oatmeal!

it’s delicious and healthy! i just had some with maple syrup and soy milk. apparently, oatmeal is really good for your heart, or so says the container it comes in.

last night, brian and i went to the Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds show. although i left with a new-found resentment of tall people, the amazing performance made staring at this one dude’s sweaty shoulder for most of the night well worth it.

i almost cried when they started playing. for the last couple of months, i’ve been listening to their latest album over and over again. it was pretty amazing to listen to a live performance of music i’ve gotten so close to.

i really got a kick out of how a lot of the songs they played from their older albums had evolved so much, they were almost unrecognizable. this is something i really appreciate about the creation of music. progression and evolution. it takes a lot of guts to reimagine a song that already works and then play it for an audience that loved the album version so much. i definitely developed this appreciation from listening to brian’s band so frequently. they are all incredibly talented musicians and they are not afraid of this sort of musical evolution. they recently reworked a few songs that i’ve heard them play a certain way several times; their new take on these songs has completely blown me away.  i feel that musicians who do this with their music are not taking their audience for granted. for me, it is always an honor to witness this sort of progression.

anyway, i am inventing a dinner plan for tonight. i’m going to do a kale w/peanut sauce dish over yakisoba and accompany it with curried mashed potatos. it’s going to be a marriage of thai, japanese and indian flavors. i hope it works out!

larabar

it’s some kind of energy bar. i am not particularly fond of the texture. i only ate it because i can’t sleep and i felt like eating something might help. i don’t know why i can’t sleep.

i am a little nervous about starting school again. i really want to go back but i am nervous about getting back into the swing of things.

i wish there was more to eat. i wish i could sleep.

amy’s no chicken noodle soup

i’m not feeling very well. i guess it’s a good time to not feel very well since i am still out of school due to my injury. but it’s still a bummer because i’m tired of getting sick so often.

the vegan chicken noodle soup was satisfactory. it contained firm tofu instead of mock chicken which i think was a very classy choice. other than that, it was a very comforting soup in that mushy noodles and veggies in a salty broth sort of way.

for dessert i’m probably going to eat a shot blok. then, i’m going to work.

thinking about eating my scab

ever since the accident i’ve been waiting for my arm to turn purple. i mean, i did land with the pressure of my entire body onto my left arm; so why isn’t there a fucking gnarly bruise to show for it? the only physical evidence that i have for the injury (that has caused me terrible pain for the last two weeks and will keep me out of school for a month) is this puny, yet incredibly annoying, scab on my elbow.

i’ve been working on it for the last few days and tonight i finally picked off the most stubborn part of the scab, the part that has been holding on for dear life all week. it finally came off and the weirdest idea crossed my mind: eat it.

ew, that’s gross!

no, i did not eat it.

espresso karma

yesterday, ethan and i took a ferry to Bainbridge Island and we had a really good brunch at the Streamliner Diner. i had the green eggs and cheese and he had something else. every thing was great but their coffee just didn’t do the trick. once we got back to seattle, i stopped by a cafe for a double-tall iced soy latte. i don’t know if i qualify as an espresso snob yet but i do know what a double-tall iced soy latte should taste like. it didn’t even taste like soy milk with a hint of espresso flavor, it tasted exactly like what it looked like, a brownish milky drink.

unfortunately, the amount of disappointment i experienced from the first few sips prevented me from politely asking for another one. like i said, i am not quite the espresso snob, if i was, i’d know how to gracefully return a drink. instead, i dumped the rest in the trash, walked out of that cafe and into another.

this time i ordered a double-tall iced americano with a splash of soy milk. it was definitely the worst americano i’ve ever tasted and i’ve had pretty bad espresso before–i had to taste every bad shot i pulled when i first started making espresso drinks at the cafe i work at.  the taste of this americano didn’t even resemble espresso, it just tasted like poison. i ended up dumping that one too . i didn’t try for a third espresso drink.

then, i remembered the day before. i was at work and we were down to the last espresso bean (the cafe i work at ran out of espresso!) i knew that if i messed up the last few drinks there would be no remakes. just my luck, with the last two drinks, i pulled two double shots that were 5 seconds each (if you don’t know, a perfect shot should pull between 18 & 22 seconds, a 5 second shot yields a very diluted shot.) of course on a typical day, i would have remade the drinks but it wasn’t and there was no more espresso left. so i served them. had i known espresso karma would come around and bite me, i would have given those customers their money back.

