26 Before 26: Eat an Oyster

9 Mar

 

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In my 26th year of life, I am attempting 26 new things that I’ve never done before. Full list here.

A couple of weeks ago (my blogging timeliness has really fallen by the wayside, folks), a couple of friends and I ventured out to a new cocktail bar in Brooklyn called the Bellwether. I subscribe to an email list in New York called Thrillist. They send out daily emails of amazing places to eat and drink in New York. They have never steered me wrong. The email I received from them about Bellwether was entitled “Oysters in the Front, Party in the Back.” I had found the place to try my first oyster.

The neighborhood we walked through was a bit sketchy. Abandoned lots, warehouses, then (as is Brooklyn’s style) a bunch of cute, trendy bars and restaurants. When we walked into Bellwether, I saw behind the bar, alongside the requisite bottles of alcohol, was a section of the bar on ice, full of oysters. We ordered our drinks (I opted for my standby Manhattan), and I ordered the oyster platter. There were three varieties on the plate, and as the bartender told me them, I nodded along pretending to know the difference, but actually had no idea what she was talking about. I think one of the varieties was from Martha’s Vineyard? Fun fact. It was only a couple of years ago that I learned that Martha’s Vineyard is not a vineyard in Napa Valley. Nope. Not at all.

The oysters were lovely and tasted like eating gooey, mucousy ocean. I liked the sauces that were paired with it, and it was an interesting experience to eat something that was so oceany. I had one of those synesthesia moments, like how Chai tastes like Christmas to me. Christmas doesn’t have a flavor. Oceans aren’t edible. But it’s that in-the-moment undefinable knowledge that those two things must be somehow linked. Oysters are like slurping ocean!

That being said, I didn’t love them. I didn’t dislike them either. I think the whole chilled seafood thing threw me for a loop, and I felt awkward slurping them. After all, it was such a nice little cocktail bar, and I felt like I wasn’t using my proper table manners. I liked them though and am anxious to try some of the other more legendary oyster bars in New York.

Brian and I

7 Mar

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We’re awfully cute. I just felt compelled to share.

He took this on a subway ride one night before we went out. I’m so happy we’ve become friends this last year, and with his cousin/one of my dearest friends Zach visiting this weekend….it’s going to be amazing. Pure and simple.

My First Surgery

4 Mar
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Me in my scrubs.

My vet tech training has been going slow. I am still working full time at the front desk (the practice manager is not letting me go easily), so I can only do my training one day a week. There is so much to learn, and it isn’t easy to do it once a week for five hours. I’m fairly comfortable running lab tests, and I am getting better at restraining animals, although cats still scare me, squirmy little bastards.

I meant to write this post weeks ago when I actually did assist in my first surgery, but as always, I’m way too busy. Four/Five hours of sleep a night has become the norm. Lots of coffee, lots of power-napping, I somehow get by.

Anywho, my very first surgery! Shit just got real. My first procedure was a neutering on an adorable French Bulldog. Of course, the first thing to do is to knock out the animal, which I’ve done many times since, and it’s fun. I’m usually restraining the animal, while another technician injects them with Ketamine and Valium. Animals, like humans, don’t enjoy having needles stuck into their veins. So I hold the animal in a tight grip. They squirm, make confused yelping noises, try to scratch/bite. Then, at last, the other technician hits the vein. The animal stops squirming, sits, lets the front paws slide forward. My grip is loosened, as the animal kind of looks around in a blissed-out stare.

“There you go,” Darryl, one of the other technicans likes to say. “Ket/Val is your friend, baby.”

The animal is out. We intubate and prep them for surgery. Anesthesia is a scary and delicate thing. All of the surgeries I assist in, I just stand there in cap and surgical mask, watching carefully, trying to not get in the way. Techs aren’t allowed to touch the pet during surgery. They’re more there to make sure the patient is okay and get the doctor sutures, collect biopsy samples, etc. I kept wanting to watch the deftness of the surgeon’s hands, see what he was doing, but I had to remind myself, that’s not my job.

