A Well Wrought Blade

 
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the shit. In celebration of finding a real job, this is my gift to myself, a completely selfish indulgence: A 10 inch Viking chef's knife. It is a solid, hefty, balanced and wickedly sharp piece of steel. Its name is Ringil.
I received a Williams Sonoma gift card from my parents-in-law, and I got the Boos Block with it. I had wanted one for years, and it has surpassed my expectations. It's as hard as a rock.
Shameless materialism. It's fun to get what you want now and then. Many onions shall meet their destiny at Ringil's edge! (Howard Dean-style war cry)

The Cubicle Farm

(listening to a randomized mix of Sting's Nothing Like the Sun, Eric Clapton's Me and Mr. Johnson, Oysterhead's The Grand Pecking Order and Lyle Lovett's Live in Texas)

I'm sipping a glass of Black Box Merlot, a very nice, mouthfilling, velvety, dry, plummy wine. My wife is away on business. The house is pretty blah without her. Comfortable and pleasant enough, but utterly unmotivating and rather boring. I need time to myself, but not too much. This is too much. The sky is grey and Tropical Depression Jeanne approaches. I don't really feel like going out to see a movie; it's just not exciting enough to get me out of the house. I have the History Channel, the Food Network and my jolly new Star Wars Trilogy DVD set to keep me safe from the perils of industriousness and ambition. Speaking of which, there's the topic of work:

I'm still happy, but I'm adjusting. I've been training and squeezing as much information into my factory-second brain as possible, but there is no substitute for time spent on the job-- I am assigned to a project which is in a period of major change. My coworkers and I have a very abbreviated time frame in which to become functional, and it is a bit daunting.

Having drained to the lees the rhapsodic cup of shit-job escape, I have come to the grim realization that I still have to go to work.

I have not written very much here lately; I have used the term 'sedated' to explain it. I hope it passes. Perhaps I'm just using up my meagre brain power at work. Perhaps it's all still new and challenging, and I need to be a little bored and fidgety in order to be creative. Cubicles don't bring out the seething lust for life in people, if I may permit myself a generalization.

Nevertheless, I'm very glad to have the job that I have. I just can't seem to rid myself of my disdain for the very idea of a job. So much fascination, pleasure and satisfaction can be gained from non-work activities. It naturally follows that one could accomplish more of those in the absence of a job (but with money magically coming out of your nostrils). Here are some examples of what I've done lately in spite of my laziness:

1)Making prosciutto, scallion and ricotta filled ravioli
2)Toasting various sandwiches on my iron griddle , and enjoying the fact that the wife enjoyed them:
-pastrami on potato bread, with parmiggiano on the buttered side, which yields a golden-brown and tasty crust
-Albacore tuna salad with fresh cilantro from the garden, on home made wheat bread with kosher dill pickle slices
-A Quesadilla filled with chopped pastrami, ricotta and hummus (sounds weird, but it turned out to be rather tasty)
3)Writing tasting notes on the wonderful beers that my brother-in-law sent me for my birthday (beers which I could not purchase in North Carolina because of the backward and idiotic 6% alcohol limit)
4)Washing dishes to my obsessive-compulsive standards of cleanliness (in order to maintain some order in my not-quite-as-big-as-could-be-wished kitchen)
5)Ordering and impatiently waiting for my Viking knife from CutleryandMore.com

I'm not exactly Mother Theresa. I consider myself a bum, but I'll make you a hell of a sandwich.

My long-lost and eminently excellent friend Sean sent me some Tahitian vanilla beans, a windfall from his honeymoon. Some home made ice cream will hopefully result from this. 

 

Westvleteren Abt 12 (Yellow Cap)
A Quadrupel brewed by Brouwerij Westvleteren (Sint Sixtus Trappistenbdij) in Westvleteren, Belgium

Thanks, Tim.
Here is my review, as I posted it on BeerAdvocate.com:

The color is deep mahogany with a fine, palamino-colored head which dissipates to lacy remnants fairly soon.

The nose is somewhat restrained, but it contains sugar, oranges, banana, and croissants.

The palate is smooth with an abundance of flavor. I get toffee, brown sugar, banana, nutmeg, chocolate, quinine and fresh grapes.

The finish is long. The bitterness, reminiscent of quinine or campari, becomes slightly more prominent as the sip of beer fades. It does not, however, overexpress itself.

This beer has extraordinary balance and complexity. It does not hit you over the head; it just states itself perfectly with nothing out of place. I equate it with Veuve Cliquot La Grande Dame.

[ serving type: bottle ]
appearance: 4
smell: 4.5
taste: 5
mouthfeel: 4.5
drinkability: 4

overall: 4.55

Sunday afternoon. The sun is shining, and the breeze is fresh and cool. Summer is on its way out. The day reminds me of the way it is on Thanksgiving in San Diego. Lindz and I are sipping wine, listening to Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and David Gray's "New Day at Midnight," and we are grazing as we read (I'm reading French Chefs Cooking by Michael Buller). Earlier, I made pita chips and we ate those with hummus. Then, (pictured here) I put together some cantaloupe, prosciutto, balsamic vinegar and a bit of black pepper. The wine is A Mano Primitivo. We nibbled some herb crusted buffalo mozzarella next.
All the while, my soup is simmering. It is the remnants of a roast chicken (I used the technique from The Best Recipe, a Cook's Illustrated cookbook), some onion and garlic, some fresh rosemary from my potted herbs, a whole star anise, some pinot grigio, some coarse kosher salt, some fresh black pepper, and some water. We'll eat it sometime this afternoon.
This is wonderful.

Tasting Notes and a Poem

(listening to Björk's Homogenic)

Glenfarclas 12-year old Single Malt Scotch Whisky, a gift from my excellent wife on the occasion of my thirty-second birthday:
Color: that of a penny which is a few years old
Nose: Sherry, the inside of a brand new acoustic guitar, alcohol, hints of spice
Body: Firm, slightly tongue-coating in an oily way
Palate: Burnt sugar, peat, sherry, honey
Finish: Fairly lengthy, oaky toasty notes and an overtone of Lapsang Souchong tea emerges.

This poem was written in Michigan, for those of you reading in less autumnal environs:

Fourteen Lines of Fall

by Christopher Kueffner

September 1993

The earth whispers, quieting

down for a sleep. A crisp breeze sighing

is the sound of her bedtime prayers. Shining

slant and for fewer hours, the sun starts sliding

south and west, gilding the fruits ripening.

The leaves on the trees are rioting

in fiery colors before they fly and swing

through the air on their way to the whitening,

frosted ground. I must ask why this thing

called Fall steals summer, why it brings

cold, why it takes the leaves from trees lately sighing

in a warmer breeze. But as I'm trying

to find an answer, it comes in a blinding

blizzard which covers and gives beauty to all this dying.

Tasting Notes

(listening to Mark Knopfler's superlative album "Sailing to Philadelphia")

On the occasion of my birthday (which officially is tomorrow), I received a box of various beers from my brother-in-law Tim. Tim is a lover and brewer of beer, and he filled the box with good stuff.

1)Homebrewed Stout. Tim did not supply a name for his brew, so I dub it Howell at the Moon Stout. It is excellent. It's better than many of the professionally brewed stouts I've had, be they on draft at a microbrewery or bottled. It was thick and black, but it was free of the chalky dirtiness that afflicts some heavy beers. It reminded me of Fuller's London Porter or Lost Coast 8 Ball Stout. It's well balanced and drinkable, but profoundly satisfying. Brown sugar, smoke, leather, chocolate and toffee notes.

2)Jolly Pumpkin La Roja. This is from Dexter, Michigan. It is a Belgian style artisinal amber ale. 7.2% alc/vol. It is fantastic. I drank the whole 750 ml bottle myself, and I was pleasantly buzzed. A strong but balanced wave of brown sugar, smoke, sherry, peat moss and an elusive white-wine-like zing washed over my palate. Good heavens, what a beer. This one demands your attention as soon as you sip it.

3)Bell's Pale Ale. One of my favorites ever since the first time I had it in the early 90's. It's a nice cloudy, hoppy pale ale. I love a good bitter beer, and I love sour cocktails and single malt scotch. Everything needs a backbone.

4)Paulaner Salvator Doppelbock. A strong, brown sugary, buttery, toffeeish beer. I've had it before, and it deserves its place in Michael Jackson's Great Beer Guide.

More great beer awaits me in the box. Thanks, Kathy and Tim.

 

Labor Day Weekend. That's Mom and Ron holding hands around the grilled garlic/rosemary pork tenderloin and zucchini. The roasted red pepper risotto is in the foreground. The wine was the economical Yellow Tail shiraz. That is a real Guinness bar mat that Lindz borrowed from a bar somewhere. We'll return it some day.

The Flexible Orange Spatula of Death

Charlotte sent me some goodies for my birthday. This spatula is one of them. It works very well, and I'm a man who owns a bunch of spatulas. This thing gets under anything. Pictured here is a sublime tomato, from the Farmers' Market, on my massive iron griddle.
She sent me a colorful dishtowel, which is draped over my shoulder off-camera here. I'm never in the kitchen without a towel over my shoulder. I haven't explored the intricacies of my other items yet. She sent me a little bottle of pure orange oil; I might do some dessert crimes with that.

sedated

I am sitting in my cubicle, fifteen minutes before my shift starts.
I've been reading and training, not really doing anything with consequences.
I feel just a little sedated. I'm still getting used to this, and the arrival of my first payday here will probably put a little spring in my step.

My mom and Ron (I'm not sure what his official title is; boyfriend seems a bit silly) visited Lindsey and I over Labor Day weekend, and a good time was had by all. We did some shopping at the flea market and the Farmers' Market (I got some potted herbs). I cooked dinner for us, of course. I smashed up some garlic and fresh rosemary from my plant in the Giant Mortar and Pestle of Death. A bit of salt and pepper, oil and honey went in there too. I smeared this goo all over a couple of pork tenderloins. I roasted a huge red pepper in the oven. Lindsey used that in the risotto. I grilled the pork and some zucchini on the Broil-Mate 3844 of Death. Tasty.

My mom brought a bunch of stuff with her for me. I had left a bunch of stuff in my room when I moved to San Diego in 1995, including a lot of cd's. I have been reunited with my old Metallica, Tesla, Anthrax, Van Halen, Megadeth and much more.

Waldenstrom's Macroglobulinemia

(Listening to "The Great Radio Controversy" by Tesla, an album that sat collecting dust in Michigan since I moved away in 1995)

I'm trainin' like an oncology fool, yo. It's great, but I suppose it all happened a bit fast. The transition from "shitty" job to "real" job happened over the course of a weekend.

I mentioned some names of former Starbucks coworkers in a previous post (the one with the axe), and a couple of people have spotted it. Crazy. I wonder if Dana Berkoski, Kristi Gardner and Barb Brown will see it too (I think they're all married now)? Or Joyce Varino? Or Peter Lutz? Or Ki Min Sung? Or Jeff Shaffer? Eric Canfield? Damon Kilcoin? That crazy chick Vanessa who shaved her head? Shelley Bilden? Annabelle Dunnatte? Stacia Partin? Tina Givens?

Ah, the years I pissed down the drain at that company. All so I could remember some people through the sweet, gauzy haze of time. All that time spent shovellin' coffee for the man almost seems warm and fuzzy.

BAH!

A Couple of Things

1)No, I don't like Bush. I've ranted about him before here.
2)Billy, I don't understand your comment.
3)I'm not an unquestioning, rah-rah-rah Democrat. I'm unaffiliated.
4)I choose not to trivialize my views by putting them on a bumper sticker. I also do not drunkenly rant about them at a bar. I bitch and moan about things here.
5)It is never my intent to offend or insult people (except if I make it clear that I'm insulting them); my only aims are to vent and to stimulate thought.
6)Perhaps I lived in California too long, or perhaps I've spent too much of my life working low-paying, unsatisfying jobs. The result is that I tend to question the establishment.

Here's my Mom, bustling around my house. 

Dubyah

George W. Bush, you are a real piece of work. You woodenly read a corny speech written by your lackeys and expect to convince anyone to vote for you? You couldn't manage a convenience store, much less a country, you swaggering chimpanzee. Things would be better if there simply were no one in the Oval Office. We would do fine on inertia for a decade or so.

Speaking as objectively as possible, I make the observation that the Democratic National Convention was more positive in tone and eloquent in character than the Republican National Convention, which was negative in tone and bluntly vicious (particularly that backward hick Zell Miller), as well as evasive of the issues. Vice President Cheney, bloodless corporate manipulator that he is, can speak fairly well. He has gravitas, and he actually commands the English language, unlike his slack-jawed used-car-salesman of a boss. I actually think he would have been a better president because he's a CEO kind of animal.

Of course, all of the carefully screened people in attendance cheered on cue. The dead soldiers who mistakenly thought that their children were orphaned for a good reason did not applaud.

George W. Bush, you are a draft-dodging, falsely pious, dangerously proud fool. I hope you lose and crawl back into the bottle, asswipe.

Just Drive

I've said it before, and it needs to be said again. If you slow down to stare at a car accident, thereby backing up traffic, you should have your fucking eyes gouged out!

Other than that, everything is sunshine and lollipops.