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November 30, 2007
Just another day at the office
***
***
This video marks my last appearance on Japanese TV. I'm the one on the right. You know I kinda miss that job. My well of comedic and/or humiliating stories has run dry. The only funny things that happen to me these days are my random encounters with crazy bums. And those really aren't so funny.
Tomorrow our friends Renu and Jon are coming in from New York and I'm really looking forward to a break and showing them around. Two months ago I couldn't tell you which way the ocean was and now I'm a bona fide local. Well, sort of.
Rafe and I are off to my dad's house again, just for the night. He's slowly becoming more independent and soon won't be needing round the clock assistance. I'm bringing chicken tortilla soup, tiramisu, and Boggle in efforts to lift his spirits. He's been stuck in the house for three weeks now. Hopefully the food and diversions will mean we won't have to endure any more war documentaries. Ken Burns, I hate you.
*** Sadly there won't be photos on here for a while. We lost our lovely Lumix camera while in Monterey for our 4 (!) year anniversary. Been kinda bummed about it as our photos from the trip are lost (including a silly series of me INNOCENTLY eating a chocolate-covered frozen banana -yeah, I wonder what that must have looked like to the person who found the camera!)
Posted by debbie at 6:25 PM | Comments (1)
November 14, 2007
Here, Nibby
Discovery: Berkeley-based Scharffen Berger's Nibby bar. 62 percent cacao - perhaps the perfect cacoa percentage- with ground cocoa nibs (cocoa beans after they have been roasted and shelled) interspersed throughout.
The Nibby is a chocolate bar to gush about: deeply cocoa-y, slightly crunchy and dark enough without having any of that bitter undercurrent.
My godfather happens to own another chocolate company nearby so I feel like I'm doing something shameful by enjoying Scharffen's product- but I can't help it, the Nibby calls out to me. Plus I'm PMSing so loyalty means little to me right now.
Nibby would be a good name for a Corgi. I want a Corgi so bad. They're adequately funny-looking without being gross (like the pug's mucusy flat face- oy vey, I don't understand how people have dogs like this around) plus they're compact but not rat-like. A perfect city dog.
I'd go for a Beagle, too. In an ideal world I'd find a Corgi-Beagle mix. Do they make these? A Borgi? A Ceagle?
Before we moved, I was a little obsessed with scanning PetFinder.com. I became very attached to the idea of getting a dog- I thought it'd make me a little less lonely out here. I found THE perfect dog- his name was Narbles. He was pretty old but that didn't really concern me- that only meant less walks and less years of commitment.
His profile read:
"I'm an altered male Beagle of dignified carriage and gentle disposition"
Dignified carriage! Gentle disposition! And what advanced writing skills.
When we arrived and I thought, hey we have room for a dog (sort of/not really) I checked back in on him, and he had already been adopted. I was heartbroken.
Maybe a baby pygmy goat is more reasonable way to go. Quieter than a dog and a kookier pet choice. Kook-factor is something to consider when you live in the nation's kooky capital. And you can lead them on a leash! I'm loving how they specify "These are pets, only--they are not to be even remotely considered as food." Do people really go trolling Petfinder for animals to butcher and eat? Jesus.
The producer in me is thinking that would be a great idea for a Dateline special. To Catch a Pet Eater. You know you'd watch it.
Posted by debbie at 8:11 PM | Comments (0)
November 12, 2007
Write it Down
So much for NaBloPoMo. I was feeling (temporarily) very disciplined until my dad got into a car accident Thursday night. Before I get all Debbie Downer on you, let me just say that he's ok. But it was quite a shake up.
