Or not.  But that is my license number.  I’m a licensed carbonator.  Yeppers.

A week or so ago, Teresa sent me a link to a product I didn’t know existed.

The SodaStream Fountain Jet.

Behold:

I’ve always had a thing for old seltzer bottles.  We have some Teresa bought at a yard sale in the garage.

Ours are not this pretty but you get the idea.  William Powell could make you a drink from them.  Especially if you were Myrna Loy.

I also have been trying to be more green.  I ride my scooter when I can.  I would like someone to buy me this:

Audi A3 TDI.  45 mpg.  Thank you very much.

I’d buy it for myself, but I’ve recently taken a “state budget” furlough pay cut.  (Don’t ask).

The SodaStream hits exactly the right marks.  I can have (really, really slight) thoughts of Powell and Loy while making carbonated beverages.  It saves me from buying and discarding plastic bottle containing fizzy water every week (my average was 3 bottles per week).  It fits my newly “dehanced” salary.   (Thanks California economy!)

So, how does it work, you ask?  I’m so glad you did.  So, so glad.

First, you need to secure your license for the Alco2jets.  I have two licenses and two jets.  I am special.

That’s the spare.

That’s the one currently in use.  See just how special I am?

License 220579.  That special.

Ok, so here’s how it works.  You fill your specially provided SodaStream bottles from your handy Britta picther.

Please note that two bottles full is more than the (*cough*stupid*cough*) Britta pitcher can hold.  No offense to Britta stockholders.

This will mean filling and waiting for the Britta to take its sweet time draining itself through the (probably only mildly useful) filter.  Now, I could just skip this step and use tap water.  But what if L.A. tap water isn’t pure and clear as the driven snow?  What if, indeed.  So, once the Britta has finished its “job,” here’s what I’ve got:

Yep, still water, two plastic bottle.  Awesome.

Now I secure one bottle on the machine.

Then I push the magic button.

And watch the bubbles fill the bottle.

If you try this at home, you will probably be joined at this point by one or more dogs.  They do not like the sound.  Especially the loud burping sound it makes indicating a certain level of carbonation.

I manage to ignore the dogs and persist.

4 burps for plain or flavor enhanced water.

How about orange?

Just a drop.

Now, let’s get fancy and have some Diet Pink Grapefruit–”compare to Fresca!”  I’ll want five burps on this, dog concern be dammed.

Measure the syrup.

Pour in bottle and gently shake. I register slight alarm at the pinkness.

Pour into juice glass.  Serve to spouse.

Seems ok.

Secure made soda in fridge.

Put soda maker in it’s place (on floor, away from flammables, near wine and drinks)

Pour self a (slightly larger) juice glass of pink drink and sit down to blog.

Generally I’m only slightly excited by kitchen gadgets.  This one, though, is beyond fab.  No electricity, less plastic. A source of creativity.

Burp burp burp burp burp.

Once we reconvened at their house, I wandered into the kitchen to explore the raw zone she’s created.  I was being my usual forward self and smelling tubs of stuff and being perhaps more disparaging than I ought.  Treecup offered up “cheese” on a “cracker.”  Sly says that her food has entirely too many quotes.  The “cheese” was made of cashews and was a rough approximation of cheese.  Like, if we were in the cheese ballpark and cheddar was playing first base, this was in an obstructed view seat in the upper upper deck.  Take me out to the ball game, take me out with the crowd, buy me some (raw) peanuts and cracker flax…

Anyway, if the cheese was in the cheese bleachers, the “cracker” was maybe standing on the street waiting outside cracker stadium to catch a long ball hit by a saltine.  When Teresa asked how the seeds could be made to form a “cracker” Treecup informed us that, when soaked, flax seeds exude a semi gelatinous substance and then can be made into cracker shapes. Handy.  (See, there I go again being more disparaging than I ought.  Still, I have anti-flax seed feelings just at the moment).

We departed soon after our raw experience.  (I should note that I demurred for us when Treecup offered up a viewing of her new raw dvd).  She claims it very inspirational and I think we may need to watch it next time.

