keen on quinoa

Because I am a meatetarian, I don't waste a lot of my time eating wussy non-meats such as quinoa or carrots. However, that said, I'm exaggerating about the quinoa. And also the carrots.

Quinoa, people! You should eat it! You should be eating it right now! It doesn't matter what it is or how you pronounce it! It's the food of the gods!

Or anyway it was apparently the food of the ancient Incans who, although no longer with us, were (according the back of the quinoa box) a supremely healthy and vital people thanks primarily to all the protein they got from consuming quinoa, which Wikipedia enthusiastically (and so helpfully) assures us is a pseudocereal rather than a true cereal, all the time. Day and night. For snacks. On ice cream. Of course I'm paraphrasing, but still.

The Guatemalan and I, not being ancient Incans or knowing very much about them when it comes right down to it, had never had quinoa and were likely seriously protein-deficient up until last weekend when I went out on a limb and made the "Quinoa Cakes with Eggplant-Tomato Ragu and Smoked Mozzarella" from the February Gourmet, minus the Eggplant which is obviously a non-meat of some sort, albeit purple, and also the Smoked Mozzarella mainly for financial reasons. I also added another egg to the cakes, which upped the protein content of the meal thereby mmmhurble the proteases and mmurrrarh, you know, the polypeptides, as well as mumberha essential amino acids and whatnot. So what I mean to say is, we are healthy like the ancient Incans now. Maybe even moreso what with the extra egg and how we're still living and all.

But perhap the real moral of the story is: quinoa is awesome. Buy it. Figure out what it is. Learn how to pronounce it. Eat it. Fear it. Love it.

is it like this for everyone?

The things that have excited me the most today are as follows:

1. It is Potato Day in the cafeteria

2. I left half a thing of milk in the mini-fridge in the wet lab last night because I had to go force people to learn about longitudes and latitudes (and like it!) and tragically ran out of time for dinner. That means one-and-a-half bottles of milk for lunch today! To go with the Potato!

I would prefer if today had involved flying purple rabbits or something. Unexpected extra milk is nice, but oddly colored flying mammals are arguably much more interesting.

if we all got along

We figured out the other day that if everybody in the world was the same, we'd all be the same.

Wait, no, how'd that go? It was: If everybody got along with everybody else, we'd never have anything to talk about. We'd all be extremely nice, boring people who approve of each other's husbands and agree that we are all effective decision-makers. In lieu of exchanging good, juicy gossip about each other, we would sit around all day discussing furniture styles and debating the merits of vegetarian chili versus the obviously much more delicious meat chili.

Of course, the outcome of our debates wouldn't matter, as all the participants would eventually tinkle out peals of gentil laughter and exclaim, "Oh, lawd! But after all, everyone's perfectly entitled to his or her chili-related opinion and we will all just agree that we will no longer attempt to serve chili to each other because the whole topic simply causes too much tension! Ha ha ha!"

Then we will be back to furniture styles.

a model dog

Unexpected thing accomplished this weekend: made a new collar for Lila Bean. And now she's totally insufferable, running around thinking she's All That. The photo shoot didn't help, either.

Magical Rodeo Holiday - Day Two

Same agenda as Day One, only instead of organizing personal files, I will clean the casita until you could eat off the walls. Of course you won't be able to try this as I have avoided grocery shopping for some time now and it's not on the agenda for today either. Also, the "organizing drawers in AZ room" activity has been subtly shifted to "stripping weird yellow paint off drawers in AZ room".

I think you'll agree that my fun threshhold has decreased considerably as I have aged. Why party in Mexico when you can Endust your houseplants, that's what I always say.

brain storm, ice storm, whatever

Oh, shit! He wrote The Ice Storm. And Garden State! Hmmm...being a writer exposes one to genius. Must practice harder apparently.

Meanwhile, Christine and I did daiquiris and Coronas this evening on the patio while Lucho watched Harry Potter (the only child-friendly DVD I own) and had mac n' cheese in the AZ room. She's dropping Lucho off and picking me up in half-an-hour for white chocolate martinis and 9 o'clock apps across the street at Cuvee. Thank god for friends with kids and jobs who can still be convinced to go out on a Thursday!

