The Frank Funny Farm

Editor's note: Megan is gonna die of shock from my posting, but, whatever. she wanted me to post more, so i hope you guys don't mind seeing more food.

We had some friends over last night for a little 4th of July shindig; it turned out rather awesome. As with most of our friendly gatherings it was pot-luck style. I made Ground Venison Burgers with a Coffee Spice rub that were amazing. I also used a purple cabbage and some fresh cord we got from our CSA along with some hot peppers (including some cayenne from our garden!), carrots, lime, red wine vineagar and cilantro to make a spicy southwestern slaw. Keith and Laurie brought along an amazing whole grain mustard warm potato salad. Carey & Jared brought some hot dogs and brats. It was fantastic!

For dessert Megan made the most amazing trifle! Using some peaches from the CSA along with strawberries and blueberries she layyered the fruit with poud cake and an out of this world lemon curd. it was unbelievable.

Jared put on an amazing fireworks display in our back yard that was much more enjoyable than going downtown and standing in the rain amidst all the crazies – a great night indeed.

And as an added bonus, the leftovers for both breakfast this morning (trifle) and lunch today (potato salad) were awesome!

Tags: 4th of july, fireworks, food, friends, grilling, party

Happy Friday to us! There's also one more itty bitty one above these two and a bunch of blooms.

Tags: peppers!, wee back yard garden

you may or may not be aware, but ben and i have a very special talent. we possess the remarkable ability to make any task more complicated and take at least three times as long as it should, simply by being present. the force is strong with us. the best example of this is probably the great toilet replacement of '08, in which a simple remove-old-toilet-put-in-new-toilet job that should've taken a couple hours tops required no less than 4 trips to home depot and no less than EIGHT hours. you'd think we'd have to be idiots and spectacular screw-ups to make that happen, but oh no, my friends. such is the power of the frank factor; we didn't do anything wrong. the first problem was that when we finally got the gross old toilet to surrender it's grip on the floor, it took half the flange with it. fine. we'll go get a new one, unscrew the old one, screw in the new one, bada-bing-bada-boom. except that the old one was welded into the pipe in the floor and not coming off ever at all ever. i suppose here we could've investigated and tried to unscrew it before going to the store, but since it was ya know, kinda poop covered and who in the ham sandwich would weld the frickin' thing to the pipe in the first place, we did not. argh. home depot again, returning with a flange repair kit, which is essentially the top metal ring part that screws through whatever parts left of the old flange and into the floor. swell, we're on the way now. except that the screws are no match AT ALL for the bathroom floor. the go a little way in, then bend, or don't really go at all. one goes in about halfway, just enough to make us hopeful, then breaks off in the floor. in the floor. right under the hole. there was much cursing. home depot. mammoth, concrete devouring screws (for real this time) acquired, angrily drilled into floor, except in that one spot of course. huzzah! all we have to do is put on the waxy goo and put on the new toilet and we are free to poop! except. our new toilet is (as any good newer model should be) a bit more slim in the bottom it seems and lacks the extra space required by the repair kit flange top. use your imagination, fill in the very blue blanks and then multiply it times ten. we remove the lovely new toilet and stare in a manner than would make any redneck who likes to look at car engines proud. then, true to that redneck heritage, i mutter something along the lines of "fuckit" and grab the hammer, giving the flange the nips and tuck it needed. then we put the bloody toilet down and muscled it into place in a way certainly unbecoming of a lady and caulked that bastared to the floor. i applied a little more redneck ingenuity to the levelling process that i'll leave out of the blog since we do want to sell the house at some point and it might freak some people out. we then noticed it was 8 o'clock-ish and wondered how we had spent an entire saturday doing something so simple.

