Re-election

I think elections should mean something. I think they're the perfect opportunity to express your voice.

If you don't like something, run for office.

And it feels like lately, there's nothing I like in Californian politics.

So I think next election cycle, I'm going to serious run against whoever is "unopposed". I want to ask questions and stir up drama.

But mostly, I guess I shouldn't be disappointed in the people of L.A. for not showing up in droves. A lot of them probably weren't aware that yesterday they had to vote (for Mayor, for City Controller, for a bunch of measures that shouldn't have passed yet did). I blame the media for not 'hyping' it up like they should've - afterall, if they can on a regular basis make mountains out of molehills, why not at least do some coverage? Do candidates need to do publicity stunts to get attention for their elections? Sometimes I'm disappointed in the city of L.A. So much potential, yet so little delivery.

So now they'll have to suffer the consequences. It only fuels my anger that we have to go through this (again, and again, and again).

But it all goes back to education: those that are educated about the tools they have available to use will most likely use them. And a good majority of Los Angelinos are not educated, let alone the percentage that are legal citizens.

So I guess the lesson here is guys: when your opponent is big and rich, 'underdog' it. Use the resources that you DO have available: the internet (twitter, blog, myspace, facebook, chat, IM, youtube), word of mouth (friends, relatives, random people), viral advertising (posters on poles, buses, freeways), and best of all - your diligence. Your strength and determination and pride are all on the line which is all it takes to gamble it all.

Go big or go home.

Seriously.

Wrap Me Up

I'm a bubble gum enthusiast. The foil wrappers, the tangy artificial taste, and the numbing occupation of chewing for hours and hours on end.

Since I was a kid, I haven't kept up with my bubble gum chewing habits in a while. Recently though, Elixir gum made me rethink this.

It's not the flavor, kids. It's the wrapper.




Beautiful, brocade-ish, pink wrapper. I feel like I'm on cloud nine everytime I look at it.

And so the inspiration begins: this would make a beautiful fabric. Unfortunately, not many people believe in the ability of "thinking out of the box" as far as sewing together foil bubble gum wrappers. I believe in my heart of hearts I can pull this off (if only I knew how to sew.)

So I'd like to kick off my project outline: Candy Wrappers - The Unknown Frontier of Crafting.

Sure, everyone knows how to make Starburst Wrapper Bracelets.


Or you can shoe it.

Even a dress, hat, and really, that's it.

My ambition is to take it one step further. To actually make a dress out of bubble gum foil wrappers. Oh yeah, it's hard, but is it do-able?

Theoretically, sure - why not? Bond the individual wrappers, cut out a pattern, maybe even line the wrappers with a softer malleable fabric/material.

Maybe a mini dress like Pinto's.. or something like Belle's (which is a flippin hot pattern).

So I'm going to start to collect my wrappers! Squee!

In other news, I'm still eyeing this old chair I still have from my salvaging expedition four months ago from a Hollywood residential street.

I was inspired by this. Of course, I don't think I can pull off a duplicate without the whole thing screaming: KNOCKOFF!! But with this sort of chair "shape", patterns wouldn't work because of the 'curve'. So probably a solid color.

I just have difficulty picking a color, buying the fabric, and deboning the damn thing like I said I was going to four months ago. It's now unofficially the cats' hangout, happy to have something they can climb all over and scratch and ruin because it's already ruined anyway. And now I'm thinking about getting this chair (even though it's in CHATSWORTH of all places, and I have no real mode of transportation to get it to me). But it's sooooo coooooool looking and it's got potential up the ying yang to be OFF THE HOOK.

I mean, come on - I can tell it can be a REALLY cool lounge chair. And it's FREE (unless you remember the fact that upholstery can run up to 200 bucks even if you are doing it yourself.)

But I almost don't want to get it just because, well, I HAVEN'T EVEN REUPHOLSTERED THE OTHER ONE. I don't want my place to be FULL of chairs I'm not USING for sitting down (instead of a dump ground for papers, broken locks, and cats).

BUT IT'S SOOOOO COOOL LOOKING and I know how hard it is to find a chair like this FREE!

So I'm gonna stew on it til the end of the day and then beg whomever can pick this chair up for me (at a minimal cost, gadzooks!)

Every weekend, I tell myself: okay, I'm gonna do something, gonna do something, gonna get something finished.

And I almost never do. Not in the sense of physically putting together what's inside my head.

Like for instance, this past weekend was going to be focused on planning/building my kitchen table. The closest I got was doodling the dimensions on my sketchpad and handing it to the BF.

