Holiday Health Shake

There's eggnog in there. With bourbon, rum and cognac. 

From the Roof Deck This Morning

Pete stuck an old pie box in the railing to block a spotlight from a neighbor's yard that shines too brightly at night.

I can't drink coffee anymore. No caffeine for me. There are a lot of things I can no longer consume at this time. I'm perimenopausal. If you haven't heard, and I hadn't, perimenopause can cause a gal's hormones to run amok and make  her an insane, discombobulated, miserable wretch. And damn, it can sneak up on you too. You don't realize you've lost it until, from out of nowhere, you get a blessed flash of clarity and you find yourself in the middle of a swamp with no solid ground in sight. 

I didn't think it was my hormones. I mean, the last five years have been very tumultuous and involved a great deal of change and loss. I just thought it was my crappy life that was getting me down. Only I don't really have a crappy life at all. Trauma and profound loss don't have to ruin every aspect of your life. I've taken some blows but my life is far from crappy overall. That lack of perspective is an example of how I'd slipped off the rails. It starts with legitimate trauma and then before you know it you're careening down a dark and bumpy road, unable to see the exit ramps. 

Fortunately a friend told me about The Hormone Cure, by Sara Gottfried. IT REALLY HELPED. First of all, it spoke to me. I had almost every possible symptom, especially sleeplessness, foggy-headedness and rage. RAGE! I read the book and thought "THIS BOOK IS ABOUT ME!" (See - all caps. I really did.)

Based on what I read in the book, I determined that I had high cortisol. I ended up having to give up both caffeine and booze. I was so desperate I couldn't wait to give them up. I dove right in. It's been five months now and it's been so worth it. Sanity is worth whatever I have to do to keep it. I'm also taking fish oil and a number of vitamins to support my healthy temperament. It's been an adjustment but, again, so worth it. 

However, decaf sux. Over the years I'd come to rely on a comforting warm beverage first thing in the morning. The caffeine buzz was delicious as well but I understand I have to let that go. I feel a bit sad about letting go of the warm comfort though. There have been days I've sipped warm water from my mug. I'm picky about flavor. I feel that if something doesn't taste good, why put it in your mouth? Green tea wasn't cutting it. Herbal tea neither. I actually like echinacea tea but I don't think one should drink that every day. Mostly I've gone with decaf, attempting to view it as not coffee but a drink in its own right. It's not a very good drink in its own right. Those are the breaks. Oh well. 

So here I am on my lovely, un-sucky roof deck on a beautiful early summer morning with my excellent mug. 

The tall tree in the background is named Sasha Fierce

Things are not perfect. (I haven't set up my summer planters yet. There's an old, greasy pie box shoved in the deck railing. How am I going to attract a following for my blog if I don't have beautiful photos of how I'm doing everything right?) Decaf is unrewarding. I can't "party" like I used to. But I have a nice life. 

BAB

I will never be a "popular" blogger because I can't be bothered to take a pretty picture or gussy up the ones I take. Some artist. I'm supposed to be all about aesthetics. I am. Just not conventional aesthetics.

Any hoo, I'm all excited because I sent away for some fitness shake powder thingies and they came! 

This is Skoop B Strong. It's supposed to speed recovery after a workout, among other things. 

Since you never know till you try, I got a sampling of their whole line. It sounds like good stuff. I'm all about healthy skin, a healthy body, and plenty of energy. Why not give it a shot?  Plus they donate a serving of fresh fruits and vegetables to school lunch programs for every portion sold. 

Yeah, I got the mixing cup too. The sipper cap part clicks tightly into place which is good. I'm much less likely to spray my entire kitchen with soy milk and protein powder that way. 

So how does this B Strong taste? It tastes gross! I've never been one to tolerate artificial sweeteners before. I HATE diet soda. YUCK! This has Stevia in it. According to the website stevia can support healthy blood pressure (which I already have) and, I guess do other things for me that I don't need. 

I don't know, I'll choke it down. I might get used to it. If it helps me feel great I'll keep drinking it. 

Of course the best way to take care of your health and have plenty of energy is to eat right and exercise regularly - which I do a pretty good job of lately - and GET ENOUGH SLEEP. I don't get enough sleep. 

