red hair and black leather

I'm in the throes of my annual Overdose of Stone Fruits. I love them - pluots, nectarines, cherries, plums.... nom nom nom nom. And the farmer's market is so close and has such a great selection. MY FRUITS, LET ME SHOW YOU THEM.

Today is such a perfect, mild, sunny San Francisco day that I would have been absolutely unsurprised if everyone at the Ferry Building Farmer's Market had burst into a spontaneous polka of joy. You know I would have joined right in, too.

Made Spicy Chicken Black Bean Chili last night - first time I've ever made chili.

I deviated from the recipe a bit (no surprise): I added parsley, cilantro, and red & green bell peppers, used Guinness in place of the last bit of chicken stock (what? I ran out & beer is what I had), overcooked the chicken a bit (oops), & left out the cumin (didn't have any).

What I'd do differently: reduce the amount of liquid and not drain & rinse the beans (both pinto & black). Use all black instead of half pinto. Cook the chicken less, and maybe buy boneless skinless thighs instead of boning & skinning them myself. Use cumin - I like the flavor. Use red or yellow onion instead of white - the flavor's too sharp among the pleasant spiciness of everything else. Simmer it longer - the recipe only had me simmering for 15 - not enough time, I think. If I simmer longer, though, I'll probably leave out the green peppers and put mushrooms in their place.

What I'll keep: The Guinness adds a nice kick. The cilantro, parsley, and red bell pepper are tasty.

A cheap and tasty meal that will last a while. Pretty good. Also, an excuse to eat sourdough bread! Yay!!

I have not been able to find Brach's Chickies and Bunnies candy here in SF. That was always the best part of Easter, tracking down the bags of vaguely marshmallow/circus peanut-tasting, pastel-colored bunnies and chicks. Well, it was the only reason for Easter, in my cracked little head.

No chickies and bunnies. Woe.

On the plus side, no snow (except for Twin Peaks, and who goes up there?).

I think I might need to stop drinking coffee. This induces panic in me, making me wonder how I'm going to stay awake through my workday. However, the physiological effects are starting to take their toll - I can feel my muscles bunching and trying to pull away from the bone as I finish my second cup. That area in my chest that tightens whenever I haven't eaten enough/am too stressed/whatever - the place that makes it feel like I have rebar sticking through my torso and/or am having a heart attack - that's playing up, too.

It's not like the servings are huge, either. I take in probably 12 oz. of coffee total, and always before 10 a.m., else I can't sleep at night. This is ridiculous.

But the muscle bunching? So not fun. I'll try cutting down first, see if that works.


Eh. It's a small thing in the grand scheme of things.

I love fruit. There's not a fruit I can point to and say - "I won't eat that in any form" (although I've not yet tried durian fruit). Sure, I may not like some varietals - Granny Smith apples, for instance - but fruit as a whole? Delish.

My favorite fruits, the ones I can eat at any time, are stone fruits. Peaches, plums, nectarines, cherries, these are all heaven-sent nummy goodness. I can quite easily eat a 2-pound bag of cherries in one sitting. I wait impatiently for nectarines to hit that 30-minute window of ripened perfection. A plum is a symphony in my mouth. The best, however, are pluots. Specifically, Dapple Dandy pluots. The right Dapple Dandy, eaten just before it starts getting mushy, has an almost spicy quality to it that reminds me of Japanese food.

Twin Girls Farm is my main crack supplier for all of these fruits. The Wedge carries plums and pluots from them, and there is no comparision between those fruits and the other kinds I find at the big supermarkets. The non-organic fruits don't have the complexity to them that the organic ones do - the Dapple Dandys are too sweet, the nectarines are bland.

We're moving out of stone fruit season, but the melons and berries are coming up strong to compensate. Minnesota is very good for growing melons, berries, and apples, even if we're a bit behind California's curve. Still, there's a nice watermelon waiting at home, ready to be messy and wonderful, and a pint of blueberries that I may eat right out of the carton. The melons will shift to apples, the apples will shift to satsumas, and then there's a slight dearth until stone fruits come back. Yum.