That's it. That's all I did.

And it's like, well look man... All I need is a table with four stools. A nice high bar-inspired table, rectangularish.. maybe a square. Small enough to be quaint in my kitchen - but enough space to put a few dishes on there, a game board, something like that. And I don't want to break the budget of $100 total.

Inspiration: Apartment Therapy's Katzies!

Cayenne Pepper Mistake

Ooooh.

Never again.

Never never never again.

I don't even know why I even picked UP the cayenne pepper canister and decided "well, gee, this would make a nice spice rub for some shrimp.. and oh, why don't I just POUR MORE OVER THE TOMATO SAUCE? BECAUSE I'VE NEVER HAD CAYENNE PEPPER BEFORE!"

Foolish me, I forgot how it tastes. I normally have an aversion to spicy stuff. I'm more of a "light to heavy MILD, thank you." It's the white in me.

So when I decided to invent a tomato-spaghetti-shrimp sauce of my own (with udon noodles of course) I'm not sure what I was thinking when I added paprika (spicy), cayenne pepper (ouch), regular pepper (okay), and spied what was also JALEPENOS in the canned sauce as well. What was I thinking?

I'll post up the ingredients to the sauce anyway. No pictures, sorry!

SUPER NONROMANTIC SPICY SHRIMP TOMATO SAUCE

1 lb. raw deveined shrimp
Garlic salt
Sea salt
Pepper
Cayenne Pepper
Paprika
Fish seasoning
Basil
(1) Canned Stewed Tomatoes
(1) Tomato Sauce
Garlic
Canola Oil

Directions

For the rub:
3 tbs. cayenne pepper (note: I would recommend you cut this back to 1 tsp., lol)
1 tsp. paprika
2 tbs. fish seasoning
1 tsp. garlic salt

First I lightly fried the minced garlic in canola oil before adding one by one the spiced-rubbed shrimp to the pan.

Then after all the shrimp is cooked, add the stewed tomatoes and tomato sauce. Stir.

Add spices to taste, as well as salt. Enjoy!

I could NOT eat this at all. I normally eat a plate and a half before I get full and this time I ate barely half a plate. It was way too spicy for me to handle. The BF gulped it down without much comment - because as he puts it, "spicy doesn't bother me like it does you."

*pout*

Right. Okay. Well, for now the cayenne pepper is on temporary ban because I am a little scarred.

Also, the ride was a perpetual disaster. Totally disorganized. Usually the criticism is that Critical Mass stops TOO OFTEN. This time they didn't stop ENOUGH. Two hours before a stop happened! We ditched before that happened.

Also noticed a good majority of literal drug addicts in the streets of L.A. Saw a homeless man's penis (please, don't ask). Saw at least three crackheads get in conflicts on the sidewalk/in businesses.

It's getting to the point where I'm really afraid to go out at night even with someone else. I really wish L.A. advertised women's defense classes more - that the government pretended to care about how women feel at night, alone - how we want to stand up and be independent, yet we need boyfriends to escort us home. It's ridiculous: how come we have ten billion dance classes, the majority on how to be a part time stripper---



BUT NO FLIPPIN' WOMEN'S DEFENSE CLASSES IN THE CENTRAL L.A. AREA? If I'm wrong, please, go right ahead, correct me.

It's really frustrating.

It's not enough just to carry a bottle of bear mace. There's a thousand scenarios I can think of where a woman is in a situation that mace could not fix.

I think the L.A. City Council needs to think long and hard about who pays their salaries. After all, women are graduating more on average from high school, we're slowly turning the tables on men as far as education, getting jobs (in most areas), and as powerful consumers/breadwinners.

I demand protection and education. Is that so much? (Yes.)

Search for Tracking Devices

To fit inside a bike.

Last December, my prized bicycle was stolen from a Silverlake residential neighborhood. Granted, it was partially my fault for believing that area could be safe for overnight parking when you know, cars are frequently broken into. But I thought, hell, the rent is so high here, there's no way "riff-raffs" can afford to live in this neighborhood.

Ank! - wrong answer.

Truth is, even with a steel cable lock, your bicycle is not safe anywhere in Los Angeles, even in your own home. That's the sad fact: nothing you can do can prevent your bike from being taken away from you.

Last night coming from City College, a very somber upset 50 year old man was standing in the subway station, telling people around him that his bike (along with three others, including one locked with a kryptonite lock). It shook me up because it was just so sad and I felt his pain from firsthand experience. These people naively trusted their locks, the campus security, and the world that their bikes would stay there until they came out to get them.

