…beyond nice.

Being homeless has a serious side-effect of extreme crabbiness. I need to find a way to remove this stick from my ass and snap out of this funk.

Since the place I’m staying at doesn’t have internet connection, I figured I have the perfect excuse to buy a new laptop. Then I can drive around residential neighborhoods and steal their internetz and be creepy. Sure, I can go to a café like the hipsters and get it for free, but I take this as my opportunity to shine as the creep.

I don’t want to squander all my hookers and blow fund on a typing device, but I can’t stand being away from all of you for so long. I’ll just have to cheer myself up by surfing for pron while waiting in line for my grandé soy mocha.

In other news, this article is really creeping me out because I walk around alone at night in Capitol Hill all the time.

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I had a wonderful three day weekend. I biked, read, spent time with friends and family, hiked and cooked.

I went back on the bike trail on Saturday because it doesn’t seem fair for me to get on a trail once, declare it “suck” and never go back again. It still sucked the second time around and I figured out why. For the first part of the ride, I took the trail from UW to where it ended in Ballard and I loved it. The scene kept changing from one area to the next from the nice college town of UW, through the lush green parks in Fremont, and all the way to the factory areas of Ballard. Unfortunately that trail ended quickly, so I turned around and rode past UW toward Redmond once again and the homogeneous scenery got boring once again. It just felt like I was going nowhere, fast. Side note: The Aeon Flux catching a fly with the eyelash thing is not nearly as sexy-cool in real life, it’s quite the opposite with me screaming, “Oh God, sick! Get it off! Get it off!”

I had a nice gorgeous long hike lined up for this past weekend, but the weather gods were not playing nice. It was either rainy or cloudy all weekend which means I would be driving 2-3 hours out of the way to see fog. I’m not sure if you’ve seen fog before, but it’s not all that exciting and if you’ve seen fog in one place, you’ve seen them all. I ended up at the top of Mailbox Peak again because I wanted the convening with nature and exercise part of hiking without the stupid long drive. You can see the very exciting view of nothing right behind me. If I Photoshop out the mailbox, I can claim to be on top of just about any pile of rocks and you would be none-the-wiser.

I cooked up a storm this weekend past. I highly recommend The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen for any vegetarians that has a decent grasp of basic vegetarian cooking but is looking for ways to add a little sumthin’ sumthin’ to their meal, just the recipe for seitan alone is worth the price of this book. I’ve never been a fan of cookbooks as a meat-eater because I preferred to cook by instinct and that translated pretty well with vegetable, but after a while all green things started tasting the same so I picked up a few books to see if I can add some flavoring to my food. I’ve purchased 5 vegetarian cookbooks and this is the first book that inspired me to cook something.

I love this book because it’s not written as a simple recipe book, but it’s written as a book with stories and suggestions. If you want a book that gives you a ton of recipes and pictures, this is not the book for you. There aren’t any pictures but there are wonderful illustrations on how to trim certain vegetables (I had no idea how to trim artichoke and fennel). Unlike the other books I’ve picked up, this is extremely light on numbers of recipes but he comments on each of them and they all seem very hand-picked. I’ve picked up the book from time to time just to read what he has to say about some of the dishes, sometimes it’s a history on the dish, other times it’s the health benefits of the dish and after a while, he made me want to cook. This book is like a math book that teaches you the theories instead of giving you the formula straight-up.

I made my first batch of seitan on Sunday morning while nursing a hangover and I forgot about my headache while cooking. The seitan smelled so yummy while cooking in its broth that I started picking at them one by one. I intended to cut up them up to stir-fry at a later date, they never made it to that stage. Freshly cooked seitan is soft and chewy with the consistency of chicken and the taste of whatever sauce it was cooked in along with a hint of dough. I don’t miss eating meat, but I really do miss the texture and this really hits the spot.

