Deserving

Not too long ago--a matter of months, maybe--a bartender and I had an intelligent conversation about absinthe as I waited for Calsee to open her apartment door. The crowd at the bar was extremely mixed, as it always is, at the Zig-Zag; on my left sat a blond, large-framed drunk woman in business clothes, I think drinking a martini; on my right sat small-boned skater kid drinking whiskey and beer, his over-sized t-shirt showing off his closely-shaved dark hair and arm tattoos. I pulled up a stool and asked the bartender what kind of absinthe he served. He offered me tastes of two kinds, and I shared them with the drunk woman in business clothes and the skater kid, knowing that one serving of absinthe is about all I can carry, and even a sip or two over that limit can be too much. They tasted. The drunk woman, very talkative, had barely a sip of each and exclaimed much over them; the skater kid appreciated it more and accepted my gift of the rest of the tastes. (A man after my own heart--never turn down free booze.) I drank my chosen absinthe--I forget what it was, now--and made a little more small talk to my left and to my right, until I asked for the bill. The skater kid made a move for my number, and I turned him down, gently. Calsee called. I strolled out of the Zig Zag, carefully, feeling the affects of the absinthe. Ahead of me on the Pike Hill Climb, walking up to street level, was the drunk woman in business clothes, who had left the bar with a late-arriving date. "This girl sits down," she says to him, loudly, and I realize she's talking about me, "says she builds planes for a living, and orders ABSINTHE!"

I brushed a little imaginary dirt off my shoulder.

ANYWAY, this is not about me, and I can't collect a speck of dirt compared to that bartender. Because that bartender with the intelligent absinthe conversation was just crowned "best bartender in America". Congratulations, Mr. Stenson. Wonder how this compares to being featured in Playboy's A-List?

Never a Dull Moment

I've been putting off renting a truck for Sunday's move--yes! I am moving! On top of getting a new job!--and it turns out it's a good thing I did, because the new apartment building had a power outage and all the outlets in my new places BLEW OUT.

Yes, they did.

Now it turns out that I can't move in until the DAY that I have to MOVE OUT of my other place.

Even for someone as used to living on the edge as I am--and let me reassure you that I have made a damn career out of it--this is cutting it...a little close.

I'm not even sure what I'm going to do next.

And so I'll post a funny exchange from Facebook about LAST weekend:

Me, to T-Town: "After locking us out of your house--in the cold rain, in our pjs, without phones or wallets, getting into a fender-bender, driving like a maniac, and blowing out a tire--not to mention ziplining--Lilith Fair seemed pretty uneventful."

T-Town: "Two questions: 1. How is this different than a normal weekend for you? 2. Were you somehow under the impression the Lilith Fair would be interesting? But seriously, it was great to have you here and you still owe me 20 bucks."

Me: "Well, I don't normally go ziplining."

T-Town: "Good point."

Where My Head's At Today

Here:



And here:



And here:

http://www.omniglot.com/blog/?p=2888

I got there because my boss and I are having a discussion about how to identify a language she overheard, not long ago, at the airport, that she couldn't identify on the spot. And since my boss is Irish, has an aunt who is Welsh, has traveled all over the world and spent a lot of time in Turkey and Saudi Arabia and Brazil, AND is a language nerd...let's just say that there's not many languages that she CAN'T identify on the spot. Lots of soft round sounds, and clicks, she said, spoken by three slender dark-haired girls with faintly olive skin. In this case, I think the gender identity of the girls is a red herring, so to speak. We've already ruled out everything on most continents, including Welsh, Basque, Catalan, and Icelandic. Nothing Cyrillic or Germanic, for sure. My boss' description makes it sound African. It's POSSIBLY Romanian or Finnish. Thoughts? (Celia? Rob?)

In any case, Omniglot looks fascinating. I may spend a lot of time there in the future.

And here:

Take me there, please.

Survived My First Week

At the new job. I'm not going to lie, it was a little touch-and-go. But I made it. Still alive, still hired, people seem to like me. Now I just have the rest of my career to go.

Anyone know a good eye cream?

My old friend "Bobby" rolled in last night at a bright and early 1:25 am, and to kill time before I picked him up, I went salsa dancing. And then he and I stayed up until 4 am talking, laughing, and gossiping, over wine. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

This morning I'm blearily staring at my computer screen and this pops up:

Tri-Tip: "You went to salsa and then picked up "Bobby" at 1 AM? You, ma'am, are truly hardcore."

Me: "More like two am, because his plane was delayed."

Tri-Tip: "I salute you."

(Note: Those of you reading along at home may wonder why Tri-Tip knows I went salsa-dancing last night, when this IM conversation is obviously the first time we've communicated today. Is he my boyfriend? Do we talk in the evenings? The answer to both questions is no. He knows because he follows me on Foursquare and Twitter, and has access to the places I check in. If this entire tangent confuses you, welcome to the 21st century. Moving on.)

About 9 am I IMed Kentucky. (Who is new on this blog! Welcome, Kentucky!) The New Job moved me to her work site, which is great because a) I don't see her enough, b) it gives me someone to bug at times like 9 AM when I've gotten two hours of sleep. "Today would be a GREAT day for our first Tully's run," I write to her. "Just saying."

Fifteen minutes later she hits me back. "YES. See you in five."

Turns out she was ALSO at the airport at 1:30 am. We could have gotten a damn drink in the airport while we were waiting for our respective arrivals. We laugh about this, back in her office, comparing how little sleep we got.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure my eye-bags are purple," I said, mainly joking.

She gives me a critical look. "I wouldn't go so far as to call them purple," she says. "More like lavender."

"Hmph. Well, I haven't slept much in four days," I said, pulling out my concealer, which I happened to put in my pocket this morning, even while sleep-walking, because I knew this was going to happen.

"I'm not judging you, doll! I feel you! But they ARE there," she says, pulling out her mirror. I futzed--gently--with the skin under my eyes, and the concealer, and looked at her for approval. "Much better," she says, encouragingly. "No longer purple. They're still puffy, but you can't fix that without cream."

See Title.

Cheese and Coffee and Lipstick

This describes most of my breakfasts. And the following describes the past five of my mornings:

I bit into a chunk of Manchego and sipped my barely-warm VIA as my boss held a hand mirror for me, sneaking around the corner of my cubicle wall, so I could apply eyeliner before the foreign nationals came in. She talked at me a mile a minute as I kicked off my ballet flats and stepped into my brand-new black slingbacks, breaking off only to say, "Cute shoes!"

My slingbacks are the tallest work shoes I've ever owned, and my boss is so well-dressed that I'm currently overhauling my wardrobe so I can keep up. So when she says, "Cute shoes!" I say, "Thank you!"

She turned the mirror around and applied her own lipstick. "It probably wouldn't kill you to be here earlier," says the petite powerhouse, who is going to school full time while managing my department for two continents and half of Europe and Asia, as she wielded her lip pencil.

I make a mental note to overhaul my wardrobe AND go shopping AND drink more water AND eat healthier. Whatever this woman is doing, I would like to also do.

Contentment

It's 78 degrees. I'm wearing a white t-shirt dress. I'm drinking a strawberry daiquiri which, miraculously, I have not yet spilled on the white T-shirt dress.

I have a strawberry daiquiri because I had extra strawberry filling from making 12 strawberry tarts a week ago, which I'll talk more about in a later post. Also being made as I sip my strawberry daiquiri: a strawberry pie, with the extra strawberry filling, and a loaf of gougere, with extra dough from making cheese puffs, also a week ago. The extra ham and cucumber has been made into sandwiches with the extra white bread, the chicken from TWO weeks ago has been picked clean and tossed--with the leftover meat waiting to be a part of another meal--and I am listening to this song:

Into the Fire

I have a new job here at the Lazy B, and so far it most reminds me of a mix of the West Wing and the Devil Wears Prada, except that my boss is totally awesome. It's fast-paced, tons of things happen all at once, things change minute by minute, so I'm behind already, and really I just want to take my boss out for coffee and listen to her talk because she's that cool.

My meals here at work have consisted of peanuts, granola bars, and slices of cheese, because I'm too busy to eat or cook, and last night I came home at 4:30 pm and went to bed an hour later.

Whew.

P.S. Hi, mom. I have eaten some quinoa and yogurt as well. And YES, I am drinking enough water.

Staying Enaged

It's hard.

It's hard to stay focused. It's hard to take the long way around. It's hard to come home after work and devote four hours to your side projects. It's hard to remember how to spell "devote".

It's hard to wake up early in order to bike or take the bus, when it's easier just jump in your car. It's hard to pack a lunch the night before, when it's so easy just to buy pre-made food. It's hard to pre-set your coffeemaker, when you can just buy a latte. It's hard to eat simply, when it's so much easier to buy fancy restaurant food. It's hard to read Shakespeare, when it's so easy to read Agatha Christie. (Or worse, blogs.) It's hard to just walk to J.Crew when you need new clothes, instead of scouring thrift stores.

And now that you've taken the easy and more expensive way out of all your obligations, you find yourself with a lot of free time on your hands, so it's even harder to pare your life down to its basic necessities instead of filling it with things that fill your extra gobs of free time.

It's even harder to bitch about these very, very small concerns in the face of so many REAL problems in the world. That is all.

Overwhelmed by Other People Today

On gray June Gloom Seattle days, it's wonderful to know that other people are creating amazing things, so I can just sit, and drink my coffee, and stare out the window, and enjoy their things instead.



All of this woman's photographs are so amazing.





Oh, just check out her flickr stream.

And a slightly different take on art, aesthetics, and fantasy:





This is a real artist's commune, only not a commune. From the NYT article:

"The woman, J. Morgan Puett, a fashion designer and artist, is also a kind of radical homesteader, having staked a claim here on land stalked by black bears, deer, coyotes and porcupine. Along with her 8-year-old son, Grey Rabbit, and a changing cast of friends and romantic partners, she has built a home that is an ongoing experiment in art, design and aestheticized living, an artist colony conceived in the communal spirit of 20th-century institutions like Roycroft and Black Mountain College, with her own house, just now being finished, at its heart."

People who can do this with their lives make me think I'm wasting my allotment of oxygen.

And finally, it's probably more artistically appropriate that you listen to something like Ratatat or Tom Waits as you look at the above images, but THIS is what's in my head:

Share Ghost In The Machine by B.o.B

Love the amazing, AMAZING, almost-an-afterthought, harmony in this song.

Overheard at Olivar's

A heavier young man in black frame glasses sits with a gray haired lady. It becomes clear that he is, in fact, her son, and they are both from the East Coast and she is here to visit him, as he has apparently just moved here.

(In regards to some work she is doing.) "Well, you can use my computer any time this weekend, Mother...although I don't know how you'll access your files." Black Frame Glasses says loudly.

"I carry them around with me on this flash drive on my key chain," she murmurs.

He gasps. "You DO? That's not safe! Anyone could just pick that up and download all your important information!"

"It's encrypted," she says.

"Oh? OH! Encrypted, eh? Oh, that's good. That's a good thing that you did that. As long as there's no way anyone can break it."

The waiter arrives.

"Now, Mother, you have to let me order for you. Yes, you do, you're a lady!"

He turns to the waiter. "The LADY will have..."

I silently judge behind my coffee. You will not do well in this town of tech-savvy feminists, Black Frame Glasses. Your mother may be used to putting up with your peculiar mix of idiocy and self-importance, but we are not, and furthermore, have no desire to become so. You will do better in the mid-size East Coast town you are undoubtedly from. Please return there.

Also, you shout.

My Friends Are Funny, Too

Chalie: "I heard a TV newscaster say, the other day: 'I'm told they plan on baiting the bear trap with Krispy Kremes & stinky fish.'"

Me: "Oh?"

Chalie: "I figure that trap ensnares just as many middle-school-ers as it does bears."

John: "Maybe they should just bait the trap with middle-school-ers."

Me: "Would that be like killing two birds with one stone?"

Chalie: "No, that would be like killing two stoners with one bear."

Thursday Afternoon Groove

This song's been in my head for weeks.



After that one, definitely watch this one:



Oh, Sam Cooke. MR. SAM COOKE, ladies and gentlemen.

If you have even one second more of free time, you should for sure listen to, "A Change is Gonna Come", "Another Saturday Night", and "Chain Gang". A Change Is Gonna Come, especially, makes my blood run cold every time I hear it.

And, if you've ever listened to a hip hop song and liked it, you are REQUIRED to familiarize yourself with The Clapping Song, just so you can look nobby in front of hip hop nerds.



AND, finally, a more modern blues song:



AND, one of THE most powerful songs from my childhood, and one of the most powerful, emotional songs about school shootings, ever:






(Can you guess what it is? If you're from my generation, you know it for sure...)








(Make sure you have tissue.)

West Coast Versus East Coast

Much has already been said about this, and surely a few more words can’t hurt.

I was with Blond from New Jersey just a few days ago. We were in downtown Seattle, looking for a parking spot in front of Pike Place Market, at 3:30 pm on a Saturday, and anyone reading this who has spent any amount of time here already knows that that is…pretty difficult.

Most of West Coast life is pretty relaxed compared to the huge amounts of effort it takes to even buy a cup of coffee in NYC, for example, but looking for street parking at Seattle’s biggest tourist attraction at prime time can tend to rachett up the heart rate a little bit. Blond from New Jersey and myself were unfazed. I saw a parking spot open up at 1st and Pine, and she cut easily across two lanes of traffic, stopped, reversed—everything you’d need to do to suddenly parallel park on a city street. At rush hour. And everyone just…went around her. There were a few polite honks. We looked at each other.

“This is so…easy!” She said.

“For real,” I said. “On the East Coast, someone would have already insulted your mother.”

Dating Episode # 343

I was on a street corner in Ballard with a date, holding his arm and laughing about something, when he pointed, kitty-corner.

"Hey, look, an interracial couple," he said, totally straight-faced. "THAT'S something you don't see every day."

I looked at my yuppie, real-estate-magnate date--who also happened to be black--and burst out laughing.

"Maybe there's a mirror on that corner that reflects us," I said, still giggling.

He gave that couple the five-second once over before shaking his head and turning away. "Nah," he said. "She's nowhere as cute as you are."

How Gay Marriage is Not Like Plastic Bags

Listen, small governmenters. I understand that the plastic bag tax scares you. I understand why. I understand that you have issues with a big, blowsy government trying to tell you what to do when they obviously can’t take care of themselves, and you especially don’t want a reminder of that every time you choose to use a fucking plastic bag. I get that.

But here’s the thing: a five-cent bag tax is NOT the government telling you what to do.

I’ll repeat that: A FIVE CENT BAG TAX IS NOT THE GOVERNMENT TELLING YOU WHAT TO DO.

It’s an INCENTIVE. Just an incentive to behave in the way that the government wants you to behave. If you drive too fast, the government will issue you a speeding ticket. If you buy cigarettes, the government will take some tax to shore up against your eventual health care costs. Hell, if you DRIVE, the government will take a gas tax to pay for roads, and the faster you drive, the more you’ll pay in gas, because the more gas you’ll burn.

But you know what? You CAN PAY THE FIVE CENTS. The government isn’t telling you that you CAN’T use a plastic bag. (That WOULD be telling you what to do.) The government is laying out the consequences of your actions so that you can make an informed decision. That is, in fact, one of the governments’ JOBS—to get its citizens to think globally. To remind its citizens that hey, you may not ever see the increased cost of your health care, smoker, or you may not understand why you can’t just go five miles over the speed limit, but we have seen the data on the deaths of young people under the age of 18 and we’ve seen the 100 years of data on smokers’ lungs and we’re telling you, you are incurring a cost on society and we are going to make you pay it.

