Respect the Beer. Also: Little Disabilities, or, Thanks for the Chairs, Sharp Edge.

I haven't blogged much this past week -- I honestly haven't had a whole lot to say.  The brokeness keeps our adventuring reigned in, and it's hard to make blogging hay out of tidying up and making lunch.  I considered doing some current events blogging, but decided that I didn't want to subject my own blood pressure to it.  I've got lots of opinions about lots of things, but if I start ranting about shit like John Roberts giving, apparently, zero fucks about the legitimacy of the Supreme Court as an institution, I think it's just going to make me an angrier, unhappier person in general, and no one wants that, right?

Saturday's breakfast. Ground peanuts and fresh blueberries make PB&J a little more wholesome.

So as I said, it's mostly been banal stuff around here: cooking lots of meals.  Let me think, in the past week I made fresh pesto pasta, creamy swiss chard and pea pasta, green curry, massaman curry, several breakfasts and lunches ... tonight is roast chicken, since it's comparatively cool today, with a mess o' veggies on the side.  Tomorrow is Taco Tuseday at the Spiher Robinson hacienda, which vaguely excites me.

Sunday's breakfast. That's a Parma Sausage banger. And avocados were on sale at Whole Foods!

Two pleasantries popped up, both involving Friend Sarah.  On Wednesday night, I met she and Acquaintance Dayle at Sharp Edge Beer Emporium in Friendship for a few after-work beers.  (After work for Sarah, anyway.)  I've always been a big fan of Sharp Edge's afternoon happy hour -- half-off Belgian drafts from 4:30-6:30, Monday-Friday -- but it turns out that on Wednesday nights they offer half-off Craft drafts, which is good to know.  Sarah and Dayle and I gossiped and talked about ponies; it was nice.

Last night, we again met Sarah and also Friend Davin, this time at Beer Nutz Bottle Shoppe and Grille in Aspinwall, as Ted and I had a Groupon.  I didn't have to cook dinner!  Sunday nights at Beer Nuts they've got $3 local drafts, and I much enjoyed my Penndemonium.  I enjoyed my Turkey Devonshire as well.  I think Sidelines Bar and Grill, my favorite Allegheny River hamlet bar, has better food than Beer Nutz in general, but one place Beer Nutz beats Sidelines is on the French fries -- Beer Nutz has some damn good fries.  I think I had more grease last night for dinner than I've eaten in the two weeks previous, combined.  One effect of eating mostly at home is that we eat a lot more healthily, or at least, a lot more wholesomely.  I mean, is creamy swiss chard and pea pasta low fat/low cal?  Hardly.  But I don't actually consider a cup of half 'n' half and 1/3 cup of parmesan cheese to be particularly bad for (lactose-tolerant) humans, spread over three servings.  And there's about six cups of fresh vegetables involved, so nutrition seems pretty well addressed.  The thing is, after a long history of poor eating -- either poor in the sense of nutritionally unbalanced and downright unhealthy by almost any metric, or poor in the sense of fucked-up starvation dieting -- I don't think it's wise, for me, anyway, to worry about calories and carbs.  Rather, I try to eat as much locally produced food as possible, as little processed food as possible (or at least, as minimally processed food as possible), and a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains.  I try to take it easy on the white sugar and the deep fried and the cheese -- with much more success in the former two ventures than the latter.  Basically, if I made it from scratch and there's a lot of vegetables involved, I call it good eating.

Anyway.

Mmm.  Beer.

The one big event of the last several days was the Sharp Edge Great European Beer Festival.  Ted and I bought tickets to this way back in April, when they were a bargain-priced $40.  Held in the Sharp Edge's parking lot in Friendship, it's a nice set-up, similar to yet different from our earlier beer fest at Penn Brewing.  All of the beer is European rather than local, and much of it is Belgian, so almost everything is of very high quality and high alcohol content.  You get a guide to the beer and a little punch card at the beginning of the night, and each sample is punched out, so in theory you can only have one of each beer offered (though the pourers will sometimes fudge for you at the end of the evening).  There are probably in the neighborhood of 70 beers, so this isn't too much of a hardship.  One thing I liked a lot about Sharp Edge's beer fest was the availability of chairs right in the beer area (as opposed to up on a second level, far away from beer, as at the Penn festival).  My neuropathic leg does not like standing on concrete for three hours straight.  

Mmm.  Beer.

An aside, because I don't know if I've mentioned it here before: I have a bad back and a bad leg.  When I was 17, a herniated disk in my lower back contacted an important nerve locus that controlled a significant portion of the nerves in my left leg.  This was incredibly painful and also somewhat physically debilitating -- I could not stand up straight, and I walked with a limp.  My family physician at the time misdiagnosed my condition for several months, insisting that I was "too young" to have a severe back injury, and explicitly telling my mother that I was faking my complaints to avoid gym class.  We should have sued the living shit out of this woman.  Finally, my mother, who was inclined to trust the doctor, but who didn't believe I was lying either, insisted that something be done to take my complaints seriously -- this was after months of deterioration in my condition, to where I was bent over at the waist and in more or less constant pain.  So my GP reluctantly sent me to get an x-ray.  Later that day, she called my mother, very nervously, and told her that she had made me an emergency appointment at a neurologist, and to go that day.  After a myelogram, a spinal tap, a CT scan, and some other crap, including another painful month wasted on physical therapy while they tried to avoid surgery on my condition, my back was operated on, two of three herniated disks were corrected, and I was sent home to convalesce.

(Aside the second: my surgeon, although an apparently competent operator, was also a horrible dick.  He berated me and my mother for the fact that I was "unbelievably fat", even though, at the time, I was perhaps a size 16 on a broad 6'0" frame -- chubby but certainly not fat, despite what my [non-adult] bullies claimed.  When pressed, he would admit that my weight had nothing to do with my condition, which apparently was simple bad luck -- I was born, apparently, with a weak spine -- but then he'd go back to berating me.  Gee, I wonder why fat people don't go to the doctor for preventative and even urgent care, thus suffering graver and longer lasting injuries and illnesses -- which are then blamed on their fatness.  DO NOT GET ME STARTED.)

