Sometimes I wish I was wrong

Well, as best as I can tell, nothing has been touched in the kitchen. 24 hours later and the piece of turkey is still sitting out, the oven door is open, and the remains of the glass pan still litter the area. And I'm pretty sure neither of them went to work today, though they're not here now. The hell?

I'd be laughing if it hadn't belonged to me

Last night as I was sitting peacefully in the common room, actively ignoring my deteriorating health (welcome to cold & flu season, cough wheeze) and knitting*, there was a sudden huge and unpleasant boom, crash and tinkling in the kitchen. After a few minutes, my roommate (we'll call him "J") came in and explained.

Apparently, his girlfriend (whom we'll call "T" and also lives with us) wanted him to cook this chunk of turkey for her. It seems they have an arrangement where he does all the cooking and she complains about the dishes. Anyway, we're out of butter which he usually uses liberally in his cooking, but there was some urgency to the turkey-cooking which precluded him from running out to get more. So the turkey was roasting away in 11x9 glass pan which is more for, say, brownies than it is for roasting. But I digress. So he was checking the bird and decided he would use a little milk to help brown the bird since, as he pointed out again, we were out of butter and couldn't do things the way he wanted to. Of course, the pouring of cold milk from the fridge onto a hot bird in a glass pan is not the best of ideas, which he learned when the glass exploded, spraying the oven, part of the kitchen, and J with chunks and shards of glass, as well as hot turkey juice and grease.

Being short on patience and already frustrated, this sent him over the edge, which is to say that he had to walk away, leaving the mess to cool with his temper, and describing the situation to me in the context of his puzzlement that T was now frustrated with him for not finishing the bird.

I relay all this to you as the latest example of the dysfunction in their relationship, as well as to mourn the loss of my brownie pan. And, to express my own annoyance that the kitchen was in the exact same state this morning as I left for work, complete with a now-room-temperature hunk of turkey flesh laying on top of the stove.

Any guesses as to whether it will be cleaned up when I get home tonight?

*I'll save this footnote for a full post in the near future.

Even pearls are dark

Because my company is in the advertising business, we tend to come by lots of new products as samples, for video shoots, and the like. Periodically, when the store room is full, there will be a frenzied give-away free-for-all which has provided me with everything from cookie dough to Rolaids chews, Strawberry Mini Wheats to toothbrushes, detergent to battery-operated razors. I haven't had to buy shampoo in years. Not all the products are so great, but I try not to look a gift horse in the mouth, as it were.

I mention this merely because, a year or two ago, I tried bleaching my teeth with one of the new teeth-whitening strips of the variety you're supposed to slap on and wear for a while each day. I honestly haven't given any real thought to bleaching my teeth before, but ended up with this product because it was free. Sort of like how I ended up with the car wax, even though I don't have an automobile. Anyway, it was a short-lived bleaching attempt because I was unable to keep the damn thing on my teeth for more than ten minutes before the mind-numbing pain shooting through my teeth and resonating in my skull became too much to bear. Not exactly root-canal exposed-nerve sort of pain, but more hot/cold-sensitivity teeth-about-to-shatter pain. Clearly the peroxide bleach thing is not for me.

It occurred to me today, however, as I was washing down my beet salad with some pomegranate-blueberry juice, that perhaps it's time to revisit this and look into the whole laser/light variety of whitening procedures...

Where you're terrific, if you're even good

Ok, I'm done traveling for the immediate future. I've flown enough this past year that I seem to have gotten past my landing anxieties (at least in part). There were the two trips home, the work trip to the Carolinas, the college reunion back east, the Labor Day trip to KC MO, L.A., and... where was that other place? Oh that's right, Hawaii. Sure, sure, I've made no progress on my international destination list (New Zealand, Antarctica, Australia, Argentina, Peru, Nepal, China, Mongolia, Japan, Iceland, France, Norway, Switzerland, Croatia, Turkey, Tanzania, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, the Seychelles, India, Indonesia... to name a few), but I have yet to win that damn lottery. Or hook a wealthy man.
Anyway, I digress.

