Garden of Eden

new pics of the garden, a grand work in progress. thanks, marcy. . .





more pics here

it's in the jowls

i noticed last week that bradley's jowls always smell different. so i made a log. here are my findings.

olfactory variances in jowls, subj. bradley, ver 1.1
20apr - reminds me of the slight fumes when pulling old masking tape up.
21apr - definitely kellogg's corn pops mixed with poison ivy
22apr - 80% sandwich pickles, 20% garbage
23apr - rotten kiss my face peaches and cream lotion
24apr - baby powder with a dash of burnt hair

wheel of fortune cookie

vanna white has a sucky job. everyday, she dresses up like she's entering the miss texas pageant. and for what? so she can turn letters and clap without disturbing the subcutaneous tissue in her upper arms. every day she is dressed like she's going to the inaugural ball for the president. that is so sad to me. it's like being a wedding dress model. think of how "old hat" it is when one of those women really does get married. is she showing up to be betrothed or is she going to work?

"..."

ps new additions to the garden: brussel sprouts, collard greens, cantaloupe, watermelon, cucumber, yellow squash and a lemon tree. can't wait until harvest in june.

it's lsat season again folks, i'm rounding third...

i love finishing things. earlier in my life i hardly ever got to the point that i finished anything, a book, a race, even a bag of cheetos. . . but i think i believe in time as a commodity more than i did before and so the "process", the "in media res", is more aesthetic and meaningful.

i've been cooking more for the last few months. i started as more of an attempt to be fewer degrees away from the human experience. but now that i've been going for a little while, this idea of finishing and of the legitimacy of time has become overwhelmingly satiating. i crumble up empty packages of walnuts with more gusto, swirl water around an empty can of coconut milk with more moxie, dust my hands off with great fortitude after using the last quarter cup of amaranth flour. there's just something so cathartic about it. and i do love catharsis, in more than one way. the process of cooking is not hard to reconcile; while knee-deep in julienned carrots, i've never found myself wanting to quit. but paying a more intimate deference to time has changed the taste of food.

i'm certainly not a seasoned cook, i would call myself a level 2 novice. but i've always been far too impatient to let the lamb shank broil for 2 hours. i've been too short on attention to fold egg whites for 3 minutes. or let beans soak overnight. so what i generally ended up with was something that resembled the intended dish, but not quite.

i think i got tired of "not quite" cooking a little after i got tired of "not quite" business and "not quite" relationships and "note quite" life. and i believe in time more than blessing or serendipity or hard work. i believe in time because it's not based on knowledge or technology or money. it's the same seconds, minutes and hours that everyone has to deal with. and things get tangled and untangled, born and dead, broken and redeemed, started and finished, on the clock of the universe and nothing else. it is the great legitimizer, the divine healer, the one big way that i see an enduring, gracious and unchanging God on earth.

today i made roasted kale, it tastes like potato chips. i shared them with bradley. i told him they were lays, he believed me.

hail damage

chad is leaving today to work with his dad in dallas. there's a big storm and he's a licensed catastrophic insurance adjuster. i saw him pack his "rejected" self-inking stamp. it apparently came in this antique mahogany wood case that used to be a music box. that chad, he really takes pride in helping people.

a sashay for my attache

well, i've been getting spam-like comments on my entries, if it keeps up, i will have to change my comment settings. sorry in advance to anyone who reads and doesn't have a blogger account.

second, i have to links to two photo galleries. the first is to see the progress of our garden, including the highly-anticipated garden expansion aptly titled "2008 project green revolution in northwest waco, ya'll".

garden beginnings

second is a link to a photographer you will find mesmerizing. nate dogg introduced me to his work, an ethereal study in animal portraiture. if you don't tear up/feel breathless looking at these, you have a heart made of stone. i'm sorry but you do. it will make you want to take down your framed ansel adams posters you got from bed bath and beyond.

tim flach

have a great day, smell you later!

the new kids don't look so new anymore

two words that have a bad rap: dirt and fat. dirt doesn't signal that something is dirty. ingesting fat doesn't make you fat. i don't know much about language, but i have a feeling that other people don't run into this problem. and if they do, i'm almost sure that they intuitively make the necessary distinction. does that make sense? in some ways, english is so gratuitous and in other ways, it is lacking. so that's sort of weird.

marcy purchased a compost bin and we decided to overtake another eight percent of the yard for gardening purposes. i told brian that by the end of the summer, i don't want to have to go to the grocery store anymore. the only drawback is that bradley currently utilizes this little plot of land for sunbathing and it also serves as the turnaround point of his running track. but he doesn't pay rent, or taxes, and he can't speak, or give me the finger, so i don't feel too sorry for him.

if you haven't visited 101 cookbooks, you should. i've made almost 10 recipes from it in the last three weeks. tonight, chazz and i had the sunburst carrot salad as a side, alongside black bean burritos; it was really good, man.

now i feel like i have to insert a picture or lesley will complain. so here, cherry blossoms in brooklyn, it's springtime, people: