Jeepers, have i been a busy cookie lately. Just for you, my faithful (uh, maybe all two of you?) readers, a quick overview of life in the last week:

I helped some dear friends finish moving on Saturday. I felt good about leaving their kitchen clean and with uncluttered counters, too.

I experimented with adding color to my bath biscuits, and was braver with my scent mixes. Results? I'm especially enjoying my take on the scent of lush's butter bombs, and i think i'm going to save the color for melt & pour soaps. They look nice, but the color sticks to any oil (cocoa butter, anyone?) left on the tub.

Sunday i hosted a birthday bbq for Heather. I think it went well. Even the meat-eaters seemed happy with the food. I think i overcooked the shiitakes, but others liked them. I'll write up the menu for gastronome soon, i promise.

Work has been a serious flurry - closing down projects is always a joy. Long nights, early mornings, lots of work. Yesterday morning i gave a key project-related presenation to a series of VPs, including my Sr. VP. Seems to have gone well. Our project was approved.

Tonight i'm trying a new restaurant - The Village Pub, in Woodside. Chef Mark Sullivan pulled in one of Food & Wine's Best New Chef awards this year. I'll be sure to report back.

Saturday i return to the office, for an exciting BRB. Saturday night i hope to experiment on The Rebecca with Rebecca.

Merriam-Webster says:

Main Entry: com·pe·tent
Pronunciation: 'käm-p€-t€nt
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, suitable, from Middle French & Latin; Middle French, from Latin competent-, competens, from present participle of competere
Date: 15th century
1 : proper or rightly pertinent
2 : having requisite or adequate ability or qualities : FIT (a competent teacher) (a competent piece of work)
3 : legally qualified or adequate (a competent witness)
4 : having the capacity to function or develop in a particular way; specifically : having the capacity to respond (as by producing an antibody) to an antigenic determinant
synonym see SUFFICIENT
- com·pe·tent·ly adverb

I think having this competence, this capacity to function is what gets me in trouble at work. One might wish it took more than that. Alas.

Editor's note: There's no HTML for the schwa character. I reluctantly substituted an euro sign, since it doesn't conflict with other International Phonetic Alphabet characters, yet connotes a certain amount of e-ness. Merriam-Webster uses ampersands, which looked silly to me. They also use a-umlaut instead of the IPA "script a" character. IPA doesn't really work well in HTML. Alas.

Given that i left for work right after this morning's post, it's far too late for me to be just leaving the office. Tomorrow should be a shorter day.

It's too early to be sitting here, finished reading my morning web, dressed & ready to go. My cat is foolish enough to think it's a good idea to follow me around all morning, when there's a perfectly good immobile and warm human still in the bed, good for sitting upon. My body is not quite sure what i'm doing here, and is giving off signals of confusion. I don't quite feel bad, but i certainly feel off.

And what did i gain by getting up early this morning? Well, most of my morning reads haven't updated yet, but AAPL has already fallen to 17.37 this morning. Motivation not so high.

Just a few not-so-related thoughts today i wanted to share....

I wonder what they're going to do to the Peppermill (aka R&D 7). They're in full demolish mode - the [west? closest to Mariani] wall is GONE as of this morning, and the concrete was being smashed to bits.

I need to deliver these to my faithful beta tester. I hope to do so tomorrow. My review is that the first batch was a little heavy on the cocoa butter, but overall pretty darned good. We'll see what she thinks.

Mike, Andrea's guy, wins some bonus points with me for not just sending us a thank-you for hosting him at dinner a few weekends back, but for sending it as a card, via snail mail. Snail mail is classy. The compliments to my cooking didn't hurt, either. A sure way to get fed again!

We have tickets to see Wynton Marsalis Septet tonight. I hope i can decompress enough to enjoy it. Check back for a report.

In the vanity department, there's a new picture of me up on my main page. I think i need a new title font now. The picture was self-taken the night of the Kidney Theives/16 Volt/KMFDM show. If you're feeling creative, send me submissions!

