Home Sweet Deck.

After that last post about my hideous neighbors…I figured maybe I ought to say a few words about what I LIKE about my apartment. 

 

1.  It has two bedrooms.  No, seriously.  My last apartment didn’t even technically have one – it was an “open concept” one-bedroom.  Which meant: kitchen/dining room and living/bedroom.  Fine for me, but inconvenient when having guests, since this also meant I didn’t have a couch.  The “guest bedroom” was an air mattress, inflated at the foot of my bed, after all of my living room furniture was pushed out of the way.

 

2.  The bathroom is within the confines of the apartment proper.  Again, not a luxury I had in my last apartment, where my bathroom was out in the hall.  This meant walking to the shower or going to pee meant entering common space.  You have no idea how much you value the privilege of walking from the bathroom to the bedroom naked (or semi-so) until you can no longer do it.

 

3.  It does NOT have an overbearing landlady who lets herself into it without warning and peers around her curtains at my visitors.

 

4.  My building is only one apartment deep.  This means I actually have east-facing windows AND west-facing windows, ergo my apartment has excellent sun exposure throughout the day and breezes blow straight through it when the windows are open.  I have never lived in an apartment that had decent air circulation without mechanical intervention.

 

5.  I have a dishwasher.  Granted, I have to open the fridge door to open it all the way, but dishpan hands are a thing of the past for me.

 

6.  This is the big one…I HAVE A DECK.  Growing up, the deck was something I took for granted.  It was the site of crab feasts…dinners when the house was too stuffy to stand…it was where my family met one of my college boyfriends for the first time, and where my brother once suggested that maybe I would enjoy photography (he was right).  My apartment in grad school had many things going for it: a small gym, hot tub, in-ground pool, tennis courts, nice little trail through the woods for running.  But in my last couple of years of grad school, I told myself that my next apartment would have: a) a dishwasher, b) a washer and dryer, and c) some sort of balcony/deck. 

Then I decided to move to Toronto.

On my limited budget, I had to make some sacrifices.  My little basement apartment did come with laundry privileges, but not a dishwasher.  But I made damned sure I would have some outdoor space for my grill.  I use my grill year-round, as long as it isn’t buried under snow (and even then, have been known to melt a ring around it when desperate).  My Toronto landlady offered the use of their very large grill, hooked up to the natural gas line.  I opted to use my tiny Weber Smokey Joe, because I.  REQUIRE.  CHARCOAL.  Landlady hated this.  She had a severe aversion to smoke or lighter fluid fumes, so I used that as an excuse to buy the chimney starter I had been wanting for ages anyway.  TA-DAH!  No lighter fluid!  Every time I lit that damned thing on a nice day I heard windows being angrily slammed shut, but there wasn’t anything she could do to stop me, because IT WAS WRITTEN INTO THE LEASE.

And, lest you think I just said, “I need outdoor space for my grill…”

Nope.  I specified that it was charcoal.  Bitch had full warning, and didn’t have a leg to stand on.

However…I still had to climb the stairs out of the basement…cross their gargantuan 3-season deck (complete with patio heater which made it more like 3.5) and stand out in the freezing cold to use the spot they had given me.  So my grilling frequency was less than optimal.  It’s hard to throw your meat on the grill, then go work on side dishes, when you spend at least a minute in transit negotiating doors.

So when I looked at this apartment, I saw right past the smell of Pet and ugly-ass cabinets, because there was a big sliding door leading out onto…a proper Deck.

And not some shitty balcony built of cinderblocks that feels like a concrete cage.  This is the biggest deck I have ever seen attached to an apartment of this size.

I have room for a patio set.

I can store my recylables and my bike out here.

I CAN GRILL.  Just a couple of feet outside of my doors and windows, which means I can do it in nearly any weather.  Especially now that I have a down vest for the dashes outdoors in the colder months.

I have a view, not of the next complex over, but of a nice little patch of woods surrounding a drainage culvert.  Nature provides a buffer between me and the medical center/retirement complex on my street.  It looks kind of like this:

I can garden.  Not a lot, but I have tomatoes.  I have radishes and lettuce.  I have rosemary, thyme, oregano, parsley, and two kinds of basil.  My garden looks kind of like this:

I.  HAVE.  FLOWERS.

I have little lanterns with tealights in them.  I have an extension cord that allows me to blog by candlelight.

I have delicious, Lake Michigan breezes from the west, and strong afternoon sunlight.

I have:

That’s right.  MUTHAFUCKIN’ PRODUCE.

And this weekend, as summer comes to a close, I have UVa football streaming on my computer as the sun goes down and I grill my dinner.

No matter what’s going on in my life…no matter how stressed I am at work or at home…no matter how messy my kitchen or bedroom are…my deck is my oasis.  Nothing seems to matter when I’m out here.  As long as the plants get watered and the gnome gets paid…

 

Everything is going to be okay.

To be continued.

So it was brought to my attention, by a new reader of The Alchemist, that a certain long-running plotline was never resolved.  Namely, “whatever happened to the VGLM???”

 

He got married about two weeks ago. 

 

After obsessing over him for far too long, getting over him and becoming fairly good friends with him, I kind of lost touch with him my last year in Toronto.  We had evolved into a weird mentor-mentee kind of relationship, since he’s one of the few people I know that spent nearly as long in grad school as I did.  Some of us have to take longer so that we can participate in outside activities that keep us sane.  He’s not a prolific Facebooker, and that last year I had moved on to a teaching position, meaning I had moved out of the lab space I shared with him.

 

So a little while after I moved, I found out via Facebook that he was engaged.  <sad face>

And she appears to be lovely.  <sadder face>

And they seem to be starting a lovely life together.  <slow tear>

And according to her profile pic on Facebook, they both looked stunning at the wedding.  I do find it slightly disturbing that, in the pic she chose to use, she looks gorgeous…and they’re both smiling…and they’re not actually looking at each other.

 

But to each their own.

 

I prefer the pic I took of two other good friends at their wedding last weekend, where they couldn’t take their eyes off of each other during their first dance as they sang to each other quietly.  But whatevs.

 

In other news: The cinderblocks were removed the day after I complained.  Also, the Bitch Downstairs with the Baby has moved out.  Hopefully my new downstairs neighbors will have less of a fondness for extremely loud bass on Sunday mornings, and for storing dirty diapers within noseshot of my deck.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

When I took my current job, it involved a major move on almost no notice.  When I came for my interview, I took it as a good sign that the department had put together a packet (read: binder) of information for me…guidelines for all of the majors at my university that require chemistry…information about benefits…a folder from the local chamber of commerce with information about the school system, things to do, etc…and a flyer tucked in the back advertising a house for rent.

 

I inquired about said house, and the landlady sent me pictures.  The place was ADORABLE.  It looks small, but is a 4-bedroom house with a recently remodeled kitchen, a finished basement, and a garage.  Two of the bedrooms are upstairs, and thus could easily be closed off and/or used for storage, while I use the ground floor and basement as a perfectly me-sized house.  And it was…<drumroll>…$700/month!!!

 

Of course… “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

 

Did I mention I was hired a mere two weeks before classes started?

 

And I was moving from Toronto.  A place where the rental market is HIGHLY competitive (my absolute unwillingness to compete for a shitty downtown apartment is precisely why I wound up living for 4 years in a tiny-but-marginally-less-shitty apartment in the suburbs), and thus one must act fast to lock down a good place.  At this point, I want the house.  I am doing everything I can to try to get deposit money to this woman so that I can guarantee I have it.  My stuff was already packed…I just wanted to find a home and move into it and get on with my life.

Even though she explains that the utilities bills will stay in her name, and be sent to her in Colorado.  So I will be expected to mail my checks to her in time for her to mail checks to the utility companies by the due date.

Oh, and she had talked to someone else about renting, but determined it wouldn’t be a “good relationship.”  She always rents by word-of-mouth, to temporary faculty and such, she doesn’t rent to “just anybody.”

 

O…K…

 

Still, I want the house.  So I explain that I live in Canada, and all of my funds are Canadian, so I’ll need to figure out how to get a deposit/first and last month’s rent/etc. to her.  IN COLORADO.  I ask if she has a PayPal account…
"No.  And I refuse to get one.”

 

O…K…

 

And she launches into an e-mail tirade about how she needs to know my move-in and move-out dates so she can draft a lease to send me, and all she gets from me is all of this information she doesn’t need to know about my finances, and yadda yadda yadda.  She also leaves not one, but SEVERAL messages to this effect on the machine of the friends with whom I am staying.

Also, one of the stipulations of the lease agreement will be that the neighbor kids are not allowed to play in her yard.  She has the biggest yard in the neighborhood, and the kids all want to play there, but the neighbor mom has sued her once already when one of the kids got hurt on her property.

