Let’s do it for Ghengis!

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As you know, last year I lost my dear little Ghengis. I’ve survived months of mourning and grieving and now it is time to do something.
I am raising money for the 2007 Humane Society’s Walk for Animals. I miss Ghengis in the deepest way, I really do. Part of what hurts so much is that I don’t have the means to tell him just what a great dog he was. This is one way that I can do it.
The funds I raise and donate will be a memorial to Ghengis. There is no better way to honor his memory than to help other dogs (and cats and bunnies and ferrets and squirrels and mousies!).
If you would like to donate, please click here. It’s fast and easy!
Do it for him…

EDIT: Thank you to all who have donated so far! I am truly touched by your generosity! I have bumped my goal up since your donations have surpassed it. Thank you thank you and Ghengis thanks you!

LOOK!

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New photos! over there on the right! A couple new dog photos, a couple added to ephemeral and many added to craftin! see the dino purse, the turtle parade and the little bunnies!
Finally, photos to love and share

Public Radio is going to kill me

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I’m pretty sure that public radio is trying to kill me. This isn’t paranoia or me just trying to blame a giant, faceless entity for my own stupidity. It’s true, there’s a conspiracy.
1) While listening to a bit about the process of hand mixing fabric dyes in Afghanistan, I missed my turn to go home and subsequently turned on the wrong street
2) Listening to an interview with the ambassador to Sudan and his wienery way of wiggling out of any question that could not be answered with a reference to the glory of sudan I ended up way south of my house and had to creep around the lake to get home
3) my car displays the artist and song title on the radio. When i am listening to the minnesota public radio’s station that is supposed to be playing “new, alternative music” (and I’m such an old lady that when I listen I end up saying things like, “comb your hair, cheer up and go outside for a little bit” and “your whiny voice doesn’t hide your lack of talent” and “oh great, another blast from the eighties! Goodness, I’m glad I got to hear ‘Faith No More’ once more before I died!”). Every once in a while they do play something of interest that sounds both new AND good (because a lot of the shit sounds new, but stuffing a reed up my ass and listening to whistlefarts also sounds new but you wouldn’t want to hear it) and I want to see what I am listening to. I have to stare at my radio face and the road and the radio face and the road and the radio face and the road and try to watch the light turn red and not die before I get the name of the artist which I will promptly forget because I can remember things I don’t need to know (like the fact that I was wearing a beige sweater at the record store appearance of Soul Coughing 2 million years ago, but I cannot remember the name of the record store).
4) an explanation of how the sub-prime mortgage market implosion affects me made me late for work
5) listening to Kevin Kling talk about dachshunds and dog sledding found me in the garage with the car running for longer than is healthy
6) last night I totally blew through a stop sign while listening to a story about Albert Einstein
Actually, it seems that public radio isn’t trying to kill me but is trying to use me as a tool to kill others. interesting.
In further geek news, April got David the first 2 seasons of the new Doctor Who on DVD. I was not so interested, i’ve never been terribly interested in Doctor Who and in watching the first episode I was really not interested, but I kept watching. It’s actually not bad. I mean it’s not high art or anything (except for the Empty Child/The Doctor Dances two parter, that was awesome) and the science is way way wrong most of the time but it’s quirky and fun. I will say that Christopher Eccleston makes a funnier, more thoughtful and better looking Doctor that David Tennant can ever hope to be.
And by comparing Doctors in this way, I have doomed myself to a life of tucked in button down shirts, inhalors and New Years Eve parties spent playing video games in cheap hotel rooms! (oh, Anna, did I totally diss you there? yeah, I think I did! I am your mom and I took you to school in the car of pain!!!! Guess that will teach you to miss lunch you overcaffienated monkey-picker!)
Also also I have reopened comments to all and I am taking on a new strategy to fight comment spammers. So leave a comment, just don’t try to sell me clear prom shoes, visa cards, outdoor area rugs, hoover vacuum cleaner parts and viagra.

the gift

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My mother has a friend, Susie that dyes and spins yarn. If you go to her site you can see some of her beautiful handiwork. I particularly like the ‘irises’ and the ‘baby so blue’.
When I got home last night I found a package waiting for me. It was quite unexpected. It was from Susie, who I had met once last fall. Insid the envelope was was a beautiful skein of yarn, hand dyed in vivid candy shades of pink and blue. It’s a very lightweight super wash merino wool. She sent me 1100 yards. I have a skein of hand dyed super wash merino wool that measures 1100 yards! Go to your yarn store and see how many yards are in a typical skein of high quality yarn!
1100 yards of yarn would pass over a football field 11 times! 1100 yards would pass over me 660 times! 1100 yards would kick your mom’s ass and FEEL NO REMORSE!!!!
I immediately pulled out my pattern books to find something worthy of such yarn. I’m still looking though I do have some ideas brewing in my head. Most certainly, this yarn will not be made into gifts. I’m feeling greedy, I want to keep things for me!

