Oh so quiet.

I'm disappointed. I've been house sitting (and dog sitting, obviously) and when I signed on to do this I saw this as a nice little escape, a chance to have some peace and quiet and do some writing, maybe even get my fiction writing mind going a bit. The setting is ideal: smaller house, comfortable sitting, dim-able lighting, and a nice spacious back porch.

Here I am, nearly a week later, and I have done squat. I think I'm getting sick, I feel ridiculously uncreative, and I haven't even done much as far as quality blogging in the last couple of days (though I still stand by my last post, I think it was one of my better works in a while). I think I realize why this is, though: I need external stimuli. Whether I'm writing blogs or fiction, I need some sort of spark that I can then expound on, and it's just a little too quiet and peaceful here. I don't see crazy people (save one kooky bitch on my dog walk last night) and I don't do much of anything out of the ordinary that might be considered "blog worthy." Plus, I've been so tired (a mix of less sleep, more hilly walking, and impending illness) that I feel like I'm cheating myself out of my prime blog time: the hours between two and three thirty in the a.m. So here I sit at one fifteen, gradually pecking away at this keyboard with the dog sleeping nearby, nose dripping from time to time, trying to figure out ways to be exciting and clever.

One last thing that I was struck by tonight: how is it, as a local culture, that we have such absurd food knowledge? I had sushi with two friends tonight, and everybody had their favorites, their likes and dislikes. How is it that offhand I know that I love raw yellowtail and mackerel, or that I prefer smelt roe to salmon roe? Does it strike anyone else odd that a busta white San Franciscan at age 27 can discuss the relative merits and differences between cooked eel (unagi) and fresh sea eel (anago)? Did people twenty years ago get their veggies drizzled with a cilantro-mango vinaigrette? Was aioli part of their daily vocabulary? When the hell did this happen? Is it a San Francisco thing, or do people in the Midwest eat like this too? I mean, I'm completely sopolistic, but still, I don't see some Iowa or Dakotan farmer going down to his local restaurant to order Ashanghai Noodles with Velvet Chicken & Sweet Shrimp, featuring Chino Farms stir fry vegetables, Thai basil and a ginger-black bean sauce (I didn't make it up, I got it off the online menu for Spago). That's a far cry from chicken fried steak or a bacon cheeseburger. Don't even get me started on the whole wine thing. I love knowing it, but I don't really know why in the world I do know things like that; except, of course, to impress the ladies.