No Dog Left Behind

I'm gradually emerging from my plague ridden state.  Monday was the first day that I've actually felt well again, after a fairly intense 3 week illness.  I spent most of the week previous in a sickness induced, didn't-get-the-job-and-feeling-surprisingly-crushed-about-it mind funk, emerging from my stupor to obsessively refresh the Weather Network site and track the satellite imagery because we were hosting TWELVE (12!!!) kids for the Big Yam's dinner and a movie birthday party.

It was intense.  Some people didn't RSVP and of course I didn't chase them because quite frankly, I was hoping they forgot and I didn't want to hear "oh yes, actually we ARE coming!" I was already getting stomach knots thinking about all those f**kers in my house.  We kept it very, very simple.  We showed Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs outside on the deck on a projection screen and prefaced that with a dinner (also outside) of hot dogs and Kraft Dinner with a fruit tray and a veggie tray.  Veggie straws, a bowl of gummy bears (as a shout out to the movie), and the piece de resistance, I made these cupcakes that look like spaghetti and meatballs (round tip yellow-tinted swiss meringue buttercream with a Fererro Rocher "meatball" dipped in a strawberry sauce and plopped on top).    The weather was being a pain and it kept threatening to rain all day, interspersed with glorious moments of sunshine.  We didn't know how to call it and finally just hoped for the best.  All the parents sent their kids with winter gear and sleeping bags and in the end, the rain held off and it was a lovely (albeit a tad cold) few hours outside.  One kid plaintively asked me at one point, "When do we get to go inside?" and I was like, "You don't.  This is an outside party."  LOL!  I'm a monster.

One kid was also being a whinge and finally I just said, "Do you want to go home?" and she said yes, so I just packed her up and walked her home.  For a few seconds it looked like she was waffling but I didn't give her a chance to change her mind.  I don't have the patience for that, man (which is why I'm not a teacher).  We served popcorn and lit an inaugural fire in our outdoor fire pit (read: corner of our concrete pad that we bricked in with leftover/found bricks).  In the end, my vision of a bunch of kids all snuggled up and giggling at the antics of Flint Lockwood and co. actually measured up to the reality, but not without some fraught moments.  It looked like things were going FUBAR when the party first started and all the kids were riled up and screaming like banshees in the backyard and I was frantically blowing up balloons to keep up with demand.

The weekend prior we had both my nephews sleep over while the rest of my siblings went to the annual hospital fundraising gala my mom's organization throws.  Little Ze, the older one, balked at eating one of my test-run cupcakes because he said it "tastes like pasta" and of course, the Big Yam picked it up and refused to eat the cupcakes I made for the party.  They also got properly country mouse-city mouse'd because our charming neighbours had one of their classic blow outs that somehow seemingly inevitably ends in a quasi psychotic episode with someone screaming obscenities in the street at an ungodly hour.  The Dotytron went to the bathroom and walked by the Big Yam's room to find my two nephews, wide awake, lights on, anxious and worried and unable to sleep.  Welcome to the big city, boys!  

I met with Academic Book Club last week.  I love those women, but we have very, very different value systems and we have very, very different cultural references some times.  JJ mentioned that she was shocked about the revelation shaking up the food blogging world that the authors of the blog, "Thug Kitchen" turned out to be white.  Thug Kitchen won Saveur Magazine's best new food blog of 2013 award.  I'm not sure why.  I've linked the blog so you should read some entries.  I've read lots of pieces about the racism implicit in invoking the use of the word "thug" in the blog title and the tone of the writing (Gawker, Jezebel), but honestly, it's fascinating to me because ALL YOU HAVE TO READ IS ONE ENTRY AND YOU COULD DEDUCE THAT IT'S NOT A "THUG" (READ: BLACK) PERSON WRITING THIS VEGAN FOOD BLOG.  The whole "the authors are white!" reveal is about 15 billion degrees less surprising than the most mundane reveal on Scandal (a show the Dotytron and I both love).  Like, because the author swears (in the clunkiest, most inelegant way imaginable - you can tell it's an affectation and doesn't come from someone who drops f-bombs as part of every day speech), it's "urban"?  There's no slang, the tone is all off, and yet, the fact that people bought in says so much to me about the privileged, rarified world of food writing and foodie culture.  James Oseland as an arbiter of urban culture?  I think not.  