Tonight i bought a container of duck fat.
Soon (read: when my throat is sufficiently recovered) i will fry new potatoes in it with thyme from the garden. Then i will roll over with joy.

Tonight after supper i finally embarked on a new project i've been plotting for a while - creating my own bath bombs. I seek to create lovely, soft & fizzy bath bombs, freeing myself from a dangerous dependancy on the oh-so-lovely Lush Butter Balls; i bought a stack in Victoria on our honeymoon last year, and even with careful rationing i'm running out.

I spent some time surfing various recipes on the web and eliciting advice from friends. I worked up the nerve to wander into our local herbal-witchy store, which is actually much cooler than it looks from the outside. (That would be the Scarlet Sage Herb Co., on Valencia Street.) I was unable to find a key ingredient at the Scarlet Sage, so i ordered my citric acid in bulk from Majestic Mountain Sage (and i couldn't resist some fragrance oils,too) and then put things on hold for a few days. (What is it with the sage names?) MMS had reasonable prices & speedy delivery, and their fragrance oils pleased even the notoriously nasally picky me. My box arrived on Friday.

Tonight i dove in. Some of the recipes call for corn starch, but i decided not to use it, on instinct. Later tonight i found an explanation - it supposedly helps them float better, but also can supposedly excacerbate yeast infections. Yuk. Score one for my instinct. I actually wound up using the simplest recipe i found: 1 part citric acid to 2 parts baking soda. Mix until smooth. Pretend you want a really nice cake or something. Drizzle in your fragrance, and mix well again. As i'm trying to replace the butter balls in my life, i ran a fork around the top of a container of cocoa butter to get tiny shards, and mixed that into my bowl, too. Spritzing small amounts of witch hazel with my right hand, and mixing with my left, i mixed and spritzed until the mixture felt like wettish sand. (Not soaked sand, mind you - damp sand. When you can crunch some into your palm, open your hand, and it keeps the shape, you're done spritzing.) I wound up using my cooking ring molds to shape the bombs (making biscuits, really), and had the most success unmolding them after about 5 minutes. I spritzed the tops with a tiny bit more witch hazel, and now they're drying.

I'll report back when i've done the alpha testing, and if they're ok, again after my beta tester has a run with them. This was lots of fun to do, and satisfying in a very third-grade-science project sort of way.

And a bonus photo, because i have it: last week's apricot-cherry pie. (It turned out pretty well for a danger pie.)

On the way back from getting burritos at El Farolito (among the best burritos in the neighborhood, in a hole in the wall at 24th and Mission), I noticed some mosaics in the sidewalk on Mission at 23rd. I don't know how long they've been there. I'm not very observant most of the time.

They're each about 4 feet by 12 feet. The first one reads: "10111". The second one reads "XXIII". The third reads "=+(symbol which looks like an equals sign with a third, slightly longer, stroke between and parallel to the other two)".

I'm sure there's no signficance to this.

Russell's entry below sums up most of the evening quite nicely - and he writes much more cleanly about music than i do, so count yourselves blessed!

A few other wee observations:
--I learned that the DNA's ATM is full of subversive messages. Probably the most amusing ATM i've observed to date.
--When i am at a club like this, i yearn for the days of my blue hair. The next day, i remember what a pain the upkeep was. It's all about the balance.
--I need to go out dancing more often, somewhere that there's both space to dance and good industrial music.
--16 Volt's first song was a strange mix of Diatribe-esque music and Beastie Boys-esque vocals. Odd, yet compelling. These guys weren't the best musicians, but they were funny and compelling - good stage presence.
--We had an awesome punk taxicab driver who sounded interested in the band, and professed 'yeah, i hate people too'. Good man, that.
--Russell and i enjoyed several rounds of 'that person looks like a cross between [person a] and [person b]'.
--Free (the chick from Kidneythieves) gets a heck of a lot of credit for getting up on stage dressed as a 'normal', and diving into her set and going for it despite some obvious nerves. (That has to be a hard crowd to open for.) She warmed up, and the set was grand, even if we would have preferred some more from Trickster.