During my first surgery, Dr. S kept asking me if I was okay. Was the blood making me woozy? Did I feel nauseous? He kept telling me to go sit down if I thought I was going to pass out. I actually felt fine. The only thing that was bothering me was breathing through the surgery mask, which sometimes feels smothering.

After the procedure, Dr. S also did a lacrimal duct flush, and while he did he asked me what I thought. I stood there talking to him for a moment, before I realized absentmindedly that there on the surgical table in front of me, among the surgical knives, scissors, sutures, were two tiny testicles. Once I realized they were there, it was hard to look away. It’s easy to use the euphemism “neuter.” But there were two excised testicles sitting in front of me. I can’t believe where my life has taken me.

It was a simple procedure, one of the most common ones done in veterinary medicine, and I really had no problem with it. Oh, but the mass excision of a bloody anal mass we did last Friday? I had to go sit down, put my head between my knees, and take many deep breaths.

26 Before 26: Take a Pole Dancing Class

26 Feb

In my 26th year of life, I am attempting 26 new things that I’ve never done before. Full list here.

My friend Junie and I have been talking about taking a pole dancing class for a long time. We even bought Groupons a couple of months ago. However, our schedules just never seemed to align, and the couple of times we registered for classes, they were cancelled because of weather.

Junie is going through a rough time, and earlier in the week, she came out of the bathroom, drying her eyes. She sat down at her computer and solemnly declared, “This Friday, we pole dance.”

I am there for my friends. If you are going through a rough time, I am at your disposal. I take pride in being there for the important people in my life, because they have proven to be there for me. So if I must pole dance to help a friend out…I must pole dance.

First of all, pole dancing isn’t stripping. At no point were clothes removed, and we were all in tank tops and shorts. It wasn’t as much cardio as I would have liked, but it definitely made my muscles burn. It was an introductory class, and the teacher taught us a quick little routine. Everyone felt a little silly doing some of the moves, but when she put the music on, it became a bit easier to lose inhibitions and have fun with it. I LOVED the head rolls (the easiest part). While walking around the pole, you essentially flip your hair around in a seductive way.

Our instructor was incredible, and when she danced the routine, she looked unbelievably confident and sexy. I want to have that level of confidence in myself. I spent most of the routine trying to get my feetwork right and to follow the beat. (By the way, “Cream” by Prince is probably the best confidence-boosting song I’ve heard of late. It’s been on repeat on my ipod.)

“You’re so cool, everything you do is success,
Make the rules, then break them all ’cause you are the best.”

Toward the end of class, she gave us an introductory lesson on the two most difficult parts of pole dancing, spinning and climbing. I had a rough time with the spins, mainly because they rely so heavily on upper body strength of which I have none. But climbing, I’m on it. Literally. Once I figured out that it was all in the thighs, I popped myself up about two feet off the ground. I could hear Junie whooping at me. I followed the instructors directions, let go of the pole, and arched my back, holding on just by my legs. I. felt. hot.

Junie was incredible. She was the most confident one there, and I was so happy to help her get out of her own head for a while.

We have our next class next week.

My Blogging Anxiety

17 Feb

I have always been an autobiographical writer. I don’t have the imagination of Roald Dahl or J.R.R. Tolkein. I can’t create worlds, and when I try, it’s never as good. My writing is at its best when I am writing from my heart. I am a storyteller of my own personal experiences. This last week I was at a bar with my Dodgeball teammates, and I was telling them a story from when I worked at the hospital in Reno. All eyes were on me. Everyone was laughing and staring at me with rapt attention. When my story concluded, my one teammate looked at me with wide eyes and said, “Do you have any more hospital stories?” I live for those moments.

I’ve been wanting to blog more, write about my life and my experiences. Like most writers, I am writing/perfecting stories in my head throughout the day. But something happens when I put myself in front of the computer.

