My web savvy cats have informed me that today is OneWebDay. What’s OneWebDay? It’s a day for celebrating the web because, simply put, the web is worth celebrating. Here’s more from the OneWebDay site:

OneWebDay is one day a year when we all – everyone around the physical globe – can celebrate the Web and what it means to us as individuals, organizations, and communities.

As with Earth Day – an inspiration and model for OneWebDay – it’s up to the celebrants to decide how to celebrate. We encourage all celebrations! Collaboration, connection, creativity, freedom.

By the end of the day, the Web should be just a little bit better than it was before, and we’ll be able to see our connection to it more clearly.

Now, I might be off to a late start (almost 6pm, PST), but that’s not stopping me from joining in the festivities. For my small part I’ve made a list of things to accomplish before the day is out. Fortunately for me, my “day” doesn’t end till Chopper gets home from work at 10pm, so there’s time yet. Let’s see how well I do…

A final thought for OneWebDay: As most readers of Belly Timber know, Chopper and I spent all of 2005 and most of 2006 away from our home, caregiving for my parents. We were on an island, not unpopulated by any stretch, but separated from our friends by hours in the car and more hours on an expensive ferry ride. We didn’t get out much. Had it not been for the internet — for email, for chat, for this blog, and for our other online communities — we would have lost touch with nearly everyone save for those few who still rely on phones and snail mail. (Don’t get me wrong, I love a good old-fashioned letter on paper, but how many friends of mine still write them? Let me count. Um… Yup, none.) Point is, during our island stint, the web was our lifeline. It saved our sanity more than once, it brought us opportunities well worth having, and it gave us many many new friends. I only hope that some day we’ll be able to travel and meet the friends we’ve made who live further than a day’s drive away.

And now, because it is also Weekend Cat Blogging, and Puddy and Katie have declared an optional theme of “Favourite Things,” here is Ahriman doing one of his favourite things: Color-coordinated sleeping.

A few weeks back it was the orange Top Ramen box. Today, it’s manila envelopes. Ahri is also quite fond of the blond wood of my computer desk (which indeed matches his fur quite nicely). Trouble is, he can never quite decide where on that blond wood to plant his orange butt. In fact, I think his favourite thing might just be the act of strolling back and forth in front of my computer screen while I am trying to work. Hmmm. Here’s a question. If I paint the desk a color that clashes with his fur, will he finally stop this madness?

(Much more Weekend Cat Blogging over at A Byootaful Life, wherein all “favourites” get that extra-nifty extra “u.”)

Taggity tag:onewebday

This was my weekend. How was yours?

(Weekend Cat Blogging Round-up will be up as soon as the computers are as cooperative as the cats. In brief, we had an emergency upgrade issue and everything’s in pieces. Somewhere in this office, there’s a hard drive with half a round-up post on it. I think it’s the drive on the table in the photo, but I can’t be certain. On the bright side, the cats haven’t yet knocked anything onto the floor, nor have they turned ribbon cables into playthings. Phew!)

It’s one of those days.

I’m in the middle of transferring a large number of websites, databases, lists, galleries, and so on to a new hosting service and it is tedious work. For those who don’t know, one area in which I freelance is web design and I host sites for my design clients. My current host has been frustrating of late — frustrating enough that I’ve decided it’s time for a change.

This means Belly Timber will be moving hosts as well so there’s a chance we’ll be down for a bit later this week. I’m hoping to make the transition as quick and painless as possible, but I can’t guarantee that a certain persistent orange lummox won’t step on the keyboard at exactly the wrong time and delete my database backup. He has a rather uncanny knack for getting his paws into my work at inappropriate moments, just as Angry Cat used to shed on the articles of clothing that most needed to be clean.

Yes, that’s Angry Cat from the photo archives, above. The Belly Timber Home Photo Uploading Service is on the fritz yet again. I have half a month’s worth of photos stuck on my flash card and no way to show them to you.

On the bright side, with no way to take pictures, we now have a great excuse for lazy, ugly meals.

Another (temporary) bright side: Port and Ahriman have not yet discovered the sleep-on-warm-clothes-in-the-dryer trick. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time…

(The delicious Boo-licious hosts this week’s Weekend Cat Blogging over at Masak-Masak.)

No list today. I’m tossing the list.

It’s a Portland birthday. Rainy, but filled with friends, destinations, and hot chocolate.

Perhaps, instead, I’ll make a list as I go along.

And now I’m off to explore…

This week’s Whine Blogging Wednesday is a short one. Not because I don’t have plenty to whine about. I do still have that whole House Fiasco to cover, you know. (You thought the bathroom was bad? Just wait!) Oh, and then there’s this heat. I mean what’s with the hundred-degree days, I ask you? I’m like three-eighths Scottish. I start melting when it stops raining.

Nah, the issue, as you can plainly see is fur-related, and you’re just getting a sneak peek. And really, it’s not so much an issue but a minor inconvenience, which could easily be solved by installing a bed of nails between my keyboard and the monitor. Or perhaps a lake. Or loch, as I prefer. With invisible, feline-deflecting monster.

Now, next week — next week, there’s no whining on Wednesday. Not a scrap of whining allowed. Why? Because next week’s Wednesday is my birthday and I fully intend to do right by it this time.

