I Need Protection Please. Are You Protecting Me?

My friend and ceramics teacher, Josh (who apparently reads this blog, and is hurt that I haven't given him the Waiting-for-the-J 15-seconds-of-fame yet, despite my undying love for him) (see what you've made me admit, Josh? I've gone and broken the Shy Girls' Crush Code), just had a birthday, and as a present to himself got his first tattoo. We've been spending the last couple weeks in class, after class, and outside of class hearing him talk about it, seeing the sketch ideas, getting excited for him ... and it's all brought forward the old itch to have one for myself. (By the way, his is pretty awesome ... and if he'll comment on this post and share a link with us, I'm sure we wouldn't mind one whit.)

For ages (since high school) I've thought that if I got a tattoo, it would be an eye of Horus on my upper right arm — I used to draw one there over a birthmark I have as an idle doodle. The style I specifically want I found a few years later at the NY Metropolitan Museum of Art:



Still tempting, though I guess the question is whether a) I can stand the pain, and b) how certain upper management at work will take it. I like to wear short sleeves, since my upper body gets warm easily, so it might be hard to keep it covered all the time.

In other news ... I started out my week with a kitchen accident:


This is what happens when you turn on the wrong burner in the morning before hopping into the shower. I was trying to boil the water in my kettle for coffee. Instead, I ended up melting a spatula and fusing it to the pan. It's stuck pretty strong, as you can see:



I'm holding up the heavy pan solely by holding on to that spatula. Yeah, I did a good job with that.

Offsetting that, I have a new addition to my inside garden wonderland. I won an orchid in the "Plants" giveaway that my office building does on a monthly basis (whenever they switch out the decorative plants in the lobby ... lately it's been orchids). Now I need your help! What kind of orchid is she:

and how the heck do I take care of her? Steph, I'm looking at you. Help me, Stephy Losti-moli. You're my only hope.

Unless someone else steps up to it.

Tempranillo Hangover

A lot of wine this weekend. Finally hung out with Leonie (from my ceramics class) in a non-classmate function, and I spent most of today with the hangover to prove it.

I don't hit up the Mission often, but last night was a good experience. We started at Fabric8 for an art show reception — her friend Ken has a couple pieces in it, I've seen his work before when Leonie had her birthday party at his house a couple years ago, and if I had a cool $400 lying around I'd seriously consider buying something — most of the rest of the art was kind of typical blasé San Francisco "avant garde" ... meaning that it thinks it's original but still kind of looks the same as everything else. Bonus, however, was the Creme Brûlée Cart parked in the back patio area, which I've heard much of but hadn't come across yet. I give him 4 stars out of 5: I had the basic vanilla flavor (next time I'll have to try the lavender), and it was pretty fantastic, a perfect size, a decent price ... but definitely not the best I've ever had. Pretty high up there, though.

We moved next to Heart, a little wine bar just down the street, and three of us ended up sharing three bottles of Tempranillo. Very nice place, not too pretentious, and they had this amazing BBQ pulled pork slider on the menu that had me melting in my seat.

Got a ride home and stumbled drunkenly through the door at about 1 a.m. I was just ready to pass out when I got a JDate IM from a guy I'd emailed about two or three weeks ago, thanks to my Elsie-challenge. Of course he has to pick the night I'm most incoherent, so I begged off as best I could, and I'm surprised that he still actually wrote me back today. This, plus another guy I've been flirting with via IM (he lives in L.A., though, which is a big ol' minus) have me seriously considering giving JDate one more month's chance. My current subscription expires Tuesday, so I have another day to decide. But it does feel good to flirt again, even if it is pathetically on the internet. Maybe it'll give me the glow and vibe to be able to do it in the real world, too? It's been a long time. Feels nice. Really really nice.

Raffled

Apparently, the time to get noticed on JDate is after 1 a.m. on a Friday night. I was home, avoiding laundry, decided to just pop on there for a bit, see what happens, and WHAM, my pick of messages. Why this had to start up with only just over a week left on my subscription, I have no idea. Maybe it's JDate's way of getting me to pay for a second month. I dunno.

Also, why I was only getting messages from L.A.-area Jews, I dunno. But hey, my ego is not going to complain one bit.

