hottest crew of friends to ever storm a wedding - evidence:
oh, and the bride and groom looked pretty damn foine too:
how adorable are they? C is positively radiant!
so effing cute! the mcmichael gallery is an absolutely stunning spot - the gallery itself (where the reception was held) is all rustic stone and wood beams and the outside features hills (the ceremony was outdoors on top of a hill) overlook rolling wooded glens. the sun was shining, love was in the air, and we got to be there for our nearest and dearest. is there anything better? and we got to welcome J & A into the ranks of homeowners...helping homeowners! they bought what sounds like from all accounts an absolutely gorgeous abode in the kdubs for a fraction of what we pay in toronto without all the headaches. they bought big fabo!
i'm feeling a leetle better about our hovel. i know we did the right thing. we didn't overpay - we got something with room to appreciate with a little bit of elbow grease and a whole lotta cash infusion. we went by again yesterday to pick the colour for the master bedroom:
corn husk green on the left, citron on the right. i think we're going with citron. i think it'll look really nice with the colour of our teak headboard and bed - and we're not doing the whole room. most of the rooms save my craft room and the dining room are going to be 3 walls of white with 1 accent wall in a colour. i think it would look awesome with this marimekko bedding set:
the citron wall is also going to be broken up with some floating shelves, probably ikea lack ones in white - so we can display some posters or prints or something - or just have some prints displayed with bulldog clips:
yesterday was bucktown. we woke up early and then immediately figured out how much paint we *think* we're going to need and then busted ass to home depot to buy s**tloads of paint so that we could get that 30% off deal. then we came back and i made us sunday breakkie (challah french toast spread with passionfruit butter we brought back from hawaii - it's a fruit butter so that means there's no butter in there, it's just a super-thick, spreadable, passionfruit elixir from the gods).
after breakkie the dotytron went to rip out baseboards and i went to town painting my desk and this other piece of furniture, then we hauled our butts over to C & A's place to drop them off at the airport but we got stuck in traffic for the CNE so we were literally pissing ourselves worried that we were going to make them miss their flight for their HONEYMOON. then we came home and i cooked a bunch of stuff to bring over to the old roomie and l'army's house for dinner. they had steaks and corn and hosted and i brought that cucumber, radish, feta and dill salad, hasselback potatoes with bacon-scallion-dill sour cream topping, and a cherry tart with brown butter almond streusel. the cherry tart was THE BOMB.
today is more bucktown. the dotytron is lesson planning and i'm doing more painting and hopefully spraypainting our new filing cabinet a fire-engine red. then we're hoping to make it to the house so that there can be more baseboard removal and i can clean the kitchen and then we're going to go for a hamcamp reunion with possibly my brother s-dawg and my friend L to see bwong's new digs and do some latinfest 09 thing that's happening up there which apparently involves flautas and churros (SOLD!)
then tomorrow is the dotytron's first day of school and the electric work starts on the house!
...when they started doing demo they would find underneath the ugly acoustic tile ceiling on the upper floor ANOTHER PLASTER CEILING. the removal of which would OF COURSE necessitate more money because of more labour, bigger bin to haul shiz away, etc.
it was kind of cool seeing the ceilings stripped to the joists. even with the EASILY AUDIBLE sounds of the mice nattering away in the attic/crawl space, it made the whole place seem cleaner. stripping away the gunk meant that we could start over and do it right. from scratch.
last night for dinner i made us an AMAZING SALAD. i'm going to post the recipe at the end of this entry. so good! instead of a dressing you used pickled mixed vegetables (sold as giardiniera) pureed with some of the pickling liquid and olive oil. so good! T from work recently made some pickled eggplant and she gave me one of her precious 12 jars. so tasty. she gives them a brief boil in the pickling liquid and then sets them out to dry for a couple of days so that they retain some texture. the salad was definitely hearty enough to serve as a meal.
we had dinner after stopping by the house and meeting with the electrician. he's good! the lowest quote by far but he seems honest...he just has a bit of an odd way of speaking and he's not a great front person for the company - he doesn't coddle you, but he says it like it is. he's kind of brusque, but he's not trying to upsell us. there's not that much knob and tube to be replaced and a lot of the receptacles are good - so that's shaved down the price a lot. we're also not touching the kitchen wiring for now. we figure if we're going to gut it in a year *knocks on wood* hopefully - then we won't bother messing around only to have to re-do it later.
today was a short day at work, then i went with the dotytron to eq3 and we BOUGHT OUR NEW COUCH! so exciting! even if we DID get declined for the financing option! i guess the underwriters weren't too impressed with our new $300000+ mortgage (we haven't even made a payment yet!) lol! we ended up going with the byrd couch -
with espresso legs and a stainless steel grey microfibre upholstery. i'm excited! picturing what our living room is going to look like when everything is in there is sustaining me through these long, lonely nights of exhaustion.
i sold our ikea expedit shelving unit. the 5x5 is too big for our space and i hated the birch effect. instead we're going to get two 4x4 in white - 1 for the living room for our books and knick knacks and 1 for the dotytron's studio for the music and his stuff. i also took apart my matthieu desk from ikea - took the WHOLE THING APART. undid all the screws and dowels...disassembled the whole thing. the dotytron was a bit grumbles about it but i want to do it right. i'm going to sand it, paint it with a high gloss white and then maybe varnish it and get a new knob for the drawer. i treated myself to a new orbit sander!
this is going to make all my furniture refinishing so much easier!!! instead of using a sanding block, you attach the grit you want and what would take and hour or two takes only a few minutes! it's also going to come in handy when we're sanding down our plaster patching on our walls.
home depot is having a sale on behr paint this weekend. buy 2 cans get 20% off, buy 3 cans or more, get 30% off! so we're going to get our paint - it's too good a deal to turn down. we're pretty sure we've figured out our colours. most rooms will be white with just 1 accent wall in a colour and white trim. my craft room is going to be a soft cucumber-turquoise - i think i'm going to paint the whole room...or maybe two walls...and the dining room is going to be a soft blue grey - because that room is broken up with the entry to the living room and a big window, we're going to paint that whole dining room.
