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[06 Jun 2009|05:17pm] |
Well..Charlotte and Kenny are getting married tomorrow. No one is sure what to make of it. I am not sure what I think of marriage in general so can't even begin to figure out what I think of this one..but it is between the two of them, none of my business. Anyway, overall I am indifferent to the whole thing, as I barely know either of them. I'm very excited about tonight, though. John, Radio and Alex (John's friend from Hickory) are coming down here, Rebekah is already here and Jen and Maxx may be coming up from Charleston, and Blake is getting here somehow. The wedding is on Sunday. John, Radio and Alex will head back to North Carolina on Monday. We're all hanging out at Rebekah's house tonight, possibly me (and Blake?) before the rest. I must wash my dirty underwear (ALL dirty), take a shower and determine whether or not my scrapes are still in that phase where getting them wet causes incredible pain, get my funeral dress from my mom's house for the wedding tomorrow and ask her about people sleeping there. AHH AHHH. Not sure when everyone is getting here; stayed up until six talking to and playing chess with John last night so he may have gotten off to a late start, or they had to wait on Alex, or something, who knows.
Casey is also coming down but I don't know if he'll be able to get a ride to Rebekah's. He has no idea how long he'll be down here..I'm glad I'll be able to see him again at some point but I don't understand why he's coming here in the first place, with his unpaid bills and rats up in Carrboro. Oh well. I told him he was welcome to stay at my dad's house with me but I mentioned he was coming into town this morning and found out that he is welcome here for only a brief visit. Certainly understandable as he spent at least two weeks here last time he was in the area and my room got completely trashed. He is a good kid but the filthiest person I know, encouraging my own tendency towards filth.
Anyway must shower and start laundry and then get out of here!
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[05 Jun 2009|02:31pm] |
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Somewhat hungover (dizzy and deyhydrated). I drank three glasses of white wine and two beers at my mom's house, a couple big glasses of water (I must have gotten up to pee like ten times while I was there) rode home at two in the morning, then only drank a glass and a half more as my sister had friends over and I didn't want to leave my room after the brief walk through the living room. Instead I contented myself with listening to music loud enough to distract me from but not cover up the painfully thumping bass, only Little Wayne's voice and the actual music, then put on Godspeed and soon went to sleep, waking up to turn the music off once it had reached the last song. I had a complex, bizarre dream that I was unable to remember when I tried. All I do remember is that it involved hanging out with Nikki, which was fun and involved a brush with..cannibals? Police? The threat of some kind of punishment.
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[26 May 2009|01:40am] |
I thought before that I'd lost any hope of ever becoming really good at traditional chess, but discovering this really does it--it's a list of pages with brief explanations of chess variants and the opportunity to try them out with a computer opponent. That is roughly three hundred and ninety-two different types of chess to play whenever I want. I've mostly been playing Berolina chess, where the way the pawn moves and captures are reversed (also called reverse pawns). They are like traditional pawns except that they capture by moving forward and otherwise move across the board diagonally.
I have been reading about chess and playing chess so much that I am starting to feel burnt out on it.
John's friends Syd and Alex came over earlier. I was utterly terrified but it was fun, really. They will be back soon, having sex..HAVING LEFT TO EXPLORE A MOSTLY-ABANDONED FACTORY. Odd mistype (and I am surprised to learn that "mistype" is an actual word). The factory is only mostly-abandoned due to a single human guard and no other type of security in place. Aside from a chain-link fence edged with barbed wire. I did not go with them due to my horror of climbing over barbed wire fences; I freeze and become quite irrational.
Yes yes oh the sorrow, I go back to Chapel Hill tomorrow. It will be weird seeing Casey again, as it always is after having not been around someone for a while, especially someone with which you are romantically involved. Agh, what a horrible way of putting it. It will be fun. He is completely ridiculous but I cannot fault his reasons for not being otherwise. Also he has those amazing rats now.
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[21 May 2009|03:39pm] |
I finally figured out how to take good macro shots on my camera. Or re-remembered, as I guess I forgot because it's kind of a pain in the ass--you have to go into the Styles menu, switch to the Documents mode, THEN turn on the macro mode. You can turn on macro mode under almost any other style, but the pictures will turn out blurry if you don't do it under Documents. Which is irritating and unnecessarily complex, but oh well..
