#back from a long weekend away in sunny Aberdeen

[magicmalcolm]

Aberdeen Beach-front, 23rd February 2024.

[calpicowater]

Week 15/52: April 9th - April 15th 2019 | Seattle Trip ⛰

Bless for only having to work for 3 days this week. Which means I had four days off!! I haven’t had this kind of break since early November so I am very grateful (even if it does mean earning a little bit less money). On Saturday, I woke up at 6:30am to go to Seattle with Betty and her uncle LOL. We arrived in Seattle just before 10am and we began exploring Pike Place Market right away. There were so many food vendors inside!!! Sad that I didn’t try the food because I was truly saving my stomach for Shake Shack (like some people save themselves for marriage lmao-) LOL. There were also SO many pretty flowers inside!! I saw a lot of tulip bouquets~~~ wrapped in pretty white paper >< too bad I can’t bring plants across the border hahahhahah ;^; so I took photos instead lol. 

We also went to see the Original Starbucks (just the outside because the line up to get in was crazy jfhshkg) and the Gum Wall ! The original Starbucks logo’s mermaid (??) has no clothes on??? just boobs casually hanging out??? for everyone to see?????? WHY????? I’m not complaining but ???! The gum wall was pretty disgusting LMAO. I saw photos and it already looked gross but that shit looked even more gross in real life because there was so much gum on the ground as well!!! 

Next stop was SHAKE SHACK!!! AKA the reason for me coming to Seattle in the first place fjaskdg x_x anyway this shake shack only had electronic kiosks to take orders (wow technology) and literally no option to get your order taken by a real person LOL which is great if you hate human interaction (like me). I ordered their signature Shack Burger™, cheese fries, and the cookies and cream shake! My favourite was definitely the burger. One of the best burgers even because the patty was soooOOOOo well seasoned (with salt and maybe spices??) and the Shack sauce was GOOD. I’d say the Shack Burger is on the same tier as the Central Perk hashbrown burger I had in Shanghai LOL. The fries were good, too! Really crispy and well seasoned (with salt, once again djhhaksdg I JUST LOVE SALT AND SHAKE SHACK RLY TRULY UNDERSTANDS THAT). However, the cheese of the cheese fries already went hard by the time they gave out my food so that was :-\ I just wish the cheese was still melted and fresh!! It would have tasted better >0< but oh well! It was still yum. I’ve had better fries though. The cookies and cream shake was pretty yum too~~~ It took me the whole day to finish the drink, though. Because it was so rich and sweet. Still worth a try! Not to mention, the food is SO BEAUTIFULLY PRESENTED (especially the burgers). Can’t wait to try other menu items in the future maybe hEhHEHEhehehe. 

After Shake Shack, we went to Kerry Park to see the Seattle skyline. It was SUPER WINDY hfksdag I died from the cold tbh but the views were nice! I think it would have been even more beautiful during sunset time/night time/during a clear, sunny day. It was super overcast and rainy for the whole day of my trip so you can’t even see the mountain in my photos hmmmm... I’d love to see the night view someday too!! c: 

So after doing ALL OF THIS, it was barely 1pm O_O and we were already on our way back north. Betty wanted to go to the 202 outlet so we did (I didn’t buy anything, of course lol). We were in the outlet for about 2 hours (??) before returning home. I was home by 5pm. LOL. Damn I really could have fit more activities during this day (e.g. Space Needle, some of their museums etc.) because I had no idea customs would take no time at all LMAO. I probably went during a good time too because it was rainy and cold and not the Easter long weekend yet lol. Anyway I love travelling even if they are just little tiny day trips like this. I hope to go on another trip soon~~~ I feel the happiest when I go sightseeing in a different place! :0

I went to hangout with Mia on the day after! We walked around RC and I bought the Vans Old Skool that I’ve been eyeing since last October LOL. After 7 months of longing, they are finally mine!!!!! So happy. We also tried Shiny Tea and it tasted so bad wtf... the Aberdeen location tasted so much better smh. After shopping, we went to Horin Ramen to eat dinner! The ramen was so delicious and beautifully presented!!!!!! Mia liked it too LOL. I love taking people to eat yum foods :’) ~~

[shgoldbe]

Kitchens - Part I, 1959 - 1990

Hollywood, Florida I The first kitchen I remember was in Hollywood, Florida.  It was an inconsequential place with a small eating area where I most memorably recall eating artichokes and spaghetti.  That is where my life began.  There I also ate dry cereal soaked in milk and well sugared.

