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| Argh, I stepped on my Venus razor blade in the shower and made my bathtub look like some crime scene. Band-Aids clearly weren't sufficient and my EMT boyfriend could not be dragged out of bed. Left to my own devices, I: - Tracked blood all over the house while limping around searching for useful supplies. My search yielded: one pair of scissors, one Super Absorbant tampon, three wimpy Band-Aids, and a big bottle of Purrell.
(Supportive Boyfriend: Quit stomping around, I’m trying to sleep! Me: I. Am. Injured. What kind of supportive boyfriend are you?) - Propped my mangled toe on a chair, took a few deep breaths, and poured Purrell all over it.
- After I stopped screaming, unwrapped the tampon and cut up the wadding into manageable pieces.
- Glommed all the tampon bits onto my toe. My blood made a nice adhesive.
- Tamped the whole thing down with an outer layer of Band-Aids.
- Scrubbed all the blood out of the wood floors.
Finally, now I can relax and watch Glee on Hulu while drinking sake! | | |
| My perfect Sunday evening (knocking back cherry bombs with friends at my favorite bar in the city) was indelibly marred by a shocking event--the theft of my bike right outside my favorite bar in the city. I stumbled out into the night with Tami, laughing all the while, when she suddenly stopped short and said. "Uhhhh, no bike. No Bike. NO BIKE?!" The only thing left behind was my chain lock, snipped in half by an enterprising criminal with a bolt cutter.
It feels so frivolous to mourn about some object (I mean, it's not like anybody DIED), and yet I feel like I've lost a good friend. I had my trusty bike for the past five years, and it gave me a lot of memories. Like:
My First Brush with Death. I was still a novice to riding the city streets. I was biking home and tried to turn left across some light rail tracks. I came in at a shallow angle, therefore my wheels got stuck in the tracks. I wobbled for a few seconds before the rail tracks spit me out into oncoming traffic. I could see the driver's eyes lock on me in horror as the car came bearing down on me. Thankfully I made it with mere feet to spare, but almost died by crashing into the row of cars parked along the side. That very night, I watched the movie "Sixth Sense" for cathartic reasons, only to be flummoxed by Haley Joel Osmont pointing out the ghost of a female bicyclist who had just been hit by a car and thereafter roamed the streets with blood pouring down her forehead.
My First Date with Henry. I didn't know it was a date at the time, I just wanted to take my new wushu buddy who had just moved into the city on a bike ride across the Golden Gate Bridge and into Sausulito. At the end, he asked "Will you date me?" I'm glad he was persistent, after a few months of friendship, I was ready to date him back!
Being Chased by Hordes of Nude Men. Another bike ride with Henry. We were toiling up Steiner Street when he glanced back, did a double take, and apropos of nothing exhorted me to bike faster and to not look back. I was like, what for? and he exclaimed in the manner of a SWAT Commando defusing a nuclear bomb, "Don't ask questions, just do what I say!" I looked back and saw a horde of elderly, naked men, all on bicycles, pedaling furiously and gaining on me. I said, "Whoa", and then did as Henry said. The next intersection coming up was Haight Street, Henry said, "Turn right here!" I thought to myself, if there's any place in the city for naked guys to flock to, it would be Haight Street, but alright. But I pulled a sharp right and we stopped to watch the naked guys shoot past us. Then to celebrate our narrow escape we went to Rosamunde's Grill for meaty sausages.
Many, many wonderful breakfasts at Patissierre Phillipe. All enabled by my trusty bike. Whenever I had to go to work on the weekends, I would make it okay with myself by biking to Patissierre Phillipe for an indulgent breakfast. Pithivier tarts with perfect, flaky golden crust and filled with almond pastry cream. Buttery croissants filled with the same. Summer green bean salad with pancetta and onions. Huge, steaming bowls of coffee. The patissierre is like, a two minute soaring bike ride from work but alas, a twenty-five minute trudging walk. For that reason alone, I must get a new bike ASAP.
