This. Is. RVA.

I just got back from the bar, and it's late. I'm up listening to songs by Hot Water Music and Saves the Day from like ten years ago that I used to play back when I was a freshman in college.

I can see this circumstance repeating itself well into my forties and fifties. Age is a construct. We'll still be emo indie rock assholes when we're old and grey and still living alone.

I'm back from supporting Operation: Javelin Thrust in the vast deserts of Nevada. Not a lot to mention, because I had back-to-back shifts of doing martial arts training and then running the night shift at the supply office. Ergo, no fun trips of exploring anything off-base like Fallon or Reno. Boo. At least I didn't waste any money at the casinos, but I didn't make any either.

On the plus side, I lost a fair bit of weight, and I can actually see my abdominal muscles again. Yay? On the down-side, it's after 3:30am and my body still feels like it's 12:30am. So much for sleep, but I guess it's a good opportunity to catch up on music and shock my body back to living in the EST.

I came back to Richmond feeling very confused about a lot of things: Work; Hobbies; Heart. The funny thing is that I'm not even necessarily worried. If I get burned in any of the above arenas, I feel like I'm in a good place to take my lessons and move on without dwelling too much. I have hopes, of course - and setbacks will hurt for sure - but for once I finally feel like I'm in control of what I'm getting myself into. I'm ready to learn lessons and come out just as happy in the end.

Still, the excitement of hope is giving me something to look forward to when I wake up for the foreseeable future. Yes, excitement and fear, but I suppose that's what to be expected when I've finally found a reason to let myself be vulnerable again.

Fingers crossed - "Il y a toujours l'espoir."

Okay, okay, so I fail epically at maintaining interest in writing about myself. I've actually been pretty overwhelmed by all the stuff that's been going on.

Ironically since my last post, I was hit by an SUV, and somehow managed to buy a second moped and not consider myself batshit crazy. I mean, if I'm going to get myself killed, I might as well have fun doing it, right? Plus it's much more fulfilling than developing a debilitating addiction to crack cocaine.

My gang, The Prophets of Doom [oh yes, we take ourselves sooooo seriously...], survived our first rally. Barely. It was hosted in Louisville, Kentucky by the illustrious Bourbon Bandits. Despite the fact that both of my mopeds were dead for the majority of the trip, I had a great time, met a lot of great people, and was thoroughly stoked to finally visit Kentucky [and see Indiana from across the river!]. Next up is the Hell's Satans' rally at the end of June, and maybe some forays up to Pittsburgh or Philly to ride with those cats.

My professional life has been pretty disappointing. I feel like my role at work is pretty irrelevant, and I know I'll be out of here within a year. I was already given an "official written final warning" about "un-excused lateness," which is crap because a) everyone here shows up late, and b) since my old supervisor left, my new supervisors have done pretty much everything to keep me out of the loop. So, if I can get my work done at noon instead of coming in early for no reason, I don't see the problem. I am the only arts technician in an organization full of corporate suit-types, and no one really has the chutzpah to say what's really on their minds. I mean, I'm pretty well-acquainted with passive-aggressive tendencies, but this place is ridiculous...

Reenacting has kind of taken a back-burner for the moment. With car repair, and various fines and fees popping up every couple of weeks, it's hard to get back in that mindset of attending events. Plus, there's been a bad case of The Drama going around the reenacting community, and I'm trying to keep my head down until it starts being fun again. Miss all the people, though, so that's been kind of rough, but I need to get my personal life together before I can start rocking out with the hobby again.

Hm. Really that's about it. I mean, it's been a good couple of months since I've put down anything serious here, so sure, I'm leaving out the sordid details of the various bouts of carousing I've done with the friends, and my occasional sordid flirtations and flings, but really, who wants to hear about that?

I swear that mopeds are going to be the death of me, but I am too addicted to do anything but keep on riding them.