Oh, and a previous tenant had been told he couldn’t paint one of the bedrooms.  She had done it in some sort of (horrible sounding –ed.) denim finish for her son.  She still hopes to come back to, at the very least, retire to this home and wants nothing changed.  In fact, there will be a clause in the lease that prohibits me from making any changes.  Former Tenant apparently mentioned to a neighbor that he was going to paint this bedroom anyway.  But, “word got back to me that he was going to do it and I put a stop to it.”

So…you’re saying that your neighbors will be spying on me and/or suing me.  At all times.  Eeeeeeeeeeeeexcellent.

 

Um…what.  The fuck?

 

This is about the time that I say, “I don’t think this is going to work out.  Perhaps we should go our separate ways.”

“I agree.”

End of story, right?

 

Nope. 

A few days later, I have another e-mail from her.  “I feel like we got off on the wrong foot.  I have been looking at the real estate listings, and all of the apartments are either in bad areas or too far from campus.  I feel for you…you are young, and I am willing to try to work this out.  We just need to work on better communication.”

 

Um, bitch?  You crazy.  I don’t think so.

 

“Thanks but no thanks.  I’ll take my chances finding a place on my own.”

 

We finally go our separate ways.

I move to my town, and set up shop in a hotel so I can start work and house-hunt.  There is a complex that I have been told, multiple times, only rents to faculty, staff, and professional students.  The sign in front of said complex says, “Now Renting”

So I give them a call.  They say that there is one apartment that just became available.

Again, coming from a competitive housing market and now literally homeless, I ask when I can come see it.

This is the point where I feel it is relevant to point out that this is the only apartment complex I have found that I am ELIGIBLE to live in.  Everything in this town falls into one of the following categories:

1.  Student housing (too old for that shit)

2.  Retirement housing (too young for that shit)

3.  Low-income housing (too rich for that shit)

4.  Home ownership (too smart for that shit)

So basically, if I don’t want to get stuck owning property in a small, dying Michigan town…I NEED THIS APARTMENT.  So I look at it.  It smells bad and the cabinets are older than my mother, but it has a nice layout, a dishwasher, and a nice big deck out back.  The property manager assures me the previous occupant has JUST moved out, and they haven’t had a chance to clean it.  It will not smell like Pet when I move in.

I say I will think about it.

But by the next day, I’m pretty sure there is nothing else for me in this Godforsaken town.

I call back and say I will take it.  Again, I am used to a MUCH more competitive housing market…the manager seems taken a bit aback by my desperation.  She does not understand that I AM LIVING IN THE HOLIDAY INN, Y’ALL.

No one should have to pay seventy bucks a night for a roof over their heads.  I don’t care if they do clean it, make your bed, and leave you wee lotions while you’re at work.

So it’ll be at least a week before my apartment is ready.  <sigh>

Finally, I sign my lease and take possession of my new home.

And it smells like fucking Pet.

At first, I thought I could get used to it.  But I spent about an hour in my new home before I started to get an asthmatic reaction to the lingering allergens. <sigh>

So I dash off an e-mail to my property manager: 

Me: Dude, I can’t live like this.  Like, asthma.  Seriously.  Can you clean the carpets again, or maybe get them replaced?

PM: We will have the carpets replaced on Monday.

Can I get a whoop whoop for good customer service???

 

So I spend one night sleeping on an air mattress on the exposed carpet padding in my dining room.  Then go out of town for the Labor Day weekend…and come home to fresh carpet.

A year later, my apartment still smells weird, but it is the weird chemically goodness of brand-spankin’-new, heavily StainMastered carpet. Meanwhile, I have settled in.  I swabbed down the linoleum in the kitchen and the bathroom with vinegar (to remove the last ammonia-riffic traces of what I have to hope were Pet accidents).  I have bought under-cabinet lighting and a kitchen cart to make my ugly kitchen functional.  I have hung pictures and posters on my walls…put up window treatments for privacy and hominess…changed the window treatments and sheets in the bedroom because I realized I couldn’t hang my favorite poster with the ones I had…cleaned out and actually started to furnish and decorate my back bedroom/office/sewing room.

 

Then the neighbors changed.

Over the course of the last few months, I have had to deal with:

1)  Screaming matches downstairs, followed by slammed doors as both of them leave to presumably tell their friends what an asshole the other person is.  48 hours of continuous howling by their neglected dog ensues.

2)  Perfectly nice-seeming downstairs neighbor knocking on my door when I was home sick and unloading a sob story about his cheating girlfriend with WAY TOO MUCH INFORMATION…all as a prelude to asking if he could borrow my phone.  Dude, KEEP THE PHONE FOR ALL I CARE…JUST STOP TELLING ME THINGS I DON’T NEED TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR HORRIBLE LIFE.  A few days later, watched the guy she was cheating with move into the apartment…when the ex had just moved into the building next door.  Bitch, have some class.

3)  Unnecessarily loud comings and goings, often around 4am when I am trying to sleep with my windows open.  A typical conversation proceeds as follows:

“Please don’t pee on my car.”

“I’m not going to.”

<sound of peeing on what one can only assume is the maple tree right outside my window>

IF YOU ARE IN MY PARKING LOT, SURELY YOU HAVE A FRIEND THAT LIVES HERE.  AND SURELY THAT FRIEND HAS A FUCKING TOILET. 

Oh…my bad.  You might have to climb TWO AND A HALF STORIES to get to a toilet that flushes, and you just have to pee.  The tree is certainly the best option.

4)  The morning symphony of birds singing…breeze rustling the leaves of the trees…and wretching somewhere in the distance, presumably in my parking lot.  Because indoor wretching should not carry through my open windows.

5)  My next-door neighbors (also faculty, and lovely, quiet neighbors, expecting their first baby) moving out because the people living upstairs from them appear to be the source of 3) and 4).  Apparently, there has been wretching on our stairwell, but on stairs I (blissfully) never need to ascend or look at.  Said neighbors are apparently not limited to peeing on trees and (not) cars…they also like to pee off of their balcony.  ON THE THIRD FLOOR.

6)  Unusually large numbers of unusually large flies in my apartment.  Specifically, around my patio door and kitchen window.  I go outside and look down…to find an entire box of dirty diapers stored just outside Downstairs Bitch’s patio.  WHO STORES DIRTY DIAPERS IN A CARDBOARD BOX???  OUTSIDE???  WHEN THERE IS A DUMPSTER LESS THAN 50 YARDS AWAY???

7) Two cinderblocks, carefully stacked just below my fire escape.  Because this is apparently an acceptable alternative to remembering to take your keys.

8)  A completely random, approximately 19-year-old drunk kid opening my front door this afternoon because he thought it was his buddy’s. 

“Um, HELLO??? GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!”

<door closes>

I deadbolt it.

<door knock>

I open door.  Nobody there.  I slam door shut and deadbolt it.

<door knock>

I open door (honestly expecting an apology, if not from Random, from one of his friends).  Nobody there.  I call upstairs, “Are you guys having fun?” as one of Random’s friends says, “you are a retard.”  Slam door.  Repeat.

<door knock>

FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE.

 

What I REALLY want to yell is, “I hope you’re in my class this fall, asshole.”

 

Today I started doing three things: writing angry letters to my landlords, and deadbolting my door, no matter how full my hands are when I come home from Meijer.

And thinking seriously about getting the hell out of this town.  Damn 2-year contract…

Letters From the Front: Hookah-ed.

Pennsic, in general, has many traditions…many social events…lots to do.

 

Blood Moon, in particular, has…well…two.

The first time I started this series, I wrote about Scotch Broth night.  That’s one.  And a lovely, family-friendly ritual it is.

 

The other one?

<sigh>

The other one is called Hookah.

And no, it has nothing to do with smoking.

Hookah is the one “party” Blood Moon throws.  But it’s more of a neighborhood block party than a ParTAAAAAAAAAY party.  The ground rules for Hookah are as follows:

1.  We cannot Hookah unless it has rained that day.  The first rain is generally a guaranteed Hookah occasion, but I usually miss that one since it always seems to happen in the first week.

2.  The Hookah is announced to neighboring camps via a few ringleaders that run around the fringe of our camp singing the Hookah Song.  It goes something like, “Hookah, dookah, dupity do!  I’ve got another Hookah for you…”

3.  The Hookah is filled with…<sigh>…Pat O’Brien’s Hurricane Mix.  It is syrupy sweet.  It is reasonably strong.  It is bright red.  It is the sort of thing that nightmarish frat parties are made of.

4.  The Hookah keeps getting refilled until we run out or everyone passes out.

Yeah, it’s that kind of party.

 

I’m not sure how far back Hookah goes as a tradition…all I know is that the Old Hookah was made by Brother, and my first Pennsic was the first year of the New Hookah.  The New Hookah looks like this:

That’s right.  It’s a giant jug with giant jugs.

