I ate Robbin???s cousin for dinner
February 5, 2011
Today I shocked myself by doing something that I never in a million years thought I’d ever do.
Early in the day, Surly Brewing shared that the Ngon Vietnamese Bistro would be tapping a special edition cask of their Bender Ale that was made with vanilla bean. I thought that sounded like a delightful variation on a beer I like, and I’ve been reading good reviews of the restaurant for a long time.
I looked up Ngon’s menu and the word “rabbit” immediately jumped out at me, as in Crispy Rabbit Dumpling. My reflex was to huffily dismiss it as a place I’d never go on principle because they serve up fluffy bunny rabbits. But then I read the description: “Singer House Farms rabbit rolled in a crispy shell with herbs served with a sweet curry sauce & tomato basil confit.” To my horror and amazement I found myself thinking “that sounds really delicious!” I do like curry, after all.
All day long, I kept returning to the menu in fascination, spurred by the strong desire to go have some of that special Bender. Of course I could choose to eat something else, but Crispy Rabbit Dumpling continued to sound appealing.
As I thought about it, I thought why not? Maybe a dumpling would be the perfect way to satisfy my curiosity because it would be in a less recognizable form than, say, something that looked like my rabbit Robbin’s hind leg.
I went to Ngon (changing my previous notion about indulging in some Smack Shack lobster goodness for a Friday treat) and bravely ordered. The server asked me how it was and I gave her an honest answer—interesting, I’d never eaten rabbit before. Interesting in a good way? Well, I have a pet rabbit and this is just a little weird.
“Interesting” applied more to my conflicted emotions about the act of eating it, but in the end it went just fine. It tasted like it belongs in the dark poultry meat family. I’ve found that goat is kind of like that, too, though a little grainier. I have been getting more adventurous with my eating recently and if I am going to even loosely apply the term foodie to myself, I can’t be squeamish.
I was slightly disappointed with the Bender as I couldn’t taste any extra vanilla flavor in it.
I also had a small salad and Black Sesame Shrimp, both of which were tasty as well.
The lighting was very low, so these aren’t the best photos but you get the idea. I tried to throw a little more light on the plates with the table candle, and it wasn’t until I had been moving it around for a couple minutes that I realized it wasn’t even a real candle but a good fake that flickered and all.
You know I can???t dance
January 31, 2011
Here is a video of me demonstrating a dance move that I made up. I originally called it “The Washing Machine,” but then I decided “The Agitator” had a little more pop. Not only should you admire my funky break, but also please appreciate my Minnesota dead-of-winter indoor get-up of turtleneck and wool sweater, sweat pants and long underwear, socks and sheepskin slippers—figure-flattery at its finest! I do have a furnace that works, but I keep it set a few degrees lower to conserve. Besides, when I’m bustin’ a move I get hot real fast.
Leo Sayer – “Long Tall Glasses (I Can Dance)” – buy it here.
Getting my hard on
January 27, 2011
Yesterday we got to talking about what you’d like to experience if you were the opposite gender for a day.
Many answers were predictably about having sex in various ways. Saxchik’s list was comprised of many things I already do—”First, I’d open every jar in the pantry, then I’d kill some bugs, then I’d fix things around the house, then I’d take out the trash, then I’d build a fire, drink a beer and jerk off for the rest of the day.”
I don’t understand about opening every jar in the pantry and I don’t have a fireplace. But I do kill bugs (specifically the centipedes that come with an old, garden-level apartment) and fix things around the house (such as replacing my bathroom faucet and toilet handle and plunger, and installing a programable thermostat). Of course I take out the trash, and if you’ve been a reader for any length of time you’ll have figured out that I adore beer.
Jerking off was almost interesting, but it didn’t quite capture the essence I was seeking. Sure, it’s something that as a woman I can’t do (well, at least not like that), but it’s not something I’ve ever wondered about. It was a conversation later in the evening about beer that gave me my eureka moment.
If, as a woman, I were a man for a day, I think it would be fascinating to have an erection. It must be such an odd sensation.