I had kept a blog throughout high school and college, putting all my teenage angst and brand-new college experiences on the interwebs for all to see. This was before Facebook. Facebook has changed our world, how we view ourselves, how we can shape ourselves to be viewed by others. But when I was a college freshmen, it was a brand new thing, only available at mine and a handful of other universities. So I put my blog link on my about me.

I remember the moment blogging changed for me. It was the day before heading back to Reno for summer break, post-freshman year of college. My friends and I were all at a party, drinking beer, taking lots of pictures, saying our proper drunken goodbyes. At some point, a couple of my friends came up to me and told me that they read my blog.

Ah, how nice, I thought. My friends read and enjoy my blog! This is a new and exciting experience!

“So who’s the third guy?” they all asked me.

My heart sank. I knew exactly what post they were talking about. The one I didn’t think anyone was ever going to read. It listed three guys that I was flirting/involved/interested in? I don’t really remember the gist of it. But the third guy. I remember. I wrote about how I secretly cared for this person. How when he had a bad day, I wanted to make it better. How I desperately (at the time) wanted to be more than friends, but I didn’t want anyone to know about it. Now everybody knew about it! Throughout the night, different people came up to me asking me who it was. The very boy in question even came up to me and asked me who it was. But I was too young and self-conscious to simply say, “You.” I never approached blogging the same way.

The same situation has been somewhat occurring in the last year. Boys that I’ve dated or become involved with tell me they’ve read my blog, found the link on facebook, or that they googled me and found articles I’ve written elsewhere. I’ve always appreciated it immensely, especially when they gush about liking it (how flattering!), but then I find myself sitting down to write a blog and worrying about every person I’ve dated ever or been friends with ever or briefly met ever reading my blog and judging me.

I love writing that is honest, that discusses serious emotion, complicated situations. This is the kind of writer I want to be. I just don’t know if I’m brave enough to do it.

26 Before 26: Cook a Fish Dish

6 Feb
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Drinking wine out of mugs? You betcha.

In my 26th year of life, I am attempting 26 new things that I’ve never done before. Full list here.

Thursday night, Brian and I made plans to get together to watch the new season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. A week or so ago, we spent an evening drinking wine and eating Oreos, watching previous seasons on Netflix. The show is awesome. It’s hilarious and extremely low budget. After our respective bottles of wine were finished, we started writing down our favorite RuPaul quotes.

“Sharpen your claws, baby. It’s a jungle out there!”

Thanks Ru!

So for this week, it was my turn to host the viewing. I decided to use this opportunity to knock another item off my list. After all, I have 24 items left and only 8 months. Where is this year going?!

For Christmas my mother bought be Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” It’s the most thorough cookbook I’ve ever used,which is great because I have no experience with French cooking. I decided to cook the simplest dish: Fish Filets Poached in White Wine (Filets de Poisson Poches Au Vin Blanc). My Julia recommended using Sole, so I went to a fancy grocery store near my office. They had it….at $28/pound! Not. Happening. So I went with the Hake, which was still pricey at $12/pound, but this was my first ever fish dish!

I have to hit four different grocery stores in my neighborhood to come up with the various ingredients necessary, and I finally get home to start cooking. I had skimmed over the recipe beforehand, but now that I read it more carefully, I realized that the recipe did not include the sauce. I thought it was fish in a white wine sauce, but no. I hollered a profane word and looked through the cookbook for the simplest sauce I could fine. I decided on a basic white sauce (Sauce Bechamel), and I ran to the corner store to grab some flour to thicken the roux.

Brian arrived in the nick of time, and I put him to work stirring. Cooking is not a difficult task, but when you become over ambitious, like moi, you find yourself trying to saute brussel sprouts, monitor the poached fish, and stir a roux to the appropriate level of thickness.

It all came together, though. The brussel sprouts were amazing, just due to the fact that brussel sprouts in a shit-ton of garlic and butter will always be amazing. The fish was perfectly cooked, although I found a couple of bones in the piece I ate, and the roux was a bit bland. I think I needed more salt/pepper/seasoning/something. But, honestly, neither of us got food poisoning the next day, and we enjoyed our meal. So, sweet success!!

