The Velvet Cerebellum

Dear kids who went into my mom's yard and smashed her bird feeders and bird houses,
Fuck you.
Seriously, fuck you. What the hell is wrong with you? How can you, at that age, have so much unchecked anger and lack of sense that you can do something like that? And apparently you went around town smashing mailboxes and other things. fucking miscreants.

So, the theory is that you are student at the school where my mom is a teacher. Are you doing this for revenge? Do you think that you were treated unfairly and now, in the cover of dark you step forward using baseball bats to smash small items. You are too cowardly to do anything else but sneak around at night smashing things.

Were you trying to hurt my mother? Well, was the collateral damage worth it? All those birds losing their homes and food dispensers. More importantly, you didn't know that those weren't my mother's bird houses and feeders. They were her father's. He put those up so he could watch the birds. He put a lot of work into finding the right foods and houses to attract certain birds. He had a field guide to birds and he would watch and identify them. Some of those bird houses were gifts to him, his friends understood what it meant.

You think you are so important, that you are the centers of some angry universe, that you alone are the arbiters of your own twisted revenge. You are not. You are children unable to see beyond the invisible borders of your tiny shit town. You are pitiful and wasted.

Posted by Heather at 5:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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I'm in the mood for open letters again!

Dear Julie,
Remember talking about opening a crochet only store? Yeah, I want to be your partner. We'll shove a couple of racks of knit patterns over in the corner and not take time to organize them or keep them neat. We'll carry all the cool crochet tools of the trade. We'll offer up help to any crocheter who needs it and stare blankly at knitters with questions. Hell, we'll even tell knitters that what they are doing is so much easier in crochet and leave it at that. Seems fair.

Dear Needlework Unlimited,
I'm done, you suck. Yesterday, as I was looking through your crochet books an employee approached me asking if I needed any help. I thanked her and told her I was just looking at the books. The following conversation ensued:
"but you're looking at the crochet books."
"I know"
"The knitting books are over here"
"I know, I crochet."
BUT YOU'RE LOOKING AT THE CROCHET BOOKS!!! How lovely! With my public school education I would not have known that the book in my hand had the word "crochet" in it. Thank you for warning me! What would I have done if I had wasted all of 3.7 minutes of my life on your paltry crochet book and pattern selection???? You know, there should not be a rivalry between knitters and crocheters, but bullshit like this makes it happen.

Dear publishers of crochet books,
there is a portion of the population that is interested in more than "easy crochet" "quick and easy crochet" "simple crochet" "super easy 30 minute crochet projects" and "teach yourself to crochet!"
Also, we are interested in something other than "advanced crochet patterns for people who like to wear ugly things" and "wacky crochet things you would never make for their eternal pointlessness". I'm just saying is all.

Dear lady at 3 Kittens yarn shop,
I will admit that I was at the end of my short rope after having spent so much time in the snide pits of Needlework Unlimited, but, dammit, what the hell was up with your comments? I asked you to recommend a yarn to complement the yarn I had for a project, I explained what I was making with it and what I needed. You said, "you know, you use less yarn when you knit than when you crochet." Yeah, I know that. I also know that crochet goes faster. I also know that it's 1000 times cheaper and less time consuming to just buy a fucking sweater from the store and be done with it, but that's not really the point. Again, you are exacerbating a rivalry where there should be none.

Dear April,
I need you to help me with a couple projects. When you are not busy, can you call me?

Dear Readers,
Thank you for your patience as I rant. I will soon get photos of my marvelous hoodie posted. I am currently making the funnest chenille jacket on the planet and then I have 2 more sweaters I am going to start and finish as well as a crochet project bag, amigurumi dolls, a bunny costume for a baby, and a hoodie for my sister. ahoy!

Posted by Heather at 1:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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super happy lucky!

It's occured to me that I am incredibly lucky that Anna does not have the ability or know-how to get the phone messages that I leave for her off of the phone and onto the internet. She'd have some great blackmail material there, including the little somg I made up last night about pooping.

So, Anna, cheers to your lack of techie geek ability.

I'm also very lucky to have not only reached my goal multiple times over in my fundraising efforts for the Humane Society's Walk for Animals but to have gotten over $1200 with almost no prodding at all. If you would like to donate just follow the link. It's safe and easy and germ free.

I even got a donation from somebody I don't know. Thank you, Jim! I don't know who you are, but you have my deepest thanks!

Next year I am going to try to wrangle my fellow dog park buddies into making a little fundraising team. Might be fun, who knows.

I am unlucky in that I have to be at the vet's on the other side of town at 8am on Saturday because Chester has a persistent cough and is not feeling well. Poor little guy, i just know he's going to vomit all over the place. damn.

