Exciting news and close encounters of the squirrel kind

Today was unintentionally exciting . . . which sounds odd since I suppose we don't exactly go about having intentionally exciting days. Anyways, my point is that it was an exciting day.

Things started out pretty normally with a walk to campus to pick up box lids to use to pack up some of my bosses files then hopping on the bus to go to her place to pack the boxes. Then midday I had a brief phone interview about a job I'd applied for a little while back . . . and now they want me to come in for a real interview! I'm trying really hard to not get too excited about this but . . . I can't help myself. I wasn't really expecting to hear back from them in the first place so getting the request for a phone call was a big surprise. I'm not going to say anything else about it though, if I talk too much about it I'll just work myself up over something that will probably end up being nothing. The interview does involve flying across the country though so I hope that I have some chance of actually getting this job . . . because it would just be mean of them to make me fly across the country to interview if they're not seriously considering me.

To get back to my exciting day, when I got back home I got a phone call from the shop saying that there was a package for me there. I was a little confused as to why anyone would send me something addressed to the shop but it all became clear when my co-worker told me it was from Blythe! As a former employee there herself Blythe would know that even if I wasn't working the day it got there someone would call me about the package. So what was in the package you ask? Well, my birthday present of course! It's only two months late but no matter. I got some delightful peanut butter cookies and a handcrafted bowl made by the guy who sells his wares next to Blythe's farm at their farmer's market.

The excitement of the day wound down with an encounter with an overly friendly squirrel in the park behind my house. I was sitting on a bench having a late afternoon snack of a boysenberry milkshake (oh so delicious!) and french fries when I noticed that the squirrels that had been chasing each other around the nearby tree trunk had stopped chasing one another and were making their way onto the grass. One of them kept getting closer and closer to me. He's stop and rear up on his hind legs and sort of look at me and then take a few steps (or maybe hops since its a squirrel) closer. He was definitely eying my fries. The first couple of times I'd move he'd scamper off but never too far. Finally, he was within two feet of me and I had to shoo him off multiple times while lecturing him on the fact that he should not be that bold or unafraid of humans because it really wasn't safe for him. I can't figure out if he was too young to know better or if people have been feeding the squirrels so they're getting used to people. In either case its not very good situation, wild animals should be admired from afar and should lead their own wild lives.

More snippets

I should write about this before I forget. I had a most fantastically strange dream the day before yesterday. The strangeness isn't unusual, if you've know me for any amount of time then you'll know that my dreams are all quite bizarre. So, without going into the entire dream I'll just tell you all how it ended and the particular bit that my roommate found hilarious in my recounting of it.

"So, her mom walked up the stairs and onto the roof. And we just knew inherently that she wanted us to empty all the food out of our tupperware onto the ground below to make a trampoline for us to jump down onto. "

It's not the strangest dream I've had but it's up there. That bit sounds crazier without the context of the rest of the dream but it just gets too long. But be rest assured that the necessity of a trampoline was real. In case you're curious, the food in the tupperware was linguine and green beans . . . and lots of it too.

Faux is in . . . and that goes for turkey too

As you may have noticed I've sort of disappeared again. It's the end of the quarter, enough said, right? But I couldn't miss out on sharing my Thanksgiving with all of you, because that is the spirit of the holiday is it not? I had intended to spend Turkey Day at home writing a paper, not because I'm a huge procrastinating nerd (is that contradictory?) but because I was scheduled to work at the yarn shop for 3 days of the holiday. So I really needed to get work done. Well, as usually happens in my life, there was a change of plans and I ended up hosting Thanksgiving for a few friends whose original Thanksgiving plans had fallen through.

We were going with a vegetarian menu for the evening including some 'raw food' (as in the raw food movement) dishes. Here's what we had:
Wheat berry salad
Wild rice salad
Roasted vegetables
Faux 'raw food' turkey
Kabocha (Japanese pumpkin) soup
Hawaiian rolls
'Raw' sweet potato pie

Sound tasty? Definitely not your average Thanksgiving spread. It was delightful. I must admit that the faux turkey may not be my first choice for Thanksgiving dinner entree but it wasn't all bad. It was a combination of seeds, nuts, herbs, and celery blended together and then formed (very artistically I might add by dinner guests) into a turkey shape. The way it tasted reminded me of Mediterranean salads, except thrown into a blender. And I would probably have eaten even if it hadn't been the main dish for dinner but the idea of it being faux turkey sort of distracted from the whole eating experience.

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving . . .

And now back to writing my paper because as you might have guessed this post was a little jaunt down that oh so tempting road of procrastination.