Anyway, five years later, when I was 22, one of the corrected disks reherniated.  From all I've heard, this, again, was simple bad luck.  There's about a one in ten chance that a corrected disk will reherniate, and one of mine did.  Unfortunately, whereas the only aftereffect of my first injury was occasional back pain, this herniation resulted in permanent nerve damage in my left leg.  I was given emergency surgery on my spine again, but now have uncorrectable numbness and weakness in my left leg, and a bit of a limp.

This is bothersome but not horrific.  I miss being able to wear high heels -- it's impossible for my weakened left ankle to balance in them now -- and I find that the limp tires me out sometimes: walking unevenly is more difficult than walking "normally".  I also sometimes get a lot of pain and sometimes increased numbness in the bad leg, particularly when I do shit like stand around on concrete for hours -- walking is actually easier on it than standing, for some reason.  And my balance is pretty poor on that leg -- no rocky uphill hikes for me.  (Luckily, as we all know, I'm not an outdoorsy type in the first place.)

My point in bringing this up is that, while I'm grateful to have the bodily integrity that I do, and am privileged to have a mostly healthy body, I also have a little disability, and it makes me aware in a way I never was before I was 22 about accommodations -- and specifically, the lack thereof -- for people with disabilities both little and large.  Sometimes a chair is a real godsend, and unfortunately, nondisabled folk, who, for instance, might be event organizers, sometimes just don't think of things like that, because they don't have to routinely in their own lives.  Sometimes the elevator being out, even for just a one-floor climb, is a real hardship; sometimes uneven ground will make it almost impossible for a person to enjoy an event, or even attend it.  And you can't always look at someone and know their level of physical ability: it's not like every disabled person is in a wheel chair or on an oxygen tank.

Anyway, thanks for the chairs, Sharp Edge.  

On the other hand, food was included in the ticket price at Penn's Microbrewer's Fest, while a piece of pizza cost $4 at Sharp Edge.  So, you know, there are cons as well as pros.

The beer schwag raffle.

Ted and I had a nice time, despite my encounters with the Beer Fest Noob Bitches.  This was a gaggle of girls seemingly in their mid-twenties, whom I at first thought were merely stupid, but then later discovered were obnoxious.  Look, if you don't know, here's how beer fests work: there are many tables behind which are the people with the beer.  You wait in a (usually) small line, get your beer sample, perhaps say a few words or ask a brief question of the brewer or distributor doing the pouring, and then move off -- 'cause, you know, it's a line.  Once you've obtained the thing you've been standing in line for, you move away, so the people behind you can also obtain the thing they've been standing in line for.  That's how lines work.

Except this gaggle of girls would get to the front of the line, get their beer samples, and then just ... camp out.  This, of course, blocks the people in line behind them from getting beer.  This, of course, makes them noob bitches.

After a while under the tent with them, though, I realized that they had strategery.  They weren't just camping in front of every line.  They were camping in front of the lines headed by good-looking (in a conventional sense) male beer pourers.  So they'd get their beer and then stand in front of the good-looking beer guy, giggling and squawking about how they've like, never had beer before, oh my God, this is really good, I like, think I'm getting tipsy.

Look.  Bitches.  Please.  I try not to be in the business of judging strangers, and I realize that being single is tough.  But at a certain point, if you can't respect the beer, and the sanctity of the beer fest, and the primacy of the beer as the focus of the beer fest, then you've gotta get the fuck out, because I don't fuck with girls like you, and I don't advise that others do, either.

The good news is, it was not any of these girls who won an awesome prize at the end of the night; it was me.

Sharp Edge does a raffle at their beer fest -- you put your name on your ticket stub and put it in a drawing for one of several prizes, the winners of which are drawn at the end of the night.  I put my stub in the box for a Baltika beach umbrella.  It had a base that you could fill with water for stability, and a sturdy-looking, large, collapsible umbrella that I could stand under and would shield two folding chairs from the sun.  At the end of the evening the first two people who's stubs were drawn for this umbrella didn't come forward to claim it -- mine was the third stub drawn.  Victory!  I am totes more fully prepared to drink outside now.  I want to go to the beach and bring my umbrella and sit in my folding chair and drink beer in the shade now -- this is a new goal of mine.

It's actually still in my dining room.

So anyway, that was the the past few days.  Today I've got to go to -- shudder -- Oakland, to Hillman Library to pick up a few books, and then it's time to hit the farmers' market.  I'm looking forward to Wednesday, when I'm going to get to attend a happy hour with Friend Lara, who will be here from out of town, and then Friday is payday, which is always a good day.  The downside of the week is that I've gotta read Foucault going on about prisons as unpaid research for the one new class I've been assigned to next semester.  Some of the readings seem like they'll be interesting.  Foucault is never interesting.  Blah.

We hadn't had a kitty picture in a while. Matilda always looks so stunned.

Skyler's tummy is a surprisingly common roadblock in my house.

Pasta Fest: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Dear Readers, yesterday I went to Pasta Fest.

Pasta Fest happens once a year for four weekdays at Casbah, which is a favorite happy hour site of mine (when I can afford things like happy hour).  Casbah is one of the upscale Big Burrito restaurants, and I was frankly shocked to discover that some people on Yelp are less than amazed by their quality and service, because 1) I consider myself an extremely exacting judge of restaurants, both in terms of food and service, and 2) every experience I've had at Casbah has been delightful.  I mean, as you'll see below, I can always find something to pick on, but I was particularly amazed that some Yelpers were less than satisfied with the service.  I have always, always had the absolute best service at Casbah.  (In fact, all of the Big Burrito restaurants, even the Mad Mexes, have good service in my experience, and it's much to the credit of the company.) Perhaps it helps to be a "regular" (during the school year, I'm usually there for wine over reading or quiz grading once a week), and perhaps it helps to frequent the bar -- Ted and I tend to be bar eaters -- but in any case, I love Casbah.  My mother is planning a birthday dinner for herself there next month, and I think I will finally give the restaurant a proper review then.  Until then, I just wanted to share with you my delight over Pasta Fest.

