through the window and up above
The sunset tonight is an astonishing Halloween orange, and the bars of color are so distinct that they look almost pixellated - quick, Seattle people that spend too much time online/stalk my LJ, go look!
Fuck, you missed it.
It's that time of year, although a little early. I'm in the kitchen six full days this week and it shows no sign of letting up. I actually like it this way, as I was getting tired of the landscaping gig. I've kept it up for two years and I think I'm done. There were plenty of things about it that weren't working for me, and haven't for a while, but the biggest problem was that West Seattle is an enormous sucking black hole that sucks extra hard when it comes to public transportation. I tried to work last Saturday and after an hour of no-show and just-missed buses, I gave up. If I absolutely have to, I'll find a nearby coffee shop that needs an evening barista, but with all of the big gala events planned I should be fine through Christmas if I keep my belt tight. Recent additions to the banquet menu include vegan chocolate cake, pomegranate sorbet, and raspberry napoleons. (We're making the discs out of almond dough, not puff pastry, since puff is abominably hard to cut and we need to be able to crank out four hundred of these without a hitch. In the professional kitchen, such modifications of classic pastry design are not considered cheating but are instead referred to as "postmodern", in much the same way that a lumpy, misshapen loaf of bread can be disingenuously pointed to as "rustic".)
Work has been surprisingly un-stressful, despite the action-packed days. I've reached the point where your skill at a particular task suddenly takes a jump ("leveling up" in geek speak) and I'm much more comfortable in the kitchen. My pastry exec's grumpy days seem to be at a minimum, the morning guy keeps bringing in the fruits of his backyard smoker, the head exec has grudgingly agreed to buy a tabletop ice cream/sorbet machine for the shop, annoying co-workers are less so, there are new CDs in the shop's library, and even the banquet servers seem less stupid than usual.
... I had happy hour beers and munchies with my friend J, who's gay, a quarter century older than me, and enormously satisfying to talk to. After a pitcher of Naughty Nellie at Pike Pub & Brewery downtown, I had gotten the update on his most recent boy toy, who he's patted on the ass and wished well in his future endeavors, and I told him about most recent breakup; when I got to the climax/punchline of the final fracas, he laughed so hard that he slid to the seat of the booth. When he got his breath back, he told me that the whole saga was similar his own heterosexual experiences in his early adulthood - honestly, it's amazing how much you can learn about sex and romance with women from older gay men, it's a lady-fancier's most untapped natural resource. He also reminded me that Team Manlove was still recruiting. I told him to send me a brochure and check with me after the next breakup.
Afterwards we walked through the new sculpture garden by the waterfront, then hiked back up the hill. It wasn't until this morning when my throat and shanks hurt that I realized that we'd talked and walked continuously for about three hours. Poor J. He's still upset over the abrupt death earlier this year of a mutual friend of ours. They were together for just over ten years, and stayed close for years after up until his death. There's a visible void in his life still, and it's sad to see how it appears in little ways at most every turn. I'm still a little dazed from the guerrilla ambush nature of the breakup, but it's nothing compared to that. The perspective check has just about packed up that episode and put it away for me.
Speaking of Naughty Nellies, check this out. I thought I'd seen an example of every antique anthropomorphic tchochke known, thanks to the proliferation of junk shops in the deep South, but this is new to me. I wish I owned more than my one pair of motorcycle boots so I could justify one.
Speaking of something else entirely, I'm a fiend for Baroque history. There's something about an era that has pirates and swordfights, a scientific/technological paradigm that's an aesthetically pleasing combination of grimy DIY and cross-your-fingers-and-wish-hard mysticism, and a marginally more effective approach to hygiene than the tedious-assed Middle Ages. Apropos of that, I've just chewed straight through the first three mass market paperbacks in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. See, this is what I've been waiting for all these years and proto-pulp fiction penny dreadful boys-own-adventure novels later. (Dumas and Sabatini obviously excepted, and anyone who says otherwise is itching for a fight.) They remind me of the Flashman novels in that they make me feel stupid in a good way, and knowing that I'll have to go back and re-read them to keep the history straight only makes it more fun.
In a fine example of literary synchronicity, the day I finished the third book a friend unexpectedly pressed his copy of The Island of the Day Before on me, and I'm in deep, meaningful love. I haven't read any Umberto Eco in years; I fumbled through The Name of the Rose at a too-early age, and never really went back, although I did flip through Misreadings after I heard that he liked comic books. There's something about reading a truly great book that's been translated from a language that's not native to you. It's similar to the feeling I get when I read Arturo Perez-Reverte, but it's even more intense: you don't know where you are or exactly how you got there, like in a dream, and there's an erotic feeling of excitement and contentment. Tomorrow I'm going back to the sculpture park to lie on the grass and see how far I can get through it before the sun sets, which hopefully will be as good a show as it was tonight.
