Expect delays, discombobulation, and chaos as I work towards settling in.

I pushed my way through a home-made revolving door into a diaphanous, amorphous, rustling pink antechamber. It was not unlike being encapsulated in a gigantic chewing-gum bubble. This was the entrance to Jaime Burkhart’s conceptual installation project, “Great Accommodations!“

The piece takes its form as a large, inflatable maze, a human-scale Habitrail fashioned from hundreds of disposable plastic picnic tablecloths. Larger chambers within the maze house art, photos, and artifacts relating to river culture. The Marvel, a home-made, bicycle-powered raft that Burkhart and several friends navigated from Kansas City to New Orleans in the summer of ’07 is present in two chambers. The raft itself forms a stage for a video installation in one room, while in another, the pedal-powered paddlewheel hangs overhead.

The installation hasn’t reached its complete form as yet, but it’s getting there, and the going is getting pretty weird. Good weird. I’d stopped by yesterday to help hang some more of the plastic river and do whatever else I could do to help get this trippy tribute to “river culture” off the ground, so to speak.

I encourage anyone who has much business to do downtown to stop in and say “hi” and have a look around. If nothing else, it will definitely take you out of your normal world and pleasantly disorient you.

I grilled up two of the eggplants I found the other day, then pureed them in the blender with a tablespoon of tahini, one of olive oil, ditto lemon juice, a finely minced clove of garlic, and about six tablespoons of water. I pureed the eggplants whole, skin and all. I added maybe 1/4 tsp of salt (I think there was still a little salt on the eggplants from the pre-grilling salt treatment, although I did rinse them off before grilling).

The color is pretty “off” since I pureed them skins and all…it is a really horrible greenish-brownish-tan, but the flavor is FAB. Subtle smokiness, a little tartness, that nice toasty sesame from the tahini, and a fresh, slightly grassy eggplant flavor. Because the eggplants were small, it only made about 1 cup of baba ghanoush, but it’s a good one at least.

Next year I am definitely planting WAY more eggplants.

The other night, we had eggplant and zucchini (both home-grown) simmered in a sauce made out of fresh roma tomatoes from the tomato plant we planted in the front terrace. I served it up on rice and it was pretty darn tasty! I seasoned it with half of a yellow onion, oregano, and a spice mix we bought in California on our cross-country trip (Garlic Capital Products “South Of The Border Mix”). This stuff has a pretty good heat to it, so you have to use it sparingly, as we learned early on in our trip!

I’m about to make another batch of tomato sauce, and I will be using a bit of it in tonight’s dinner, which is going to be veggie fajitas made with some of the banana peppers from the garden, as well as a couple of bell peppers in the fridge that need to be used before they go off.

I think that next year, we’ll have a much bigger and better garden, but I’m pretty happy with what I’m getting out of what we have right now.

Basically so that I can, if the spirit moves me, add cutesie little touches to this blog.

I’ll try to use them in moderation, so that this site won’t become a nauseating eyesore

I’d hate for people to come here and say

I didn’t realize that I had an eggplant plant until today. I was weeding after about a two-week lapse (shameful) and saw, lo! Eggplants! I don’t remember planting eggplant, so Joel must have, unless this is somehow a volunteer.

This is the eggplant that tipped me off to the presence of an eggplant plant in one of our raised beds.

In the course of weeding this summer, I somehow serendipitously avoided pulling up this plant; I guess it looked like it might be something official. I’m glad my halfassed gardening instincts were correct. I’ve gotten used to most of the native weeds, so I generally know what I absolutely MUST destroy. I give everything else the benefit of the doubt basically until it turns into something identifiable or annoying. I know what stuff like melons, squash, carrots, etc. look like, but when I plant something new (i.e. Asian Eggplant) I’m not always sure what I’m looking at. Obviously!

The gradations of purple are really pretty, so I took a closeup of the top of the eggplant for posterity.

This is what I pulled in today. I probably should have left that smallest eggplant on the left to ripen a little longer, but it was touching the ground and I was afraid it would rot. I’m going to see if I can ripen it in a paper bag.

It’s completely irrational, but I feel like I have unexpected and FREE BONUS FOOD upon discovery of this eggplant plant. There are three more small eggplant fruits on the plant, plus some blossoms, so there’s a little more fresh eggplant in our future. Whoot!

ABBA and I have a slightly stormy history. I loved them as a kid, of course. Their sprightly, catchy, danceable tunes get young and old alike up and moving. When I was in college (undergrad) we used to play ABBA’s Greatest Hits in the costume shop when we were working on costumes for plays. In fact, Dancing Queen played a cameo in the one-act I got to costume solo. The play was “A Couple Of White Chicks Sitting Around Talking” and ABBA came in after the wild Texan gal took the uptight Westchester County matron out on a shopping spree and a wild night on the town, and they come back to the posh chick’s house dancing and in high spirits.