Pasta Fest is pretty self-explanatory: a special menu of small-serving pasta dishes.  A few of the pastas are on the regular menu, so I'd recommend avoiding those, as you can try them any time.  (If you're curious, the regular menu items offered in smaller portions for Pasta Fest are the Orecchiette, the Short Rib Ravioli, the Red Pepper Casereccia, the Veal Tortelloni, and the Ricotta Cavatelli, if memory serves.  I'm not saying these aren't very good -- especially the Casereccia and the Cavatelli -- but I'm saying that you can try these dishes at non-Pasta Fest times.)   Ted and I made our Pasta Fest visit coincide with happy hour, to save some cash: $6 wines and cocktails at the bar between 5:00 and 7:00.  We ended up going through three courses of pastas.  My glee knew no end.  Allow me to present you with our nommings.

I am a sucker for a good potato dumpling. Not to mention some tender lamb.

Ted's first selection was Potato Gnocchi with braised Elysian Fields lamb shoulder, rapini, cipollini onions, rosemary, and Piave cheese.  I believe this was also his favorite dish of the night.  The lamb was tender and delicious, as were the gnocchi, and everything was well balanced, though I thought that the lima beans -- yes, there were also lima beans, though they weren't mentioned in the menu description -- were a titch undercooked (also I've never been a huge fan of lima beans).  Overall, though, this was excellent.

Fine Dining in America is having a "Put an Egg On It" moment, and I don't mind a bit.

My first selection was Egg Tagliatelle with pancetta, wee little croutons, Appalachian cheese, spinach, fresh oregano, and, of course, a fried egg.  I absolutely loved this dish.  The richness of the egg yolk alongside the saltiness of the pancetta and the tangy, herbal freshness of the oregano leaves was a wonderful combination, and the tiny croutons added a crunch that kept the dish texturally interesting.

Strangely revelatory.

For our second round, Ted picked Sage Linguini with pork ragu, grilled scallions, Burrata cheese, orange sea salt, and extra virgin olive oil.  This dish had strengths and weaknesses.  The scallion bulbs should have been sliced in half before they were grilled.  And the cheese was a mostly solid mass atop the dish -- it should have been broken into smaller pieces that would have been able to melt into the sauce.  However, the pasta itself was quite good, hearty and pleasantly flavored with sage, and the pork ragu provided me with a little revelation: meat sauce doesn't have to involve ground meat.  You see, I hate ground meat -- I despise the texture of it.  When it's compressed into a sausage I can cope with it, as the compression alters the texture sufficiently, but burgers and meat sauces and standard taco fillings are just anathema to me.  This ragu, however, was made of a tangy, tomato-y pulled pork.  The pork was tender and there was none of the grainy awfulness of ground meat!  I can't believe this never occurred to me before -- I am going to make such a ragu myself in the near future, I can assure you.

Skinny noodles: troublesome to cook.

My second selection was Capellini with goat confit, garlic, spinach, and Calcagno cheese.  It was a simple dish, and though not quite as interesting as some of the other plates we tried, it was fresh and well-balanced.  Goat, which can be troublesome to cook, was here lean and tender and very well done.  The dish's one flaw was the pasta itself.  The capellini was so thin that it just couldn't hold up to the big pieces of spinach and cheese on the fork, and it was a bit overcooked -- I'm not sure how anyone could fail to overcook fresh capellini; what do you do, just hold it over the steam of the boiling water for a few seconds?  In any event, I spread my little roasted garlic cloves on some of the tasty sourdough that comes with every meal, and was pleased regardless.

Certainly the best looking dish of the night. So cheerful!

My third course was Spinach Torchetti with chanterelle mushrooms, basil, cured egg yolks, and guanciale.  Guanciale, it turns out, is cured pork jowl -- yes, I was eating pig face.  And I'm here to tell you that pig face is delicious.  I liked this dish a great deal.  The pasta was eye-catching, substantial, and al dente; the chanterelle mushrooms were delicious and cooked perfectly, toothsome and warmly caramelized; and the guanciale was salty and chewy and outrageously tasty, though I wish it had been sliced a bit more thinly.

Kind of makes me wonder about the state of my own liver.

Ted chose, for his third course, the Rigatoni with Madeira, foie gras, arugula, and rhubarb.  My relationship with this plate of pasta was complicated.  On one hand, I totally get what was going on, and I think if I had been another human being, I would have liked it a great deal: the ultra-rich fattiness of the foie gras alongside the tartness of the rhubarb and the slight bitterness of the arugula, all balanced with the slight sweetness of the Madeira and the heartiness of the pasta shape ... this might have been the most well-constructed plate of the night.  Except: I hate rhubarb.  Rhubarb is the devil.  So ... where does that leave us?  Well, it leaves us with undercooked rigatoni, but that was a different problem.  I think in the end, it was a good dish -- it's not Casbah's fault I hate rhubarb.

Hilariously, Ted learned what foie gras is as he was eating it.  I honestly didn't know he didn't know when he ordered the dish.  So when he asked me what was so delicious, as he savored the rich little chunks of diseased organ, I explained to him about force-fed geese and ducks and fatty liver.  He renounced foie gras on the spot, mid plate; I finished the liver for him.  I also pointed out his hypocrisy vis a vis animal cruelty and the factory farmed chicken wings he loves so much at Sidelines; he looked chagrined.  I think Ted might be creeping back towards vegetarianism -- or, at least, more ethical eating.  Jonathan Safran Foer, you might be winning a slow victory in the Spiher Robinson house.

So that's your food porn for the day.  Pasta Fest is still going on today and tomorrow, so if you want to treat yourself to some magical carbs, there's still time.  Oh, and if you're curious about the wines, I can only speak to the happy hour menu, but I'd recommend the Casal Garcia Vinho Verde -- it's crisp and effervescent and perfect for hot days like these -- and they also have a delightful sparkling lambrusco on the happy hour wine list at the moment, and it's just fun -- I mean, how often do you get a sparkling lambrusco anywhere?  (And no, it's not that dreadful Riunite crap.)

