contact has been made

Something smells really good as I’m driving along the highway. Maybe someone is cooking out on the grill (at 11:30 p.m. on a Wednesday)… it sure smells juicy (for 10 miles)… Oh, it’s just my dinner leftovers that have exploded all over the back seat. That’s an idea– have dinner-flavored air fresheners! Make every day a BBQ during your commute!

It poured today; I’m talking torrential downpour. I know, because it started pouring the second I stepped out of the T stop at DTX and continued unabated until 3 blocks later when I reached 220 Franklin St. I accidentally took a wrong turn when I got out of the T and had to go a block out of my way. Do you think the rain would have stopped earlier had I not had to make a course adjustment?

Because of the rain, my wrist brace got all soggy so I spent the rest of the day with my arm smelling like someone had shoved a wet sponge into a sweaty gym sock. Basically, that was what my arm was, so the analogy almost isn’t an analogy at all.

At my job sites, people are getting used to the sight of me. They come up to me and ask plant questions all the time. Yesterday I spent 15 minutes discussing powdered fox urine in broken English. Apparently fox urine wards away skunks, and a lady asked me if I knew where to get it. I had half-a-mind to be like, “I got da hook up. Meet me in the parking garage, floor 4 in 10 minutes. Bring the briefcase…” but I didn’t. I go easy on non-native English speakers! Today I spent 20 minutes discussing the finer points of orchid care with a Chinese woman (the finer points are: don’t ever water them, give them direct sunlight or pay attention to them. They’re kind of like gremlins).

Saki and I went to see Hancock today– it was surprisingly pretty good. I was expecting it to be heartwarming; at least that’s what the previews hinted at. Instead, there was a PLOT TWIST I’m not going to tell you about. Needless to say, it ended up being a completely different movie from the one I thought I was seeing, which was a nice change.

Mmm. Now my arm smells like Palmolive.

I’ve been craving deep fried cheese for a while now, so I finally made some today. It’s awesome– get some queso blanco, dip it in your favorite beer batter, and deep fry. Mmmmm, heavenly.

However, I had all this beer batter left over, so I began rummaging through my house looking for other things to deep fry. I came upon a tin of sardines… we eat fried fish, don’t we? Why not sardines? Well move over, Mrs. Paul, because deep fried sardines are the shizznit.

After a tin of sardines, though, I still had leftover batter… so I found a can of tuna fish. I remember a recipe I found for fake gefilte fish made from tuna, so why not? I drained it, but I didn’t have any breadcrumbs. BUT, I did have the dregs of a bag of tortilla chips (lime flavored even!)… so I crunched up the chips, mixed them with the tuna, made patties, dredged in flour and then beer batter and deep fried. Their structural integrity is not great, but they taste delicious!

So there you have it… more adventures in Trailer Trash cooking.

Tasty!

Saki and I finally went to the BBQ fest today– it was awesome– meat as far as the eye could see. I think I ate at least 4 different kinds of dead animals in the space of one hour.

Some meaty highlights (we got a couple of different samplers and brought them home to eat later):

1. This Australian place had awesome shrimp on skewers
2. The Australian place also had super awesome ribs
3. I had a Jamaican style jerk chicken sandwich
4. Saki got pulled pork on a hamburger (I approve of multiple dead creatures together)

Yay, meat! I don’t think I’ve ingested this much protein in the past 6 months combined!

All this time, Stella the turtle is really a DUDE! Wow. All my pets are male, and here I thought there was a 50/50 ratio of males to females in this house. Now I am outnumbered (but never outgunned!)

I guess his name is Stellan now. That’s a good name, right? It’s danish or something.

Ok, it’s Swedish:

Meaning unknown, perhaps related to Old Norse stilling “calm”.

I guess Stellan’s pretty calm (for a turtle, anyway).

How long have I had this turtle? At least 6 years, maybe more… and I never really thought to check (no, not THERE!, you can tell bu the size of the fingernails on red-eared sliders). The old Chinese lady who sold me Stella(n) and her brother(?) Roland, said they were a girl and boy pair. Since females are bigger than males, and Stella(n) was bigger than Roland(a), I made the assumption… wrong! I wonder if Roland was really a chick, or if they were both dudes? We’ll never know. Alas. I suppose it’s good I thought Stella was a girl, because I named them both after songs on Interpol’s first album (it was the only CD that would play in my finicky CD player on the way home), and I don’t think there’s another dude-name song.

Right now I’m waiting for Saki to get finished with work so we can go to this giant BBQ fest downtown. I’ve been waiting for about 7 hours now. You see, he calls every couple of hours to tell me he’ll be here in 45 minutes. Thus, I can’t go do anything else because I really want BBQ! I should have just arranged to meet him someplace at a certain time, like several hours in the future, and it he wasn’t there, then screw it. Why don’t I think of these things before I waste entire beautiful weekend days? I would have gone to the Strawberry Festival in Lexington! I would be stuffed full of real, strawberry-tasting, non-Californian strawberries by now!