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| Things aren't too busy with my new job yet, so I actually had a whole evening free to do whatever I like. It was actually my second free evening in a row! I spent yesterday evening getting hot and sweaty while trying to crab crawl up a huge flight of San Francisco stairsteps on my hands and knees, backwards. Now why would I engage in such a J-horror, ghostlike activity? Well, apparently it's good for parkour conditioning, and besides, everyone else was doing it so I'd feel a bit of a wimp if I didn't try it.
But anyway, this isn't about my newfound parkour addiction, it's about baking cookies. I got home before sundown today and came face to face with the conundrum of how to spend my free time. My options were: (1) to watch X-files again until my brain turned to mush, (2) read a popular cognitive neuroscience book aimed towards the masses ("How We Decide" by Jonah Lehrer), or (3) stare glassy-eyed at Facebook and weblogs until my brain turned to mush. Then I had a sudden epiphany, hey, I can bake cookies! Hey, wasn't there an intriguing oatmeal toffee number on the internet that caught my eye a week ago?
Baking cookies is such a fun activity, I daresay it is more fun than any other kind of cooking adventure. One thing I like about baking cookies is that it actually requires a fair bit of exercise to do the entire thing by hand. One of the universal steps of any cookie endeavor is the creaming of the butter and sugar. This involves mashing the sugar into hard butter which you can barely even make a dent in. You mash and mash and mash, forearms straining against the butter. Effort is most definitely required. But while your arm muscles are straining, your mind becomes liberated by the repetitive activity, and you float free in your inner world, and sooner or later you find yourself thinking that life is damn good.
And finally, when all is said and done and the cookies are out of the oven, you can look over the fruits of your labor and think, wow, I made these things that make people smile. Then you grab your own plate and glass of milk, sit down in front of your much anticipated Netflix DVD, and enjoy.
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| First, let me say that I had a great time touring Australia with Tami. She was a great travel companion and put up with my quirks with much forbearance. For instance, there was the time I lost my wallet for the fifth time and tore the room up in my search only to find it in, of all the places, my toiletries bag. I still don't know how it got there.
Australia is full of life, sometimes too full of it. We found that out while staying in Cape Tribulation, a beach resort town on the northeast coast of Oz. Cape Trib is a beautiful spot where World Heritage listed rainforest meets the beach and the Great Barrier Reef. The beach was peaceful and beautiful, with white sand beaches, coral cays, and warm blue waters. Unfortunately, the waters are also the breeding ground of box jellyfish, whose tentacles carry thousands of tiny stingers that inject lethal poison into whatever is unfortunate to touch them. Brush up against one of these guys, and you will definitely die in agony. We were disappointed that the beaches were of the "look, don't touch" variety but decided that saving our skins was worth it.
Our hostel was right at the juncture of the rainforest and beach. I didn't realize until too late, but rainforests house lots of spiders, particularly the golden orb weavers. If you've seen the YouTube video of a spider eating a bird, that spider was a golden orb weaver. They are huge black things with gold-plated joints. At our hostel, we found that golden orb weavers like to string their webs among all of the buildings, and sometimes across pathways. What that means is that we would go for a stroll from our cabin to the bar, only to stop dead in our tracks, realizing that if we had walked but one step further, there would be a web wrapped around our faces and a spider sucking the serum out of our lips.
The fact that Australia just has too much life is demonstrated in the following true story: On one sunny morning in Cape Tribulation, we decided to stroll around the pristine beach. I stopped to sit down under the shade of a tree, only to be chased off by an angry wasp. I made it to the next tree and stopped for a few moments to take some pictures. Then I looked over my shoulder and saw a white, fat spider crawling up it. I decided the best course of action was to shriek and bash at my shoulder with my heavy bag, then beat a hasty retreat to the hostel pool, which I reasoned would be more protected from the bugs. I kicked off my shoes and read lazily in my lounge chair. When I glanced at my shoes, one of them was swarming with angry red ants. I had a pretty energetic time swatting all the ants away, and then decided to change locations. I sat under an umbrella'd table to read. Looking up from my book, I saw a golden orb weaver the size of my hand with fingers splayed, a mere foot away from my face.
Cape Tribulation is beautiful, absolutely gorgeous. I just couldn't wait to leave it.
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