*grabby hands* x 111110100000

last night's gambol down vinyl memory lane ended up being very fun. we've given up on cataloguing our stuff on discogs for the time being and instead we divvied up the work thus: i would sit on the floor, pull out stacks of my records and file them into "keep" and "iffy/don't remember - requires another listen" and the dotytron would play the iffy/don't remember ones with me barking "forward! back! other side!" directions for the needle. i need surprisingly little time with a track to get a sense if i want to keep it or not.

things i love the most: amens. all kinds. 808s. all kinds. it's a pretty simple formula, really. occassionally i'd pass him something like "tudor rose" or "walk wid your friends" (shouts out to all the massif who know what i'm talking about) and feign like i didn't remember what it sounded like just to hear them again. i haven't touched my records in a dog's age. i'd like to get another turntable and a mixer again. playing records is fun.

stuff on the chopping block was a lot of my indeterminate atmospheric drum'n'bass with the faux jazzy/nature stylings and most of the indeterminate noise/breakcore type stuff. i think all told i'm axing 30-45 tunes from my collection - not too bad. not that significant but it still lightens the load somewhat.

this morning at work i had a run-in with toronto's finest. i was called to the front of the building by security because i could speak cantonese and there was an elderly woman out there who didn't speak any english and they wanted me to translate. i went and the woman was clearly disoriented and confused. she was fairly lucid, but she kept repeating the same story about her apartment. she could give me her name, but not her address or phone number or tell me who she lived with or what she was doing at my building. each time i asked her a question, she would listen carefully and then start repeating the story about her apartment. after 15-20 minutes of this, security told me to go to work and they would call me if they needed me. they called me out again when the toronto police showed up.

there were two lady cops, one kind of burly and pouty and the other one was short and spry and seemed intent on pleasing (i'm not sure who, i think burly cop). burly cop barked out questions to ask the lady, but i got nowhere. then burly cop said, out loud to her partner, "well, we should just dump her at the hospital, she's obviously koo koo." it was off putting to say the least. then she told me, "tell her that we have to take her to the hospital because we can't be babysitting her all day." after about 15 more minutes of me trying to explain to the lady and find out if she remembered the street name of her address or if there was anyone she could call, the woman (who was 71, i managed to get that much out of her) would simply say, matter-of-factly, "i can't remember." she was clearly suffering from some kind of dementia or alzheimers or equivalent. burly copy was clearly impatient (i can't imagine what she had better to do than, oh i don't know...HER JOB). then burly cop started going through the woman's pockets (without asking the woman) all rough and pulled out a cell phone. she dialed the only number on the phone and it turned out to be the front desk of the apartment building and then they escorted the woman out to drop her off at the building. pleaser cop was no better...she was clearly trying to kowtow to burly cop.

as she left, burly turned to me and said, "thanks for your help. you should consider becoming a cop." ummmm...no thank you, lady! that poor old woman - i can't imagine what it must be like to go through what she's going through and to know that you can't even trust law enforcement (which is deemed an "essential service") to make sure you get home safe and sound or that you'll be looked after. they totally didn't give a rat's butt about her and she was a buck to be passed off as quickly as possible. so sickening. i seem to recall in first year politics that we make some kind of trade with government - something to do with "civil society" and some kind of "social contract" - this cop was so NAKED about what a d**k she was. i mean, i guess it's one thing to gripe about this situation when you get home from work, but she was doing it in public! being blatantly patronizing and unsympathetic, rude and callous. it made me want to give her a dressing down, so bad...but i didn't know how to go about it.

it's so sad. when you read the newspaper stories about the racist cops or how they engage in racial profiling or use unnecessary force - it's so easy to believe it. everyone i told the story to today wasn't surprised and more often than not piped up that cops are a**holes. totally disheartening and scary.

not to be a weirdo, but i'm going to change the topic in a big way -

roll call of awesome:

online store: three potato four. whooooosh. that sound, my friends, is the sound of my heart being set afire. click that link only if you are strong-hearted and sturdy of account balance enough to handle the visual assault. it's like instant grabby hands over here, folks. i want most, if not all of the lovely vintage curiosities and novelty items there.

to wit:

united states chalkboard map.

hardware store drawers. these are the perfect size. i actually just went to the trouble yesterday of taking all our burned dvds of movies and shows and whatnot, taking them out of the cd binder, putting them in paper sleeves, and printing up labels with a nice font and labeling the front of each sleeve, with the intention of stacking them in something like this - so that we can flip through them and find the movie we want and it looks nicer than those cd binders and books which i find to be offensively hideous. if i had even the slightest bit of extra coin right now, i would get one for sure.

this old telephone sign. LOOK. AT. THAT. FONT. *faints from typographic happiness*

i'm actually buying this tonight. it would be perfect in the entrance way of lil' ugmo, hung up on the exposed brick wall...add a mini ledge underneath for cell phones and mail and it's a PERFECT landing pad. love it.

wire egg basket - for holding magazines in the living room or bedroom. LUST! PINE! WANT!

whyohwhy must i be so short of money right now? ugh. it grieves me deeply.

fin.

in case i haven't made it abundantly clear...

