A year and a half!

Since my last post! I don't even know where to begin.

I saw rutting elk in the Redwoods, and mountain biked for the first time in Moab, Ate oysters on Bainbridge Island, saw whales in California near the wreck of the Brother Johnathan, and ate lumpia at the Eval Keneval festival in Butte Montana.

And right now I am watching "Conceiving Ada" with the beautiful Tilda Swinton: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118882/

...And eating "laceys cookies" I picked up at Trader Joes, dark chocolate and almond. Dark chocolate sometimes keeps me awake, but am getting sleepy and tired from the long drive from bend and the sunburn earned while playing:

"The Orvis Casting Course at the Old Mill is the only 18-hole golf-style casting course of its kind in North America. It was designed for fun, education, and as an opportunity to practice essential casting skills before going fishing or during the off-season. The course is free and open to the public. It was developed in partnership with The Old Mill District.
Each station is named after a given fishing situation exemplifying its unique challenges; some will require roll casts, some distance, all require a level of accuracy and all provide fun and improve your casting. Users can keep track of their scores on scorecards distributed at the store. Best scores will be showcased on a plaque in the entrance of the store."

From the web site: Orvis

I chose to not keep track of my points after the first few holes, but plan on returning and kicking some Orvis Course ass.

but now it is movie and nap time.

Pink dog.

oh but it's true.

My dog is pink and says "I love you".

That dog from Idaho..

Azalea's first trip to the beach.

santa!

I'm sorry lu.

I just could not keep you safe. I wish I could have a snuggle just one more time. My perfect puppy, my baby dragon, you are missed and it's only been 26 hours since I lost you.

mexico..

he lives..

bean soup and madeleines.

I had a hard day yesterday, a bit of comfort was needed..

bean soup, using the hamhock from easter, corn meal-parmesan muffs and madeleines.

Maddies seem to be the yummiest thing ever.

Hope the p's like the soup, I made a ton..

Yesterday and today

Following up a blind call ad in craig's list I found myself to a "hair show model call" at a downtown salon early yesterday morning. When i say early I mean noon. I was the third or fourth girl there as well as a boy who came with his girlfriend. They let the reception room fill up and circulated a names and number sheet.

a hotty stylist by the name of Dimitrios carefully chatted us up about our expectations and chemical treatments and what we didn't want to happen. Me with my short hair and blondness already going on, I think he thought it would be best for me to go a bit darker but he seemed to respect all the trouble I went through to get blond and let me stay so.

There were a few discrete cullings, the "we will call you if we need you" mostly of girls with really black hair and issues with changes. Eventually they had us sign us model releases and brought up in the back area, where the fun really began.

sometime around two I was placed in a chair and they began my color process, first conditioner to protect the damaged hair I guess I have growing on the back of my head, and then more strange alchemy. I lost count of how many times they carefully perfected the color I ended up with, and I had to promise to avoid the chlorinated water in mexico. For which I will do gladly since we are only a few feet from the ocean.

They put me in a dress that looked like squished bugs barfing rainbow. Pretty sure it looked better in person. I couldn't decide if I liked it or not but they seemed to love it and who was I to argue. I think I look good in a hoodie.

Unfortunately I got a ticket for staying after in the parking lot, but the salon said they would take care of it. I was out the door sometime around 6, in time to make it to Jello's for dinner.

We had to be back the next day at the dreadfully early hour of ten, where I spent the next 4 hours reading and trying to get comfortable in one of the few padded chairs they had in the reception area.

Ken Kesey's "Deamon Box" is not the most uplifting nor happy group of stories but it's what I brought along. It was a bit of interesting contrast reading about kesey's exploits on an oregon commune/farm, while I watched the transformation of a dozen or so beautiful people. Pill popping fatties, dead fauns, mean dogs, hippie hanger-on-ers and kids billy and other wise. That whole cycle of life thing that makes me happy I only grow tomatoes and have a Ludog

They perfected the color on a few of the girls, and started cutting everyone else's hair. A few girls dropped a few inches and others dropped a few feet of hair.

Two stylist meticulously wound hair and flat ironed hair for what seemed like and actually was hours. I hit the chair sometime after one and the HOTTEST boy cut my hair, it's not often they make me feel stupid or at a loss for words, but this Ahn did. what do you say to a hotty who just got back from a photo shoot with cosmo italia?

sometime around two they herded us over to the crystal ball room where we had a run through and finished up with makeup.

and then, after franticly finishing hair, makeup and wardrobe, we were on stage, where we did our walk, and the turns. I as per the usually was last in my group and didn't really have time to set my make up. My whole time we had on stage, I sniffled and felt like I was looking awfully weepy I felt a bit better that it was another girl who could not take it and walked off stage, she looked super hot tho, with huge dark brown soup can curls and super perfect bangs..

