The Orange Reconciliation

Okay.  Orange is not my favorite color.  I do not daydream about painting an entire wall a juicy citrus, nor do I respond to the big O in public decorated places.  But when I see things like this

and this

I immediately start salivating.  How beautiful are these spaces??  They’re so contemporary, urban but comfortable.  I think I could easily incorporate orange into my little home, but then I’m not sure.  Will I tire of it?  Will it eventually make me want to puke?  Because even though I love these rooms and the way they use the color, I still am not a fan of the color itself.

Sadly, I’m not allowed to paint in my place, but I pondered a a pillow, throw, or lampshade.  I’ll hold off for now and pursue hues I more passionately fancy, but it’s like a little worm creeping into my thoughts every so often . . . My friend KG would call it a “Brain Ninja.”

Roasting 101?

First off, I don’t often buy magazines.   I like to read the fronts while standing in line, but rarely do I nab one.  However, because this one leapt off the shelf and refused to go on living without coming home with me, I simply could not say No.  You can almost always get me to do something by either  a) bribing with promises of food and beverage, or  b) threats of suicide.  So I ended up buying the darned thing and it’s turning out to be one of the best mags I’ve ever purchased.  Who knew things could be so simple?!

I can’t vouch for other issues, but this one is chock FULL of fantastic ideas and recipes.  And my favorite part?

Revolutionizing Dinner (One Table at a Time)

Seriously.  Seriously this is one of the most useful articles I’ve ever read.  They have four (ish) families all with different setbacks to cooking more regularly and healthily (BTW, “healthful”  is a word we invented to sound more scholarly in health and nutrition articles.  The words “healthy” and “healthily” have since been replaced with suspiciously similar terms “healthful” and “healthfully” which have proliferated to such a degree that the red squiggly line no longer shows up underneath them in my draft. Nice going, ENGLISH) and they send their “team” in or whatever and give them cooking and organizational tips and lots of cool stuff.  This article, I am realizing now at this moment, might have changed my life.  It’s gotten me so pumped to cook more and be active about it, hence the stupidly easy dinner I made tonight with virtually nothing in my fridge:

Rosemary chicken legs and thighs with carrots (BOO-YAH, MARTHA)

This chicken turned out *SO* DELICIOUS, and I’m not just saying that because I made it and I’m the only one here.  I’m pretty hard on myself when it comes to cooking.  But this?  Easy peasy, man.

Mix in a bowl:

Olive oil

Minced garlic or fresh cloves, chopped

Salt & pepper

Ground rosemary

Toss carrots and chicken pieces in mixture, put on a baking sheet and bake at 425 degrees for 30 minutes.

BAM.  DONE.  STUPID EASY.

Apple Tasting at Portland Nursery

The Apple Tasting Festival might be my favorite event in the city.  The Greek Food Festival comes in a close second.  I think because it’s simple and wholesome, and the tasting itself is free YAY.  I paddied up the Boy and the Brother, got them loopy off the hard cider tasting, and the day took us away!

Today Must Be Irritating Day

I’m not much for venting about stuff, but today it is essential.  An observation: It must be built in to human programming to comment on the temperature, not limited to the weather, or in a room, or of our own bodies, or how we feel in terms of temperature, but primarily so.

It’s hot.

It’s cold.

It’s too cold.

I’m cold.

It’s cold in here.

It’s warm in here.

I’m suffocating in here.

I’m a sunlight person.

My feet are cold.

My toes are ice cubes.

I’m sweating balls in here.

My face is hot.

Your mom is hot.

Your mom like sweaty balls.

It’s too hot in here to think that’s funny.

I’m freezing and you don’t even care.

So that means I’m not a “sunlight person?”

It’s dark and cold in this office.

I like working in a cave.

I hate how you’re cold all the time.

Your mom hates it too.

I happen to be of the School that thinks being slightly on the cool side is far better than slightly on the warm.  I can always put something else on, drink something warm and yummy, walk around and generate heat.  But if I’m too hot, I’m just too bloody hot.  And when I get hot I get mad, and if I’m too hot and mad and there’s lots of computing going on, then it’s sort of over at that point.  So nevermind the fact that being in a cool environment should always trump being in a hot one, I feel no pangs of sympathy if anyone in my vicinity is “too cold” (whereas in most situations, I usually feel slight pangs if not hefty pangs of sympathy.  I am even capable of empathy, too, but it depends where I am in my cycle).  I truly do not care about your fingers, your toes, your face or how sucky your space heater is.  Wear something wool, put on a scarf, and shush.  Running one’s mouth does not, in fact, generate heat like regular running does, which perhaps explains why it happens so frequently.  And that means you can STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT IT because it’s NOT MAKING YOU WARMER.