we've spent the night cleaning our apartment so that the landlord can show it tomorrow without being too fearful as to its' state. our packing is going pretty well...i'd say we're 30-40% done. we can take over carloads of clothes and we're hoping to have the kitchen set up before our big moving day.
tonight for dinner i made us a fresh tomato, white onion, basil pasta with nice balsamic, some grated grano padano, and chili oil from T's chilies. it's a seasonal thing i make when the tomatoes are in season. it's so fresh and easy. i don't even cook the tomatoes...just chop them up and mix them with the hot pasta. we have 1 can of coke so for dessert we're going to have bowls of vanilla ice cream with coke poured over. so luxe! haha.
tomorrow is a huge day. i want to sand all the furniture i'm repainting. i think the pink telephone table i'm going to sand down and repaint so that it's the same cream colour as the other one. the pink is a little tart for me and i don't know where i'd put it with the rest of the decor. the russian white colour will make it more versatile. i also have to do the grocery shopping and do some prep and stop by the house and see if i can smear some of the paint samples we got on the walls - we're undecided for the main bedroom - i want a bold colour called "citron" which is a peppy, punchy, bright chartreuse and the dotytron favours something a little softer - a colour called "corn husk" - we'll see who wins!
after that i'm meeting up with L at her house to do girl talk and primp for A & C's wedding!!! so exciting! i love it when other people get married! i love mulling over the details and providing advice...just can't do it on a large scale for my own! then it's A & C's wedding at the mcmichael gallery in kleinburg. when i told my colleagues they all ooh and ahhed which means that it must be a pretty special place! i'm so pumped to see them be wed and to see the kdubsguelph crew - haven't seen them since pre-hitching and we have much to discuss - and what better forum than celebrating the lurve of two amazing people and friends?
the dotytron is hilarious - it was late one night and i was figuring out what to put on their card - "what should i write???" the dotytron (from beneath the covers of the bed, where he had already collapsed, exhausted), "may - triton - bless this union" lol!!! so that's what their card says. it's pretty solid as far as salutations go!
1 c. giardiniara vegetables (italian mixed pickled vegetables), chilies stemmed and drained 2 T. of the pickling liquid 1/4 c. of olive oil (i used 1/4 c. of chili oil) salt pepper
2 cans of chickpeas, rinsed and drained 2 tomatoes, chopped 1 c. of pickled eggplant (feel free to play fast and loose with the ingredients - add cucumber, red onion, olives whatever you want) 100 g. sliced provolone, cut into strips 100 g. genoa (or the salami of your choice) cut into strips 1 head of romaine, washed and chopped
- take all the ingredients from the chickpeas down and toss them together - take the dressing ingredients and blend until it forms a chunky puree - toss the dressing and the salad together - serve with crusty bread.
it's not as dire as it sounds. that was written after we showed up at the house and saw that all the chattels that had been housed in the rotting carcass of the garage was now littering the front lawn and the shared driveway. we're talking rotting, smelly wood, all kinds of old fridges, a giant sewing machine that literally must weigh a metric tonne. we had stipulated that the sellers had to empty out the garage or else we would try to hold back some of the money to offset our costs if we had to pay someone to move the junk ourselves. we were worried that they had obeyed the letter of the law but not the spirit and had emptied out the garage, but were hoping that the city would drag away a tonne of stuff on garbage day.
this was also after we met the people with whom we share the said driveway. they rent the house. it looks like a s**tshow over there. screaming, hacking butts, a dirty, messy, half-feral child. AND they've currently been paying the previous owners $100 a month to park in the shared driveway. the dude has a doublewide (two sets of tires!) giant monster truck. when we were there for the last purchaser's visit the wife came out and was all like, "yous the ones buying the house?" "yes" "well, my husband has been paying $100 a month to use the space because he can't park it in the street, see." i told her that we had a car too and we hadn't made up our mind but we'll have to figure out a sharing arrangement. then she started trying to push me to make a decision. heck no. i've dealt with enough neighbour parking nightmares...i'd rather work out a sharing arrangement...3 months on, 3 months off - or every other month, or something. we're going to need that space and quite frankly, we paid good money for that space.
before we moved in some of the neighbours were like, "well, you don't want to piss the guy off because he's a snow plower so he plows the street for everyone in the winter." i'm like, then YOU give up your spot to him! why should i have to?
so there was that.
the dotytron, bless his heart, spent 4 hours yesterday bleaching the eff out of the kitchen and going to town with borax for the cockroaches and mouse traps. i think once we're in there not living in filth it'll be a lot better. lil' ugmo just needs some love. once you have people who are clean living in a place the place cleans up. no food left out, maintaining a clean house...they all go a long way. and let's face it...we probably have the odd mouse right now in our current apartment. it's an old toronto home. what are you going to do?
anyway, i'm sure i'll feel better once the minor renos are done and we've cleaned and painted and our stuff is in there. and when i can start dreaming about my new bathroom and new kitchen and finished basement. the fact of the matter is, we don't have the money to buy something that's all done up already, so in the words of my niece's daycare, "you get what you get and you don't get upset." sage words. words that can only be made more reassuring with the addition of rubber gloves and industrial strength, bleach-based cleaning supplies.
last night for dinner i made us a corn, bacon, and scallion sauté. corn, bacon, and scallions were meant for each other and summer. nothing better. sweet, salty, textured...so easy and quick. i cut bacon into small dice, render it in the pan until it's crisp. remove that with a slotted spoon and add the kernals from as many ears of corn as i feel like denuding that night. sauté the corn in the bacon fat until almost cooked through and then add the sliced scallions. season generously with black pepper and a pinch of salt. i reserved some of the bacon fat and dredged tilapia filets in flour and then browned them in the pan. i also blanched some green beans and served them in a mustard-dill vinaigrette.
tonight we had dinner with H & J and sweet baby D. they're going to england! it'll be nice...they deserve a vacation. we came up with some new products. in light of the whole michael bryant/cyclist killed incident, i remarked that i wanted a lightsuit for biking at night. an LED one. the dotytron decided that he wanted one where the lights would make it look like there was a tiny man riding a bicycle...so the rest of the suit would be dark except for a tiny LED man floating above a GIANT (in proportion to the LED man) bicycle. pretty good, eh?
