belated birthday celebration

Celebrating Sal's birthday w/dinner & a movie. Dinner @ Mextiza, where we've never had a bad meal & tonight didn't disappoint, either. Holy gods, the rotisserie chicken roasted in red corn, gaujillo peppers, & avocado leaves is worth selling your soul for. Also, one of the perks of being married to a chef is when a former student happens to be working the line & sends out a complimentary appetizer made just for you. #livinthehighlife

Heart o' Gold

Sal cut this pretty bouquet for me from one of our rose bushes. This variety is called "Heart o' Gold", with enormous blooms and a divine scent.

Friday night in the 'hood

It's a rare Friday date night & a terrific, warm evening with the whole neighborhood out to enjoy this eve of the St. John's Parade & Bizarre (yes, Bizarre). Just had a lovely dinner @ Thai Cottage & now waiting in line for the entertainment portion of the evening. Afterward will be a late night gelato from the shop next door before the pleasant walk home. Have I mentioned lately how much we love where we live?

doubting your committment to sparkle motion

I am not a coffee drinker. My husband, the poor dear, is a connoisseur of the stuff and living in the The Coffee Bean House of Worship (aka Portland, Oregon, or the Pacific Northwest if you want to mollify Seattle) means that he essentially lives in Nirvana, Shangri-La, Eden, and Valhalla all at once. Which also means that I, the non-coffee drinker, spend a lot of time in coffee houses, bakeries, cafes, and bistros.

The good news is that these places all recognize the non-coffee drinker, offering alternatives of chai, tea, and hot chocolate.  Some even offer a variety of each of those things! Which means I, too, can enjoy the experience of reading a book or surfing the 'net whilst sipping from my goodwill mug in some esoteric little place with paintings of radiators and bird feathers by local artists decorating the walls and a mix of indie, rap, and 80s pop (played ironically, natch) in the background.

I order the hot chocolate*. I love tea and chai, but I almost always order the hot chocolate. With whipped cream. And a pastry on the side. It's the small luxuries in life.... And after countless cups of hot chocolate in a countless number of aforementioned coffee houses, bakeries, cafes, and bistros, I have learned that coffee places cannot make hot chocolate for shit.

*(Yes, yes, I know. It's not hot chocolate, it's hot cocoa. Hot chocolate is actual melted chocolate, generally served in a demitasse cup because no one could possibly drink 8 oz. of it at a sitting. I have enjoyed the ecstasy of actual hot chocolate -- drinking chocolate -- and I agree that the distinction is important. But I have grown up saying "hot chocolate" not "hot cocoa" in the same way I have grown up saying "pop" not "soda" and these language differences are a signifier of regional nuances and cultural variations make us a tapestry yada yada and some things you just can't beat out of a person.)

I'm pretty sure that 90% of the coffee people who put hot chocolate on their menus have never actually tasted the hot chocolate they serve, and they universally labor under the delusion that a squirt of chocolate syrup in a mug of warm milk, stirred until it's no longer white, is all that's needed to call it hot chocolate. I get that coffee people do not deign to sully their palates with the plebeian tastes of the great unwashed. Nonetheless, it seems sensical to taste the items you're selling. If for some reason you cannot, then perhaps it should not appear on your menu. I have been tempted on many occasions to march back to the counter with my mug, hand it back to the barrista, and say, "I ordered hot chocolate. This, sir, is tinted milk."

I am utterly baffled by the dearth of a decent cup of hot chocolate in this town. With only a handful of exceptions, every hot chocolate I have ordered has been an exercise in disappointment variance. You would think, in the gastronomical mecca that this city has become famous as, in which we have elevated the donut to a performance art, beer to an elixir of the gods, and bacon to a freaking staple, that we might have mastered the simple combination of chocolate and milk. I'm frankly surprised that we don't see the same experimentation with hot chocolate that we see with waffles, ice cream, and potatoes, but I would just settle for mastery of the basics.

So to the coffee joints of this city that I adore, a simple request: please, learn to make hot chocolate. Taste what you're selling -- you don't have to be a fan of hot chocolate to know that what you're serving isn't cutting it. It doesn't have to have the consistency of sludge to be considered chocolatey enough. "Pale brown" is not a signifier that you're done. Topping with a big dollop of whipped cream does not transform a crappy mug of hot chocolate into a gourmet treat. And the bitterness of straight unsweetened chocolate and no sugar whatsoever may please your coffee-conditioned taste buds, but for a non-coffee drinker, it just makes me hate you.

official memos

Dear January,

You are officially fired from 2013. Please collect your things and turn in your keys, HR will have your final paycheck.

