Oh Oh Oh!
Last night was SO MUCH FUN!
We headed out of the house around 10pm, over to Kelly's for the LUPEC Women's History Month closing party. Jennie had already left, and it was crowded, and we couldn't seem to get anyone's attention to get a drink, so after we said some hellos and I wore a pipecleaner hat for a hot minute, we decided to carry on. We traveled downtown and parked in the ole Liberty garage for the third time in two days. Decended the stairs to the sound of "Killing Moon" by Echo. Awww.
I flew to the DJ booth to give Spat a kiss and some Nick Cave records and then flew to the dance floor, where he followed Echo with Gene Loves Jezebel. Sweet.
Afterwards we made our way over to the adult beverage section of the bar where once again the lovely bartender talked me out of what I thought I wanted and made me something more delicious. Also, he looked like Simon Le Bon.
The best thing about Ceremony for sure is the people watching. There's the goth bellydancer from my distant past; there's lots of children of the night in various states of funky fabulousness; there was a no doubt Point Park student masquerading as Peter Berlin; and there was the Sorcerer and his Apprentice. They arrived at about 11:30pm. The Sorcerer was a medium height, medium build long haired bearded fellow in a long black velvet frock coat and top hat. His Apprentice was tall, skinny, wearing leather pants, a black tattered t shirt, leather jacket, dog collar, white face paint and long black hair with ponytails. The two of them skulked around for a bit, and then the Apprentice eventually took to the dance floor and did the most sinewy grinding sexual dancing with a variety of girls and boys. By the end of the night, The Apprentice and Peter Berlin had finally found each other and put on a graphic porn show for our voyeuristic delight. Seriously, it was worth the $4 admission price even if I hadn't gotten to dance to tones on tail. I can't wait to go back.

Hey there!
Remember me?
I wouldn't blame you if you didn't. Sorry I've been out of touch.
It's been kinda a whirlwind week and a half and also, I just haven't worked out a good schedule yet to get my internet time in. That's something I plan to work on in April.
So, quickly, what I've been up to if you're interested:
1)Anita Fix and bambam video premier: we star in a video our friend Michelle made for her thesis art project at CMU. The longform is called "stomach trouble" and you can see a little of our bit here. The filming process was really fun and I wish we could make music videos all the time. The premier was at a group art show and I don't know how much experience you have with group art shows at CMU but--the whole thing was a bit precious. We got to sit on a long bench and watch ourselves projected larger than life on a wall which was good fun. The rest of the stuff was variously impenetrable and annoying. Sigh.
2)First wedding of the season: Saturday the 22nd we had our first wedding of the season out in Leechburg. Everything was ubersmooth from our point of view, and I even got to do a little crisis management when the cupcake delivery was determined to be an hour late. It all worked out in the end and there are humor stories galore like there always are from weddings, and also, the bride was smokin hot in a scarlett o'hara gone goth red satin dress. Ooh la la.
3)Easter: after a post wedding sleep in, I got up and made my best bread yet (I have settled pretty much exclusively on a honey whole wheat recipe for the time being. This easter batch I used Frankferd farms flour instead of King Arthur and I liked it even better. A bit grainy-er. Yum) and also a pineapple upside down cake. Then went to work to have a meeting with a future wedding couple and do some prep for Monday since we closed early. After prep I brought home Leslie and Amy for a delicious Easter feast of ham, roasted glazed sweet potatoes, hominy casserole, barbecue baked limas, homemade bread and pineapple upside down cake. We had beers and watched Jesus Christ Superstar, which neither of our guests had ever seen. It was really nice.
4)IKEA/Bahama Breeze: Wednesday Jilly and I took a trip out to Ikea to get some stuff for the Quizzle and also so I could drop a little catering cash. It is increasingly hard for me to drop cash randomly but I managed to find a few things I felt were justifiable purchases. I got a couple nice area rugs, a mezzaluna, and a really beautiful new springtime comforter cover. We also stopped at TJ Max and I got some organic cotton sheets, white almond shampoo and citrus body wash. It was that kind of trip. We were mainly headed out to commerce avenue to go to Bahama Breeze, where Jilly had never been. The mojitos were amazing, the Jamaican meat patties were amazing, the jerk shrimp was the love of my life as always, and my salmon tostada salad was unusual but delicious. I heart that place so much! Plus, I had gotten an email coupon for $10 off two entrees, and when I redeemed it I got ANOTHER one. Whoo!
5)Party!: Last night we played at a party for the aforementioned Michelle in Polish HIll. I can't remember the last time I played at a house party but there is no better stage upon which to freak out in the way we would like to make a habit of freaking out. We played every song we know, some we don't know so well, and caused a whole lot of racket. Someone apparently called me "iconic". Wow. There was some social akwardness on my part because I wasn't feeling all that chatty, but we got through. And then we got home and slept hard.
6)Conference: this weekend was the Farm to Table conference at the convention center. There wasn't much there for me, honestly, and if Sandor Katz hadn't been the keynote speaker I don't know that I would have bothered. His keynote speech was really wonderful, about underground food movements, and I picked up his Wild Fermentations book. Today we went back for his workshop on fermentation, and as we were headed there we were discussing his talk and I realized that it had made even more of an impression on me than I realized. Good stuff. The fermentation workshop was eyeopening in a major way--basically just took away any lingering fear and damage I have from taking "Food safety" class. Seriously, I didn't realize how damaged I was from learing the ropes of the food sanitation industry. Ugh. Anyway, we got some nice raw milk cheese, and organic eggs, and some lettuces and baby red russian kale, and I picked up some literature and renewed my subscription to Table, and we were out.
7)Namaste: We headed directly to the south hills because Sandor mentioned Dosas like 4 times and I got hungrier every time he said it. We arrived in the midst of some kind of birthday or something, and there was a massive line for the buffet. There also was a distinct lack of dosas, but everything there was so good it didn't matter. I ate way more gulab jamuns than usual, but I think it was the slight hangover talking. After eating we stopped in to the store next door where I stocked up on some stuff including a dosa mix. Until I have the time to make my own (which I plan to do using Sandor's book!) I am gonna try the mix. We'll see.
8)McGuinnis Dad's: good times. We mostly went to get some Amish chicken but of course I can't go there without filling a basket. Including some Hagen Daz "baileys" ice cream in honor of Old Greg. Hee.
That brings us to tonight---we're headed to Kelly's for a LUPEC shindig and then to Pegasus for my friend Spat's guest DJ night at Ceremony. We're having it laaaarge...