Anyway, I kept pulling flax seeds out from my teeth with my tongue.  One of them got lodged in my windpipe just as I was steering the FJ onto the 10.  (Non-SoCal note:  Socalies use the definate article when referring to freeways.  I’ve lived here long enough that I do it too.  “The 10″ = “Interstate 10″ which stretches from Santa Monica to Jacksonville, Florida.  It’s 2460 miles long, which makes it longer by 270 miles or so than my high school distance.  I can code-switch well enough that when I go to Atlanta I switch back to “I-75″).   So, there I was getting on the freeway and needing to merge onto “the 57″ (aka California 57, which runs from Glendora to the Orange Crush for a distance of almost 24 miles) and I’m choking on this flax seed.  Coughing with watering eyes choking.  It persists all the way up the 57 until I merged onto “the 210″ (aka California 210/I-210 which runs from San Fernando to Redlands for a distance of 86 miles, it swiches from I-210 to CA-210 at the 57).  Choking and coughing so hard, I’m hoping not to vomit choking.

Teresa was very supportive during my coughing episode.  She offered my some tepid lemonade and offered to drive.  She also refrained from saying disparaging things about my Garmin nüvi, which was telling me to do things vis à vis the freeways.  Teresa vacillates between thinking the Nüvi is rude and thinking it might lose the will to live.  She doesn’t like that it interrupts her (which it does) or that I defy it (which I thoroughly enjoy doing ).  I agree wholeheartedly with my co-worker who says that all Nüvis (she has one, too) are “judgemental” when they say “recalculating” after you’ve defied their direction.

As I merged onto the 210, I finally stopped coughing.  I noticed at that very moment a Dodge station wagon (of the modern magnum/charger variety) that had a brown body and bright orange expensive looking rims.  It also had sepia tinted pictures painted across its sides.  Of Jesus.  Both sides.  Sepia Jesus on a Chrysler product.

WHY I stopped coughing is up to debate.  Some possibilities:

Chance?

The 210?

The biological dislodging of the flax seed from my windpipe?

The shock of the sight of the car?

Divine intervention?

Very hard to say.  Maybe if I had watched the raw dvd I’d know better.

Cracker flax, know thine enemy.

Also, We got our yard done and lots of work on the interior of the house.  Did I mention we got married?  Oh, and then there’s that whole election bidness in a couple of days.  No on 8, k?

But, friends, I’m here for a short while today to speak about a grocery store.  Yes sir.  Yes ma’am.  All those other things, they take time and thought and care.  This is just about happy in the ‘hood.

I’m not the first to notice.  Sandra Tsing Loh, who I would probably follow into the fiery pits of hell should she ask, noticed. Twice.

I don’t know where Loh lives in the part of the Valley she refers to as “The Nuys” to give it new cache.  But I’m close to Fresh and Easy.  Remarkably close.

Today, my spouse slash wife (of two weeks) slash partner (of fourteen years) and I went there.  Oh it is a bright place.  With Jam.  And chips that taste like Doritos.  Except, and here is the clincher, they’re SPINACH and ARTICHOKE kinda-Doritos.  Maybe I should have told you to sit down before I told you that.

It occupies a space that used to be a Ralphs.  Not a good Ralphs.  just a ralphs.  It’s not any longer.  Soy milk.  Fresh fruit.  Teeny pies.

It may not be love, but color me intrigued.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…

Fresh and Easy

It’s a neighborhood market.  In my neighborhood.  My my.

Hugs and kisses and lots of foons,

Sporks.

All day, while trying to make some sense of the mess that is my office, my brain loop (and my brain is VERY loop-rific right now) keeps slinging by the banana/Miracle Whip combo. Brain loops drive me crazy. They seem to have gotten worse as I’ve gotten older. I worry sometimes that in 20 years or so I’ll only be able to think about one thing. Corn Flakes. An episode of Cheers. Poppies. While I’m not focused on any of those things right now, if you had told me 24 hours ago that one (of several) of my current obsessive brain loops would be bananas and Miracle Whip, I’d have laughed. I never know what road signs my brain will think to linger by.

I just Googled bananas and Miracle Whip and came up with a large hit total. 244,000 hits. Many of which recipe.

I loathe Miracle Whip, by the way, so I’m doubly horrified at the idea of two hundred thousand web sites that concern themselves with it vis a vis bananas.

The additional problem with this loop pattern is that it inevitably leads me down food free association roads best not traveled.

Peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches (which I have been offered on multiple occasions).

Pimento cheese.

Mushrooms.

Tomato mucus.

Goose grease French toast.

I could go on. Given the current state of my brain, I probably will internally.

Shudder

* Wandering around Trader Joe’s doesn’t help. They have what they have.

* Foil packets of Indian food and microwaved frozen naan seem like a good idea.

* Foil packets of Indian food and microwaved frozen naan are NOT a good idea.

* Nausene is just cola without the carbonation.

* Coke is better than Pepsi for everything including stomach upset.

* Diet Coke doesn’t help much with stomach upset. Neither does Fresca. Both are
good at other things. Mostly providing no calorie, tasty, carbonated beverage
experiences.

* Mints do not function like Tums.

* Neither does Advil.

* Do not undertake a rut break-perunity without Tums

* Tums smooth dissolve mint flavor taste like party mints AND helps stomach upset.

Fancy has seven or eight tables inside and another six or so outside. The food is reasonably priced, fresh, and good.

Fancy? Not really. Your order from the counter, get your salsa in little plastic buckets, and they call out your number in Spanish and English. The folks who work there are nice and it’s one of those L.A. places where people from all sorts of cultural backgrounds sit next to one another, including those who by birth should know good Mexican food. It’s next to an express lube place. Why do we call it Fancy? Because it is. To us.

Fancy is on the way home from work for me and since Honey has been commuting by bike, I’ve been trying to take up more of the cooking slack. My two choices tonight were cooking fish and picking up Fancy.

So, I walk into Fancy and there’s a line. I get in it and stand for a few minutes as it inches forward. Then out of nowhere, a young woman in truly ridiculous shoes steps in front of me and says, “I was in line.”

I look at her in shock and amazement. “You were?”

She gestures impatiently behind me. “Yes, I was over there.”

I turn to look and realize that she had been sitting (though I did not and could not have seen her) in a chair five feet away from the end of the line hidden behind a stack of high chairs.

“You were sitting there?”

“Yes and that was how I was in line.”

I glance down at my feet (clad today in Teva sandals) to think for a second and notice that she is wearing five inch teeny spike white high heeled sandals.

Now, what I want to say is:

“If you didn’t have on those stupid shoes, you could actually STAND in line like the rest of us.”

What I actually say (trying to sound deeply contemptuous):

“Oh.”

I’m so brave in my head.

Fancy still tasted terrific and Honey enjoyed her tostada without ever having to see those stupid shoes. The sacrifices I make for love. It’s how I’m so brave. In my head.

My staff eats. A lot. Badly. Do(gh)nuts. Cake. Cheetos. Almost everyday someone brings something in, always high in fat and calories. It drives me wild. I’m not the most food resistant person in the world. I try to resist. Sometimes it works. Other times, less so.

So, today I was walking by and there were two things sitting on the table with those “it’s for everyone” markers recognized the world over. Both items had small plates next to them and food serving devices nearby.

I stopped. I gaped. I may have gasped. I certainly sighed.

On the table was: a VERY gristly steak and next to it (on a seperate plate–a small mercy) there was a chunk of flan swimming in sauce.

Steak and flan. Both room temperature.

Here’s the good news: I had no trouble resisting. For your evening update, I should note that the flan was consumed and the steak is still sitting there. Anyone want some?

Ok, I know some of you like gum. That’s fine. People like the Yankees and pimento and mushrooms and golf. There is no accounting for what appeals to people. Look at them. Like alien eyes staring.

I loathe gum. I don’t like the way it tastes. I don’t like the way it smells. I hate that people leave it places so I have to see it. Or step in it. I can and have been pretty fucking rude when it comes to gum. I can’t help it. I probably could help it. I don’t want to.

Once I liked it. When I was a child. I would poke around in my mother’s purse. She usually had Trident, sometimes Juicy Fruit. I was beset by braces (and not the kind glue-on kind but the mean wrap-around-your-tooth kind) when I was but a lass (10 or 11 I want to say) and being the good girl I was, duly gave up gum. My orthodontist was a big guy with very hairy hands that creeped me out under his rubber gloves. Hair under translucent rubber=not pretty.

By the time I had my braces off, I was in my rebellious phase (don’t ask) and rarely wore my retainer and once accidentally threw it away in the trashcan at The Varsity. The Varsity is a wonderful place, and I order right. It’s also a place where grease takes hold. Rooting through The Varsity trash looking for my retainer was a more base experience than most in my life. The irony was the trash rooting resulted in naught. Well, it resulted in greasy hands and clothes, but no retainer.