the thing with facebook photos is that you don't really get a sense of how a day unfolded...you get the snapshot commentary but not the whole thing...there's no room to be sharing the more intimate anecdotes.
when i think back to the day of the performance and the whole weekend in general, all the details recede into the general hazy glow that enveloped the time we were together in geneseo. if i had to isolate a particular moment that encapsulates what made the weekend so fun, i invariably go back to late saturday afternoon. after a week of chill and rain the sun shone on saturday with a vengeance - during the performance and after we were all veiled in a thin sheen of sweat. after the picture-taking, clothes-changing, bbq-eating, cake-cutting, family-talking and after the older generation had packed up and went back to their respective hotels to nap, change, or shop the malls, all that was left at my sisters place were the under 40 set.
my sister supervised little ze and miss ramona as they donned swimsuits and cavorted in the sprinkler. the rest of us drew names out of a hat to pair up for a game of bocce. the winners of each match would pick someone from the losing team to run through the sprinkler. at a certain point, that devolved so that one of the members of the losing team had to stick their face in the galvanized bucket of ice and ice water holding the beers. i'll always remember the image of dr. rei kneeling in front of the bucket with her face poised to dunk it in - even as we all tried to interject that we were just kidding (bwong: "uh, rei! rei!")! she stuck her nose in, in the end.
i'll also always remember trying to come up with team names. dr. rei turns to the dotytron (her partner) and says, "what should our team name be?" and they hemmed and hawed for about 30 seconds before s-dawg busts in, "UM...TEAM BORING, JUST SHUT UP AND PLAY" and thus they became team boring. hanbo (my partner) was super concerned about our team name suggestion (we ended up being "the kings" due to his unbeknown to me bocce prowess and my firmly cemented bocce champion status) and after that, became even more concerned that we should have nicknames. we settled on "money mercy" and "the sheik" (i'll leave it to you to figure out who was who).
then we all assembled by the swing set. bwong sitting on the too-low swing with his legs akimbo, hanbo leaning on the slide, the rest of us sprawled in various degrees of recline on beach towels draped on the lawn. i'll remember always the lazy, laughter-peppered, sun-drunk conversation and half-hearted games we play-talked our way through. i'll remember dozily napping in the sun, watching the clouds drift across the sliver of sky visible between the shadow of my forearm draped across my eyes. there was something idyllic and perfect in that moment. surrounded by my family and my very best friends, lying in the grass on a perfect summer day, doing what we do best - bind ourselves to each other through jokes, laughter, and talking - always the talking. playing that stupid picnic game s-dawg likes to play...it was effortless and natural and so very easy. and we'll always have that. that and countless more moments of love and companionship. that perfect understanding that can only be had between kin and friends so close that water's viscosity becomes indistinguishable from blood.
for that i am immeasurably lucky. that's the stuff right there. the marrow.
hey, remember that time we bought a hideous house? hey, remember that time we knocked a hole in the wall only to discover that the plaster is STUCK ONTO THE BRICK and there's no strapping behind it so our dreams of an exposed brick wall are of the pipe variety? hey, remember that time we took some trim off the wall only to have a cockroach fall out?
we made a horrible mistake.
fin.
p.s. closing day ends up being a lot less climatic than you think. you show up at the lawyer's office and you get a set of keys. that's IT. considering that i was sitting on pins and needles all day waiting for the bank to cotton onto the fact that i borrowed from my line of credit to make up the difference on the down payment, it was a lot less dramatic than i had anticipated.
p.p.s. hey, remember that time we overpaid for a hovel?
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.
zomg, being a homeowner is a**. even more a** than planning a wedding, because it's way more money and you're saddled with this thing for life, whereas it's a lot easier to skip out on getting hitched, either somewhere along the way TO getting hitched (à la what we ended up doing) or immediately after (aka divorce).
our second purchaser's visit went okay. we saw two contractors (one whom we've seen before but keeps forgetting us somehow). one tried to upsell us on a lot of stuff and it's really easy to get pulled in. ideally, these are the scenarios under which you want to buy a house:
a) be a millionaire, so that you can buy a NEW house in cash, outright b) be a millionaire, so that you can buy a $400,000 house, and then spend another $200,000 gutting it and fixing it up to your specifications c) be a millionaire, so that you can buy a plot of land and build a custom house
we don't fit into ANY of the above options (in case you didn't know). it sucks because you ended up paying for stuff to be done twice, when you don't have the money to gut it all at once. for example, you're getting the re-wiring done, right? so they put in new outlets for the kitchen, but then you're going to end up gutting the kitchen in a year anyway (best case scenario), so then you have to re-do all that work.
it's really easy to fall into the trap of: "well, while we're ALREADY pulling shiz out of your place, we might as well DO IT ALL and DO IT UP PROPER" which is a mistake borne from new home frenzy. you just (naturally) want your stuff to be set up and ready to be photographed by dwell or domino magazine. but this can lead to rapid increases in price before you've had a chance to let the dust settle.
par example, at lil' ugmo, two of the rooms share an 8" long closet, with bifold doors in each room. the placement of the doors in each room slightly overlaps. we'd like to make it so that EACH room has a self-contained closet (ie. when you open the door to the closet in the dotytron's studio, you're not looking at the stuff hanging in my craft room).
the easiest way to do that is to throw up a diagonal wall between the two closets. but one of the contractors told us that he could square up and seal up one closet and then move the door way for the other one. this is the mid-price option. the problem is: they've installed new hardwood floors in ALL the rooms. which means that you're priority number 1 is to AVOID MESSING UP THAT FLOOR AT ALL COST. because matching that little bitty piece of floor that gets messed up is going to be damned near impossible, which means that if you do mess it up, you have to replace a whole section of floor (at best) and the ENTIRE FLOOR of the room (at worst). so then his workaround was to create a built in wardrobe, like a custom piece of furniture. VERY EXPENSIVE! like, $2000! but, we could also use cheap wood and then paint it. much cheaper!