The story is a little hazy (as are most stories 'round here) but as he recalls, he was on his way to meet me for dinner in Berkeley when big truck in front him stopped suddenly before a light--he didn't see the truck until too late, slammed on the breaks, and hit the truck. His airbag failed to inflate (is this common? Because if it is, this is just one more reason why I don't want to learn to drive**) but thankfully he was wearing his seatbelt. He really fucked up his knee, a knee that was already fucked up from a previous accident a few years ago. It could have been so much worse. It was just a knee and a little whiplash. So he's ok except for the fact that he can't walk, go to the bathroom, or do anything for himself for God knows how long (God, how long?) Until last night I was camped out at his house. Maybe 'camped out' isn't the right phrase. 'Held hostage by Jewish guilt'? Yeah, that's more like it.
"What degree does the thermostat say?"
"Let me see."
[I run downstairs]
"69"
"Too hot, I'm sweating buckets here! Turn it down to 68 please"
[run back upstairs]
5 minutes later...
"I feel chilly! What degree is it in here?"
[run downstairs, report that it is the 68 degrees he requested earlier]
"Too cold, I have the chills now. Is that what you want? Turn it up to 70."
The game went on or four days.
The Goldbergs don't do well with injury or illness and, frankly, we milk these situation for all their worth. It's what we do.The nurse in the ER must have been tipped off to this family trait after my dad began screaming for crackers- a real emergency because he was...hungry. As he was being loaded into his wheelchair, the nurse pulled me aside and implored me not to baby him--he said that if I did, he would never get back on his feet. He needed to exercise his knee and regain his independence as soon as possible.
I thought about this later as I flipped his blueberry pancakes like a short order cook, rolled his ("make sure they're loose!") socks on his feet, and changed his urinal every hour. I was babying him, but I couldn't help it. He was stuck on the couch, bored and miserable, and I felt like the least I could do was be a good nurse (though on Day 2 he remarked "good thing you never wanted to be a doctor!" implying that I sucked at the gross parts of patient-care. Yeah, I'm a little skeeved out by pee and other bodily fluids). Regardless, I didn't like to see him so helpless and vulnerable. And suddenly so old-seeming. This was a guy who at one point would have been able to walk upstairs on his hands, busted knee or not. Granted that was fifty years ago... It was a little sad having to care for my father like that; I was really thrown off guard. It was like caring for a 200 pound baby.
Speaking of babies, I am no way ready to have one. Remember that Home Ec assignment where they hand you a baby doll and order you to cart it around for a week to teach you a lesson? An infant simulator like The Baby Think it Over? What a great name. I've only seen this kind of thing in sitcoms. What was my lesson out of this? Get back to me in a few days. His "lady friend" (praise the lord for "lady friends"!) has been there since I left but I need to return this weekend while she goes to work.
I'm back home now. Starting to say "home" and meaning this home, this one we're creating here.
I miss Brooklyn and everyone terribly, but I'm... ok with being here. I'm enjoying the fresh(er) air, new places to check out, being closer to my parents, the company of new friends and old friends, etc. I'm finding the space I need to write and think more clearly about the next step and what I want to do with myself. I guess I'm more adaptable to change than I was giving myself credit for.
If my outlook seems uncharacteristically sunny (especially to those who I was whining to about moving here- sorry about all that) it's perhaps due to a book I stumbled upon my dad's nightstand called Write it Down, Make it Happen. The book is about writing down your goals and dreams as a way of realizing them- once they are written down, you will attract the kind of energy you desire and your subconscious will guide you to the right place.
I'm reminded of that ol' cheesy chestnut that goes something like :
Live in New York City once, but leave before it
makes you hard. Live in Northern California
once, but leave before it makes you soft.
I've already gone soft dammit! Reading new agey self-help shit like this. But so what?
Dreams that float around in your head as these vague lofty ideas tend to stagnate- you really need to see them written out to have them actualized. It's surprisingly simple and surprisingly effective. Today I wrote down - start blog-writing again. And lo and behold.
**I will learn to drive. I wrote it down. It will happen.
Posted by debbie at 8:20 PM | Comments (1)
November 8, 2007
Smallar Than We Remembered
Posted by debbie at 4:13 PM | Comments (0)
November 7, 2007
One Step Ahead
This article from nymag.com had me laughing
EXCEPT for the mention of Saltwater sandals.