In Hickory as of Saturday. It is kind of boring here.
Got drunk the night before last. We attempted to watch Brazil but quit halfway through. As far as I can remember the rest of the night consisted of arguing about/discussing our relationship, the worst possible topic of conversation while drunk, as I either lose the ability to make sense of my drunken logic the morning after or realize I forgot practically everything either of us said, and me saying no to sex because I was too drunk and then having to repeat this refusal many more times.
Distracted.
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[17 May 2009|10:30pm] |
I've been playing chess through correspondence for the past couple of weeks, starting the first time Casey left my dad's house and I no longer had a live person to play against. If any of you would like to play, here is my profile. It's free to sign up.
http://www.redhotpawn.com/profile/playerprofile.php?uid=501803
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[30 Apr 2009|02:25am] |
Last night I drank way too much. I threw up before passing out for the night, then threw up early this morning after I drank some water--liquid vomit exploding out of my mouth as I walked into the bathroom, soaking the roll of toilet paper sitting on the bathroom counter. I threw up some more, into the toilet this time, then wiped up the puke/water with a towel. And then I slept until 2:30, masturbated until 3:00, got up and went on the computer briefly. I slept most of today--back to sleep by 4pm or so and I didn't wake up until around 9pm.
And now this has been sitting here for several hours and it's almost 5am so I am going to try to get to sleep again..
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[24 Apr 2009|02:51pm] |
Casey is kind of boring the fuck out of me. It's true that he DOES talk about things other than depressing or ridiculous historical occurrences and his various pus-oozing injuries, but I've lost the ability to pick those other things out from the mass of filth and insanity and have little desire left to try to talk to him. I am not sick of him overall, I just want him to get out of here so I can go back to smoking less and riding my bike and going outside every day, as well as not drinking every day. And cleaning, and showering, and changing my clothes, and listening to music on my own.
We have been playing a lot of chess, though. He's getting better at it but still makes stupid mistakes. We didn't have a set to play with at my mom's house so we made a grid out of red yarn and used playing cards for the pieces (jacks for knights, tens for rooks, lower number cards for pawns, aces for bishops..). It worked quite well and while I imagine many people find unconventional chess boards and sets disorienting, it would work as a travel chess set--none of the space and weight concerns of a conventional board. It was kind of confusing as the grid was rectangular, but that just meant having to be more careful about keeping track of what squares are on a diagonal.
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[21 Feb 2008|09:16pm] |
I don't know what this is with John, really. I don't think it's being bored with him because he's overly serious as I felt a lot better today after going on a bike ride with Jen and he was cheerful and manic when he came home from work. I accidentally offended him so now he is not even talking to me, is holed up in his room.
I can't say I mind all that much. I am zoned out and listless. That period where I was energetic and full of new ideas is over; this is its inverse. I am not even all that excited about going back to South Carolina anymore (although that is hardly surprising). I have nothing to talk to him about. I guess I've been a huge bitch lately, as he keeps telling me. If that's the case it is more indifference than anything, or being too zoned out to interact properly.
I blame the weather, partly. It's going to warm up again on Saturday, though.
I responded to a bunch of craigslist ads for jobs today. Two part-time office work, a couple part-time receptionist jobs. Also, Jen and I stole from Wal-Mart. I felt very obvious at times but everything was fine.
My room is really messy but I don't care. I don't care about much of anything. Hanging out with Jen the past two days has been good, although I am slightly disturbed by how easily I pick up her mannerisms. Hers are similar to mine in the first place, which makes it easier.
I don't know how to get myself out of this mood. It only bothers me when I remember what I felt like a couple of days ago, or even what I feel like normally; on its own it is not unpleasant, because I'm too removed to be bothered. Agh, this is no good.
