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amwritingmeta · 4 years

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Viva Italia!

If all things had gone to plan I would have been landing in Rome right now. I would have walked through Fiumincino airport and probably have gotten myself a nice (and overpriced) sandwich for lunch in the little café by the escalators before heading up into the walkway taking me straight to the Hilton.

I would’ve stood in line for my pass and felt that build of excitement and expectation and pure, unbridled joy that comes with JiB, because it’s not just the con and spending time in a room full of people I greatly appreciate and adore, it’s getting to meet up with people I only really manage to hang out with in person one week per year, and it’s staying in Rome and experiencing the chilled out holiday vibes that come with being away from the everyday rush, and omg it’s the Monday Night Concert that just tops it all off like one big, awesome, glossy, sweet cherry. Simply put, it’s magic.

But if you can’t go to Italy, then Italy will have to come to you.

That’s right, I’m doing JiB Quarantine Edition and if you wanna jump on this train, this is your formal invitation. If not, soups be to you, my friend, and all the delicious tiramisu as well, because no hard feelings ever.

Here’s the simple plan: I’m cooking Italian all week and of course I’ll be trying recipes I’ve never made before (not deterring - fun) but I’m keeping it fairly simple, and so for pizza night on Friday I won’t be making pizza from scratch. :)

Tonight and tomorrow are straight forward enough, with a movie night tonight (Roman Holiday) and a chat with @natmoose tomorrow (my travelling companion and co-conspirator) but on Friday it’s time to really dig into the JiB spirit of things with pizza night to be enjoyed with a marathon of favourite SPN episodes (it’s so hard whittling down any kind of list here) (fuck me) and if anyone want to jump on my list or just join into the spirit of the thing, please, do! And please include me!

Saturday, oh, Saturday.

On Saturday the plan is for a JiB panel marathon. Most likely in the later afternoon into the eve. (can’t pull an all day) (got responsibilities here in the everyday) There will be apple juice. There will be a mini-wheel of (mis)fortune. There will be hijinx and shenanigans. And if you have any suggestion of what should be put on the mini-wheel of (mis)fortune, do share! I’m thinking I might put “Tweet at Rob Benedict and ask him if he’d ever consider getting Quattro Fromaggio together for a one off performance to lift everyone’s spirits” and what the wheel dictates, the arrow will underline, so may the spin stop where it may!

On Sunday I want to Zoom chat with you. Yeah, with you. If we’ve met at JiB, I want to say hello. If we haven’t, I want to say hello. So if you’d like to have a brief or a long conversation, let me know and I will say hello and then some! Again, if you’d rather not, all the apple pie in the sky to you!

Monday.

Well, of course, it’s Monday Night Concert time. I’m just going to relive the good times and watch footage from the cons I’ve attended, but this is an individual choice and one might watch a smattering of material if one was so inclined. There will be G&Ts. Because tradition at this point.

On Tuesday I’m watching Call Me By Your Name and, if I can manage, baking an Italian apricot cake, but I’m exchanging the apricots for peaches. And on Wednesday it’s La Dolce Vita time, a movie which I have never actually watched, which I’ve always felt self-conscious about, because come on, Fellini already!

I’m not putting any actual times down here because I’m keeping it holiday casual and will simply potter about and enjoy these things when it befits, but if anyone wants to join and has a preference of when stuff should go down then let me know. It’ll be much more fun to do it while getting to have an exchange with you guys!

Anyway. I realise that some of you may be working and some of you may have a hard time joining in for a myriad of reasons, but I hope that you’re all keeping well (or as well as you possibly can) and that getting a bit of a distraction might be welcomed.

Until December, Rome! Ciao, amore!

Recipe for dinner tonight: Fusilli con Caponata di Melanzane

Serves 4

5 tablespoons olive oil, plus extra for drizzling

2 aubergines, peeled and diced

2 onions, sliced

3 plum tomatoes, peeled, de-seeded and diced

1 tablespoon capers, rinsed and drained

6 black olives, stoned and halved

6 basil leaves, torn

300g/11oz fusilli pasta

salt and pepper

Heat 3 tablespoons of the oil in a large frying pan. Add the aubergines and cook over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes, until they are softened and golden brown. Remove the pan from the heat and set aside.

