the early bird special

Last night I went to an information session on the Master of Science in Information Studies program at UW, had the most delicious pumpkin beer at Big Time Brewery, ate Swimming Rama with prawns at Thai Tom and went to go see Jens Lekman in Fremont. All amazing things. Jens, oh, Jens, even with my overdeveloped English major vocabulary I don't know enough synonyms for the word "magical" to do that show justice. Jens was traveling with a giant band of attractive Swedish girls with hip haircuts and orchestral instruments and Floyd's Swedish doppelganger dj-ing from a laptop. Jens sang and told anecdotes and danced and played guitar and keyboards and I swooned and swooned and swooned over and over again. Towards the beginning, it looked like Cody and I were going to be stuck standing near a group of awful talkers, but the crowd shifted around and instead we were right next to an adorable girl that friendly and under five feet. The girl and her friends seemed charmed that we were worried about her being able to see the stage, and we danced together, and she told me about the time when she and Jens walked around an art museum in Chicago together. I imagine it was just like in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. (True story, I have never been to Chicago and have absolutely no idea which or how many art museums are there, so as far as I'm concerned, they were listening to instrumental Smith's melodies and looking at Seurat paintings.) The best stage banter came after Jens had played a solo-version of Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al" but omitting all the choruses; he said that he liked silly songs like that, but that he hated the chorus, and that he also hated Chevy Chase's stupid face. Total magic.

Other highlights of the past week include a crisp fall walk in the arboretum with Megan, the illustrious Toby Shuster, finally seeing the Pipettes with Elisa.

Tonight I'm making my first bolognese sauce from scratch, improvised from Mark Bittman's instructions. I doubled the recipe, increased the meat, and used turkey and lamb with beef instead of ground pork. I substitute ground turkey for most recipes, and I had some frozen ground lamb that I figured would give the sauce a little more of a Greek twist.

Hello, November!