I bought some real strawberries at a farmers’ market in Kendall the other day. They are awesome. They were wicked freaking expensive ($6 for a quart!!!), but worth it. It’s a sad day when locally-grown produce is way more expensive than the crappy fruit they ship in from across the country. Alas.

Philippa is my bike, in case you forgot. It’s the 4th anniversary of me adopting her! She has new handlebar streamers as well as some new stars for her spokes.

I just rode her to go see Jamie Lidell at the Paradise, and the show was AWESOME! I was a little dubious when I heard he was going on the road with a backing band, but it all ruled. I knew I should never have doubted Jamie Lidell, the man is a god among scrawny British freaks! He did a bit in the middle where he beat-boxed and scatted into the sequencer and made his own backing music to sing to. I love when he does the whole experimental bit, and this time around it was as brilliant as ever. As for the backing band, they were really great! The drummer’s dad even came out and played a number on the bagpipes. I can’t remember what he played, but I think I played that tune back before my pipes were destroyed in that flood (I’m still annoyed that my SECOND FLOOR bedroom flooded in a rainstorm, but what can you do?). Anyway, it was a nice touch!

My current mini-obsession is the mouse lemur:

They are nocturnal arboreal primates found in Madagascar with really huge eyes that make them look like those creepy computer-enhanced pictures of animals. They’re PRIMATES! They’re related to us! Some varieties find grubs under tree bark by echo-location, which is pretty cool- no other primates do that. Anyway, read up on the mouse lemur if you’re into small mammals.

Oh yeah, it’s also Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran’s birthday– maybe I should embrace all the useless knowledge my 0-12 year old self amassed and celebrate it somehow. I am always lamenting on how I can remember, for example, the names of Nellie Olsen’s husband and children on Little House on the Prairie, having seen the episode where she has twins ONCE, yet I can’t remember my phone number or my cousin’s kids’ names.

The genealogy saga continues– one industrious person traced a line of people back 17 generations. That’s back to the 1300s– there’s probably more, I just haven’t had the patience to keep tracking. I’m glad distant relatives have done all the research for me, because I really don’t need another thing to be obsessed with to take up all my time. As it is I’ve been staying up until 2:00 a.m. every night looking up stuff on ancestry.com because my free trial subscription runs out in like 12 days.

hehehe I said “taint.”

It was beautiful out today, so I rode my bike down to the Fenway and embarked upon a trail known as the “Emerald Necklace.” however, because I have the mentality of a 12-year-old boy, I can’t get the name straight in my head, and am always thinking it’s the “Pearl Necklace,” and then I giggle insanely to myself.

Anyway, it was nice, so I cycled around Arnold Arboretum for a while. However, I grew weary of dodging all the clueless people with baby buggies and didn’t get all the way to Franklin Park. It’s amazing– people with baby buggies always think they have the right of way, no matter what. They could jaywalk across a 4-lane highway at rush hour and still get all pissed off and indignant if a car came within 20 feet of them. I especially love the ones with the pimped-out 2-seater jogging strollers with off-road tires and hydraulics and tinted windows and… whatever else that probably cost like 5x the price of my car. The moms and dads of these babies figure since they dropped a grand on a vehicle that their kid will outgrow in a couple of years (or not, as a lot of moms had 5 year olds stuffed into the buggies), they have the right to hog the sidewalks as much as they want and give as many dirty looks to whoever invades their ample baby buggy personal space. If you don’t want to irritate any of your wealthy neighbors, keep at least 5 feet away from them on all sides at all times. Invading their space just makes them walk slower in order to better glare at you.

Besides the pedestrian dodging (many pedestrians insist upon walking on the bike path– around Jamaica Pond, there are 2 paths, clearly marked for walkers and one for bikes), my ride was pretty nice. Bike riding is awesome! remind me to get my back wheel rack fixed, though. The hardware that secures it to the frame in one spot fell off, so it’s being held in place with a bungee cord and some heavy-duty zip ties. This is fine, but sucks for heavy groceries like multiple juice jugs (cranberry juice was wicked on sale, OK?).

heheh I said “jugs.”

It’s officially summer now because I took a long bike ride today and put on sunscreen to do so. Yay, my bike is fixed! It had some problems, but now it is perfect again… except for the cheap-ass purple handlebar streamers that I bought at Target the other day and didn’t last an entire bike ride. Oh well. Luckily I have a backup pair someplace in this house.

