Just picture a great big steak, fried, roasted or stewed--

If I think way, way back, I can remember when New York City was a tourist destination for me. I have memories of getting onto a Wade Tours bus, day-tripping with my parents and other tourists down to that big, bright city. Had to make sure to wear those comfortable walking sneakers. Know which landmarks you're going to hit. And don't forget the map!

It didn't begin to change for me until near the end of the undergrad, when it became just another place where some friends lived. And then even more so a few years after that, when it went from day-trip distance to commuter distance. I'm no native, but I'm more familiar with the parts of the city that I frequent -- pretty much all of Midtown, as well as Union Square, NoMad, the West Village and Chinatown, plus Borough Park in Brooklyn -- than I am with the cities within a half-hour's driving distance of where I grew up.

That doesn't mean that it's not still a fun place to vacation.

It wasn't something planned out too far ahead of time, but it turned out that my friend A. from Florida was going to be vacationing in the city for half a week, so I did my usual thing and crashed with her in return for providing my charming company. By which I largely mean a drinking companion and a garbage disposal for whatever food she didn't eat. And we drank and ate at a lot of places.

I'm actually not really into aggregate review websites. I find them most useful for more service-related things, where what the most basic content of the experience is might be a question, for getting clarification about what you're really getting for your money. It can be so easy to get buried in other people's opinions, when there's so, so many. For restaurants (general expectation: I pay money and receive food to eat), I'm still more of a fan of the old-fashioned "Did someone I actually know go there? What did they say?" or "I'm standing outside of the place right now and I feel like I want to go in" approach. Or reading actual reviews -- you know, the ones that are more than three sentences long, whether they're in a newspaper or a magazine or a blog or wherever. Some nice comprehensive, considered thoughts about the experience from a person with presumably some amount of knowledge or at the very least, some sort of specific interest.

These things here? These aren't reviews. These are just me having opinions about things. Which I should probably do more often, as I do tend to Do Things on a semi-regular basis and often have opinions about them.

So here's a piece of new news on the internet: hotels in Manhattan are fucking expensive. We stayed at the Best Western Plus, Prospect Park, which was pretty great and also in Brooklyn. The location was very convenient, being literally on the same block as the 25th Street station on the R line. Which is slow if you're actually in a hurry to get anywhere, because it's a super local line with more stops than I knew existed, but it's pretty easy to transfer to something quicker.

The hotel is relatively new and pretty good value for NYC standards. By which I mean that the entire room plus the bathroom combined was smaller than the living room in my apartment, but it fit a bed, an armoire, a desk, two night stands and a dresser with a mini-fridge. The lobby featured an included continental breakfast in the morning, with Dannon Light & Fit yogurt, dry cereal, scrambled eggs, sausage, muffins, bagels, bread, juice, black tea and coffee available. The breakfast room itself was pretty cramped, so A. and I would grab food and bring it back up to the room.

They had a 24-hour fitness center in the basement, which featured an elliptical, a reclining bike, a treadmill and a weight machine, as well as a full-wall mirror. There was also an exercise ball bouncing around, though no free weights. The equipment seemed relatively new and functional. A couple of water fountains in the room, as well as a stack of towels -- though no equipment cleaning supplies. Also, probably due to the "24-hour" thing, the light in the room worked on a motion detector. The downside to this? Apparently, at least the elliptical was positioned outside of the range of the detector, so after ten minutes, I would be plunged into darkness.

In an otherwise empty basement.

Just a little bit creepy.

One thing that was also kind of weird was that on Monday morning, when I was heading back to the room from the fitness center, there was a localized loud beeping in the hotel. Almost like an alarm. But not quite. But close enough to be slightly worrying. I called the front desk, and they apologized for waking us up and said that they were just testing a system. I didn't bother telling them that they hadn't woken us up, but I personally found it more troubling that I hadn't been sure if the building had been on fire or not. One would think that "testing a system" that produced a repetitive mechanized beeping noise loud enough to be heard in the guest rooms and wake people up would be something that was perhaps deserving of some announcement (which I recognized might not have been practically possible) or at least performed at a different, less crowded time of today.

That's actually mostly skipping ahead, though. When we got in on Saturday night, A. and I just dropped our things in the room and then headed out to Williamsburg. My first trip to the fabled land of the hipsters! To whom I'm not sure if I'm related or not. It recently underwent some serious soul-searching when I received an e-mail from one of my trend/style lists telling me about some hot new restaurant, and my reaction was, "Oh, yeah, I heard about that place a month ago, I've been meaning to check it out." And then I hated myself.

It did turn out to be useful, though, when A. realized that she'd be able to make it to New York this summer, and I was able to come up with way too many places to eat. We hit Parish Hall for dinner that night. On the pricey side, especially if you're getting drinks as well, but good quality stuff for a nice night out. The atmosphere is a little hipster-minimalist, but if you get seated in the back, it's more like an actual restaurant with a traditional table set-up.

I was feeling mighty hungry, so I got the chilled corn soup (squash seed oil, blackberries, basil) and the duck (seared salt-aged duck breast and braised leg, carrot puree, summer squash, plum, granola), as well as a Winnie Palmer (Bourbon, black tea, lemon, Regan’s orange bitters, fresh mint). And also ate half of A.'s dinner. Portion-wise, you aren't going to come here to stuff yourself -- particularly if you're a big eater like I am -- but while I'm certainly not saying that you'll leave still hungry, it's definitely an instance of paying for quality rather than quantity. It was all quite good! The corn soup was delicious, the corn flavor extremely strong and punctuated nicely by the tang of the blackberries. I found it to be a touch on the salty side, but most food that I don't prepare myself tastes salty to me. Everything was fresh and delicious. I've never been a big fan of summer squash, but the vegetables that came with the duck were mouth-watering. The duck breast was presented simply and straightforwardly, but the duck leg was actually minced up and wrapped in a thin slice of summer squash, kind of like some cross between a spring roll and a sausage. Only squashier.

Recommended as a splurgier night out! The menu is apparently very seasonal, keeping things fresh, so I'd recommend checking it out if you plan on going. They also appear to participate in a variety of local food events, so you can keep your eyeballs peeled for that.

One thing about our trip to Parish Hall, though, was that they were out of the one dessert in which we had been interested. So we headed back up Bedford Avenue, having passed a number of places on our way down, just seeing what caught our fancy.

We ended up at Fabiane's Cafe and Pastry Shop [WARNING FOR EMBEDDED MUSIC], which turned out to be an excellent choice, despite how unfortunate their website is. It was heading on 11pm by the time we got there, an appealing little cafe that opened up to open-air street-side seating, and they were still doing table service. Which was a little slow and not particularly friendly, but that wasn't a big bother, since we were just getting casual dessert. I got the chocolate mousse and A. got the caramel cup, and again, I ate half of her order. Both of which were amazing. It was one of those "orgasmic dessert" sort of situations -- you know, stick the spoon in your mouth, have your eyes roll back into your head and make some sort of embarrassing noise. Again, not a cheap place, but so, so worth it.

The next morning, we were meeting our friends P. and M. to use a Groupon deal that we'd gotten for brunch at The Pan-American. I'd made reservations a few days ago, pretty much for right when the place opened, but we had a busy day planned out, so we wanted to get an early (for a Sunday) start.

So we got there and the place was locked up like Fort Knox, with a sign in the window from the city health services saying that the place was closed down for operating without a permit.

That was a surprise.

I've since gotten a refund (store credit) from Groupon.

Luckily, what was very nearby was The Public, which my friends whom we were meeting had been saying that we needed to attend someday. Well, no day like today, right? We all got the set price brunch: one entree, one brunch cocktail, coffee or tea. The value of that varies, as there's a pretty good range on the prices of the brunch entrees. But I'd call it a pretty good deal for most things.

Following my friends' recommendations, I went with the black pudding waffles with red wine poached pears and whipped foie gras butter, with a cocktail that was some sort of bourbon apricot iced tea and some jasmine green tea. You get a couple of sturdy waffles, maybe about five inches in diameter -- not huge but very rich, particularly with all of the butter. And the tea comes in a little individual pot that contains a couple of servings. Very much worth it. And also just a great atmosphere for spending a couple of hours gabbing away over brunch. We'd managed to get a street-side table, with the front windows all opened up on a beautiful summer day...

...though I was still the only one with a big hat. I've told them multiple times that we need to work on that.

A big hat also seemed appropriate for hitting up our next stop, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We were only spending a couple hours there, so my plan was to hit the three special exhibitions in which I was most interested. You see, A., M. and I all have very different museum speeds. A. walks through almost without stopping. I like to read all of the accompanying material and take a few minutes to contemplate each object. M. is somewhere in the middle.

So we decided that it was best for our friendship to just agree to meet in the gift shop at a pre-established time.

My hits for the afternoon were Designing Nature: The Rinpa Aesthetic in Japanese Art, The Printed Image in China, 8th-21st Century (through 7/29) and Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations (through 8/19). All were wins, in my book. I've always liked the Asian Art wing at the Met as it is, and both the Rinpa and the Printed Image provided amazing looks at specific practices. It's difficult to describe them in any sort of decent way without finding myself facing the impossible task of describing the entire exhibitions, so I will simply state my pleasure at viewing them. The Printed Image, especially, was astoundingly extensive and pretty mind-blowing in the history that it contained.