I suppose you men as men don’t often think about what’s going on when it’s happening. I suppose that, just as I have to carry my breasts around all day every day and they hold no mystique for me, the physiology of your erections probably doesn’t usually warrant a second thought by you. When you had your first one way back when, do you remember if you contemplated it as some weird, new feeling in your body?
Oddly enough (or maybe not, any of you other gals?), I often dream at night that I have a penis. Sometimes it’s limp, sometimes it’s hard, seldom am I doing anything with it in the dream, and it almost always breaks off at some point causing me to feel very disappointed. It’s not that I secretly wish I were a man—at least I don’t think I do but maybe my subconscious knows something I don’t (where’s Sigmund Freud when you need him?). But I do have complex feelings about how men treat and objectify women and society’s general tolerance and reinforcement of such behavior and that, for as far as gender equality has come, the balance of power still tips in favor of men. So my dream penis is probably the manifestation of my desire to have the same kind of power that men have.
So, if you could be the opposite sex for a day, what would you most like to do and/or experience?
The day in walk: Bridges 2: winter riverfront
January 17, 2011
Today I was supposed to pick someone and follow them for a while, reporting on where they went. Well, I followed Old Man River and he went south, to New Orleans.
I was going to take pictures of the river (the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis)—the river itself—but it didn’t take long at all for my focus to shift to the bridges. The river is present in a few of the shots, but once again the underneaths of the bridges are the stars. Maybe you remember when I did that last summer on a bike ride.
Ah, summer.
The difference between last summer’s bike ride and today’s walk is, oh, I don’t know, about 70°F/21°C. I didn’t look today, but it was about 15°F/-9°C, based on the forecast high. But being a hardy Minnesotan, I bundled up and went for a nice walk.
So.
1. Hennepin Avenue Bridge (historic). Underneath the bridge, behind where I stood to take my photo, are a couple of pylons from the original version of this bridge built in the mid-1800s. I think the current bridge is the third or fourth version. Oh. According to Wikipedia, this bridge was the first permanent one across the Mississippi River. How about that?
2. 3rd Avenue Bridge (secret passage). Just a bit east (the whole walk wasn’t even two miles), is a more modern-looking, but quite older bridge. This one was an odd duck because it has beautiful arches when viewed from a distance. But when you’re standing directly underneath it, all you see are two doorways like the one in this photo. It looked like it went through three parallel walls. Weird. I was sort of disappointed there wasn’t a drawbridge or something.
3. Mill Ruins Park. Okay, so it’s not a bridge, it’s the riverfront ruins of abandoned flour mills. There is running and dripping water everywhere. The icicle mass was cool. There also seemed to be a model photoshoot going on. The models were not modeling outerwear. Silly catalogs.
4. Stone Arch Bridge (arches). This is the bridge that might possibly have some notoriety outside the Twin Cities. It used to be a railway bridge. Now, it is for pedestrians and bicyclists. It’s stoney and archy and neat. It’s at the foot of the St. Anthony Lock & Dam, which I believe is the first lock and dam on the Mississippi. The first in sequence, I mean. I don’t know if it was the first constructed.
5. I-35W Bridge (strong). This is the sturdy replacement for the bridge that collapsed in 2007. From the side you see graceful arched spans, and from underneath you see these stout legs. I live in the neighborhood. I was outside puttering with my tomato plants when the old bridge collapsed. I heard the sirens and figured there was a big accident on I-94, which is also near my home. It’s still weird to interact with the new bridge.
6. 10th Avenue Bridge (industrial). It’s also weird to be underneath this bridge, just a couple blocks downstream from the 35W Bridge. This photo doesn’t show it, but this bridge looks old and tired from below. The roadbed on top is all spiffy, but it’s a little creepy to look at the chipping concrete when you know what happened to its neighbor three years ago.
Photos were taken with the assistance of my new friend, Instagram, and the Inkwell filter. (Except for the first one of me, that is. I did that in Photoshop.)
A smidge for your fridge
January 16, 2011
Today was one of those rare occasions when I made art for the sake of making art. You have my permission to print out this picture and hang it on your refrigerator, because that’s why I created it.
