Auction for beerituality

If you're my Facebook friend, you've already seen my posts about this, but just in case you didn't, here is the info again.

Jeff and his friend Lou are making a movie called Beerituality. To raise some money for the movie, a bunch of our wonderful friends donated handmade items that we're selling on eBay.

The auctions for many of the items end on Thursday night. So, please take a look at the items that are listed here on eBay and bid if you see something you like.

Thanks for your support if you have already bid!

Exhausted and wide awake

Since I got home from Seattle I've been having trouble sleeping. I guess it's jetlag, but does jetlag cause a person to wake up a lot during the night and consequently be really tired the next day and then not able to sleep that night either?
 
Part of the problem is that Jeff has started snoring recently. His response when I tell him to please roll over or whatever is "I wasn't snoring." Thankfully the new iPhone software comes with a great little voice recorder. I emailed a recording of his snores to him. He had no response. 

So my choices are sleeping pills, the sleep-inducing app, ear plugs, waiting until I'm so exhausted I pass out. I find that ear plugs hurt so those would not be a good option. If you have any other suggestions, please let me know.  

Vancouver, an overview

Big City Cupcakes on Howe St. has made my second morning in a row. Yesterday we shared a chocolate cupcake with strawberry buttercream frosting. OH MY GOD. Today I had chocolate cheesecake with a blob of cheesecake creaminess inside and tart buttercream frosting on the top. OH MY GOD.

I call bullshit on the Vancouver Starbucks. If you are not clear on which sort of iced tea I want, please ask. I have never been automatically given sweetened tea before and I do not buy your story that it comes sweet unless you specify. 

Longboat Chocolate Porter (Phillips Brewing, Victoria, BC) is the absolutely perfect combination of beer and chocolate and can currently be found at The Alibi Room. Although I suspect they change up the taps fairly often. It's the only bar we found in Vancouver that has a whole page of local beers on tap. Most of the others only had the current three or so available from one brewer. 

Why in the world do we not have Japanese tapas in New York?? At Hapa Izakaya we had more wild salmon sashimi. OH MY GOD. And we got the B.C. sashimori selection which included the salmon, prawns and scallop sashimi. I have never eaten such a delicious scallop. We ARE ruined for sushi, I'm afraid. 

The toppings for the hot dogs (including veggie dogs) at Japadog included bonito flakes, wasabi mayo, radish, soy sauce, teriyaki sauce. I'm not saying those sorts of toppings were not tasty. They would just take some getting used to on a hot dog. 

There are gorgeous mountain views all around Vancouver and various little beaches around downtown. We saw an amazing sunset from one of the beaches last night at 10 p.m.

Anyway, back to the food. A roll we saw at two sushi places (and ate at one) that I have never seen at home and which is super delicious is the magma roll. The magma is a black sesame sauce drizzled on top of a regular roll. I don't remember what was inside. It might have been a California roll or something like that. The sauce is what stood out.

West coast Amtrak vs. East coast Amtrak
On the west coast one must line up an hour before departure time to get a seat assignment, even if you have already purchased your tickets online. If you arrive 20 mins. before the train departs you will still get a seat but the line will be long and your view will not be as scenic.  

The plus side is that people traveling together will be pretty much guaranteed seats together and there is no frantic searching for available seats. 

Available to eat on the west coast Amtrak: shrimp dumplings and wild Alaskan salmon. Everything else is pretty much the same. 

One surprising twist on the wine vs. beer issue is that the three types of microbrews available on the train are pictured and described. The wines are described as merely Merlot, Cabarnet and Sauvignon Blanc. When I asked the cafe employee what kind of wine he had he repeated back the three types listed on the board. As it turns out, the Cabernet is from Hahn Estates in CA and for $12 a split is a pretty good deal and rather tasty.                   

Twitter vs. Facebook

I finally figured it out. I may be the last one, but I am a little slow, so bear with me.

Facebook allows for cross-posting your tweets to FB, but it's pointless. If I follow you on FB, I don't need to see the same posts on Twitter and vice versa.

What I have come to realize is that Twitter and FB updates have their own unique purposes.

FB friends are people I know in real life (for the most part), so those updates can be more personal.

On Twitter I am followed by many people I've never met. They could (presumably) not care less about what I'm eating for dinner, how much I love my new shoes, etc. (Of course, it is debatable as to whether my FB friends care either, but that is a different story.)

After the election I stopped using Twitter for a while because of all the duplicate posts. I loved watching the debates with Twitter, but after that, my interest waned considerably.

