Off and running...

Andy, the boyfriend, and I have recently relocated to warm, sunny, happening, friendly, active, musical, delicious Austin, Texas. So, I'm no longer storming Japan but am instead taking Austin by the horns. Please click over and check out our all new adventures...
www.austinbythehorns.blogspot.com

still time for all things orange and brown and punkin-y...

we just got around to carving our punkins last night. so what if it's the middle of november!? how awesome, cute and asymmetrical respectively. kinda like their creators...andy, scott and jax respectively.

i was gonna attempt to be creative with the innards, but they were old, nearing rotten and i was tipsy and tired. next year...

my slice of the election

Oh the sweet chaos and complete saturation of election season. Candidates faces and their common refrains decorate our tvs and magazines, their voices drip from our radios. As much as I enjoyed all the rigmarole of debating and researching and voting, it's taken me nearly a week to desire rehashing it in written form.

It felt good to vote. It's not often enough that I get to make a contribution to the democratic process in such a tangible way. Don’t know if I can say it better than Andy did on that morning…“it’s the one time when I feel powerful…or, uh, maybe it’s better to say it’s the one time when I don’t feel completely powerless.”

I made my way to the Baptist church at 11 am thinking I would miss the ‘I’m late for work’ crowd and beat the ‘I left early for lunch’ crowd. I stood in line, patiently, reading my Radar magazine, for about 40 minutes. Occasionally I would mull over the jesus posters and god propaganda that decorated the Life Center’s walls. The irony of voting there wasn’t lost on my mind which subscribes to the separation of church and state doctrine. That sliver of time though was a small poll tax to pay in order to contribute to this monumental election.

It was monumental in another way as well…I baked.

We (or I should say Andy and his roommate Scott. I’m not so into sweets…) hadn’t even completely finished the Pumpkin Turtle Pie I made the other day yet…



And I was already baking again. Something must be wrong with me.

Andy had been bugging me about making a cake and this seemed like the perfect occasion. I picked up some red and blue frosting the other day in anticipation of creating a pro-change sheet cake…a pro-democratic frosted masterpiece…a pro-obama vanilla cake with vanilla frosting…more lovely irony. As I was crafting my second cake ever (the first was a set of boobs that Amanda and I made for a friend in Columbia so many years ago), I felt a little like I didn’t deserve to be using the cake pan my grandma had bestowed on me. It was a bumpy attempt. This realization lead me straight to a metaphor of the cake as the election itself. The bumpy road to Pennsylvania Ave…all the smearing of frosting I did, which seemed analogous to the smear campaigns and negative ‘he said-she-said’ that colored the process. Then there was the excited, carnal way that we all devoured the cake that was reminiscent of the energy Barack has generated amongst constituents this time around.



We ate dinner and cake and drank beers and watched the election unfold. I was initially a Hillary supporter, but I mustn’t understate the excitement and potential I feel at the dawning of this era of a new president. The door is open to possibility, to opportunity. I can imagine a future that’s bright and better. And, hell, even if it’s not, I bet it’ll be different, and change is something I have always thrived on.

(In a final irony, I swear "America the Beautiful" just began blaring from my radio as I was posting this. Nice touch NPR.)

foodie fodder

You all know how much I adore writing about food.

If letters were morsels and words delicacies,
I could craft stories worthy of menus in the best eateries.
Each dish a poem, each course an essay,
I’d write of tapas, pizza and amuse bouche.
I would stir slang and spices, mix with real sustenance,
Pour phrases on to the page with culinary competence.
If only I could find a way to marry the vinegar and oil,
Of a career built of gastronomy and days of keyboard toil.

I recently had the opportunity to mesh the two…
Check out my story on Sonic Drive-in’s happy hour! It was published in Myrtle Beach’s free alternative paper, The Weekly Surge, on October 10th. I think there’s some more room for contribution, but as they haven’t been so professional about paying the freelancer, I’m going to wait and see how that pans out before submitting anything else.
I also had a story published recently in Alternatives Newsmagazine. Well, it was actually more of a press release, but it still ended up in print. I’ve also been tracing some of the other branches in Myrtle Beach’s interconnected publishing scene and have a few promising leads. We’ll see…
Once again, I find myself in a space where I'm encouraged to write more. I'm hoping some of these liquid thoughts will gel enough to make it to the blog. Blogging is good for me, I know.

it's a miracle ! !

nope, not referring to the fact that i've finaly updated... (here goes my next attempt at keeping this alive...i know it's good for my soul and sanity, i've just been refusing to sacrifice time doing other things for the clarity writing brings.) this piqued my interest...the miracle fruit man's website. He plies, not surprisingly, miracle fruit.

"The Miracle Fruit is a bright red, oval-shaped berry approximately 2 to 3 cm long containing a single seed. Although not sweet itself, when a single fruit is eaten and the fleshy pulp allowed to coat the taste buds of the tongue and inside of the mouth, an extraordinary effect occurs. The fruit enables you to eat a slice of lemon or lime without wincing. The marvelous aroma and inherent sweetness of the citrus remains but the sourness is almost completely covered. The effect remains for approximately 30 minutes, or more."


it's the fruit and experience i first encountered during my molecular gastronomy dinner in tokyo. i detailed it (OCD-like) thoroughly here on my blog.
i'd say the 3 buck purchase price is well worth such a tasty tripping experience.

hungry in so many ways

over the past few months i’ve definitely missed the catharsis of digesting my exploits and regurgitating them as writings on this blog. there is a certain kind of understanding that comes with reexamining and analyzing occurrences that is crucial to fulfillment i believe. there are several reasons why i’ve lapsed, perhaps the most prominent being that my adventures in small town America seem decidedly unexotic, like they wouldn’t be of interest to anyone, especially not in the way that quirky and traditional Japan was. And the people who inspired me to blog, family and friends who were geographically and, at times, emotionally farther away than they had ever been before, are now within my sphere. i’m creating experiences involving the people who were once my target audience. when i began writing it was for me, a way to anatomize my new experiences and convert those episodes into life knowledge, and so it was with the blog. but the purpose of this website expanded and morphed until i realized i was writing as much for others as i was for myself, i was eager to share my adventures, to convey the bits of truth about human nature that i was mining from cultures in far away places. the lessons i’m learning now in myrtle beach seem terribly less romantic and, consequently, far less interesting. another reason for slacking on the blog is time- what a very interesting concept. it seems i just can’t find enough of it to sit, reflect and record right now. although i know that one is able to make time for things one deems important, which makes me question the role writing is coming to play in my life.
one of the things i miss writing about most, not surprising to readers who have followed this blog over the years, is food. (see the unwittingly included food analogy in the first line for evidence.) i’m relieved to say it’s the aforementioned restrictions and not a lack of restaurants or my waning appetite that has caused me to lapse on this subject. i’ve eaten well as of late.
thinking about my travels, be they to Bangkok or Baltimore, i realize how much i rely on 21st century word-of-mouth, the internet, for recommendations on food spots. it motivates me to offer praise and earnest criticism where due in the hopes that others could enjoy the same culinary delights or avoid similar gastronomic perils. maybe instead of theorizing about all this i should just cut to the substance. i had great sushi last night, proffered up by the snottiest waiter ever, a remarkably unsettling combo. that deserves writing about. i should just get on with detailing the best salad in town that i’ve come to rely on for my weekly fix. but unfortunately i don’t have time…i’m meeting my dad at magnolia’s for lunch. it’s a scintillating country cookin’ buffet that i’d put up against any grandma’s sunday dinner in a head to head taste test. that’s the problem with attempting to balance reflection of experiences with the opportunities to make new ones. fried pork chops and macaroni and cheese always win.

alcoholism on the grand strand

Lately i’ve joked incessantly about Myrtle Beach turning me into an alcoholic. Not that I haven’t always been known to enjoy a little drinky-drinky, it’s just that the consumption of those adult beverages used to seem more like a side affect of going out and less like the main motive. For example, it’s nearly impossible to sing karaoke or bowl without a pint in hand (metaphors aside, your score would probably be higher if you left the beer in the scoring console’s cup holder). But those things don’t feel like binge drinking for binge drinking’s sake.

Also the fact that I don’t know so many people here precludes me from getting involved in many traditional night time group activities. No rounding up the troops to fill an 8-top at the comedy club (There is a comedy cabana on the north end, which I thought about visiting tonight. Much to my chagrin, it’s not willing to make people laugh on Mondays and Tuesdays.) Other evening entertainment in Myrtle Beach is rather lackluster and seems to have left me with a proclivity for simply bellying up to the bar, making my way down the beer menu and chatting up strangers. I’ve only discovered one band in this town that can motivate me to come out for the sake of the tunes, but I’ve seen them perform so often I find myself wondering when they’ll finish that perpetual studio album and start playing new stuff. There used to be a festival a week near where I was living in Japan that begged you to, of course, come out and drink but also dance, eat and soak up culture. Art Walks, exhibition openings, gallery parties apparently haven’t caught on round these parts, or at least they aren’t well publicized enough for me to stumble upon them. I don’t know a single club in town that encourages me to dance so hard I forget about making my way to the bar, which I sorely miss. The last show at the IMAX theater starts at 7, which hardly constitutes a night out.


I spew this list as partial evidence that I’m not just sitting on my lazy ass moping about this town’s lack of culture without actually searching for any. Ironically, this post, written during an evening sat home alone, seems to substantiate the exact opposite of that claim. The whole reason for this is an article featured on BBC that I stumbled upon a bit ago. My dad told me he’d read about this claim, it seemed too outrageous to be true. Could modern medicine be justifying my vices? Could scientific evidence be reinforcing my wild ways? Could this globe of cabernet in my hand coupled with my workout this afternoon really make my risk of fatal heart disease 50% lower than that of physically inactive non-drinkers? It seems so. Rejoice!
A little alcohol combined with a healthy active lifestyle may be the best recipe for a longer life.

These photos of my recent indulgence seem to make my father look like a bit of a lush as well considering he accompanies me in every pic. Glad to know he's watching out for his health too.