After my hike on Monday, I went home, showered and cooked for three hours. I made a second batch of seitan, put that in an Indian curry dish, cooked a light soup, roasted asparagus and sautéed snowcap mushroom. There was a recipe for Indian curry from scratch which was wonderful because I’ve always felt like I was cheating when I buy whatever curry powder and stir it in my food. Since I had every herb/spice/seed that went into the curry, I was able to chew on the individual ingredients and see which flavor I would like to bring out more in my own curry, then shake a bit more of that in the final dish. I made a soup called “Spring Tonic” which started with caramelized scallions, onions and radish, then simmered with watercress…it was light and oh so delicious. I ate all the food, with the exception of two pieces of asparagus, then passed out in bliss.

Side note 2: My new squatting location doesn’t have the interweb hook-up, so I will be updating a lot less frequently until I find a more permanent home.

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This week is milestone week, so I’ve been once again putting in a few extra hours at work.  I love milestone week because there’s usually such a sense of accomplishment at the end of the week.  I hate milestone week because this is the week where all the crap that I really don’t want to do, stuff that I’ve carefully Tetris’d into the storage closet, have to be dragged out and sorted through.  There are bugs that took hours of banging my head against the wall and sobbing loudly at my keyboard to find that one bad line of code.

Last night as I was driving home with a crick in my brain, I thought, “God, I could sure use a cold beer right about now.”  Right then, Jesse called me up - I could hear in the background that he was out and about.  I demanded to know where he was.  He told me he was with Sung and they’re drinking at Hooters (I love my classy friends) and that I should join them.  After zero seconds of arm twisting, I told him I’ll be right there.

Tonight, when I drive home, I’m going to focus on thinking, “God, I could sure use a buddy that wants to climb Mount Adams with me.”

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Did I mention my ONE last very coveted climbing buddy is having a baby? I’m at that terrible age where all my friends are suddenly starting new serious relationships and falling off the face of the earth (Sung, Daniel) or having babies (Frasier, William). This effectively wipes off ALL my backpacking and rock climbing buddies.
During our Monday rock climbing session William mentioned he’s not only having a baby, but he is having two babies - twins - a gaggle. If I had any kind of evil hope that he might still make it out for climbing one night a week, that pretty much killed it. I’m going to have to work on finding some belay buddies in between home hunting. I have an abundance of drinking buddies, I wonder if there’s a place I can go to trade two drinking buddies for one backpacking/climbing buddy…like a Ye Olde Buddy Upgrade Shoppe. I found two slices of stale old pizza in the fridge that I can throw in for additional bartering points. How about I put on this jaunty green felt hat for charisma bonus…what about now? Darn.

Here’s a hint for newbie rock climbers, when your friend is trying to navigate a tough section of the wall, don’t bust out a Weird Al Yankovic’s “Another One Rides the Bus” (parody of “Another One Bites The Dust” by Queen) song. I don’t know what got into William, but while I was climbing he started singing away:

Another one rides the bus
And another comes on
And another comes on
Another one rides the bus
Hey
He’s gonna sit by you
Another one rides the bus

I laughed so hard I almost fell off the wall - good thing the dude holding the rope was so preoccupied with singing too.

In other news, my phone is trying to break me and Jessica up - again. Fuck you, phone! I don’t have that many girlfriends to begin, what the hell were you doing holding onto all my text messages? Were you hoping to save them so that you can read them to your friends and mock my grammar? Do they make good reading material when you can’t sleep?  There will be plenty more poorly composed and badly spelled text messages for you to savor in the future, let these ones go.
Jess and I made plans to go out for food and I never heard from her, I looked at my phone today and saw all these messages queued up with “Sending in Progress…” status. I called her to see if she got my text and she asked if I got her text, no for both. Our phones hate each other, this same thing happened a few years back, I would randomly get 4 of the same message from her a week late and some never show up. We would even text in front of each other to test and it’s completely random whether our phones would talk. We laughed, remade plans and made a pact to always call instead of text.