There are two pieces of tubing coming out of the top of the Hookah – in the words of Brother, “So you can Hookah with the one you love.” (The previous incarnation only accommodated one user at a time.)

Operation of the Hookah proceeds as follows:

1.  Two willing victims are found.

2.  The Hookah is hoisted above a third party’s head. (Preferably by its giant jugs)

3.  Said willing victims drink, via the magic of siphoning action, from the tubes until they can’t take it anymore.

4.  Lather.  Rinse.  Repeat.

 

It’s basically a fruity, non-carbonated keg stand for two.  The new, double Hookah introduced another aspect to the ritual: that of competition.  Whoever has the least staying power is in charge of how long of a drink the other person gets.  If you crap out too quickly, your partner will be highly disappointed in you.

I never crap out too quickly.

The Hookah has claimed many victims over the years.  Those victims clearly have no grasp of hydrodynamics.  Either that, or they have no idea how to use their tongue.

Those who allow Gravity to determine the rate at which they drink are condemned to also become its bitch by the end of the night.

 

The stories of Hookah are legendary…I will spare you the gory details.  I have only experienced Hookah once, but have never been its victim; the vast majority of our camp cannot make the same claim.  I take the occasional hit, but keep my mug filled with something more palatable.  I, like my brother, appreciate the Hookah more for the social aspect than for the beverage itself.  The Hookah draws in our neighbors, and the occasional passerby.  And, in the case of the one year I was there for it, also led to a long, snaking backrub chain.

 

THIS IS, BY FAR, THE BEST PART OF HOOKAH.

 

I enjoy drinking. 

I enjoy socialization.

I freaking LOVE BACKRUBS.

By the end of my first Hookah, all I know is that I am running a decent buzz…and I am more relaxed than I have ever been IN MY LIFE.  The new girl in camp always seems to attract the most backrub attention, so I had a distinct advantage that year.  I swear I didn’t go 5 minutes without somebody rubbing my shoulders…and that person was always different.  I actually didn’t drink that much because I was TOO BUSY GETTING BACKRUBS.

 

This is the sort of thing that makes it hard for people who haven’t been to understand what an incredibly relaxing vacation Pennsic can be.  You never have to be anywhere.  You can drink whenever you want.  AND SOMEONE IS ALWAYS WILLING TO GIVE YOU A BACKRUB.

 

People pay hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars for spa vacations that do the same things.  But I’d be willing to bet that those spa employees don’t make you laugh half as much in the process as my Clanmates will. 

Hookah, dookah, dupity do…

Letters From the Front: Ma-ma-ma-My Persona

After my first Pennsic, I wrote:

“I never felt the need to have a persona, so I didn't.  There was talk of giving me a name, and I think if I'm ever going to assume one, that's how it will have to happen.  I mean, my persona is and always will be a saucy gypsy, but for now, she remains nameless.”

She is no longer nameless.

 

My second Pennsic was very different from the first.  Brother and Girlfriend had broken up about 3 months after my first one, and at the time he had requested that I (and the other Clanmembers) maintain our friendships with her and not choose sides.  In private, he specifically told me that, regardless of what he decided to do, I should return to Pennsic if I wanted to.  That I would no doubt be missed if I didn’t return.  Luckily, he decided to return as well.

Unfortunately, so did ex-Girlfriend.

Which might not have been a problem, but Brother had fairly recently gotten engaged, and ex-Girlfriend had even more recently found out.

Camp was…how do you say…a little tense.

Even though their times at War only overlapped by a couple of days, I spent that time trying to both spend time with my brother and not ignore my friend.  Naturally, this largely resulted in my spending most of my time with people who were neither one of them.  I spent my second Pennsic becoming a Swiss national.

Meanwhile, Omar’s attempt at a bigger, better onion dome had only been halfway successful, and he wasn’t able to provide accommodations for two as planned.  So I camped with Ashlyn and shared his living/dining/kitchen space under the dome.  My stay at Pennsic also wasn’t as long this year – due to other Mundane-world factors, I only came for a very long weekend this time.

All of these factors meant that:

1.  I had no true home to call my own.  Gypsy!

2.  I was a social butterfly within camp.  Social gypsy!

3.  I spent quite a lot more time outside of camp.  Par-tay gyp-say!

 

In the four days or so I was at War that year, I think I went out every night.  Middle weekend is the BEST time for parties, but that’s another post.

 

One of the first nights I went out, I was with Ashlyn…and I think Scoundrel…and I have no idea who else.  We went to a camp that hosts an Irish Pub of sorts on certain nights.  The place was fairly dead, but the Celtic band played on…

…and one random woman was bellydancing.

 

That’s right.  Bellydancing to Celtic music. 

 

This woman was…a bit more advanced in years than your typical bellydancer.  And obviously not fully aware of her surroundings or her mental capacity.  We joked about her for the rest of the night.

 

“I think that’s my Pennsic persona.  I opened the first falafel shop in Dublin.”

“My name is…Babaganoush.  Babaganoush…O’Malley.  You may call me Baba.”

(I would later change my name to Babaganoush O’Reilly, because no matter how much I try to deny it, I am fundamentally incapable of resisting the allure of becoming Baba O’Reilly.")

Baba has a mysteriously ambiguous accent.  Mostly because a certain running clan joke (which I will not retell here because it is completely nonsensical) only works in an Indian accent, but obviously a gypsy must sound vaguely eastern European.  Have you ever heard someone speak with an Indian/Russian accent?  Unfortunately, my clanmates have.  Over time, her accent has settled into semi-Romanian.  Which is, of course, just right.

Over the course of the short time I spent at Pennsic that year, Ashlyn and I developed quite a schtick.  (No really – our neighbors complained about the late-night giggling next door.)

“Have you met my beautiful daughter Tabbouleh?”

“Come here, my little falafel.  Come to Baba.”

Hanging out near one of the food tents one morning, Ashlyn noticed a man on a wagon taking pictures of passersby.  She referred to him as the Pennsic paparazzi.

“Don’t talk to me about your Papa.  His name Razzi.  He left me for that hussy Ensalata!”

“Of course, his second wife, Caprese, she lovely.  They very happy now, with three beautiful children.  Mozzarella, Basil, and a little Tomato on the way.”

 

My new persona meshed well with brother Omar.  One of Omar’s breakfast specialties is pancakes.  As we sit under the onion dome making breakfast, passersby often stop to take a look.  Omar is polite…always invites them in for a closer inspection.  He has his own schtick:

Passerby: How do you get the curvature in the dome?

Omar: Young, supple saplings…very flexible…nah, they’re tent poles for a pop-up dome tent.

This evolves into:

“Welcome to Omar and Baba’s International House of Pancake.  First come, only served.”

“Tabbouleh!  Time to make the pancake!”

“But MaMAAAH….”

The International House of Pancake turns into the falafel stand by lunchtime.

 

This year, I would be making dinner, and Ashlyn(Tabbouleh) would be juggling or playing with the kids in camp.  I screamed across camp:

“TABBOULEH!  DINNER!  FIVE MINUTES!”

and, ten minutes later:

“TABBOULEH!  DINNER!  NOW!”

One night, she had a little date-type thing in another camp.  I said:

“Tabbouleh!  Do we need to have sex talk?”

“Yes, mama.”

“NO!”

 

I think there was more early material, but it has sadly faded over the past two years.  Rightly so, as our compatriots grew more than a little tired of it being repeated ad infinitum around camp as we refined our act.  The problem was, THERE WAS ALWAYS SOMEBODY WHO HADN’T HEARD IT YET.  Now, they have all heard it, and simply address me as Baba.  When I go out, I introduce myself as Baba.  I’m sure to those who take this whole Pennsic thing seriously, people like me are incredibly annoying, but to be frank, I can’t be bothered by those people.  The SCA in general, and Pennsic in particular are supposed to be…wait for it…FUN.  The day it stops being fun is the day I’m out.

 

So, my little falafels, come.  Come…to Baba.

Letters From the Front: Shop ‘Til You Drop

I had heard this well before my first Pennsic… “The shopping!  OH MY GOD, THE SHOPPING!”

And my mental response was, “um, great!  For what?”

(I never actually asked this, mind you.  Ever since I was a wee ‘hooty, I always preferred to think first, observe later, and only ask questions as a last resort.  Long before I ever heard it articulated as such, I subscribed to the “better to be silent and thought an idiot than to open one’s mouth and prove it” philosophy.  This has been proven to make me appear less ditzy to friends, but less interesting to professors. Meh, I am the original Happy Medium.)

 

Like most of Pennsic, it is hard to explain the shopping scene.  Let’s just say that at Pennsic, I have more places to shop, and for more interesting and higher quality stuff, than I have in the town I currently live in.  Not that that’s saying much given my podunk place of residence, but it’s a start.