I had a cocktail waiting for the rest of the gang to finish up, and then the finale, a simple one really, but it worked out well and I did get the cutest hair cut ever.

may day

The sky over Sake One:

the oyster with the cobra head thing:

David kissing a deep fried fish skeleton with a mouth full of mackerel:

I shucked three hundred and sixty oysters today in sake land. Did the oyster up for the sakeness and then went the syun for snackies. They don't have the meat in a box anymore. I do heart me some fatty tuna. I wonder if the price will drop when people stop eating it because the mercury levels. Fish bones are good.

one day with mom

I went skating with my best friend today..

she sure is super.

pizza..

for the dinner..

it's been forever..

I have been distracted by the most odd ball stuff and it's back on the ol' pony.

I made Big Daddy Ryan's Ham yesterday. The boys have plowed through most of it as it was absolutely perfect. Tender, moist, sure it's now in pig heaven, with

little angel wings, and a solid gold pig halo.

Good pig.

for some reason the machine wants the picture sideways, wild!

Oyster quotes

“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.”
Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

"I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead - not sick, not wounded - dead."
Woody Allen


"I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. . . . I do not weep at the world -- I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife. "
Zora Neale Hurston

“It's a wery remarkable circumstance, sir," said Sam, "that poverty and oysters always seem to go together."
Charles Dickens
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club

"If you don’t love life you can’t enjoy an oyster; there is a shock of freshness to it and intimations of the ages of man, some piercing intuition of the sea and all its weeds and breezes"
Eleanor Clark


"The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster"
David Hume

“I will not be sworn but love may transform me to an oyster; but I'll take my oath on it, till he have made an oyster of me he shall never make me such a fool.”
William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing (Benedick at II, iii)




"Before I was born my mother was in great agony of spirit and in a tragic situation. She could take no food except iced oysters and champagne. If people ask me when I began to dance, I reply, 'In my mother's womb, probably as a result of the oysters and champagne - the food of Aphrodite.'"
Isadora Duncan, American dancer (1878-1927)

"Then the worlds mine oyster, which I with sword shall open"
Old Willy

"We are bound to our bodies like an oyster to its shell"
Plato

“A loaf of bread, the Walrus said,
Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed--
Now if you're ready, Oysters, dear,
We can begin to feed!”
Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) (1832-1898)
Alice Through the Looking-Glass

"Oysters are the most tender and delicate of all seafoods; The stay in bed all day and night; They never work or take exercise, are stupendous drinkers, and wait for their meals to come to them"
Hector Bolitho

"I live absolutely like an oyster"
Gustave Flaubert

its not oyster but good:

"We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.
Anais Nin

Closing time..

The the north east corner outside my bar is often inhabited by a breed of human I call "crusty punks", or "gutter punks". Camo, dreads, facial tats, and pit bulls, these kids are the ones holding up "Why lie, I want a beer" signs. The dogs carry pack and look hungry and worried, while the kids jerk the choke chain for every lunge at freedom they make. Not one of these dogs have I ever seen was well behaved.

much less last night. Starting from about eight o'clock on I could hear some girl yelling and a dog barking . We also had one dog in a car in a yuppie car who sat there from four when I got there, with no visits from his owner. My bartender LOVES dogs, and to see one mistreated was driving her crazy. Eventually, the owner did show up, and I informed my coworker so she could cease her worrying. of course she had to go talk to them. seconds later I see her chasing the unfixed, year old yellow lab down the street toward the crusties corner. I walk out to the curb, and the absolutely empty eyed woman who was owner of the dog stared at me and said "she chased him" I can hear snarling and yelling from around the corner and I go back in for my cell phone so I can call "clean and safe" and have them remove the nutty kids, but by coworker quickly comes around the corner dragging the dog and looking more than a little distraught.

the soulless thing who really needs to get her dog fixed had not even moved from beside her car. Had not even thought to get her dogs leash. She simply stood there while my compatriot drags her bouncing and untrained dog back. now, this bartender ain't no spring chicken, but her sprint after that dog was pretty amazing.

the dog returned I was told of one of the crusty kids dogs had made a lunge at him after he had gotten his muzzle off, and how the lady used to work across the street at the hotel.

Blah blah blah, why do these ass holes have dogs any way?