Me

Dear 2013,

You have not gotten off to a good start with me. As you'll recall, I had some reservations about you before you even started, so it's in your best interest to try to gain my favor. You don't want to follow in 2012's footsteps -- that path doesn't end well for anyone. So step up your game, 2013, and consider yourself on notice.

Me

gollum stole the show, as expected

thorin and thranduil doing a kegstand, by the inimitable and brilliant gingerhazeBecause several people have asked me about The Hobbit, and I'd intended to post this last month....

We actually saw the movie at a midnight showing on opening night...? day?...whatever, it was a Thursday at midnight. Not as the obsessive fans we were for LOTR, purchasing our tickets well ahead, leaving work early, and standing in line for hours, but just because it worked out. We did not even trek to a technologically advanced theater with the best sound system and reclining seats. Our trek involved only the four block walk from our house to our little neighborhood theater about 30 minutes before the movie started. But more about that in a minute.

See, I never felt about The Hobbit the way I did LOTR, which is kind of odd since it was my gateway to the world I fell in love with. I loved The Hobbit in the same way I loved The Chronicles of Narnia and The Chronicles of Prydain*, as wonderfully immersive and thrilling adventures that satiated my hungry imagination. But even at that age, I understood the fundamental difference between The Hobbit and what came after, the difference in tone and scope and magnitude, and that deep, deep mythology of LOTR satisfied me in a way that The Hobbit did not.

[*Although in truth, Prydain was elevated even amongst these, and was as formative to my childhood as LOTR, A Little Princess, Ramona Quimby, and To Kill A Mockingbird. Prydain was what developed my taste for the tragic with the triumphant, the flawed characters who start as endearing dreamers and end with a hard-won and tattered nobility.]

Which is to say that I was looking forward to the movie, but not with anywhere near the anticipation that I had for LOTR. We weren't even planning to see it until sometime the first weekend, but I'd noticed on the neighborhood theater billboard earlier that week that they were advertising a midnight showing and thought hey, that might be fun. We love our neighborhood theater, and it just seemed the perfect way to enjoy the movie.

Of course, our neighborhood is comprised of many types of very Portlandesque Portlanders, including a large representation from hippie to hipster, and that alone was guaranteed to make the whole experience even more entertaining. The wonderful thing about the neighborhood theater is that it's this great old theater that's been restored, but not by people who were slavishly devoted to the architecture and intent on turning it into a monument to some golden era. The place looks fixed up, but fixed up on a budget, and it still has some of its shabby charm and juuuust a touch of funky aesthetic to give it its own character and sense of home. Which is characteristic of our neighborhood in general, but I've already digressed enough.

Anyway! As we settled into our seats and watched the place fill up around us, it became clear that the hipster contingent of the geek crowd was going to comprise the majority of the audience. Which became an anthropological exercise of its own, since I'm far more versed in the culture and traditions of the full-blown nerd subset of fandom, and there are definite differences between the two. The nerdy part of fandom is more likely to dress in costume, for instance, and argue the lineage of Numenor, while the hipster sect will top each other with how early they were into LOTR before it was cool. But, you know, geeks are geeks in all our different flavors, and we share more in common than we do with the general population. Like showing up at midnight for a movie about a hobbit who lived in a hole.

If it seems like I have a whole lot to say about the experience of the movie rather than the movie itself, that's true. The movie itself was fun and silly and enjoyable. It captured the tone of the book well (i.e., that the book was a children's story, and had an entirely different focus than the later books). Middle-Earth was as lovely and magical as ever, and I would've seen the movie for that alone. Martin Freeman made Bilbo relatable and likeable. Thorin was appropriately driven by duty, and depicted with far more gravitas than I think every came across in the book, no doubt to serve the need for an Aragorn-like hero. Also, LOL Thranduil and your haughty disdain for all things dwarf.