We shared a bottle of Merlot that a vendor gave me at work, split a sleeve of Oreos for dessert and watched the drag queens argue and fight. As Ru would say, “You’ve got to know who you are, and flaunt it. All. The. Time.”

January 23, 2012

3 Feb

Let me introduce you all to a new holiday! It’s January 23rd!

In Brian’s family, they celebrate that day every year. Why? The real question is why not. I thought it was a little strange at first as he explained to me that they all got together, dressed in silly costumes and toasted the day. Sometimes his family would have a murder mystery dinner party, sometimes they’d play poker, and sometimes they’d play strip yahtzee. Living in New York, Brian decided to throw his own January 23rd event in the West Village at a karaoke bar.

An amalgamation of people showed up, some of us wearing silly hats, all of us ready to drink and sing. Highlights included Brian’s falsetto “Kiss” by Prince, “A Whole New World” with a very deep, baritone singing as Princess Jasmine, and my rendition of “Just a Friend” by Biz Markie (if I do say so myself.)

By the end of the night I was sold on the holiday. It was a day to celebrate and have fun with friends. One could argue that most weekends/birthdays/random Thursdays can represent the same thing. But what makes holidays so special anyways? Aren’t they all just another day in the calendar year? Sometimes I feel pretty burnt out on other holidays. Christmas never seems to live up to the heartwarming hype that we are bombarded with. Halloween comes with an enormous amount of pressure to find a costume that makes you look attractive/creative/entertaining, and you have to find a party to go to with equally attractive, creative, entertaining people. Valentine’s Day used to be fun, but I’ve been bombarded with heart-shaped things for the last month, and I kind of want to just get it over with.

January 23rd is different. It’s a secret among us few elite. No special decorations, no traditions, special recipes, stupid songs. Just. Have. Fun. With your friends! With your family! With some random lonely dude who sings a mean “Total Eclipse of the Heart” at a karaoke bar.

As I headed out that night, I promised Brian that I too would carry on the memory of January 23rd from that day on. He told me, “Our motto is ‘spread the word.'” Okay, he kind of drunkenly slurred it, and I’m pretty sure he made it up then and there. But the fact that January 23rd has no motto makes it all the better!

R Train

1 Feb

I don’t think it’s any secret that I form attachments to strange things. Like when I yawn, this weird creaking noise comes out of the deepest recesses of my throat. I just love it!

So I’ve fallen in love with a train. I guess the love has been there for a while, but it was a couple of drunken weekends ago that I professed my love to poor Gian. I believe I casually asked him what his favorite train was. He doesn’t have one. He asked me what mine was.

“The R! I love the R! It’s just the best! No train can beat it! I love its dirty floors. I love its horrible color scheme! I LOVE THE R!!”

And I do. Sometimes I will walk far out of my way so that I can get to an R train. On my return from Philadelphia this last weekend, my bus dropped me off right by the E train which would have quickly taken me home. Nope! I walked the extra 10 minutes to the R train. And after a weekend out of New York City, when I saw that yellow circle round the corner, my heart sprang to life. It’s my R.

The reasons I love this train are manifold:

  1. The aforementioned color-scheme. Unlike the sterile blue of most MTA trains, the R train retains this orange/yellow/brown theme. Sound hideous? It kind of is. But those colors are warm, and it does my soul good to see them.
  2. The seats are situated so that more people get a chance to sit down. Trust me, I’ve done the math. Also, some of the seats face forwards as opposed to sideways. Getting one of these seats on my morning commute brightens my entire day.
  3. It goes through three boroughs. Queens, Manhattan, and Brooklyn. Typically wherever I am going, I can take the R. Sometimes it is out of the way or takes longer than other trains, but I simply don’t mind.
  4. It goes local through Queen. Some people might consider this a draw-back, but to me I get some extra time with whatever book I’m reading.
  5. The music is the best. There’s the group of small Mexican, mariachi men. There’s the couple that play the accordion and carry their baby for pity. Brian is writing an article about the girl in the following video. When he showed it to me, I immediately squealed with glee, because I knew it was the R train. This is what happens on the best train in NYC. I’ve ridden them all, and none come close to the R in my heart.

