Happy Birthday, Tim!

Dang, I was lucky to grow up with such an awesome brother. I'm so proud of you and all you do.

Scenes from the Midland Trail, US 60, West Virginia

All of the following photos were taken within an hour's drive from my house. Damn, I live in a beautiful place.

A Clandestine Affair: Charleston's Underground Kitchen

Last weekend, I experienced yet another first in my life. I paid money to eat a mystery dinner with +/- 29 people I'd never met before in a secret location.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: The Underground Kitchen.

Charleston's Underground Kitchen describes itself as "...a giant, infrequent dinner party involving strangers and amateur cooks who like good food and don’t mind making a few new friends." Who on earth would not be intrigued by this claim?

I learned about Underground Kitchen from the blogosphere, of all places. Being a newcomer to Charleston, I've poked around on the Internet quite a bit over the last couple months. I've found that the best way to learn about a city's offerings is to find the local bloggers. While perusing a local blog aggregator one evening, I noticed the term "underground kitchen" popping up in a couple different spots, and my interest was immediately piqued. Like a bloodhound, I followed the scent right to The Underground Kitchen's website. After reading how it worked and admiring the site's design (a well-designed website goes a long way with me), I wasted no time signing up for the invite list.

Within a couple days, I received an e-mail from The Underground Kitchen announcing the date for their next affair. "I should do this," I thought. Mom has been telling me I need to get out and meet people, and she's never given me bad advice. I've known this as well, but really haven't felt up to it. The Underground Kitchen, I decided, would be just the catalyst I needed. So, I did the following:

1. Paid $40.00 of my hard-earned scratch to someone I'd never met, let alone heard of, via PayPal.
   
2. Immediately wondered if I'd just given $40.00 of my hard-earned scratch to a pimply-faced Belarusian teenage genius with an affinity for illegal-in-most-countries Internet porn and pirated MP3s.
   
3. Shrugged and waited for further instruction.
   

Between the time I paid for my reservation and received the e-mail disclosing the supersecretninja location, I told anyone and everyone who would listen about what I had just signed myself up for. Everyone's reaction can be summed up as follows: "Wow, really? That sounds SO cool. Wait... this is in Charleston?" Having never been to anything like this, I wasn't sure how to accurately describe it. "Well," I'd say, "I think it's kind of like a rave, without the candy kids. Or like Eyes Wide Shut, without the whole freaky, masked orgy thing going on*. I won't know where it is until a couple days before, and I won't know who will be there or what we'll be eating until I arrive." Needless to say, everyone I talked to about it was intrigued.

Fast-forward to last Saturday, when I pulled into the parking lot of Charleston's Habitat for Humanity ReStore with a chilled bottle of wine and a major case of the butterflies. A couple days before the event, I was talking with Bridget on the phone and nervously telling her that I felt certifiably insane for making my first social outing in Charleston a mystery dinner party with 30 strangers. She stated in her calming, matter-of-fact way, "Dinner with 30 strangers is a lot less scary than dinner with three strangers." A genius observation, and exactly what I needed to hear. As I walked to the door I chanted in my head, "30 is less scary than three. 30 is less scary than three." And I was golden. I even squashed the urge to declare, "Fidelio!" as I made my presence known.

I walked in to a dark-ish warehouse, atmospheric in its string-lights and candle-lit dimness, the hum of fans (it was a hot evening and the venue was not air conditioned), laughter and various conversations, and the most amazing smells ever. I was greeted by one of the chefs and introduced to the other, who was feverishly chopping what looked like cilantro. My first impression of the non-chopping chef was that this guy seems like he never meets a stranger, and I felt immediately at ease. Both of these guys were genuinely friendly, despite being in the throes of cooking for 30 people in a warehouse. These people seemed cool. I was not going to need my brass knuckles after all.

After putting my name on a sticker and a place card, I went over to the wine chilling station and just started talking. I'm an interrogator's dream come true... when I get nervous, I talk. So talk I did. And I met some very cool people in the process. I'm horrible at remembering names, but was able to piece some names together with websites and blogs I'd visited or people I'd seen on Twitter. At that moment I realized, once again, what a trip the world wide web is.

Dinner was a study in social engineering; place cards had been strategically set to ensure that people who knew each other well were not seated directly next to each other. I was seated in a wonderful little pocket of guests, as I'm sure the entire table was. The people in my immediate vicinity were warm, welcoming, friendly and excellent conversationalists. Several topics were breached, and nobody's delicate sensibilities were offended, no insults were hurled, nobody burst into tears. I felt very comfortable and happy among what felt like were like-minded individuals.

And then there was the food. Let's talk about food. Okay, so these cats refer to themselves as amateur cooks... and I guess in the literal sense, they are. Do not mistake amateur for average, though, or even just pretty good. The food they prepared was excellent on a technical level, but more importantly, it was creative. Flavorful, inventive and freakin' delicious. The courses were as follows:

• Appetizer: Curried Chicken Salad with Walnuts & Cranberries and Curried Pea Dip
  
• Salad: Roasted Corn & Orzo Salad with Goat Cheese and Ginger/Tomatillo Sauce
  
• Entree: Grouper with Zucchini Cakes and Stewed Tomatoes & Olives
  
• Dessert: Chilled Pear Soup with Walnuts and Honey (I think)
  

A few things. First, the curried pea dip looked kind of like guacamole but I could not, for the life of me, place the flavor. It wasn't guacamole. Not even a hint of avocado, and a completely different consistency. Now that I know it was peas, I'm like, "DUH! PEAS!" When it's not easy to immediately place a flavor, you know something's been made both creatively and skillfully. Second, I love goat cheese. I love ginger. I love tomatillo sauce. NEVER would I think to put all three together. Yet, it worked magically.

I managed to take a few snaps, before the wine and food buzz really kicked in and I felt too jolly to be taking photos. Behold:


Our top secret location


People who actively seek out dinner parties at classified locations


Beautiful and tasty vittles

So, to sum up, The Underground Kitchen is a must-do if you like mystery, intrigue, good people and amazing food. The aspect of raising awareness for Habitat for Humanity was a really cool angle as well. Local readers, you have to try it. Just don't secure your reservation before I secure mine. And out-of-state friends and family, if one of your visits coincides with an installment of The Underground Kitchen, you can bet your sweet ass(es) I'll be taking you with me. Every city would benefit from something like this.

Finally, read about the evening from the perspective of the UGK Maestros themselves. I love, love, love that they gave a nod to Bridget's sage words of nerve-calming advice (a story I repeated several times throughout the evening with my rosy-cheeked, wine-buzzarded self).

Not even remotely scary... absolutely, deliciously cool. Right here in Charleston.

Edited to add: Local restaurant critiquing crew, Fork You Blog, have posted their take on the experience at Fork You Blog. It's a fun read.

*I can not vouch for what may or may not have happened after I left.

Show Me The Way

I never met a gadget I didn't like.



If this ain't love, I don't know what is.

Slutty Makeup Bea Arthur Ativan Before I Got Fat

Ah, I love Flickr stats. My favorite feature shows search terms that called one or more of my photos. Most of them? I know exactly which photo would have turned up in the search. Others? Er, not so much. Here is a rundown of some of the more amusing search terms that, for reasons obvious or otherwise, turned up some of my snaps.

• Homecoming 1991


• Alabama Jesus


• Crinoline


• Jimmy Carter


• Drag Shows


• Sandwich


• Before I Got Fat


• Makers Mark Bourbon House


• 1990 Fashion


• Bea Arthur


• Slutty Makeup


• Santa Claus Lap


• Toes (yikes --ed)


• Ativan


• Cramped Space


• Bar Ladies Rooms


• Cardboard Tubes


• Shrimp Float


• Mr. Six


• French Busker


• Red Velvet Twinkies


• Red Sandals


• Scenic Dirt Road


• Kitchen Dramatic


• Submarine Robot


• Barefoot Welcome Center


• Frank Lloyd Wright Chair


• Barefoot Overalls

Were I to be judged by these queries, one might think I am a spambot. Alas, I'm just a girl who takes pictures of things she finds interesting.

What's most interesting to me? This is my all-time most-viewed public photo:



I wonder if there is something about this old, run-down theater I should know. Hmmm...

On Glass

"Glass breaks so easily. No matter how careful you are."
-Laura Wingfield
From Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie
Part 4, Scene 7

On Hotel Living

One more thing to cross off my list of things to do in life: Live in a hotel.



Living in this hotel has turned me into such an old lady. I'm a major grandma up in here. I get home from work, I watch the local news, I watch NBC nightly news, and then I watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!. By the time Jeopardy! is over, I am at a nodding-off point. I get up, putter around, and then fall asleep with the TV on. Watching TV in bed is a HUGE luxury for me. Having a TV in the bedroom is something I've always been fiercely against but am often tempted by, so I am enjoying it while it lasts.

That said, I'll be glad when it's over. The movers will have my stuff up here on Friday or Saturday and I'll get settled into my new dwelling. At the same time, though, it's been pretty cool to be here. It's forced me to unwind during my off hours. Having someone bring me clean towels and wash my dishes never gets old. I have a dedicated housekeeper here, and she is a living doll. She leaves Banjo! little treats and leaves me neatly-stacked pyramids of Hershey's chocolates. One day she even left a toy for Banjo! accompanied by a very sweet hand-written note.



And, yes, Banjo! totally loves it. Housekeeper Terry will be getting a huge tip.



The downside to the hotel lifestyle is that every so often there are guests who are loud all night long making for a night with little to no sleep. Also, it's expensive. In case anyone was wondering, it's around $2,500 to stay at a Residence Inn for a month. Considering the circumstances, though, it's been worth it. I had time to find a cool place to rent in a neighborhood I'll be happy in, and I've been able to get some rest after months of craziness. I think the hotel is cheaper than the hospital for "tired people", which is where I was inevitably headed.

Come to think of it, I'm really going to miss this place...

Loitering at the Shop 'n' Rob

It appears when I made that wrong left turn in Smuteye, I ended up in Springfield.

Proof that I Spent My Early Years Wearing Leotards... Exclusively.

I am going to treat cyberspace to some old photos I found whilst putting stuff away last week.

Wake up, it's 1984

First: Halloween party pictures. My mom loved to throw parties. I always had a birthday party, but the big deal party for me was the Halloween slumber party. Mom would seriously go all out, making crafty decorations and snacks and fabulous costumes for me. She wasn't a subdued domestic goddess by any means, she was more about having fun and flexing her creative, free-spirited muscle. We didn't have much money, so she'd go out into vacant fields and pick dried thistles and spray paint them black to make spiders which got hung from the ceiling... stuff like that. She worked it.

Here we are in fourth grade, late 1983. Can you spot me? Trivia: All the pottery on the mantle was created by my dad.



And, the following year: late 1984. Hellcats start young, oh yes.



Now let's ROCKIT into 1984/85. To boost my low self-esteem, mom enrolled me in a local drill team. We were a parade-marching drill team. I remember marching to the theme song from Simon and Simon quite often. We also did holiday performances.

Anyway. The 1984 summer Olympics had gone on in Los Angeles earlier that year. Maybe it was because I was just a kid, but it seems to me they were a really big deal that go-round. I remember desperately wanting to be Mary Lou Retton, but was too tall to be a gymnast. So, I got dance lessons instead. Being that my only other aspiration was to be a Solid Gold Dancer (Darcel was my favorite), I was cool with that.

The Supreme Team was the name of my drill team and we had a standby routine that we'd do in competitions. We also had a Christmas routine, and a backup routine to Yaz's Situation. I still love that song. The standby routine was to a song called Junku by Herbie Hancock. Yes, a bunch of little white girls from suburban SLC were groovin' to Herbie. The song was used as a theme for certain events in the Olympics earlier that year, and is along the same lines of the more commonly-known Rockit (for which the video STILL gives me the creeps). But yeah, Herbie was and still is the man... it just wasn't until much later in life that I realized just HOW COOL he is after getting into Headhunters-era stuff.

But I digress. The photos below are from a Christmas show. Here is some more trivia: The mall we are performing in is the same mall my uncle was shot in last February. I'd never have imagined that 22 years later, someone I loved dearly would be shot, left for dead and paralyzed a mere few yards from where I was trying to concentrate on not screwing up in front of a crowd of Christmas shopping Salt Lakers. It's very heavy to think about how randomly and unexpectedly life can change.

Here, we are dancing to Jingle Bell Rock. I hated that song then, and I hate it to this day. But I did not let that affect my unwavering commitment to fierce jazz hands. I mean, really. Look at all those other lackadaisical, limp-wristed jazz hands. Mine were TIGHT.



And these are from the Herbie Hancock routine, complete with props (a coat hanger bent into a circle and wrapped in tinsel) and buck teeth that could put anyone else's to shame:





Man, I tell you, I lived in those costumes. Like, I would play in the front yard in them. And people would probably drive by and see the skinny, buck-toothed child spinning around on the grass in sequins and ballet slippers and just shake their heads. But I was oblivious... I had a weekly Solid Gold top 10 countdown to pretend to star in!

This glimpse into my past brought to you by an old shoebox and a mind-numbing case of procrastination. Good night.