Other things that mystify me:

• Why the heater in the office bathroom runs at full blast for about an hour in the morning and at no other time of day.  Have you ever tried to poo with a strong hot blast of air pouring over you?  It’s strangely challenging.
• Why the person in the next parking space at my building insists on parking diagonally in their space.  Technically legal, but SO. IRRITATING.  I guess they’ll get the hint by the dings in their door.
• Why coffee = happiness (not that it matters…)

Today, to combat the arctic cold, I am wearing the best thing in the world: a cerulean blue and hunter green wool Pendleton shirt with pearly buttons.  It was gifted to Brother #2 by our Stepdad along with a few others in different colors.  They’re “vintage” because he wore them in the seventies during his cop days when his mustache grew to Tom Selleck proportions and he’d bust pervs in Church parking lots.

Okay, that’s a lie.  His mustache STILL measures at Tom Selleck proportions.

When Brother “got too fat” for the shirts (which really means nothing.  Even when he was running half marathons every other day and sustaining himself on one apple per day and that’s it, he’d say he was “too fat” for his jogging shorts) he passed them on to me and now, HOO-rah, I get to wear them on delightfully brisk days like today.  It’s a good thing I was wearing it, because I might have frozen to death in the frigid sixty-eight degrees in my office before we got the heater fixed.

More Fall Things, Because I’m a Glutton for Fall Things

Ma sent me a picture of Autumn as it looks in Ohio.

Quite impressive!  Last year she sent me a picture of a GIGANTIC leaf she found in her yard.  She’s got some huge old trees on her property that produce some real big fatties.  She scanned Mondo Leaf with a “mere mortal leaf” and it was like looking at a semi truck next to a scooter.  Absurd!  And the Autumns in Ohio really are something special, if you’ve never been.

To satiate my monster Autumn appetite: a golden tree aflame!  The photo is no measure of this tree’s energy and magnificence.

And, uh,  if you couldn’t already tell, I’m a sucker for trees.  And flowers.  And planty things.  I must get it from Ma.

Autumn in Portland

is why, I’m convinced, people move here.

Of course, every time the season changes I say that, but this time I really mean it.  Autumn is where it’s at.

I took this while driving.  I don't recommend it.

Birch trees = my *favorite*

My favorite little cheapy shoes, unraveling even as we speak.  I tell everyone I know not to buy Target shoes ’cause they’ll fall apart, and what do I do?  Fall in love with some.

Puuuuuuuurple !

I found the sun hiding in this puddle.

Art Sesh with Brother 10.18.11

I scheduled an Art session with Brother last week.  I don’t recall that’s something I’ve ever done.  Nevertheless, it turned out to be productive and (duh) raucous.

Not that I have any particular affinity for Chuck Klosterman — never having read any of his writings (he’s a writer, right?) — I just happen to like his face.

And I have since bought some better paper.  This stuff is shit.

This Week's Accomplishments, in Order of Appearance

• Executed Mom’s Famous Chili Recipe with flair and excellence.  On only the second attempt in my life I successfully combined the savory, hearty flavors of blow-your-top-off meat chili with bonafide sex appeal.  AND, as Brother so wisely informed, the gastrointestinal effects of chili become compounded over time.  I only wish I had some warning — between Bear and myself, sterilizing with flame thrower and a bucket of acid became imminent in the W.C.

BAM.

• Successfully — and by “successfully” I mean “without mishap, disaster, or crying babies” — baked corn muffins to go with hot chili.  I ate three, the Boy devoured four or five (I lost count), and the warm butter and honey were *the* perfect accompaniment.  Eat that, June Cleaver.

WOMP.

• Found The Zone for a quick minute getting lost in this pretty tree.  The first of those around my “office” building to succumb to the dipping nighttime temperatures.  I was rather swept away!

• Conquered this morning’s breakfast like a true champ, only breaking one yolk of six.  Those are much better than my previous odds.  Luckily, I was feeding barbarians who don’t eat, but merely initiate shoveling.  Plus, everything tasted so damn good one broke yolk didn’t make much difference.  Nobody cried, nobody went for the jugular, no feelings got hurt.  Just warm full bellies and an endless stream of rich roasty coffee with a gallon of half and half.  Is there anything better?  MmmmYeahNo.

