but it’s the best one i encountered this year by far.
i mean damn, that’s cool.

no, i don’t know the dude. the pic is immortalized on flickr.

thanks to the ReadyMade magazine blog for pointing the way.

last year i made a pledge to redouble my efforts to travel to black rock city this year for burning man.

i made it.

i returned home last thursday night, and the intervening days have been spent unloading a large truck, rinsing playa dust from my skin and hair and clothing and lungs, and alternately bubbling over with stories and collapsing from exhaustion.

i have new friends, a new job for a week out of the year, and a new town to call home. there is so much to say about black rock city and so little of it makes sense out of context, so for now i offer some photos to get things started. my own camera ran out of batteries early and i didn’t get many good shots, but burners are thankfully well represented within the flickr community, so i offer you a few of my favorites:

The Monkey Tree —

Life in a whiteout —

The Double Rainbow and the Temple of Forgiveness —

The Double Rainbow Entire —

The Eclipse —

The Big Rig Jig —

So chew on those a bit, and if you’re still hungry, head over to this description by Lucifer, my boss at the Golden Cafe.

i’ll say more soon and evermore, i am sure. in the meantime, stay happy, and i hope to see you next year in black rock city.

i’ve never been very good at picking a favorite anything, and i’m kind of annoying if you ask me to do so because i will probably give a somewhat lengthy speech like: “well, toDay i think it would be fun to watch the hudsucker proxy, listen to the shins and go bowling. while eating pringles. but last week i totally wanted to watch ET and go to the park. so i Really think it’s more about… sorry. yeah. i’ll take whatever’s on special. thanks.”

but then there is aged dutch goat’s milk gouda, and i think i’m ready to go out on a limb and say that it is my favorite cheese. ever. and yes, i would marry it.

the first time i tried this cheese was a few years ago in some schmancy wine and cheese shop in concord, ma. i was there on a business trip and the other woman i was traveling with and i were exhausted and decided to go buy some cheese and a baguette and a bottle of wine and call it dinner in the hotel room. i think we got some other kinds of cheese, too, but honestly i don’t remember any of the next week because all i wanted to do was eat that gouda all day. work schmork.

it’s funny because this was the same trip wherein i discovered that i have a fondness for tempranillo wine, which is one of the most common spanish reds, so this post sounds a bit big for its epicurean britches now, don’t it?

but to return to the cheese, i came home gaga over it and unable to find any in indiana for a long time, until david rousted some up in indy for the decadent garden party almost a year later, and it was still good, but not quite as good. then sahara mart offered yet another reason to become my favorite bloomingtonian grocer by carrying some for a few weeks. i must have been the only person who bought it, though. barbarians. ;)

anyway it’s not all that hard to find these days, possibly because it’s getting hipper, and i have since located several samples that were all lovely, though usually quite expensive. at whole foods, for example? they have one that is aMazing but it costs like $18/lb. and i’m sorry, but i make it a rule to only donate a kidney to subsidize dairy purchases once every five years.

yesterday though? i found some at trader joe’s for $8/lb. and the past few days have been happy, which is what led to this post. i think my conviction is even more solidified because this dairy sensitivity thing i mentioned in the biscuits and gravy post? it’s quite real, but both hard cheeses and goat’s milk cheeses don’t aggravate it much, so it looks like the thing to do is just pinch pennies and cherish only such cheeses that truly deserve to be cherished. which is how it should be anyway, really. and this shiznit’s at the top of the list.

that was educational, eh? :)

and the first reason it might be fun to live in amsterdam, you ask?
why, the tulips, of course!
i like tulips.
and if you don’t believe that, look here.
there are even two pictures that are named “i like tulips”, so i don’t know what else you thought i meant…

here are a couple of shots of my recent activity c/o tif:

erik has recently enrolled himself in his own private contest with tiffanie regarding number of photos posted to flickr, and yesterday he gleefully informed me that he had again pulled ahead, having posted nearly 150 pictures of mexican kittens, firepits, and eduardo caguama manos, which are basically beer bottles that remain duct taped to your hands until you drink all of their contents. the quality of these entries did not preserve his lead for long, however, and that was probably my fault because i told tif of these developments today at the harry potter meetup and, lo and behold, only two hours later she had again edged ahead with pictures from the last couple of weeks, even though she was supposedly going to spend her afternoon packing. :)

meanwhile, in my own flickr world, i made up for not having pictures to post by actually checking my internal messages, and there was one from some online scottish guidebook saying that they might want to use the picture below in an upcoming edition.

this amuses me because that picture was taken with absolutely no consideration for quality, simply because i had just taken a picture of tania and the new friend we had made at the hostel and it seemed like fun to try and get a shot in low light. that is a good bar, though, and i guess if you’re a guidebook such shots are more interesting than things like grit bins, which i document solely because they make me giggle.

but come on, this one’s kinda funny:

ok, i’ll take some pictures of current events soon now, i promise.