How to Bore Me Silly

Start talking about your garden.

Seriously.

I know it is all the rage to have a back yard garden. In fact, “I grew it in my back yard” is the new “It’s organic” (And the “It’s Organic” people have made me want to stab myself in my eye, and theirs, for YEARS).

But Seriously.

I grew up on a farm. We usually had a garden in our back yard, my grandmother had a giant strawberry patch up in the hollow, and there was always corn and hay planted in the fields that have to be harvested on the hottest days of the year.

I still can recall, innately, the smell of tomatoes being canned and sauerkraut being pickled – or whatever you do to it to make it sauerkraut – in the basement. It haunts me.

Picking and subsequently stringing beans is boring, hard work. Tilling, de-rocking, and weeding a garden sucks. Walking behind the tractor picking up all the corn that missed the wagon is not cool or hip. And patently uninteresting.

So excuse me if my eyes glaze over while you start telling me about the latest yummy creation that you made from that single heirloom tomato planted in a clay pot on your deck. It is not that I don’t care; it is that I am attempting to suppress a gag.




And truthfully, I don’t care.

AND you have a view of the drug deals on the Avenue!

As I twittered this morning, my mood today is much improved, and my twittering is a full-on addiction now. I am such a sucker for the new technologies that clog up the tubes. But I feel better; I guess my hormones got back in check, my knee is bothering me less, or my wine baseline is stabilized? I don’t know, but something has occurred. I am still completely overwhelmed at work, but I just do not care today. Maybe I have reached the point where I know I am not going to get everything completed, so I’m just internetting it up this morning instead of even attempting get my tasks finished. I have oodles to catch up on in the cyber world! I have read no celebrity gossip for a week! Who knows what could have happened in my absence?

So, Ryan and I hit up 13.5% last night, a new wine bar that opened in Hampden. It does indeed seem an anomaly on the Avenue, hon, but I will tell you what: that place was jumping, the wine selection was boffo, and the prices were astoundingly low.

As much as I like wine, I’ve never been a huge fan of the “wine bar” scene. Too achingly hip and snooty for me. But this place has potential. The interior is swank but not stuffy, and you are immediately made comfortable by the friendly staff and decent music mix unobtrusively playing in the background. They weren’t trying too hard with the whole down-tempo house music thing boom-chicking the night away that seems to be a prerequisite for any swanky wine bar, restaurant, or Anthropologie. They were playing the Supremes, James Brown, some jazz, some Zep, and other old rock and roll. That went a long way towards making the environment more Hampden-friendly. I mean, Ryan came in his John Deere hat and nobody batted an eyelash. That is MY kind of wine bar. I will turn that boy into a wine lover yet, I swear!

My Life in Various Meats, Volume 2: The Stick Chronicles

Just to get it out front here: Yes, I tore the hell out of my knee Saturday. Yes, it hurts like a beeotch. Yes, I required some medical attention to stop the bleeding. No, I was not drinking. Yet. No, I was not wearing high heels. Yet. No, it was not during the set, it was immediately prior; which resulted in a lovely bandaged, bleeding-through knee during our rough, non-transcendental, awkward in the sunlight set. It is best if you were not there.

Maybe my aching, swollen, infected, skin-free kneecap is contributing to my sour mood. Maybe I am aching for some chicken on a stick. But I digress, as this is Volume 2 of my meat-laden weekend adventures, not a continuation of today’s previous bitchfest.

Do you know how it is always 9000 degrees for Artscape, and you complain ‘why can’t it be cooler’? Well, guess what happens when the weather is cooler? Nine million more people come out. It was fun, as always, but the gorgeous weather combined with no overlapping headliners to divert crowds to various stages -- internet, it was PACKED. Like, I could not even hear Cake from where I was sitting packed. Not that I needed to hear Cake anyway. So after some wandering around, following up my breakfast bacon with lunchtime chicken on a stick (food of the gods, I say), we hopped into Ace’s Jaguar and headed over to Jackie’s house for a more civilized time.

Yes, I said Jaguar and yes, people looked at us as we pulled into the Wine Source in Hampden like we were gangsters. It was AWESOME. The highlight of my weekend was coming out of the store, seeing Lesley lounging in the back seat of the Jag chatting on her cell phone as though she was casually arranging a hit.

