ventura make-your-own hotel waffles

note to self: the self-serve waffle-making station at our Ventura, Ca hotel yields undercooked waffles.

note to self: the 8 hour train ride (due to major delays) from san diego to ventura yields hilarious conversations with nice people on the train.

beepers

remember when beepers were the cutting edge technology only required by doctors and drug dealers? and now...not that far into the future, everyone AND their grandmother has a cell phone that is so so so much more powerful. what the hell is next?

Larriland mentioned in New York Times

I suppose it was inevitable...Larriland Farm mentioned in the New York Times. Sure, the mention was just in passing, but still. Little ole Larriland, the place where hog halves hung from the old barn in the early 1980s, way before local produce was cool (but before it all but disappeared before making a comeback more than a decade later)...little ole Larriland has made it into the New York Times. Larriland is the pick-your-own farm that we visited numerous times per year, to pick strawberries, peaches, nectarines, raspberries (to eat off bush but not buy), apples, spinach, pumpkins and various other fruits and vegetables. The farm has grown exponentially since the early days...and it's a little sad to see how successful they have been...but it's better than the alternative...the McMansions that are popping up all over the surrounding parts of Howard County. Icky.

More Larriland thoughts in another post...but I saw this and had to share...it's also interesting to me that the reference is in a story about Frederick, MD, the new cool "old Maryland town" a frontier of sorts according to the author...this is funny because we grew up visiting a VERY different Frederick. We grew up visiting our dad's parents who retired in the first explosion of siding-clad split levels that attached to old Frederick like a wart attaches to a toe that's been to the locker room one-too-many times.

I don't think douglas was there, but I'll never forget the time granddad took some of us through what was then the current construction site in their neighborhood and down to the Monocacy River. (Every visit to our grandparents split level in "new frederick" seemed to co-incide with the beginning of another siding-centric tract development in the fields that used to surround Frederick.) Grandad walked us through the construction, through a dried-out corn field and down a steep slope to the muddy waters of the Monocacy river just to see it. One of those moments you never forget. Along our walk, we found a bone from some large animal, a horse or cow probably.

sun goes down and the leeks start cooking

sun goes down and the leeks start cooking

it helps to have an italian houseguest who knows her way round the kitchen to help with the leek (porri) soup.

douglas' turkey saga part two

italian bf is back from LA and when I relayed douglas' turkey-day conondrum to him, he was like...well...if he has work he absolutely has to do and he has the drive to do it over thanksgiving...maybe he should just stay and do it...

hmmm...maybe that's the drive you need to actually do grad school...(I wouldn't know)...so anyway douglas, I am offically not preaching to you on this...i say do what you need to do, but make sure you take a break and step back and try to reconnect with yourself before the final push till the end of the semester...maybe going home will do the trick and maybe 2105 GWP is not the right option...but do find something that takes you away for a short time...do you have a crash pad in manhattan?

and btw, it's not like i'm going back to the rents this turkey day. italian bf and I are driving up the coast from sd to sf and then I'm flying back to sd and he is driving back w/ an old friend who is visiting from italy.

go home for thanksgiving Douglas!!!

Douglas, the youngest of the 6, is in architecture grad school at Yale. this is his first semester. He barely sleeps b/c he has so much work to do. I just talked to my mom and she said he said he isn't coming home for Thanksgiving b/c he has to work on a paper.

Come on Douglas!!! You have the whole week off...can't you go home for at least a couple of days? Get some good food, a night of sleep and a change of scenery?

Knowing that you are going home will also make you more productive for the first part of the week when you are still up at school...and if you are going home, you better buy a ticket soon...you don't want to decide to go home at the last minute and then realize you can't get a ticket...

now...on the other hand...if you are saying you have a paper b/c you have a hot week-long botty call next week that you don't want to miss out...then that's up to you...but thanksgiving only comes along once a year...and if you don't want to go home, then go somewhere else...what is Amanda doing? go see her! or go hang out in Manhattan...but enjoy yourself for at least 48 hours...you'll be glad you did.

it's gotta be...

it's gotta be dirty.

The paper version of the Christmas Letter HAS to be dirty. There is just no two ways about it.

I apologize in advance to all those souls who have transcended sex and find such lust-tinted musings on life tired, unamusing and pitifully revealing of a week psyche and spiritual inner life.

anyone who has received the paper letter in the past and would like to cancel their subscription should do so in the next 7 days.

****this note not required by law****

how to give yourself a wet willy

to give yourself a wet willie without actually sticking a wet finger in your ear is easy. All you need to do is accidentally drop your right ear bud into a cup of black tea that's gone cold. You let the ear bud sit on your desk for two hours, then insert it in your ear, sure it's dry by now.

and now it's time to squirm as memories of gross people sticking wet fingers in your ear rush into your brain. Remove ear bud and watch drop of tea pour out of the little holes in the ear bud.

repeat.

just back from yoga

just back from the yoga class that I teach on tuesday nights.

