how about now?

The worst thing -- well, not the worst, but probably the most annoying -- about losing something important (say, hypothetically, an annual transit card with five months remaining in the annum) is that my Golden Retriever brain will not stop looking for it in any place I have ever seen it.

Is it in my coat pocket? No? How about now?

I had it on a bus yesterday! Say, maybe it's wedged into the seat of this completely different bus on a completely different route. No? Shucks.

I usually keep it in the outside pocket of my bag. Is it there? No? It wasn't there the last four times I checked, but maybe I just overlooked it -- I should check again! Maybe it's behind that pen? No? Well, maybe it will show up this time I rummage through the 4x5x2 pocket...

what neglect!

Oh, hello. Mite dusty around here, isn't it?

I'm attempting to renew the blog habit before I leave the country in (gulp) five weeks. To that end, I'll try to clean up the numerous posts loitering in the draft file from last summer, and I'm posting a random daily life factoid:

My housemates are pitching a New Year's shindig, so I cleaned the bathroom last night. I spent over an hour scrubbing the floor and sink and tub (not mopping, scrubbing -- like, using a brush and bucket and rag) with cleanser and mildrew remover, and you can barely tell. Sheesh.

hello goodbye

I feel like I've finally gotten my sea legs, and the Fringe ends tomorrow. I found the Farmers Market (not that it was hard to find), the grocery store, the library, and the best internet cafes*. We made an outing to the Edmonton Mall and a random dance club, and I even picked up a schedule for the local Bikram studio (...but 8 a.m. yoga is like 4 a.m. in Fringe Time)

We've been flyering our little butts off, and (*fingers crossed*) should make our audience goal for the final show. Nobody likes handing out fliers, but I have to say that it's much easier while wearing a giant buttercup costume. (The Reindeer helmet + sporty shades works well, too.)

Postcards! I finally got 'em mailed! Love to y'all, and I'm looking forward to being home soon. xoxo.

*Canadians serve up some pretty decent espresso, but they make iced coffee by pouring hot brewed coffee over ice cubes. So wrong.

green onion pancakes

I just found them on the fairway.  If I have to be rolled home next week, that'd be why. 

Edmonton ho!

OK, I've got like 11 minutes of internet time, so here goes:

Hey, cats, I'm in Edmonton! The Fringe is a freaking ZOO, with literally thousands of people mobbing the street fair and thousands more queuing for tickets, fourteen hours a day. We're in a glorious 300 seat venue with a Korean children's troupe (omfg, you have never seen anything cuter than 8-years-olds in traditional dress flyering in broken English -- "We play today of 4pm you come?") and a zombie musical. We've been eating fairway samosas, farmers market plums, potluck sandwiches, and drinking a lot of Grasshopper ale after shows. I've seen some freaking amazing shows (how have I never seen Dawson Nichols before?!), our Seattle peeps rock, and YK plastered our shows' temporary tattoos on the forearms of a totally hot reviewer. (Heh.)

And, kittens, I'm in a four-star show: check it, yo.

Oh, and p.s. -- GlobalTV says FIVE STARS, baby. (Look for Fringe Reviews, 8/19.)

We like to move it move it

I'm moving! (which is great. more later.)

love, love, love / we've got it in slopbuckets

I just saw the all-out big-top Circus Contraption show for the first and last time. My brain is full and my heart hurts just a little. It's been good to know ya, kids.

lights still blazing post-show

dinner with friends

On Wednesday we had a light supper and put the baby to bed and then drank wine on the roof and talked until it was too dark to see each others' faces. This is the good stuff.

(And, hello, summer!)

you always remember your first time

I was searching for something else in my inbox and found this in a message I wrote to Ida four years ago:

Last night there was a terrible accident with buttercream.

Which also means I made some, for the first time ever, and it's wicked awesome. When I started beating in the butter it got grainy, and then smoothed out nicely... and then dissolved into this spongey mush of buttered sugar floating in slimy eggwhite: So. Totally. Gross. I vaguely remembered a recipe that said "Keep beating! It'll smooth out!" and of course I thought that I'd be the one exception and it would never ever work for me, but the clouds parted and all of a sudden it emulsified (emulsed?) into a perfectly smooth cream in this amazing moment of culinary drama. I recommend it.

I tried to figure out how many pounds of buttercream I've made since then but when it comes to butter I go all Watership Down and can't count past four (which happens to be the number of different flavors of leftover buttercream in my freezer right now).

yikes! April?

I'm swamped at work.

Still.

My office window faces west, and some afternoons I want to shove the poor plants onto the floor and take a nap on the sill.

My bangs are growing.

I read a lot. I finished Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility. Savage Inequalites got a little heavy so I picked up Emma; she's kind of a pain in the ass but I have to stick it out until she gets her comeuppance.

I just got the big green book and I read it more than I cook from it.

I got bonked on the head by a falling worklight last night but my pupils are still MER (thanks John Galt).

There are some blog posts buried in the draft folder and I swear I'll totally finish them like any day now.

Uh, that's about it.

Thanks for checking in.

xo.

Rumpus

Rumpie likes to play fetch the lizard.

photo essay in Ioway

This morning Brynn and I attended John's Art of Theater class to critique his students' acting scene presentations.  John introduced Brynn as a fellow member of the theater faculty (such subterfuge!) and me as a "guest artist from Seattle."  It wasn't until then that I noticed all of the girls were wearing pink and turquoise and high heels and eyeliner, and I had on a tweedy orange wool cardigan and -- yes -- a thermal undershirt.  

my barista/musician boyfriend totally bought

this sweater at the Chicken Soup Brigade

It's a little scary to walk into a strange classroom and start giving feedback.  Will they listen? Will it be helpful?  Do I actually have anything intelligent to say?  

