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the last hurrah
Apr. 9th, 2004 02:45 pmlast night i shared my last bottle of wine with Shirley. for the next two weeks i'm eschewing alcohol to help narrow down some side effects that may or may not be medication-related and may or may not be exacerbated by alcohol. i'm already feeling deprived, since i've got some huge fat asparagus to grill up and they'd go so beautifully with a nice sauvignon blanc... but i shall persevere. anyway, we got very silly and had lots of good girl talk and ate potstickers from a bag. the best food is the food you eat when you're already half-ripped.
i decided it's time to replace my thyme and sage, which are a couple of years old and seem inclined to turn into sparse, woody shrubs at this point. got a huge variegated sage and some silver thyme from OSH, and also scored some marjoram! i'd been looking for it, but not finding it -- and i almost didn't find it this time, because it wasn't labeled, and not having used fresh marjoram before i didn't know quite how to distinguish it from oregano. after some leaf-fondling and smelling, i figured it out; it's lighter green than oregano and the leaves are smooth rather than lightly fuzzed. i'm so excited to have two new (to me) herbs in my garden -- i've cooked very rarely with marjoram and tarragon and i'm hoping that having them on hand fresh will stimulate me to whole new areas of culinary experimentation.
i also picked up some seed for thai basil, so if i can get it to grow (i've had mixed success growing things from seed) it'll be cool to have both varieties on hand. i wandered lost in the fertilizer aisle for a long time before giving up and getting plain old miracle-gro, which i'll supplement for the tomatoes with some slow-release spikes tailored to tomato growing. fingers crossed... Shirley's tomato has grown from the size of mine to about 3' tall in three weeks!
my impatiens seems a bit happier since i left it in the sunniest spot on the balcony to dry out a bit -- i think i'd overwatered it last time out. nothing yet from the magic beans, but it's a bit early to be expecting anything.
once again, i find myself marveling at just how conventional i really am. for all the hanging out with weirdos and geeks (and you know i mean that in the nicest possible sense of the words) all those years -- mostly because that was the only way to hang out with smart people -- it turns out that what i really like best is to tend my garden and cook. the best part is knowing these are interests that are really mine. i didn't pick them up from friends or inherit them from my parents. (while my mother is an avid cook, i didn't get really into cooking until i started branching out from the kind of things she made.) the downside is that it sounds awfully unexciting next to the wild array of hiply "eclectic" interests listed by people here in their personal ads.
(alas, in the Bay Area, "eclectic" describes a specific subculture with interests and subtypes as rigidly defined as any other. for a place that's supposed to be so open to free thinkers, San Francisco has the most discrete and exclusionary social groups of any place i've ever been; the vast majority of people i've met fall neatly into some clearly defined "type" or other, and people seem to really work at turning themselves into the type they'd like to be. it's a city of elitists -- it's just that we have more kinds of elitists than anywhere else, so everybody can be one! except there's no subculture for those of us too bullheaded to let ourselves become a type. we just walk around with our heads down, refusing to acknowledge each other for fear we'll have too much in common and it'll make our bones itch. or at least that's today's wild theory. but seriously, how do you find a community if the very thought of being a "type" makes you want to leap from the nearest tall thing that's neither a building or a bridge, because those have already been done?)
i'm making no headway at all at work -- too little direction and too much desire to enjoy the nice weather. all i want is to go home and play in the dirt!
i decided it's time to replace my thyme and sage, which are a couple of years old and seem inclined to turn into sparse, woody shrubs at this point. got a huge variegated sage and some silver thyme from OSH, and also scored some marjoram! i'd been looking for it, but not finding it -- and i almost didn't find it this time, because it wasn't labeled, and not having used fresh marjoram before i didn't know quite how to distinguish it from oregano. after some leaf-fondling and smelling, i figured it out; it's lighter green than oregano and the leaves are smooth rather than lightly fuzzed. i'm so excited to have two new (to me) herbs in my garden -- i've cooked very rarely with marjoram and tarragon and i'm hoping that having them on hand fresh will stimulate me to whole new areas of culinary experimentation.
i also picked up some seed for thai basil, so if i can get it to grow (i've had mixed success growing things from seed) it'll be cool to have both varieties on hand. i wandered lost in the fertilizer aisle for a long time before giving up and getting plain old miracle-gro, which i'll supplement for the tomatoes with some slow-release spikes tailored to tomato growing. fingers crossed... Shirley's tomato has grown from the size of mine to about 3' tall in three weeks!
my impatiens seems a bit happier since i left it in the sunniest spot on the balcony to dry out a bit -- i think i'd overwatered it last time out. nothing yet from the magic beans, but it's a bit early to be expecting anything.
once again, i find myself marveling at just how conventional i really am. for all the hanging out with weirdos and geeks (and you know i mean that in the nicest possible sense of the words) all those years -- mostly because that was the only way to hang out with smart people -- it turns out that what i really like best is to tend my garden and cook. the best part is knowing these are interests that are really mine. i didn't pick them up from friends or inherit them from my parents. (while my mother is an avid cook, i didn't get really into cooking until i started branching out from the kind of things she made.) the downside is that it sounds awfully unexciting next to the wild array of hiply "eclectic" interests listed by people here in their personal ads.
(alas, in the Bay Area, "eclectic" describes a specific subculture with interests and subtypes as rigidly defined as any other. for a place that's supposed to be so open to free thinkers, San Francisco has the most discrete and exclusionary social groups of any place i've ever been; the vast majority of people i've met fall neatly into some clearly defined "type" or other, and people seem to really work at turning themselves into the type they'd like to be. it's a city of elitists -- it's just that we have more kinds of elitists than anywhere else, so everybody can be one! except there's no subculture for those of us too bullheaded to let ourselves become a type. we just walk around with our heads down, refusing to acknowledge each other for fear we'll have too much in common and it'll make our bones itch. or at least that's today's wild theory. but seriously, how do you find a community if the very thought of being a "type" makes you want to leap from the nearest tall thing that's neither a building or a bridge, because those have already been done?)
i'm making no headway at all at work -- too little direction and too much desire to enjoy the nice weather. all i want is to go home and play in the dirt!
