This is going to be an extremely long post. I’m sorry about that. This is the problem with being 1) goofily happy with someone and 2) recovering from ugly sickness. These things are unrelated, but both keep me too pre-occupied to post. So, this will be long, but I will try to divide it up so you can read it in chunks!
Risotto
I made a curried buternut squash risotto on thursday night. It was different, but entirely delicious. A 1.5 pound butternut squash, half of it was roasted face down, the other have cut into 1/4″ dice and tossed with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garam masala and roasted until crispy. The regular roasted squash was mashed up and added to the almost mostly done risotto, the diced was added at the end. I used half veggie broth and half water with a dollop of mild curry paste (indian style, not thai). I want to make it again, but next time not veggie broth, the reduction of the broth was too too rich.
Risotto pt:2
This is a pointless ramble about this one time I had really bad risotto. Went to dinner at Sydney’s once. Sydney’s is supposed to be one of those upscale restaurants with smart and trendy dishes, the reality is that their menu has a number of upscale, smart and trendy words and phrases printed on it, but the kitchen is full of second rate ingredients, pre packaged, boil in bag food and uninspired, untrained grill jockeys. I ordered the smoked chicken and dried cherry risotto, I had foolishly high hopes. Now, risotto, as we all know, is a rice dish. the word risotto means ‘tasty and comforting bowl of rice food that is kind of tedious to make but the results far exceed any time spent over the stove”. Sydney’s never got the memo. The dish I was served had SOME rice, but mostly it had overly sweetened dried cherries and 12 pounds of ‘chicken’ cooked some weeks before on the mother shipped, smoke flavored and vacuum packed before shipped to earth. It was horrid. I learned a brightly valuable lesson. Why am I telling you this? who the hell knows.
Secret Confessions
Friday night we headed to Bryant Lake Bowl to see the Secret Confessions show with the Mean Sisters. Very cute, lots of fun. Sadly, the waiter brought our beer but never came back fr our food order. That’s fine, after the show, David and I headed over to the Longfellow Grill instead. I had me the Elvis burger (best burger in town by far). Friday night ended up being a date. I love dates. I love dates in that stupid, goofy romantic way.
Love them.
Ganymede Elegy
I finally re-purchased the Cowboy Bebop DVD’s. Quite an investment, you can’t really get the 6 dvd set anymore, they sell the shitty 3 dvd set and I really did not want that. I held out and finally found the set for a reasonable price on eBay. Good price for the brand new set, but the shipping took for-fucking-ever! Started watching them. I’d forgotten how much I loved Cowboy Bebop. Now I get to veg out to Cowboy Bebop as much as possible.
�Cachapas!
Another wonderful breakfast at Maria’s eating corn pancakes (cachapas), this time with James (as he needed a ride to the airport). I forgot to order the single pancake so I ended up with the double and having way more food than I could eat. Are there enough superlatives in the world to describe cachapas? No.
El Doggies
of course I write about the dogs, I love the dogs, the dogs rock hard. Dog park for a while, but not long enough. Maddie does okay for a bit but becomes overwhelmed and thugs out on the other dogs. Levi happened to be there with Milo and Bela, Hooray! Ghengis LOVES Milo, they’re very evenly matched (for now, Milo is only 6 months old, eventually he will get to be too big). We’ll have to start bringing Ghengis to the park without Maddie every once in a while. I like getting Maddie out there to socialize her and exercise her, but being there for only 20 or 30 minutes is not enough for Ghengis. We’ll keep working on it though. Ghengis also got to play with a coupld of dachshunds for a while, they were so damned CUTE.
Rabbits!
Went to see Wallace and Gromit last night (I know I know, it’s late, I always see movies late). It was good, but I think they do better with short form. It just wasn’t as tight as their other stuff. Still, though, It was cute and fun and the theatre was full of cute kids.
BABYSITTERS
Last night, David and I cuddled up in bed and listened to the This American Life archives. Shopping, life in the navy and babysitting, those were the topics we hit last night. It was kind of like a date only it involved maximum cuddles and falling asleep with my face on his chest.
El Doggies Pt:2
We also played a game with Ghengis last night called “In other parts of the world”. We let him know that in other parts of the world, small brown doggies are not allowed to take up so much pillow real estate and in other parts of the world small brown doggies are eaten for dinner and in other parts of the world small brown doggies are beaten in their sleep for no reason. Ghengis is a good small brown doggie and he took it all with good humor. Maddie, on the other hand just tries to get as much cuddling as possible.
