7.26.2012

Not Your Bubbe's Matzoballs

I slept late for the first time in a while. It was incredibly nice. Aaaah, sleep. I've missed you. You know, a good night sleep can be hard to find. You get all restless, fidget-y... thirsty... but I digress. A little bit.

I hitched a ride into the Mission with Heidi so I could wander around a bit. Valencia has some interesting little stores and a great Italian deli, Lucca's. Heidi and I are planning on making pizza tomorrow night, so I had to pick up a few things. Mainly, whole canned tomatoes, pecorino cheese and fresh mozzarella. I also got anchovies because we love each other. Mmmm.... little dead fishies. But I got a little distracted on my walk by a comic book store... *sigh*... I love comic books. I bought Neil Gaiman's Sandman #1 and proceeded to read it in a coffee place called La Boheme. I might have read all of it in one go. It's so fantastic... Gaiman has such style.

So I sat in the cafe for a good hour and a half. Reading a book. I'm so adventurous in this city. (I should really go to museums or something... but that takes a little planning, no?)

Early in the day, we decided that we were going to meet at Wise Sons Deli for lunch. Oh my god. It was delicious. I had an egg cream, their club sandwich and I tried pickles for the first time. Noooot bad. Not bad at all. I could get used to it. And did I mention the babka? Straight out of my childhood, seriously. We stuffed ourselves and had massive food comas on the way back to the car. (We found more 'poisonfruit trees', which I scaled to retrieve the treasures (aka poisonfruit) at the tippy-top.

We assembled some pretty fabulous pizza dough tonight while Nate was at band practice. After throwing it in the fridge to rise, we put on True Romance. The cast was fantastic, the whole thing was great. I love Christian Slater. I'm loving everything today... I'm so stuffed with food.

Love,
Henna


7.25.2012

Traffic Falafel & Dead Birds

Monday night, traffic out of the restaurant was terrible. Absolutely terrible. Nate and I drove four blocks and suddenly we were caught in standstill, bumper-to-bumper traffic. So we did the obvious thing and called the falafel place, Oasis Grill, a block away and placed a take-out order. I called, jumped out of the car (unmoving traffic, remember) and sprinted the block to the falafel place. By the time I got back with our two orders of Deluxe Falafel, we had barely moved... but I had learned the cause. We were in four lanes of traffic, which were reduced to two lanes then one without warning. Damn subway construction. But we finally got home and decided to set up the new surround sound stereo system Nate had gotten. It was, of course, 11:30 at night. We didn't go to bed until 12:30 because stereo systems are that much cooler than sleep.

Yesterday was pretty chill. I stayed in back during the lunch rush and made sandwiches. During the ball game rush, someone asked me to recommend a beer. "Sorry, I'm under 21, I have no idea what it tastes like." He winked and me and said, "But I bet you do..." I had no response. Nate and I skedaddled out of there when he got back from a catering event and we decided to cook dinner for Heidi. So I made a salad and roasted a whole chicken. An entire chicken.

Everyone had gone to bed by the time it came out of the oven. So I managed to wrangle it into a couple of tupperware containers and went to bed myself. So the dinner became breakfast.

*sigh*

Love,
Henna

ps. I realize all I do is eat, work and walk dogs... but all I want to do after work is eat. and sleep. pttthhhbt.

7.22.2012

Psychosomatic Love and Puppies

Hooboy. I'm sleepy. I'm always sleepy. Work was pretty typical, I gave people food... there were a lot of gluten free orders today. etc. And one dad brought his two year old (I'm guessing on age here) to order a mousetrap sandwich. She had a huge gash on her face and the women sitting behind him looked very concerned. One woman leaned over and asked, "Excuse me, what happened to her face?" She turned right around and explained, "I fell out of my stroller!" She talked to me for a bit about the scab on her face, falling out of the stroller, being hungry for her sandwich... then she knocked over her cup of water. So I gave her a to-go cup and she thanked me. I enjoyed her very much.

I went over to Jeremy's because they were having a 70% off sale on swim suits. Isn't that nice? So I got half of a swim suit for 1.80. COOL RIGHT? MONEY SAVED AND STUFF. After I got back to the restaurant to wait for a ride home, I decided to sit outside to cool off. One of the people who live in the park walked by with their dogs. He had a beautiful white snowball that was probably still a puppy. She stopped her owner and came over to look at me. I moved to pet her, so she jumped a foot in the air. "Would you mind terribly if I let her get to know you? I want to her to meet more people." How am I supposed to turn down an offer to meet a puppy? So I sat there as she tried to eat all of the cheese off my clothes until she put her paw in my hand, sat down, and insisted I pet her. It was adorable.

Heidi and I came home to some dogs desperate for walkies. So we took them down to the BofA and Divisadero. As we were walking, there was a massive crashing noise. I have no idea what happened, but two cars were absolutely decimated... one was thrown back on the sidewalk. No one seemed hurt, but they blocked traffic for a good couple of hours. So we trotted around the spectators (and the thousands of dogs stopped to watch) and plodded up Divisadero. (Do you like my adjectives for "walk"? I'm trying to practice being a thesaurus.) We had a grand ol' time avoiding snack sized pups until we walked into a group of four people.

First of all, one was English. From London.

"Oh. My. God. I love pitbulls! Can I pet her?" As he bent down to pet Stella, the two ladies and the other gentleman descended upon us to shower love upon the dogs. Stella gave everyone's face a thorough cleaning as the girls squealed and took pictures to send to their friends. They wanted to know Tilly's breed ("dog") and were thrilled that they were both rescues, which led to more doggie kisses. Right in the middle of this dog love fest, a man walked up to all of us and asked for a bit of our time (that's a bad way to start any story). He entered a contest for KMEL106 R&B Radio for their Home Turf competition. He was one of the finalists and if his song wins, they play it on the radio on Friday. He showed me how I could vote on my phone. (Link here. Vote for "Psychosomatic Love" by Alejandro Adam) I hope he wins. He was very earnest.

The dog loving crew continued to thank us for adopting the dogs and letting them shower Tilly and Stella with love after Alejandro walked off.. I assume they were bartenders/waiters at the bar we were standing in front of. "Just so you guys know, this bar is very dog friendly, sometimes we have more dogs than people!" Of course, dog friendly means we can't bring ours near there. Shoot. But the British bartender hugged both of us and there was another round of thank yous.

Lots of hugging and dog love tonight.

Love,
Henna