PickledCherub

In a way I remind myself of my dad, getting all excited about this Mount St Helens possibility. You can totally check the government websites about how awesome volcanoes are, and see photographs of them. There's even a Hall of Fame with photos of the mutant fly and bizarre captions. Look look Hall of Fame Here!

Just bought a mixing console for eighty bucks from Trade Up. It's a Ramasa something or other.

If my dad were alive, he'd totally be watching the Weather Channel and calling me up about Mount St Helens. He loved destruction and drama like that. When I started at Reed, he took me up there in the rental car and we toured the shit out of MSH, looking at how the trees were all burnt up, and the new growth. I remember that he was enthralled with this berry cobbler we had for dessert. It probably had marion berries in it or something. Marion berries and hazlenuts: Oregon's Best.

Anyway, it makes me nostalgic, this natural disaster impending.

We're going to look at a house that just went up for lease. It's down the street, and half a block closer to work. It looks twice as big as this house, but it's cheaper by one hundred dollars. Moving would be a cinch, plus I bet the guy would let us move in for a couple of days before we started living there. I'll tell you more later.

I haven't had to work in so long that I feel super relaxed.

I'd write more but I'm being interrupted. So much for intimacy.

I've been feeling pretty frugal lately, at least in terms of the kitchen. Since there's three of us here now, I don't think there's any reason for food to go to waste. I'm always making things with stuff that's about to go bad, beets that have been hanging out in the fridge for a while, celery that I don't know what to do with. Since I have a waffle iron now, I thought I'd make waffles for breakfast. But we don't have any eggs, and I ended up using a vegan recipe for banana pancakes. I cannot begin to describe how nasty that waffle was. All gooey and the texture of silly putty. Plus bananas. Ick. I'm making the rest of the batter as pancakes, and with the addition of butter, it seems to be a lot more on the edible side.

I don't have to work tonight, it seems like I never have to work. I should do something. Something productive.

I'm all done with the workshop I attended this weekend at Jackpot! Studios. It involved twenty hours of listening to Larry Crane talk about things. I learned a whole lot of stuff about things such as compression and microphones and pre-amps and stuff, and realized that I don't know how to spell algorithm (Is there a Y? An E?). I do now. Jackpot has tampons in the bathroom, which is awesome, and practical, because ladies need tampons, sometimes.

Here's some observations/misconceptions I had this weekend.

The first thing I noticed when I walked into the control room (where all the mixing happens) was a box of Q-Tips. I thought, wow, Larry must really like to have clean ears when he's tracking. Really, Q-Tips are useful for cleaning out guitar input jacks and things of that nature.

Men, of a certain type and age, in the company of other men of a certain age and type, love to make jokes about their wives/ex-wives. This was the way Larry and Chris communicated, mainly.

I was the only lady in the class. I felt very shy for most of the time, due to the combo pack of not knowing a whole lot about technical stuff/not wanting to look silly.

Professional recording schools are a waste of time. Unless you go to Evergreen, apparently. I didn't know Evergreen had a musical engineering department. Now I do. Sometimes I think that maybe I would have liked Evergreen. I prefer Wintergreen.

I had all these cool ideas about which mics to use with different singers I know. I thought, on one of them, that Will would sound really good.

But, towards the end of the class, the last two hours, I got really bored. They were talking about things that don't apply to my life, such as tape and reel to reel (which I learned how to use in High School). The first day and a half were the most useful for me.

The thing I really learned, aside from basic technical stuff, is that the most important thing to do is listen to what you're trying to record.

I'm really glad I took this class, and now I'm all ready to record stuff.

Um, and I had some beer.

I woke up last night/this morning and the clock read 5:55, which I thought was pretty awesome. At the time, anyway, I thought it was awesome. Now it doesn't seem so cool.

I have to go to work this morning to work at work. So I am eating a peanutbutter and butter on toast sandwich. I almost had tuna salad, but couldn't stomach it this early. Chris and I went grocery shopping late last night, and the place was filled with young single men. I thought, if I were single, I'd totally come here and pick up on the dudes.

Gotta brush my teeth. If you read this, you should totally come visit me at work before 3.

In my dreams last night I kept saying "I'm not Mirah, I'm nothing like Mirah, I'm not MIrah."

Things I've ruined in the past day: one orange sweater (Lindsay's), one non-stick pan (Chris'). If I lived by myself I'd be less likely to ruin other people's stuff.

Chris' mom was on Texas TV yesterday for her Nordstrom's thing. "There's your mom!" I kept saying, but it was true only the first time.