I realize that there's some irony to me posting this right after I posted a blog about being broke.  I want you to know that I charged the whole meal and I regret absolutely nothing -- Pasta Fest comes but once a year, and you'll pry my noodles from my cold dead hands, bank balances notwithstanding.

More Death. (And a Boyz II Men Concert.)

I did a lot of cool stuff between Thursday night and Sunday morning.  Then my aunt died unexpectedly.

Liz was technically my great aunt: she was in her early 80s, so she lived a relatively long life.  But her death came out of the blue; she hadn't been ill at all, except for the various standard complaints of old age.  Then she got a blood clot in her brain on Sunday morning and died.

I feel like a jerk because her birthday was three weeks ago.  I had meant to write to her, but hadn't gotten around to it.  There is no way now to amend for this.

What I'm troubled by is the fact that this regret only matters to me.  It cannot matter to Liz now.  Nothing can matter to her.  Liz is dead.  All the matters of her life are over, and that is that.  Someday nothing will matter to my mother.  And nothing will matter to my husband.  And nothing will matter to me.  And given that fact, it is hard for me to say why anything matters now.

***

I had my midlife crisis extremely prematurely.  Starting in junior high or so, adults -- my relations and teachers, mostly -- fed me a lot of bullshit about how I was Special and Talented and Smart, and was definitely going to succeed in life.  I don't think they were deliberately setting me up to fail, and I don't even think most of them were lying.  Given where I'm from, I was Special and Talented and Smart, and seemed like a good bet, at least compared to the general population of my peers, to succeed in life.  I went to college and continued to receive reassurances about my future.  I went to (a very prestigious) graduate school, having been reassured by an actual, professional literary author who was mentoring me at the time that some day I would write books for a living.

Of course, this was all horseshit.  I'm not saying it was ill-intentioned horseshit, but come on.  My imminent disappointment began to make itself felt in my final term of graduate school.  I seemed to know without knowing.  I began to suffer from panic attacks.  I developed what I called a "doom cloud"; it is difficult to describe what this was, other than to say that there was a constant, dark weight at the back of my mind.  It wasn't composed of any specific or articulated thoughts -- just a layer of discontent and anxiety that was my constant, looming companion.

I finished my thesis and graduated with my masters, magna cum laude.  One of my advisors at the time gave me the following career advice: "Clean up your thesis and then get an agent."  Really.  That was it.  I tried to place a few of the stories from my thesis, but that went no where.  I was unemployed for nine months while I lived with my (also unemployed) husband in what I can only describe as a garret in the ghetto.  I applied for a variety of jobs, and finally was hired as a Clerk Typist II for the Allegheny County Department of Human Services.  I answered the phone in a windowless room and performed minor clerical functions.  Everyone assured me that this was a Good Job, because I had Benefits, and would someday retire with a Pension.

I honestly thought about killing myself almost every day.  I had dark and violent thoughts I couldn't suppress.  I concluded that I couldn't actually kill myself because 1) my mother and Ted would feel so bad, and 2) Jesus would be angry.  So instead I would walk along the edge of the sidewalk at my lunch hour and to and from the bus stop and hope that I got hit by a bus.

I quit my job to go back to school for a career that I didn't particularly want.  Everyone had told me that I absolutely couldn't quit such a Good Job, so I studied for and took the LSATs and got a scholarship to go to law school, because at the rate I was going, I was never going to get a bus to hit and kill me.  Going Back to School is a socially acceptable reason to quit a job -- apparently, violent depression is not.  More could be said about how fucked up that is, but I'll just leave it there for you to contemplate.

I ended up dropping out of law school because it was expensive and I didn't want to be a lawyer.  But by then I was working part time as an adjunct, a job I like, and which I now do "full time" (at least for two-thirds of the year), so everything worked out.  Plus I didn't dislike law school per se -- I like learning things, and the atmosphere of academia is like a warm blanket to me.  My doom cloud finally dissipated.

My point is that all of this took a lot of readjustment.  Once it became clear in my mid-20s that I was not going to Succeed as promised, I became very depressed, and the prospect of a lifetime at that Good Job made me, as I said, honestly want to die.  I don't know if other people find it so difficult to live in the world, but it's clearly difficult for me.  Finding a way to do it took a few years.  I decided that my only ambition was to live a happy life (that was still guided at least in theory by moral principles).  Eating curry and drinking wine and watching Star Trek make me happy: today I will eat curry and drink wine and watch Star Trek.  Visiting with my friends makes me happy: today I will visit my friends.  Reading books makes me happy: today I will read a book.  Mission accomplished, mission accomplished, mission accomplished.

I am, basically, happy.  I love my husband and our little family of cats.  I have good friends and enjoy myself most days, though I wish we had more money -- but who doesn't?

But it is a very small life.

And small lives don't stand up to death well, do they?  Someday you will wake up and not finish out the day.  You will die, and nothing will matter to you again.  And so what will have been the point of all that mattered previously?  Even if it was difficult to live in the world, so what?  You're dead now.  So what if you found a way to be happy, eating curry and drinking wine?  You're dead now.  I realize that this is solipsism and nihilism, but there it is.  I don't know -- I guess I just haven't been in a very good mood since Sunday.

P.S.  Still haven't heard from God.  After 30 years, I'm starting to feel a little stood up.

***

As to all of that fun stuff: on Thursday, Ted and I went to see Friends Sarah and Roger host a dance recital at their Arthur Murray studio.  It reminded me of when I was little and took jazz dance classes at the YMCA, and we would have little performances for our parents periodically.  Except this event was for grown ups.  We chatted with Friends Saundra and Neilbert -- Neilbert even danced a rhumba! -- and got to see Roger's newly grown ponytail in action: he is bringing the Latin Heat, dear readers.