We went out to a show last night. KMFDM-with-Pig, 16 Volt, and Kidneythieves at the DNA Lounge. meriko managed to cut out of work early, so we were able to go out to the pub for a bite to eat, come home, take a quick nap, and get presentable for an outing -- leaving the house while it was still light out! The staff at the DNA was in a good mood despite smuggling attempts and the occasional smart-ass heckling hippie ("The DNA Lounge has a ZERO TOLERANCE drug policy? Bwah hah hah!" "Why's he gotta be like that? I don't go slapping the dicks out of that guy's mouth when _he's_ working...").

Once in, it wasn't long before we ran into Rachel and Jesse and Juan, who meriko and I had first met at jD & Karen's Little Shed of Horrors party a while back. They were here for KMFDM. We were here partly for KMFDM but probably a bit more for Kidneythieves. I only knew of 16 Volt vaguely from their touring-with-Diatribe days.

Kidneythieves took the stage first. Their stuff is on the conventional-electro-rock end of the "industrial" tag, but with solid songwriting and intriguing imagery. When the first went on, I wasn't entirely sure it was them, simply because singer Free Dominguez looked a lot more normal than I was expecting. Their distinctive sound cleared it up for me pretty quickly even though all but one song of their set was from their new album, which we don't have yet. I had been hoping to hear "Taxicab Messiah", "Pretty" and more off Trickster, but only got to hear the first of those ("my god loved the whores and babies/my god never noticed a sin/my god grew and killed the daisies/my god threw the towel in/my god is weird/my god is scared/my god paints a pretty picture of fear") in their short set. They sounded pretty good. meriko observed that Free seems to have taken some stage-prowling lessons from Curve's Toni Halliday. (Actually, you can draw a lot of parallels between the two bands, now that I think about it.) Alas, they'd run out of copies of the new album earlier in the tour, but Free signed a promotional card for us. During the set, meriko pointed a guy in the corner of the balcony above the stage sporting a mohawk and aviator mirrorshades. I said "that might very well be Sascha KMFDM." (It was.)

Somewhere in here I ran into Jen. Jen's someone I met ages and ages ago. I met her when she was in a really bad lifespace. I helped her out a bit and then we went our separate ways. I've only seen her a couple of times since then. Her life is strange but it's good and happy for the most part, which I'm glad to see.

Next up was 16 Volt. Despite the fact that they toured with Diatribe a lot back in the day, I'd somehow never seen them. Like Diatribe, they're straightforward guitar-oriented industrial. I didn't think they were quite as good as Diatribe -- can't nail down why exactly. Still, they had some fans up front who seemed to be having a good time, so it's all good. meriko wound up getting a 16 Volt shirt just for the anime-girl-with-a-gun artwork.

KMFDM was the headline act. I really haven't been paying attention to their stuff for a while -- after Naive it all seemed to sound more or less the same to me, some sort of sloganeering industrial disco, and I could never be bothered to keep up. After the band's dissolution a few years back, Sascha K, Tim Skold, and Lucia Cifarelli released an album as MDFMK that I thought was pretty brilliant by comparison, much fresher, free of a lot of the trappings of the old band. Alas, MDFMK seems to have been a one-off. The MDFMK core rejoined old cohort Raymond "Pig" Watts, and reformed KMFDM. Long-time KMFDMers En Esch and Gunter Schulz apparently were invited, but declined to rejoin. You following all this? There's gonna be a quiz...

Anyway, Sascha, Lucia, and Watts traded off the singing duties for the half-set that we stuck around for. We found ourselves strangely bored -- maybe cuz we hadn't heard the new album, maybe cuz KMFDM just isn't very exciting any more. Me, I would have stuck it out if there had been a bald pervert in fishnets fronting the band -- it just isn't really the same without En Esch (but from a quick listen, it doesn't sound like Esch & Schulz's new project, Slick Idiot, is any good either). So, we left early, grabbing a couple of tee-shirts on the way out. Not a bad night out, considering how out of practice we are.

