Categories
Parenting Personal

Busted Lap

December 5th, 2021

The world is wrong today

An Uber driver speaks of his wealth

When he’s just one small step

From the corner bums and their filth

Fortunes lost or never found

Spare change in their cups


That jingling sound

My fortune cookie wants to teach me Chinese

Kàn Bìng it says

“To see a doctor”

And I’m down, I’ll tell ya

It’s a day for downers

I’m sobbing over Cohen’s Hallelujah

Because it’s instrumental

But I don’t need no fuckin’ healer

I’m not mental


Long ago I was a puppet

Then I cut the strings to stop it

And I’m free now

With two cats in the yard

Life used to be so hard

But it still is, god!


Dammit she’s stuck like a barnacle

Jammed in a pickle

Wrapped by a tentacle

One monkey on our back

And missing one in the middle

Bitch cast a wide net

But the puppet has gone

Because the marionette was wrong

Categories
415. Featured Posts Parenting Personal

Lamentation #45

Categories
Personal Software Development

Forgetting Something?

Shit!

What, you ok?

Now I’m feeling bad for startling the Lyft driver

I mean we’re halfway to SFO already

Heading down 101 through the eucalyptus groves of the Presidio

Toward the tunnel

Which is a great place to get a speeding ticket

But I wouldn’t know anything about that

Besides I digress

See the problem at hand

Is that my flight to JFK is leaving in 90 minutes

And I’ve barely left enough time

Screw you Dad for always leaving plenty of time

Too much time

Twice as much time, sometimes even more!

But my old man was right

I cut it too close—

Again

No room for error

And now we have an error—

A big one:

I left my wallet in San Anselmo

In Marin County

At least 30 miles north

And a 90-minute round trip—

Out of the way

Missing the flight is a certainty at this point

Or is it?

See it’s worth mentioning

That I have a really strange background

I’ve said and done all kinds of weird and crazy shit

Went to UC Berkeley when I was still in high school 

Smoked and drank a lot of stuff

Nearly got myself kicked out of Stanford

Traveled all over the world on business

And sometimes pleasure—

Often both

Had a wife but she ran me out of town—

Definitely a story for another time

Also I built the tech for a dark horse presidential campaign

And before that spent seven years at CIA

People who don’t know any better call it “The CIA”

See now that’s how you can tell

Just like you can tell if someone is from Los Angeles

When they say “The 101”

So that was a very different version of me—

The CIA version

In fact at the time

I was happy to serve my country

And I’m proud of what we built—

And what we did with it

But I became less happy a few years later

After moving back to San Francisco

When the government of California

Decided to turn my bicycle accident

Into The Crime of the Century

Now I realize CIA and CA

Are two different entities

And perhaps I’m throwing the baby out with the bathwater

But my experience

Being the subject of a high profile criminal prosecution

For a goddamn accident

A bicycle accident

Changed how I feel about government

About authority—

And that’s a really nice way to put it

So how I fiercely protected my privacy at CIA

Then had a complete loss of privacy

As I was tarred and feathered

By local national and global media?

That made me paranoid

I mean really fucking paranoid

I’ve even talked to doctors about it

And they say no it’s okay

You’re the right level of paranoid

Which is not helpful

But I understand what they mean

Because thinking that people are out to get me

Is actually perfectly normal—

When they are

As it turns out exploring the depths of my paranoia

Jogs my memory

And it occurs to me

That in my laptop bag

Sitting right there next to me in the Lyft

Hidden deep inside an inner liner

I had placed a small blue pouch

With a zipper down the middle

And a tiny belt loop

Meant to be worn inside shorts or pants

Like a sealed interior pocket—

Concealed from wandering hands

In the little pouch:

A miniature Moleskine journal

(The cover embossed with “Good Grammar is Sexy”)

(Because it is)

A ballpoint pen, safe for air travel

A condom, safe for penis travel

The US Constitution, pocket-sized

An encrypted thumb drive with passwords for everything—

And my perfectly valid unexpired passport

Do you want me to turn around?

No! Keep going, we’re good

With a US passport I can probably get to Tibet

So I figure I can also probably get to New York

And if I can get to New York

Then I can probably figure out the rest

My irrational confidence

Fighting a tug-of-war with my paranoia—

My very rational paranoia

First off I have to figure out how to pay for this Lyft

That actually isn’t bad

Between Apple Wallet

And Paypal

Venmo

And all my apps

I can spend money online no problem

The real world—

As it turns out

Can be a little more complicated 

Don’t need to rent a car

Good because my driver’s license is 3,000 miles away

Metro Card?

