I belong to that dynamic portion of the American workforce that punches the clock four times a day (or, to be precise, clicks the mouse on its computer equivalent). In for work, out for lunch, in for work, out for whatever. Since I arrive at work at 8:00 and leave at 4:30, I tend to take exactly a half hour lunch, which usually means eating leftovers at a wobbly table while reading a 9 month old issue of Harper’s or an exciting trade publication. Sometimes there’s a field trip to “The Long’s With the Longest Line Ever” or “My Favorite ATM.”
Today, in an exciting turn of events, the Yankee Fan picked me up and we cruised down to Chinatown for some dim sum. It was hellsa good, and I managed to get very full while still avoiding my mortal food enemy The Steamed Bun. But that meant paying money for lunch instead of eating from the pot of eternal stir fry leftovers. And that also meant taking an hour lunch, and for the clock puncher, time is money.
Really it doesn’t add up to much, but the old coot brain is still in budgetary/moving expense panic. So, despite not having finished the day’s work quite a while ago, I decided to stay at my desks (yes, I have more than one) until 5. It’s a beautiful day out. I’m bored to death. I could be on my porch right now drinking the free beer that a grateful client brought to our office today. Is it worth balancing the books in my brain to stay here another 10 minutes?
Maybe the free beer is my salvation. Since I have free beer, I won’t have to buy any beer on the way home. The cost of 6 beers should cover the cost of 10 minutes of my remaining makeup work time, shouldn’t it?
I’m going home.
Archive for March, 2007
In honor of having endured a workday that has been a finely woven tapestry of aggravation, frustration and barely suppressed physical violence, I feel moved to complain about something. My whine of choice concerns a turn of phrase that makes me want to punch a hole in the wall. Since I remember having heard it used on “Emeril Live” several apartments ago when we had magical free cable, I choose to blame TV chefs for its spread into the popular speech. Why, when people talk about cooking something, do they feel obliged to replace the verb “cook” or “make” with the verb “do”?!? As in, “I forgot to get eggs for the mini quiches, so I just did a fruit salad for the potluck” or, “My dinner party was so fabulous. I did an organic quinoa casserole with shitakes and sea vegetables” or “Easter brunch? I’m going to do hot crossed buns and a big honey-glazed ham”. Are you humping the ham? ARE YOU? Damn right you’re not. What happens to food in the kitchen is cooking. At least most of the time. I hope. If you’re serving it to me at your fabulous dinner party…
In a rare turn of events, S. and I both found ourselves men/ladies of leisure on Sunday.
First we did two cookie/waffle experiments:
a) What happens if you pour your toasted almond waffle batter in the iron and then stick on some lumps of chocolate chip cookie dough? Result: nothing gross; nothing awesome.
b) What happens if you just put a big lump of cookie dough in the waffle iron? Result: weird crunch-greasy cookie.
Then we went to Thrift Town of El Sobrante. Of the three Bay Area Thrift Towns I’ve been to, it’s the best. Lots of stuff, minimal hipsters. Ostensibly, we were there to shop for Awesome Home Decor for S., since he thinks I have an eye for that kind of stuff. I don’t think anybody would argue that I don’t have the eye. The question is whether or not it’s an evil eye, which pretty much hinges on your like or dislike of owl-shaped spoon holders and bad raccoon paintings.
Since I’m in TOTAL MISER MODE right now, I didn’t plan on buying anything. Ha ha! I kept pulling out things for S. “Look at this cool orange serving tray! You could use it to serve beans!” “How about this banana hanger” “This freaky mask would go with your stuff” “Maybe you should get all these scary teddy bear things and have a bear theme” My suggestions were politely scrutinized and put back on the shelves, but I didn’t take it personally. SOMEBODY has to have some restraint. He did end up with a couple cool skinny ties. That he found without any help from little old me.
And of course I found some INCREDIBLE BARGAINS that I couldn’t pass up. Here’s what I got for a grand total of 12.96:
A cooling rack for baked goods (something I actually need!)
A Swedish krumkake (cookie) iron (normal retail price at least $40)
A set of four matching juice glasses featuring different tropical birds w/their scientific names
A pair of hiking boots
A belt
An awesome sports-related present for the Yankee Fan (bargain of the day at just 29 cents)
A hat advertising Riviana Pozuelo (a Costa Rican cookie brand)
An ugly but small picture to add to the “wilderness theme” area in the kitchen
Sweet!
If you, too, need a personal thrift store shopper, my rates are very competitive indeed.
With yesterday’s scrub brush purchase I think I’m done buying all that annoying new apartment junk. Granted, the scrub brush at the old apartment a) Had been purchased by me b) Had only ever been put to use by me c) Was still in good condition, but it seemed a little to miserly and gross to pack it. But that’s neither here nor there. The point is that I finally feel ready to do some serious grocery shopping and meal planning. I have a whole freezer and fridge to myself, plenty of cupboard space and no roommates to be aggravated by the smell of homebrewed kimchi. Plus the Farmers Market is starting to overflow with exciting things.
