Tooting My Own Horn

My commute back from UCLA home is almost always by bike. Just for fun, I decided to start counting my mileage this year, and I'm proud to say I've passed 230 miles for 2009. That's more miles than we've put on the car this year, and puts me on track to save at least 2,000 miles behind the wheel this year. It's nine kinds of awesome. Some of the recent rides:

17 January 09: K-town to Westwood roundtrip 21.02 miles (YTD 153.54 miles)

20 January 09: K-town to Westwood to K-town by way of 920 14.75 miles (YTD 168.29 miles)

21 January 09: K-town to Westwood to K-town by way of 920 13.40 miles (YTD 181.69 miles)

23 January 09: K-town, Westwood, Marina del Rey, K-Town 23.05 miles (YTD 204.74 miles)

25 January 09: Barnsdall Park out and back 5.45 miles (YTD 210.19 miles)

26 January 09: K-town, Westwood, K-town by way of Mar Vista 20.13 miles (YTD 230.32 miles)

You can follow along here.

a story about light

One other note about returning from Colorado:

My own story about light: Driving back to California from Colorado by way of I-25 to I-40, we spent a decent amount of time in the darkness with only the ribboned highway for company. Coming west past Flagstaff, through Kingman and falling to the Colorado River, you could see a haze of light to the north. At first, I thought it was Laughlin, tucked as it is into the nib of Nevada pressed against the river. Later, though, passing through the darkness of the Mojave, I wanted to pretend it was Las Vegas, some slow siren song of neon in the dark. I don't know if it was, but driving back on 40 - along that thin string Jenny saw from above - it was tempting to imagine it so.

It comes from reading something that a friend of mine wrote and being reminded of a piece in National Geographic not too long ago.

new year's resolutions

Would it be flip to say, Write more often? Probably.

But we're home, returned from Colorado. The Trojans are pulling away from the Nittany Lions on the radio in the other room, I've realized that my computer has another internet signal to pirate, and Kirsten is measuring stips of muslin to thicken the curtains in our bedroom.

It's a lovely climate here, though our weather mostly comprises thick fog over Wilshire on New Year's Eve (no, it's not Chicago, but few things are...). Class gets underway for us both next week (one of the many shocking things about 2009: the real world insists on resuming). And a batch of pasta dough is relaxing on the counter in our kitchen.

Dinner tonight is fresh fettucine with rosemary butter; maybe a salad with the last of the romaine heads in our fridge; and an evening turned back to reading, straightening our lives, a glass of wine.

So not a word about resolutions, I'm afraid: Keep it as simple as write more, and hope to convince Kirsten to publish the last two drafts she's hoarding somewhere in the folds of the interweb.

And for those keeping score, USC just opened the lead to 31-7.

fires

We're fine, all told. We didn't learn anything until the radio turned itself on this morning, and the fires are far enough away that there are no adverse affects on our air or weather. Even the fierce gusts that they're talking about in Sylmar are barely an issue in Koreatown.

Both the LAFD and the LA Times have put together good maps to locate the fires. Neither map has our location on it, but if you zoom out, you can find downtown Los Angeles near where the 10, the 101 and the 110 meet. We're northwest from there, just south of the 101 at Vermont.


View Larger Map


View Larger Map

monday spectaculars.

The first rains have come and brought what qualifies as winter in Los Angeles. We're staying busy with life and laughter, but a quick story for today: Given that we both have Mondays off, we gathered ourselves this morning to take a walkabout.

A lovely time, really: Just about 8 miles in total, and you can find the map here.

Back to prepare for teaching tomorrow.

food!

We may not have everything (like, I don't know, my thesis, or, occasionally, where to park the car), but we do eat well. There are popovers for breakfast, scrambled eggs with feta and fresh parsley snipped from Kirsten's potted herbs on our patio, occasional sourdough pancakes, and recent rotations of french toast. Our lunches are usually devoted to eating leftovers or recovering from the excesses of the morning, but our dinners have been consistently lovely.

Tonight, for example, this was dinner: Kirsten went to work in the afternoon, I hung around and wrote a little; about five, I wandered over to the subway, hopped up to Sunset and stepped into one of our local Jons (and while my initial enamoration - that's a real word, I promise, it means the process of falling in love - with the market has faded a little, it remains rock-solid for two-pound containers of feta, cheap tomatoes, and more varieties of pepper than you could shake a stick at) to pick up some stuff for dinner: a couple of pickling cucumbers for an appetizer, some pumpkin filling for pumpkin muffins later this week (I told you we eat well), and about two pounds of Roma tomatoes for tonight's pasta.

