Sculpin

I’m in the market for a new massage therapist, preferably in the U District, Lake City, Ravenna, Maple Leaf, Fremont, or Roosevelt neighborhood. Know anybody?

The LMT I’ve been seeing (not our friend Desolina; somebody else) has some practices that I find questionable. And, to get woo-woo for a minute, massage is an exchange of energies that’s too intimate for me to feel comfortable with an LMT whom I do not feel to be of solidly good character. Nothing really despicable has happened, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to go back.

Updated to add: Thanks, folks! I’m good for now.

My very wussy little leg presses last Monday threw my knee tendons into an uproar on Tuesday, and they’re still roaring a bit. So next week I’ll see my doctor and, I hope, get a physical therapy plan. (Thank you, generous health insurance!) Maybe I’m being overconservative here, but I suspect that it’d be a good idea to have some knowledgeable person help me rebuild strength and joint stability in my weak leg.

I knew that leg was weak and unstable, but damn, I thought I could manage a few sets of 15 pound presses. I thought wrong. (Desolina the Myofascist is probably nodding sagely right now.)

Anyway, I’m going to be exceedingly boring for a while and probably won’t have much to post. I’m distracted.

Josh and I joined Mieko’s last week. I promptly got a minor flu-like bug and haven’t been as active as I’d like to be, but Josh has been working out three times a week. Yay Josh!

I’m not wholly sure of this, but I think right now I’m not flirting too hard with The Crash if I keep my heartrate under 120 (perhaps under 115 would be better) and the duration under half an hour, assuming a quiet day overall with much resting. There’s definitely a heartrate-crash correlation. I’ll have to experiment more when I’m entirely post-bug. Probably will also need to up the antioxidants and eat those antioxidant-rich vegetables. (We’ve got lots of homegrown purple potatoes!)

My friend Adrian wants to build a 3-foot-long shoulder-mounted mbira with a sight. He’s calling it a mbirazooka. Damn, he’s cool.

“I have to tell you, things are good. I am . . . I am . . . Whooo! . . . I am very good. I just returned from a walk and . . . HA! Things. Are. Good. I’ve got a bowl of hard kibble with some soft stuff mixed in. My name’s on the bowl! I am passionate about this lamb-and-rice recipe. What’s been going on? HAHA! I’m so in love with this bitch! HAHAHA! I can’t . . . I’m so . . . I can’t restrain myself. HAHAHAHAHAHA! We met at the park. She was in the run for little dogs . . . ’cause she’s, well . . . HA!”

From “My Dog Is Tom Cruise” by Noah Baumbach, The New Yorker 2005-07-25

In line at the grocery store today, Josh wondered aloud about the various Brad/Jen/Angelina stories that were in the tabloids on display. And I was, I regret to say, able to inform him. You know how I know this crap? Because I run across it as I’m engaging in America’s new favorite pastime: reading about the madness of Tom Cruise. As in today, at Slate, where I read:

During a visit with fiancée Katie Holmes’ mom and dad, “Tom apparently got excited while explaining Scientology and questioning Catholicism,” Star reports. “Naturally, this would upset the Holmeses.”

I bet.

At the farmers’ market today I ran across an eggplant that bears a striking resemblance to Richard Nixon:

My extra-lame snapshottery skills couldn’t do it justice, so I asked Josh to take some pictures of it.

Soon I will cook Eggplant Nixon and eat his brains. Yesssss. My plan is to make a version of makeua oop, a Burmese dish that involves frying a spice mixture, adding vegetables, and steaming it all without added water. The original recipe uses dried shrimp, which will never be in my home again — oh, man, the smell, ugh, yuk, no. It also uses ground pork, but I’m happy with turkey here. No meat at all is also a good option, and probably better than using fake meat in this dish.

Eggplant Oop
(adapted from Hot Sour Salty Sweet)

3 Thai bird chiles or a roughly equivalent number of other hot dried red peppers — I use at least 5 homegrown cayennes.
1 large shallot
5 cloves garlic
a tomato
1/4 cup ground turkey (optional)
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1 1/2 pounds of eggplant
salt
vegetable oil

Soak the peppers in warm water for about fifteen minutes. Mince the shallot and garlic, chop the tomato roughly, and slice the eggplant into 1/4″ slices.

Chop the softened peppers. Put the shallot, garlic, and peppers in a blender (or mortar) with a little salt and blend to a paste; you’ll probably need to add a little soaking water. Add the tomato and process again.

Put a large pot with a tight-fitting lid over high heat and bring a little oil to a shimmer in it. If you’re using ground turkey, brown it now. Add the spice paste and turmeric and cook, stirring, for a couple of minutes. Then turn the heat to medium and add the eggplant. Stir it up, then cover tightly.

