Spine and Open

Oh how I have abandoned the bloggitty.  And I have so much more great information to share about the wonders of non-motorized transport - but that will wait.  In the last hour and 1/2 I have had 2 really nice experiences.  While riding through Myrtle Edwards Park I caught the stunning and glorious aroma of our fine honeysuckle vine.  I think I actually had to say, “oh my” out loud.  The honeysuckle flowers are not super long lived so get to the park now.  The vines are twining up the fence on the park side of the Grain Elevator Compound.

I made it to work and am feeling a little slow-moving.  I have to a bunch of computer work this morning and I put on the American Analog Set’s album, “The Fun of Watching Fireworks.”  This is perhaps one of the best alltime long roadtrip albums, but also really wonderful for overcast slow mornings.  The twill of the farfisa and the tasty drum beats are really making my morning spectacular.  Thanks American Analog Set.  Now perhpas I need to put the album on my MP3 player and ride back over to the park and listen while taking in the siren-song fragrance of the honeysuckle.

On Thursday night, Half Light played with a Seattle band that we’ve been trying to play with for about a year; they are called Slow Skate.  For me, this was one of those rare experiences when I was elated that I was out seeing like music, especially considering it was midnight on a Thursday.  There is nothing wrong with Slow Skate.  The first thing I was struck by was how great the drummer’s snare drum sounds.  The drummer seemed jazz trained but never got too fancy, and was certainly able to bust out the rock when necessary.  The drummer and stand-up bass player were communicating often, and it was fun to watch them.  The deep, growly bass lines coming from the bass were a perfect push-pull to the perfectly tasty drums.  If you clicked on the first link, and are listening to to Slow Skate right now, you are no doubt enchanted with the PJ Harvey meets Cat Power meets Eleni Mandell vocal stylings.  Caitlin Sherman sits comfortably at the wurlitzer belting out her lovely vocals.  In the live setting, I didn’t even miss the killer harmonies that are strewn all over Slow Skates recordings.  I was certainly drawn into the magical tone coming from theguitar player’s hollowbody Gibson.  Since the piano is laying down a lot of the structure that would normally come from guitar, the guitarist was free to engage in long, flowing, super-tasty lead time lines.  We were also blessed with one amazing guitar solo. 

I only regret that I had to get out of the Comet before I had a chance to purchase Slow Skate’s pink vinyl 7″.  Lucky for all of us, they have quite a few gigs coming up.  I have a crush on you Slow Skate!

It came in the mail, the 2009 Territorial Seeds Catalog, now with 225 new varieties.  Hello - I do not NEED 225 more varieties to chose from, it is hard enough!!!

Now those of you that are gardeners or know gardeners, will find nothing new about my post.  For the rest of you, I will try to explain the drama, joy, bargaining, and ultimately, hard truths that a gardener goes through when planning their crops.

The seed catalog arriving is a time of joy.  There has been time to reflect upon successes and failures from last year.  I sit down with my catalog and my gardening journal and start writing down what I need.  Golden Beets, I don’t like them, but I’d love to grow them for those who do.  I stayed up late looking at the catalog.  I made myself put it down and try to go to sleep.

I’ve been reading books on self sufficiency and I have plans.  New garden plans.  There will be so much room for crops and new flowers, to attract the bees, for proper pollination, and delicious herbs for cooking with……

Just writing about it, you see I don’t have very much room, I live in a city - I already tore up the lawn and converted it to garden, but I’m not ready to move on to bargaining yet.  I think I’ll let myself have more joy and let the list of plants NEEDED get really out of hand.  Maybe instead of real scientific bargaining, I’ll cut each plant out, throw in a hat and pick 15.  We’ll see what happens.

Deathcake.  I remember the first time I heard about Deathcake…” with layers of chocolate decadence, espresso ganache, and chocolate cake, all drizzled with dark chocolate ganache.”  It is like death by chocolate on steroids.  It is so much chocolatey yumminess that it is actually hard for a complete chocoholic like me (I probably put away at least 1 ounce of 70% or higher chocolate per day) to finish in one sitting.

OMG - stop drooling

I called cupcake royale about a week ago, because I  hadn’t heard anything about deathcake yet.  They assured me it would be available starting Feb.1.  Right now, you can preorder yours.  They are usually only available until Valentines Day.  The existence of Deathcake Royale probably makes up for the existence of valentines day entirely.

Tonite was yet another sample of,  “I usually don’t want to go out, but I’m always glad I did.”  Tonite’s agenda was pizza at Stellar pizza,  followed by music at the Squid and Ink.  I would have been great with just the pizza, then home by 9 and in bed early, but I wanted to see some friends play.  The music was really great and inspiring.  Jim and Barb were super killer on acoustic guitar and cello and vocal harmonies.  I loved all of the songs they played.  I also got to hear tunes from Herman Jolly and Black Night Crash’s Jim, who also turned in great sets.

