craigslist baron von slangingheimer

reporting for duty.

i've been slanging mad shiz on craigslist - it's been pretty lucrative. it's all about finding that sweet spot - pricing it low enough to stimulate a lot of interest so that you can pit prospective buyers against each other, but also high enough so that you have room to grow in the negotiations and don't end up getting shortchanged.

it's looking increasingly likely that our dreams of having the place painted before we move in are of the when-pigs-fly variety. we've "managed expectations" down from painting the entire house, to just the upstairs, to one room, to maybe the baseboard on the main floor if we're lucky (and even that's not likely). it's extremely cheering to talk to people who've done it before though. we met some of our neighbours last night - one of whom had their house rented for TWENTY FIVE YEARS prior to them taking possession. he's been working on it off and on (doing the work himself) for 3 years and only now is it up to snuff - so our little mice/roach problem isn't so bad.

that's the kind of stuff that warms the cockles of a fixer-upper's heart. to know that everyone else is in the same boat. we all gazed adoringly at the house across from all our properties that sold for half a million - the whole street worships that house's selling price like an idol and is counting on the residual warmth of that considerable appreciation to warm us when our spirits flag during renovation, dust-filled lungs hell. neighbour guy told us about showering with a hose rigged up in the basement draining into the floor drain - stories like that are THE BEST! they make you realize that despite the rude comments of tactless schmoes - you DIDN'T buy the only lemon in the fruit basket.

i'm totally stoked about halloween this year. it's a shame, because we've been invite to our friend H's tarantino-themed halloween party in cleveland. he's my mom's gradeschool friend's son and he's THE BEST. i mentioned him a while ago when s-dawg, the dotytron, c-hova and i met him for the first time and were like flabbergasted that ONLY NOW were we meeting kids of my mom's friends that were actually cool and not like, future doctors of america or something. one time we went for dinner with my mom's doctor friend whose five year old child played mental chess, had his kids enrolled in u of t's school for gifted children, AND who selected all the books his daughter read. when he found out what we did for a living (at the time i was a cook) he turned to my mom and said, "mama lagerfeld, do you ever worry about your children's futures?" - what a jerk! anyway, H and his gf A are the bomb. the tragic thing is that they live in CLEVELAND and we're just adding to the list of amazing people we know who for some inexplicable reason insist on living far away from us (i'm looking at you, kdubsguelph).

the dotytron's been talking up my pumpkin carving skills to the neighbs - i'm a little worried. i know what i'm doing this year, but still - it's a whole new audience. there's actually going to be kids out trick or treating! so exciting!!! i'm going to make a felt banner - i already bought all these orange-brown patterned fabric scraps ... i'm thinking something like this:

but obviously a zillion times cuter. i'm going to hang it on the front of our enclosed porch.

this weekend was ram jammed. so much fun! we went to the fundraising ball my mum does every year (usually we look after my sister's kids) and sat at the same table as sdawg and my sis and outlaw bro and H and A and this random couple that we promptly scared off with our drunken obnoxious antics. the night before, when i was picking out what i was going to wear, i pulled this crazy silver sequined number from the back of my closet. i wasn't going to wear it, but the dotytron said that nothing says "ball" like silver sequins so i went for it:

i basically looked like a human disco ball. i gotta say, it looked pretty fly with a kicky, mod high ponytail and dramatic eyes. here are some shots of the evening:

matchy matchy!

H (aka asian farrakhan) and A

sdawg and his friend L


my sis and outlaw bro

the evening culminated in us all storming the loose moose (the traditional after-ball watering hole) - which was empty - and watching UFC repeats and singing "living on a prayer" at the top of our lungs to the dismay and chagrin of the assembled staff.

then we all hit the hot house cafe for brunch the next day, which is another tradition. met up with dr. rei and hanbo. dr. rei, i hate to say, is an AYCE buffet n00b. the first thing she put on her plate was crab salad! CRAB SALAD!

after that we headed home, whereupon we found that the cats had thrashed their food bowls. i bought them 2 nice ceramic water bowls and 2 nice ceramic food bowls, but the dotytron had forgotten to feed them the night before, so they had knocked them over, tossed the tray upon which their bowls rest halfway across the kitchen, AND knocked over the tin that holds their cat food (the lid stayed on). it was quite a dramatic feat - mostly because that tin was almost full, which is like 5 lbs of dry kibble. then we discovered that SMUDGIE HAD GONE MISSING. we couldn't figure out when/how it had happened until we saw that there was a HOLE in the window screen in the bedroom. so basically the little bugger saw something outside, went apeshiz and TORE A HOLE in the screen chasing after it. so we spent an hour crawling the neighbourhood, going into people's backyards, shouting "smudgieeeeeee!!!!!!!" at the top of our lungs.