The yelling and the barking on the corner has just gotten louder and more aggressive and then the cops show up. This is nothing new in my hood. Drunks, homeless and trendy douche bags from the burbs hitting the hot spots for an appletini, all in one little area I like to call Shanghai Alley.

there are 5 cop cars and the yelling girl voice is not yelling "Take pictures, Take Pictures" but by the time I get to the back window the guy who was taking pictures is being put in a cop car. and there are two dread heads face down on the ground with hands zip tied behind them. the cops are searching them, and throwing their things up on the hood of the cop car. I was not impressed at to see one of Portland's finest throw one of the kids guitars up on the hood with way more force than necessary.

of course by this time they are trying to load the hippie dude into the car. He is being "limp" and the cops eventually drag him to the car. I can only imagine having to touch this person who most likely has not washed his hair in 6 months. Some how they get him. but almost immediately something is happening and they open up the car door only to let the limp hippie ooze out the side closes to the widow we were watching out of. after repeated threats of tazering and a few sharp knees to the back they get the man reloaded.

the girl is smart, she gets up, but still yelling "take pictures, this is illegal" and other things. but Portland's sit-lie makes it so. Yet people are up in arms that you can't sit and lie on the side walk and impede traffic. Are there no benches for them to sit on? Must they pee on my corner?

why do I want to feel bad for the crusties who get roughed up by the cops but just don't? That man could have just gotten in the car, but he made them drag him. He could have chosen to sit on a bench in a less lucrative spanging corner, but then they also could have stayed home in Omaha, gone to school and been a doctor.


but look! The big O wants em! gutter punks come home!

go kids, go!

yay!

Sake and Oysters..

I Shucked out at sake one this weekend. Some how I talked Sooz into backing me up, and learnign to shuck, and James into driving my many cooler-ed s-elf out to the Boonies/Cornelieus/Forest Grove/Hillsburough area to the only sake factory in Oregon. Thank Goth for map quest!

I brought along made a mignonett made with the the Momakowa sake silver, and one of the sake girls (I feel odd putting a name on here with out asking..) came up with a oyster dress of a pinch of grated daikon, a splash of ponzu and green onion sprinkle, super good and something I would love to serve up again

Here is what the sake goddess came up with for pairings:
Muroka Genshu Sake, kumamoto set with the sake mignonette
Tsubake Grand Shrine (wow, my favorite) with cocktail sauce on a Penn Cove Oyster
ruby Genshu sake with the pepple beach and the Ponzu
"G" Joy sake the cocktail sauce and the Kumies again
tokubetsu honjozo Sake the sake Mignonette and a Penn Cove oyster
Murai Nigori Genshu Sake, Ponzu delight and a chef's creek oyster

Then came the storm warning. It seems the peoples of forest grove are afraid of rain, but being under a bit of tent, busy and in a very calm corner of the garden I could truly experienced the terrior of my home.

We got lucky and just happened by the Good will bins on the way back to town. Sooz changed back into her real clothes and proceded to buy an old singer sewing machine that was missing its box. I found a sweater and a funny 80's jacket that had buttons and bling I wanted.

Tonight I drink unfiltered, and relax..

Yay, another wine fest!

Perhaps I am becoming jaded, but the wine fest seemed a bit of an over priced weekend drinking in McMinville but with worse food, crammed into three hours with a bus ride. (remind me to look into bus tours of Mc-wine-O-ville) The sister and friend bought up most of the prize winners right off, being as last year they waited to buy and missed out on a few prizes. Narry a half shell to be seen there was a definite lack of raw foods. I did see a bit of ceviche, and smoked shell fish meats on a stick, but for some reason the black and and shriveled little things just didn't seem all that appetizing. Mums and Migi both had a pan fried oyster thing and mom actually stood in a twenty minute line for some shrimp cheese toast thing. did meet up with the sake one kids,they had a coconut sake that out of sight. But and had to run off and find an ATM with the Pig. The oysters I made back at camp were perfect! I should have brought 5 dozen!

yay! piturz

Japanese Sushi Documentary!

Jerry allen..

Back in a strange corner of my neighborhood rose garden; behind the band stand and hidden by rhododendrons, is a sculpture by Jerry Allen called "Disk # 4". Under "park features" I found this blurb "Disc #4 a bronze sculpture by Jerry Allen was installed in 1979 along the west side of the park."


That's it. There are too many Jerry Allens on the net to find out anything about him..

Pink Pig Pinatta!

Marey HAD to have a pink pig party! So I had to make her one, but this one IS EVIL!

LOOOOOK OUT NATHAN!