As for Schiaparelli and Prada, I liked it a lot better than 2010's American Woman: Fashioning A National Identity. The latter had felt like a very superficial overview to me, more of a publicity draw than something actually informative or insightful. In contrast, I found the current fashion exhibit to be accessible but also interesting, creative and educational. It featured a number of short videos of imagined conversations between the two designers (with an actor playing Schiaparelli, her words drawn from Schiaparelli's own) along with displays that compared and contracted their work in different design contexts. Yes, the exhibit was packed, unpleasantly so at some junctures; yes, it emptied right into a mini-gift shop. Don't care. It was good stuff.

I'm not sure if this is an always thing, but there was a good amount of sale merchandise in the gift shop. I struck gold and found a coffee table book of Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo for $18 -- normal price, $85. Japanese print art has long been a love of mine, so I am seriously considering getting a real coffee table so that I have a proper place to display it. I also picked up a discounted 2013 calendar of the Schiaparelli/Prada exhibit. This is a big win for me, as I usually don't get calendars until either about a quarter into the next year when they're heavily discounted or when I get the free academic wall calendar from my undergraduate alma mater in the mail. I am moving up in the world.

Our plan was to head to our favorite bar that night, but since it's a lounge that isn't really a place for getting real food, we stopped at BonChon Midtown first -- not the Koreatown one, the one up between 50th and 51st. The Koreatown BonChon was what had introduced me, late in life, to the wonder that is Korean fried chicken (I'd been a devotee of American fried chicken for as long as I can remember), and we'd tried the Midtown location on a Groupon once. In contrast to the two-story, two-steps-above-fast-food type place in Koreatown, the Midtown location feels like your average tiny Hell's Kitchen restaurant -- maybe about twice the size of my living room, half of which is taken up by a bar, a sleek and mod aesthetic. Three flat-screen televisions grace the wall, actually relieving you of the awkward situation where you know that the person sitting across from you is half-distracted by the television behind you, but that's okay in this case because you're half-distracted by the television behind them, which is playing the same channel.

As for the food, it's cooked to order, piping-hot fresh and completely delicious. I ordered a small side salad so that I would be eating something other than fried meat, and it was only a little bit smaller than some other places' entree-sized salads. M. and I split a fried chicken combo with the soy garlic glaze, and I also at most of A.'s Asian pear salad with grilled chicken, as well as one of M.'s delicious crispy friend potstickers. And a gingerman cocktail, which is basically bourbon plus ginger plus more alcohol and which was just a strong as the last time I got it.

But mostly, it was about the chicken. I might have eaten a lot of it. Just maybe.

We met up with P. again at The Dove Parlour, where we're about as regular as people who live out of town (or regularly congregate with said out-of-towners) can be at a bar and where it's easy to spend a huge amount of money. Their happy hour is totally worth it, bringing most of their specialty cocktails down to $7. I had my stand-by, an Olympia (you guessed it: more bourbon). P. and I split a cheese tier, getting the brie, manchego, sottocenere, cabra romero and my sorrow at having developed an allergy to almonds. And I finished things off with my also usual, some traditionally prepared absinthe, which is what will really kill you, not because of the alcohol but because it costs $15 for a teeny-tiny glass and is also delicious and okay fine, it can get you hammered.

But more to the point, we hung out here for about three hours. It being a Sunday night, the place was pretty much ours, too, for much of the time. The background music got a little loud -- and a little weird -- at some points, but I find it to be a great hang-out bar. Dimly lit, with Gilded Age decor, it's a place to drink and talk, without any bar games or televisions. I've definitely had some of my favorite evenings there.

On Monday, A. and I visited the Museum of the City of New York. It's a cute little place! Emphasis on "little." It's a two-story building, with four one-room exhibitions, a 20-minute video presentation and a couple mini-exhibits. As long as you're not expecting anything huge, though, I would recommend it. The two special exhibitions currently running are well put-together: one about banks and another about activism, both in the context of, of course, their history in New York City.

A. then proceeded to make me a very happy woman by humoring my quest to get lunch from the Okadaman food truck, which is located at 48th Street between Park and Lex. I got myself a seafood okonomiyaki and a very blissed-out expression. It was very near the end of their lunch hours, so it wasn't very warm, but it was still entirely delicious. At $8.50 per okonomiyaki, it's a little on the pricey side, but it is dense and delicious. With the seafood option, mine had squid rather than pork, and it was perfectly tender. And I can speak from experience and say that okonomiyaki is fucking work-intensive.

We then got A. some food at St. Andrews, another stand-by of mine if I need a solid bite in Times Square. A Scottish bar, save for the haggis, the food isn't the most adventurous, but it's very good. Because I have to eat everywhere, apparently, I just got a cock-a-leekie soup, which turned out to be like chicken noodle soup without the noodles, which is actually really, really good.

After that, we headed back uptown to meet M. at Alice's Tea Cup: Chapter II. M. got tea and a savory scone; A. got tea, grilled cheese and a cookie plate; and I got tea and the golden afternoon beet salad. Both of my items were good -- the cholestea was green tea with ginseng and a couple other things, and it had a pleasantly spicy, herbal taste to it. The beet salad is actually a warm chopped beet salad with orzo over mixed greens. While certainly not a meal I regret -- and their tea menu is impressively extensive -- it's probably not somewhere to which I'll be rushing back. The atmosphere is probably part of it for me -- it's pretty much the definition of "twee," which isn't quite my bag. And while the food was good, it wasn't as excellent as some more substantial plates that I could get elsewhere for a comparable price.

The next day, A. took off back to Florida, so I hit up my college-mate J., who is in her last month or so in the West Village before heading back upstate. It turns out that the two of us can talk a lot: YA literature, the mechanics of moving, the New York City educational system, undergrad nostalgia. I abandoned her for a short while to hit up NY Dosas, a food cart on the southeast side of Washington Square Park, where I got the special pondicherry (a lentil/rice crepe containing vegetables and potato). I've heard from P. that the dosa guy has increased his prices over the past few years as he's gotten famous, but it's still within reasonable foodcart-but-more-than-a-hotdog-stand range. It even felt healthy to eat -- the vegetables are fresh, pretty much a salad. For one of my appetite, it's not the most filling, but I was planning for a big meal that night, so it actually worked out perfectly.

In any case, I returned to J.'s place, and we gabbed more before she took me to David's Tea on Bleecker, which is apparently a huge Canadian chain and is kind of amazing. The tea selection is extensive and creative, and the staff was so friendly and enthusiastic. I got a cup of hot Gyokuro Yamishiro, a straight green tea. It brewed to a beautiful bright green color but the flavor was actually quite smooth, not nearly as grassy as some green teas that I've had. There was a small seating area in the back, so J. and I took over that for a long while, with me getting a refill of hot water for a second steeping.

It began getting busier once people began getting out of work, so we relinquished our seats and returned to her apartment, to where her husband also soon returned after a day of the bar exam. We all got rather engrossed in the 1990s at that point, but I soon had to leave for the final stop on my epic adventure.

That stop was meeting P. at Sparks Steak House, to which we'd bought a killer Groupon a while back, which was basically almost 50% off a meal for two. The deal had, in fact, been advertised as dinner for two, but in actuality, it was a gift card that was valued at what dinner for two was approximated to cost, though it could be spent however you liked. I'd made a reservation, but apparently that doesn't guarantee you to have a table ready right when you arrive -- somewhat understandable, as the place was packed and is apparently like that everyday, all the time. It worked out in the end, as P. had a delay, and we ended up being seated not more than five minutes after she arrived.

And then dinner. Oh, dinner. Given that we are classy ladies of the highest caliber, that could mean only two things: bourbon and medium-rare sirloin.

We each got a Manhattan with Maker's Mark, which were delicious and stunningly strong and amazing. After asking our server about the size of the appetizers and being told they were shareable, we decided to split a lump crab meat cocktail. He was absolutely right: totally shareable. And they even brought it out to us individually plated, which was characteristic of the wonderful service we received the entire night.

For the main course, we got the creamed spinach and mushrooms to share as sides to go with each of our prime sirloin strip steaks. First of all, the creamed spinach and mushrooms were both delicious, with the spinach being fresh and rich and the mushrooms being immensely buttery.

But the meat.

Oh, the meat.

Seared beautifully on the outside, with that salty-sweet char, the medium-rare was actually closer to the rare side of things, which is perfection in my book. Just a giant chunk of tender (though not tenderized) meat. I ate the whole fucking thing. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that it was probably about half the size of my head.

In an act of understated wizardry, our server changed our tablecloth between the meal and dessert, for which we ordered raspberries with whipped cream to split. Again, it was plated individually for us, and the portion size was great. The choice itself was also wonderful -- the delicate tartness of the raspberries was a perfect finisher for the grand sweeping gesture of the meat.

Have I mentioned the meat?

And then P. and I had been at dinner for almost three hours, and it was Good.

Dagnabbit, I am jealous of myself right now.

Also, hungry.

Time to remedy that.

In the dark of the night just before dawn--

So last night, I went with some friends to see the midnight showing of Inception: I Know What You Did Last Summer, more popularly known as The Dark Knight Rises. I promise that there aren't any spoilers, as not only would that be incredibly discourteous, but it would probably lead to my being drawn and quartered by the remaining portion of the population who isn't already primed to do so after I express what I fear might be some minority opinions about the movie, at least among the geek milieu.

And so first: Batman. After that: chicken.