 

My very first shopping expedition was a couple of days into my first Pennsic (I do believe this experience has been documented, but in less detail).  Someone in camp (I believe it was Scoundrel) asked, “have you been shopping yet?” 

I answered, “No.”

I didn’t even know how to get TO the shopping.  Seriously – had not left camp yet and had been led that far by Brother and his Truck.  (Three years later, I’m still not very good at getting around much of Pennsic outside our neighborhood.  Like I have said before, Blood Moon = Slacker Camp.)  Regardless, I knew I needed STUFF.  Most notably, a belt.  I was currently borrowing one, and a pouch, from Ashlyn.  She will prove to be one of my best Pennsic friends EVER.  The Belt and Pouch are the Purse (or Murse) and Wallet of the Medieval world, respectively.  Your Pouch holds your ID (important for parties)…your credit cards…your money…your lip balm…your sunscreen…your odds and ends that you need wherever you go.  Your Belt holds onto your body said Pouch…your mug (also important for parties, as well as coffee, and water, and…believe me, you don’t know how much you need a mug AT ALL TIMES until you’ve been to Pennsic)…your camera (a perfectly acceptable form of Creative Anachronism)…your knife (steel is a generally accepted and envied form of accessory)…your cell phone (if you’re one of THOSE – I am now seasoned enough that it is no longer jarring to see a man in a tunic talking shop on an iPhone)…and anything else you want to carry around.

Clearly, until you have a Belt (and, to a lesser extent, a Pouch), you aren’t REALLY at Pennsic.

So…I go to the cheap leatherworker’s tent.  I buy a belt.  It is the cheapest belt possible – a thin, long strip of leather with a ring at the end of it.  But it works.  And will continue to work for another year.  Basically, I no longer feel nekkid.  And return the (much nicer) borrowed belt to Ashlyn.  I keep the pouch, though, because pouches are EXPENSIVE.  I can’t quite wrap my head around what people are willing to spend for something they only use once a year.  Also, a member of our clan is teaching me to crochet, and I am determined to crochet myself a pouch.  (Which also works for another year.)

Thus begins one category of Pennsic vendor: the leather guys.  No, not Leather Guys…these are guys who make useful things out of leather.  These guys make belts, pouches, armor, accessories for belts, scabbards, sandals, and pretty much anything you could ever want out of leather.  Some of them also sell just plain leather.  Leatherworking is a popular Pennsic pasttime because it is slow - Slow crafts are especially well-suited for two week periods with very little responsibility.

But I am getting ahead of myself.  My first trip to the merchants, I am on a mission, and then just browse.  I don’t REALLY start to shop for a few days.  During the Wednesday of the second week of Pennsic (also known as War Week, since this is when all of the battles occur), Midnight Madness happens.

Midnight Madness is pretty much what it sounds like – the vendors usually close up shop early in the afternoon and reopen in the evening, in order to stay open until the wee hours.  Sometimes they have special sales, but (like most of the special things that happen at Pennsic) this is really just an excuse for a social event.  People put on nicer garb, because basically they are going to Town.  We fill our mugs with something tasty and sip as we browse.*  Certain items, such as jewelry, are not bought at Midnight Madness because you can’t really see them in the lower light.  But you Scout. 

My very first Midnight Madness…I bought a very small cow made of stone.  And possibly some small pewter badges.  Not much.  But I had so much fun!  Some of my favorite pictures from that first year were taken at Midnight Madness.  I still fondly remember trying on silly hats, ogling the aforementioned pewter badges (they are authentically Period, but rather risque…they would certainly make certain gentle readers blush.  I bought more this year!), and ordering Turkish coffee from a man pushing a cart.  The sensory memory of that coffee is intense.  This…THIS is where I start to get that OH MY GOD THE SHOPPING!

 

There are:

Fabric vendors, selling quality fabrics like linen, wool, and silk at prices you simply will not find anywhere else.

There are:

Vendors with reels and reels of decorative trims.  JoAnn Fabrics has, like, 5.  AND THEY SUCK.  Trim is something else you can’t possibly understand unless you have tried to make garb.

There are:

SO many people selling pottery!  AND THEY’RE GOOD AT IT!  Most of you reading know that I have not one, but TWO potters in my family (one is quite Hairy…get it?  Ah, to heck with ya).  All of my dishes are handmade…and I am on my second set.  I have a ceramic colander.  I have a ceramic mushroom pot.  I DO NOT NEED TO BUY CERAMICS.  But I buy them at Pennsic.

At my second Pennsic, I bought my jingle goblet:

It looks unassuming, but there is a jingle bell concealed in the base.  You can only ring it (safely) when the goblet is empty, or preferably nearly so.

The man selling these is genius.  They look almost primitive, and come in different solid colors.  They all have different prices.  You do not realize until you pick them up and ring them that they are priced, not by looks, but by SOUND.  I paid top dollar for the one with the best ring.  It was TOTALLY worth it – if you jingle it long enough, someone will appear with a beverage in order to shut you up.  Chivalry?  Or low tolerance for high-pitched jingly noises?  The world will never know.

I also bought my Wee Mug:

In the words of one clanmate, “Did you put mug in dryer on too high heat???”

The Wee Mug is a VERY generous shotglass.  With a handle! 

(Handle is concealed in picture due to a particularly shoddy hand model.)

Hell…my BROTHER buys ceramics at Pennsic.  I have NEVER seen Brother buy pottery anywhere…except for one booth at Pennsic.  This booth does the most amazingly beautiful pottery I have ever seen.  Case in point, this year’s indulgence:

I also bought another cup with the most incredible brass patina glaze on it.  This pic really does not do justice to the gorgeousness of these glazes.  (Mental note: do pottery photography in daylight.)  The chemist at my core giggles in glee at good glazes (say THAT three times fast), and these FEEL SO GOOD too.  SPECTACULAR pottery!

These are not the ones that my brother buys…these are much more affordably priced.  That’s right…It.  Gets.  Better!  But there is not a thing in their booth I don’t drool over.  GOR.  GEOUS.

There are:

Jewelry vendors.  My most significant purchase at my first Pennsic was my poison ring:

And thus ends my career as a hand model.

It is significant because the stone is a Moonstone.  I belong to Blood Moon Clan.  Get it?  If they had one with a Bloodstone I would have bought it too.  I still wear it nearly every day – as a chemist, I have always found poison rings cool, and this particular vendor is the only place I have ever found one small enough to not look ridiculous on my incredibly stubby, small fingers.  Who cares if the payload is so small I would have to load it with botulism to make it a lethal dose???  My students ask about it regularly.  The ones that ask think it is cool.  I love this damn thing.

There are:

Miscellaneous vendors.  This year, I spent a ridiculous amount of money at a tent that sold yarn and hand-blown glass jewelry.  I spent a sensible amount of money at a tent that sold the most comfortable wooden chair I have ever had the pleasure of sitting in (did not buy) and the most awesome leather-clad hip flask I have ever had the pleasure of holding (totally DID buy):

The flask (in Blood Moon colors – red and black!) was purchased.  The belt loop (which is probably a more ingenious design than the creator ever fully realized) was fashioned by Chieftain.  Like I said, leatherwork is a popular pasttime at Pennsic.  I now owe him a tiny crocheted monster as payment.

I’ve also been known to buy the occasional hip scarf (especially coins for bellydancing), pair of earrings, etc. to inject my persona into my garb.  You can easily spend hundreds of dollars.  Pirate boots?  Medieval musical instruments?  Puppets?  Chain mail?  The more you spent last year…the more you will spend this year.  And so on…and so forth. 

 

Pennsic: the original self-fulfilling prophecy.

 

*NOTE: Drinking in public is perfectly acceptable, nay encouraged, at Pennsic.  There are occasions where you are judged harshly for walking around with an empty mug.  Seriously, a man’s worth is directly proportional to the quality and the content of the mug he carries.  I shit you not.

Letters From the Front: Under Siege

So, at my first Pennsic, when Brother picked me up, we stopped for some groceries on the way back to camp.  One of the things he needed was posterboard and markers.  He needed to make a sign.  This was the result:

See, Pennsic is a full two weeks long.  The first week is for the hardcore campers.  There are fewer classes offered, the crowds are smaller, the parties are less crowded.  With fewer people around to keep you amused, hobbies and small amusements are very important.  There had been a big storm that week, causing an actual current in the trench separating Upper Blood Moon from Lower Blood Moon.  (Said trench was constructed a few years before after one Clan member had a river running THROUGH his tent after a nasty storm.  It has also divided the camp into two factions – Those Who Don’t Mind Kids and Those Who Do – the trench provides a convenient boundary that conscientious parents can instruct their children not to cross under penalty of death and/or cross looks.)  What does one do with a current?  Why, one races rubber ducks in it, of course. 