For serious - I was almost run over last night. I was taking a casual evening ride through the cold, testing out the feel of my seat which I had just lowered*. I had done a small loop on a pair of longer one-way roads that we regularly use to test our top-end speeds** and had just started making my way down a slower residential road with stop signs. I am very, very good at obeying stop signs. Unfortunately, this sets me up to assume that others are similarly proficient at remembering the most basic of parental aphorisms, "Look both ways before you cross the street."

Last night I was lucky. I made my way down the street, approaching an intersection where I had the right-of-way. An SUV was sitting at the stop sign. As is typical in The Fan, the SUV [which is too damn big a vehicle for this city anyways] poked its front end just a bit into the road to see around the densely-packed row of parked cars. Well, he moved to see, but this driver's optic nerve apparently failed to communicate to his cerebellum that there was still oncoming traffic.

I made eye contact with, what looked like in the dark, a dim-witted geriatric behind the wheel of the vehicle rolling casually into my path. Sadly, I had just finished hardwiring my bike the week before, eliminating silly extravagances such as switches and horns in favor of running lights and...no alarm-giving device. I went with what seemed like my next best alternative to a horn: Screaming a drawn-out "FUCK!" at the top of my lungs in his general direction whilst applying the brakes and swerving into the opposite lane. Thankfully there was no oncoming traffic, and I had taken the time to tighten my brakes a couple of days beforehand.

No one was hurt, but I'm sure I startled a few years off of the negligent bastard's life.


A certain someone's 1978 Puch Maxi-Luxe

*Low seats are full of win, and I'm definitely keeping it this way. Yes, it's harder to pedal from a dead stop, but I definitely feel more in tune with the bike, and more aerodynamic.

**This is not so impressive when you consider that maybe, just maybe we are barely pushing 30 mph...

So, no, I didn't die in the unheated new apartment. Yet. It's actually a pretty damn cool place.

Tonight I had my first real throwdown, and I was rather impressed that I, as a kind of social outlier, was able to get such as a vast amount of folks to pour through my doors. It's an uplifting feeling, but a fleeting one. In the moment, I thrive off of the attention, but after everyone is gone, I'm let feeling very confused.

Do people like hanging out at my abode because of me, or just because I dropped some bank into buying a bunch of booze?

It's purely a question out of insecure paranoia, honestly, but I can't help but ask myself the question. No doubt is it a role, but am I playing the Harry, or am I just a Falstaff?

Most likely the latter, and I'm okay with that, as long as people consider me more of the supporter and less of the fool. I feel I've been enough of that, and hopefully one day someone might take me seriously.

Done with the Shakespearean references - time for bed.

Ten degrees Fahrenheit tonight. If I freeze to death in my sleep, NO ONE WILL BE AROUND TO FIND ME.

Irrational fears of living alone.




I hope my heat works...

As of 11:33pm last night, I am officially moved out of my old apartment and into the new one. The last things to go were my ex-roommate's two extra televisions [why someone needed more than one TV in a two bedroom apartment is beyond me], a star-shaped piñata, and a day-glo pink re-re helmet with attached rabbit ear antennae. I ended up donating the TVs to my non-profit employer, and the helmet and piñata are taking up space in my car with the rest of the pack rat stuff I keep in my back seat. Fun.

I am relieved, but exhausted. Monday I had a bunch of awesome friends and family come help me cart my stuff across the way to the new place, and for that I am eternally grateful. After getting abandoned by the roommate, I've just felt so negative about my living space. It was really uplifting to have friends come by and kick my ass into gear. Thanks, guys! We concluded the evening with pizza and beer, and shot a movie in the empty apartment that will hopefully be posted within the week.