(When one spends one’s previous two birthdays on a tiny island away from all one’s friends, one gets rather pissy about it and one vows to do right by one’s next birthday.)

So, the plan: I am making a list. (Have I mentioned I love lists? I should do a quick site search to see how many times I’ve mentioned I love lists and then make a list of… oh never mind, you get the idea.)

This new list?

Forty Five Neat Things To Do On My Birthday. The goal: Collect a list of at least 45 neat things (that don’t take all day or destroy my bank account), and attempt to do as many of them as possible between sunrise on the 18th and sunrise on the 19th. (I should note that I didn’t invent this idea; I just borrowed it from a friend with a recent birthday because it was simply too cool not to use.)

Of course I’ll blog on the Big Day — but alas, no moblogging or voiceposting as I lack them newfangled technogadgets — and I’ll even share pictures because for some bizarre and unexplainable reason, my flashcard reader is functioning again. (Lappy is still quite dead, though, but that’s a whine for another time.)

There is one discouraging part (and I won’t whine! I won’t!): Chopper has to work that day. ALL day. From seven a.m. well into the evening. So, for the vast expanse of my daytime birthday, I’m on my own. Or, with friends just crazy enough to join me.

And I need a list.

(It’s WBW: Share your whines in the comments and while you’re at it, help MizD plan her birthday!)

1. Forget you have a blog.

2. Start a three part series and only post part one.

3. Crash your hard drive and lose two months worth of post drafts.

4. Listen to emo rock until the paint peels off all your dark elf figurines and the only posts you can write are the ones that begin with the phrase “Dear World.”

5. Post a poll about what you did on your vacation, even if it wasn’t a vacation and you really don’t want to talk about it.

6. Forget other people have blogs. In fact, forget blogs exist at all and be completely stunned when you accidentally click on that button on your Google home page that says “reader” and discover some five thousand unread posts.

7. Read a print media opinion piece on the destruction of ‘high culture’ by evil, egalitarian bloggers, and almost believe it, just for a second.

8. Teach a seminar on blogging, hand out your card, then add in a tiny voice: “but, um, remember all that stuff I said about updating on a regular basis? well…”

9. Post a gleeful “return to blogging” announcement and then forget to return to blogging.

10. Better yet, make the cat post it!

11. Reintroduce yourself to the world of blogging with a photo retrospective — on the day your hard drive goes belly up and you can’t access all your archived photos.

12. Wait till your third wedding anniversary to post because at least then you’ve got an excuse to include a pretty picture:

If Angry Cat were around today, she’d be livid. I mean tearing the paint from the walls livid. See, we don’t know for certain, but Angry Cat may have died from tainted food. And now, in the wake of that – in the wake of the Menu Foods disaster – the USDA, in their infinite wisdom, is considering a rule change that’ll further dilute the meaning of the word "organic."

That’s right, under the new rule, all those big Agri-businesses we already trust so, so much? They can call beer "organic" even if it’s made with pesticide-treated hops.

They can call food items "organic" even if they contain synthetic food colorings, fish oil from farm-raised, mercury-tainted fish, sausage casings from factory-farmed animals, and (among other things) inorganic whey protein concentrate.

Huh. Protein concentrates from crappy overseas factories. Just what we want in our "organic" foods after we’ve been so careful about finding new resources for our surviving pets.

Yeah, Angry Cat would be pissed.

But since she’s not here at the moment, I’m going to send you over to this most excellent diary on Daily Kos, and to the Regulations.gov page where you can leave a comment and tell the USDA just how you feel. (The Daily Kos diary includes detailed instructions for maneuvering through the rather unfriendly comment form. I highly recommend that you write up your comment first and then copy-and-paste to the site; the form has a bad habit of timing out.)

And by the way, because, as we all know, the USDA is indeed infinitely wise about such things and infinitely willing to listen to the average consumer, they’ve given us a teensy window of time for comments. In fact, that time runs out at the end of day TODAY. (Believe me, if I’d known about this a week ago…)

No doubt Agri-businesses had months of lobbying time. Us? We got a week. Thanks, USDA! Love you too. Here, have a burger and some fries. No clue where the ingredients came from, but you told me they were organic.

We’re on a vacation from blogging, tackling unruly to-do lists and musing over new bloggy directions. A minor change in our blog wardrobe may be in the works. (I’m thinking neon leg warmers, how about you?)

Meantime, let’s see who’s still around:

Create your own visitor map!

Yeah, you, 2006. You did your best, bucko, but you failed. We’re still here and we’re not giving up.
Challenge, eh? You wanna talk challenges? Like messing up our house? Sticking us with hideous bills? Making our move more hellish than a rancid vat of velveeta? And in the end, you have the gall to take away our cat and we’re supposed to say oh, thank you kind year, may I have another because we so love your idea of a challenge!

Well, we got news for ya, 2006. You’re gone. History. Outta here. And guess what? 2007 is so much cooler than you. You thought you’d make us all better with that tough love crap. Make ‘em suffer. Then they’ll rise to the occasion, you said. Right. Nice one. Working real well for that Bush clown too, isn’t it?