On Friday we had dinner with Friends Carley and Lindsi. It was Lindsi's birthday, and she decided to nom at Pusadee's Garden, in our hood.  I was so, so happy to not cook dinner.  Then they both came back to our place for some gin 'n' tonics, and finally Sarah stopped by, too.

Apparently, this is what tailgating looks like.

On Saturday, I tailgated for the first time in my life.  Ted and I and Carley and her boyfriend Chris and Friend Nick all had tickets to the Pirates game.  I hate baseball: baseball is boring as shit.  BUT.  After the baseball game THERE WAS A BOYZ II MEN CONCERT.  HOLY SHIT YINZ GUYS. ABC BBD.  Chris has a big truck, and so we decided to tailgate before the game.  This turns out to be basically sitting in a parking lot while eating and drinking.  Carley brought fish sammiches with guacamole and cilantro; I brought ginger-stewed beets, haluski, and Doritos; Nick brought beer.  We had an unusually healthy tailgate, is what I'm saying, but it was nice, and when Chris helped some other parking lot drinker jump his car, the guy gave him $20, which covered the price of our own parking.  Sweet.

But then a cop told us we had to clear out of the parking lot, so we had to go into the actual baseball game.  It was only the fourth inning.  Good Lord, getting through that baseball was interminable, especially because I couldn't afford to buy All The Beer.  SEVEN FUCKING DOLLARS FOR BUD LIGHT.  Nick, I think feeling a deep sympathy for me, even though he loves baseball, actually bought me a $7 Bud Light.  I literally was so grateful I teared up a little.  I then scraped together $7 of my own for another godawful beer.  These two beers got me through to the end of the baseball.

SO INTERMINABLE.

The baseball was made even more interminable by the world's most obnoxious eight-year-old boy, who was sitting next to us.  His mother was not paying any attention to him, natch, and every 15 or 20 minutes or so, he would want to exit the row, forcing all five of us to stand up while he filed past, obnoxiously shouting, "Excuse me!  Excuse me!  Coming through!  Make way!"  Then a few moments later he would realize that he had forgotten money, or whatever, and come back through.  Then go back out again.  Over and over again.  So eventually, every time he came past, I said something hateful to him.  "You're an asshole."  "I hope you fall down the stairs."  He finally responded to me when I said, "I hate you."  "Why?"  "Because you're obnoxious.  GO SIT DOWN."

Yes, I was a bitch to an eight year old.  No, I have no regrets.

But finally, my trials over, Boyz II Men began to perform.  30,000 people sang along to "On Bended Knee".  They played all the hits.  It was fantastic.  The nostalgia was rolling out of PNC Park and wafting down the river, eastward into the night (in the direction of Motown Philly, of course).  Ted had not anticipated any of this; he had no idea everyone my age in the park was going to wig the fuck out.  It's kind of a weird phenomenon.  It's not like I'd buy a new CD from Boyz II Men.  Their moment is more or less over.  But their moment was so formative of my and Carley's junior high school years that we sat through most of a Pirates baseball game so that we could sing along at the top of our lungs to "End of the Road".  I don't know if this is good or bad for the Boyz, sad or reassuring.  In any case, they've got an album of covers coming out.  They sang a Journey cover on Saturday.  If nothing else, they know their audience.

But Pittsburgh is The Best.  Ever.

BEERFEST! Also: Dolphin Grey is More Like Pigeon Purple

It has been a full three days, yo, in spite of our newly imposed frugality.  To begin with, on Friday, I had a fucking day as a housewife.  First, one of the "kids" woke me up at 5:00 am -- George the kitty nosed me awake, and when I grabbed him and squoze him in retribution, he just flopped over and fell asleep.  Lucky for him, but I never got back to sleep; finally, as Ted was leaving for work at 9:00, I just got up to do the errands.

The first stop was the Strip District, and -- and granted, I am out of shape, but -- that was a fucking workout.  Hauling 50 pounds of groceries around for 45 minutes at least felt like a fucking workout: that cabbage was the heaviest cabbage ever grown by man.  Now that we're broke all the time, the Strip seems like the best primary food shopping destination, as it's substantially cheaper than the grocery store, and at decent quality.  Stan's Market doesn't have vegetables as beautiful as Whole Foods, but with the farmers' market up and running now, that's OK, I can augment.  I'm still going to Whole Foods for some things, like local, pastured milk and chicken thighs that have come from marginally better-treated chickens, as I look at these things as ethical matters.  Of course, I also hit up Parma Sausages, and asked where they sourced their pork from, which was a mistake, at least mostly.  Apparently, the prosciuttos have to be made from a special kind of pig, a Berkshire, and those pig parts all come from one farm in Iowa.  The guy behind the counter was like, "Those are some happy pigs -- right up until the last minute, anyway."  And I can live with that.  But the other pork comes from "all over", so you can bet, since 95% of American pork is factory farmed, that the pigs who make up the sausages and salami I bought were not "some happy pigs".  Le sigh.

I mention all of this because I just finished reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals last night.  I think I'm going to mull it over and write about it more fully tomorrow, but the Parma experience weighs into the whole affair.

Meanwhile, after hitting the Strip, I drove over the Whole Foods (for chicken thighs and local dairy products), and ... my car stalled.  This happens about a half dozen times a year.  Marshall, my Honda Accord, is 15 years old.  He just passed inspection, so I can't tell you why he stalled, other than to say that every now and then he just does.  I called AAA, but then luckily I got to cancel my tow when the engine finally turned over.  After that I took my perishables from the Strip home, just in case, and then returned to the grocery store, but as is typical after such a stalling incident, there appeared to be nothing wrong with the car, and no problems have occurred since.  I think sometimes Marshall just gets fussy.