August in Seattle

August in Seattle ushers in the season of blackberries. They can be found everywhere, lining roads and sidewalks. The Burke-Gilman Trail is lined with an especially prolific population of blackberry bushes. There is nothing more enjoyable than going for a leisurely stroll along the trail, stopping here and there for a snack of freshly picked berries. Equally enjoyable is watching other people stop to munch on berries. Everyone from serious cyclists, decked out in their spandex gear standing astride their bikes reaching for a cluster of berries, to businessmen in suits and ties out on their lunch break, gingerly leaning over the bushes to pick berries without getting their apparel stained or snagged by the bushes, can be seen along the trail.

For myself, August has brought a new apartment and soon a new roommate. The moving process was spread out over several days but now it is finally finished and I'm settled (more or less) in my new apartment, although not in my own room since someone is still living in it. To settle into my own room I'll have to wait a couple more weeks. Actually to do any unpacking at all I'll have to wait a couple more weeks. Until then I'm living out of luggage and boxes, which I should be used to by now with all the traveling I do but somehow it's different. When you only have one piece of luggage with a limited number of things in it you can resolve yourself to those items, but when you have all of your belongings in luggage with you and theoretically available to you it is intensely frustrating because really they're not available to you unless you know exactly where you've packed everything - which I don't. It takes me 20 minutes to find any one piece of clothing I'd like to wear and really that's not a very efficient way of getting dressed. I should really just content myself with what is most easily accessible but what's the point of having your entire wardrobe packed and within reach if you can't wear it?

On the upside my new apartment has a fantastic view of Mt Rainier from the living room, the balcony, and my bedroom - I'm thrilled!

Time comes in many forms

Why is it that when I have all the time in the world to blog I can't bring myself to do so? I think about posting but I never sit myself down to actually do it . . . strange.

So, what is new in life lately . . . knitting projects, moving to a new apartment, that's about it. Not too exciting. Actually I just celebrated my birthday over the weekend which was if not exciting at least pleasant. I went to a Japanese style bar called Wann with the girls from school for yummy drinks and tasty snacks that were nostalgic of Japan. I had a Cassis Orange, it's classified as an izakaya (a type of Japanese bar) classic beverage and although I've never had one at an izakaya before, just at normal bars, it is indeed a very typically Japanese girly drink and made me feel right at home. We ordered several of their appetizer items but my favorites were probably the tatsutaage, marinaded deep fried chicken, and the Brie cheese tempura with a raspberry soy sauce dipping sauce - oh so delicious! On a side note, the bartender was really cute. In the following days I also got taken to brunch - one of my favorite meals - and to dinner by various other friends. So, basically I had a weekend of eating and since I love all things food related that was quite alright by me.

I won't tell you how old I am after this birthday but in a conversation with my friend Rena I was told that I can now officially be said to be pushing 30. I don't think I like that, not that I have anything against being 30, but it's just that I still feel like I'm very much in my mid-20s. Age is really just a number though and I should pay it no heed.

Other things . . . I now have in my possession the final book in the Harry Potter series. I'm both excited and sad about it. I'm eager to read about the continuing adventures of Harry and his friends but it's sad knowing that this is the last book and that there will be no more after it. The same sadness has accompanied the last volume of other series too, such as the Anne of Green Gables books, The Chronicles of Narnia, the adventures of the Swallows and Amazons, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Obviously I can read the books again but I'll never have the same feeling as the first time I read them, that feeling of anticipation, of slowly pushing forward line by line into the yet unknown realm of fiction. I can't bring myself to start reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows just yet. It'll sit on my bedside table for a little while longer while I savor this feeling of ending and resolve myself to it.

And on that note of ending, a goodnight to you all.

Chocolate, oh chocolate wherefore art thou so sweet and delicious?

Keeping with the theme of chocolate goodness, I was skimming through some of my favorite on-line spots and saw this little number on Chow. A top ten list of retro candy bars across America?! Yes, it's true. I'm sad to say (and slightly surprised) that I've only had one of these confectionery delights - the Idaho Spud. The one I ate was a gift from Bethany who had visited Idaho but they can also be purchased at the local drugstore (after all Idaho is a neighboring state). I quite enjoyed the spud. Everyone else had issues with it, a dislike of marshmallow, a dislike of coconut, etc., but I thought it was . . . well, special in its very own way. The only thing to take away from the joy of my spud was Bethany telling us that she had debated between the Idaho Spuds and t-shirts that said Darth Tater . . . need I say more?

Does Michigan have a retro candy bar? For that matter does it have t-shirts with witty word play referencing Star Wars? All I can think of as strictly Michigan is Vernors (which isn't entirely true anymore), Faygo, Superman ice cream (which I'm not even sure about), and Cake Batter ice cream. Two types of soda pop and ice cream, can they really compare to a candy bar? I don't know.