So when the plastic bag tax failed here in WA, I couldn’t understand why the heck people bucked against THAT tax when they hadn’t bucked much against, say, sin tax. But pretty soon I realized that hey, taxes—and incentives—are easier to ignore when they don’t personally apply to you, EVEN IF they go against your own personal value system. A small governmenter, in my mind, should be equally screaming about the cigarette tax and the plastic bag tax, but it turns out they’re not, because humans don’t think rationally. A small governmenter can look at the sin tax and think to himself, “Well, that’s not really in line with my beliefs, but I’m not going to fight too hard for it because I don’t smoke. Yeah, it sucks that my neighbor is paying two dollars extra a pack, but I don’t PERSONALLY pay it, plus I can kind of get behind where the government is coming from.”

And yet a five-cent bag tax fills people with ire. Why? For the first time, an incentive like this affects everyone.

Affects. Everyone.

EVERYONE. Black, white, old, young, female, male. Everyone. Everyone would pay this tax. CHILDREN would be paying this tax. Anyone who can put money on a counter and get candy in return. And so people rose up in arms like never before, because this is the first time such an incentive has applied to them. It’s obviously not the AMOUNT—five cents is almost nothing. It’s not that the tax is difficult to pay—it’s just added to your bill. It’s not even that the tax is hurting the environment, if indeed anyone actually cared about that. It may be partly the smallness of the action—the average consumer can’t really believe that plastic bags are so harmful that they should have to pay five cents. But people pay speeding tickets, and people will eventually pay the plastic bag tax, too.

Because despite what I just said a few sentences ago, this is not actually the first time such a tax has been applied to them, even small governmenters. They still pay speeding tickets, and parking tickets. But the newness of this kind of tax confused them, and so people complained about the government telling them what to do.

But let me repeat myself, if I may: a five cent tax is not telling you what to do. You can just pay the tax and use your goddamned plastic bag, right? Right. Now let’s imagine that the government is telling you that you CAN’T, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, MARRY YOUR SAME-SEX LOVER.

THAT is a good example of the government actually telling you what, in fact, you may or may not do, with your private life.

Let’s now imagine that the government went ahead and said, “Okay. You CAN actually marry your same-sex partner—legally, with all the rights and privileges of any hetero couple, and the law and the health care companies will not be able to tell you any differently. But for this privilege, you will have to pay us, say, $4,000 dollars.”

That’s right. Let’s put an incentive on our gay marriage thought experiment. The homosexual tax. Would people pay it?



















Of course not. Why?






















Because MARRIAGE SHOULD BE FREE. Because no American in their right mind would pay for an inalienable right.

This argument falls apart, of course, if you don’t believe that plastic bags harm the environment and that the Gay infect everyone around them with their perversion, and the beauty of America is that you are totally allowed to believe that. But it doesn’t change the FACTS: a five cent bag tax is an incentive. Inability to marry the love of your life is living in a police state. If anyone should be complaining about the size of the government, it’s people who love the same damn sex.

Style Note

I bought these boots about three days before I left for Washington, because I am a planner like that. Suddenly I realized that I needed boots. And I needed them NOW. And I spent about twenty minutes looking at Zappos before I found these, and I paid for the overnight shipping, and they arrived Tuesday afternoon while I wasn't there and the driver wouldn't leave them--because UPS/FedEx/DHL packages that require signatures is SUCH a good way to ship things--and I chased them down that evening to the big UPS building in SODO (and not to be a huge chick stereotype about it, but industrial SODO after dark is kind of creepy) and it was cold and I took the big box directly to T's house, and I put them on for her and we both moaned.

Yes, it was like that.

I got on the plane with them. I SLEPT in them. I wore them all day at the National Mall, and came back with dry feet. I plan on giving away all my other boots. They're that good.

(Side note: I got on the plane in a cashmere shirt dress, boots, and coat. How fabulous am I?)

I Can't Hide It

I like to think of myself as a gypsy. A world traveler. Someone who is familiar with both coasts of this great nation and decently familiar with a handful of more exotic destinations. (My renewed passport was waiting for me on my return from DC! Hooray!) The world is my oyster! I am at home everywhere!