So L.A. for Thanksgiving! Until I visit, it's easy to forget how much I like L.A., as different as it is from S.F. Dinner was terrific, as was the company of Jen's welcoming friends. The rest of the weekend was spent chillaxin', watching tv in our pajamas and eating cake and pie (curse you, House of Pies, in all your banana creamed glory!), though we did venture forth amongst the masses to fill ourselves with the frenzied 4-weeks 'til Christmas spirit of the season. Alas, I did not use my camera, nor cross-post, so this paragraph is all you'll get till the DVDs are compiled and released in a few years once all the music rights to my memories are obtained. Rose, always a pleasure! I'll see you at New Year's!

The flight home was a fitting way to end my year's travels: chaos. Never have I seen so many people crowding the airport gates. While check-in and security were no problem, the overbookings, smaller plane exchanges, and weather delays meant I sat in the fetal position on the floor forever, trying not to be trampled, draining my cell phone playing sudoku. That's enough of that. Until I go snowboarding in Colorado with the fam in Feb, of course (yay!).


...My god. I used 'chillaxin' in a sentence. You have my permission to smack me.

...Or the turkey gets it....

Happy Thanksgiving y'all! Hope everyone enjoys lots of food, family, friends, and whatever else makes this the best holiday ever.

I'm off to LA. Maybe if you're lucky, you'll get a little Electric Mayhem crossover blogisode.

Trees of green, red roses too

Where to begin, where to begin...
I'm back from Hawaii, and it was exceptional. It's been on my destination list for a long long time, so even I am a little surprised it all came together so quickly and so well. Thank you Zoe, for planting the seeds over Labor Day, and for being a terrific travel partner!

Sadly, I've only ever taken one other vacation to a tropical destination (and as great as Puerto Vallarta was, it's got nothing on Hawaii); most of my time off is burned in less glamorous places. I was, therefore, quite excited, though not entirely prepared.

First, the Big Island is BIG. I mean, I knew it was bigger than the others combined and that it takes a couple hours to drive around, and that it has 5 main volcanoes, two of which top out over 13,600 feet, but still I was taken aback by the sheer bigness. Second, it's warm and muggy. Obviously, right? But when you're used to sweaters and heat lamps year 'round, it's pretty novel to be in flipflops and short sleeves after dark. Also, ocean water is salty. Well duh. And warm! So clearly I'm never in the icy waters of NorCal, and it was a revelation to be in the bathtub blue there, swimming, kayaking, snorkeling (gasping, choking), body surfing.

The trip in brief: Landed in Hilo. Swooned over the blue-eyed Brazilian "Paulo" at the car rental counter. Drove off in our banana-yellow Jeep Wrangler Sport, winding our way up the spectacular (!!) Hamakua Coast. Hit the fog at nightfall in Waimea but found our way to the hotel in Kona. Barely squeaked into the restaurant reservations and got a little lost getting back from dinner. Went to Wal-mart. Sunscreen. Lay on the beach, pet sea turtles, explored the Kona coast. Ate cinnamon buns the size of my head. Sunscreen. Kayaked into a sea cave and had an entire bay to our snorkeling selves. Drove back across desolate lava fields, ate local ice cream in Hawi, checked into our B&B on the slopes of Kohala. Sunscreen. Lay on the beach, swam. Looked out over the stunning Pololu Valley (trails down in closed due to the earthquake), drove (top down!) the mountain road to ranch country, failed to find internet cafe. Sunscreen. Drove Saddle Road between the volcanoes back to Hilo. Shopped, walked to waterfalls. Fish tacos. Went to Volcanoes National Park, hiked, dined, dropped. Doorless helicopter tour of the volcanoes. Sunscreen. Hiked across the floor of a huge crater, trailblazed across the floor of the caldera. Turned off our headlamps at the back of a long and deserted lava tube. Sunscreen. Hiked and explored the remainder of the crater trails, saw nene, hiked to petroglyphs, hiked across frozen lava flows into the dark to see red hot lava pouring into the steaming surf. Knit.