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[20 Feb 2008|08:45pm] |
John is overcome with Charlotte love, or something, so he's in his room listening to lots of music I've never heard him listen to before, or it's been so long that I can't remember. Maybe it's a mix CD? Hmm. Jen is in the bathroom for the millionth time today and about to go to Guilford College for a lunar eclipse party. I think I will climb onto the roof to watch it--or maybe the Rape Shack roof. It is a steep, peaked roof, though, so perhaps not a good vantage point from which to watch what I imagine is a very slow process.
I am going to make a chessboard bandana. Cloth is really perfect, better than using a flexible cutting mat for a portable chessboard, as I'd considered before. I would like to make it tonight but I should get permanent fabric markers instead of using paint pens. I am using part of my bedsheet (I use only the fitted sheet, so it's just been sitting in the hall closet).
I've decided to keep Mouseteeth--she will come to South Carolina with me, at least--and give Ishmael to a shelter. These are both cats, in case this is confusing. I'm keeping the record player Boone left here and my bed. I will get rid of Jen's old computer chair, which I've been using as a desk chair, and give John back the beautiful yellow desk he got from Joanna and Barrett. I'm keeping Paul's sleeping bag and tent, which he left here back in early fall and hasn't touched since then, and Mike's sleeping bag, just because it is like a time capsule. He brought it to Bonnaroo last summer and so it smells like dirt and me, Paul, Mike and Jen's sweat. I like that it will likely smell like that for many years to come.
Things between me and John are kind of weird. I don't have anything to say to him and I suppose he has nothing to say to me either.
Taking Jen to Guilford now!
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[07 Feb 2008|04:09pm] |
Oh, stomach. Why must something as delicious as an apple bring such PAIN.
Today I filed my state taxes. A little over three hundred dollars, hurray!
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[03 Feb 2008|08:15pm] |
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We put peanut butter on everything here. I made a sandwich and realized that it was a peanut butter and tomato one and I didn't realize what a weird combination that was. Agh, I feel sick. Boone always dumpsters potato chips and shit like that and I ate a bunch while trying to decide what REAL food to eat. I was progressively more and more overwhelmed by having houseguests, so that I spent all of today in my room, reading the comic Bone. Now I think I may go for a drive..just around town, aimless, with eventual dumpster-diving. I'll bring my computer so I can listen to the music on here if I get completely sick of the radio.
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[03 Feb 2008|02:13pm] |
I've made these three times. The first time they came out absolutely perfect, but the next two they were pretty weird and the batter was crumbly. I realized (I think this is it, anyway) that it's because I didn't follow the instructions the second and third times, instead just mixing the ingredients together all at once. Maybe? I can't really remember what the texture of the dough was like the first time I made them. I should start taking notes when I cook. Treat cooking like lab experiments.
I listened to my voicemail (I am lazy about checking it) and apparently my dad sent me a check. I will be able to finish paying rent and pay at least last month's late charge with that. It's a relief.
I actually feel like listening to 69 Love Songs but am in an okay mood. Strange, strange.
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[28 Jan 2008|01:02pm] |
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They Might Be Giants: Snowball in Hell |
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I started a new batch of kombucha last night. It's easy to make but some of the ingredients are hard to come by. This is all from the book Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz, which I highly recommend.
"Kombucha is sweetened black tea, cultured with a 'mother,' also known as 'the tea beast,' a gelatinous colony of bacteria and yeast. The mother ferments the sweet tea and reproduces itself, like kefir grains."
"The trickiest part of making kombucha is finding a mother. Ask at local health food stores. On the Web, kombucha enthusiasts maintain a Worldwide Kombucha Exchange at www.kombu.de, where mothers are widely available for just shipping costs. Kombucha mothers are also available from G.E.M. Cultures."
And here's the recipe:
TIMEFRAME: About 7 to 10 day
INGREDIENTS (for 1 quart/1 liter):
1 quart/1 liter water
1/4 cup/60 milliliters sugar
1 tablespoon/15 milliliters loose black tea or 2 teabags
1/2 cup/125 milliliters mature acidic kombucha
Kombucha mother
PROCESS:
1. Mix water and sugar and bring to a boil in a small cooking pot.
2. Turn off the heat; add tea, cover and steep about 15 minutes.
3. Strain the tea into a glass container. It's best to use something wide; kombucha needs adequate surface area and works best if the diameter of the container is greater than the depth of the liquid. Allow the tea to cool to body temperature.