As you’ve learned from previous entries, woodcut is my preferred medium for art-making. But for work as a graphic designer, I used to have to illustrate simple stories and did so with photo and clip art, such as in the Billy Goat Can Float book. I didn’t usually have to draw stuff from scratch though, it was just a matter of combining elements. That’s fun, too.
Today, however, I created this original illustration in Adobe Illustrator and jazzed it up a bit in Photoshop. Guess what, it’s a rabbit.
Has anybody printed it out and hung it on their refrigerator? I have no idea. But I did. Yes, those are rabbit-shaped magnets holding it up, and there are many other rabbit things present on my fridge. I also have some bowling achievement magnets, a few Minnesota Twins baseball things, ephemera from my favorite radio station, The Current, and a few beer items. Oh, and my guest pass sticker from the day I visited my friend who works at Yahoo.
My new picture definitely brightens things up. I printed out an extra one for my mom. Well, it’s actually an extra that I thought I was printing with a border, but the rule only showed up on one edge. But I know she’ll like it. She hasn’t had refrigerator art from me since the mid-seventies.
Out of the poop loop
January 15, 2011
It’s a dirty job, and it doesn’t get done often enough. That’s right, folks, I’m talking about the price of living with your furred or feathered sweeties. And scaled, I suppose. I guess fish and snakes poop, too.
Everybody has their least favorite household chore. Mine is laundry. I hate doing laundry. It’s not even the washing and the drying. It’s the sorting and folding and putting away. Socks and underwear have gone whole seasons without getting back to their drawer, as I pluck them clean from the laundry basket on top of the dryer. There is a two-foot stack of clean, folded shirts on a chair which, for some reason, I simply can’t bear to take fifteen feet back to my dressers to put away. What the heck?
So scooping the litterboxes should be simple by comparison. Sure, ideally, it would happen more frequently than laundry—as in daily, when it would be a smaller, faster task—but for some reason I tend to put it off until it seems monumental, and then I put it off some more. And so on.
I give props to all four of my cats (the two current and the two previous) for being very forgiving and reliable, even when the boxes are a mess. My rabbit, Robbin, well, he gets himself to the litterbox corner but …
I know that out in the rest of the house, Robbin doesn’t like current cats CJ and Dasie very much, and I think this extends to sharing the litterbox with them. He didn’t seem to have any beef with my previous cats, Dhia and Yul. In fact, his reliable litterbox use (along with not being a chewer) is what earned him the free-range lifestyle. But then the cat individuals changed, and so did his toilet habits. But maybe it’s also a function of his increasing age (he’ll be eight next month). I know he’s still physically able to get into the box; he still frequently jumps up onto my couch and various chairs. All I’m left with is that he doesn’t like CJ and Dasie’s, um, smell.
Anyway, what I do know is that he is more likely to get into the litterbox if it is fresh, clean litter or if it’s not, if the box freshly scooped. So why the heck don’t I just scoop already?
Bibi (no longer with us), CJ, and Robbin, takin’ care of business.
Arteaga, Michoac??n, Mexico
January 13, 2011
For today’s fun, I got a randomly generated geographical coordinate and took a closer look in with Streetview. The pin dropped in west-central Mexico, in the state of Michoacán. The nearest settlement was the town of Arteaga, and the main drag did, in fact, have Streetview.
I was looking for an interesting building. Most people would probably look for something architecturally interesting, but in light of my developing food awakening, I decided to look for a place to eat. Google gets credit for taking their Streetview images in the warm season (not as important in Mexico as it is in Minnesota where I live). On the other hand, that means trees are in full leaf and often obscure things you want to look at. I’m sure there were several other eateries that I missed because they were behind beautiful flowering trees. The one that I did find was big and purple, Erika’s Restaurant y Mariscos.
Anything that you can make out on Erika’s menu looks delicious to me. For only having had Spanish classes when I was thirteen and fourteen, I am pleased with how much I remember (which isn’t really much, but enough to get the gist). Nevertheless, I had to look up mariscos. It means seafood. Arteaga is about an hour from the ocean. I bet the seafood is pretty good. I’d probably be up for that, too.