Tracy Chapman's new cd Our Bright Future turned out to be a hit with the folks who practiced tonight.

only 7 people came to class, which is not great for the studio's revenue, but it is great for the students who did come. I had more time to give assists and to connect with each of the students.

lots of folks will be away next week turkey day...but I'll be there...hmmm...maybe I need to come up with a turkey pose...

Fig Leaf 2.0

if vegetables are vestments, do they still count toward the five-a-day goal?

anza borrego italiani

yesterday's fun

Friday Fist Bump

Friday fist bump to everyone!

In the last 48 hours, I have found myself in two separate fist bump scenarios.

In the first, I was simply an observer...sitting inside a cafe with tinted windows watching the world go by...in particular, the world happening at the table directly in front of me, but on the other side of the tinted window. I watched a dude sit at the table, with an air of excitement...clearly waiting for someone...and that someone turned out to be a buddy of his...they greeted with a fist bump. The dude who arrived first pulled out a colorfully wrapped gift for dude number two, who opened it right away. Inside? Skater shoes. A late 30s straight dude gave his fist bumping straight dude friend just the sort of "post-skater airwalk-espue" black shoes one would expect.

And then yesterday, a man of color who I interact with at work about once every other month greeted me with the more traditional four-part handshake...I was cool for the first three of the four maneuvers, but then stalled and didn't produce my fist for part four: the fist bump. We laughed, and then he noted that the cool thing now is to go straight to the fist bump. Who has time for all the handwork foreplay leading to the fist bump? Apparently not the dudes of America.

thursday post

wine, beer and bread

yogurt, milk and toothpaste

to the store I go with haste

thankful for my job and living place

full-moon chipotle warning

if you are like me, you should stay away from Chipotle when it's a full moon.

this is a lesson I learned today after eating at Chipotle on a full moon.

I took a big bite of my burrito and when I swallowed realized that I bit off and swallowed a nice chunk of aluminum foil along with my rice, beans and tomatoes.

at least the foil was thin...and not the heavy duty aluminum foil that is good for covering furniture before wild parties.

marichi d

UPDATE: an alternate version of this post will be added to the blog in the near future

i was doing the pose described in the yoga forum entry pasted below...the pose is called marichyasana d and I treat like an outhouse in Ohio in the 1980s...you get in there do what you have to do and get out...but today was completely different? why? because I was so with the breath that all movement was like union of peanut butter and jelly? hell no! i wish...it was different in that I was in no rush to leave because my gazing point was the cutest 8 month baby I had ever seen, hanging out next to her mom who was practicing yoga. the baby sat there with perfect posture...spine so strait, while the homosexual in front of her tied himself up like a pretzel in some abstract attempt to be a whole lot more like her...sitting there fully aware and present...enjoying her mother and occasionally spontaneously giggling...giggling for no particular reason...just giggling because she could and because being happy is always an option. I didn't know 8 month babies are such good yoga teachers...but i think this is the secret the new parents are all hiding from me...that your baby is your guru and your student at the very same time. how fucking cool is that?

one person's take on marichi d is below and here

Hahaha...you're first mistake was even attempting such foolishness!

Okay, let's assume for the moment that you're body can actually do the pose with or without buttering your hips and duct taping your arm to your knee....

Let's say the left foot is in half lotus and the right foot knee is pointing to the sky. Now pull your right sit bone back and move your right foot a little more to the right. That should widen your base. Now the fun. Sit up tall as you inhale and twist to the right as you exhale. Use your right hand to pull the belly flesh out of the way (if you have a little extra like me). Lean to the right to get your left armpit to the outside of your right knee. Put the right hand back down for support.

Okay here is a good trick: EXTERNALLY ROTATE your left arm first as you press the triceps into the outside of the knee. Then INTERNALLY ROTATE the arm to bring the hand down towards your left hip. Now look over your right shoulder stretch your right arm really far out and EXTERNALLY ROTATE the right arm as far as possible before INTERNALLY ROTATING it to meet the left hand. Left hand grabs right wrist and you try to straighten the right arm.

Okay as for balance remember how you moved your right sit bone back and your foot out to the right more. That should give you a wider base. The right knee should lean in towards the center of the body as the bind tightens. Glue the right foot down and try to pull the heel closer to the sit bone. Now the stability comes from your uddiyana bandha. You keep the navel pulled into the spine and let the breath fill up the kidneys and lengthen your tailbone down towards the floor like an anchor.

Besides all that, it's just practice. The more you do it, the calmer you get in the pose and you find the stillness that you need.

Will Hang Lights for Cash

A home-made sign on the exit ramp for The 5 at La Jolla Village Drive offers to hang your christmas lights for you. I suppose there is a market for this, but I have such fond memories of hanging white christmas lights on our mostly dormant azalea bushes...and memories of happily plunking down my own hard-earned cash from raking the leaves of various neighbors to buy more lights to put on the bushes. I was SO into Christmas lights...into the thrill of reaching the crest of Gatewood Place (the block before ours) and looking down the hill and halfway up the next hill and seeing the white lights lighting up the bushes. But I think more than anything, I sought the feeling of personal expression and validation I got from seeing my efforts "lit up at night."

