Warning Labels

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The packaging for my new razor says “Not intended for children.” Who in their right mind would give a razor to a child? And if you’re the type of person to give a razor to a child, are you really reading the warning labels? Does anyone ever read that and have a lightbulb moment?

It reminds me of the Douglas Adams book So Long and Thanks for All the Fish. One of the characters, Wonko the Sane, puts the world in an asylum after reading the detailed instructions on a pack of toothpicks. “Ah yes,” he said, “that’s to do with the day I finally realized that the world had gone totally mad and built the Asylum to put it in, poor thing, and hoped it would get better.”

Rolling the Day Away

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We dragged our fabulous Landrollers out of storage bright and early today and wavered around town. We can just rollerblade out the door here, so there’s no excuse for not going out, except that we’re kind of like a clown circus on wheels at the moment. Ergo the bright and early - the less witnesses the better.

If you’ve not seen Landrollers before, you’re not alone. We spend so much time explaining them, I’m thinking about handing out information sheets. We first saw them on the Dog Whisperer. Cesar Millan wears them when he’s running the dogs. They really are as cool as they look - nice smooth action, and you don’t take a header every time you hit a rock. We actually rollerbladed down the hall on the carpet, and believe me, it wasn’t because my technique was so good that I stayed on my feet! But practice makes perfect, so off we roll.

At the moment I’m tentative rolling interlaced with windmilling arm incidents. I dream of someday being one of those whizzy people that go zooming by, all grace and elegance and speed…

The Lean, Mean, Soybean Machine

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I don’t drive often, but when I do, I drive the lean, mean, soybean machine. That’s my lovely little Bug, which runs on vegetable oil. Not biodiesel, which has some scary additives but can be used in any diesel engine without conversion. My baby runs on straight vegetable oil (SVO). Like the kind you cook with. I have been known, when I clean out my pantry, to dump out-of-date cooking oil straight into my veggie tank and drive around town on it.

I got my TDI Bug converted a few years ago using the greasecar system. You see, the diesel engine was actually designed to run on peanut oil, so converting it back isn’t that difficult with most engines. The old Mercedes are the easiest - you just have to change out the glow plugs and fuel injectors. The VWs are a little more complicated, but well worth it. Just think - guilt-free driving! Not to mention a great conversation starter. And last time I checked, no one was fighting any wars over vegetable oil.



So here’s me tooling around town today, fueling up with soybean oil at Costco, and thinking I have the coolest Bug in town. And then I see, two spots down from me, the IKEA summer sale Bug. Not only a classic bug, in yellow, just like the one we had as a kid - but it has the craziest hat in town! I think my Bug is jealous. Now it wants a hat, too.

Slave to IKEA

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I’ve spent the whole weekend schlupping IKEA boxes in, out, and around, and building IKEA wardrobes until I thought my fingers would bleed. I feel like I’ve been run over by a Mac truck. And we’re nowhere near done!

This morning it was back to IKEA to exchange a piece of glass that was delivered broken, and to buy another 10 boxes of drawers. All of which is still piled up in my car. Because if I have to schlup all of that up now, too, I’ll jump out the window and spare myself the pain.

The only bright note (besides the fact that, actually, the bits that are done look really cool) is that I’ve set aside a whole section in the new wardrobes to organize my business. As you can see, at the moment everything is stuffed in a cabinet and dripping out the edges… Let’s just say there are things in there that haven’t seen the light of day in 6 months or more. And they may have mutated. I’m a bit scared to reach in there now. Something might bite.

Deep Thought

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Andy’s thought for the day:
“There aren’t enough songs about nose hair.”

He’s very deep, my Andy. I may have to give him his own column on my blog.

Top Gun Bar Goes Up in Flames

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The Kansas City Barbeque, where the “sleazy bar scene” from Top Gun was shot, was completely torched yesterday afternoon. We walk by this every morning - it’s between our place and the train station. Apparently it was some kind of kitchen fire. It’s the end of an era… mind you, it’s an era that ended years ago, but still.

The tragic part is that apparently a bunch of movie props burned in the fire. I adore movie props - an addiction I developed while working at Warner Bros. I could spend hours in the Harry Potter museum on the Warner Bros. backlot. I’m going to sit here in silence for a few minutes, and just mourn those lost movie props.

Cell Phone or Schitzo?

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Have you noticed these days there are tons of people walking down the street, talking to themselves? And I find myself looking to see if there’s a headphone or not. Because some of them are on cell phones. But some of them are schitzophrenics, talking to their invisible friends. And you probably don’t want to smile and nod at those ones, because they tend to be just ever so slightly unpredictable…

Pizza!

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Having been stuck in bed, a slushy lump, for most of the week with bronchitis, I’m finally re-entering the human race today. So to celebrate, I’m making pizza! I love the process, starting from raw ingredients, making my own dough, and topping it off with whatever I can find in the fridge. And convince Andy to slice up.

My weekly pizza night owes its fantastic crust to Reinhart’s Pizza Neopolitana dough recipe. I’m a big fan of Peter Reinhart. His recipe makes a fabulous Italian crust, thin and chewy with great flavor.

If you’ve ever made bread from scratch, you really need to read Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. My bread baking skills have gotten immensely better, and I’ve learned how to fake it, and how to rescue a recipe gone wrong (which does happen more than occasionally in my random world). If you’ve never made bread from scratch before, and you’re desperate to learn, try Beard on Bread. Reinhart will scare the pants off of you.



I live in a part of town that used to be all warehouses, and there’s still quite a few left, including several which still contain fantastic restaurant supply stores. I bought my pizza paddle from one - they even shortened the handle for me, so I could use it in my small kitchen without getting wedged between the walls. My well-loved pizza stone is from Williams Sonoma. Worth the investment, let me tell you, because it turns my oven into a pizza oven. Pizza in 5 minutes flat at 550F. Whooooeeeee! It’s enough to singe your eyebrows off. If I hadn’t pulled red-hot sculptures out of 1200F kilns for raku, it would probably even intimidate me. So there you go. Raku can make you a better cook. I knew I’d find a moral in this somewhere if I looked hard enough.