Day One of Rodeo Holiday a success after all! I am leaving the building!

ride 'em rodeo days

Rejoice, for Rodeo Days are upon us!

That means a four-day weekend during which many things that are completely unrelated to the actual rodeo will be effortlessly accomplished, leaving hours upon hours of free time for play and daiquiris!

Activities on the list for Day One of Magical Rodeo Holiday:

- painting on of new toenail polish for first time since last June
- purchasing of Turbo Tax and subsequent quick, efficient, and timely completion of 2007 taxes
- bread-baking
- drinking of daiquiris on sunny patio
- reading
- completion of all writing homework assignments and also extra bonus writing for purpose of becoming famous writer sooner rather than later
- studying of Spanish until can understand telenovelas and find out what exactly Santiago's mother told him after her emotional conversation with the priest that filled him with such sexy, masculine rage
- organization of drawers in Arizona room
- organization of all personal files and trip to Kinko's for use of shredder to ensure that identity remains intact after massive file purge
- completion of Wingal's birthmas present and trip to Post Office (Thursday afternoon! Short Post Office lines! Yay!)
- taking of Lila to get updated shots (mother-daughter bonding experience)
- wonderful lazy trip to Bookmans to buy book by apparently famous author who is coming to visit writing class in two weeks as feel guilty for never actually having heard of author before last Monday
- bank visit for delinquent deposit of check from nana (bad, bad ungrateful granddaughter for waiting so long but for some reason never seem to have a car available during banking hours)

Activities Completed on Day One of Magical Rodeo Holiday by 4:00 p.m.:
- Organization of personal files (Yeehaw!)
- Development of raging sinus headache behind right eye socket
- Shower

rugs...rock

We came into some money this weekend.

The Tucson Gem and Mineral Show is in town - the Greatest Show on Earth - or at least they say it's the largest gem & mineral show in the country. Now before you shrug your shoulders and say Ehh, the Gem Show is like the biggest thing Tucson does all year. Bigger than the Friends of the Pima County Library Book Sale, even. It lasts for most of February and apparently brings more than 50,000 people from all over the world. From France even. To Tucson! For rocks!

The Gem Show also draws tons of vendors who inexplicably have nothing to do with the dealing of gems and minerals or even fossils at all. And in fact, we never actually look at the gems, minerals, rocks, or fossils, but man, we love the rest of it. Seriously, if it wasn't for the Gem Show, I'm pretty sure Raphael would have hauled us with all our possessions outta here years ago ("Whaddaya mean I can't buy decent African statues with rusty nails poking out of them and weird little bags of herbs or, well, who knows what, stuck in under the nails, that are supposedly used for protection among certain African tribes, in this crappy town?!?").

These people I'm talking about erect big white tent villages around the hotels that line the west side of I-10. They sell:

African art, Pakistani furniture, Indian textiles, Tibetan incense, Nepali jewelry, Afghani rugs. Gleaming statues of Buddha the size of baby elephants (very Buddhist). Stacks of metal bowls, mirrored bags, colored glass lanterns, beaded pouches, market baskets, wooden masks, statues, pots, padlocks, stirrups, fetishes, utensils, scarves, hats, musical instruments, and probably children.

And then there are the rug guys.

We love rugs, but, like many normal people, we can't afford them. Finally we got a great deal on a rug at the Gem Show two years ago from a rug guy named Daroud. We think his name is Daroud. But because we don't actually know how to spell Daroud, I will call him the Rug Man.

Anyway, Raphael's all like BFFs with the Rug Man by now and this year we got some more rugs from him. We feel like the Rug Man gave us a very good deal, and, as we got to talking, it turned out that we had two rugs at home that he was very interested in seeing.

