23 August 2010

dancing with ira.


sorry kiddos, but i'm going to get all braggy on you here. See, I'm sitting at my red kitchen table on a beautifully sunny afternoon, finishing up a late lunch of leftover mussels steamed in white wine sauce, and I have just had the best weekend. the kind of weekends you can't really plan but that sometimes just pop up and make your life slow down and well, to run the risk of sounding downright cheesy, they are just... delicious. there. i said it. but it's true.

it all started with a slow Friday afternoon, which hasn't happened in months at my dear ol' job. I had gotten a cute haircut in the morning, busted out a couple super productive hours of work at a coffee shop, and gone on a nice run around greenlake. i got home around 1, checked on my to-do list and found it insanely short.  i celebrated with a wee bit of a nap, curled up on the couch which had just enough sunshine to be comfortable, but not too much to be hot. once awake, with a cup of coffee in hand, i actually wrote. yea. see the thing is - and i can only confess this now that i think i am coming out of it - i have been in a bit of a writers funk lately. blame it on the sunshine. blame it on the stressful job. blame it on the fact that a cute boy keeps asking me to go on long runs and eat nice dinners or go drink tall boys at dive bars, but i haven't been writing. and when i sat down... it wasn't pretty. i mean, i kept up as best i could on Jackson Riley, and the posts, while not awful, were not great. but there were something. and i'll take it. it's a little weird to have my writer's blocks a public thing, but i'll get used to it.


but on friday afternoon, i began to write a bit of my novel, which has been on hold for weeks upon weeks. and i didn't hate what i wrote. it's terribly long and doesn't yet have plot or much focus, but it's about a girl named Brooklynn and a mother named Adelle and a big farmhouse in eastern Kansas. i'm rather fond of the characters. i think i'll keep them around. i pumped out 6 pages, which is a ton for my little out-of-writing-shape mind. i was exhausted afterwards. i had to take another nap and watch the daily show to recover. (oh, and i did a little bit more work too, just to pay the bills).

friday night was out drinking a fresh (!) squeezed (!) whiskey sour. having never really had a whiskey sour before,i don't think i can now have it any other way that freshly pressed right in front of me. 2 lemons, a lime, and Maker's Mark. Mm-hmm. I sat and ate pot pies with friends and then sat and drank with friends on a huge patio enjoying the slightly chilly but totally manageable Seattle air.


Saturday was filled with trips to the Farmers Market to pick up ribs and veggies and fruit for the week ahead and salmon for dinner that night. We had to celebrate, to kick off our evening right. See, my friends, we were going to see Ira Glass. And while it may be understandable that some of you don't know who he is (a NPR radio broadcast host of This American Life) and some of you who know who he is might not care that much and wonder why I would be so excited (please don't underestimate the bounds of my nerdiness. srsly.) I. was. pumped. Before the show, friends were coming over and we were grilling salmon & asparagus with a side of cilantro pesto, eating a salad with fresh avocado and apple (a combination i had not previous thought of and now cannot wait to try again). We finished off the meal with beer popsicles, which were - surprisingly - very delicious. I was skeptical, and I am a true-blue fan now. I can't wait to try them with huckleberry beer and fresh fruit. Should you ever find yourself at a summer dinner party in my backyard, I fear you'll now know what I'll be serving for dessert.

We saw Ira, and for the most part, he lived up to my expectation. I wished he had a bit more depth to his show - another performer or storyteller would have been nice - but I enjoyed it none-the-less. Leaving the show, we headed to the only acceptable afterparty: a dance party DJ'd by Ira Glass and Dan Savage at the dive gay bar Rebar. It was (wonderfully) what I expected: terrible DJ'ing by two novices, a lot of show tunes set to a techno beat (Zanzabar and Cats, no joke) and probably the best people watching EVER. Ira danced exactly how you would think a 50-year old national public radio host would dance, and it was ever so endearing. Dan danced as one would expect a writer with an affinity for show-tunes to dance, and it was ever so perfect. Dan's husband, Terry, somehow was able to dance to every. single. song. and make it look good (to a disco version of Memories. I don't even know how that's possible). At one point (I think it was when GaGa began to play) everyone behind me pushed up and I found myself dancing on the stage, next to 100 of my new best friends and Ira. All fun and good, if a little surreal. But once people began to push past me, saying "Oh, I just need to touch him. I just need to touch Ira." I knew my stage time was over. There is only so much celebrity worship I can handle, especially of a radio host while in a fairly dive-y bar. Girl gotta know when to peace, you know?


So we left, and headed up to le capitol hill and ending the night with the best burrito ever from Rancho Taco Bravo, the place to stop should you be starving and slightly tipsy at 2AM (just note it for future reference). It's Seattle's answer to fast food - family owned, recognizable ingredients, slightly more 'spensive than Taco Bell, and a million kagillion times better. I highly recommend it. 'Specially the spiced pork Rancho Burrito.


And this morning, after saying adiou to my friends, Amos and I have had a nice relaxing time, cleaning up from dinner last night, looking into a future vacation, watching instant Netflicks. I may go on a bike ride later or I may bake a strawberry pie. It's one of those kind of days. And tonight we are seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark with more friends at this little theater that lets you eat pizza in a booth and brings you homemade popcorn in wooden bowls... seriously, don't mean to be braggy here folks. My life is kinda rocking for the past 48 hours and I just am soaking it up.

All in all, I think I'm coming out of my writers funk - this weekend sure didn't hurt - and looking forward to seeing you all again soon. Peace.

2 comments:

  1. Beer popsicles? Yes, please!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh man, we would totally be best friends if we lived in the same city. Just saying, our boys would probably get really pissed off at never spending any time with them because we'd be joined at the hip. Hell, we could even work together since we both work at home! We should probably break up with them and just date each other :)

    ReplyDelete

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