Last night I got wiggledy wasted at the Hedge House and came home driggledy drunk and had a series of unsettling dreams. In one, I was trying to find Marian, and I couldn't. In another, well, it was a sex dream, and those always freak me out.

Today I found out the Jaime, Amac and Katy's old housemate, works at my new favorite coffeeshop/bakery on 28th. This place has the best tuna sandwiches. I know that six dollars seems like a lot to pay for a tuna sandwich, but this thing is all gourmet with dill and mustard seeds and celery and green onions. I guess I could try to make it at home, and it would be cheaper, but then . . .

I've been sorting through boxes, boxes in the basement, boxes in my closet, sorting and throwing things out. I came across this thing that my first boyfriend in college wrote about me on some legal pad. It's all about whether or not I would recommend keeping him alive if women took over the world. His guess: yes. His reasoning: he could express his emotions (why do guys always think that's a big deal?); he could "give" me multiple orgasms; he loved me. I also found a picture of him graduating from High School (he was cuter when he was younger), and one of his nephew. The question becomes: do I throw this stuff out? Usually I throw some of it out, but now I'm at a point where if I threw it out, I'd have nothing left. Not necessarily a bad thing.

Then I found this letter my dad wrote me that I always find. I don't get all teary eyed anymore, not usually. But the combo pack of sitting there with my boyfriend recording something and me re-living all these relationships made me feel a little bit nervous. As in, a series of reminders that relationships end, no escape.

Eh, but who cares?

One of the best things about having a body is being able to feel it change. And then there are different types of change, sometimes for just a few moments until return to the base state. That's about it.

Working at a restaurant is kind of like being part of a family. For example, when something bad happens, everybody agrees not to talk about it. The old dishwasher got canned, because, well, he kind of stopped showing up and sometimes came into work in a way he shouldn't have. But now we have a new dishwasher, Alejandro, who is, surprise surprise, Mexican. He also has put all other dishwashers to shame. He is fast, efficient, and sparkling good at this job. He knows a little more English than I know Spanish, and we communicate alright. I did some of his mopping for him tonight because we closed early (it was dead), and he was all, "Amy, I do it." And I was all, "I help you, you help me, we can leave early." I feel guilty about not knowing Spanish. I feel like I should, living in America. Knowing French doesn't help much, because most people who know French can speak English, too. And I'm always embarassed to speak Japanese, mainly because I would know how to order food, but not how to serve it without being offensive. Japanese is tricky, because you could say "Here's your food you gutter-slum" and not even know it.

Last night was awesome, because I saw Y.A.C.H.T. and Bobby Birdman at the States Rights Records show. I had a lot of fun, and Bobby Birdman's act was amazing. He has a voice comparable to Frank Sinatra or Mel Torme, but somehow better, smoother. He was all singing these songs that I'd call ballads, maybe even jazz-standards, over a synth thing on his iTunes. He was great at getting the audience involved, having us clapping and stomping and singing and going up onstage and dancing. Jona's act was the best I've seen yet. He did this five minute improv about being on the Aztec desert island and drinking sand. I had no idea what he was talking about for a long time, and then I looked at the projection screen behind him and was all "Oh." He has a ton of stage presence and is good.

I'm sorry about not being as vigilant about this blog-thing. Dinner was good.

Chris has been relentlessly mastering things all day. I got to work on time this morning. Yesterday I was an hour late--because I thought I was closing. It was kind of rough towards the end, mainly because I just wanted to get my dishes done and get out of there. A woman I had class with (maybe I had a few classes) came into the shop with her faggy boyfriend. I was all, "Fuck, fuck, go away." They ordered ice-cream cones and were annoying. The woman used to be a Suicide Girl, which made her quasi famous on campus. I think we had an intense mutual dislike/respect for each other. Or it could be in my head. I don't like serving Reedies, Reedies that I know or that know me, because they are the worst tippers. They are worse than most middle aged lesbians or old people ate tipping. Of course these are generalizations about people.

That story about the guy who got arrested for not tipping in NY made me so happy.

But we watched Grosse Point Blank and had spinach pizza. "Carrots and Celery are just the base of the soup!" I've been watching that movie since I was in High School. The first time was in Alexia's living room, on a winter break. They had a giant wall-paper mural of white horses running through the crashing waves on the living room wall. Amanda's house had a Sol leWit drawing on the wall in the foyer. I painted Sesame Street characters on my walls, and an Isak Dinesen quotation. "The cure for everything is salt-water: sweat, tears, or the sea."