Yesterday I woke up in my new place after calling it quits around 3am. It was really cozy, except that the electricity hadn't been activated and I didn't have any heat. As soon as I got out of work, I went right back at it, this time focusing on getting Kelly's shit out. Laura was awesome and came by and took the mattress and box spring. I managed to take care of the rest: two ridiculously heavy platforms made out of 2"x8" for raising the bed off of her floor, a desk, a set of drawers, a table, and a full-length sofa. I almost had the sofa out on my own, but it got stuck in the stairwell. Fortunately, my neighbor was awesome and helped me twist it around so I could flip it into the street and into the alley.

I forgot to eat yesterday because I was so focused on finishing the job, so the only substantial food I've had as of now was the pizza from Monday night. I'm a little woozy, my muscles are shot, and I still need coffee.

And I need the over $300 that Kelly owes me for picking up her part of two months' worth of bills.

But I'm done, and ready to start a new existence on my own in my awesome new apartment. Things can [hopefully] only go up from here.

P.S. I will not have real internets until late tomorrow, so I have no idea what any of you are up to because I can't creepystalk your Facebook status updates. Just a heads-up.

This week seems like some game that life has been playing against me, and I keep coming up with the losing hand. Name an aspect, and I've either been trumped or had to fold.

This evening was the coup de grâce. I'd give in, but I don't have that option right now.

I've got to remember to stop trusting people.

I'm not sure if everyone has heard or not, but my living situation took a turn for the worse Sunday when I got home from working a show and found out my roommate had reached the breaking point and was removing herself from Richmond. Sunday was seven days away from when we had to be out of our current apartment and one day after I had spent an entire afternoon driving/walking back and forth across the city, scribbling numbers of two-bedroom apartments down on a scrap of notebook paper, and probably adding many more grey hairs to my scalp in the process.

So, after a brief half-hour of disabling panic in fear for my friend's health and for my own basic shelter, I was able to catch my breath, catch a drink, and sit down with a shortlist of options [thanks to Liz!] to help get me in the right mindset to nip this crisis in the bud. The momentum has been maintained, and I've actually found some pretty solid options:

- Patterson Ave. for $575 [right across the street from my current apartment!]
- Grove Ave. at Mulberry St. for $545
- Hanover Ave. at Vine St. for $600
- Park Ave. at Colonial for $650 [no utilities - boo]

There are a few others as well, but these are great prices and in great locations. They are also probably comparable to shoeboxes in size, but should this be the case, it will be a shoebox that I can call my very own - up until now I thought I'd be sharing living spaces until I died, and am really starting to look forward to not having to cope with roommates passed out in awkward places, mountains of dishes and empty take-out food containers, and animals defecating on my furniture and carpets.

It is a stressful situation, and will most likely make me very broke, but I think in the long run I will be much, much happier.

It's a good feeling to look back on a year and accept the fact that really, it was a hell of a good one.

The rest of Christmas, however, was pretty damn epic. Here's how it began for me.

My target departure time last Friday was 12:30, which I met, barely, as I was still buying presents for people I was going to see that evening. I made decent time right up until I hit the typical maelstrom that is D.C.'s mixing bowl, and from then on until I got north of Baltimore on I-83. My goal was twofold: To make it to northern New Jersey in record time, while taking the most convoluted route possible in order to not pay tolls. Hence, the 83 instead of the 95.

What can I say, I'm stubborn.

Anyway, as soon as the traffic let up, I cruised peacefully through the southeastern Pennsylvania farmland. All of a sudden, my control went nuts, and after a few seconds to determine that "Yes, this is a pull-over kind of emergency," I eased [more like "shuddered"] my car into the shoulder, which couldn't have been more than five feet wide. After carefully timing my exit into the six-inch space between me and the 75 mile-per-hour traffic, I was able to see that my left rear tire had practically disintegrated off of the rim. No hope of resurrection, whatsoever. Plus, I wasn't sure I had even a doughnut to limp to the next exit.