It's a class for non-majors, so the scenes ran a predictable gamut of quality and believability,  but there were some surprisingly present and engaged performances and every single one of John's students was attentive and appreciative in the critiques.  Way to go, Prof. Kaufmann!

lost on the sidewalk outside the Theater portables

Afterward, Brynn really wanted me to see Kalona and the Amish Hardware Store.  Most of the stores in Kalona were closed, but we bought a rhubarb pie at the bakery and then headed out past the Cheese Shop and the Grocery Outlet, down roads lined with clotheslines full of blue jeans and aprons and ever-diminishing numbers of power lines.

There was a horse & buggy tethered in front of the hardware store and an SUV in the lot.  We wandered around marveling quietly at the astoundingly economical and comprehensive selection (bulk beans! kitten notebooks! giant underpants! tiny work gloves!) and eavesdropping on the Amish women behind the sewing counter.  They were speaking a mind-boggling pidgin of English and German -- I understand enough German to pick out phrases, but some of the vocabulary was clearly both and neither.  I bought a canning jar lifter and a gorgeously sharp steel paring knife ($3.39!) (how am I going to get it back to Seattle?) and a chicken handkerchief.

cluck

And then we saved a horse!

The buggy horse had wrenched the hitching rail and the posts had given way, so the poor guy was trapped in the buggy traces with a steel rail and three fence posts dangling from his bridle.  He was reasonably calm but rapidly getting less so.  Brynn stayed outside trying to calm the horse without getting close enough to spook him, and I ran back inside and alerted the owner -- she ran out, untied him while we held the rail (the rope was tied without a quick release; Brynn was appalled), and then retied him on the remaining rail and trotted back in before we made it out of the lot.  Not much sentiment wasted on working animals here.     

We had waffles and wi-fi for lunch.  Potato & dill for Brynn and sweet corn/apple/flax for me; grading papers and editing play post-mortem notes, respectively.  We boggled together at a coed with a wildly mussed hair, a misbuttoned coat, and jeans that were slipping well into her hinterlands.  She seemed sweet and unself-conscious and really enjoyed her French toast, though, so wherever she was coming from, we hope she enjoyed it.

look how fast her pen is moving!  

Brynn's at the gym and I'm playing fetch with Rumpie.  Broccoli soup and rhubarb pie for dinner, fingernail polish and a movie later, and an oncology appointment in the morning.  Hard to believe this trip is passing so quickly.

Yay!

Brynn and Rumpus in the dining room

is this for real?

I just got this audition announcement for an "alternative beverage" via a generally non-corporate-stooge listserv.

What's it going for here? Obama's coattails? Trust fund activists? Chinese dissident poverty chic? Is it a parody? I can't tell.

CHARACTER BREAKDOWN / PROJECT NEEDS:
Project Concept: Looking for performers that can show the juxtaposition of self-importance to sacrifice, self indulgence to poverty, and societal disconnect from the world. The concept will show that the key to cutting through the fog of greed and corporate lust that have orphaned the world’s invisible, is to opening people up to the alternative beverage Tibet@n Tea and the freedom that change unleashes.

Pavlov's breakroom

As I walked down the hall toward the office kitchen and the box of Danish halves left over from this morning's meeting, I caught myself murmuring snack snack snack snack, snack snack snack snack...

I fear I have been in Cubicle-land too long. (The horror! The horror!)

In other news, I now have three Gmail addresses: public, anonymous, and Facebook. Oh, yes I did.

Happy-Presidents'-Day scones

They're a little late to be end-of-holidays baking, but here's what I did with the ingredients left over from a dessert auction recipe plus some other stuff (can't remember what I bought the cream for...):

Orange-Almond-Cranberry Cream Scones

1-1/2 c. flour
1/2 almond meal
1/4 c. sugar
1 T. baking powder
1/2 t. salt

1/2 c. orange-flavored dried cranberries*
minced zest of 1 orange

1-1/4 c. heavy cream

2 T. oat germ

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Sift together dry ingredients. Stir in cranberries & zest, making sure they're unclumped and coated with flour. Stir in cream until just combined -- do not overmix (dough will be wet).

Scoop into 1/4 c. balls; place on an ungreased baking sheet and flatten slightly. Smear tops with a little more cream, and sprinkle with oat germ and a little more sugar. (Raw/turbinado is best, but white sugar is just fine.) Bake 12-15 minutes.

Eat. And eat and eat and eat.

*I didn't intend to buy the orange-flavored but their label looked the same as the regular. At any rate, Trader Joe's orangey berries don't have creepy chemicals and they worked really well in this recipe.

guess they ate too many m&ms

I don't know how this company became the market leader it is today with employees who can't even commit to finishing a damn doughnut.

melts in your mouth

This is my office-mate's drawer:



And -- seriously -- this needs to stop. My insulin levels spike every time she opens that drawer. I've certainly eaten my fair share, and I purchased one of those green bags. But I draw the line. No more, m&m, no more. I quit you. We are done.

future yesterday comes too soon

Craig Ferguson got married.

And David Letterman resolves to stop eating roadkill in 2009.

I know because I've been up until 1am (or, um, later...) every night this week painting "newsprint" and sewing pinafores for this amazing little show. The newsprint fabric is going to be made into high-fashion accessories for teeny tiny people. The pinafores are going to have ruffles. It will all be marvelous.

It's pretty fun, although I have begun to dread the 12:40am knell of that fucking monkey puppet.

Please to note: the enormous expanse of hand-lettering was dashed off in, like, an hour by the amazing CCS -- I'm just filling it in. I only dropped the brush and stupidly splattered paint once! (I blame the monkey, not the whiskey.)

rabbit rabbit pony

Did the deed! Proof:

Damn, that's a lot of hair, yo.