Category Archives: things i worry about

when herbs become puzzle pieces

the day lee, things i worry about

it’s bad enough that there’s a note posted on the window of my local bookstore that says (something like), every time an order is made on amazon.com another mom and pop bookstore goes out of business.
it’s bad enough that California hiked its sales tax so damn sky-ward that i want to buy EVERYTHING online, including marrow bones, flour and now, herbs. and i’m not talking about those kind of herbs, in which case you’re better off staying in California, since those damn green crosses seem to multiply like rabbits. bulk prices are such the deal that the cost of a large bag that i’m never going to get through is cheaper (and fresher) than one of those nice glass containers at Whole Foods. the problem is what to do with the extra herbs. anyone want some marjoram and thyme?

and… if that’s not bad enough, the state of California seems pissed at everyone skipping out on their sales tax, so they’ve reincarnated this magical thing called USE TAX which means making you report everything you bought out of state and TAXING you for it because you USED it, and yes, that means all the clothes purchased at Gilt or wherever that you haven’t worn…

why i love stripey socks

the day lee, things i worry about, why artists need math

a long time ago a fashion-senseless lady advised a friend of mine that wearing stripes as a “wide” girl would only accentuate her wideness. instead of telling her that fashion is how you carry it, not how it carries you, she relegated my friend to the “dark coffin of low self-esteem,” full of oversized & earth-toned cotton separates from CP Shades. 25 years later, i still blame this lady for the email i receive at the start of every new year from my still stripe-less friend that gives a generic greeting and a profound “word of the year.” barf.

in grad school after the Northridge earthquake a bunch of us dyed our hair blue. (or at least we tried to, my hair is black, so i first bleached it, which made it yellow, and then the blue dye turned me into a martian.) several students who had red-tagged apartments were staying with my roommate and i, and one of the guys let us paint his toenails blue. the next day, after working in the wood shop all day he came home and said “now i know why you girls all paint your nails. you have a shitty day, but when you take your socks off it makes you smile.”

now that’s the best reason to wear anything… so, clearly – this outfit from Commes Des Garcons must accentuate the kidneys?

toffee sameness

food, the day lee, things i worry about,

eating toffee is sort of like having a #19 from Langer’s. you don’t want to share it with anyone, you want the whole damn thing for yourself. it’s like if you only eat half a sandwich/piece your head keeps turning right and left as if something’s missing. hiding the other half of the sandwich is one thing but try splitting a piece of toffee when you don’t really want to…

the problem is that as soon as you eat the whole thing, you kind of wish you did share. whoops.

good thing today the Internet took the day off. no emails since noon. that calls for a good nap.

argument

coffee sameness, food, the day lee, things i worry about, ,

last fall a great Italian friend of mine was hired by the Met and i took a trip out there to show him—a babe in the woods as far as having never left the Florentine motherland—the glories of Bed Bath and Beyond & Ikea and to argue the necessity of spending the money for a waterproof North Face jacket at EMS.
throw down the money, i told my friend, and POOF, not more than a month later, i was sent a warm and remote hug from the Met’s icy rooftop terrace.

NY being NY, taking a trip to EMS meant a trip to Soho, which meant stopping first at Grand Central Station for espresso in the form of a cloud at Joe’s, then on to Kee’s Chocolates and Sullivan Street Bakery.

Jim Lahey, the owner of Sullivan Street Bakery, is on my list of “Why Can’t Los Angeles Make Bread Like These Guys” and is known for his No Knead Bread. sadly he had a split with his partner so we discovered that the Soho store was no longer called SSB but Grandaisy, owned by his ex-partner (and still good!)

today i found out Joe’s has switched its bean source from Barrington to Ecco and there was some hubbub online that i must have missed. the wonderful folks at Barrington will still sell you its Gold beans online, but it’s a telling sign of impending suckiness at Joe’s.

LA being LA, the only way to get good bread and a real espresso is to make it yourself. today, being a watch-the-convalescing-pup-devour-a-bone day, i made a loaf of bread (two actually, the rectangular one is gluten-free)

and thought about what my Italian friend would say to the argument of whether to spend the money on a Behmor roaster?

notice the shipping discount and the 8 lbs free green beans.

the new Ziggy Stardust

the day lee, things i worry about,

as the pup waits for blast-off her front leg is secured with a Fentanyl patch, a narcotic 100 times more potent that morphine.
the vet insisted that we put a plastic cone on her, to make her look more like Laika, and to prevent her from chewing the patch. “if that happens,” the vet said, “then you’ll have a dead dog.”
he must have liked the big goofy stare i gave him, because he followed that up with “and of course people have tried to chew on them too, in which case you’d have a dead person.”

au jus

food, the day lee, things i worry about

did i miss something or when did meat start looking like DVDs? will the full color booklets explain exactly what the difference is between the photograph for Tyson’s Beef Brisket vs. the one for Tyson’s Pork Loin (is it just the addition of a single tomato) or why the Hormel Italian Style Beef Roast says “au jus?”

mat zapper II

the day lee, things i worry about

it’s tuesday so i go to my yoga class a few minutes early, hoping for an illicit chance to stick my mat in the zapper. but hey! the sign that says “for authorized staff use only” is gone, and in its place is this:

it looks kind of fake, the way it’s just sort of stuck on, but i’m sure it will suck the dollar out of your credit card just fine. now that the management has pointed out the need for ultra-sanitation-to-the-max, they want to charge money to achieve it. smacks of some kind of twisted yoga philosophy, not surprisingly. oh sacrilege!

mat zapper

the day lee, things i worry about

an “E-normous” mat zapper has suddenly appeared—happy 2010—in the hallway at my local yoga place, and around the corner near the tank tops and herbal tea is its companion, a 50-gallon bucket of Purell wipes. The mat zapper says it’s an “Ultra-Violet yoga mat sanitizer” for authorized personnel only, but the Purell wipes are free.


with the appearance of these large objects dedicated to squashing bacteria the message that is highlighted (way more than breathe/surrender/peace/namaste) is just how gross and dirty yoga places really must be. in other words, it gets you looking. before the mat zapper, the ropes were simply “dark,” the corners of the rooms “well-shellacked,” and the mats “just a little sticky.” now the bar has been raised. something “sanitized” this way comes and now everything must be measured against that. yeah, think about ole zappy before you put your face in that blanket.

and talk about single-usage appliances… i can’t figure out how to get even a chopstick UV’d on that thing.