Like everyone else, I wondered how the movie would fare by being stretched into one of three, a ridiculously transparent money-making scheme that I worried would ruin what could be a good movie (or movie and sequel at most) with a bunch of filler. As expected, the filler came from other Tolkien works, giving backstory that happened off-screen in the book, but I thnk it was generally handled okay.  The little detour with Radagast, for instance, was fun and set the stage nicely for "The Necromancer" and of course the appearance of the Witch-King of Angmar and the infamous Morgul Blade was a nice bit of foreshadowing. (Although I was disappointed by the characterization of Radagast, as I always thought him more akin to St. Francis of Assisi than Dr. Dolittle.)  That said, three movies is still going to be much more than necessary, and just makes me wish for more LOTR than more Hobbit.

Still, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the experience we had in seeing the movie, and I'm glad we didn't go to the lengths we went for LOTR. I didn't have my socks blown off, but I didn't expect them to be.

say hello, wave goodbye

Goodbye, 2012. You weren't my worst year ever, but I'm not sorry to see you go. You weren't that deadbeat 2008 crashing on my couch and playing Halo all day in your underwear, but you didn't do much to distinguish yourself, either. Not that you all have to be like 2006 and 2007 and being a mixed bag isn't necessarily a strike against you. But you started out a better friend than you ended up being and the more I got to know you, the less I liked you. Plus, you were kind of bitchy-nice. At least 2009 had the decency to just punch me right in the face instead of this passive-aggressive bullshit.

As for you, 2013, your reputation precedes you and it is not reassuring. Turmoil, disruption, chaos...those are generally the characteristics of a toxic personality that I could not wait to be rid of. But maybe all those rumors about you are mistaken. I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, but don't push me, 2013. Ask 2003 and 2004 what happened when they ganged up on me. If you can find them.

Of course, you're bringing me the big four-oh right off the bat. That's a gift I have mixed feelings about, though not for the reasons you might assume. But I'll keep an open mind and see what you bring me. You might be one of those challenging friends that's hard to get to know, but one worth having just the same.

saturday in the hood

Dinner & a movie @ St. John's Pub w/my sweetie. Life is good.

smeagol is freeeee!

So my hatewatch of the Twilight franchise is officially over and I no longer have to march in the Zombie Shame Parade. When the credits were mostly done, ProcrastiGirl and I turned to each other and said, "Well, we survived it!", then broke down in giggles. There may have been a tinge of hysteria.

This last one was definitely better than the others, in much the same way the first circle of hell is better than the seventh. Although I admit I have a bit of affection for the first movie, just for its endearingly earnest awfulness and for all the hilarity that ensued when ProcrastiGirl first realized that the sparklepires don't have fangs. I seriously haven't laughed like that during a movie in a long time.

The main reason this one was better is because for about 10 or 15 minutes near the end, the movie showed the possibility of what this story could've been, as if the screenwriter snuck in a great big FU as a major plot twist. Before the reveal of the twist, I was suddenly all, "WHAT WHAT WHAAAAAAT THIS IS THE GREATEST THING THAT COULD HAVE POSSIBILY HAPPENED IF THIS IS REAL I AM GOING TO OWN THIS MOVIE AND JUST PLAY THIS PART OVER AND OVER AND OVER."

And then there was the reveal of the twist and I was suddenly ::sadface:: because seriously, that brief glimpse of kickassery made me long to live in the alternate universe where that's how the Twilight saga really ended. (Although let's be honest: in said alternate universe, Edward would've gotten the beatdown for being an abusive hosebag and Jacob would've gotten kicked in the nutsack when he assaulted Bella and Bella would've realized that they were creepers who didn't deserve the time of day, then focused on her studies and gone off to college and gotten a degree in literature and her happy ending would be teaching classic romances from a feminist perspective by day and staking vampires by night. In that alternate universe? I would've read the shit out of the Twilight books.)

breathing a sigh of relief

includes the simplest, humblest annotation: "thank you"

So a week ago today, we breathed a sigh of relief that the crazies had not successfully taken over the asylum.

Which isn't to say that things are all perfect now. It is, after all, still an asylum.

But things are better than they were, and there's hope that things will continue to get better. Maybe not in all the ways we want, nor as quickly as we want. But considering the alternative? That was very, very bad for anyone who wasn't a rich, white, Christian American man?

Yes, things are better.

Thank you, Mr. President.

lunch, deli club:

• imitation crab
• molded egg
• green beans
• peas & carrots
• Starkrimson pear with cashews for gap fillers

your perfect chaos is a perfect fit

Today is a post of odds and ends, wee tales of empowerment, quirkiness, and adorableness. Also, food.

