exSQUEEZE me?!

ugh. ok, normally...I don't like to talk shit. Because I believe it just comes back to you in a much worse format. karma.

but SERIOUSLY?!?

Ok, so my PT non-office bookkeeping (independent contracting) job has a couple of "high-end" clients that we like to take very good care of. Because they are generally reliable with a good business model ie. cash flow. I've been handed two which is nice. And they both like me; the rapport is good and I "get" their businesses.

So basically, we have to go in to see one of our high end clients next week and I call him to set up the meeting. The Guy I Work For (TGIWF) tells me that his best day to do anything is Thursday. And that he has a couple of clients on Tuesday that he can't switch out. I say ok and set up a meeting with the client for Thursday morning. I email TGIWF and tell him that everything is set up for THURSDAY.

He emails me back and goes, "Great! I'll switch my Tuesday client to Monday. See you there."

um. EXSQUEEZE ME?

So I email him back and go, "Wait TGIWF...THURSDAY."

And he writes me back going, "Oh no, I can't do Thursday. I have clients that day that I can't cancel on. Can you switch to Tuesday?"

I send him back a pretty terse email saying that I'm confused and the reason I scheduled ANYTHING on Thursday was because of HIS schedule. In the meantime, I have scheduled my OTHER high end client for Tuesday morning. And you know who will have to do all the switcharoo footwork tomorrow at some point during her busiest day at the PT Office Job? You get a gold star if you guessed ME. I mean, this would not happen if he just scheduled the damn clients HIMSELF. It's pissing me off that not only did I cater my schedule to the one that he told me, he is too passive agressive to call the clients himself. Which means, guess who ends up looking like a dumbass when I have to call the clients to reschedule?

A for A-hole if you guess, ME AGAIN.
this is why I really don't like people. look, pick a friggin' day that works for YOU and tell me what it is, but if I have to try to change my schedule every thirty seconds to cater to your little whims then don't expect me to give you ANY respect.

Nopa

It's b-day season (yes, I know I keep harping upon this) which means seasons of EATING! So being a little linecook415 fangirl, I got my bestie to take me to NOPA last night for a b-day dinner.

NOPA stands for "North of the Panhandle" and while the storefront is rather discreet, inside the space is airy and well lit with a ton of windows (clerestories), open kitchen and a 2nd floor mezzanine that overlooks the main floor. There's also a large bar that runs the entire side of the restaurant, but separated from the ground floor dining area by a large wall. And a communal table runs in an "L" perpendicular to the bar along the front windows. If you're really special, you can score one of the four bar stools that are directly adjacent to the kitchen counter and get a free show while you eat.

Ok, for a friggin' Wednesday night, I don't know what sort of crack the chefs are doling out of the kitchen, but this place was packed! From the time we arrived until we left, people were rolling in and rolling out. And pretty normal people at that, people you think you'd probably like to hang out with. And definitely people who LIKE to eat. Plate after plate of the flatbread kept coming out of the kitchen and every chef and server I could see was doing what seemed like triple duty.

Amuse: spring pea puree with grilled crostini and sea salt

Pretty darn good, please excuse the heavenly aura effect - we were sitting in this great corner location that had a fantastic view of the kitchen (but also included some blindingly bright late afternoon/early evening sun rays). The brightness of spring peas on top of crisp crostini toasts was a good start to a b-day meal. You'll notice that the plating is pretty sparse, which is just telling to the simple California (American) cuisine served at Nopa.


Starter: flatbread with house smoked bacon, garlic confit, ramps and sweet cream
This bacon was AMAZING. Sweet, creamy and chewy - almost akin to pancetta, and sprinkled in judicious amounts so it didn't overpower the bread or the ramps, but enough so that I was mentally trying to find the pieces with the most bacon. One of the best things about all the food here is the BALANCE of flavors. Nothing overpowers anything else and the food is delicious and thoughtful. (I would eat a lot of this if it were available)


Entree: Roasted duck breast, English pea risotto, mint and parmesan with dressed dandelion greens
Again, the balance here was incredible. A simple roasted duck breast in it's own juices, served aside a simple (and LIGHT!) risotto that included mint and peas. I was happy to find that even though there was mint, but it didn't taste like a mouth full of toothpaste. And there was a LOT of duck! Enough so that even when I split the portion, I still felt like I had eaten my fair share.