Crikey.
I don't really need a new obsession, but I've got one.
This extreme cutie is Noel Fielding, who plays Vince Noir on The Mighty Boosh. Last Sunday we went over to Bonello's place to watch a couple episodes that Mueller has on DVD. I quickly became one smitten kitten.
There are lots of places on the internet to watch episodes of the Mighty Boosh.
The first one I saw was "eels", which is a fine place to start. But really any of them that you can find will give you a glimpse of the extreme comic talent of Noel Fielding. He also plays the moon and Tony Harrison. Sigh.

Awesome Dream

Obviously my subconscious felt really bad for laying that bad Jimmy Page dream on me, because just before I woke up today I was treated to one of the most awesome dreams ever. Of course, it followed a rather disturbing dream that I won't go into here, at least not now. Because I want to talk about the awesome dream so that I can brighten your day.
In the awesome dream, I was going with rebby to see Love and Rockets. We didn't have tickets but were relatively sure we would be able to get them at the venue. The Venue appeared to be a highschool gymnasium from the outside,where we were standing in a long line of people waiting to get in. We were in a long dark highschool style hallway, but there was a window right where I was standing and I saw Daniel Ash and David J walk in carrying some luggage. They had on dark glasses and Daniel was smoking and looking extra cool.
I kept trying to find out from the people who were more or less corralling the crowd where to get tickets, and they kept saying "inside". So we waited. We were right at the beginning of the line and felt very happy about it, when all of a sudden I noticed that the hallway was emptying out at the other end. They had opened the opposite doors! So we headed down that way and watched people pouring in to the bleachers. In the center of the room was a ticket kiosk, but when I tried to get there to get tickets the guy said "after the show" and just waved us on. Cool!
So we turned toward the stage, only to find (and here's where it gets awesome) that it was not so much a concert stage as a produce section. There were several kiosks full of broccoli on ice scattered around in front of the stage, which was lined with big produce cases full of leafy greens, squashes, and tomatoes. Almost immediately the lights went down and out onto the stage burst Howard Jones and some woman, the opening act. I looked to my left and Daniel Ash was standing there on the other side of the broccoli display. He was very excited about Howard Jones, and the next thing I knew we were dancing around the broccoli together. On the stage, the background vocals were being sung by disembodied heads lined up along the front produce case. One of them was David J, and at the same time I realized that I realized that Jennie was standing in front of his head talking to him. I tried to get my camera phone to work but I couldn't, and so I didn't get a picture of her talking to David J's disembodied head. I ran over to her and she told me he was recommending some lettuce.
Sad to say, at this point I woke up to pee and was unable to get back to sleep. But the mental image of dancing around the broccoli with Daniel Ash will stay with me all day.
Today is well and truly passport day, and I plan to bake some bread as well. I stumbled upon a relatively simple very delicious honey whole wheat recipe that renewed my excitement about baking bread again. I think I will also buy a copy of the Veganomicon because I need some new vegan inspiration. Also, I'm just damn excited to be walking around in the 56 degree weather!
Hope you have an exciting and productive day as well!

