Lucy Bland On Tour!

Hey folks! Lucy Bland is hitting the road this Wednesday, and they've gotten a nice little write-up in the Eugene Weekly for their first show.
If you're in one of these places, check them out!

Apr 2 2008 8:00 PM Eugene, OR
Sam Bond's
407 Blair Blvd., Eugene, Oregon 97402
with local band the Fast Computers

Apr 3 2008 8:00 PM Chico, CA
Cafe Coda
65 Humboldt Ave., Chico, California 95928
with local bands Surrogate and Belda Beast Cafe Coda is all ages beer/wine for those of age Cover’s are $5

Apr 4 2008 San Francisco, CA
Retox

Apr 5 2008 8:00 PM Merced, CA
The Partisan
432 W Main St, Merced, CA 95343

Apr 6 2008 8:00 PM Los Angeles, CA
Tangier

Lucy IS a pit bull

Okay, so I had a scary experience yesterday - probably my first real one with Lucy, and I figured I ought to share it.
I took Lucy with me to run errands yesterday - I picked up a pair of glasses, headed to the pharmacy...all of the things you do on Saturdays. When we had a few extra minutes, I took her down for a walk along Leschi. This was her first visit to that part of town, and there's a big walkway there and plenty to look at, so I thought it would be good for us to do something different. The weather was beautiful, and after about half a mile of insane Lucy behavior, she finally calmed down and started to walk well.

We stopped just past the marina and sat down to watch the dragon boat teams practice. The sky was clear enough to see the mountain and the weather was great. I had brought treats and a bone for Lucy to chew on, and she was by my feet gnawing away happily while I talked to Mom and Dad on the phone.

To my left I could see a stroller approaching, and a toddler wobbling ahead of his dad. He teetered in my direction, and I promptly hung up on Mom, knowing I had to play good ambassador with Lucy the crazy and a small child. His father told him to ask before petting, and he did from about 6 feet away. I had my hand on Lucy, with one hand under her collar and the other gripping her leash like my life depended on it. She's always been pretty good with kids - I can wave a treat in front of her and they can pet her all they want. This one was different. He was small and uncertain in his steps, and he was bundled up like it was winter - a coat with the hood pulled over his head, sunglasses and a pacifier. I think it was that combination - and the silent approach - that scared her because all of her hackles went up and she growled a deep, frightened growl. She bore her teeth and then started barking a panicked bark, the whole time standing in front of me and pushing me backwards.

I was horrified. I apologized profusely to the father, saying that perhaps it was the pacifier and the sunglasses, and that maybe she just got startled. But Lucy wouldn't calm down. I pulled her aside and made her sit - and then made her do a trick or two to show the little boy that she was a funny dog, but just not one to talk to at that moment. The dad said it was OK, and that this was a good lesson for his son, and that it was probably just a surprise to the dog. He then asked if we took her to the dog park to get her used to small kids (we do, but not off leash I explained), and what kind of dog she was. There it was, the big question. I said she was part pit, and yup, he said he thought so, and that she looked like a staffordshire bull terrier. He picked up his son and I walked away, heading right for a crowd of small kids. Lucy didn't even flinch that time.

Down to Sea Level Release Party

Last Wednesday night (3/19/08) I had the pleasure of attending Lucy Bland's excellent CD release party at the High Dive in Fremont. I'm not sure exactly how many people were there, but I have to say there were at least 200 people through the door when the band was on. The show was fantastic - the stage at the High Dive is big enough for everyone to get some visibility, and the sound guy who had started out as sort of a jerk earlier in the evening really got them sounding good even though they'd had no sound check.
They debuted a couple of new songs - Memory and Skyscraper - and the entire set was really upbeat and had a lot of energy. They did a terrific job (my photos don't do them justice), and I'm really excited to see their CDs for sale on CD Baby, iTunes, and at Easy Street, Cellophane Square and other places around town!!

Lucy & Mars - it's LOVE!

Yes, they're in doggie heaven when they're together - and we love it too because we don't have to baby sit them. Enjoy these pictures!

Lucy Bland's Down to Sea Level releases 3/18!!

There's plenty of great news about Lucy Bland!!

Last Friday night they had a killer show at the Sunset in Ballard, and on 3/18 they will have a CD release party at the High Dive in Fremont.

Check their site for complete updates - and tour dates for the West Coast!!

Did you know I'm taking ballet?

Indeedy.
I'm in week 7 of 8 this week, and we just started doing pirouettes. Tough, but love it.

And no, there are no recitals or public viewings of my humiliations.

The Eagles are back at Montlake

On the bus today, I saw one flying overhead...

