A Little Spice to Life

I’ve really been into Ethnic foods lately—especially curry, masala and any other sort of spicy and flavorful Indian-type food. Last night I piecemealed a pretty decent dinner together from the random ingredients in my cupboard, and I was pleased as punch. It’s not everyday you can find a recipe on the side of a box (literally on the side of the couscous box), add a little and substitute for what you don’t have—and end up with a decent meal. I think this is proof that my culinary capabilities are evolving past having to read and follow a recipe verbatim. (Yippee!) So, thought I’d post it here for those interested in experimenting a bit in the spicy, Indian-food category (You can click on the card to make it bigger, and print):

(The recipe called for walnuts—I substituted cashews—and 1 ½ cups of tomato sauce, but I used the rest of the TJ’s Marsala I had and tomato sauce. I added ginger, garlic and chicken, but I left out the raisins and chutney, which I didn’t have. I’d like to try it with raisins next time since I’m a sweet and savory type o’ girl. Mine turned out four stars, so next time I won’t add quite as much extra Cayenne pepper.)

Next up…Baby Daddy and I are signing up for a handmade sushi roll class, which I’m REALLY excited for!

Currently Feeling: Loving that my 401K savings plan is rapidly growing.
Currently Anticipating: Conor Oberst at Easy Street Records for free tonight! Anyone want to go with me?
Currently Reading: “Water for Elephants” by Sarah Gruen.

Joggin’ Along to Jerry Springer

Holy balls. My gym’s downtown location is amazing.

I finally remembered to bring my workout gear today for a little lunchtime work out session at the Executive Club location of my gym – three blocks from my work.

I recently searched for a gym with locations that I could easily access from home and from work. So, I was eager to jump at joining my new gym when they told me that since they cut back their fitness classes at my neighborhood location, I could pay their membership fees ($40 a month), but could also go to their Executive Club location downtown without paying the membership dues for it ($70 a month).

Hot diggity damn. Boy did I luck out. The Executive Club location downtown is fAAA-nCY. The locker rooms have a steam room, private showers, ironing board, steaming wand, etc. The third floor has cardio equipment, free weights, a rock climbing wall and “Winter Garden Room” with a patio for lunches. The workout rooms have big, etched glass doors with brand new equipment and personal TVs on the treadmills. And, there’s a full spa and intermittent lounge areas with leather couches and flat screen TVs throughout the gym and locker rooms. My favorite part though—there’s a huge, private “women’s only” workout room with cardio equipment placed on the perimeter, so you can people watch all the downtown crazies, and free weights, machines, etc., so you can pump iron without feeling shy in front of the boys.

Today on the treadmill I watched, “The Secrets of Hollywood’s Hottest Cougars,” on VH1 where I learned that “the ultimate hoo-hoo rehab” is “vaginoplasty.” And I even caught a couple minutes of Jerry Springer, which I haven’t watched since early college. Do you know that they now do, “Sesame Springer”? It’s Jerry Springer, but with muppets dressed up as the guests, and the muppets act out the guests’ stories.

So, not only did I get a fantastic workout during lunch today, but I also now have zero-faith in the human race.

Currently Feeling: Snacky.
Currently Anticipating: Sunshine after work today. Perhaps a jaunt around Greenlake?
Currently Loving: SmartFood popcorn with white cheddar popcorn seasoning.

Groggy with Dingy Hair

I’ve slept through my alarm for three days in a row now. I can’t figure out what’s happening. I’ve had more than enough sleep last night and the night before, but each morning I’ve suddenly snapped awake, 10 minutes before I have to be on the bus. Which, of course, means I run around like a mad woman, throwing heels and clothing around, locating my bag, grabbing lunch, slapping on some mascara and hair goo, and then sprinting to the bus stop. Conclusion: This is the third morning I’ve gone without a shower. I’ve felt gross, slimy and not awake all week.

I think I’ve become way too addicted to pressing the, “Snooze” button. It seems that the last three mornings, I’ve pressed Snooze, and just slept through it when the radio came back on, blaring dance tunes from C89.5. If only I could just GET UP when the alarm first goes off. But no. It’s like a major addiction I have with pressing Snooze. “JUST 10 MORE MINUTES!” feels like a million bucks. But 10 more minutes has turned into 20… 40… an hour and a half of snoozing… then missing my bus, being late to work, not showering and looking like slime.

A sign of alcoholism is when it starts to affect your work and personal life… I think I have Snoozolism.

Currently Feeling: Like I need a change of location or a month in a foreign country.
Currently Anticipating: “The Dark Knight” at the drive-in tomorrow, and a pool party at Brett and Angie’s on Saturday.
Currently Hating: Cold calling. Whoever came up with that tactic anyway? It blows.

Return of the Dirty Hippies

I recently joined a gym – yet again – to try to get into better shape.

