Peg Kerr's Journal

I think I've hit upon what I'd like to blog about for the 100 things challenge. I've picked #56 on this list: 100 Things I Tried for the First Time. I've officially contracted for the challenge here.

I chose this because 1) I'd really like to do the challenge, to spark more blog entries; 2) I've been thinking I need to find something new to absorb my energy, now that I've stopped doing karate. And what better way to find something than to try a lot of new things? 3) temperamentally, I tend to be rather a stick-in-the-mud. I tend to go back to the same restaurants over and over and order the same favorite dish over and over. I need to stretch myself 4) I think this is an important thing to be mindful about as I age. I don't want my world to get smaller as I get older. That's one thing I admire a great deal about my own parents: they're always willing to try new things (this is a couple in their 80s who just got back from a trip to the Dominican Republic where they were installing bios sand filters to give the people down there clean drinking water.

Coincidentally, last night when trying to come up with something to do on my Friday night out, I was feeling fretful about doing the same old same old. I was determined to find a new restaurant. It took awhile of poking around on Google maps, but I eventually found a restaurant near my old dojo that has just added a dinner menu. I've stopped there to pick up coffee and pastries a couple times, but this was the first time I had the opportunity to try dinner there. So this will be my first 100 things entry: Dinner at Sun Street Breads.

The space is quite lovely, and they have seating outside, too, although last night I chose to sit inside. Disconcertingly, it's also the former site of our Snyders drugstore, so whenever I go up to the counter I always feel like I should be ordering a prescription.



I was seated immediately, and the service was very friendly. I ordered the 'Latin Cowboy' - steak, arugula, peppers, chimichurri sauce on toasted baguette. I chose a side salad. It was very simple, just romaine with a nice rather sweet vinaigrette. Since this place is also a bakery, breads are the star of much of the menu. The sandwich was good, albeit slightly awkward: a bit too tough to use a knife and fork, and slightly too big to pick up and take a chomp from it without stretching the jaws really REALLY wide. But it was tasty--the meat nicely rare.

Well, that was easy, and not too far out of my comfort zone. Leave me a suggestion if you have any ideas for what I might do for future entries.




{Take the 100 Things challenge!}

I was thinking, after my post about my weird inner dissatisfaction, that part of my problem was that I haven't been able to follow my treasured Friday night out custom for awhile. I used to spend Friday night out doing whatever I wanted to do, and over the last six months, this has become very difficult because 1) suddenly there were three Friday night karate classes in a row and 2) no money because of the layoff. However, last night, Rob had the day off and so could drive the girls to their classes, and I decided to skip my own karate class in the interests of mental health (sorry, pazlazuli) and have one of my classic Friday nights out. The money hasn't quite been flowing in yet, but I know it's coming, and I have money left over from the bonus from work. And I have some gift cards from Christmas.

First, I went to a bookstore and bought some books using gifts cards so I'd have something to read while I ate and while waiting for a movie. I picked up Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle, which I've been wanting to try for a long time, and a book on making decadent coffee drinks.

Then, I went to try a restaurant I haven't tried before that sounded interesting, Namaste Cafe and ordered whatever I wanted without worrying about price or calories. And so I did, and it was absolutely wonderful. Namaste Cafe, at about 25th and Hennepin, is a charming little place painted in warm saffron colors. I got the Ginger Cardamon Chai (delicious), the Katmandu Curry with lamb, Aloo Paratha bread on the side, and I finished up with Sikarni, which is whole milk yogurt drained to a custard-like consistency, mixed with sugar, cashews, raisins, cinnamon and cardamon. I just about moaned aloud when I took my first bite; it was so delicious.

I had hoped to squeeze in a stop at a bead store, maybe Bobby Bead, which was just a few blocks up on Hennepin. I was thinking in terms of what Julie Cameron in The Artist's Way called a weekly artist date--spend time doing something that pleases your inner artist, as a way to get your creativity going. I've been meaning to get the supplies to make a red bead necklace--I have lots of blue and purple necklaces, but nothing that's red, and I wear a lot of red. But I didn't have time if I wanted to catch the movie I had in mind. I drove over to the Riverview Theater and watched "Into the Wild." The Riverview is so cheap ($3 a ticket) that it assuaged any guilty pangs I might have had about spending more than usual on dinner. I was tremendously impressed with the movie (I plan to make a separate entry on it, considered in conjunction with The Glass Castle.