In an as-yet unrelated amusement, Chieftain had shown up with a small, built-to-scale trebuchet.  Pico, another member of our camp, decided to scale it up so it looked like this:

Clearly, this trebuchet is designed for a ducky payload.

 

As Pico tweaked the design, changing pivot points and counterweights, the most convenient target in Lower Blood Moon was the Onion Dome.

By the time I got there, the Onion Dome had suffered under the sickening thump of rubbery yellow shrapnel landing on its sides and roof for several days, always preceded by a cry of “Duck in the Hole!” upon loading.  The children of camp found this hysterical, but I can assure you the humor is lost after a few days when you are on the receiving end of it.

Thus, the sign.

Unfortunately, the sign made an even more convenient target. 

So, after a couple of nights in camp, having made friends and found my niche in this group of misfits, I casually mention to a trusted ally that I would very much like to steal the trebuchet. 

He is on board.

It’s another night or two before we get our opportunity.  After a night involving quite a bit of drunken silliness, the fire is dying down and only a few people are still awake.  Perhaps most importantly, Pico is NOT one of them.  We debate places to hide the trebuchet, and there is only one tent large enough – Scoundrel’s tent.  You can see part of it on the far right behind the picture of the trebuchet – it is round, circus-like, and perhaps most importantly, tall enough to conceal a minivan if necessary while the family sleeps inside.

Imagine four drunk people carrying a trebuchet into a tent, attempting to be stealthy.  It goes something like this:
”SHH!!!  DON’T WAKE UP DONNA!!!”

Accompanied by a fair amount of running into things and/or each other.  There may or may not have been a fair amount of giggling.

As we retire fireside to congratulate ourselves on a cunning heist, Donna emerges from the tent to inform us that there is nothing funnier or louder than drunks trying to be quiet.

 

The next morning, Pico is on a recon mission.  He knows two things:

1.  The trebuchet is missing.

2.  There is only one tent likely to be housing it.

Unfortunately for him, it would be considered bad form to march into someone else’s tent uninvited.

So instead, he sets about interrogating likely suspects.  I escaped scrutiny, but he made a beeline for Donna, asking if she had seen the trebuchet.  Acting the surprisingly willing accomplice (since she had been woken by our ninja asses at wee hours of the morning), she disavows all knowledge of said implement of feathered warfare.  During the interrogation, a small, blond, cherubic youth insists at her feet:

“It’s in ow tent!  It’s wight heer!”

Luckily, Pico is oblivious to the emphatic gestures of a toddler, and never even notices his traitorous attempt to expose us.  We are, however, now aware that the trebuchet cannot remain in its current location.  It is too dangerous – Scoundrel and Donna can’t stand guard all the time.

Negotiations are made with the camp next door.  The trebuchet is safely relocated across the border via the back of Scoundrel’s tent, and stowed with our allies.

I think it was when Pico visited later and DIDN’T find the trebuchet inside Scoundrel’s tent that his wife confided, “you guys have really got him.  I have never seen him like this.  Keep it up!”

So they did.  They spent all afternoon waiting for Pico to leave camp (which he refused to do until he found out where his trebuchet was). 

FINALLY…he and his wife went out for a run.  They returned to this:

That’s right.  The trebuchet, in Pico’s tent, decorated with a lemur.

 

Say what you will about SCA folk needing to get a life, but stealing and hiding that thing provided a solid 24 hours of amusement.  And I guarantee I laughed more in that day than you did in your entire last vacation. 

Viva La Onion Dome!

Gettin’ Medieval

Three years ago, I attempted to write about how Pennsic changed me.  It did not go unnoticed that I only got two entries written out of a planned series of 8. 

 

Sorry about that.

 

But I have just returned from my third Pennsic, and am once again struggling to readjust to the Mundane world.  My Pennsic experience is much different now, but no less affecting.  I feel the need to write…to make some lame attempt at explaining the inexplicable.

 

Also, my blogging has dropped off to absolute radio silence over the last couple of years, and the number of started (but never completed) blog posts stored on my computer makes me sad.

 

So I decided that I would attempt to continue the series, in a slightly different format.  I still have my notes from that first Pennsic, but they are vague and the experiences that were so new are old hat now.  I really SHOULD have made myself finish the series when the memories were fresh.  Sadly, the first-time wonder has been lost, but the experiences remain magical.  Some of the things that happened at that first Pennsic are still talked about vividly in camp.  Some happen every year.  So I will attempt to finish the series by writing, not about specific days at War, but about individual experiences.   Hopefully, this will help some of you understand why I keep going back.

 

So, in that spirit, I present Pennsic Week.  As per MadMup’s rules, that doesn’t necessarily mean a post every day (although I will try, since classes will be starting soon and these are my last days of freedom), but it does mean a week’s worth of posts about various Medieval topics.  If there’s anyone still out there reading, I hope you will come along with me.

Family Secrets (Vol.1)

Tonight I perfected one of my all-time favorite foods.  I can remember when I first asked my dad for the recipe – it was right after 9/11, when I needed comfort foods.  His response was, “why couldn’t you ask for something easy?  That’s one of those things I just…DO.”

 

In short, there was a recipe once upon a time, but my mom and dad have been making it for so many decades that there’s no guarantee they’re still following it.

But it’s so STUPIDLY SIMPLE.  It only has 7 ingredients, and none of them are measured carefully.  It’s one of those things I make for people, and EVERY.  SINGLE.  TIME. they rave about it and ask for the recipe.  EVEN WHEN I MAKE IT BADLY.

When I was a kid, my parents would always prepare this in the same pan.  I would pass through the kitchen on a day they were making it, and take it upon myself to fill the turkey baster with marinade and squeeze it over the top.  Multiple times.  And possibly poke the meat with the baster.  Repeatedly.

Ethnically, I doubt its authenticity.  But I like it better than the “real” thing.

So, without further ado, I have decided it is time to share it with the world.  The dish I grew up associating with the word… “teriyaki.”

I present the Illinois Extension recipe for “Teriyaki Marinade.”

1/3 c. soy sauce

1/3 c. red wine vinegar

1/3 c. water

several slices ginger

several cloves garlic

~1tsp brown sugar

If you are making my favorite main course of all time, add one piece of chuck and marinate until the marinade turns cloudy.

If you start early in the day, omit the water (if you really want her to, Professor Wahooty will step in and explain why).  Give it at least 2-3 hours though.

Grill.  It will sear well due to the fat in the meat and the bit of sugar in the marinade.  I keep it rare to medium-rare inside.  I will not be held responsible for well-done results (although it actually even tastes good when cooked medium-well, something I usually consider a crime against beef).

The beauty of this thing is that it is almost universally delicious, and works on beef, chicken, pork, salmon, etc.  There is some tweaking involved for other proteins, which I may reveal…some other time.

 

In the meantime, I invite you to share your stupidly simple family secrets in the comments.  I showed you mine – you show me yours!  I may reveal more easy recipes if I get some audience participation.

In Memoriam.

Nearly ten years ago, I puttered around too long, getting ready to go to work.  As a result, I witnessed world change unfold as one plane hit the World Trade Center.  The response was confusion, until the second one hit.

 

Nearly ten years ago, I felt my heart stop when I heard two more planes were en route to Washington, DC, where I had a father in a government building, a close friend at the CIA, and countless others unaccounted for in the middle of the workday.

 

Tonight, I watched that chapter of our collective memoir close.

 

And I am appalled.

 

I have witnessed the following (paraphrased, obviously) exchange in my Facebook feed:

Person: I hear the President wants to talk to us about something.  Makes me nervous.  Hope he doesn’t break into the Celebrity Apprentice.

Friend of Person: Word has it that Bin Laden is dead and we have his body.

Person:  YAY!!!

 

Accompanied by rousing choruses of “ding, dong the <insert insult of choice> is dead!” and lots of “patriotic” HOO-RAHing.  And one incredibly funny comment of “Trump wants to see the death certificate.”

 

Let me be clear: I do not believe in capital punishment.  I cannot take pleasure in the taking of a human life, no matter how evil I personally believe that human being to be.  Am I happy?  Absolutely not.  Intensely relieved?  Yes.  Satisfied?  Somewhat.  Do I think this is, by any means, over?  Not by a long shot.

 

Christians have lightning-quick “eye for an eye!” reflexes, but, when the moment suits them, their selective memories are quick to forget the coda introduced in the sermon on the mount. We will never extract our pound of flesh in this matter, and I do not have the fortitude to forgive this man for what he did.  I may never.  But amid all of the “YEAH”s and “God bless America”s, all I can think is… Goddammit, you people are no better than those that did the same thing in all of those villages the day those thousands of Americans died.

