31 January 2004

How do I hate LA? Let me count the ways.

1) Aggressive hostile drivers, especially on city streets

2) Dimwitted drivers on the freeways going 20 MPH slower than everyone else in a middle lane

3) What do ugly people do here?

4) People in clown costumes at the gym

5) Fake friendliness

6) The fact that everyone’s car is shiny and clean

7) A fresh eyesore  comes into view whenever you turn your head

8) At ten after midnight on a Saturday night I’m almost ready to pack my bags and drive home

Gruss aus Los Angeles! It’s sunny and almost 70. I know it’s boring to write about the weather, but I’m sitting shirtless on Yolanda’s patio as I type this. I thought those of you enjoying life in the colder climes this weekend might want to know what it’s like here. Isn’t that why you read blogs?

350 miles in a little over five hours’ time. I started out at my parents’, and spent the first hour winding through the hills to the Central Valley. Through Clayton and Byron on Marsh Creek Road and then the Byron Highway to Mountain House Road and Highway 5. Then it was 90 mph most of the way. The town where I grew up has been full of subdivisions and tract houses for over thirty years, but the country, with grazing cattle, tractors, and barns full of horses, is still only twenty minutes away.

I was too tired to drive down here last night; spit roasting pork loin the night before tired me out, even though it went well. I singed off most of the hair on my fingers and my forearms.

Yolanda isn’t his real name, but we call him that because of his appreciation of certain aspects of Mexican culture. He isn’t here this weekend (he’s off to a tryst in Mexico City), so this is my first solo visit to LA in years. I hope I can manage. I realized that it means that I’ll have to drive if I want to do anything. Yolanda’s kind enough to do all the driving when I visit, and I’m content enough being shown to good advantage as a passenger in a convertible BMW.

On the agenda: fish tacos, the gym, window shopping on Robertson, a trip to San Gabriel to see the house where my grandmother grew up, dinner with a friend from San Francisco, and hopefully, some touching.

22 January 2004

Happy Lunar New Year.

I’m giving myself another resolution: be frugal. To that end, after the gym I steered my bike away from Truly Mediterranean and its falafel deluxe and made a little pasta with a can of oil-packed tuna and the rapini that I got last Saturday at the farmers’ market. I have enough for lunch tomorrow too.

I’d write more, but it’s almost 1:30 in the morning. I’ve just finished assembling and reformatting our draft documentation. I started working on it at noon and took two short breaks for therapy and the gym. Thank god for Adobe’s FrameMaker. It’s hard to learn, but it's vastly superior to Word. Everything just locks into place. Word is fine for a memo, but not for a twelve-chapter book that has to be formatted consistently and elegantly.

Over 5,000 today! Thanks, dear readers.

19 January 2003

I think I’m one of those people who didn’t get the message of the Industrial Revolution. I hate working on a regular schedule. Why on earth do I need to be somewhere early every morning? I’m great with deadlines, I’ll work around the clock to get the harvest in, but show up each morning and waste the best hours of the day? No thanks. And I wonder why I’m broke.

And thanks to the member of the old guard who stood watch tonight. That kind of chivalry is all too rare.

18 January 2004

I’ve been unusually emotionally labile the past few days, even by my standards. As I was walking back from lunch on Thursday, I got a call on my cell phone from a “Restricted ID.” The guy introduced himself, and I thought at first that it was some kind of telemarketer, so I put on my what-the-fuck-do-you-want voice. It was actually the dean of admissions from one of the trade schools I applied to. He was calling to tell me that I had been accepted and that the school was offering me a dean’s scholarship worth $50K+ over three years. Golly.

So why am I in a bad mood? This was my “safety” school, and I don’t really want to go there. I won’t, in fact, go there if I get into any better schools. I didn’t tell him this, of course. I haven’t heard from any of those better schools, so I may just end up going to his and being stuck in the second tier for the rest of my life. At least I won’t have a huge debt to pay off.

And thirdly, my only remaining close friend in San Francisco has been gone for the past ten days, and I miss him. I went over to his place this afternoon to take in the mail and read his copy of Details (don’t bother) in his sunny living room. My other two close friends have been living in New York and LA for years. I have made a few new friends here, but I haven’t known them long enough to be really tight. I know from experience that having a boyfriend doesn’t mean that you won’t be lonely, but a little companionship right now would be nice.

And the other minor irritation is that I banged up my fingers last night picking crab at the restaurant. Little cuts and nicks from the sharp edges on crab shells always seem prone to infection and inflamation. It has been painful to use my hands all day.

Fifteen more minutes and this weekend is over.

