Serendipitous luggage find!

Mary has a carry on bag in this exact material!




-and I have a carry-on in THIS exact fabric!





- Post From My iPhone

Hummus = yummus!

-- Post From My iPhone

11:00am in "Sunny California"

Note the plump, juicy oranges in the background.

So, remind me again why it was 23*F last night and I had to scrape my windshield this morning?





-- Post From My iPhone

Tiny keyboard sucks

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I collect S words

Sentient, sensual, selebratory (oh right, that needs a C, oh well), sublime, subtle, succulent, striking, sexy, slurpable, scintillating, superb, stupendous, satisfying, salacious and overall scrumptious SOUPS!

Oh, swords! Right, I collect those too!

Some are hanging on my walls...



And some are not.





-- Post From My iPhone

Yummy, Hot Pho!

Yes, after an eight hour "Hot PhoDJ Sunday" radio shift, I took my clients out for some restorative hot pho.





-- Post From My iPhone

Pies to be thanksful for.

My pecan and pumpkin pies, and another of Julie's beautiful flower arrangements from our yard.

Dog, Boy, Fruit

My orange tree is almost ready to give juicy ripe navel oranges. Yum!











-- Post From My iPhone

Secret Soup surprise

Home made cream of squash soup with Gruyere cheese hiding under a puff pastry roof.


-- Post From My iPhone

Mmmm Enchiladas.

a dj is me!

This is my portable dj setup. Not much bigger than my iPhone and a paperback book.

Sweet Brian

Printing pics of Velma from ScoobyDoo


-- Post From My iPhone

Microsoft Windows 7?

Microsoft will sell W7 to me for 39.99 with proof of studetship, so here's my proof.


-- Post From My iPhone

Too much foie gras.

I suppose I should ask if it is possible to have too much foie gras. Politically, animal activistically ( did I make that up?) of course ANY foie gras is too much. Culinarily, it would be a stretch.  I eat veal, as well.  I am evil.  This was local Sonoma County "raised" foie gras, and it was the best I've tasted. Possibly because it went from pan to mouth in less than a minute. Of course that also meant I didn't bother to plate it, so it looks pretty nasty unless you know what you are looking at.  Yes, it's pretty fatty, but you only eat about an ounce.  What you see is enough for two or three people easily.

My previous experiences with foie gras have all been in really nice restaurants.  The first two times it was not seared, or not seared well, or it was too long in transit so it arrived on the room-temp side of warm.  I thought it was all hype, the foie gras insanity.  Finally I had it seared properly and thought "wow, that WAS really good, but not sublime."  All of those dishes came with sauces, I should add.

This foie gras today was so good that I am now right on the bandwagon, ready to do a little foie gras song and dance as our float passes the naysayers.  This foie gras was from a local Sonoma county organic farm, and it was purchased as an entire lobe.  It was cleaned and sliced and seared within minutes of opening the package and it was eaten within seconds of turning brown in the pan with just a sprinkle of salt and pepper.  That was all.  Anything more would have ruined it.  Yum.




It was pretty outrageous.




-- Post From My iPhone

Beef Curry and Spinach Salad

Had a bunch of leftover tri-tip I needed to get rid of and it was too cold to cook outside so Pop and I made beef curry. I have never used beef in curry before other than ground beef in keema. It came out pretty yummy! Not quite as yummy as lamb, but yummier than restaurant curry by far. We also had spinach salad with craisins and walnuts. Yes, I said craisins.

Flowers from the garden.

Julie's been at it again with the beautiful bouquets.

Faith vs. Logic

"Do not let your mind get involved! Logic will compete with your faith."
~Rockwealth Televangelist..



-- Post From My iPhone

Mmmm Hot Pho!

Well, a meager facsimile thereof.

Ramen noodles, Trader Joe's bouillon, leftover tri-tip and fresh serrano chili, celery and cilantro. A dash of rice wine vinegar and a squeeze of Schrirracha (rooster) sauce and it hits the spot!

Meat Pyramid.

I've recently returned to The Kingdom of Loathing, aka KoL.
In this game, the monetary system is meat. I was making sausage the other day and couldn't resist stacking my finished product into a neat, easily manageable meat stack:

Truth be told, I haven't actually returned to the game, so much as the community. In particular, Radio KoL. It's an amazingly diverse online radio station with DJs from all around the globe, playing music from all imaginable genres. There are some DJs who talk more than they play music, and there are some who simply try to be as shocking as possible... and yes, it can get offensive at times, depending on how easily you are offended. I'm pretty immune so I take it all with a grain of salt, and often actually enjoy it. I am really very interested in becoming one of these DJs. I think it would be a lot of fun to have a show where I play music from my travels, as well as bits of my favorite audio books and maybe even take phone calls. Must explore the technical possibilities of that.

Back when I was actually playing the game avidly (which means about an hour a day actual game play), I went to a Seattle gathering-- a picnic and then a house party with a bunch of the players . It was a blast. I was starting to flirt with the idea of becoming a RKoL DJ back then, but never pursued it. Now I am finding myself drawn to the idea again. I have always thought it would be fun and I would be good at being a radio DJ. People have told me I have the voice and personality for it often. Maybe we'll see. I am actually very interested in figuring out how this shoutcast stuff works, so I've downloaded it and will experiment a bit.

Dragon!