Well, I’ve got a secret for you: 2007 knows where it’s at. 2007 is on our side, letting us pick our own challenges, and trust me, those challenges aren’t going to be the sort that just keep us treading water, no sirree bob. We’re talking kick-ass, get ahead in life challenges – you know, the kind you never let us touch, you scum sucking P.O.S. year, you!

So, take a hike, 2006, cuz us and 2007, we got plans. Big plans. Hell, I’ll even spill the beans and tell you what the first plan is: 27 days from now, it’s Chopper’s birthday, and the next day — 28 days from now — we’re going to have this house transformed from tornado zone into cozy cottage, all ready for one colossal, long-overdue house rewarming party. Oh, sure it’s going to take a hell of a lot of work. We’ve got shelves to build, a kitchen to paint, dozens of boxes to unpack, and a list of repairs and missing items a mile long, but you know what? We’ve got 2007 on our side and we don’t even care if we’ve got a budget the size of a single app at French Laundry: we’re doing it anyway.

And in February, we’ll have a new challenge, and in March, one more, and on and on, until, at the end of glorious 2007, we’ll have kicked butt all over hell and back and turned you, scuzzy little inconsequential 2006, into a distant, fading memory.

Sounds good? Good. Now don’t let the door hit your sorry ass on the way out.

My dearest, sweetest kitten,

I’m going to tell the truth.

To the blogging world, you were the ever cynical, ever snarky, furball-hating Angry Cat, but to me, you were always Audrey. Dear, sweet, little Audrey, the best kitten in the world, and I want the world to know.

I remember many years ago — many in human years, even! — when you first adopted me. You were a scared little thing, hiding in furnace ducts, certain I wouldn’t understand your dread fear of doorways and brooms. I loved your funny little tail, kinked a full quarter angle at the end, and your cracked maa – aaaa of a meow, which, if Dad were here, he’d insist I write phonetically — mæʔæ — just because. We had a different house then, and you had a brother, long lost now. I miss him too.

When we were losing Dad, you sat by his pillow like a temple guardian and soothed him with purrs. When Dad was gone, his pillow became your bed, and Mom became your constant companion, and for that she loved you, even when you typed silly nothings across her keyboard.

Oh kitten, these last days were rough for you, I know. Losing eyesight, and strength, breath, all of it slipping away so sudden when before this time we’d never fought anything more fierce than a hairball or an occasional pack of fleas.

I suppose, in those final hours, you were indeed Angry Cat, angry at your ancient, failing body, angry you couldn’t speak and tell me exactly what to do to ease your pain. And me, your miserable, inadequate human, could only reach back to memories of Dad and bring the same small comfort I knew from before; a drop of water, a warm blanket, a song sung quiet in your ear.

You are my Audrey, my only Audrey.
You make me happy, when skies are gray.
You’ll never know, cat, how much I love you…

Sweet, silly, broken-voiced cat, I once had a crazy notion you’d live forever. Those nine lives of yours outlasted so many others – cats, fish, our dear little guinea pig, and even crazy Elvis the mini rex who once chased you up the plum tree. (Yes, my Audrey, I do have to tell the truth – you were never as tough as your alter-ego. Me neither.)

And now, little one, I have another secret to share. It’s a vision and it goes like this: I see a rocking chair on a weathered porch on a warm island day. And a lap – Dad’s lap – and the best little tabby in the world, perched, regal as a temple guardian. She raises her chin for a skritching, this magnificent cat, and Dad obliges. And then he sings to her, and she sings to him — mæʔæ — and no one, not anywhere, is angry.

xxox

Your devoted human,
MizD robin

End Note: Dave and Mishka and I wish everyone the best for the new year, and we hope there are indeed new beginnings on the horizon. 2006 was a rough one. May 2007 take us beyond choppy waters and deadly shoals and out into the tranquil sea. Peace to all.

(See more Weekend Cat Blogging over at Lisa’s Champaign Taste and give all your kittens extra skritches for me!)

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to celebrate the life of MizD’s camera: a camera whose essence was suddenly, though not unexpectedly, extinguished on the evening of December the Fifth in the year of our Lord, 2006.

True, the signs were all there: The stuttering LED that too often spewed forth cuneiform in place of digits. The dimming sensors crying for light. The morning’s greeting, not cheerful and informative, but tragic — a single, solitary and altogether ominous utterance: ERR.

Oh, poor camera, you never had a name. Poor camera, you suffered through far too many cursings while your feckless owner struggled with your outdated controls. Poor, poor camera, so battered, so used.

We commend you to the box of non-functionals, oh camera, and to Elmo, patron saint of misguided electrical discharges, we offer up this prayer: may your afterlife be filled with light and joy, and may it always be in focus. Amen.

MizD’s camera. August 2002 – December 2006.

Reminder! Weekend Cat Blogging Lucky 79, right here at Belly Timber! Leave your cat blogging links here, or email our clever host at the_cat(at)belly-timber(dot)com. Check back for the official WCB post Friday night!

Mercy goodness.

Where the heck were we all weekend?

Seems our hosting service experienced what we like to call a “surprise.” SQL databases belly up, mail server down, two days of laborious rebuilding and here we are, at long last, back, and, and…

What’s this?