Holy crap! It's almost two! There's always so much stuff to do! That's why no one gets enough sleep. Gotta go! Later!

I'm Gonna Be Late For Work. Sorry Bob.

What's going to happen today?

It's supposed to be very windy out today. I LOVE wind.

It's also November first, the first day of NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo, neither of which I have signed up for. Words! Glorious, luxurious words! I want to cocoon myself in words, sweep them around me like a cape on this blustery day! I want to dive in and swim in a warm sea of words! Everything sounds like a stinkin' overwrought cliche though. Oh well.

So I'll move on to pictures.

All that's left of Mr. Loaf: the scalp. I'll have that for lunch at work today. With a salad, of course.

Halloween party pictures of people you don't know:

Steffi and Yukari being photobombed by Selena and Nate

Vampire Melvis

Random Yukari, Quinner and George

Jill, Jim and Jamie with a sneak Quinner in the background

Standard Halloween party photo

Hijinks with Steffi and Angela

Insufferable Preppy Bastard and crew

Jeff and Melvis being photobombed by vampire Nate

John, Linda and Alma

Aftermathish

The party went pretty well. The Red Sox won the World Series. The meatloaf was tasty, as were the pickled beets. No one had a martini but me though.

Party tip: Cheetos really brighten up a dreary bread plate.

I think I'll wear a dress today (with tights) so it can blow around in the wind.

Miss Brilliant Ruins Halloween For Everybody

Miss Brilliant (me) loves Halloween. Miss Brilliant thought it would be a great idea to have a Halloween party. Miss Brilliant ran this great idea past Mr. Brilliant (Pete, of course) so now we're having a Halloween party! All in the spirit (get it, spirit! HAW!) of trying to have some fun in the midst of difficult times.

Miss Brilliant neglected to take into account how exhausted and sad and frazzled and pressed for time she already felt and has heaped up some more big tasks onto her plate! Go Miss Brilliant! Mr. Brilliant agrees that he's in the same leaky ghost ship.

I don't want this party to be lame and suck. I want to have theme food and black vodka martinis and bloody poison punch and ghost cupcakes and whatever other horrific Halloween snacks a person can make for a good Halloween party. I want decorations! Spooky lanterns! 'N' stuff.

'N' stuff. Pretty good imagination there, huh? Must work on that.

Okay, my costume's almost all set. I'm pretty pleased with how that came out. No worries there.

I don't know how I'm going to prepare good, spooky Halloween food for a party on a Wednesday night. Planning, I guess. Lots of make ahead. Maybe I can get some people to show up a little early and help with the decorations? Maybe I won't count on that.

Mr. Brilliant and I will need to discuss some things...

Garlic Festival Liveblog, Final

Adieu, picklebacks! Bonsoir, tout le monde!

Post Hijacked By Crab Pretzels

You know what's in here?

Guinness!

No, I will not drink Guinness from a styrofoam cup.

Pete and I are in a motel in South Carolina. One that does not have glasses available, only styrofoam cups. 

Christmas is over and we're headed back north from Florida. Tomorrow we hope to make a stop in Hagerstown, Maryland, for some of these:

These are crab pretzels, which I am shocked to see that I haven't yet blogged about. We stopped in Hagerstown on the way down south. Growing up in Maryland I had heard about Hagerstown all my life on the radio for traffic reports and school snow-day closings but I'd never known where it was. We had a chance to stop there this trip so we did.

Hagerstown is great. It was founded in 1762 and has beautiful architecture downtown: colonial and newer brick and stone row houses. There's almost a New Orleans-y feeling to it, though waaaaaaaaay more laid back. Nowhere near as party. Tons of character. It's sandwiched between Pennsylvania and West Virginia but it's still definitely Maryland. Therefore you get crab pretzels. Pretzels from the Germans and fresh crab from the bay.

If, by chance, you are driving through the American Mid-Atlantic region and want to avoid the Beltway around D.C. I would recommend going through Hagerstown. We dined at Bulls & Bears Restaurant. If you hit the link the page will say it has "a New York style atmosphere." I don't know about that, but the crab pretzels are damn good and they have a great beer selection. Most of the beers on tap were of the artisanal variety, high alcohol. Tasty, but watch yourself if you're driving - which most likely you will be. I had the Yeungling's which is local, of normal alcohol content and very fresh on tap. A tasty lager.

