This weekend, my friends Carrie and Joshua came to visit from Massachusetts. They drove, the brave, patient souls, and we had a whirlwind weekend of long walks, eating, and pleasantly just existing.
When I visited them for New Year’s, I was treated to beautiful homemade meals of sushi and fresh pasta, as well as a lovely exploratory walk of their town, two holiday parties and an outdoor hot tub with a neighboring wood fire. My goal was to attempt to meet this level of visit excellence. However, I—we, really—were immediately hit with a very serious problem. We had way too much food. We also planned to go biking, visit the Arboretum, visit the gems of Ypsilanti, and find the street Carrie had lived on during a very brief stay in Ann Arbor years ago. In approximately 48 hours.
In preparation for a fast-paced weekend, I had procured salad greens, tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, catfish filets, potatoes, and pasta. They brought tomatoes, herbs, and bread from the CSA. They also wanted to take me out for dinner to celebrate my new job. I also wanted to take them to my usual haunts.
We spent the entire weekend eating.
Shortly after their arrival, we headed downtown for dinner and beer at Old Town. We ate ribs, a Knight’s burger, and a reuben with pitchers of Oberon and Two Hearted. We were joined over time by friends who’d planned to join us and those who were collected along the way, maxing out around a dozen. Diagrams of how people knew each other were drawn by hands in the air. Stories were told. Design theory was hashed out. Drinks were drunk. We drifted home, full of meat and hops and goodwill toward men.
After sleeping in on Saturday, and changing the tires on my bike to the lovely road tires they’d brought me, we brunched at Northside Grill, consuming two-egg breakfasts and pancakes. We headed to the farmer’s market, intent on browsing only and full of plans to tour downtown and campus. However, we were faced with raspberries and cherries. We bought them. We continued downtown to drop by The Brickyard and had a small picnic of fruit and almonds. Another friend, just returned from the meat capital of America, called to let me know he had thick cut, vacuum-sealed bacon for my visitors. We met him upstairs, received the bacon, and wandered southward toward campus. All that walking required a snack of tomato bruschetta and ABC’s Brasserie Blonde at Dominick’s.
This is where we descended into madness.
Still wanting to take me out to dinner, my guests suggested that we go to eve in Kerrytown. I reminded them that they were leaving on Sunday afternoon, so our only chance at a fish and potato dinner would be that very night. They made the obvious point that we would just have to have two dinners. Reservations for a late dinner at eve were made, and after an attempt to triangulate Carrie’s old neighborhood, we began the march home to fix dinner number one.
We drank cranberry juice and Vernor’s and made insalata caprese, garlic mashed potatoes, and milk-soaked, flour-dredged fried catfish. We all remained prone for approximately an hour, with Carrie and I elevating our various bad joints made worse by walking nearly all the way to the Zen Buddhist Temple on Packard and back, then rose and dressed for dinner number two, which consisted of really delicious cocktails, appetizers (curry mussels, chicken dumplings, and scallops), and desserts (with wine, of course). Creme fraishe was the order of the evening.
On Sunday, sure we would never eat again, we rose and began to plan the bike ride, which got increasingly short as we discussed it, despite our clear need for exercise. Then, an IM from my usual weekend brunch companion sent us rolling toward the Roadhouse for oysters, grits, eggs, huevos rancheros, and pastries. Afterwards we slowly prepared ourselves for exertion and rode the paved path around Argo Pond, stopping occasionally in search of wormwood. Successful, we returned to my apartment, packed their car, I sent them off only 2 hours behind schedule. I was left with the beginnings of bathtub absinthe, leftover potatoes and fish, several tomatoes, and a surprise bottle of 10-year Laphroaig.
These people are probably the best house guests ever.
Yesterday I attended the summer iteration of Shadow Art Fair at Corner Brewery in Ypsi, and it was just as awesome as the last time.
This time, I splurged a bit and got a necklace (by Wei’s Open Secret) and a photo print (by Ann Arbor’s own Peter Baker) for myself, as well as a birthday gift for my mom.
I also traded some postcards and stickers, and ran into some other Ann Arborites happy to escape the art fairs in town this past week.
Some of my favorite artists there this time:
Peter Baker: hand-printed film photographs of locations all over the United States. Find him at peterbaker.com (photography), elevatedworks.com (design and development), or ptrbkr.com (blog).
Amanda Marie Edmonds/amepix: buttons, magnets, stickers, and accessories with a garden and localvore theme. Find her at amepix.etsy.com (store) and amepix.net (photo gallery).
Today I went to Morgan and York with a friend for coffee and cookies. They have Easter-themed items out now.
The odd placement of the icing prompted said friend to remark that the bunny looked like it was wearing a gimp mask. Things, as would be expected, went downhill from there.
