This is why I don’t keep sweets in the house

The following cycle has repeated itself several times this evening: I remove the cover to the thing of peanut butter covered pretzels I bought today from Kowalski’s. I take three of them out. Two of them are eaten before the cover is back on the container. The third is eaten by the time I walk across the kitchen to wipe the residue of sugary goodness off my fingers with the washcloth at my sink. I simply cannot be trusted with sweet snacks.

Random Music Post: Down by the Sea Edition

So this is a big song for me and my nostalgia.  I heard it thanks to Yahoo! Music back in 2006.  I heard a lot of great songs I never would have heard thanks to that internet radio service.  I have memories — I won’t call them fond memories — listening to this song during that lonely period in the fall of ‘06 when I had lost the friends I’d made in Atlanta, and was all on my lonesome once again in that ugly city.  This was on of my favorite songs back then, and I love the lyrics in the third section enough that I’ll reprint them here without permission from the author:
Last night I lay in bed
And held myself
Trying to remember
How it once was with you
How your hands were softer.

Yesterday I found myself
Staring into space
Rather like the sailor
In my own home surroundings
I’m not sure I know me.

If you were me what would you do
Don’t tell me I don’t need you to
It won’t help me now.

The Strawbs — Down by the Sea

Your Medicine

Things I did today that involved lust and/or affection:

• Stroked lovingly my Epicurean cutting board
• Gazed lustily at my second paperback copy of Dan Simmons’ The Terror
• Removed proudly my new 8-inch Global chef’s knife from my recently mounted knife magnet
• Glanced approvingly at the Ikea kitchen island that gives me 150% more counter space

I also made time to think longingly about the ex I saw at the movie theater last night, so my brand of heterosexuality still has plenty of room for good ol’ fashioned boy/girl gettin’ it on.

A roomful of people who sort of knew how to use a knife

It was a dangerous week for me.  Far more dangerous than normal.  At least once, I found myself in the presence of a large crowd armed with the sharpest cutting tools in the area, many of them pointed at me.  Actually, it was only the one time that happened.  I took a class at Kitchen Window last night on knife skills.  It was the first cooking class I’ve taken since home ec in junior high.  It was long overdue.  I don’t know how I managed to feed myself for so long.  It’s as if there’s an entire industry that makes it easy for people to stay alive without having to put much energy or thought into what they eat.

Anyway, I promised you a story of danger.  Believe me, there was danger.  This was a knife skills class, not a sponge cake throwing class, so I was in great danger for three and a half hours.  People who know me know that I have a habit of saying things that make folks want to stab me to death.  Granted, this was a room full of people who were so inept at handling knives that they needed to take a class in it, but even if they sucked at knives, that didn’t make the knives less sharp.  There isn’t really a wrong way to stab me to death, cut my fingers off, or disembowel me.  I’m sure it wouldn’t have taken them long to do any of those things if they had a mind to do it.  Which is why I was on very good behavior last night.  I didn’t insult anyone, nor make any smartass comments unless I thought they were really necessary.  In short, I behaved like an average socially awkward shy person who is actually pretty charming when he’s comfortable.

Now that I’m done describing how dangerous my lifestyle is, I can talk a little bit about what I learned.  It would perhaps be a little much to use words like “changed my life,” but this class changed my life.  Maybe not, but it was terrific fun.  The teachers were great, and the one lady teacher was quite attractive and I wanted to sit next to her at a bar and make out with her after a period of drinking and conversation.  But what I really can’t forget is the Global chef’s knife I used.  It was so much different from the piece of shit thing I’ve been using for lo these past twelve years.  I resolved to get a much sharper knife than what I’ve been using, chop vegetables often, and do it on a much better cutting board than the ones that are in my kitchen right now.  It’s a lot to work out, and I haven’t put anything into action yet.

Actually, some if it has been put into action.  I don’t have much counter space, so I explored kitchen islands at Ikea.  It turns out they sell them!  I didn’t buy one, but I did go to Ikea after work and fondle a few.  I also moved my kitchen table around to make room for a kitchen island in my apartment.  I know, I know.  You’ve seen my apartment, and you wonder how I can even turn around in it, let alone think about adding a kitchen island.  It will make my kitchen a tad cramped, but I think it can work.  I can get used to it.  I’ll just have to watch my movements so I don’t hit my elbows on something everytime I do anything.  But it’ll be worth it to finally have a surface on which to prepare food with the fancy cutting board and knife I’ll eventually get.

Random Music Post: Green Grass of Tunnel Edition

This is a very pretty song, and it represents exactly the kind of music I often want to hear.  I’m not crazy about the vocalist’s voice, but what can I do?

Múm — Green Grass Of Tunnel

Random Music Post: Romeo and Juliet Edition

For some reason, this music from Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet was in my head tonight.  I saw this particular piece performed live at a concert with Jen last spring.  It was a bill filled with music for lovers, which was very fitting.  This was my favorite.

Prokofiev — Lover’s Dance

Random Music Post: Tom Waits Edition

I’ve had this song pop into my head now and again the past few days.  It’s from The Black Rider.  I don’t know enough about how his work has been regarded to say whether this is a popular album or not, but it has several songs I absolutely love.  This one isn’t one of them, but the whole point of my random music posts is to post stuff I happen to think of as I’m sitting at my computer.

Tom Waits — Crossroads

You’ll know it when it happens.

There comes a moment in the career of the amateur bloggist when he creates a blog post title that is unique enough that it places the post relatively high up in a list of search results for a given phrase, and it generates a lot of traffic to his site.  My moment came last night when I posted a very short and simple post about putting a banana in the freezer.  For one brief day, my blog was the most popular thing in the world.  It’s the sort of thing that reminds a person that he is significant, and that his blog is consequential, and that he should really take a stab at NaNoWriMo.

ABW

Always Be Writing.

I have a habit of thinking of certain activities it would benefit me to do more often, and then coming up with a mantra not unlike the one Alec Baldwin has in Glengary Glen Ross. Except his is “Always Be Closing,” which makes a lot more sense when you make an acronym of it.  I inconveniently pick activities that don’t make such a logical acronym, such as folding, searching, thinking, cleaning.  Okay, cleaning works.  But my new one, writing, doesn’t so much.

It came to me tonight when I was at the laundromat.  I should be writing all the time.  Everything that happens to me, I should write what it is, what I think of it, how it makes me feel, all that shit.  Don’t worry about whether it’ll be any good, because a) it can’t help but be good, since I’m a good writer, and b) even if it’s not great, it’ll improve with continued practice.  The point is that I’m a good writer, and I should be flexing this muscle of mine in ways besides writing to strange women on the internet who may not turn out to be worth a damn.

I was going to write about the rest of my India trip, but I got sidetracked.  I did a ton of writing last spring, but they were all e-mails to one woman.  Jen G., the girl I courted for a month and then dated for about six weeks after meeting.  We had one of the most fulfilling e-mails exchanges I can remember, and was such a satisfying lover that I doubt very much I’ll ever meet anyone who would be such a perfect match in that regard.  In other regards, we were a disaster waiting to happen.  Thankfully we broke up before things could ever get ugly.  The first time trouble reared its head, we parted, because we knew we weren’t right for each other from the beginning.  It just felt so good.  But the ending still hurt, and it hurt a lot after that.  It still hurts when I think about it.  But somewhere out there, there’s a more fitting partner for me.

This flood of thinking came about because I was rejected earlier tonight by someone I thought maybe could have been that partner.  That’s my problem, I think of each new woman as a potential partner, without being more circumspect.  I leap into gushy emotions without caution, sometimes causing discomfort among anyone who isn’t quite as into me as I am into her.  I should know better, and I usually do.

Okay, the first extended blog post in a while is rambling and light in a lot of areas where I would hope to be wordier.  This will improve as I write more.  The point is to write, dammit, and get better at it.  I’m a prime candidate for it.

I put a banana in the freezer.

Now what?