A Tale In Which Our Heroine Gets A Sign From the Universe. Literally.

On the way to the store a few weeks ago, there was a handmade sign stapled to a lightpole saying "Go Brittney Go!" An unexpected exhortation to hurry, hurry to the store? Words of encouragement for braving the hordes in the produce section when I got there?

No, just a remnant from the Portland Marathon a few days before (the route brings participants across the bridge and down Willamette, which is the street I was on), one of many homemade signs of cheer and support along the route. This one was on neon pink posterboard and featured stars and glitter.

A little further on, another sign: "Brittney You Go Girl!" I grinned and said to myself, "Yes, Brittney, you go girl!" And then after that, "YOU ROCK BRITTNEY GO GO GO!" I nodded and pumped my fist a little, "Yes, Brittney, you do rock! Go, go, go!"

It was the most empowering trip to the grocery store I've ever had.

A Tale of What Makes This City Uniquely Fabulous

On the way home from that same trip to the store, I saw what would've been the most awesome thing that day, if I hadn't already taken the grocery store errand of champions just before.

In the bike lane on the opposite side of the street, a cyclist caught my attention from a few blocks away, which is saying something, since cyclists are ubiquitous in this city of that's a haven for bike lovers. It wasn't that he was an older man, nor that he was riding an older-style bike that forced him to sit more upright, nor even that he was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt instead of sporting the hipster-biker and/or Serious Biking Enthusiast gear that's more common. No, it wasn't any of those things, because you get used to seeing all types when bikes make up as much traffic as cars do.

What caught my eye was the white fur stole wrapped around the man's neck and shoulders. I kept staring as I got closer, trying to puzzle out this unusual fashion choice. Was it for warmth? It was a gorgeous 70 degree autumn day, so that seemed unlikely. And fur-anything is a rare sight here, the headquarters of Liberal and Vegan and Environmentally And Socially Conscious.

It wasn't until I passed him that I finally realized that it wasn't a fur at all.

It was his beard.

Parted in the middle and thrown over each shoulder.

I wish every trip to the grocery store was that awesome.

A Tale of What's Red and Black and Adorable All Over

Sister reported the following conversation between her and the Fabulous Miss M regarding favorite colors:

Miss M: And Aunt Bitty's favorite color is purple, like me!

Sister: Yes, and yellow.

Miss M: Mommy, what's Uncle Sal's favorite color?

Sister: I think he likes black. And red.

(I was impressed that she remembered that, by the way.)

Miss M: Uncle Sal is a Ladybug Man!

(And now you know why we spoil her rotten. When you're that adorable, it's a requirement.)

A Tale of Bento Catch Up

But not bento ketchup. Although that would be rad.

Super behind on posting bento pics, but there were too many good ones not to feature them here, and also, NEW BENTO BOX WOOT WOOT! In my search for non-plastic boxes, I've finally added a glasslock box called a Wean Green, which is a pyrex type of glass with a locking plastic sealed lid. This one is square and holds 490 mL, so it's a good in-between size with a nice depth. (For the locals: New Seasons sells them alongside the Lunchbots.)

10/15/12 lunch -- Ms. Bento

• chicken noodle soup made by Chef Sal
• carrot sticks
• green beans
• Cox's Orange Pippin apple with cashews as gap fillers
• chocolate pudding

10/16/12 breakfast -- pink WeanGreen

• molded egg
• cashews
• Honeycrisp apple
• cheese cubes

10/16/12 lunch -- bento colors purple

• King David apple with cashews as gap fillers
• chicken teriyaki meatballs
• steamed broccoli
• carrot sticks with honey peanut butter for dipping

10/18/12 lunch -- pink Natural Lunch

• chicken teriyaki meatballs
• steamed carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower
• molded egg half
• Anjou pear

10/22/12 lunch -- french bistro

• crab
• peas and carrots
• King David apple with cashews as gap fillers

title from "Get On the Road" by Tired Pony

feh

I have the crud and want to do nothing more than lay in bed and watch movies. It started with a scratchy throat Tuesday night that hasn't gone away, then achiness and stuffiness Wednesday night, then congestion yesterday, and by last night, was a full-blown cold.

It's supposed to be beautiful and warm this weekend, when I could be doing any number of fun and glorious things. But I won't be doing fun and glorious things, I will be dealing with the crud, holing up like a wounded animal and subsisting on soup and juice and NyQuil.