The last post is from November 2nd?

Aww, crap.

Ahem. Brief announcement: I will be restoring the last three posts shortly, each backdated to their appropriate release into the wild. And with a little luck, or perhaps a large amount of sweat and bacon elbow grease, comments on those posts will reappear as well. Cross fingers.

Have I mentioned yet that this sort of thing has been entirely too common around here of late?

PS: I’m unpacking my sewing supplies…

(or Belly Timber’s new adventures in Portland, a three part introduction)

2. In which MizD goes crazy with the crafty thing.

Freshman year of high school, I had an English teacher I couldn’t stand. I’ll call her Ms. Rhubarb. Ms. Rhubarb was new to our school and had her own peculiar way of seeing things. This way included the rather brazen assumption that her Freshman English class was the single most important class of my entire high school career. Now, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t an academic slacker. If anything, I was a nerd. The sort of nerd who cluelessly wore flowered underwear under white pants, and never missed a day of class even if it meant pockets stuffed with Kleenex and cough drops. I did my work for Ms. Rhubarb, but apparently my nerdly efforts weren’t good enough.

"She takes on too many things," she announced at my parent-teacher conference, "Theater and soccer and art classes and all these other extra-curricular activities. She needs to focus."

My math teacher nodded in agreement. At least I assume he did — I haven’t been good at math since sixth grade.

My mom (who’s always appreciated my scattershot attempts at finding life’s purpose) searched for something appropriate to say.

My advisor, who was, thankfully, also my theater teacher and had a rather Gandalfian presence which served him well, rose to my defense. "If she can’t try all these different things now, when can she try them?"

Ms. Rhubarb, who would have been fearful of a follow-up firebolt had she any interest whatsoever in genre fiction, backed down, muttering all the while that one day she would be proven right. My appalling lack of focus would do me in.

And to this day (conveniently ignoring the "now" part of my advisor’s remark) I am still determined to prove her wrong.

Oh, I have a calling. It’s not that I don’t have a calling. It’s simply that my calling is rather…

Okay, I admit it. It’s scattered.

Playwriting, fabric art, painting, film, comics, sculpture, decoupage Easter egg depictions of the complete works of John Norman… Honestly. Do I have to make up my mind?

Now, here’s the thing. For the past twenty months, I’ve been on a crafty starvation diet. Oh, I’ve had my compy and my camera and my sketch pad here and there, but damn, the craving for my old art supplies has been extreme.

And now that I’ve got access to them again at long last…

And now that I need to buckle down and kick some freelancing butt…

Well, the short ending to all this is, yes, I’m working with Chopper to build a personal chef business, but that’s not all: I’m rebuilding my arts and crafts studio and I’m hitting the marketplace. With a vengeance.

Scattered, you say, Ms. Rhubarb? Just watch me.

Next up: Part 3: In which we embark upon the rescue of our wayward house.

(or Belly Timber’s new adventures in Portland, a three part introduction)

1. In which we leap off a tall cliff without a safety net.

On the final weekend of July, this past summer, we did something rather extraordinary that I never thought we’d pull off: we catered a wedding.

It was our gift to our dear friends, this wedding feast. We took a weekend away from our island home to shop, and prep, and cook up a storm, and we accomplished it all — wedding feast and rehearsal dinner for 50 people — for just shy of $350 (with, I freely admit, a few key donations from the Belly Timber personal pantry; our friends were on an extremely tight budget and we were determined to wow them with our frugality).

Now, even though we’ve cooked for many of our own parties (and for our own wedding), this was different. Daunting. It’s our friends’ wedding, after all. We can’t screw it up. They’ll never forgive us!

So, to doubly ensure everything would go off without a hitch, I donned my stage manager hat and began making lists. Lists, lists, and more lists. (I love lists.) We were prepared. Frighteningly prepared.

And of course, because nothing ever goes exactly as planned, we ran into tiny glitches here and there: a misplaced corkscrew, a lost container of yogurt, a –

You know what? I can’t think of a third glitch. It went that well.

In fact, I have to say, we loved every minute of it.

And the guests and the wedding party absolutely adored our food.

And when we were all done and we’d nothing left but the cleaning, and everyone was happily gorging themselves on shrimp satay and baba ganoush, we looked at each other and said, Dude. We need to do this again because we kicked some serious culinary butt.

That was the moment. The moment we knew our vague post-island plans had to become much much more than just vague post-island plans. The moment we knew we had to start our own personal chef business.

Oh, sure we’d talked about it before, tossed around ideas, names, researched the local competition, but now we had the confidence to do more than just daydream.

Jump ahead three months.

In the interim, we’ve taken a beating. I’ve written (and The Cat’s written) in brief about dead computers and other internet disasters, and I’ve mentioned — also in brief — a small portion of our house woes. They’ve been immense. So overwhelming at times that we’ve spent days wondering who the sneaky bastard was who slapped "kick me" signs on our backs.

But even so, we are ready. Not financially ready, mind you, but more than ready in spirit. The return to our own house marks a substantial change in our lives. Not just a change from the nomadic existence of the past 22 months, but a deeper transition from treading water to moving forward. In short, we need to leap so that we do not fall.