Overall, I found the The Dark Knight Rises to be pretentious, slow and predictable. But I think that it speaks to the movie's strengths that I also was very entertained and enjoyed it a lot. It sure was a long-ass movie for which to attend a midnight showing, let me tell you that. But despite the length, the movie never felt long. It did feel slow, though -- but in a very tense, simmery sort of way. For better or for worse, the vast majority of the movie felt like lead-in, build-up.

When the story finally pulled the trigger, however, it was entirely worth it.

It's actually pretty difficult to really talk about the movie without spoilers, I feel, as its strongest points are the content of its twists and reveals. I mentioned that it was predictable, right? Yeah, it was. But because the movie didn't depend on the "a-ha!" or "gotcha!" of its twists, it actually didn't hurt it. I can't recall any other movie that I've seen -- and to be fair, I haven't seen a lot of movies -- that have had such a satisfying slow-burn of a gradual character back story reveal.

The one purely negative part of my movie-going experience was that I never really got absorbed into the movie. I am seriously really, really easy when it comes to willingly suspending my disbelief and I get embarrassingly emotionally invested in whatever it is that I happen to be watching at the moment, but I always felt a little bit outside of this movie. Part of it might be that I'm not the biggest Batman fan, or at least not the biggest fan of Christopher Nolan's Batman. The Dark Knight for me is dominated by the Joker and Harvey Dent. The Dark Knight Rises is an incredible showcase for Catwoman -- well, Selina Kyle, who is actually never explicitly called "Catwoman" and -- of all people! -- Bane.

It's something that differentiates the Nolan Batman movies from most of the other comic book-based movies that have been being produced lately. Usually, we get stuck with a bland, forgettable villain -- hey, can you remember anything about the villain in the Star Trek reboot except that he was played by Eric Bana? -- but that's all right because it gives us more time to pay attention to the heroes. The Avengers? Who cares about the villain! The intra-team squabbling and hijinks are where it's at. Recent exceptions that I can think of include Watchmen and possibly X-Men: First Class, depending on how we decide to place Magneto on the hero spectrum in that specific movie. The Nolan Batman movies, however, somehow manage to entrance me with the villains/antagonists and have the hero leave me cold.

It's a large part of why I have absolutely no interest in watching Batman Begins. I know the information that is provided by the film and my head hasn't particularly been turned by any exclamations of masterful narrative artistry, so there's nothing much that interests me about it. An origin movie that focuses on the Batman himself? I feel like I have better ways to spend my time.

(Speaking of Batman Begins, Ra's al Ghul is invoked in Dark Knight Rises, which also kicked my brain out of the movie experience. It just always sat a little oddly with me that Ra's al Ghul was played by Liam Neeson. Don't get me wrong -- I love me some Liam Neeson and I'm not commenting upon his performance. But it seems like a dude named Ra's al Ghul from the Arabic peninsula asks, just a little bit, to be played by an actor of Middle Eastern descent. And despite my love for other actors, as well, given the back story that was presented, as much as I would sincerely like to be able to just watch a movie and not be distracted by systematic societal white-washing, well, you can't always get what you want.)

But back to the subject of seeing The Dark Knight Rises, I remember being completely engrossed by The Dark Knight, so I think it's fair to say that my failure to be absorbed wasn't entirely my own apparently Batman-deficient fault.

My laughing really loudly and really inappropriately when Bane executed a classic line and action, however, was entirely me just being an inherent asshole.

I don't know, maybe I was just in an asshole mood overall, because a lot of the Emotional Moments just struck me as being really hammy and overdone. I felt more embarrassed than moved. And as I've mentioned, I am usually a giant softy. I cry at movies, guys. I cry a lot. This one just failed to catch me, somehow.

All of that being said, I am so happy that I went to see it, would not be averse to seeing it again (and am tempted to wear French Revolutionary garb if I do go to another showing) and recommend it for your own cinematic viewing. For all of the parts that didn't win me over, there were a lot of things that did. Least of all not being Selina Kyle riding that motorbike.

Less superficially, while not a Batman aficionado and having no personal connection to the Catwoman mythos, I loved this Catwoman a lot. I'd had no real feelings, either positive or negative, about Anne Hathaway being cast, but I loved what I saw. I had actually been reading a story just the other day that was based on the premise of Tony Stark being a woman -- there is actually an alternate universe in the comics where that's true -- and thinking about how I wished there were more roguish women characters. And then, in waltzed Selina, a badass chaotic neutral, playing the cad with a self-centered swagger usually reserved for the bad boys but also the poise and amazing lipstick of a woman who's learned to work the system. And while she bears the scars that anyone growing up tough would have, her attitude doesn't exist just as a cover for some wounded vulnerability inside. I've actually been feeling pretty happy about a lot of the badass women I've been seeing on the screen lately. Between Selina, Agent Peggy Carter from Captain America and Natasha Romanov from The Avengers, I'm in kind of a happy place right now.

Also, I'm hoping that between Natasha and Selina, I'll be able to get the components for my Halloween costume a little easier. And no, the costume is neither the Black Widow nor Catwoman.

I do appreciate science writers' efforts to be topically relevant. One of the things that I got from my inbox today was that "Advising a parent to ask their child 'What would Batman eat?' might be a realistic step to take in what could be a healthier fast-food world." [The Scientist]

I mean, hell, it works on me. When I first started walking/running, I would yell at myself that if I couldn't even walk one mile, how would I be able to get the One Ring to Mordor? Do you know how much fucking walking and running they do in the Lord of the Rings? They walk all the fucking time. If I was going to be ready when I was called upon for my own quest, I needed to push myself for that extra half-mile!

So yeah, asking myself what Batman would eat? Actually, that probably wouldn't motivate me all that much. And asking myself what Tony Stark would eat would just add one more factor into my life trying to turn me into an alcoholic. What would Steve Rogers or Natasha Romanov eat, though? I'm all over that.

I'm not sure about Natasha, but I think that Steve might eat what I cooked up over the past week or so. I've been spending a lot of time on the road, and will be heading out again this weekend, so I've been cooking less. But that's also been freeing, in a way, since it reminds me that I don't have to be -- and, indeed, under these circumstances, shouldn't be -- cooking in bulk. I can just make a single meal! And then change it up for the next one!

And so, I put to use a package of three chicken breasts in three not-particularly-radically-so-but-still-different ways.

First up last week was some sweet ginger stir-fried chicken and fuck-all if I remember what veggies with leftover quinoa. No pictures because it honestly looked pretty boring. But it was quick and delicious and nicely filling after a workout without being heavy.

-1 chicken breast -1 inch fresh ginger root, grated -Chinese five spice powder -canola oil -leftover vegetables and fuck all if I can't remember what they were and now it's driving me crazy -leftover quinoa

I am a big fan of Chinese five spice powder. Containing cinnamon, star anise, fennel, ginger, cloves, white pepper and licorice root, it was apparently named by people who couldn't count and is a good way for adding some sweet to the savory in a warm, non-sugary way. It's flavor is very strong, though, so seriously, don't dump on a lot.

I just chopped up the chicken breast, warmed some oil in the wok, tossed in the chicken, tossed the ginger on top, stir-fried it about halfway cooked, added in a couple pinches of five-spice powder and finished cooking the chicken all the way through. For stir-frying chicken, I generally use the poke test for determining doneness. The meat should be firm, not bouncy, if it's done. Overcooked chicken is one of the worst things in the world, in my opinion, so I stay pretty closely on it, and the second it seems like the biggest piece is just about to be done, I dump all of the meat out of the wok and onto the plate.

A few days later, life called for some fiesta chicken and home fries. I call it "fiesta chicken" because I put guacamole on it and actually know nothing about Latin cooking.

-1 chicken breast -olive oil -lime juice -cilantro -jalapeno -leftovers from the best home fries ever -spicy guacamole -veggie chips

I dumped the chicken breast in a bowl with olive oil, a pretty good amount of lime juice and dried cilantro and jalapeno because I didn't have any fresh. I let that marinate for a while. Then, I heated up my grill pan -- one of my favorite kitchen tools -- to very hot. Tossed on the chicken. Let it cook for about three minutes, then picked it up with some tongs and turned it 90 degrees and cooked it for another couple minutes more. Then, I flipped it, let it cook about about three minutes, turned it 90 degrees again and cooked it a couple minutes more.

The chicken actually was pretty thick and didn't end up being cooked entirely all the way through. I preferred that -- as I've mentioned, overcooked chicken is anathema to me -- and one minute on high in the microwave finished it up nicely.

Plated it with reheated home fries and some veggie chips. Then dolloped some spicy guac on the home fries and the chicken, adding a piece of red pepper from the home fries to the chicken because it looked pretty.

Something I continued to discover during my weekend away is how cooking at home reduces my eating-out costs and calories by making a lot of food out there less tempting. If I can cook the same thing -- and sometimes cook it better, I thought, as I eyed some plain home fries that sat in pools of orange-y grease -- why would I want to fill up on this stuff?

When I got back, stir-fried ginger garlic chicken and spinach (with brown rice) were on the menu.

-chicken breast -1 inch fresh ginger root, grated -2 big-ass cloves of garlic -1 bag of fresh spinach -1 big spoonful of low-sodium soy sauce -canola oil

Chopped the chicken and garlic, grated the ginger. Heated the oil in the wok and stir-fried the garlic until it just started to brown. Then, in went the chicken, followed by the ginger. When the chicken was almost finished cooking, I added the spinach. Kept on stirring that in until it began to wilt, at which point I added the soy sauce. Stir-fried a little longer, and ka-pow!

