Category Archives: Up to Stuff

I tried out wall climbing last night at Great Western Power Company in Oakland.

So that means that I clung to little hand holdy gripping things on a wall, suspended by a rope, and tried to convince my feet to find a new place to step a little higher and then hoist up again. When I was ready to come down, I had to just let go of the wall and allow myself to be lowered by the rope, while imagining what loveliness was happening to my ass which was harnessed in with straps. Anything that creates fatty bulges around the tuchis and thigh area is surely something to pursue, eh?

I was accompanied on this by two lady friends who were quite brave. I was ever so glad to try this out with other women, especially since they’d never done it before either. We had a little lesson on tying the knots for the climber and the belayer, and then he watched while one person did a climb on a short wall and another did the belaying.

And then he turned us loose on the very tall wall, which was… well, quite tall. I got about half way up when I noticed that I was panting and that my heart was racing and that the Maggie mechanism was quite scared! I tried to make it a bit further up, but the panickyness and then the waning strength in my arm muscles pretty much made me think that that was an ok amount of a try when I got to a point where the little hand hold jobbers started being sparse.

I think I may try it again, and possible have less of the fears. Hopefully. And trying things that are scary is good for you, right?

Last night I went to an underground dinner party. It’s hosted by this organisation called The Ghetto Gourmet. I can never remember if it’s the gourmet ghetto or the ghetto gourmet, due to that block o’ restaurants in Berkeley, but I have looked it up and am reporting correctly. Ghetto Gourmet.

Anyway.

So it’s this thing where you sign up and pay via PayPal and then you show up at someone’s apartment where a chef and volunteers have taken over the kitchen. They cram in a bunch of tables and you sit at one and they serve you this fabulous meal. It’s like going to a restaurant, except it’s an apartment and you sit at tables with strangers.

This was my second time and I think it was even better than my first dinner. I really only remember the beignets from that one and that may be just because my mom used to make those for us when I was a kid type person. I developed a love for deep fried doughy goodness early.

So last night’s dinner was just stellar. There was a duck proscuitto-esque thing with some green garlic flan, which really sort of custard-y. And then this lovely, light clear brothed vegetable soup with fava beans, peas and asparagus. And then there was oxtail with a seared scallop and a meyer lemon leek bit. The oxtail was shreddy and god damned delicious. The leek mixture was so uber good I couldn’t deal. And for desert, there was a bourbon fruit mixture of cherries, strawberries and rhubarb with this brioche/biscuit thing called a baba. And that was wonderful, especially when baba got a bit soaky with the berry juices. Mmm.

I want to eat it again! Right now!

1. The ‘e’ on the end of Faire.

2. R2D2. I wanted to kiss him just to see what he would do.

3. A strange man named Trademark, who looked kind of like the GhostBuster, Egon.

4. The Bellagio-like geysers of choreographed Diet Coke, somehow combined with Mentos.

5. I ate a soft serve vanilla ice cream cone.

6. Hippies, weirdos and nerds conglomerating in a people watching holy grail.

7. It was sunny and warm and pretty out.

8. Jessica and I drank a (wee) bottle of whiskey on the walk to Maker Faire from where we had to park.

8a. I got to spend almost a whole day with Jessica, which was fun and giggly and good.

9. I bought a cool green necklace: a square, green piece of glass with vintage fabric pressed into it.

10. People gliding about in huge cupcake cars. Or vessels. I don’t know what they were, but it was weirdo and oddly neat-o.

**I did not like:

The traffic on the way to Maker Faire. There was some piss poor planning going on there on someone’s part.

The supremely lame little “show” that we were forced to endure before watching the life-size mouse trap in action. In fact, endurance levels were running a little low and after 20 minutes, we jumped ship and never actually saw the mouse trap trap any mice.

I do volunteer work! It’s super yay, as I get to relive my days of Key Club fame in high school. Even better, when college kids in color coordinated t-shirts try to stop me on the sidewalk to ask for money for one of 2,743 causes, I can say that I don’t donate money, I donate time and feel good that it’s actually true

The All Stars is an organization that puts together talent shows for inner city youth. They do the shows a few times a year and one cycle involves 3 Saturdays: an audition, a workshop, and the actual show. Everybody passes the audition, they just have to show up for all of the bits in order to perform in the show. It gets the kids constructively engaged in something that they like and creates a supportive environment for them to interact with one another. Sometimes the kids are awful and sometimes they’re astoundingly great. Mostly they sing or rap or dance. There’s usually one doing something like ballet. And a handful will do spoken word.

The dance performances are my favorite. I am staggered by these kids as they illustrate just how profoundly uncool I am. I am appalled slash thrilled by the skanky hoochie dancing the girls will sometimes do. That Beyonce-like ass wiggle thing is something I would totally do, if only I could…. how fun would it be to whip that talent out for special occasions?

At some level, I just appreciate being exposed to these kids. I would find many of them a little scary if I passed them on the street, so I like being around them in a non-scary way. They are the people in my neighborhood, after all. And there’s something so normalizing about seeing them nervous… because as much of a front as these kids put up, they do get nervous about getting up on stage and performing.

The added bonus — I get to find out about things like hyphy.