Happy Birthday, Dad!
Today was cake and ice cream at my dad’s for his birthday. We got him monster movies and champaign and it was fun for all!
Meatball
For whatever reason I was in the mood for italian food, not real italian food (but also not Olive Garden), I was in the mood for red sauce and noodles and italian sausage and all that. We went to Vescios in Dinkytown. I got exactly what I was craving, a huge huge plate of rigatoni with generic red sauce, italian sausage and a scoop of ricotta cheese. The salad was straight up iceberg lettuce with canned olives and boring dressing, the bread was 2 degrees from wonder bread. It was not authentic, it was fabulous.
When we left, David hit the nail on the head, the place has the ambiance of an old tractor tire. It’s so old school. Dark panelling, uncomfortable molded veneer booths, I even saw them pouring red sauce into the big pot from a giant bucket. This is the kind of place your grandparents went to for Italian food and they thought they were in for a treat. Sadly, the prices did not reflect the atmosphere or the lack of effort, it still cost $36 for dinner and we only had water to drink. Oh well, we probably won’t go back again, but I have enough leftovers in the fridge.
puke
Came home to 5 piles of dog puke on the floor. What the fuck, doggies? Seriously.
so long
I apologize for the length (and this is the edited version, I didn’t even tell you about the cranky pharmacist with the cold sore and practiced disinterest). I’ll try to be updating more often, I just need to find the time and wherewithal!

I love that every morning i have 30 minutes to sit in the quiet of my house, listen to NPR, surf the web, read my emails and watch the dogs go back to sleep.
I love that we actually got a real autumn this year. The climate was certifiably ‘cool’ and ‘chilly’, the leaves turned real fall colors.
I love the way my dogs smell. No one else on the planet loves dog smell the way I do, I bury my face in my dogs and inhale.
I love chick pea patties with chevre, roasted sweet potatoes, sauteed kale and mint chip ice cream.
I love songs about escaping and starting over (you’ll have to scroll down the “train to chicago” this is the only page I could find with the lyrics to that song) especially in the fall when the dread boulder of winter threatens to chase me down the hill. I live my escape fantasies in my songs and get it out of my system and come home and look at the dogs and the boy and the dishes and happily realize that all I could never fit it all in my car for a fast getaway.
I love shopping for legos online.
I love wearing a black bra with a white shirt and not caring how trashy I look.
I love that i am ending this post simply because I have to pee

Tonight at Target I gave the cashier a quickie-mini-lesson in how to cook kale. She’d never seen it before and was confused by it. I gave her a few methods and stopped after telling her to add it to risotto, I didn’t want to explain risotto.
I will probably add it to risotto. Maybe. I did pick up a butternut squash and curried squash risotto would be good. We’ll see. Tonight is my night off, I made a frozen pizza, I did add tomato, extra cheese and herbs so I was nt a total slacker.
I also bought Maddie a new dog bed. I think she’d had one before and I think ghengis is old enough to not hump everything that will bear his weight. She hasn’t laid on it yet, she’s far too excited by my proximity to lay on it.
So, it’s the month of the growth. My sister went to the doctor in amazing pain and they discovered a 4cm cyst on her ovary. They are in wait and see mode. If it gets bigger, they go take it out, if it doesn’t they leave it to burst on its own. I used to get these fairly regularly, I know her pain.
Then my old friend, Ron, dropped this frightening bomb on me this morning. Fuck.
There is not much I can do for either of them but show my support and fret and worry. So, there you have it guys, the eternal worrier now has something to focus her worry on.
Progress on building my new site has slowed, I’ve been distracted. The same could be said for goat pictures. They’re coming along slowly.
I don’t have much more to say. If anyone would like to join me in my worry for April or Ron, please sign up in the comments section below. I’ve mentioned many times how dear my sister is to me, but I’ve probably not said much of Ron since he moved his punk ass so far from me. Ron is truly one of my favorite people and he is definitely one of those people where it does not matter how long you’ve been apart, you’ll pick right up where you left off…which I suppose is watching him play Castle Wolfenstein at 4:20.
ps. no, i’m not doing NaNoWriMo. One day I’ll write a book, it won’t be this year and it won’t next.