I’ve belonged to Pure Fitness down on Westlake since moving to Seattle. At first it was an okay place, but then it turned into nothing I like about a gym. The owners changed, and the place became more sterile looking and less inviting. To access it, I had to drive down Mercer after work, which is equivalent to sitting on the 520 bridge; it sucks. To top it off, I get bored on treadmills and elliptical trainers, so it didn’t help when there was never any good magazines to read and you couldn’t see the TVs to read the shitty subtitles, let alone hear them.

Conclusion: I stopped going to the gym.

So, I joined All Star Fitness on lower Queen Anne. It’s a little bit more inviting, I drive by it nearly every day or can jog down to it, and it has private TV screens in front of each workout machine. Plus, I dug the idea of going to their location downtown on my lunch hour, and the gym also has a pool and hot tub. Major bonus.

Baby Daddy and I have been dying to go hot tubbing for some time now. (G-rated hot-tubbing; just for relaxation, really.) Since we’re not crazy enough to brave Tubs in the University District, which is closed anyway, I decided to sneak him into my gym. (Although I did go to Tubs once in college, and they have beds next to the hot tubs. Beds!)

The poolroom is a really nice set up, albeit a little muggy for mid-summer. But, the hot tub has Jacuzzi jets, the lap pool is a comfortable temperature, no one from the gym can see in, and there is a sauna and steam room. I’ve never been in a steam room, so I suggested that we check it out. I stepped inside, and was hit with a cloud of eucalyptus steam. Very niiiice! We sat in there for a bit, but then I started to feel extremely hot and like I couldn’t breathe. I kept opening the door to stick my head out and gulp fresh air.

“God! I’m hot!” I exclaimed. I picked up a water bottle sitting on the ledge. “This has to be water to spray on you, right?” I asked Baby Daddy.

“Uh. I don’t know. I don’t think so…”

“Well, why else would it be here?” I said in my usual know-it-all way. “It’s probably to cool you off, duh!”

I proceeded to spray it all over my body—my neck, my legs, my chest. And then all over Baby Daddy’s body too.

“I don’t think that’s water,” he continued. “You just sprayed it in my eye, and it stung.”

And then my whole body started to sting.

“Shit!” I smelled the contents of the bottle, which burned my nose. It smelled like very strong, pure eucalyptus oil.

And it was.

It was so strong my eyes and nose were stinging, even after we had dressed and left the gym. It gave me a huge headache, and both of our bodies continued to sting through the night.

“We’re going to die from, like, eucalyptus oil overdose or something!” I said.

“Smooth move, 20-Something,” he said as we walked home.

Worse part about it—we smelled like a couple of dirty hippies. And you all know how much I love hippies.

Currently Feeling: Sleepy with a bit of a wine headache.
Currently Anticipating: The Bite of Seattle this weekend and Jana’s bachelorette party.
Currently Wishing: I can sell all this ad space before the August deadline!

The First OG Gangsta to Go

One of my Dolphin Sisters got engaged over the weekend.

Because of this, I’m a little sentimental today.

You spend your whole life, growing and changing with friends. Or, at least I’ve been very lucky to have a select number of girl friends who’ve been by my side since junior high. They’ve walked next to me during days I was too embarrassed to go to school, too heartbroken to get out of bed, too young to make the right decision, too in love to see straight, too sassy for my own good, too stubborn to say sorry, too self conscious to be myself in a crowd…

My point being—you spend 10 plus years with childhood friends, dreaming of college, boyfriends, careers and families. College came and went. Boys have come and gone. Careers are there and growing. But the day a best friend meets the very right person and commits to a lifetime is always a little surreal. It’s like the 13 single years you’ve spent together—when you’re number one to each other and no one else—flash before your eyes.

And do you know how many memories 13 years hold?

The very foundation of my being—years that formed my personality—are years spent with Larisa. We met in 7th grade. I was a lost girl who knew two people in a sea of converging elementary schools. When popularity and “being cool” start to count, two people don’t get you very far. But eventually familiar faces and the possibility of friendship begin to emerge from a crowd. And there was Larisa.

We played softball together every day after school during softball season; I snuck home illegally on her bus to rollerblade the Burke Gilman in the sunshine; we went every winter to Snoqualmie, where we learned how to snowboard while listening to “Tool,” eventually teaching classes together. We shared the exact same sense of humor and disregard for rules that got us in trouble. A lot. (Voted Biggest Rebel 2000 ) Ha ha. We have so many inside jokes, I couldn’t even being to explain or list them.

In high school, we went to countless dances together. We’d skip school to gamble and get cinnamon bread from Great Harvest Bread Company during second period break. We started our careers at McDonalds, where eventually we were banned from working together cause we got in trouble for having a fight with all-purpose cleaner water bottles in the lobby. We went to Korn concerts (weird), Limp Bizkit (funny), Pearl Jam, The Gorge, Dave Mathews and countless more shows. We’d play Doctor Mario after school for no less than four hours, an unhealthy amount of days in a row. We drove around in my 1973 Volkswagen Beetle that was painted to look like a root beer float, yelling, “PERVERT!” to people walking out of Taboo Video every time we drove by, and stopped to smoke raspberry ciggies on the docks in Kenmore. I lived in her room for a month during senior year, where we’d share clothes and sneak out to bowl at Kenmore Lanes.