Anyway, those ladies are lovely but very different from I.  A few weeks ago I got to parachute in as a ringer to the Dotytron's Record Club and guys, RECORD CLUB IS SO FUN.  It's a bit of a bro-down, so I'm not sure I'd be welcome to join (they've also curated the guest list to the nth degree because the vibe is super important to them), but, as an example, the theme was jungle music and the guys came over and we played records and DJ'd and then went to a club and danced until almost 3am. By comparison, at Academic Book Club, it's shaking it up when we meet at a restaurant (this time we met at District Oven, which is a pretty terrible Middle-Eastern-ish restaurant where they don't salt the house-made pita, which is a criminal offense, in my books) instead of at someone's house where we talk about our kids and pick at a desultory spread of baby carrots and grapes and Carr's water crackers, which are my Platonian ideal of a disgusting cracker I want to get as far away from as possible.

As this post has already ventured into potpourri category, my proposed tattoo is taking shape.  A few weeks ago, while spearing the last lonely, cold, congealed hot dog off a plate, I said to the Dotytron, "No dog left behind, is what I always say," and then said, "I should get that as my tattoo!"  Imagine it, a cute, 1950s style hot dog with "No dog left behind" underneath?  That's such a good motto, isn't it?  Not only insofar as it pertains to hot dogs, but also as a motto for how you deal with friends, family, etc.?  

I'm feeling a bit low, lately.  Not getting the job, when it's an internal competition, and you've been with the organization going on eight years now, is tough, mentally.  I can tell myself that I wasn't the right fit, that it's about being the right person at the right time for the organization, and I can try to pump myself up with so many Sheryl Sandberg platitudes about how your career isn't a ladder, but a jungle gym, etc...but I still fell off the jungle gym.  On my a**, on concrete (this is an old school jungle gym - none of that recycled rubber composite padding here!  I'm having a bit of an existential crisis about it, probably exacerbated by the fact that I'm back at work after 15 months off, and this is my LIFE, ya know?  I'm (presumably) done having kids, so my career is where I'm going to be spending the majority of my time and energy and I'm feeling a bit lost and directionless.  

Other things that don't help: being sick, calorie counting so I can't even take comfort in a pile of empty carbs, getting reacquainted with rush hour TTC streetcars.  

Things that do help: visits with friends, eyelash extensions from SMckay, saying "to hell with it" and buying myself a (cheap) leather purse from ASOS anyway, fall, a long to-watch list on Netflix, slow cooker meals, moving bedtime up for all the kids so that I get an extra half hour of "me" time in front of the TV, with my knitting and quilting in hand, and more time for reading.  These guys:

REMEMBER THESE GUYS?!?  

OK.  Those nerdbombers are such giant nerdbombers.  Look at how clueless and overwhelmed by life they were.  For real. 

This guy's new catch phrase:

He's really trying to make it stick.

Dinners around here, lately:

Hit up Ja Bistro with our Guu crew.  This is the large lobster sashimi platter.  They also served this blowtorched sushi (aburi) which is nice - kind of smoky from the edges getting singed, which offsets the sweetness of the rice and the cool centre of the fish really well.  Overall, I really liked the blowtorched stuff and obviously, a pile of sashimi is always delicious, but I felt like the giant ice platter didn't showcase each piece.  We were so busy gabbing and eating that I didn't get the full 

O-TORO-gasm that you get when the pieces are presented individually, or slowly.  I might go back, but I'm more likely to hit Guu up again.

Shrimp burrito bowl times

Last night's dinner was a sausage, kale, and white bean gratin with crispy torn bread topping and baked delicata and buttercup squash.  I pre-soaked and parboiled some cannellini beans and set the aside.  In a pan, I took about a pound of sausage out of the casing, and browned it, breaking up the chunks with a spoon.  Then I added onions, garlic, a bit of the bean water, and a whole giant head of kale, thinly sliced.  Cooked that down, then stirred in the beans and seasoned with salt and pepper.  I added some apple cider and about 2 ounces of smoked gouda, diced small to the pan, then topped it with bread torn into big chunks and tossed with oil, salt and pepper.  Baked until hot.  It was good, but needed a bit more...maybe some herbs, maybe some lemon zest, maybe some parmesan?  

I have a backlog of a million book and movie reviews.  Stay tuned.

Fin.