But apparently my roots really show. And it's not because I haven't been to my stylist recently. (WAH-WAAAAAH.) On this aforementioned trip to DC, I was getting a Dark Cherry Mocha to accompany me on my four-hour trip to BWI--because apparently I thought I needed enough sugar to kill an elephant just to make it to the airport--and I was talking to the barista. He spent about three seconds talking to me before he said,

"So...are you from the West Coast?"

And I'm not even that blonde anymore. Apparently my speech pattern gives me away.

It's not the first time I've heard this, either. Shout-out to LT, who was the the first person to mention to me, in his nasal East Texas accent, that I had "the accent" of the West Coast. (Ten effing years ago.) It's not really an accent, per se--it's more of a speech pattern. Quick, quick, slow, says LT. I hear it in my friends, especially after a weekend like this one, in which I was without it, listening instead to the intellectual, measured accents of my sorority sisters. (Not a joke. Those ladies ARE intellectual and measured.) Last night I was in Philly, talking to a bunch of boys from Rhode Island with the thickest East Coast accents I'd heard in some time. They sounded like they came from another planet, especially compared to the firefighter from Charlotte, his drawl thick but soft, unlike the hard percussiveness of the RI accents, like a drumstick hitting a pad. And all Southern drawls are not created equal. My friend from Kentucky has an accent that is totally different all over again, way softer than the firefighter's, and lighter, too. More like smoked clover honey than the slow-moving BBQ sauce rhythm of the Carolinas. My friend Ray-Ray, mentioned here, has a Memphis accent like the twang of a banjo string. You can hear the hills of Tennessee when she talks.

Okay, where's my passport? I have itchy feet already.

No Caulk Was Harmed

I was not ACTUALLY learning Ancient Hebrew, or, in fact, re-caulking the bathroom, at the time of the last post. My bathtub was in fact re-caulked last week, but not by me. And the closest I come to Ancient Hebrew is the King James Bible. The verse of the day, by the way, is Mark 6:4, World English Translation. "Jesus said to them, 'A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country, and among his own relatives, and in his own house.'"

What? It was quoted recently in the gangsta rap I was listening to. (Not 4 Sale, Kardnial Offishall.)

My Own Grandmother Prefers Scotch Anyway

A buddy walked into my apartment not long ago, picking me up on our way to a movie, and ended up waiting for me to finish learning ancient Hebrew and re-grouting the bathroom, like girls always do when we have to go somewhere, and went straight to the liquor cabinet to pour himself and myself a drink. I heard the clank, clank, clank.

And then he appeared in the bathroom doorway, holding a plastic gallon. "WHAT," he said, with all possible snottiness, "are you DRINKING?"

I paused with the caulk gun still in my hand. "Canadian Club whiskey," I said, perhaps a trifle defensively. "I like it. So?"

He shot me a withering glance and turned around, heading back to the cabinet. "I knew I was coming to your place, I figured you'd have some good alcohol, I KNOW you have taste," he muttered, in a stage whisper. "CANADIAN CLUB. Seriously. And that's all you have?"

"I have vodka in the freezer, asshole," I called. "And I actually have mixers for that, namely, the OJ in the fridge. And I even have ice."

He re-appeared with a screwdriver on ice for himself and a whiskey on ice for me. He took a swig of mine in front of me, just so I could see the look on his face. "Wow, Grandma," he said, looking down at the glass. "Is that you?"

Okay, so Canadian Club is a little on the sweet side, I get it. I like bourbon and that shows in my whiskey tastes. But I also like Scotch, and my tastes change depending on my mood, which is probably why I drank some Canadian Club today and then poured the glass down the drain, wishing I still had my Speyburn. I've been cutting back on my alcohol storage for some time, so my liquor cabinet is down to the bare bones, but I guess I can't get away with just one whiskey from the entire spectrum--and if I do, it certainly can't be CC. If I, uh, want people to willingly show up at my house.