Hairy-handed orthodontist died while I was a teenager and I took it as a sign that I should move on from corrective dentistry. That was not the signal the universe was sending and my teeth have drifted. Still.

I vividly remember getting my braces off and how slick my teeth felt. I immediately wanted some gum. I had some. I wanted to vomit. Ever since I have an aversion, a revulsion, a repulsion to gum.

Last night I stepped in some. It got all over my car floor mat and floorboard. It took 30 minutes to clean up. My car still smells like spearmint and every time I think of it, my gorge rises.

So, gum chewers of the world, hear my pleas!

1. Don’t chew it in my car.

2. If you must chew gum, dispose of it properly.

3. Consider mints. Mints I like.

That is all.

*How busy I am.

*How the wildfires make me want to camping. Not where they are, mind you, but because wood smoke makes me want to go camping. I should feel bad about feeling this way.

*How a student made me look stupid while I was being observed in class the other day.

*How a colleague pretty much refused to do work he’s already been paid to do, which will make me look bad.

*How much I’m looking forward to getting out-of-town this weekend, but how panicked the missed time is making me.

*How little grading I’ve done on papers that came in a week ago. (None).

*How much I need to finish an article.

*How behind I am on blog commenting/reading.

*How I need to stop this list RIGHT NOW or will feel worse, not a little purged.

*How much I look forward to Lost every week. (no stress factors in that last comment).

Anyway, what I will say, however briefly, is that I’ve been enjoying these little Italian yogurts from Trader Joe’s that come in pleasing little glass bottles.

Honey and I had a running joke about them because I wanted to try them for the bottles and she didn’t think I’d like them because they are too “wangy.” To translate: sour/overly yogurty, etc.

This is how it would go, “Honey do you think I’d like those yogurts?”

“No”

Ok, so it’s not that funny, but we liked the patter. Then I saw them in apricot and I’m a bit of a fool for apricot, so I got them anyway. I really like them. They ARE wangy, but wangy in a good way.

So, I’ve had four of them at work so far and have been washing and displaying their little bottles. I can’t decide how many little bottles is too many little bottles.

Here’s what the little bottles look like:

Aren’t they cute?

I also like the company’s English translation of their blurb on the product:

“…[T]he traditional processing of the dense double layer yoghurt, where the ferments join the milk and pot after pot the unmistakable texture is achieved. Finally it is packed in its traditional glass pot Biospega.”

I want to go to the place where the ferments join the milk. I’m guessing it’s right in the center of the land of wang.

I have one “pot” on my desk and three others on my bookshelf right next to my woodblock Colosseum. At least I’ve got my vaguely Roman stuff together.

My conclusion, if I stay in the land of wang, I may be ok. At least there are cute little jars there.

I’m a posting MACHINE!

Can you tell it’s spring break and I have less everyday pressure? I’m working on real stuff, too. I’ve graded 10 midterms a day all three days this week, wrote two probationary performance evaluations, reviewed an article for a journal, created some new curriculum, cleaned out my e-mail, and it’s not even noon on Wednesday.

Anyway…I have been in cereal crisis. Honey and I like cereal for breakfast and for the past few months, we have given over to the magic that is Kashi. Honey likes Go Lean Crunch. I like it too. But I found personal cereal nirvana in Strawberry Fields. What’s not to like? Organic? Check. Available at Trader Joe’s? Why yes. Tasty? Mmm Hmm. Soggy danger? Low.

That’s all well and good, until it disappeared from Trader Joe’s. No shelf space disappeared. One week there were a few boxes. The next, no space. I searched for it. Honey, sweet person that she is, went to another Trader Joe’s looking for it. No luck. What was I to do?

I made do with Cinnamon Harvest, which is tasty. Then I went to Trader Joe’s Vanilla Wheat Squares. Bereft probably best describes my cereal feeling as I spooned the vanilla pockets into my mouth on Monday.

Then I remembered that there’s a wondrous new invention called the internets. You can type something into a box and it will spit back information. So off to the internets I went and found Kashi’s own site. I was hoping they’d have a way to match my cereal desires with a store in my area. Kashi did me one better. For a small fee (a pittance really), they sent me a CASE of Strawberry Fields in a big brown truck. Incredible!

This morning, I opened the box and there were twelve friendly box tops staring back at me. Waiting to be my cereal.

A nice Wednesday today, a fields of berry of straw morning and a labor settlement with guaranteed raises for me and my kind. *Contented Sigh*