Because who are we to argue with the Rug Man, we brought them over to the Show this weekend. One of them is apparently worth less than a no. 2 pencil with a broken tip to a person who has no access to a pencil sharpener. This one, Daroud kindly kept for a couple days to see if he could sell it for us. This afternoon, we will no doubt pick it up and it will be covered with epithets (Your rug SUCKS! and Your rug hates the American Family!) angrily scrawled by all the people who passed innocently by and were horrifyingly blinded by its staggeringly unappealing rug-ness.

The other rug is one that I found about three-and-a-half years ago while running one sunny morning in a back alley in Raphael's old neighborhood. It was rolled up sadly next to a garbage can but it looked to be in decent condition and didn't have an odor that I could detect. So I rescued it, we beat the hell out of it and sprayed it with a hose and left it hanging in the sun for like a week, and when we lugged it out to the Rug Man yesterday, he promptly offered us five hundred dollars for it.

We didn't take the money. First of all, one of the Rug Man's assistants assured us that we could get more than five hundred for it if we found the right person to buy it. Secondly, this Cinderella rug, our free alley-find-turned-most-expensive-item-in-the-house arouses in us feelings of inconvenient, weapy sentimentality. What we need here is five hundred dollars, not wussy emotion. Nevertheless, the Cinderella rug reminds us of our first couple of years together, when we trolled Tucson's alleys on warm weekend mornings looking for salvageable home furnishings and piles of wood in a cozy fit of icky couple-y nesting.

More than the others, it's our rug. And speaking of nesting, how appropriate that it's also apparently our nest egg.

one more try

It's Lila's opinion that we need to get Dog in Prog back in progress. So I just posted a picture of her begging for Cheerios over there and now she's unhappy with the way I captured her cheekbones. And also she's mad about the opposable thumbs business. Seriously, you cannot please them.

part II: yes yes YES!

If I'm going to run for president, I'm going to have create some kind of wishy-washy scandal about my personal life to generate interest in my campaign and keep me popular once I'm in White House filing my nails, or whatever else it is that I'll doing there.

Plus, we'll need something to talk about by then since I will have ended the Iraq war by shipping over huge crates of puppies and baby penguins to everybody (everybody!) and also cooked them dinner or gotten in with their grandmothers by taking out their garbage or painting their fence. No one can hate someone their grandma adores. At least you can't throw bombs at them.

I also pledge to not start any additional wars, once Iraq is resolved and once the giant evil robot truck rebellion has been put down. And that one's not technically going to be a war anyway; mainly we're just going to open up a can of whupass on them before they even clamber down fully sentient off the assembly line. It's not technically a war if it's an ambush.

Yessir, no wars on my watch. If there are disagreements or disputes over who gets to have nuclear capabilities or who had Pakistan first, we will all sit down and discuss them like adults over vodka lime freezes and calamari. Because I'm the leader of the free world, that's why.

I know this "peace" thing is sort of an unpopular view around here. I think it's safe to say that most of us would rather run somebody over than shake their hand when they cut us off in their tiny two-door wussy mama's-boy cars that are painted champagne. And anyway, how are we going to spend our time without any wars? How will we know what to talk to each other about over dinner and at staff meetings and during traffic? Dear god, how will our children learn to solve their problems?

Well, in my role as the YES party candidate of choice, I've been thinking about this for a good long time now (almost six minutes) and I think I have a pretty elegant solution:

Puppies.

And also how about this:

Try writing down a bunch of conversation starters on little pieces of paper, putting them in a hat, and teaching your children to turn their Ipods off in front of their elders and while driving and also while in class. Then force them to pull a scrap of paper from the hat and make some decent conversation that doesn't involve that open-mouthed yah they like to use for a change. There, do I sound like an 85-year-old enough for you? I would make an awesome president.

Okay, also how about this:

When I'm president, everyone will be required to have a fire-pit in their backyard. And you also have to have a backyard. Attached to a house. If you don't have these things, the government will provide them, but you must prove that you are maintaining your new property in a fashion that doesn't annoy your neighbors too much and not beating your wife or you will have to go live with your parents. Yah.