It's beautiful and lovely and fun and I'm pop-topping

Posted by Heather at 1:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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Dear Mr Matheson,
I'm sure you don't remember me, I was in your algebra class back in the late 80's. I would describe myself as that weird, shy, socially awkward kid but that would describe most of us. Algebra always confused me, i was terrible at it. I went to you one day after class because I was not understanding something you had taught that day. It was early on in the school year and the concepts were fairly new. You told me that if I had been paying attention I would have understood what you were talking about.

Thing is, I was paying attention. You made it my fault, it couldn't possibly be that you were too old and set in your ways to actually know that some people would be confused by your cryptic descriptions. You were too grumpy to see that sometimes these things aren't obvious to kids. You were way too much of a fuck to help someone who came to you and asked for help even though it was your job. You get paid to teach, you do not get paid to funnel the contents of your brain onto a chalkboard and the fact that you don't know the difference between the two means you are not teaching.

You made me cry in frustration that day and I gave up. I believed you. I believed it was my fault for not understanding. You looked at me like I was a fuck up who didn't care and instead of me realizing how wrong your logic was, fuck ups don't stay after class and ask for help, I believed you.

And I failed algebra. I ended up taking "everyday math" since I would never be smart enough to learn algebra.

Then this weekend I was crocheting a sweater but I had to make it bigger than the pattern called for. I sat down with the calculator and I determined certain values and made the appropriate multiplications and divisions where necessary. I was able to plug those values into other equations and get stitch counts and row numbers. The thing is, it worked perfectly. Last night, when I pieced the sweater together, every fucking part of it lined up perfectly. All of the seams just laid there begging to be sewn together. When I tried it on, it totally fit. I increased the width of the sweater, shortened the body, did my decreases and raglan caps and armholes based on the figures I had calculated. And it worked.

And technically, it was the algebra. I figured it out. It wasn't that I was a fuck up or that I wasn't paying attention, it was that you were too damned lazy to take the time to teach me and now, 19 years later, i taught myself. I think you owe me part of your salary.

But you probably already spent it on cheap Farah slacks and cotton poly blend short sleeve shirts.

asshole.

Posted by Heather at 4:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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I've spent the weekend doing laundry and it's pretty damned sad when you get a little giddy at the prospect of every damned thing you own being clean (including your fat pants AND that pile of blankets you never wash because there' no real need for them right away).

Posted by Heather at 9:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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I am such a damned nerd. Seriously. Also, showing signs of OCD maybe...

Thursday night I pop into the Library to pick up the book they have on hold for me (China Mieville's "Un Lun Dun". Read this. It's awesome. Read this especially if your name is Julie and you live in Montreal, but even if your name is not Julie and you do not live in Montreal! If your name is Gary and you live in Muncie, read this book. Or not, you may not like it. What the hell do I know) and I figured I'd also snag some DVD's for the weekend.

Anyone who checks out DVD's from the library is automatically a nerd. It's just the way it goes. So, being the ultra-nerd, I skip the movies and go directly to documentaries (I don't really miss TV all that much but I do miss my science documentaries. Nerd.). I got two documentaries about space and I also got Murderball because, you know, sometimes I feel this desperate urge to grasp the last remaining shreds of hipsterdom from my gaining nerdiness.

One of the space documentaries was a lovely affair done up by BBC. It was a pseudo-documentary following the mission of a 6 year trip through the solar system with the astronauts visiting various planets and moons. The science was a tad wonky now and again, I mean if there's an 89 minute delay in communications because of distance you can't really get minute by minute health readouts on the astronauts down at mission control, can you? Also, they sometimes had instantaneous conversations with the astronauts even though they were so far away. Anyway, this documentary was way cool. It was treated as though the mission were really happening and not just "this is what could happen if we went to venus". There was even some implied humpty moments among the crew. hot! Zero G BJ! I watched it 3 times. 3 times. Does this count as some sort of OCD or something.

The other one was supposed to be about the creation event and what not. Mostly it was interesting, but unfortunately they had an agenda. They were postulating that all of the specific factors that led to life on earth were so extremely rare that 1) earth was the only planet with life and 2) there must be a god. Now this is fine on some level, I understand that line of thinking. What really bothered me was that they didn't look at the evidence and conclude this, they started with their conclusion "there must be a god! there's no other way to explain this" and then worked backwards. It doesn't work that way. You end up only seeing the evidence that supports your conclusion and ignoring the other things. Also, there was quite a bit of specious reasoning going on in there. Ultimately, in the end you could say that sure, there might be some sort of worked out plan by some sort of system or whatever, but they took a leap beyond the actual evidence to anthropomorphize whatever system started the whole thing and in anthropomorphizing it, they concluded it had to be god. You can't do that. You can't make a leap like that based on nothing but emotion and then say that proves your theory. It doesn't hold out.