Ever the multi-tasker, I started making a combination grocery list/things-to-cook list while waiting for a print job to finish at work. The print was taking a really long time, and I was really, really ready for lunch. Needless to say, the cooking list got completely out of hand:
Strawberry shortcake
Grilled asaparagus
Potstickers
Giant pot of pinto beans
Frozen pupusas
Deviled eggs
Waffles
Apple-fennel coleslaw
Stirfried greens
Pink pickled shallots
Pickled carrots
Cilantro relish
Coconut bread
Mexican rice
Dal
I think I might need to squeeze an extra fridge into the bathroom.
In my “new” neighborhood, which I like to think of as being on the posh side of 580, people have attractively overgrown yards with flowering trees and daffodils and waddling dachshunds and stuff. Even my weird little building has a pleasantly stinky orange tree and soft green grass (that’s probably full of dachshund pee). I don’t know if my usually keen nature-dar was clouded by a miasma of spring pollen or just by my over-enthusiasm for the new ‘hood, but every day since moving, I’d been half-consciously enjoying the gentle chirp of crickets in the evening. Except there are no crickets. I realized that last night as the Yankee Fan and I were returning from a post-dinner constitutional. What there is is the un-lubricated ventilation fan atop the Japanese restaurant across the street. Oh well.
Soooo…my new and generally outstanding apartment has one sad flaw: it’s in a more-than-4-unit building, so a City of Oakland truck will no longer rumble around once a week to collect my banana peels and coffee filters from the big stinky green bin. I’m not confident that a home operation is viable considering that in addition to compost I’d mostly likely produce clouds of flies/stench that would waft gently into my neighbors’ windows. Would it be TOTALLY MAXIMUM CREEPSTER if each week, during the wee hours of Green-Bin-Pickup-Eve, I slunk around the neighborhood with my bulging bio-bag and deposited it in some other household’s green bin that had been set out on the curb? WWJD?
As noted yesterday, I’ve been neglecting my usual homemakery in favor of panicky/obsessive moving activities. In addition, I haven’t gone grocery shopping in almost 3 weeks. But somehow last night, with a can of unflavored tomato sauce from Long’s, some borderline Italian parsely (the only vegetable in the fridge) and a bunch of stuff from Trader Joe’s jars I busted out some pasta sauce that was suprisingly delicious and tasted like it took much longer than 10 minutes to make. Here’s the recipe…
Moving Sauce:
some olive oil
1 can unflavored tomato sauce
1 yellow onion, diced
4 cloves of garlic, chopped
1/2 cup chopped Italian parsley
1/3 cup kalamata olives, chopped
1/2 cup marinated artichokes, chopped
1/3 cup sundried tomatoes (the kind in oil), chopped
1-2 tbsp capers
1/2 cup of whatever wine you’re already drinking
1/2 cup water
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
Salt to taste (it really depends on whether the canned tomato sauce had salt)
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Heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil in a big frying pan. Add the onions and garlic and cook for 5 minutes. Dump in everything else. Add more water if it seems to thick. Let it simmer for 5 minutes or so. Eat it on some pasta, finish off the wine, fall asleep at the dinner table, have moving-related nightmares all night.
I’ve descended into classic coot-style moving frenzy. Unnecessary fabric scraps, polyester dresses and stale rice noodles are being culled. Many, many index cards have been filled with bullet-pointed lists. Many, many minutes have been spent on hold with AT&T. Moving always seems to magnify my best and worst traits. I’m skilled and also get overly pleased at fitting things efficiently into cardboard boxes. I LOVE making bullet-pointed lists. And I love the feeling of having discarded everything I don’t really, really want. On the other hand, my natural pessimism and paranoia tend to flare up. There WILL be some kind of disaster setting up the PG&E account. That one shelf WON’T fit in the closet…or will it…and I won’t know until tomorrow when I actually get the keys and head over with the measuring tape. And the only way I deal with the uncertainty is frantic, frantic action. I can’t stop fiddling and pre-packing even though I should be doing things like grocery shopping or eating dinner or washing clothes.
One particular side effect is that I’ve been leaving myself very little time in the morning to decided what to wear to work. I get up plenty early, but end up sorting through kitchen utensils in my pajamas instead of getting dressed. So I’ve been wearing some weird outfits. Like today. I decided at the last second to throw on this pair of BRIGHTBRIGHTBRIGHT magenta pants I acquired in Fort Bragg a few weeks ago when the Yankee Fan and I got soaked hiking to a lighthouse (100% my fault) and needed to get emergency dry clothing. The magenta pants were the only pair in the thrift store that were neither ill-fitting, highwaisted nor offensively pleated. But they’re painfully loud. I decided, in my infinite wisdom, that I should tone down the magenta with a neutral color. Like a grey shirt and dark brown turtleneck sweater. With a grey pigeon pin to play off the shirt. And tan shoes. All day I’ve been looking at myself in the mirror wondering if the outfit is confidently edgy or just a disaster. I wish I was done moving.
