The Torchlight is our Oyster

In an earlier entry (see: “The Train is Our Oyster“), I recounted for you my adventures of two summers ago, when I visited my little brother, Ross, in Seattle. This weekend, I made the trek again, though by car (not train) and for only two days (not four). Of course we did some of the traditional things, like visit Pike’s Place, eat pyroshkis, and wander University Ave. aimlessly, but we also branched out a bit and included the Olympic Sculpture Park, dinner in Fremont and a brief visit to a Capitol Hill bar called Chapel that was, once, a funeral parlor.

Also, there was the Torchlight parade.

When I say “parade,” though, I don’t mean we sat on the curb and waved glo-sticks and cheered as drill teams and silk dragons and dance troupes passed by–no, I mean we marched. See, my brother is Drum Major for the Husky Marching Band, so he had this teeny little commitment on Saturday night that we’d have to work around in planning our Seattle adventure, and what, we wondered, would Thea do for four hours, alone, in Seattle while Ross led the marching band from the Science Center to Qwest Stadium?

We thought. We pondered. Then, we borrowed a purple Huskies shirt, talked to some important people, then got me some green water bottles and a purpose: watergirl. I wove in and out of the band for three miles, dodging trombones and cymbals, distributing water like some sort of marching band angel of mercy. It was fabulous.

At first, I felt a little awkward about the fact that I don’t even live in Seattle, let alone go to UW, and am only affiliated with the school by blood, but after a while I got into it–particularly after I realized that I could stand in as a surrogate “high-fiver” while the band was actually playing. I’d noticed that all these adorable kids were continually holding their hands out to the band (who were, quite understandably, occupied playing their instruments), hoping for high-fives, and after seeing a few kids drop their hands, heartbroken, I thought, You know what? I have a free hand.

And so I high-fived the kids on behalf of the Husky marching band, smiling and waving and exhibiting all the school spirit I could muster for a school I don’t attend–though I was never particularly good at mustering up school spirit for any of the schools I did attend, now that I that I think about it.

Another grand, though terrifying, moment came just before the parade: we arrived at the Seattle Science Center, in all our purple-and-gold glory, to find that we had over an hour to kill. Some band members talked of food, of sitting down, of visiting the International fountain, but Ross caught a glimpse of a roller coaster track and came up with a different plan altogether.

Now, you know that little carnival over by the EMP that is roughly the size of a parking lot and has maybe six sketchy rides in it? The roller coaster that caught Ross’s eye is called The Windstorm, and, though not terribly tall or fast, it looks like it was built sometime in the 1940s and hasn’t had so much as a paint touch-up since then.

We bought our tickets, scrambled into the car and threw our hands up in the air, as the car climbed the first hill, then shuddered, leaned a bit to the left, righted itself, shuddered again, and kept climbing. We put our hands down, calmly grasped the safety bar and held on for dear life.

Now, I’ve ridden a few roller coasters in my day and many of them were enormous and gravity-defying, death-defying, better-judgement-defying, you name it, but I don’t think I’ve ever found it so believable that the car might actually detach itself from the tiny little rust-stained track and send us hurtling twenty feet to our fiery and wholly preventable deaths.

By the time we got out of the car (quickly, the second the bars lifted off our laps), my hips were bruised from rattling around in the seat and my head hurt from hitting it against…something, I never found out what. From the way Ross massaged his side I could tell he’d had a similarly abusive ride–we compared injuries before moving on to the other slightly less terrifying rides.

I was sad to leave Seattle this afternoon, though we did manage to cram four days of activity into two–rollercoaster, parade and all–and I wish I could add for you some of the sweet thoughts I have about my brother right now, but after all that fun, I’m very tired and probably you’d be embarrassed to even read what I’d come out with at this point. So, suffice it to say I had a great time with him this weekend, and I can’t wait to visit him again.

Cannons, you say?

Tonight was one of the most fun shows I’ve played in a long time. By all counts, it probably shouldn’t have been, because all my equipment failed in an almost-ridiculous way: one amp distorted horribly anytime I played the low E on my guitar, the other whooshed in an oceanic sort of way and occasionally made an awful buzz/rumble from time to time. The mic stand broke in half.

Also, I had a bad cold and was slated to play for four whole hours, plus the sit-down audience was, at its highest, no more than ten people–at its lowest, there was no audience.

All the same, it was a blast. I played, unamplified, on a small stage in Boulevard Park, with a sparkling view of the bay marked by little white sails. The show itself was part of a relay that started this morning in Blaine and finishes sometime tomorrow by Whidbey Island, so there was a fairly steady stream of runners (in great team get-ups, my favorite being a whole team in running clothes and tutus) handing off batons along the path.

From time to time, somebody would sit down in front of the stage and listen and we would chat a bit.