Edit: speaking of speaking of speaking of things, Baroque history and love in particular, it's entirely futile to be so infatuated with someone who's so long gone, but Jesus, I doubt you can fault me.
Fuck, you missed it.
It's that time of year, although a little early. I'm in the kitchen six full days this week and it shows no sign of letting up. I actually like it this way, as I was getting tired of the landscaping gig. I've kept it up for two years and I think I'm done. There were plenty of things about it that weren't working for me, and haven't for a while, but the biggest problem was that West Seattle is an enormous sucking black hole that sucks extra hard when it comes to public transportation. I tried to work last Saturday and after an hour of no-show and just-missed buses, I gave up. If I absolutely have to, I'll find a nearby coffee shop that needs an evening barista, but with all of the big gala events planned I should be fine through Christmas if I keep my belt tight. Recent additions to the banquet menu include vegan chocolate cake, pomegranate sorbet, and raspberry napoleons. (We're making the discs out of almond dough, not puff pastry, since puff is abominably hard to cut and we need to be able to crank out four hundred of these without a hitch. In the professional kitchen, such modifications of classic pastry design are not considered cheating but are instead referred to as "postmodern", in much the same way that a lumpy, misshapen loaf of bread can be disingenuously pointed to as "rustic".)
Work has been surprisingly un-stressful, despite the action-packed days. I've reached the point where your skill at a particular task suddenly takes a jump ("leveling up" in geek speak) and I'm much more comfortable in the kitchen. My pastry exec's grumpy days seem to be at a minimum, the morning guy keeps bringing in the fruits of his backyard smoker, the head exec has grudgingly agreed to buy a tabletop ice cream/sorbet machine for the shop, annoying co-workers are less so, there are new CDs in the shop's library, and even the banquet servers seem less stupid than usual.
... I had happy hour beers and munchies with my friend J, who's gay, a quarter century older than me, and enormously satisfying to talk to. After a pitcher of Naughty Nellie at Pike Pub & Brewery downtown, I had gotten the update on his most recent boy toy, who he's patted on the ass and wished well in his future endeavors, and I told him about most recent breakup; when I got to the climax/punchline of the final fracas, he laughed so hard that he slid to the seat of the booth. When he got his breath back, he told me that the whole saga was similar his own heterosexual experiences in his early adulthood - honestly, it's amazing how much you can learn about sex and romance with women from older gay men, it's a lady-fancier's most untapped natural resource. He also reminded me that Team Manlove was still recruiting. I told him to send me a brochure and check with me after the next breakup.
Afterwards we walked through the new sculpture garden by the waterfront, then hiked back up the hill. It wasn't until this morning when my throat and shanks hurt that I realized that we'd talked and walked continuously for about three hours. Poor J. He's still upset over the abrupt death earlier this year of a mutual friend of ours. They were together for just over ten years, and stayed close for years after up until his death. There's a visible void in his life still, and it's sad to see how it appears in little ways at most every turn. I'm still a little dazed from the guerrilla ambush nature of the breakup, but it's nothing compared to that. The perspective check has just about packed up that episode and put it away for me.
Speaking of Naughty Nellies, check this out. I thought I'd seen an example of every antique anthropomorphic tchochke known, thanks to the proliferation of junk shops in the deep South, but this is new to me. I wish I owned more than my one pair of motorcycle boots so I could justify one.
Speaking of something else entirely, I'm a fiend for Baroque history. There's something about an era that has pirates and swordfights, a scientific/technological paradigm that's an aesthetically pleasing combination of grimy DIY and cross-your-fingers-and-wish-hard mysticism, and a marginally more effective approach to hygiene than the tedious-assed Middle Ages. Apropos of that, I've just chewed straight through the first three mass market paperbacks in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. See, this is what I've been waiting for all these years and proto-pulp fiction penny dreadful boys-own-adventure novels later. (Dumas and Sabatini obviously excepted, and anyone who says otherwise is itching for a fight.) They remind me of the Flashman novels in that they make me feel stupid in a good way, and knowing that I'll have to go back and re-read them to keep the history straight only makes it more fun.
In a fine example of literary synchronicity, the day I finished the third book a friend unexpectedly pressed his copy of The Island of the Day Before on me, and I'm in deep, meaningful love. I haven't read any Umberto Eco in years; I fumbled through The Name of the Rose at a too-early age, and never really went back, although I did flip through Misreadings after I heard that he liked comic books. There's something about reading a truly great book that's been translated from a language that's not native to you. It's similar to the feeling I get when I read Arturo Perez-Reverte, but it's even more intense: you don't know where you are or exactly how you got there, like in a dream, and there's an erotic feeling of excitement and contentment. Tomorrow I'm going back to the sculpture park to lie on the grass and see how far I can get through it before the sun sets, which hopefully will be as good a show as it was tonight.
Edit: speaking of speaking of speaking of things, Baroque history and love in particular, it's entirely futile to be so infatuated with someone who's so long gone, but Jesus, I doubt you can fault me.