  

adventure/nimrods abound

imma do things chronologically so we don't lose anything in the mix.

when we got hitched, we had to rent an amp. so we went to the only music store in geneseo, ny - buzzo's music. owned by this fine gentleman:

who walks with the help of a jerry-rigged cane (it looks like a bunch of metal rods taped together with packing tape) and speaks in a raspy mumble that's near incomprehensible. buzzo, who's famous catch phrase is: "you kidding me or what?", is a well-preserved relic from the trip the light fantastic, don't drink the kool-aid, shine on you crazy diamond 60s counter culture. he doesn't really do rentals, but he made an exception for us. in return, the dotytron bought this shirt:

when the last of our auxiliary performance thank you cards went out shamefully late, i made sure to get the dotytron to include one for buzzo, with some photos of the amp and the dotytron rocking out with the electric guitar.

on wednesday, i came home and emptied the mail box (note for posterity and future house-chore labour division collateral: THE DOTYTRON NEVER EVER CHECKS THE MAIL) to find this envelope:

i waited for the dotytron to come home and we opened this letter together:

it reads:

dear lagerfeld and dotytron,
so glad it's gone so well!!!
hope this finds you both healthy and happy!!
the pictures will be "on the wall" somehwere (or on the "green giant")
thanks!!
best regards,
al "buzzo" bruno

AMAZING ON SO MANY LEVELS!!! first of all, only buzzo would write BACK. second of all, only buzzo's lsd-derived chicken scratches would take us the better part of half an hour to decipher. third of all, we're going to be immortalized on the wall of a geneseo institution! so the best! we got deep roots there, folks.

last night for dinner we had another legume-based dish. i made that warm baby spinach, lentil, bacon, shallot salad that i do. i usually bread and fry the goat's cheese rounds but we didn't have panko and we already had toasted breadcrumbs leftover from the lima bean dish on tuesday, AND i was feeling chided and remorseful from the weekend of gluttony followed so closely by fat tuesday, that i just smeared the goat's cheese onto toasted slices of my sourdough bread and served it alongside, topping the salad with toasted breadcrumbs for texture. it was good!

so we pile in the captain to do some errands before dball. as we're driving to dball, i start talking about ehm do's show on saturday and the dotytron mentions that he's kind of weirded out by how she was making kind of ribald comments (it was close to valentine's day, after all) and he doesn't really want to see his sister being sexy - that it gives him the willies. and i was talking about how you have to be supportive and then i said, "i'm sure if you were dita von teese's sister, you would go to her show"

the dotytron, driving, looks over at me with narrowed eyes and a puzzled, uncomprehending look and slowly says, "okaaaaaaaay.........i'm not really sure where you're going with this."

and i was like, "you know, if you were dita von teese's sister, or her parents, you would go to her show, even though it's sexy."

a couple of beats passed in puzzled silence. my puzzlement at the dotytron's obtuseness, his puzzlement to be revealed a second later when he burst out laughing, "oh, i get it. i thought you meant that dita von teese's sister would be going to ehm do's show, and i was all like, 'why would dita von tee's sister go to ehm's show?!?'" LOL!!! we laughed our guts out. it was the way he kind of gave me the puzzledeyes and was all like, "okaaaaaaaay..." about it. like he didn't have a clue where i was going but was willing to reluctantly follow along. kind of like a metaphor for our relationship.

so we played against a team that i kind of dislike in dball and lost because they're an amazing team. my team (well, like 2 players) got super rattled and freaked out and started accusing the other team of cheating and then one of the dudes on my team walked out like a poose. it was so poose. this broad on my team said that there's more glory in throwing someone out when you're the last person on the court for your team than a catch. THAT IS SO WRONG i almost smacked her upside the head. catching is the NUMBER 1 SKILL in dodgeball. the NUMBER 1! repeat it after me: CATCHING IS THE NUMBER 1 SKILL IN DODGEBALL. because it's the double whammy - you get someone out AND you bring someone on your team BACK IN. what an idiot.

anyway, on the way home, we got pulled over by the cops because the sticker on our license plate was expired and we hadn't renewed it. the dotytron tensed up like whoa, but i found the whole situation kind of funny. we were literally 1 block from our house. i've never been pulled over before so i put my hands up in the air in the car to show the 5-0 that i wasn't packing. the dotytron was unamused. when the lady cop (it was a lady cop!) was shining the light in the car i suddenly had a hilarious idea. how awesome would it be to be pulled over by the cops, have them come up to the car, shine the light in, only to have you turn around with one of those halogen head-lamps strapped to your head?!??? ahahahahahahaha!!! i can picture it in my head and it would be so funny.

so we're waiting there while they run our vehicle and registration and insurance shiz and then the lady cop comes back and says, "it's your lucky day, guys. we just got called to a knifing" WHAT THE HELL? lucky us, unlucky schlub who got knifed, i guess.

so i've been on twitter for about a year maybe and i finally got into a snippy tweet flame war with the food writer for the toronto star, who wrote this incredibly smug article about how torontians aren't being "cool" about the arrival of guu. read about it here. it got linked in my twitter, so i'm like, ummm...FIRST OF ALL ELECTRO CYBER GEEK, how do YOU get to be an arbiter of taste i toronto? have you met you? btw, you posted THIS as your twitter picture:

what an "asexual snail" in the words of dr. rei. explain how i'm supposed to take any of the pretentious, holier than thou, "oh, i'm going to ask my FRIEND, the chef at kaiseki-sakura [aka native insider authenticity generator alert!]" drivel that comes out of your mouth, seriously? you, who overcooked a ribeye like whoa?