then i cried. i love that cat. if it was boddington, sure - no biggie. but smudgie is the best cat to ever walk the earth. he's so soft! and so handsome! and so debonair!

then we decided that we might as well go to canadian tire and do our errands and then come back at night and look again. just as we're stepping out the door - guess who comes sauntering in like he doesn't have a care in the world? the smudge. the prevailing theory is that smudge and boddington ran out of food, things got desperate, and smudge went on a mission to rustle up some grub, leaving his weaker counterpart (el stupido, boddington) to hold down the fort.

sunday night we had dinner at the dotytron's sis' pad. she's so grown up now! it's the cutest thing ever. she's grown into herself so much in the last little while - it's incredible. we had delicious bean and corn chile, a lovely romaine salad with capers and artichoke hearts, and this awesome appetizer of peach salsa with brie on baguette that i'm totally ripping off. followed by a mint tart and a raspberry tart from the queen of tarts.

i wish we could have stayed longer but we were wiped from killing an ENTIRE bottle of industrial-strength bleach cleaner on our kitchen that afternoon. so many mouse poops! so many dried carapaces of cockroaches past! *shudder* i don't understand how people LIVE like that. it's one thing to have a roach or mouse problem - heck, it's happened to everyone. but to LIVE like that??? how does that happen? how are you okay with that?



monday night we had a quickie dinner of perogies with onions, bacon, sour cream, and sautéed zucchini from the momma and poppa d's friends' farm.


tuesday night i made us a black bean and kidney bean chili with corn bread and avocado schmoo and sour cream.

tonight we ate leftovers and then hit up home depot to spend buckets on painting supplies, which included home depot emblazoned jaunty painting caps (impulse buy!)

roll call of awesome/my fair lil' ugmo:

mobiles! i'm currently obsessed with integrating vertical space into the design of the rooms in lil' ugmo - i think one or another of the above options is definitely going to be occupying a quiet corner or two. the top one is from etsy seller royalbuffet and the middle one is from frazier & wing - i ADORE their stuff. i love the sophisticated colour combinations. the last one is a diy wedding (but really, pom pom vines can certainly be employed for non-nuptial decorative ends) tutorial from oncewed.


blanca gomez prints. when i have a bit of extra flush, i'm going to get the top one, entitled "bang!" from poster cabaret.

this dress. this shirt. squeal!!!

this and this style of light fixtures. i love old fashioned looking ceiling mounted lights. love them.

i also LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE the firefly pendant lamp from cb2. if i have my way - this will be our dining room lighting, on a dimmer - so we can get a range of light. ideally, if i was going to be a big energy wasting hog, i'd put traditional filament bulbs in there, but ultimately i know my conscience won't let me - a red spectrum compact fluoro will have to do.

fin.

can't talk...

...to busy slanging all my worldly possessions on craigslist.

too bad too - had an epic weekend of fun and being dressed like a giant disco ball. in the throes of home renos - running behind schedule (but of course). lots to tell - no time to tell it.

update soon, lovelies!

fin.

SUCCESS!

things are looking up in lil' ugmoville. well, kinda. structurally, in terms of renos and repairs - not so much. the electrical will be done on monday at which point we can have our contractor in doing drywall and whatnot. it's looking increasingly UN-likely that we'll have everything painted before the big move. but what can you do. that was a bit of a pipe dream anyway, considering the fact that we're PAINTING AN ENTIRE HOUSE.

but i'm tired of focusing on the negative! here's how you can tell that the dotytron and i have been together forever - we're a good balancing act. like a lever and a fulcrum if we remember our 5 (6?) simple machines from grade 3. when one of us is down, invariably the other one will be totally optimistic to prevent a downward spiral into split-wristville.

