Craft time

Jenne sews

George sews

Ho, ho, ho

Kitchen christmas!
Originally uploaded by average lavender

Christmas felt like just another day around here, except Liz was here and we were given the exciting task of unwrapping things. Being festive, "Christmasy", jolly, etc is virtually impossible in the land of no snow, fake Christmas trees outnumbering real trees, and people who think snowflakes are stars. We tried though. We put up some lights and even got some of those glass ornament balls, we had a wreath...we listened to all the holiday news on NPR... So without the cheer we just tore the paper off the packages and soaked up all the kitchen-gift-related goodness depicted here.

Next step for the kitchen? Triple it's size, magically.

It's nice to know we're not alone.

Homesick

(by Joeseph Lambert, George found it in Seven Days.)

Okay, I'm back.

Time has passed and some things have happened, but none of them are earth-shatteringly exciting - I swear.

Jesse was here to visit and we did a lot of driving around and looking at things and watched him take a lot of pictures. He's got a fancy new Canon PowerShot G9 and can't seem to put it down. Now he's in China for an undetermined amount of time, but he was excited and happy to go.

We had Thanksgiving at the bakery with my boss, co-worker Emily, her husband and some more of Shannon's friends. While it was nice have a big meal and do something other than work I helped with a lot of the preparations and most of the clean up, so it was kind of like being at work. There were two turkeys (one brined, one not), sweet potato gratin, gravy, mashed potatoes, some other stuff, and a bunch of pies - of which only three slices were eaten.

Emily had her baby. A little boy named Ethan Danger - healthy, content, home. I still haven't met him because I've been sick for the past week and decided a week old human probably doesn't need this.

George has put in something like 53 hours at work this week starting and finishing up the $10,000 shoebox. He tried to sucker me into sanding but it was no use. His boss called last night to tell him how good it looked. It's the kind of thing that I can't even begin to describe but hopefully he'll get some pictures of it before they bring it to the client.

We're slowly getting into the Christmas spirit here in the land of drab drizzly winters. We've been cranking out gingerbread people and houses at work, sugar cookies shaped like candy canes, Santa's hat, and snowflakes - which, interestingly enough, everyone here calls a star. To celebrate the birth of our fair Jesus we're thinking about hitting up a different beach this year, maybe south of here, possibly Santa Cruz, possibly for two days and a night, or maybe we'll just do a beach day trip. We haven't accepted the possibility of rain, but no one wants to be at the beach in winter when it's raining. Regardless, we'll be with Liz and maybe Iran and Anu? (nudge nudge)

I'm trying to figure out how to make Flickr and Blogger talk nicely so I can put more pictures up with less hassle...

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.

EARTHQUAKE!!!!!

We can finally leave California! We felt our very first earthquake. Honestly it felt like when the garbage men throw the cans against the house after emptying them. Kind of pathetic, but I don't think I want anything bigger.

Apparently it was a 5.6 on the richter scale, just north of San Jose.

From the USGS site:

"A moderate earthquake occurred at 8:04:54 PM (PDT) on Tuesday, October 30, 2007.
The magnitude 5.6 event occurred 8 km (5 miles) NNE of Alum Rock, CA.
The hypocentral depth is 9 km ( 6 miles)."

you're looking to waste some time?

Why not finely grate one pound of baby carrots? That's what I did.

the rabbit's got one boot

As we speak George is (hopefully) an hour or so away from having the Rabbit complete and running for real. Now it's got new axles/CV joints, one new boot, new tie rods, new oversize battery, and a new lease on life. If all goes well and according to plan we're hoping to celebrate by going to one of our new favorite restaurants, Sorella Cafe.

One of the projects George is working on is kind of the prime example of the ridiculous ways people spend money when they have too much of it: a mobile name tag holder for a church which George's vague estimate prices out to be $10,000 in the end. I haven't seen the design, so I can't say whether or not it's going to be really cool. It's just so silly that someone would hire a designer to solve their pesky name-tag-jumble problem. Peg board? Everyone responsible for their own tag? Card catalog style?

After my boss came back, my co-worker and her husband went to Japan for two weeks and upon coming home she promptly came down with walking pneumonia. Which means George and I haven't been having any grand adventures aside from the usual go-to-work-come-home-sit-around. With Liz back in town we've been trying to at least get over to Berkeley. Luckily we've got her hooked on watching the show Alias with us so we can lure her over at least once a week. For Liz's birthday/Halloween we're going to Chez Panisse with her, her dad and step mom. We're hoping after dinner we'll still have time to get out and do something for Halloween; Liz is going to be Rainbow Brite, I'm planning on being the Morton Salt girl, and George is wavering between Speed Racer, Wolverine, or a number 2 pencil.

Last night for dinner we had Chickpea Broccoli Casserole from the cookbook Vegan with a Vengeance. Neither of us is vegan but it's nice to have a a group of recipes that rely more on vegetables than meat and butter, like this one for example. If you're going to make it you'll need...