Given that I'm heading out of town again this coming weekend -- and planning to eat quite handsomely during that time -- I've been trying to stay in clear-out-the-fridge mode. But when I dropped into the co-op to pick up some salad materials the other day, they had several reduced items, near their sell-by dates, in the butcher bins.

And I said, "Fuck tofu stiry-fry in the eye."

Bleu cheese and bacon burger on grilled kaiser roll with garlic sauteed spinach with vidalia onion and shiitake mushroom!

-burger from the grocery store -kaiser roll from grocery story -1 bag of fresh spinach -1 big ol' vidalia onion -some shiitake mushrooms -3 big-ass cloves of garlic -olive oil

The mushrooms were actually pretty old and had gotten dried and shriveled. A short soak in some water, though, and they were good as new and I felt really Asian. Chopped up the garlic, onion and mushrooms. Threw the garlic in a large pan with some olive oil and started that going on medium for just a couple minutes. After that, I added the onions, aiming for them to go translucent.

Meanwhile, I heated up the grill pan to very hot. Tossed on a burger. I like my meat medium rare, so I found that five minutes on one side and then three minutes on the other side worked.

The mushrooms got added to the veggie pan next. After that, the spinach, just until it was wilted. Then I turned off the heat and let it just sit in the pan.

When the burger was done cooking, I removed it from the pan and let it rest on the plate. As it was taking its breather, I put the halved kaiser roll on the grill pan. Just a minute or two and it was all toasted up like a burger bun should be.

And there you have it!

And holy shit, it was leftover rainbow chard. That went with my first chicken meal. That has seriously been bothering me for over 24 hours now.

In the end: this chick could break you.

FAKE-OUT: YOUTUBE DOUBLE-WHAMMY

I stay light on my feet and hit 'em with--

Sometimes, you take one day off from work and end up with a delightful unintended vacation. (Two days totally counts as a vacation.) Before I go sashaying down memory lane, however, I want to pin up a couple of links of note here.

First of all, the surviving victim of a brutal attack on a teenage couple in Texas has recuperated enough to leave the hospital, and she's refined her description of her attacker, which has gone into the police sketch, included in this article. While the motivations behind the crime can't be concretely proven, given that it was an execution-style shooting, without any attempt at robbery or the like, by a stranger perpetrated upon a young lesbian couple -- the leap of logic between the lily pads of the circumstances and the probable motivation ain't that large. I feel the need to help to give that nasty bastard's face as much attention as possible until they find them.

Also, there is the Internet Declaration of Freedom. "A group of more than 1,500 organizations, academics, startup founders and tech innovators has come together to produce [it], a set of five principles that put forward a positive vision of the open Internet. Our goal: Get millions of Internet users to sign on to this Declaration. Build political power for Internet users to make sure that we get a seat at the table whenever, and wherever, the future of the Internet is being decided." Unsurprisingly, this is something that I find to be extremely important. My life has been immeasurably enriched by the internet -- the people the I've met, the information (both accurate and not) that I've consumed, the gatherings that I've organized, the cute baby animals that I've watched -- and I believe that it's an ever more vital instrument for the development of our globalized world, where the Big Guys have always bigger and bigger Big Guns.

But in other news: love is in the air!

As I've mentioned, I had a wedding to attend this past weekend, which I hadn't been guaranteed to be able to attend until fairly recently. That might have been the reason that I didn't give it much thought, planning to just casually drive over there on the day of the event, mingle with friends at the reception and cruise on back home that evening. It was just another thing that was happening -- an obligation, though of the most delightful kind. I think that I didn't want to be too disappointed if it turned out that I would have to miss it due to work. Because I know that if I'd known what it ended up being and then had not been able to be there, I would have been heartbroken.

It only occurred to me when I was being asked how I knew the couple -- both are my friends in their own right, though I met the groom through the bride -- and I realized that I'd known the bride for longer than I'd not known her. There are very few people whom I consider actual friend about which I can claim that, and most of them are online friends. Basically, there's the one woman whom I've known since we were in kindergarten together and after that, it's the leap to the crowd who populated this wedding.

1998. That was the summer when we attended the same musical theatre day camp and were in the same project group, putting together our own little original musical. She was also working on another musical that she had written that summer and was being presented by their own little community theatre group, sprung up around that one show, but I ended up not making it to see it. Possibly because I was performing in a show myself with a different community theatre group. What was it that year? Annie?

In any case, that was the last year that I performed with that group, because the next year, I was in her show, making some of the best friends that I have had the privilege to know. It was also the year that we had to do a last-minute replacement because one of our cast members left rehearsal a few days before opening and then was never heard from again and also when we performed to an audience of four in the picnic pavilion of a town park built on top of a former landfill and situated next to a nuclear research facility. Or something. I'm not exactly sure what it was, but I know that the fish that were in the small pond nearby were colors that should not be seen in suburban nature.

That's when I became a member of that local family. And it was also when I met my friend's younger brother, who is actually closer to my age than she is, and the two of us became friends as well -- closer than my bonds with the other members of the group, actually, though that's meant as an emphasis on the two of us being delightful jerks together rather than to diminish my other friendships within the group. It turned out to be very handy as I went through high school. Attending an all-girls school as I did, one was required to hunt down a male escort for formal dances. Going stag was not so much frowned upon as just not even considered to be an option, and it actually never occurred to me to be pissed off about that when I had an easily-accessible victim to drag along with me and provide pleasant company. It was a pretty win-win situation, I think: we would sing showtunes and attempt to top each other in duels of witty banter, he would date other people and I would never have to consider heteronormative social obligations to be a burden when dancing time came.

And we would dance like hell itself was burning down. Not in that it was sexy-hot in any way, but damn, was it enthusiasm-hot (which probably contributed to it not being sexy-hot, because have you seen how sweaty dancers get?) and also goofy as shit. We may not have had any skill whatsoever, but boy, did we have heart!

We'd fallen out of touch over the past years, as we both went off to college and then he moved out to the West Coast -- it was during that time that I sort of fell back in with the rest of the group, and also met the future-groom, with the originating of our local game nights, something that earned me a mention in the couple's posted autobiography of their coupledom -- but the few times our paths crossed, it was so easy to slip back into that camaraderie, as if we'd never been away. Don't get me wrong -- we were never deep. Okay, maybe not "never." I won't swear that there weren't any teenaged AIM conversations that might have involved feelings. But we were very rarely deep. And there's something great about having someone who's company you just enjoy.

And it somehow didn't occur to me that of course he'd be coming in from California for his sister's wedding.

To be honest, I felt a little awkward for the ceremony and the beginning part of the reception, as I was sitting at a table with my mom, my grandparents and some older relatives of the bride. I hadn't seen my grandparents since I was home over Christmas break, so I was quite glad to be able to spend some time with them and also, quite frankly, felt a bit obligated. Also, most of the people with whom I was most interest in speaking had tons of other people clamoring for their attention. No need for me to be yet one more obstacle between them and their plates of brunch. So things were a wee bit awkward for me for a while. The ice began breaking, however, when the dancing started.

It started with the DJ announcing that, to kick off the dancing, there was to be a competition between the tables. The table that boasted the craziest dancers (though no standing on things and no removing of clothing) would be awarded a bottle of champagne with which to toast the newlyweds! The "bottle of champagne" being a bottle of André, but one has to consider the $4 value of that bottle to be at least doubled by the honor of victory. Anyways, a couple of tables got up and began doing crazy group dances, and I was urged out of my seat by my mom, who told me to defect because I was never going to win anything with this group of old people. So up I went, and I semi-joined a group, just so that I could be up and dancing. The first table who had gotten up (not the one with which I had insinuated myself) won the prize, and the regular dancing commenced.

So apparently since we last danced together at age 18, my friend and I have both gotten taller, he's learned swing dancing, I've gotten more athletic, and I've also become less anal-retentive, more shameless and, let's face it, sluttier.

The music being played tended to be in the range of the 1950s to the 1970s, rock & roll to classic rock, hitting disco and funk along the way. Which provided the opportunity for a lot more Broadway-influenced style dancing, giving the two of us a shared strong point. It wasn't long before we were dancing together again, only better than before -- and with me being able to keep it up in three-inch heels the entire time now. And when "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" came on -- we hit a home run.

In fact, as the music ended and we were smiling and wiping the copious sweat from our respective brows, the leader of the table who had won victory in the kick-off competition, walked up to us with bottle in hand.

"Take this," he said. "You are the true victors."

(Those might not have been his exact words. But they're pretty close.)

The happy dancing continued until the late afternoon. (Not as epic as continuing long into the night, but it was a 12:30pm wedding with a brunch reception, so it makes sense.) Some guests began leaving, including my family, but the core group of us remained dancing. My friends invited me to stay the night and just crash with someone so that I could hang out with them, so I was in even less of a hurry to leave than if I hadn't been planning to, well, not leave.

The fact that my family had left was perhaps what allowed me to be just so blasé about mooning about a quarter of the people still present.

I should have been more sensible about it, but we were both caught up in the dancing, so when he asked me if I wanted to do a lift, I was all for it. Up, side, side, center, up, down. Simple enough! And the up, side and side all went swimmingly.