Back in the day, when I was in my late teens and early 20s, I was mad skilled at the intarweb flirting. It was interesting to watch all those old rusty talents creakingly try to rise to the occasion. Kind of frightening, too. Apparently I held my own well enough; is that something I can be proud of?

But before this startling realization of my late-night attractions (maybe I should have stayed on the Graveyard Shift), and even now, I've been antsy to shake this loser-feeling that's been hanging over my head for a lot of this year. The trip to New York in February kind of pushed this feeling to the forefront, and I can't seem to find a way to shove it back into the recesses of my mind. It's become an obsession, even though I know better. It's partially what you might think, but I have a feeling this has got its roots in almost a decade of missed opportunities, settling, bad choices, envy, laziness, missing the mark on my own expectations ... and probably also has something to do with being 30 and not being at the place I thought I'd be at when I hit that milestone.

The current cure being attempted: contest entering. It started with the cheap ones: the state Lottery, free leave-a-comment-win-a-book offers on my favorite blogs, the orchid giveaways that my office building has on a regular basis (when they switch out the plants). And it's culminated in the big kahuna: The San Francisco Dream House raffle.

I know, I know, it's a lot of money to put down for a small chance of getting return. But I figure, it's going to a good cause, the chances of winning are better than the lottery, and damn, wouldn't it be nice if I won? Even just one of the smaller prizes. (Though fuck it, I want the house.) So I took the money the gubmint returned to me (just got my refund), and threw some of it at this dream. Maybe it'll buoy me up for a few months. A girl's gotta have hope that she will win. Sometime. Eventually.

Making Up for Missed Opportunities

It's time to bust out the Trashcan Sinatras CDs again. The email announcing the band's June U.S. mini-tour came just as I got home tonight, and within 15 minutes I'd bought tickets for myself and coworker/friend Elsie.

Their last San Fran show, back in the end of July, I missed by being practically on my deathbed. They're my favorite band — I've been a fan since I was frickin' sixteen years old, almost half my life — and since they have a tendency to pop up and then fade back into obscurity, I wasn't sure if I'd get an opportunity to see them again short of a trip to Glasgow. At the time I seriously was considering drugging myself up so I could make it, but since I could hardly sit upright for more than ten minutes, it's probably best I didn't try. And lo, here they are again, touring on their latest and with promises of a return to the States later this fall.

The those unfamiliar, here's a link to a page with some songs to sample. A few links for the lazy:

The Genius I Was
The Main Attraction
Freetime

Happy, happy day.

Boiling Down

I wonder if I should put this comic strip on my dating profile? It kind of states about 33% of my requirements in a boyfriend.

We had our family Passover Seder yesterday, and it inspired me once again to look into making my own Haggadah for our family. It's a project I've had in the back of my mind for a while now. The one we've been using for years is really basic, and kind of skims over a lot of the story. There are elements of it I'd like to keep, of course, but for the purposes of our own family gatherings, and especially considering the fact that we're not very religious and that we almost always have one or two outsiders there who have never experienced a Seder before, I think it would be nice to have something that fits in with our own pool of beliefs and experiences. Probably blasphemous ... but what else is new?

Just another thing to add to the list of projects I want to do someday. Eventually I will get around to starting on that list.

Today's fabulous San Franciscan adventure: butchering a chicken and making chicken broth. I have to say, I'm glad I'm a carnivore, because one of my favorite things to do in the kitchen is cut up a chicken. I might have mentioned this before. But I say it again because it's just that much awesome, once you know how to do it.

The chicken body parts, except for the insides and back, went to making Chicken Paprikash, which is one of my favorite easy-peasy leftovers-guaranteed (because I'm cooking for only one) recipes. Most of the rest is in my stockpot, simmering; it's been going about 3 hours so far, and I'll probably keep it on until I'm ready to go to bed — I like my chicken broth to be boiled down, dammit. Not sure what to do with the liver. The one in this chicken is huge, but I only have the one. It's in the freezer for the moment ... maybe I'll collect a bunch and find a good recipe for chicken livers. At some point. Maybe.

Ah, the life of a single woman in the City. Are we jealous yet? (Didn't think so.)