Every good gimp mask needs a mouth-zipper.
It says a lot about how awesome the folks at M&Y are that at this point the gentleman making our coffees suggested that we should put the gimp bunny back in the display case. His sentiments were appreciated, but the gimp bunny was taken away and consumed.
Hey, kids. It’s been a busy couple of weeks. I’ve been wrapping up some freelance projects.
Yesterday, after a particularly boisterous staff meeting, I made a t-shirt design depicting our new unofficial mascot: a small whale sculpture by the staff elevator. A quick photo, some lasso, some filters, some Cooper Black, and voila.
My boss has already made an iron-on version, and our director is looking into costs for silk-screening.
As one friend pointed out, this is what happens when I use my powers for evil.
On an unrelated note, I just caught this Flash ad on Salon.com, in a Glenn Greenwald thread about Obama’s new video directed at the government of Iran:
I like that a) not only does the meal cost about 3 times what one would pay for, say, an excellent, rare-meat-and-weapons-grade-drinks-filled “evening for two” at Knight’s, but b) the lady seems distinctly uninterested in her dining companion, who appears to be prattling at her over his small glass of wine while she peers lovingly into her giant glass of wine. Ah, romance.
On Saturday night I saw the Handsome Furs at the Blind Pig with someregular partners in crime and additional brave compatriots. After a delicious homemade dinner of fish stew and wine, we trundled downtown and got a pitcher* in the 8 Ball, then headed upstairs in time to see the second opening band, Child Bite (think: tenor-sax-wielding bastard child of Man Man, Les Savy Fav, and the hardcore band of your choice).
Handsome Furs are a husband-and-wife duo from Montreal. He plays guitar and sings, and she pushes buttons and wears amazingly absurd outfits. They were incredibly energetic and excellent performers.
Their most recent video, for a song on their new album, Face Control, has zombies and making out:
*The conversation when the $4.75 pitcher of beer was brought to the table went something like this: Jane: What did you get? Jessica: Very cheap beer. Jane: But what kind? Me: OLD STYLE. Jane: … Matt: It doesn’t need a name. It has an adjective.
Update: I am reminded by Une Petite Friponnerie’s post-show post of one of the other conversational highlights of the evening. The Handsome Furs rolled into Ann Arbor on St. Patrick’s Day Observed, and at the beginning of the main set, vocalist/guitarist Dan Boeckner described what they’d seen as “Mad Max meets American Pie.” Having passed some underdressed, green-bedecked undergrads on my way to dinner, I can imagine that the carnage was alarming.
It occurs to me that I haven’t blogged about What I Did A Couple Weeks Ago.
Many were overtly or vaguely aware of a brief and harrowing road trip I took with a friend to south central Pennsylvania at the end of February. I’ve explained its purpose on my return to several people, but I think it’s summed up best with the following description, culled from a retrospective IM conversation.
me: Well, a complex one. No? “I did a 22-hour round-trip roadtrip with my ex/best friend to pick up hundreds of dollars of military surplus storage and modular furniture from a tiny army surplus/Y2K-preparedness/gun-nut store in Bumfuck, PA, which I knew the location of because I grew up a different but similar Bumfuck, PA. And in return for signing up for another trip this summer, I got thiscase. Which has embroidery floss in it now.”
“During the trip we deconstructed a case of beer and stored it in one of the cases because the car was so full of army surplus furniture that there was only room for one case of beer.”
“The beer was acquired because it is not available in MI and has sentimental value. It was split in half to share with another friend who owns a $1 van which is regularly borrowed to move large quantities of free high quality furniture around, often in snowstorms.”
Pardon my relative quiet this month. It’s been a downward spiral of decadence, ink, firearms, and (most frightening of all) furniture ownership. And I’ve made more time to read, as you’ll have seen from the ever-changing “Reading” section in the sidebar.
I hadn’t checked my tumblr dashboard for a while, and when I did yesterday, I discovered that Filled with Chocolate Pudding!, one of my favorite tumblogs, had linked to Faces of Unsolved Mysteries. Traffic on Thursday went up 583.33% (to 35 people)! So I hastily updated, and will have to soon make a trip to the library for more delights to share. This is a public service to you.
I was largely well-behaved online during the presidential election. But I cannot ignore this. “This” being a video of Sarah Palin being interviewed for an Alaskan TV station after the annual gubernatorial turkey pardon. She talks for 3 minutes about total bullshit, wearing a Burberry scarf and drinking Starbucks, and then there is a dude in the background slaghtering a turkey. You cannot make this shit up.
Hi. This blog is by Devon Persing. She mostly writes about work (information science and publishing), food, and crafts. You can write to her, if you'd like. You can also follow her on twitter or check out things she saves on delicious.