we were all caught up on that tip and had pretty much decided on squaring up the closet and then i started talking to my colleague who said, "you know what? why bother spending NOW on a closet? when you can use that money for other stuff?" and i was like, you know what, you're totally right. WHY BOTHER SPENDING MONEY ON A CLOSET? so we'll probably go the quick and dirty route and just put in the diagonal wall. each room gets a 3'5" closet of their own and yeah, it's a little odd to have a diagonal wall, but it's going to save us LOTS of money in the short term that could be better spent in other areas (like, repaying our debt). and it's not like we don't have the option in the future to square up that closet if we decide that we must absolutely have square closets or else our lives won't be worth living.
don't even get me started on the tankless hot water heater. oy vey.
last night we signed the papers with our lawyer and had a few more heart attacks when we saw how much the certified cheque we're delivering on monday has to be. it's all so tentative and dicey now and considering our last experience when we got pwned by the mortgage underwriters...i'm feeling really scared and nervous.
we had dinner with dr. rei and a nice long catch-up that was impossibly fun. i have the best best friend in the world. we can literally just sit and talk for hours and hours. we tried to come up with a processional and recessional song for her wedding. i think i came up with a pretty solid suggestion. the recessional is a toughie. it's really hard to find songs that are filled with joy. other than "ode to joy" and van halen's "jump" (the dotytron's call - solid). it also has to be played on an organ. seriously, think about it. what songs are filled with JOY and not happiness? joy's a hard one to nail down.
this morning i've been packing and organizing and labeling and showering. this precedes our attendance at a late afternoon hors d'oeuvres party for all the dotytron's mater and pater's family that didn't get invited to the hoo-ha in august, hosted by momma d and poppa d. it's really nice that we'll get to see everyone and have the opportunity to apologize profusely for being weirdos who ran off to get hitched with only 20 people in attendance. i hope i don't have to open presents in front of people. that's actually one of my least favourite things to do. i like opening presents in the privacy of my own home. is that weird? it's only fun when it's like, besties or something. but with people you don't know well i find it awkward. i know, i have social anxieties to spare!
here's hoping i don't gorge too much on bite sized foods.
hi! remember me? i'm back! we got back yesterday around dinner time and then i made us unpack and hyperventilated and had 60 thousand anxiety attacks about how busy our lives are and how much shiz we have to do and then we ate pizza and i organized my life some and fell asleep.
toronto feels like a BIG city after hawaii. but first things first - the disney vacation with the family, which was renamed the "pineapple whip tour 2009". there's a link to some photos 'pon the facebook for those who like such things.
the resort we stayed at was called the "port orleans - riverside" formerly known as "dixieland" (replete with confederate flags until someone realized how INCREDIBLY OFFENSIVE that is.) the resort consists of a bunch of low lying, antebellum mansion type lodgings grouped around a man-made (everything in disney is man-made) river. it was STINKING hot. unbearably hot. instant crankers hot. step outside to be enveloped in the smothering embrace of a hot, wet, woolen blanket hot. it was so humid that every part of you chafed. it is a testament to what a hardcore amazing packer i am that we went down with 1 carry on roly luggage and 1 knapsack each. and that's it! eff you united and your $15/checked bag ways! not on my watch! the key to surviving is 100% cotton aka all american apparel, all the time. it saved my butt.
the pineapple whip is this AMAZING thing that they ONLY have in ONE location in all the park (the whole compound consists of: the magic kingdom, EPCOT, animal kingdom, hollywood studios, and downtown disney). outside of the tiki room in adventureland, dole has a stand that sells "pineapple whip" which is *wait for it* PINEAPPLE FLAVOURED SOFT SERVE. I DON'T EVEN LIKE SOFT SERVE! it's THE BEST! they serve it swirled with plain, vanilla soft serve in a cup, OR you can get a PINEAPPLE WHIP FLOAT which is pineapple whip in a cup of pineapple juice. it's SO refreshing! when we wore our t-shirts people would pass us and either give us the thumbs up or say, "i've heard about this pineapple whip" or just puzzle over what it meant. i also made up a song and a dance for it. it has to be seen to be believed.
here are our photos from hawai'i - what we did and what we ate. i'm going to be honest, i wasn't expecting much because everything i had read was like, "oh there's no fancy hawaiian food, it's all diner-y" etc. then i came to and realized that I LOVE DINER FOOD MORE THAN ANYTHING. most of the hawaiian restaurants worth going to are in shady looking strip malls spattered in industrial areas...but the food is SO GOOD! we chowed down like kings and the portions were HUMONGOUS. now we know how brother iz got to be so ginormous. there's so much ahi tuna you think you're going to drown in it. platters and platters of cool, thick slices of carnelian red tuna. it's insane. spam and portugese sausage everywhere. sweet bread (from the filipino/portugese influence), taro/guava/passionfruit bread. so much pork! loco moco (hamburger patty topped with egg on white rice and canned gravy), poke (cubes of ahi tuna or salmon in a marinade), puupuu platters (appetizers/hors d'oeuvres), and lunch plate style meals (protein, rice, a scoop of macaroni salad). we feasted and our costs were pretty low.
as per usual, we avoided tours. you really don't have to do them. before we left we considered getting a tour to go up mauna kea (the mountain with the observatories up top) which would have cost us $180/person and included dinner. but we just trucked up there on our own. the stars atop the mountain were like nothing you've ever seen before. you can see the swirls of galaxies and jupiter!
the big island is breathtakingly, achingly beautiful. within two seconds of driving you'll go from arid lava desert to misty rain forest. it's the biggest of the chain of 8 hawaiian islands and thanks to the most continually active volcano in the world spewing lava into the ocean (kilauea, going since 1982), it's still growing. there's only 177,000 people on the whole island, so it's not very densely populated. the major towns feel small and poky. everything shuts down by like, 9pm...we'd be driving around looking for things to do - which is why we saw a billion movies while we were gone. we got a little paranoid that everyone at the b&bs were avoiding us because we never saw anyone - we thought there might be a secret party room somewhere that we didn't know about.