That's probably all you need to hear about for this installment. No doubt there's more to come another time.

Tree 2012

I'm pleased with it.

I haven't attempted to use the scanner yet. However, I did fix the Christmas tree lights. 

I'm VERY proud of my extremely basic electrical skills, let me tell ya. They didn't have replacement bulbs at the hardware store so I had to buy a whole new string of lights. Boo! The new string came with replacement bulbs! Yay! The little plastic doohickey that holds the glass bulb in the new set was not compatible with the sockets on the old set. Boo! It was close enough to make a temporary circuit though. Yay! I figured out which bulb had burned out on the old string with a light from the new string. The glass bulbs are compatible, so I replaced the bulb in the old doohickey with a spare from the new set. Now I have TWO working sets of lights! Yay! Go me!

Now you can behold the beauty of my confectionary tree! I like it so much that I'd like to have some people over for a drink and to look at it. Not too many people - our place is puny (as it should be) Very unlikely to happen though, at least before New Years.

I miss having parties. The last party we had was this one, in 2008 (with the blow-by-blow here) We could maybe fit a total of eight people in here comfortably but only for cocktails. Two people would have to sit on the floor if we were going to feed them too.

I want to have a blow-out! We used to do that every few years. I want to have a blow-out because I want to go to a blow-out. I can't go to someone else's blow-out because I'm not really a party person and I get to feeling really awkward around a lot of people I don't know. I guess I could go but I wouldn't blow it out there. I'd probably do my best to schmooze then leave early. Defeats the purpose.

If I'm going to have a blow-out it'll have to be at someone else's house. My party, their house.

Well that's enough rambling for one night. NaBloPoMo can get a blogger into some really bad habits.

Sorry Fellas!

I think the guy on the right looks disappointed with me. The other two can't be bothered. I've been neglecting my tequila. How will I ever make it up to them?

Crap Drawing

A not 100% shitty drawing

One of the things I need to do for this vast project I'm working on is think up a good name for it. Okay, also I have to do a lot of the kind of drawing that I suck at.

I am a shit cartoonist. I'm pretty good at drawing the things I see. Particularly portraits. I love faces. That's neither here nor there. We're talking about what I suck at.

I suck at trying to draw faces and bodies from my head. But I want to put out a comic.

At first I thought I could take photos of myself in costumes and sets doing the things I want my characters to do and then make drawing from those. That might be cool. I could still do that. I've been thinking about doing that for over a year and still haven't taken one photograph.

I have also been completely unsuccessful at getting myself to buckle the hell down and just do sheaves and sheaves of shitty drawings until I get better at it. Is practice the easy way? I mean, wouldn't it be easier to just draw until I came up with something I could live with?

But is making art about easy? No. Duh. It's about learning, exploring, trying something new. It's about being willing to fail and keep going until you get something you can use.

Failure is so much easier to stomach when you're in good company and maybe over a couple of beers. So I'm thinking I should get a few friends together and have a shitty drawing party. Or maybe meet at a pub and have an informal shitty drawing event.

Brilliant! Problem solved! I wonder if I could get anyone to go?

Painfully horrid and embarrassing

Stiff and awkward but I don't completely hate it 

Minty Drink

Quick post while I'm thinking about it:

I'm listening to Christmas music while cleaning the mouse crap off the dining table so we can eat off of it tomorrow. You read that right. I'm thinking a drink would be good around now. Probably a stinger.

Stinger Cocktail, one serving:

Ingredients:
Ice
2 ounces cognac
1 ounce white creme de menthe (trust me)
Twist of lemon peel

Directions:

Fill a mixing glass two-thirds full with ice. Add the cognac and white creme de menthe. Shake well, then strain into an old-fashioned glass filled with three or four ice cubes (not crushed ice). Garnish with a lemon twist.

I got this recipe from the Washington Post Spirits columnist, Jason Wilson.

Yes, I too was scared of the creme de menthe (my mom used it to make a really tasty grasshopper pie that I loved when I was a kid. I thought that might not be so good in a cocktail now that I'm an adult) Turns out it's damn good. It's kind of easy to drink too many of these so be careful - the price isn't pretty in the morning.

