Crossing the Street

Last weekend I crossed the street. Went to LA to see a dear friend I didn't know well, if that makes any sense. And this is where street crossing begins.

Our work in the forklift industry brought Miss Burbank and I together. Mr Guy encouraged this further after meeting her and seeing how much we like each other. He made the radical suggestion that I plan a weekend with Miss Burbank, like he does sometimes with Mr Guy South, and I up and did it.

She took me to the weirdest place, the Oak Crest Market in Studio City. Part wine store, part thrift store, they have a deli and sell produce. You can buy potatoes and Jello salad, NOS (new old stuff) and OOS (old old stuff). Every item in the store is covered in a layer of dust that is either thin or thick, depending on the item's tenure. I left with a pack of cigarettes, a rain gauge and some mix tapes, one of which, "Funny Tape" turned out to be a tape of a record called "Sebastian Cabot, actor / Bob Dylan, poet." I didn't think it was funny, but gave it to someone at work who did!

We went to Fred Segal, which is the kind of store I'd usually be too intimidated to go into. But with Miss B, I was not, and my excuse was that I was shopping for an upcoming fancy "do" at the factory. Emboldened, we went to a resale clothing boutique, and then we crossed the street to walk back to the car.

Across the street we found an antique store that also had clothing in the back and I tried on weird designer garments, causing Miss B to say "we should cross the street more often." There you have it. Our whole wonderful weekend was crossing the street, and everything we did had that magical quality of trying to do something that was new, either because one of us hadn't done it or because we had never done it together.

More photos to come, and a trip up here for her in the future.

Flammie

This weekend we went to the birthday celebration of Mr Randommeats. His parties involve a) homebrew, b) his 20 best friends from college and earlier, and c) some of the Guy Family. In this case it was me and mr guy, and Random's wonderful mom and brother.

We got into town early and tooled around. In the distance a beautiful pink hotel caught our eye. We stopped to take pictures and wanted to see the lobby, and before you knew it we gave our $99 to The Flamingo Motel, an architectural wonder of the kind that is mostly extinct nowadays.

So on the way to the birthday party, I saw a used clothing store with a $5 rack on the street, and bought some pull-on pants and a t-shirt ("Everybody loves an Italian boy") and I was jammie-fied and ready to have some fun. Which we did.

As soon as we got back to the house (Guy Family Brewing), one of the revelers started setting up his cot, so "when it's blackout-30 all I have to do is crawl over and get in."

We're old, so we turned in after the corned beef and cabbage and before the keg stands.

Skunk

As I was making my way home from the factory the other night, I had an intense OLfactory experience: a skunk smell on the highway gave way to a hint of lemon oil in the finish and memories of the old place. Whoa. I think about skunk too much.

Well yes I do. Only three synapses separate the olfactory nerve from the hippocampus, which explains why smell evokes memory so quickly. But the fact that I had so much to say to myself about the qualities of the smell was a direct result of living in a refinery town for seven years.

What I was smelling was a mercaptan, a smelly sulfur compound. Mercaptans are responsible for both pleasant (grapefruit)and unpleasant (dung, skunk) smells. They are also a byproduct of the oil refining process, and the refineries would release them into the air late at night or when it rained.

I think of them as nasty and dangerous toxins. The refining industry thinks of them as less toxic compounds whose main problem is their ability to cause residents living nearby the refinery to pick up the phone and call the authorities!

And that was me. I was a waitressing night owl back then, and was on a first name basis with the nighttime operators at the air quality control board.

Things improved when one of the refineries closed. And then we moved to the new place and mercaptan isn't part of my life like it once was.

But every time I smell skunk, I parse the odor: skunk? or "skunk?"

Oskah!

Oh the happiest day of a girl's year. It's Oskah 2007!

It's time to summon the Oskah crew, eat yummy treats and lose the betting pool.

This year we're featuring kimpira gobo inari, vinegared Japanese mountain potato with shiso, tobiko sour cream with chips, and ahi poke.

Mr guy has buffered the red carpet and will keep us happy and commercial-free until it's time to order pizza :)

Faxing in their votes: mr and mrs middleguysis. In attendance: ms scandwaiian, mr guy. At large: tinybutmighty.

Trebek! The game is afoot!