I recently -- say, in the last year or so -- came out as an atheist. I was raised as a lackadaisical Catholic by humanist-leaning parents who taught me to ask questions and think for myself, so it wasn't really a big surprise* to anyone. I had always had a big problem with the Angry Daddy In The Sky model of creation, which got me in trouble in more than one CCD class, and I'd bounced around the usual Wicca/Tarot/Buddhism/blah art school girl "spiritual searching" stuff in my teens and 20s. So, what I mean is, I don't really believe in a lot of that woo-woo shit. The sort of comfort lots of people get from worshipping the deity of their choice, I derive from knowing that we live in a universe of natural laws; that we are natural beings connected through common ancestry with every other living thing on this planet, inhabiting a system that can be known and understood.

I have always felt like a "lucky" person, though. Like, I have a lot of luck --- not necessarily good or bad luck, just interesting luck. Weird shit happens to me and around me on a pretty regular basis, and it isn't always unicorn farts and rainbows, but it is often sort of incredible.** I often get panic attacks right before weird life events ramp up, and over the years my best coping mechanism has been to just hang on and ride whatever weird wave is coming my way. I know a belief in synchronicity and karma is pretty much indefensible to a rational, scientific mind, but we are all just slow-moving energy when you get down to it anyway - its not entirely outside the realm of imagination that we can be drawn to particular energy patterns over and over, or that particular sorts of people are continually drawn into our kurass... Whatever, it's a stretch. But there you have it: if I believe in anything, I believe in surfing the Chaos, and trying not to mow anyone else down while I'm doing it.

Kansas City felt like a big, extended stretch of weird-bad. We had a wonderful support network of friends and compatriots, which was good, because boy did we need them when everything else was going to shit all the time. I didn't write much, except around the wedding, because who the hell wants to read post after post of, "Yeah, pretty depressed these days. Money's really tight. The Boy and I are fighting. I'm miserable at my job. Waaaah." (Not that I didn't do a fair amount of that, just that it was with months and months in between, to space it out.) I made some art that I'm pretty proud of, and there are people back there that I hope remain in my life forever, but things have been continually looking up since we moved. Sorry, Midwest. I do still believe in your awesome potential, and I wish my pals luck in remaking their patches of the prairie. That direct sunlight and 90% humidity just beats you like a stick, though.

Anyway. Lately I haven't been writing because things have been good, for the most part, just really eventful. Due to a fortuitous sequence of events, we had the opportunity to get ourselves into serious trouble, in the best way possible. We're closing on a house on Tuesday, a 104-year-old lady in a convenient part of town, with lots of original woodwork covered in thick lead paint, some ill-advised carpet in the upstairs bedrooms, and buckets of charming details. She needs a new roof, her backyard is overgrown, there is some sagging ceiling plaster and missing light fixtures and unfortunate popcorn texture on the walls that must be dealt with --- but there are also built-in cabinets and window seats and new appliances in the kitchen, and nice wood under the ugly carpet and aforementioned lead paint.

When we first started looking at houses, his parents were advising us to try to find a "starter" home --- something finished in the suburbs, that we could do a little work on and sell in a few years when we wanted to move someplace nicer. I haaaaaate moving, though, and don't drive, so that plan sounded pretty horrible to me. In talking it out, we both realized that what we really wanted was a more self-sustaining life in the city, and that was going to take significant amounts of time and labor to achieve. It made more sense to us to pick a place that we really liked, that we could imagine taking on and making our own over the span of many years. We never thought we'd get so lucky as to find a little gem of a dream house, just a few blocks from a BART station, both less expensive and more lovely than anything we saw out in the suburbs. We have a budget for repairs built into our mortgage, and we will still be paying significantly less than we have been in rent.

It's weird and exciting to be setting down roots someplace, on the opposite coast as where I started. We have big plans for the house, and our little plot of land.  There are fruit trees in the backyard, so we already have a head start on growing our own food. We're finally going to get to compost! We will have windows! We're getting a puppy! It's all happening so fast! Whee! I don't believe in any gods, but I do believe in feeling grateful for the good turns in life. Things are chaotic, but good*** right now.



*except maybe my extended family, Southern and much more devout than our little oddball branch of the tree. I am sure my Grandma prays in fear for my eternal soul nightly, and I sometimes feel badly that she feels the need to do that.

**which is not to say that this cannot be said of pretty much EVERY OTHER PERSON ON EARTH. I am not so vain as to consider my experiences more or better than anyone else's, I just mean that it has been noted by others in my life that very odd occurrences happen along my periphery, almost as if a crazy screenwriter is throwing weird plot points in all willy-nilly. "Okay, and then she finds a dead body in the subway! And then a car crashes into her apartment building! And then she gets a job in California OVER THE PHONE!"

***always my favorite D&D alignment, anyway.

And another two months passed, and lo, it was boring to tell of so she didn't.

Seriously, so boring. I went to work and ate some food and slept and watched TV shows* over the internet.

Want to know what I didn't do? Um, lets see: finish unpacking. Finish my thank-you cards. Organize my studio area. Get my bike fixed. Have more than one area of the loft clean at any one time. Put my clothes away. Make some art. Go to yoga class. Achieve any of the short-term goals I set for myself back in January. I started feeling frantic. Enduring a mini-meltdown every weekend for six weeks led The Boy to suggest (gently) that y'know, we had health insurance now, and the folks at the adult behavioral health center were "really nice, and easy to talk to". (Or in other words, GRL u trippin LOL >_< srsly tho get help)

So I have a shrink now for the first time in years, and he's alright. Kind of a thinner, California-casual Santa Claus. Is big into neurochemistry and talks a lot about the brain. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see whether the short-term boost I'm having from seeking help in the first place can be sustained as forward momentum. Really, I just want to figure out why I am a gloomy, nervous space cadet, paralyzed by indecision and always hiding from the wolf at the door. I don't think that's a lot to ask, but perhaps I am overly ambitious. The last time I had a real shrink there were puppets in her office.



*Speaking of which, have any of you been watching Dollhouse? This week it finally got awesome. Thanks for kicking it into gear, Joss. Fuck yeah.

What's up? I know it's kind of a blog cliché to start your first post in months with an apology for being away for so long, like all three of your regular readers were waiting with bated breath because you didn't tell them how your new job was going. So I won't apologize, though I will say that one of the unintended consequences of getting rid of our TV was that the computer became our TV, and also I will say that getting a moment alone to get all diary with it is tough when you live in 400 square feet with another person who is always all up ons. Unintended consequences, man.

Anyway, we are in California now, and I am almost afraid to say how well we're doing. As if by naming it, I shall render this good time lifeless. But shit, things are pretty okay right now, and it's nice to let people know that for once we're doing okay. D is working his second two-week contract for a gallery in San Francisco, and has been getting his resume out there for other contracts. My job is quite alright: I work in a small, ultra-specialized archive with three other pleasant (and quirkily amusing) people, getting to use enough of my brain that I feel valuable and competent, but not so much that I am sapped of my desire to work on my art in the evenings. I find working around archival material to be pretty inspiring, though I will confess that the last few months have been rather slack when it comes to artwork. The 400 square feet thing is continuing to be a challenge.

Right now our apartment is kind of like a large, beautiful storage cube with a skylight, though little by little we are trying to fix that. We've been rearranging furniture for the last two weeks, and I just spent my birthday IKEA gift certificate on a new bookshelf and a plastic container we can use for our recycling, so we can finally stop just piling it around like MONKEYS do with THEIR recycling. Anyway. We're making headway, but are realizing that we have too many things like tables and not enough things like shelves. We are both beginning to see the utility of rugs, now that we have concrete floors. I have MLK Day off and D doesn't, so along with a rare day by myself in our little house, I get to rearrange furniture and hang artwork and take measurements for hypothetical new shelving units that D is going to make during his lunch breaks this week, huzzah!