I love fruit.

We're coming up on the end of Week One of Zach's Grand Get In Shape Plan, and it's been interesting. He's getting advice from 3 separate sources - me, a woman he works with who is also a boxer and a trainer (R), and a man who is a martial artist (M). There hasn't been that much conflicting information yet, but the differences have been enlightening. I've missed a few things, primarily because my focus is so different from Z's. As a distance runner, I do not strength-train prior to running. I only do it after a run or on a completely different day. Z doesn't have that worry, so M told him to lift weights prior to cardio. As a freaky hippie eater, I try to avoid high fructose corn syrup in its entirety. R told Z not to worry so much about it, that there are a few things in which HFCS is okay to eat. Little shit like that. I'll defer to both of them, because R is used to whipping big guys into shape and M knows about being a guy, being a guy in theater, and being a guy in theater trying to get and stay in shape.

I'm currently in the middle of my own "Oh, fuck, I need to get in shape" plan, which is fun. We open Friday next, and I'm wearing a very skimpy outfit for a couple scenes. Vanity is a lovely thing.

I've also been concentrating on getting faster. My 10-K pace last year was 10:00, and I'd like to get it down to 9:30 in time for the Get In Gear Run. This is all part of a grand plan to run Boston sometime after I turn 40 (the qualifying time drops to 3:50 - which is a little less than a 9-minute mile pace over 26.2 miles). We'll see if this actually happens, since a lot can change in 12 years. And if I happen to speed up enough to qualify when the required time is 3:40? I won't complain.

To all the New Englanders who were trying to tempt me their way when I complained about the cold and ice here, I say: Neener.

I will not mention the 6 inches of snow we're currently getting. I'm just glad we live right behind the Guthrie right now, so we don't have to deal with idiot drivers.

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I am very sad that Satsuma season is over. I am trying to console myself with Clementines, but they are not the same. They are dry and bitter compared to the sweet juicy tartastic goodness of mandarin oranges. I've never found a citrus fruit that I like as much as mandarins. Hell, only raspberries and cherries top mandarins in my Pantheon Of Fruit.

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Rehearsal is going well. I only wandered onstage for a total of 10 minutes out of a 3-hour rehearsal session last night, but my attention was absorbed by Leading Women: Plays For Actresses. I tore through 5 full-length plays - which I will review in my next post.

I'll need to bring crosswords or something to work on during shows, though. I'll have a lot of downtime, but not enough to allow myself to be absorbed into a book. Besides, I enter an incredibly private headspace when I'm reading, which is not conducive to performing.

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Have I mentioned how much I love our treadmill? Because I do. It's so easy to just hop on for 20 minutes and then hop off. I could never do that with running outside - I either need to bundle up or apply sunscreen, and once I've gone to that trouble, I don't want to have it be a wasted effort, so if I don't have enough energy for a full run, I may as well just stay in and nap, and then I get out of shape. I do miss the outdoor runs, but they will return soon enough.

Other good things - If I feel like doing a hill workout, I can just program it in instead of having to calculate how many blocks I've run and what that distance is in my head and where I should go next. It also keeps me to a strict pace, which I'm incredibly lazy about doing on my own.

I'm a little obsessed with getting into shape right now, because I fear what the costumer will put me in for Measure For Measure. I am playing a whore, after all. I did have the goal of getting into super shape before the end of 2004, but I got a little derailed. I look upon this as catch-up. This week has been very good, with some sort of exercise occurring every day. (Monday's was before my tummy rebelled.) I hope I keep this up.

I think I love the treadmill most because it gave me another context to run in, so it revitalized all of my running. Yes.

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Ganked from lysana - my Humor type:

Sunny/Dark: 1/10
Dry/Gross: 5/10
Traditional/Offbeat: 4/10
Active/Passive: 6/10


You are a SGT--Sunny Gross Traditional. This makes you a John Hughes.

Your sense of humor makes you the ultimate every- person, just I'm-a try not to trouble nobody. You're laid back. Like la-a-a-aid back. You might be from the Midwest.

