The high and the low

Today's high:
I went to the Smashing Pumpkins' studio this morning to deliver their meals for the day and bumped into Jimmy Chamberlain in the kitchen as I was making my way to stock the band's refrigerator. He was very nice and said, "Hi. I'm Jimmy," and shook my hand. It was a warm, firm handshake. But that probably goes without saying, since he is the drummer and all. I saw this picture of him on the Internet and his arms are cut (See below.... What! I had to do my research before going out there.)

Today's low:
I ate a bag of Kettle chips that were past their expiration date. The good thing about working at a food company is that there is a lot of food around. The bad thing is that some of it is expired, and that is why it is sitting in boxes around the office. There's also a huge tub of abandoned Honest Teas out back, which don't taste that bad.

The parking ticket gods have it in for me

I've gotten $135 worth of parking tickets in the last three months. The latest incident was today, when I was playing fast and loose with a 1-hour meter in Hollywood. Being a cheapskate, I parked at a meter in front of a Famima store instead of using a pay lot. Made a mental note to add more money at 12:15, sat down to lunch with a friend, and then forgot and blew deadline by 9 minutes. Ran the 25 feet to my car only to be greeted by the familiar sight of a pink slip on my windshield. I love the City of Los Angeles. Or rather, the City of Los Angeles loves me. Who wouldn't love someone who regularly makes out checks to you?

I am pretty sure someone up there doesn't approve of my skirting of parking regulations and is trying to teach me a lesson. Other dumb things I have done in the past few weeks, for which I have mostly been punished:

1. Parked in a UCLA parking lot twice with a parking permit that expired last quarter, to attend a free yoga class (Yes, I am that cheap.)
2. Failed to see a meter that was concealed behind a telephone pole -- at least from my vantage point -- and just assumed I'd found a cool, meter-less parking spot (Earned a ticket for that one.)
3. Misread a sign and thought that I could park without feeding a meter on Wilshire Blvd. after 4 pm (In fact, it was no stopping after 4 pm. That was a $65 ticket. Ouch.)
4. Violated my company parking lot's rule that employees must park on the roof and leave covered spots for visitors, by swiping my key card as though I was going to go on the roof and then backing up and taking a covered spot (The key card got deprogrammed or something as a result of that little maneuver, and I had to go 'fess up at the parking office.)

I think my problem stems from the fact that I think parking should be treated like a public good, like oxygen or sidewalk space. Or at least not be so restrictive and expensive. Like parking signs should be worded in a more friendly and understandable way (Example: Try not to stop here between the hours of 4 and 6 pm, as many commuters are trying to get home) and meters should give you at least a half-hour for every 25 cents, not just 7 and 1/2 freakin' minutes.

But I am resigned. Today, to appease the gods, I put a quarter in someone else's expired meter. Hopefully, that will improve my parking karma or at least buy me some extra time before my inevitable next violation.

There is a cloud inside my head

I went out last night and got hammered. Which hasn't happened in a very, very long time. What started out as a nice, innocent dinner with people from work -- a treat from two very fun VPs who are in town this week -- somehow evolved into a 6-hour food- and drinkfest. My first taste of a kamikaze was also my last in a long line of drinks (These food people and their wine pairings! Plus cocktails before the meal and an aperitif after, and shots downed first thing after entering a bar). It was at that point that my boss tried to put me in a cab. Even though I knew I was pretty far gone, I valiantly resisted. He finally let me leave when a coworker invited me to crash at her place, which was nearby. But I told her thanks and goodbye, and headed to my car. I shut my eyes for 10 dizzy minutes, then pushed off slowly and carefully.

The idea of leaving my car behind, even though my boss offered to park it at his hotel, was really unappealing. I am so car-dependent. A new adjective: cardependent.

Definitely not promoting this kind of behavior. In the future, I promise to switch to water well before the end of the evening, like a responsible adult. In any case, I'm being punished for overindulging because I woke up at 4:30 this morning and was unable to fall back asleep. So I made myself a bowl of noodles, which did not turn out that well. (Sorry, noodles.) I'm gonna be a zombie today. This is not good, because I have a meeting to negotiate a pay raise in a couple of hours.

