I absolutely hate the word “blog”

So there’s this stupid little head shop in Fremont and Lake City called Piece of Mind.  Now you MIGHT think that’s a cute little pun, but let’s examine things closer.  Take a look at their logo to the left.

So that’s a PEACE symbol, right? Like, world peace, peace on earth, peace and goodwill. Or PEACE of MIND. So you see, the name PIECE OF MIND would only be a good pun if the interpretation of the homonym /pIs/ that they were going for was, in fact, the PIECE meaning. I.e. a piece of pie, let me give you a piece of my mind, etc. FOR EXAMPLE.

So unless they’re trying to indicate that their shop, instead of giving one ‘piece of mind’, actually somehow robs them of a small piece of their mind, then they’re clearly not quite grasping the concept here.  And if, in fact, the whole piece thing IS in fact their desired marketing angle, then God help us all.

As another case study, let’s take a looksie at an example of a GOOD pun using the term /pIs/: Peace a Pizza, whose logo and name ACTUALLY MAKE SENSE.  Because, you see, traditionally you eat a PIECE of pizza, so changing their name to reflect the PEACE meaning instead is actually a valid pun here, that’s witty and consistent with their logo and branding.  Please take note, stoners of Seattle. Put down the pipe and pick up a thesaurus.

GOD THIS INFURIATES ME SO MUCH EVERY TIME I DRIVE BY THE PLACE.  Thank you for letting me get it off my chest, Imaginary Readers.  All better now.

Another year, another bizzarely boring and silly retail idea: glassybaby. While Christmas shopping and running errands at Bellevue Square, I spotted the following store. (Keep in mind that this is during the INSANELY busy season, on a particularly insanely packed evening. And yes, that is one lone customer you see.  I actually peeked in a few more times over the course of the evening and saw no one at all.)

When one of these shops turned up in U-Village months before, I was perplexed and then quickly irritated. I like retail real estate to be filled with cute and /or useful shops that contain a variety of delightful goods, not sparse minimalist spaces displaying a single product that is… a little glass candle jar. Not even the friggin’ candles to put in the jar, mind you: just the jar itself. AND OH MY GOD THEY ARE FORTY DOLLARS APIECE THAT IS BALLS. Read the rest…

I was running errands in Redmond the other day on my lunch break, and I drove by what has to be the most pathetically-named city park in the history of pathetically-named city parks:

(To be fair, there are indeed grass lawns throughout this park.)

Coming next month: “Wet Water Lake”. Should be a friggin’ riot.

Let’s see if it sticks.

I’ve never been a huge fig person before — not because I don’t like them, per se, but more because I have no idea whether I like them or not. I guess they don’t seem to have a particularly distinctive flavor, at least according to my palate. I know they’re all the rage with foodies, though, and I was feeling hungry, bored and adventurous. And Grant was off at some football thing, so I was left to myself to figure out dinner plans.

Enter Pagliacci. Their current seasonal offering is the Prosciutto Fig Primo, and it made my mouth water when I heard the description over the phone (text doesn’t do it justice):

PROSCIUTTO FIG PRIMO 
The thought of a sweet fruit on a pizza is often considered a foreign concept. We pushed the boundaries of pizza making with our Pear Primo and thanks to its continued popularity, we knew figs could be a hit too. We combine figs with prosciutto, basil and fresh mozzarella on an olive oil base for the perfect balance of lightly sweet and salty flavor.

Our usual standard is their Parma Primo, which has prosciutto plus basil, tomato, olive oil, mushrooms, fontina, mozzarella and goat cheese on an olive oil base. So this was close to home while still being adventurous and fun. And I actually think there’s a higher ratio of prosciutto to other stuff with this special.

At the end of the day, the fig primo had definitely won me over, even though it was a bit pricier than our usual (extremely expensive) favorite. The only improvement I would make is to add some tomatoes.  It was so very sweet that it seemed like it could use something tangy to balance it all out.  Still, it turns out that a) I like figs in some contexts, and b) I’m not yet over the fruity pizza trend.  Mmm mmm!

So my most recent Costco run yielded a box of chanterelles, of all things.  (I think of Costco as more of a bulk mouthwash and paper towels kinda place, but hey… they were cheap, fresh, wild-harvested, local, and bright orange with gills, so how could I refuse?)

I’d never cooked anything with chanterelles before, so I decided to just sautée them in a bit of butter and chicken broth, and let their natural flavor shine. Ahem, that was LET THEIR NATURAL FLAVOR SHINE.  (They didn’t hear me.)