4. Add the mature acidic kombucha. When you obtain a culture, it will be stored in this liquid. Save a portion of subsequent batches for this purpose.
5. Place the kombucha mother in the liquid, with the firm, opaque side up.
6. Cover with a cloth and store in a warm spot, ideally 70 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit (21 to 29 degrees Celsius).
7. After a few days to 1 week, depending on temperature, you will notice a skin forming on the surface of the kombucha. Taste the liquid. It will probably still be sweet. The longer it sits, the more acidic it will become.
8. Once it reaches the acidity you like, start a new batch and store your mature kombucha in the refrigerator. You now have two mothers, the original one you started with, and a new one, the skin that formed on your first batch. Use either the new or the old mother in your new batch, and pass the other one on to a friend (or the compost). Each generation will give birth to a new mother, and the old mother will thicken.
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You can use white, green or black tea and I'm pretty sure a wide variety of sweeteners can be used in place of sugar--Mike and John used molasses for our first batch of kombucha.
Here's where the kombucha I started last night is fermenting:
And here's the mother Jen and Nick gave us last time they were here, which thickened and gave birth to a new mother (which I'm using) when we made our first batch:
It feels like a squid.
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[18 Jan 2008|03:07pm] |
News from two people I dislike lately: Charlotte told Boone that I slipped turpentine into a drink I gave her and my old roommate Alex left a comment on my LiveJournal asking about a check I gave him almost a year ago that bounced. I wrote a new check at the time but when John and I went by the house after we moved out I ended up just giving the check to John, since Alex owed and would likely never give him his share of the deposit. I must relate this story to Alex. He will no doubt find it amusing. Really, though, he'd better not fuck with me. We hardly ever had heat in that house and goddamn was he obnoxious. I barely spoke to him for the last two or three months we spent there.
I've been poring over my two cookbooks for the past half-hour or so, copying down recipes. So that's basically what I'm doing today: cooking and baking. I'm going to make tomato sauce, baked zucchini, pancakes, molasses bread and strawberry bread. I've already made the strawberry bread before, never made the others. I think I'll also attempt naan again, too, since I didn't know how to do a couple of things that the recipe required of me and as a result it came out really weird. Also, burnt. Here's the strawberry bread recipe, it's so fucking good:
Paula's Strawberry Bread
Ingredients:
3 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
2 cups sugar
3 eggs, beaten
20oz strawberries, sliced
1 cup vegetable oil
Combine first five ingredients; mix well. Combine eggs, oil and strawberries; add to dry ingredients. Mix well. Pour batter into two greased and floured 9x5x3 inch loaf pans and bake at 350 degree Fahrenheit for 1 hour or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Makes two loaves.
We keep finding strawberries when we go dumpster-diving. I'm glad to have found a really good use for them.
I may also make ginger cookies using this recipe. I made some using another recipe a week or two ago but they came out pretty weird.
Ohhh, so much food. I suppose the most useful thing I'm going to make is the tomato sauce. We have four packages of pasta but have yet to use any of it. Well, off to the corner store to get a small container of milk, a can of tomato paste and some onions.
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[17 Jan 2008|12:45am] |
I decided that the only books that I refer back to or re-read often enough to justify keeping them are:
-poetry books
-dictionaries and other reference books
-instructional books
-collections of short stories
-books I have yet to read
-cookbooks
I love reading poetry although I don't do it all that often. I sometimes get really into it and read nothing but poetry for hours at a time, but not much aside from that. I recently discovered two poets whose work I like a lot: Sharon Olds and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Olds' poems are simple and easy to understand but she describes things beautifully. Ferlinghetti's are both serious and playful in a likable, non-gimmicky way. I like Yusef Komunyakaa a lot too but that's nothing new.
"At the Screen Door" by Yusef Komunyakaa
Just before sunlight
Burns off morning fog.
Is it her, while she know
What I've seen & done,
How my boots leave little grave-stone
Shapes in the wet dirt,
That I'm no longer light
On my feet, there's a rock
In my belly? It weighs
As much as the story
Paul told me, moving ahead
Like it knows my heart.
