Galaxy Granola

At my work there is a huge-normous unlabeled tub of granola, which a lot of people eat with some bananas or berries on top.
I too like granola, but I am allergic to nuts, and the work-provided granola has nuts in it, so I bring my own Galaxy Granola, which I really like. People with nut allergies have to be really careful about things that have lots of ground-up, MYSTERY INGREDIENTS in them, such as breads, cookies... granola. Most of the Galaxy Granola flavors don't have nuts, and if they do, they say so clearly on the label. Galaxy Granola is really crunchy and tasty, and it's made with organic ingredients. If only all problems in life could be so easily solved! So far I've tried Mocha Fudge, Not Sweet Vanilla Munch, and Gingersnap, and I plan to try the Banana next.

So Gosh Darn Cute!

Tenorikuma is a new Sanrio character. He's a little coffee-making bear. This is a plush coin purse! Some of the stationery has a smiling little milk foam puff and a happy sugar cube. I think what I love most about silly made-in-Japan kawaii stationery is the anthropomorphization. I love thinking that little sugar cubes, sushi rolls, cups of coffee and various fruits and vegetables have cute little personalities.

Some of my Japanese Tea Cups

I don't passionately collect anything, but I do have a collection of Japanese tea cups. Most of them are from Rafu Bussan in Los Angeles. My old dentist was right next door, and somehow I got into the habit of browsing Rafu Bussan's vast stock of Japanese porcelain and always buying a pretty tea cup after my biannual teeth cleaning appoinment. Not very romantic, I know.
These Japanese tea cups are different from American coffee cups in a lot of ways; they're thick, they're often artfully glazed down the inside of the cup as well as on the outside, and they're often textural, so they feel bumpy or ridged or curved or whatever in your hands. My favorite one was blue and curvy, and I loved drinking coffee with cream out of it. I nabbed it from my dad's house, actually. Somehow it cracked, so I don't have it anymore. That's kind of what I get for taking the cup without asking, huh?

Saponaria

They have a lacy, wildflower look, and are long-lasting. There was also a beautiful white color, so white it was almost blue, but I'm in a pink mood today. Next time I see Saponaria, I'll buy blue-white.

Not Your Average Ice Cubes

Before moving to San Francisco, my sweetie and I lived in a charming little part of Oakland, California known as Piedmont.
One of the first things that impressed me about Piedmont was that there is an always-full coffee independent house called Gaylord's on one corner, and right on the opposite corner is a nearly-always empty Starbucks. We took a break from unpacking our belongings on a hot September day and wandered down to this Gaylord's for an iced coffee.
"Ice cubes or coffee cubes?" the woman working there asked.
"Can you repeat that?" I said, startled.
She gestured toward the ice cream freezer, in which there was an empty ice cream bucket half-full of dark brown ice cubes - cubes of frozen coffee.
"Oh my GOD!" I exclaimed. "I'll have the coffee cubes, please!"

GENIUS!!!

Since we've moved away from Gaylord's and their coffee cubes, and discovered the joy of Blue Bottle coffee, we now make our own coffee cubes at home. (I could also wax poetic about Blue Bottle's New Orleans-style iced coffee, and I will... another time.) If you like iced coffee, I highly recommend making yourself some coffee cubes. Instead of your iced coffee getting weak and watered-down as the ice melts, it gets stronger! Once you use your ice trays for coffee, though, they become stained and you cannot use them for plain water again - the ice will taste like coffee. So get two separate ones and dedicate them to your coffee cubes. Brew the coffee and let it cool a little, but don't let it sit around and get cold and stale. Pour it into your ice trays (leave a little room for expansion at the top) and refrigerate the rest of the coffee. Drink the cold coffee soon; don't let it sit around in your fridge for days. Add whatever sugar and milk you're going to add, and enjoy!

My Old Friend (Florence Arnold)

This weird piece of modern art has a lot of sentimental value for me (I'm a very unsentimental person). It belonged to my grandparents, who gave it to my mom. I can remember falling asleep on the couch, staring at it, when I was younger than kindergarten-age. My mom gave it to me when I was fifteen and moving out of her house, and it's been everywhere from my college dorm room to the apartment I share now with my partner. It fell down in the Northridge, California earthquake in 1994 (I lived in Northridge at the time), the glass shattered, ripping part of the paper, and it was the one thing I carried out of that apartment when the fire department and cops escorted the residents in for ten minutes - we had ten minutes to salvage any valuables or documents!

The artist's name is Florence Arnold. Her style is called hard edge, or California hard-edge. I have two other lithographs and a sculpture also made by her. My grandpa and she were friends, so there's a lot of her artwork floating around the homes of my aunts and uncles, but I don't think anyone actually likes the art but me. They should give it all to me! I love mid-century modern! I love Florence Arnold's work, and I love this piece especially. My mom and I irreverently call it "the toilet bowl" because that's what I said it looked like when I was just a wee brat.


See it in context.
See the other two pieces.

My XXX Rated Hamster

In general, male hamsters are a little smaller and more mellow than female hamsters, so I decided to get a male hamster. All well and good - I love my little hammie. The funny thing about male hamsters is - they have enormous balls! It's really kind of gross.