I LOVE MY FRIDAYS OFF. i have a colleague who likes to grumble about them, but i swear they'll have to pry them from my cold, petrified, dead hands. i managed to sleep in for a whole glorious hour, waking up at 8, despite a 6:50am internal clock poke to the eyelids and consciousness that i managed to smother with a fitful, uneasy, forced rejuvenating slumber.


from there, i and i have been enormously productive. i made (and jarred!) a double batch of jumbleberry jam, we went and picked up a trunk (pictured above) from some dude on craigslist that will have pride of place at the foot of our bed and will store extra pillows and blankets and comforters that won't fit in the linen closet of lil' ugmo. the dude lived in a GORGEOUS house in the upper beaches...that's going to be in our "in 10 years" house...if we don't move a little closer to my beloved danny. moving closer to the danny has been made more compelling now that they're OPENING JAH COLD STONE CREAMERY on the strip!!!!!!!! yet another reason why my sis and outlaw bro should uproot their family and move to my neighbourhood. the reason why i call it jah cold stone creamery is linked below. ANYWAY, jah cold stone creamery is opening where the wendy's used to be, attached to the timmy ho's. my preference would still be to have the wendy's there, as wendy's is good year round, whereas jah cold stone creamery is only good for like, the three months of summer we have, but i'll take it as a welcome alternative to baskin robbins iron grip on my community ice cream dollars. ANYWAY, the trunk owner said he'd had good luck selling stuff on craigslist. as long as you have good stuff and you're asking a decent price, then he said stuff doesn't stay on there for more than a day. SWEET! all the more reason for us to start selling our wares.



after the trunk pick up i went to the dentist and got some scaling done and then the library and did some local errands. i also finished picking all my digital photos from 2005-2008 for printing and dropped them off (oy vey...it's 871 photos worth!!!) once i pay for them then i can put together all my albums and that will be a weight off my OCD back. now i'm eating my breakfast/lunch of leftover couscous salad and then i'm going to hop on my trusty steed and go on my lee valley hardware mission and pick up some 100% cotton jersey tops from american apparel (the ones picture below) to go with my other hot weather attire for the BLISTERING heat and humidity that is going to be disneyworld in august. say what you will about american apparel, but 100% cotton is totally the way to go in the heat. i'm also going to stop by mec and see if i can get a cheapie, light rain jacket or poncho. the key is that it's LIGHT and CHEAP and WATER RESISTANT for hawaii and general travel.

hopefully i get back in time to bake a loaf of bread and start playing around with my new wood glues and whatnot.

tonight we have a meeting with our lawyer and then we're going to eat a quickie dinner and meet up with dr. rei, hanbo, and my buddy N for the "scene not herd" series at the worldwide short film festival. this year looks MAD indie. i don't know why they've kind of backed off from pulling more international videos, as those tended to be the best ones, but it's a tradition so we'll suck it up.

i also have to make a million phone calls to hvac and performance purveyors in geneseo. and phone in my c/c number to disney so that they can charge the balance for the trip. this summer is the summer of consumer debt. OY.

tonight for dinner we're having mac'n'cheese and hotdogs. i'm kind of ridiculously excited for it, but i'm not going to bother taking a picture. after the short film festival we're going to get ice cream from greg's and then talk about how indie everything was (aka a near perfect evening).

this bird's gotta fly!

fin.

i freakin' love my work

today the ontario beef council or some shiz set up shop on the front lawn of my work for their annual beef lunch giveaway. i lined up for like, half an hour with a colleague but it was so worth it! medium beef tenderloin, roasted and served up with grainy mustard, spicy horseradish, and caramelized onions, soft rolls, potato salad, roasted carrot and beet salad, sliced tomatoes, and asparagus in a light vinaigrette. with your choice of drink. FOR FREE!

it's a good thing i had already designated today as an "eat whatever i want day" (K helped me to figure out that my day to day diet is my own twisted karl lagerfeld, esquire version of the weight watchers points system.) which means that i have already earmarked pizza (and/or panzerottoes) for dinner. lunch was delicious!!! the beef was so tender i didn't even need the feeble assistance of a plastic knife to cut through it and the potato salad was a couple of notches above the norm - plus a roasted carrot and beet salad?!?? who does that?!?

