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.

Angry Gin-drinker is Angry About Capitalism

Oh, Lord, yinz.  Lord, sweet Jesus.  June is upon us and we are so fucking broke.  I never say we're poor -- Ted makes a decent salary, per se, and I make a ... salary for most of the year, so it's not reasonable to say we're poor.  But between debt and my natural disposition to let money run through my fingers, we're constantly broke.  But never moreso than June through September.  Being an academic is wonderful for many reasons, but the reliable paycheck isn't one of them.

I saw this dog today.  He was very intense.

How broke?  Yinz, Ted got his paycheck, and after all our bills are paid for this half of the month (the gas bill WILL be late), we've got $270 to live on until the 15th.

Talking about this shit is fraught, y'know?  Because 1) I know that we have A LOT of privilege.  Ted and I are both very educated, very white, very straight, and have supportive families that have helped us when we've gotten just too far below the waterline.  And 2) $270 is enough money to feed two people and five cats for 14 days, and we don't NEED things like trips to the movies, beer, or ... beer.  But on the other hand, I have beef with that old canard that goes like, "Poor people shouldn't waste their money on [things other people enjoy regularly and even take for granted].  They know they're poor, they should saaaaaaaave."  I have always been offended by the idea that people who aren't poor think that poor people shouldn't enjoy a nice pair of new shoes sometimes, a nice date out with dinner and a show, a nice trip with their kids to an amusement park.  Yes, those things can be costly, but the suggestion that poor people should forego every costly, pleasant thing just because they're poor is offensively dehumanizing.

Now, as I said above, though, Ted and I aren't poor, we're broke -- and frequently irresponsible with money.  (Though definitely not as irresponsible as we could be.)  But, as far as that goes, I've got thoughts too.  Look, I'm smart.  I know how to add and subtract, I know how the economy works generally, I know that I'm in debt to a multitude of usurious purveyors, etc.  But I refuse to give too big a damn about money.  Life is -- actually, really, not figuratively -- really fucking short, and I don't intend to spend mine obsessing over something as joyless as money.  I realize that this is a form of privilege too -- many people actually, really, literally have to worry about money every moment of the day, and if they don't their kids don't get fed.  No one in this country should be in that position; but the Mitt Romneys of the world like it when other people suffer, so here we are.  But in any event, I'm not in that position, thank a merciful God -- I've got $270 to live on for two weeks, and a credit card in an emergency.  And so, broke or not, I just refuse to devote my life to scrimping and worrying and otherwise doting over money, so far as it is possible for me to avoid it.

But damn yo, we are pretty broke.

Indian food and gin. How British of me.

So, in honor of that, we got Indian take away and I am drinking a bunch of gin.  Tomorrow I will go to the Strip, buy cheap things to eat like greens and chicken thighs and pasta and bread, and so forth.

You might be able to tell I already have some gin in me.  Whatever,  In summation: fuck capitalism.  Seriously.  Fuck it.  We've got five advanced degrees in this house, how are we living off $270?

ANYHOODLE.

Today my supportive mother came to visit.  She took me to lunch at Jimmy Wan's and to see Men in Black III, which was shockingly good.  She also bought us a new puzzle, so guess what's on our agenda.

Instead of ads on the inside of the bathroom stall doors, Waterworks Cinema puts up little fortunes and platitudes.  This is also very intense, I feel, at least for a bathroom stall door.

Atonement and an Onion Volcano

Today was a great day.  I did the four things I like the most: wrote, read, ate, and drank.  I also waited most of the day to brush my teeth, and spent some time cuddling kitty cats.

The writing today turned out to be an undertaking!  I got up, made myself my tea, and sat down to write a review of the book I just finished, Ian McEwan's Atonement.  Turned out I had a LOT to say about it.  I'd really like you to read it: you can find that blog here.

Matilda's all like, "Eating WHICH animals?"

The reading took the form of some random internet dicking around at first, and then I started to read Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer.  So far it's not much I don't know, but I've spent  many years worrying over the ethical questions surrounding food.  In any case, it's good to revisit the moral quandaries of eating.  Someday, when I'm a better person, I'll stop eating sausages and such.