Have you been dreaming lately?

Just two notes from my dreams of late . . .

1. I'm stuck in an octagonal toaster and can't get out
2. The cheeky nerve of bananas only being sold in bunches but when I yank them apart because I want all my bananas to be individual fruit they reattach themselves!

Dreams are weird . . .

Stress eating commences . . .

Here's the list:
Goldfish crackers - Parmesan flavor
Green grapes
Oreo cookies
Ben & Jerry's -Fudge Brownie
Mint chocolate chip ice cream (yes, 2 types of ice cream)

Let's hope the list doesn't get any longer . . .

I'm feeling peckish

My, my, I have been remiss in posting lately. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed with school (and apparently I can't type either, I kept typing 'wchool,' 3 tries before I got it right!) at the moment and all I really want to do is sleep.

I've been thinking longingly of Japanese pastries lately. Two that stand out in my mind at the moment are the little manju shaped like chicks that are filled with sweet yellow bean paste


and dorayaki which are like little pancake sandwiches filled with sweet red bean paste and sometimes candied chestnuts.


They may not sound particularly scrumptious from that description but the thought of them with a cup of hot Japanese tea is making my mouth water.

Snow, sugar, knish?

While everybody else back east (or really back 'mid-west') is basking in the glow of uncannily warm weather - except for the very few ruing the un-wintery climate - here in Seattle it is freakishly cold. It snowed today . . . twice apparently, once in the morning and once in the evening. The evening snow was lovely, I was out walking at the time. There were nickle and dime size flakes of fluffy sticky snow that clung to everything and made the world look all winter wonderland-ish, like it had all been turned upside down and dipped in a sugar bowl. I love sugar . . . .

In other news, I reached a certain level of baking triumph. I made some rather tasty knishes. I think I've discussed my love of pocket like bread or dumpling foods and knishes fall into that category. My knishes had potatoes, broccoli, and onions inside and were simply delicious. I haven't quite mastered the wrapping up part so there was a bit of excess dough on top but that didn't bother me so much. The only tragic part about them was that in my hurry to eat them, I burned the roof of my mouth on the potato filling which was quite hot. Despite my food related injury I persevered and kept eating, really I couldn't stop which should probably be attributed to sheer stupidity instead of anything resembling perseverance.

Yeay it's Christmas! Now let's eat cake . . .

That's right, in Japan Christmas cake is a big deal. I don't really know how it got started, possibly a European influence since its more common to celebrate with Yule Logs in Europe and the Japanese Christmas cake phenomenon could easily be an offshoot of that. Anyway, cake is big on Christmas here. In years past I've had every intention of getting the order forms and fliers advertising said cakes to prove that this really happens here, it's not just a crazy story I'm telling about Japan. But I never manage to do it, mainly because I get back to Japan too late in the season . . . apparently the week before Christmas is terribly tardy in the game for the true connoisseur of cakes. But this year dad and I decided to get a cake of our own. I managed to snap this shot of the lovely cakes in the case while being jostled by the little old ladies rushing to get bargain priced cakes. Last minute cakes sometimes go for half price, after all who wants a Christmas cake on the day after Christmas?

And this is our very own cake. You may have noticed that it's a strawberry shortcake. It's a little strange since strawberries aren't natural winter fruit here either but I guess that's what looks pretty on a cake. The little Santa is a completely edible sugar creation. It's hard to convey the size of the cake through the photo since there's nothing to compare it to but it's about the size of a small paper plate, a rather petite cake by American standards. There were some other equally lovely cakes in the case next to this one but I couldn't even get close to take pictures, Japanese grannies can be quite pushy and all elbows when it comes to a bargain!

Crash and burn Mondays . . .

I'm back! Where have I been? Well, nowhere really. I've just been sequestered in my room with my books for the last week and a half. It's the end of the semester and I was drowning in academic wordy garble. At the moment I'm functioning on 8 to 10 hours of sleep for the past 3 days. I know it's a far cry from the days of college when I would pull an all-nighter to crank out a paper but . . . well I really like my sleep and I'm not as youthful as I once was. But I handed in my last paper at noon today and now I feel elated beyond belief. A million paperweights have been lifted from my shoulders and I'm walking on cloud 22 and a half. I even indulged in a shopping spree . . . gasp! I know! I'm a broke grad student, who am I to go shopping? Have no fear I'm not spending myself into debt or anything. I just got a couple of essential items for the long plane ride tomorrow - a book of crosswords and a novel.