Anyway, the evening was such a success, gave me such pleasure, that I realized, with some surprise, how much I've been missing this. I haven't been doing enough just to recharge and reenergize myself by doing all the things I love most to do. I'll need to find more ways to do so in the months ahead.

Is there anyone interested in taking a fragile post-surgical Peg out for a little bit this evening? It would be a definite mitzvah. Friday night is my usual night out, and I'd like to escape the house for a little while. Because of the Vicodin, I can't drive, and obviously, no alcohol or rock climbing will be involved. I probably wouldn't want to make it a very late evening. Suggestions (low budget)? I might be up for a quiet evening at a coffee shop listening to some pleasant music, and conversation with a friend. Other ideas?

Edited to add: carbonel has come up with a group of friends who will be gathering together with me tonight. Thanks, carbonel!

I was invited to dinner at minnehaha K. and B.'s tonight. The shrimp truck had come to town, and so all sorts of seafood courses were planned. "I'm sure you'll have a great time eating food I would never touch," Rob said. And we did. I have been coming to the dinners at minnehaha K. and B.'s for awhile, and I am always grateful to be invited. Friends take turns serving courses: there are often eight to ten courses, with appropriate wines, and can last four hours or so. I love the gatherings, but I will admit to being somewhat intimidated at times: the group that gathers is very knowledgeable about wines and food whereas I am not. I have never done a course. This time, I wanted to do one, but I had to take Fiona to karate and take Delia to a birthday party, so I knew I would not be able to stop at a grocery store at all. So I once again just ate: a cold marinated bean salad with shrimp, fiddlehead ferns and coconut dusted shrimp, and homemade chipotle pasta with crawfish tails (I think??), and korean shrimp pancakes, and salad and an incredibly delectable dish made of crab and morel mushrooms, cooked in cream. Wine with each course (I am too ignorant to tell you what they were). minnehaha brought out some vodka he brought back from St. Petersberg yesterday for us to try, and then we ended the meal with a bottle of Armagnac. It was bottled in 1939. Apricot torte for dessert.

I helped dry dishes between courses to earn my keep.

After dinner, minnehaha K. suggested a walk, offering the lure of "Let's go see the Washburn water tower!" I had never seen it before. We set off, and after some confusion and a few detours out of the way (this section of town is not called "Tangletown" for nothing), we found the tower. It is certainly worth seeing. If/when I write the ice palace book, I'd like to find a way to work it in, just because it is so cool. The stone figures that ring the tower are sixteen feet high. If they had an arm outstretched, they would look like the Argonath. It was a lovely night, perfect temperature, too early for mosquitos. We sat at the foot of the water tower and talked quietly, staring up at those enormous brooding figures while the Big Dipper wheeled in the sky overhead.

Then we came back and washed more dishes. And I came home to tell you about it.

edited to add: lsanderson posts pictures from the dinner here.

I went out tonight with a new friend, Sanjuanita, to try the climbing wall at a local sporting goods store. We chose to do it because it was our first time going out to do something together, and we decided to make a big deal out of doing something that neither one of us have ever done before. I have been thinking a lot lately about being stuck, about ruts, and what I need to do to try to break out of them. Sanjuanita was game, so we met and paid the fee, only $3 a climb to the ceiling, if you also got their special members card, which Sanjuanita had already.

I watched a kid swarming up the wall for about ten minutes before Sanjuanita arrived. He made it look easy. So we paid the fee and signed the intimidating and stupidly insane-to-sign waiver (no, we will not sue the store in case of injury even if the store is determined to be negligient. I asked the hunky young man acting as the rope monitor, "You won't drop the rope, will you?" He thought about it for a moment and said, "Naahhh.")

Not knowing any better, we each paid for two climbs. The wall was two stories high. I went first.