At least I wasn't, you know, dead or anything. Well, actually, the tire changing process almost cured that...the six inches of space between the car and the highway was all the space I had between me and speeding 18-wheelers while I operated the hopelessly ineffective winch jack. Despite the precarious position [and my recurring mantra of involuntarily attempting to recall statistics of motorists killed while changing tires] I managed to operate the jack from behind the car, untangle the mass of rubber that used to be my tire from the hub, and swap it out with the spare doughnut that I wasn't sure I had in the first place.

Of course, once that ordeal was accomplished, I found out that said doughnut was hardly inflated. Perfect. Fortunately for me, I was able to roll to the next exit which had a Wal-Mart Tire Center. I wasn't about to wait three hours with them to get a new one, but I did get re-inflated. I rode the rest of the four hours up to New Jersey with white knuckles, brazenly defying the "DO NOT EXCEED 55MPH" warning on my little spare by barely breaking 60.

I arrived in front of my grandparents house only 1.75 hours behind schedule with a simmering temper and a growling belly. I am a good grandson though, and not wanting to bring my troubles into my family's home, I sat in the car for a moment, took a few deep breaths to calm myself, and then slowly got out, and locked up. Smiling at the thought of mashed potatoes, Swedish meatballs, seeing my family, and drinking a cold beer, I walked a few steps through the snow to the kitchen door.

It was at this precise moment that I realized that I had just locked my god-damn keys in the car...

Definitely exhausted after the day's activities, and I'm not sure how much later I'll be up. I still have gifts to find for cousins, and it's gonna be a long trip tomorrow. New Jersey, hopefully New York for a day.

I'm not sure how I feel about the holidays this year. It feels kind of forced, like some of the magic has been sucked out of it. I'm getting the vibe that everyone really wants to see each other, and eat, and catch up, but without the burden of going through the whole gift exchange dance.

Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe I'm just too worn out to try and make sense of it.

So, I'm still working on the apartment craziness, but I HAVE GOOD NEWS!

1) Gone out a couple of times with a very cute and very fun person, and will hopefully see them again soon.

2) AFTER ALMOST FIVE GODDAMNED YEARS I AM FINALLY GETTING PROMOTED TO CORPORAL OF MARINES!!!

That is all. Carry on.

So I have lots of lights to gel before noon, but I'm sitting in my office, half-catatonic, waiting for my Rite-Aid brand Day-Quil to kick in before attempting to manhandle Source4's for the rest of the morning. In the meantime, I figured I'd give a brief rundown on what I've been up to over the past sixteen days...

- Matt came back to town from FSU!!!

- Two weekends ago was absolutely batshit crazy. That Friday I attended Ex-Boss's birthday throwdown for her and her other two triplets. Planned on ducking out early as I had drill in the morning, but as is typically the case with me, I closed down the bar. Woke up kind of late, rushed down to Norfolk, got a reckless driving ticket [which will definitely be contested], and worked in the Toys for Tots warehouse all day on about 2.5 hours of sleep. Drove back to Richmond for work, falling asleep at the wheel periodically, only to find that the event had been concluded successfully without me. Frustrating, considering I ALMOST WRECKED SEVERAL TIMES, and no one bothered to tell me that I didn't have to come back.

- Same weekend, Sunday, second day of drill wherein WE DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Got off early, thankfully, and was able to take a nap before dropping pies off for the moped gang's potluck, and trucking across the river to "bartend" for the roller derby bout. After tapping two kegs in about an hour and a half, I helped clean up the rink, and ran back to the potluck for awhile, then to the derby after party, and after-after party, and...well...woke up at someone else's house*.

- Tuesday: Holiday party at a co-worker's house, then Dustin's, then, yeah.

- Wednesday: First Mojo's night since Matt came back. One of the best nights I've had in a very, very long time. Not only was the regular crowd in attendance, but Noah and Jeff showed up as well. Deep life discussions ensued, punctuated with me jumping around to a bunch of different tables to catch up with all the other people that I happened to know [Marissa, Lauren V., Danielle from the Hotdamns, Lindsay from high school theatre, Maureen, Robert and Alison, etc.].

