Snake Attack

My beloved husband awoke me this morning just before 4 o'clock with a spaztic fit. "There's a snake on me!" he said as he flailed wildly, crawling over me with his arms lashing at the darkness. He then fell out of bed and half-stood, stomping and struggling with the invisible force. This led me to belive that he was wrestling with an intruder, and I may have screamed. It all seemed so real at the time, the way these things do. I thought we were toast. After a few seconds, I switched on the bedside lamp and saw Joe, naked and terrified, with no intruder and no snake. We both went back to bed, but it took a long while to calm down.

In his frantic attempt to shed himself of the imaginary snake, Joe somehow mahed his hand up against my earlobe, which today is red and sore but not swollen. He also broke one of the rods on our drying rack, but a little glue will fix that right up.

This is not the first time spectres of snake attacks have ripped Joe from his slumber. I guess it's a theme with him, an Indiana Jones snake pit kind of terror. Me, I'm not scared of snakes, but I am scared of Joe being scared of snakes. What horror.

Free from Chocolate Cake Opression!

I just sent in my simple chocolate sheet cake assignment. This means that, for better or for worse, I am free from chocolate cake! Now I can eat proper lunches and breakfasts. Like leftover stuffing, which I am just now off to eat. I'll print the recipe here on the blog once I hear the outcome. The outcome may actualy determine where Joe and I will live in the future, so it's no small potatoes. Anyway, I'm basically pleased with the cake I created, but I still want to refine it even more. I ran out of time; today was the deadline. I'm just happy to be finished and able to get on with my life. The rest of the day I will spend doing housewifey things like cleaning, doing laundry, shopping for groceries, paying bills, and making food. I'm very good at doing those things.

Still at It

I'm on cake #7 now. I'm not sure if I should keep going or quit while I'm ahead. Every day I'm eating the equivalent of two gigantic pieces of cake, all in little tastes. All in all, seven variations on a simple chocolate sheet cake is only knicking the tip of the iceburg. But then, a cake is a cake--right? Give twenty people the task of coming up with the ideal simple chocolate sheet cake and you will get twenty cakes.

That said, I think I'm realizing that I'm not as into Scharffen Berger cocoa powder as I thought. As a former employee, I have scads of the stuff around, so I'll keep on baking with it as needed. But today, as I poured boiling water over the Scharffen Berger cocoa powder and whisked it into a smooth paste, a hammy, almost smoky bacon-esque aroma rose from the bowl. At the Scharffen Berger factory the cocoa powder always seemed appealing, but perhaps because of the overall sensory overload of chocolate permeating the air. In the isolation of our lackluster kitchen, this is not the case. So we'll see how cake #7 turns out. Hey, do you need some chocolate cake? Leave a comment and I can hook you up. But I don't deliver.

Too Much Cake

This is what I've been doing lately. It's a secret project, but obviously it has sonething to do with chocolate cake. I'm going for the ultimate chocolate sheet cake. I've baked five so far, and I'll probably bake at least five more. Sometimes I can't even tell the difference between cakes..I got a headache this afternoon, because I'd eaten primarily nibbles of chocolate cake and not much else. It's more work than you'd think, tasting cake. But I'm keeping at it.
P.S.--#1 is made with Valrohna, # 2 with Scharffen Berger.

Frugal, not Gourmet

Could you make dinner from the following leftovers?
-about 1 cup unused parsnip, potato, and carrot ravioli filling
-10 ounces meatloaf
-4 ounces mushroom stems

Plus you have the services of the following non-leftovers:
-1/8 bag frozen green peas
-three carrots
-one onion
-one bottle Trader Joe's Winterfest Double Bock Dark Lager (a very fine beer, considering the $4.99/six pack price)
-milk
-all-purpose flour
-unsalted butter
-fresh sage & parsley
-Dubliner cheddar

...well, I did. I minced the onion and mushroom stems and cooked them until soft, then added some butter and flour. I opened the beer and poured in maybe 4 ounces (the rest went into me) and stirred in some milk and water. This became the gravy. To this I added minced meatloaf, diced carrots, frozen peas, and minced sage and parsley. I dumped this mixture into a gratin dish; the ravioli filling, which was pureed and starchy, became the topping. There. Instant shepard's pie. I grated a little cheddar cheese on top of the potato/parsnip puree to gild the lily, so to speak. Who knows, this might turn out tasting like crap--but I just took it out of the oven, and it smelled great. It has yet to pass the most stringent of tests, the Husband Test. Joe will reject or embrace odd, thrown-together dishes with no predictability whatsoever. Will this very thrifty casserole strike his fancy? Time to eat now; I'll report tomorrow.