Omigosh. This was the right thing to pick to do. It was safe, I know, but still waaayyyy outside my normal thing-to-do and comfort level. I realized, belatedly, only when I was harnessed up and went to stand at the easiest face, that the wall sloped back toward you the farther you climbed, so that you weren't climbing at a 90 degree angle. I started up.

I am sure it was most amusing for the onlookers. I was noisy, I realized later. My arms got tired very quickly, and I would yelp when my weight shifted unexpectedly and transferred to the rope. And I would make loud "gggrrrrraaarrrghhh!" sounds as I struggled to hoist myself up. I should have been using my legs more, I realized, but I difficulty levering myself up. I am no lightweight. "Sanjuanita!" I cried, stuck at one point, my arms cramping, "I should have done more weight-lifting!"

I got halfway up and got stuck. I couldn't pull myself up because my arms cramped every time I tried. So I pushed away from the wall and hung from the harness and told the monitor to lower me to the ground. ("Whhhheeeeeeeeee!!!!!!")

When I got safely to the ground, I was sweating and trembling and laughing. I scrambled out of the harness and Sanjuanita took her turn.

She got about as far as me, halfway up. She was troubled by her shoes, which were apparently not quite fitting right. So she was lowered to the ground and after a kid went (scrambling right up, the show-off), I tried again.

I got a little higher, about ten minutes of climbing, and although I pushed off the wall several times and tried shaking out my hands as I hung in the harness, my arms cramped every time I tried tackling the wall again. So I got lowered again, still shy of the goal.

Sanjuanita looked at me and looked at the wall and laughed. "I'm not going to try again tonight."

I nodded, entirely understanding.

"But we'll come back."

I grinned at her as I scrambled out of the harness again and reached for my own shoes. "Yes, we'll come back."

"It might take us three or four more tries to get to the top."

I looked back at the wall. "It might."

"But we'll get there."

"Definitely."

Sanjuanita looked at the wall, too, and a little grin curled the corner of her mouth. "And then maybe we go bungee jumping."

We laughed, and adjourned to Baker Square for pie.

Help the two of us think of things to do if we get together again on future Friday nights (after we conquer the wall). Something to give us new experiences, stretch us a bit. Ideas? Leave them in a comment. Thanks.

Here were some ideas we already had:

Take an art class, something we've never done before. Watercolors. Scrapbooking. Photography.

Take a cake decorating class.

Take an auto repair class.

Go salsa dancing.

Go line dancing.

Go to movies, some genre that we usually never see (although I still draw the line at horror movies; I won't see 'em.)

Try a restaurant or cuisine we've never tried before.

Thoughts?

I am tired of reading about death and stupidity. Death through stupidity. I came home and greeted the girls. Fiona had cleaned the bathroom. I talked for a little while on the phone with kijjohnson. I decided not to go out for dinner--money being a bit tight. I made a supper of whole wheat pasta with my homemade pesto, gauging the amount perfectly, so I had neither too much nor too little.

I am sporting the new haircut, the one which made my coworker say, "I'd love to get a cut that short, but my husband says it would make me look too butch," and I smirked and said, "That's Ms. Butch to you." It still has a few little glittery blond highlights left from the time I tried highlighting my hair for the first time earlier this summer.

I put on an old favorite pair of jeans, soft and supple, which curve confidently around my legs, and a white chemise with a subtle glitter of sequins at the neckline, and my denim jacket, decorated with the ribbons I've chosen and sewn on myself. I wore the heart earrings, the ones with tiny serene faces carved into the hearts, which dangle down at my jaw line and murmur into my ears, Damn, woman, you look good. I drove to Anodyne Coffeeshop [an·o·dyne, adj. 1. Capable of soothing or eliminating pain. 2. Relaxing; n. 1. A medicine, such as aspirin, that relieves pain. 2. A source of soothing comfort.]

I carefully considered the various choices of Sebastian Joe ice cream available. I asked for sample spoons of the raspberry chocolate chip, and the cinnamon-chocolate coconut. Hmm. Tough choice. "I'll take both, if you can give me a half scoop of each." No trouble in the least. I sat at the table by the window overlooking Nicollet and read the free copies of Lavender Magazine, Minnesota Women's Press, and The Onion ["God Outdoes Terrorists Yet Again"] The usual Friday night folksinger was there, this one ever so not-quite-slightly flat. I was in too good a mood to care. He wasn't loud enough to be entirely annoying.

I switched to reading Sherri Tepper's Beauty which was sometimes absorbing and sometimes a little bland. I folded down the edge of a page marking a section which she seemed have swiped from Tolkien's "On Fairy Stories," the bit about man being a subcreator:

[Puck says] The Holy One created the world beautiful and manifold and complicated, and the way it was made was the way He meant it to be! He wasn't just playing, making a toy world with the real world somewhere else. No, this is it! Anybody with eyes can see the truth of that. The Holy One wanted mankind to understand creation so he could create in his turn, for man's the only one among us who can create anything at all! Angels don't! They burn with a flame, like stars, but they don't create. Faery isn't! It grows and flowers, without much thought, and it doesn't create."

See what I mean? Substitute "Faery/angels" for Tolkien's elves, and it's the same thing.

I ordered a mocha (a double!) and a brownie, which was crumbly and fudgy, and chockful of nuts. I switched to a deep, cozy leather couch and put my feet up comfortably on the battered old coffee table. And finally, as the staff finished sweeping up and putting the chairs on the tables, I left, walking outside and feeling the humid air wrap around me like an embrace. I looked up at the stars.

Then I came home. Rob was washing the dishes when I came in, which means the kitchen will be clean in the morning. The kitchen smelled warm and sweet from the bread Delia had baked.

I came upstairs to tell you about it.

I had a lot of pleasurable anticipation about last night all week, and it lived up to my expectations. ( Seeing Mary Fahl )

( B. and K.'s garden and music party ) A wonderful evening.

Cheers,
Peg

Tonight was my night out, and B. minnehaha surprised and really touched me by inviting me to be his guest to dinner at Vincent's (perhaps moved to compassion after I had posted one too many LiveJournal entries about the hassles of trying to cook for a family of impossibly picky eaters). ( Read more... )

Peg

My Elven brooch pin arrived today! I pinned it to my black japanese-style coat and wore it when I went out tonight. The black simplicity made it stand out beautifully; it looked splendiferous. I shall wear it often.

After duly considering the suggestions made in my LiveJournal comments, I decided to do something I have never done before and went to Kieran's Irish Pub for the evening. I don't like any kind of beer at all, but I ordered a Guinness, which is something I do about once every two years or so. I took a sip and the shock of memory that the taste brought back was startlingly strong: I suddenly remembered sitting on the patio of one of the pubs (it was called "The Mill," maybe? I think?) overlooking the River Cam in Cambridge, England, over twenty years ago. There are punters going slowly by in the river. It's late afternoon, and I am tasting my first pint of Guinness ever, screwing up my face at the bitter taste as my friends around me all laugh.

I drank about a fifth of the pint I was served tonight and decided that was about enough for another two years. I want to like it, but I still don't. The first sip goes down okay, it's "interesting," and I like savoring the memories that it evokes, but I just don't care for the taste after the first three swallows or so. The pot roast sandwich they brought for my dinner, on the other hand, was so good I almost cried: tender, juicy meat with caramelized onions--they flavored the gravy with Guinness; I decided I liked my Guinness better that way. The potatoes were flavored with garlic and chopped scallions; delicious.

I sat there for a long time in the open air patio, reading American Gods. I laughed at what the Raven said to Shadow when Shadow asked him to say "Nevermore." I ran across this on p. 323:

"Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives."

Live Irish music started at 9:00 (guitar, flute, concertina, pipes, bodhran, etc). I stayed until 10:30, until my yawns seemed to grow too frequent, and then left to come home. I tipped the waitress hugely; she had not seemed peeved in the least that I had taken up one of her tables for over three hours, but apparently many people do, so that they can listen to the music.

Verdict on tonight's entertainment:



A good experience breaking out of the rut. Thanks for the input, everyone.

Cheers,
Peg