Hollywood, Florida II – Washington Street Then at another house in Hollywood where the kitchen was darker I ate canned spinach and my brother drank milk from the carton while standing in front of the open refrigerator door.  My mother swatted flies in that kitchen and I agonized over the violent assassination of these innocent insects.  That is also where I threw my plate in rage over distinct foods on the same plate that touched. It was the kitchen where horror of horrors occurred – we were terrorized by a dead grasshopper that was discovered when we went for seconds of canned spinach.  It was a gigantic multicolored variety as long as the can was wide.  Only a flying cockroach or praying mantis would have been worse.

Saint Louis Park, Minnesota The next kitchen was in a nearly new second floor apartment in Minnesota.  Nothing happened to me in that kitchen but I remember it being there.

Skokie, Illinois I Then in Skokie, Illinois the kitchen grew in size.  It was right there on the right side as you enter the front door from the hallway of a large three floor newish apartment building.  But there I spent little time.  The eating was done in a separate dining room.  There were no windows in that kitchen but the dim light would come in from the north cemetery facing windows of the living room.  

Skokie, Illinois II Next was the large Kirk Street apartment a couple miles away with its long narrow kitchen that included a small dining area by the windows that looked out upon the alley.   I was in that kitchen a lot mostly with my mother and sometimes with the whole family.   But it wasn’t really a nice space.  The kitchen door led out to the living and dining area on one side and the bedrooms and family room on the other side.  The living and dining areas were green-carpeted and very sunny.  To the east was a small public park and the view always amusing for its seasonal variety and the cute little girl, probably a couple years older than me that always went there to smoke.  Within the kitchen, on the side where the windows were there was an area where we had a table where the four of us could sit for a meal.  There was also a backdoor that led out into a tiny vestibule that opened up into the alley.  The memory of meals there is few.  The view out the windows was of an alley and cars parked alongside the building.  The electric lines ran from pole to pole through the alley.   One of the poles blocked a potential parking space.  With great difficulty my father maneuvered his old green Dodge into that space.  Nobody complained – it was otherwise wasted space that no other tenants used.  The Dodge just sat there for years and we used it for storage.  We could see it from the kitchen window.  It was in that kitchen that we got our first dishwasher.  It was a portable model that we had to wheel to the sink and hook up to the faucet to run.    

Hollywood, Florida III Back in Florida, this time in a small seventh floor apartment of a building that you wouldn’t feel very good about living in but wouldn’t care because it was only temporary.  I can picture the kitchen and the dining area just in front of it.  Windows let in ample light and the view was uninteresting.   An aerial view the west side of Hollywood is not one you would find memorable.  Nothing was cooked or served there that I could remember.  

Aberdeen, South Dakota A kitchen where I didn’t live is worth mention here because there were many vacations spent there in the house of my grandparents in Aberdeen, South Dakota.  It is a separate room in a small house with a built in eating area.  The appliances were different and more advanced from what I was used to everywhere else.   The refrigerator was fancier with swiveling shelves, the stove was double, there was a dishwasher and a disposal.  I wasn’t used to these fanciful things.  Moreover, there was a basement with a freezer in it.  At the breakfast table in the built in eating area we would eat oranges, cantaloupe and other fresh fruits that I was unaccustomed to eating for breakfast.  My grandfather would toss orange peels to the sink from the table as sport.  It was like a ballgame.  Orange peels ended up all over the place but mostly in or near the disposal.  We almost always went out to dinner when visiting Aberdeen so the kitchen is remembered as a breakfast room.  Once a printed bag was placed on the kitchen counter and the ink was transferred onto the Formica countertop.  The image was indelibly engraved on that countertop as it was in my memory.