Do Something Good Today: kiva.org

In January I made a promise to myself - no more gifts. I mean, we have a house full of stuff, we can barely fit already, and I'm really at a place in my life where I want less stuff. Less stuff means less waste, it means less cleaning, and more importantly, less junk. And for my friends, I'm going to try to follow the same rule and give you something you can use for the benefit of someone else.

This is what I sent to all of my friends on January 2:

Are you looking for an excuse to do good this year? Got some resolutions to give more? Well, rather than wait until the end of the year to send out a bunch of money, I've decided to start my year with a bang (and a plan) to lend money through Kiva.org. And I'm going to keep doing this all year long, and try to get more folks involved. Why? Because we have so much, and this is such a simple gesture.

Kiva.org is a non-profit that allows you to make a small 0% loan to low income entrepreneurs in the developing world (microfinance). We can help provide affordable working capital for the poor -- money to buy a sewing machine, livestock, etc. -- and empower them to earn their way out of poverty.

You know what's amazing about Kiva? It's how fast it's growing. At the end of last year I heard a speech by one of Kiva's founders about microfinance. I decided to take a look at their site to learn more. When you log in to Kiva, you can see the folks who have applied for loans - what they want to use the money for, where they are, their payment history - everything. They ask for so little, it's completely humbling to read. But the coolest thing is that after a few minutes, you can literally see the applicants loan requests filled and they move from the 'Need' column to the 'Active' column. I've sat for hours watching people come on to the list of applicants and roll off faster than I can loan them funds. It's thrilling and makes my skin tingle to think that there are enough people logging on and loaning money that sometimes you'll catch the system saying 'Congratulations, we've raised enough money to fill every application that's been submitted!' I've seen it once and nearly cried at what a beautiful thought that is.

Here are some stats from last week (New Year's week), for the skeptics:

• $794,525 loaned (over the holiday week, I saw this number at ~$950k - in a WEEK!)
• 786 businesses finished paying back loans (incidentally, the delinquency and default rates hover around 0. That's ZERO percent. Check it.)
• 1160 businesses were funded
• 11921 new lenders joined (NEW! NEW people loaning money, all at a minimum of $25 = ~$300000 last week alone from brand new people!)
• 3.5 hours to fully fund a business

Okay, this is enough from me. I'm done with my soapbox. Please, if you can and you're interested look at this. It's nifty cool, it's easy, and will make great presents this year (no waste, no junk, no 'giftrocity'). Good karma, you know?

Happy new year, everyone. Thanks for reading, and pass the word.

So far, I've made 6 loans and I've given 3 friends gift certificates on Kiva to get them started too. I've watched with excitement when my first loan was distributed and I proudly showed off my borrower's first payment back into the system. I can't tell you how amazing it makes me feel knowing that I can have this sort of impact.

There is a drawback, something quite unexpected I saw and felt in January - and I have to warn you about it because it's always a possibility. I had gone to the site to check on some stats when I saw a large number of journal recommendations for borrowers in Kenya. This was in the middle of the fighting there - chaos had descended on Nairobi and we were getting our first reports on kiva as to the impact. By the time I finished reading, I was exhausted and angry and crying. So many people who had asked for so little had everything taken - sometimes their houses were burned down, sometimes their businesses looted and burned, and on many, many occasions, the people were butchered, killed, or missing. The money had nothing to do with my anger. It was like I'd been present when we planted a tiny seedling, and now I saw that someone had come in and practically poisoned the earth so nothing would grow back. Everything these people had worked for was gone, and I felt as touched by it as I could a million miles away.

Check out my kiva page, and join in. Make a difference.

Dinner at Lampreia

Lampreia, Scott Carsberg's joint on 1st Ave in Belltown, has been beckoning for a while. I'd been there once long ago, but Todd hadn't been so we made reservations for Saturday night and got all dressed up for it.

I'm here to blow the lid off the Lampreia experience. So many people I know have opinions about the place - the chef's a tyrant (I'm told), the food inspired but expensive, it's dated, the waiters skitter around like they're walking on eggshells...

And when you walk by the place or try to get more information, you know why. The windows are completely covered and lit from the outside so you can't see in. No menu is posted on their door or their website. In fact, it's not really a website as much as it is a full-color business card with no links to anything. All you hear about is the chef's rep and how magical the food is. So here goes...

The interior looks like an old hotel restaurant. Creamy walls, muted lighting, quiet service. The window to the kitchen is open to the dining room (but slightly obscured), but it is absolutely silent in that place. White tablecloths, maybe 13 tables total - and when we walked in there was only 1 other table there. We saw only 25 covers (diners) the whole evening, and most of the tables stood bare all night. It was Saturday night.

When we arrived at our table, our waiter brought over the evening's first foray - an albacore tuna tartare on savory biscuit with a little pureed avocado. When I reached for my plate, he said, 'no, you should take it with your hands.' When I started to move it toward my mouth, he said, 'the chef would like you to enjoy this in a single bite.' Uh-huh. So this was how it started.