Jackie has such a lovely back garden with real vintage wicker furniture, and truly is the hostess with the mostest. Suddenly, there was jazz trickling over from a neighboring yard, people started showing up with various items to grill, and wine and brie was set out. We ended up with a veritable feast of grilled pork, vegetables, wonderful white wine, and pleasant conversation. It was a relaxing and surprising end to what I had assumed would be a rollicking day.

I guess you really cannot plan truly fun times. The spontaneity is part of the joy. Also, James passed out on Izzy’s dog bed. That was pretty joyous too.

Artscape is coming, hon!

Two more days, and then the bacchanalia begins. Oh and how I will have earned it after this week’s killer deadlines. Oh the hell!

Artscape, Baltimore City’s free Arts and Music Festival, is this weekend on Mount Royal Avenue, just outside my office. It is an event I eagerly anticipate every year. It is always hot, crowded, and crazy. In my nine or so years attending the festival, I’ve seen some fantastic performances and met some cool people, including my husband.

This year, we are kicking off the adventure on Friday evening at Sue Island Dock Bar, out on the water in Essex for some heavy, steamy crabs and ice cold Miller High Life. James and Lesley are coming into town from Richmond; Kim and Val are taking a night off from new parenthood; and general merriment will ensue.



Also new this year, the Bellevederes (yes, I never tire of self-promotion) are playing on Saturday afternoon at 2:30 at Northscape, just up Charles Street from Artscape proper. It is the Station North Art District’s attempt to capitalize on the overflow from Artscape... show the suburbanites who trek in from outside the beltway once or twice a year that North Avenue is not the Methodone Clinic-having, open air drug market corridor it used to be.

So, get thee to the corner of North and Charles Saturday afternoon, and then join us as we wander on over to Artscape to partake in some good (and not so good) art, good music, and countless varieties of food on sticks – this might be my favorite thing about the whole weekend, an entire food group devoted to whether or not it can be served on a stick. Bon Appetit!

A Funky Driver on a Funky Bus

Yes, yes I am, indeed, at work on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. And yes, it sucks.

I am not being nearly as productive as I should be, but am setting it up nicely to get in here at 6:30 in the morning and hit the ground running. Getting the easy things out of the way today so I can concentrate on the actual design elements tomorrow. My brain just is not functioning well enough today for the hard stuff. That's what happens when you spend the evening at Brewer's Art drinking Resurrection.

Ryan and I met up with our old friend Clark for a couple of quality Belgian Ales and to catch up, because we haven't seen him since Night of 100 Elvises back in December. That is way too long. Clark and his wife Joan are some of the greatest people I know, and I always love to spend hours chatting with them. We don't get to do it often enough. Then we stopped by our favorite restaurant, Ethel and Ramone's, in Mount Washington (go there today), to see our friend Brie, who was waitressing. Do you know what happens when your friend is waitressing, and it is the end of the night, and her tables are all finished? She keeps refilling my wine glass and giving Ryan pie.

So it was a wonderful evening, and this morning Ryan FINALLY found a lovely new hat at South Moon Under. We've been looking for a damn hat for weeks, I swear. But now I'm here, and Ry is home enjoying the wonderful summer weather with Bruce. Probably at the park. Those Turds.

Listening while attempting to work: Bay Area Funk: Funk and Soul Essentials from San Francisco, Oakland, and the Bay Area, 1967-1976. Volume 1. I can't WAIT to hear volume 2 because Volume 1 kicks so much ass.

Really, I do it for the sake of science

I've eaten about 50 of them, but STILL cannot for the life of me tell the difference between Peanut Butter M&Ms and Reese's Pieces.

Oh well, guess I'll have to continue this highly scientific experiment. Internets, I'll keep you up to date on any late-breaking results.

A Warning

On Saturday, Ryan got a hankering for a new hat (the man loves his chapeaus). So we headed down to Urban Outfitters in the Inner Harbor, and then over to Fells Point for some hat hunting.

We were unsuccessful in our hat search, so we decided to go for ice cream at Maggie Moo's before heading home. For some bizarre reason, I opted for a cup of "Cotton Candy" ice cream, shown below, and learned a valuable lesson:

If you put something this shade of bright, flourescent blue into your body.... it's probably gonna come out the same color. I thought I was dying or something.