Now I have it figured out. Twitter is useful to me for one thing only: discussions about toics of common interest. Topics may include news, conferences, movies, beers, restaurants, brands, etc.

Twitter is a public forum. If I tweet about the Beer Wars movie, people from around the country are going to soon search on "beerwars", see my comments and those by everyone else tweeting about the movie. It's a shared experience like nothing else I can think of. And, actually, it's pretty fabulous. I'm all fired up about Twitter again.

And now I'm going to unfollow all of my Twitter friends who cross-post to FB. It's nothing personal, guys. If you decide to separate the two, please post a message on FB so that I can start following you again.

No, not yoga for dogs

Thanks for all the feedback about the yoga and pilates classes. Maybe I was jumping the gun a tad by thinking I should buy a year-long membership after taking only one class. (Actually, I was only going to buy a 3-month membership. Much more reasonable.)

I went to a beginner yoga class last night and then I bought two 10-packs, one for yoga and one for pilates.

I cannot adequately describe how beneficial this yoga class was for me. I felt relaxed and appreciated and safe and content. Is that how yoga usually goes? I've only done it maybe 2 or 3 times in my life and it was always in a big class with very little personal attention.

This class only had three students. The instructor (who is the same person who teaches the pilates classes) showed us (me, really) variations on every pose. With almost every pose she walked around to check that each of us had more or less the correct form.

She said the yoga classes never get much bigger than a few people. I find that surprising, but maybe it's because there are other yoga studios all around.

I kind of want to go every day, but I'm going to wait until next Monday to go back. Maybe I'm just a little bit too excited about taking these classes.

Philly beer week, I love you, and a question

Philly beer week was fabulous. Next year we will definitely try to talk as many friends as possible into going with us. The saddest part was that we had to miss the vast majority of the events taking place in Philly during the work week.

As soon as we arrived, we went straight to a tasting lunch with Stone and Dogfish Head beers to drink and brewers in attendance. How often does the CEO of Stone Brewing sit at your table, with just you and your husband, to chat about beer and such? I will tell you: not very often.

After lunch, I'm a little embarressed to admit, we took a nap.

The only other official event we attended was the jazz happy hour at TIME restaurant. There was nothing that made it seem like an event, unless the place is normally empty on a Saturday night (unlikely). And the kids we saw playing New Orleans-style jazz on the street were way more fun than the jazz being played at the restaurant.

We went to Zot for dinner, a Belgian restaurant we noticed in the old town the last time we were visiting. There was no official event going on, but we wanted to check it out. They serve mussels with 50-some varities of sauces and they have a fabulous selection of beers. The end of beer week coincides with foie gras week, so I made the questionable decision to have two of the foie gras appetizers for my meal. It was, I believe, due to this divinely delicious but incredibly heavy meal that I was barely able to move after dinner and we had to forego any more beer week activities for the evening.

For brunch on Sunday we went to one of our new faves, the Belgian Cafe. The eggs Benedict on a Belgian waffle was truly inspired.

And now, a question.

Last night I went to a pilates class at a tiny studio in Jersey City. I have been searching for just such a class in just such an environment for years. They also offer yoga and various other classes. I was pretty sure going into last night's class that unless there was something really horrible about it, I would be joining this ... what do you call it exactly? Hold on, that's not the real question.

The more you pay for at once, the less you pay per class. The pilates classes are $12 each and the yoga are $18. If I buy a 10 pack of each, I pay $10 and $15 per class, respectively. So, if I take one of each per week, that's $25. Or, I could pay $99 for an unlimited monthly membership. OR, I could pay $269 and get 3 months of unlimited. (Or I could pay $719 for a year of unlimited, but that seems really crazy at this juncture.) This seems a little nuts, taking one class, and then handing over $269, but it's not that unreasonable, is it? Hold on, that's not the actual question either.

It's not that I can't afford this. I totally can. It's just that gyms don't typically cost $88 a month and only include classes. Although, to be fair, Maximum Motion does include a few classes per week that involve weight use. But the other thing is that I don't like gyms and so if I join one, I'm unlikely to ever go to it. If I work out, I run. But I would really like to be able to do pilates and yoga and maybe another class now and then. Is it ridiculous to pay that much for a few classes per week? (That's the real question.) I should note that because of the studio being small, everyone gets personal attention and is on a first-name basis. The instructor told me that yoga on Thursdays usually only has 2-3 people in attendance.

My mind is pretty much made up. I'm just curious what others think.

