steel away

1. Steelers - excitement is building. what was with some of those calls last night?!? not to whine and be one of *those* fans, but still.

2. Pumpkin bread - simple, deelish.  I used the Joy of Cooking recipe, which called for 1/3 c. of milk + 1 tsp vanilla instead of water. No nuts. Saw a recipe that used chocolate chips.  Hmmm…that would be disgusting or wonderful.

3.  Earth from above - wow. why am i not a bird. why.

I like how using periods instead of question marks makes the head in my voice talk in a monotone as I type.  how are you doing today.  why did you eat my pumpkin bread.

4. Modest Mouse throwback - Lonesome Crowded West is still a great album.  I’m tickled by the lyrics.

After seeing The Original Oyster House (as it was in the early ’90s) profiled on some Sebak documentary, and then seeing it again recently on a local news feature for Pittsburgh’s 250th anniversary, I decided to try it. Chomper and I went there before the Steeler’s game, so there was added charm and annoyance. We had to wait awhile to get a seat, but that was understandable. I get really awkward in such situations, though, so I had to try to chillax and not just run out the door. I guess I just don’t like feeling like I’m in the way and not being acknowledged by waitstaff nor bartender. But we did get a table eventually, and the rather overwhelmed-looking server took our order after a short wait.

I got a fish boat (jumbo deep fried fish sandwich“) with sides of coleslaw and New England clam chowder. Chomper got the same, I think. He ordered an oyster but it never came, so we can’t comment on the quality of the restaurant’s namesake. I wanted to get a fish sandwich because that’s what people are always raving about on the TV. But as I looked at other people receiving what appeared to be just a giant hunk of breaded fish on a bun, I wondered if this would be another Primanti Brothers : all hype, no delicious. Luckily, it wasn’t as bad as that.

The clam chowder was wonderful. The consistency was a bit reminiscent of canned chowder, but the taste made up for that. It was just the right amount of spicy and clammy, and the flavors were blended perfectly. The coleslaw was pretty good. It was nice and cold, though I don’t know why I noticed that. Now, the fish sandwich. Oh, the fish sandwich. It was essentially just breaded fish on a bun. The bun was so soft that it fell apart as I ate, which was frustrating. Did I put too much tartar sauce on it? I don’t think so. The fish was good. It almost melted in my mouth, and the breading didn’t flake off. Plus, it was giant. But to be honest, I can’t say why people exclaim about it the way they do. Damn you, Sebak, for turning nothing into something for the sake of local history! I don’t regret going there. Like I said, it was good. But it wasn’t a m a z i n g. And boy did I have a grease-induced stomach cramp afterwards.

(the picture is from roadfood.com, it’s actually a Wholey’s fish sandwich, since I couldn’t find one of an Oyster House sandwich.)

I started watching the debates, but gave up because it was frustrating that there’s no way to tell who’s statements are accurate, while being pretty convinced that none of them are. Chomper forwarded this to me. It’s helpful. Too bad I still don’t really care.

Went to D.C. on a trip with library science students this weekend. Was subjected to National Treasure at 7am when all I wanted to do was look at the fog atop the Laurel Highlands. The entire trip was a bust; it was humid and nasty and the tour of the Library of Congress would’ve been better if it was lead by an actual docent and not some random friend-of-a-friend who was just pulling facts out of her ass. The architecture was nice. Maybe I’ll post pictures, eventually. I’m behind on picture uploading. On the way home from D.C. I was listening to the radio (trying to drown out The Librarian) and came across a Christian station that was playing this:

holy crap. some of my favorite lyrical snippets:

“The world’s trying to tidy up, exfoliate they skin
but only Christ can come and exfoliate they sin”

“he bruised his son”

“The crucifixion was pretty grim”

I’ve been going through a music drought lately. Last week I started trying to get out of it by using Last.fm for the first time, and then playing with Pandora. But not a lot of the things I discovered turned out to be as great as I had originally thought. I kinda like this Leyna Noel, but can’t get my hands on her/their album unless they decide to come to Pittsburgh. I mean, I could write them. But, you know. Then today I got an email about this radiohead remix situation, and I thought that would lead me to some interesting new things. But none of the files will play.  I don’t want to resort to just buying all the iterations of Jason Molina that I can get my hands on, and you can only listen to M83 so much, so I decided to appeal to my devoted readers.

What are you excited about listening to these days?   Give me one to three names and I will listen to them, and post my reaction.  I’m especially in the mood for something mournful, yet witty.  I like organs and stringed instruments.  Really, I don’t know what’s happened to me.  I used to be drowning in music I loved.  I guess Xiu Xiu is only appropriate for certain life stages.

I was browsing design*sponge and liked the plates featured in one of the pictures, so I looked up the designer, Thomas Paul (which I will refer to as one person instead of as a design firm, for simplicity).  I came across these plates that he supposedly designed himself.  Except I recognized the patterns from a 1970s book about Polish papercutting!  (or it might be this book; one of the two.)

Maybe the designs themselves aren’t copyrighted, because they’ve been passed down through the ages.  But dude, you cannot claim that his plates feature “exclusive Thomas Paul designs and colors, referencing traditional motifs” when all the “designs” are just details of scherenschnitte THAT WERE NOT INVENTED BY THE “DESIGNER”.  I hope he’s more forthright than the people who sell his stuff.  But somehow I doubt it.  Why do I let stuff like this bother me?  Because $36/set is a lot to make off of the creativity of generations of dead grandmothers?

The events I mention in this post took place a couple weekends ago, but their charm has not yet dimished. During the first weekend in September I got real excited about getting up early to go be physically fit. One morning I rode my bike to Schenley Park and walked three miles, the next morning I power-walked around Allegheny Cemetery at dawn. It was there that I realized what I am : a deer whisperer.

There’s background to this assertation. Last Thanksgiving, Chomper and I were walking around Chatham’s campus, and as we descended a set of stairs, we saw a mama deer and a baby deer in some rather sparse woods. I mean, they weren’t the kind of woods I’d feel safe in if I were a deer. It was a magical experience because there was a lot of snow on the ground and the air had the kind of silent hum that it has on winter mornings, like the hint of a distant highway or rushing river. And plus, it was Thanksgiving morning, so the anticipation had not yet turned into a stomach ache and the inability to watch football because your eyes keep closing. Digresssions! Okay, so that was “deer in the city” experience number one. Number two happened at the end of August. We were riding the incline with Mom and Dad Chomper and I saw a deer UNDERNEATH the incline. It was not dead. It was chilling. What kind of deer would live on that slope? (According to this website, and this one, Mount Washington is a veritable playland for wildlife.)

At 1:27, the dude in this video reacts exactly as I did (minus the weird French):

So this brings me to experience number three, in Allegheny Cemetery. I was strolling along, being amazed at how much wilderness borders the cemetery, and suddenly I saw a couple does tip-toeing out of an island of trees. I stopped dead in my tracks, as did they. Much eye contact was made. I stood still long enough to convince them that they could safely continue their foray into the labyrinth of gravestones. I watched them for awhile, but then I got bored and started to walk away, and one of them followed me. I started to panic, thinking that I was going to have a maniacal deer biting my shoulder or pawing at me. So I started jogging a bit and she left me alone.

I continued along the road, going up and around a little hill, where- to my shock and amazement - I came upon a sort of meadow / overgrown service drive that was overflowing with deer. Seriously, there were probably at least 8 of them. They all looked at me when I stopped and gaped, but then they just went back to chilling. I guess that is what deer do. So, this was already enough deer-sighting to make me excited, but that’s not even the beginning of it. It’s like the more I looked, the more deer I saw. There were two more hanging out in a ditch. There were others scampering around farther away near a tree line . And - this is the part that made me think something supernatural was at foot - there were two of them just lying in the middle of a group of graves. Just lying there! They didn’t even get up when I walked by less than 10 feet away from them. Just turned their heads. I’m telling you, the look in those deer eyes was the look of someone who’s been dead for hundreds of years and gets reincarnated as a deer every morning to frolic or lie around until the sun hits their grave. After all, over 117,000 members of Pittsburgh’s families are there. The odds are pretty good that some of them haven’t crossed over. I also saw a beaver. Maybe that was the cemetary director in his animal form.

The cemetary’s website mentions wildlife:

Deer are seen with increasing frequency in the areas of the city, representing the largest native animal remaining here. Look for tracks, droppings, hair that has been rubbed off or small trees that have been “rubbed” by male deer testing their antlers. None of these animals pose any danger to visitors, but it is simply good judgment to leave wildlife alone.

They should leave me alone! I didn’t ask to become Pittsburgh’s deer magnet! Next I’m going to see a buck just lying in the middle of the empty Bloomfield Pool, staring up at me. Maybe I did ask for it. I was definitely interested in pursuing a deer theme for our wood paneled “den”. After that weekend, I felt it was necessary to follow through:

Awhile ago, Chomper made me aware of the possibility that all space and time might be sucked up by black holes created by the particle accelerator outside Geneva.

I just include this video for the mood of it. There are subtitles posted as a comment on the YouTube page. The guy featured is Dr. Otto E. Rössler, who is apparently the only person to have given some academic backing to the doomsday theories. All of this is just as funny as the Y2K stuff, now that it’s over (the machine was started on the 10th. so I guess there’s still time for the theories about millions of little black holes accumulating to come true). It’s also interesting to me how many people are making crazy YouTube videos to state their opinions. I guess it’s more fun than just writing? Font choices! Extra-diegetic music!

What I really wanted to say is that last night over dinner, we were discussing what we would do if we knew a toxic nuclear cloud would reach our location in three days, or if we knew we were going to be sucked up by a black hole. Pink Floyd’s Money was playing on the radio during this conversation, which lead Chomper to exclaim (in his typical “fuck the world” sort of way) that during his last three weeks, he would force someone (at gunpoint, if necessary) to teach him how to wail on the saxophone, so he could just stand at the top of a cliff and wail while the black hole approached from below. Perhaps, like this (you can click to go to the YouTube page where all the weirdos post themselves playing the solo):

If only I had photoshop at work I could really do a number on that picture. But I had to settle.

I read about this play while reading Football for Dummies. (I’m trying to learn about formations etc. ) This is from Wikipedia, but Howie Long’s description is a lot more exciting.

The Play refers to a last-second kickoff return during a college football game between the University of California Golden Bears and the Stanford University Cardinals on November 20, 1982. Given the circumstances and rivalry, the wild game that preceded it, the very unusual way in which The Play unfolded, and its lingering aftermath on players and fans, it is recognized as a highly memorable play in college football history and among the most memorable in American sports.

After Stanford had taken a 20-19 lead on a field goal with four seconds left in the game, the Golden Bears used five lateral passes on the ensuing kickoff return to score the winning touchdown and earn a 25-20 victory. Members of the Stanford Band had come onto the field midway through the return, believing that the game was over, which added to the ensuing confusion and folklore. There remains disagreement over the legality of two of the laterals, adding to the passion surrounding the traditional rivalry of the annual “Big Game.”

THANK GOD FOR YOUTUBE:

The last few weeks, days, who knows, have been mostly filled with the start of fall semester and the planning of trips. I don’t understand why fall semester is always so much more frantic and high-powered than spring. Calm down, people. It’s just school. But it is infectious, and I’ve been storming the message boards of my online class about cataloging. I think online education might be feasible if people are encouraged to have real discussions, not just post idiotic repetitive things for credit. The more I get into cataloging stuff, the more I wish I had a degree in CS and was pursuing something like designing web apps. WHY DO I ONLY WANT CAREERS THAT MAKE ME SIT ON MY ASS ALL DAY?

Did you know that fall is my favorite season? Not just like, “oh, fall is nice”. I am obsessed with it. I yearn for it all year long. Fall is the only time that my mind becomes entirely calm. In second grade my teacher was young and wanted to do exciting crafts, so we all got to design pictures to be made into plates. It was a big deal, and everyone was kind of stressed about making their design something really important, because a plate is something durable that you’re going to use over and over again. It was like the second grade equivalent of deciding on a tattoo. I wanted to make a plate that said “I love fall”. But it wasn’t normal or acceptable to like fall. Children are expected to like summer, because they are not in school and can play all day long. I was afraid of being ridiculed, or at least misunderstood, if I dedicated my one and only homemade plastic plate to Fall. So I sold out. And to this day I have a stupid plastic plate that says “I like Summer”. Because even though I was selling out, I still couldn’t bring myself to say that I “loved” summer.

I’m not just anticipating fall because it is fall. There are multiple exciting things coming up:

1. Football. I’m currently trying to learn more about formations etc. so I can get more into the games. If that’s even possible. I think I got artichoke dip and barbeque sauce all over the carpet during the Superbowl because I’m a jumper and a screamer. My participation in the Swim Club Fantasy Football League just ups the stakes. I am so ready for this. BRING IT ON. There’d better be a reason- other than nostalgia - that people keep ranking our defense so well. Dudes better step up and get it done so the Smackdown Zombies (my fantasy team) can take home the imaginary prize.

2. Trip to the Laurel Highlands with my parents. (October) We’re staying in a Holiday Inn that has taxidermied animals as its decorative anchor. Yesss! The plan is to walk on trails and marvel at the colors and eat at diners. I’m excited about going to Miss Martha’s Tea Room. Maybe they’ll let me borrow a pair of their lace gloves even though I’m not 70.

3. Trip to Texas to eat salmonella-ridden stuffing with Claire and Marlowe. (Thanksgiving) I didn’t think I would be so excited to visit Texas. But I am. Mostly because it takes up such a huge part of the U.S., and I’ve never been further south than…Pittsburgh? Omaha? I don’t know which one is more southerly. I went to somewhere in Missouri and Florida when I was a child, but I was not aware enough to make socio-cultural observations, so it doesn’t count. While visiting Claire, I hope to do many things:

• meet her man
• drink enormous jugs of red wine
• not get salmonella
• go to a Texan thrift store, or maybe just anyplace that calls itself an “emporium”
• put an end to my misconceptions about Mexico
• make Marlowe snort something out her nose

4. Trip to Washington D.C. (September). Gonna tour the ol’ Library of Congress with a bunch of other library school kids.  Gonna see if I can slip away at some point to get lunch with a certain friend instead of being annoyed by childrens’ authors at the National Book Fair.  All of it for just $15!

5.  Molasses cookies. This is a tradition that has accompanied the first day of school since I started school.  My sister and I would get on the bus (or into the bus driver’s suburban) with our new backpacks and new floral leggings, and return home to a house filled with the delicious smell of freshly-baked molasses cookies.  No, it was not 1950!  My mom even continued this tradition through last year.  In college, I received packages with smashed cookies in giant ziploc bags, which I would only share with people I really liked.  No cookies this year, though.  I think it’s time for me to grow up and make them myself.  I’ll post the recipe soon.

last night i had horrendous dreams.

<dream>
i was at work at the library. a family of visiting dignitaries was there, being courted by myself and my boss. she had taken the parents into her office to chat, and i was left with the dignified child, who was a veritable spring of reference questions. so i was showing him databases and working up a library sweat. accordingly, i had taken off my cardigan and placed it on a nearby chair. we were content in our exploration, until suddenly the head librarian (my boss) emerged from her office and looked angry, frustrated, and confused by what i was doing. she grabbed my cardigan, thrust it at me, and pointed in the direction of the back office. “Back!” she exclaimed, frightening the child and his nevertheless placid parents. I couldn’t understand why she would be angry at me for helping this child learn how to use databases. Were my daily tasks more important than the enlightentment of an impressionable youth?!?! Apparently so, for I was being reprimanded for not doing my duties, and overstepping my bounds (for I am not yet a Librarian). Then, I fought back. I stood up for myself and what I had been doing, and expressed my disgust that my boss thought it was right to reprimand me. There was shouting, flushed faces, ne’er before uttered curse words, and then a scene change.
<cut>
i’m pushing an office chair up an endless hill.
seriously.
part of the time i was sitting in it, pushing myself with my legs. the other half i was leaning on it.
i don’t recall it rolling down, but perhaps that only happens when you get to the top.
<cut>
final scene: an exotic outdoor resort, complete with fake rock formations, caves, and multi-layered pools. in the distance is the mirrored building that houses the library from scene one. it actually looks quite nice, reflecting the palm trees and the intense terra cotta of the manufactured cliffs. the shimmering pools are full of people swimming happily, and i’m walking alongside them. everyone is wearing bathing caps. i look down and see chomper being kissed by a lovely Indian-American girl. somehow i know that he knows her from college, and that she’s always had a crush on him. why isn’t he pulling away!? i get down on the tile right next to their heads, put my head to the side, and say in a monotone, “This won’t work.”
</dream>

I was very upset about all this when I awoke. I really felt like I had lived through that showdown at the library, and I felt miserable about it all. Yet, I can understand where the first parts of the dream come from. But what’s the connection to the third part? The only thing that’s taking Chomper away from me is his head cold. Anyways, it’s awesome to have a dream with imagery I can actually understand and relate to my life. Too bad it didn’t tell me something I didn’t already know. Or did it?! :-0