Is this the same story
That sent him to a padded cell?
After all the men he'd killed in Korea
& on his first tour in Vietnam,
Someone tracked him down.
The Spec 4 he ordered
Into a tunnel in Cu Chi
Now waited for him behind
The screen door, a sunset
In his eyes, a dead man
Wearing his teenage son's face.
The scream that leaped
Out of Paul's mouth
Wasn't his, not this decorated
Hero. The figure standing there
Wasn't his son. Who is it
Waiting for me, a tall shadow
Unlit in the doorway, no more
Than an outline of the past?
I drop the duffel bag
& run before I know it,
Running toward her, the only one
I couldn't have surprised,
Who'd be here at daybreak
Watching a new day stumble
Through a whiplash of grass
Like a man drunk on the rage
Of being alive.
"Songs for My Father" is another of my favorites of his.
"Birthday Poem for My Grandmother" by Sharon Olds
I stood on the porch tonight--which way do we
face to talk to the dead? I thought of the
new rose, and went out over the
grey lawn--things really
have no color at night. I descended
the stone steps, as if to the place where one
speaks to the dead. The rose stood
half-uncurled, glowing white in the
black air. Later I remembered
your birthday. You would have been ninety and getting
roses from me. Are the dead there
if we do not speak to them? When I came to see you
you were always sitting quietly in the chair,
not knitting, because of the arthritis,
not reading, because of the blindness,
just sitting. I never knew how you
did it or what you were thinking. Now I
sometimes sit on the porch, waiting,
trying to feel you there like the color of the
flowers in the dark.
"The End" by Sharon Olds
We decided to have the abortion, became
killers together. The period that came
changed nothing. They were dead, that young couple
who had been for life.
As we talked of it in bed, the crash
was not a surprise. We went to the window,
looked at the crushed cars and the gleaming
curved shears of glass as if we had
done it. Cops pulled the bodies out
bloody as births from the small, smoking
aperture of the door, laid them
on the hill, covered them with blankets that soaked
through. Blood
began to pour
down my legs into my slippers. I stood
where I was until they shot the bound
form into the black hole
of the ambulance and stood the other one
up, a bandage covering its head,
stained where the eyes had been.
The next morning I had to kneel
an hour on that floor, to clean up my blood,
rubbing with wet cloths at those dark
translucent spots, as one has to soak
a long time to deglaze the pan
when the feast is over.
And Lawrence Ferlinghetti's poems are goddamn long, so here's "Autobiography" and here's "I Am Waiting."
I also just ordered the book Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis, since it was on Amazon used for only a quarter and it's hard to find. Two of my favorite poems from that: "Mehitabel's Extensive Past" and "The Song of Mehitabel" and "Certain Maxims of Archy."
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[16 Jan 2008|09:01pm] |
Tiny cat muscles seizing up as I lift her off of the computer keyboard. I don't have much energy today. Mike and I stole from Earth Fare, drank stolen kefir and read comics at a store where we didn't buy anything. All in all an enjoyable day.
Also, FUCK YEAH:
I am ridiculously excited about this. If it does snow, an event I've come, as a result of growing up in South Carolina, to regard as incredibly improbable, it'll be the first time it's snowed this winter. Wonderful wonderful wonderful and it's bound to be a beautiful day. I'll have to set my alarm so I get up fairly early and can enjoy it (and photograph it!) as much as possible.
I guess that's the only important thing about today, and it's something that hasn't even happened yet. I plan on taking in my massive new winter coat in the laziest way imaginable--scissors plus safety pins--and stomping around in the snow with my camera and a half-bottle of red wine. Or gin. Mmm..gin.
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[15 Jan 2008|02:47pm] |
After a while of not leaving it becomes hard to leave the house. I suppose I must try, though, I must try. I just feel a lack of good places to which to wander but this runs counter to the idea of wandering. AIMLESS. I may get high but it is such a bad idea, such a bad idea. The weed I have now is of a kind that makes my muscles seize up and my brain turn bad. Still I must try, I must try.
Ah. Off to listen to The Winks and clean.
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