Perhaps

1 in 12.5 million...Nov 9 post

I already knew that italian bf is one in a million, but I now have empirical evidence that he is 1 in 12.5 million...

well...sort of...only 1 in 12.5 million spam emails results in a sale...and italian bf became that statistic yesterday when, in a panic, he bought anti-spyware software from a fake website and thus joined a botnet and became a computer zombie...

italian bf, if you wanted to be a zombie...you could have been one for Halloween, you didn't need to turn your computer into a zombie!!!!

it's crazy how much legwork is now requrired...in addition to blocking the credit card and monitoring all the other credit cards, italian bf has had to go through and change every freaking online account password that we have...since it's possible that his keystrokes were captured...including a crucial password that is used for many different accounts..

this is exactly why they say you should have different passwords for every account...but how the hell are you supposed to remember them all?????????

Apple Crisped

I got my ass kicked by apple crisp. An apple crisp that I made. An apple crisp with apples, pears, (too many) cranberries and persimmons that won't ripen. After the usual butter, brown sugar, oatmeal, flower, cinnamon and nutmeg topping had been applied to the raw cut up fruit, I threw on cardamom for an extra gourmet kick.

After 35 minutes in the oven at 350 degrees, let's just say that the wouldn't-ripen persimmons magically turned into almost-rotten-tasting baked sweet potatoes. The cardamom gave the whole dish a vaguely ethnic....maybe Indian...vibe that joined with the sweet potatoe punch to create a nauseating combination of tastes.

what to do?

Step one: pick out the rest of the persimmons and throw them away. Nevermind the loud thump you hear every time you drop a persimmon chunk into the sink. How heavy are they anyway?

Step two...leave it in the fridge for 36 hours longer than you should

Step three...attempt to eat on a nearly empty but relatively nauseated stomach that is the result of deciding to try out Pizzaria Uno pizza after many years. You have fond memories of going to an Uno's in Georgetown with Mike H. at some point either during or after college.

Step four...enjoy your day...if you can...

McBarneys

wh-words

it's good to have an italian bf who studies "wh" words like "what, who, when and where-the-hell-is-my-martini" ...and this wh scholarship comes in especially handy when you go to a bad exhibit and a contemporary art museum and leave with a big black and white post striped card that says "what" if you hold it just right and plug your left nostril and think only in verbs for 18 seconds.

it comes in handy b/c you have someone to hand the card to who won't be as snotty and snobby as you...someone who is happy to have a fettishized "what" in the house.

birthing pain

Peter,

I think you said it right...we have our country back! if this election is the birth of a new era in america, then maybe the vote to stop gay marriage in california is the labor pains...or maybe when the vagina tears all the way to the anus...yes, I think that's about right...in time it will heal, but in the meantime, it's shitty (literally and figuratively)!!!

i'm glad u found an obama party in Paris. we went to an all night coffee house and just watched the happy people stream in and out...it was fun...

:) d

Nov 4 Ballot photos

scenes from the ballot box...

Nov 3 standing up out of backbend

it's monday (well, it's actually wednesday, but i am pretending it's monday)...it's monday night and I finished my yoga practice. I stood up out of backbend for the second time in my yoga life. It was the first time I did it without spreading my feet super super wide. how did it happen? in preparation for tomorrow's vote, my brain made some sort of connection between "every vote counts" in democracy and "every breath counts" in yoga...and so in my backbend series, I was successful in my efforts to stay with the breath...and on the fifth backbend, I just started rocking back and forth between feet and hands and before I knew it I was standing up. this was in the living room. it was almost completely dark. I was like "cool"...and I kept going with the practice.

Nov 2 Soda Fountains?

I had a lemon phosphate at an old tyme soda fountain yesterday (Nov 1) in Julian. It tasted like lemon soda. Not sure what all the fuss about soda fountains is. Of course, I was already a bit jaded b/c it was the town's "apple days" and there were hardly any apples around...I guess they were all put into the pies that people were waiting in line for...waiting in line for pie...maybe they are just practicing for waiting in line on tuesday...

vote no on 8 rally pic Nov 1 post

i was going to try to post every day this month (NaBloPoMo)...but it's now the th 5th...so i'm going to do some back tracking...

It's saturday night, and I just got back from the Vote No on Prop 8 rally in Hillcrest. They ran out of candles and there were more young lesbians than you might find at an MC Flow concert (and that means a whole lotta young lesbians). there were also a ton of cops, who were intent on making sure we stayed on the sidewalk. Critical mass blew through on bikes dressed like skeletons...bad ass!!! I wanna be a critical masser here in sunny d.