Saturday, April 29, 2006 

Recipe site

I love to cook.

I've started to record the recipes I've perfected (along with those that friends/family gave me that I often cook). I take my granny's approach to cooking, so the amounts listed are estimates at best: I cook to taste.

This is probably of interest to a handful of people, but seemed worth mentioning.


What fascinates me is that I use the same few ingredients in nearly everything -- it's the spice and method of cooking that makes all the difference. Squash, zucchini, spinach, garlic, bell pepper, tomatoes, salt, pepper, cayenne, chili powder....

Friday, April 28, 2006 

8th Annual Caughey Spaghetti Dinner

Saturday, May 20th

Come any time after 7PM.

Saturday, April 22, 2006 

last night was inspiring.

there is something great about seeing one's friends create, seeing them succeed.

the first stop was the magnolia theater. yep: my friend david is a bonafide successful comic book writer. his wife, melissa, just got accepted into a local roller derby league (she might be small but i guarantee you that she'll be a mean powerhouse of a player).

our friend sjs arranged the event. there was cheese.

we soon departed for the meridian room (no big surprise there) where we dined on jalapeno hummus and sweet potato fries with friends (and consumed mojitoes that contained one tiny fragment of mint leaf. note to self: never order a mojito when the bar is busy), then headed to the shithole next door where once a bartender attempted to kill dan with gin (but that's a different story). our friend paul (who is married to sjs -- we're all connected!) and his band played. and then the tah-dah's played. we consumed beer and saw many people, spoke and reconnected with lots of friends.


i have the pleasure of being acquainted with people who create things, people who play bass and write, people who arrange events and write press releases, moms who train for the roller derby.

----

in other news, i just saw this, a book i worked on that features the talented mr. hopkins. it's worth the cover price just to read his essay

Thursday, April 20, 2006 

rain and picasso

this weather is incredible. we need more words for rain: in the past eight hours or so it has sprinkled, misted. there's been a downpour. it has thundered and done several shades in between each.

there isn't a word for what is going on outside this morning. the same drops of water have been hanging from this branch outside my window for a quarter hour, perched there catching the light of dawn and defying gravity while a cleen light sheet of moisture gently pelts the ground.

this sort of weather makes me want to throw away my umbrella, to stomp in puddles. it reminds me of that oddly safe feeling one got as a child when strapped into the back seat of a yellow subaru, lulled into quiet, secretly enjoying the smell of wet sneakers while you contemplate the thick gray length of nylon seatbelt and absently appreciate the consonants that make the word "buckle" what it is, the sounds of the wipers and the fat raindrops splattering across the windshield as your parents safely navigate sodden roads.


----



on a day very much like today my father and i drove to the kimball museum. i was probably eight years old or so. for some reason or other this painting appealed to me. i don't remember too much from my childhood, so the things that stand out stand out.

kind of like this guy's eye, his pipe. what i think is a page of sheet music, or perhaps a book.




Friday, April 14, 2006 

the past week+










Thursday, April 13, 2006 

praise luna

perhaps it's the full moon.

i feel like going to a revival. i want to clap my hands and sing a third, or a fifth above or below the melody. i want a worn red hymnal in hand. i want to see old ladies stomp the packed ground in sunday shoes, men with hands in the air, cracked leather bibles on pews. small children in pastels and easter dresses, white shoes and hairbows and bluebonnets waiting on the side of a highway, flowers just sitting there waiting for you to sit your family down and take photographs that will eventually yellow. easter eggs and gold brick chocolate bars.

hats and corsages. the family pew. offering envelopes used for tic-tac-toe and doodles or notes on the sermon, or notes passed to the cute guy sitting at the end of the third pew from the front, the youth section, i think he's going to be a pastor or a leader or a musician and i wonder if he'll sit by me in the church van at this weekend's youth rally.

eight glories, hallellujahs.

nine songs and a sermon and an altar call. tithes and offerings
body and blood
song and dance
sing and clap
holy ghost power
slain in the song of it all

slain in the song of it all.

 

i am deeply sad in a way that eclipses feeling sorry for oneself.

the past year has delivered several blows. i've been kicked while down, injuries piled upon insults. gaping voids a keening reminder of recent loss.

and i sit here and type and think and none of it changes the fact that my papa is in the ground. his absence is a mystery, a black hole we're all destined to join.

i keep saying i want my papa back. but ownership of pretty much anything, especially people, is a myth.


his presence in my life was a gift. a glorious product of contingency, of coincidence and happenstance and love and hope, of grit and life and hard living.

-----

my wounds are tender. i'm scraped up, burnt, broken.

but i hope.

 

simple needs

souffle cookware
vegetarian chef school
new guitar strings
subscription to bran's music
personal scribe
thousand dollar gift card to home depot for plants
backyard
japanese water heater
huge-ass bathtub
time machine
saffron
a film crew
cushy university job
free tuition
living will
argyle socks
free postage for a year
a hot tub
a year in taos
a month in peru
new dishes
yoga

Tuesday, April 11, 2006 

beat up and battered around....

i'm ashamed to say that it's been a while since i've purchased a cd. long enough to forget the simple joy of anticipation as you drive home, tearing off the packaging with one hand while steering and shifting somehow with the other, coming home and sliding it in, cranking it to eleven and looking at the album art while you take it in.

i like listening to music as an activity. that said,

crap. i missed jenny lewis with the watson twins at the dma. they cover a traveling wilburys song.

bisa.

-------

this makes me want to pick up my guitar.

there is memory, and there is a kind of feeling that a certain era of one's life has. i can remember the time when i was prolific, when i wrote songs and learned and created chord progressions. coupled voice with strings.

but i haven't felt that particular _______, that inspiration coupled with several things that lack words in quite this way in some time.

i feel half-crazy this evening, like anything is possible. perhaps i'll become a chef. a backup singer. a free-verse poet. a theologian. an author. a salsa dancer. a yoga instructor.

maybe i can fold all of those into one lifetime.

Sunday, April 02, 2006 

random thoughts

it just got sunny out. i potted two rosebushes to reward myself for unpacking the second floor. i'd love to throw on my black bikini and head to the pool to read some rorty but alas, i must push forward. there is sourdough to bake, starter to share. clothes to hang. about fifteen trips to the dumpster that must be made (it's a good few hundred yards from the door and my insight's hatch still doesn't work. i wish i had a wagon or a wheelbarrow!)