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I’ve been very much on the fence when it comes to doing the Seattle-to-Portland (STP) bike ride. Life has been a bit too chaotic to establish a good training regime. Some of my friends that are planning on doing this have been telling me about their bi-weekly training. I get weekly reports of, “this week we did 30 miles” and “this week we did 35” and now they’re up to 50 miles. I feel extremely behind because I’ve only been huffing up and down Capitol Hill and I might get 10 miles on a good day.

On Saturday, I decided to get my ass on the bicycle highway to see if I can get some actual mileage on my bike. I started near University Village and ended up in Redmond, my trip computer read 43 miles for the round-trip…not too shabby for a first extended ride. A few things noted:

1. Riding a bike on the bike highway is stupid easy, the only minor physical difficulty about the ride was the saddle soreness factor after mile 35. I did the entire 43 miles ride with a short bathroom break which was more to blow my nose because my sinus goes haywire with a hint of wind-chill factor.
2. After mile 30 the ride got boring…not just a bit boring, but “get me off the fucking road right the hell now because I would rather be anywhere else than here” boring.
3. I used biking cleats with my step-in pedals for the first time. Apparently, it might have been a good idea to adjust the tension on the pedal release before using them for the first time. My shoes clicked into the pedal during the ride, but at some point the trail crossed through traffic and I tried to get my feet off the pedal but they were welded to them. With my shoes stuck, I had the choice of pedaling straight into traffic or stop and tipping over. I chose to ride up to a light pole and hugged it. I stopped, balanced for a moment, and tipped over; my right foot released before my bike crash landed. Yes, as I have reiterated many times in this blog: I am the epitome of poise and grace. Luckily, this graceful gal had half a wit to carry her bike tool with her to adjust the tension on the pedals and to tighten the clips in her cleats.

I’m leaping off the fence for the STP ride right now. It’s simply not my personal Everest to endure hours of riding boredom with literal pain in my ass. My personal Everest is Kilimanjaro.

Oh yeah, people, Bikram Yoga sucks, especially on Sunday so stop piling up on my class already! We had 36+ people in a tiny little 105 degrees and extra humid room this last Sunday…I can’t begin to tell you how wonderful it is to feel sweat drip over from the strangers next to me. Yum.

Here’s a tip to newbie Bikram Yoga students, the coolest class is the early 6:45 a.m. class because the instructor told me they would have to be there by 4 a.m. to properly heat up the class. The last class of the day will definitely be heated to the proper temperature, go to class 30 minutes early and lay on your towel to give yourself time to adjust to the heat gradually, so you don’t drop dead half-way through class.

I’ve picked up a couple gourmet vegetarian cookbooks and I just started experimenting with fennel. Here’s a hint to newbie gourmet cook wannabes, always keep some asparagus or broccoli around to stir-fry for backup.

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I’m not really homeless people, you can stop feeling sorry for me.  A friend of mine wrote to me telling me that he feels bad for my homeless state.  I replied, “How much did you spend on rent this month?  …  I got to spend all that on video games, hookers and blow.”  I’ve taken up professional squatting.  I’m currently staying at my sister’s boyfriend’s apartment.  He lives with her, but my sister isn’t comfortable with the idea of him giving up his condo so soon in the relationship, so I’ve got a fully furnished unused apartment in lower Queen Anne Hill at my disposal.  So in theory, if I want to keep this place forever, I have to make sure my sister doesn’t ever hit that “comfort zone” in her relationship.  Every so often, I need to put in a comment about the flaws in her boyfriend to ensure that my career as a squatter doesn’t get cut short.  Sure, this may seem a bit terrible, but it’s not like I’m saying relationship isn’t agreeing with her waistline or something equally dastardly.  The sweet thing about living in Queen Anne is that it’s a neighborhood that I’ve considered moving to because I’ve got a couple friends that moved there from Capitol Hill and they rave about it all the time.  I was worried that after I buy my place in Capitol Hill, I would suffer from the Grass-Is-Greener syndrome.  After living in Queen Anne for about a week, I think that’s where the cool kids from Capitol Hill goes to die.  It’s basically a much much tamer and smaller version of Capitol Hill…and god knows, Cap Hill is already tiny as a snow globe town.