And frankly, you all know my opinion...yeah, maybe something started things rolling, a prime mover of sorts, but that prime mover does not in any way have to be anthropomorphic. it does not have to resemble humans in ANY way. It doesn't even have to resemble life as we know it, it could just be a collection of protons that spin funny and made everything explode. As such, it does not matter to me how plotted or planned or tuned the universe is, it still doesn't translate down to a set of arbitrary rules about who I can fuck or what I can eat. It's really hard to see a moral code in the universe.

AND I think that anthropomorphizing things is the biggest mistake scientists make. It is scientific hubris.

After the documentary they had one of those "interviews" with the guy who did the documentary. Totally fake, completely scripted. The issues at hand was "knowing what we know about the creation of the universe, which religion is the right one" and again they already had their conclusion and worked back. Of course they concluded that Christianity was the correct one. Interestingly, they spent a LOT of time disproving Mormomisn. I thought that odd. i also thought it was strange that in discussing the Hindu creation myths they totally discounted the same elements that they ended up holding up as proof in the Christianity creation story.

They totally dissed animism too!

I watched the documentary 2 times, the faux-interview once.

On to less nerdy things, I am finishing up my hoodie (after having to frog most of it and start over). I should be able to piece it together by the end of the week. Then off to new and bigger and cooler things.

Posted by Heather at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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Every once in a while I get that "hey, i write pretty okay stuff, I should write a book!" idea. Luckily for everyone involved, this thought is quickly followed up with "the occasional witty blog post or email is not in any way a sign of actual literary talent and may actually be a sign of the fact that I am incapable of writing anything longer than 6 paragraphs". This is good.

Occasionally, I do come up with bad bad bad openings for novels because it makes me giggle to actually spend time crafting intentionally bad ideas....

• Lacking any other surface they dumped their blow on the Koala Kare Baby changing station and started to cut it up. With amazing intensity they inhaled not only their next high, but the memories of thousands of Gerber shits, sweet lullabies and talcum powder along with an unhealthy amount of disinfectant.
  
• Like your husband on taco night, she was silent but deadly. Trained for 5 years on a lonely mountainside by the most secretive ninja trainer in the world, she fought for justice, she fought for truth, she was...The Fat Shadow
  
• She felt the familiar urge when she spied the Dracunculus Vulgaris blooming in her neighbor's garden. It brought her back, way back to a time when things were simpler, and yet more complicated, a time when tv dinners were magical and yet profoundly silent in their deadliness. A time when everything made sense simply because she didn't know anything at all.
  
• This is a book about some people that I don't know. I made them up. I feel uncomfortable admitting this. This book is not a lie, it is just not real. The main character, John, may remind you of my dad but my dad is shorter than the character I call John. Other similarities are just that, coincidences. Like that 'John' is married to Meredith, like my dad is married to Meredith. and 'John' has a son whom he hates so much that he kicked him out of the house at 32 forcing him to get a pointless job that screwed up his D&D schedules and even though he couldn't afford to buy beer or groceries because the computer upgrades cost more than he expected, 'John' would not let his son come back home to get groceries or beer or even do laundry.
  
• To understand a dog, one must only take into consideration that a dog has 100% more feet than a human. Once you wrap your brain around that, the rest of dog psychology is a snap.
  

Incidentally, if any of you are a book agent and you want to give me a sweet advance on one of these books, contact me.

Posted by Heather at 3:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

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Today's rocking hot cheap steal purchase?

A 21 quart "Maid of Honor" brand pressure canner for $15! Oh hell yeah. It just needs a new rubber gasket ring and we're good to go. I am so all over the farmers market! I can pressure can things now. Fuck you, botulism! I can now bring food to 15 pounds pressure and process for 30 minutes! I will kill you, botulism! I will kill you in my super cheap pressure canner.

I wish to thank the good people at Steeple People Thrift Stores for not knowing the actual value of what they were selling and many thanks to Matt who saw, recognized it for what it was and called to tell me it was there. Thanks, guys! Saving almost $100 on a pressure canner is super keen!

The added benefit is that it looks like a kitschy 50's robot thing. Very cool. I think the guy behind the counter thought I was buying it for it's kitsch value. I did not want to take the time to explain that I'm not so big on kitsch and then find myself yelling about kitsch and camp and how angry it all makes me because when I get to that point I suddenly find a needle in my arm and people wheeling me away. I did point out that I was planning on actually canning things. I'm gonna 'put up' for winter!

ps if anyone else would like to join Anna and I on our SUPER CHICKEN TREK TO NORTH DAKOTA let me know. You have to bring your own chicken costume.