Feh. Feh, I say.

yesterday's lunch, Paris slimline

• chicken teriyaki meatballs
• steamed broccoli
• carrot sticks
• cucumber slices
• cashews and dried cherries

yesterday's snack, cute animals sidecar

• hard boiled egg
• carrot sticks
• almond butter for dipping

in which we try to save our souls with a good deed

As of approximately 10 PM Saturday night, I'm pretty sure that Sal, Sister, Guy, and I are all going to hell.

We spent four hours playing Cards Against Humanity* (link may be NSFW) and laughed so hard that our faces hurt, our ribs ached, and there were multiple near-choking incidents. This game is seriously demented and wickedly awesome and so very, very wrong. Like, you-need-to-take-a-Silkwood-shower-afterward wrong. We realized within the first hour that A) there's no one else we could play this game with, and B) it will feature regularly in Hall-Smiley family get-togethers.

*(If you haven't heard about it, it's basically Apples-to-Apples, if it had been created by an unemployed alcoholic uncle with a penchant for raunchy, politically incorrect jokes. Apples-to-Apples wishes it were this much fun.)

Aside from playing horrifyingly inappropriate and evil card games until the wee hours of the morning, we also took the Fabulous Miss M to her first-ever movie at a theater. I'd originally wanted to take her in June so her first theater movie would be Brave, but after seeing it, worried it might be a little too intense and scary for her, especially for a first-time theater experience. Luckily, Finding Nemo was just re-released in theaters, which she's seen dozens of times on DVD so I thought that would be perfect since the whole theater-going experience was going to be pretty overwhelming on its own.

We got popcorn with extra butter and introduced her to Reese's Pieces and plenty of sugary drink to wash it all down, because hello, Aunt Bitty and Uncle Sal are the awesomest. (You're welcome, Sister.) She sat wide-eyed from start to finish, enthralled by the huge screen and stereo sound and trailers for movies that aren't even out yet.

So we had a ridiculously fun time and Sister and Guy got a couple of hours of free time. Which would ordinarily earn a nice bit of good karma. I'm afraid, however, that after Saturday night, our karmic debt looks like the Greek government's balance sheet.

lunch, blue bunny & moons

• stir fry (chicken, onion, garlic, leek, rainbow chard, baby bok choi, orange sweet pepper, fennel, broccoli, corn, secret sauce) with sesame seeds for garnish
• jasmine rice with carrot hearts for garnish
• Bartlett pear half and cashews
• dried cherries

ace of cakes

So...this is a thing that happened today. Sal said, "Yeah, I thought we were doing serious faces...".

(Duff is here for Feast Portland this weekend and needed a kitchen for prepping a few things. Of course he came to OCI, because OCI is home of the Kitchen Ninja. I MEAN REALLY DUH.)

give us this day, our daily bread

We returned Sunday from a 4 day trip to northern Washington, where Sal attended a work-related conference and I tagged along, because hey, why not. More specificially, he attended Kneading Conference West, the purpose of which is "to inspire and educate novice and professional bakers, grain growers, millers, wheat breeders, wood-fired oven enthusiasts, food entrepreneurs, food writers, and anyone who loves to eat hand-crafted breads."

So basically, three straight days of talking about bread, literally morning, noon, and night, and Sal could not have been happier if he had been baked right into a loaf of artisan bread. He was so gleeful at the end of every day that he probably could've powered the entire city of Las Vegas with his excitement. And now there is talk of milling our own flour and (finally) building that earth oven we've been talking about for years.

While he spent his days at the conference, I spent my days writing and exploring the area around Mount Vernon. The last time we were there was with the Albino and Mr. T for the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, (hence the picture up top). Even without the fields of rainbow flowers, the area is actually quite lovely and the little downtown area is also very charming. On one of my driveabouts, I ended at Bay View State Park, and another, discovered a really great park on a hillside overlooking the valley and enjoyed a wee picnic of cheeses and crackers while reading a book. Not quite the excitement of a conference about bread and baking, perhaps, but a lovely few days of R&R. I can do with a little less excitement at the moment, anyway.

Super behind on bento postings, but here are the last few. The rest are on the daily bento page, as always. (I just realized that I've had pretty much the same lunch for the last several meals. Hmmm, perhaps time to change things up.

