while my blogmate continues to put the best stuff in my arsenal to shame with her witty, insightful banter, i remain stuck in a cycle of blog indecision, perseverating about transient, meaningless events that, though entertaining to me as an amalgam, fail to come together in even an amusing, if not interesting way.
i hang my head in shame...
but continue to laugh on the inside (and sometimes even out loud) about the weird series of things i've heard, seen, done, and said in the last month.
while in france i learned that my seventeen year old french skater punk cousin - along with his entourage of french skater punk friends - actually poured a concrete skate park in the barn, much to the delight of his parents who basque in the transferred glow of youthful spontaneity while also enjoying the peace of mind that accompanies knowing the exact whereabouts of their youngest child.
from french b.f.e. we moved on to italian b.f.e. for a few days of raucous wedding partying and outright euro summer camp. there was lots of drinking and eating and driving around looking for the slovenian border, and of course a story that started, "let me tell you about the most famous transvestite in trieste," and ended, "but then he moved to london... and became a baker... and i don't think he's a transvestite anymore."
i got back from my european adventure and rolled right into my highly anticipated 30th birthday weekend. it's hard to pick what goes on the highlight real, but up there on the list are:
1) zillions of disney princess cupcakes, thoughtfully provided by my blog mate
2) zillions of friends at the village tap on roscoe, along with a decent handful of stragglers and 3 anorexic crashers who stole cupcakes and ran
3) zillions of beers
and of course,
4) the great 30th birthday festival crawl, orchestrated by my blogmate, dh, and kl (in absentia) - you'd think seven festivals in seven hours was too much... but you'd be wrong.
then i went on to new orleans to vist my allegedly convalescing mother who, even with half a lung missing, had the stamina for the zydeco/seafood festival (where i wondered why i had never before tried char-grilled oysters, easily the best food on the planet), the creole tomato festival (where we ate fried-green-tomatoes, easily the second best food on the planet), and a matinee showing of "waitress" (featuring nathan fillion, easily one of the hotest guys on the plant). once i'd finally managed to wear out my mother i went out drinking with my good friend lr, drank a mint julep (i'm sorry, one more time: hands down the best drink on the planet) and found myself happily being driven around new orleans in her convertible, giggling in the passenger seat as she muttered expletives under her breath and made grave announcements along the lines of, "i can't talk to you right now, i'm concentrating on not peeing."
from there i'll skip past the tragic tales of my soul-sucking professional life and move on to the next weekend of binge drinking, this time in honor of my good blogmates upcoming nuptuals... and of course drag queens. so there was a bridal brunch complete with an omelet station (for which i take no credit) and a pretty well stocked bar (for which i take all the credit), and then there was my second annual pride parade party... both welcome excuses for pre-noon drinking, for the acquisition of pressure cookers, and for hanging out with my most awesome friends.
so none of this really comes together very well, except to remind me that while i may not be beating men off with a stick, winning the lottery, or fitting into my skinny jeans, i do have a pretty interesting life... which i am apparently too busy to blog about.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
squish the grapes slowly
keanu reeves i am not. and i hated "a walk in the clouds." but LOVED my adventure with friend jannine to beverly's wine- and beer-making store for a beginners' wine-making class!
picture a talkative william h. macy (not quite the minnesotan accent from fargo, but close) with one hand in a sling pouring glass after glass of homemade brew for 6 of us to sample as we learned about the different kinds of yeast that make different flavors, why you can't make a cabernet with 18% alcohol (apparently you have to start with twice the sugar as desired alcohol content, but if you have 36% sugar, the yeasties sometimes get tired of eating and conk out early like thanksgiving day in front of the big game, leaving you with syrup), that they bottle something called bourbon-honey mead (!!!) but can't sell it at the store because their half of western ave. is actually dry, so they have to sell actual alcohol at the store across the street. we started a batch of pinot grigio - i love red wine but we preferred the immediate drinkability of whites for a first attempt; wouldn't your heart break if you spent weeks waiting patiently to bottle your wine, then 3-6 months for it to age properly, and then it was yucky?
the process has been pretty easy so far. we mixed yeast with grape juice, bobbed a little sugar-and-alcohol-0-meter in the mixture to test the concentration, giggled a lot at the instructor telling us we had to be "sterile," but that our sterile working area was the top of the bucket that the grape juice gets put in (enter much jannine whispering "oops, i breathed into our sterile field. wait, was that your hair entering the air over our sterile field?" we medical types aren't funny, i realize, but there was a lot of wine and we found ourselves quite clever), and sealed up the bucket. next week we get to go back to see if our yeast are eating the sugar or not and switch buckets.
in 6-10 weeks we get to bottle, label and serve. suggestions for names? anyone lining up to be willing to taste? (if it helps, no, my hair did not end up in the wine.)