You enjoy the occasional weird or dark humor, and the right joke out of nowhere can really make you laugh out loud. In fact, the funniest stuff for you is the stuff that takes you off guard. If you can see it coming, you don't want to see it arrive.

You probably don't think this site is all that funny. So it's weird that you're here. I appreciate it, though. Maybe I'll cut back on the ranting and say something nice for a change.

Your Active humor score of 6/10 means you are ju-u-ust right. You're probably pretty popular -- a walking social lubricant. You know how to take someone from on edge to relaxed, and from relaxed to larfing. You're kind of like an episode of Arrested Development. That show is good. Anyway. Rave on, funny one.


If you want to take it to find out yours, go here.

Hi. Popping on for a bit, but not long. I can focus on the keyboard, but not on the screen, so I apologize for typos and the lack of commenting and generally not being about. I'm also feeling amazingly futless and Percoset-ed up, so read at your own risk.

Where to start? I'm insanely lucky and insanely bored, all at the same time. I just spent three minutes talking to one of my bhodditsavas because I felt the need to acknowledge something greater than stupid dumb luck. A friend did some Reiki on me last night, and that was fantastic. The general outpouring of love and support and caring has been amazing.

I'm feeling pretty good lately. My right face hurts, but it's okay. I even went to Target today with Zach. he drove.

Surgery is on Tuesday. We're still hosting T'Day on Thursday. I may be more nervous about the party.

I can't taste very well right now. Everything is still swollen, and it's hard to chew, and there may or may not be nerve damage. We can't tell, and won't be able to for the next few weeks. Reed's Ginger Candy, therefore, is the bomb.

Also, Satsuma Mandarins have come in to the stores. If anyone wants to know what the holidays smell like to me, crack open a mandarin orange. We would get them in crates direct from Japan when I was a kid. Burning spruce is also a good smell, but you can't beat the mandarins.

I'm enjoying the solid food as much as possible, and do not plan to stay on the post-op liquid diet for a second longer than is necessary. (Solid is in this case relative, and mostly means applesauce, yogurt, portabella mushrooms, and Kashi GoLean shakes. Hey, it's better than jello.)

Anyway.

Again, thank you all for your support. Z will be updating you as things progress.

Love to everyone.

My haul from the farmer's market today includes the first batch of apples (so teeny!), chives, basil, tomatoes, blueberries, gouda, and green beans. All grown (or made) in Minnesota or Wisconsin (the berries always come from Bayfield. It's A Thing). Yummy. It's the first week for the blueberries and the apples, and the first week that the tomatoes are actually tomato-like. I've already eaten my way through the pint of blueberries. I think I'll make a couple foccace tonight - one with basil and chives, and the other with basil, chives, and tomatoes.

There's an interesting dynamic at work in the Minneapolis Farmer's Market, especially in the downtown one. A couple vendors bring in produce from all over, so you can get pluots and oranges and bananas and other non-native produce at the Market. This upsets some of the local farmers, so now everyone who sells Minnesota-grown produce has a bright pink sign stating that fact. (This isn't an issue with the St. Paul market, because Minnesota-grown is a requirement to sell there.) Since I buy most of my non-MN produce at my co-op, I'm more than happy to stick to the local-grown stuff. That is the whole point of the market, as far as I'm concerned.


Speaking of Market, I went to karaoke last night after rehearsal, and am exhausted today as a consequence. Still, had fun. I need to remember that while singing "Express Yourself" is fun, it needs to be the last song I sing, because it rips the hell out of my vocal cords. Or, you know, I could actually learn how to sing. Nah, too easy.


Tried running last night. The knees felt fine, but the top of my foot/front of my ankle hurt so much that I had to give up after a half-mile. This is starting to worry me. My hope is that the pain is connected to the adjustments my legs & knees are having to make, and that it will go away by this weekend. I'm doing the golf ball massage thing and the ankle rotating stretches at my desk, and will ice and elevate when I get home.


Slow day at the office. Don't want to be here. Want to be at home, sleeping.