“If this is a plan, then I’m dead where I stand” Boy that kinda sums up today: the walking dead.
Tuesday Night. My family has always been gifted in the kitchen, through tried and true family recipes, practice, long hours; the size of our family simply dictated it. When you have to rent out the Rose Bowl to hold a family reunion, you had better have some skills behind a stove. Living near my grandparents for the majority of my childhood and having a stay at home mom, I got to see alot of culinary action; Sunday Dinners that would make Ethiopians start swimming. I however, despite continuous immersion in the wondrous preparatory abilities of those around me, simply failed to absorb any of their tried true practices. This is not to say I cannot cook, quite the contrary. However, my cooking is much more like a tornado, than the nicely formed ranks of nutritional troops the women in my family could crank out. I don’t need a recipe, because I usually screw them up, and I can usually work with whatever is at hand. I am a savant. Rainman of the kitchen. I entertain myself with thoughts of my mom and I going head to head on Iron Chef, East meets West!!
To date the recipe that I get the most compliments on is one I made up one bright payday afternoon and invited all my friends over for food. It’s bastardized chicken parmesan with stuffed shells and other sundries. I invented and cooked it in under an hour the first time. Last night I realized I had most of the necessary ingredients to make it so I figured, let’s do it. Emily is in town for a couple of days, so she I and cam all entertained ourselves watching Spanish dubbed episodes of the shield while we ate, Jake and Darla showed up after we were finished but they had enough fried chicken grease on them to feed half the city, so I wasn’t worried about their dinner.
I am addicted to sparks. no clue how or why, but I love them. So much fun running around with an orange mouth laughing at people. We had some sparks before cooking and killed a bottle of a great cabernet with our food. Classic Gambini dinner. Now I just need to trade my t-shirt and jeans for black Armani suits and shirts and white ties. I’ll open up The Don Diner. It will be great.
Jake and Emily dig the hell out of one another. When I was out of town seeing my grandfather last January, Emily was house sitting for me. Jake came over a lot as did the girls basketball team. So they got to like each other pretty well; no mystery since, aside from being a little young, they are both outstanding people with a lot of empathy for those around them. That said, their little reunion hugs and kisses dance shouldn’t have surprised me, however it was like something you would expect to see on a Surreal Life reunion special. Whatever. We spend the rest of the night goofing off and letting our food digest. Finally retired and went to bed watching office space.
My house is not so much a domicile as a jungle gym. It’s available at all hours, no volume control or safety features, and there is always opportunity to have fun and injure yourself at the same time. Couple this with a regional demographic in which 21-40 is effectively nonexistent, no public places for people under 21, my relatively relaxed attitude, and you have a situation simply rife with opportunities for trouble. You also have very little sleep.
Cameron, Jake and Darla took it upon themselves as their personal mission to go batshit crazy until 3 am or so. I make the mistake of setting my alarm for 5 am, instead of 6 like I usually do and so here I am at work running on minimal sleep with minimal coffee. Speaking of which, I need to get a new coffee machine; don’t ask. I am irritable and lazy, a bad combination or so I am told, and it’s still 30 till lunch. feh!