Budget Cuts

The small capitalist nation that is Joe and I is in the midst of a budget crisis. Well, it's really just my nation--Joe's part of it is okay. But I am facing the prospect of a mounting defecit, with no revenue in the immediate future. Unlike certain other nations, however, I have the foresight to anticipate financial quagmires and thus am strategizing with cost-cutting measures. No more dinners at restaurants with table service. From now on, if I go to a coffee shop franchise, it's nothing but hot tea (always the cheapest warm beverage item). All Christmas gifts this year will be handmade from items we already own. Alcohol consumption must plummet (either that or I cultivate a love for mixed drinks, as we do have a pretty decent stash of hooch). No clothing, book, magazine, or music purchases unless absolutely necessary (e.g. I'd need a new pair of black shoes to wear to a new job). No motion pictures unless they are at matinee prices or $1 budget cinema chains. No movie rentals.

If I play my cards carefully, I'll be able to coast through the end of this month and the very beginning of next month. However, I'm unsure of what will follow. One job prospect may require a trip across the country, which would not be cheap. Then there's things like auto and health insurance, the January trip to Mexico that I put a deposit in for but still owe a good chunk on, my final car payment, and the trip to San Luis Obispo that Joe wants to take for Christmas. I'm all in favor of travel and fun, but the prospect of mounting debt is terrifying. Many folks have it worse, but I don't want to rack up debt just by everyday living. Debt is for emergencies and major life aquisitions/transitions (moving, house, car, unforseen medical nighmares), not crap like PG & E bills.

I think I may try to back out of the Mexico trip. Bummer, but I got myself into this financial position in the first place, and I can 'fess up to my duties.

Worse comes to worse I have Joe to step in and cover some of these costs--he is, after all, my husband. But it's not like he's Daddy Warbucks or nothin'. I guess the fun of marital money matters begins for us now.

How Can JT LeRoy Bite Me If He Does Not Exist?

Those of you with minds like steel traps may recall that I have a little bit of a problem with JT LeRoy (see "JT LeRoy Can Bite Me" from this very blog). So this Woman's Wear Daily article was particularly delightful to me. It seems there are those (including David Segal of the Washington Post, whose writing I dig, though I know nothing of his investigative skills) who suspect that the pan-sexual slyph with the troubled past, celebrity friends, and addiction to personalized fragrances may be a hoax. Is he real? It's fun to debate, I suppose, but in a way I don't care. Real or not, he's kind of a sham anyway (yes, I'm still pissed about that Scharffen Berger episode. What a whore!) Maybe I should find some homeless kid to be my alter-ego, huh?

Oh! So I'm copying below a portion of the my original post from June of this year, "JT LeRoy: The Saga Continues." JT LeRoy, be a fucking human!

Perhaps I spoke a bit harshly in my previous post about JT LeRoy. I was upset because he and his assistant phoned the PR line of our chocolate factory asking for chocolate, when in fact my own generous offer of free chocolate many months earlier via email went ignored. But perhaps JT LeRoy never even saw the email. There's a good chance he didn't. Emails get lost in space, sometimes.But then Mr. LeRoy's assistant sent a follow-up email after the call. This is an excerpt.
"JT is unusual in that he hearkens back to an earlier time when filthy lucre was avoided by means of barter. In the world of big business, advertising dollars are spent willy-nilly, in periodicals that may or may not attract a dedicated audience. JT decries this depersonalization of product. He prefers to give items that he loves apersonal spin, explaining, as only he can, how his life has been enhanced by this or that thing. I've attached a piece that JT had done for Black Book about Mandy Aftel's perfumes. Through it, you will see how JT can best any PR firm's appraisal of a product. As you read it, please understand that no money ever changed hands between Mandy and JT. Instead, gifts were sent to JT's friends and a story woven out of that experience."
Sick! So if we give JT LeRoy chocolate to share with his friends, he'll write about us? I personally feel that this is filthy lucre, and that if he wants to write about Scharffen Berger, he should just do it. We give everyone free chocolate; you don't have to get all slimy about it. The whole thing leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.

Bike Wreck

Well, my five minutes of local radio exposure has come and gone. It was fun, though. Funny, because doing this thing took me from 6:30am (waking up and getting dressed) to 8 (arriving at the station). It's 10:53 and I'm just selling in here at home. Of course, I did stop for post-radio coffee and a maple scone. Mmm, maple scone.

On the way home I passed an accident. There was bad traffic and it slowed eveything down. Some guy slid on his motorcycle (or, more accurately, *off* his motorcycle) on a 2-lane overpass on 101. I drove right past the ambulence and accident scene. The empty stretcher was there, waiting for him. The guy was on the ground against the barricade. I saw his bare legs--he was wearing shorts--but that's it. The paramedics were getting ready to transfer him to the stretcher right as I passed. I was a rubbernecker, what can I say? I really wanted to get a good look at the accident, but safety and respect got the best of me. Funny, I always avert my eyes when I see scary movies--but real life, whoa! That's a whole other ballgame. I think in real life, scary things are scarier after they happen.