That I am actually looking forward to all of this surprises no one more than it does me. Wow, motivation. I has it.

The moving preparations are many, and daunting, and overwhelming. My first day is one week from now (!!!) so I'm leaving on Monday, and handing the packing and cleaning yet to be done to my husband. Then it'll be another month of separation, as he gathers up our life here, and I look for a new place to live there, and we meet back up at Halloween to load the truck and the cats and get the hell out of Dodge. I'm excited to be someone new, but nervous, too. Worried about making a good impression, hoping they aren't disappointed in me once they meet me...it's all a rich tapestry of anxiety.

I'm still trying to convince the Lad that we should just GET THE HELL RID OF most of our shit. Our furniture is really nothing special, most of it having been scavenged from various friends' moving sales and the sidewalk on big trash day. There is IKEA where we're going. I am totally willing to toss like 60% of our stuff if it means that moving day won't suck so hardcore. The Boy is quite resistant, though. He gets very emotionally attached to things, and finds it really hard to let go of them. He's been trying to be good, so sometimes he'll hand me a big box of random crap and say, "go ahead, toss stuff out, just don't show me what you're getting rid of."

Some things I can't WAIT to get rid of. I decided to take this opportunity to sell off a lot of the artwork I have just sort of lying around. Some of it I've had for over a decade, and it's time to let it go to someone who'll love it instead of tolerate it. Some of it I'm just sick of looking at. Some of it I recently painted and figure, why not make a couple bucks? Anyway, if you or anyone you know is looking for some art, you can get some right here, baby: http://jenfridy.etsy.com

And now back to my regularly-scheduled packing extravaganza.

So.

I have been pretty honest about our job situation here in KC. For the most part, Lo Has It Sucked These Many Years. I have been looking for a better, more lucrative, more satisfying job since last year – but in July, when the Husband lost his position at Local Cultural Institution, we started casting a wider net.

Like, a really wide net.

I sent resumes all over, with my only criteria being that I felt I could learn something and be effective in the job I was applying for. For a while, it looked like my old hometown was where it was at: I interviewed at the main library back in Pittsburgh, and it was very hopeful, but I lost out to an internal candidate. Then there was nothing but silence on the job front. I followed up on my applications and sent new ones out every week.

All the hard work paid off. Last week, I had a phone interview that went really, really well, for a job that I am very interested in, in a city neither I nor my husband has ever lived before. This week, I got the call officially offering me the job. As of October 1st, I'll be working for the Water Services Archives at UC Berkeley, in a position that will be a lot more in line with my skills and experience than what I'm doing now. There are benefits, and paid vacation time, and on-campus gym facilities, and good public transportation waiting for us. Even better, my best friend has a list of contacts for the Husband to call in his own job search – any one of whom D would be thrilled to work for.

We're moving to the Bay Area, y'all.

As nervous as the thought of moving over a thousand miles away is making me, I can't stop smiling. This feels like it's going to be a great move for us.

I stoled this from agent-mph
The Omnivore's Hundred is a list of foods the gastronome Andrew Wheeler thinks everyone should try at least once in their lives.  The rules: 1) bold those you have tried, 2) strikethrough those you wouldn't eat on a bet, 3) Italicize any item you'll never eat again, 4) Asterisk any items you'd be interested in trying but have not yet.
 