picture a talkative william h. macy (not quite the minnesotan accent from fargo, but close) with one hand in a sling pouring glass after glass of homemade brew for 6 of us to sample as we learned about the different kinds of yeast that make different flavors, why you can't make a cabernet with 18% alcohol (apparently you have to start with twice the sugar as desired alcohol content, but if you have 36% sugar, the yeasties sometimes get tired of eating and conk out early like thanksgiving day in front of the big game, leaving you with syrup), that they bottle something called bourbon-honey mead (!!!) but can't sell it at the store because their half of western ave. is actually dry, so they have to sell actual alcohol at the store across the street. we started a batch of pinot grigio - i love red wine but we preferred the immediate drinkability of whites for a first attempt; wouldn't your heart break if you spent weeks waiting patiently to bottle your wine, then 3-6 months for it to age properly, and then it was yucky?
the process has been pretty easy so far. we mixed yeast with grape juice, bobbed a little sugar-and-alcohol-0-meter in the mixture to test the concentration, giggled a lot at the instructor telling us we had to be "sterile," but that our sterile working area was the top of the bucket that the grape juice gets put in (enter much jannine whispering "oops, i breathed into our sterile field. wait, was that your hair entering the air over our sterile field?" we medical types aren't funny, i realize, but there was a lot of wine and we found ourselves quite clever), and sealed up the bucket. next week we get to go back to see if our yeast are eating the sugar or not and switch buckets.
in 6-10 weeks we get to bottle, label and serve. suggestions for names? anyone lining up to be willing to taste? (if it helps, no, my hair did not end up in the wine.)
Friday, June 15, 2007
senor bendice mi camino
saw this written as the bug shield of a truck this morning and loved it.
i'm glad someone's blessing someone's automotive journey. i wish we'd had that bug shield last weekend when mb and i drove out to the palos forest preserve to do a little hiking and see the cicadas. perhaps senor could have made me a little more observant, which would have prevented the following exchange:
mb: "i can't wait to see the cicadas!"
me: "me either. where are they? what's that buzzing sound? how come we haven't seen them yet? what's that buzzing sound?"
*relative silence, except for deafening buzzing sound*
mb: "do you think those are the cicadas?"
me: "oh. right. the buzzing."
me: "so if they're so loud, why can't we see them? on a totally unrelated note, what are those weird bugs nose-diving the windshield? anyway, where are the cicadas?"
senor might have been bendiciendo our caminos, but certainly not the caminos of our little friends who arrive in northern illinois every 17 years, who were meeting a rather abrupt end on mike's car.
my stellar observational powers did not end there; i also failed to immediately notice the pock-marked ground in the woods where the young cicadas exited for the sky, the millions of molted skins left by the nymphs as they grew, or the older mother-bugs on the surfaces of all the tree trunks, laying eggs that would eventually hatch into the next cycle of larvae to bury underground and meet us again in 2024 for a new cycle of getting it on.
once i stopped to pay attention, they were everywhere. but once i stopped to pay attention, it was creepy and i wanted to leave. good thing a loud park ranger with a bullhorn was there kicking out all the nature- and fitness-lovers gathered for stair climbing by the toboggan run (apparently closed for remodeling). relieved, i told mb "great, let's skip any more hiking or stair climbing, go for a little run down that nice flat trail over there, and call it an afternoon." and off we went, blissfully unaware that we were running straight into what mb later referred to as "spring break daytona beach for cicadas." flying posses, piled-up threesomes on each branch, loving couples on the ground, loners on our arms.
ew. but fascinating. but ew.
i'm glad someone's blessing someone's automotive journey. i wish we'd had that bug shield last weekend when mb and i drove out to the palos forest preserve to do a little hiking and see the cicadas. perhaps senor could have made me a little more observant, which would have prevented the following exchange:
mb: "i can't wait to see the cicadas!"
me: "me either. where are they? what's that buzzing sound? how come we haven't seen them yet? what's that buzzing sound?"
*relative silence, except for deafening buzzing sound*
mb: "do you think those are the cicadas?"
me: "oh. right. the buzzing."
me: "so if they're so loud, why can't we see them? on a totally unrelated note, what are those weird bugs nose-diving the windshield? anyway, where are the cicadas?"
senor might have been bendiciendo our caminos, but certainly not the caminos of our little friends who arrive in northern illinois every 17 years, who were meeting a rather abrupt end on mike's car.
my stellar observational powers did not end there; i also failed to immediately notice the pock-marked ground in the woods where the young cicadas exited for the sky, the millions of molted skins left by the nymphs as they grew, or the older mother-bugs on the surfaces of all the tree trunks, laying eggs that would eventually hatch into the next cycle of larvae to bury underground and meet us again in 2024 for a new cycle of getting it on.
once i stopped to pay attention, they were everywhere. but once i stopped to pay attention, it was creepy and i wanted to leave. good thing a loud park ranger with a bullhorn was there kicking out all the nature- and fitness-lovers gathered for stair climbing by the toboggan run (apparently closed for remodeling). relieved, i told mb "great, let's skip any more hiking or stair climbing, go for a little run down that nice flat trail over there, and call it an afternoon." and off we went, blissfully unaware that we were running straight into what mb later referred to as "spring break daytona beach for cicadas." flying posses, piled-up threesomes on each branch, loving couples on the ground, loners on our arms.
ew. but fascinating. but ew.
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