So, tonight we finally caught up, and hosted Mother's day dinner for Mom Bornschlegel. Andi brought her new guy Mike, who is some unknown-amount allergic to cats, so we decided to grille outside.

I don't know how it was in Santa Cruz today, but all morning while i planned the menu and drank coffee, it was slate grey and windy as all hell here. While we were out getting groceries a lot of the clouds blew away, but it was still classic San Francisco windy. The wind subsided mid-dinner, but came back by the end - everyone was pretty happy to get back inside and wait for cake and coffee. And Mike didn't really suffer at all in our de-catted living room. Goblin being shy is sad for her with the cat-lovers, but is really helpful to the allergic folk.

They showed up at 6; we had prepped everything and taken it downstairs and started the fire before they arrived.
On the table:
--a bottle of Robert Sinskey Vin Gris de Pinot Noir
--a bottle of '97 Navarro Petite Sirah
--a bottle of '97 Eberle Zinfandel
--a large pitcher of ice water with lime and mint
--a cheese plate with some teleme
--a bowl of cherries
--a tray of olives

All the courses were served appetizer-sized: 3-4 scallops a person, etc.

Course one: Veggie Antipasti
i grilled a series of vegetables, and served them as they came off the grille. I often serve this with grilled toast, and cloves of garlic for folks to rub on the bread, but we had enough food coming that we skipped the toast tonight. First were orange and yellow peppers. Mike had a hard time believing they weren't marinated in something extravagent, but they were just rubbed with olive oil, salt and pepper.

Second to the grill were zucchini - quartered lengthwise, rubbed with olive oil, salt & pepper as well. I just think they are SO tasty over the fire.

Third i grilled off the artichoke hearts - according to Schlesinger's 'Artichokes Johnson' recipe. Cut the top third off, snip off the tops of the rest of the leaves, and parboil in salted water for 15 minutes. Slice in half,pull out the heart, and coat liberally in olive oil, salt and pepper. Grill until carmelized, and squeeze lemon and drizzle olive oil over the top. These are something special, even for artichoke lovers.

Course two: Scallops with prosciutto
Directions: Wrap half of the scallops around the circumference with proscuitto. Thread onto skewers, alternating wrapped and unwrapped. I like to start and end with wrapped ones. Wrapping them just before you put each on the skewer is easiest for me. Drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper. Grill over medium heat. Pull 'em off the skewers, squeeze a lime over them, and server. (I forgot the lime until we were one scallop in - oops - then added it.)

Course three: Spicy Grilled potato salad
This was another Schlesinger recipe. Two thumbs up. Red creamer potatoes, parboiled, halfed, and threaded onto skewers. Grilled over medium-high heat. Tossed with olive oil, mustard, chopped garlic, chopped fresh parsley, and hot sauce just off the grill.

Course four: Grilled peppered filet with roasted garlic toast and blue-cheese butter
This really is just what it sounds like, and is another Schlesinger recipe. Really, if you like to cook over live fire, these are books for you. Grilled toast. Peppered filet, seared over fire. Roasted garlic on the toast, filet on top of that. Blue cheese mashed with butter on the steak. *tasty*. Russell, of course, bypassed the blue cheese portion of this course.

Everyone ran up and down the stairs, carrying up the preptrays and dishes. Russell's mom did just enough dishes to get her hands warm, and then we made her stop. Brewed coffee (both kinds: caf and decaf. No Heather, not espresso and brewed.) Andi employed the kitchenaid to turn the manufacturer's cream into whipped cream, with some Germain-Robin brandy and sugar & frosted the torte she brought. Topped half with skor bars and half with raspberries. Some of us might have used the extra whipped cream on our coffee, but we're not telling. The cake was so, so good. Andi says it had three ingredients: butter, sugar, and chocolate.

A bit of chatting, water, coffee and wine later (yeah, we did look at the French Laundry menu and cookbook; fanchildren we are), the Mountain View contingency headed south and the goblincat emerged. A successful gathering, i think!