 

Celebrate progress, not death.  Fight the mentality, not the individual.  Stop the hatred, not the heartbeat. 

 

If it took a decade to win the battle, how long to win the war?

Martha Stewart for the New Millennium

I had a thought while I was cooking dinner tonight.  The world needs a new cooking show.  One that represents, not the woman we all want to be, but the woman we all actually ARE.

 

A woman who often begins her Sunday with a long to-do list full of plans for household chores, home improvements, and things that have to be done before work on Monday.  A woman who has the best of intentions, but realizes by the time she has made her breakfast and sipped her coffee while watching CBS Sunday Morning that she has a limited window in which to run to Meijer/Big Lots/Kmart/Lowe’s before the good stuff comes on NPR for the afternoon.  A woman who has a major crisis of interior design while shopping for new drapes for the bedroom and can’t commit to a tomato plant, but scores 600-thread-count sheets for $40.  In short…a woman who is only about halfway through cleaning the kitchen when she HAS to start dinner if she wants to eat it before breakfast.

 

My cooking show would be shot with handheld cameras and begin by entering my front door, startling me as I kick the clean-but-as-yet-unfolded undies that currently reside on the floor out of the shot. Wobbly pan past the Dining-Room-Table-of-Unfinished-Projects  and Curtains-Yet-to-be-Hemmed to watch my very careful chopping on my tiny chopping block (which is of such size because my kitchen has zero functional counter space) so as to avoid bits of vegetable escaping onto the yet-to-be-cleaned counter.  My cooking show would involve me dropping things onto said counter or the floor, and audibly debating the 5-second rule to myself before erring on the side of caution with a sigh.  I mix a martini.

I am a woman whose mire poix sometimes involves celeriac because she discovers her celery is furry.  I bet that never happens to Martha.  But it should.

As we go to commercial, I sit down and put my feet up, sipping a now highly-watered-down martini because I had just mixed everything when I realized my shanks were brown and I needed to de-glaze my pan.  I am not wearing impeccably crisp and well-pressed white clothing.  I am wearing a grease-stained t-shirt and the Jeans That Fit Right Now.  I am considering folding that laundry.  But…you know…Bravo is marathoning “Real Housewives of New Jersey.”  My horror at any human being ordering “half Coke, half red wine, with a lot of ice” (Seriously, how did this become a Thing???) is captured on film for all eternity as we fade out.  Please be sure to get my digital picture frame that displays every photo at a 90 degree angle NO MATTER HOW MUCH I SHAKE IT into the frame.

…

AND…we’re back.  To find me…right where you left me, only 2 hours later.  And maybe a whole lot drunker.  What?  I’m braising, bitch.  We hear the unmistakable sound of breaking glass from the bedroom (I say unmistakable, because many years of teaching chemistry labs has trained me well in distinguishing between the sound of Falling Glass vs. Breaking Glass).  Our heroine has finally gotten around to hanging pictures in her bedroom, only to find that apparently one has a faulty hanger on the back of the frame.  She suffers only one mild puncture while CLEANING THE BROKEN GLASS OFF OF HER BED.  Good thing she bought new sheets today!  She emerges back into the living room.  Laundry is still there, but looking even more rumpled (if that’s even possible).

I begin to prepare my celeriac for puree.  Loosely following an Eric Ripert recipe.  Ah, I’m out of lemons.  Will make do.  Prepare the celeriac and go back into the fridge for the…ah, shit…seriously, I KNOW it’s in here…it may not be GOOD, but it’s IN HERE…THERE it is…cream.  Which is well past its date and has solidified on top (seriously, I bought this shit for Mardi Gras and it’s almost Easter).  Solid cream layer tastes fine, but what about the liquid beneath?  Pour some into my little tiny dish that is only ever used for testing Suspect Dairy Products, and…IT’S GOOOOOOOD!  Shake that bad boy up and USE IT!  Chop up my celeriac and…wait…IS THAT A LEMON THAT WAS HIDING UNDER THE CELERIAC????  SCORE.

Wow.  Lemon juice does NOT feel good on that one mild puncture.  Ow.

(Has anyone else noticed that the cattiness of any “Real Housewives” show increases exponentially with the percentage of interviews shot in soft focus?  No?  Just me?  All right then.)

I pour a glass of my cooking wine while everything finishes.  WOW, does that stuff suck.  Seriously, wanting my $12 back.

Finally, everything is ready.  The celeriac puree has been truffled, the salad made, the shanks braised to delicious tenderness.  I pour a glass of the marked-down-on-clearance wine and find it to be much better than the on-serious-sale wine for the same $12 that I opened a couple of days ago and thus used as cooking wine. 

I may have a chaotic apartment, but I have one hell of a delicious dinner.

 

Fade out as I carry my new sheets across the parking lot to wash them so I can get through the night without shedding blood.

 

My cooking…nay, LIFESTYLE show will not air on the Food Network, nor on PBS.  This shit SCREAMS Bravo.  Seriously, Andy Cohen.  This…THIS is a real housewife.  Call me.

Letter to the Editor

Pardon me, regular readers, while I go public for a sec.

 

Khao San Road, a restaurant in Toronto that I consider a friend was recently reviewed by one of the national Canadian papers.  This reviewer visited on the seventh day of business at this particular restaurant, and wrote this review on the basis of one (and only one) visit.  For those of you not familiar with the general ethical code for those who have an inordinate amount of power to impact a business such as a restaurant, the general idea is this:

1.  Do not review a restaurant until it has been open at least a month.

2.  Visit multiple times before posting a review, so that you can:

3.  Sample most, if not all, of the menu items.

4.  Pay your own way.

 

This particular reviewer did…um…one of those things.  I think.  But let’s be honest, she is KNOWN for doing this sort of thing – she would rather write a review with no credibility than be the…<gasp>…SECOND person to review a new place!  So I will not take too much issue with this particular bad habit of hers…everybody knows she does it, and most people whose opinions matter put little stock in her reviews for that very reason.  But her review offended me on a completely different level, one that has nothing to do with my desire to see this restaurant succeed, and thus I wrote my very first…Letter to the Editor.  Since there is no guarantee this letter will be published by the paper in question, I am posting it here.  I even started using Twitter in order to make sure it gets seen by a few people, and you KNOW how much I hate the Twitter!!!  So without further ado…

 

In a world where print journalists have to battle for face time with online bloggers and message board riff-raff, print reviewers are constantly fighting to prove their relevance and status as the true tastemakers.  So why, exactly, is Gina Mallet going to such great lengths to set this battle back?  In her review of Khao San Road, she has committed two cardinal sins of restaurant-reviewing: 1) she reviewed a restaurant that had been open only a few days and 2) she only visited once before publishing said review.  These alone would be unforgivable - or at least wildly damaging to her credibility as a reviewer in most circles (although Ms. Mallet’s track record would indicate that she cares more about beating bloggers to the punch than about her own credibility) - but what truly disturbs me about this review is the racial comments made, aside from the food.  

“Our server, who wears a black teeshirt with a glittering skull and crossbones, laughingly owns up to being Chinese.  The server at the bar is Filipina, but the kitchen is all Thai.”

In a city as multicultural as Toronto, what does it matter if your Thai food is brought to you by a waitress of Chinese descent, or your tea is brought to you by a Filipina?  Her implied criticism of this establishment for having a multicultural staff is astounding.  Does the waitstaff have to be Thai in order for the food coming out of the kitchen to be authentic?  When one of the world’s most respected students of Thai cuisine is a white man from Australia, why do I need a Thai person carrying my noodles to believe that they are made correctly?  Does the authenticity somehow evaporate off of them when handled by a person born in Canada?  If this is the case, I guess I have never had authentic takeout of any ethnicity other than my own.  Does she inquire as to the ethnic heritage of her servers in an Italian restaurant as well?  David Lee never seems to come under fire for making Continental food, so in this day and age, I have a hard time understanding why the ethnicity of a chef, let alone of a server, bears any relevance when judging the food.  She notes that the kitchen staff is, indeed, all Thai, but proceeds to blame errors in her order on a language barrier:

“It’s awfully good, but we’re sure we ordered it with shrimp — and we don’t much care for the beef. Uh-oh. Seems the server doesn’t speak Thai and the kitchen doesn’t speak Chinese. We wonder whether we shouldn’t give the server a refresher in Morse Code and tap out SOS.”

This comment is condescending, rude, ignorant…and flat-out racist.  The waitress in question, while being of Chinese descent, is a native English-speaker, with absolutely no trace of an accent, let alone a problem understanding other English-speakers.  The entire kitchen staff also speaks English.  Any brand-new restaurant makes errors in order processing in its first week - miscommunication happens with a new staff trying to find its rhythm - why should ethnicity be brought into the discussion when it has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand?