it was really hard to leave. i fell in love with the place. it's not just the beaches or the marine life or the nature - the pace of life is so easy going. if you go to hilo, the county seat, you're away from the tourist hubbub and you can really picture yourself making a life there. i've been on other vacations where i've been DONE with the place once it's been over - like, feeling worn out and looking forward to resuming the "regular" pace of my life back in toronto, feeling bored and restless. that wasn't the case with hawai'i - i feel like we have unfinished business. it was enjoyable being still for once (me! still!) - sitting quietly, soaking in the elemental sublime of your surroundings, feeling it reverberate and thrum in concert with some primordial, evolutionary timbre. i will definitely go back.
for dinner tonight i made us a chopped salad of blanched green beans, just-cooked corn off the cob, grape tomatoes, cucumber, and orange pepper in a creamy dill dressing, with grilled sea bream stuffed with lemon and thyme, finished with a slug of olive oil, a squeeze of lemon, and sea salt. it was delicious!
i gotta get a good night's sleep. our second purchaser's visit tomorrow morning. today at work was crazy, made even crazier by the fact that I'M NOW A PERMANENT EMPLOYEE! yay benefits! yay personal leave! yay sick days! yay glasses! yay varicose vein compression stockings! yay to staying in a job i love with people i like! yay!
it's been a whirlwind 4 days at home, lemme tells ya.
tuesday after work was all about laundering, cleaning, putting things away, and getting things together for our 20 day vacation coming up. it's crazy! because the plan is NOT to come home-home between disney and hawaii and impose on the good graces of A & C and use their spare bedroom as home base, we had to pack for both trips simultaneously, with the idea of leaving some stuff that's earmarked ONLY for hawaii at A & C's so we can do a swap when we come back from disneyworld. hectic!
the problem is that hawaii has SO MANY climates represented that depending on our activities for the day and where on the island we'll be, it's going to be a crap shoot what we'll be wearing/requiring.
there are worse issues to be dealt, i know.
tuesday dinner was lovely. i took some thin slices of pancetta, crisped them in a pan and removed them to drain. then i took some portobello mushrooms, skinned them, sliced them thick and sautéed them in the rendered pancetta fat with a few fat cloves of roasted garlic, seasoning them liberally with pepper and stringently with salt. i took two ace bakery rosemary focaccia rolls (my new favorite all-purpose sandwich bun - adjudicated solely on the basis of the scattering of sea salt flakes that graces their cherubic tops), split them in half, and layered on the pancetta and then the garlicky portobello mushrooms. i fried two eggs over-medium and put those on top and served this glorious sandwich with a rustic greek salad of cucumbers, tomatoes, red onion, and kalamata olives with chunks of greek feta. sooo good and a welcome vegetal-laden respite after my geneseo excesses (i think there was lettuce on my aunt cookie's sub and after that point, i draw a blank on verdant items i consumed).
wednesday we worked and then had dinner with the ex roomie at king park, which is fast becoming my new favorite restaurant. they had the rotisserie going in full force so we had lamb AND the spit roasted pork - both of which were succulent with crunchy flakes of salt and redolent of oregano and melting lamb/pork fat. divine. their onion rings are also the stuff of legends and i absolutely ADORE their "village salad" (think your standard greek salad without the lettuce and with the addition of green peppers) that comes topped with a thick slab of feta for your to break off into creamy shards as your desire.
after that, we headed down to the rex to see our buddy A's band, the AG:6 play for the last time (A's heading to NYU to study under the likes of john scofield. you know, that hackjob. it's not like he's one of the lions of jazz guitar or anything. no biggie). A is spectacularly talented and while i will miss our couch-driven ruminations on life and love and culture, i'm unselfishly willing to loan him to nyc for the purposes of furthering his compositional ambitions and my own new york/brooklyn couch-surfing ones.
that was a late night! it was a nice reunion of the dotytron's jazzamatazz crew.
last night i booked it home from work, we met with our NEW lawyer (points in her favour: 1) she seems to know what she's doing; 2) no visible evidence of wonderland excursions; 3) she has an actual office space with different rooms. emphasis on the plural). after a reassuring visit we headed out to dodgeball and then met up with our friend S after dodgeball for some post-dodgeball dinner at the golden turtle and ice cream at the big chill. i like her...she's super nice and funny and talking to her is easy.
see? it's been a social whirlwind! and i've been filling every spare moment with tying up loose ends, sending a million copies of documents/identification/itinerary iterations to far flung corners of the world, and otherwise preparing for the closing day/contractor maelstrom that will greet us upon our return. yikes! taxing! we've vowed not to let this ruin our vacation though. we're going to relax and rejoice in every minute (not that we're the types to let outside stuff really affect our downtime anyway).
tonight we're meeting up with our friend P and the roomie and l'army who are all going on a temagami camping trip together. P has generously offered to give us a ride to A & C's house tonight. i had planned on depriving myself of sleep so that i can show up at A & C's at like, 9pm and then conk out because our airport taxi is picking us up at 4:30am. the forethought wasn't necessary. we've been so busy with all of the above that i'm lucky if i've gotten 5 hours of sleep a night all week.
there'll be mega-posts aplenty upon my return, stuffed to the gills with photos of me and my beloveds cavorting with animatronics (my favorite), characters, rides, and whatever else the disney "imagineers" can conjure. followed by even MORE photos of the dotytron and i in search of exotic fruits, loco moco, white sand beaches, sea turtles, "point break" surfing prowess, mountaintop sunsets, and volcanic activity. what i'm hoping to avoid: poi (i hate taro).
...we got hitched! tied to the hitching post! we're joined in an unholy union in unholy matrimony for richer and poorer (even though i think i mouthed the word, "NEVER!" at the dotytron during the "poorer" bit) and in sickness and in health until we're parted by death (note to people getting married: vows can be a bit of a downer - there's some macabre shiz in there, friends.)
first: i can't believe that w.p. video of them dancing down the aisle has been taken off of youtube because of a "copyright claim by kevin heinz" - GHEY! so lame! why would you do that and be so weaksauce? are you trying to give me further ammunition for my "you guys are lamewads" thesis? jeez.