A while back, on a certain Sugar High Friday, I wrote a little tribute to Chopper. Happy Chopper Day, I called it, his first anniversary of his graduation from culinary school. "The scariest wagers," I said, "are the ones you make on yourself and on your future success." Well, this, after Chopper’s stint in school, is scary wager number two. Can we do it? Can we be our own bosses and make a success of it? Are we completely nuts?

On this past Memorial Day, I wrote about the caregiving experience, about Dad’s cancer and how this blog was born out of a need for release. Now, as we shift into a new phase in our lives, Belly Timber shifts with us, and as our lives expand, so too will the blog expand to encompass the bigger picture: MizD and Chopper leaving limbo and starting from scratch. A disaster zone house, a budget the size of a postage stamp, and a mountain of student loan debt, and still, we leap. It’s that or the daily grind, and lordy are we sick of the daily grind.

So, happily, crazily, we leap.

Tomorrow: part two: In which MizD goes crazy with the crafty thing.

im in ur hous paintin’ ur wallz

So, you’ve probably noticed things have been a little sparce around these parts. Crazy stuff going on, from captors with computer troubles to household disasters to — would you believe — sabotage of the internets?

I kid you not.

And I wasn’t even the saboteur.

But here’s the thing: My captors have a GROOVY NEW PLAN they’re going to announce on Monday and it’s not just about this here blog. I’ll let you in on a little secret: It’s got something do with business plans and tax ID numbers.

Oh, and speaking of this here blog, and um, that there blog?

Well….

My female captor, she is SO indecisive. First day she wants two blogs. The next day, one. Next day, two again. MAKE UP YOUR MIND, HUMAN!

So, this morning, as I was leaving a household contribution on the paper just outside the rim of the catbox (my aim is impeccable), I noticed this nearby notebook, open to a page of female captor scratchings. Ahah! She’s written her bloggy thoughts. Let’s have a look!

Belly Timber – playing with our food everything since 2005.

A blog about food, crafts, DIY, frugality, and random fits of chaos.

Note: Everything is interconnected: food to frugality to sustainability to DIY to craft. It’s all part of a whole (One Blog to Rule them all – mwaahaahaa!); all moving toward the same goal of living well on a low budget and not fucking up the environment in the process.

DIY and crafty things? Oh happy day! More distractions! More time for Meeeee! And, best of all, do you know what crafting means?

That’s right:

YARN.

My life is almost complete.

Hey. Wait a sec. Frugality doesn’t include ditching the canned cat food, does it?

(Check out more Weekend Cat Blogging over at Skeezix’s Scratching Post!)

Portland Farmers Market, October 2006

Well we know where we’re going
But we don’t know where we’ve been
And we know what we’re knowing
But we can’t say what we’ve seen
And we’re not little children
And we know what we want
And the future is certain
Give us time to work it out.
–Talking Heads, Road to Nowhere

So many changes, so much to say, but it’s late and I promised I’d post before midnight.

Also, pssst. A work in progress, over here.

It’s like this:

Chopper’s compy is dead.
My compy is mostly dead.

We have only the lappy, sans cat pictures, now perched on a TV tray table in Chopper’s parents’ basement, because – crazy but true – our house still lacks internet service.

Oh, that Comcast, she is a slow one.

We’ll be back soon, we promise. Even if it means we have to nail our local cable guy with a tranq dart and hold him hostage till he brings our poor little house into the 21st century.

Lappy!

So, here I am, total dork, reveling in my newfound wirelessness by snapping pictures of Chopper at the Ugly Mug Coffeehouse while he reads the sports page and we drink our double espressos. Yes kids, this is me, blogging our very first trip to a coffee shop with a laptop that actually CONNECTS TO THE INTERNET!

(And with that technologically antediluvian confession, we’ve completely lost all of our geek cred.)

In truth, I wasn’t expecting to luck out like this, but two days with mouse poised to refresh and browser open to Craig’s List really can pay off.

Seriously, this little baby’s processor is faster than the one in my desktop. And it’s got a DVD player that I swear plays DVDs better than the gizmo that’s hooked up to our TV. Crazy, huh? I’m like a kid in a candy shop and I’ve just discovered this newfangled thing called the gummy bear. What’s next? Phones that take pictures? How cool is that?

Now for the fun part: No, not formatting, uploading, organizing, watching Platelicker and The Cat fight over who gets to be on my wallpaper… Not that tedium. No, the fun part is naming my new lappy!

Whaddya mean you don’t name your computers? Doesn’t everyone name their computers? Hell, I even name my hard drives within my computers. My desktop? He’s Aziraphale, after the angel in Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens. (There, that should restore some of that geek cred.) My three internal drives? Horrabin (after the terrifying clown-on-stilts in Tim Powers’ Anubis Gates), Jivecow (after, er, nothing at all – I’m certain Chopper made that one up), and Seraphim (yeah, I know, it’s plural. Get over it.)

So now I’ve my new lappy, and lappy needs a name!

In fact, oh what the heck.

It’s MizD’s Name My Lappy Contest!

Submit your suggestions here.