The breast was supposed to be medium rare and it was a little north of that, but I guess with all the scares about raw meat, that's probably good. I'm so used to duck that's been glazed or served with cherry or other sweet/sour combinations that this was a change. Just the duck.

Entree: pan seared halibut with mushrooms, spring onions, favas and fiddlehead ferns.
What I love about Nopa dishes is their simplicity but also the choice of accompanying incredients. I'd never had fiddlehead ferns before and these were delicious! They had excellent texture; middlng tender/crispness and a new but also really intriguing flavor. Maybe celery like? And some citrus flavors. The fish was so incredibly white, but done to that quality where the flesh is still moist while being cooked all the way through. I think if fish had been done like this when I was younger, I would be more of a fan of cooked fish these days (which reminds me, I'll write my review of Farallon next week - WRECKFISH, get some) .

Side: Braised favas with fried almonds

This was the only dish that Kat and I were sort of "meh" about. There was a smokiness to the dish that started to get old after a while. It was all smoke and tomato. The way the dish was described, we thought the beans would have been shelled (which is a pain in the ass for favas, I know) and somehow lighter. This dish is more of a cold SF night dish vs. a Spring one. We did like the almonds though. Maybe Amy Brown can make almond bacon brittle?

One of the best thing about hanging out with friends at dinner is that you can talk about all sorts of stuff that's been on your mind. But it's very bad for being viligant about taking photos. So I did not get photos of our very good desserts. We had the sopapillas with burnt caramel sauce. OMG. Get this dish. Cause nothing says lovin' like FRIED BREAD with a butter/sugar sauce. The sopapillas were more akin to beignets - they had bready/custardey type innards instead of fried bread (like yau tiu, chinese donut) innards. Better yet, get the strawberry lemon verbena parfait which includes two sizeable scoops of creme fraiche ice cream and do the following.

1. Break open your sopapilla
2. Stuff the innard with a spoonfull of creme fraiche ice cream
3. Pour burnt caramel sauce over this
4. Dunk into your French press cup of Blue Bottle Coffee
5. Eat, savor and REPEAT til sopapillas are gone.

(if you get sad when the sopapillas are gone, remember that you still have the cognac pound cake from the parfait to eat with the remainder of the burnt orange caramel sauce)

The dining room here is REALLY noisy, so just be prepared that it will not necessarily be romantic, especially if you are seated next to a set of nouveau riche yuppies who will be intent on having a couples compairison conversation right next to you. (unfortunate, but they gotta eat too). Richie Nakano of linecook was there and I kept stealing glances over at the kitchen to watch him sort of scan the dining room. And here's my question: I wonder how many people are now populating the restaurant due to Nakano's rising web-presence (and his stint at Porchlight, podcast, blog, features on EaterSF and SF Weekly, Chronicle etc. he's sort of the new anti-Bauer) and does this annoy him or does he not care or is it a happy financial/gastronomical side-effect of his willingness to speak about food and what he does so candidly?

Anyways, check out Nopa if you guys are in town. Two thumbs up.

NOPA
560 Divisadero @ Hayes
San Francisco, CA
415.864.8643

gangaji

(reposted from a Facebook post)

Many people have trouble with the word love. Love, as most of us have known it, can be sentimental, potentially messy, and most definitely out of control. And yet, love is what we crave. There is often a love/hate relationship with the idea of love, most likely stemming from our experiences as children, when we loved helplessly. We projected love out onto our loved ones—our mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters—and at some point found our loved ones to be unreliable. We confused their actions with love and concluded that love was not trustworthy.

People are definitely not trustworthy, because in general, they are very busy protecting their story of who they think they are. Since they are mostly involved in their story, they can only give a certain amount of love before they start wondering, “Well, when do I get mine?” And since love has been identified as being connected with another person, this sets up a whole continuation of distrust around love.

But love is not a person. Love is the individual, collective, and universal soul. Love is God. Love is truth. Love is beauty. Love is peace. Love is self. To truly know yourself, to surrender to the truth of yourself, is to surrender to love.

Many people are aware of their resistance and want to surrender, but they don’t know how. The only actual barrier, however, is in not seeing the underlying story you are telling yourself about the danger of surrendering everything to love.