15 January 2004

I got a call this morning as I was leaving the house from a friend whose catering job this evening had just grown exponentially. I put my briefcase down, grabbed the iron, and pressed my chef’s jacket, then grabbed my briefcase, my knives, an apron, and my jacket and minced off to job No. 1. The party was in Pacific Heights. The hosts were pleasant, the daughter precocious, and the son a future homosexual. He was all of eight or nine years old, but he declared that he was “very fond” of hors d’oeuvres. Of course, I had to be an asshole and put him to the test (with little faggots of bitter greens wrapped in prosciutto or a tortilla española), he didn’t like them. He just liked the idea of being fond of hors d’oeuvres. Anyhow, the guest of honor was a very famous musician, someone so famous that his handlers indicated that he was to be addressed as “Maestro”and not by name. The wines: NV Bollinger (don’t waste your money), a 1998 single-vineyard Kistler chardonnay (a typically overwrought California disaster, listed at $159 a bottle (!) on-line, but essentially undrinkable), and a 1990 second-growth Médoc, which was pleasant, though clearly infested with brettanomyces (read down the link for the Erik Olsen article).

I forgot to mention yesterday that I broke one of my resolutions, but it was with S&P Daddy, my inspiration, my muse. I know he has a boyfriend, but since he was being generous, I wasn’t going to turn him down in his time of need. And we will soon introduce a new correspondent, Miss Valerie Plame, who will be supplementing our coverage of the derring-dos and derring-don’ts of Gold’s Gym.

If I had a CD burner I might heed your call and make some to CDs share, but I’ve dated too many DJs to feel comfortable about mixing songs together as a amateur. In any case, what songs would I use? I almost never listen to music of my own volition. Weeks and weeks go by without my turning on the CD player; I’ve never listened to an iPod; I don’t like headphones (too claustrophobic). I almost never listen to music for more than a few minutes in the car; I can’t listen to music and write or edit since it takes up too much space in my head; and I don’t like listening to it when I cook because it just adds to the other noise in the kitchen. I like the sound of rain, or wind in pine trees, or the hiss of bicycle tires on wet pavement, or, late at night, hearing the fog horns out on the Bay when all else is quiet.

12 January 2004

It was a long day. I awoke an hour early and misread the clock, which meant that I had just enough time to go to the gym (world’s fastest leg workout) before a two-hour planning meeting. From there I gobbled lunch and went to the restaurant. I have a love/hate relationship with that place; what I love is being able to go to work and improvise all afternoon; there are no recipes, just techniques. Since I had never made it before, I didn’t expect to be the person making eight gallons of fish and shellfish broth, but I did. Here’s how: sauté some onions, leek, fennel, and garlic but don’t let them brown. Add a little tomato and red peppers if you want to go that direction. Gut the fish, remove the gills, chop the fish carcass into biggish pieces, rinse off all traces of blood, and add them to the vegetables. Split and rinse the lobsters, sauté them, and then put them in a mixer to break them up. Add them to the pot of fish. Boil the crabs for a few minutes (to kill them). Open them up, remove the gills and clean out the stink, break them up in the mixer, and add them to the pot. Open the clams in white wine and add them to the broth. Add water to cover and bring to a boil. Skim the foam assiduously (you can leave the oil at this point). Once you’ve skimmed it, add herbs and aromatics to taste, and transfer the whole pot to the fireplace and let it simmer there for about 45 minutes to get a kiss of smoke. Strain and skim again. Yum. I got so messy that I had to change my jacket three times, but things went well in the end. While gutting the fish I found some nice big livers, so we poached them and incorporated them into the aioli that went with the dish. The chef had the day off, so he and his wife ate dinner in the dining room. She’s a no-nonsense French woman d’un certain âge. She came into the kitchen during dinner to tell me, “La soupe, c’était vraiment un tour de force.” I’m still smiling.

11 January 2004

“If you want to know whether a piglet will grow into a nice fat hog, you measure its father’s scrotum.” — Tod Murphy, quoted in the 1/11/04 NY Times Magazine article on his Farmers Diner in Vermont, which tries to get most of its meat and produce locally. The magazine also features a nice short essay by the marvelous Michael Pollan on the insanity of the beef production industry in the US. A must read. I knew that industrial cows are still routinely fed bovine blood products and ground up pig and chicken carcasses, but I didn’t know that they were also fed chicken shit (yes, that’s right, chicken shit) as a yummy protein source. Do you know where your meat comes from?

I’m lazy and I’m wicked. I slept 10 hours last night. We had a great night at the restaurant — one of those rare times where everything goes flawlessly. I made steamed cod with truffle butter; it was one the best things I’ve ever cooked in my life. It wasn’t my cooking, it was just the combination of great cod, beautiful leeks, black truffles, and plenty of good butter. Because of the drought last summer in France, this is the first time all season we’ve used truffles; the price is astronomical. My mouth was watering like a little piglet's all night long each time I got a whiff of the truffles. It’s watering now as I think about them. Please don’t think that you know about truffles from those disgusting truffle oils you sometimes get in fancy restaurants. They’re as much like real truffles as humping a rubber blow-up doll is to a caress from your beloved.

I’m not going to write about my wickedness, except to say that it involved supporting a (very) local business.

I was going to borrow someone else’s idea (he’s too lazy and shiftless to write his own blog) and inaugurate a new feature, Goldsfinger, wherein one will find blind items about the goings on at Gold’s Gym on Brannan Street. It involves Duchess Tinymeat (she’s too old and grey to be Princess), but it’s too catty.

9 January 2004

It was cute straight-guy day at the Laundromat. First, two rockers in black sleeveless t-shirts with enough clothes to stock a thrift shop, and then a quiet, scruffy, thoughtful boy, and then a nicely built blond (drinking a beer from a paper bag at 3:15 in the afternoon). Was that a boner I saw in your pants as you read the article on threesomes in Vice?

As for the date, my therapist, curiously also named Dr. Melfi, suggested that I’m unwilling to go on a date with anyone I’m really attracted because of my overarching desire to avoid chaos in my life. Dating someone, even someone I’m really into, would bring turmoil. Except for my lack of gainful employment, or rather my overabundance of gainless employment, everything is running smoothly. I’ve finished my trade school applications. I’m getting along well with my family and my friends. I got my rent lowered 18%. I’ve made the first pass at my taxes and hired an accountant. My bathroom gleams.  Why mess things up with a guy? I'm still hopeful, however, and I realize that I have to change tactics:

New Year’s Resolution #11: No more dates with guys I’m not really attracted to. Even if they’re super nice. Even if we have lots in common. I’m not a straight woman. Dating guys I don't want to have sex with is just more self-sabotage.

7 January 2004

Well, Mr. Six from the housewarming party last Saturday and  I are going on a date Thursday. Finally someone who has a car! Seems like a first for me. Perhaps I’ve been setting my sights too low.

Resolutions update:

(1) I haven’t knowingly slept with anyone’s boyfriend this year. I didn’t ask them, but my intuition told me that they’ve all been bachelors.

(3) I haven’t learned Portuguese or (8) made any money, though I did get a slight raise at one job.

(4) I got a new shower curtain.

(9) I’m trying not to be relationship-phobic about the date. No point in sabotaging things before I even get to know him.

With reference to Item (8), is there a taboo in blogging against talking about money? No one ever discusses his financial successes. Some openly beg for money, many will detail their poverty, but no one mentions his $$,$$$ Christmas bonus, or the burdens of surviving on a “quarter” ($250K) a year. Or am I just reading the wrong blogs?  It couldn’t be decorum or a fear of tackiness, considering the things people do write about.

I didn’t have any epiphantic moments today, though I did realize that I need to make more money and soon. But for a bit of touchup work, the bathroom is finished. My neighbor across the airshaft complemented me on the whiteness of it all.

The gym is full of fresh meat. I see new faces every day. God bless them. I’ve done just about everyone there that I can. Perhaps when my job starts I’ll join a businessman gym downtown and start plowing a new field.

Just trying to set a bad example.

5 January 2004

5:55 PM
So who’s the freak who co-hosted As It Happens on the CBC today? What’s up with his scary voice?
The first coat is on. The brushes and rollers have been washed and are drying. I’ll need to put on another coat tomorrow morning. It looks good. Bright and white. I have white paint under my fingernails, which looks like a French manicure. I feel pretty, oh so pretty.

3:30 PM
Just waiting for the primer to dry. I used the whole quart, down to the last drop. Listening to the news on NPR while painting reminds me of my teenage years with my dad, when it seemed that he was always having me paint something with him. I’m not great at it, I’ve never learned to work with oil-based paints, and I know that paint will always spill on to the only square centimeter of the floor that you don't have covered, and I still have trouble with ridges in glossy trim, but I’m pretty fast for an amateur. I knew exactly what to ask for at the local paint store, which is staffed by jocular, impatient, straight assholes. I hated painting as a kid, but now I’m glad my dad took the time to teach me.

2:10 PM
I’ve washed and rinsed the walls, taped all of the edges, covered the mirror, and shingled the tasteful fiberglass shower surround with the NY Times, and now it’s time for the primer.