Unfortunately, my dress was such that, when pushed up due to straddling someone around the waist, gravity was not enough to bring it back down again.

Stupid physics.

It sounds perhaps a bit more dire than it actually was. A quick push back down, and I was decent again. And, it being a formal event, I was wearing a pair of what were basically off-brand Spanx, so I actually had dance-pants level coverage -- had I known that I was staying over and brought a bathing suit, people would have seen far more of me. Even when minor in content, however, the factors of the incident being unplanned and unexpected can mean a lot in and of themselves. In the end, he was entirely humiliated while I couldn't quite bring myself to care.

Remember what I said about shamelessness?

Tangentially, it reminds me of the doctor's appointment when I got my first pap smear. (Bear with me here.) I was waiting in the examination room, when in walks the doctor with a young Asian guy, which made me go whoa, because I kind of thought that I was the only Asian person in the county. It turned out that he was a resident or some other medical student-y thing at the adjoining hospital. When we got to the gynecological part of the exam, the doctor asked me if I would be all right with the student staying in the room, telling me that it was perfectly fine to ask him to leave.

I considered it for just a moment. And then I laid back, pumped my fist in the air and declared, "For science!"

I hope that he's grateful, wherever he is now, for the educational opportunity that I granted him.

This also might have something to do with why I'm chronically single.

Anyways, my point is that the wedding was great. And it wasn't all about my dancing exploits, though they were also great. It was just wonderful, to the point of being surreal, to be able to celebrate two of my good friends being so happy with a bunch of my other good friends. To be able to watch them during the ceremony and have it not be defined by overwhelmed tears but, so characteristic of the friend whom I adore, having the bride literally bouncing up and down with excitement at being able to marry her best friend, who was wearing a top hat.

The centerpieces on the table were put together by the couple and their party: piles of books, each topped by a small toy animal that apparently had some significance. Old books, new books -- Harry Potter and books of jokes and Temeraire and Calvin and Hobbes and more others than I can count. An old Charlie Chaplin movie being projected on a screen on one end of the room. A table full of more books and also games with post-its declaring "Bored? Read me!" and "Bored? Play me!" There was at least one game of Boggle going on during the reception. The couple's first dance was to "Beauty and the Beast." After the reception, a gang of us hung out at the pool, then went to dinner -- after which, finally parting ways with the newlyweds, we gathered for a game of Balderdash. And instead of driving home or crashing on a couch, the bride's family all but dragged me into their suite to put the bride's former room to use.

It was an amazing day.

And the weekend was only halfway finished.

Next morning had some delightful lingering over breakfast -- though let it be known that had I been on my own, I would have caused a stink at the restaurant (we were at Jiminy Peak, by the way), where the menu said that they served a good brand of tea, so I ordered a cup of tea and was brought a cup of hot water and a Liptons tea bag, for which I was charged $3 -- and then I hit the road for Williamstown. I wandered a bit before meeting a fellow alum who is in the process of transitioning from a career in neuroscience to a career in stage management. I know, right? But it felt very gratifying to be able to be on the giving end of the whole networking thing.

I was seeing a presentation by the Williams College Theatre Lab that evening, so I still had a number of hours at my disposal. Not having been able to attend my five-year reunion earlier this year due to being in tech, I somehow got in into my head to have my own one-person, one-afternoon reunion, revisiting old haunts and visiting for the first time some things that I'd missed during my time as a student. I sat on a rock and dangled my feet in the Green River, something that had always seemed far too dangerous to the younger me. I stalked every room in which I'd lived. I wandered through the cemetery, by my favorite gravestone: that of an English professor on which is written "If you can read this, you're standing on me."

And then I remembered about how I'd always joke/threaten to walk to Vermont, so I set about doing that.

It turns out that the sidewalk to Vermont runs out about a mile away from the state line, and while I'm willing to risk comfort, dignity and a moderate amount of health for the sake of pride, risking my life by walking alone alongside a rather heavily-used rural highway in the rain didn't seem like a great plan, so I turned back. But I know that I could have made it, which has a little bit of victory in it.

I realized then that I'd been walking for pretty much the past four and a half hours and that I was kind of hungry. I briefly contemplating trying out one of the new places in town, but then laughed. Of course the thing that I needed to do was go to the same place that I'd always gone and order the same thing that I'd always ordered.

That pad thai is still delicious.

The show that night, a presentation that resulted from a workshop with the Bengsons was amazing, and I'm very excited to watch their Hundred Days project be developed into a full production. Even better, I was able to hang out with the Theatre Lab's artistic director (who was the same guy who had been leading it from the beginning), the associate artistic director (a classmate and fellow Theatre Lab alum), a since-retired theatre department professor (from whom I never took any classes but for whom I stage managed a show) and the Bengsons.

Then, finally, I hit the road back home.

It was only two days. But it feels like it was a lifetime -- it had to have been, didn't it, to have contained so many wonderful things?

It's taken a great deal of self-restraint to not go dancing down the streets lately. But I manage, somehow.

And the next dance floor that I do hit had better watch out.

I'm gonna be raising hell.

One finds that this is the best of all possible worlds--

12:05pm

Ah, Wednesday. I step off of the treadmill at the university fitness center after having watched the CNN broadcast of Mitt Romney defining the word "awkward" at his speech to the NAACP. The gym is one of those things that I'm trying to remember to take advantage of during my waning days of student-dom. When you're working or studying somewhere, it can be so easy to forget to actually live there. You -- and when I say "you," that's my narrationally distancing way of saying "I" -- are in a place for a year, four years, three years. And then the time is done, and you're moving on... and you look around at the museums you haven't visited, the libraries where you never read, the restaurants in which you never dined, the magnificent architecture at which you never really looked and in which you never attempted to trespass while slightly intoxicated at some late hour in the night. So for me, I'm trying not to waste this magnificent opportunity that I've been given by just being here in the same way that I've done with others in the past.

One of the perks that I'm trying not to waste being gym membership.

In any case, to my immense surprise, I find that I've actually accomplished my weight goal for the summer. Yes, I'm weighing myself right after having sweated out who-knows-how-much water, but I figure that by using the scale that I know reads two pounds heavier than the other scale at the fitness center, I'm playing things pretty evenly. Deal with it. And while the weight thing isn't my biggest priority -- I both know intellectually and have experienced quite well how the amount of gravitational pull on one's mass and the state of one's health aren't directly related -- it admittedly produces something of a glow to have empirical proof that some kind of change has been happening due to my work over the past months. Somehow, having achieved this goal catches me by surprise. In that chaotic, unfair thing known as life, to have put in effort and received results is amazingly pleasing.

This has turned out to be a surprisingly good day.

3:01pm

I show up to work earlier than usual for an evening show. You see I'd signed onto this job in late winter, but the work didn't actually begin until late April, with calendars and scheduling and such starting to appear and demand satisfaction. Which means, of course, that in May, I receive a postcard telling me to save the date for two good friends' wedding.

On the first of the two busiest days of work in the entire summer: when we'll be doing all three of our shows, which we're running in rotating repertory, in one marathon day.

To summarize my reaction: "...fuck me."

Actually, that wasn't so much a summary as a reenactment.

The point being, after some professional angsting and soul-searching, I did what any normal person would do and arranged for my other stage manager (he stage manages two of the shows, while I production stage manage the entire festival and stage manage one of the shows) to substitute for me that day. My absence was provisionally approved, with every desire and belief that it be a possible thing. A few weeks into our run, everything seems to be shaping up well, with the individual shows all running well and the scenic/lighting changeovers between the shows developing into beautiful, quick and simple clockwork. So, I made a copy of my calling script and gave it to my stage manager to peruse; we met to talk through the show; he shadowed me as I pre-set and called the show one night; and he'd been in to practice running through the tech of the show on his own a couple times,

Tonight, he was going to pre-set and call the show while I watched him. In preparation for that, he wanted to just run through the tech with me there so that he could ask a couple of questions that he arisen when he was working on his own.

I wave to him as I head into the building. He's finishing up a game on his phone. It's almost time for me to sit back and let someone else take the reins.

3:16pm

The sound is completely fucked.

Going through the first piece in the show, things were sounding much louder than usual. Then, we reached the second piece, which contains some cues that can be described professionally as "crazy-ass freak-outs." The sound in that piece as a whole is rather tension-inducing, in an artistically appropriate way, with those freak-outs being particularly sonically stressful.

Right now, though, the freak-outs are more along the lines of "heart attack-inducing." The meters are flashing red as they go into overdrive, speakers crying out in pain. I have the sound designer on the phone -- intermittently, at least, as the theatre in a basement and there is apparently very limited cell phone reception in the stage management booth.

We're going through all of the things that the sound designer can think of, and everything seems to be perfectly normal. Except for how the levels are now breaking the speakers.

Finally, we exhaust all of the sound designer's theories, and he says that he'll come in to work on it. It's almost 4:00pm at this point, when we have a staff meeting to discuss laundry procedures -- what, do you think we have an actual wardrobe staff or something? -- and our upcoming marathon day. Clearly, nothing more can be done down here, so we head upstairs to not be responsible for anything for a couple of minutes.

4:44pm

Our sound designer came and fixed our problem, so he calls me briefly out of our staff meeting to explain what went wrong to me. Apparently, he'd been using a limiter for Ableton Live that was regulating the levels for our show. The thing is, it had been a trial version -- and the free evaluation period had expired, so the plug-in just stopped working. Poof! No more limiter! But he put in another thing to perform the same function, so all was well and we wouldn't have to worry about blowing out either speakers or eardrums.

When I return to the room where we were having our meeting, my other stage manager tells me that one of my actors had called saying that he was currently suffering from heat exhaustion. I call the actor back, check in about how he's feeling, make sure that he's treating himself properly.

I glance at the clock. There are over four hours until the performance. While I'm slightly put out by someone getting heat exhaustion on the day that they have a show, everything sounds as though it's following the proper course, though he probably won't be able to perform at 100% tonight. I tell him to keep me updated and that I'll check in with him closer to the show.

6:02pm

Feeling rather awkward and at loose ends, I text a friend. With my sub very competently taking care of all of the pre-show business tonight, I am an entirely useless supervisor right now.

Famous.

Last.

Words.

6:14pm

My phone rings. I glance at it -- it's my heat-exhausted actor. I pick up and greet him, and I'm answered by his girlfriend.

Apparently, rather than heat exhaustion, he has been attacked by a nasty stomach virus, he's been getting worse, he's extremely weak, and they're just now leaving urgent care and have been told by the doctor that he'll likely be in rough condition for a couple days. I tell her that we hope that he feels better soon, and that we'll be taking care of things on our end and that he should rest well.

I hang up.

Well.

Time to see if it's possible to perform a five-person ensemble dance show that uses all of the performers in every single piece with four people.

6:17pm

I walk into the office and tell the producer that we have a man down. I can go through the show and determine what it might be like when modified to be performed with four people, and then I can present that to him. Then, he can decide if that is something that the festival wants to present to an audience -- but, I say, I will present that plan to the company and we will go forward with it if, and only if, they feel comfortable performing such a show.

I walk out of the office.

Five minutes later, I return and present my plan.

And the producer says: go for it.

6:26pm

I start gathering the other actors, calling and texting. One of the actors is already there, rehearsing for the fireside storytelling post-show gathering, so that's easy enough. Two of the others reply that they're on their way as fast as they can.

The fourth goes to voicemail. There's no reply to a text message. I dispatch my stage manager to continue trying to get in contact with her. As we wait for the others, I start talking through the show with the actor who is already here.

6:42pm

With three out of our four actors and our crew member gathered, I present to them the overall general plan for how the show might be modified to accommodate missing one of our performers, highlighting the instances that would be most drastically affected (such as a couple of partnering sections). The actors, the light of determination (and just a little bit of fear) shining in their eyes, declare that the show must go on.

I give the nod to the producer, who heads downstairs to open the house to the audience, letting the in after the 15-minute delay in which we were determining whether there would even be a performance for them to see tonight.

Meanwhile, we go back to the beginning and start working our way systematically through the show, discussing every single thing that will be modified and earmarking a few moments that the actors would like to actually walk through on their feet before performing it.

Still no word from our fourth actor.

7:34pm

Our fourth actor joins us at the normal half-hour call time, and having just reached the end of the show in our talk-through, we loop back around to the beginning of the show, hitting the moments that will specifically affect her.

Lesson learned, she says, is to make sure that you take your phone off silent after getting out of seeing a show when you yourself have a performance later that night.

7:45pm

Half-hour until places for top of show -- half-hour, please.

I grab my salad and shovel my face full of Asian mixed greens, avocado and kimchi. Clearly, I'll be calling the show tonight, and the last thing I need is to have a blood sugar crash in the middle of it.

8:16pm

Everyone is in places. I watch from the booth as the producer does his usual pre-show speech, telling people about the festival's other performances and informing them how to leave the space in case of an emergency. And, he adds, one of our actors unfortunately fell ill, so tonight we are presenting a modified version of the show that will nevertheless delight you.

Let's get this thing started.

9:06pm

And the curtain comes down. Or it would come down, if we had a curtain. In reality, I take the last light and sound cues, cutting out the sound with a blackout. Then, as per usual, I bring up the curtain call lights and sound and start the applause from the booth, as the audience tends to not be sure if the show is actually finished. To be fair, the show consists of sections, at the end of which it has a tendency to go darker and quieter, and there isn't any narrative of which to reach the end, so it's understandable that one might be unsure.

But we did it.

10:04pm

Our Technical Director is out of town, so I was on firewatch for the fireside storytelling tonight and shut down the sound and light systems and closed up the space after that. Dragging myself upstairs to the dressing room/green room, I collapse into a chair.

Time to start writing the performance report. So hey, everyone, here's what happened tonight...

11:23pm

I send the performance report. It's taken a lot of melodramatic lolling about in the chair, but it's written and sent.

I've had a headache for two days now. Having been on a wellness kick, I'd been massaging some stiffness out of my shoulders and found myself working upwards, into my neck and head. Now, this was supremely dumb of me, as the muscles in my neck and the back of my head have been in a constant state of pain since I was in middle school, at least. It honestly took me a while to cotton on to the fact that it wasn't normal for applying light pressure to the back of my head to induce nauseating pain. But for some idiotic reason, in my healthful zeal, I'd a couple days ago decided that maybe I should try to do something about this ongoing problem. And so, I'd starting carefully working those sore muscles.

What I'd succeeded in doing was making every muscle in my head and neck hurt.

So here I am, sprawled in a chair, feeling lightheaded with pain, my sandals long since kicked off and my hair hanging loose. I curse my body for its reaction to stress, which is much less useful than my brain's reaction. My brain takes stress in stride, not letting crises ruffle it. My body, on the other hand, is extremely sensitive to stress, and unsurprisingly, right now, it is in a major state of protest. In a state of riot, even.

I stand. The hardwood floor feels good under my feet, and the open space, cleared out of its usual tables and chairs by the actors, who wanted an open warm-up space in their green room, looks so inviting.

Nobody else is in the building at this point. I do what I want.

I grab my iPod and hook it up to the room's sound system. I let it rip.

And I dance.

12:46am

I wake up on the floor of my apartment. It's confusing, because my brain discerns that it's not in bed but at the same time believes that where it is right now is just fine and can't we just stay here?

After coming home, I'd put on my pajamas, sprawled out on the floor of my unlit living room and done some extensive stretching for my back. Taking deep breaths, I'd lowered myself into savasana. And there I'd stayed. It probably won't end well if I stay here, though. Curling onto my side, I slowly heave myself off the floor and shuffle to the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea. Some Tension Tamer, please.

And dear god, but this is the shit that I live for.

Maybe the things that disappeared were the ones that I wanted to sink--

Nothing like feeling worn down on a Sunday morning. Or early afternoon, as is now the case. It's certainly been a packed few days, which isn't necessarily unusual -- except that it was for non-work-related reasons.

The family came to visit on July 5, so there was all sorts of going to the beach and eating New England seafood and walking around town before they came to see my show, which they hated. Okay, maybe "hated" isn't exactly accurate, but "would never have voluntarily chosen to see of their own volition were it not for the fact that a Person To Whom They Have An Obligation As Well As Some Affection was working on it" still lacks a single word. I'm fairly strongly convinced that theatre -- and the other performing arts, as well -- would do well to add such a word to its lexicon. Any suggestions? Or is there a pre-existing one that I'm missing?

I feel a sort of peculiar tension between the artistic tastes of my family and myself. On the one hand, I am eternally grateful for growing up in a household where the arts are appreciated, for having been exposed to the arts in the first place and having my efforts be supported. I'm amazingly fortunate in that respect, and I certainly wouldn't be where I am today without having had all that.

On the other hand, as I've gotten older and my own tastes have developed, I find myself going through that rite of passage where you realize that your parents are, in fact, only human. Only in my case, the harshest blow comes with seeing with clear eyes the way that an individual whom I hold in the highest esteem thinks that Menopause: The Musical was frighteningly clever and hangs a Thomas Kinkade winter scene wall tapestry with blinking multi-colored LEDs without the least bit of irony. It's a fact of life that not everyone has the same tastes -- in fact, that is one of life's boons. But oh, how it stings to suddenly be confronted with such a vaunted figure not having an appreciation for anything that they deem to be too "weird." To say nothing of the refrigerator stocked with light beer that had me convinced for years that I didn't like beer at all.

It's also odd to be reaching that realization that visiting family (or being visited by family) is a disruption. Not necessarily a bad disruption! But it is a disruption to Life As It Usually Is -- in other words, the center of one's life has, at some point, shifted away from Going Home. Having always been a very home-centric person -- with an implicit family-centrism, even if we weren't the most warm and fuzzy of folks -- it's a slightly shocking and untethering sort of thing. It's a sign of time passing and life inexorably changing. It's having to catch one's balance in order to not fall off of that tightrope stretched over that great abyss of the future.

Yesterday was filled with socializing of a different sort, as I went to the beach again, this time with friends from work. We spent a lovely few hours there, splashing about in the Long Island Sound in both low tide -- where you could walk out a good ways and still literally kneel in the sand and have your head be clear -- and high tide. One member of our group brought her ukelele, so at one point, there was the whole troop of us sitting in the sand, with some simple tunes being plunked out and voices harmonizing to the sky.

Most excitingly, after years of failure leading me to resign myself to never being able to accomplish such a feat, I discovered that the impossible was, actually, possible. Yes, it's true. Yesterday, I floated on my back for the very first time. I'd always had sinking problems around the middle, but the salt water apparently gave me enough of a boost that I was able to stay afloat. Trivial as it may seem, it was a pretty joyous experience for me. I spent a good amount of time out there, while my friends gathered and chatted, just off to the side, by myself, looking up to the sky, getting facefuls of salt water when some larger waves would come through but always staying just at the surface.