The winner, selected either by MizD, Chopper, or The Cat as she walks across the keyboard and votes with her claws, will receive the fabulous prize of:

The Undying Gratitude of MizD’s New Laptop, Which, by the way, is an Inanimate Object and Completely Incapable of Expressing Undying Gratitude!

(Ahem. Bonus geek cred restoration, courtesy of Chopper’s t-shirt logo.)

So here we are in our strange little cave, surrounded by the glories of the big city.

(Big city dwellers, stop laughing now, dammit. Portland is big. She is a fierce and feisty corgi next to your fussy whippets and poodles. Heart the size of a mountain, this corgi has.)

Chopper’s in front of me on our foam pad bed watching tennis (Agassi!) on the telly while I’m typing on my tiny Visor, foldable Stowaway keyboard atop a banker box on the floor. We’ve got a cooler across the room for vodka, beer, wine, juice (in that order of priority), and open cans of food for the cat. Poor Cat has hairball issues and is on a special diet these days.

Next door (cave part two), Platelicker’s sprawled on the cool cement just beyond my mini-office: one table, one chair, one file cabinet, computer, scanner, printer, and the most important purchase since our arrival: a hotplate for emergency tea.

What’s this? We moved from an island to a basement?

No worries. It’s just temporary. In a month or so, we’ll have our old house back (and our own kitchen at long last!), but in the interim we’re staying with friends, just a short hop away and still in our old neighborhood.

And what a neighborhood!

New restaurants, new shops, even a new weekly farmers market, and all within walking distance! We are ready for some serious exploration and re-discovery. I mean, dude, there’s a cheese shop that’s goat and sheep central, and damn that espresso across the street hit the happy caffeine spot.

Not that we’re leaving the island behind for good, mind you. See, time up there was always at a premium; frantic bits of freedom jammed between long hours at work and long hours of caregiving, and so we’ve got quite the backlog of adventures (and photos) to blog. And, on top of that, we’ll be back for visits. Can’t keep these two barflies away from the pub forever, you know.

(Brief pause for a wave hello to the boys at the pub.)

Meanwhile, we’re taking it easy these first days, getting our bearings, organizing our small collection of unpacked belongings, reconnecting with old friends.

Oh, and lounging. We are all about the lounging. In fact, our goal (after this exhausting and quite annoyingly busy summer) is to perfect the fine art of productive lounging.

Cooler full of tasty beverages just five feet away from the bed and me with a keyboard? I think we’re off to a good start.

It’s moving day. See you all on the flip side!

Since we here at Belly Timber are just too darned swamped to cook this week, we’ve decided to launch a new tradition:

Whine Blogging Wednesday!

That’s right. Forget the pairings and the earthy undertones and that three foot square terrior that’s so unique because it’s where old Vintner Joe buried the mule 45 years ago, it’s Whinin’ Time.

Go on. I’m sure you’ve got something to whine about. Share the love.

Here. I’ll start:

4:30 am wake-up call for catching the ferry out of town.
Far, far too many hours on the freeway.
More complicated logistics than you can shake a stick at.
and…
Five and a half days without blogging because Mrs. D’s ancient laptop is about as dead as Vintner Joe’s mule.

Cross fingers we can steal a moment on a computer while we’re away.

Meantime, whine amongst yourselves.

Today is Mrs. D’s birthday!

Five years ago we were both struggling our way through life in low paying theatre jobs. We met through mutual friends while doing shows, she was stage managing an excellent production of Sweeney Todd, while I was across town running lights for an equally great production of La Cage Aux Folles. In a town like Portland, where the theatre community is comparitively small, one can play “six degrees of seperation” and remove up to five of those degrees between anyone who ever worked there. So, when two of our actor friends that I had worked on a show earlier that year with ended up as the main characters in Sweeney Todd, one could almost say it was Kismet.

Five years and five birthdays later, after trial, tribulation, knocks, culinary school, and the occasional out-of-state move, we are looking to expand our horizons. Details will, of course, be forthcoming, but for now just keep the number 43 in mind…

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MRS. D!!

They tell us the second one is the cotton anniversary. We’re thinking of getting each other t-shirts or dish towels, but surely we can find something more exciting in cotton!

I wrote this piece back on May 9th, then set it aside for other concerns, and because I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to say. Today, Memorial Day, it seems fitting that I pull it out again and post it, though I’ve always felt it a bit strange that we should set aside just a single day a year to remember the loved ones we’ve lost.

Dad.

One year ago today, early on a Monday of a Paper Chef weekend, Dad, the gentlest soul and the best patient a caregiving daughter could ever hope for, breathed his last breath. I was there, by his side, morning medicine in one hand, my other hand on his forehead.

Chopper had to go to work that day and I had to make phone calls, arrange for the funeral home to come from the mainland, and ready Dad for his final journey.

(more…)

The lovely Sam of Becks & Posh (who doesn’t mention cats nearly often enough) has posted a link to a new Flickr toy over at Food Blog S’cool and ponders whether this toy works with blogging software other than Blogger.

Well, viola!