more often than not, ***I'M*** captain half-full. i know, surprising, right? the thing is - i get negative about the small things: dishes not being done, neighbours sullying my immaculate green bin, people cutting in line representing the downfall of civilization as we know it, etc. when it comes to THE BIG STUFF, i just put my head down and plow through until its done. get 'er done, is my motto. it's the indomitability of the karl lagerfeld spirit. i'm driven as a mofo. the dotytron is all-too-easily bogged down by the perception of the magnitude of whatever the task is at hand. i can see EXACTLY where we have to be and then i just work myself to the bone getting there. sure, my life isn't RELAXING, per se - but it's productive. and in the lagerfeld universe productivity is worshiped with the fervour of the true believer.

the point is: the dotytron had to pull a rotting mouse carcass from the kitchen cupboard in lil' ugmo yesterday and it damn near broke him.
ming).

here's the positive side. this is the kitchen we inherited:




so. gross. (that's not the positive side - it's coming) our budget for renoing the kitchen right now: -$2002020202020202. (still not the positive side). i was so disgusted by this kitchen that i had hatched an elaborate plan to spend a whole year cooking dinner using ONLY the following: microwave, toaster oven, panini machine, rice steamer, slow cooker, deep fryer - until such time as it was possible to gut the thing and have the kitchen of my dreams (cork floors! gas stove! stainless look appliances! bosch dishwasher!) (STILL not the positive side). that plan is obviously impractical - but let's face it, if i spent a year doing it and blogging about it, i would probably turn into some kind of blogging celebrity and get a book deal. not half bad. look at what that "julie and julia" broad is doing now. precisely.

so i decided to paint the cabinets. BRILLIANT IDEA. the cabinets are laminate. normally, i would have to sand, prime, and apply two coats. i was feeling lazy. we bought behr paint and primer in one and i removed the hardware and started slapping that shiz on. COLOUR ME IMPRESSED. it's sticking! like crazy!!!!!!!!!!!!!! on LAMINATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this is kind of a big deal. i've saved myself like 5 hours of sanding and priming time and jebus knows how much drying time. i think 2 coats should do it, so the first batch will be done by the end of the weekend. it's going to make the kitchen look MUCH better. and maybe i won't have to do my weird, restrictive cooking-for-a-year-sans-stove challenge after all.

in other good news - our landlord is a SWEETHEART and is GIVING us extermination services for our mouse/roach problem (he works for orkin) as a WEDDING PRESENT. how effing sweet is that? so cute! AND he can do the treatment whenever. we were kind of worried we'd need to get him in there while the ceilings were open and everything was exposed but he says he doesn't have to. we can move in, have our shiz in there, and he can do it in a couple of hours. sweet! amazing! apparently people like to throw around the word "fumigate" but to actually fumigate you have to close down like a block. they don't do that anymore. they just put poison traps around and the roaches take it back and slowly die a horrible death and take their roachy brethren down with them. amazing.

probably the most awesome thing about getting hitched was how the community comes together around you. to wit: the dotytron needed dress socks. he goes to ashraf at lb luomo (that muslim men's clothing store across from the big mosque that the dotytron loves shopping at) to get the socks, happens to mention to ashraf that we're getting hitched, and ashraf GIVES HIM DRESS SOCKS. so sweet! so cute! stuff like that tears my heart into a million pieces of joy. THAT'S the kind of stuff worth fighting for. when you really become a PART of your community - the community will come together.

ANYWAY, the other success story of the day is that i got an amazing massage from my massage therapist who worked me like a stiff sourdough. it felt goooooood.

but the principal one is that WE FOUND A QUEEN SIZED BED FRAME. and by "we" i mean "i". as you well know, i LOVE my teak veneer headboard and bed with the built-in nightstands. love it. adore it. but the dotytron is 6'4" and costco has really affordable memory foam mattresses and while-we're-moving-why-bother-taking-our-crappy 50-year-old-double-mattress-with-us-and-why-not-upgrade, etc. but the dilemma is, our current headboard is almost 9ft long - so a queen is going to be even longer and the master bedroom isn't THAT big. so we want our bed to be in proportion to the room. i believe in that. i'm willing to sacrifice the queen sized bed in order to serve the higher cause of proportion and form. form over function! did i mention that i LOVE our current bed frame? so the last little while i've been trawling craigslist and coming up with bupkes. sad perogie.

