cooler air

...my butski! it's been hot as hades 'round here lately and it's making for some champion whinging courtesy of k. lagerfeld, esquire. YOU try not whinging when you've become a fat little mouth breathing weirdo.

kdubsguelphtdot cottage was really really nice...there were some pros and cons to the set up. pros: the bathrooms were all really nice, huge fire pit, drinkable well water, big kitchen and giant kitchen table for eating at, lots of activity space. cons: basement (secondary hang out room) smelled dank and was kind of neglected and featured the furnace room and beer fridge of doom, the dock was tiny and rickety and had rotting wood galore, and there was no outdoor table for eating outside. the dock was a bit of a pisser as was the axe murderer vibe in the basement - it just meant that we didn't really want to hang out there all that much.

also, the weather was kind of lame, cloudy and cool most days with only 1 day of consistent sun, and it wasn't that hot. but there's nothing that can be done about that.

but my oh my did we have fun! we camped out at the pearces' dock where my pregnant belly was deemed to be collateral by J, in case the pearces happened to be there and got mad at us for trespassing. we ate like kings: key lime pie, peanut butter cookies, burgers, mac'n'cheese, salads, monkey bread, taco night, so many chips. a few of us went on a trip to visit the dorset fire tower, which in the subsequent re-telling, became the GREATEST ADVENTURE OF ALL TIME. there was a race with a startling upset - one of those true underdog sports stories finishes, recorded for all posterity. we played so many games and had so many cozy chats and basically loved up on one another and rued our eventual return to reality. i'm really hoping that we can make it an annual tradition, to supplement the winter farm vacay.

momma d's family cottage was another time entirely. quiet, relaxing, reflective time on one of the prettiest, most wildlife-rich lakes i've ever been to. it's teeming with life in a way that the other cottages i've been too aren't. we saw so many frogs, and minnows, and crayfish, and a pretty chubby garter snake, hummingbirds galore. i caught like 4 fish just casting off the dock and managed to land the best thing of all (for an avid fisher), a "the one that got away" story. most of the times at healey lake i've never caught anything of note - small little rock and baby small mouth bass about the size of my hand. but casting off the dock on the thursday night, i got something BIG. something big enough to snap my line, make off with my lead, hook, worm AND mangle my bobber (!!!!!) so exciting!

saturday night we had a hootenanny on the dock, recorded by ehmdo. now, if you're a tone death motherf**ker like myself, just try participating in a hootenanny featuring a gifted guitarist/singer (dotytron), a mandolin/songwriter (poppa d), a choir singer (momma d), and a professional singer-songwriter (ehmdo), AND another talented singer (ehmdo's bestie L, who frequently joins her on backup at live shows). you may have heard of a certain evolutionary phenomena known as "flight or fight." well, my friends, my survival instincts kicked in and i desperately clung to the melody with every atom in my being, trying to tease it out from the FOUR PART HARMONY going on in some of the numbers, singing with my hand in front of my mouth to muffle my (limited) contributions. it was kind of terror-inducing. it was also the most over-directed and micromanaged dockside hootenanny that i've ever seen, lol! so many takes! i think there's some good material there and there was definitely something magical about singing under the stars, with an inky black lake still beneath your feet, and a slowly dying fire casting flickering ember shadows on our faces.

then we came back to the stinking, stinking heat. oy vey. tomorrow evening we're going on the last big excursion before the fatburger's appearance, to visit my sis and outlaw bro and family, with dr. rei and hanbo, in geneseo. the real reason for the trip is to go to the new york state fair, which is BLOWING MY MIND at the moment. check out the interactive "food finder" map! check out the categories: "fried" "on a stick" "unique" - i'm going to eat the S**T outta this fair, mark my words. i really want to try a deep fried oreo, fried cheesecake, fried mac'n'cheese and all sorts of other goodies that you don't normally get (because you would die, obvs). i'm also liking all the seafood options, like fried clams, shrimp, crab cakes, and the regional new york specialties. GAH!!! i'm basically spending all my free time poring over the map and trying to commit it to memory and playing sophie's choice about what's actually going to make it down my gaping maw.