At home, I made batches of green curry to freeze, as well as batches of black beans in the slow cooker. Kindly, hearing of our brokeness, Friend Davin offered to come over with a bottle of good liquor that evening, and in return, I included him in taco night: chicken thighs stewed in Mexican seasonings on Reyna's flour tortillas with cheese, sour cream, some homemade salsa, black beans, and cabbage.  I love taco night.  Then we got to sippin' on some Knob Creek Single Barrel Reserve, which is 120 proof and might have tattooed the inside of my esophagus, and after they were done with work, Friends Sarah and Roger stopped by too.

The downside to Friday was that I managed to sprain my foot somehow (as diagnosed by Friend Frank), and it hurt to walk on for the next two days.

On Saturday my mother came down and took us to lunch at Pusadee's Garden, which regrettably we don't get to eat at as often now that they're only open at lunchtime on Saturday.  I firmly believe -- and yes, I've been to Nicky's and The Smiling Banana Leaf -- that Pusadee's has hands down the best Thai food in the city.  Those other places are good, but they're not that good.

Green Curry.  Yum.

Then Mom and Ted set about painting the dining room and kitchen.  We chose Glidden's "Dolphin Gray", which turns out to be more lavender-ish on the wall, but is still an acceptable "pigeon color", as I like to call them, by which I mean, when we started picking paint colors, I realized that I always gravitate to colors that one might find adorning a pigeon's feathers.  That project continues today, insofar as Mom is down here, painting.  I try not to get involved in these projects -- I suppose it is exploiting my loved ones, but I'm strangely comfortable with that.

After that little project, it was time for ... BEERFEST.  Before we were broke, Ted and I bought tickets to the Penn Brewery Microbrewers Fest.  We had been several years ago, and there since then has been a real change in the festival's composition: almost every brewery featured was actually a local or regional brewery.  From Pittsburgh metro alone you had Penn, of course, Fat Head's (which is technically brewed at their small facility in Cleveland but is still a Pittsburgh establishment and company), Church Brew Works, East End Brewing, Full Pint, Rivertowne, Rock Bottom (a chain, but the beer is still brewed here), and Arsenal Cider.  There were also breweries from Altoona, Erie, Youngstown, Slippery Rock, and other nearby points in Pennsylvania*, Ohio and New York.  There was a Philadelphia brewery that had a little sign up saying, "We did NOT brew 'Crosby's Tears' - that was ANOTHER brewery!"  There were a few non-local breweries -- Rogue, Avery, Harpoon, and etc., which were being represented by local distributors rather than actual brewers -- but you got the feeing that they were there just to fill up the remaining spaces.  (One non-local brewer came all the way from Missouri, and was actually really good: O'Fallon.  I really liked their Wheach**, which is strange, because I am normally not a fan of fruity beers.  And another, New Holland, from Michigan, had what Ted thought was the best beer of the day, their Charkoota Rye.)

The Beers.

The point is, a few years ago, I don't think a microbrewers' fest in this city could have been populated by a majority of local and regional beers.  I think the fact that now it can be is a great sign for like, how awesome Pittsburgh is for you if you are an awesome person who likes good beer; but I also think it's a good indication of the region's health in general: I have no science to back this up, but I would bet that areas that are doing well have a lot of microbreweries, and areas that aren't, don't.

By the by, part of the price of admission was noms from Penn's restaurant.  I had a sausage and sauerkraut sandwich with a side of warm potato salad, which was tasty as hell.  That place has really good German food.

Food to eat while drinking beer.

Sunday rolled around and I missed the Queen's Diamond Jubilee flotilla down the Thames to go to mass, because there was supposed to a meeting of the Parish Life Committee's youth group organizing subcommittee, and ... then there wasn't.  I've decided not to air my grievances about this here, out of tact, but let me just say this: do not join a church committee.  Just don't do it.

Sunday rounded out with an awesome visit from Ned, who is an old college pal of mine.  He lives in DC now, but was up in the Burgh visiting, and so we got to have some wine and chat, which was great.  I like Ned a lot, and we always make the effort to see each other when I'm in DC or he's in Pittsburgh.  Except college pals always make me feel old.  Sigh.

Oh, and dinner was stuffed shells, which I bring up so as to report on what I regard as a strange thing.  This is my second round of stuffed shells, and on both occasions, I used a very simple tomato sauce: a can of whole plum tomatoes, an onion, and butter.  (The onion is halved and allowed to simmer in the sauce for about 45 minutes, then removed -- blend tomatoes if they don't break down in that time.)  On the first occasion, my ingredients were: 1 28-ounce can of Muir Glenn plum tomatoes, one white onion, 5 tablespoons of butter.  On the second occasion, my ingredients were: 1 28-ounce  can of San Marzano plum tomatoes, one yellow onion, 5 tablespoons of butter.  (Neither can of tomatoes contains anything but tomatoes in juice.)  The sauces turned out completely different in color and flavor!  I don't know if it's more to do with the onion or the tomatoes, but this time the sauce was golden red and very cream-like in consistency, whereas previously it had been much redder and had much more of a tang.  I find this sort of fascinating.

Plus isn't that a great looking salad?

So anyway, as I said, Mom's back again today, painting away, and then we're going to get lunch, hit the farmers' market, and maybe get a drink.  Ted is in Columbus for work today, and this is awesome, since he's going to return with a case of Two-buck Chuck from their Trader Joe's (Fuck you, PLCB.  Fuck.  You.) and a box of Tim Horton's donuts.  It's the little things.

We moved the hutch to paint, probably for the first time since we moved in, and discovered a treasure trove of lost kitty toys.  The kitties were VERY excited.  (We also found a lot of dust.  Ahem.)

* One of the brewers there was Stoudt's, which I now have a fatwa against.  During the Pens-Flyers play-off match, Stoudt's Twitter account tweeted "Pittsburgh dirty city = dirty hockey".  I don't really mind the accusation of dirty play -- sports is sports -- but the "dirty city" line was sufficient for me to be like, "Well fuck your beer then."  I bring this up because I think it's illustrative of the importance of handling your business's social media with care.  I don't follow Stoudt's on Twitter; rather, a local brewery that I do follow retweeted the remark.  If you have a business situated near Philadelphia that also sells in Pittsburgh, I don't think anyone in the Burgh would deny you your right to root for Phily per se -- but the extent of your commentary on the subject ought be no more than "Go Flyers!"*** and "Nice game, Pens."  Because, seriously: common sense.