so today i went by g.u.f.f. probably my FAVORITE store for mid-century modern furniture (along with upsidedive). the prices there are always fair and they've had lovely queen teak beds before - but nothing lately. so i wander in and ask. i'm told that queen is the most common size for frames and the fact that i have a double is actually a little rare. but queen frames sell out in the store in MINUTES. they JUST had one, but before they could even get it into the store, a dealer came by and whisked it away. BEFORE THEY COULD GET IT INTO THE STORE! so i kept walking, bought a lovely mid-century electric lemon lamp to assuage my aggrieved soul and SAW THE GUFF GUYS DROPPING OFF A BED FRAME TO ZIG ZAG ON QUEEN EAST. i waited a bit, walked in, and casually inquired if he had a queen sized bed frame. and (of course) he did. i saw it. it's quite lovely. needs a little bit of cleaning and an oiling but it'll be fine. the lines are actually nicer than the one i have now - it's got lovely tapered legs and the HEADBOARD IS ACTUALLY SHORTER THAN OUR DOUBLE. which means it'll fit into the room even BETTER! huzzah!

he told me that he didn't charge me much over what he paid for it at G.U.F.F. plus, once is slang my double on craigslist it'll offset the costs. so that's one thing i can scratch off our list and now we can order our memory foam mattress and have it delivered to the house and it's all glorious.

i was also describing the rosewood buffet that we have to the zig zag guy (remember it? it's got the slatted wood doors - the zig zag guys says the correct nomenclature for that style is tambour). apparently rosewood pieces are collector's items, because rosewood is rare or endangered now. and the fact that ours has tamboured doors makes it even MORE rare - he told me to hold onto that piece and that it's highly sought after. according to zig zag guy, if i ever get tired of it, it's better for us to refinish it rather than get rid of it. score! i wouldn't ever get rid of it anyway - i love that piece and it was a total find.

so yeah, that's the good news.

today is my day off from work. i'm off to take our water sample to the city to get it tested for lead. i'm also going to do some light grocery shopping and then do some errands. we're going to go back to the house tonight to try to rip out more of the baseboards.

last night i made us nicoise sandwiches for dinner. i'll post a pic later - the dotytron has absconded with the camera. tonight i don't know what we're going to have - maybe take out at lil' ugmo while we're going to town on the baseboard and boraxing the hell out of the kitchen to kill les cucarachas.

fin.

latin fest ftw!

bwong's new digs are the BOMB. right on the subway line - it took us 30 minutes to get there AND there's a wendy's in the building! AND a sheffield and sons! his condo is so centrally located AND he's got a light fixture that looks like a cross between HAL and an ipod. i think he should rig it up to look like an ipod. he also did the magnetic chalkboard wall, which was a good lesson for me because i want to do it too and i wanted to see how the magnetic primer works. i'd read that you have to use a crapload of coats and use those rare earth, super magnetic magnets that have such a powerful you can really injure yourself if your skin gets pinched. the magnetic primer is just basically thick primer with little metal bits in it...so you have to stir it up good to get the metal bits evenly distributed and also use a tonne of coats.

ANYWAY, on to the goods:

communication snafu with bwonger (aka us not reading the fb message thoroughly) meant that we waited an inordinate time to meet up. this time was not wasted. we had pre-dinner churros (stuffed with milk caramel - dulce de leche/cajeta).

then we warmed up with some chicharrons. basically this version was strips of deep fried pork belly. the fat, oh, the glorious, glorious fat!

we went with the standard fair/food court divide and conquer approach. we each lined up and bought some food so that we could go splitsies. i think this is barbacoa or some kind of beef soft taco.

beef filled flautas.

carnitas soft tacos.

grilled chicken (kind of underwhelming)

roasted pork ("the best in town!" the sign proclaimed - i'm not going to argue). with potato "omelette" basically mashed potato cooked on a griddle. so good!

grilled steak.


pupusas.

fried plantain stuffed with queso fresco and more meat.

our spread before (for 4 people!)

the aftermath of the decimation we wreaked (clearly, we were meat hungry and rice was not our go-to).

i'm waiting on tenterhooks for our final quote from our reno guy. eeks! we'll see how much we have to shell out...kind of nervous.


tonight for dinner i made us fried eggplant, campari tomato, basil, and olive pasta. for dessert we're having leftover cherry brown butter almond streusel tart with whipped cream. it's my treat for being too busy to eat lunch today and subsisting all day on water and my meagre cereal portion from this morning.

fin.

kdubsguelphtdot represent!

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!

eeps!

fin.

of course

...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!

okay...i'm off.

fin.


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

chickpea salad with giardiniara dressing

serves 2-4 (main course or appies)

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.

so maybe i was being a bit overdramatic

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.

fin.