- Thursday: Made butterscotch haystacks and Swedish holiday cookies [which were mostly sugar and shortening, but really GOOD!] over at my mom and dad's house. Met up with Paul afterwards and we attacked Penny Lane, Banditos [which was scary loud], and finally closed down Caliente.

- Friday: Holiday party at work. Some cookies consumed [my baking skills are officially NOT BAD]. Babysat po-dunk dance company, before running over to the Hotdamns CD release party. I did sound, as usual, and the show was fantastic, also as usual. I donated the rest of my holiday cookies and none were left at the end of the show. We did a little bit of after-party, but everyone was pretty worn out, being that it was after 4am when we started to wind down.

- Saturday: Toy shopping with Liz, Art for Autism benefit, and Marissa's toy drive/birthday keg party [which I did (uncomfortably) in dress blues]. The week caught up with me a little early that night, so I didn't end up staying as late as I'd hoped.

- Sunday: Slept. A lot. Then went out and acted stupid with everyone at Star-lite. Took wayyy too many goofy pictures.

- Monday: Football and wings with Paul and Meg. Moped maintenance. Brief stop over at Empire.

- Tuesday: Woke up feeling like death sat on my throat. It is entirely my own fault for staying as busy as I've been. Lots of work for Glenn Miller Orchestra. Falafel and couch-ing for the rest of the evening.

- Today: Glenn Miller alllll day [just finished the first show]. Mojo's with the moped gang. Maybe taking part in a music video filming, I DON'T KNOW.

And, after recalling the first half of this month, it's no wonder I a) am kind of sick, and b) can't update the blog for the life of me. Anyway, I'm going to actually try and feed myself something besides coffee and cold meds before this next show starts up...

*This is happening again - I do not know why, although I am not complaining

So, I've stepped up my efforts towards finding an apartment by the beginning of January. I decided that my paltry salary doesn't afford me the opportunity to buy a house where I want to live, but I still want to sit down with a realtor, just in case I can find something within my price range that isn't in the boondocks or across the river.

So, Apartment-Hunting-Cover-My-Ass mode has already yielded several intriguing options:

1008 N. Belmont Ave.
- 2br.
- $725
- Pros: Still sort of in my awesome neighborhood, cheap, bigger front porch
- Cons: Closer to Broad St., farther from Carytown, still living with a dog

300 N. Lombardy St.
- 2br.
- $800
- Pros: All utilities included, in walking distance to pretty much everything including All-Star, lived in the neighborhood before, off-street parking, surrounded by VCU undergrads
- Cons: Far from the current neighborhood, still living with a dog, surrounded by VCU undergrads

1709 Hanover Ave.
- 1br.
- $575
- Pros: Pretty much the same pros as above, not living with dog, cheap for a Fan single
- Cons: Nothing really included, paying $200 more a month, never really lived alone before

So...some things to consider. There's another single as well going for $549, but I don't think it's exactly where I want to live. I don't know. Living by one's self is a scary prospect. I'm already pretty damn lonely, and paying a lot more to feel like that 24/7 is not the most uplifting of outlooks. Then again, I've never had an entire place all to my self, and I think that could be pretty empowering. I'd hate to stop living with Kelly, but getting a single apartment sounds intriguing. I don't know. We shall see.

Oh, and if anyone on the f-list knows any swanky 1 or 2 bedroom apartments opening up in the next month, let me know!

Спасибо! ^_^

I bought all the ingredients I need to [hopefully] make four cinnamon-carrot pies. I will be sharing them. Will you be one of the lucky recipients???

The sad thing is that despite the large amount of pies I will be hoarding, the highlight of my day will most likely end up being my finding a first edition of Sarah Vowell's Take the Cannoli at Chop Suey Tooey.

That's...pretty fucking pathetic.