Cherry tomatoes, butter, garlic, salt, pepper, parmesan, hot pepper flakes.

Speaking of eating, that took the form of a lunch that used up some leftover pasta and cherry tomatoes that were beginning to fade, plus some leftover trailer provisions -- not bad at all.  But the exciting part was dinner: we had a coupon to Nakama for our anniversary (which was technically on the 8th, but the coupon was good all month).  Mmm, shrimp hibachi.  Who doesn't like dinner and a show?  At least during the week -- Friday and Saturday that place turns into fucking Bros 'n' Hos 'R' Us.

HIBACHI ONION VOLCANO.

Now I'm at home, drinking wine.  Day: complete.

Dungeons & Dragons: Pretend Baseball Edition, The Trailer, and the Importance of 50 Cents' Worth of Pasta

Today's main victory was Indian Lunch Buffet QUADFECTA.  By this I mean, not counting the three days I spent away over Memorial Day weekend, I've had Indian lunch buffet four days in a row.  Today I went back to Tamarind with Friend Jay, and had a tasty lunch -- I still think they've got the best-tasting lunch buffet in the city -- and nice conversation.

Speaking of Memorial Day, Ted and I and Friend Sarah took a vacation to The Trailer, and I'm hoping you'll read about it here; for one thing, you will learn of the existence of Sponge Candy.

Ted in front of some typical rural New York art. Painted saws. Who knew.

Otherwise, today I finished Ian McEwan's Atonement, which I plan to write a full review of.  I'm ... I don't know.  I've got a lot of feelings about the book, but I'm not yet sure what to say about it.  Hopefully I'll be able to work on that tomorrow.  Next up on the summer reading list is either The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, or Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer.  It's not a momentous decision, because whichever I don't pick to read first will get read second, but still, if anyone wants to voice an opinion in the comments about where I should go next, feel free.

Meanwhile, it seems my wondrous vacation month is over.  We exhausted this month's money over the vacation weekend (oh, the perils of the once-a-month paycheck), and there's not another one, for me anyway, coming, so we're upon our annual period of brokeness.  I've got a coupon for a nice dinner at Nakama for our (sacramental) anniversary that came earlier this month, and Mom's visiting on Thursday, which always means a nice free lunch, but otherwise.  My habit is to like things to start on tidy times, so I'm going to finish out the week as though we were still fully in glorious May.  But next Monday, since I have to be all pathetically cheap anyway, I'd like to start a routine of ... stuff.  Less-than-fun stuff, like brushing up on Russian and such.  Self-improvement stuff.  Maybe even, God help me, a little exercise.  (Lord, I hate exercise.)  So let's see how next Monday goes.

Today's other small awesomeness was dinner, which was late, because Ted was off at the bar undertaking some kind of stratometric fantasy baseball match.  I think the word is stratometric?  Stratomatic?  I don't know.  Baseball is boring as shit already, and fantasy baseball is like some sort of godawful mathematical abstraction of baseball, and apparently stratospheric fantasy baseball is like fantasy baseball except with boards and papers and dice, so it's basically like playing Dungeons & Dragons: Pretend Baseball Edition.  That's what he was doing tonight.  If he weren't already married, he'd be consigning himself to a protracted, late-life sexlessness, I suspect -- he might be anyway.  Ahem.

How beautiful is rainbow Swiss chard?  Seriously.  What beautiful leafs.

ANYWAY, in the meantime, I used the rainbow Swiss chard that remained in the veggie drawer from last week, and was only now beginning to wilt, to make a pasta.  I've published the basics of the sauce recipe already, recently, so I don't know what made tonight's extra tasty, but swiss chard and peas in creamy parmesan garlic sauce came off extra delicious tonight, accompanied by a Parma sausage.  Part of the deliciousness was that I used Colavita pasta (radiator shape!), which I picked up at the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company last week.  It's dried pasta, about fifty cents more expensive per bag than the store-brand pasta I usually buy, and I don't really know how this is possible, because as far as I can tell dried pasta is basically flour and water, but man, that 50 cents was well worth it -- the pasta itself was much better than the usual stuff I use.  I'm going to buy more after pay day when I go grocery shopping.

