i need to join the gym

once again my spirits are lifted by food and food-related gadgetry. this past weekend was an extended dose of sunshine, and i got to try foil dinners for the very first time. i am knowledgeable about a few subjects but extremely retarded in so many others. outdoors skills would be one of such things.

(immediately after building a campfire)
me: so, how do we cook this food anyway? can't we just put the packets in now?
p: no, we gotta wait and cook them over coals.
me: (frantically looking through our stuff) did we bring coals???!

apparently, 'coals' to anyone with even an iota of campfire experience means the logs in the fire that gets so hot it burns bright orangewhite. i was thinking of charcoals for a grill. the last time i went camping was my freshman year at USC in Los Angeles, and 10 of us idiotically and unsuccessfully attempted to start a fire for 2 hours. no thought about brush or making it triangle shaped or what-have-you. we just piled anything wood or wood-like in a circle, wasted like 7 firestarters, and generally dicked around scratching our heads absolutely stymied. finally, a nearby camper realized we had crossed the line from entertaining to just plain pathetic and built it for us.

long story short, these foil dinners were so delicious. and we made them gigantic; they reminded me of shiny christmas packages both in appearance and my anticipation in opening them. i want to try pit cooking sometime (to sum up - a hole in the ground, hot stones, wrapped food, green vegetation or a bowl of water, cover, then wait a few hours or a day), but i think if i tried that here on a warm summer day, the bears would get my feast.

to round out my food mania, i bought a new garlic press, a case of my favorite hot sauce (belizean heat), a new french press, and a rapid food chopper. the only other kind of shopping that gets me this excited is for school supplies. i am such a fat nerd.

so here i am in the Yakutat Lodge bar waiting for my delayed flight to Juneau, and i'm sandwiched between the Yakutat city public works one-man show and a longliner fisherman from Tacoma talking about the VA Tech killer, gambling, and Bowl For Kids Sake. no matter where i am, i am constantly plugging. i wonder if i can claim this beer as a business expense.

oh! hey, while i've been typing this i recruited the public works dude to be a team captain, woohoo!!

i'm one to talk

flying to another city and back within 8 hours reminds me of a crazy fun gambling binge in seattle except today it was to hoonah and it was for work. i helped our coordinator there at her bowl for kids sake by doing all the accounting & registration in addition to emceeing the last session. what's kind of nuts is that this is our first year ever doing bowl for kids sake in yakutat, i'm in charge of finding sponsors and recruiting some team captains, and on the actual day of the event, no one else is flying with me to help. ack. i'm flying there next week for 3 days to do some prep. the week after that should have been vegas, but if i know juneau, then i'm pretty sure we all know what happened with that.

jack has it easy. all work and no play just makes him a dull boy. all work and no play makes val a sad girl who thinks about things buried and gone.

sometimes your hand is held in a way that is so perfect that even if you don't believe in soulmates, you can concede that at the very least maybe hands have them. sometimes your heart is a taut cord stetched thin and tight like a tripwire. there are moments when you just want to lay bereft on the carpet and wonder why they had to say the words so soon. sometimes you don't say anything because it will reveal too much or not enough of the things exploding inside of you and then that silence drifts into the world of things that could have been different. sometimes you feel like an atom splitting apart right there in the middle of your living room and perhaps pangea was only a nice idea.

sometimes you just have to make the right decisions, even when they hurt and are difficult. especially when they are difficult.

“You never give away your heart; you lend it from time to time. If it were not so, how could we take it back without asking?” -j.w.

storypeople of the day

Crawling in to a large hole without any idea where it leads, but she knows where she's at right now & it can't get any worse

hey mickey you're so fine

i've always grown up a dog lover, but now i know the best cat in the world. he actually is a dog parading around in a cat costume, and he makes bird noises when he's happy. and no matter how much empty space there is on the bed or the floor, he'll find the ONE spot where you've thrown your black sweater and lay all up in that thing all day. lately, he's taken to sitting in front of the dictionary on the floor (lazily left there for scrabble purposes) as if he's intently studying it, and it's cute as all get out.

this probably looks like evidence of cat cruelty but it's more of a testament to terrible shaving skills. dog-cat-bird, i.e. mickey, develops gnarly knots in his abundant healthy fur but hates to sit still for the clippers. he doesn't like look this anymore because now he just gets his knots tediously snipped off with small scissors.

happy easter

when i celebrated easter growing up, we'd typically have a huge store-bought honey glazed ham and all kinds of delicious dishes to accompany it. neighborhood kids would come over for an egg hunt in our backyard, and some of them held money inside and some chocolate. some had nothing inside because i guess the adults wanted to approximate what real life would be like: that sometimes even when you try really, really hard and get up close with gross cicadas while searching under the magnolia tree, your prize can turn out to be empty and people laugh at you. kinda like when you want to be with someone really badly & you do all kinds of dirty things to nab them, but then they give you herpes, and the nurses snicker at the public health center behind your back.... maybe not.

this year is the first time i wanted to celebrate remembered easter, and it wasn't until i saw this cute bunny-shaped pasta in my supervisor's office on friday. after work, i bought some & was excited to have my own little carb celebration for jesus.

but then i got really ambitious and wanted to make mexican barbacoa, which entails simmering meat and spices overnight until the roast is fall-off-the-bone tender and infused with the tastes and smells of cinammon, cumin, ancho chiles, onions, garlic, red chile arbol, bay leaves, tamarind, and black peppercorn. i cooked this phenomenon for 19 hours and made homemade guacamole, fresh tomato salsa, and cilantro-lime basmati rice. just my luck, however, i came down with a wicked bad cough and sore throat over the weekend so trying to eat this spicy meal almost caused me to vomit whilst dining. so my easter dessert was buckley's, a disgusting canadian decongestant that might as well have been like allowing myself to puke and then swallowing it back down.

gossip folks

i don't feel good. everything's in german. you know what's funny? the viking on a thursday night.

talk what you know.