9/6 lunch, Lunchbot Duo

• herb roasted turkey breast
• steamed broccoli
• Jazz apple slices
• cucumber slices
• carrot sticks
• strawberry
• sunflower seeds

9/6 snacks, Lunchbot Pico

• Jazz apple slices, cashews (morning snack)
• hardboiled egg, carrot sticks, cucumber slices (afternoon snack)

9/10 lunch, pink Natural Lunch

• herb roasted turkey breast
• steamed broccoli
• carrot sticks
• pear slices

9/18 lunch, origami squares

• herb roasted turkey breast
• steamed broccoli
• carrot sticks
• Honeycrisp apple slices
• dried cherries

there's a reason her secret service codename is renaissance

"If farmers and blacksmiths could win independence from an empire, if immigrants could leave behind everything they knew for a better life on our shores, if women could be dragged to jail for seeking the vote, if a generation could defeat a depression, and define greatness for all time, if a young preacher could lift us to the mountaintop with his righteous dream, and if proud Americans can be who they are and boldly stand at the altar with who they love… then surely… surely we can give everyone in this country a fair chance at that great American Dream."

-- Michelle Obama, speaking at the Democratic National Convention

MY HEART.

laptop recovery: boom roasted

I have officially survived Computer Apocalypse 2012. With aplomb, even. Hard drive successfully replaced and formatted? Check. All software, plug-ins, drivers, applications, and miscellaneous desirable (as opposed to undesirable) bells and whistles successfully installed and calibrated? Check. Over 67.5 GB of data successfully restored from the online backup? Check.

Laptop recovery: BOOM ROASTED.

And now my laptop is all shiny. It's like a little reward for all the sturm und drang of a computer meltdown. I am now in I Have My Shit Together mode, empowered to clean and reorganize and generally fix all the things. This will last approximately 2.5 weeks, and then I will be back to Have You Seen My Shit? I Think I Lost It Somewhere Near Albuquerque mode.

lunch, bento colors purple

• grilled Thai peanut chicken
• peas
• cucumbers
• carrots
• strawberries
• Honeycrisp apple

snacks, bento colors mini

• morning snack: Honeycrisp apple & cashews
• afternoon snack: hard boiled egg, cucumbers, carrots

the gerbils have gone on strike

<-- So that's pretty much been my life in the two weeks since I first started writing this post, except without the adorableness. The gerbils who make my computer go are way meaner and far less eager to help than kittens.

The good thing is that my problem (hard drive failure in my laptop) happened in slow motion, which gave me time while I waited for a new drive to get here to double and triple check my backups, make a list of programs I'd need to reinstall, copy critical files to a flash drive so I could use other computers (i.e., Sal's) while mine was down, and all the other things that make starting over much easier. I'm the most prepared I think I've ever been for an imminent hardware crash.

But oh, how much it sucks nonetheless. Even though I knew it was coming and had time to prepare, and have a second computer at my disposal and a smartphone to keep me connected to email, just the thought of the hours of reinstalling the OS and software, swapping out disks through endless reboots, the inevitable glitches and unexpected errors, etc. etc. etc. made my stomach churn, nevermind actually having to suffer through all that. Pile on the fact that it requires hours I really, really don't have right now, that I was up against a deadline for getting everything up and running again due to work and my website business, and most importantly, my book was being threatened in whatever minuscule way...well, let's just say I have morphed into a female Bruce Banner, on the verge of hulking out at any moment.

When you're tech savvy, I think people assume that these kinds of things don't faze you. But I can tell you that when you're trying to resurrect what is essentially your day-to-day life in a fancy metal box and you're only a blue screen of death away from utter devastation, you're just as liable to commit ritual seppuku as a less tech savvy person. You'll probably just do it in a really geeky way.

Anyway, I'm still here, I've successfully avoided hulksmashing anything (yet), and I seem to be reaping the benefits of all that preparedness, since the transition has been relatively smooth thus far. (With the exception of about 30 heart-stopping minutes very late Monday night, when I thought I had accidentally overwritten my backup. Sal happened to call in the middle of my building freakout to tell me he was on his way home, and I'm pretty sure nothing I said was coherent, but I don't know for certain because I've blacked it all out.)

Since I had a post mostly written before my laptop started bidding adieu to this mortal coil, I'll just quote it below. More for me than for you, if only to remind myself that we had a life before the gerbils went on strike, and we will again soon. (Also, I won't try to post makeup listings of my bentos in that time, but you can see them all here.)