Speaking of this house, I cleaned the kitchen-area! The micro-organisms living in my microwave had evolved and developed warring civilizations. I think one of them was close to inventing the atom bomb… but I committed a major act of germicide and nipped those in the bud. Wouldn’t it suck if the universe was just a scum that developed inside some alien’s jam jar? For millions of years (a couple of weeks to the alien), we’ve been evolving, but we’re just the grime about to be washed down the alien drain…

Anyway, the kitchen is clean, and it’s nice. I was able to cook some dinner, something I’ve not been able to do in a while since the one burner was buried under several strata of crap. I improved upon my Lazy Person’s Spaghetti Method– I have these metal bowl-plate things that are the exact size of the stock pot I use to make noodles. I heat up the water and cook the spaghetti, but all the while put the sauce in the bowl and use it for a top. That way you don’t have to heat up the sauce separately. Then you can eat the spaghetti right out of that dish and you’ve only dirtied one pot and one bowl. How’s that for philistine behavior? Works for me!

While out riding my bike I stopped at the store to pick up some milk and ended up buying some Fancy Cheese– it tastes like Brie, only a little sharper, and has MUSHROOMS in it. I love mushrooms! I love cheese! Finally they put the two together! It was kind of pricy, but I like to splurge on good cheese like twice a year when I’m feeling decadent.

I’m feeling celebratory today because not only did I find a hidden stash of brain-drugs left over from a previous prescription, but I CAN HEAR AGAIN!!! I went to the Cambridge hospital and they put drops in my ears and then squirted them out with this hardcore spray-bottle with a little tiny hose on the end. It hurt like a freaking motherfucker, but they managed to squirt about 1/2 teaspoon of crap out of each of my middle ears. The good things is, my phobia of putting things in my ears is completely gone now! After putting everything I could think of in my ears for the past 2 weeks, I’m completely blasé about it all– bring on the mind-controlling bugs like on Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (I think that’s what started it all). It’s because of that movie that whenever anyone uses the phrase “I just wanted to put a bug in your ear…” I cringe inwardly. It’s a stupid phrase anyway, who came up with that?

Then there was the movie Mountains of the Moon about finding the source of the Nile, and one dude got a boll weevil or something in his ear, and he’s stabbing his ear with the point of a compass and finally the other dude drips candle wax down his ear canal ::SHUDDER:: that movie gave me nightmares for decades…

Anyway, I can hear, completely and in stereo!

I just have to go back to the Cambridge Hospital with 2 pay stubs and proof of citizenship within 10 days in order to maybe be able to afford to pay for the “cebatious impaction” removal…

but I can hear!!! Go ahead– whisper something! I can hear a pin drop!

Here’s more proof that I’ve been watching too much MI-5: I spent today re-planting a ton of plants in the window area at some back downtown, and the hot janitor kept coming by and sweeping stuff up. My instant thought was “he must be a CIA operative; he’s way too cute to be a janitor.” He was this Latin dude that looked a lot like Gael García Bernal, but with a bowl cut that only he could pull off. It looked kind of artsy on this dude, and not dorky like you’d normally associate with this particular hairdo. Anyway, I kept watching him to see if he tried to contact his home base from his pen or something… but… he was probably just an exceptionally cute janitor.

Did I mention that I can hear now?

I think I’m going to go listen to Beethoven now.

Athena called me up yesterday just as I woke up to inform me that Freezepop was playing a free show on the Common in slightly less than 2 hours. We managed to mobilize in record time and get to the event, which was a gay youth pride rally, with 10 minutes to spare.

Oy, kids these days! Gay kids these days, especially! I’ve had many moments where I just don’t understand the youth of America, and this drove that home. First of all, let’s discuss fashion. Now I’m the last person on earth who should be called a fashion expert, but what’s with the 90s revival thing? All the kids were wearing a strange melange of 90s grunge, current hip hop fashion, all topped with brightly colored geometrically-patterned 80s wear.

Most of them had various pointy piercings sticking out of their cheeks and chins, and a good 1/4 were carrying around homemade signs advertising “free hugs” or “free kisses.” It’s not just about gay kids; it’s kids in general. Teenagers like this used to always come into the store–it’s just that I don’t think I’ve ever been in a crowd of this many so recently. Kids These Days seem to be begging to be noticed. I got those challenging stares that teenagers are so good at giving from everyone–the ones that say “go ahead, I DARE you to make fun of my weird appearance!” The problem was, everyone kind of looked the same. The only weird-looking kids were the ones without any piercings and with normal-colored hair!

Oy, back in my day… uh… yeah. Something.

On another note, I still can’t hear out of my right ear. People have been giving me advice of what substance to pour into my ear to melt the wax and get my hearing back (thanks, guys!). However, the problem is that the wax is stuck behind my eardrum. i remember having this problem with water years ago. The doctor said that because of my allergies the sinuses do something or other so that water and wax get trapped behind my eardrum, and there’s nothing I can really do about it without messing up my eardrum. So, I don’t want to pour anything into my ear, because it will probably just get stuck behind my eardrum with the rest of the stuff (I took a shower this morning and now have water rattling around in there as well). Argh.