last night's dinner was an attempt to recalibrate post-cottage excesses and pre-NYSF excesses. we had pan-seared lamb shoulder chops with a mint chimichurri, white bean & grape tomato salad, and a tomato-cucumber salad:

i have no less than eleven (!!!) book reviews and 2 movie reviews on deck for my peeps.

it's hard to believe that the last weekend of the summer is already here. i'm glad i'm spending it with my favorite people. is it weird how much i love going on vacation with friends? should i only want to go on vacation with my partner?

fin.

black rabbit

who do you think i would be in u900? and the dotytron?

we both think that i would be the black rabbit and the dotytron would be the laid back bear, strumming away and sweating at having to sing "jingle bells" in english:



SO CUTE! the dotytron thinks i should learn to play the ukulele. he says it embodies one element of my personality. the small, asian, cute-loving, domo-kun, mashimaro part. he says that capturing the OTHER part of my personality (the loud, brash, obnoxious, spiky ball part) would require a LOT more instruments/time/investment than learning how to play the uke. i'm in! i hope he gets me one for my birthday.

one of the things i like about the dotytron is that whenever i start singing, "what's with these homies, dissing my girl..." he'll ALWAYS, reliably, finish with, "why do they gotta front?" i like the consistency. it's nice knowing that someone will finish weezer song lyrics for you.

i made the dotytron some business cards that he can hand out and leave with principals when he goes and supply teaches at various schools. that way, if they need a supply teacher they have his contact info on hand and can call him directly if they like him (and who WOULDN'T like him?)...i think they turned out okay. i mean, no one would mistake them for a professional graphic design job but i kind of thought they were decent for someone using microsoft publisher with no design skills. what do you think? i came up with 3 different concepts:




i like the second and third one, best.

last night we ate leftovers - i had clam linguine. i EFFIN' LOVE clam linguine. so good - al dente linguine noodles with the chewy brine of clams carried aloft on a fragrant raft of onions and garlic. i also ate more brownie and ice cream even though i really shouldn't be eating that AT ALL, what with me trying to regain my svelte figure and whatnot.

tonight we're playing dodgeball and then chasing that with some veal sandwiches from california's sandwiches. nom nom!

fin.

the no.1 song from the lagerfeld and dotytron family singers

number 1 in the sense that this tune is the one we duet to the most, due to a number of factors, including but not restricted to:
a) the song is 10 different kinds of amazing
b) i know all the words
c) it's in my range and i can sing it fairly well
d) the dotytron can harmonize anything



we got back really late from the party and played youtube videos and sang along to them until we fell asleep. the party was so filled with love. being surrounded by love and family and friends is actually kind of exhausting. we were there from 3 to about 10 and it's just a whirlwind of talking, catching up, opening presents (which i had to do in front of people, which wasn't bad, i guess...more on that later), eating bite sized foods (a task to which i set myself with dedication and verve) and cupcakes, and kissing on both cheeks. we rarely see all the dotytron's family (pater and mater's side) all together more than once a year and the phenomenal thing about weddings is how it brings people together and how heartfelt people's well wishes are (for the most part).

i was surprised by how wiped out i was. i think when you talk so much you use up a lot of oxygen and your body gets deprived or something.

anyway, we sang along to "more than words" when we got home and played every song by chicago that we knew. the combination of peter cetera & david foster is a magical, magical thing.

the end result of all the food swirling in my belly and the tiredness was THE BEST DREAM OF ALL TIME. i dreamed that extreme were my roommates! lol! the house setup was pretty much the same and it felt very normal. like, i was living my normal life except in one room, extreme would be practicing "play with me" and nuno bettencourt took $5 from the grocery funds to buy something random and i had to lecture him (which is actually very normal for me, the odd part is the person receiving the lecture). i was like, "the grocery fund is NOT an ATM. and if you take $5, just keep the change and put $5 back in." lol!!! lecturing nuno bettencourt is one of the funniest things i've ever done in dreamland.