The floating continued into the night, I took part in the Global Floating Dance Party. It was my first flashmob-type event, and I enjoyed it greatly. The basic concept was that people would download and load some prepared tracks onto their personal listening devices, show up at a meeting place at a set time, and then the whole crew would go dancing through the city together, exuberant in their grooving but not creating any noise disturbance to anyone not participating. The music was uneven -- mostly good but with too many down-tempo sections that went on for too long. Still, it was a great time. Everyone was very well-behaved, and despite the occasional lulls, everyone was in good spirits. The concept was simple, and people could just get into it without any fuss. To say nothing about it being a workout! Despite starting at 10:00pm, it was still rather warm and very humid, and I was drenched and gross by the end of the 90 minutes of dancing.

As for the day in between the family visit and all of yesterday's socializing, I didn't get much done except for convincing myself not to kill myself. So Friday was either really productive or really unproductive, depending on how you want to look at it.

Talking openly about one's health is a dicey thing. Being in the arts, I'm not so scared for my career as a result of holding certain political views or taking a certain attitude. But would it influence someone's view of my usefulness if they know that there are random days when I'm barely able to walk up a flight of stairs? Would they interpret that as meaning that there would be days when I'd be unsuitable for work -- even though I've dragged myself along on such days so that hopefully no one would be able to see any difference, not collapsing into an enervated heap until I'm safely hidden behind the door of my apartment? And even more so with issues of mental health, with someone working in a management capacity. Shit, that bitch be crazy! What kind of liability is that, if a person in charge sometimes has days when they feel like their consciousness is crawling out through their eye sockets and wants to take a flying leap out the nearest window?

But the point is: my afflictions do not diminish my value as a person or as a professional. I am a skilled, fairly successful person working a management job among artists whom I respect. Of course, I am also supremely fortunate that my symptoms are at a mild enough level that I'm able to manage them in the manner that I do, which is not true for many people whose experiences I cannot fathom. But what I'm saying is that we sick folks and we crazy folks are everywhere. You might not even know that we're there.

And you? You're not alone.

It's important to me to talk about this openly because one of the things that changed my life was stumbling upon a Wikipedia entry that described this terrifying thing that I had been experiencing for years: derealization and depersonalization. Clicking on that link was learning that I wasn't losing my mind and that I wasn't to only person to ever feel that way and that there were causes for it. And it was starting to get back control of my life.

My journals from middle school have entries written during those dark nights when I felt like I was going crazy. I can remember nightmarish episodes from all the way back into childhood. But it wasn't until a few years ago that I finally learned what was happening to me. And you know what? Since I gained that knowledge, my occurrences have decreased and the ones that I do experience are so, so much less terrifying. Because part of what made them so frightening was that they were complete mysteries, and that fear, in turn, fed into them and made them worse. While they still aren't pleasant by any means -- let us refer back to my temporary distaste for existing, as of this past Friday -- I know that they're temporary and that they're not going to take over me.

Here are some links that I have found informative:
-Wikipedia: Derealization/Depersonalization
-About.com: Depersonalization, Derealization and Panic Disorder
-DPDRDisorder.org
-PanicEnd.com: Unreality, Depersonalization, Derealization

I'm still feeling rather disappointingly tired, probably a combination of the family excursion, yesterday's youthful indiscretions and the factors that led me to spending most of Friday afternoon lying on my bed, listing to myself all of the reasons why suicide wasn't a good idea. The weather might very well be one of those factors. While I seem to be thankfully past the point of when I would spend a number of summer days flat on my back, breathing labored due to the pain throughout my entire body, the unstable summertime weather still does affect me -- my hands have been rather crotchety and stiff, my back has been begging for a merciless masseuse to try to detangle it and stairs have been more of a challenge than usual. It's also possible that my change in workout routine has been affecting me, as I've switched from longer cardio workouts to shorter, high-intensity interval workouts. (Another reason that I'm so devoted to fitness is that it helps to stabilize my moods.) Overall, it's not a bad tired, though. It's the sort of tired that comes after having gone through something, rather than from not wanting to go through anything else.

Work calls, however, and it's time to perk myself up for something about which I care deeply.

Even if it is kind of weird.

I see fireworks, I see the pagaent and pomp and parade--

For the first time since unofficially starting this little Blog Everyday project of mine -- it's a project now, evidently -- I've felt that nagging voice rising up inside of me. The one that whines "But writing everyday is haaaaaaaaaaaard." Well, tough cookie, crumbles. Not writing is no more an option than not exercising physically. I've found myself rather liking Jillian Michaels' vaguely D/s style of instruction, so I'm giving it a go and brutally yelling at myself about how I need to give it all up for me and how I have no tolerance for failure and how I should endure the pain because won't it feel so good when I finally succeed.

Aside from that, though, I took today as mostly a vacation. By which I mean that I made no efforts to graduate from grad school but otherwise carried on mostly as normal. Which included avoiding the fuck out of anyone I know. For a while, I had assumed that I would be spending today with friends, but when the day itself arrived, I found the prospect of spending the entire day on my own, without the necessity of interacting with people whom I enjoy greatly but whom I constantly see in the context of work and school, to be much more enticing. To hell with dealing with crowds; I've seen fireworks before and felt no urge to go out of my way to see this little New England city's display. Why spend Independence Day among my fellow citizens when I could instead spend it dicking around on the internet and improving my Spanish?

In other news tangentially related along the lines of things I supposedly learned in high school, The Economist has reminded us that math is actually important and that we consumers are often pretty dumb, which leaves us vulnerable to having advantage taken of us. "Consumers often struggle to realise, for example, that a 50% increase in quantity is the same as a 33% discount in price. They overwhelmingly assume the former is better value. [...] This numerical blind spot remains even when the deal clearly favours the discounted product." So while fine, make your argument that the average person doesn't need calculus, but please! Remember your fractions! Don't let yourself be a passive sucker in our capitalist jungle! Especially my national compatriots -- how much more American can you get than refusing to let yourself get screwed over by people who are trying to take your money?

Independence Day actually isn't so much my holiday. Catch me again in September, when Constitution Day/Citizenship Day rolls around, and then you'll be subjected to the full force of my estadounidense-ness. True story, there are two books that have a permanent home on my bedside table, and those an old family Bible and the Federalist Papers.

Anyways, it's not as though I let the day go by without some sort of celebration. Today deserved a special meal, something that I had been idly contemplating since the farmers' market last weekend.

As a side note, all of this food talk is rather amusing to me. Once upon a time, I actually wasn't quite welcomed in the kitchen, being viewed as a hazard to myself and others. While the former had changed, the latter retains some truth, as evidenced by my managing to throw mustard all over the kitchen floor today. Not spill -- throw. Twice.

It was worth it, though. The result: porterhouse steak with honey-mustard and shiitake reduction, rainbow chard with shallots and goat cheese, and quinoa. And a cold beer.

I based the steak and sauce off of a recipe in Bobby Flay's Boy Meets Grill. As per usual, I adapted based on availability of ingredients and equipment, as well as personal taste.

After seasoning the steak with freshly-ground black pepper and letting it rest at room temperature for a bit, I cooked it in a pan over stove-top, using about a large spoonful of olive oil. I prefer my steaks medium rare, erring on the side of bleeding, and cooking over medium-high heat for about three minutes per side, flipping it once, seemed to do the trick. When I was finished cooking it, it immediately was removed from the heat and put on a plate to rest.

While the steak was cooking, I sauteed the well-washed rainbow chard in a bit of olive oil. I prefer my vegetables on the side of crispy -- I'm sensing a theme here -- so I cooked it over medium heat and added one chopped shallow when the leaves had just begun to wilt. Then, I just continued to saute it, checking the done-ness of the stems by stabbing them with a fork every so often. When they were just about where I wanted them, I tossed in a handful of bits of semi-soft goat cheese.

Also during this time, I sliced up a handful of shiitake mushrooms and sauteed them in a small pan with olive oil.

When I removed the steak from the pan, I kept the pan warm and added about half a small spoonful of olive oil. Then, I added the mushrooms, a chopped shallot, a big spoonful of whole-grain mustard, big spoonful of lemon juice, a spoonful of honey and some parsley. I stirred that over low heat for a while, then grabbed the plate on which my steak was resting and tipped the juices that had gathered on the plate into the pan. Stirred it all up and let it reduce a bit.

For the final plate, I put on some leftover cooked quinoa, still cold out of the fridge, since it was a hot day. Then, onto the plate went the chard and the steak. Finally, I spooned the sauce onto the steak.

The verdict: would do it again! One thing to note is that, despite the fancy-sounding ingredients, the sauces and other bits aren't overwhelming at all. Your base items -- the steak, the chard -- completely show through, so if those aren't good, the other things won't save your meal. Also, the chunky sauce will inevitably fall off of the steak while eating it -- especially if you're eating it right and getting every bit of the best meat by picking it up with nature's utensils (i.e., your hands) and gnawing right down to the t-bone -- and then tastes great mixed in with the quinoa.

Topped it off tonight with a simple red-white-and-blue dessert: plain low-fat yogurt with blueberries and grenadine to accent.