Why is Jimmy Page always ambivalent toward me in my dreams?
Last night I drempt that I was in some sort of strange, Survivor-esque reality TV situation with a bunch of random people I didn't know, and Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. Jimmy was naturally my team captain, and I used all of my skills and bravery and cunning to take our team to victory. (I can't really describe what it was we were doing, but one point it involved shooting hunks of day old bread out of giant caulking guns. It was one of those dreams)
Anyway, at the VERY end, I made it out of the fight area alive, and stumbled over to the bonfire where Jimmy and Robert and some other people were sitting, singing and drinking wine and having a fine time. Robert was thrilled to see me and scooped me up in his arms. I noticed as we were sitting cheek to cheek that he had VERY good skin. Jimmy looked at me rather cooly and asked about another girl. It was heartbreaking.
I'm going to go ahead and hold the Dubbel Trubbel I had at the brewery and with dinner this evening responsible for the strangeness of this dream. Oh, and the hormones too. They probably contributed.

Good morning!
I am really enjoying the fantasy that it is spring and this is a light spring rain which will be followed by a warm sunny sky. I think it will actually be followed by a steep drop in temperature and some snow, but right now I am happy in my fantasy.
I didn't get out too much in the close to 70 degree weather of yesterday, but I did sit on the porch with rebby for a while when we got home. Then we realized that some neighborhood cat peed on rebby's porch chair, and that put a damper on our enjoyment.
But still, it was nice. I am really ready for spring.
So, this weekend I had kind of a nice weekend which was slightly marred by food poisoning. It happened Thursday. I ate some leftovers from a thai place on liberty in bloomfield on Wednesday night and woke up Thursday feeling queasy. I had a lot of things to do on Thurs, so I worked through it, but when I got home from the catering to the delightful aroma of rebby making ribs, I had to go upstairs and have a lie down. Only I didn't stay down for long, and spent most of the night up and down with my makeshift puke bucket in hand. Of course, I hadn't really eaten much all day, so once the offending matter was actually out of my system we turned to the charming dry heaves. Blargh.
I got myself stabilized to go in to work Friday morning, but once there I realized I was thoroughly exhausted. So as soon as I was able I came home and went right back to bed. Ahhhh. Rebby brought me soup and crackers and ginger ale, and I sat around being a delicate flower all evening. We were supposed to go to an engagement party, and I was really sad at the thought of missing it. But then the terrible weather intervened and it was post poned anyway! So I went back to being a delicate flower, and then I went back to bed.
Saturday morning I worked breakfast and having woken up with a powerful urge for waffles, I decided to get out the ole QS waffle iron. It hasn't seen much action in the past year or so, but I was determined. I made some amazing buttermilk waffles and some pretty good vegan pumpkin apple butter waffles, and people ate them up. Yum!
I hung around making things all afternoon and then headed home. Where nothing much exciting happened. Sunday we took it easy and then decided to hit the coop for some crucial supplies. Before heading out the door I checked my bank balance and BLAMO! My enormous tax refund had arrived! So we had a rather luxurious coop shop. The biggest expenditure was on seeds for the garden---we had gone over the seed catalog I got in the mail in the morning and fantasy ordered about one million dollars worth of seeds. Several of the varieties we had fantasy ordered were available right there at the co-op, so we loaded up! I am so excited about gardening! We even took the giant leap of faith and decided not to get a CSA this year in anticipation of gardening luck (and, lots of famer's market shopping when the gardening luck fails)
The rest of Sunday was more lazing around, after rebby made some delicious blue cheese stuffed burgers for supper. Good times.
Yesterday was the lovely hot day and I enjoyed it as best I could from the kitchen at the restaurant. I was inspired to make some REALLY good soup (lemony kale and chickpea) and REALLY good curry (Persian Eggplant) And then I worked on some seitan stroganoff for a blue plate special. I am hoping the colors will mellow out over night because the vibrantly green peas in the pink tinged brown sauce was not so attractive. Tasted good though, and I'm sure I can mellow it out somehow if need be.
Yesterday afternoon I had a giant nap on the couch, because my sleep patterns are all screwy AGAIN. I've got to get this under control! And start exercizing. I know it would make a huge difference.
OK, I'm going to leave you with something that made coffee shoot out my nose this morning. I haven't checked in to 5 Things in a while, but I am sure glad I did this morning!
Have a good Tuesday.