i forgot to mention that on friday, something hilarious happened when we were chatting with dr. rei. dr. rei talks a LOT of smack based on half-cocked, muddled ideas of how she thinks something is (ie. writing off the continent of africa). ANYWAY, a while ago she had expressed that she doesn't like the song that she refers to as, "take a load off annie" and which other people call by its title, "the weight". i think this is one of the best songs ever written, so we tried to convince her otherwise at the time and she said something about how it's a drag and did this horrible impression of the chorus. so, the other night, as she's lying on our couch trying to not rub her eyes after petting our cats, she says, "hey guys, remember how i said i don't like 'take a load of annie'? i actually do" to which i interjected with a tart, "of course you do, YOU IDIOT." lol!!!

this song is also fantastic:

we heard this in the car today and the dotytron was like, "i love the ship metaphor." if you listen to the chorus, it goes like this:

and i can't fight this feeling anymore
i've forgotten what i started fighting for
it's time to bring this ship into the shore
and throw away the oars, forever

the best is how they continue the ship metaphor with the "throw away the oars, forever." lol! the idea of someone hucking their oars (forever) is some damned funny imagery.

today i went to dr. rei's mostly irani shower. i was the only person there whose name didn't end with an h. lol! seriously, it was all irani and me. it was lovely and fun and i felt so welcomed by her family. i love getting close with the family of friends. it adds a whole new layer to your relationship. i like how those generational divides start to break down and the lines between family and friends start to blur.

anyway, i realized what makes me feel awkward about opening gifts in front of people. it's really hard, in the moment when you're opening that gift, to express how grateful you feel for the other person's generosity and imbue it with sufficient sincerity. when you're opening gifts one after another, it becomes kind of difficult to individualize the experience of receiving a gift and convey how truly special that gift is. does that make sense? it's a little easier when it's all gifts. but when it's gifts plus some people giving money, it's really difficult to be effusive enough given how generous people can be. i'm not saying like you have to like, fake it. i'm more saying that it's hard to focus on that person and make them aware of how touched you are before another equally generous gift is being pressed into your hands to open.

and with that, i'm out. tomorrow is closing day! day! ay! y! *echo effect* i took a 1/4 day off of work in the afternoon, just in case the bank realizes that we went on a hawaiian vacation and are terribly irresponsible and therefore, undeserving of their magnanimous loan.

cross your fingers!

fin.

fat little weirdo

the fat little weirdo returned with a VENGEANCE on tuesday night. i didn't think i was going to be hungry after scarfing mad pizza and cake at lunch - i figured i would only nibble on some fruit or something. but apparently the fat little weirdo had other ideas in mind.

i microwaved a bag of light popcorn and started shoveling handfuls into my mouth. then i took five hotdogs from the mennonites (no nitrates!) and boiled them and ate them sans bun. the dotytron was strangely immune to my "dinner" of choice. instead he studiously tried to ignore me as i stood behind him in an oversize, dirty breakcore t-shirt, with a plate of hot dogs, spearing one up and dipping it's snappy, taut end in ketchup before taking giant bites and asking through noisy, snuffly chews, "you sure you don't want some of this?" for some reason he finds it distracting when i do that.


last night i made us a quickie dinner of pan fried paneer on top of a warm chickpea salad consisting of some of T's preserved chilies, onions, garlic, and chopped zucchini blossoms. i scooped this warm mixture on top of some baby spinach and squeezed half a lemon over and sprinkled it with sea salt. then i topped it with the fried paneer.

for dessert i was really craving a pudding cake. i LOVE pudding cakes of all stripes and persuasions. chocolate pudding cakes, pouding chomeur, strawberry rhubarb, etc etc. blueberry pudding cake is one of my all-time favorites though. it's the best of both worlds - warm, ultra-blueberry compote on the bottom cradling a tender, light as air quick-bread cake with a crusty top and chewy-browned edges, a perfect foil for a scoop or two of vanilla ice cream. the best thing about pudding cakes is that by and large, they come together in less than 15 minutes. 15 minutes of active time for a warm, homey, old-timey dessert? yessum!