Also pathetic: Not having a sink because my roommate thinks piles of dirty dishes caked in cheap take out food magically disappear once the pile extends a foot above sink level. That is fucking disgusting.

First off, this userpic isn't really indicative of my current mood, per se, but it's my first animated GIF that I made from a webcomic to which I am completely addicted. It is not great by any stretch of the imagination, but it still cracks me up.

Anyway. Friday was pretty typical, as far as Fridays go. I stayed at work late making sure the community theatre group got off to an okay start, bounced the hell out of there as soon as possible, stuffed my face with veggie food from Chipotle, and met up with Liz to keep Dana and Dustin company while they closed down All-Star Deli. Normally, there's some batshit crazy bike kids' party going on, but alas [as if to set the tone for the rest of the weekend] the various groups had dispersed into smaller fragments to find somewhere warm to hunker down for the first real "cold" weekend of the year. We ended up being mildly yet surprisingly amused by watching Tropic Thunder at Dustin's, followed by various other late-night cartoons until well after four in the morning.

Saturday was kind of a big deal, since our allied bike gang was hosting a rather last-minute scavenger hunt/race across the city. The race was starting in Oregon Hill, so Liz and I met up at the nearby 821 Café for what should have been a quick lunch. I had a very greasy, fresh, and delicious eggplant parmesean sub:



Unfortunately, the waitress kept forgetting to check back with us, so we were a little late getting to the jump-off point. By the time we arrived, most of the bikers had already scattered off to their various destinations, but we were still able to get "race cards" to commemorate the event, and got to look at the manifests that told each biker where to go. They had to make it to eight different locations, complete a task, get their manifest signed, and make it back to the starting point in order to win. The tasks included such things as:

- Eating an entire pack of raw ramen with a buttermilk and whiskey shot
- Beer bonging a concoction of Evan Williams, PBR, and chunky cranberry sauce
- Drinking a gorgonzola/steel reserve milkshake
- Racing around a city block wearing a helmet fashioned from a turkey carcass

Yeah. Not many people succeeded in this. Oh, and just for the record, Liz and I were only observers, thankfully.

After the race, everyone crossed over to Belle Isle and had a very successful bonfire inside the abandoned hulk of an old hydroelectric plant.

We called it an "early" night for a Saturday, and I was in bed by three. Despite being plagued by nightmares and weird dreams all night, I was up pretty early and vaguely motivated to be active on Sunday morning. This ended up in my taking a long drive out to northwest of the Greater Richmond area to the site of the 1864 Battle of Cold Harbor, where over the course of a single morning, 7,000 Union soldiers were mowed down by Confederate double-canister fire from well-prepared trenches.

Much of the battlefield is still in private hands, but what little is preserved gives an eerie look at trench life during the American Civil War. I took a 2.25 mile winding hike through the trenches on both sides, which was given a foreboding underscore by the intermittent rifle fire from nearby hunters. Part of the trail took me through a very well-preserved stretch of a Union reserve trench.



Upon entering this section, the hunters began volley-firing far to the southeast. I had "a moment."

History is so fascinating. I wish I knew people in town who really appreciated it. We have so much that most Richmonders really take for granted.

Wawa Cashier: Oh, so I see you're a lefty! Me too!

Me: Yup!

Wawa Cashier: I think I have a couple of those same scars, too.

Me: [confused] Oh, yeah, that one? [points to knuckle]

Wawa Cashier: Well, that's one of them.

Me: [scared] Heh! Well That's what I get for fighting friends in the back alleys of Richmond! [backs away]

Wawa Cashier: Well, I didn't get mine quite like that. Mine came from when I tried cutting off my fingers with a kitchen knife!

Me: [running out the door] Oh! Haha. That'll do it! Well, take it easy!

I don't think I bothered mentioning that I went to the big biannual World War One event two weekends ago. It definitely wasn't the greatest event I'd ever been to, but it was far from being bad. I'll take what I can get.