ANYWAY, this weekend was all kinds of awesome. geneseo, ny tends to be guaranteed good times but the dotytron and i love it SO MUCH that it was nice to be able to show people why. we got in late wednesday night. thursday dawned bright and sunny so we loaded up the car and went to wegman's and finished up our last minute errands. stuff like: renting an amp from buzzo music on main street geneseo (tip: if you click on the link, please do take the extra effort to click on "buzzo poems" - you won't be disappointed). buzzo doesn't usually do rentals but he was so tickled pink at our "rock'n'roll" wedding performance that he made a special exception. for your general buzzo trivia edification: buzzo also once won a wrestling match in guelph. amazing! he talks exactly the way you'd expect someone who looks like a grizzled veteran of the grateful dead to talk and he walks with the aid of a walking stick fashioned from what appears to be 3/4 of a magic 8 ball frankensteined onto a lucite bar with packing tape. he's kind of awesome.
after that, we had some spare time so i proposed a trip to stony brook state park for me and the dotytron. stony brook is near and dear to my heart. its a place that is teeming with magic. a stream fed pool nestled at the base of a towering gorge, public picnic tables with hibachis hidden amongst the dappled shade of tall trees, a concession stand selling fries and perry's ice cream, and a cedar-chip floored playground with all manner of entertaining things for kids. there's nothing better than going for a freshwater swim, clambering out and letting the sun dry you as you lay out in the sun to dry on a damp towel, happy and tired, alternating thumbing lazily through the pages of a book with dozy, sun-drunk naps with your arm flung over your eyes. i love the tired you get from being outdoors and being active. that fresh-air/swimming tired/cottage tired feeling. there's nothing better because it's so removed from your mind whirring. it's your body that's tired, not your head.
for lunch that day we had subs from aunt cookie's sub shop. now, i RARELY eat subs. i'm not the biggest fan of cold cut sandwiches in general - you'll never see me going to mr. sub or subway as my first choice. but upstate new york has a huge sub culture (heh) and aunt cookie's are THE BEST. hands down. it's so simple: a toasted wheat or sesame seed bun - ever so perfectly crisped so that there's the slightest bit of crunch and between the toppings and the soft give of the bread. sub bread at the chains is gummy, rapidly reduced to tissue paper pablum, but the stuff here is made for topping. and the meats, the meats! you've got regular assorted, italian assorted, just capicolla, just italian salami - a dizzying variety that manages to thrill while still being restrained enough so that your decision making processes aren't compromised. some oil and vinegar, some mayonnaise, a fine confetti of shredded iceberg lettuce, thinly sliced white onion, and some sliced tomato and salt and pepper are all you need to reach sub heaven. i could eat those things all day.
i made dinner for my sis and outlaw bro and family that night. something simple: grilled sausages, a corn and jicama salad with scallion aioli, and sliced tomatoes with basil and little balls of fresh mozzarella cheese, topped with olive oil and coarse salt.
the next day we did some more erranding - some small final preparations, putting welcome bags with rochester-area treats (nunda's mustard, dinosaur bbq chips, maple syrup), an itinerary, and some bottled water in our out-of-town guests' hotel rooms, laying out the tables in the tent, setting up the folding chairs, cleaning my sister's house and then packing up to head to the B&B.
at this point, i had put myself on a "no carb" diet in a bid to make sure i could fit in the 26" waist of my dress. there was NO GIVE in that thing and no extra room for alterations. it was still, "no carb" lagerfeld style, though. which means that on friday morning me and the dotytron had breakfast at the cracker barrel where i indulged in chicken fried steak and eggs, biscuits and sawmill gravy, grits, hashbrowns and a side of patty sausage.
that's the dotytron in his brand new, $6 buzzo t-shirt.
my sis & outlaw bro booked friday and saturday night at a B&B for us. it's a lovely place, the temple hill is, shaded by towering, verdant oaks in a quiet strip off the main drag. our room was gorgeous. we chilled out there and then went to meet everyone for the rehearsal dinner, which was a hoot.
best thing about having a tiny performance - everyone came to the rehearsal dinner! we had it at delmonico's italian steakhouse. the dotytron's family were totally flummoxed by american style serving sizes. "does that say one HALF pound steak?" "no, that's ONE AND A HALF pound steak" i could hear nany and poppa (dotytron grandparents) and uncle mert and pat (dotytron grand-uncle and grand-aunt) muttering about how on earth they were going to finish everything, what with the pork chop dish on the set menu described as "two 8oz portions of pork loin chops" i gotta say, you can't beat the value. the banquet/large group menu had a house salad, followed by a MASSIVE entrée and dessert! the desserts were HUGE! look at the size of the KIDS sundae! look at how happy dr. rei is!
everyone was in jovial spirits. a small group was also nice because people could freely get up and mix and mingle and talk to each other and it was a lot more manageable facilitating conversation across groups. of course nany and poppa ended up knowing the manager at delmonico's, who presented us with a GIANT surprise gift basket of all kinds of italian treats. it was so random! lol!
the next morning we got up super early and went to my sis and outlaw bro's house to do some final set up, before heading back to the B&B to get ready. we had a quick breakfast at the B&B and met this hilarious kid, hunter, who was there with his parents attending a different wedding. the kid was hilarious because he was so awkward. dr. rei helped me get primped and did an awesome job. she totally made my eyes pop and managed to perform admirable under pressure while hanbo took pictures of us being ghey because he eats that stuff up.
then we did the ceremony. it happened REALLY quick. i was kind of worried that little ze might be difficult but in the end, he took his job REALLY seriously. the dotytron played me down the aisle with a ridiculously over-the-top electric guitar to the tune of the "theme from top gun" and then the judge did his vows and we sang our vows, which was the theme from the tv show "growing pains" - here are the words:
Show me that smile again. (Show me that smile) Don't waste another minute on your cryin. We're nowhere near the end (nowhere near) The best is ready to begin.
Oooohhh. As long as we got each other We got the world spinnin right in our hands. Baby you and me, we gotta be The luckiest dreamers who never quit dreamin.