However, I'm going to wait on my cocktail until food is more imminently on the horizon.

Letting The Cat Out

Pete and I have a number of things that we like to do when we go to La Jolla to visit my family.

The first place we have to go is Mr. Taco. Everybody in the family knows that.

The second place we have to go is Tokyo House in Pacific Beach.  Everybody knows this too.  What they don't know is that Pete and I have begun to indulge in the beer and sake special: if you order a big beer (22oz. bottle) you get an order of sake with it for a penny. At lunch time.  Yes, this is what we like to do.

I looked at a couple of the yelp reviews and some of the unflattering ones do have a point.  This place is a little scuzzy. Pete and I like scuzzy (I'm looking at you, Peppermill)  The people who work there are really nice and the food is great.  The music is unreliable, which is always entertaining.  Tokyo House is also a refreshing change of pace from the mostly fancypants stuff we do in California.

After our beers, sakes and makimono we like to go to the fifteen dollar store two doors down.  Everything there is fifteen dollars or less.  Like these rings.  They're all for sale at three dollars apiece.

 I went home with the one with red eyes on my middle finger.  I probably should have just bought them all so I could wear them all at once, as shown.  However, my beer-and-sake-addled head remained cool and I didn't.

Birthday photos tomorrow.

Chemicals

I did some research before I started NaNoWriMo.  Not too much, just enough to get the general idea of how it works and a glimpse of what I could expect.  I bought the book, "No Plot? No Problem!"  I explored the website a little.  It looked like zany fun.

One feature that caught my eye was that the veterans were giving me license to drink all the coffee and booze I want to as noveling fuel.  I love coffee (and hard liquor [and good beer]) so I was kind of excited to experiment with potentially performance enhancing chemicals.

I know myself though.  I know that in fact I have a low threshold for where caffein or alcohol go from help to hindrance.  I thought that really I'd just up my chocolate/Nutella intake and that those would be the real fuel for my novel (my novel's working title is "Chocolate Kick")

I knew I wouldn't go nuts with chemicals but I did try to push my normal limits.  It turns out that extra chemicals haven't been helpful at all.

It turns out that when I drink more coffee than usual I get spazzier than usual.  I drop things and bump into things and send small objects (like cutlery, writing implements, cell phones, Fay) flying across the room.  If there is any mental benefit - and I don't know that there is - the physical inconveniences outweigh it.

When I tried getting drunk and writing, well, first of all I didn't get drunk.  I guess my heart wasn't in it.  I just got tipsy.  More importantly I couldn't think of words.  I knew what I wanted to say but the words hid in my mind and refused to present themselves.  Definitely an impediment.

As for chocolate, I did eat a lot of Nutella the first week.  I also crashed a lot.  (Nutella is not chocolate.  I know that.  I have an excellent chocolate shop near me.  I haven't had time to go there yet.  I think I can go sometime this upcoming week and then I can test out real chocolate.)  Crashing isn't helpful either.

I think the bottom line is I'm better off if I just stick to my normal eating and drinking habits.  So boring.  Eat right, exercise regularly, don't overindulge.  YAAAAAAWWWWWN!

It's so dull to be mild-mannered.  And yet that's what I am and that's what seems to work for me.  So frustrating.  Life can be so disappointing sometimes.

So I have been experimenting.  I love to experiment because I live for the unexpected and I have such high hopes of encountering exciting new things.  Instead I've been confirming conventional wisdom.  Oh well.

I Heart Kimchi

For starters, let me just say that I was doing some serious weeding today and when I was done I thought an after-gardening martini would be a good idea.  At the moment I'm done with the martini and I could probably use some food.  So that's where my head is.

Speaking of food, I thought I'd relate my first experience with kimchi.  I <3 KIMCHI SOOOO MUCH!!!!!!!

It was back in 19 (yes, last century) 1989.  I was working at an animation company (why the HELL did I leave???  Oh yeah, they weren't paying me*) called Olive Jar.  Yes, it was super-fun.  It was also kinda freaky because I had just moved to Boston and I was unfamiliar with the Boston attitude.  Let's just say that some people could be moody and I thought it was me when it was really them.