i worked really really really hard today. one of those days where i was juggling a million different tasks and phone calls and memos at once. i barely got up to pee and didn't eat a thing all day except 2 tim horton's cookies. after work we went to pick up our grillz. the dotytron's fit amazing but mine didn't turn out and i have to get remolded. it's very demoralizing. what if mine's not done in time?!?? what's wrong with my teefs?

then we got the dotytron some flip flops and hit up chipotle for dinner. the barbacoa at chipotle is a wonderful thing. so good! we were going to try to be thrifty and split a burrito but i was so demoralized by my grill not fitting that i ate the whole thing. plus i was probably suffering from low blood sugar from not having had a chance to eat all day and getting up at 6am for a run.

now i'm recording a billion takes for the performance cd. singing is hard. it's hard in a lot of ways. first you have to be in tune. this is HARD. then you have to project. this is also hard. then you also have to EMOTE THE FEELINGS IN THE SONG. this is very hard. in combination with all the other stuff it's damn near impossible. especially if you, like me, are tone deaf. here's my tip: REVERB IS YOUR FRIEND.

tomorrow is a BUCKSHOT day. we have our purchaser's visit to the house, which means we have like, 6 different contractors coming through to give us quotes. then we have to go to the bank and like, take out every dime we've ever had in our lives. here's my tip: 3.7% FIXED INTEREST IS YOUR FRIEND. then i have to get my mold done for my teeth and come home and get my hair cut and then have the kdubsguelph crew over to do backup vocals and gossip. i'm exhausted and stressed just thinking about it.

here's the recipe for the blueberry pudding cake:

fin.

------------------------------------------------
blueberry pudding cake
serves 4-6, from gourmet magazine, july 2005

1/3 cup plus 1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon cornstarch
10 oz blueberries (2 cups)
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
1/2 cup whole milk
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly

- butter a 9" square baking pan (i use a 9" round casserole dish with 3" high sides)
- preheat oven to 375F
- stir together 1/3 c. sugar with water, lemon juice, cornstarch and blueberries in a saucepan. bring to a simmer. simmer 3 minutes, set aside.
- stir together flour, baking powder and salt. whisk together milk, egg, and butter.
- stir liquid ingredients into dry ingredients. spread into prepared pan.
- carefully pour blueberry mixture over cake mixture (blueberries will sink. this will look wet).
- bake for 30-45 minutes until top spring backs when touched and is golden brown.
- serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

slumdog snoozeanaire

predictably and unjustifiably swept the oscars last night. really? it wasn't THAT good. it was decent. an entertaining, distracting, colourful trifle that glosses over poverty and chemistry between the leads and leaves you the moment you step out of the theatre. it's not the kind of film that wows you. that thrills, excites, engages, challenges. it's as easy to swallow as pablum. but whatevs, the academy has been wrong before (hello: 'shakespeare in love'? 'juno'? 'little miss sunshine'?) giving 'slumdog' the win for sound mixing was egregious. did anyone even NOTICE the sound in 'slumdog'? VERSUS 'THE DARK KNIGHT'?!???? i did pretty well in the oscar pool, losing to my sister by one point (i knew i shouldn't have voted with my heart in the best actor race.) i missed the first part but it seemed to move along at the tidy clip. my sister gets really upset when the audience in the auditorium doesn't clap equally for all the people who get mentioned in the tear-jerker "in memoriam" segment - she kept repeating: "clap equally or at the end! clap equally or at the end!" which is kind of true. don't be dicks about it, just because people have no cultural memory any more (or any memory for that matter.)

now the clothes. kate winslet's dress was interesting in concept and colour, but ended up looking like it lacked polish. reese witherspoon's dress was a mess. i really liked miley cyrus' gown, even though i thought it wore her instead of the other way around. at first i didn't like marisa tomei's, but when i saw all the pleating i changed up my opinion - i do wish it had been more of a colour though, the oyster shade washed her out even though she editorial-posed her heart out on the red carpet. SJP's boobs were wrangled, pushed, and prodded up and out as if their very integrity depended on it. i wasn't a fan of her gown. i loved penelope's vintage balmain number and leslie mann's sequined sheath. i thought there was too little colour, overall and that beyonce needs to learn to tone it down and for the love of all that is tasteful STOP LISTENING TO YOUR MOTHER. viola davis and taraji henson both looked absolutely stunning. halle berry's dress was too busy. frieda pinto's number, i don't care if it's dior, looked cheap and was pretty unflattering, and shame on you for doing that to someone who possesses that radiant of a smile.