Lucky for me, I had a similar experience about a week ago.  I had been to shows on thursday, friday, and saturday night, but some friends were playing on sunday night, and as much as the couch was calling to me, I had to go to the show.  I got to see Nathan Wade and the Dark Pioneers rock an amazing set.  I bought their EP have not been able to stop listening to it.  Nathan’s voice is somewhere between Jeff Buckley and Robert Plant, and that is not something that should be said lightly.  As an added bonus, Nathan is a killer guitar player - and the band is amazing too.  Next I got to see Bill Patton fill in with Whiting Tennis.  Bill sat back and played tasty pedal steel until about 1/2 way through a tune, when he all of a sudden set out on an amazing pedal steel solo, including breaking a string. I’m not used to seeing pedal players break strings.  It was great.  The night ended with C-monster and I sharing a plate of fries at the People’s Pub.

Yeah, relaxing and sleep are nice, but rock n roll always wins.

Oh I love NASA.  I have not got laser corrective eye surgery for one reason - I really want to go into space, and laser eye surgery takes you out of the running - something about your eyes exploding.  This weekend will be a great time for skywatching.  The sky will feature the biggest full moon of 2009, now I know it is the first full moon of 2009, but it will be the biggest of the whole year.  From NASA,   “Johannes Kepler explained the phenomenon 400 years ago. The Moon’s orbit around Earth is not a circle; it is an ellipse, with one side 50,000 km closer to Earth than the other. Astronomers call the point of closest approach “perigee,” and that is where the Moon will be this weekend.”

Go outside and check it out.  And if you happen to be on a beach at about 10pm, you will experience a super-low tide.  You can see some amazing sealife at super-low tide.  Bring a headlamp, and don’t crush the critters while you’re trouncing around.  I saw a giant jellyfish before.  You can also see tons of starfish.

First sorry for no posts…stupid computer issues.  Things are all better now, now that the mac is sitting by itself thinking about what it has done.  Trusty PC here doesn’t have a problem loading the admin page.

This post is about SNOW.  Here is Quez in the snow, he pretty much hates snow; this was the last time he went outside.

Tangerine Tabby + Snow = angry meow meow

On Sunday, unlike Quez, I was so in love with the snow.  I got comfy clothes out and went for a big long walk.  Threw snowballs at Brian and Hynuju’s house and they gave us cookies!  Ginger cookies and chocolate goo cookies.  They were awesome.  Then went sledding at Greenlake.  I love sledding.  I loved the crunch of just trouncing around in the snow.  We got some food at St. Andrew’s.

I hadn’t been into St. Andrews because it is on Aurora Ave N, and looks like a complete dive bar from the outside.  Now, I have no problem with dive bars, but a dive bar on that section of aurora, didn’t seem promising.  I was wrong.  They were playing Manu Chao. They have a veggie burger, they have boundary bay on tap, and they specialize in Scotch:

WOW that is a lot of Scotch.  This is dangerous information.

It is now Friday and I am done with snow in the city.  Snow in the city is making me have to go to work on Saturday, so that I can make up for Tuesday.  I tried to go to work on Tuesday.  The bus never came.  I need some Scotch just thinking about it.

I was supposed to hit the slopes this weekend for the first skiing of the year, but the Blizzard Warning ruined that plan.  We don’t get Blizzard Warnings very often in Seattle.  The lack of skiing meant that I could go to my friend Charlie’s 35th birthday party, featuring a guest of honor called Whiskey.  Jason and I brought a bottle of Elija Craig 20 year, which I really like.  Folks in Seattle are either extremely overconfident, or massive wimps when it comes to driving in the snow.  We do have a layer of ice down, but pretty much there is no one on the road.  We picked up Jed on the way and we parked at the bottom of the hill to Charlie and Alexis’s place.  Ilsa and Paul cross country skied there!

We sat around drinking whiskey until the topic of sledding down the hill came up.  Charlie offered that he had a Queen sized air mattress, I said I was in.  We inflated the air mattress and thought we were in for an out of control ride down the hill (the hill is very steep and was actually closed by the DOT).  We got on, nothing happened.  Jed pushed us, then got on, we went a little ways.  Turns out the air mattress has a lot of surface area, and we were working against to much friction for the amount of speed we could get going (our combined weight was not helping us either).  We finally got a pretty cool ride, employing a trick I had learned as a youngster.  The trick is using hedges to your advantage.  We set the air mattress on the snow, on a hedge, in a position that allowed for much potential energy.  We would ride two at a time, count to 3, then run and jump on the thing.  There are few things more entertaining than sledding.  The only comparable feeling for me is riding roller coasters.

Later, we decided to play poker, and instead of money, chips were worth fun points.  It is a nice feeling to try and explain the value of 300 fun points, when you are trying to scare someone out of a pot.  I think I equated 300 funpoints with hanging out with Episode 4 era Han Solo.

It is still snowing.  The city will be shut down.  I look forward to sleeping in, if the stir crazy cat will let me.