12/13/10 Passing time

She sits on the couch and tells me about her day.

"By the way - by the way, I cannot believe I haven't told you about this yet. The Mexicans in the kitchen play prison games where they bet five dollars a pop on whether a coin comes up heads or tails. You can hear the coins clinking on the floor of the kitchen while I'm telling my tables the specials. I'm all, 'Yes, the kitchen staff are picking money up off the floor with their bare hands before they make your food, but I'm sure your grilled salmon with a white wine reduction sauce and fingerling potatoes will be just fine.'"

11/26/10 It was delicious (they tell me)

Though I have claimed vegetarianism for upwards of 15 years now (I can count on one hand the number of times I've eaten meat since 1994), today my hands still smell of roasted bird from the turkey I helped prepare yesterday.

It's a very strange situation, being married to a confirmed, enthusiastic, and unrepentant carnivore. The constant confrontation with your own values that occurs when you are around those that don't share them requires both a flexibility (in order to not judge or feel superior), and a sense of humor, because you will be made fun of and intentionally, humorously provoked.

Plus, I like to cook, so I have learned the finer points of meat preparation for a woman whose favorite meals include, quote, "the tears of the innocent," while never tasting the things I help make.

11/20/10 The very nice doctor is not a dentist

"Well, when I got out of the shower," the doctor says, finishing his story, "the ants had covered the sandwich! The hotel got me an upgrade, told me they'd never had anything like this before."

He smiles shyly as we laugh with him, and he writes out our prescriptions. He has a small, black something-or-other caught in his teeth, but before I can mention it to him, he's left the examining room to talk to another patient who is wandering the hall of the office.

11-9-10 Pie is too nice to be bad for you.

Coring an apple requires a little bit of muscle, a little bit of guessing. Stab straight down and twist, gutting the pulp of the stringy bits and the little black seeds, hand it over to Katie, who then proceeds to peel it in a long, continuous ribbon of red (a skill I've yet to get the hang of).

The Cuisinart spins the halves into perfect slices in seconds, and as watch them pile up, I see a single black seed that I missed. Will it kill us if I don't fish it out?

11-8-10 my mini spooner

The new bowls we got for our wedding are primary colors of yellow and blue - deep, deep cobalt blue, and a cheerful, sunny yellow. I often find myself picking one or the other based on the food that I'm serving, or on the mood I'd like to create in myself with the plate.

"Frosted Mini-spoons" is the best that Malt-o-Meal could come up with for their "Frosted Mini-wheats" rip-off cereal, and while it's not that bad, there's something in the Kellogg's version that has a little more substantial-ness when it comes to milk. The best part was pouring them into a sunny yellow bowl (her favorite color) and thinking about Katie asleep in bed, and the perfect applicability of the term "mini spoons" to her.

11-1-10 Sous chef rhapsody

She chops the veggies, stirs the cheese and the rice together. I open cans, suggest seasonings, wash the dishes and utensils as she finishes with them.

The kitchen is clean and well lit, warm and bustling as we make dinner. Once again, something I have dreamed of since I was a kid has come true, and the home I have always wanted is that much closer to being real.

11/12/09 - Really, it's tougher on the people around me than on me

I sit down on the floor. The song isn't right - it isn't right, and I'm not sure how to fix it, which makes it even more of a drag. I lay my guitar aside and and try to explain to Ray why, making more and more of a hash of it, and getting more upset and despairing until finally I realize the problem: I'm hungry.

The despair vanishes, and I put my guitar away, since I've killed the vibe, but at least I know why I feel crazy.

6-17-08 The Party Boat

The company I work for rents a boat to take the employees out for a night. The food is decent, the company pleasant, the drinks free, and the music a (very small) step above a wedding DJ.

A full moon rises above the city, one of the greatest cities in the world. We pass beneath Brooklyn Bridge and I stand on the top deck, watching it all pass by, the city and the bridge and all of it glittering in the sunset while a huge orange moon slowly lifts into the sky, and I think, "I am so lucky to live here, so lucky to see this all right here and now."

6-14-08 Cyberdyne and Swedish Decor

Katie and I ride our bikes out to Red Hook, looking for a farmer's market we've read about. After a brief incident with another popped tire, we find the farm, but no market.

Across the street from the farm (Red Hook seems like the edge of the world, no tall buildings, just waterfront, then water, and then what feels like next stop Europe) is the new Ikea, its hulking and monstrous bulk disguised in primary blue and yellow paint in much the same way that one would attempt to disguise a rhino by dressing it in a party hat.

Katie stares up at its sprawl and vast, lunatic cheerfulness for a few seconds before saying, in a terrified voice, "on August 4, it becomes self-aware!"

6-5-08 Not Today

The deli where I occasionally buy my morning sandwich (two eggs, cheese, salt and pepper and tabasco on a toasted everything bagel, thanks) is typical for the area: big, tiled, non-descript, an enormous salad bar filled with a variety of foods in quantities that would make a starving third-world-country resident weep.

