Month: February 2013

Art

The new Nick Cave album Push the Sky is coming out in a mere three days. I only found out about it via an email that they were coming to town in April (with Sharon van Etten, NO LESS) !!! I am SO EXCITED.

Found this teaser video of work on the album on their YouTube channel. I love finding stories, video, etc. that remind me that the creative process is indeed hard work. I forget this whenever I try to write, or draw or knit or whatever the hell it is that I claim to do. You don’t just sit down and suddenly strum out something like “Midnight Man” on a sunny Tuesday morning  in a beautiful London loft. You sit in your office writing from 9-6 for months, years. You read, you write bad poetry, you watch movies. You binge on five hours of Frasier (wait that’s just me). You play around with chords, dick around, and argue with your collaborators about the “wa wa sound.”

Back to work, artists. Back to work.

Food, Health

I Quit Sugar: Week 6: All Savory All the Time

 Week 6: End of the line for my vegan and sugar experiment.

When I started this experiment I figured that going vegan might be easier than cutting out sugar. That hasn’t changed. Thankfully I’ve found a few dishes that have been lifesavers. See below!

Vegan:

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Back on board the Meat Train:

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  • Slow cooker curried lentils, potatoes and chicken with greek yogurt- fantastic, but not as awesome as the butternut squash soup

 My vegan experiment has been over for more than a week, but the aftereffects are surprising.

I was so excited at first to eat meat and eggs and butter and cheese. Yet now that I can, I’m feeling pretty sensitive to meat. I feel grossed out if there’s too much, for example.  It feels wasteful if the meat that I’m eating is not rocking my world. Carmelized bacon with eggs? YES! Random burger from so so place? EH. Also I’m really feeling the heaviness from meat and the accompanying heartburn. 🙁

I’ve faltered a bit with the sugar thing the last few weeks.

It’s been really really hard. I stole secret sniffs of a lemon pie at a party and pretended in my mind that I was eating it.(This is a trick I have heard that makes you feel like you’re tasting it, but IT DOES NOT WORK). SAD. I’ve purchased sugar free, lactose free and gluten free ice cream, only to get home and notice “may cause a laxative effect in sensitive individuals” on the side label.

Hard as it has been, the experiment has been enlightening. But with diabetes, liver and cancer all up in my family history, I think that it’s worth it to keep trying to cut it out to a manageable level.

Life, San Francisco

Only in San Francisco

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Safeway on Church St

Edited to add: And as I left the store a man approached me, urinating (at me) and walking at the same time. Only in San Francisco.

It was worse than yesterday when a homeless man basically spooned me from behind putting his head on my shoulder while I was waiting outside a lunch spot for a friend. You know you’re getting old when you start to get deeply annoyed and can’t just ride out the craziness. Blegh!