I haven't been going to enough bars lately; I haven't been hearing bits of advice from older and possibly wiser starngers. Drunk advice often sticks with me much longer than any other kind.

Working on this album thing has been both inspiring and tedious. Some songs, I realize, just need to be given up on, others need to be completely re-done, some are almost OK as they are. You know, and then what? I give it away as a holiday gift, and then what? Do I then promote myself? I'm no good at that. Argh.

Chris has pretty much usurped my computer, such that I have to use his to blog. Hopefully he'll get a job and then we won't be constantly together. It has its ups and downs, for sure. One comes to realize just how nutso one is when there's always someone else there. We have different rhythms, that's for sure. Although I've been finding it even easier to sleep in later and later. The other downfall is that I haven't been seeing my buddies too much.

I made this lamb stew and it gave everyone really stinky farts. Even the cat wouldn't get under the covers.

There's a new addition to the family: Monitors! We have really nice speakers for mixing. They are amazing, as in, I can hear things floating around like never before. Missy Elliott sounds better, Britney Spears sounds worse. Graceland is about the same. Bjork is freaking scary.

Isaac and Altana are finishing up their visit to Portland on their way to Seattle. They're moving to Seattle, tonight, I guess. It's been super fun having guests and cooking meals and making music. Although I'm sick of hearing "Close to Me" over and over again, both versions. I've had a lot of time off from work, but I don't feel ready yet to start doing those things again. Mainly I feel out of it from all the staying up late with whisky and getting out of bed at three.

I've learned that a lot of the time the key to collaboration is leaving the room and baking some cookies or something so that other people get to express themselves. Collaboration is mostly compromise. When I suggested that we record this cover, it didn't seem to me that it would be "my song" or what have you. But, people seem to think that. Which is OK, because then I can put it on my album and people will think that I'm awesome.

I think I'm going to go count some money.

I can't sleep, can't get comfy enough to sleep, mentally or physically. Could be too much coffee, too much sandwich.

I made an awesome soup yesterday with carrots, onions, ginger, garlic, beets, garam masala, and tomatoes. It turned this really lovely deep red. When I make soup, I feel like I'm putting the canvas on the floor, splattering paint. Yup, I'm pretty much the Pollock of soup.

Chris made these biscuits and sausage gravy things yesterday and it was yummy but I've had stink-bombs blowing up ever since. Which says a lot about things, doesn't it?

I'm a bit worn out and I couldn't be sure as to why. Chris has all of this energy and we have basically the same schedules, except that I work twenty-five hours a week. Maybe I am not giving myself enough credit.

I am going to read now.

So yesterday I made this zuchinni and parsley soup with garlic and thai basil and roasted chile peppers. Lindsay thought it was too hot for her, but it was milder than the roasted garlic spinach tomato soup I made last week. This soup, yesterday's soup, started out by cleaning out my fridge and taking out all of the vegetables that weren't carrots or cucmbers or tomatoes (I always think that there's a salad to be made). I put two garlic cloves in my soup pot in about four tablespoons of olive oil, then added one chopped white onion, about three cups of chopped (half-inch) zuchinni, a bunch of finely chopped parsley, and a lot, about ten leaves, of thai basil. I also was roasting some chile peppers, but I don't recommend you use those if you don't want it to be hot. I let it cook for a while, but since there was so much stuff in the pot, I felt a compulsion to stir it every minute or so. I came up with a good name for this recipe: "Refrigerator Soup." It cooked for about ten minutes, then I added five cups of water and two teaspoons of salt, turned up the heat (from med-high to high), and waited for it to boil. I let it boil for fifteen minutes and took it off the stove. Chris wanted me to walk up to Hawthorne with him so that he could get his glasses fixed, but I wanted to wait around while my soup cooled. When it was warm enough to handle, into the blender it went, about five batches it took. The soup turned out to be a lovely creamy green color. "Hey," I told Lindsay. "This soup is vegan!" I added some lime juice. We ate the soup with some toast and salt and pepper. Lindsay and Chris added sour cream.

I could've used cilantro instead of parsley, and then just put a little bit of parsley in at the end as a garnish. But I didn't have cilantro and I had all of this goddam parsley, and who knows what to do with parsley anyway. The soup is just as good cold as it is hot, so it's a good summer time soup, for the late summer when you don't know if you're going to wear a hoodie or a tank, so you wear both. It's a soup that's like layering.

Then, for dinner, I made garlic green bean and cheddar sandwiches. Yum!

Life is going alright, otherwise. Watched Human Nature last night. Conan is back on, and the Olympics are over!