I'm pretty terrible at taking food blogger pictures, but trust me, this was delicious.

Other than that, Chief demanded a lot of extra cuddles because we left him alone over the weekend.  Chief's Idiopathic Vestibular Disease seems to be clearing, and the steroids are making him spunky.  There's much to be happy about, upcoming poverty aside.

His "How dare you leave me without my permission?" attitude comes across pretty well in that look.

A Lego Ragemonster Stocks Up for The Trailer

Today was a laid back day. I met my fuzzier half in Squirrel Hill (where he works) for lunch at Coriander India Grill.  (Of course Friend Sarah and I have rated Coriander!)  This means that I officially ate Indian lunch buffet three days in a row.  TRIFECTA.  There is no better $8 lunch.  Ted always orders off the menu, though -- he hates buffets; he thinks they're unsanitary.  He might be right, but if there's one thing I love in a meal, it's tasting lots of different things -- guess who has a blog and loves tapas, y'know?  Ted ordered the lamb vindaloo, and I stole a little, despite all of my buffet offerings.  Here's the thing about Coriander's buffet: it's good (today the chicken makhani was the stand-out), and I like that there are usually lots of veggie dishes (it let's me pretend the lunch is healthy).  But there's a huge downgrade in quality from the food off the menu to the food on the buffet.  Now, since the food on the buffet is still good, this should tell you something about their off the menu items -- delish.  They have the best vindaloo in the city, as far as I'm concerned, and the chana masala is also tremendous.  It's just always a little frustrating that that doesn't translate as well to the buffet as at some other Indian places.  Ah well, it was still a really tasty lunch, and I got to eat with my favorite guy!

No, I never get tired of eating Indian food.

Other than that, I just ran a few quick errands to finish provisioning for the weekend.  As previously mentioned, we're going with Sarah to The Trailer, and though we'll likely eat out in nearby Ellicottville one night, in general The Trailer exists for drinking, snacking, reading, and sitting quietly in the air conditioning.  So I've stocked up on provisions.  We're bringing:

~ Prosciutto, pepperoni, and salami from Parma Sausage Co.
~ Taleggio and Humboldt Fog cheeses
~ Whole seed bread and wheat crackers
~ Fresh apples, raspberries, and tomatoes
~ Dried figs and mango slices
~ Mixed nuts
~ A variety of olives, and pickled peppers and artichoke hearts
~ Tea
~ Dark chocolate
~ Tins of smoked oysters and clams
~ Bourbon
~ Vodka
~ Two pounds of assorted gummi candies

This isn't counting whatever Sarah is bringing, but I hear she's stocked up on Doritos, which makes me happy.  We may be overstocked, but I like having a picnic of delicious, only semi-perishable items available while I relax in the wilds of New York.

Gummi bear cubs, cola bottles, Swedish fish, and fried egg gummis.

The gummis, by the by, came from The Chocolate Moose on Forbes, which has a great selection of bulk gummis.  Also while in Squirrel Hill, I got to check out this year's Lego contest at S.W. Randall Toys.  I LOVED Legos as a kid.  You have no idea how much I loved Legos.  And it makes me a ragemonster to see how increasingly, Lego markets itself only to boys, and only in really gender essentialist ways -- back when I was a kid, there were sets of Legos, sure, but it was like, Lego Town, and you built gender-neutral things like ambulances and little stores, or Lego Pirates, which everyone everywhere could think was awesome.  And mostly, you just had plain Lego sets, which were just nonspecific giant mixes of bricks, and you made whatever you wanted; I liked to build elaborate, multistory houses, complete with furniture and grounds.  But now Lego sets are 1) hyper branded with other corporate products, like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Batman, etc., and I'm not saying those things aren't cool, but I think that corporate shilling shouldn't be ALL that Lego does, and 2) hyper masculine, with all kinds of like, combative wolf robots and stuff aimed exclusively at boys, which a) alienates young girls from the awesome experience of Lego (and suggests that girls can't build complicated, difficult stuff, which is horseshit), and b) alienates young boys who don't like hypermasculine combative war games all the damn time.  I mean, it's bad for all the reasons gender essentialism is bad, and it's bad for boys and girls and all gender points in between, and it sucks, Lego, it really does.  But the nice thing about the Lego contest is that you can't enter a set, it has to be something of a kid's own design, and it's remarkable how NOT gender essential the entries are, almost as if kids aren't ultra-delineated in interests based on their genitalia or something WHO COULD EVEN BELIEVE SUCH A PREPOSTEROUS IDEA.

