Happy New Year!

Things have been fairly mellow since my return to Alabama. The weather has been sunny, but chilly, so there have been plenty of opportunities for walking, running and biking outdoors. For about forty-five minutes at a time. Then it's back inside for a hot shower. Holiday television programming has offered many opportunities for tv bulimia-- binge on a marathon of NCIS or Mythbusters, purge by turning off the tv and turning toward the kitchen.

The kitchen has been a fun place lately. We made our own mayonnaise for the first time which turned out to be quite tasty. We used it to whip up that southern classic: pimento cheese sandwiches (pronounced "pimenna-cheese"), using Miz Childers' (of the raw milk farm) recipe, as well as her homemade raw milk Colby cheese. But don't worry. We... fed it to some animals... or something...

My latest experiment in the kitchen was to make eggnog from scratch. It turned out to be completely awesome. The only bad part was that we took it to a New Year's party, and the other partygoers drank it. I mean, I guess it's good that they liked it, but we feel like we should have had more for us, so I may need to make more soon. It being made almost entirely of eggs, whole milk and cream, it may become a meal replacement drink for us at some point.

Boxing Day Pupdate

After a few relaxed, snowbound days in Seattle, I caught a snowy Christmas day flight back to Huntsville, AL. My first flight arrived in Denver (where it was actually warmer than it was in Seattle!) about a half hour late, so I only had a half hour until my scheduled departure way at the other end of a very long terminal. I speed-walked all the way down there, forlornly passing up New Belgium Brewery's version of an airport bar in my haste. My dream of drinking in an airport bar on Christmas day was out the window. When I arrived at the gate, sweaty and needing to urinate, I discovered that the plane had not even arrived yet, and they just hadn't updated the info board thingy. Sigh. They were so stingy and optimistic with their information, I didn't feel comfortable leaving the gate area to go back to the bar. But it looked more like a well-lit café anyway, so it wasn't going to be the seedy, depressing airport bar experience I was seeking, and I don't think I missed anything.

When we were finally able to board the plane, one of the flight attendants made this announcement: "This is the flight to Huntsville. If that is your destination, great! If not-- Huntsville is a little bit warmer than Denver right now, so why don't you just ride along with us, and we'll figure out a way to get you back later."

After an uneventful flight, I arrived in Huntsville on Boxing day, and inquired about the puppies. The one I poisoned lived! Four out of the six were adopted out, and the remaining two stayed at the farm, destined to live a dog's dream life. I will be seeing them soon, so there will be pics, if I can get them to sit still for it.

Seattle Storm '08

I hung around all week watching the cats and chickens, and wandering around the neighborhood watching people snowboard and cross-country ski. By the weekend I needed to get out. My mother kindly agreed to thaw the chicken water for the weekend while I crashed at friends' houses in the north end. She also kindly drove me up there when it became apparent that the Metro buses hadn't figured out how to deal with the huge amount of snow that had fallen in the south end on Thursday. During the weekend, even more snow fell, so that by the time by bro picked me up and brought me back to the south end, there was something close to a foot of snow. And it's mostly still there. Crazy. (see my flickr...)

I'm spending my last few days in Seattle pretending to be snowed in with my brother and sister-in-law, and with two of their friends whose flight home was cancelled, so they actually are snowed in. Into the city, that is. We managed to leave the house long enough to buy some new board games and load up on food and beer.

White Pre-Christmas

Friday night my brother, sister-in-law and I went to a Christmas bash for charity at the really fantastic Club Motor, which featured live music, burlesque, circus freaks (who claim they don't want to be called circus freaks, even though they were billed as such), and a raffle. We won two prizes, and gave one away. Not because I didn't want to keep it, mind you, it was really fantastic, but I'm just not really in a purse-owning place right now.

Saturday night, it snowed, and never turned to rain as it generally does out here. As of Monday night, it is still snowy and icy, and shows no sign of a thaw in the near future. Weird. The chickens' water freezes over every night...

Foxy pink gorillas

I've spent the past week eating, drinking, and hanging with my friends and family-- in short, there was nothing interesting to post about.

Until now.

Last night I went out with a couple of people on an impromptu investigation of the free Tuesday night burlesque show at Sea Monster. The place is tiny, and features about three tables, six bar stools, and a live band, in addition to the 9PM and 11PM burlesque shows. We were pleasantly surprised to find the band was good, and the burlesque was fun. The highlight of the show was the performer "The Shanghai Pearl," who has a twisted sense of humor, and great theatrical presence. In her last act, she came onstage dressed as a pink gorilla-- not a sexy gorilla in any way, just a full body pink fluffy gorilla costume with mask and french maid outfit, which she removed to much applause. She then continued to dance around the stage in her gorilla costume for most of the number, before finally reaching the obligatory disrobing during the final seconds of the act. This was a highly entertaining way to spend a cheap Tuesday evening. It's a tiny bar, and it seemed like the performers used it as a practice venue, so if you decide to head on down, you'll enjoy it more if you have no expectations.

Hometown Tourism

On Monday we wandered around downtown, window-shopping and playing tourist. We stopped by that zany fun house, the downtown branch of the Seattle Public Library, because I had never bothered to check out the new building while I actually lived here. It was a treat. In the afternoon, we drove to Tacoma to drop my cousin off at the Amtrak station, and we had enough spare time on the way down to stop by Weyerhaeuser's Bonsai tree collection, which is both fun to look at and free. We also dropped a buncha cash at the shooting range in Tacoma, where we tried out a .357 something or other handgun that was wrist-achingly heavy. At least it didn't eject the spent shells directly into my forehead, like the 9mm did.

Since then it has been all about chillin' with the cats and chickens, who seem willing to eat almost any table scraps except onions. We have a lot in common, the chickens, my brother and I, but you can tell us apart because my brother and I will eat the onions.

Feeling Taciturn

I don't have much to say on the blog right now, because I'm getting the chance to say it all in person! As many of you know by now, I made a brother-instigated surprise trip back home to Seattle for Thanksgiving. (More thank yous to him than I can possibly express. This was a fantastic idea.) This is the real reason I wanted to be in Alabama by Thanksgiving-- I was planning to fly out of Huntsville the day before Tofurkeyday.

On Wednesday, my stepmom and co-conspirator dropped me off at the airport for an uneventful flight home. On Thursday, I got to surprise my mom at her home for breakfast, and one of my oldest friends at a Thanksgiving dinner. On Friday I got to surprise one of my other oldest friends at her mom's house for leftovers. Saturday and Sunday were all about chilling with my brother's cats, chickens, and various people I love, until the one last surprise for my brother, which is that I got our cousin to come up and meet me here for a few days. The master surpriser got the tables turned on him, mwah ha ha! It was fun to see how differently everyone reacted.

Now that the surprise traps have all been sprung, I can blog again. I am here in Seattle until Christmas day, so there will be plenty of time to hang with everyone. Hey GS people, I am crashing your beer hour on Friday, so show up early, before I drink all of the Fat Tire.

I hope your Thanksgivings were all as good as mine was. I am sure feeling thankful about now.