<Insert gratuitous yolk joke>

• Lastly, with not aforementioned ferocious spacial reasoning skills, I wrangled my shitty computer desk into submission.  If I’ve never talked about it before, sitting — anywhere, any time, in any fashion for longer than fifteen minutes — is murdering me slowly with plaguing determination.  I was in a car accident in late March and ever since, my neck, back, and shoulders have been an utter wreck (no pun intended), and sitting sets off all forms of pain, sharp and dull, in one or all of these areas.  I’m working on getting a standing desk for work — the guy in the shop next door is building me one out of an old door — but my home desk, if you’d even call it a desk, has been an additional problem.  But voila!  A genius new setup where I can stand and blog and not regret every bit it of when I’m done.  Now THAT’S an effing victory, Son.

BOO-YAH sucker!!!

It Was Inevitable

I can't believe it took me so long to get one of these.

I am so beside myself.  And Ma's gonna freak out -- She's gonna be like, "I can't believe

it took you so long to get one of those!" and I'll be like, "I know!  How is it even possible!" 

and she'll be like, "I don't know how it's even possible!"  

I knew it was inevitable when the Boy said, "Oooo you know what sounds good?  Some mashed 

Word of the Day: Abounding in Pith

pith*y

adjective, pith*i*er, pith*i*est.

1.  brief, forceful, and meaningful in expression; full of vigor, substance, or meaning; terse; forcible

2.  of, like, or abounding in pith

For the Love of Bulk

Brother and I took to Winco today for some reconnaissance.  His budget is strained right now and he enlisted my help in acquiring essential food goods for the least amount of money.  Such things require Winco.  Such things also require his sister's superior budgeting and sustenance retrieval skills.

Much to my dismay and unprecedented surprise, Winco was an effing madhouse.  Luckily the panic didn’t set in until after we’d combed most of the aisles and were in search of contact lense solution (which they do not carry) and contemplating whether or not the pickles were a worthwhile investment.  We decided they were, but not worthwhile enough to maneuver the thickening crowd coagulating around the entrance where the killer pickle deal resided.  We shall forego the savings and forge on, Comrade, into the treacherous unknown . . .

Items best bought in bulk:

Dried beans

Spices

Nuts

Rice

Canned fish

Items more or comparable in price to other groceries:

Most produce

Deli meat

Bulk cheese

Minced garlic

Fine juices

Non-bulk cereal

We felt pretty good upon completing our two-hour excursion, but only after we got the hell out of the sea of overloaded shopping carts and children darting around our knees.  I splurged on the four-dollar bottle of juice because it was made in my hometown, and Brother went ahead and splurged on sixteen cans of tuna to get him through the next couple months.  A valiant effort, at forty-nine cents a can.

Our checker was unfortunately and visibly dissatisfied with her life even though I didn’t notice until we left the store and Brother noted, “Wow, our checker was really dissatisfied with her life.”  He said it while mildly distracted by a shoplifter trying to get away with nabbed goods on his bicycle, which was a little silly because his bicycle was still chained up to the bike parking post, and he was then pinned to the side of the building by two beefy dudes in black shirts and escorted away.

As we loaded our groceries into the car I thought about how long it’d been since I’d seen that much packaged meat in one place (that’s what she said?) and decided I would only make minimal trips to such expansive and frenetic stores because my stress level was markedly higher coming out than going in (that’s what she said?) and I’d long lost count of how many times Brother made jokes about “tube meat.”

Feeling satisfied and rather accomplished but also much too hungry, the only reasonable reward was hitting a dirty Chinese food buffet on 82nd Avenue.  I felt okay about the assorted vegetables and not too bad about the various meats in sweet sugary sauces, but completely regretted the Banana Vanilla Cake because

a)  it was not, in fact, cake but much-too-banana-y banana pudding made with Nilla Wafers

b)  I had two bites too many.  I do not know why I felt driven to the second bite, but it was worse than the first and my pallet will forever hate me for it.

I made Brother try it and he shared my sentiments, which I think in this case I will call “antiments” because that seems much more appropriate.  And, truth be told, I feel better now with heavy carbohydrate-laden Chinese food in my guts than I did all day eating moderately healthy.  I think it must have been my non-hangover hangover, as I only had two sips of beer last night with my pancakes and bacon at ten o’clock, and the only cure for a hangover of any variety is something greasy and regretful.

I shall not make the same mistake again.

Cruisin'

with the Blue Bomb and KT Friend.  

Though not as much a fan anymore, John Mayer says it's 

"the kind of morning that lasts all afternoon."

By far my favorite kind.

Coffee, Bouffant, eggs, coffee, Scrap, Kombucha, coffee . . . 

Forgot my camera at home, though, so here's some shit ones from my phone.