(post originally written on August 14th, 2012)

Sal did the Bridge Pedal Sunday, riding his bike on a route that crossed all 10 city bridges. It's about 35 miles altogether, plus the 18 miles he rode to and from the race start/finish. Whew! We met up for lunch and drinks when he was finished, which is proof that I'm way smarter, since I skipped right to the good part with none of that silly bike-riding nonsense.

Sunday was officially hot enough that we set up the bed on the back porch and have been sleeping out there since. It's supposed to be even hotter later this week, so we're going to be out there for a week or more. [ETA: And so we did, for a full week, and it was glorious.]

Getting to sleep outside is pretty much the only upside when it gets hot. It's like camping, sort of! We camped all the time when I was growing up -- the really real kind of camping, where you hike into remote areas and cook your food over a firepit you dug yourself and the nearest bathroom is a good 20 miles away -- and I miss that kind of summer getaway sometimes.

It always takes a couple of nights to get used to the change and remember the details of sleeping outside: the rustling of the raccoons on their nightly sojourn through the backyard, the scritchy screetchy sounds the possum family makes as they shuffle under the porch and around the side the house, the occasional mortar round sound of an apple falling onto the porch roof.

Or, I should say, it always takes me a couple of nights to get used to those details. Sal sleeps like a damn rock, and whether it's the creaking sound of a floorboard that may or may not be the footfall of an axe murderer, or the unidentified but very clear sound of something rustling about under the apple and maple trees where it's too dark to see, he sleeps blissfully on.

I've gotten used to the nighttime sounds of our neighborhood wildlife, and with the exception of the apples, no longer shoot bolt upright in bed every time there's a new sound in the dark outside our screened-in porch. In fact, I've even been able to enjoy my current reading material -- a book about the zombie apocalypse -- in this setting, read under the covers with a flashlight*. Without nightmares! I think I'm officially a Big Kid now.

*(I have read many a book with a flashlight, snugged down inside a sleeping bag out in the middle the damn wilderness, but it's been a long while. It's kind of made me all nostalgic. )

and only the stormy hearts know what it says

While the rest of the PNW was suffering its first hot temperatures of the summer this weekend, we were literally basking in the glory of a beautific summer day on the Oregon Coast.

The timing was strictly a stroke of luck. We scheduled this bonus weekend at the end of June, when the proprietors of the cabins we frequent offered us first dibs on a cancellation for this weekend. The perks of being a regular.

So instead of sweltering in 102 degree heat in our non-air conditioned house, we were stretched out on the sand on a perfectly perfect 80 degree day under ridiculous blue sky.

And we remembered the sunscreen! And the sunglasses! So we weren't burnt to human-shaped crisps! Nor were our eyeballs broiled in their sockets! Hurray for responsibility!

A tempered victory, though. We have a standing Oregon Coast Checklist to help us remember the things we need/want/might bring. It's rare that we bring most or even half of the items, but it's indispensable in helping us remember everything for each trip. In our haste to get out the door, I didn't bother pulling up the list. We've made this trip dozens of times, surely we'd remember what we needed. And we were traveling especially light this time. Most of the list wouldn't apply.

Oh, nay nay.

Throughout the weekend, one of us would suddenly name a thing we realized we'd forgotten, accompanied by a facepalm. "Camera!" "Chairs!" "Butter!" Whoops. Lesson learned: always leave a note check the list.

Sunday was nearly as hot in Portland as Saturday, but in Oceanside, we had fog and cloud cover so heavy it was as if the sky was only a hundred feet high. No wind, no sun, and just the right combination of cool and temperate. It was goddamn glorious. Sal and I did not a single damn thing all day except relax and read and nap.

An hour or so before sunset, we changed to warmer clothes, filled a small cooler with ingredients for a campfire meal (hot dogs, buns, marshmallows, carrot sticks, etc.), and claimed a spot on the beach for building a fire. This is a pretty regular thing on Oregon beaches, so it's easy to find a ring of rocks and remnants of a previous fire someone else built. The sophistication of the firepits will vary, but it's rare that you have to build one from scratch.