3 16-oz. cand chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 large onion, quartered and thinly sliced
3 large carrots, grated (2 cups)
1 head broccoli, cut into small florets (4 cups)
2 Tbsp. thinly sliced chives
1/2 C. bread crumbs
3 T. olive oil
1 C. vegetable broth
1 tsp. salt

Then you'll want to...

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl mash the chickpeas well, it takes about two minutes with a potato masher (or pastry blender in my case) and they're good and mashed when they're done. Add the vegetables and mix well. Add the bread crumbs and mix. Then the oil and mix. Add the broth and salt, then mix. Dump it all into a glass or ceramic 9"x13" pan pressing the mixture in firmly. Cover with aluminum foil, bake 45 minutes. Uncover and bake 15 minutes more. Ta da!

My boss finally took a vacation and went to Italy for a week for a friend's wedding. Consequently, I'm working eleven days in a row--which started last Thursday.

Last week George was supposed to get the last of the parts he needed to finish the Rabbit, we even drove up to Petaluma to the the package because UPS wouldn't leave it without a signature. The next day he discovered that they'd sent him the wrong part!

It's a long week.

bulleted

The bike

For all practical purposes, my bike is complete!






One of her flashiest features are the tires: SpeedBlends made specially for Rivendell. When they're rolling the colors merge and have a nice teal-to-pink progression.




A couple other things I really enjoy are the microfiber bar tape, the waxed thread securing it, and the sleek, attractive stem. (Notice the u-lock attached to the bike...) The next step for it will be a shorter stem so I'm not reaching as far and a little saddle bag so I don't have to carry around a bag on my back.


Trips and visitors

My trip to Asheville was great, I got to spend time with Hope which is something I really could stand to do more of. We spent most of our time tearing paneling out of the littlest room in the house and painting painting painting. When I left we'd finished the walls & trim in the bedroom and almost all of the studio and the first coat in the kitchen. The time we spent away from the fumes was filled with trips to Lowe's, going out for food, touring around the city, and a really sucessful trip to and antique mall where we walked out with a chrome breadbox, a set of rectangular chrome kitchen canisters, a little kitchen table (mostly for the heavy-duty base, not the paint-splattered institution-like top), and two awesome chairs.

Dyani and Conor have arrived in California, Conor will be starting classes at U.C. Davis anytime now. They came down for the weekend where Dyani got a new bike: a new Volpe! She'd been looking for a nice touring bike and I, naturally, couldn't shut up about how amazing the Volpe is and pointed her to a bike shop that had one the last time George and I were there. After test riding and discovering it was on sale and loving it, she decided to get it. Hooray!

Liz is coming back tonight! We like Liz, she makes us feel like we have friends and know how to have fun.


The Rabbit

George has been plugging away at Rabbit repairs. I'm not too sure of the specifics, but I know that lately the work has been unfortunately frustrating. Parts not fitting and having to be reordered, bolts in ridiculous, hard-to-get-to places. Maybe he'll make his own post someday about it and it'll be more in-depth and interesting than mine. (hint hint)

funday

today george got a big ol' box full of rabbit parts! the new head gasket, brake pads, door gaskets, new head bolts, a new door latch, thermostat, and ... a water pump! and a green o-ring.

boy got to chase ants around the window sill.

girl got to be chased into the house by another mean dog. last night a dog bolted from the sidewalk into the driveway barking and snapping his evil jaw at her. she managed to scramble away and under the house. this morning she was sitting on the threshold of the door and the dog almost busted into the house. i'm not impressed with these san anselmo pooches.

and tonight i got to go to the doctor for a mysteriously swollen achey weird knee problem. it kind of went like my dentist visit, except this time the doctor was just late to work, apparently. after waiting in the exam room for an hour, he came in, moved my knee around a little, and determined that i probably have a little tear or some other damage in the joint, but it doesn't appear to be severe enough to warrant x-rays. however, if by next monday it's still all "jacked up," as my co-worker emily would say, then i get to go back in and possibly get some x-rays and then depending on what they find the great possiblity: surgery. i'm hoping it'll just get better.

tomorrow we may drive up to jenner and beyond and see what's whats up north or we may stay home and i'll sit on the couch. regardless we're heading to hilda's coffee shop for breakfast.

scrappins and mitch

last weekend my boss made a big cake that looked like a wine bottle and had tons of cake scraps leftover, so i took them and made scrappins the polar bear cake.



george thought he looked silly without a mouth, so he gave scrappins one. at first the cake was going to be a tower, then a panda, and finally a polar bear, but he looks most like a dog. regardless it's pretty delicious.

yesterday as i went out to do the laundry this little bird started making noise at me and fluttering around and i figured i'd just spooked him. later when i went out to put the laundry in the dryer boy and girl were harassing him in front of our neighbors house. i picked him up with a towel because it looked like they were more toying with him and less eating his flesh at that point.