update: wonderful day at the beach, my injury & new hair cut

i haven’t been writing lately due to the bike accident but my arm feels well enough to type now and i feel it’s my duty to update you folks on what’s been going on with me in the last week:

on sunday, brian and i celebrated our anniversary by spending some quality time at a remote beach near Hansville on the Kitsap Peninsula. it was an absolutely gorgeous day and there were so many strange things to see. for example, this giant dead Lion’s Mane jelly fish that had washed ashore:

and other dead things, like dead crustaceans and dismembered remains of other creatures. we also saw alive things such as a seal swimming in the distant waters and this very aggressive crab:

later, we had dinner, returned our zipcar and headed home on our bikes. we took the Burke Gilman trail and right around Fred Meyer, i ran into a fence, fell off of my bike and landed on my left arm causing injury to my left shoulder and elbow. luckily, no bones were broken. just a sprain and i get to wear a groovy sling for the rest of the week.

this week has been a little weird for me. i am used to running from one thing to the next, barely stopping and feeling extremely overwhelmed, stressed out and exhausted. however, since the accident, i’ve just been taking it easy. it’s been nice but it also has been a bit boring.

one thing i had to look forward to this week was an appointment for a hair cut, which i had on wednesday. i needed a trim and since i haven’t been able to do anything with my hair (due to my left arm being immobilized) i was excited to have someone else take care of it for me.

during the unusually brief consultation, i told my stylist that i liked what she did last time and i just wanted a trim–no more than 1/2 an inch off of the length and to blend the layers a bit. she acted as if she totally understood and before i could stop her, started hacking several inches off of the top of my head and around my face and left all the length in the back. if you can’t imagine what that looks like, i’ll spell it out for you: m-u-l-l-e-t.

it was crazy, i never thought i’d cry over my hair but i really thought i was going to break down right there at the salon. then she yelled, “yeah! balls to the walls!” when she finished. her enthusiasm sort of cheered me up.

i left with wet, unstyled hair that dried into a hard shell, thanks to her overuse of some odd, smelly product. what made it worse was that i had to wear it like that for the rest of the day, until brian came home and washed it out for me (i couldn’t even wash my own hair because of my arm!)

today i managed to style my hair in a fashion that hides a lot of the mulletiness of it. but it’s a little unsteady and i fear if the wind blew or if i even moved my head, the style would get knocked out, back into a mullet.

oh well, it’s just hair.

pina colada shot blok

brian called me at 7 and told me he was about two hours away from seattle. his band left yesterday, bound eastward for a couple of shows. he’s coming back tonight and i can’t wait to see him but i am also very hungry. i thought about eating something but if i waited and he hasn’t eaten anything yet, we could eat together. i am waiting for him to get home to find out if he has eaten, so i can eat.

to pass the time, i decided to organize cds. i figured i needed some sort of fuel to keep my brain working, so i opened a bag of SHOT bloks and ate two pieces.

for those unfamiliar with SHOT bloks, they are “the latest nutrition option for endurance athletes. Bloks come in chewable, 33 calorie cubes, making it easy to customize and track caloric and electrolyte intake during long outings and races.”

basically, they are energy boosts you take when you are doing strenuous activity. they also taste like candy, so i eat them like candy. however, since they are jam-packed with energy junk, every time i eat them when i’m just sitting around (not practicing endurance athletics), i get a terrible tummy ache.

i hope i don’t get one tonight.

later, i’m having bibimbap

this morning i woke up way later than usual–i slept in until 915am! right now i am kicking back, lounging, if you will. i am skipping school today!

i want to feel good about it, instead of guilty, and spend the day in the sun! so that’s what i’m going to do. as soon as i finish lounging i am going to hop on my bike and ride downtown for some bibimbap with my baby. who knows where adventure will take me after that. i do know that much later, i’m going to see brian’s band play at fado and maybe i’ll eat some dessert.

dessert

lately i’ve been eating a ton of dessert. i don’t know if it’s stress related or my body preparing for colder weather, it doesn’t matter. it’s been great.

also, i’m looking for a good banana bread with cocolate chips recipe. someone hit me up!