I have never thought highly of Gina Mallet’s writing before, as she has a long documented history of racially-loaded comments...dripping with sarcasm, yet having nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of the restaurants she reviews.  To wit, from a 2007 review:

“They didn't speak much English; we spoke no Chinese. To them, we undoubtedly all looked alike. We joked about being hungry again in an hour, a quip that has since been amended by the avalanche of cheap Chinese products. Now it's "I hardly finished eating before my made-in-China sweater started to unravel."”

Offensive racial stereotypes such as these have no place in a national paper.  As someone who values responsible print journalism, I am starting to find the bloggers and riff-raff much more credible than Ms. Mallet’s tabloid-style sensationalism.

Laid back.

It seems all I do anymore is rant, so I figured I’d just tell y’all about my day this time instead.

A few years ago, my parents decided to institute “Fishy Fridays” in their household.  It began before they retired, but after my dad had taken over “weekend cooking” duties, something that happened well after my brother and I left home.  I’m sure it was partly motivated by years of my mother’s belief that the Catholic abstinence from meat on Fridays during Lent meant that we are supposed to suffer…I think Dad took the reigns on Fridays in general mostly thanks to his Protestantism during Lent. (For those who are curious, I lie somewhere in between – I do abstain from meat during Lent, but often feel like I’m going to hell for enjoying it too much.  Not a problem since the move, since there is not one place in my town that sells sushi.)

In my household, I think I have inadvertently developed a similar tradition…namely, “Surf-and-Turf Saturdays.”  Exhibit A (from a few weeks ago):

Surf…                  and Turf…

And this week I revisited the theme.  Except “surf” was grilled mojo shrimp with a Napa cabbage slaw, but the “turf” was still roasted bone marrow.  Mmmm…meat butter.  I can get used to this.  I’m not sure “turf” is ever going to branch out – the parsley salad really makes for an amazing dish, and marrow bones are one of the few ingredients I can always be guaranteed of getting here that is truly amazingly delicious.  Even if my one reliable source sells them in a bag labeled “dog bones.”

There is something so deliciously primal about scooping out all of the good stuff inside a bone that is about 5 inches long. <drool>

If I’m being completely honest, I only made the shrimp to avoid making an entire dinner out of meat butter.  (The speed with which the drippings from inside a bone solidify is somewhat terrifying, but I’m told it’s Good Fat.)  Well, that, and the fact that my grill emerged from the snowbank on my deck earlier this week and I’m trying to get as much use out of it as I can before it disappears again tomorrow.  The only sure sign of warmer weather I can cling to is the cocktail of the evening…a slightly more sophisticated version of gin & juice or a greyhound. 

Therefore, I shall call it a Snoop Dogg:

1.5 oz freshly-squeezed grapefruit juice over ice

1.5 oz gin (or vodka if you’re like that)

splash of grapefruit bitters

top off with club soda

Simple.  Refreshing.  Delicious.  I can see myself drinking a LOT of these come summertime.  In fact, I can see myself doing ALL of this come summertime.  Surf and turf on my deck is mighty appealing…

Hmm…can you grill marrow bones?

Pardon My Pretentious Ass.

Since I don’t teach on Fridays, Thursdays are my Friday nights.  Before you commence slapping me for being obnoxious, I assure you, I put in my 40-50 hours/week.  I simply relish being able to put in as many of them as possible from my apartment, and Friday is the one day I have the luxury of doing that all day.  Although, more often than not, Friday is the ONE day of the week I do NOT work – I’ll admit that it’s nice being able to take care of all of my personal errands on a weekday, and on Saturday and Sunday when the grocery store is mobbed, I’m happy as a clam staying home with my lecture notes and lab reports.

Anyway, I digress.  Tonight, I felt like making myself a Nice Dinner, so I stopped at the one place in my small town that sells Nice Ingredients.  This guy has a complete monopoly in town on any kind of premium protein, and while his intentions are good, I have already figured out that he doesn’t always have the knowledge to back it up.  The man carries good meat, makes EXCELLENT sausage, and always stocks good beer, but there’s a reason I rarely buy wine there.  He advertises on Facebook, and while I perk up to see what fresh fish he has on Fridays, and what new beer he is carrying, I inevitably end up rolling my eyes at his wine specials.  He seems to fall for the siren song of mediocre, well-marketed, slick-labeled mass-market wines.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that in this particular market, but personally, I’m just not going to get hard for a wine from “Cupcake Vineyard” or “Menage a Trois.”  Don’t even get me STARTED on “Mommy’s Time-Out.”  Most of the wines in his shop that I would drink can be purchased at Meijer at better prices, and thus…I do.

But this evening, I was doing my shopping, and he offered up that he had just made some fresh Italian sausage (and andouille…and brats…I DO love this man’s brats…) so I got some.  And decided, what the hell, I’ll pick up a bottle of wine for my Friday night dinner of sausage and peppers.

Oh, have I mentioned that I have already picked out a couple of cheeses (curds and string cheese…are you getting the general idea yet?) and two kinds of sausage?  Okay.

Him: “Do you need any help with the wine?”

Me: “Nah, I think I’m okay.”

<short interval of undisturbed contemplation>

Him: <popping around the corner> “What do you like?”

This man is DYING to help me.  This is part of the reason I love him – the drive to please is strong with this one.  I don’t have the heart to let him know that he cannot possibly read my tastes better than I can – he just does not have the skillz.

Me: “I like a lot of things.  Just trying to figure out what I want with my dinner.”

At this point, he leaves me alone.  I think he gets it.

I pick out a cheap, but not Cheap, Italian red to go with my dinner.  Also grab a 4-pack of Good Beer to have around, and head to the register.

He cards me, rather demonstratively, and proceeds to explain that his daughter earned him a rather hefty fine earlier in the day by not carding a decoy sent by the authorities.  Also is a bit too forthcoming in the details, explaining that he needs to make $1500 in alcohol sales in order to recoup the costs of the fine…I’m guessing that means he was fined about $500.  Okay, maybe $1000.  He only needs about 49 more of me to come through to make that up.  Considering what he charges for his meat, I think he’ll recover.

So I come home and have a little pre-dinner nosh of some curds (to find out if they were squeaky…they were not) and string cheese and a Founder’s Backwoods Bastard (caramelicious!!!).

A couple of hours later, I work up enough appetite to make my dinner, and open my wine.  This process starts in rather mundane fashion…pulltab to open the foil on top…

…but under the foil is what appears to be…a screwcap? 

I’m not used to screwcaps with foil, but whatever, I proceed with the unscrewing…

…only to find glass underneath.

Not a glass neck.  There is a glass top as well.  Clear glass, while the bottle is green.

What the fuck?

My wine bottle has a glass stopper in it.

Are we seriously doing this now???

I have had bottles of wine that were clearly corked.  It is unfortunate, and unnecessary.  I have absolutely no qualms or snobbery about screwtops on my wine…I’m actually a fan, as long as the wine contained by them is tasty.  One of my favorite winemakers is actually doing studies on AGING wine with screwtops…I’m not sure he has a leg to stand on, but I admire the science.

This…is not science. 

This…is Marketing Genius at work.

Seriously, Marketing Geniuses (please note the sarcasm, dear Reader…): I would MUCH rather have a regular old screwtop on my $11 bottle of wine than try to pry an awkwardly tiny glass stopper out of the bottle.  This is the single most bizarrely awkward bottle opening I have ever personally witnessed.  And I have SEEN people sabre bottles of bubbly.  Badly.

In my perplexed state, I updated my Facebook status to say, “<Wahooty> is puzzled by her wine.  Are glass stoppers what we’re doing now to prevent corking?  I’d rather have a screwtop.”

One of my more worldly friends “like”d that almost immediately.

One of my childhood friends (who, just for the record, still lives in our hometown and is some sort of equipment mechanic now – I did not grow up in one of THOSE DC suburbs…) commented, “need to let your wine breath it will bring out the taste”

<THWACK>

That would be the sound of a forehead slap at the very moment my head hits the keyboard. 

Certain groups of people…the lovely locals in the small town in which I live or the people I grew up with… will never cease to make me feel like a completely pretentious ass.  Because they mean so well, and have no idea how completely and utterly ignorant they are about…oh…absolutely everything I enjoy.  As an educator, I think I can say with absolute confidence that the biggest problem with stupid people…is that they don’t know they’re stupid.