Then in grad school, I am afraid I got ABBAed out. It seems like ABBA Gold would end up on repeat at the majority of house parties, and I dunno…I was under a lot of stress and pressure, and the excessively chipper disco music just got on my nerves like nothin’ else. I went resolutely off ABBA for about four or five years, but they’ve crept back into my subconscious, and now I have a few ABBA songs in the music mix on Joel’s old Rio Cali MP3 player that I have kind of annexed (he’s got a proper ipod mini, so I’m not depriving him of his music!)

To the end of satisfying my recent ABBA mania, I watched a great documentary on YouTube, the BBC’s “A is for ABBA.”

It’s to my current dissatisfaction that I have yet to watch Mamma Mia, but I’m about to add it to the Netflix queue. I don’t care how naff and contrived it may be, it looks cute and has a bunch of ABBA songs, and frankly, my tastes in music aren’t especially exalted.

Speaking of not-particularly-rarified tastes, it’s probably known that I like and liked the Spice Girls, and I realized while watching the ABBA documentary, that a lot of the completely mad clothes that Geri Halliwell (Ginger Spice) wore were direct descendants of some of Frida’s decidedly odd costumes. I went through a bit of a Ginger Spice phase in college, wearing stupidly short skirts, midriff-baring tops, and loads of sparkly barrettes and frilly elastics in my hair, so this sort of giddy look holds a rather warm place in my heart. If you’ve never dressed up like a hyperactive, psychedelic tart, you just have no idea how much fun it is!

I’ve got a couple of partyish events to go to this weekend, and you can bet that I will be dressing up in brightly colored, ridiculous-looking clothing because I have no reason not to. I just retrieved my magenta tutu from the shelf above the closet in my workroom, and will be building some kind of stupid outfit around that for tonight. I get too few opportunities to dress up like a colorblind maniac to pass up the ones that do present themselves.

It’s a nice heavyweight woolen flannel, and I trimmed it with gros-grain ribbon. I used my old favorite Simplicity 4698. Sadly, Simplicity has discontinued this excellent pattern, so I am going to have to copy this in Tyvek for the longterm.

The skirt I have paired it with is part of my one amazing and freaky dumpster-diving haul. It’s Liz Claiborne Sport, a much lighter weight woolen flannel with a self-colored machine embroidered border around the hemline. Paired up, they create a look not unlike the separate-set suits popular during WWII. In fact, I have “Everyday Fashions of the 1940s as pictured in the Sears Catalogue” which shows several similar outfits.

I’m pretty happy with how this turned out (and how well it goes with that skirt).

Due to basic laziness, I got a kind of late start heading out the the bank, but I figured that it would be no biggie, since they’re open until noon on Saturdays. So I headed downtown with my paycheck in hand, ready to take care of some business. I got downtown only to learn that the downtown branch of my bank isn’t open on the weekends.

Yaaay, right?

So I figured I still had time if I really hustled, to catch the midtown branch before the magic noon hour. Well, I missed it by about 10 minutes, so I just rolled around to the drive-through, thinking I would just go ahead and take care of my banking that way. They wouldn’t help me out! They said that it’s policy not to serve pedestrians who come up to the drive-through, that it’s a liability issue, that I could get run over or mugged!

Shit, I could get run over or mugged anywhere, any time, if I’m unlucky or stupid. I don’t think I’m at a higher risk at the bank, but policy is policy, and when policy is policy, you can’t do much to fight it. Commenting that cyclists and pedestrians are NOT the same thing would have done me no damn good anyway, so I just accepted defeat and left.

I was pretty close to the Westport grocery store, so I thought I’d go ahead and pick up a few things, but then I realized that I was riding my singlespeed, which doesn’t have a rack, and was carrying my Camelback, which doesn’t have a terribly large carrying capacity.

So, I figured I’d just scurry home and switch bikes…get the ol’ Trek, strap on the panniers, and come back for food.

I did just that. Busted a move home, switched bikes, and hauled ass back out toward midtown. At that point, I was trying to wrap things up pretty quick, so I’d have time for a decent lunch before heading out again this afternoon for the ACME ride.

Well, speed and the ol’ Trek 800 don’t so much mix, and I took a corner too tight at too much speed and laid it over…HARD. My right arm is lightly roadrashed from wrist to armpit, with a particularly gnarly hamburgular contusion on my forearm right below my elbow. My right leg is also rashed from knee to boot top, with a major concentration of gore right on the knee itself. I tested yet another helmet, which passed with flying colors, and also dinged my glasses. The right side bow has a small crack in it, so I’m a little nervous about them holding together for the long run. If/when I get some money, I’m going to see if my eye doctor can replace that bow.