First of all, I found a quarter on the sidewalk on the way to work this morning. Yesterday I found a dime, and that was exciting enough, but a whole shiny new quarter? People usually pick those up when they drop them, especially in this neighborhood!

Second of all, I was walking to the T to go to Kendall from work and I found a Chahlie Cahd on the ground. I figured it probably didn’t have any money on it, so I’d give it to one of my co-workers who always buys tickets because she hasn’t bothered to get the actual card.

BUT, when I swiped it at the T turnstile, IT WAS A MONTHLY COMBO PASS!!! Woo-hoo! Those suckers are like $60 a month, and I purposefully didn’t buy one this month because I was going to see if I could make it on just $30 of regular fares. Well, it’s been 3 days and I’ve already used up over $10, so I don’t think I was going to make it. Now I don’t have to try! Of course, I instantly felt guilty that I was using someone else’s card, and what if the person came back for it?… to the Dunkin Donuts parking lot… right where it hits the road? The guilt went away pretty fast.

I should go buy a lotto ticket or something.

Or not.

Why are rabbits’ feet lucky, anyway? Are they luckier if they are in bright colors?

Patty and I went to see Augusten Burroughs give a reading at the Brattle Theater tonight. It was kind of… voyeuristic. Mr. Burroughs talked about his messed up family and read a chapter about how psycho his dad was, and it sort of felt like I was sitting in on someone’s therapy session. I suppose that’s what his books kind of are– therapy sessions– he said as much. Anyway, aside from that, the talk was interesting and he was funny. He doesn’t seem to take himself too seriously, which is cool. His new book sounds pretty cool, actually. Remind me to pick it up if ever it comes out in paperback or my 3-digit library fine miraculously disappears so I can take out books again. Curse you, large-print edition of Me Talk Pretty One Day due in September of 2003! It’s sitting right here on the floor of my room, too– I’m too embarrassed to return it at this point. I’ll have to sneak to the library in the dead of night and quietly slip it into the night-return box. Besides, I still owe 2 more books that I don’t even remember.

I worked in Hingham and points south today. We drove one of the company vans down to the Sowth Shaw and watered the plants in the Whole Foods store down there. It required being on a ladder the whole time, since all the plants are up high. Whilst on the ladder I accidentally dropped my spray bottle. It fell about 15 feet away from a shopping cart with a baby in it. The mother of the baby grabbed it and gave me a dirty look. Then she and some other woman she was with talked loudly about how the spray bottle almost hit the baby. Lady, that kid was so far away I couldn’t have hit it with the bottle if I’d thrown it!

WF shoppers are the same no matter where you are! There is no shortage of wealthy people with senses of entitlement the size of Toronto who want nothing more than to shop for expensive food all day. One middle aged woman went up to me and demanded to know where the “salted caramel sauce” had been moved to. I had no clue so I went and found a Whole Foods employee to locate it for her, and she proceeded to tell him that it *should* be right there (pointing), but it wasn’t. SALTED CARAMEL SAUCE?!!? WTF?!!? All in all, these people amuse me more than anything. It cracks me up to watch people whose biggest worry in life is that Donna, their regular manicurist has the flu so they will have to re-schedule their appointment. It’s like being at the zoo, looking into the monkey house. Ahhhh, so THIS is how the other 3% lives!

(Richard Attenborough voice)
And here we have the over privileged suburbanite in its native shopping habitat. Notice how the female of the species shakes her head in disgust at the sudden lack of pomegranate extract in the wheat grass jelly. She now goes through the daily ritual of demanding to speak with the manager…

Now let me bitch about the pets, and then I can get to bed. Lard Ass and Douchebag each drink a lot of water. However, the only water-holding vessel good enough for them is the toilet. This isn’t a problem except when they have cat litter stuck to their paws and track it onto the toilet seat. However, there’s nothing I can do to make them drink from anything else. I could have a golden fountain eternally spouting chilled tunafish-flavored Perrier, and they would still enjoy sticking their heads in the toilet.

Stella on the other hand, won’t eat her vegetables. Everything I’ve read about turtle care says that you need to feed them plants occasionally; turtle food alone isn’t healthy enough for them. But, Stella won’t touch any plant matter I put in her tank. I wonder if I painted it with meat she’d eat it?

No, I’m not becoming one of those neurotic pet owners who project all of their eating disorders onto the animals. I’m just sick of finding pieces of kitty litter all over the bathroom and swirling chunks of decaying vegetable matter circulating around the turtle tank.