en la edad del miedo le ofrezco los cacahuetes

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Before I regale you with tales of my enormously delicious paella meal, I will tell you 2 things from this weekend that are totally retarded. It’s important that you don’t get the idea that I am some sort of super hero with only magic and smooth writing pens. I am just a regular person with a regular life. I want to guarantee balance. If there is no balance, there is no truth…
1) We decided to do our grocery shopping for easter dinner on saturday night at 10pm. This could end here as it is pretty retarded, but it was cool, we got our stuff and got home. I walked in the door with approximately 8000* bags of groceries on my arms. If you know anything about my dogs you will know that they are an excitable and yet entirely retarded pack of beasts with no concept of “other” or “cause and effect”. As I tried to get in the door quickly Maddie was trying to tell me important news like “My name is Maddie” and “OH MY GOD!!! You are now inside the house” or my personal favorite “when you were not in the house I farted and it kind of smelled like dog food and it was really weird so I barked a little.” My dogs never say things like “wow, that’s a lot of stuff, can I help you carry anything?” no, they can’t conceive of any notion other than, “TOUCH ME TOUCH ME ACKNOWLEDGE ME VALIDATE ME!”. In Maddie’s frenzy she managed to knock into my legs and send my flying onto my face.
Sprawled out in the living room, groceries everywhere, do you think Maddie would feel remorse? No, mostly she just saw it as an opportunity to say, “my nose is very wet and I want to leave nose wetness on your face as a gift.”
2) Sunday, after eating a delightful brunch at my dad’s house (ham….the king of the pink meats) I had to swing by my house and hurriedly gather up the food and equipment to make the amazing paella dinner at Owen’s place. With Anna’s help I hauled the bags and pans and whatnot out to the car. I dropped Anna off at home and popped over to Owen’s place. It was a beautifully sunny afternoon, the skies were so clear blue and I was belting out “The Decemberists” at the top of my lungs. When I got to Owen’s and started to unload the car, all my joy dissolved…
In the process of loading up the car I had put my lovely 12 in Calphalon paella pan on the trunk of the car. You know where this is going. No pan in my car, certainly no pan just sitting on the trunk of my car. I lost my pan. I drove home hoping it had fallen off my car as I was pulling out of my driveway and nobody noticed it. Sigh. It either shattered into 1 billion anodized pieces or someone not so unlike myself came upon it and said “a practically new calphalon pan with cover that retails for $168** just lying in the street? Happy easter to ME!”. My pan is gone. I would be sad or angry but really it was my own fault and all I can do is laugh at my own stupidity.
Okay, that was my “retard” portion of the weekend, now on to the food.
Owen is amazing to cook with. Anything I use gets snatched up and cleaned immediately, he takes orders well and makes me buttered english muffins when my energy gets low.
The first crostini we made was went from the planned “Mirableu blue cheese, roasted apricots and spiced pecans” to a combination of Point Reyes blue, roasted plums and spiced pecans due to the vagaries of the imported cheese and stone fruit situation in minnesota. This ended up being a balance of sweet, salty, sour and spicy all at once.
The next crostini was Brillat-Savarin brie, pears poached in ginger syrup and roasted curried yam slices. Same result, sweet, spicy and salty, but no sour. I loved it. The pears were amazingly spicy and sweet. The leftover ginger syrup went into martinis later in the evening.
A salad of mixed greens, flowers, herbs and mint and an orange mustard vinaigrette. The vinaigrette in its initial incarnation of orange juice, oil, homemade mustard and shallots was weak and without the proverbial balls I was looking for. I added about a teaspoon of mustard powder and threw it in the fridge for further flavor blossoming. The mustard powder did the trick, sweet and tangy and definitely not bland.
This is the paella recipe that I used as sort of a base. A jumping off point, so to speak. We got rid of the chorizo to satisfy the sensibilities of the fish but not meat eaters and replaced it with squid, halibut and bay scallops (along with the shrimp, mussels and clams). I wanted the flavor to be more “Spring” than “Summer” so I cut back on the tomatoes a bit and added a metric buttload of orange juice reduction and orange zest. I also used peppadews instead of piquillos.
Also, it took way way way longer for the rice to cook than I anticipated, so the fish got a bit overcooked, but no one minded.
Dessert was an orange cream tart with strawberries, mango and blueberries on the top, glazed with lemon ginger marmalade. I accidentally added too much sugar to the mascarpone cheese and it ended up being way way sweet. sigh. better luck next time I guess. Owen arranged the fruit on the tart as he has way more visual creativity than I do.
We ate, drank, gossiped and had a great time. David and I drove seperately and he won major points for finding and bringing the cocktail napkins that I forgot! I didn’t even have to ask him. He’s like magic.
I hope it was a happy Easter for you all! Oh! April, sorry babe, there were no leftovers. We were big big pigs.
* When you own two dogs it is important to always have a steady supply of plastic bags in the house. This means that when you bag your groceries you use plastic and you place 1 or 2 items only in each bag. a 2 bag shopping trip can easily yield 8-10 bags if you bag things up properly.
** I did not pay $168 for this pan. I got it on sale. I am not THAT retarded.