And Sundays will be Chill Out Day. For real. Every Sunday. All stores will be closed by presidential decree. You will have to buy your firewood on Saturday night or swipe part of your neighbor's tool shed which was totally going to fall down anyway. Remember to buy beer too, because no stores will be open on Sunday. Everyone will be at home with their families and/or friends sipping cervezas and basking in the warm glow of the neighbor's tool shed. Reconnecting. Rebuilding. Reinventing. The American Family. But for real this time. With me as president, you don't have to be married and straight to make a family. But you can be if you want to.

I have distracted myself with rhetoric for too long. It's time to get this party started. Now, as soon as I can get the fund-raising on the road, I'm on my way.

Vote yes to YES, the party of yes!

part I: yes, a vote for YES is a vote for yes

If I'm going to run for president, I'm going to need a party name and a campaign platform.

As for the party name, I've selected an acronym that I think will be highly effective in encouraging disenchanted voters to stand with me in support of positive change in our country. In the spirit of optimism, the acronym I've chosen is YES. I will be the YES party candidate.

YES to change! YES to money for everybody! YES I'm still working out what the letters that spell out YES actually stand for!

I haven't settled on a representative animal for our party but this is on my agenda. It is bulleted and underlined.

Like many presidential candidates, I have a few issues about which I'm particularly fond of discoursing, as frequently, loudly, and vaguely as possible especially over a couple of good chocolate martinis.

First of all, in regard to those giant trucks that everyone is buying up like Skittles at a Disney movie - these will be banned. Now I'm not sure what people are using these things for. Most of them are so shiny and clean and reflective that you can find out if that broccoli is still in your teeth when they pull up beside you at stoplights. So I can only assume that they are primarily being used to haul kids to the mall for a few well-spent hours at Abercrombie and maybe an Orange Julius or one of those giant soft pretzels that gushes out neon-orange cheese when you bite into it.

Therefore, as president, if I don't see a nick, a dent, a scratch, or, better yet, an actual tree sticking out of the back, your giant, non-work-related truck will not be allowed to continue to contribute to the hopeless congestion of our city streets and the pollution of our environment.

YES to no more consumer-owned giant polluting trucks clogging up our roads!

Beyond the sheer ridiculous wastefulness of these giant trucks, according to my intelligence we have other reasons to fear these vehicles. What I'm talking about here, if you haven't already sensed where this is going, is GIANT EVIL ROBOT TRUCKS.

I firmly believe that if we continue on the course we have set for ourselves as a nation of giant truck-consumers, we will wake up one terrible morning to find that our love for giant things has poisoned us and that we are all dead.

Or at least if I am not elected president, our future will surely be bleak. Here's what will probably happen:

Within the next few years, our giant trucks will continue to increase in size. Instead of driving them, you will be now able to program them with different routes and they will drive themselves while you shave or nap in the back or make gratuitous rude gestures at the smaller, slower, and more environmentally correct vehicles on the road far below.

Eventually you won't even need to be present in the vehicle to run these giant trucks. They will be able to pick up the groceries or the kids for you and run down cyclists entirely on their own. It will be super-awesome until, one day, their programming runs amuck and they screech out of control and get up on their back tires and start to smash buildings in the downtown and chomp trees into mulch with their glittering front grilles. The police won't be able to stop them because they are built so goddamn Ford tough. The National Guard could probably destroy them with air strikes and tear gas if only they weren't spread so thin, facing giant truck uprisings throughout the country, because these trucks have also learned a primitive form of communication and by now have created a deadly nationwide web of giant truck anarchists. And they are killing everybody!


It's only a matter of time.

If I am elected president, I will consider it my responsibility - nay, my duty - to prepare a pre-emptive attack against these giant evil robot trucks of the future.

And YES, it will be totally awesome.

february

...then what's she been doing all this time?

The February issue of Martha Stewart is apparently a "Special How-To Issue."

Pause.

"Special."

"How-to."

"Issue."

Pause.

I guess in March, she's just going to leave us to muddle our own sloppy, pedestrian way through creating bejeweled kitty collars and cakes that look like Paris.