As long as we keep on givin We can take anything that comes our way Baby, rain or shine, all the time We got each other Sharin the laughter and love.
the best part of that was that we filled in the electric guitar bits. with our voices. lol! then we exchanged grillz and kissed and trooped out to the sounds of the allman brothers' "whipping post." cut to: tuesday afternoon. dotytron calls me at work. "ummm, have you actually LISTENED to the lyrics from 'whipping post' before?" me: "yeah." him: "so you know it's all about how the dude's woman has been a skag and is floozing it up with some other guy?" me: "sounds about right."
we piled into our vandalized car and headed out to do photos. you can't tell, but there was a mysterious green lantern insignia that appeared on the side of captain save-a-hoe.
chowtime! the food was really good! dinosaur bbq runs a tiptop operation. the food that was supposed to be hot was hotish, the food that was supposed to be cold was cold, the deviled eggs and peel'n'eat shrimp were as tasty as they are at the restaurant. even better, they provide everything. paper plates, cutlery, napkins, wipes, serving utensils...you can just load everything up into a garbage can after and whisk it away and it's like nothing ever happened.
after lunch, most of the older folk left and the younger generation played a bocce tournament. we randomized the partners. bwong and s-dawg were team "ching chong ching", me and hanbo were "the kings", dr. rei and the dotytron were "team boring", and c-hova and outlaw bro rico were "booze." me and hanbo pretty much won. after that we kind of got the itis and we laid out under the sun on towels by the swing set and idly chatted and played random motivational games s-dawg picked up from the ted rogers autobiography.
the dotytron's sister got us an amazing wedding prezzie (in addition to being the girl photographer for hire for the entire festivities) - an antique door knocker engraved with "dotytron / lagerfeld" - BEST!
we rested up and then piled into our cars to hit the charcoal corral and silver lakes drive-in. that complex is like a warren of time-warp fun. there's an arcade, a room filled with rattan furniture and wood-bladed ceiling fans known as the "fiesta room," a wood-paneled pizzeria, an old fashioned ice cream parlour, a grill restaurant, a stage for concerts, chicken bbq on fridays and saturdays, outdoor seating, a GIANT bouncy castle, and a mini-putt course. it's crazy! the dotytron's sis fell in lurve as soon as she saw that this was a real-deal drive-in replete with oldies wafting through the air.
by the time we got there (6:30pm!!!) chicken bbq was sold out, so i had another buffalo/western new york specialty, beef on weck, so named because it comes on a kimmelweck bun (a bun flecked with caraway seeds and coarse pretzel salt). the bun makes it. it's rare roast beef sliced thin and piled high on the bun. i had mine plain (it was my first time) but it's best (apparently) with horseradish and mayo. i had heard of it in my travels but as i was contemplating the extensive charcoal corral menu, a little forlorn at the chicken bbq shortage, i mused aloud, "beef on weck? what's that?" and a really nice lady at an adjoining table gave me the lowdown. when i finally started eating the sandwich she came up and asked me how i liked it! so cute! the thing about my experiences in geneseo is, people are SO NICE. so genuinely, warm, friendly and NICE. there's no artifice. it's very sincere.
the dotytron and i were bickering outside in the parking lot at wegman's over captain save-a-hoe's busted calipers and there was a jolly fat guy in a biker t-shirt and his batik-muumuu wearing wife kind of being forced to listen and not quite knowing what to make of our display. the woman said, "i can tell you like each other by the way you're talking to each other," in a friendly way, and i replied, "i know! we're actually getting married this weekend!" and she came right over and pulled me into her bountiful bosom for a bear hug. it was sweet.
we played improv games outside of the screen waiting for the movie to start. we saw "funny people" (review to follow). it was an exhausting day and we went to bed tired.
the next day was my THIRTIETH BIRTHDAY. dun dun duuuuuuuuuun. i woke up, way too early, groggily slumped my way to the bathroom to pee, peered at myself in the mirror and FREAKED OUT. THE EYE FOLD ON MY RIGHT EYE WAS MISSING. my right eye had gone asian on me (see top photo for an example). i rubbed at it. i rolled my eye. i poked and prodded at it and while i could coax my eye fold back for a second or two, it KEPT DISAPPEARING. at this point, i woke the dotytron up, frantic. "MY EYE FOLD IS MISSING!" he was a little befuddled to say the least. at first he claimed not to know what i was talking about and tried feebly to convince me that both eyes looked the same. BUT HE WAS BEING A LYING SACK OF POO. then i kind of had a meltdown and threw myself face down on the bed and moaned and groaned, "is this what happens when you turn 30?!??? one half of my face turns asian?!??? this sucks!!!!! this is what makes me cute!!!!!!!!! i swear if it doesn't come back by monday i'm scheduling the surgery!" (asian people can get an eye fold cosmetically manufactured by any semi-skilled plastic surgeon). i know, crazy talk, right? after about 45 minutes of me lost in a 30th birthday depression, i looked in the mirror and it had come back. i think i was just overtired or something.
the dotytron gave me my "surprise" birthday prezzie. he made me a tshirt that said: "my two most beloved things are: 1) amens, all kinds; 2) 808s, all kinds" with my little happy face picture on it. super cute! he totally spoiler alerted himself though because a week and a half ago i came home to find a google chrome incognito window open on my computer with a map and address for a t-shirt making place on it. ON MY COMPUTER! lol! i was good though! i didn't give it away that i had suspicions until i opened the prezzie. he also gave me a voucher for a weber charcoal bbq to be picked out at a later date. dotytron's sister em gave me a gorgeous muumuu and momma and poppa d got me an awesome day of the dead apron and scrilla. so aces! i'm such a spoiled lucky button.
we went to brian's u.s.a. diner for breakfast. we were supposed to go golfing but it was raining pretty hard and we knew it would be miserable. breakfast was fun - again people were boggled by the portion sizes. then we said goodbye to the dotytron's family, my family, and headed back to my sister's place to loaf. dr. rei and hanbo went shopping but came back in time to see me presented with my birthday cake:
the lead-up to this cake was pretty awesome. i had kind of guessed that it was coming - the day before as we were packing up the leftovers i faux-casually said to my sister, "oh, we should just use the carrot cake for my birthday cake" to which she replied, "no, i got something from weggy's" (which i knew, but i just wanted to be sure. she's really easy to bait, being the anti-scheist and all). anyway, later on i mused, "i wonder what kind of cake you got me?" and my sister said something like, "you couldn't even IMAGINE a cake like this" which of course made me super curious. she and the dotytron were in cahoots. the two of them went together to pick it up and he kept laughing each time she mentioned it. it totally lived up to the expectations. lol! apparently the weggy's people were SUPER embarrassed to even have this design at the back of the book, much less make it for people of the asian persuasion. the dotytron even tried to get them to do a mash-up - they had some bride cakes and he tried to get them to combine the bride cake with the racist chinese people/miley cyrus scandal cake which my sis rapidly kiboshed. awesome, eh? i love my family.