And just like that, the week was over and I was back at work almost as though it had never happened, with hardly a tan to show for it, what with all the sunscreen.

I ku ka makemake e hele mai, hele no me ka malo`elo`e

I had the best of intentions of getting two more posts in this week before saying farewell for another week (one post about that Haggard fellow and one about the elections), but those will have to wait. For you see, as usual when I travel, things have come down to the last minute and gotten crazy busy and I'll be up late packing and take too much stuff, none of which will actually be weather appropriate, and there will be things left unfinished and I'll be stressed until I throw my stuff down in the hotel room.

Which, in this case, will be tomorrow evening in Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Aloha, y'all! I'll be back in a week.

Louise, no matter what happens, I'm glad I came with you

Two things:

1) I just got back from my five-year-ish physical, and I'm in good health! My cholesterol is low, my blood pressure is low, my blood sugar is in the right place, etc., etc. So, weird maxillary pain aside, I've got nothing to worry about. I can go on eating bacon to my heart's content. You know, for now.

2) Just before I went to the doctor, I dumped my sister off at the airport. She was only here for the weekend so it was too-quick a trip, but I was sad to go back to the apartment without her. I miss her! And we had fun while she was here.

I mean, we both missed the boys, of course, but it was also the first time just the two of us got to hang out for any extended period in roughly 10 years, I think. So we could stay up late, sleep in late, skip meals if we felt like it, eat sushi, linger over brunch, go shopping, spend the afternoon museum-hopping... all without interruption, complaint, or naptime. So we did!

We also went to see Chicago (the musical), and, best of all, drove through the Wine Country on a glorious autumn Sunday with the top down in our Dollar-rent-a-car convertible-for-the-price-of-an-economy-class lucky mistake. I could definitely get used to that.

Anyway, a number of people during the weekend commented how nice it was to see siblings out together having fun, as though it were an unusual thing. I mean, I know we haven't always gotten along perfectly, but that was just part of growing up under the same roof sharing space, attention, the bathroom, and not sharing all the same tastes, opinions, inclinations, perceived opportunities. Whatever animosity we might have felt towards each other when we were younger has largely dissipated as adults. And I guess I find it hard to believe that that's terribly rare.

In any case, yay! Here's to health and family!

It's not a contest, but...

Ok, in truth, it was not raining cats and dogs when I posted the previous entry. It was raining, but not terribly hard. It's just that it was only the second time it's rained since last spring, so I was still enjoying the surprise of water falling from the sky. The picture, of course, had nothing to do with anything. I don't even know the story behind it. It's a photo that is in a frame at a co-worker's desk (an actual photo, mind you, on photo paper - not a magazine cutout or new frame insert). And because I crack up every time I see it, I took a photo of the photo so I'd have a copy of my own. So if anyone comes up with the story behind the photo (actual or fictional), pass it along. The winner of this non-contest will get their very own copy.

Cats & Dogs

It's raining!

Trick or treat

The kids were out in force this evening as I walked home from work, and many of them were costumed in terrific disguises. But what's with all the lazy jokers wearing street clothes and carrying a plastic grocery bag? So what if you put a little glitter in your hair, what kind of costume is that? It isn't just free candy night, people, you're supposed to hold up your end of the bargain and at least try to put some effort into it. If trick-or-treaters actually came to my doorstep, the ones without a detectable costume wouldn't be getting any of my candy, that's for sure. Little moochers.

In other news, I went out amongst the hordes in the Castro tonight. That'll be the last time I do that. 100,000 drunken people in disguise jamming the streets with other rowdy revelers just isn't as much fun as it used to be. It took me over an hour just to catch a cab home. Although it could've been worse since at least I narrowly avoided getting shot, I guess.

I sound like an old coot, but what ever happened to the good ol' days of homemade costumes, popcorn balls, and peaceful drunken revelry?