** Also, HOW CUTE IS THE WHEACH?  They should have stickers and buttons with this little guy on them. 

*** Except actually, no one should be like, "Go Flyers", because they are The Worst Thing on the Planet Earth.

Sports! Also: Much Chicken is Eaten

So, no, I didn't post on Friday.  I felt like bloody hell all day because of Ted's cheap brandy, and didn't feel up to typing.  But!  That doesn't mean I didn't do anything on Friday -- indeed, I went to Union Pig and Chicken for lunch, and it prompted many thoughts on gentrification, race, and urban redevelopment, which I wrote into a blog and posted here.  Please read it: I'm curious about others' thoughts on the subject.

And then the weekend was busy!  Saturday, first of all, was a big day of Sports.

Ted in his West Ham kit, from back when Dr. Martens was their sponsor.

Ted's English football team is West Ham, and last year they got relegated down into the Championship League.  (My team, Middlesbrough, was relegated in 2009, and there they seem likely to stay for the foreseeable future.)  But, the Hammers were in the Championship Final against Blackpool on Saturday morning, and the winner got to move back up to the Premier League.  So off we went to Piper's Pub to watch the match.

English Breakfast Boxty

Piper's is the best place in the city I know of to watch soccer, and this seems to be confirmed by the number of expats that are there every weekend.  Plus they have delicious United Kingdom comfort food to nom.  I actually special-ordered an English Breakfast (fried eggs, bangers, mushrooms, tomatoes, and baked beans, usually with toast) atop a boxty, an Irish potato pancake.  Needless to say, that couldn't possibly have been a bad idea.

West Ham pulled it out in the end, and Ted is very excited, because this means that next season he'll be able to watch their matches on TV at Piper's Pub.  (The poor Champions League doesn't get televised in America, that I'm aware of, except for the big League Final.)

After that, it was back home for a little relaxation.  Then we set off for the Consol Energy Center to see ... the Pittsburgh Power.  Yes, we went to see Pittsburgh's Arena Football League team.  I'd never seen Arena Football before, and it's kind of odd.  The score runs up much higher, but the play's no faster, because the field's so short north-south that after about five yards or so, the rushing player just gets crushed into the wall; pass plays don't come off too well because, well, they're not the best QBs out there, y'know?  It was hard to judge the fan investment in the affair, by which I mean, I couldn't tell what percentage of the enthusiasm on display was ironic, as compared to earnest.  Ted and I watched with more interest in the spectacle than investment in the winner (and a good thing, because the Power lost to the Kansas City Command), but we had a nice time anyway.  EXCEPT.  I went into the affair super excited because there was supposed to be a Tim Horton's stand in the Consol, and God knows I love me some Tim Horton's.  Except when we got there, the stand had been converted into a motherfucking Dunkin' Donuts kiosk.  Dunkin' Donuts is so mightily inferior to Tim Horton's it is impossible to even quantify the exact level of inferiority -- you like, need an electron microscope or something.  Plus, the Consol Center is Pittsburgh's ice hockey arena; eating Dunkin' Donuts at a hockey game makes no fucking sense, whereas eating a Tim Horton's donut at a hockey game makes infinity sense.  If you don't know why, educate yourself.  So anyway, that was a huge letdown.

Let's go Pixburgh Paher!

Interesting aside: when I was an instructor at the University of Michigan, one of my students was Terrance Taylor.  He was a senior on the UM football team.  At the time people expected him to be a first or high-second round draft pick after he graduated, but then scouts got wind of the fact he was lazy in the off-season, and he dropped to the fourth round.  He bounced around between Detroit, Jacksonville, and Indy, and now he has landed in the AFL as a defensive lineman for, you guessed it, the Pittsburgh Power.  The world is really fucking small.  Unfortunately, I didn't get to see Terrance play, though, because he is apparently on the IR/suspended roster -- the AFL doesn't bother to distinguish between these two states of inactivity, which is sort of hilarious.

Look at how the grease glistens!

After the game we went to Sidelines for dinner, and I ordered the Kitchen Sink Crunch Burger (except with a chicken breast instead of a burger, because ground cow is disgusting).  It was the unhealthiest thing I could think of, and it just felt right, given the evening's activity.

Speaking of unhealthy chicken sandwiches, on Sunday evening we went out to dinner at Burgatory with Davin, which was tasty.  One could also consider it a celebratory chicken sandwich: on Sunday, Ted and I finally finished our jigsaw puzzle.  I did not know those things were so fucking difficult.

VICTORY IS OURS.

Today, I took myself to $5 Movie Monday at Waterworks Cinema -- you get a free small popcorn, and free air conditioning, too.  I watched The Avengers again, 'cause it was awesome.  After that I picked up a hoagie, which I ate in the park -- by which I mean, I parked my car and rolled all the windows down and ate in my car in the park, because I'm not really a sit in the dirt kind of girl.  Then after that it was off to get more leafs at the farmers' market in East Liberty, where I got swiss chard, beet greens, carrots, lettuce, and a quart of absolutely delicious strawberries, plus some local honey.

These are so fucking good.

Currently, I'm making some simple tomato sauce for the stuffed shells we're having for dinner tonight along with the wee lettuces.  I have no regrets about the unhealthy noms of the weekend, but I'm glad I went and bought some leafs to eat today.  A person needs leafy greens to feel OK about themselves.

Battleshots and Local Leafs

It was an eventful few days.  I've been celebrating my 30th birthday for over a month now, and this Saturday I had a birthday party.  Good friends came, Friend Sarah gave me a hot pink immersion blender, and Battleshots went over gangbusters.  I've got a leftover growler full of Washington Apples shots that are just going to have to get drunk, oh noes.

BATTLESHOTS.

Friend Neilbert brought me these lovely fleurs from his own garden.  Yes, that is a very happy carrot in the background.