Apple Pay

So I manage to make it to the hotel

A cute place in TriBeCa

The room is already paid for

But trouble ensues anyway

They insist upon running an imprint of a physical credit card

You know for damages and stuff

I have practically everything else in the world

Other than a physical credit card

Because it’s tucked neatly next to my drivers license—

3,000 miles away

I explain the forgotten wallet

Hotel policy, you know

I realize I’m getting nowhere

So I call in a favor

A couple of my coworkers are staying in the same hotel

Before long I get one of them on the phone

And he kindly lets them use his card

For damages

So I trash the hotel room

No I don’t do that!

What kind of a person do you think I am?

Anyhow I manage not to have too much trouble

Spending money in New York City without a wallet

Apple Pay and Apple Wallet go a long way—

Even in 2014

And some restaurants and stores—

Worst case

Actually allow me to read them my credit card number

While others give me attitude

But hey it’s New York City—

If you don’t like this place

Fuggin’ go to the one next door

Every one of my trips here

Whether good, bad, or meh

Involves acquiring a dozen bagels

And a tub of whitefish salad—

If at all possible

This is too important of a mission—

And I have a return flight to catch

Finding a bagel joint is the easy part

I mean come on this is New York City

But it’s crowded inside

Peak bagel time

A bit chaotic

I struggle to imagine how I’m going to pull off

Reading my credit card number out loud

In a room full of New Yorkers

Angry about bagels

(They’re always angry about something)

Then a light bulb goes off in my head

You know the proverbial one

And I opt for the sure thing:

I step outside and find a quiet spot—

No easy feat in New York City

But I do my best

Then I grab my phone

Look up the number of the bagel joint

The one I’m standing right in front of

So I call them

Placing my take-out order

And reading my credit card information to them

From right outside

Just me and some very healthy-looking pigeons

(The smartest ones go for the everything bagels)

(Obviously)

Washington Square Park farmer’s market, 2016. I know it’s not pumpernickel.

A few hours later

I push that silver button

It seems only found on airplanes—

You know the one that reclines the seat back

And I sink my teeth into a fresh pumpernickel bagel

A thick band of whitefish salad oozing out

Ever so slightly

Like a sickly tongue

Making a sizable mess

But absolute perfection in my mouth

As I fly west back to San Francisco

The endless sunset painting the cabin’s drab grays

In lush gradients of brown and pink

What strange and discordant circumstances from the past

Whether seen at the time as good, bad, or meh

Converged in such a way

That made it possible for me

To fly from San Francisco to New York City—

And back

Without my wallet

Now just because you can—

Doesn’t mean you should

For the record

I advise carrying at a bare minimum:

Multiple forms of ID

More than one credit card

An ATM card

And a good chunk of cash when traveling

Or else YMMV

And how much your mileage may vary

Depends upon what you forget

Categories
Activism & Politics Featured Posts Personal

El Paseo, 2019-2020

Mill Valley looks like the kind of town

You’d expect to see in a model railroad set

Minus the trains—

Tracks torn up

After a massive fire

Almost a hundred years ago

But each little house

And road sign

And tree

And store

Glued on

Exactly where it belongs

There’s a hair salon on the corner

With a hand-painted sign outside

Doesn’t say the name of the salon

In fact I don’t even know the name of the salon

Or if it has a name

Just HAIRCUTS

A barber pole

And a giant pair of scissors

Downtown Mill Valley, 2019

Someone not from here

Asked me if Mill Valley is a Hollywood set

And I’m still not sure it isn’t

I mean it definitely has a cast:

There’s Alex the rug guy

Poor thing looks like he hasn’t eaten in a decade

Doug behind the counter

Who co-owns the market

His son Eugene

Who surfs big waves at Ocean Beach

Jason the bartender

Who knows everything

Theodosia the barista

Who only knows how to frown

Kecia who sells flowers

From a cart over the arroyo

Larry the Hat

Who needs no explanation

And Denis

An 80-something fellow

Gentle giant of sorts—

At least six-and-a-half feet tall

Maybe seven feet with the giant mop of white hair

He would dig through the trash

And return things to me in paper bags

That he thought I didn’t mean to throw away

Denis was also my landlord—

And property manager

As I’d round the corner

Up the stairs to my apartment

I’d peek over my left shoulder

Into Denis’s gallery—

And store I guess

I mean nothing had a price tag

But hundreds of oils on canvases

Leaning against the walls

Stacked ten deep

Like cardboard boxes broken down for recycling 

Then in the very back of the store

Or gallery or whatever it was

An easel facing the rear wall

And balanced in one of Denis’s enormous hands

I’d see the edge of a mottled palette

And a few fronds of white hair

Jostling around as he tinkered with his brushes

Most of his massive frame

Hunkered behind his latest work-in-progress

An old man emptying his brain

Filling canvas after canvas

In a race against time

Next door is a store called Poet and the Bench

That sells neither poetry—

Nor benches

That was pretty common here in Mill Valley

Also sometimes it was really hard to tell

What was for sale—

And what was just part of the store

The north entrance to the El Paseo tunnel

I lived above these art galleries

That wanted to be stores

That wanted to be art galleries

In a tiny apartment overlooking

The pedestrian tunnel entrance

On the third floor of El Paseo

In an unlikely love affair

With Mill Valley

A model railroad town

And Hollywood set—

Featuring majestic redwoods

In the shadow of Mt. Tam

From my tiny apartment

I’d watch glorious sunsets

And make vintage cocktails

In my little kitchen

And at 8pm sharp

In a coordinated show of support

For essential workers

We’d howl out the window

Like a bunch of fucking lunatics

The echoes bouncing off the buildings

And through the El Paseo tunnel

I would live above the entrance

For more than three years

Which felt like home

Until suddenly it didn’t


El Paseo was not the only tunnel in Mill Valley

The other one cut between Piazza D’Angelo

And the Balboa Cafe

That tunnel leads through wisteria to a small parking lot

The exit of which faces an old theater

It’s small—

Seats fewer than 300

But just a few months earlier

I gave my first musical theater performance

As J.P. Morgan in Ragtime, The Musical

It was a pro-am cast

With a 21-piece orchestra

Quite a spectacle

Yours Truly as J.P. Morgan in Ragtime, The Musical, summer 2019

Anyhow, I’m sure most of Mill Valley didn’t care

That ten times—

For ten performances

I was J.P. Morgan in Ragtime, The Musical

But that didn’t stop me from feeling—

And acting

Each time—

Like a local celebrity

I would don my wardrobe and do my makeup at home

Then I’d walk the two blocks from my El Paseo apartment

Actually it was more like prancing

Off to the theater

Dressed like J.P. Morgan

Navy blue pinstriped

Three piece suit

Ivory sash

Black top hat

Silver monocle

Chrome pocket watch

Wooden cane

And a ridiculous mustache

I was J.P. Morgan

This weird little place

Half model railroad town

And half Hollywood set

It felt especially right for me—

When I was J.P. Morgan

Morgan literally singing about how wealthy he is

See, there are a lot of J.P. Morgans

In Mill Valley

And for most of them

It’s not a fucking costume

During the summer of activism

Around police violence

Which could have been any summer

Or anytime really in the last 150 years

So that doesn’t narrow it down much

But I’m talking about the summer of 2020

The mayor of Mill Valley

Herself a dark-skinned woman of Sri Lankan descent

Shut down any discussion of Black Lives Matter

At the town council meeting

Saying it wasn’t an issue of local importance

I guess that was on-script for Mill Valley, too

Where I rarely saw anyone who wasn’t white

And either enormously privileged—

Or descended from enormous privilege

Or at least they acted that way

There were other problems, too

In Mill Valley

Related to being black

See Ragtime, The Musical

Is about a lot of things

Like immigration

And love

But mostly it’s about racism

Specifically whites

In the early 1900s

Being truly awful, racist pricks

To blacks

So to pull off a musical like this

We needed three casts:

An “immigrant” cast

A “black” cast

And a “white” cast

Some members of the black cast

Both adults and kids

Came from the greater Bay Area

But others came from Mill Valley

I don’t know where the hell we found them

But somehow we did

We also needed guns

Fake guns, of course

This was musical theater

Not a theater of war

See what I did there?

So anyway our guns—

Theater guns

Some revolvers

Some rifles

They were vintage

And fake

Of course

But they were also kinda

Real-looking

One day the director

She sat everyone down

And gave us a very serious talk

About only using the guns—

Theater guns

In the theater

And only on stage

During rehearsals and performances

This had me wondering

Because very few things in theater are serious

But this sounded serious

Did some “well-meaning” white person

Wander past the theater

And notice a kid in the black cast?