Come college, we went to separate schools, but I’d come home to spend the night in her sorority, and we backpacked through Europe. I’d bring her pineapple and tomato pizzas the summer I came home to deliver pizzas for Papa Johns, and she lived in a fraternity at the U.W. We’ve been to Mexico together, twice, drinking far too much tequila and dancing in our Mexican sundresses. We’ve been Captain Hook and Smee, his first mate–and Jem and Pizazz, one of The Holograms.

We’ve had terrible arguments, circumstances or relationships that have sometimes put distance between us, but we’ve always come back eventually, always rollerblading together every summer just like the days we were 13.

And then, she became my Dolphin Sister. After drinking a little too much one night, she sent me an e-mail that she didn’t remember until I called her the next day. Something about how she’s glad we’ve been friends for so long, and made it through all our ups and downs. “I think we must have been sisters in our past lives?! I kinda think I was a dolphin, so maybe we were dolphin sisters?,” she wrote. It has been a joke forever since. We buy each other cheap dolphin trinkets and wear dolphin rings on our fingers. (Both on our ring fingers because it’s the only one it fits). As cheesy and silly as it might be, I believe it is our way of reiterating how important our friendship is to one another, and that we really do love each other as a sister.

So, yesterday her Dolphin Sister ring was replaced with a platinum diamond.

But it’s not a replacement for our friendship.

You get to pick your friends. And you get to pick ONE person, to spend the rest of your life with, who becomes a part of the life you’ve shared with all your friends.

I picked Larisa, and she chose me.

And Larisa picked Dave, and he chose her.

And that makes Dave, my Dolphin Brother to-be.

I couldn’t be happier for them. And I can’t wait for another 13 years of friendship with Larisa—AND Dave.

Congratulations!

Currently Feeling: Mucho happy it’s supposed to be in the 70s all week.
Currently Anticipating: Picnicking and rollerblading in Alki tonight with the BF.
Currently Loving: Work dresses! I can’t buy enough!

Loving My Chinese, American Tradition

Remember when you were little, how exciting it was to go pick out fireworks at a stand with your parents? I would be barefooted, long-haired and sun-kissed, jumping up and down with excitement when fireworks stands started cropping up in grocery store parking lots. Even more exciting—when my dad made the hour trek to Boom City on the Tulalip Indian Reservation and bargained for bags of items that crackled, snapped and lit up the faces of me and my friends.

I might not be the most patriotic person (it’s hard to be proud of this place nowadays with the war, our President, a growing obesity epidemic and our foreign politics), but there is something to be said about being an American and celebrating traditions of the Fourth of July. It’s just so damn fun—the barbecues, sunshine, friends and family, boozin’, boozin’ and more boozin’. And of course, the fireworks.

I can’t recall exactly when it started, but for as long as I can remember, I’ve loved and bought a Chinese pagoda firework for the Fourth. Ever seen one? They start out looking like a one-story, round house. When lit, they spin and spin in a fast circle, shooting out colored lights on its sides, and then when it stops, it pops up into a five-story pagoda house.
As a little girl, I thought the Chinese pagoda house firework was the coolest thing ever, and I would set it atop my dresser after the night was over. It’d stay there for a while—a whimsical symbol of a country that is so foreign and strange to little girls—before my mom threw it out after I eventually forgot about it.

Now in my 20s, my Chinese pagoda firework makes me smile in remembrance of being young, finding pleasures in the smallest things, and being barefooted, long-haired and sun-kissed.

So, happy Fourth of July friends and lovers. May you find pleasure in the small traditions that bring a smile to your face…

Currently Feeling: Disenchanted by a lot right now.
Currently Anticipating: A night out with girls tonight, the Fourth tomorrow, and camping Saturday and Sunday.
Currently Listening To: Pandora Radio. Genius!

YIKES

I will not be leaving for lunch today:

SEATTLE — Following a police chase that started on Capitol Hill, police have surrounded a vehicle and have removed a suspect from inside.

Police surrounded a gold van with their guns drawn in downtown Seattle at Second and Spring streets.

KIRO 7 Eyewitness News reporter Gary Horcher said he heard shots fired, and video from Chopper 7 showed glass being shot out of the van’s windows.

Video from Chopper 7 showed dozens of police officers with their guns drawn toward the vehicle.

The chase made its way to downtown Seattle where police surrounded the vehicle and closed off streets in the area.

Bus routes are being diverted from the area while police continue to process the scene.

UPDATE: Man shot and dead. Safe to go shopping at lunch. Whew.