Ugly? Please. They're adorable and of high quality. See above (they look better on the foot than just laying there like that). I bought a pair last summer and I'm still rocking them, even in the San Francisco chill. When it becomes really frosty, I'll just wear them with socks (ok, maybe not). What they lack in arch support they make up in classic charm. I used to wear them all the time as a kid and I didn't know they even made them in adult sizes until I spotted a woman on the subway wearing them. I don't imagine they'd look so great on giant hairy-toed man feet, but what sandals do?
How could they hate on the Saltwater sandal and not even mention the horrific comeback of the white Ked?
Whoa, I was searching for a photo of a guy in skinny pants and Keds to prove my point and came across an entire photo collection belonging to Keds #1 fan, a MTF transgender with a bit of a Keds fetish
I'll spare you by not including the link to the whole collection.
Posted by debbie at 2:13 PM | Comments (0)
November 6, 2007
On the Lamb
I made lamb meatballs the other night. It was my first experience cooking with lamb. I even asked the meat lady at Safeway if the ground lamb I had picked out was supposed to look like that way. She laughed. And then I remembered my little friend in Pennsylvania. My inner vegetarian was piping up and signaling to my outer carnivore that something was off. I think she was saying something along the lines of "we don't eat our friends, Debbie." Truthfully, she had point. On the other hand, why should I feel any guiltier eating lamb over beef or chicken? I guess it goes back to that whole "it's hard to eat something with a cute face" thing.
I'm halfway through Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, last year's best-seller that reviews have promised "for anyone who reads it, dinner will never again look, or taste, quite the same."
In the first chapter, Pollan explores the landscape of the modern American supermarket through the eyes of a naturalist and sees its astounding biodiversity.
Further on the book he tries to explain how every item in the supermarket is a link in a food chain-- some chains (for heavily processed foods like the Twinkie) being much longer than others and how some of the things we consider food are so far from something that once grew naturally that they're hardly "food" at all.
Interesting because when I was first looking at this recipe for "making lamb" I hardly connected "lamb" to an actual animal. I was simply on a quest to make some meatballs.
Lamb= ingredient. Processed into a neat ready-to-cook mound and shrink-wrapped in plastic. Not this:
I guess you could say the book has gotten me to see food in a different light.
Well, maybe not.
Today I came across this and felt giddy. Have you seen this in stores? Where can I buy it??
At least it's organic. That should count for something. Unless I'm missing the point, which I very well could be.
Posted by debbie at 5:00 PM | Comments (0)
November 5, 2007
Restraint
On Saturday night my dad came over for dinner and afterward he drove me back to the East Bay so I could crash at his house and get an early start on Sunday's massive flea market in Alameda. I had been planning for this day before I even left New York. In truth, it was one of the major reasons I agreed to The Move.
I'm not much of an early riser (an understatement perhaps) so this seemed to be a most sensible plan - if I stayed in the city, it would take ages (a BART ride, a bus, a shuttle, and a horse carriage ride) to get there. Why not crash at my dad's and save some precious morning sleep-time?
Unwisely, I forgot to take into consideration that my father likes to keep his house like a meat locker and that I wasn't going to get a wink of sleep because of this. I was shivering most of the night and when I realized I could no longer feel my toes, I crept downstairs and turned up the heat a few degrees. My dad awoke seconds later, muttering that it was "stifling hot," and turned the thermostat down to its lowest setting. "I'm freezing!" I called out. He came into the guest room and tucked another blanket around me, which was sweet, but I was still freezing. And then when I was finally drifting off, a spider bit me. On the face. In the morning my father felt bad and told me that there was a a bit of spider "problem" in the guest room that he had forgot to mention. We woke up too early (there were roosters crowing, I'm not kidding, for father has relocated to the boondocks) but at least we were fortified by the extra hour handed down by the Day Light Savings God, and so we made our way to the Alameda County Faire.