Seriously, God, if you’ve still got RSS feed on this blog, being homeless has been hilarious and all, but I’m quite ready for the condo of my dreams to show up on the market already.  Thanks, luv you.  And don’t forget, I’m still waiting for a clean burning engine for my SUV.

A few years ago, if you had told me, “You know, there’s more to life than trying to look pretty and getting your drink on.”  I would have laughed at your face and told you, “That’s just what ugly people tell themselves.”  Life of the pretty party people is simple but sweet.  One day, I walked out on my party friends, I got tired of the unhealthy cycle of partying seven days a week, quite often till 9a.m., barely grabbing a shower and trying to stay alive at work.  It has been years, but I do miss some of the friends that I’ve lost, more specifically, I miss my best party friend Jessica.  Jessica and I were close friends, but I had to walk out on her all the same.  I hurt her pretty badly when I disappeared, I ran into her at a club once, she cried and asked why I never returned her calls and abandoned her.  I didn’t know how to tell her that I needed to stay away from a part of my life and that she was part of that.

I ran into one of my old party friend Monday night at some bar and got Jessica’s contact info from her.  Apparently they still party, but not till 9a.m. every damned day.  I text messaged Jessica expecting her to tell me to go fuck myself, instead she invited me over to her new condo for drinks.  I went to check out her place last night and we had a wonderful time hanging out and catching up with each other.  It was like we were never apart, things were pretty much the same.  I met her gay best friend.  He told me my shoes were ugly and asked me who did my lips.  I woke up this morning with a wicked hangover and wondered where my car was…like I said, pretty much the same.

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What do you think of when you think of “home”? I think of the place where I put all my “stuff”. I consider myself officially homeless because when I close my eyes and think about where home is - I draw a blank. Being that I’m in my hometown filled with family and friends, I’ll never be out on the streets or anything, but it’s still strange to not really have a permanent stash spot.

I thrived on security and familiarity. I used to not sleep well if it’s in a foreign place. When I traveled, I would sleep like crap for a few days until exhaustion took over then I would sleep the “sleep of the deads” for a night, rinse, repeat. After a while, being away from home would stress me out and I would long to return from vacation.

One of the most beautiful thing about being human is our ability to adapt. In the short time that I’ve been homeless, my mental attachment to my material things is broken. It’s such a delicious feeling to not have my possessions possess me. It feels like floating. I think about where home is, and it’s precisely wherever I am standing. I know I’m taking this situation a bit lightly being that I know my current state is temporary and that it’s by choice, but it’s still nice to let myself float away for a moment. It’s wonderful to take a break from Thoreau’s “Men have become the tools of their tools.”

I mentioned wanting to volunteer for Harborview Hospital nearly two months ago and I’ve stopped talking about it, so obviously my dedication is waning. After all, I’ve already taken FOUR shots in the arm and had two letters of recommendation filled out, so why not just give myself a break? Ah, if only that was the case. Harborview is the largest trauma center serving four states, they have at least 200 hundred volunteers that are being managed by 3 people. I had my volunteer interview yesterday after waiting over a month…the interview is mostly to see which department I would best fit in. Then before I can volunteer I have to attend a mandatory orientation from 4-6:30 which is held one Wednesday per month. I’m 3^rd on a waiting list for May 30^th, but if I don’t get in that, it will be June 27^th before I can attend.

It’s a good thing I’m only volunteering for a hospital and not somewhere important like a place where people might die if things move at a slow pace.

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Some days, I pretend like I’m very brave. I’ll pack a backpack full of provisions for five days and tell my sister I’m heading off to the woods alone, she’ll ask if I get scared, and I’ll reply, “Pshaw, what’s there to be afraid of?” Then I’ll stomp around in the mountain pass in the dark, and have a heart attack every time I hear a twig snap.

Other days, I don’t even pretend. The weather is getting nice out and riding a bike around in close-toed shoes creates sweaty unhappy feet. Still, I’m deathly afraid of riding in open-toed shoes because I know I will scratch my toes off.