A quick overview on the menu: in the bottom-left corner of the page, it told diners that they were to remove any papers, pens, pencils, writing instruments - anything that could document the experience - from the table. Phones were to be off. On the right side of the menu was a list of course choices. On the left was a short note that said, 'many of my customers asked me for the pleasure of cooking for them. To do this, please close your menu and let me cook' or something like that. It was the offer for a tasting menu. Todd and I picked that, 8 courses. We had already each ordered a glass of wine (bad, we should have asked what sort of wine would be suggested before we committed to the tasting menu).

Here's the menu:
1. Burrata with pureed mango
2. Locally caught Dungeness crab stuffed in a shaved Fuji apple cigar. Served with apple gelee and smoked salt
3. Celeriac veloute with smoked cream and celery leaves
4. Poached foie gras enrobed in hazlenut cocoa ganache, served with candied red pepper and kumquat puree
5. Steamed artichoke bottom stuffed with lightly smoked cow's milk cream-type cheese, served with pureed tomato, pureed Kalamata olive paste, and a tomato wafer
6. Cedar-smoked duck breast ham with date puree and a bitter endive pesto
7. Pacific bass seared (pan fried, really) with smoked paprika, served with 'carrots' made of yukon gold potatoes and pequillo peppers and a wilted scallion
*** At this point, we inserted a cheese course that wasn't part of the menu, but made the meal for me:
Todd's - shaved Parmagiano Reggiano with 25 yo Balsamic vinegar
Mine - Broiled Pecorino on an Alder plank rubbed with white truffle honey and served with a candied chestnut and shaved black truffle
8. Dessert (also different, I guess based on the feedback we'd given all night about each course)
Todd's - Buffalo milk yogurt mixed with blueberries, served with blackberries and raspberries sandwiched between vanilla wafers
Mine - Watsonville strawberries cored and stuffed with white chocolate mousse, served on a strawberry coulis with a strawberry wafer

We finished the meal with a selection of petit fours: a 65% cocoa truffle, coconut macaroon, peanut butter cookie, lemon cookie and cinnamon cookie.

The whole meal took 3 hours, and cost about the same as the Herbfarm. I'd come back here again.

And how did we remember all of the details? I wrote it all quickly on the only piece of paper I was allowed. My credit card receipt.

Favorite Things: Sottocenere al Tartufo

OMG. I don't know where this has been my whole life - but I found it after getting into truffle popcorn, which we got in Dallas the last time we visited Jessica (that will be another post). Something struck when I went to Whole Foods recently - and I grabbed a block of Sottocenere al Tartufo, a cow's milk cheese spotted with black truffles. You can smell it in the fridge even when it's all wrapped up. Todd couldn't eat much of it, but I could cut chunks off and just chow down.

Here's a link for more information...

Lucy's First Hike: Twin Falls

We took Lucy out for her first hike recently - and I bought her a nice, big pack from REI so she could get used to carrying her own load. The night before the hike we filled up 2 Nalgene bottles and I took Lucy for a walk in her new pack. She complained all the way to Third Place Books and back, but she was a good sport when I made her jump on ledges and sit down fully loaded. I figured it would help her get used to it, because that following morning we were going to load her down even more when we got to the trail.

In the end we only walked a couple of miles to the falls, but Lucy carried her pack with our water and snacks the whole way. In fact, neither Todd nor I carried a thing - but we had to hang on to Lucy, and she was still mighty strong. On our way back from the end of the trail we unharnessed her - we thought she might be tired - and realized immediately that was a bad idea. She was so excited to get the pack off that she nearly took off over a ledge with Todd at the other end of her leash. That lasted about 20 feet, and we saddled her back up again.

We'll keep working on her, and maybe by the summer she'll be ready for a night of camping at Goat Rocks!

Grendel 1994 - 2006

Not too long ago I read a book about the dead. It said that as long as there was someone alive to remember them, they went to another place, living out a happy life waiting for their friends and loved ones to join them.

This weekend, my little man joined them.

Whether the days were light or dark, he was always by my side and in my heart, and I would not be the person I am today without him. I only hope to one day be as good a person as he thought I was.

Remember him well.
Grendel 1994 – 2008

Favorite Things: Texas Pecans

I sat at the dinner table one afternoon and cracked pecans from Jessica's yard - we had brought them back with us after our visit in October, and they'd been sitting quietly in the cabinet just aging. They taste different than pecans from California, and cracking them out of the shell and trying to keep the meat intact proved to be a very meditative activity.