Eau de Penn Station

There is a hallway in Penn Station that has always smelled like cheap lemon yogurt. I don't hate lemon yogurt (although it's not my first choice). But smelling it down there is so disgusting that I breathe through my mouth when I walk by. Of course, I am often compelled to take a quick whiff to check that it still smells like lemon yogurt. (It still does, as of an hour ago.)

I used to think the smell came from the ice cream stand that was on that hallway. But the ice cream stand is long since gone and now there is an Auntie Annie's there. There is no reason for a pretzel stand to smell like lemon yogurt.

This weekend is the end of Philly beer week. There is so much going on that we are having to make difficult decisions about which events to attend. Do we go to the 3-hour seated prix fixe lunch (with beers from Dogfish Head and Stone) or do we go to the pay-as-you-go session with River Horse (one of my fave brewers) and classic Philly foods, such as fried Tastykakes? We finally chose the seated lunch. It's only $35, too.

There is a jazz happy hour (with Moinette Brune, Saison DuPont, and Scaldis Belgian Strong) and a special Sam Adams release party (for Double Bock, Imperial White and Imperial Stout with matched chocolate and cheese) and a beer brunch on Sunday...

We are going to be so full of beer by Sunday afternoon we are going to swear it off. For at LEAST a week. (Now Jeff is telling me he already has those Sam Adams beers, so maybe we don't need to attend that one.)

You can say you knew me when

Apparently, I have a thing for foods that are more than one thing. Not foods that satisfy more than one food category (such as pretzels covered in chocolate -- that is WRONG). I mean foods that are two things at once, such as the amazing Flip Sides Townhouse crackers, which are a cheesy cracker on one side and a pretzel on the other side. Pure genius. Pure delicious, as well.

Another example of this brilliant food combining technique would be Tweeterz, which are candy-coated Twizzler nibs. Why stop with just delicious Twizzler nibs when you an make them even more delicious by giving them a candy coating? You don't need to answer that. I already know the answer.

The new exercise sensation that is soon going to be sweeping the nation was invented by me. This is how you do it. You put on some good dancing music. I went with a new wave station that I created on Pandora. And then you start dancing. While you are dancing you think up the next thing you are going to do, such as: lifting some weights, or doing some crunches, or some stretches, or some stretches AND some weight lifting, or some jumping or some running in place or some jumping jacks, or some pushups. Then you stop dancing and do one of those other moves for 15 reps or a minute or a song or whatever you like and then you start dancing again until you have decided on your next move.

I'd better patent this right away. I need to figure out a name first, though. Craigercize? Crexercise? Aeorcraige? Craigobics?

Invention

I made the following dish for lunch. I call it: What's in the fridge that can be combined?

I was going to broil the eggplant, but I stupidly put it in 2 pans instead of the broiler pan that came with the oven and they would not both fit in the broiler. In the future I would definitely broil the eggplant and do the tomatoes, separately, in the oven.

I brushed the eggplant slices with a lemon olive oil we got at the Fancy Food show and which we had not yet used. I am definitely a fan of this for veggies. I have some asparagus that is begging to be roasted with this oil now.

When I flipped the 'plants, I added the sliced cherry tomatoes, which had been tossed with the olive oil, s&p. I sprinkled the 'plants with cumin and jalapeno powder and s&p.

I cut into triangles 4 corn tortillas, sprayed them with Pam, sprinkled salt on them, and put them in the oven, too. Setting off the fire alarm when they got crispy was not part of the plan.

When the tomatoes were bubbly and the eggplants were browned, I put 4 rounds on each plate, topped them with tomatoes and sprinkled on some grated sharp cheddar. Chips on the side.

Not stuck

For what it is, I really do love our little apartment. I love the wall of closets, drawers and cubbies. I love the non-working fireplace. I love the heavy pocket doors. I love our pass-thru. I love our tiny bedroom and rather large bathroom. I love our eat-in kitchen. I love the shared backyard. I love the molding above the light fixture in the living room. I love the crown molding in the living room. I love the 2 greens we painted the living room and bedroom. I love our old man wing chairs. I love that we have space to have guests sit at the table. I love the big windows that let in lots of light. I love that our neighbors are easy-going and we share duties.

I love that parking is not very hard. I love that we can take different routes to and from the PATH train. I love walking by the little gallery on Coles every day. I love that the homeless people in front of the deli say hi cheefully to us. I love keeping track of buildings going up. I love the variety of restaurants.

Everything else, I hate. No, but overall, it's good. Sure, there's no way in hell we could sell our place now and get anything near what we paid for it. But it's not as if I hate it here. Far from it.