Beauty and the Beast

29 Jan

A couple of weekends ago, my co-worker Jess texted me to let me know that a theatre in New York was showing Beauty and the Beast in 3D. Jess and I tend to get in heated and profoundly ridiculous debates. We’ve fought over whether Bert and Ernie can be considered humans. We’ve fought over the flavor vanilla (I’m a fan, and she’s not). But our most intense debate was over Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid. I think B&B is the best Disney love-story. She thinks LM is.

She’s nuts.

She claims that B&B isn’t a good love story, because the beast is a monster who essentially kidnaps her. She believes that Belle falling in love with him is creepy, because he is of a different and unclassifiable species. But at least he’s a mammal! Ariel is also of a different species, and can we talk about how shallow Prince Eric is?! He never speaks to Ariel. He likes her, because he found her semi-naked on a beach. There is no debate that he is the most attractive of the Disney princes, but he’s also a tool.

I digress.

I made plans with my friend Kayla to go to the Ziegfield theatre to see B&B 3D on Sunday after I got out of work.  I texted her, and there was a miscommunication of dates, and she was unavailable. The movie was going to start in about half an hour, and it was my only free day that week. I texted Gian, but it wasn’t enough notice for him. So I went by myself.

The Ziegfield theatre is an old-fashioned theatre in Midtown. They have large swooping stairs, elephant statues lining the walls, and each of the bathroom stalls have their own private sink. Fancy!

So I took myself on a lovely me-date. Shouldn’t you occasionally show the ones you love just how much you care? Shouldn’t you love yourself? Shouldn’t you spend an afternoon treating yourself like a Queen? Yes, yes, yes.

I bought myself popcorn, a soda, and sat in the fifth row, which is my favorite row in movie theatres. Seeing the movie on the big screen for the first time in something like 20 years was incredible. I felt like a little girl again. I also had chills down my spine throughout the movie. The music! The drawings! The library he gives her! The Little Mermaid is pretty good, but Beauty and the Beast is definitely the best.

Missed Connection

22 Jan

I’ve gone out pretty much every night for the last couple of weeks. Not necessarily out partying. Sometimes I go to a friend’s apartment for dinner, sometimes I play poker with some softball friends, and sometimes I’m eating Jambalaya in the East Village with my nearest and dearest.

A cold finally caught up with me, but it didn’t stop me from going out every night last week. I was exhausted and sniffly. So Friday night (despite having spent the entire day in bed reading/watching “Intervention”), I had to call it an early night and leave the bar a bit after midnight.

I was standing at the subway platform, mindlessly staring down the track. I felt happy. I like where things are heading. I don’t know how I ended up here, but it feels right. I am trying to teach myself to not worry about the unknowables and just enjoy the wonderful present. And after a couple of years of discontentment, I’m basking in the glow of now.

In my tipsy/sniffly/exhausted/blissful haze, I realized that I was staring at a man walking down the platform towards me. He was attractive, and when I realized what I was doing, I quickly looked away. He kept walking toward me, and I looked back to realize he was waving and had an adorable grin on his face. He had his ipod in, and I had mine. I looked around to see who he was waving at. That’s when he stopped about two feet in front of me: smiling, waving, just…standing there?

I slowly took my hand out of my pocket, raised it up, and waved back at him. That’s when he gave me the most triumphant high-five of my life. And through The Clash playing loudly in my ears, I heard him yell, “Yeah!” as he walked away.

It was such a good moment. It was as if the universe heard me thinking, “I’m happy!” and sent me a big “Good for you!”

I didn’t chase after him. He didn’t come back and talk to me. But that moment was so pure and wonderful. I hope he was feeling as happy as I was at that moment.

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