(more…)

The permalinks for the old MT install are down, but I’ll have the redirects up by the end of the day.
Whazzup? Well, some pernicious little files in the MT install kept doing rewrites and reinstalling my old MT html index. Aaaaaghhh! I tried to delete them, and they reappeared even so. So… silly me just hits delete on the entire MT install, then says “oh crap, the permalinks!” but it was too late. MT permalinks, bye-bye. At least I killed the pernicious files as well. I think. We’ll see. Meanwhile, Chopper and I are off to see a brewer about some beer.

No re-hatching is complete without eggs. Here, a cuddly, baby Cthulhu bursts forth from his shell and plots world destruction. He’s young, though. Perhaps we can avert disaster with some motherly love and a perky little chant or two. Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!

Not that changing over to a new blogging engine bears any resemblance to a horror movie, mind you. Nope, not at all.

It was all going swimmingly, honest. Last Tuesday, I hatched this grand plan to upload and install Wordpress (and transfer over all our archive posts) during the Day Without Food Blogs. I’d created a bare-bones page in honor of Net Neutrality, and set up a redirect so that I could, (meanwhile and quite nefariously) work behind the scenes and ready Belly 2.0 for a grand unveiling.

And then the Wordpress import engine stripped all of the CSS out of every single last archive post and my two hours of work turned into, well, many more. Many, many more. Because you know, once you’re forced to futz with one thing, you end up futzing with another, and then another, and then the futzing just explodes into a giant, week-long futz-o-rama.

Here, we have an egg discovered on board the French frigate Amitié during the Napoleonic Wars. Little did anyone suspect at the time, but this egg contained not just any dragon, but a most impressive Chinese dragon (with a most charming personality, to boot). To read about the dragon’s adventures during the Age of Sail, you simply must check out Naomi Novik’s Temeraire trilogy, new from Del Rey.
“It’s crunchy and delicious, just like cow!” — Dragon Dish Daily

(At which point Chopper says “enough with the futzing already. Get the damn site back up!”)

So, here we are. (And, yes, I still have more futzing to do.)

And now, a few truly boring technical notes:

1. Why the change over? Don’t get me wrong, I’m awfully fond of Movable Type and it’s served me well since the day we started this puppy, but when MT introduced version 3 and started charging for it, I said no thanks, I’ll stick with free because free and my budget get along better. All fine and good until MT Blacklist fell by the wayside. Within days, we were inundated with comment spam and my only recourse was to ether screen all comments or shut down almost all of our old comment threads. When I found myself spending more time closing threads and deleting spam than futzing (creatively) with the blog, I knew it was time for a change.

(more…)

The thing I hate about pruning is when you have to let go of a branch and it sproings back at you and slaps you in the face.

That and Platelicker’s land mines, buried so nicely in the newly-tall weeds. Aw, thanks pooch, you shouldn’t have.

Meanwhile, two small hints of things to come:

Also, soon appearing on our sidebar: an exciting two-word phrase containing the initials R.A.

(No, not Rodent Alert, you doof.)

It’s not spring here just yet, at least not according to the outside temperature which still prompts me to wear thick, long-sleeved shirts. (Chopper, meanwhile, wears shorts, but then Chopper wears shorts in a blizzard, so this means nothing. Well, nothing other than my constant ability to admire his shapely Chef Legs, but that’s neither here nor there.)

(Is there such a thing as “Chef Legs?” Chefs do a great deal of standing, and do therefore tone their muscles, rather like soccer players, who have, in my humble opinion, the best legs in the world… but I digress.)

So. Cleaning. Not quite spring cleaning.

The short of it is: we’re mired in it. I spent yesterday organizing our spice drawers, liberating old jars for new spices, and creating a new set of labels which I then slapped on the jars so that they’d all look pretty, like they matched, like they were part of a set or something. (From a distance, they even fool people!)

Today, we threw out things around the house and surveyed the garden (much, much pruning to be done), but more importantly, I’ve wallowed myself in deep reorganization regarding the computer and the website.

Short version: Blogging may be somewhat light until I get reorganization work done.

Long version: One gig of free space left on my computer and I’ve got how many photos and graphics I want to play with? Time to bite the bullet, snag a new hard drive and shuffle everything around so that Photoshop says nice things to me like “yes, I have room to play, thanks much” instead of “holyfreakinghell are you insane trying to save that huge-ass file?”

Second half of long version: Blog changes coming up. Things could get weird around here. I mean, weird, cuz, you know, we’re not at all weird now.

Chopper, the Birthday Boy!

(No, I’m not telling how old.)

People, what is it with you?

You could google and stumble across our site because of our comet truffles, or our checkered ravioli, or at the very least The Cat’s lamentations of dairy dessert denied.

But no. You stumble here — as our sad stats tell us — for one reason above all others. You stumble here because we have a

MESSY KITCHEN.

That’s right. “Messy kitchen” is our number one search string result. And not by a nose either. It beats out “belly timber” at number two by a substantial margin. What is up with that? Are messy kitchens so rare that visitors must come to gawk?

Oh very well. If you must, we will accommodate.

First off, let me point out that the messy kitchen in our introductory post, is not our current kitchen. That kitchen belongs to the house we used to live in when we lived in Portland, and I assure you, I’m confident that it’s not nearly as messy now as it was then.