The biggest faire in all the land.
We parked in EEE- exactly 57 rows of cars away from the entrance. As far as the eye could see, it was bric-a-brac and crap (and precious heirlooms, too). It was hot, the kind of hot where heat waves rise off the pavement. I was cranky and hadn't had my daily requirement of caffeine. My eyeballs hurt. And I was overwhelmed. Not prime shopping conditions.
And so many hours were spent at the faire, and I only came away with a set of $5 salad plates (from the 50s! Made in Japan by a now defunct San Francisco manufacturer! Hey, it was a mildly exciting find at the time)
I spent a measly $5. A record low. I spied so many wonderful perfect things for our apartment and didn't buy any of them! I couldn't decide on anything. It was like a visit to Century 21- you're eying something, you know it's a good deal, but you can't tell if what you're looking at is ugly as sin or if it might be great in a different context, i.e., your living room. I was the definition of wishy-washy. And so all I bought were five plastic salad plates at a dollar a piece- not a bad find, but a truly unimpressive bounty. Sure sure when you go to a flea market, it's not the money spent by the deals had, the rewards of bargaining, the comradery amongst serious buyers and sellers, the priceless value of vintage items vs. cheap reproductions you can buy at pier1 or target, yeah yeah. But I was disappointed in myself. I should have done better!
Not that we have money to spend on frivolous flea market sprees. I'm learning about budgeting. It's been...difficult. I'm the kind of person who doesn't even look at ATM receipts. If one spews out, I immediately tear it up and throw it away before the numbers have a chance to catch my eye. It's pitiful. Before we moved Rafe forced me to sit at the table and figure shit out on a Excel spreadsheet. Nothing freaks me out like looking at numbers on a spreadsheet. I am scared of dealing with money- it's a sad fact about myself that I'm trying to work on. Anyhow, at the time, I was so wigged out by the idea of, shiver, budgeting that I made Rafe refer to it as a "budgie"- my childish way, I suppose, of destigmatizing the panic-inducing concept of financial planning. Not that I spend money wildly or have no idea what's in the bank- I'm pretty frugal; it's just that I'd rather (foolishly) think of money in the abstract. "Budgie," I thought, is a harmless little thing, the name of a cute Beagle puppy perhaps, leagues away from the dreaded...b-word. So yeah, we're on a budgie.
This is starting to sounding pathetic, I know.
Budgie.
Anyhow, the faire is a monthly a-faire. So next month I'm dead set on bringing a U haul, budgie be damned (just kidding Rafe).
Posted by debbie at 7:42 PM | Comments (0)
November 4, 2007
Today he emailed me a set of photos taken in the mid 60s of my parents while they were on a trip to Paris. They were were taken with an old half-frame camera. What a shame digital photos can't really capture the same kind of je ne sais quoi (like that peppering of French? It's the only French phrase I throw around with wild abandon. Ok, and so it's also the only French phrase I know). They were so young and stylish then, I can't believe these people are the same ones who would later become my parents. It's always humbling to see your parents as, well, people, especially as those with lives that predate your own.
I've never had a burning desire to see Paris but looking at these photos makes me want to book a flight this instant. And go backwards in time about 40 years to hang out with my parents when they were my age.
Posted by debbie at 12:19 PM | Comments (0)
November 3, 2007
Check out this funny video my cousin Rae made:
Elmo: A Hollywood Story
(warning: not for children)
Posted by debbie at 3:53 PM | Comments (0)
November 2, 2007
Jesus Christ it's been a long time. I've been hibernating. I've been hibernating so long I don't even know what day it is. Friday? Fridays used to mean something. Now the concept of Friday, or how that differs, say, from a Tuesday, is pretty much lost on me now. Fry Day. Fri...day. But yes, I've finally emerged from the rabbit hole (do rabbits hibernate?) I'm poking my head out and saying hello. Hello, strange alternate universe. One where pot smoke wafts in the air at all hours all over town, where I have no job, where the skyline reminds me of home but is significantly smaller and slightly askew. I'm six hours and 3,000 miles away from my old life....