We managed to snag a good one, complete with two big driftwood logs for seating, and only had to build a second ring on top of the first to make it deeper. Our luck ended there, though. We'd bought a small bundle of wood (with the heat, the beach was crazy-crowded, which means there was not a stick of small driftwood to be found) but didn't realize until we were trying to get a fire going that it wasn't seasoned and there were no pieces that were really kindling-sized.

We'd almost burnt through all of our paper trying to get the fire going and were about to admit defeat when a guy came down the hillside, saw that our fire, you know, wasn't, and offered to bring some kindling from his van. WAY too good to be true, this guy. It could've been a candy-from-strangers situation, but he was just a nice guy with good timing doing a nice thing.

A really nice thing, actually, since he didn't actually have kindling in his van, he had wood in his van, which he then chopped into a big bundle of kindling and hauled back down the hillside to us. And single-handedly saved our much-anticipated beachside picnic in the process. Then politely refused any offer to share in our fire or food, just left with a handshake and a smile. Faith in humanity: restored.

So we enjoyed our cookout and our fire until well past dark, ocean rumbling nearby, fog bank keeping the air cool and still, the smell of woodsmoke bringing back too many memories to count.

title taken from "Young Sea" by Carl Sandburg, which contains one of my all-time favorite lines:  "I am the last word/ And I tell/ Where storms and stars come from."

this is like the great lentil miasma of aught three

You have to really enjoy drinking tea to order it in two pound batches. The school recently chose a new local organic tea supplier, and Sal had the opportunity to buy from their ginormous selection. The only catch was that they sell it in two pound batches, so whatever we picked had to be something we'd really want to drink. A lot.

Since Sal was opting for a black tea, I decided to choose an herbal. Apple-cinnamon tea sweetened with a bit of honey is one of my favoritest things in the fall and winter (second only to orange-spice tea), which means I go through it like crazy, so that seemed like the logical choice for ordering two pounds. While we waited for the order to arrive, I entertained lovely-cozy apple-cinnamon tinged fantasies of curling up in the library with a book, of our quiet Saturday mornings with the NPR lineup in the background and rainy gray outside the window, of day-long writing binges fueled soley by cup after cup of hot tea and a plate of something freshly baked by Sal.

Be careful what you wish for.

Because despite being double-bagged in heavyweight plastic, it turns out that two pounds of apple-cinnamon tea smells strong enough to give you a headache if you're within ten feet of it, and will probably knock you out cold after more than fifteen minutes of exposure. I had to shut it up in the kitchen cupboard before bed the night Sal brought it home to get a relief from the intensity.

Or so I thought. I woke up that morning -- UPSTAIRS AND ON THE OPPOSITE END OF THE HOUSE -- to that smell, and not in a good, "oh, what a lovely, cozy way to wake up" kind of way but more like a "ye gods and little fishes the smell is so strong that it's moved past any semblance of apple or cinnamon and moved into cologne of Hades territory". Down the stairs, the smell intensified. Open the door to the side of the house where the kitchen is, and it was like being punched in the face by a meth-addled Johnny Appleseed.

It was The Lentil Incident all over again.

When I got home from work that night, the smell had taken on a physical presence, infusing every room in the house. Opening all the windows couldn't air it out fast enough and the only way to get relief was to take the tea out of the cupboard (still in its double bags!) and set it out on the porch until we could transfer it to a more impenetrable container. Just the sight of the bag through the back door window gave me a headache.

The tea o'doom has since been divided amongst sturdy, sealed containers and no longer threatens nostrils within a one mile vicinty. Dividing it into smaller quanities seems to have cut its potency to more tolerable levels, eliciting something akin to the lovely-cozy apple-cinnamon fantasies I'd originally entertained. Cranked up to 11, but at least that's still within human survival limits.

The irony in all this? Sal's been so stuffed up with hayfever that he can't smell any of it.

lunch, Origami Squares

• teryaki chicken meatballs
• green beans and caramelized onions (both from the garden, woot woot!)
• cucumbers
• carrots
• cubed egg (as in, an egg molded into the shape of a cube, because my husband is delightful and sweet and got me an egg cuber for an anniversary present; he also got me "All the President's Men for an anniversary present, but that has nothing to do with bento, so)

lunch (last Thursday), Fit 'n Fresh

• red leaf lettuce green beans, sunflower seeds
• carrots, cucumbers, fresh peas
• tomatoes (from the garden!)
• boiled egg
• Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Bento: ranch dressing to top what became a hella big salad