Hollywood, Florida IV After the temporary stay at the Gulf Plaza Apartments we moved into a new custom built house not far away.  This was a vastly grander kitchen than has ever been in a home where I lived.  There was a large ceramic double sink, dishwasher, split-range, disposal, cove lighting, side-by-side refrigerator-freezer and the latest in appliances, the garbage compactor that could condense large volumes of garbage into small compact blocks of refuse.  It was the latest but not the greatest; after a while we used it simply to keep paper bags in.   Sliding glass windows opened up into a screened patio replete with a potpourri of tropical exotic plants.  Connected to the kitchen by an open passage for walking and sliding serving plates of all sizes and shapes through was an equally large informal eating area decorated in the same yellow flowered wallpaper as the cooking area.  The eating area opened up into the tropical garden through wooden French doors.  To the side a sliding double wooden door opened up into a vast family room.  In the kitchen my mother made dinners nightly that always included a salad, a main course and a hearty side dish or two.  On weekends my father would sometimes make pancakes and he would always make coffee for himself.  They used a Pyrex coffee percolator and it smelled up the whole house of coffee.  It would be years before I got near the stuff.  I prepared my own breakfast on school days and by the time I had finished high school I was making meals of my own and sometimes for others.  But the most important place in the kitchen was in the cupboard above the counter that separated the eating area from the kitchen because that is where we kept the Pop Tarts.   On occasion I would clean up the kitchen after meals and my mother gave me a quarter.

Rancho Palos Verdes, California Then I crossed the country and I found myself in an apartment in a garden-style complex in Palos Verdes Estates, California.  The kitchen was very small with a tiny window facing the exterior hallway.  I stood in that kitchen when my girlfriend’s father asked me what I want from her daughter.  I wished he leave the apartment and go back to Minnesota.  I wanted nothing from her, I told him, and then it was in that very kitchen that she told me the importance of hot water in washing dishes.  Finally, in that same small kitchen, her mother, (the former wife of the original what-do-you-want-from-my-daughter father) with whom we shared the apartment, had a boyfriend that made stuffed mushroom caps there.  They were unmemorable and I don’t remember them but I do remember that he made them.  I remember it because my girlfriend didn’t like the guy and talked enough about him and his mushrooms contemptuously.  The guy was okay.  I should have taken heed.  So many clues paid so little attention to.

Berkeley, California I – Piedmont Avenue Then to Berkeley, California.  My first very own kitchen that I shared with my girlfriend (until I later shared it with someone else).  The apartment and the kitchen were vastly older than any I have ever experienced.  Everything in the kitchen was ancient and old-fashioned.  The refrigerator was the newest thing but if it were any older it would have been an icebox.  It was a completely separate room, long and narrow with a ceiling at least twelve feet high.  On one end was a large window and on the other was the doorless entryway that opened into the hall.  The apartment front door was right there across the narrow hall.  Near there in the hall was the only heating vent in the whole apartment, a system I had no control over.  There was enough room in the kitchen to seat four in the corner nearest the entryway.  That is the place I celebrated my twenty-first birthday.  It was in that kitchen where I cooked up my own version of green eggs inspired by Dr. Seuss.  My three years in that kitchen that reeked with character, didn’t inspire me to cook much else – other stuff had me occupied.  

Berkeley, California II – Durant Avenue For my senior year I moved near downtown Berkeley and “down” to a shared bedroom apartment that was dark, narrow and smaller perhaps in cubic feet than my last kitchen.  The kitchen was nothing more than a passageway between the living room and the bedroom.  I don’t remember cooking there except for the once or twice I had a guest over.  I compartmentalized my life so I wouldn’t have to think about the kitchen and be burdened by its soullessness.   While I’m a keep-a-kitchen-clean guy I notoriously left this one piled with dirty dishes to the great displeasure of my roommate.  Did I dirty all those dishes?  How?  I can’t remember.  It was my senior year and I had more important things to think about.