I Love Fashion Twins

I saw these women, with the same Vera Bradley quilted handbag in different colors and just about peed myself with happiness.

Shortly thereafter, I saw two men together, each with khaki shorts and a bright blue tee shirt, with the same build and coloring, and SO wanted to take their photo, but I had used the last bit of my camera's memory card taking a stupid picture of the driver of the shuttle I was on. Dang, I could have had two in one day.

My obsession with Fashion Twins has now surpassed my obsession with low-rise pants and butt cracks. And something in me has changed - now, instead of looking down my nose at people who are dressed alike, I feel happy and giggly when I see them. Maybe that's why they do it! Does it make them feel happy?! (I will have to ask my mother, whose style is normally so severe and tailored that I almost fainted from shock when I saw a photo of her and three friends, smiling, and ALL WEARING THE SAME HIDEOUS CELINE DION TEE SHIRT.)

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I Love These Flowers

These are called Montbrecia. I hope they last for a long time; I love their alien-wildflower look and the brilliant color.

They are the same flowers that Heidi on Vashon is growing in Vashon, Washington.

By the way, that is my goldfish, named Ping, in the bowl on the coffeetable.

Men in Low-Rise = BUTTCRACK!

I'm glad that the "Low-Waisted Pants + Short Shirt= My Buttcrack is Showing" issue is not limited to women's fashion. No one is exempt!

It's True - the 80's Are Back

I've been complaining to anyone who will listen that the 80's are back, I hate 80's fashion, boo hoo, what am I going to do, and so on.
I remember the pants I wore in middle school, and they were really tight Jordache or Guess jeans, with zippers at the ankles and sometimes little denim bows at the tops of the ankle zippers. I also wore pink Reebok high tops and I usually had on a pile of jelly bracelets and a thing called a "banana clip" in my hair; hair which I had laboriously crimped at 5:30am each school day with a super-hot crimping iron. My mascara, which I had to hide from my mom, was electric blue, and I had a pair of cheap pink high heels she didn't even know I owned, which I would change into at school, shoving my Reeboks into my locker.

All this makes me shudder; it was cute then; I was thirteen. It hardly mattered if my jeans were tight - I was a child - I had no curves. The thought of SQUEEZING myself into pants like that NOW makes me really scared.

Still, there are some fashions from the 80's that make me smile to see again, like dolman sleeves, boatnecks, sexy open-backed tops, wide diagonal and chevron stripes, polka-dots, pink-and-gray, navy-and-kelly green, and those freakin' little candy-colored hearts and stars that seemed to cover EVERYTHING in 1988. And another thing I didn't get my fill of in 7th grade - candy-colored plastic beads.

This week I've purchased two rather 80's-style tops; one navy blue with kelly green dots and a criss-cross of fabric in back, and this one; a cream tunic with blue diagonal stripes, and three giant-bead plastic necklaces - one red, one pink, and this aqua one, above. All right. so I've given in to the 80's comeback! I can't exactly run around naked and unaccessorized, can I? So that's my excuse. Hey, a girl can change her mind.

STOP! This Post is Rated NC-17!

One of these handfuls of teeny-tiny clips came from a sex toy store. The other pile came from an office supply store. At one store, they were twenty cents each: at the other, $1 each. The pink ones were purchased about six months after the black ones, and the black ones were purchased six months ago. (HA HA.)

All right, I'll stop being silly.

The moral of this story is: all the world's a stage and every object is a potential sex toy!

Have a good weekend!

A Pot Rouge for Lips and Cheeks

I like my two new Bobbi Brown pot rouges for lips and cheeks. I got colors "Flushed Pink" (the more natural one) and "Pale Pink" (the more candy-like, blue-pink one). They're creamy and soft, not too greasy (I think the Convertible Color by Stila feels too greasy) and I like the wide, round jar. A lot of round makeup items wear down only in the center because of the ways they're sized and shaped; like your finger can only get to one spot easily within the pot. This stuff comes in a really wide-mouthed, shallow jar so you can get to all the product easily. Too bad I didn't take the photograph BEFORE I stuck my grubby finger in there, right?! Well, you germophobes can use a lip brush.

If anyone remembers the cream rouge that Chanel used to make, which was tragically discontinued; with a fine-mesh screen that covered the actual product; this stuff is similar in feel and performance. I loved that stuff!
So this is great: we can all look like we've been running through meadows and eating cherries and getting stung on the lips by killer bees!
Hooray! Sexy bitches!

Gingerbread Cream Cheese Cupcakes

These pretty things are two gingerbread cupcakes with cream cheese icing, from Miette Patisserie in San Francisco. They also make this same gingerbread in a lovely cake that serves 6-8 people. Even without the cream cheese icing, the gingerbread itself is rich with spices, not-too-sweet, amazingly moist, dark and full of molasses, and dense. It's heaven in a fluted paper cup; it makes the eyelashes flutter and the eyes ROLL BACK IN THEIR SOCKETS!