Tonight's recipe came by way of our friend Melina. She had us over for dinner a couple of nights before we skipped Chapel Hill, and made a remarkable pasta out of a sumptuous cook book titled On Top of Spaghetti. Being a pasta lover myself, I was in love, but for one reason or another, held off from buying the book until a recent foray onto Amazon just before dinner time resulted in a spur-of-the-moment cookbook. Go figure.

But the book is remarkable. Seriously. I've just finished dinner, and leafing through the cookbook is making me hungry again.

Without further ado, then, two recent recipes:

4 am spaghetti for one (but double for two):

4 ozs. spaghetti; 1 large garlic clove, peeled and trimmed; 1/4 c. extra virgin olive oil; 1/2 to 1 teaspoon powdered Esplette pepper or hot or sweet paprika; large pinch of dried oregano; freshly ground black pepper; pinch of sea salt.

1. Bring your water to a boil; generously salt the water; cook, stirring often. For the love of all that's holy, don't put oil in the water.
2. While the pasta is cooking, heat your pasta bowl (seriously. It's a new trick and I love it) in the oven or in warm water; once heated, rub the garlic clove all over the bottom of the bowl; pour in the olive oil; throw the herbs over; add the salt and pepper; the oil should warm up in the bowl and release its flavors; smile broadly, sip your wine.
3. Drain the pasta, leaving it a little wet; toss it into the bowl. Enjoy.

This next recipe is in honor of my dear friend Giovanni, who made me a version of it a year ago; little did I know I've been saying Matriciana when it should really be Amatriaciana. Go figure.

bucatini with fresh tomatoes, pancetta, and onion (I changed proportions to reflect the pancetta packet that Trader Joe's sells)

4 oz. pancetta; 5 tblsps. olive oil; 2 lbs. ripe roma tomatoes, chopped; 1 heaping cup diced onions; 1/2 tsp. sea salt; pinch of red pepper; 1 lb. spaghetti

1. Put the pancetta in a big saute pan over medium heat; toss often to keep it from sticking; let it render a little, lose some of its fat, and brown on the edges; lower the heat, add the olive oil, the tomatoes, the onion, and the salt (Don't worry about the excess liquid, it'll cook down). Stir in the red pepper; cover, bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer for 20 to 30 minutes, until the onions are all the way cooked; taste and salt as necessary.
2. Boil your water; salt generously; cook, but before you drain, reserve about a cup of the water (another trick - the starchy water that is to be drained is really good for keeping the pasta moist and supple as you mix in the sauce). Once drained, toss the pasta into your saute pan with the sauce and mix until well-coated; as needed, add water to keep the pasta supple. Serve in heated bowls.

Like I said, we eat well.

a month gone by?

A couple of weeks back, I saw Kirsten working on putting some photos up from her trip to Arizona (and still have faith that she'll finally post them), but since then the two of us have been frightfully remiss in posting/writing/sharing much of anything about our respective lives. To be flip, I might beg off by saying That's life.

But perhaps some measures of repentance: We shared a light picnic dinner tonight (tomato, mozzarella and basil sandwiches on fresh-baked bread, a bottle of syrah) in Barnsdall Park tonight, sitting on the wide lawn while night stole its way over the city. At one point, Kirsten turned and looked north at the creased mountains, saying, It's like Hogwarts!

She was pointing out the Griffith Park Observatory, perched as it is on a shoulder and lit up in the deepening dusk. Set off as it is from the houses below, it has a curiously magical sense to it, a way of floating in the darkness. We didn't linger too long, as the evenings have begun to tend towards the chill damp that marks what passes for winter, and we didn't have a thing to light our books. So we slipped our way back down onto Hollywood, then down Vermont to the Metro station. A quick two stops home and then the last couple of blocks into our place.

It's still filling in, but we've mostly set ourselves up. A television - courtesy of my brother - sits shrouded in one corner of our dining and living room, and photos are still making their slow way onto the walls. We both take great pleasure in the coat and shoe rack that sit in our hallway, and Kirsten's plants are thriving on the patio. Rolls of muslin and a large tool box filled with fashion implements have made their way into our bedroom, but I'm not one to complain, as there's a kind of tidal rhythm to the papers that pile upon my desk (low tide as a trash can).

I wake early Tuesday mornings, and Kirsten slips out of the house before me Wednesday through Friday, but we're still managing to share most of our dinners. Teaching is going well enough for me, and though I don't want to speak too much for Kirsten, she's finding enough in her first two weeks of FIDM to keep herself busy. But all told, it's a nice life.

I'm still riding my bike, fixing it when need be, starting new blogs, finding new things to read, and keeping busy. Kirsten is, I think, not doing the same things but enjoying what life brings her. The kittens are well - they've discovered catnip, thanks to my mom's friends Stephen and Phillip - and so it goes. Hopefully, it won't take us another month to write something.