If I gone just one more notch further north, I would have come across the loncheria above, which is the kind of establishment I was really looking for, if you can call it an establishment—it looks pretty temporary, unless you consider that the wheels on the trailer have been removed, then it looks more permanent. But what I’ve learned from Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern is that this is where you will find the best eats. ¡Quiero tortas!
I also noticed there were some hotels in town, so tourists like me would have somewhere to stay.
Break time
January 6, 2011
Other than eggs to make breakfast, I don’t really break things. The only thing I’ve broken recently—and that was six months ago—was a glass dinner plate. That wasn’t a big deal, because it was plain, clear glass—generic and easy to replace should I choose to do so. It was much more of a crisis when I finally finished breaking my iPhone 1.
This happened in April, just shortly before the iPhone 4 was even announced. I had been pondering the possibility of upgrading to iPhone 4 anyway because who wouldn’t want to from iPhone 1? At the same time, my iPhone 1 was a little bit of a badge of honor, that I still had the original (even though I held out for nine months after it was originally released).
I was intrigued by the better camera on iPhone 4 and thought that it would be nice to have it for my then-upcoming vacation to London. A camera in my back pocket was much more appealing than carrying around some huge thing slung over my shoulder. At an early season Minnesota Twins baseball game, my hand was forced.
I had already flung my iPhone 1 to the ground several times and the glass had been cracked in a few places for quite some time. I had gotten smart and sealed the shatter at the bottom of the screen (pictured below) with clear nail polish. That area was obviously impaired so I gave it some attention.
The cracks on the upper part of the screen (pictured top) seemed more innocuous because although cracked, the surface still felt smooth. I guess I was in denial, or at least not paying attention. In addition, I got a kick out of casually, conveniently, riding the thing around in my back pants pocket while other people encased theirs in bullet-proof cases or old socks. Who’s laughing now?
Well, at that fateful Twins game, there was a rain delay. I had planned ahead. I sat confidently in my seat in my baseball cap and rain poncho, feeling superior to those who ran for the shelter of the concourses. To amuse myself, I took self-portraits of the situation and went about uploading them to the social networks. Trouble was, although my rain poncho was clear plastic, it was getting steamed up inside and I couldn’t see through it to work on my iPhone. So what did I do? Why, I adjusted its position so that my view was no longer obstructed. I put it out in the open, outside of my rain poncho. I could see again!
I’m smart, but sometimes I’m a dope. I was a dope that night. What did I think was going to happen? Raindrops penetrated through the upper cracks and from then on, the top half of the touchscreen ceased to function. I held my breath for a week until iPhone 4 was announced, and then gave a big sigh of relief that I could get it two days before I left on my trip. I was glad that by that time, iTunes had the capability of rearranging iPhone screens on computer and then syncing, so I could move all of my heavy-use apps to the bottom halves of the windows.
I limped along like that for almost two months. I was ecstatic when I picked up my shiny new iPhone 4. I took immediate advantage of Apple’s offer for a free case. That rubber bumper has already saved iPhone 4 from several perilous situations.
Predicting the future
January 5, 2011
Today I will ponder the other subject that people do around the turn of the year, the future. I will travel to the future and imagine what might be going on.
Fantasy future
Anyone who’s been reading along knows that my ideal future would be the one in which I’m living happily in London. I’d find an affordable flat somewhere in central London. I liked the Camden area a lot, a neighborhood that has diversity and all types. Maybe I’d find a place above a neighborhood pub like the Spread Eagle. I’d tappy-tap-tap on my MacBook, writing all day and earning enough to keep it going. Or maybe I’d have to go to my office job in central London, walking a few blocks to the nearest Underground station for my ride. If I did go to an office, there’d be a nice little pub like the Cheshire Cheese at which to stop for a pint with my mates after work. It would be a Bridget Jones existance, minus the halfwits, fuckwits, perverts, alcoholics, workaholics, etc.
I guess this has already gone from prediction to fantasy. Oh well, I’ll run with it.