With a gun—

A theater gun

Way more irony than I can stand

To have a police shooting

During the making of a musical about racism

Weeks later somebody spray-painted

Some KKK-related garbage

On a small building down the street

White people clutched their pearls

And said Not in Mill Valley

But until the police stop

Relentlessly provoking and killing black people

And proving

Again and again

That black lives don’t matter

This will continue to be an issue

In Mill Valley

And everywhere

Walking to rehearsal one evening

I noticed Theodosia wiping down tables

Sporting new purple streaks in her hair

My gaze lingered an instant too long

She frowned at me

Very much in character

Then I passed a parked Prius

Informally the official vehicle of Mill Valley

The paint was dinged up and worn

But the bumper stickers intact:

C O E X I S T

You know—

The blue one with all the religious symbols

And another with a raised black fist

This was exactly the kind of person

Who would probably call 911 on a black kid—

With a theater gun

And this is what makes me want to smash my fist

On the Hollywood set

On the little model railroad town

Watch the little fake houses and stores and trees snap

As they peel up remnants of the fake asphalt

Because the Prius driver would never identify as a racist

On the surface they would deny it

They’ve got the bumper stickers to prove it!

But their racism doesn’t live on the surface—

Like a bumper sticker

It’s buried deep within

And sometimes it has a way

Of sneaking through

Do we have to have our own real police shooting

Our own dead black kid

Right here in model train town

For it to be an issue of local importance?

Though I loved Mill Valley

With its quirky cast of characters

I didn’t like this plot development

Not in the slightest


So I’d end up living in Mill Valley

For another eighteen months after Ragtime, The Musical

So much of that in the thick of coronavirus

To keep everyone safe

We played apartment trading games

Quarantining with my teenage daughter

In El Paseo

Or sometimes it was just us

Oh and the cat we were hiding there

For months!

Perhaps the world’s most adaptable—and cuddly cat

Keeping the cat litter

And empty food cans

In separate trash bags

And sneaking out late at night

To deposit cat trash in the dumpster

Behind the nameless hair salon

So Denis—

The dumpster-diving landlord

Wouldn’t suspect anything

We did such a good job

That not even Jason the bartender found out

And he knew everything

Plus he lived next door

A paper-thin wall separating our apartments

And my bathroom window opened

Right onto his patio

(Don’t ask why)

(Because nobody knows)

And before COVID canceled love and everything

People would get married

It seemed like every weekend

At the Outdoor Art Club

Across the street

One time I even recognized the music

Cosmo Alley Cats, a San Francisco swing band

From the comfort of my postage-stamp-sized living room

And then there was the time I helped Kecia

By climbing over a railing

And down an embankment

To fish fallen orchid stems out of the arroyo

And the time a woman at the market

Asked me to help her get basil off the shelf

But wouldn’t accept the basil I had right there in my hand

And the time a guy tried to pick me up

At the bar of Tyler Florence’s old restaurant—

In El Paseo

But I acted straight

And it was hard to watch

(Most guys really need to learn how to flirt)

And the time I asked the metermaid

If moving violations

Were within her jurisdiction

To stop her from yelling at my ex-wife

Perhaps an unlawful u-turn was involved

But that wasn’t my point

And those times I slipped out

Through the El Paseo tunnel

The careful art of triangulating

Between the elementary school

The restaurants

And the homes

So I could smoke a half a joint

Without getting dirty looks—

Or even actual aggression

Damn you Mill Valley!