1. Venison (Sausage only, but it was weirdly gamey)
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses*
17. Black truffle (Just the oil, but it was rather an intriguing flavor.)
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters (SO funky, sandy, bouncy, and GROSS. Aphrodisiac MY ASS.)
29. Baklava
30. Bagna Cauda*
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea*
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat*
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more (Such delicacies are wasted on someone with my gag reflex for alcohol.)
46. Fugu*
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin (In sushi! It was delicious!)
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone (Do Abalone and Superballs come from the same place?)
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads (Guys, it's called offal for a reason.)
63. Kaolin (Wait, isn't this CLAY??? I think my mineral foundation is made of this shit.)
64. Currywurst (Never had it in Germany, but have made it at home many times.)
65. Durian*
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis (I know it's just a big loose sausage, but just the thought of it nauseates me.)
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette (Again, I make it a policy to never eat the Poop Chute of any creature if I can at all help it.)
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe (They aren't kidding about those Green Faeries.)
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill* (Never say never, in these exciting times!)
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant*
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake*

I was surprised by how many of these I'd already had and enjoyed. Of course, it's pretty clear how far off the vegetarian wagon I've fallen these days.

There is lots of other stuff going on, in development, but I don't want to jinx anything by mentioning it here. Suffice to say, please clap for Tinkerbell, she's expecting a phone call this week. :)

The Husband left on Wednesday evening, and I've been coming home (or staying home) to an empty house every day since. It's been okay, I guess. I've done some chores and some reading, and I've got some resume-updating to do as well, so I might as well be alone and undistracted. It's a little sad having no one to share my weird thoughts with, though. iChat is cool and all, but there are limits. I don't want to hug or make out with my webcam, for instance.

One of the ongoing busywork projects we started before he left was a big purge. We're both pack rats, him even more so than me, so we tend to hold onto things long past their expiration dates. It was time to be brutally honest about those books I was never going to read again, the records in his collection that he couldn't really care less about, and the broken machines that we both knew were never going to become an art project. We managed to separate out about 25% of our records, most of our old stereo and computer equipment, and about 10% of our books (I know, I know,) for an eventual yard sale.

During the first attack wave, we noticed that we had a metric shit-ton of cds that we pretty much never listened to, since the iPod and computer replaced our cd player two years ago. Most of them weren't digitized either, so the music they contained was fairly inaccessible to us, practically speaking. $100 later, and we were the proud owners of 250G of extra storage space, in a stylish black casing about the size of a deck of cards. Since its baptism, we've been systematically ripping our whole collection and saving it to the new drive, which has been sort of an Adventure In Sound for me. Going through our sizable collection and listening to at least a little bit of ALL OF IT has been a really interesting trip down memory lane. I've got a decent chunk of middling-to-poor goth and industrial music, for one thing. But I've also discovered some gems I haven't listened to in years. (Nevermind is a really solid album, you know? I kind of wish I hadn't gotten rid of the rest of my Nirvana discs on a whim back in college.)

We've probably finished about 80% of our collection, after nearly two weeks of daily ripping. As it stands now, we could have a party that lasted 76 days, and never hear the same song twice.

- The Husband was given an unceremonious lay-off last week, slashing our home finances by two-thirds and thoroughly pissing us both off. He got 24 hours' notice that he (and everyone else hired in January) was not going to be staying on after his contract was up --- a complete 180 from what he was told only two days previously WHEN HE SPECIFICALLY ASKED ABOUT IT. They had been reassuring him for WEEKS that he would be kept on to fill shifts, and it was all a lie. Consequently, he is leaving for a month starting next week, to do remodeling work at his parents' house and earn some money so we can move away from this fucking town which continues to fuck us over in ways big and small.

- I interviewed for a new job in a different city, and it went really, really well, but I lost to an internal candidate. The people I interviewed with were very nice and encouraging and all, but it was sort of a whoosh of disappointment to have things be seeming to go so serendipitously and then...nothing. I mean, they called all my references and everything.