A medium-height, heavy-set asian woman with a lip ring and a short, spiky haircut occasionally flirts with me from behind the register when I come up to pay. I like the attention and am entirely unattracted to her, so I when I saw her behind the counter, I looked forward to the free ego strokes. Whether she was not paying attention, in a mood, busy with work, or whether I was simply not looking as handsome as I may have in the past, regardless, she didn't even make eye contact as I handed her my card, signed the receipt, grabbed my food and went back upstairs to my cube.

"Well, that was disappointing," I thought as I walked back into my building.

2-11-08 Never Complain, Never Explain

On Saturday, we went down to Chinatown on a whim, not thinking of the thousands who might be joining us, what with it being Chinese New Year and all.

It wasn't nearly as crowded as you might expect, and we got to see the shortest celebratory puppet dragon ever (two guys beneath the puppet, followed by two more rather older-looking gentlemen, one playing a drum, the other clapping cymbals together in a relatively stirring fashion as they wound their way over the crowded sidewalks), as well as a man at a market serving a durian fruit. He sliced open the thick, thorny rind and scooped out the vaugely fetal looking sections of pulp while we stood around and gaped like the psuedo-tourists we were.

Then we went to a Malaysian restaurant where I could eat exactly 2 things on the menu (the rest of the menu was populated with oddities like duck's web, squid ink, frogs, jelly fish, and the like), and so I ordered the vegetable curry, the leftovers which I ate today for lunch, sweetened with a little coconut milk to alleviate the killing heat that brutalized me on Saturday.

1-31-08 Wealth. I don't has it.

The outer doors to Cipriani, a high-end restaurant across from Grand Central Terminal, are black, opaque glass, two stories high. Behind them are revolving doors, like at a bank, leading into an enormous hall with ceilings fifty feet high and a dining space as large as half a football field. I walk past on my way to work and look in, staring deep into the warmly lit opulence of table after white-linen-covered table, while small people, working industriously setting up for some event or other, place gleaming silver and starched napkins down on tables beneath warm gold and wood accents on the walls.

A little ache starts up in my chest, and I remember what it was like to (pretend to) have enough money to eat someplace like that.

1-2-08 - On Why I Am Well Suited for an Artistic Life

I have been making my lunch to take to work for several months now, and as I am both lazy and poor, I have stuck with the old impoverished standby, rice and beans. I use Goya canned black beans, along with powdered garlic, bay leaf, basil, rosemary, oregano, balsamic vinegar, Angostura bitters, and a seasoning packet that you can buy from Goya that's kind of like Tony Chachere's spicy, salty seasoning (which I have yet to be able to find in my neighborhood), but not quite.

I make this meal at least once a week, either for dinner or for lunch, and I am sort of in love with it. The seasonings and substantial heartiness of it warm my heart, and every time I put it in the microwave to heat it up at work, I find myself singing a little song: "Rice and beans, rice and beans, rice and beeeaanns".

12-31-07 - So this is the new year...

Katie says she needs to eat meat, so we stop at a Mexican restaurant/bar in Astoria on the way home from a New Year's party at a friend's. After looking at the menu for a bit she decides on a chicken quesadilla, and we munch on chips and incredibly fresh, very hot salsa while we wait for the soft-spoken man behind the yellow-with-age counter to fill her order.

Towards the back of the bar, away from the street, short, dark men dressed in button down work shirts and jeans dance to accordion music in the red glow from a neon Budweiser sign with women in black skirts and high heels. A large black man by the door pats down every person who walks in (except us, the only white folks in the place), checking for weapons, and as we leave with our order, he gives a friendly "Happy New Year!", but he doesn't smile at all.

12-27-07 Mexican or Mexican't?

On my last day in Arizona, my father asks me what I'd like to eat, and I of course answer Mexican food. As good as the food is in New York, there is nothing like authentic Mexican food in Arizona, and I really want to get a taste of it before I head back to where I: a) have to pay for my own meals, and b) find "Mexican" restaurants are mostly run by Chinese.

My sister orders a combination platter with rice and beans, but she doesn't want her rice, so she offers it to me.

"You don't like Mexican rice?" I ask, "What are you, some kind of rice-ist?"

12-26-07 absolution

The sink fills up with dirty water, clogged again, and my father goes out to investigate. My sister suggests that I may have caused the commotion since, yesterday, in preparation for our Christmas dinner, I peeled potatoes directly into the sink and into the garbage disposal, where I thought they’d be taken care of.

Thinking I should confess, and help out the process of fixing the problem, I say to my father as he walks by, “Uhhh, listen, Dad, I think I know why your sink is clogged.”

“No you don’t,” he says, walking away.

12-19-07 flying

Fled the city like it was on fire. An early morning and a long day without food, which seemed to increase my sense of everything being filled with "meaning" and "portent". As we flew over the Rockies, the rivers and dams gleamed in the sunlight like they were made of gold.

A ridiculously attractive couple sat in front of me on the plane, and I wondered if people like that actually have to ride in coach, or if they were normally shepherded in to first class, and these guys were just slumming.