Cook this, stirring about once every five or ten minutes, for forty-five minutes to an hour or until the eggplant has collapsed into a shapeless mass.

Serve warm or room temperature.

The authors of Hot Sour Salty Sweet suggest that this is very good — if very nontraditional — as a spread on bread. They’re right.

I was reading Georgette Heyer’s Charity Girl a few weeks ago. I have no idea whether its silly plot made any sense at all, because I was so distracted by the wonderful language.

If you were in one of these novels, here are some things you might call somebody you didn’t like:
skitterbrain, slibberslabber here-and-thereian, scattergood, shuttlehead, gudgeon, noddicock, souse-crown, snivel-nose, muckworm, lobcock, pudding-heart, rabshackle, gull-catcher, looby, sapskull, rake-shame, scaly scrub, hog-grubber, flea-mint.

Incidentally, a “gudgeon” is (among other things) a sculpin, and seems to be Regency-ese for “gullible dork”.

The word “hog-grubber” led me to the 1737 Canting Dictionary, which reports that a hog-grubber is “a close-fisted, narrow soul’d sneaking Fellow.”

It’s happened so many times that I don’t even bother trying anymore. I wrap up my donation in plastic so there’s little risk of it being harmed by the elements. I tape the provided yellow sign to it. I put it out on the curb by 7 in the morning. And then at the end of the day I bring it back in again, because the goddamn NW Center truck has not picked it up.

I used to call them to say, “Hey, where was your truck?!”; eventually I gave up on even that. My donations go elsewhere: thrift stores, the wonderful Sharehouse, the Jubilee Women’s Center, even the NW Center’s own clothing donation bins.

Inspired by the news that I could stop getting the weekly fistful of ADVO flyers in the mail, I’ve gone on another round of de-junk-mailification around here, and that includes the junk from the NW Center. They may not pick up our household’s donations, but they’ll send us beg letters and pester us with recorded phone messages. How about they go away?

So today I called the NW Center to say, “No more phone calls! No more mail!” and very briefly explained why I’m not interested in donating to them. I had to call back after the sighing, dull-voiced receptionist transferred me to customer service — after a couple of minutes of being on hold there, my call was disconnected. (Are these people completely useless?) With any luck, the message will get to somebody who can take me off the lists.

If you too would like the NW Center people to take you off their lists — phone, mail, or both — you can try calling them at (206) 285-9140.

One of my mom’s friends, Jacqueline, has been confined to a wheelchair for thirty years or so. Doctors thought she suffered a spinal cord injury in a car accident.

A couple of weeks ago, Jacqueline had surgery to remove a brain tumor.

She can walk now.

Not very well, of course — her legs have atrophied. Still, she takes a few steps each day under the guidance of her physical therapist.

Everybody’s dumbfounded.

The Future of Ice, notes and sources:
“To educate yourself about climate change, its causes, and how it affects us biologically and culturally, is simple, and there is no excuse for ignorance.”

“Harper’s Index”, July 2005:
“Tons of CO2 emissions that would be replaced each year by a proposed windmill project on Long Island: 235,000.
“Tons produced each year by a single jumbo jet making a round-trip trans-Atlantic flight daily: 210,000.”

The Future of Ice, xiv:
“My six-month chronicle took me to both ends of the earth: to the tip of Tierra del Fuego, where I found winter in summer, and to the top of the Spitsbergen (Svalbard) archipelago, where winter was giving way to spring, then returning again.”

Northwest Environment Watch, referencing the International Panel on Climate Change:
“Air travel has a disproportionate short-term effect on climate. Carbon dioxide has the same effects on the climate no matter when or where it is injected into the atmosphere. But other aircraft emissions—such as nitrogen oxides—have potent, climate-changing effects because of the elevation at which they are released. Over the short term, they more than double the effects of the CO2 alone. Over time, these other pollutants disappear, but the carbon dioxide remains aloft capturing heat for decades.”

The Future of Ice, p. 178:
“We hear about the fragility of the upper atmosphere, how sensitive it is to environmental changes…. In a few hours we’ll be flying back to London.”

Dr. Patrick Minnis, NASA News, April 27 2004:
“Increased cirrus coverage, attributable to air traffic, could account for nearly all of the warming observed over the United States for nearly 20 years starting in 1975, but it is important to acknowledge contrails would add to and not replace any greenhouse gas effect.”

The Future of Ice, notes and sources:
“Every conversation we can have about the beauty and vigor of the world and the damage being done to it is vitally important.”

Emmeline Pankhurst and others:
“Deeds, not words.”

The Future of Ice, biographical note:
“She divides her time between California and Wyoming.”