So, Monday was when I was starting to hit 'crazy town.' My usually calm facade was starting to get a crazy eyed glow. And inside I was going absolutely nuts. So, after I decided that turning in a better paper late was worth the letter grade I'd be losing for its lateness, I went into fuzzy logic mode and decided that if I was going to be torturing myself through another night of paper revisions I could eat whatever I wanted. I came out of the store with a giant bag of Cheetos, a package of Safeway brand Oreos (which are called Tuxedos, I'm partial to the ones that have vanilla cookies with chocolate and vanilla cream inside!), and an antioxidant fruit smoothie. This isn't my usual diet . . . they're all things I would consider a bit of a treat but . . . well it was crash and burn, so why not?

Now I need to pack my bag for my trip tomorrow. There's nothing like 10 hours on a trans-Pacific flight with 300 grouchy strangers to round out the week.

Run turkey run!

I have been remiss in posting lately, haven't I? What can I say . . . there has been an onslaught of work lately and my head is just too full of academic nonsense to post anything interesting, unless you'd really like to hear about the value of social capital in Japanese neighborhood associations or the role of the Japanese government in disaster management. I know, it's just riveting isn't it?

So, Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone is eating lots of turkey or its dietary equivalent if you aren't a carnivore. Personally I love Thanksgiving for the pumpkin pie . . . yum! I love pie.

On this auspicious day of giving thanks and eating, I'd like to discuss some foods of interest. In accordance with my love of pie, I also enjoy savory dishes with pie like characteristics such as calzones, knishes, empanadas, and pasties. Basically foods that are wrapped in bread or dough are good in my book, they're so handy . . . a completely encased treat for optimal eating convenience(there are some exceptions, notably the corn dog . . . it's just scary and slightly weird). I am particularly fond of the Cornish pasty, those of you from Michigan should know what I'm talking about since one of the Upper Peninsula's official tourist attractions is Cornish pasty consumption. I'm so taken by the pasty that I'm seriously considering going to the pasty festival in Calumet just so that I can have lots of different pasties without having to drive all over the place. Another food festival that I'm curious to see is the pawpaw festival in Ohio. Anna told me about the pawpaw and I'm very intrigued, its a fruit of the banana family that is native to North America. It looks odd but delicious at the same time. Its supposed to have a custard like texture, if it tastes like custard too I'm sold! So, is anyone up for a 'taste testing' roadtrip next summer?

It's all mini - mini pizzas, mini celebrities

Alright, Irfan this time you actually did have a starring role in my dream - how happy are you? *grin*

Here's what happened, Irfan and I had to go get lunch for ourselves and 8 friends (apparently they weren't important enough to be in the dream although the number of people was very important). So, we drove around debating which grocery store we should go to and finally we decide on one with a super tiny parking lot (only room for 4 cars!). Once inside we split up because I was in charge of beverages and Irfan was in charge of food. For whatever reason I decide that we don't really need beverages and decide that I should help Irfan pick out food. I find Irfan in the deli section, except it wasn't so much a deli as it was 6 giant stainless steel industrial ovens in a cluster. Irfan is, as usual, super excited about his selection of food and insists that I take a look inside the box he's prepared while he gets something out of the oven. I look in the box and find that Irfan's selected 8 tiny slices of pizza, each could fit in the palm of my hand, and 2 tiny burritos, which for some reason aren't folded up but instead stuffed into Dixie cups. Obviously at this point my eyebrows are raised and I'm giving Irfan a cynical look, "That's it? This is what you chose to feed 10 ravenously hungry people?!" Meanwhile, Irfan is excitedly heating his own mini pizza slice in the oven but insists on watching it with the oven door open, which incidentally, he happens to be laying on as though it's a piece of furniture. At this point I say, "Irfan, careful you don't burn your eyebrows off," to which Irfan replies, "Don't worry, I won't do that again." In reality I don't remember Irfan having ever burned off his eyebrows so I don't know what that's about. Irfan, that hasn't happened to you, has it?

Anyway, at this point, as can only happen in dreams, we're instantaneously transported back to wherever it is that we came from. I still can't see the other people that we're hanging out with but we're sitting at a rectangular table that in my mind is most definitely a poker table. It actually looks sort of like a foosball table, because the center is sunken in and the sides have a considerable lip. The surface is green like a games table and everyone's cards are propped up against the lip of the table facing outwards so that you can see everyone's cards but your own, bizarre no? Anyway, the strangest part was that as part of the game there was a miniature Owen Wilson frantically running around the table moving everybody's cards! Not a robotic miniature but a real live Owen Wilson who was only 3 inches tall! And that's when I woke up.

How weird is that? I don't even know where to start . . . except to say that if I could, I really would like to have a miniature Owen Wilson. And I wish I could remember what this bizarre version of poker was because the whole idea of playing an entire game without seeing your own cards seemed crazy and yet wildly exciting.