Say Cheese

Neither Dragonia nor Church had ever been to Le Fromager before, so Jack and I escorted them there and showed them how to throw down.  And we had:

• Nettle Meadow Kunik (mixed milk, New York State)
• Robiola a Due Latti (mixed milk, Italy)
• Amarelo da Beira Baixa (mixed milk, Portugal)
• Midnight Moon (goats’ milk, Holland)
• Fiscalini Cheddar (cows’ milk, California)
• Morbier (cows’ milk, France)
• Roomano (cows’ milk, Holland) (and yes, that’s Roomano, not Romano)
• Langres (cows’ milk, France)
• Pont L’Eveque (cows’ milk, France)
• Bleu D’Auvergne (cows’ milk, France)

…plus a big old charcuterie plate.  And strawberry-rhubarb sheep’s milk yogurt parfaits all around for dessert.

Yummy.

Full House

Wow!-  not only is Jack here, but Church stopped by for the weekend, too!  There haven’t been four people staying over here since…  well, HERE, in this new apartment, there haven’t ever been four people staying over.

Rad!

On the Lees

Forgot to mention:   this past Saturday, I finally got around to attempting the much-discussed but never-implemented vertical tasting of my homemade hard cider, over at the Empress’ place.  We didn’t get through too many years of it, as there weren’t any avid hard-cider drinkers there besides myself, and enthusiasm for tasting waxed and waned over the course of the day.  But I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the bottle of King’s X I tried and decried must’ve just been a bad one;  all of the cider I decanted was sound and drinkable, all the way back to the oldest extant bottles, from 1993.  That vintage was crazy dark at the bottom of the bottle, almost stout-colored, which part of it we chose not to drink (and I don’t even want to think about what the inside of the cap looked like after 17 years.)  But the pour off the top had a sweet, complicated flavor, reminiscent of honey, that it’s never had before.  It was pretty cool.

I called Weaver to tell her that it was still drinkable after all that time (since we were dating when it was made, still three years away from getting married, and she helped me make it *laugh*), and she sent me a text message back that said “Congratulations.”  Which was very nice of her.

Highlights from Dragonia’s Birthday

Breakfast in Bed: Coffee with sugar-free hazelnut syrup and cream, served in a Lenox Kelly china cup, with matching silverware (fresh out of its original packaging!) Yogurt, and strawberries, and apples. And bacon. Lots and lots of bacon.

Presents!: Soaps and socks and dresses. Sarah McLachlan’s new album. Sarah McLachlan could sing the phone book and make it sound passable, probably.

State Transit Can Smell Your Fear: Starting off on a shaky foot by running to catch the bus before it pulled away from Sealand’s Acme bus stop. Got the last two seats, all the way in the back, then compared notes on the buses of two coasts. Explained all the highways and tunnels. View of the City from the Helix ramp, across the river. Yes, we’re going UNDER the river.

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Inauspicious

So far during the time she’s been here, Dragonia has given herself an inch-long second-degree burn on her elbow by bumping into the hot cast iron pan we cooked our bacon in, accrued a foot-long red scratch up the back of her calf from no apparent source, and spent two nights in the bathroom puking from heat exhaustion.

On the other hand, we had a very nice bottle of 1995 Clos Du Val Merlot I had been cellaring.  And watched Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs on DVD, and episodes of True Blood and Doctor Who via the computer.  So hopefully we’re on the way up.

Three Hours Into the Future

Dragonia has arrived safely West of the Rivers, and is resting quietly.

Spell-based spacio-temporal travel takes a lot out of you!

Then and Now

One of the fascinating things about rummaging through the endless piles of paper I’ve accrued over the last fifteen years is discovering old drawings I did during that time.  Many of them are surprising to me, almost literally shocking, because they’re far better than I remember them being:  they possess either a diversity, or a level of energy, or a level of technical skill (sometimes all three) that I doubt I have anymore.

Here, for instance, is a random sketch that was tucked into a pile of notes on an anime parody/genre mash-up:

Here, by comparison, is the sketch I did sitting outside with Jack yesterday, at Starbucks:

(*laugh*  You know, I just realized, Cloak Girl there looks like a mellowed out version of Andréa from Daria.  Can’t imagine why that would be…)

Maybe those two sketches aren’t exactly the best choice for point-counterpoint–  I’m sure all five of you reading this will like the bottom one just fine, if not much better than the top one.  And the top sketch isn’t exactly random;  it still existed for me to discover NOW because I found it sufficiently likable THEN not to immediately crumple it up and throw it away.  Still, I feel like there’s a point trying to make itself heard there.  Something silly and weighty about how drawing is like life, in that it isn’t a straight line from A to B, where B is better than A.  You wander all over the place, gaining some things and losing others, and where you wind up in the end isn’t necessarily any better than where you started out.  Unless you think it’s better.  For some reason.

Walk a Mile in My

Have been experiencing a temporary increase in consciousness concerning shoes, of all things.  I run two avatars in Second Life, one male and one female, and my wardrobe as a girl is just shockingly deficient in appropriate footwear.  But the difficulty of finding the right pair of heels to go with my favorite dress is offset significantly by the utter customizability of what’s available.  As a man in SL, you can buy an OK pair of boots, and if you’re lucky, they’ll have a resize script in them that will adjust them to fit your feet.  As a woman, you can get a pair of bow-tied Marilyns that will replace your feet, plus a heads-up display that allows you to size them as large or as small as you want, custom-match them to your skin tone or panty hose, change every aspect of their color from the leather to the laces, and pick what color you want your toenail polish to be.  Boys are so deprived.

Meanwhile, the mercury in the City of the Mists hit the better part of 100 degrees Fahrenheit earlier this week, and with only 10 minutes left to make it to the bus stop, I discovered that I’d left my sneakers down the street inside Gloria.  So I grabbed my flip-flops instead:  the pair I haven’t worn in the City since that day several years ago, when I tripped up the subway steps wearing them and rammed my big toe into the concrete hard enough to break it.  I didn’t trip this time, but I did walk much more slowly, and since I was taking my time anyway, I spent most of the mile between Central Terminal and where I work observing with great interest what was on everyone else’s feet.  I discovered to my surprise that, by and large, men don’t wear that kind of footwear on the street-  at least not in the City of Mists.  Women, once the temperature becomes warm, switch to thin-strapped open platforms, summery sandals.  Men, even ones who have otherwise stripped themselves down to cut-off t-shirts and shorts, do not.  Their feet remain obdurately encased in thick sneakers, high socks, hard leather boots.

There are exceptions of course, just as there are women who stick to the concrete-stompers.  (The business woman who slips off her pumps at the office door and laces on her sneakers for the duration of her commute is a City of Mists icon.)  But they’re few and far between, and seem to prove the rule rather than disprove it.