I know not everyone wants to see this kind of thing, so I’m not going to inflict it on the unwilling, but if you want to see some pretty grodacious damage, I uploaded some pictures of my current roadrash status to my semi-private photodump.

But I did accomplish my shopping and get home with enough time to take a bath and get the worst of the road grime out and off of my injuries, clean up a bit, nosh some leftover saag paneer, and leave for ACME.

Heading out, I decided that I’d ride my road bike, since I was kind of tired from all of the ass-hauling I’d already done, plus feeling a bit wimpy after my wreck. I decided that I wanted the lightweight zippiness that I enjoy with my singlespeed, plus gears. My other geared bikes tend to be pretty portly, but the Burley is zippy and easy to ride.

So my day may have begun rife with frustration, inconvenience, and injury, but I did manage to ride three different bikes in one day, and there’s got to be something to be said for that!

My niece and nephews are such awesome little kids!

Here’s the birthday boy himself, enjoying an ice-cream-cone cupcake. The big kids decorated them, and they were extraordinarily colorful. Sis has a great stash of really vibrantly colored sprinkles, and Elizabeth & Alex were very generous with them.

Elizabeth is one of the silliest kids I know, and always a crackup to spend time with. I don’t know that I’ve ever met a kid with as much vim as she has.

Alex is an awesome kid, too. He’s such a thoughtful little guy, always trying to lend a hand. He helped me take Ruby for a walk, helps his little brother with breakfast, and loves to assist his dad with yard work.

Matt, my brother-in-law, had gotten this cardboard barrel that the kids were all extremely taken with. They spent a good, solid hour-and-a-half rolling down the hill in their yard in it. And/or otherwise monkeying around in it.

You know how it is…the simplest stuff, often things that would otherwise be thrown away, end up making the best toys.

On that note, I figured that it would be hard to go wrong with Duplo blocks for Max’s birthday present. I already knew that the big kids liked Legos. Audrey had a stash of Legos that she’d had for years that the kids always played with, and I sent them more at Christmas time (easy present!). When Max opened up his new tub of Duplos, it was instant fun. He commenced to making a very, very long tower out of the four-button blocks, while Alex built a garage and Elizabeth built a one-eyed robot:

Building really cool stuff seems to run in the family. Matt recently re-acquired this AWESOME chair that he’d built many years ago:

It had been semi-lost/stolen in one of his moves years ago, and via a bit of asking around, he finally tracked it down to an old acquaintance’s storage unit.

Here’s Audrey and her enormous cat who looks like Maru. Boda is such a ridiculously friendly cat that it is hard to photograph him…he wants to run up and rub his big ol’ noggin against the camera.

Mom and I had been going for a bit of metaphotography, but she put her camera down too soon. In our family albums, there are a lot of photos of Grandma taking a picture (or pictures that Grandma took of somebody else taking a picture).

I guess it’s family tradition!

Somehow, my dad managed to evade photography, but I did catch him chuckling it up on this video of one of Alex’s many trips down the hill.

And Ruby decided that she needed to nap on/under/or between Joel’s and Dad’s feet.

She’d spent the afternoon gleefully chasing the kids or fetching a tennis ball that Alex was only too happy to throw for her, and she managed to wear herself out pretty well. That’s always a good thing…it can be a bit of a challenge to get the bulk of the energy out of a young collie/aussie/possibly-golden mix.

It was a pretty awesome visit (if rather short) ’cause it’s always great to get to spend some time with my family.

I also distributed a little bit of sewing. I made a skirt for Mom. We’d gone fabric shopping when they were visiting KC in June and she found this very cool abstract vine-print fabric to make up a skirt from this pattern.

This fabric was such a great choice. Firstly, it hangs and drapes beautifully and was easy to handle with little tendency to fray. It’s also pretty much entirely wrinkle-proof, which makes it a great option for travel-wear. I tried a new-to-me lining fabric which purported to be static-resistant, and while I was handling it, it lived up to its promise. Lets hope that continues during regular wear, too.

I also made my sister this skirt, which is a copy of one of mine that Audrey had borrowed and liked. It’s a versatile, flared denim skirt with white contrast topstitching. Years ago, I bought a whole bolt of dark denim that has like 1% lycra. I’ve made a couple of pair of jeans and three skirts off that bolt and still have probably 70% of it still around. I’ll be wearing (or sharing) this denim for many years to come, I can tell. At least it’s good fabric.

This dog is hilarious and cute. One night, she actually was over 3/4 of the way underneath the bed.