The degree to which you try to maintain the story about who you think you are is the degree to which you feel isolated from love—and, the degree to which you hold back surrendering everything to love is the degree to which you suffer. Until you realize, “I want truth, which is love, more than anything,” you will experience yourself as separate from love. Love is the constant. Love is not an aspect of truth. Truth, God, and self are aspects of love.

What is the worst that could happen if you surrender to love? What we seem to fear the most is the broken heart. Yet the very unwillingness for the heart to be broken is the broken heart. The tragedy and the irony is that in order to avoid a broken heart, people live in a state of broken-heartedness. In the willingness to have the heart be broken a million, trillion, zillion times, true love is revealed.

Most people are more afraid of having their feelings hurt than they are of having their bodies hurt. But the willingness to be hurt is crucial. Without the willingness to be hurt, there is no willingness to love, no willingness to die, no willingness to live, no willingness to be.

It is easy to see from your own life experience that no matter how much you try to run away from hurt, you still experience it. To stop the running, to turn and experience what is chasing you, open and unprotected, you have to be willing to be free.

Are you willing to be free?

Are you willing to trust love rather than your mind’s protection from hurt? If you are willing, then you will taste the possibility of living a life of love and conscious innocence. This is possible for everyone. Love is the teacher. If you are willing to surrender to love rather than trying to control it, love teaches you who you are.

Hurt may feel like the end of the world, but it’s not. Hurt hurts. The degree to which you are willing to be hurt—not wanting to be hurt, but willing to be hurt—is the degree to which you are willing to love, be loved, and be taught by love.

Love can be your teacher, though it never teaches withdrawal from experiencing hurt. Other people are not the source of your hurt; the source of hurt is the fact that you love. Trust the love. If love is to hurt you, then let it hurt you fully. Let it annihilate you. Let your heart break open so that an even deeper love can be revealed.

Most everything we do is to avoid vulnerability. We dress up in grownup clothes and play at doing grownup work, in an attempt to escape the defenseless innocence associated with childhood. But innocence is not limited to children. It is possible for you as an adult to be consciously vulnerable and innocent. You can consciously hurt.

In conscious suffering, you are no longer fighting the suffering. You are consciously present in it. And if suffering is met as it appears, it is revealed to be not what you thought. Conscious suffering reveals itself as the Buddha, as Christ’s heart. But the intention in this is not to meet suffering to get rid of it. The innocent intention is to meet suffering as it is, even if it means feeling hurt.

True innocence is the capacity to directly experience what is here right now, without any demands that it look, act, or feel differently. Innocence is openness, the willingness to see and to trust, even if what appears seems absolutely untrustworthy. True innocence is not naiveté, nor is it delusion. However, it involves vulnerability. The willingness to be innocent is the willingness to be hurt.

This willingness to be vulnerable is what the term “spiritual warrior” really means. Vulnerability takes more courage than being cynical, strong, or powerful. It takes courage to be open, innocent, and willing to be hurt.

Let the whole world break your heart every instant of the remainder of your life. Then your life can be lived in service to love. This does not mean you stay in abusive relationships. It means only to stay true to that which is always true to you, and that is love. Anything else is a story.

If the story is never investigated, your whole life is lived on the assumption that the story is real, and that your heart, your soul, and your love need to be protected. But that assumption is actually a denial of your heart, your soul, your love.

The great good news is that love is free and it has not gone anywhere. In all of these aeons that you have been hiding from love, love is still here, it is still open, it is still waiting for your commitment, still waiting for you to say, “Yes, I give my life to the truth of love. I vow to let love live this life as it will, for better or worse, for richer or poorer.”

The love that you search for everywhere is already present within you. It may be evoked by any number of people or events. A mountain can evoke this love. A sunset can evoke this love. But finally, you must realize you are this love. The source of all love is within you.

-Gangaji

ritual

As with all sacred rites, the beginning of class is beautiful to watch. The dancers may straggle in and mill about, but they eventually assume,w ith frighteningly formal rigor, their customary place at the barre or on the floor. If a principal dancer walks in, they automatically shift places to give the star the center spot facing the mirror. Of such beliefs and traditions are rituals made. It's like going to church. We rarely question why we go to church, and we don't expect concrete answers when we do . We just know it feeds our spirit somehow and so we do it.