My favorites are the Ms. Pacman characters and Troy Polamalu.

Anyway, I'm certainly not the first person to talk about this.  Here's one such little discussion, on Sociological Images.

Also seen in Squirrel Hill today were about ten times more elderly people than I've seen in months, seen by me in the span of about 30 minutes.  I'm not opposed to the elderly per se, I'm just saying it was sort of an odd demographic shift -- I'm not sure it bodes well for the neighborhood.

After that it was a grocery store quick hit, and since then I've been dicking around on the Internet, periodically telling myself I should read a book instead, while Floyd naps on the couch next to me.  Later tonight, we've gotta tidy up and pack, and at the moment I'm wondering if 4:36 is too early to start drinking on a Friday.

I know, Floyd, sometimes reading can just be too taxing.

Oh, and before I close out for the weekend, here are two things I missed from earlier in the week.  First, here is a picture of bees that I took at this Monday's farmers' market, where I bought some honey from the Fine Family Apiary.  Apparently, the queen in here wasn't doing well in her hive, so they replaced her and moved her to a smaller set-up to see if she does better; in the meantime, she's reppin' the apiary.

Bzzzzzzzz.

Second, we had a mildly fascinating arachnid encounter earlier this week.  I was sitting at the kitchen table, and felt something tickle first my arm and then my leg.  I looked down, and on the floor was a pretty intense looking black spider, who escaped uncaptured.  The next day, he was spotted again on a wall, and this time Ted caught him in a glass and released him outside, where he leapt away into the grass.  Some googling tells us that we had a daring jumping spider on our hands, which sounds pretty impressive to me.  I didn't get a picture of our actual spider, but here is a good photo of what he looked like.

He was a pretty intense little dude.

He was probably about the size of a dime.

So that's that -- enjoy the holiday weekend, and I'll be back Tuesday.

Death

Today started out ... varying.  On one hand, I've had a backache for 2+ days now.  My spine is my enemy.  I've had surgery on my lower back twice, and it and I are still in contention.  It's the sort of thing one just has to live with, and I do, but, y'know, allow me a couple of sentences to bitch about it.

But the day perked up when Friend Nick asked me join him for Indian lunch buffet, this time at People's.  That is two Indian lunch buffet lunches in a row, which is #Winning.  People's is very good, but variable: by this I mean, some days you go and it's good and spicy, and some days it's bland -- there's no way to know until you're there.  Today, unfortunately, was bland, though the food was still good, just too mild for the likes of me.  However, two things about People's that are always good: it's $8 even, and they put out delicious chai with the buffet.  Mmm, chai tea.  (Yes, Friend Sarah and I reviewed People's for the Great Indian Buffet Tour.)

Plus also I got to have a nice long chat with Nick, who is one of my best friends, and whom I always enjoy seeing and chatting with.

After that, I spent the afternoon reading Atonement by Ian McEwan.  It was recommended to me by Friend/Boss David, who raved about it.  So far I find it compelling, but also flawed, in ways that I plan to discuss when I finish it.  Wait for the review.

The big event of the day, though, was visiting Friends Katie and Randy at the viewing of Katie's father, who passed away very unexpectedly this Monday.  I felt helpless, and mostly talked to Randy (her husband), who is the sort to make jokes in the face of sorrow, which is also my wont.  I don't know what to do around death, in part because I inherited my mother's stolidness on the subject: they're dead now, what was there is gone, and so that is that.  But I realize that other people aren't like this -- which is probably a good thing, because my mother and I might be dancing the line of sociopathy on this one -- and since it's a friend, I want to help.  But how? I didn't know what to do with my hands, and I kept sweating, which I do when I'm nervous.  Katie said she wouldn't turn down a casserole -- it was all I could think of.  Mumford & Sons, which is a band I like but isn't necessarily profound or anything, has a song containing the lyric, "In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die."  Something maudlin comes after that in the song, but I kept thinking of just those two phrases today.  That's all there is to it.  I think the only way most people can live their lives is to forget, from moment to moment and day to day, that they will  some day die -- and even when you have it put in front of you -- in this body I live and in this body I will die -- you still can't actually embrace it; something in your brain turns it aside and paves over it, over and over again.  At least, that's how it works for me.

Take that, mortality.

After the viewing -- Me to Katie: "We're gonna head out, we're helping your husband be inappropriate" -- Ted and I got in the car and drove, literally, across the street, to D's Six Pax and Dogz, the one on Northern Pike in Monroeville. It's not as good as the D's in Regent Square: the pizza wasn't as good (though it certainly wasn't bad) and the service was indifferent, plus the entire place had the faint odor of raw potatoes to it.  But Ted and I ordered a large "Three Little Pigs" pizza -- sausage, pepperoni, and bacon -- to, as we put it, spite death.  Because what else can one do?  I've paved you over, today, Death, with pepperoni.

A kitten picture, since things were getting a little heavy, there.  Did you know Matilda is laser-equipped?

A Day in the Life

I did a lot of stuff today, though I'm not sure I have much to say about it.  Mom came to visit, and we went to Tamarind, Flavor of India for lunch.  Tamarind's lunch buffet, although small, is absolutely fantastic, and in fact, it is still winning my and Friend Sarah's Indian Lunch Buffet blog ... contest?  I don't know if it's a contest since there's nothing to win, but we've made it a point to visit several Indian lunch buffets and assess them critically and rank them, and Tamarind is winning.  So, you should probably go eat that.  Also read about it, here.

This was Round One of Indian food.  Not pictured: the goat I ate during Round Two.

After lunch, Mom and I went to the Strip, where I chiefly shopped for provisions for the upcoming Trailer Weekend.  Sarah's parents own a trailer -- though it's really nice, so I think "foundationless house" is a more accurate term -- up in New York, near Salamanca, and last Memorial Day Weekend Ted and I and Sarah went up to western NY and really enjoyed ourselves, so we booked The Trailer for this MDW as well.  If you want to read about last year's trip, you can do that here and here.

After that I dozed off on the couch.  Then I went to Casbah for their wine happy hour, where Ted met me.  I'm a huge fan of Casbah's happy hour: $6 a glass for really good wine.  Is it cheap?  No.  Is the atmosphere good, the service great, the wine delicious?  Yes.  Am I bougie?  Sure, everyone knows I'm a snob.  So there you have it.

SO MUCH DELICIOUSNESS.

While there, I informed Ted that we had two dinners for the next two nights based on my visit to the farmers' market on Monday and the Strip today: pasta with swiss chard and a Parma sausage, and stewed beet greens with a Parma sausage and some Mancini's bread and butter.  Which means one night between today and Saturday we have to go out.  He chose tonight, so we ate out at Point Brugge, which is one of my favorite places to get dinner in the city.  It's not cheap, but it's a good value for the quality.  We shared the cheese plate, with sausage (also Parma), which tonight turned out to be smoked meats -- YUM.  Then Ted got their chicken sandwich, which he loves, and I got the moules frites, red curry.  1) Best French fries I've ever had, anywhere, hands down, no other contenders.  2) The curried mussels are amazeballs.  Go there and eat them.  Also, excitingly, they had a beer I last had several trips ago at Pizza Paradiso in DC on the drink menu tonight, Saxo from  Brasserie Caracole, which I was super pleased to drink again.  Such a cute label!

That snail knows how to play the saxophone.

Now we're at home, and I might have a tiny Trader Joe's ice cream cone for dessert.  I love summer.