I'd love to know here this was coming from and going to!
Dominic and I saw it on the road in Cloverdale a couple days ago.

In a fog. And a book.

I am not doing really well on the nightly posting. I had a terrible dentistry experience which left me in a fog of pain killers and anger for most of the last week. When that wasn't the case I was trying to take advantage of the precious moments where I wasn't either in excruciating pain or drugged up or nauseous. So updating has been on the back burner, so to speak.

I have instead been reading. I read a really cute book called The Name of the Wind, it's the first novel by Patrick Rothfuss. It's a fun fantasy with magic, music, magic music, suspense, meanies, demons, giant armored spiders, romance and all the basics required for an entertaining read. There is a magic academy, there is revenge, camaraderie, missed opportunities and gleaned insight. There is a wild-haired tunnel-dwelling girl who reminded me of a teen-aged Nute from Aliens. Much of it was predictable but still didn't bother me. I only rolled my eyes a few times. But you know, that's the nature of this type of story really. With very few exceptions, fantasy novels tend to be fairly predictable in their "day to day" details. The stories may vary wildly, but there is always going to be that element of "this boy is the chosen one, and things happen to him that almost never happen to anyone else".

They are forever breaking world records, getting the impossible girl, finding the incredibly well-hidden treasure and slaying the unslayable dragon with only a tiny plastic sword and some impossibly clever wit.

That said, I am not a big fan of fantasy. I loved the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit books as a very small child (my parents read them to us in installments as bedtime stories). I enjoyed the first couple Harry Potter books just cause they were so cute and I loved that they got ten year olds reading, but I got bored after the third. I really enjoyed the Bartemeaus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud. I can't think of any other fantasy books I would suggest to friends off the top of my head. I have been an avid reader since I was four years old and went to get my first library card (all by myself!) at the Fairfax Public Library. When I was eight and nine I was regularly up all night because I couldn't put down a good book. I tell you this so that you understand that I have read a lot of books in my life, and therefore only having a scant handful of a certain genre means something. It's not my bag, man.

So yeah, if you like fantasy, I think you'll love The Name of the Wind. If you don't like fantasy, you still might enjoy it, as I did. Check it out.

Quota post...

Because I have to. I am the sort of person who is very inertia driven. So long as I continue to do a thing, I can keep up momentum, but if I skip one day I am likely to just let the whole project slide out of my grasp. So this is it. My page marker, so to speak, for today. I am going to watch a movie with Julie and possibly come back to write more. I should talk about the boat, and my boyfriend-slash-indentured-muse, the sailor. More on that when I return.

---three hours later---

I'm back. We started to watch The libertine with Johnny Depp, but Julie wasn't feeling it at all so we switched to The Pursuit of Happyness with Will Smith, which was pretty good. Frustrating as hell most of the time, but of course it is a feel-good ending that really does warm the cockles of your heart. And it's always nice to see a grown man cry, if he does it well, which Mr. Smith seems to do.

So about the boat. My long-distance boyfriend/muse is moving forward with the motions to be living on a sailboat sometime very soon. He went to look at one yesterday that has a lot of potential. It even comes with a slip in a very nice marina with a gorgeous view of Seattle and my favorite happy-hour restaurant, McCormick and Schmidt, just a few step down the dock. The downfall is the teeny-tiny living space, particularly the kitchen. He was concerned with not having room for any of the pots and pans he is used to cooking with in his apartment. I'm trying to help him make the decision easier by pointing out possible ways around the lack of space issue. I have lived on a sailboat before, and actually the one I lived on with my dad was smaller. He is looking at a 30' fiberglass hull made by Yamaha. It looks really nice from the photos I have seen.

The boat Peter and I lived on was a 24' (possibly 26'?) Catamaran, I believe. It was also a long time ago. I do remember the space feeling very cramped at times, but it was more of a personal space issue that came up for me. The physical space seemed alright. Then again, I still had a room's worth of crap stored at my mom's house so I wasn't trying to load everything I owned into my "crawl-in closet".

He'll continue looking at other possibilities, and there are many in the area. Some are a bit of a trek, an hour or more out of Seattle but it's not like you buy a boat everyday, so it's certainly worth a little energy to find the right one. Particularly if you plan to live in it.

And now... bed. I wish I could say I was crawling into the berth of a sailboat and drifting off to the sound of water lapping against the hull as I am gently rocked by the rhythmic tide, but that will be the case soon enough. It will.

blogical concerns

Of course I worry about possibly offending someone or hurting their feelings by using them in my stories, but my sister has other concerns about the potential dangers of blogging. She warned me against using stories of my past escapades for fear I might appear less than pure to potential future employers. I suppose that's a valid concern, really. We all like to think we'd never consider working for anyone less open-minded than ourselves, but in today's economy, we may all find ourselves takin' what they're givin' cause we're glad to be workin' for a livin' (as the song goes, more or less).

I wonder about that though. I mean, as a writer, do I have to concern myself with whether or not some future potential employer might take my fiction for fact? Or even use my fact-based fiction as a reason not to hire me? I guess the answer is an obvious "Yes." but I hate it.

I suppose I could start a new anonymous blog and write over there and simply journal pc stuff here. I don't know. I suppose I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. So far I don't see much danger in continuing just as I have been. Why complicate things when it's difficult enough for me to keep a blog going for more than a few weeks?

Some of Dominic's Art