Turns out chanterelles don’t really *have* much of a natural flavor.  In fact, I had to drizzle a bit of white truffle oil on them just to make them fun enough to eat!

Lesson learned: while the name may sound all French and elegant compared to, say, oyster mushrooms, the latter is actually much tastier.  Now I know!

Trumpet, like most cats, can be a bit of a picky eater. But I have been wanting for ages to try and switch him to a more natural brand.

A couple years later, I’m *actually* getting around to doing something about it. I got him using Wellness brand dry food that’s well-geared for his particular needs (he’s UTI-prone). But I tried giving him wet food from that same company, and it was a no-go — he only likes stuff with a sliced/chunky texture, and not that godawful horrifying pastey mixture that most wet cat foods possess. (And I totally sympathize. We don’t want to have to open cans of that shit for him, either.)

Thankfully, I’d bought those cans at a small, locally owned pet food store in Whitecenter, near my old work. They guarantee all their foods, so they reimbursed me even for the cans that we had opened up and rinsed out — no hard feelings! Given that I figured it would take a few more tries before I found a natural wet food that Trumpet would touch, I was bummed that this refund-friendly place was no longer convenient for me.

I popped into a local Mud Bay Granary just to see if they could be of any help, and they very much were! They lay out all their cat food brands and the reasoning behind them on their site, which is very helpful.  And they gave me three free BIG cans of wet food for free, just to see if he liked them.  And they said if he didn’t, I could come back in and get three more free cans.  And then they gave me free salmon treats to try out on him.  And they have a zillion convenient locations all over western Washington.

Have I mentioned that Mud Bay is awesome?

No, not the cheesy Shakira album. I mean actual, paid laundry service.

See, we have assigned time slots in our building to do laundry in the shared, coin-op laundry room. And lately, some inconsiderate neighbors have been stealing our time slot, despite the fact that we repeatedly leave increasingly frustrated-yet-still-begrudgingly-polite notes about it. (At first, we figured it couldn’t possibly be the same people over and over again, and that it must just be new-ish tenants who didn’t realize there was a schedule. But then, our caretaker informed us that it’s the same assholes over and over again, so now we’re in full combat mode.)

Needless to say, the fact that they’d thwarted our FOUR most recent attempts to do laundry had left us with quite the backup. So I caved, and we looked into getting professional laundry service. And can I just tell you, MY GOD IS IT WORTH IT.

For a mere $0.95/pound, Russell will come by your place, pick up all your dirty things, wash them according to your specifications with your choice of products, and return them within a day clean and dry and nicely folded and bagged. You don’t even have to drop it off or pick it up. He says his rates may go up soon, but considering that we did at least four loads worth for $35, I’m not too freaked out about it.

Don’t get me wrong — this is a major splurge for us, so it will probably never become our principal form of laundry-doing (at least not unless we’re making six figures each). And now that we know we have the building’s proactive caretaker in our court, we’ll probably continue to do battle with our neighbors until we win. (Next week: Me sitting in the laundry room reading, waiting until they show up so I can confront them in person. Fun, fun.) But still — this was a very welcome help-in-a-pinch option, and I plan on having Russell come take care of our excess sheets and towels again the next time we have houseguests!

Not exactly the first time, but still.  This was pause-and-shoot worthy. Especially given that these days, the mere mention of Sarah Palin’s name is a standalone punchline. Even the women on the skincare and makeup forum I frequent had to take a stab.

Anyway. On a political note, Imaginary Readers, allow me to introduce you to Grant’s new blog. (Here’s hoping he doesn’t mind the Imaginary Plug.)

Grant will most likely write about politics far more frequently than I will. He will also write about video games and movie reviews and… aw hell, go click it. He’s funnier and wittier and taller than I am. Well, in many contexts/shoes, anyhow. So there you have it.

He’s also figuring out how to do a lot of custom CSS stuff from scratch, which makes me jealous and impressed. Who knows — maybe I can get him to work his newfound skills on this tired old blog. (Kidding, kidding — he’s the one who helped me co-design this hack-of-a-theme just a few months ago, so I could update to a non-WP 1.0 design.)

I feel like I’m in a Volkswagen commercial. I’m sandwiched between two other bus commuters who were previously both yammering loudly.

But they finally shut up and both started listening to music. And for the past two-ish tracks, we’ve all been subtly tapping our feet/fingers/neighbors in PERFECT TIME with each other.

Aww, Loud White Tapper just got off. Way to ruin the groove, buddy.

In other news, this post was brought to you by the new-ish WordPress iPhone app. Testing, one, two…