Last night, I went to pick up some mushroom (mushroom is the new steak) at the neighborhood hippie market. While I was parking my bike, some gal walked up to her bike in flipflops. I openly admired her bravery, “Wow, how do you ride in those flipflops? I’m scared I will sand all my toes off.” She smiled and replied, “Funny you should ask that, I just scratched up the side of this foot.” I looked at the scab on her left foot and shuddered.

I was that same person that wrecked her bike going 2 mph, if I happened to be wearing flipflops at that time, I would have amputated my left foot then too.

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I haven’t been feeling much like writing recently, instead, I’ve been doing a crap-ton of reading because I’ve read somewhere that if you’re about to be homeless, the best thing to do is read. I’m sure it was from a very reliable source, like the bathroom wall at my favorite dive bar, or holy sheeze, I made that up, but why question where I get my useful information anyhow?

What did I read? Well, I finished a book and a short story, started on another book and got further in three other books. I’m perpetually in the middle of reading at least five books. This may be a symptom of attention deficit disorder, but I can’t keep a straight thought long enough to look up a shrink for proper diagnosis.

The short story I finished is called The Death of Ivan Ilych, and I highly recommend it. Tolstoy has an amazing way of capturing human emotion and putting it down in words. I am recommending a classic, so better reviews and summary have been written before I was born, so I’ll not try to compete and stop here.

The newer book I finished is called Stumbling on Happiness and I think it’s pretty good far as pop-psychology goes but it’s definitely light on depth and data. It’s an interesting book that covers various studies done that shows how we have a way of tricking ourselves into being happy and how our happiness is easily influenced. One study that stood out in my mind is the study of how having control makes us happy.

There was a study done at a nursing home with the residents being given some extra company each week. In one group, the residents were allowed to dictate when they have visitors and in the other group, they were simply told they were having visitors stop by randomly. At the end of two months, the group that had control over visitors showed great improvement in health and took less medication. The study was successful and thus it ended. Then a short while after the study concluded more of the old folks that previously had control died than was the norm. The death rate of the other group was about the same.

Apparently having control then losing it, is more devastating than never having it to begin with. Moral of the story, stop being such a control freak, that shit could kill you.

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Last year, I hiked/backpacked every weekend between April and October, about half of them were with friends, half of them solo. Whenever I mention that I hike every weekend to a non-hiker they would ask if they could join me or suggest a friend that I should look up to keep me company and I would always decline. I decline because I am an asshole misanthrope that jealousy guards my quality time with me. And why would I want some newbie to hold me back? I was in my selfish mode and I wasn’t done with my solo talks with me, god, and the universe (although there was one hike that was 11 miles roundtrip in complete solitude that got me pretty bored with all three company).

This year, I felt that I should try to get people into hiking so I figured I would try to gather a group of newbie hikers once a month and drag them up Mount Si or something to that equivalent. I gathered 3 hikers and somehow by Saturday, only one showed up. This was the real reason I didn’t try to form newbie groups before…people seem more interested in talking about hiking/biking/backpacking/climbing than to actually do it. I was really glad that Jesse showed up for the hike, because even with all my pep and energy over hiking, having 3 people bail could sap whatever go-getting I had.

Jesse was well-rested and in good form to kick Mount Si’s ass. We completed the hike in about 2.5 hours which beats even my usual time of 3 hours. I’ve noticed whenever I bring one of my long-legged buddies, I always tend to go faster. I’m just happy that Jesse was such a trooper, quickly leading the way up top, waiting for my short legs occasionally, and he was so kind as to oblige me a a photo next to the sign.

Later that night, Jesse, being our token Latino friend, was so kind as to host some Cinco de Mayo festivity with some magically delicious homemade sangria. Still later that night, we wandered the streets of Capitol Hill looking for a good club for some dancing, we heard there was latin hip-hop at Baltic Room. Somehow we forgot that we live in Capitol Hill and what we ended up with was gay latin hip-hop night.

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