It hit really, really close to home. I still can't stop thinking about.

Since that fateful December, I haven't ridden my new bike at all which I'm sad to say I don't "love" like I did my first bike. Maybe it's the style of the frame, or the ugly color to dissuade thefts, but I just don't feel that spark. Actually, the boyfriend had to convince me to buy it. It was a good deal, still is, but I just don't fawn and favor it. Where is my new bike now?

Sitting as a coat rack against a wall, dusty and ignored.

Everytime I look at it, I feel guilty. I can't even ride it around the block because I'm just so scarred by what happened before. The sensation of paranoia takes over me and my boyfriend's words come back to haunt me: No matter what you do, you cannot prevent your bike from being stolen.

So I sit here and I think, "God, why can't there just be this taboo on stealing someone's transportation?" I mean, it's heartbreaking, like someone's only car that they depended on to get to their work.

I've resolved to continue a search for a tracking device for a bike. I've come up with the following searches:

Memoryc.com
Pegtech.com - This is only available to Law Enforcement for bike theft sting operations.
Chinavasion.com - This looks a bit shady.
SurprisingGift.com
SpyHawk
Zoombak - I've heard hit and miss stuff about this. Inexpensive (relatively compared to others) tracking services, but it is not real-time and can actually promise more than it delivers.

Makezine also posted on a DIY tracking device, though I'm not sure how a Boost mobile phone can be incorporated on a bicycle, but it's probably cheaper than anything else out there right now.

The problem with this search boils down to several detterants:

Price
Availability
Usefulness
Effectiveness

It SEEMS like a genius idea: a tracking device to a bike would mean even if it got stolen, there's that chance you can find your bike and nab the guy who took it. But when you look closer at it, it's riddled with faults.

First of all, a GPS tracking system is expensive. Like at least 400+ USD. Second, the subscription to live tracking which is what you want (versus taking a GPS and logging it where it's already been - utterly useless if the bike is stolen with the GPS on it) could come out to 400-600 a year. So we're talking at least a $900 investment for say, a $600 bike.

For a practical, everyday, hardworking but not necessarily rich person, this price is ridiculous, especially now when layoffs are common and minimum wage is the median payroll.

So let's say we shove that factor aside and price is not an option, especially for someone who invested in a quality bike, doesn't have other financial commitments to tend to, and has a fairly well paid job: the availability for a bicycle tracking device is not there. It took me several hours of hunting on the web to find fairly good choices, but it's not like you can go into a bike shop and casually mention, "oh can you wrap up a GPS tracking system to go? I'm on my lunch break."

It's just not sound economics since the demand isn't there because the price is so high.

If we shove that factor aside as well, then it comes down to usefulness. You shell out the cash, you install the programs, you attach it discreetly to your bicycle - but guess what? It doesn't work!

Who's to say you'll even get your money back? If you will get your money back? Will it really prevent a bike theft or lead to bike recovery?

And of these tracking devices, very few I think could be retrofitted to a bike for minimal discovery, just because they're -well- huge.

Why can't it be simple? Why can't there be some sort of electronic microchip inside the bike?

The most you can do right now is this:

• Get a quality lock. Probably two.
• Do not leave it outside, overnight, anywhere, no matter what sense of security you have about the place.
• Learn how to lock your bike correctly.
• Get a bike license from your local fire or police station. Fee should be relatively low.
• Know your serial number, write it down, keep it safe. Trust me, I wish I did this for my first bike.
• Know the make, model, color of your bicycle, down to the wheels.
• Do not let anyone "test ride" your bicycle you don't know well.
• Write your name and serial number on a rolled up piece of aluminum from a soda can and stuff it inside one of the handlebars. Nifty cheap trick.
• Take pictures of your bike and inventory the parts, their receipts and prices, just in case it is stolen.
• Get renter's insurance. It can probably cover the theft of your bicycle and help pay for a replacement.

This advice only enhances the safety of your bike. It doesn't necessarily prevent the theft. Given enough time, any bike can be stolen, but if you put enough deterrants on there, the thief might go, "Aw, hell, forget this fixie, I'm gonna steal that Mountain Bike instead."

Recap:

• Cable locks are only good if you live in a town of 100 people or if your bike is super crappy that no one would steal it, even if you advertised: "Steal this bike. Please. I have cancer."
• By themselves, u-locks aren't perfect. And not all of them are created equal. But they're harder to break than just cable locks.
• My boyfriend recommended that American Lock be used instead of a kryptonite u-lock to lock the New York Noose Chain. Sturdier, much harder to break, and well, American.

