Jesse is here. Mostly we eat and sit around. We've gone to the top of Mount Tam and today he and George went to the Marin Headlands. Also they fixed the Rabbit.

Links to things:

Mount Tam
Marin Headlands
Rabbit
Pie crust
Sweet potato fries
Pacific Catch
Japanese Joinery

Toxic slick: coming to a beach near you...er.. us.

Last Wednesday a container ship ran into the Bay Bridge, dumping 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel oil into the bay. As for the cause, it's being attributed to "human error," which is believable and there was some serious fog that morning, but honestly--it's not like those pylons are tiny and they're equipped with radar. It's scary to think of what the marine life is going to be like around here in the coming years. In the meantime, officials seem to have everything under control.

George continues to pluck away at the Rabbit without much luck. The fuel lines have been replaced with stronger, clear tubing so it won't degrade as quickly from the biodiesel and we can see if the fuel pump is actually getting fuel, which it is. This afternoon his focus is on the fuel pump and whether something is amiss with it; he bought the pump used, but (supposedly) resealed from a fellow on ... ebay? craigslist? and has since emailed him to see if he can shed any light on the subject. Or find out if he got ripped off. Whichever. We're hoping it'll magically get fixed by Tuesday night when we have to head to the airport to pick up Jesse!

Yesterday we spent our rainy afternoon listening to Agatha Christie podcasts. Last week I painted the underside of our loft (which is the ceiling for the dining area) and it ended up a greenish yellow that Geo describes as glow-in-the-dark paint that doesn't glow in the dark. That's pretty accurate. This week I'll paint our new window shelf and then take a few pictures so you can watch the evolution of our weird apartment.

Part two: other stuff

Saturday night was a 40th birthday party for George's boss at the local winery. His wife is good friends with the owner, so he closed it down so we could have dinner there which was provided by the Puerto Rican restaurant Sol Food. Usually hanging out with the Coutures is entertaining and enjoyable, however this time is was the Coutures and the rest of their friends, who--aside from the other guys in the office--are all about 40 and from Marin. It was an awkward evening that with every "oh what do you do?" conversation drove home the feeling that we don't belong here. We don't have kids, we don't own a home, have a modern car, I'm not a contractor nor a designer, George isn't a business wheeler-dealer or wear a tie, we don't watch sports or even have TV, we know nothing about wine, we haven't traveled much, and we don't care about any of these things. We had a pretty nice conversation with one woman who'd grown up around here and seemed to understand that a lot of the residents in this area are completely intolerable, we liked her.

Sunday night we were psyched to be going into the city to have dinner with George's cousin, Iran, but didn't get to go because the Rabbit developed a fuel leak. George spent the whole day trying to fix it and when he thought he'd got it the car wouldn't start at all (instead of starting and sputtering.) We're both becoming more and more frustrated with this car, but probably will never part with it.

We finally found a place in the apartment for some bike hooks and got the bikes up off the floor! It feels a little less like we're living in a garage. George built a fancy new shelf to go under with window by the table, which replaces a skinny, ill-attached shelf the cats would sit on. Today I'm hoping we can agree on a color for the new shelf and for the underside of the loft, because while I can't put my finger on it I'm convinced that painting the right thing the right color in this place will magically transform it into a more comfortable, homey living space. Or I'm crazy and fickle about interior paint colors.

What we're really excited for is the middle of November when Jesse comes to visit! He'll be here for a whole two weeks around Thanksgiving, which we'll be celebrating at the 2nd Annual Fat Angel T-Day Feast. Maybe we'll get to take an exciting trip to some other part of this God forsaken state, or at the very least have a few days where we can all hang out with anyone having to go to work.

Today's fascinating lunch: mac & cheese with tuna fish. Tonight's fascinating dinner: sweet potatoes and chicken.

Part one: the food.

We really did try as hard as we could to put together our costumes, but it just didn't work out. Luckily, by the time we finished with dinner it was 11pm and even Liz, the party girl that she is, was fine with ducking out on Halloween festivities. Chez Panisse was one of the most elegant meals I've ever had--big plates with consumable-size portions precisely, yet nonchalantly arranged food, the waiter actually used a crumber. The menus are printed for the specific day and they have a great print on the cover. I think the vegetarian menu had an eggplant...or grapes, equally as beautiful as the tomato plant.


The best courses: the appetizer and dessert. The mozzarella was mild and cheesey without being rubbery like big pieces of mozzarella tend to be. The fig crostata was wicked figgy (a crostata is essentially an Italian galette but much flakier), and the fennel ice cream cut the intensity perfectly. George and I plan to go back at least one more time before we leave the Bay area. (Most of the things to do before we leave are eat at certain places.)

Continuing with food, I have three different cakey things to share with you. The first are some hi-hat cupcakes I made for Emily's birthday back in October. They're a chocolate cupcake frosted with a mound of marshmallowy stuff, dipped in a chocolate shell. I pawned most of them off on George's office.




At work I've been playing around with frosting some more cakes, the most recent a spice cake Shannon had leftover. I put some chopped apples and unsweetened whipped cream in the middle which was what really made it. Next time the apples need to be chopped smaller and more of them.




Most recently I made cashew, carrot, cardamom cupcakes with cashew cream cheese frosting from a recipe at Cupcake Bakeshop. The best way to describe them is with their name: they're exactly that. They're delicious in the way that cashews are buttery, soft, and salty.