A few days later one of my local stores, Zipp’s Liquors, had an Odell tasting. Turns out, Todd was there to pour. Then the following week, after a Zipp’s-sponsored major beer tasting, I got to hang out with Todd for a while, as well as a few other beer suspects including Hanszee and Tyler from Zipp’s, during a Double-Double mini-event. Double #1: Myrcenary double IPA. Double #2: Double Pils. A month earlier I had tried Myrcenary for the first time. Instant favorite!
One of the things about Odell Brewing is that the label artwork and hand-lettering is just beautiful. Such are the Myrcenary label and the St. Lupulin. I happened to notice that Todd had given a Myrcenary t-shirt to another patron. It didn’t take long before I was in possession of one myself. Heh.
So suddenly, I have five beer t-shirts, three of which are Odell**. Wokka! It’s a little bit silly how thrilled I am to have them, unless you consider how much I love what they promote!
*Bell’s, Lagunitas, Sierra Nevada, Summit, Surly (alphabetical order, because I couldn’t be expected to actually rate them)
**The other two are Surly, which I bought after a brewery tour, and Great Lakes Brewing, which was given to me at the above-mentioned Zipp’s tasting. I like the Great Lakes Commodore Perry IPA.
Odell brews I have brought home.
Odell brews I have tasted.
Food trucks step up in tornado relief
May 24, 2011
As if I didn’t already adore my local food trucks for their amazing culinary delights, today, in the aftermath of yesterday’s tornados in the Twins Cities, one of which tore through the Camden neighborhood in north Minneapolis, several of the mobile kitchens went up to the area to aid in relief food dispensation. I admire them even more. It doesn’t matter that it was mostly hot dogs and bottled water donated by grocery stores. None of them hesitated in committing to the effort.
A photographer named Tony Webster has a gallery on Flickr of shots from around the neighborhood (one of which I linked to above). There wasn’t utter obliteration as in Joplin, Missouri, but the damage was still pretty devastating.
We had had almost two inches of rain in the previous 36 hours so the ground was saturated. A lot of the damage was caused by entire trees being uprooted and falling over onto structures, rather than simply snapping and not expanding their footprint too much. I’ve seen photos of entire blocks of trees just toppled over on their sides. It weird and sad. And, of course, plenty of roofs were torn off also. That’s odd, too, to see into homes like you were the Jolly Green Giant who just pulled them off to see what’s inside.
Fortunately, unlike in Joplin, there have been “only” two related deaths so far.
If you’d like to donate to a local relief organization, GiveMN.com has a fund. I contributed what I could.
Smack Shack. At one point there was an impromptu prayer session in front of the truck.
World Street Kitchen. The comfort of a hot meal, however simple.
Chef Shack. A worker refuels.
Photos by Tony Webster, Smack Shack, World Street Kitchen, Chef Shack
Salad: a love affair
May 9, 2011
I didn’t always love beer, and I didn’t always love salad. But now I love both. My love of beer developed gradually and I couldn’t really say when. However, I think I can’t pinpoint my first salad-loving incident to Vancouver, British Columbia, in November 2004.
My parents and I were about to embark on a group holiday tour across western Canada aboard the Rocky Mountaineer train. Sort of like the Orient Express—every bit as romantic (because when isn’t overnight train travel not romantic, even if you’re only with your parents) but quite a bit less famous.
The evening before we were to begin riding the rails, the group dined out at Canada Place on the Vancouver waterfront (pictured below). It was a fine dinner and I ate mine up. It was also the first time I can remember truly enjoying eating a salad. Maybe it’s because it was (perhaps) the first one I had that consisted of darkly colored “greens” rather than pale wedges of iceberg.
At any rate, I ate mine up, and dinner, and then noticed that a couple of my dinner neighbors had left theirs untouched. So I asked if they’d mind passing them over because it would be too bad if they went to waste. They were quite happy to. And I was in my first salad rapture.
Now that I think about it, it was roughly (give or take a couple of years) around the time of my beer awakening as well. I hadn’t gone hoppy yet but I had gone dark, and regularly enjoyed Newcastle with my buddies Jim and Rob whilst we shot pool at City Billiards and they flirted with Liz, our frequent server. At the first dinner for the tour group in Winnipeg, Manitoba, we ate a place with (as I recall) “grape” in the name and Fort Garry Dark Ale on the menu. At the time it sent me into my first beer rapture.
Now I realize I’m merging Canada group tours. The Winnipeg stop was prior to boarding the train up to Churchill to commune with polar bears. Salad in Vancouver was prior to the train heading back east across the Canadian Rockies.
But the point I was going to make was, I had discovered my enjoyment of getting tipsy by the time we were dining in Vancouver, and I know I was at least mediumly tipsy that night. The salad was really delicious and, due to my tipsiness, I was emboldening to beg more off my dining neighbors.
As with the beer, I don’t know when the absolute love took over. But I do know that it has and that if you give me a choice between a large salad and most other things, I will choose the salad. If it were between salad and pizza, I’d have a tough decision, but my current favorite meal is a rare steak and a giant salad. Nothing else (except the adult beverage), just the steak and the salad.
This past week I’ve been enjoying particularly delicious salads. My grocery store changed the way they make their deli roasted chickens for the better (saltier). One of the best ways to do the salad is to get the chicken for dinner one night, then use the leftovers for really tasty big salads that are a meal in themselves from then on. Finished with olive oil and either balsamic or raspberry vinegar, and you’ve got a winner.
Salad, salad, salad!
May 4, 2011
Kelly’s Unnecessary Blog 