Heat the remaining oil in a shallow pan. Add the onions and cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes, or until softened. Add the tomatoes and cook, stirring occasionally, for a further 5 minutes. Add the capers, olives and aubergines and cook for a few minutes, then remove the pan from the heat and add the basil leaves.

Bring a pan of water to the boil. Cook the pasta in a large pan of salted boiling water for 8-10 minutes, until tender but still al dente, or firm to the bite. Drain and tip into a salad bowl. Drizzle with olive oil, season with pepper and stir. Add the warm aubergine caponata, stir again and serve immediately.

(mh mh good) (hopefully) :)

All recipes will be from the cookbook Recipes from an Italian Summer by the Silver Spoon Kitchen.

#jib11 #jib week #when not in rome...#quarantine edition

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sea-salted-wolverine · 3 years

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Okay so last week was a shitkicker and was literally so bad I spent the better part of the week trying to delude myself into thinking it was a good day. Like, we're talking, "the sun is shining and I'm here to see it so today is a good day" and "I'm having a bad day- fuck me I am not haveing a bad day- I'm having a good day- I'm not having a bad day". Denial is a powerful tool for mental health, apply judiciously. I get that everyone on earth is kinda having a shitty year but it feels like things just kinda escalated in my little corner

The 7th had a huge snow storm that brought traffic to a stand still. No one could leave the house and university class was online anyway. Batshit customer demanded to pick up her gear anyway. I drove in because I was the only person with keys to the shop that could get to the building. It took me a solid 2 hours going 15mph on the highway. The snow in the parking lot was up past the fenders of my truck. Crazy lady gets 10 out of 18 of her survival suits back but the other 8 still have holes in them because our only repair tech is also the only one who answers the phone or runs the computer or handles customers or cleans or disinfects anything or stores gear. I'll give you one guess who that person is.

Did you guess me? Good for you. Fun fact this was not the case in October.

Crazy lady swans off through the snowed in parking lot and because she cant find the exit, blasts straight through the ditch and onto the road.

I say fuck it and leave. I've been at work for 2 hours. I have made 24 dollars for my trouble. It takes me another hour to get home.

The 8th is Saturday and I'm supposed to be at work. No one can drive. There was another 10 8nches of snow last night. I say fuck work and go to dig out the plow truck. The canopy over the plow truck collapses as I walk out to clear the snow of it.

I do not scream.

My partner and I get the truck running and go plow people out of their driveways and then go do the shop.

We come back home and the heater doesn't work. We just spent most of last week frantically trying to limp the thing along because no heat at -20°F is in a word fucking unpleasant. At least now its 40 degrees warmer because if the snowstorm. We take it apart again. The house smells like diesel. The house smells like exhaust. The house is not cold because the wood stove can keep up at 20 above zero but it won't keep us through the winter.

There is no saving the oil heater. We need a new one.

Its 730 and neither of us have eaten. I start rice in the pressure cooker so I can throw a tasty bite on top and call it dinner and that dies too. Explosively.

Dinner is half cooked rice and microwaved curry.

Sunday is spent finding a way to stretch our increasingly thin budget to buy a new heater. Between us we actually have 2275$ and we will still cover the mortgage. Somehow. All our Christmas gifts will be hand made this year. The next thing that breaks will stay broken.

Monday, power outages due to snow storm. No wifi, no zoom meetings. Another 8 inches of snow. This is now more snow than my city gets for the full year.

My boss calls sobbing. The dog died. Joey, an 11 year old, 130lb mastiff with a tumor the size of a football on his liver has been her constant companion for at least 8 years. The pandemic has confused the bejesus out of him because while he loves the lock down and going out to play every hour or so he doesnt really like the concept of strangers in masks. Hes a guard dog and doesnt understand that men in masks coming into the shop are not here to kill mom they're wearing masks so they don't kill mom.

Mondays the shop is closed anyway and I spend it installing the new heater. It doesn't quite fit in the space the old heater came out of but its warm.

Tuesday, I go to work, everyone cancels class, I once again gently explain to a regular that eugenics is bad. I would like to curse him out. I cant. He drops a grand on scuba gear and leaves, talking about how great his trip to Mexico will be.

I do not scream.

A friend calls to ask how I'm doing. Not great. Yea, her niether. She asks if I want to go out to the backcountry with her over the weekend. I explain that my leg physically does not move and I'm downing copious amounts of advil to remain upright. The doctor sent me in for an MRI but has not yet called back. Plus I'm supposed to go to Valdez for the weekend and actually go diving. That I can do with limited use of my leg.