Seriously, if you ever feel stupid…you aren’t.  Questioning your own intelligence is, in my opinion, a sign of having some.  I feel stupid on a regular basis – it’s what drives me to seek out information and learn things, and thus grow as both an intellectual and a human being.  There are those who offer recommendations based on their knowledge of what I know, and what I don’t…and then there are those who just think they know shit when they’re actually clueless.  And these are the people who, if I tell them what I’m really thinking, would label me Pretentious, and possibly, depending on my tone, an Asshole.  Because they simply don’t know that you’re not being pretentious if you actually KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT.  They can not fathom that you know so much more than they do about the topic at hand.  I had a friend in high school who hung out with the nerds…not because he was all that smart, but because he was in most of our classes and we were the ones that were nice to him.  But somewhere along the way, he allowed this to convince him that he WAS smart, and he regularly tries to engage in intellectual banter with me on my Facebook feed. 

Depending on who you ask, it was Mark Twain or Oscar Wilde or Winston Churchill who said, “I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed man.”

I am not so noble.  In fact, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t occasionally just smack his ass down to shut him up.

And this, dear friends, is why I am an asshole.  Sometimes, I just can’t help myself. 

But I will always…ALWAYS be nice to the sausage man. 

You can’t be pretentious if you know what you’re talking about, but you also can’t be an ass to a man with good meat.

I teach, therefore I drink.

Did you ever wonder when you were in college…what things you might have done that pissed your professors right the fuck off?

 

Case Study #1:

I receive an e-mail from a student informing me that she has plans to leave for spring break on Thursday of the preceding week.  I have a test scheduled for that day, and she asks about rescheduling.

I ask WHY she is leaving early for spring break.  Students trying to leave a day early for any break is annoying, but two days is really stretching the limits of my patience.

“Well, my family already bought the tickets, and it was cheaper to leave on a Thursday…I can bring in proof that they were purchased back in September…”

I’m sorry, but what exactly the fuck is wrong with your parents that they decided, MONTHS before you even knew your class schedule, let alone exam dates, that “oh, it’s okay, we can pull her out of school a couple of days early to save a few hundred dollars.”  Sure, vacations are expensive.  But so is…oh…A COLLEGE EDUCATION.  How much are they spending on tuition this semester vs. the cost of this trip?  And which of those two things is more important??? 

I am not a complete asshole – I did allow her to schedule the test for a day early.  But I almost made her cry first.  Because SERIOUSLY????

 

Case Study #2:

We had our first test about a week and a half ago.  Now, I seem to be physically incapable of writing easy tests.  I want to know what my students know, and I get a lot more usable information out of a hard test.  It spreads them out, and having a low average is more than made up for by the massive grade-padding they receive from their labs and homework assignments.  If all of the grades are clumped together, you can’t tell who really understands the material and who is just really good at memorizing your lecture examples/homework problems.  And if you know me even a little bit, you know that I care much more about the former.  If I didn’t, I’d be a lazy-ass teacher.

And the last two weeks, I have had the same two students in my office, bitching about how hard the test was. 

Last week, I felt I talked them down.  But this week, they came to my office hour to ask some questions about their lab, and they were still clearly pissed off.  They asked what the average was…I told them.  It just so happens that percentage-wise, the average is a failing grade.  I have already given them an opportunity to earn back enough points that the class average is now a passing grade, and there will be another.  Have I mentioned that their grades are HEAVILY padded by lab reports and homeworks?  But they are hung up on the lowness of my test average.  They ask, “the average is failing.  If the entire class fails (at this point, I resist the urge to point out that this only indicates that HALF of the class has, in fact, failed – my students are even worse at statistics than they are at chemistry), then doesn’t that indicate that something is wrong?  Have you ever seen that before?”  I say, “yes.”  “In a 100-level class????”  I say, “yes.”

I pretty much end this conversation with a, “trust me, I know what I am doing.  You are not, in fact, all going to fail this course.  Now, do you want to actually talk to me about the lab?” 

Later, a math professor who lives in the next cubicle over told me, “I admire you for holding your ground there.  I have had tests where the class average was a failing grade.”

I asked, “in a 100-level class?”

“Math 126.  I wanted to come in and back you up, but figured that would just escalate the situation.”

SWEET, SWEET VINDICATION, YOU ARE MINE!!!

I’m a big girl.  I can admit I make mistakes.  My students catch at least one mistake every lecture when I write faster than my brain/mouth can keep up.  I would much rather be the sort of professor that can admit such things rather than the sort that blindly defends an answer that is clearly wrong.  However, THIS WAS NOT A MISTAKE.  The only mistake here is you convincing yourself you understood the material when it is PLAIN AS DAY that you did not.

 

Lately, there have been a lot of whisperings and full-on gnashing of teeth in academia due to a recently-published book.  A long-term study of college students determined that the majority of students are now graduating college, with degrees, not having made any appreciable improvements in their writing or critical thinking skills.  Students graduate saying things like, “I thought college was going to be harder than high school, but it turned out to be easier.”  In other words, you no longer have to learn anything to graduate college.  That’s FOUR YEARS, after which you are SUPPOSED to have a deeper understanding of at least ONE topic than the average person.  FOUR YEARS that are completely lacking in academic rigor.  I don’t know yet if I am part of the solution, but I for DAMN sure refuse to be a part of the problem.

 

So you wanna piss me off?  Ask me to dumb down my class for you.  Go ahead.

Customer Disservice

When people ask how I’m adjusting to small-town life after four years in Toronto, my answers are generally positive.  “Small-town Midwesterners are lovely people.”  “My students are so sweet and awesome.”  Etc.  And the thing is, I actually mean it.   I have received some of the best customer service of my life since I moved here.  That is, until I came home tonight, too exhausted to even make a grilled cheese for dinner.  Em suggested I just order pizza, and even though it didn’t sound good, it sounded easy, so I did.

 

Half an hour later, my phone rings.

“Hi, this is Caitlyn (or Kaitlynn, or Katelinn, or Kaetelynne or whatever new spelling of that name is en vogue today) from Mancino’s.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t really want to get out and walk around in the cold looking for your apartment, so could you tell me exactly where it is?  I mean, is it like, on the first floor…or second floor…or what?”

Keep in mind, my apartment complex consists of only about four buildings, arranged in a straight line.  It has exterior markings that look like this:

It really requires extraordinary powers of deduction to find apt. 201C in said complex.  But whatever, I give Cate…Koete…oh whateverthefuckhernameis directions.  I do this thinking she’s calling from her cell in the parking lot, so go to open the door for her to make it even easier to give me my damn food.  Nope, no delivery vehicle yet – she has called from the pizza place.  This is also about the time that I discover that whoever built this complex decided that there should be a height requirement for rented housing, as my peephole is located a good three inches ABOVE THE TOP OF MY HEAD. 

I NEED A STEPSTOOL TO SEE WHO IS KNOCKING AT MY DOOR.

My apartment is so secure I won’t even know what my potential rapists look like.  Note to self: does Lowe’s carry very small periscopes for emergencies?

Katie eventually arrives and hands over my pie with a “sorry about that…”

I bring it inside and open it to find this waiting for me:

Now, I probably do not need to remind you, dear reader, that I do come from Midwestern stock.  And have also lived in Canada for a while, where I underwent an extensive training program in Non-Offense.  I am NOT a complainer.  But seriously, this thing is inedible.  This is a cheesy Elephant Man in a cardboard box.  I ordered a pizza with extra cheese, not half a pizza with quadruple cheese and the other half bread and sauce.

<sigh>

I’m going to have to make a phone call now, aren’t I?  And I do so hate doing that.

“Hi, Mancino’s.”

<insert politely-worded complaint about mangled pizza here>

“Um…hang on.”

(heard in background after a loooooong pause):

“Phone for you.”

“Who is it?”

“Complaint.”

“Hello?”

<insert ever-so-slightly less polite complaint about mangled pizza here>

“Okay, I’ll re-make it and send it over to you.”

“Thank you.”

“Oh, but I’m going to need you to give back the pizza you already got when it comes.”

Um…excuse me?  You fuck up my pie, and now you’re accusing me of filing a false pizza disaster claim?  When did FEMA get hold of the Italian-American delivery industry?

Whatever.  I’m not kidding when I said the original was inedible.

What he really should have said was, “I’m sorry.  It’s Wednesday, and students get a 50% discount tonight, and nobody complains when they’re 18 and dinner is half price, and the dinner rush is over, so the A-team isn’t on duty.  We’re the…<counts on fingers and removes shoes and socks> J-team.  We carry pizzas vertically and don’t get out of our cars to find your apartment if it’s cold outside.  And the J-team doesn’t get fed on-duty and thinks the elephant man will go over really well when we bring him home to our stoned roommates (duuude…pizza on a spoon!  sweeeeeeeeeeeet…).  And have I mentioned I’m an 18-year-old pre-pharm major that will someday a) make more money than you and b) be fucking up your prescription medications to this very same standard?”

New pizza arrived shortly thereafter, and the swap made.  I realized too late that if they can ask for their pizza back, I can and should ask for my tip back. 

And I ate my pristine pizza. 

But it was neither good nor easy.