yesterday, the frank factor showed that even the internet is no match for it if it's angry enough. we went and got a shiny new battery charger for our lawn mower battery sos we could make it go mow. upon examining the battery, we couldn't find any indication as to the voltage. no worries, i memorized the model number of the mower real quick-like and went inside to use the google. not so helpful, as it turns out. we could find part numbers, diagrams of the various systems and even a manual, but none of these things simply said "12V battery." we looked up the battery number on the battery maker's site, and while they were happy to sell it to us, they didn't seem to think we needed to know the voltage. we'd found some indication that it was likely a 12V battery, but nothing really definitive, and since we could fry the thing if we set the charger to 12 and it was on some off chance a 6V, we weren't too comfortable with it. somewhere in the middle of the process we realized it'd be much faster to just call the man down the street who sold it to us and ask, so we did, but no one was home. finally, after trying every possible search combination known to man, some obscure thing came up to verfiy that it was, in fact, a 12-volt battery. that's right, it took us a little over half an hour to be able to hook our lawn mower battery up to the charger. it's a gift. sadly a non-returnable one. sigh.

and then halfway through the mowing process the blade belt came off and once we got it back on we couldn't get it to tighten enough to turn on. we stared at it for a while, jiggled things, then it got too dark to really see anything, so we gave up and our front yard has a lovely haircut now. i was talking to my dad last night and he had a suggestion, so hopefully that'll work when i get home tonight and i can take care of the silly looking yard and then ben and i can have the satisfied, accomplished feeling that makes the beer taste better and the gas-and-grass  perfume smell more pleasing. we were robbed last night, man. stupid frank factor.

Tags: lawn mower battery, lawn mower woes, murhpy's law is no match for us, toilet replacement fun, we're special

we had much fun this weekend and we were even a bit productive. who knew? we also pretty much ate our way through the weekend, which was very much tasty. really, ben should be blogging about the foods because he, of course, took pictures of all of it, because that's what he does. friday night the ryan came over and we made greek lamb/beef burgers and sweet potato fries and snap beans. they was delicious. there was half a burger left, so saturday morning it went into omelets with spinach, mushrooms and feta. very much yum. saturday night was jared's birthday extravaganza which means gathering around a giant hibachi at mikado and watching our tasty dinner being made with flair and pyrotechnics, then going to (where else?) wilhagan's. sunday, in a stellar feat of wasting no foods, we grilled some chicken rubbed with the same gyro spices we used in the burgers, then used the rest of the tzatziki sauce we'd made as the sauce for pita pizzas with mushrooms and feta and parmesan and zuchinni and tomato for ben (and the chicken of course). the rest of the mint shall be taken care of tonight in some pesto-ish sauce for pasta. win!

after we had those scrumptious pizzas (brilliant idea i had there, i must say), we went downtown to war memorial auditorium to see ryan adams and the cardinals. the show was great, would've probably been awesomely fantastic had there been more vocals in the mix. alas. still, the band was super tight, i don't think i've heard them or any ryan adams band sound that good. i was kind of interested in how the show would be, because he's been clean for a while, but he also got married within the last few weeks, so he's (hopefully anyway) been happy and healthy and stuff, the combination of which i'm pretty sure is unprecedented. but, he is of course, still weird and goofy and geeky so it was great. at one point when the house lights were on, he noticed a guy standing up in the balcony was wearing the same shirt as neal casal, the guitarist and back-up singer. so he proceeded to improve a ridiculous song about it. hilarity. he also played a surprising mix of songs, all in the trademark faster rawkin' live version he tends to do. if you have heartbreaker, then you know the song "lucy." last night, he played a straight up punk version of it, which was clearly the way that song was meant to be done. glad he figured that out. he played for just about 3 hours, which was awesome, but also not, because it was sunday night and the show started at 8:30. very late going to bed for ben who had to get up at 6 this morning to go to the gym and me who should've gotten up at 7:20 to be at work at 8:30. don't tell anyone, but i didn't shower this morning. tiiiiiired. sleep and relaxation weren't completely on the agenda this weekend, though we did sleep in saturday a bit i suppose. it was a good spring break wrap-up weekend and hopefully a good "last weekend" for ben. they have a huge project at work, so apparently i won't see him until june. sad.