another reason i love my work is that next week is the annual work picnic and this year the division hosting has set up a cookie-baking competition. no sooner had the email announcing the contest landed in my mailbox than i fired off a reply asking if i could submit more than one entry. lol!!! i think i'm going to do 3 different kinds. chocolate cornmeal orange sandwich cookies. a dotytron family recipe called "mona's mother's mother's favourite cookie" and maybe a classic chocolate chip. i'm a little stuck on the third option. i'm also entered in the bocce tournament with a dude from security as my partner AND i'm signed up for the relay race. i'm such a joiner! ha. you never could have forced me on threat of torture into signing up for a relay race in high school or university, but for some reason, work brings out the best in me. AND me and my partner won the first game in the lunchtime bocce tournament. i was the champ last year, but this year the stakes are higher. last year's prize was $10 each. this year it's FIFTY!

aside from being a joiner, another thing i never thought i'd find myself doing is obsessively trawling through ebay for jcrew clothes. i'm like a boho-prep. it's such a deal! plus, the stuff is fantastic for work. full price is insane though. i'm actually experiencing buyer's remorse about the anthropologie buys. doing the lil' ugmo/performance/hawaii/home repairs/lawyer fees/taxes number crunching has been sobering to say the least and i really don't need to overspend on clothes (and make no mistake: anthro is hella expensive, even WITH a sale room) when there are ebay sales and GAP sale rack items to be snapped up with an even higher pleasure:dollar spent return.

last night's knit club meeting was long on tasty eats (i make a mean, mean, black bean chili), short on knitting, long on cute babies and "so you think you can dance" - i can really eat an ungodly amount of freshly fried corn chips. i lost my frying mojo after eating my weight in chili, avocadoes, corn chips, sour cream and tomatillo salsa, so i didn't end up making dessert. we polished off the last stragglers from the club pack of ice cream sandwiches that had been staking out prime real estate in the freezer. club pack of ice cream sammies, i hardly knew ye.

my fair lil' ugmo - tchotchkes edition

totally obsessing right now over vintage flip alarm clocks. love 'em. there's something deeply satisfying about the faint "whuff" sound when it flips.

this cheapie, cheerful, battery-powered number from target is another one on the shortlist (and a fitting compadre to apple clock, senior) i'm basically looking to replace our ugly, LED radio shack monstrosity with something a little more aesthetically pleasing.

bedroom:

i'm going with the roomie and l'army and T to check out this lady in etobicoke who seems to be some kind of mid-century furniture collector. apparently she goes buck at estate sales and then has to unload all her stuff on craigslist. she has a teak bed frame, queen size. the dotytron and i are thinking about upgrading...here's what it looks like:

there are a few drawbacks. yes, it's a queen and it would be nice to sleep in something bigger than a double. but! when we slept in the king at the hotel in chicago i didn't like it because i like to play "human blanket" in the sack...we don't actually need that much space because we're pretty smushy *BARF X 1000000000000000000* but i feel badly for the dotytron's cramped gams hanging over the end. the other thing is, i don't like the finish on this wood and i don't like the cut of the handles. our current bed frame has flat front drawers on the built-in nightstands. this looks more low-rent to me. but it's still worth seeing in person. also, i want to see what else she has.

i also don't want my entire place to be an homage to like, "mad men" or something. the other thing to consider is that the beds with the built in nightstands have EFFIN' long headboards. SO LONG! and unless we plan on becoming millionaires, most bedrooms in toronto would be dwarfed by anything bigger than a double. so there's that consideration as well.

i'll update with pics from last night's dinner.

fin.


--------------------------------------------

black bean chili

serves 4-6 main course portions

1 1/2 c. dried black beans, soaked, and pre-boiled (i just doubled the amount when i was making the black bean burgers the other night, but you could always just add an extra can, or add more dried black beans)
2 c. black beans, rinsed and drained (see note above)
1 large onion, diced
a crapload of minced garlic
1 T. cumin
2 t. coriander
2 t. oregano (mexican preferred)
4-6 dried whole chilies (your choice. i usually do a mix of guajillos, anchos, pasillas, etc.)
2 whole chipotle chilies (from a can of chipotles in adobo)
1 28oz can of tomatoes (whole, diced, crushed, whatevs, you're going to be puréeing it anyway)
salt and pepper

- sauté the onion and garlic in a good glug of olive oil until translucent. add the cumin, coriander, and oregano and sweat out. dump into a slow cooker or a big dutch oven.
- meanwhile, stem the dried chilies and break into pieces. cover with 2 c. of boiling water and cover. let stand 10 minutes. blitz up the chilies, the water, the chipotles, and the tomatoes until fairly smooth. add to the slow cooker/pot
- slow cooker up that shiz (i did mine on low for 5 hours) or simmer on low heat, stirring occasionally.
- season with salt and pepper
- serve with your preferred accoutrements (sour cream/crema, diced avocado mixed with chopped scallions and lime juice, tomatillo salsa, crushed up corn chips)