That’s not to say we don’t have a messy kitchen now. This time though, we’ve got an excuse. Don’t believe me? Here, take a look:

That’s the kitchen. And I mean the whole kitchen. Three steps to the left and you’re in the bathroom. Walk toward the camera and you hit the dining room table.

To better illustrate the utter chaos that is our messy kitchen, I have created this fine work of digital art. Okay, I’ve drawn badly on the photo. Read on to revel in our daily battles and chortle at our culinary misfortunes.

Now, just so you don’t think we’re completely screwed, we do have this lovely additional pot and pan storage area:

Ahem. Yes, that’s the dining area’s window seat. Just, ignore that. Go about your business.

Oh, and look! We have a pantry!

Well, sort of a pantry. More of an alcove, really. But it’s got shelves and the shelves have food on them, so that counts, right? To bad about that pesky hot water heater in the back taking up all that room, eh?

So, I know what you’re probably all thinking. You’re thinking “You have a kitchen like that and you write a food blog? Are you people INSANE?”

Well, if you have to ask…

In all seriousness though, we do intend to do something about this calamitous crisis of space. No, we won’t be knocking out any walls or putting in additional cabinets. We will be expanding the old fashioned way. We will turn the clock back to frontier-style living and make use of the great outdoors.

That’s right. Meet our new kitchen annex:

The Messy Porch: Future home of pot and pan storage and a brand new chest freezer!

Filed under: kitchen photos and, of course, holy crap what a freakin’ disaster.

Where are the pictures, you ask? Where’s the Belly-banner? Well, good question. Someone was snurtching bandwidth from us by hotlinking to a photo, so I went into my control panel and tested out a little tool called “hotlink protection.”

Apparently it’s protecting me from myself, and it doesn’t know how to deactivate. As in, I’ve deactivated it, but the photos are still all gone. On the server, yes, but invisible to visitors. All that, and Chopper got called into work on SciFi Friday! And I have glorious Sugar High Friday photos to show off… if only…

So, check back soon. Send sympathy cards. I’ll try and get this puppy working again shortly. If not, I’ll just have to work on my food writing descriptive skilz, eh?

Updated to add: Well then there now. Apparently the images are working. On. Every. Browser. But. Mine. It’s an evil plot, I tell ya, designed to say “Hey, Miz D, what is up with all this food blogging? Go write yer durn novel!” Yes, Mom.

and another update: Problem solved! Woohoo! Oh, wait. Now I have to do a post and photos while Chopper’s at work. Dammit all.

…and now you know everything you need to know about a typical Friday night at Casa Belly-Timber. Party animals, all of us…

I. Ten True Confessions.

1. Our kitchen often looks like this:

2. We have been known to eat ramen and 75 cent tacos for weeks on end.
3. We have never been to Europe.
4. We buy Carlo Rossi wine by the gallon.
5. We cook on an electric cooktop.
6. Hell, we don’t even own a dishwasher.
7. Needless to say, we suck at cleaning up after ourselves.
8. One of us (guess which one) runs screaming at the sight of organ meat.
9. The other one (guess which one) has no problem at all drinking cheap beer.
10. Despite all of this, we are starting a food blog.

II. The cook.

Chopper Dave has been in the industry for ten years, and is a recent culinary school graduate. Despite what some owners of sports bars might think, this did not turn him into a snob. He’s still as irreverent as ever, it’s just that now he knows how to pronounce all those fancy French and Italian words.

Chopper Dave got his nickname due to an incident involving a Buffalo Chopper and a fifth story window. Descriptions of this incident available upon request. For a small fee.

III. The cook’s assistant/photographer.

Mrs D isn’t a cook. In all honesty, she prefers watching her husband cook to actually cooking, and if he asks her to set down her camera to chop vegetables, she’s likely to get pissed.

Mrs D does, however, love good food. Unless that good food contains dairy products. Or broccoli. Or cauliflower. Mrs. D has food issues. Or rather, her gut has food issues, and she would do just about anything to trade in her gut for one made of cast iron.

IV. Platelicker.

Platelicker is only allowed to lick plates once they’ve been placed on the floor, far, far from begging territory. This does not stop her, however, from fulfilling a life-long dream of being rechristened “Steakgrabber.” She achieved this dream once. She will never achieve it again.

V. The Cat.

What’s a kitchen without a cat? Especially a cat who has permission to walk across the counter, shedding fur into our blueberry gastrique. Why do we let her do this? So she can reach her cat food dish, also on the counter, far far out of reach of Platelicker.

VI. It’s all about the teamwork.

Mrs. D and Chopper Dave met during a production of Sweeney Todd. They have yet to determine what impact this fact will have on their culinary fate.

In a fit of insanity, nearly one year ago, Mrs. D and Chopper Dave decided to get married. Not only that, they decided to tread where mere mortals fear to tread and cater their own wedding. This fit of insanity was quickly followed by a long spell of exhaustion. During this spell, they made plans for many other joint projects, including an online serial adventure novel, a nautical screenplay, and a theatrical extravaganza that begins with a mass food poisoning. Some of these projects may even see the light of day. In the meantime, they are happy to finally launch their food (and beer — did we mention beer?) blog, Belly-Timber.