Social

Melissa planned the perfect, foodie party for my birthday this year: ten of us got to have Culinary Communion to ourselves for a "local food" class. In preparation, Chef Gabriel Claycamp and Chef Katie Coleman shopped at several local farmers' markets to gather a collection of foods that were produced within 250 miles of Seattle. Melissa brought several bottles of wine from the same region. With help from the Chefs, we created a menu that would make use of almost all of the ingredients. We drank. We cooked. We ate.

What did we cook? Melissa and Winnie made fresh pasta and an arugula pesto. Several people worked on a roasted golden beet salad with fresh blackberries and chives. Gavin and Elaine threw together the most fantastic dish of clams, mussels, pancetta, and a white wine sauce. Joan, Aron, and Tatjana grilled corn, onions, and eggplant for a "deconstructed" ratatouille. We also battered and fried squash blossoms and beans, roasted potatoes with garlic, stuffed peppers with lamb and mint, and concocted a giant spinach frittata. (Forgive me if I don't exactly recall who worked on all the dishes.) We finished the whole meal with grilled peaches dressed by a balsamic and port wine reduction.  But the finale was my birthday cake, which Melissa had gone out of her way to procure from Mike's Amazing Cakes.

Photos from the party are linked here.

Against what might be better judgment, I'm accepting the Five Things Meme invitation that Sara tagged me with at the very end of 2006. It's one of those things that you might imagine is a great idea, but also contemplate the potential for malignant aftereffects. For example, couldn't the Five Things Meme just be a cover for DARPA's Total Information Awareness program? How cute of us to have willfully given the Department of Defense a collection of five lesser-known facts to add in our files. I'm going to, however, throw caution to the wind and error on the less conspiratorial side.

With no further ado, here are five things that you may not already know about me:

1). Sometime during my second or third grade education at a private, Christian school in California, I was so constantly absorbed in my own thoughts that the teachers believed me to be mentally retarded. They eventually moved me into a class with the other "slow" children, where it was determined that, in fact, I did not suffer from a mental deficiency. The measures used to test my proclivity for mental strength or weakness escape the written record, as my grades throughout my school career are quite good. This would not, however, be the only time I was accidentally placed in a remedial class. My 8th grade math teacher (Mrs. Ford) luckily realized that a horrible mistake had been made when I was placed in her remedial math class simply because the school had not yet received the academic records from my prior school. I went on that same year to compete, regionally, with the school's MATHCOUNTS team.

2). As a child, I had a fascination with fire. The translucence of a flame can be mesmerizing. The jittery dance on the end of a candle or matchstick may only be surpassed by the swirling water in a slow-moving brook. Dry, California summers don't mix well with such an obsession. The combination once resulted in my being responsible for almost burning down a whole neighborhood. Luckily, no one was injured. I have no idea what the property damage totaled, but we did move soon thereafter.

3). I have a hand gun. Yes,...I'm anti-gun, and I have a functional, seven chamber, 32 caliber, German-made revolver. Why? Because I acquired the gun many years ago, and I'm afraid of the process of getting rid of it. You wouldn't believe the number of people who have recommended that I take the gun to the police department. Do they even think such a recommendation through to it's obvious conclusion? Imagine me leaning over the counter and whispering, "I have a gun." Would there be any other worse place to make such a statement? The gun does have to go. The question is how best to dispose of a hand gun.

4). Cave exploring (spelunking) is one of my favorite activities. Growing up in the gold country of Northern California meant that there were quite a few natural, limestone caves and abandoned, man-made mines to explore. I've even made a special trip to New Mexico for the incredibly large Carlsbad Caverns. Without a doubt, limestone caves are the best for spectacular formations (stalactites and stalagmites). My current priorities haven't allowed for much cave exploration, but I just might have to join the local National Speleological Society chapter (Cascasde Grotto) this year.

5). My very first, paying, legitimate job was to clean the walls of a car wash in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. The process involved spraying sulfuric acid on the metal siding of the stalls, and washing them down with a garden hose. There were so many things wrong with this job that I don't know exactly where to start. Maybe it was having a fifteen year old dilute and spray sulfuric acid without any protective clothing. (At the end of each day's work, my hair would be bleached white from the acidic back spray, and I couldn't see well.) Maybe it was the attendant who'd only recently come out of an eight year comma, and didn't completely relate to the contemporary world.

There they are: five things you probably didn't already know about me. Now, since this is technically a web-based chain letter, I'm forwarding the Five Things Meme task on to Kevin Wagner, Rachele Cawaring, Nick Onken, and Adrianne Young.

Let's be honest. The recent Senatorial debate over the proposed "marriage" amendment has almost nothing to do with "protecting the social institution of marriage, which has traditionally included one man and one woman". The debate is about an anti-gay amendment. It's about a pro-evangelical religious amendment. Its supporters are some of the worst bigots this country has to offer. Most importantly, it heralds the dying gasps of a hatred culture that ignorantly believe their power and influence to be on the rise.

The amendment will not pass. Marriage will eventually discard the traditional and nugatory qualification of being between one man and one woman for a contemporary definition that emphasizes its justification on the merits of its social benefits and not purely its orthodoxality. I'm hopeful, at the same time, that this country will finally recognize that unemployed couples living in a 900 square foot trailer home and using fertility drugs to shat on this planet a litter of five future social nightmares are our true enemies. Wrapped in a flag of that oh so important and sanctified social institution known as "traditional" marriage, this rural freak show will undoubtedly make the news on numerous occasions as the son joins our prison community and the daughters contribute -- as pregnant teenagers -- to the circle of life.

A truly excellent photographer and friend of mine, Nick Onken, just made the cover of Linux Journal magazine (April 2006), literally. The funny part is that he's pictured with a Macintosh Powerbook (the Apple logo removed from the photo). I guess we're lucky that the Linux community is the most open-minded of all the OS cults. Of course, they might just make the assumption that Nick is running Linux on the Powerbook, which is possible.

The photo is credited to Chase Jarvis -- another Seattle-area photographer that Nick works with.

This will not be Nick's 15 minutes of fame. He is a rising star that I can guarantee you will see more of in the future. I've always felt very fortunate to have had him shoot my executive profile photos.

Gavin has been working on an AJAX project in his "spare time". The project melds both his interest in roller coasters and the desire to demonstrate what's possible when you harness various Web technologies in new and creative ways. The resulting invention (coast2coaster) is quite amazing. You should definitely pick a park and switch to the satellite view. Doing so will allow you to zoom in and, in many cases, actually see the roller coaster. That's way too cool for words.

He's got a more detail explanation of the project on his blog. Sighhhhh. I guess this means that I'm going to have to publish something cool too.