A stray thought to follow up with the Anderson Cooper business. It occurred to me that publicly coming out is, in a way, a comparable opposite to a hate crime. The reason that a hate crime is a hate crime and should be addressed as such is because it's double in its attack: it targets both the individual(s) and a community. Beating a gay man for the sole reason that he's gay both injures that specific man and is a message to the gay community, both locally and in generally, that they, too, deserve the same treatment, no matter who they are. It's a threat and an attempt at intimidation to others beyond the specific, direct victim. But when someone publicly comes out, it also has those dual levels: the personal level, where that individual is dispelling other people's possible misconceptions, and the societal level, where they are making a statement that whatever they are is a presence that exists and is not to be hidden or shamed. To the threats of Get out and Keep your head down and Don't let us catch you comes the countering declaration of I am here and have just as much a right to be as anyone else.

Land of the free, home of the brave. So to my fellow Americans, and anyone else who wishes to crack a beer or shoot off an illegal firework in solidarity, I wish you a happy Independence Day.

That stranger he has found, this man could be my chance--

Day two of Project: Actually Graduate From Grad School. I think that I've actually found a method that works for me. Rather than trying to work as much as possible, I'm limiting how much I'm allowed to work. When I get to that time of day, I set the time on my cell phone for one hour, start it ticking and then set it down next to me and let the screen go dark. At that point, it's a race against a clock, since I know that when that timer goes off, I have to stop working, no matter how little I've accomplished.

Golly, but it seems to be working so far. Rules, limitations and punishment! Oh, yeah!

I've been being a pretty distressingly responsible, well-rounded person in general lately. Start the day with a workout! Read the New York Times and Merriam-Webster Word of the Day while eating breakfast! Practice piano for an hour and a half! Do an online Spanish lesson because I bought six-month's time with a Groupon and I'm going to get my money's worth, by tarnation! Get other stuff done in the time in between! Don't touch those online recreational activities until any earlier than 9:30pm!

And keep writing those fucking blog posts! Speaking of fucking blog posts, I'm sure that a lot of people have Anderson Cooper fatigue by now. I don't care. More on that later. But first...

Breakfast for lunch! A grilled sweet sausage (store-bought), homemade home fries and a leftover homemade buttermilk biscuit. After having picked up the sausage because it was discounted, I've been looking for a reason to use it, and having a bowl of rendered bacon grease, pairing it with home fries seemed like the natural way to go. I love a good hot breakfast, but damn, I am so not into actually cooking a breakfast that takes more than 10 minutes to prepare. Breakfast for dinner is great, too, but I prefer to have relatively light dinners, with my mid-day meal being the largest. And so: breakfast for lunch.

The home fries were pretty much perfection. I washed and chopped up three medium-sized potatoes into tiny chunks, no more than a quarter-inch thick. I gave them a rinse in cool water because some website said to do that, and it seemed like a really easy way to seem like I knew what to do in a kitchen. It probably washes off excess starch or something. I honestly have no idea.

The small size was key because I didn't want to parboil the potatoes, and cooking too-big chunks of potato takes forever and risks them ending up undercooked. I basically heated the potatoes in as little oil as possible -- just enough to coat the pan surface and keep thing from sticking -- until they were just about cooked through. Then, I dumped them into a separate bowl, refreshed the pan with just a little more oil and put the chopped Vidalia onion in. Those got cooked until they were turning transparent.

Then: the bacon grease. Lumped in a big, generous spoonful, then added the potatoes back into the pan, stirring them up to get everything coated and evenly distributed. Sprinkled some oregano and coarse black on top and stirred it all up again. (At least, I think it was oregano. At one point, my mom sent me a couple of ziploc baggies of dried herbs. I'm sure she told me what they were, but I never labeled the bags and have forgotten. Once in a while, I just throw a bunch of one of them into something because it seems like a good idea.) Then I just let them be still for a while over the heat so that they could brown and crisp up. When the sides in contact in the heat were looking good, I stirred things up again, so additional sides could brown. Two chopped red bell peppers got added last, since I wanted those to stay fairly crisp.

I used my grill pan to cook the sausage, which takes longer than expected to get it cooked all the way through. Any grease still on the sausage was soaked up by the biscuit.

As for that sausage, it had been on sale at the co-op due to being at its sell-by date, so I'd bought it without knowing a single thing about it. It turned out to be too salty for my taste, which isn't surprising, since I use hardly any salt when cooking. (Generally, I don't add any salt to anything, except when baking because I'm afraid that things will explode if I don't follow baking recipes to the letter.) There are leftovers, and I'll probably only use half a sausage for my next meal, chopping it up and mixing it in with the home fries.

Which are, I feel I should restate, pretty much perfection.

Speaking of perfection, I've long considered Anderson Cooper to be pretty close to it. He's one of the points in the triangle of the person I want to be (the other two being John Barrowman and Tracy Letts). Smart, professional, stylish, and just so very classy and cool. His officially coming out has been the buzz of the internet for the past couple of days, and the last thing the world is interested in hearing is yet another nobody offering up their opinion on the matter.

Here's mine anyways.

One of my pet peeves when a public figure comes out are dismissive comments that are meant to show how just how clever that particular member of the peanut gallery is. "So-and-so is gay! In other news, the sky is blue."

First of all, if you don't know the individual personally, I'm sorry, but you don't know. Now, realistically, it can be pretty clear if there's something in a person's life about which they're not being open or honest. But the implication that, well, obviously, you could just tell that someone is gay? What does that mean? That you can check off a certain number of items on a list and if their score is over 50, bingo, they must be gay? Yes, yes, there's that certain je ne sais quoi as well as certain recognizable actions that a person usually takes when they're not revealing a particular something to the public. But you know what? You really didn't know. Not for sure. And your cleverness that your guess was correct is actually not impressive.

Second of all, maybe you don't care. And thank you for taking the time to let all of us know how much you don't care. It really shows how much you truly don't care. But even if you don't care, there are a lot of people who do. And while I firmly support your right not to care, I also believe that it's important for you to understand why some other people care very, very much.

The fact is, for all of the progress that has been made, it's not a welcoming world out there.

And we're not just talking about the "Kill the Gays" bill that garnered so much attention in Uganda this past year, something which many of us can mourn how tragic that is while emotionally distancing ourselves, telling ourselves that it's somewhere so far away, so foreign. (PS: it's not.) And we're not just talking about kids being driven to suicide because of brutal bullying due to their perceived sexual orientation or gender identity, where that's not nice, of course, but it's something that doesn't just affect gays and besides, it's a social issue. (PS: none of that changes the fact that it's fucking terrible and needs to stop.)

Right now in Ukraine, a bill is coming around that, "If passed, it would amend existing laws on ‘the protection of morals’, media and publishing, as well as the criminal code, banning virtually all information on gay and bisexual issues and criminalizing LGBT human rights work in Ukraine." The spotlight has been on Ukraine lately, especially since a gay-rights organization's leader was brutally attacked after the first Kiev pride parade was cancelled due to threats of violence.

(You can sign an online petition protesting the bill here.)

This comes after a law was passed in St. Petersburg, Russia, outlawing the "promotion of homosexuality among minors" -- where people, gay and straight alike, have been arrested just for protesting said law.

Those are just a couple out of many, many things that can weigh on a person's mind.

It's not a welcoming world out there.

If one has any interest in the matter, I think it's owed to Mr. Cooper to actually read his entire thoughtful statement, which is included in a blog post by Andrew Sullivan, rather than just the second-hand headlines announcing his announcement.

"I’ve begun to consider whether the unintended outcomes of maintaining my privacy outweigh personal and professional principle. [...] I do think there is value in standing up and being counted. I’m not an activist, but I am a human being and I don't give that up by being a journalist."

It means a lot to know someone, and to know that someone isn't ashamed. The fact that people have reasons for coming out goes hand in hand with the fact that people have reasons for not coming out. And there's something to telling those reasons for not coming out -- fear, shame, being abandoned by family and friends, having one's career be negatively affected, having religions tell you that you're evil, having the government tell you to your face that you're not deserving of equal rights under law -- to go fuck themselves.

And it means a lot to know that you're not alone. And not only are you not alone and not only are there people who are like you, but there are people who are like you who are fucking awesome.

And it means a lot to have other people -- people who might be creating or voting on those laws that affect your rights, or who might just be the neighbor who will be either more or less welcoming to you -- see those fucking awesome people, some for whom they feel they have some sort of personal connection, even if they don't actually know them, and to maybe now feel like they now know someone like you. Because even when it's not a matter of principle for some, a matter that's personal can suddenly take on a whole new meaning.

It's difficult to imagine what coming out must be like for a public figure. I've never come out- wait, no. I've come out twice, neither time with negative results, but the experiences were nevertheless so emotionally distressing for me that I repressed the memories, genuinely blocking then from my mind to the point where I believed that they never happened until, years later, I was pondering the fact that I had never come out and realized that that was, in fact, not true. At least I'm pretty sure that it's not true. Honestly, those memories are still incredibly surreal to me, in a nightmare-ish sort of way that keeps on encouraging me to go back to forgetting about them.

But coming out is a moment of intense vulnerability. You're exposing something that you really don't have to. So why do it? Because it does mean something. Maybe not to everyone, but to someone, it can mean so much. And maybe even play its part in changing the world.

Living an honest life requires courage.

That's something that I respect and don't want to forget.