A Few of My Favorite Things: Seckel Pears

Mmmm. I love this time of year because I get my favorite fruit of the year: Seckel Pears. They're small and juicy, reminiscent of D'Anjou Pears, but they're beautiful and tiny, smaller than a mandarin orange. I like them almost overripe, when they're ruby in color and they drip from your chin when you bite in. I can eat a bag in a sitting, they're like candy. Here, I've pictured them with another favorite thing: Vella Bear Dry Jack Cheese.

NYC Weekend

I had a short visit to New York before we left for Missouri for Thanksgiving, and I got good time in with friends (and plenty of good food!). Photos as follows...

Grendel-hol!

I found this kind of fun toy called the Warholizer...Check out this picture of Grendel!

Best Chinese Ever!

When we arrived in Waco for a visit with my family, we were greeted with a spread so unexpected that I had to write about it. My grandmother (mom's mom) had been prepping a Chinese meal for the previous few days, and she was pulling out all the stops for our arrival. Because it's so infrequent that we're in Texas for a visit, she made sure that plenty of people were there and all had something special to eat.
While she was cooking the last dish, we managed to get the entire episode on video and let me tell you, my grandmother would make a great cooking show host. I'm going to try to get more videos of her doing things like this.
Mom and Dad had gotten there a few minutes after we arrived, and Mark and Uncle showed up shortly thereafter too. Including Popo, there were 7 of us who sat down to the following meal:
Beef and broccoli (Mark's dish)
Chicken in lettuce cups (Uncle's dish)
Chicken in black bean sauce (Mom's dish)
Piccadillo (a Cuban alternative, just in case Mark didn't have enough to eat)
Chinese soup
Lobster Cantonese (sort of Dad's dish, sort of just special)

All of it was outstanding!

Tillman's Roadhouse

On a visit to Waco recently, we got to spend the night with Jessica and Jay, and they took us to a fun place in Dallas called Tillman’s Roadhouse. Imagine a fancified Shady Grove, if you know the place in Austin. It had a swanky bar with equally swanky cocktails (from the cocktail mistress Lucy Brennan), but it was really just an upscale hunting cabin, complete with animal heads hanging from the walls. The animal heads were wooden, and the room lighted with shabby-chic chandeliers, but you get the idea.
When we were seated, the waiter brought two different snacks – fresh roasted Spanish peanuts and truffle popcorn. I think it was kettle cooked with white truffle oil and then topped with a little shaved black truffle. It was the best popcorn I’d ever eaten and completely original.
For appetizers, we shared a round of deep-fried pickles – they were closer to sweet pickles, not dill pickles – and they were served with homemade ketchup and horseradish mayo. To continue the fried theme, we had a trio of French fries: Peruvian purple potato, sweet potato and Yukon golds topped with a chile spice, smoked salt, and a rosemary garlic mixture respectively. Dinner was equally creative - the guys had chicken fried hanger steaks, Jessica had a supreme hamburger (with foie gras) and I had Frito pie, made with venison chili.
But dessert was where it was at. We four shared a little sterno-hibachi grill and made fresh s'mores from homemade marshmallows, homemade graham crackers and a nice, dark chocolate. Yum!

Give Thanks

Over the last two weeks, I've ben witness to a couple of remarkable transformations. One was very public, the other a little more private. But both were moving and gave me pause to think about the big things - family, friends, life, love and happiness.
The first was the death of a little girl from the Seattle area. Her name was Gloria Strauss. She'd been battling a particularly nasty form of cancer for four of her short twelve years - and the last six months her family allowed a reporter in to chronicle her battle. I picked up the thread in August when she'd fallen into a coma - and somehow I managed to read his blog entry every day since. I quietly asked around - others were reading about her too. It sounds voyeuristic, but she had such grace in the face of it all that it was a salve to all who peered in.
The second was the end of a friend's marriage. The last several months had been painful - I'd seen him bitterly angry, flippant, and mean-spirited. All at once within a few short weeks, his wife left. Left him and his two small kids. All of it. She had her reasons, as did he. And somehow, he's come out of it a little more thoughtful, not quite regretful, and full of wisdom one has only when living in that state. The further I get from that place, the more of that wisdom I fear I lose. But it turns out that it's not a momentary grace (there's that word again), but becomes part of you, it's in your bones and lives in every choice you make thereafter - even if you don't smart from the source anymore. And today when I spoke with him, I heard it in his voice - and it came back to me too. I came home, hugged the dogs, made sure Todd knew that I love him, and made dinner. And tomorrow I'll not be so earnest.

Lucy Bland at Nectar

Lucy Bland played at Nectar tonight - and their show was a smash. They played for the first time since finishing their album (Down from Sea Level), and they used this show to introduce fans to their new drummer, Chris.
Their next show is at the Sunset Tavern - they headline on a Thursday night at the end of October, and I'm encouraging everyone to come out. Making the Sunset's a big deal for them, and it would be great for them to get a good show of support! Hope to see you there!