Getting ready for a party is always daunting, but Ted is a good husband and he cleaned the entire house. In return, I brought him Greek food from the last day of the St. Nicholas Greek Food Festival in Oakland.  SO FUCKING GOOD.  The next Greek food festival is in the North Hills and starts on the 24th -- I'm planning a tiny road trip.

How do you know it's Greek? Columns.

Lamb, chicken, pilaf, green beans, spanikopita. Not much to look at, but so damn good. There were also amazing pastries.  HONEY. WALNUTS. GLORY.

Sunday was sort of a day to recover.  I wasn't hungover but I was exhausted, because the last guest left at 4:00, and then we couldn't find Matilda.  We combed the entire house, and then, fearing she'd escaped when a guest came in or out, Ted went to look outside.  An hour later she emerged, we still know not from where, looking at us like nothing was amiss, even though we'd been calling her and calling her and she hadn't even come out when Ted opened a can of food.  Kids.  Sheesh.

She looks so innocent. :-/

An Irish Boxty from Piper's Pub helped me right myself on Sunday.

Today I went out with my mom to celebrate Mother's Day.  We went to lunch at Jimmy Wan's over in Aspinwall, which has a nice lunch special, and then went to see Dark Shadows -- her pick.  It wasn't very good.  I think Johnny Depp and Tim Burton are just doing things to amuse themselves now, without consideration of, y'know, movie audiences.  After that we stopped by the first Monday of the East Liberty City Farmers' Market.  This time of year it's a lot of leafs, but leafs are tasty.  I came away with  Swiss chard, red kale, beets, potatoes, onions, asparagus, and the most delicious little strawberries.  Now I have to look up what to do with Swiss chard and beet leaves; I'll let you know what I find.  Finally, Mom and I went to Casbah for a happy hour drink -- mmm, gin and tonics.

The Farmers' Market haul.

Tomorrow I've got nothing in particular planned, though I think I'm going to take a trip to the Strip District for a few non-vegetable groceries.  I'm looking forward to a basically unstructured day; last week was busy and this week is busy, too, and I have yet to start a single project besides, predictably, the Summer Reading List.  Tomorrow I also plan to start Ian McEwan's Atonement -- I'm sure you'll hear about that when it's done.

Oh, and as a kitty update, Chief is still snorfley, but his follow-up vet appointment out at PVSEC is on Thursday, so perhaps while we're there we can get some help with that.  And I'm pleased to report that Floyd -- who spent the entire party hanging out with everyone on the couch -- made friends with Friend Mark J., who is a gentle and patient soul, and who I think is an excellent choice for Floyd to bond with.

Aren't they cute together?

A River Runs Through It. Plus: I Hate Making Things

Yesterday evening after meeting Friend Gerry for a few beers at Sharp Edge, (and after he loaned me a nice Soviet book on how to learn to read Russian), he escorted me down to Space Gallery where Friend Katie was hosting a "preview party" for Cosmopolitan Pittsburgh, which is a big annual fundraiser for the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.  The whole affair was a little more "yuppie networking" than I usually roll, but there was free wine and yummy snacks, and this happened:

Belly Dancing.  Sweet.

Today started off nice and productive.  First things first: I wrote a somewhat lengthy blog about Crime and Punishment which I published on my other blog.  You should read it here.  I also wrote a second quick recipe blog that I've schedule to post Monday there, wherein I muse on the proper preparation of mushrooms.

I also read Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It, which Friend Mark J. lent to me, as it is one of his favorite books.  The language was straightforward and elegant, while the narrative was oblique.  Maclean's appreciation of the natural world was moving.  I found the depiction of rural, small-town life sad -- the tiny, constricted theater in which the problems of Maclean's brother are enacted seems airtight and exitless, making a turn away from those problems impossible -- but that could also be an opinion inflected by my own unhappy experiences in small-town living.  In any case, I must return to the adjective "elegant" to describe the prose, particularly those scenes in which Maclean details the art of fly fishing, the sermons of his father to his sons, and the times in between which Maclean encounters his brother.  The writing is at its weakest when Maclean's brother, Paul, is in the scene: the descriptions of Paul's addictions and weaknesses are blunt and obvious where the rest of the book is delicate and careful.  Perhaps that is because it is true what Maclean writes: that he did not understand his brother, and could not help him.  Years later, in recounting the story, it is clear Maclean still does not understand, and so cannot help Paul's character become clearer through craft; whereas other characters are rendered deftly and briefly, Paul, although often present, remains an obscure presence in the book, as though seen only out of the corner of the reader's eye, and tinged with a kind of menace for that.  But these are small notes of discord within the otherwise beautiful narrative, corresponding to the discordant notes of Paul's life.  It was a lovely book, and I understand why Friend Mark J. likes it so well.  It sort of made me want to fly fish, right up until the moment fish killing becomes necessary -- I think I'd throw my trout back.

Otherwise, though, today was frustrating.  We're trying to get ready for my birthday party tomorrow night, and Ted put me in charge of getting the Battleshots board ready, after he put the hinges between the wooden boards.  I wish he hadn't, because I hate making things like this: things that have to be precise.  My board was off by 5/16ths of an inch or some ludicrously bullshit amount, and so then the grid didn't line up ... frustrated, I finally had to turn the project over to him to complete.  I'm all for things like crocheting cupcakes and drawing pictures, but if 5/16ths of an inch makes a difference, I'm not your girl; this is why I love to cook but hate to bake.  Making everything just so is tedious and frustrating and counter to my nature.

Ted was also frustrated by my imperfect grid.

So, anyway, to sum up: go read my blog on Crime and Punishment at S&S Blog.  I recommend Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It.  And here are some cute pictures of my cats, including one wherein Floyd got his head stuck in an "empty" container of sour cream, after he and I shared some Doritos for lunch.

Chief is in a box. Kitties + Boxes = Happy

George is hiding and you cannot see him.

NOMNOMNOMNOMNOM. Then he had to clean all the sour cream off of his face.