(Unfortunately, the cakes are too fresh and delicate to ship, but Miette does ship their wonderful macaroons, which are tiny, round, delicately-flavored things that just melt in your mouth. They're kind of crisp, kind of chewy, and very complex-tasting.)

Shopping for Flowers Is Competitive. Who Knew?

Each week my partner and I go to the Farmers Market at the Ferry Plaza in San Francisco. People who go regularly know to go early; later it gets very crowded with tourists and the kinds of people who go once in a while, wander around looking lost, bump into others, and exclaim, "OH WOW! WHAT'S OVER THERE?! WHAT'S THIS?!" These people are also likely to ask really stupid questions of the vendors and farmers, such as, "Do you have any peaches?" (in the dead of winter), and "Do you have this nonfat, with Splenda?" to the French guy who makes organic whole milk yogurt with local honey from his family's recipe and sells it in little terracotta crocks.

Unfortunately, this week we went a little late, so I got elbowed and jostled and stepped-on by aggressive yuppies trying to get the VERY BEST BUNCH of flowers.
Yes, make sure you spend your four dollars WISELY. (And watch out for my ribs; I kind of like them the way they are - UNBRUISED. Jeez!)

It was so crowded that I was unable to see the label on the bucket; so I don't know what type of flowers these are. I like their sweet candy-colored blooms.

Insanely Spicy Ginger Hand Cream

Enough about the sexploits of my neighbor. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.
Friday, I obtained a jar of Pharmacopia Ginger Hand Cream. This stuff is so gingery, it practically bites your nose when you open the jar. It smells incredibly good to a ginger lover like me. It's made with 70% organic ingredients, it sinks in fast, and it's super rich, but non-greasy. The jar is brown glass; very heavy and elegant. LOVE IT!

(My thanks to Kathy at my work for the recommendation.)

Gamers with Game?

I'm the stereotypical crotchety, nosy old lady neighbor, except that I'm not old. (Yet.) I get mad when people wash their cars in the parking area (because their soapsuds run into the drains that say "no dumping" and have a little picture of a crab on them, because we live by the beach and the goddamned soapsuds go right into the ocean), I get mad when people overfill the recycling bins because they don't break down their stupid IKEA and Budweiser boxes, I get mad when neighbors let their dogs trample around and shit in the native plant restoration areas around our apartments. Call me crazy.


One of my favorite neighbors to spy on is a quiet guy named James **.
There's really nothing interesting about him; he's geeky but not geeky enough to be endearing, he has no style, and he has no charm. (He did used to have a roommate who had plenty of charm. The ex-roommate offered to help me carry my packages upstairs one day, and would always say a very friendly hello.) James is in his early thirties, he's pale as a ghost, he's got a big bald spot, and he walks like a robot. He's your stereotypical aging video gamer. The thing that always made me want to spy on him was his girlfriend - a pudgy, brown-haired white girl who wore a ton of stinky, gag-inducing perfume all the time. (I call her Ross because she smells like a Ross Dress for Less dressing room.) Ross was over so often that I was starting to wonder if she had moved in, and they were at the stage of their relationship where they would order pizza and Chinese food and watch movies at home. And I was happy for them.


Saturday we heard her loudly saying goodbye at the door. She sounded oddly fake, as if she were saying goodbye to a salesperson at Nordstrom instead of to her boyfriend. Then she trudged downstairs, wearing one of her trademark thin cotton skirts, tennis shoes, and a full backpack that made her look like a turtle. "He's such a jerk," I complained to my boyfriend. "He doesn't even walk her to her car." My boyfriend peered out the window. "She looks sad," he said. She walked to her car, opened the trunk, put the backpack inside, and left.


Cut to this morning... James was leaving at the same time I was leaving for work (VERY early... 6:30am) with a new woman, a thin, ugly version of Ross.
My God, I'm in shock. I feel like I've been cheated-on. Saturday, Ross was sent packing, and by Sunday James had an Ugly Girl sleep over. And he's so damned milquetoast... so bland... so plain... how is it that HE dumped one woman and hooked up with another one in the span of one weekend? Did he even have time to wash his sheets?! Pig. God, I hate heterosexual men. God, it just makes me wanna spray Ross' horrible Clinique Happy perfume all over the stairwell and also into his mailbox.

** names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Another Pair of Fashion Twins

Sigh.


They jogged past us today, less than 24 hours after I snapped the photos of the Red Jacket Twins.

Curse of the Red Jacket Twins

I was futiley trying to take photographs of some cormorants flying in a perfect V formation yesterday evening on the beach, when I saw this person in a red windbreaker and long olive green shorts.
A moment later, when the person somehow split into two right before my very eyes, I realized it was actually a COUPLE DRESSED EXACTLY ALIKE.
Nope, these are not identical twins who have been dressed by their parents - that would be forgivable. No, indeed - one person here is a woman and one is a man, and they appear to be romantically or sexually partnered. They CHOSE to buy these matching outfits, and they chose to wear them TO THE SAME PLACE AT THE SAME TIME! EEEEEW!
I have to go. I'M GONNA PUKE!