Berkeley, California III -  2222 Durant Avenue, Apt. # 3   This was next door from the last place I lived.  It was an old house that was converted into eight studio apartments in the already distant past.   For the first time ever I had my own apartment and my own kitchen.  And what a perfectly delightful kitchen it was!  It was a completely separate room from the living room/bedroom and it had a dining area off to the side in front of an enormous window where I installed an exterior planter in which I kept colorful little flowers such as marigolds and daisies.  The light was magnificent in spite of the close proximity to the neighboring building.  The kitchen walls were covered with white glossy panels and I wiped everything clean and shiny.  The stove was a quaint semi-old-fashioned white gas model with an aluminum duct coming out the back and running up into the ceiling some ten or twelve feet high.  The counter was perfectly situated between the refrigerator and the stove with cabinets within arm’s reach.  If I was properly stocked I could do everything, create anything by pivoting my torso and moving my arms.  Two steps away the table that could seat up to four people was waiting prepared for placement of serving dishes heaped with hot food right out of the oven or off the stovetop.  For breakfast the tabletop illuminated with bright and cool northern California sunshine and at night the ambience of the light from the high-up light fixture bouncing off the walls surpassed in pleasure-giving the most memorable interior light that radiates from real and imagined cafes in the great culinary capitals or country taverns and ale-houses in the winter night.  The food I prepared in that perfect chamber were usually very good and the kitchen table, that I exquisitely dressed with finery,  where it was consumed was often where passion and romance commenced and friendships took root or intensified.  Over the course of my six years in that kitchen I made improvements such as attaching a pegboard to the wall above the stove where I hung my copper bottom Revere Ware pots and pans.  I also adorned the walls with art prints and nurtured the philodendron that snaked around the walls from their pots that I tended in the other room.   I began a collection of coffee making contraptions and cherished my new SEB pressure cooker there.  Now nearly forty years later my SEB still hisses to me to remind me of the potential for beauty in a small man-made environment where food and drink are the center of attention and the pretext for even greater things.

Berkeley, California – Another Place A couple blocks away there was another kitchen in the apartment of my future first wife.  It was a mere closet in a hallway but was amazingly fully functional.  I never used that kitchen for much of anything.  There would be no point since my castle was so nearby.

Miami, Florida I Back in Florida, ten years after I left, my independence was gone again, at least for a time.  Our Virginia Ave. apartment in Coconut Grove had a kitchen that I wasn’t interested in using.  In fact I don’t even remember eating there.  For many months, maybe even a year, I had other things on my mind.  Certainly the ambience of this third floor apartment with its exterior hallways overlooking parking was a turnoff of major proportions.  The kitchen windows fronted that hallway and nothing seemed right except to get out of there as much as I could.

Miami, Florida II The next apartment just blocks away on Tigertail Avenue was an improvement and I lived mostly alone there.  It too had an exterior hallway but the view was of gardens and a swimming pool.  A windowed door opened from the kitchen to the outside hall but that door wasn’t used because just around the corner through the living room there was the front door that opened into the same place.  The kitchen was dark and narrow but it was adequate thanks to the small dining area situated towards the interior.  I did the best I could with the space I had putting up some of the things that I brought from Berkeley, and it made me feel more or less okay about it.  I didn’t do much in that kitchen though.  I left the apartment as much as I could because it was almost always better to be away.  The necessity for using air conditioning most all the time prevented any possibilities for making the space airy and light.  The Florida climate was unhospitable and the design and construction lent itself to closed dank interiors.  The bedroom was fine but the kitchen was unfriendly.  I wanted out and out I got.

Miami, Florida III The next kitchen was in a seventh floor apartment in a newer very large building near the airport.  It was no luxury apartment but it was a nice sunny place with a large modern kitchen with good lighting.  Unfortunately the kitchen had a serious cockroach problem that was just impossible to resolve and the apartment was prone to being burglarized.  It was unbearable but those were transition months with lots going on including my first divorce and second marriage.  I had lost most interest in cooking and entertaining, but there was one recipe that I did work on in that apartment but that work was done mostly in the bedroom and it resulted in an absolute masterpiece.

END OF PART I (1959 – 1990)  

2017

PART II TO FOLLOW (1990 – 2017)