Posted by Heather at 9:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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I've been commissioned to crochet food items for a little play kitchen set. This is just too much fun! It's for a pair of twin girls who are turning 2 in November and they will be getting a play kitchen set as their birthday present. I will crochet the food to go with it. Right now I am in the planning stages, figuring out what I can make, keeping the items within certain color boundaries so as to not purchase an entire ball of yarn for just one item and determining what kinds of foods kids would actually want to play with.

I went through some cook books and magazines last night to inspire me and I realized that there is a huge difference between food that you can make in the kitchen and food that you can make with yarn (duh). As fascinating as cassoulet might be to me, you can't really crochet it. Or more to the point, you shouldn't crochet it for 2 year olds. They're not going to really appreciate that blob of yarn sitting there.

On the other hand, there will be hot dogs, hamburgers, cheese, ham, bread, blobs of ketchup, mustard and mayo, clusters of grapes, pairs of cherries, slices of pie, and so on. I am particularly excited about the cupcakes because I can decorate them any way i want.

She's also asked me to make sets of finger puppets! I am so all over that. I love making finger puppets. As we go, I'll post photos.

If you are interested in a set for someone you know, drop me a line and we can work out a deal.

Like you buy the yarn and then instead of paying me for my time you donate to the Walk for Animals!

Posted by Heather at 4:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Let's hear it, my peeps! Let us all raise our hands in the air falsely signifying that we do not care!!

We could not ask for better dog park weather, not at all. God bless the Minnesota sspringtime (when it does actually happen). Chester is getting better and better at the park. He's getting socialized and learning to trust other dogs. He's even engaging some in play. Interestingly, he always picks out dachshunds from a distance and goes after them. He really loves dachshunds. Also, he cannot stand pugs. Don't know what the deal is with that.

Tonight we managed to find a couple clusters of people with smaller dogs and Chester hung tight to me for a while then slowly ventured off for farther and farther expeditions. I was very proud of him. Proud until he forgor who his owner was and decided to take off with another lady. We'll have to work on that. He comes when called so I'm not so worried about losing him, I am just a little concerned that it does not occur to him that this person doesn't look like me or smell like me or pay attention to him the way I do.

Maybe it does occur to him and the little bastard has no loyalty. BASTARD!

oh hey...while we're on the topic of dogs...
Let me just remind you to donate! Seriously, I can be really persistant about this! Kidding! Donate if you can and want to, it's a good cause.

Posted by Heather at 7:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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So one of the cooler side effects of the Effexor is the crazy dreams...

The other night I dreamt I was on a football field with Emmitt Smith. Emmitt was getting ready for some big game, perhaps it was the super bowl, I'm not sure. there was glitter and fanfare and all manner of football related excitement. At one point, he and I were dancing on the field, he was trying to sing 'Baby Got Back' to me, but he could not remember the lyrics. I tried to prompt him, but he just wasn't getting it.

Who doesn't know the lyrics???

Later, he ran a play, went out of bounds and the play ended; except he decided that it shouldn't be done. He got back on the field and ran a touchdown. The touchdown was deemed illegal and not scored. Emmitt and the referee got into a fistfight that no one wanted to break up.

I had to walk on the field, and demand that they each stand up. I poked Emmitt in the chest and told him to shut up, I grabbed the ref and told him to make a call and stick to it, dammit.

Yeah, what the hell. I also dreamed that I was renting a house from the lady who bought my house a couple years ago and she was being a dick and I was being a dick and there was a lot of swearing and name calling, then I was on the 'Lost' island trying to teach those yo-hos how to build a palm hut.

and and and....
Please do not forget to donate to the Walk for the Animals fund drive to memorialize Ghengis.

Posted by Heather at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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When I was a kid I got as a present 2 children's books. They were both very large anthologies of children's stories. Not popular or famous stories, just kid's stuff. Stories I've never seen again in any other books.

The books were large, about the size of a phone book and may an inch and a half thick, printed on cheap paper. The stories were divided by theme and each theme had its own color paper. You know, all the animal stories were in the purple section, heroes in the green, etc...

I loved those books, I read the stories over and over. I lost those books one afternoon in a fit of parental rage and it always saddened me.