I'll keep my eye out eternally because despite its cons, I think tracking devices for bicycles should be available to the public at an honest price, that work well, that can be concealed and not removed easily, because if we want bicycle commuting to work and for automobile traffic to go down (as well as pollution, weaning gas dependency, establish a better relationship between drivers and riders), we have to give the same assurances to a cyclist that we do to a motorist that their bike has the same chance of recovery as a car, as well as the same protection.

Enough ranting for a day!

See you at the Critical Mass tonight.

Vegan Ghormeh Sabzi - Is It Possible?

Probable. The thing about my favorite Persian dish of all time is that it's normally cooked with lamb meat (under other circumstances: chicken, beef, or even fish). Researching under the tags "vegan" "ghormeh sabzi" "recipe" proved to be an excruciating journey across the interwebs.

Why vegan? Other than the health benefits and the weight loss associated with the diet, I think I like the challenge of taking a "normal" recipe and substituting all the ingredients for vegetables/non-animal origin, trying to get as close or even better taste than the original. It's not that I'm a diehard vegan, but I like eating vegetarian/vegan stuff (especially since it can come out to be pretty cheap too compared to buying expensive meat).

So in my second attempt to get vegetarian/vegan ghormeh sabzi, let me chronicle my efforts. I don't have picture (sorry!) Next time I make this dish, I will. I took kat's recipe and made a few mods.

ROMANTIC FRESH HERB PERSIAN STEW

Materials
1 Stew pot
1 wooden spoon for stirring
1 knife
1 cutting board
1 ladle

Ingredients
1 white onion
sea salt
garlic powder (I had to use garlic salt, bleh)
2 cans of kidney beans, drained and rinsed
frozen spinach
1 bag of sabzi
water
olive oil
1 brown potato

Ideally, sure, I would love a meat substitute (like Quorn or TVP) but that stuff is out of my budget right now. BTW, Quorn is farkin delicious.

1. So first I chopped up the onion relatively fine, stirfried it in the olive oil in the stew pot.
2. I added hydrated sabzi (all of it, which may have been a mistake...) to it, as well as two whole cups of more water.
3. Then I added the potato and the kidney beans.
4. I cooked it on medium for a while (like 30 min.)
5. Served with basmati rice (the tahdig recipe, which I totally effed up. -_-;..)

So in conclusion, compared to my fenugreek-less ghormeh sabzi made from scratch, my first attempt of entirely fresh vegetables was more delicious than the 90% dried mix I used last night. The boyfriend was less than pleased and didn't even finish his plate. Luckily I actually like any form of ghormeh sabzi that won't give me food poisoning.

I think next time I make this, I'll add dried limes, reduce the dried herbs to 20%, bring back the fresh vegetables. But in the meanwhile, I'm left eating portions made for a LARGE AMISH FAMILY by myself. Boo!

I'm also thinking of exploring the option of cooking ghormeh sabzi (along with other Persian dishes) in a slow cooker because of my hectic schedule with school and work. I mean, who really wants to cook while they're already HUNGRY?

In other news: Trains are sexy back.

Blog direction

I've been thinking about this more recently about what this blog should be about.

Originally I wanted this blog to chronicle a novel I wanted complete sometime in the next few years called, 'Ask a Hopeless Romantic.' I wanted to set it up so that anyone who felt inclined to could send me a romance question and I could answer it. I wasn't exactly sure on how to set it up so the unquestionables couldn't ask me anything 'weird' so I ended up abandoning the idea even though the story is still in works.

Every so often when I peruse a blog entry, I go, "Gee, I should post something like that up." But I couldn't decide if I wanted a certain theme because the threat of choosing one subcategory would make it neat but ultimately confine to one category. If I went all or nothing, it'd be ecletic, yes, but also possibly confusing for someone trying to guide their way through my blog.

Maybe I should do a all-tutorial thing where every day or every week I post a tutorial on how to do something/how it works/so on and so forth. That'd be useful and create a theme, yet not restrain my curious soul.

I think what this blog's message is not to chronicle my life but give it a sort of record of the physical manifestation of my thoughts. I'd love it if it became popular, but even if it doesn't, I can look and be proud of what I created.

So yeah. I think it's a work in progress.

Please stay tuned for any last minute decisions or flighty plans.

I still

Think about him. Even his picture inspires this sort of resurge of my heart. And I'm ashamed to admit that I think "Does he think about me too?"