9:50 AM
Since I don’t have any work lined up this week, I’m finally going to paint my bathroom. I bought gloves and TSP yesterday with which to wash the walls. I’ve got the masking tape already, and I’ll use the old shower curtain as a drop cloth. I’ll buy the paint this morning when I have to move the car for street sweeping. It’s going to be white, very white. The walls are currently the dingiest off-white imaginable, and they’ve depressed me ever since I moved in. The dingy bathroom was a symbol to me of lack of success in life: all I could afford was an overpriced pit with a dumpy bathroom. I’ve put off painting since last summer because I thought I’d move this fall. I only have six months left (if all goes well), and then I’m out of here.

I met a nice guy at the party on Saturday. I’d vaguely noticed him at the gym, but didn’t pay too much attention since he seemed a little too uptight (short, precise haircut; very lean build, my age or a little older). He turned out to be interesting and more personable and relaxed in person. He had definitely noticed me at the gym and had been interested. I had written him off because I thought that Mr. Six-pack-abs (so nineties) wouldn’t be into my voluptuousness. We’ll see.

4 January 2004

If I've already had four (or five, depending on how you count) in the last week, I guess I shouldn't complain that I struck out tonight.

3 January 2004

Yesterday was my sixth anniversary at the restaurant. Time flies. I made crème du Barry (but with a garnish of Jerusalem artichoke brunoise instead of croûtons).

It was so cold last night that it was only 55°F by morning in my apartment.

The farmer’s market was quiet, with relatively few vendors, but clear and bright on the water. I got a lot of greens: nettles, cooking escarole, dandelion, and erbette. The holidays haven’t been kind to my figure or my liver.

This evening B. took me to a housewarming party in a loft south of Market owned by a gay couple I hadn’t met. I hated the place (exposed sewer pipes from the unit upstairs, impractical layout, ugly slanted windows), but loved the art. I tried not to flirt with one of our hosts (foxy, built,  shaved head, South American), but he came over, sat next to me, and pressed his leg against mine when he saw me reading his copy of ¡Hola! (I wasn’t sure if the article sobre el cantante puertorriqueño Ricky Martin y su novia, Rebeca de Alba, la presentatora de TV mexicana (“enamorados y con manos entrelazadas”), was meant to be read at face value (since the idea was so patently absurd) or whether there was a wry subtext in the Spanish that I wasn’t able to grasp). Honestly, dear readers, I did not press my leg against his, but more than once he maneuvered himself so that his thigh or calf was aligned unmistakably against mine. His boyfriend soon joined the conversation and the touching ceased. I’m not a home-wrecker, at least not in 2004, but I wouldn't mind being entrelazado with him.

And I love Google. It's the best thing since Advil. I couldn't remember how to spell "entrelazada" (since I don't speak Spanish), but I typed in my guess, "manos entrelacedas," at Google.es, and got the helpful suggestion for the correct spelling.

1 January 2004

Last year at the house where I was catering a party I found myself in the elevator at the stroke of midnight, taking out the trash. I thought it was symbolic of my desire to get rid of 2002. Instead, it was symbolic of 2003: a rubbishy year. I cleared out a lot of dead wood in my life last year, ended things that needed to be ended, and planted the seeds for the next phase. This year, I decided to do something more positive. I went to a little party, drank only modestly, learned that unlike Stoli-and-Bolly or bourb-and-Veuve, a whisky (Glenlivet) and champagne cocktail tastes bad, in fact, it tastes something very like vomit. I smoked my first cigarette since 1986. I forgot how fun that is. The rain didn’t start in earnest until after midnight, which meant that we could watch the fireworks and dance on the deck. I met my former gay lover’s new boyfriend, who seems like a keeper.

I had a quiet day today; I made another batch of Boston baked beans, but the devil finds work for idle genitals, so I went down the street to the local sex club and found a kindred spirit. He was very direct, which I liked, and imaginative, which I liked even more. He lives in the neighborhood too. Just what I needed.

Since we live in a place with a large Asian population, New Year’s resolutions don’t have to be set in stone — we get a second chance a few weeks later to revise or repurpose them at Lunar New Year. It’s in iterative process. Here’s my first round:

1) No more knowingly entangling myself with other people’s boyfriends (unless the boyfriend is into it)

2) To borrow from young Canucker: “become more visible to allow my future boyfriend an easier time of finding me”

3) Learn conversational Portuguese

4) Get a new shower curtain (I know this seems trivial compared to my other resolutions, but I hate spending money on things like that)

5) Go to Brazil this summer (this time: Brasilia, Buzios, and maybe Fernando de Noronha)

6) Not freak out when I get declined by some of the trade schools I applied to

7) Maintain the progress I made at the gym in 2003

8) Make enough money that I can quit working at the end of June and go on a long trip (see Item 5 above) before school starts

9) Stop being so relationship-phobic

10) And a couple of other things I’m not going to mention here