Now that I think about, I'm a whole month away from my old life. I've been out here in San Francisco for exactly one month today. A month ago today I arrived at the airport where Rafe was waiting for me in his usual spot by the baggage claim, like so many times before when we were dating long-distance. This time, it wasn't for a weekend. I never thought I'd be back "home" for a good chunk of time and there I was, but was this "home"? Well Rafe was there at least, smiling and sporty with his new back-to-school haircut, looking like a stranger to me even though it had only been two weeks since I had last seen him. There we were embarking on this new journey together- me sick and sniffling and completely deaf due to the long flight and my ears not popping- and Rafe bug-eyed from his all-nighters studying and his recent addiction to Red Bull. A new chapter was beginning. We embraced, then we laughed, then we cried, etc. etc...
And now here we are a month later. People keep asking me what I'm doing now that I'm unemployed. Really I've found that being unemployed is like a job in and of itself. I've had no problem occupying my days. Especially considering that we have FREE cable. And by free cable I mean we get 10 channels of informercials, the regular shitty networks, and, by the grace of God, the Home & Garden Television Network. I love HGTV. I have it on all the time- it's my constant companion. My muse.
I'm sitting here right now in a cafe down the street after an inspired visit to the paint store. My walls will not be white! They will be vibrant and warm and they will perfectly compliment our thrift store furnishings and off-the-street decor that we somehow thought a good idea to drag all the way across the country. I have a stack of color card chips here waiting to be taped to the walls. I can't wait to get started. But fuck, how do you choose paint colors? I don't want to be swayed by the names. "Dolphin's Dance" or "Light My Fire"? "Wilderness Retreat" or "Sage Sensation"? "Wilderness Retreat" could easily have been named "Puke Chartreuse." I don't know, it's a tough call. I'm going to rely on my inner decorating-savvy gut. If one thing HGTV has done for me is that it's that it's completely confirmed my belief that the worst thing you can do to a home is leave the walls white. I know, don't even let your mind go there.
Anyhow, I'm sitting in this cute little cafe over the hill (there are hills here! Steep hills!) from our apartment that sells beer for A DOLLAR TWENTY NINE. And I'm not talking Pabst. I'm talking microbrews hand-crafted on the Oregon coast. I'm talking juniper-scented pale ales and amber-hued IPAs.
I've been spending a lot of time in cafes lately. Our neighborhood has been custom-built, it seems, for yuppies who like to while away their days typing on their laptops in cafes. Cafes and coffee (and beer, whatever), it's a full time gig here. There's a place in our neighborhood that sells the strongest beans I've ever encountered. If the wind is blowing right you can catch a whiff from three blocks away. Screw Starbucks. To my delight, I can't even find a Starbucks anywhere in the vicinity. They're so serious at this one place that when I asked them to grind my beans, they said they didn't "believe in grinding" and that they "wanted me to grind at home moments before I was to brew." I bought my $29/lb beans and slowly backed away. But truly, I'm enjoying the cafe culture. When I was working at my old job and (often) fed up with things, I would fantasize that somewhere down the line I'd be in a sun-lit cafe writing all day and sipping cafe au laits. And here I am, my deepest naughtiest fantasy realized. We'll see if I can make a career out of it.
I signed up for NaBloMo the other day. In case you're not in the know (i.e. down with retarded internet lingo) this one stands for National Blog Posting Month wherein participating bloggers pledge to write an entry every day for the month of November. I'm a day late and a dollar short. Actually I'm many dollars short. But I thought it'd be a good excuse to start writing again on a regular basis. For the exercise.
Posted by debbie at 7:49 PM | Comments (1)