At lunchtime this guy, A.J., the DP (Director of Photography, or cinematographer) had a jar of kimchi.  We ate family style at Olive Jar.  Isn't that cool?  I also had my first quinoa there.  Anyhoo, the smell of the kimchi really intrigued me.  A.J. was a friendly guy so he let me have some.

Holy crap!  All I wanted was more kimchi!!!!  It was really obvious and I think it amused him.  I probably could have eaten the whole jar but I held myself back.  It was difficult though.  I had kimchi in my soul.

Okay, now I'm going to track down some dinner for myself.  My martini thinks it would be a good idea if I had a hot dog with kimchi on it and some spicy mac 'n' cheese.

I made the mac 'n' cheese a few days ago.  It's KICK-ASS!!!!!  It reheats well too.  The recipe made something like five pounds of mac 'n' cheese.  For starters you make a pound of pasta and use two pounds of cheese.  Then there's the roux which requires five cups of milk/cream.  No wonder it's KICK-ASS!!!!!

Please be assured I will also make some nice, healthy vegetables too.  Probably steamed broccoli.

*And it's a good thing too - I was incompetent.

The Island Doesn't Want Me Back

I was so excited to get back up to Vermont.  The weather was perfect this week and I was going to spend it kicking ass in the garden.  Unfortunately I came down with a @#$%^&! cold.  I've felt so lousy and out-of-it that I've pretty much spent the last four days in bed.


It feels like I've been away from my life for nearly two months and I'm not allowed to get back to it yet.


Of course I could look at it that this is my life now.  Oy.


Today I worked up enough energy to make some soup which I'm pretty sure will cure me.  Here's the recipe:

Chicken Soup with Lemongrass and Dried Mushrooms

A generous handful of dried mushrooms
4 cups chicken stock
4 slices peeled fresh ginger
1 large lemongrass stalk, cut into 2" pieces and crushed (or 1 teaspoon fresh lemon zest)
16 fresh kaffir lime leaves or the grated zest of 1 large lime
1/4 cup lime or lemon juice, freshly squeezed
2 to 3 tablespoons Thai fish sauce
2 tablespoons light brown sugar
1 tablespoon red chili paste
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite sized pieces
1/2 pound fresh white mushrooms, thinly sliced
5 small fresh green or red chilies, sliced crosswise, paper-thin
Fresh cilantro (coriander) leaves

1. Rinse the dried mushrooms and remove their stems.  Place the mushrooms in a small bowl with enough hot water to cover them.  Soak them while you're prepping the other ingredients.  Take the mushrooms out of the water,  reserving the mushroom broth.  Slice mushrooms. 
2. In a large saucepan, combine the stock, mushroom broth, ginger, lemongrasss and lime leaves or lime zest. Place over medium heat and slowly bring to a boil. Boil for 1 minute.
3. Reduce heat to low and bring to a simmer. Add the lime or lemon juice, fish sauce, brown sugar, dried mushrooms and chile paste. Mix well and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the chicken pieces and simmer until tender 4 to 5 minutes, add the fresh mushrooms and simmer until tender, about 1 minute.
4. To serve ladle soup into warmed bowls. Float the chili slices and cilantro leaves on top.

Serves 4 to 6.


I got this recipe somewhere.  I may even have blogged about it before - I don't remember.  I added the bits about the dried mushrooms - I'm addicted to them.  I've also never used kaffir lime leaves.  The markets I usually go to don't have them.  In fact, the best I could do with the lemongrass at our nearest grocery store (in Walpole, NH) was a tube of lemongrass purée.  It worked okay I guess.


The main thing is the combination of the chicken broth, citrus, sugar and spicy/garlicky chili paste.  I'm convinced that this combo is very healing for colds and flus.  I had some soup for lunch and for dinner and I'm feeling a lot better now.  Really.


I think I made it vegetarian once, with tofu and vegetable broth, and it was really good - even healing.  I wasn't sick then though.  Another variation is to add 28 oz. (2 cans) of unsweetened coconut milk at step 3.  That makes a good soup but I think it's too heavy to help with a cold/flu.


Oh man, that reminds me - I read a recipe for home made Nyquil ages ago and I've never tried it out.  I'm not gonna start now either - way too labor intensive for a sick person.

My Summer Vacation - Media Heavy

Big tomato from our garden.

Someone left a tiki bar on the side of the road. 