Never. Again.

Gross, I know. But please, learn from my mistakes.

On self-diagnosis

I think my headband is giving me a brain tumor. I have an intense throbbing at the base of my skull right where the knot is tied. Either that or the insanely rich chocolate cake from Grauls I had at lunch for a co-worker's wedding shower is slowly killing me.

mmmm Cake. I love cake.
Excuse me while I go see if there is anymore left.
If I'm gonna go, I may as well go happy.

Alas, I am, in one afternoon, singlehandedly rendering null and void all the diligent workouts of the past few weeks. Dammit. Maybe I will just go sniff the cake for a bit... no calories in smelling, right?

I also just told your kid the truth about the Easter bunny

I just learned that today was National Doughnut Day.

I was supposed to bring the doughnuts to work today.

I forgot.

On National Doughnut Day.

I was a crusher of dreams.

Charity and Misery

So (there’s that word again!) we had a fundraiser for the MS Society at work. We do these several times throughout the year, and our company has been honored repeatedly for being the biggest corporate fundraiser in the state in a particular year. This is not a boast; it can be, in fact, somewhat shameful, due to our fundraising methods and the fact that we are company wide, pigs.

A little background here: I work for a mid-size engineering firm, about 600 employees company-wide, and about 300 in our main office here in gorgeous Bolton Hill. As I mentioned, several times a year we conduct fundraisers of various forms, most involving food. Today was the Annual Mosher Street Spaghetti Luncheon Fundraiser. People donate food and then employees are invited to purchase their lunch for 5 dollars. I made spaghetti sauce with meatballs and Italian sausage (and decided it was probably best not to title it “weenies and balls” on the description card). For 5 dollars you can come away with an insane amount of food. Eight different pasta sauces, noodles in all shapes, bread, and luscious desserts.

As noted in yesterday’s post, I do like the foods. Particularly the ethic foods. So the spaghetti luncheon is right up my alley (as is the chili cookoff, the ice cream social, the bake sale, and the hot dog fest, but I digress). I loaded up my plate with three different noodles and FOUR different sauces, some bread and a cupcake, ‘cause I love me some cake.

This is really all I will be able to eat for the rest of the day as I am now on carb overdose and will need to go for a super long run tonight if I can keep from collapsing in a coma at my desk, oh around 2:13.

It is just NOT normal to eat this much food in the middle of the work day. In fact, it probably should not be allowed because productivity goes down the pooper for the rest of the afternoon. But darn if it isn’t fun while it’s going down the gullet. And it’s for charity, so It’s all okay and calorie free, right???

I would write more, but I am about to devour a cupcake.

Feel the Burn, Baby!

Have I mentioned here before how I LOVE Indian Food? Well, I do. I also love Thai Food and Mexican Food and Afghan Food and Japanese Food and Vietnamese Food and Eye-talian Food. This from the girl who hated vegetables as a kid and was for years called the pickiest person on the planet by her parents.

I still do not love vegetables; you will never catch me eating broccoli or a brussel sprout, but I have developed an international palette. And I CRAVE ethnic food. I inform Ryan in advance that I am harboring a craving for *insert ethnic food here* and that we WILL be going to *insert favorite ethnic restaurant here* sometime in the next week. Sit a plate of hot, steamy Lamb Vindaloo before me and watch me devour and sweat like a champ. Ryan and I recently saw a clip of a comedian saying, “Most people stop eating when they’re full, I stop when I hate myself.” And we laughed and laughed. Because it is true. I am that person. Give me a plate of saffron, curry, and hot, hot peppers, and I will eat until I actually think I might throw up.



I am writing this today at my desk as I am eating my Indian food leftovers from last night as sweat runs down my face. And I can honestly say I have never had leftover Indian food before. And the only reason I have it today is because I ate most of a large tub of buttered popcorn at the movie before dinner. My co-workers should be prepared for the stink of curry for the rest of the afternoon. On multiple fronts. MWAH HA HA HA! I am thinking of it as payback for all the times they have eaten canned tuna – the bane of my existence – around me.