The little model railroad town

That won over the train-loving kid in me

The Hollywood set

Where I learned to love community theater

I love you still Mill Valley

Because of you

And in spite of you

In some ways you need to change

And change is coming

Whether you’re ready for it or not

But in some other ways—

Some important and curious ways

I hope you’ll always stay the same

Categories
Personal

Brooklyn, c. 1985

They don’t tell you in San Francisco

That East Coast nights don’t cool down in the summer

Not in Augusta

But not in Brooklyn either

I remember those sweltering nights

Thirty people crammed into my grandparents’ brownstone

Most of us related

Many of us crowded around a tiny TV

Yelling at it, mostly

Everyone was a Giants fan

Except the one Cowboys fan

Just to fuck with us

For sure

I asked him once why

And he said

As a kid

He liked the blue stars on their helmets

Same guy fifty years later

Now so radicalized by Trumpism

That I won’t even talk to him

He liked the color of the MAGA hats, too, I guess

Anyhow this kid was torn between the football game

And getting yelled at for plunking away on the old upright

That no one knew how to play

Maybe my grandmother, a little

But she was busy in the kitchen

Wearing a house apron

I guess that’s what it was called

Kind of a strange little floral vest contraption

With snaps

To protect whatever she wore beneath it

See protecting things was important

To this immigrant family

Five grown kids

With one adult uncle living in the basement

And my grandparents

And both sets of their parents

All living upstairs

Which also featured

In addition to the tiny TV and the upright

A little railway kitchen

And a long table that seated twenty

But wasn’t level

Because really it was three or four tables

All pushed together

Maybe more

In my other grandparents’ brownstone

Down the block and around the corner

They lived entirely in the basement

Which was kind of dumpy

And smelled like moth balls

But they had two stories above them

That sat unused

A bowl of fake grapes and lemons

On the fully-set table

Like Ms. Havisham

Prepared for guests that would never arrive

If ever allowed into these rooms

Which was not often

I would squeeze the dusty fake lemon

And feel the air as it hissed out

But that wasn’t the strangest thing

I mean my grandparents were living in squalor

Below ground in a musty basement

With two lavishly-decorated floors above them

That was strange

But what really stuck with me

Was the plastic wrap on the furniture

It wasn’t the thin plastic we use to wrap food

No, this was a thick, clear vinyl

That somehow was fitted exactly over

The plush couches and chairs

Maybe heat-shrunk or something

I don’t know

Because I don’t think people do this

Not anymore

And when I said that it stuck with me

I meant that it literally stuck with me

On those hot Brooklyn nights

And the days, too

A nice seal of leg sweat

On a plastic-wrapped sofa

I’d get up

And it was like peeling giant band-aids

Off the backs of my thighs

And the sound

The indescribable sound

Of sweaty legs

Trying to part ways

With a plastic-wrapped sofa

Meanwhile my grandmother

Flitting about 

Preparing food for thirty in a tiny kitchen

That was no joke

But my grandfather

A master craftsman by day

His gnarled hands kneading the pizza dough

He worked side by side with grandma

Together they would produce an enormous feast

And then a mad rush for the table

The ends filling up first

Because everyone knew

That if you got stuck in the middle

You’d spend all your time passing the lasagna

And not eating

Everyone talking at once

And nobody listening

The one aunt who always brought a different guy

Each one kinda looking the same

Brown skin

Rings, thick necklace, lots of jewelry—

Even for an Italian man

VO5-slicked back hair

And a porn mustache

Kinda half wise-guy, half pimp

And then there was another aunt’s boyfriend

Herbert, a Jew

Which was cool with us

But everyone hated him anyway

For other reasons

Mostly because he would pick fights

About stupid stuff

Like whether gasoline was more expensive than diesel

My dad worked at an oil company

Crunching numbers in a bunker

In Perth Amboy

Underneath a giant machine

That would crunch crude oil

Into many different things

If anyone knew what petroleum products cost

It was my dad

But Herbert wanted to argue with him anyway

And then of course my cousin Olive

She was maybe seven

But she insisted

After my grandparents toiled in the kitchen for hours

That she get her own special meal

Of bland American food

Usually an overcooked burger patty and fries

Or the like

She grew up to be a vegan

And now requires special treatment

Where-ever she goes

Imagine that

Between

The Cowboys fan, now Trumper

The wiseguy pimps, all probably dead

Herbert and my dad yelling at each other

And Olive, the picky eater who became a vegan

My grandparents

And their parents

Must have felt a real loss of control

See, time doesn’t give a fuck

It just keeps going

And the older you get

The faster it goes

Like a roll of toilet paper

Maybe it gave the elders comfort to know

That as crazy as this ragtag bunch of immigrants would get

As much as time would change us all

And eventually get the best of us

All of us

At least the plastic would protect the furniture

Categories
Personal

STD Testing

November, 2019

So we kinda had the talk

Me and my newish girlfriend

We’d been friends for years

But only lovers for a few months

It felt silly

We were spending nearly every waking moment together

Sleeping moments too

There’s no way either of us could have been seeing anyone else

I mean, the logistics alone

But you gotta have the talk anyway

The exclusivity talk

Because it’s the right thing to do

So we checked that box

And it was time to lose the condoms

But for one thing: STD tests

I figured I was fine

But it had been a bit

And I didn’t know what to expect

But I would be willing to put up with nearly anything

If it meant throwing away the condoms

So what I came to find out

Is that my doctor offers two kinds of STD tests

One is for the more-or-less normative folks

And one is let’s say for people who are more

Adventurous

I could have just said

Gimme the full MaGilla!