Now that I'm an adult and I have the resources to replace those quirky things that made an impression I'm finding that I cannot replace those books because I can't remember what they were called. The only details I remember are
1) A story about a little girl who finds a stray black puppy. She brings him home and puts up signs. The owner comes for the puppy and the puppy's real name is Demitasse. This one stuck with me because I had never seen the word 'Demitasse' before and I had to break it down and figure out what it meant, then I had to look it up. I also expected the guy to let the girl keep the puppy but he didn't and I came to understand that just because it's the nice thing or the thing you want it doesn't mean that other people won't be affected by it. The man obviously loved the puppy too!
2) An underwater kingdom is threatened, the hero of the story has to swim through the dense seaweed of the Sargasso Sea. I'm sure he saved the day, but I don't remember. I just remember having to look up the Sargasso Sea because I'd not heard of it before.

Anyway, yeah, sometimes even if you want something and you have the resources to get them, you just can't have them because they don't exist anymore. I'm sure these books were put out by some cheap fly by night printhouse and picked up on the cheap. They certainly were not of any high quality. Maybe someday I will find them.

*******************
Fundraising for the Walk for Animals has been coming along beautifully! I've had to increase my goal again. I am very please about this. I even contact the Humane Society to find out exactly how to make sure that the funds donated are done in Ghengis' memory. I am very excited about this. Thank you to everyone.

Posted by Heather at 3:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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As you know, last year I lost my dear little Ghengis. I've survived months of mourning and grieving and now it is time to do something.

I am raising money for the 2007 Humane Society's Walk for Animals. I miss Ghengis in the deepest way, I really do. Part of what hurts so much is that I don't have the means to tell him just what a great dog he was. This is one way that I can do it.

The funds I raise and donate will be a memorial to Ghengis. There is no better way to honor his memory than to help other dogs (and cats and bunnies and ferrets and squirrels and mousies!).

If you would like to donate, please click here. It's fast and easy!

Do it for him...

EDIT: Thank you to all who have donated so far! I am truly touched by your generosity! I have bumped my goal up since your donations have surpassed it. Thank you thank you and Ghengis thanks you!

Posted by Heather at 6:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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New photos! over there on the right! A couple new dog photos, a couple added to ephemeral and many added to craftin! see the dino purse, the turtle parade and the little bunnies!

Finally, photos to love and share

Posted by Heather at 9:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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I'm pretty sure that public radio is trying to kill me. This isn't paranoia or me just trying to blame a giant, faceless entity for my own stupidity. It's true, there's a conspiracy.

1) While listening to a bit about the process of hand mixing fabric dyes in Afghanistan, I missed my turn to go home and subsequently turned on the wrong street

2) Listening to an interview with the ambassador to Sudan and his wienery way of wiggling out of any question that could not be answered with a reference to the glory of sudan I ended up way south of my house and had to creep around the lake to get home

3) my car displays the artist and song title on the radio. When i am listening to the minnesota public radio's station that is supposed to be playing "new, alternative music" (and I'm such an old lady that when I listen I end up saying things like, "comb your hair, cheer up and go outside for a little bit" and "your whiny voice doesn't hide your lack of talent" and "oh great, another blast from the eighties! Goodness, I'm glad I got to hear 'Faith No More' once more before I died!"). Every once in a while they do play something of interest that sounds both new AND good (because a lot of the shit sounds new, but stuffing a reed up my ass and listening to whistlefarts also sounds new but you wouldn't want to hear it) and I want to see what I am listening to. I have to stare at my radio face and the road and the radio face and the road and the radio face and the road and try to watch the light turn red and not die before I get the name of the artist which I will promptly forget because I can remember things I don't need to know (like the fact that I was wearing a beige sweater at the record store appearance of Soul Coughing 2 million years ago, but I cannot remember the name of the record store).

4) an explanation of how the sub-prime mortgage market implosion affects me made me late for work

5) listening to Kevin Kling talk about dachshunds and dog sledding found me in the garage with the car running for longer than is healthy

6) last night I totally blew through a stop sign while listening to a story about Albert Einstein

Actually, it seems that public radio isn't trying to kill me but is trying to use me as a tool to kill others. interesting.

In further geek news, April got David the first 2 seasons of the new Doctor Who on DVD. I was not so interested, i've never been terribly interested in Doctor Who and in watching the first episode I was really not interested, but I kept watching. It's actually not bad. I mean it's not high art or anything (except for the Empty Child/The Doctor Dances two parter, that was awesome) and the science is way way wrong most of the time but it's quirky and fun. I will say that Christopher Eccleston makes a funnier, more thoughtful and better looking Doctor that David Tennant can ever hope to be.

And by comparing Doctors in this way, I have doomed myself to a life of tucked in button down shirts, inhalors and New Years Eve parties spent playing video games in cheap hotel rooms! (oh, Anna, did I totally diss you there? yeah, I think I did! I am your mom and I took you to school in the car of pain!!!! Guess that will teach you to miss lunch you overcaffienated monkey-picker!)