A lot of habitually crative people have preparation rituals linked to the settingi n which they choose to start their day. But putting themselves into that environment, they begin their creative day. - Twyla Tharp - "the Creative Habit"

Today's word: "God made me, so I am good."

on an up note.

On an up note:

First: Go visit Neil's blog (and vote for him in the Webby Awards!)
1000 Awesome Things.
In a world that sometimes seems determined to get you down (the boy doesn't call, they don't have bagel bites at Noah's despite their over-abundant advertising, you don't get your paycheck on time), there's nothing like reading about stuff that makes life AMAZING to get you to chuckle and feel better. And the descriptions are like reading your own version of Mystery Science Theater with your closest wittiest friends. Today alone on the main page are: putting potato chips on your sandwich (EPIC WIN), Squeezing through a door as it’s shutting without touching it, and a photo of Indiana Jones (drool) I think this website might just be a pretty secure antidote for mental depression.

Yes, suddenly you morph from Guy Walking To The Subway After Work into Indiana Jones In That Scene Where He Slides Under The Wall At The Last Second. Your hands stay clean, your strut stays mean, and you zip through that closing door and don’t look back, hoping it doesn’t nail an old lady in the face behind you.

AWESOME!

Second: this book that I just got at the bookstore
Twyla Tharp - The Creative Habit

There are so many creative "types" out there, but the best way to become successful in the community is not being a "starving artist" or a bohemian type, but just the gumption and will to be doing art on a consistent basis. Whether it be taking part in a class or show or just doing your own work, making art an everyday practice is more important than talent or producing 'significant' work. EVER.

Studies have shown that the best musicians in the world aren't the ones who are necessarily born with the most talent, but the ones who utilize their talents and practice every day. The equivalent of a full time job.

Third: Dinner @ Farallon for the Krantz tomorrow and dim sum @ Ton Kiang with Min tomorrow morning (please do not stalk me, yo). Looking forward to such good eats. Can I possibly pair it with performing or watching some live show?

Fourth: Doing voiceover work and getting paid for it. W00t! This might make the 4th time I have been paid via work related to Danno. I could do this people. I really could.

Fifth: Kicking ass on my grant writing. Warrenting a phone call from Mayabird telling me that it's good. Maybe I'm not as crazy about this career change idea as I thought. Now to get to building a budget.

Sixth: Having days off on blazing hot afternoons to spend it kicking back on the beach with your best friend. The sunset was INCREDIBLE. I had two clients cancel on Tuesday, so with record temperature highs, and the fortuitous phone call from my bestie - we took the entire afternoon to just chill on the hot sands, watch cute shirtless boys wakeboard, eat burgers and fries...some things just don't change, whether you're 3, 13 or 30. (which I am in a week...shit)

Seventh: my secret obsession with VH1's "Tough Love" - are you guys watching this at all? The greatest thing is that it's not a competition, none of the girls get voted off. This means they get to all be really supportive and loving of their crazy selves. But the blog is hi-larious. They just used a Pee-Wee Herman reference to talk about one of the contestants.

Just make sure your wish is European enough to suit her. You don’t want her to mekka-lekka hi mekka slap a ho.

ahahah. THAT is pure comedy people! I'm totally rooting for Natasha and esp. Jaclyn.

Ok, so this is the happy entry!

cardigan FAIL

dammit.
photos provided for reference
the other day, I went to Zara to get your basic, crew-neck cardigan. I found a perfect one in kelly green. but when I got up to the counter, there was a snag in the fabric. so the clerk at the counter was nice enough to get me another one. but apparently, I didn't check so closely.

because it's a v-neck.

do you fashionistas feel me? a v-neck does not serve the purpose this cardigan was supposed to. which was to basically cover up excessive boobage from low cut dresses and tops. more refined for the office and gamine classy, a round neck cardigan is more 50s while v-neck says 60s university grad student, i-stole-this-from-my-bf cute. but they're not the same thing. the round neck can be worn more formally.

pwned by a salesclerk.
thus spawning the most self-serving and useless blog post ever. heh.

goodnight moon

Gaaahhh...more boys who like emo music? what is wrong with meeee?!

I'd rather sit on my porch
Sitting by the light of the moon
Drinking tea
And whistling

Cause all I am is all I'll be
And that's quite enough for me

Photo via Unicornology