She says yikes, take it easy, take care of yourself, I love you.

I say, yikes, I'm tired of taking it easy, I wanna play, I love you too.

Hit me up if your plans open up and we can do something gentle on your leg. She says.

God yes. The cold woods away from people sounds like paradise. I dont even care that it will cause me rending physical pain to get there. I need a break.

Its Wednesday. I go to school. I get pulled over. Miraculously I dont get a ticket. I'm white female and conventionaly attractive, maybe not so miraculous. I rolled through a stop sign but I'm pretty sure I couldn't afford a ticket.

I get a text in class. One of the instructors who works with the dive shop has tested positive for covid. I haven't seen the man in 2 months. I needed a spare instructor but he was nowhere to be found. But hey, evidently that's a good thing.

I go to work. I vacillate between doing the job a 4 people and having nothing to do.

I go to the grocery store because I misjudged my last monthly grocery run and even though I'm increasing my exposure I'm out of cheese and tea damnit.

The store is packed. Pandemic who?

My partner and I haven't had a date nite in a while and this week has been shitty. I want a nice dinner. I pick up a couple boxes of the carton sushi which isnt terrible and is about as nice as I can justify on the new budget. I grab a gallon of milk and a few other things. I forgot my wallet in the truck and the cashier is chill and sets my stuff aside while I grab it.

I pay and take my stuff home and realize I left one of my bags at the store. No cheese or tea for me.

Thursday. 10am my phone goes off with an emergency alert. The govoner has grown a spine in light of recent elections and is instituting a voluntary lock down. My state has 500 new cases a day. That might not sound like a lot but theres only 300,000 people in Alaska and we've got poor medical infrastructure.

Unfortunately Alaska is full of Alaskans and nobody can tell us what to do. Nothing changes. 7pm rolls around and I'm teaching scuba classes in the pool.

I load a few hundred pounds of scuba gear into the back of my truck. In a wet wetsuit. In the snow. In a fabric facemask. 6 feet apart. In the pool.

I dont get paid for pool time.

Over the summer we had 6 dive masters including me, all big burly dudes, much better suited to picking things up. Its November and I'm the only one.

The kids I'm teaching are going to Hawaii. They're 10 and 13 and so wildly excited about breathing underwater its beautiful to watch. And they're traveling to an island. In a pandemic.

Friday.

Unload scuba gear so it doesnt get stolen out of the back of my truck while I'm at class. Were doing a make up lab today. Hey of the five student in my class only one of us has covid so theres that.

My boss calls an let's me know that shes left for Valdez without me. If I'd like to make an 8 hour drive by myself in a snowstorm I'm welcome to follow.

I'm in class till an hour before shop closing. I'm not driving across town so I can run on the open sign for half an hour.

The shop stays closed on Friday.

Saturday.

I explained to everyone we had business with that the shop would be closed over the weekend and Friday. I planned on being in Valdez. Hell I canceled plans to be in Valdez.

I open the shop and immediately field calls about why we werent open. I start to explain about the Valdez trip and logistical difficulties and then I realize that shes not mad about that. The woman was here before I opened early this morning. We have never been open that early. The hours are on the door.

A regular comes in. Hes also confused as to why I'm here.

Sunday finds me curled up in bed, reluctant to leave. Getting out of bed has not played out well for me recently.

A friend comes over to chat with my partner about specialist rifle parts. This isnt that wierd, he works at a gun shop and they've been discussing upgrading my partners current rifle set up.

He is wearing a full Scottish kilt. Red tartan. Looks very lovely.

I make zucchini bread and my proportions are a little off because I have too much zucchini so it's a little over moist but it's good. I'm recovering from an asskicker of a week and next week will be better.

Monday morning:

Baby brother has covid

Dads getting the results of his rapid test tonight.

Mom isnt getting tested because she says she doesnt have symptoms but that's not the fucking point mom.

So, I'm not going home for thanksgiving. I'm not diving in Valdez. I'm not skiing backcountry.

I'm not sick. I'm not flat broke yet. I dont have a ticket. I have a job. I have people who care about me. Im managing my physical and mental health as best I can. Im just fucking exhausted.

#vent post #writing #holy fuuuuuck #2020

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