after calling george and george calling susan we took mitch (i named him mitch) inside and cleaned up his feathers with rubbing alcohol which really woke him up and he started flappin' around. we put him back in the area where i'd first seen him, up in a box that houses electric meters and gave him a little food. i checked on him later and he was up and walking around making noise...and being stalked by the neighbor cat, rusty. i didn't bother to move him or shoo rusty because unless mitch jumped he would be safe. hours later i went to check on him again...and.. he...was face down in the dirt with flies around his head. i blame rusty.

in less morbid news, at the end of the month i'll be going to north carolina! hope and her husband are buying a house in west asheville and she'll be going down to do the closing and some cleaning and invited me along!. i'm looking forward to some time away from here and the adventure of travel and new places.

rabbit surgery

well. i've officially gone too far to turn back. i pulled the poor little bunny's heart out today. last weekend i popped its head off to change the gasket, and started seeing leaks all over the place. apparently a lot of the old seals don't stand up to bio-diesel. turns 'em to mush. i think i've found somebody who will rebuild it. i don't really want to get inside that thing. too many little bits.

should run like new once it's all back together...

gotta go. ice coffee time.

look. i'm famous!

woo hoo!

Congratulations are in order for my friend Hope who's just won an Eisner Award for her graphic novel Gray Horses! I highly recommend checking out both Gray Horses and her first book, Salamander Dream. Perhaps you may have also noticed her piece in the New York Times Op-Ed section this past Wednesday...


we've been a little a.w.o.l lately because we had cynthia and leland visiting for a while, then some frantic house cleaning and laundering due to an unpleasant amount of fleas and fear of reoccurring ringworm, and after that i have no idea where we've been. halley's coming out to visit monday night and will be here for a week...and half? or something? and the entire time she's here my co-worker, emily, is out of town and graciously letting me borrow her fancy 2007 prius. which couldn't have happened at a more perfect time because the brakes on liz's car need fixing and the rabbit is still on vacation.

i have to say, i'm very proud of george for making a post on the blog. i've urged and proded and asked and bribed him to do it in the past but he just wasn't interested. i guess all it took was some killin'.

morning kill

jenne's baking... i'd don't really know how to work this blog thing. but, girl brought me a gift this morning that i thought everyone should see... her first kill! ugly bugger, eh? the penny's pre-zinc w/ copper coating. but, if you have a new penny...

looks like she hasn't posted in awhile. things are pretty quiet around here. aside from the traffic. they're tearing up all the streets to replace drainage pipes, so the morning traffic backs up for miles. bikes are good.

the rabbit's still resting. i think there's a drain on the battery that i haven't found yet. today however, i'm messing around with the fuel injection. "hillbilly tuning". the site seems to be down right now, but i've been learning from a vw diesel guru. hagar (i think his real name is sven). he's a 75 year old "scanderhoovian" (as he calls himself) from the birthplace of the diesel engine. his english is quite poor, and sometimes he claims he went to hogwarts with harry potter, but he knows more about tuning diesels than anyone else... 70-80mpg is pretty good.


george

new neighbor.

the apartment directly across the street from us is pretty cute, it's the old train station so it has this nice line of windows above the door and says, 'landsdale station' above those. we're convinced it's got to be cool inside, so when we saw and ad on craigslist for it we figured we'd go to the open house and if it met our criteria (gas stove, bathtub) we'd consider it. the landlord (or tenant) was fifteen or twenty minutes late to show it so we decided to just forget it and went to see a movie instead.

our new neighbor moved in yesterday and the big glaring drawback to this guy is that he's got a little yappy dog that insists on yapping almost constantly. GREAT.

birthday weekend

george's birthday was pretty quiet and strangely exhausting. he ended up with the poached pear and almond tart, which turned out not perfect, but better than expected-and it's delicious! he spent the morning working on the dashboard and the display for the rabbit and in the afternoon we went into san francisco to say bye to karl and lindsay and to track down the elusive krylon spray paint for plastics in the color orange (we were hoping it'd be perfect for the dash.) driving through san francisco is always stressful and irritating (always), but more than just driving, parking is a nightmare. being that it was george's birthday and i was already exhausted he did all the driving, which he soon regretted.

karl and lindsay sent us home with various householdy things (like a totally sweet salad spinner), then it was back to marin and off to dinner with the boss & co. at the pub/brewery up the street. which only lasted until about nine but felt like two am.

yesterday was quiet. ish. we drove all over looking for a seatpost for my bike, never found it, had sandwiches in sausalito, and finally picked a color for the dash. the color is a nice light green (more like a celery and less like a mint), we think it'll be perfect.

the bike is coming together well; we've got everything we need save for bar tape and a seatpost. because the frame is old it uses a post with a smaller diameter-26.0mm as opposed to 26.2 mm. we went to six different bike shops yesterday and none had the correct size. we did discover our new favorite bike shop, the village peddler. george ran all of the cables for me and has been working on the brakes because after fighting with them and being defeated three or four times, i just couldn't bring myself to work on them. hopefully today we'll be doing some derailleur alignment.

as for the cats: