This is NOT OK.

Joelle said in the early morning on July 14, 2007

posted from my cell phone

Girls Night Out

Joelle said at some point on July 13, 2007 while listening to illasounds - 66: Remembering John Coltrane

It’s GFI’s birthday this weekend, so we decided to go out last night to this new supper club / jazz venue downtown called Anthology.  They’ve only been open a month, but they have some pretty good acts coming through there, which usually require tickets anywhere from $15-$80 a pop, depending on the act and where you’re seated in the 3-tiered dining venue.  As much as the words “dinner theater” tend to evoke images of Tony & Tina’s Wedding, the set-up in there is primarily dining, with a bar and small cocktail lounge area to the front of the building. Also, the dining is a separate cost from the tickets, so be prepared for that if you decide to go.

Last night it was the house band playing, so there was no cover.  We got dolled up, had a glass of wine at home first then took a cab down to Anthology.  As soon as we walked in, we knew we were in love with it. The inside is just gorgeous and the music was great.  The house band was really solid and the female vocalist (whose name I can’t recall) had a smoky, soothing voice.  They played some of my favorites and from our seat in the lounge, we had a perfectly clear view of the stage.  There were also plasma TVs all over the place so you wouldn’t miss a thing.  During the breaks, they would play vintage jazz performances on the screens, too.  So awesome.

GFI and I decided to live on the edge last night, so we ordered a couple high-end appetizers just for kicks. We got Ahi tuna tartare with peddlefish caviar and a small potato “tot” thing.  (Like a tater tot, but the potatoes inside were whipped, like a bite-sized twice-baked potato.) It was a true amuse-bouche, as we had almost exactly 2 bites and it was gone.  Same for our second appetizer, which was a blue cheese quiche served with a cherry balsamic reduction, crumbled walnuts and a bit of pesto.  Again, about 3 bites… but so worth it.  Delicious.  I’m just a pseudo-foodie, but the real gourmands would really dig the dishes here, I think.

Then came the cocktails:  what was supposed to be just one glass of wine turned into 3 martinis, but hey, what can you do? We were celebrating!  I had something called a Kind of Blue, which was Stoli Bluberi, fresh lemon, fresh blueberries, a blast of soda and a bit of simple syrup served on the rocks in a collins glass. I can’t wait to make that one at home.  GFI had a Black and Blue Gimlet, which was gin, blackberries and blueberries muddled with a simple sugar and something else I can’t remember. It was a deep pink and really yummy.  The next round, I decided to stick with vodka and had a simple Cosmopolitan.  I rarely order those because bartenders tend to go heavy on the cranberry and I like my Cosmo’s really, really pale.  This one was a bit dark, but it was really smooth and I suspect they have some secret ingredient.  GFI had a momentary lapse of reason and ordered a Manhattan.  That conversation went a little like this:

GFI: Ooo… I want a Manhattan! I’ve never had one before!

Me:  *eyeing her* Dude, are you sure?  Do you drink whiskey or bourbon much?

GFI: Oh sure!  I was a tomboy. I used to drink whiskey sours. I can take it!!  (she says, as she bangs her chest like Celine Dion)

Me:  I see, so tonight you’re going to really grow a pair and have a Manhattan.  Okaaaaay…

GFI: Well, they did it on Sex and the City!

I laugh only because I avoid “brown liquor” quite often.  It has hangover written all over it, but GFI wanted a Manhattan and by god she was going to have one.  I really wanted to see how she liked it.  So, our drinks arrive and we toast.  The next thing I hear is…

GFI: Damn!  Now that’s some HOOCH!

I nearly fell off my very fancy barstool I laughed so hard.  Hooch. And you know, she was right.  I don’t care how elegantly you want to serve Jack Daniel’s, it’s hooch.  There’s something about the smell that says “I should be drinking this out of a barrel”.  Anyway, she asked me to take a sip to prove that it was, indeed, hooch.  The smell alone was giving me flashbacks of nights in my mid-twenties spent on my bathroom floor thanks to Southern Comfort (there’s nothing comfortable about Southern Comfort — they lie.).  But, I took the tiniest sip and declared that it would put hair on her chest, to which she replied, “No!!  On my nads!”

Now, when a beautiful, exotic woman like GFI in her little Audrey Hepburn dress declares “No!  On my nads!” with the more excited tone ever, it’s absolutely priceless.  Assuming she meant the nads she grew earlier by ordering the Manhattan in the first place, and not pre-existing nads I was unaware of, it was damn funny.  How many more times can I say nads?

Anyway, so we wrapped up the house band’s second set with a martini called After the Show, which was… uh… let’s see if I can remember… Oh! Stoli Vanil, Kahlua French Vanilla, Baileys, decaf espresso and a wee drizzle of chocolate inside the glass.  I’m not one for dessert martinis or creamy drinks, but this was light and delicious. The perfect capper to our evening.

But wait! There’s more!

While out waiting for our cab to go home, GFI decides we’re going to Mr. A’s to have a glass of wine on the terrace so we can look out over the whole city.  We’d both gone there as kids with our parents, so it was sort of nostalgic and really, the view from there any time of day, especially at night, is just breathtaking.  We had the wine steward order us some fancy wine, which we sipped, took in the view and mocked the parade of Russian models strutting around with their bitchy mom who sounded like Donatella Versace. 

Ahhh… good times.  Anyway, if you’re ever in San Diego, you like tasty martinis and a really decent house band, go check out Anthology. Sara Gazarek will be there at the end of the month for two nights at reasonable ticket prices, if you’re interested. 

Girl on Film

Joelle said at some point on July 12, 2007

I think I need to take a photography class. I am beginning to feel frustrated with my new camera, though it’s not the camera’s fault — it’s mine.  I’m sure that will send up a resounding gasp and a bunch of “god, she gets a camera for free and she has the nerve to bitch about it?!"-type responses, but I was asked to be straightforward with my experiences, so that’s what I’m doing. I’m not ungrateful, I’m honest.

So far, I’m pretty amazed by this camera. It takes gorgeous photos overall, but I find it limiting in many ways — mostly because I don’t know how to use all the features and am not patient enough to figure it out.  The booklet seems daunting and I’m more of a hands-on learner.  There are so many incredible photographs taken with D80’s and even within the Picture This project pool. I want to be able to do that!  Hence, I think I should take a class.

I feel a little hindered by the sheer size of the camera.  I’m just not accustomed to it yet.  I love how it looks and how the shutter sound makes me feel like I’m doing something important.  But, with my point and click Sony camera, I was able to snap something at a moment’s notice.  I could just whip it out and get the shot.  Now I feel as though if I want to take a photo of anything, I have to make sure I’ve got the lens cap off, I’ve got it on the right setting, I assess the light, adjust, focus more (if it doesn’t auto-focus for whatever reason) and then try to get the shot.  Usually whatever it is I was trying to take a photo of is either long gone by then or it comes out blurry because all the settings are starting to feel the same to me now.  I’m having trouble figuring out the subtle nuances of each setting. I thought I had them down, but sometimes they feel so similar, I can’t tell what I’m doing wrong. 

This is the part where avid photographers tell me to get a tripod.  And I want one, I do.  Of course, as Kathy pointed out this morning, “You don’t want to carry about your camera, but you’re going to schlep a tripod now, too?” But that’s not it at all.  I DO want to carry my camera and would schlep a tripod!  I just think I would feel more inclined to do so if I wasn’t worried every second of something happening to it (since it’s not technically mine) and/or I felt like the shots I took were worth all the effort.

I’m having some amateur photography ennui right now, can you tell?  I want a new creative outlet and think I have an eye for this, but when you fill up a 1 GB flashcard and only one decent photo comes out of it, it’s a bit discouraging.  Maybe it’s just how photography works. Or, maybe that’s just how discovering a new hobby works.  It’s been a long time since I really tried anything to the point of wanting to invest the time to become good at it.  Whatever it is, a class certainly couldn’t hurt.

Peter said, “Less flowers, more people!” Yeah, well, flowers don’t move, buddy.  Call me in a month when I know my aperture from my ass and then we’ll talk portraits.

Clean Up on Aisle 5

Joelle said at some point on July 10, 2007 while listening to KSDS Jazz 88.3

I was watching a commercial the other night for paper towels.  “New, Improved Clean-up Technology!” a voice boomed as I was taken IMAX-style through the inner-weave of the “most advanced paper towel ever created”. 

Seriously?  I find it mind-boggling that we have engineers, scientists and such devoting arduous hours developing the most effective paper towel known to mankind.  What about… oh, I don’t know… cancer?  I mean, really… Why bother investing the almighty dollar in something life-saving when you could carry an anvil in one wet sheet of scientifically-engineered paper towel?  Then, of course, rinse and reuse it!  Will wonders never cease?!

They’ll spend time creating maxi-pads with dri-weave wings, tampons with fancy braided strings, highfalutin paper towels, anti-bacterial everything — heaven forbid someone’s kid touch a garden-variety germ and develop an immunity or something. My god!  The horror of the common cold! — they’ll give us all those things, but spending Big Pharm’s dollar on curing actual diseases… we couldn’t have that.

Really, how much can you do with a paper towel? It’s a paper towel.  It’s job is menial and expendable.  I’m not dedicated — I’ll buy whatever’s on sale.  I’m just going to spill something and rub it on the floor anyway. Does it need to be developed by NASA to get the wine off my tile?  As far as I’m concerned it just needs to be wet and available.

Heh.  I almost went back and deleted that last line because I really wasn’t going for that, but I just can’t bring myself to do so.  I’m easily amused.  On that note…

Trading Spaces Has Nothing on Me

Joelle said around mid-morning on July 9, 2007

This weekend flew by in a whirlwind. I was up until the wee hours on Friday night, hell bent on delivering my mock-ups on time and when the client said she loved them, I had no choice but to blow off working this weekend and indulge in a little home renovation.

I’ve lived in this apartment since May but hadn’t really done much with it. I was recovering financially from my move and my trip to London, plus Kathy and I had that whole book thing to worry about.  I merely went out to pick up some candles at World Market and the next thing I know, I’m on a wild shopping extravaganza with GFI. World Market, IKEA, back to World Market, Target… it was a spending frenzy, I tell you.  But, miraculously, I didn’t spend very much!  Everything was either IKEA-cheap or on sale, so I think I did a spectacular job.  Among my haul:  a new papasan chair and cushion, a new desk, 2 new rugs, a huge palm tree, 2 lamps for the kitchen, 2 lampshades for the living room, a new comforter for the bedroom (so I can finally use the cute duvet set that Taughnee got me forever ago), various candles, um… I feel like I’m missing something. Oh, a new set of curtains and… Oh! A huge pot that my palm tree lives in.  It was craziness, but I spent next to nothing, believe it or not.

I can’t decide what my favorite part is. I love my new desk, which is just so awesome, I had to have it. (Highlight: it hides all that cord and plug nonsense that annoys me so much.) But I also really love my living room.  It’s gone from feeling really cluttered and kind of “college-y” to being very homey and inviting. I feel very relaxed there and it’s nice to have a distinction between my office and my living room.

It feels like a completely different apartment now. I felt like I was jumping out of my skin before — when you spend all day every day in a place, it needs to feel like a sanctuary, not a cell and when you have a view like I have, it’s hard not to want to run outside and play. (Yeah, yeah, bitch, bitch… hee!) So, I think I’ve created a happy balance.

The next project is my bedroom. I used to have a big blue rug in the living room, but that’s part of what was making the living room seem to cluttered. The rug just didn’t fit — it was too big and not quite the right color.  I kept trying to force this giant blue rug to work and it wasn’t, so I moved it into my bedroom at GFI’s suggestion and it looks awesome, especially with my blue sheets.

Finally, I just need to finish my kitchen and bathroom.  My dining area desperately needs a table, but the one I wanted at IKEA is gone now (it’s a bold red-orange glasstop round table) that I thought would be fabulous in there.  I’m holding out for the new catalog, hoping it will make a reappearance. If it doesn’t, I may just find a second-hand table and paint it.  I’ll need another rug for under that so it’s not so chilly on the tile, but I did pick up this snazzy rug for the kitchen floor, though.  (Which got ruined when the plumber came on Saturday night and roto-rooted or whatever and, to my dismay, got black grease water all over it.  World Market was kind of enough to exchange it for me. They rule!)

I am selling my “old” desk from IKEA, a Galant birch veneer corner desk that’s 63” x 47” and in great condition. If you’re in the area and interested, it’s dismantled and ready for pick-up. You can see my ad on Craigslist here.

GFI introduced me to a Thai food place down the street called Saffron and I am now in love with it. I had this incredible egg noodle dish with seared garlic, chicken and broccoli with this thin jalapeno ‘water’ that you drizzled all over called Pad-See-Ewe.  Oh, holy holy… it was so good.  I may have to revisit them today.  I thought I wasn’t into Thai food very much and clearly, I was wrong.

I have nothing snappy with which to close this entry, so I’ll just say this: May your Monday not suck and your mailman deliver you nothing but checks.  That’s the best I’ve got today.