Pros:
- Captured 4 dudes
- Remembered to bring all my gear
- Not too cold at night
- Blew the allies away with my mad German immersiveness skillz
- Seeing comrades, and making new friends

Cons:
- Anything to do with Zienta
- Lost an original canteen somewhere in no-man's-land
- Got a bad [but fortunately not unmanageable] case of poison ivy on my arms and ankles
- Never enough bodies to hold the line

I even got a halfway decent picture taken!



Last weekend was sort of a blur, since it was the first weekend in a month that I didn't have any obligations, and I tried to cram too much stuff in. Ran around with the All-Star crew on Friday [and well into the next morning], and pretended I was cool at the Wonderland holiday bash on Saturday. Sunday I more or less puttered around the apartment making some fantastic vegetarian chili for Caroline's potluck. It turned out a little spicy, but great nonetheless. It also turned out all over the floor of my car...stupid unbalanced crock pots...

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to spend all day at the potluck, as I'd committed to running sound for my promoter's rockabilly birthday show. It was really fun, up until he got really drunk and had to leave, which I guess was a clue for the headlining band to think they could act like complete assholes and reinvent how much they should've gotten paid and citing "breach of contract" and all that shit. The situation pissed me off so much that I just wanted to leave after I'd finished cleaning up, which meant that I didn't even bother trying to ask for my cut of the door. Great. Another night of busting my ass for nothing.

Man, salsa can be a really healthy snack, and I had no idea how easy it was to make. I mixed and matched a couple of recipes from online, got supplies at the store, and went at it. Here's what I came up with.

- 2 Medium/Large Tomatoes, Diced
- 1/2 Vidalia Onion, Diced
- Fresh Cilantro, Minced [I used about a handful and a half, but this a "to taste" kind of thing]
- 2 Cloves Garlic, Minced
- Chipotle Chilis*, Diced [Recipes all said 2, I probably used 6 or 7 - this is also a personal preference thing]
- Salt, pepper, red pepper flakes to taste

*The store I went to did not have fresh chipotles, so I had to settle for a little can of La Costeña chipotles in adobo sauce. Yes, I had to cheat, but using the sauce with the chipotles added a lot of kick and dark coloration that made the dish really pop.

If you can mix and blend all these ingredients by hand, you get all my respect. I am lazy, and threw all of this into a blender. Be careful with the speeds you use - the salsa can go from "chunky" to "soupy" really quickly. I am blender-ignorant and did not know this and ended up with a finely pureéd salsa. Not a bad thing, but a little texture is a good thing. Once you get the consistency you're looking for, taste test, and modify ingredients accordingly until you're happy with the flavor - making salsa is not a precise art! I recommend fresh lime juice as well, but I was dumb and forgot to grab one for this particular concoction.



x-posted to wearewellfed

Yesterday, I fell underneath a deluge of technology.

1) I jumped on the bandwagon and finally enabled texting on my cell phone plan. YES, THIS MEANS EVERYONE CAN SEND ME TEXT MESSAGES NOW PLEASE.

2) As an extremely late birthday/early holiday/whatever present, I bought myself a Nikon S550. YES, INTERWEBS, I CAN NOW TIE UP YOUR BANDWIDTH BY MAKING YOU LOOK AT PICTURES OF THE STUPID THINGS I DO.

Hooray.

Unfortunately, I haven't set the sucker up to upload crap onto the compy yet, but - oh-ho! - you just stand by. These stupid weblogs of mine just might become not just drivel, but drivel WITH ILLUSTRATIONS!

Speaking of drivel, I'm definitely "in like" with someone right now, but I'm getting hung up on one of those classic dating quandaries concerning how/when/why/et cetera I should try and call/see/contact said someone. Too much contact, and you come off smothering, demanding, or even creepy. Too little, and it looks like you're not interested, or just a callous jerk. Weirdness.

These are also things I am probably WAY over-thinking, which tragically I tend to do far too often.