Tags: greek food weekend, i'm going to need lots of coffee today, ryan adams is still a badass, ryan adams yay!, we like food a lot

i think this blog is sarah's fault, what with her recent post about her 6 year anniversary living in LA, but the sentiment is certainly my own. see, i've lived in this town for over 10 years, which is about 6 more than i intended. and at least 4 or 5 longer than i've really truly wanted to live here.  i love my friends and life's pretty okay; it isn't about that really. it's just that i got over this town a LOOOOOOOONG time ago and there are plenty of other places i want to live. places with more of an art scene, more weirdo arty types, more to do when one wants to 'go out' than go to a bar and listen to forgettable music or go to a movie, more healthy, veggie-type eating out options, (much) better proximity to the ocean, and probably lots of other things. oh, perhaps some nice potential employment. that'd be neat. the kicker is that ben had finally grown tired of nashville as well, and we were planning to begin an exit strategy once i graduated. there was much rejoicing. then the economy exploded and selling a house we don't need to sell and moving to some unknown place for hypothetical jobs when ben has a well-paying one he loves here doesn't seem like the smartest of moves. so no moving. he says maybe next year, but i think that means never. something will come up, something will happen and i'll suffocate to death here. in stupid nashville.

my need to get out manifests itself every so often in an intense desire to at least go somewhere, anywhere, even for a weekend, which is about where i'm at now. it's like cabin fever, but it's location fever on top of it. i just get unsettled, physically, mentally, everything-else-ally. i lose focus easily and often wonder if my skin is actually thick enough to contain all the chaos of my innards. the only way i can think to describe it is the feeling you get if you drink about a gallon of espresso on an empty stomach: jittery, a little nauseated, bug-eyed and like you must run around waving your arms and screaming "AAAAAAAAAARRRGH!" i think the fact that last week i turned in my graduate portfolio and my last french assignment and this week is spring break has given me a breather, time to think about the inevitable "next," and i gotta say, i don't see anything. i think this is largely job-hunt related, as nashville really isn't the best of places to find a job writering much of anything (especially not now), let alone something i'd want to do. it's all complicated by the fact that my current employment situation could end at any point really, if the spot at daycare opens, but how likely is that? and since there's a bit more to it than just a 'typical nanny job' or whatever, i'll feel really bad if i quit. but i don't want to go back to the 50-hour a week schedule i had this summer, if that's even an option. either way, i don't relish the thought of adding any more 10-hour days to the two i'm doing now. and i need to get a real job somewhere so i can finally stop being such a deadbeat wife, and if this were any other job, i'd have no qualms about quitting. of course, the likelihood of finding a job at this point is pretty slim, so who knows. argh. i'm just jumbled and my skin is too tight, so i whine on my blog about my poor hard life with my nice house and my abundance of food and love and general spoiledness, then i want to kill myself for being such an ungrateful jackass. see? it really is hard being me.

at any rate, as winter seems to have finally left for good (huzzah!) and the days get longer, school is winding down and it feels like something should be about to happen, or i should know something or have some idea of how life will look in june. it should be hopeful, brightly colored, new, this Future that should be springing. all these thoughts are bouncing around, nudging and poking, i can see green and flowers and still i'm waiting for the last thaw; i'm still wintery and cold, gray and immobile and i dont like it. i'm ready for spring dammit! or at least a chance to flee nashville for a minute. i know the latter ain't happening any time soon, so i'll keep praying for the first. and i suppose i'll twitch my way through the spring, because there's nothing else to do. then we'll go to new york in may, and that might last me for a little bit, until the summer beach twitch takes over.

on a happier (and certain to be mucho beneficial for my brain and my skin) is that the weather saturday was awesome and i got to play outside and then sit outside and drink a beer and everything (actually, i got to sit outside and drink TASTY beers friday night too. if you haven't been for food, the chef at rumours east is AMAZING; haven't had grub that good in a while. and yes, i went to a wine bar and drank beer, delicious high-alc dark yummy beer). ben, hayley, buckley and i went to edwin warner park and walked the short trail behind the nature center. it was so so so very wonderful, and the dogs enjoyed playing in the creek and meeting other dogs and generally running around and sniffing and peeing on as much as possible. more of than needs to happen. a lot. well, maybe less of the peeing every 3 feet, but you know what i mean.

i also learned that one should not use a neti pot if one intends to leave the home in the two-hour period that follows. or one should at least be smart enough not to bow one's head for prayers at church immediately following neti potting.

Tags: hiking is rad, neti pot PSA, poor lil me, restless, rumours east is delicious, wanna move, whiny whine whine, yay weather!