My Food Groups

Chocolate
Caramel
Bacon
Cheese
Potatoes
Agedashi Tofu

Drink Groups:
Coffee
Pellegrino
Hard Liquor

I've probably left something out.

Adieu, Vegas!

I interrupt this bummer to bring you the final installment of Our Trip To Vegas:

The image below is not Photoshopped (except to decrease the file size) Pete really did snap a photograph of this storm trooper enjoying the view of the fountain at the Bellagio.

If someone offers you a free "Velvet Emerald Isle" don't feel bad about saying "thank you, no." Michael Collins whiskey is fine - say yes to that, just avoid everything else on the drink menu below.

The party's over: Pete's last beer in Vegas.

Notice that there are only men in the background in this shot? Ladies, if you're going to Vegas to meet guys, don't stay at the Venetian, the Palazzo, or Paris. All the guys are at Treasure Island. Likewise to you men, if you want to see more hot chicks by the pool you might want to stay someplace a tiny bit girlier.

Some Things I Miss From Our Vacation

Here's what's sad: I actually miss the stench of Treasure Island.

You know what else I miss? Happy hour at Isla, Treasure Island's tequila bar.

I also miss Sushi Samba at the Palazzo. YUM!

I miss my brother and Sarah (here we are at the truly lurid Peppermill Fireside Lounge)

Here's another photo that Pete took in the Fireside Lounge

I love that place. I first went there with some friends when we were driving cross-country in 1987. It was just as fabulous disco-loungey. Pete and I took his parents there in 2001. We all sat around the fire pit and got into a conversation with a gaggle of drunken UNLV architecture students. One great thing about the Peppermill is that its owners know exactly what they have on their hands. Any renovations they've made have maintained the spirit of the place.

Here I am dumpster diving:

And look who I bumped into at Caesar's Palace:

I'm Secretly Really Into Makeup

November thirtieth, here you are again. It's the final day of NaBloPoMo and my final post for the month - unless I think of something better to say before midnight.

Looking back it doesn't seem as though I've had a single interesting thought all month. So in that vein I shall come clean about the latest Kool-Aid I've imbibed.

Yes, I love Bare Minerals foundation. I never thought it would happen to me. I've always been a "please God no foundation" type but everybody was making such a stink about the stuff I decided to try it. If you hit the link above you will go to the page on Sephora.com where they are selling the starter kit (while you're there you might want to pick up this, or this, or one of these as well - all bear the Mel stamp of approval - except the first one which I haven't tried and hope to get for Christmas because I'm a big dork and I believe everything I read in a product's advertising copy) This is also bound to be good. When I say "good" I mean "fun."

Okay, back to the topic at hand. This Bare Minerals stuff is great! First of all putting it on is a very calming ritual. It's powder - but not super-drying - so it isn't cold and gloopy and you don't have to worry that you're not spreading it evenly. You just dust it loosely all over your face with a big, fat, soft brush. If you want more coverage you do it again. If you have spots to cover you hit those with a dab of the touch-up brush. You can't apply it badly (though you might want some help choosing the color to use) First you do the base, then you do the blush (I often skip the blush as I tend to be ruddy in the first place), then you do the translucent top coat. It takes no time and you don't even have to look while you're doing it.

You can't feel it on and, by some miracle, it really stays on. One thing I always felt was humiliating about foundation was the way it could end up on a person's shirt collar - UGLY. This doesn't do that - though I can't say I've rubbed my face in my shirt to force it.

Not only that but it's got SPF 15 and it's completely unscented. Since all the ingredients are inert they won't give you a rash either. High frigging five!

At first I thought, "well this stuff's fine I guess" but I kept doing it because I liked the ritual and because it has sunblock. More recently though I've grown accustomed to having really good-looking skin. Maybe that's a bad thing. Maybe that makes me product dependent. Nah - I can live without the stuff. I am chocolate dependent though.

There are plenty of brands of mineral makeup out there. Some are super-hippie-crunchy-pure and some are fake. I haven't tried any of those. I just know Bare Escentuals. Typical. The department store brand. I'm so bourgeois.

Thus ends my third NaBloPoMo. Now I shall go celebrate my success with a martini with blue cheese stuffed olives. Unless I go pomegranate - in which case, really no olives.