Until I left Southwestern Pennsylvania, Chinese food was La Choy chow mein. Polish and German food were common, due to our proximity to Pittsburgh, but beyond that, the Betty Crocker Cookbook was our menu.

Not Betty Crocker, but Fanny Farmer cookbooks.

When I went back for my mother's funeral, my oldest sister, who lived in the Bay Area, and I were discussing sushi, and all the relatives who had never left the rural county where we grew up looked at us a little funny. Apparently I can pass for cosmopolitan to the denizens of Greene County, PA.

OMG, the fact that I could visit Boston without fear seemed to mark me as 'cosmopolitan' in the white French-Canadian population of Northern New England. Shoot, visiting Manchester was deemed dangerous and exotic. My family might as well have been on a suicide mission when we headed to Boston. There was a lot of fear where I grew up of "large" cities.

I picked up a hitch-hiker once who was asking whether I lived in "the city" and he was referring to the capitol, Concord, which is a quaint small city, but really more like a middling-large historic downtown. He was a mountain dude. It's all relative, I guess.

I picked up a hitch-hiker once who was asking whether I lived in "the city" and he was referring to the capitol, Concord, which is a quaint small city, but really more like a middling-large historic downtown. He was a mountain dude. It's all relative, I guess.

You're not wrong, I've taught Ryan that Melbourne has a population of three million, and his Chinese grandparents are sitting there listening and sniffing, 'how quaint'.

Spoiler font to be nice.

Can we do that a little more, please? I'm staying out of Boxed Set to avoid spoilage and y'all have been a little too specific in blackfont re: Sleepy Hollow for my taste.

Mmm, Bayou Bagelry. They had several locations, the one on St. Charles in the LGD was walking distance of several places I lived. I was very sad when they decided not to reopen.

There's no place to get a bagel that good in Solano County, sad to say.

Cash, I hope the news only gets better.

I had a hairbrained idea for a project at work and am really hoping it gets termed brilliant and doable because otherwise this insanity is going to continue.

Also, procrastination validation! I've been avoiding calling the gutter people to follow up on the email I sent with my concerns. Well, tonight I came home to an email from the owner saying he'll meet with me after he returns from vacation. Excellent!

Now, to get around to yelling at my car insurance. For all that I have no problem putting my foot down at work and escalating, I don't really enjoy having to track people down to fix their mistakes. I get paid to do that at work; I don't like it when I am the one paying!

Bleh, I want everything to calm the fuck down.

Comparing the construction on my parents' 22 year old house to my 82 year old...well, in 60 years, the bones on theirs won't hold up as well as this one, even with much better upkeep. OTOH, their right angles are indeed all 90°, their water won't be rusty (but when a leak springs in the plumbing in the pad, the disruption will be epic) and I'm pretty sure the actual safety in code changes between 1931 and 2013 were vastly more dramatic than will be for 1991 to 2073...

My mother was international enough that I thought myself urbane. But I discovered Polish food in university and thought I was being pranked, and Thai food and thought I'd been being tortured by living without it. But she was good--outside of wherever we were living and always J'can, she was diligent about her Italian, Chinese, Greek, French, Spanish, American, Mexican, and a touch of Japanese. And then there's be theme weeks like West African (no rice, what???) and the like. She cooks what I call "food" and the rest is "ethnic". But I think she would cook most anything if there's the right level of challenge (a little, not a lot--new food is fine, time is okay, hard work is for holidays. So I'm sure I missed shit because I was 12 and not taking notes other than "okay, so ratatouille is lasagne with different food, and baklava tastes better with cheese and spinach" (because that's how I filed stuff at 12).

She never baked bread, though, which I thought was weird. When I started she said she'd never been able to get it right, and I was startled "It's an experiment with reactants! How can you do your job and not grow a bit of yeast in the kitchen???"

I'm sorry, -t! I wasn't thinking.

Even chinese was exotic where I grew up! We didn't have much in the way of chinese takeout. Every variety of NMican cuisine, a couple italian places...that was it, outside of standard american and some health-hippy stuff. Now, they have thai and mongolian and plenty of cheap chinese takeout. There was at least a couple indian places, but not sure how they've fared. One was really good, too.

I'm not so confrontation avoidant that I can't yell at the kid knocking trash cans into the alley as he danced home. 'Seriously?! Go put them back' 'Yes ma'am, sorry ma'am.' slinks back and rights them. 'Thank you!'