a-mazing. then the remaining people sat outside and hung out and talked smack and the boys smoked cigars. we talked about our garbled understanding of french new wave cinema and how dr. rei hates the future and the apocalypse. lol! best part was when i saw my doosier nephew, little ze, starting to get a little crankers and i said, "i think it's time for a nap" to which he looked up, looked me square in the eye and replied, "NOT." lol!!!!!!!!! so funny! my niece was being super cute all weekend too. i introduced her to babybel cheese and she was quite taken with it. she took her role as grillz-bearer very seriously and was being ultra precocious on the day of the performance, laying on the compliments, "your hair looks pretty like that," "i like your dress," "i like your flowers," etc. the day before the ceremony when i was going through the timeline for the umpteenth time she kept interrupting me by raising her hand and saying officiously, "i have something to say" and then saying something kind of inane. at a certain point, she leaned over to my outlaw bro and whispered, "i think you should tell aunt lagerfeld that you've been married longer and that she has to listen to you." ha!
on monday we packed up the kids and took them to stony brook. we packed a pretty fantastic picnic, if i do say so myself. we had water, juice, babybel cheese (bonbel AND original babybel), spicy salami, genoa salami, ham, some other kind of italian cured meat, little roasted marinated tomatoes, baguette slices, little bocaccini balls, cherries, crackers, and grapes. it was a feast.
we also dealt with the captain's seized calipers issue. the dotytron suggested that it might be cheaper to get it fixed in the states, and i was starting to get super-concerned about making a 3 hour drive with the grinding noise we heard every time we applied pressure to the breaks, so we took it to a mechanic near my sister's house. they put it up on blocks and called us 2 hours later and said that it was because our rear rotors were warped and we needed new rotors and pads and new calipers. if we wanted to do it all, it would cost us $875 (USD) + tax. but, we could get away with just doing the rotors and pads for $400 and change. at which point i started hyperventilating and freaking out. the dotytron was of the mind that we should get it all done at once and they did guarantee the calipers for life. so i was like, "ummm, if they can guarantee the calipers for life, WHAT THE F**K HAPPENED TO THE ONES THAT CAME WITH THE CAR?!???"
i was kind of hopping mad at how expensive it was and of course this reaction was exacerbated by how little money we have now and how much we're going to need on our closing day. so i called the mazda dealership and i called a tonne of places in toronto (nothing was open because it was a holiday). i managed to get one toronto garage on the line who said that something like that would run 400-500 bones. CANADIAN. then i called another garage who said that it would cost $540 plus tax. so i had the dotytron call garage number 1 back and play them against each other. dotytron tells garage 1 that he's been receiving quotes from $500-525 with the same year-long guarantee on the labour and the lifetime guarantee on the parts so what's with the discrepancy, blah blah blah, and garage 1 puts him on hold to "crunch the numbers" and comes back and says that he can do it for $520. WHAT. THE. HELL. do they KNOW who they're messing with?
meanwhile, i've called garage 18 who's literally 4 stores down from garage 1 and just when we decided to go with garage 1 since they already have the captain up on the blocks or whatever, garage 18 comes back and tells me that it's going to be $340. gives me the breakdown on how much each part will cost and tells me that labour is $70/hour and it'll probably take an hour and a half but he's going to charge me for one. so we place a frantic call to garage 1, tell them to CEASE AND DESIST and drive it over to garage 18.
you want to see furious? try to screw over a chinese girl when there's money involved. nuh-uh. i am NOT some doddering biddy who'll roll over. this experience was educational on a number of levels. 1) now we know where to get cheap and good auto mechanic work done in geneseo 2) now i know how to deal with mechanics. you pit them against each other. make up how much you WANT to pay (average out the quotes and then go a bit lower) and don't EVER tell them that you're from out of town and want to drive your car back tonight. hear that, auto mechanics of the free world? you're going to be SO SORRY that i ever got possession of a possible lemon mazda protégé. your days of pulling one over on me are OVER.
and i will never go hungry again!
enough epic post for me. above is the rundown of my totally excellent weekend. i love my family. i can't say enough for all the things they've done for me. i'm blessed to have the BEST siblings in the whole freaking world. THE BEST. bar none. i'm lucky to have gotten such an amazing, warm, accepting NEW white family! they're kooks but so lovable. and my friends can't be beat. i was so happy to be able to have bwong and dr. rei and hanbo there, in this town i love, with the people who know me best in the world outside of them, all together in one place.
my name is karl lagerfeld. i'm a lucky button, buckshot shorty, and an industrious pig. i write about food, popular culture, film, books, politics, theory, and the ephemera of my life. a can of chinotto once ruined my night. the rest, as they say, is history.
how adorable are they? C is positively radiant! 
corn husk green on the left, citron on the right. i think we're going with citron. i think it'll look really nice with the colour of our teak headboard and bed - and we're not doing the whole room. most of the rooms save my craft room and the dining room are going to be 3 walls of white with 1 accent wall in a colour. i think it would look awesome with this marimekko bedding set:
the citron wall is also going to be broken up with some floating shelves, probably ikea lack ones in white - so we can display some posters or prints or something - or just have some prints displayed with bulldog clips:
yesterday was bucktown. we woke up early and then immediately figured out how much paint we *think* we're going to need and then busted ass to home depot to buy s**tloads of paint so that we could get that 30% off deal. then we came back and i made us sunday breakkie (challah french toast spread with passionfruit butter we brought back from hawaii - it's a fruit butter so that means there's no butter in there, it's just a super-thick, spreadable, passionfruit elixir from the gods). 