But instead I asked some sort of stupid question

In return I was treated to a lecture

During which time I learned

That there are at least three different kinds of herpes:

Oral herpes

Genital herpes

And anal herpes

Well that’s all fine and good

But then the doctor told me about butt herpes

Showing up in the mouth

And mouth herpes showing up on the penis

My head was spinning

Just gimme everything you got!

So the doctor hands me a small pile of paraphernalia

Pee in this cup

Spit in that one

All fairly straightforward

But then the doctor pauses

And gives me a serious face

She picks up a clear plastic vial

With a thin green stick inside

On the end of the stick was an innocent

Little white orb

Of what appeared to be soft fabric

Like a cotton swab

But also not like a cotton swab

In several important ways

Have you used one of these before?

She asks me

But I’ve never even seen one of these before

So no

Soon, however, I find out

Via more lecturing

That this is an anal swab

Ya know, to check for:

Mouth herpes in my butt

Genital herpes in my butt

Anal herpes in my butt

(At least they’re where they belong)

And also anything else that might

Be living in my butt

The doctor is nice so she says

I can do this for you

But no

Like a fucking hero

Of course I want to do it myself

So the doctor sends me off

To the bathroom

With my paraphernalia

But she stops me

Do you see this little line?

She was pointing to the ominous vial

With the sickly green monster q-tip

The anal swab

She had my full attention

But I didn’t see a line

Maybe a tiny score

Or perforation

Just make sure to hold the swab above the line

See if I didn’t

The anal swab could break off

And then I’d have a sickly-green monster q-tip end

Stuck up my butt

Chilling with the herpes

The ones that belong there

And also maybe the ones from all the other places

So I venture off to the bathroom

Fortunately I have the whole thing to myself

I lock the door

I unpack all the paraphernalia

I do all the easy stuff

Pee in this cup

Spit in that one

Finally it’s just me

And the sickly-green monster q-tip

I unpack the swab

And hold it inches from my face

Trying hard to find that line

The little line that could mean the difference between

Me having a foreign object stuck up my butt

And just me

So I find the line

And I take hold of the monster q-tip

Above the line

So important to be above the line

I’m holding the green swab so tightly

That my fingernails are starting to turn red

I lower my boxer briefs

And carefully bring the swab to where

I thought it was supposed to go

At this juncture I realize

I have a problem

Because first off

I don’t have a rear-view mirror

So I can’t see a goddamn thing

Secondly: butt cheeks, sphincter, scrotum, anus

Whatever the hell else is down there

It all kinda feels the same

When poking at it

With a giant q-tip

And praying the fucking thing doesn’t break!

But I’m thinking less about that problem

And more about how on god’s green earth

I was going to get this swab up my ass

With one hand on the door handle

And the other clamped down on the swab

Above the line

Always above the line

I squatted down

Smarting

As some part of my junk

For lack of a better term

Made contact with the cold bathroom floor

A few pokes here

And a few more pokes there

And finally it hurt in just the right kind of way

To alert me that the swab had breached the dam

I’m also pretty sure that I’m bleeding at this point

Which I confirm when

After a few twists

I remove the swab and drop the horror show

Into the clear plastic vial

It would be several more days

Before getting my test results

And no, I don’t have herpes

Not the resident herpes

Nor the traveling ones

And thank my lucky stars

I don’t have anything else

So we threw away the condoms

But that’s another story

Perhaps for another day

That night though

When I first came home

From my STD tests

It was late November

Cold and rainy

I told my newish girlfriend

A similar version of the above story

At the end

Once she finished laughing

She only had one thing to say

It was a question in fact:

They didn’t tell you to dip yours in water first?

Categories
Cucina Mia Farm-to-Table

Larb Ga (Thai lettuce wraps with chicken)

Categories
Cucina Mia Farm-to-Table

Tonight’s craft cocktail

A Rosemary Fashioned: Bulleit Bourbon, house-extracted rosemary syrup, Pechaud’s Bitters, rocks, sprig of rosemary garnish

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Activism & Politics Personal

Vaccine Lies

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Cucina Mia Farm-to-Table

Saturday Dinner

Clockwise from left: au gratin with russets, leeks, jalapeños, cumin, and crumbled paneer; green beans with olive oil, kosher salt, and sautéed garlic; Memphis-style pulled pork pressure cooked with dried cascabel chili, then simmered in BBQ sauce.