Also also I have reopened comments to all and I am taking on a new strategy to fight comment spammers. So leave a comment, just don't try to sell me clear prom shoes, visa cards, outdoor area rugs, hoover vacuum cleaner parts and viagra.

Posted by Heather at 4:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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My mother has a friend, Susie that dyes and spins yarn. If you go to her site you can see some of her beautiful handiwork. I particularly like the 'irises' and the 'baby so blue'.

When I got home last night I found a package waiting for me. It was quite unexpected. It was from Susie, who I had met once last fall. Insid the envelope was was a beautiful skein of yarn, hand dyed in vivid candy shades of pink and blue. It's a very lightweight super wash merino wool. She sent me 1100 yards. I have a skein of hand dyed super wash merino wool that measures 1100 yards! Go to your yarn store and see how many yards are in a typical skein of high quality yarn!

1100 yards of yarn would pass over a football field 11 times! 1100 yards would pass over me 660 times! 1100 yards would kick your mom's ass and FEEL NO REMORSE!!!!

I immediately pulled out my pattern books to find something worthy of such yarn. I'm still looking though I do have some ideas brewing in my head. Most certainly, this yarn will not be made into gifts. I'm feeling greedy, I want to keep things for me!

Posted by Heather at 4:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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Before I regale you with tales of my enormously delicious paella meal, I will tell you 2 things from this weekend that are totally retarded. It's important that you don't get the idea that I am some sort of super hero with only magic and smooth writing pens. I am just a regular person with a regular life. I want to guarantee balance. If there is no balance, there is no truth...

1) We decided to do our grocery shopping for easter dinner on saturday night at 10pm. This could end here as it is pretty retarded, but it was cool, we got our stuff and got home. I walked in the door with approximately 8000* bags of groceries on my arms. If you know anything about my dogs you will know that they are an excitable and yet entirely retarded pack of beasts with no concept of "other" or "cause and effect". As I tried to get in the door quickly Maddie was trying to tell me important news like "My name is Maddie" and "OH MY GOD!!! You are now inside the house" or my personal favorite "when you were not in the house I farted and it kind of smelled like dog food and it was really weird so I barked a little." My dogs never say things like "wow, that's a lot of stuff, can I help you carry anything?" no, they can't conceive of any notion other than, "TOUCH ME TOUCH ME ACKNOWLEDGE ME VALIDATE ME!". In Maddie's frenzy she managed to knock into my legs and send my flying onto my face.

Sprawled out in the living room, groceries everywhere, do you think Maddie would feel remorse? No, mostly she just saw it as an opportunity to say, "my nose is very wet and I want to leave nose wetness on your face as a gift."

2) Sunday, after eating a delightful brunch at my dad's house (ham....the king of the pink meats) I had to swing by my house and hurriedly gather up the food and equipment to make the amazing paella dinner at Owen's place. With Anna's help I hauled the bags and pans and whatnot out to the car. I dropped Anna off at home and popped over to Owen's place. It was a beautifully sunny afternoon, the skies were so clear blue and I was belting out "The Decemberists" at the top of my lungs. When I got to Owen's and started to unload the car, all my joy dissolved...

In the process of loading up the car I had put my lovely 12 in Calphalon paella pan on the trunk of the car. You know where this is going. No pan in my car, certainly no pan just sitting on the trunk of my car. I lost my pan. I drove home hoping it had fallen off my car as I was pulling out of my driveway and nobody noticed it. Sigh. It either shattered into 1 billion anodized pieces or someone not so unlike myself came upon it and said "a practically new calphalon pan with cover that retails for $168** just lying in the street? Happy easter to ME!". My pan is gone. I would be sad or angry but really it was my own fault and all I can do is laugh at my own stupidity.

Okay, that was my "retard" portion of the weekend, now on to the food.

Owen is amazing to cook with. Anything I use gets snatched up and cleaned immediately, he takes orders well and makes me buttered english muffins when my energy gets low.

The first crostini we made was went from the planned "Mirableu blue cheese, roasted apricots and spiced pecans" to a combination of Point Reyes blue, roasted plums and spiced pecans due to the vagaries of the imported cheese and stone fruit situation in minnesota. This ended up being a balance of sweet, salty, sour and spicy all at once.

The next crostini was Brillat-Savarin brie, pears poached in ginger syrup and roasted curried yam slices. Same result, sweet, spicy and salty, but no sour. I loved it. The pears were amazingly spicy and sweet. The leftover ginger syrup went into martinis later in the evening.