(i pulled this photo from his blog...which is teeth-gnashingly smug). so i posted in response to him...uhhh... what's your FREAKIN' POINT? people line up all the time. sorry if it's not "cool" to line up. people line up for all kinds of things: ramen at momofokus, yakitori in japan, caplansky's, the black hoof, reserving 6 months in advance for alinea (could be construing as lining up) - are all of those equally "not cool"? HOW ARE YOU "COOL"? so effin' elitist and self-aggrandizing.

sigh. i effin' hate the calibre of the food community in toronto if it's made up of corey mintz and toronto life and joanne kates. where's the realness? where's the inclusiveness? where's the JOY? the joy in eating...that giddy excitement, the desire to share, to encompass the world at your table and while away an evening with friends over the table? if these people have it...it doesn't come across. what comes across is how much you want to sock them in the nads. that corey dude even has a twitter hater who's only goal is to start flame wars with him (misterpsm) kind of awesome.

in other news of people being shacker hackjobs, the special library association, of which i am a member is hosting a workshop with a guest speaker on the topic of "information overload." the guest speaker, whose bio reads thus (you can skim it...the main point is...he talks himself up like whoa):

"Karl Dawson is the CEO of phiScape AG, a company specializing in distributed computing and data integration in heterogeneous environments, with particular application to digital media and knowledge management systems. Prior to founding phiScape AG in Zürich, Mr. Dawson was CTO of Deltavista, a data broker based in Switzerland which connects large volumes of data from a myriad of public and private sources through sophisticated record linkage. In this position, Mr. Dawson not only designed the software and data architecture, but contributed to key parts of the implementation. Prior to Deltavista, Mr. Dawson was employed at the Amdahl Research Laboratory in Toronto, where he helped to develop a relational database system with an embedded rule-based engine. Before this, Mr. Dawson worked five years at I.P. Sharp and Associates in Toronto, where he was privileged to help engineer the company’s APL interpreter, implementing new language primitives. Mr. Dawson holds university degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science."

anyway, chachi up there describes his upcoming presentation thusly:

"Arthur Toffler characterized "Revolutionary Wealth" as resting on three pillars: time, space and knowledge. The identification of these particular elements is in no small measure attributable to technology, particularly the internet. "Internet time" is something that we all know about. "The World is Flat" is the standard metaphor for globalization. But, whereas the internet has compressed time and space, knowledge is expanding at an accelerating rate. This is the “information overload” problem that we experience in our daily lives.

Information overload cannot be solved by search engines alone, since even the most precise search requests still leave us with a lot of information to absorb. We live in a post-Gutenberg world of electronic documents, but where are the post-Gutenberg tools to help us process all this information? There has to be something more than just tag clouds."

i got just one simple question for you: WHO THE F**K IS "ARTHUR TOFFLER"???!!!??? i can only assume you mean ALVIN TOFFLER, the actual author (with heidi toffler) of "revolutionary wealth" - unless of course YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT WHAT YOU'RE GOING TO BE TALKING ABOUT AND MAYBE DIDN'T EVEN READ THE BOOK YOU'RE REFERENCING IN YOUR TALK SUMMARY.

WE ARE INFORMATION PROFESSIONALS. WE SHOULD BE GETTING THIS STUFF RIGHT. this is basic. that's like calling barack obama, bruce obama. or michel foucault, marion foucault. so i posted a comment on the event page. it's infuriating. because, you know, if information professionals actually had A SINGLE THEORETICAL INTEREST outside of hitching a cart to whatever "digital networking/crowd-sourcing/breaking down information silos" bandwagon happens to be jolting by n00b-alley, then stuff like this would be less likely to happen. you gotta crawl before you can walk, kids. GAH!!!

this weekend is gonna be dope.

tonight: dinner with the fam-bam up in markham. we're getting takeout from this sri lankan place, babu. i'm excited to try sri lankan/south indian stuff i've never had before like hoppers, etc.

tomorrow: i don't know where for lunch and then DREAM MENU for dinner for kung kung's birthday. hoping to hit up asc at the basement for old time jungle's sake. haven't danced in FOREVERS.

sunday: dim sum brunch with C et famille and then back downtown for dball.

family and jungle and food and friends - the quartfecta of good times.

fin.