But, back to the bay. Not only were there sailboats drifting prettily by, making the scene oh-so-picturesque, there were also two big ships with several masts and sails and cannons. There weren’t just any ships, either: one of them was the Lady Washington, who apparently appeared in all three of the Pirates of the Carribean movies as a British Naval ship (though of course a rumor got started that it was the actual Black Pearl, and I did my part to encourage this until I googled it just now and realized my error).

This ship and the other were staging nautical battles at various points around the bay all evening, so that, as I sang, I heard not only foghorns and waves and small children, but also cannon-fire.

It was fabulous.

Does it figure? Of course it does. (Doesn’t it?)

In the middle of July, when the temperature has at last (at least for the last two days) crept up to a pleasant 70-degrees, I manage to come down with a cold. While the birds twitter happily outside at 6:00 am, I wake up sounding an awful lot like Darth Vader, breathing with an ominous rattle that leaves my voice roughly two octaves below where it ought to be.

Oh, irony.

Life skillz, yo

Today I learned how to:

• wrap a wedding cake in fondant
• staple tar paper onto the side of a house (with a staple gun!)

At long last, the moment comes

On Friday morning, I got the phone call.

The phone call.

My guitar, the work of one-and-a-half years, was finally finished.

Dave, he who dedicated many nights and weekends to constructing the guitar by hand, did a beautiful job and I had the distinct pleasure of playing the guitar at a show that very night–because it’s so vastly superior to the guitar I’ve been playing, transitioning to a new instrument hours before a performance was much, much easier that I’d expected.  I hope to have some photos posted for you soon.

Snape, who is a good guy after all, bites the dust. Oh, and Harry lives.

Every time I pick up a Harry Potter book, I manage to convince myself that, somehow, I won’t get quite so absorbed this time through–but every time, I manage to prove myself wrong.

Deathly Hallows, here I come.

Cat people. Sheesh.

I never realized just how much we’d morphed into cat people until last Friday night, when we spent a solid quarter-hour discussing various kitty litters with some new friends.

What next? Probably before long we’ll find ourselves discussing diapers (but not just yet).

Tricks and Sirens

It occurs to me that I never posted about this: my CD, Tricks & Sirens, is done!

You can listen to the whole thing at Murder Moutain Records, Virb, or Myspace–if you’d like a copy, please send me an email: thea.rosenburg@gmail.com. We can work out the details.

Also, I’ll be playing at Three Trees this Friday, so come on by! I’ll have a whole stack of ‘em there.

The Felafel Chronicles (Cont.)

Oh yeah, the felafel was tasty. I did run into some drama with dessert, however: my original plan (fresh strawberries, with chocolate ganache) needed some adjustment after I overheated the cream and consequently “broke” the ganache. I learned this term while attempting, with the help of Google and my cookbook, to remedy the problem–eventually I was able to “repair” the ganache (another new term) by cooling half of it down, then heating the other half up, and re-combining them.

Hooray! Dessert was saved.

The Felafel Chronicles

Around here, we have a bit of a joke about my apparent inability to follow a recipe. The problem isn’t quite that I attempt some artistic improvisation–not intentionally, at least–but that I tend to realize, just at the point when I’m too committed to risk running to the store, that I’ve run out of some crucial ingredient and so am forced to improvise–out of necessity. No matter how many times I read the recipe beforehand, no matter how detailed my shopping list, this happens almost invariably.

Today, however, takes the cake. While trying to make felafel, I:

• discovered that the tahini I had in the fridge had been recalled and determined “unsuitable for consumption.” Not only did this mean throwing away my (almost full!) jar of tahini, but it also left a vast stretch of empty shelf at the Co-op where tahini should rightly be. Substitution #1: cashew butter.
• realized, while making the cucumber-dill sauce, that I was completely out of dill. Solution: I borrowed some from my mom, to be added to the sauce later.
• made it all the way home from the store before realizing that I had not purchased pita bread. Felafel! Without pitas! Solution: Mitch has been commissioned to pick some up on his way home from work.
• searched and searched all through the produce department, but there was not a scallion to be found. Substition #2: garlic scapes. We’ll see how that goes.
• had planned originally to soak the chickpeas, but became concerned that, though my recipe recommended only an hour and a half for soaking, every other recipe I looked up recommended soaking the chickpeas overnight. By this time I had already purchased the dried chickpeas, and had only three hours left for prep before dinner. Substitution #4: canned chickpeas.
• found, to my surprise, that I had roughly half the amount of chickpeas required. This realization came after I went to the store and after I went to my mom’s (she had, in fact, offered me a can of chickpeas, but I’d declined, confident that I had plenty at home). Substitution #5: half chickpeas, half soy beans.
• opened a jar of cumin, only to find that it was completely empty. Substitution #4: I shook the bottle vigorously over the bowl, and settled for a “fine covering” of cumin, rather than 1/2 teaspoon.

All that, and I haven’t even cooked the felafel yet. Who knows what will come of that?