Food for Pumpkins

The personal assistant of the Smashing Pumpkins called me today to say the band wanted to try our food. So I drove over to a discreet old building in Santa Monica that currently serves as their recording studio with some food samples -- sandwiches, wraps, salads, and soup. Also a bunch of snacks and some organic teas and sodas in non-plastic bottles. They don't like to drink out of plastic.

Dave Matthews was recording in another studio upstairs, the assistant told me. I didn't get to meet the band members, Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlain, but I think saw them in session through an open doorway. I'm not really sure. I set up the food real nice in their lounge and took off. The assistant was very sweet and grateful, because we were promo'ing the food. How funny that I got to pick what they ate today. And if they like it, we may be feeding them all the time! They are into healthy food these days.

Recipe of the Day

Slightly Dirty Vodka Martini

Take chilled vodka out of the freezer and pour into a shaker over ice. Add a small splash of olive brine and a smaller splash of dry vermouth. Shake it up until your hands hurt from the cold metal. Pour into martini glass garnished with 3 olives.

Smoking is bad, but good

This is the third place I've worked at now where there are other smokers. And here, as before, I find that I am way more plugged into office gossip once people know I smoke.

It seems like the majority of restaurant-industry types, in particular, have this habit. They emerge from the kitchen or whatever, all stressed and angry from some mishap, and light up in a corner or against a wall. Huddled together, they find relief in a soothing circle of smoke and friends. They exchange news -- who's getting fired, who got promoted, what the health inspector said -- commiserate about a bad boss or an incompetent co-worker. Then they go back to work, lungs a bit heavier but with lighter hearts.

So, yes. Smoking is bad. But it's good for some things.

I shoulda been a copy editor

So today, my company asked me to go over our new menu with a "fine-toothed comb." I think they are going to live to regret it. I'm sorry, but regular people -- civilians -- people who have not worked inside a newspaper -- just don't have the same eye for "clean copy."

OMG. This menu that has supposedly been worked-over for months is riddled with errors. Mind you, it is meant to go to the printers tomorrow and my boss just asked me off-hand this afternoon if I would take a look. This thing has missing hyphens and willy-nilly capitalization. Little phrases that pop out of nowhere into the food descriptions and are supposed to sound spontaneous and fun, but really just sound dumb. Wrong spellings like "arrugula." Argh! If my anal self didn't get so much warped satisfaction out of correcting this disaster of a menu, I might actually be angry.

Here is a pdf of my report back to my boss listing the mistakes I found in the 6 pages of this menu, just so one can appreciate the magnitude of the problems without actually having to read the gory details.

Summer resolution

I hereby resolve to do something useful with September, since I won't be working anymore or going back to school yet. Now that I'm putting myself out there, hopefully I'll be more likely to actually do it.

Read some books:
That Starbucks book
The World is Flat
The Great Game
Horse Sense
and also my advertising textbook which I never even cracked open last year.

I'd also like to find some good introductory text on Western philosophy, and I want to go through a couple of Chinese/English books that my mom brought me back from Taiwan, to brush up on my miserable Chinese.

That's about it, at least for summer reading. I'll report back on my progress at the end of next month.

Auto interactions

These car-related incidents took place in the last two days, and are so typical of Los Angeles. Out here, people don't really chat each other up on the street because nobody walks anywhere. So these types of things are about all the interaction I have with strangers, now that I am back in this car-crazed town.

Rush hour, yesterday: I'm waiting to turn left at a busy intersection, and this guy in a Mercedes drives up behind me, honks and starts waving his arms in a forward motion, mouthing "Go!" He means that I should pull forward further into the intersection, like I'm some little old lady who doesn't know better. In reality, I know plenty, and I sometimes even pull out further than I'd like, just so the next car can get his nose out also. But in this case, I don't budge. It's a small and crowded intersection, and I don't want to intimidate the car opposite me that is also waiting to turn left. So I give the guy a crazy wave in the rear view mirror, one of these overly enthusiastic waves you might give an old friend you haven't seen in a while. And the guy starts cracking up.

On the way to work, this morning: I'm waiting at a red light at the freeway off-ramp. An Acura * turns onto the ramp and the driver's eyes connect with mine. He gives me a nod. One of those cool-guy nods.

After work, today: I'm at the coin-operated self-serve car wash, and a short, older guy with a wrinkled, sun-baked face is hustling me for change. For food for his boy, he says. I tell him I can buy him some food, if he can wait until I'm done wiping my car dry. He says fine and goes to sit down. Then I accidentally pluck off one of my windshield wipers and he comes back over to try to help me. He's really trying, but is even less effective than I am. After a couple of awkward minutes, an Australian guy who's been polishing his Porsche nearby walks over and tells my guy to cut it out, to stop bothering me. I can see my guy feels slightly threatened, but is also genuinely kind of offended. He looks at me for help, but all I say is it's all right, it's all right, to both of them. I take the wiper back and manage to reattach it. Before I leave, I give my guy two organic power bars that I swiped from work and a slight smile to the Porsche man as I pull out of the lot.

* Don't ask my why I notice the make of every car all of a sudden. Oh wait, I live in LA.

Soft-boiled eggs

Today's topic: Soft-boiled eggs! The best way, in my opinion, to enjoy one of nature's most delicious foods. I have one of these for breakfast a couple of times a week, and it always makes me happy.



To prepare:

• Take a nice, fresh egg and cover it with cold water in a small pot.
• Turn the heat on high, until the water boils.
• Turn off the burner, leaving the lid on. Wait 3 minutes and rinse the egg in cold water.
• Place your soft-boiled egg in an egg cup (or if you don't have one, a shot glass also works).
• Using a small spoon, crack the top of the eggshell and peel off a large enough section for your spoon to enter.
• Sprinkle with a bit of salt and scoop out small spoonfuls of egg, taking care not to make the yolk overflow. (Hint: Scoop from the inside out, not along the inside of the shell)

Bonus tip: Dips small strips of buttered bread in the yolk.

You can adjust the cooking time to your taste. Some people wait 5 minutes to remove the egg from its hot bath, for a slightly firmer egg. As for me, I sometimes like to undercut the 3 minutes so that part of the egg white is still a little runny, but warm and delicious.

For a close runner-up, I love an egg that has been gently coddled in soup noodles such as ramen. Just before the noodles are done, I crack a raw egg into them and continue cooking on medium heat for 3-4 minutes. The great thing about softly cooked eggs is that they don't become rubbery, and so you can really savor them.

Update

Derrick hasn't been fired yet, which is good. I really hope it doesn't happen. If I was his employer, I don't know what I would do in his case.

I've been thinking lately -- and this is by no means an original thought -- about how owning a business really means having stewardship over a lot of people's well-being. And that's a responsibility of some consequence. It doesn't make me shrink wanting to run my own company. In fact, it makes me want to even more.

I just hope it's not vanity that is motivating me. There's a blurry line between doing good for the sake of doing good, and doing it for vanity's sake.

Raw words

I'm listening to a rap CD created by a delivery driver at the catering company where I'm interning. His name is Derrick, he's 32, and he grew up in Inglewood and dealt drugs and eventually ended up in prison. A few times. His last felony conviction was 8 years ago, though, and that's how he was able to get this job. The company only looks back 5 years into a person's history.

So the music is about messing up in life, being in prison, getting out, the girl who didn't wait, turning things around, "polishing vowels," searching for salvation through flow. It's called Influents.

This is real life
This is not rap
This ain't rap
This is just a lesson of real life
Peaceful days turned into stressed-out nights

Derrick lives in an apartment on Skid Row. He's started a record label, incorporated it and everything, and is saving up to buy a computer so he can produce music. He spent $700 recently to buy a keyboard worth $3,000, put up for sale on Craigslist by a pastor who didn't need it anymore. Derrick converted to Islam in 2000 and has thought a lot about religion, society and politics.

He doesn't know it yet, but he is about to be fired. Today, according to his furious supervisor, he was late to a couple of deliveries in Santa Monica and unreachable by cell phone. Apparently his last day will be Friday.