Bar developments (1 of 2): New heights of barhopping.

Starting about 2 months ago, bartenders and people at bars started buying me shots and beers a ton, to the point where I'd have to turn them down, if I was planning on a long night of barhopping.

A few weeks ago, though, hispanics started doing this for me a crazy lot.

At one bar, I ordered in Spanish, and before I left 2 (Mexican) guys in their mid-40s who heard that started asking if I was Polish, but the one kept mixing in Spanish words, his English was so bad.

"Puedo hablar un pocito de Espanol," I was like.  "Toda la familia de mi madre es Polaca, pero yo soy un Americano."

They liked that, and were like "Very good!" and started speaking a bit of Spanish to me, but it was too much and I had to tell them that.

They then asked about my father, and we had to figure out the Spanish word for "Hungarian".

I also asked for their help in how I ask for a cheap beer, and one said, "Que es la cerveza borrata?" (if I remember correctly), and the other said to try, "Qual es la cerveza que cuesta menos?".

Then, a bartender tried to get me another Miller Lite.  I had to beg off, saying I was meeting my Mexican friend for goat tacos and I didn't want to get too drunk, and then I said something (in Spanish) about how I liked goat, to their great delight.

At the next bar, a Mexican customer was talking with a Colombian bartender, and he got me 2 beers, I was having such a good time I stayed and accepted.

The bartender also gave me her Amway card.

Like a week later, I hit up a ton of Korean bars, and this one 23-year old quiet, self-identified Christian Korean student who had only been in the U.S. less than half a year did shots of Patron with me, at his expense at the bar of the karaoke lounge where he worked.

I'm not being any friendlier than I've ever been, but something has changed, I'm just really connecting with people a ton now.

Apartment fire!

The other week I went to go set out some beans in a pot to soak at night, and when I moved them from the counter to put them on my couch (I have very little counter space), I noticed the pot slid funny, so after I set the pot on the couch, I wiped up the bit of water that was there.

The next morning, I put my coffee on, and put the pot of beans on the stove to boil.

In like 2 minutes, I smell this smell like plastic burning, and I look over and there's some flames and a bit of crackling coming from underneath the pot, so I run over and grab my mitts and pick it up, and there's a lid of tupperware sitting on the burner, burning, so I picked it up by the non-burning part and threw it into some water that was sitting in the sink.

In retrospect, I realize that the lid must have been on the counter, then water made it stick to the bottom of the pot, all the way through when I placed the pot on the couch, left it there overnight, and picked it up again and put it on the stove.

Thankfully the fire wasn't big, and thankfully I'll still be able to re-use the tupperware lid (only the top of the lid was burnt, and mildly so, and it still fits on my lunch container).

Bus trip...

The other week this one young (black) guy gets on the bus right after some kind of maybe homeless-looking (black) woman, and then doesn't have enough money on his buscard, and starts saying that he owed a quarter on the last bus but no-one had change, so he had to give a whole dollar and that's the 75-cents that would have made the difference.

At that, the (black) woman who got on with him starts backing him up and saying she saw it, but the (younger) (black) (female) bus driver was having none of that, and finally some (middle-aged) (older) (Asian) guy gives the guy a quarter.

Like 4-5 minutes later, that same younger (black) guy is leaning forward in his seat, singing some kind of R&B tune in a slightly louder than normal voice, and he did that all the way through my stop where I got off for the subway.

"Have a peaceful night," I said to the (black) (female) bus driver as I got off.

"Thanks," she was like, and then she realized what I said and laughed and was like, "Thanks!".

Roman Catholic Womenpriests.

You know what I really like?  Roman Catholic Womenpriests.

The name "womenpriests" is a little odd (it's almost like a corporate logo where two words are both capitalized and written without a space in between, and it's reminiscent of 2nd-wave feminist wordplay), but I love 3 things about them:

1) They got apostolic succession by having (unnamed) bishops consecrate them.

2) They take a historic view, and say that what Rome condemns one century it loves down the road.

3) They call the consecrations "contra legem" ('against the law' in Latin), which not only points out that some specific man-made canon prevents women from becoming priest, but even uses Latin to boot in order to do that, which must really irk conservative Catholics, who tend to love to throw Latin around.

Overall, between the apostolic succession, the appeal to history, and the Latin, they took all these conservative hallmarks and did something really really liberal.

Go them!

Vegetable stock experiment: squeezed-out lime.

The other week when I was making up some vegetable stock for incorporation in a lentil soup, on a whim I threw in the squeezed-out lime I had just squeezed into the lentil soup (I added lime juice in, since I was already adding vinegar in b/c of a recipe I had seen, and they seemed like they complement one another).

My tasty vegetable stock became very very bitter, but not unpleasantly so, and when I added it to the big pot of lentil soup, it actually made the whole thing deliciously savory.

It was only then that I remembered that back when I did Latin translation for a spice company, that I read something about how dried slices of lime are used in north african cooking, and that the taste can be overpowering, but very effective in the right recipes.

I'm def. doing the same thing in the future when I make lentil soup.  I just can't stop eating this batch of soup!

Dream of my apartment.

I dreamed that I was in my apartment, and I had bought a plastic meattray full of crabs to boil in some kind of soup I was making.

As I was looking at the pot, I realized the broken crab that was stuffed into the pot was struggling a bit, and was still alive, and as I stepped back, I realized that there was a very small tortoise that had been on the meat tray as well and hidden under the crab, and it had fallen out and was now crawling around on the floor.

I looked at it and for some reason didn't touch it, and it crawled in behind the fridge.

I then looked at the tray and pulled out a small manta ray the size of my hand, and I held it up in the light by its fins and was filled with utter revulsion.

I had to leave, and meant to take a broken plate and put a bit of water and some carrots on it and put it near the fridge so the tortoise wouldn't die, it had already been through enough, but I had to leave so quickly that I forgot, and when I was gone I was wracked with horror and regret at the suffering of the tortoise.

...the previous day I had considered buying some stew beef and make beef barley soup and had looked at the meat trays at a store, though I didn't end up buying them... I guess that was the material for some of my dream...

Barman on cheap drinks.

The other week before going to a friend's birthday party, I popped into a (new) piano bar in a ritzy neighborhood near downtown to get a drink and pre-game.

I went in and asked the aging (gay?) (white) (male) bartender for their cheapest beer, my standard order.

"Nothing here is cheap," he said affably.

"Ok, then give me your cheapest you got," I was like, and he brought me a Miller Lite bottle (for $5.50).

"You know," I was like, "You can tell a lot about a man by the drink he orders."

"Yes!", he was like, smiling and laughing, "You are practical."