Author Archives: j

No place is boring, if you’ve had a good night’s sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film.

hello. you fool. i love you.

last night, m took me to the gibson amphitheater to see roxette in concert. roxette is my favorite band. ever. i don’t remember how i got into roxette, but i feverishly followed their music from the late 80s until about 2000 when they disappeared from US music charts and i moved on to other musical interests influenced by m (who also likes roxette but likes loads of other things, too).

i didn’t grow up near a major metropolitan area so my likelihood of seeing them in concert was unlikely. i’m also not an avid concert-goer and although i will hunt down every last album in a discography, i won’t become a roadie any time…well, ever. m teases me for being the fuddy-duddy who sits in her seat and just stares at the stage. i’m not bored, i’m just shy singing and being demonstrative in public.

the concert was an almost bittersweet experience for me. all these songs from my adolescence…realizing i know all the lyrics to almost every song, even the ones that were never released on the radio…realizing that i’ve been a fan since the 80s (80s!)…seeing both of them look much older than they do on their cd sleeves of yesteryear. ahhhh, that’s the crux of it, isn’t it? we are getting older. marie fredriksson has recovered from illness but has endured loss. i imagine that prior to 2002, she was also jumping up and down on stage like per gessle and gesturing wildly to the crowd. on this particular night and on this particular stage, her voice is intact and still beautiful (albeit darker and more gravelly), but i can’t suppress the heartbreak as i watch per gently nudge her into the opening lines of a song and tenderly embrace her to help her walk off the stage after their last song.

i would like to believe that this glimpse of frailty is partly due to the fact that LA is their next to last concert on a tour that started in february 2011. or that it was just an ‘off’ night. but i know that in reality, although these possibilities might be true, it’s also possible that this is simply the way life goes. i applaud her for courageously giving the audience everything she has after all these years, still striving to be the performer that she has always wanted to be. thank you roxette for a great concert – thank you m for taking me to see roxette. i will remember this concert for as many years as i remember the lyrics and then some.

speaking of memories, i can distinctly and poignantly remember where i was when i listened to their albums:

look sharp! – iowa. i’m sitting in the backseat of our honda accord, probably driving to church. i have the cd sleeve open in my lap and i’m following along with the lyrics to “paint.” from the front seat, my dad’s voice says, “they sound like abba.” i tell him they are from sweden and we agree that there’s some similarity.

joyride – wisconsin. i’m at a slumber party at DD’s house and i receive 2 calvin and hobbes books and joyride for my sixteenth birthday.

tourism – minnesota. i listen to this album all summer. i spill water on the cd sleeve.

crash! boom! bang! – this is the exception. i don’t have strong memories of this album in my life because i didn’t connect as strongly with their new less pop-y vibe.

baladas en espanol – barcelona. one of the few albums i don’t own. i discover they covered an album of their songs in spanish.

pearls of passion – chicago. i’m sitting in a computer programming class listening to this album over and over and over and over.

have a nice day – hmmm. another exception. i love ‘stars’ but can’t geographically place this album in my chronology.

and i have 3 more albums on their way…

;)

emergency preparedness

apparently, it is emergency preparedness month. you would think that an over-prepared person like me would have at least a dozen of these already, but sadly that is not the case. i am simply lazy and, frankly, overwhelmed by the long lists of supplies that should go in a kit.

putting these together had seemed like a monumental task and i had been putting it off for a long time. i imagined that i might get stuck without one, but the “it hasn’t happened yet attitude” was stronger in this young padawan. until today.

fortunately, my local library made it easy for me to overcome my laziness. i bought an emergency preparedness kit for home (everything is in a handy industrial strength bucket including a lid that is a toilet seat – awesome!) and a roadside emergency kit for the car. i dug the small kit that a previous employer gave m out of the closet and will keep it upstairs. this small kit is surprisingly well-stocked but i suppose i shouldn’t be surprised…she got it when we lived in sf. the same sf that has its own web site and handbook for handling disaster.

i spent the better part of two hours reviewing disaster checklists and adding some extra (personal) things the kits didn’t include. maintaining said kits will also take a bit of time but most of the hard work is done. the small kit had some water packets that were expired so i’ll get some more of those. at only $0.29, i think i can manage.

i have no idea if i could’ve put these 2 kits together for less than the $120 i paid for them. but in a disaster, i won’t care how i came by them, i’ll just be grateful i have them.

naked

i forgot my everyday bag (i don’t carry a “purse,” per se, especially by LA standards) at home today. of course, i wasn’t concerned about my wallet. i was concerned about my earbuds, notebook, and various fountain pens. at the tier 2 level, i was missing chapstick. yet, somehow, i still managed to entertain myself with various iOS devices, 2 sets of colored pencils, a bottle of water, a joan didion book of essays, and a mug of coffee. i’m like a human swiss army knife of crap (but at least it’s *cool* crap).

iced cinnamon coffee

having a large iced cinnamon coffee at la monarca. best iced coffee ever and i don’t even like iced coffee.

i found someone who bakes bread!

and apparently she refers to herself in the third person…

before i display the photo, i must warn that these are the ugliest rolls i’ve ever made (i’ve only made rolls twice so my rolls are ugly 50% of the time), but their redeeming quality is in their crispy crust. and the fact that i completely jacked the dough before i baked them but they still turned out ok (so much for that consistency goal):

this dough was very wet – maybe i mismeasured the poolish
at the last minute i decided to make rolls since there’s no way this dough would stay shaped – too wet
i mismeasured the first row so i added bits of wet dough to each one (in varying, non-measured, eyeballed amounts)
i mismeasured the second row so i had to remove bits of wet dough from each one (in varying, non-measured, eyeballed amounts)
i let it proof too long – didn’t seem to harm it any
i baked it for 40 minutes (i think) because 20 minutes just didn’t seem like enough and i don’t even know if i had the amount called for in the recipe (see #1)
fresh baked bread needs to sit and dry out before eating (much like resting meat) – i absolutely did not do this. i ripped open a bunch of rolls and slathered jam all over them.

they are ugly but they are crispy in a way my loaves rarely are. and my stomach doesn’t care what they look like.

ugly. crispy. tasty. homemade rolls with homemade jam!

jam

heck: “i should make jam…i could make it you know…”
rachel: “‘course you could…”
heck: “you wait till i make jam. then i’ll rock your world.”
—imagine me and you

is it wrong that i make things that i want and say i’m making them for m? i didn’t think so.

i am again attempting a tasting table recipe: strawberry-hibiscus jam. not only does it sound good, but we have all of the ingredients at home and the recipe only has 2 steps. my kind of recipe, especially if it tastes good.