~ July 12, 2003 - 8:52 p.m. ~
Museum Fun, PTC and Cilantro, and "It's an Espresso Pot!"
Very productive day today. After a week of planning and reminding, I dragged Tim, Jack and Jakeland up to a chocolate tasting at the Museum of Natural History. The cocoa confections were superb, and the only bitty hitch in the whole production was the absurdly long time it took us to get there. We waited for-fucking-ever for a train, arriving almost an hour after we planned to. Bah.For those of you who have never seen it, my favorite room in the Natural History Museum is the Marine Life room. It is lit very dimly by a glass ceiling that has recently been renovated with some sort of a lighting system that mimics dim light filtering down through water, so it is mostly blue. It consists of two levels: a main bottom level with a wide balcony around it, accessible by two stair cases. Around the edges of the main room and the balcony are displays of various marine creatures set in glass-covered niches. This leaves an extremely large area open in the middle. It is dominated by a gargantuan life-size model of a blue whale. It is the single most impressive thing in the Museum, solely due to its size. It is even bent, as though it is diving, so you know that although it fills the entire upper half of the room, it wouldn�t really even fit if it was all stretched out. The whale�s name is Elwood.
Actually, that�s not strictly true. I named him Elwood back when I was 14 or 15 and really into �The Blues Brothers.� I was aware that it was corny, even at the time, but I don�t care, and still privately call him that.
I really wanted to spend more time at the Museum, especially in the Native American and the Asian Peoples exhibits. I love looking at all the clothes and beautiful tools and things, especially the ones from Asia. I�ve recently cultivated an interest in Buddhist art, though I�m not sure why. I�ve certainly been exposed to enough Buddhist art over the years, so I�m not sure why I suddenly find myself so drawn to it. I think it�s because lately I think I�m seeing more thematic and occasionally stylistic connections with it to Celtic art, and the themes of Celtic art are infinitely of interest to me.
The Museum was followed by a trip to a Vietnamese restaurant, which was interesting because I think I�ve only had Vietnamese food one other time in my life, and I remember being too over-powered by cilantro to enjoy it properly. (TANGENT: I think I�m allergic to cilantro. My father, who also tastes it very strongly, thinks that people like us, who can taste the teeny-tiniest bit of cilantro in food and find it repulsive, have some sort of taste-sensitivity or allergy. My personal theory is that it�s related to PTC tasting. For those of you who have never heard of this, PTC tasting is a genetic trait that was actually discovered/developed in a laboratory in the 1930s. It happened when a bunch of chemists were working in a lab when someone knocked over a huge bottle of liquid PTC [I have NO CLUE what PTC is/stands for/is used for when not testing for testability]. Half the chemists in the lab started gagging and flipping out at the hideous smell, while the other half blinked and wondered why everyone was flipping out over an odorless chemical. Thus they realized that only a certain portion of the population can taste PTC. With a certain amount of continued experimentation, they realized it is a simple, genetic, Mendelian trait. It is passed down from parent to child, with the ability to taste being dominant. When I tried this experiment, I had a very strong reaction to the PTC [some people taste it less strongly], in much the same way I react to cilantro, so I think there may be some connection. END TANGENT.) This Vietnamese food was great, though filling, so we walked it off in a cookware store called Zabar. We got a single cr�me brulee dish (I�m auditioning it to see if I like it), a knife sharpener, a silver-polishing cloth, a basting brush, and a hopefully-Timmy-proof stovetop espresso pot.
Funny thing about Tim. Actually, there are lots of funny things about Tim; ask pAndi. But an interesting thing I�ve come to learn is that Tim, despite his love of espresso, cannot keep an espresso pot. The first one he had was a present from Nona. This was especially nice of her since she brought it back on her last trip to Italy, during which one of her brothers, who was also on the trip with her, died tragically of a heart attack. She went out and got the pot Tim had requested before she left anyway, which was very sweet of her. Unfortunately, Tim left it on the stove one day while entertaining friends from out of town and the plastic handle melted off while the internal gasket melted. End of espresso pot number one. I then gave him the espresso pot Nona had brought back to me. It has since mysteriously vanished in a puff of smoke. Not to say he melted this one too, but who knows? End of espresso pot number two. Next, Jack and Jakeland brought him one from Portugal. This one was really neat. It had two little spout coming out of the top with platforms under them, and you put the demi-tasse cups on the platforms, and the espresso percolated out right into them. This one was also left on the stove where it was set on fire (gas stove and all). All the plastic melted, the spouts were ruined, and the gasket melted and reformed all over the inside of the thing. It was gross. End of espresso pot number three.
Today begins the life of espresso pot number four. It is almost entirely all stainless steel, a material Tim always has luck with. There is, of course, the gasket left to contend with, as well as a small, kinda superfluous piece of plastic up at the top of the handle. It was the most unfuck-up-able pot we could afford. It makes two cups. I�ve just had the first. It was lovely.
Good luck and Godspeed, little espresso pot number four. We welcome you into this apartment with open arms and great hopped-up jubilation. Blessed be your spout, which shall bear the caffeine we so crave. May the stench of your melting plastic parts never befoul the air within these walls. Amen.
P.S. We were not invited to a wedding today. Pish on the perpetrators, those stew-whores, especially after they�ve spoken to us of nothing but their stupid wedding for almost two months now. I wouldn�t go even if I was invited, but still, talk about tasteless.