- I got into a bad altercation with a coworker yesterday, a sweet grandma who is a page at our branch, and it all started with Jodi Foster. We sometimes talk about movies in the morning, Sweet Grandma and I, and she asked if I'd seen The Brave One. Which I hadn't, because I'm not really a Jodi Foster fan. Whatever, lots of people like her, that's cool --- I'm just not one of those people. (I know she's supposed to be a really good actress, but every time I see her in a film, I find myself wishing they'd just gotten Holly Hunter.)
  So Sweet Grandma says, apropos of nothing, "Well, did you see that Jodi Foster movie, The Accused?" I told her yes, but on TV and it had been a long time ago. And she looked at me, and said, "Well, you know that lady, she brought it on herself."
  Meaning the gang rape in the bar.
  A WORLD OF WTF.
  I was kind of surprised by how quickly and shortly I snapped at her. "I don't care who you are or what you're doing, you NEVER deserve to be gang-raped, in a bar or anywhere else. No one ever, ever, EVER deserves that!" And she stammered something about "flirting" and I cut her off with, "I don't care if she was dancing on the table with her dress pulled up over her head, that is an unacceptable thing to do to another person, always." And then I walked away to cool off.
  "I was just talking about a movie! We were just having a conversation! You should listen to yourself!"
   I looked at her and said, evenly, "This is something I feel very strongly about. I think you should really listen to yourself." Sweet Grandma didn't talk to me the rest of the day, and while I feel sorry that I hurt her feelings because she is (mostly) a nice old lady, I should really be able to come to work without having to humor rape apologists.

- Our neighbors on all three sides have dogs that are rather barky, to various degrees. One seems to have separation anxiety, and basically sits in his back yard and howls all day. When the other dogs hear him, they have to sound the fucking Dog Alarm, too. I am generally an animal-loving pacifist, but Jesus Christ those dogs remind me EVERY DAY of why I am a Cat Person.

In other news, I have been thinking a lot about weight and food and eating and feminism lately, but you should be glad I deleted my half-chewed brain spew before I hit "post". Both times.

Happy goddamn Fourth, y'all! Woooo! The neighborhood was popping with quasi-legal fireworks all day, and at 1 am (when I was trying to sleep off my food coma) there was still a staccato of explosions every few seconds. AWRIGHT USA!!!!

Still, though, I can't complain about the overall tone of yesterday's festivities. The Mister and I took advantage of a rare day off together to laze around in bed all morning. I made blueberry corn muffins with carrot and lemon zest (which fucking ROCKED, thank you for asking,) and we ate them hot from the oven and slathered with butter while watching a Doctor Who we'd missed this season. (YAY for geek love.) The next three hours were spent prepping food in the kitchen whilst The Man of the House cleaned, oiled, and seasoned our new cast-iron hibachi in preparation for its maiden voyage. Charcoal was lit, applewood chips were smoked, and we grilled the shit out of some tofu steaks, vegan bratwurst, almost-ripe avocado halves, and pineapple slices. I used beer in place of half of the soymilk in VeganDad's recipe, and marinated the freshly-steamed brats in an emulsion of beer, pineapple juice, olive oil, and Korean hot sauce before grilling them --- they were fucking transcendent.

Things that were Unequivocally Awesome:

- Hibachi: made of win. Heats like a champ, it's sturdy as hell, and the cook surface was the perfect size for the two of us. Thanks to the Husband and his obsessive-compulsive cleaning and seasoning of the thing, it's already fairly nonstick, as a bonus. A+++ WOULD GRILL AGAIN.

- Dulce De Leche ice cream, with cookies. Oh mama.

- Watching Hellboy: The Director's Cut with full bellies, geeking out together over the awesomeness that is sure to be Hellboy II.

- CORNWANG!!! Behold!!

It was shriveled and dry, so we broke it off before we cooked it. Doug made me do it, though. He said he couldn't bring himself to, even though it wasn't really a wang. Dudes are so weird about that shit.

Not Awesome was the continual pop-crack-woooot! of cheap-ass fireworks going off all night long. Seriously, neighbors, if a string of fucking Jumpin' Jacks is enough to keep you shouting into the wee hours of the morning, then you need to get out more. Jesus Christ.