Happy New Year

The Holiday season kind of tricks you into good cheer with sugar highs, booze, sparkling lights, and hugs. Thanks, 2011 for a lot of things among them: moving 4 times, traveling so much, graduating, more gardening and quilting, and beautiful new friendships.

Happy New Year, friends! Sorry, this post reads bottom to top.

December 2011: Rainbow Party and feeling infinite love for Oakland, my friends, my surrogate families, and all things good. Celebrated the Solstice by unceremoniously burning something over the grill while smoking a cigarette...four days later. I sell my banjo.

November 2011: Fly home to Tampa for the holiday and to photograph Mary's wedding. Especially awesome to see my baby cousins run circles around me and to eat cookies with my mom.

Oct, Nov, Dec, etc. 2011: Occupy Camps and marches, rainy season begins again.

October 2011: Visit Portland again, and Cape Perpetua. More trips to Seattle + Las Vegas.

All summer long 2011: Camp in Alameda with 15 Kinder-3rd vs. me

July 2011: My sister, Lauren gets married to her beau Chris and buys a house in Gilbert, Iowa. I see my parents for the first time in 7 months!

June 2011: Rosie and I move into the Happiness Hotel. I buy a bike and a banjo.

May 2011: I visit my Portland people. Not pictured: Lis and Gabby.

March+ April 2011: Rosie and I move to Oakland. Trips to Seattle.

January 2011: Noelle visits before moving to New Orleans.

January 2011: Take Rosie across a lot of states to Berkeley. Here she is licking frost off a window in New Orleans.

Fiber Fun

Hi, friends, I finally finished this multi-toned scarf for my brother-in-law. Got this yarn for nearly free from the Depot. Hopefully the USPS doesn't collapse into the abyss of holiday mailings and potential anthrax scares. I was reading this morning Mother Jones article on the timeline of beginning the Iraq War. In reflection of this past year, on this winter solstice, I am amazed at how time scurries away from us. Ten years has passed by in a few winks, and 2011 is a hyperventilated exhale. Bring on la fin du monde, 2012.

The Rainbow party was rip-roarin and fun, and my friend Jorge who works at Revere Glass made me this awesome glass pendant as a birthday gift. I made a knit necklace to hold it.

It feels good to exchange joyful greetings in the form of knit love and also glittery postcards - here are a few that I made last week. Most are getting sent out at thank you cards.

Dreamy Daikon

It's been a while since I've posted a recipe, most likely due to my incessant traveling for the past month and a half. I have another weekend in Seattle to look forward to in the coming year, which will hopefully yield more blueberry picking a la Jenni Kaye, more rain, and more jokes like the one the baker in Pike's Market told me.

"What is the most confusing holiday in Oakland?" ".....Easter?" "No, Father's Day!"

Anyway, I scrambled to market and got some peppers and dill and made these roasted veggies and stuffed pepper for lunch on Saturday.

1 anaheim pepper, whole

1 red bell pepper, diced

1 large daikon

3 whole garlic cloves

bunch of dill

pinch of salt

dash of dried rosemary

1/4 C oil

1/8 C rice

1/8 C cooked red beans

I used leftover rice and beans to stuff my pepper and have estimated how much I used. Of course you can substitute any pepper and any kind of beans to your liking/availability. Use the pepper seeds to spicy it up (or feed them to your parrot).

Toss the ingredients in oil, stuff the whole pepper with rice and beans, roast at 375F for 20 minutes.

As promised to Jessica, here is a photo of my holiday cheer living room which I enjoyed decking out with fake flowers, a Christmas vagina, and various other articles from a box labeled "X-Mas City babies." Thank you, Happiness Hotel.

The Oakland port feels like the end of the world, large boxes filled with anonymous humming shit, well-lit and guarded by 50+ OPD. The winter fog makes everything feel spooky, and apocalyptic. Meanwhile, a group of women in Vermont are arrested for protesting nuclear power plants by performing a citizen's arrest on power company executives. Democracy Now! coverage here.

Full Moon

Two days until the full moon and Mercury Retrograde is ending the year with an obvious and resounding sigh, thinking about how I've almost been in the Bay Area for a year makes my head spin. Made a delicious dinner of penne, pesto, arugula, black pepper, and raw tomatoes followed by a Morpho Herbal Ale.

More photos from my trip to Florida (above) uploaded on my flickr here.

Ben's Nat Geo photo contest photo here, which you should vote for.

My friend Katie's yoga blog comin at ya from Asheville, North Carolina you should read here.

Have you seen Green Porno?

Went to LA for my birthday and a stranger at a Hermosa Beach vintage store gave me a Wild Heart vinyl for free.

Having an excellent evening and considering stringing Christmas lights in preparation for the upcoming Rainbow party here at the Happiness Hotel.