A salad of mixed greens, flowers, herbs and mint and an orange mustard vinaigrette. The vinaigrette in its initial incarnation of orange juice, oil, homemade mustard and shallots was weak and without the proverbial balls I was looking for. I added about a teaspoon of mustard powder and threw it in the fridge for further flavor blossoming. The mustard powder did the trick, sweet and tangy and definitely not bland.

This is the paella recipe that I used as sort of a base. A jumping off point, so to speak. We got rid of the chorizo to satisfy the sensibilities of the fish but not meat eaters and replaced it with squid, halibut and bay scallops (along with the shrimp, mussels and clams). I wanted the flavor to be more "Spring" than "Summer" so I cut back on the tomatoes a bit and added a metric buttload of orange juice reduction and orange zest. I also used peppadews instead of piquillos.

Also, it took way way way longer for the rice to cook than I anticipated, so the fish got a bit overcooked, but no one minded.

Dessert was an orange cream tart with strawberries, mango and blueberries on the top, glazed with lemon ginger marmalade. I accidentally added too much sugar to the mascarpone cheese and it ended up being way way sweet. sigh. better luck next time I guess. Owen arranged the fruit on the tart as he has way more visual creativity than I do.

We ate, drank, gossiped and had a great time. David and I drove seperately and he won major points for finding and bringing the cocktail napkins that I forgot! I didn't even have to ask him. He's like magic.

I hope it was a happy Easter for you all! Oh! April, sorry babe, there were no leftovers. We were big big pigs.

* When you own two dogs it is important to always have a steady supply of plastic bags in the house. This means that when you bag your groceries you use plastic and you place 1 or 2 items only in each bag. a 2 bag shopping trip can easily yield 8-10 bags if you bag things up properly.

** I did not pay $168 for this pan. I got it on sale. I am not THAT retarded.

Posted by Heather at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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Met Owen at 10am outside Coastal Seafood. Already there were people waiting to get in. I had forgotten about Good Friday! Celebrate! Eat Fish! You could see the staff die a little in their souls as they saw us out there. I hadn't even considered the parking lot would be full of nutty women, those fourty-somethings that live in 50's blocks just south of Calhoun. Not the Edina-ites, they don't go to the city for their fish, these are the eco-happy, liberal, would be liberal but the taxes are just too high kinds of ladies in their fair trade wool coats and Fendi bags. Hot.

Owen and I were in and out in a matter of minutes. Fuck, I love cooking without a budget. We got mussels, clams, shrimp, squid, tiny tiny bay scallops and some halibut, all for the paella. I'm playing with a paella recipe, I want to make it a little more spring like instead of summery, so I'm going to hit it with orange and cut back a bit on the tomato. We'll see how that goes.

I'm making two appetizers, one is a crostini with sheep's milk blue, spiced pecans, and roasted apricots. I love this one because i think it's going to really balance the salty/sweet/spicy, if we need sour I'll dash some vinaigrette on there. We also have some brie for the other appetizer and while another crostini would be nice, i'm thinking I'd like to show just a little more creativity than that.

There will also be a quick salad of mixed greens, orange mustard vinaigrette and probably some apricots and nuts, you know, because I have them.

Dessert is currently a tart filled with orange spiked mascarpone, covered in some sort of fruit and glazed with lemon ginger marmalade. This is still up in the air as I don't know what fresh fruit is available and we'll have to wing it. This is minnesota, it's not easy to get fresh fruit in the winter than hasn't been bred down to super stable but completely styrofoam flavored.

After the seafood store and some dallying here and there, David and I headed out to the Guyanese restaurant. It was okay. The food is an interesting cross between Indian and Carribean, unfortunately, everything at this place was too salty and too overcooked. The service was great and everyone was really helpful, I just had hoped for something....more.

I'm off to get some ice cream as it seems to be dinner time. later Chochachos

Posted by Heather at 7:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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Every once in a while the more adult like people around me realize that maybe putting some boundaries on me would be a good idea. Last night David suggested that perhaps I should not have ice cream until AFTER I ate a nutricious and balanced dinner. He also pointed out that ice cream, in and of itself is not a nutricious balanced meal and that I could not substitute ice cream for dinner.

He thought that maybe a good rule would be "eat dinner first, have ice cream after"

I suggested that a better rule might be "heather can have ice cream"

He said that technically, that was not a rule. I said that technically, I did not care. I thought it was a perfectly cromulent rule.

We also had a debate about what constituted an appropriate serving size of ice cream. I felt that since there was nothing mentioned in the rule "heather can have ice cream" regarding the amount of ice cream that the framers of the rule felt it was my right to eat as much ice cream as I wanted. We might have to take this to the supreme court.