the biggest upset was the most obscure japanese foreign film of all time winning over 'THE CLASS'. WHAT! i was never more sure of anything than i was that 'the class' would win that category, considering i think it's head and shoulders above 'the reader' (which i saw this weekend, review to come) and 'the curious case of benjamin button' and 'slumdog'. it's best picture worthy, and to lose to 'departures' whatever that is, was a big shock. they really DO hate the french, eh? film friend D was equally flabbergasted. this morning we shared a little tête-à-tête about it. "i can tell you about the german film, the austrian film, the israeli film and of course the french film, but i don't know a single thing about the japanese one. it's not on ANYONE'S radar" lol! also, i LOVED the judd apatow directed 'pineapple express' bit with my beloved james franco. so funny! there's nothing funnier than people pretending to laugh at serious movies. hell, i used the same bit a few weeks ago when i saw '4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days' so i consider myself in good company.

as a strange aside, philip seymour hoffman showed up wearing the EXACT SAME TOQUE I TRIED TO KNIT FOR MY MOM (twice)! bizarre!

so saturday night my back was all messed up still and it started storming so i didn't go to amit after all...the dotyron was on his way to being deep in his cups and flatly refused to drive back downtown in the increasingly inclement weather conditions. so what did we do instead? the kids piled into the family room, and we looked up videos on youtube from the 'les mis' 10 year anniversary "dream cast" special where instead of the musical being fully staged, the singers stood in costume and sang in into microphones. this was put on in 1995. this means that the latter half of my high school years were spent glorying with my sister and the s-dawg over the magnificence of the performances - it was in heavy rotation because pbs caned it like you wouldn't believe (that and 'riverdance' - i think 'les mis' wins the test of time battle there). anyway, all the cast members are like, THE BEST. so we somehow found versions of all the songs on youtube WITH THE LYRICS PRINTED UNDERNEATH which meant that my saturday night was spent prostrate after a delicious home-cooked meal of: arancini, pasta with rosé sauce, baby spinach lentil salad, veal saltimbocca, and espresso mascarpone icebox cake, doing 'les mis' karaoke with my siblings and the dotytron. it was EPIC. and AMAZING.

here's a sample:



the best thing about the 10th anniversary edition, is that there's a FULL choir, and an orchestra behind them, and the GRAND FINALE features 17 JEAN VALJEANS FROM AROUND THE WORLD PERFORMING 'DO YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING':



i defy you not to get goosebumps. my family's collective attachment to this is a seminal part of our upbringing. it's one of the reasons why we're so close. also: the JAPANESE JEAN VALJEAN IS CHAIRMAN KAGA FROM 'IRON CHEF'. *MIND EXPLODES X GOOSEBUMPS X INFINITY*

recreating 'les mis' took a lot out of me and the dotytron and we kind of crashed out. we woke up to find that the s-dawg, my outlaw brother, and my sister had found THE NEXT VIRAL YOUTUBE SENSATION and were kind of sitting in a state of awestruck stupefaction. ladies and gentlemen, may i present to you, mr. benjamin lind:


BEST. re-creating ben's uniquely atonal, flat, rendition of the 'license to kill' theme occupied a good portion of the remainder of the weekend. nobody loves fan-video evocations of sincerity more than my family. we're ardent tay zonday fans. we genuinely LOVE this shiz. if you could channel this heart and sincerity into like, policy making, the world would be so much more of an a**-kickingly awesome place. lurve!

okay, i've given you all a lot of gifts tonight. i'm going to call it for the evening and go on my merry way. movie and book reviews are coming in the next couple of days.

tonight my mum had a meeting at mt. sinai so she met me at work and i gave her a tour of the library and she read the newspaper until i was done. from there we moseyed over to tacos el asador and had dinner with the dotytron. that's two el asador meals in 3 days!

fin.

merry xmas everyone!