If I had to live a slightly further out, maybe I’d live in a terraced house like the one my friend Dan lives in. No, that probably wouldn’t be the case because I’m sure that the only way I’d afford a place like that would be to have roommates, which will never happen. Well, whatever it ended up being, I’d love it because I’d be in London and that would be good enough for me, because for ten years I’ve been convinced that my life’s happiness is dependent upon my being in London, however it happens.
Realistic future
Now we shall return to reality. I probably won’t make it out in time.
My rabbit will live just a little too long (I’ve noted before that he’s getting a little older, and although he’s in good health, I wouldn’t want to subject him to trans-continental stress), and I’ll spend a year or two too many waiting for the housing market to recover before I try to sell my place for only a moderate loss rather than the large loss I’d take today. That will give one or both of my parents just enough time to have some fluke deterioration in their health (they, too, are getting a little older and are in quite good shape), and then I, as their only child, will be wracked with guilt at the notion of leaving them, country, and continent behind in order to pursue my own selfish happiness and fulfillment. In fact, I will probably have to move back to their small city in Wisconsin to be closer to them. (That’s how we ended up there thirty years ago–for one set of grandparents.) If it ended up being the case that I had to look after them, maybe, just maybe, I could get them to come here to Minneapolis instead. They like it here and there’s a lot more going on, though as small towns go, theirs (ours) really is quite nice.
Well, it is the new year. If ever there were a time to pretend to be motivated about making my London future happen, now would be it. Stay tuned.
I won???t take the blame
January 4, 2011
“And the steps of this old church are peppered with confetti hearts
Like a million little love affairs waiting to fall apart”
Ah, Justin Currie, wordsmith to the cynics. This has always been one of my favorite Del Amitri lyrics, perhaps because I myself am cynical and largely uninterested when it comes to relationships. I can probably trace that back to interactions that happened during my formative years, between me, my parents, and my first two boyfriends in high school. And sorry, I’m going to leave you hanging on the details.
I was set on a course of believing that no boyfriend would measure up to other people’s expectations which were established early on. I didn’t realize this for a long time and spent many years having short relationships that went nowhere. I did have two engagements in my early twenties but broke those off. The first one never stood a chance, which fortunately I recognized. The second one might have lasted for a while, but by then I was completely flakey about relationships, unbeknownst to myself.
Over time, there were longer and longer spans between boyfriends. I said (and still say) that I wasn’t actively looking but that if something presented itself, I’d always be open to the possibility. I had a friend in my college dorm whose whole existence was wrapped up in having a boyfriend. If she didn’t, it was a panic situation. I was never like that. One of the byproducts of my parents raising an only child to be independent and self-sufficient is that I’m independent and self-sufficient. Of course sometimes I think it would be nice to have someone to cuddle with, but not that often. Not often enough to make being in a relationship overridingly important.
As the gaps between associations got longer and longer, I have gotten more and more used to being on my own, to the point where now I strongly prefer it. The level of excellence required to turn my head goes up, up, up. I’ve had a good experience in the last few years, but I’m more and more reluctant to relinquish my independence. I have a hard time thinking I’d want to have to take someone else into consideration all the time. Yes, I’m selfish. I want myself all to myself.
So when I hear Justin Currie’s lyrics about the perils of love, I smile wryly and nod my head. I know what you mean, sir.
“I Won’t Take the Blame” © Del Amitri
Yesterday you talked of love and now you want to leave
But don’t expect me to stand in your way
I am powerless to alter any action you might take And I won’t take the blame
I was not the one who played the joker in this game
I was not the one who feels nothing anymore
So if you walk out that door, I won’t take the blame And as I look at the girl I once adored
You tell me that I hold you back you tell me that you’re bored
So like a pair of clowns we stand around and fight
Why can’t you get it over with and walk out of my life? And I won’t take the blame
I was not the one who played the joker in this game
I was not the one who feels nothing anymore
So if you walk out that door, I won’t take the blame And the steps of this old church are peppered with confetti hearts
Like a million little love affairs waiting to fall apart
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