Unfortunately, I think that the Supreme Court in my house is populated by dogs. Dammit.

Today is my Friday! It's like I'm writing to you from the future! Sometimes you just need a day off to buy shell fish for Easter Paella, eat at the Guyanese restaurant and generally swing your butt around.

Posted by Heather at 3:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

« March 2007 | Main | May 2007 »

Date night monday night. It was cute and fun. The Birchwood was doing half priced bottle of wine night (making the bottles of wine only double the cost!) so we cozied up, split a bottle of wine, a salad and the cheese plate.

Being the über-romantics that we are, we headed to the grocery store in all our tipsy glory to buy things like ham, cheetohs, ice cream, lettuce and cilantro. I also got me a bubble gum ball on the way out.

Back at home we put the groceries away and David went to take the dogs out. Before he left he handed me a bottle of wine off the rack and told me to see if I could get it open. Now, had I not already consumed half a bottle I would have said something responsible like "dude, it's after 10 and I have to work in the morning", but I didn't.

Now, I am sitting at my desk in a haze. We got to sleep after 3am and it was fitful, wine fueled sleep. David is on spring break this week and does not have to work. He very very sweetly got up with me this morning, made my coffee, got my clothes ready and made sure I didn't fall asleep in the tub. He even got me out the door on time. I can't even get myself out the door on time when I'm not exhausted and sleepy. Luckily I don't have a hangover or anything.

on a side note, i'm entirely too pissed off at food companies that decide to package their food in smaller and smaller packages. It's rare to get a half gallon of ice cream anymore, now it is 1.75 quarts. A 5 pound bag of sugar has been downsized to 4 pounds and I even saw a "2 litre" bottle of soda at the store that looked suspiciously small, it was 1.5 litres. It's not like they're selling it for any cheaper. assholes.

Posted by Heather at 3:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

« March 2007 | Main | May 2007 »

My food issues of the previous entry have been abating in some way, which is a relief. I adore and love food and I hated the idea that I might have to subsist on a diet limited to yogurt, caramel malts and oatmeal with so much milk added that it was more like soup.

Thursday night I had to pick up David after work in northeast Minneapolis because of a bus aid scheduling something or other. We were up on Central ave, one of the best kept secrets in town. On Central ave you can eat food from all over the globe. There's not just mexican food but authentic food from the state of Chiapas, there's Ecuadorian, African, Indian cuisines from various states in India, Middle Eastern, Ukrainian....everything. We decided to get a quick dinner before he had to head out to teach his class and I was feeling optimistically hungry. We wandered a few blocks and weighed our options. The Chiapas place seemed inviting, but we do eat a good deal of authentic mexican as it is and the special was pork in chili verde which I almost always get and we needed to eat something new. A little more wandering brought us to Crscent Moon, the Afghani bakery/coffee shop/restaurant.

I had spent a week unable to eat anything more solid than water and I decided to make my first real excursion into the world of solid food by eating the food from a nation with a history that includes nothing but violence, anger and hostile takeovers. From Alexander the Great to the Soviets to whatever the fuck is going on there now, these are not a people with a rich history of trust falls and campfire sing alongs. Hell, considering the paintings on the walls of the restaurant, i'm led to believe that the national past time is a sport wherein many men get on horses and ride around and whip each other and slap each other in the face. The winnder is determined not by who slapped the most people or who rode the fastest, but the winner is usually whoever ended up invading the country while they were busy slapping each other.

I really want to make some joke about invading my dinner or being invaded by my dinner, but....i'm really NOT that painfully lame.

We perused the menu, I got me some lamb kourma and a sheer chai. I'd never had Afghani food, so I was not entirely sure what to think. First off, I wet myself twice at the chai. It was so loaded with cardamom I about died and went to Afghani heaven (which I am sure I would not be allowed into on account of all my evil ways). I'm a little cardamom whore. I'd be okay with only ever drinking that chai for the rest of my life. When we got our dinner I died all over again. Afghani food seems to be the much loved offspring of Indian and Middle Eastern cuisines. I was able to eat a little less than half my meal before being overwhelmed by the urge to spit, shit, vomit and die.

All in all, it was the most I'd been able to eat in a week and I was thrilled.

I jumped back in the eating game in the most horrific way
Friday: 2 servings of lasagna, salad and bread along with cake at the SMT volunteer thank you dinner that I went to as David's guest
Saturday: an entire cantaloupe for breakfast and pizza rolls for dinner
Sunday: a giant breakfast of eggs, potatoes, sausage, toast and a pancake and then 1/2 pund of carrots for dinner.

I'm back in the game and ready to put on 20 pounds!

Posted by Heather at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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