Sad 13 Update

I'll be on Sonoma County's KRSH 95.9 FM on Friday morning (that's November 11) at 8am-ish with my enthusiastic and supportive editor, Gretchen Giles, to talk up the North Bay Bohemian's amazing Sad 13 Challenge. Also, the column announcing the Sad 13 Challenge came out in the Bohemian on 11/09/05. You can take a peek here (sadly the Sad 13 Challenge Blog was omitted from mention, but this will be rectified in subsequent issues!)

Lately I've been thinking that I need to be less modest in the arena of career accomplishments and developments (i.e. I need to promote myself more, even if it is cheesy and full of badly styled spin). So that's what I'm doing here. Listen to KRSH, darn it! Enter a CD in the Sad 13 Challenge!

Hmm...not sure how I like this self-promotion thing. Maybe I need to practice and refine...

Not Sold in Stores

I'm jet-lagged. A 3-hour time difference is not a very big deal, but I think I have a general lack of sleep compounding it. The flight home from Ohio was without event. Here I am now, back in our little apartment with a few suitcases to empty and an empty refrigerator to fill.

While in Marietta I watched a bit of television; I do every trip. Late on a Friday night I ran across paid programming for the new Time-Life 70s Music Explosion collection. I MUST HAVE THIS! You can say whatever you like about 70s FM & AM hits, but I love them with a vengance.

I also love Time-Life paid programming on late-night television. These ads are extremely effective; they've goaded me into buying the Country Classics collection and almost had me sold on Classic Soul Ballads. The 70s Music Explosion ad is hosted by Barry Williams, a.k.a. Greg Brady. Some perky co-host who was probably born in 1974 is on with him, saying things like "I love that song! Weren't the 70s great?" Dang, she must have a great memory of the world when she was 5 years old.

Ignore the Greg Brady and Nincompoop Girl segments--the best parts of these ads are the snippets of "performance" footage that play as the songs in the collection scroll across the screen. We see all manner of one-hit wonders lip-syncing in awful sequined jumpsuits in front of preposterous backgrounds...plus lots of gross, gross 70s guys with sick mullets and terrible facial hair. Bands like Pilot ("Magic") and Bread ("Baby I'm-A Want You," one song on the collection that I despise) and Player ("Baby Come Back"). It's fascinating to me. How did folks get suckered into loving this stuff when it was so hopelessly cheesy? Obviously it's the quality of the music. The two songs I'm really dying for are "Indiana Wants Me" and "Hitchin' a Ride." Both are pretty depressing songs when you listen to them, but they are dripping with that sunshine pop sound.

So, dear Santa, please bring me the 70s Music Explosion for Christmas. That's all I want, except for Classic Soul Ballads and the new Rhino girl groups box set. I know it's a worthy investment, because County Classics was *so* worth it. Life-changing, in fact. Time-Life puts together some mighty fine compilations, even if they are riddled with cliches. I got The Folk Years box set for free from my old job, and I am still nuts over it.

I think the fondness for 70s Music Explosion and The Folk Years traces back to the K-Tel and Sessions compilation LPS that my mom ordered from ads back in the day. I have three of them: Mellow Gold, Together, and Beautiful Music. Mom played them incessantly when I was younger, and they are responsible for this time-freeze pickle I'm in now. If I'm not a fan of the Go! Team or Franz Ferdinand, it's Mellow Gold's fault.

Greetings from EST

The quality of Marietta's thrift stores has gone down. I used to be able to find all kinds of great stuff, but now it's mostly stretched-out cotton knit shirts and lame jeans in too-big sizes. I did score two nice straight-leg jeans from the Salvation Army for .99 a pair. Someone at the Salvation Army store walked by me while I was standing in line and said "Excuse me, sir." Um, no, I'm a girl. Are the matching silver hoop earrings and lipstick not a dead giveaway?

I also went ot the public library to write for a bit on my laptop. It's a Carnegie library, built in 1916 and remodeled in 1992 or '93. I used to work there at the circulation desk. I liked it. I was nervous about seeing former co-workers, because I'd be afraid they would not know what to say to me, or vice versa. Luckily there's a staircasedirectly from the breezeway to the mezzanine. From the mezzanine I could see these two older ladies who I worked with back in the day, plus I could hear them mention a girl who likewise worked there at the time. So all three are still there. A library is a good place to work, but a small library like that is a tough place to move ahead. I'd love to have a workaday library job at this point, though, so I should keep my mouth shut.

Walking around downtown, everything seemed very real to me. But I felt like a spy. I felt like a spy in my own hometown. I usually do when I come to visit.