Today's fortune: You find beauty in ordinary things, do not lose this ability.
I received a similar fortune back in July, but this one's different - here, the fortune cookie gods are telling me, in typical run-on sentence fashion, that the ability to find beauty in ordinary things is important for my future.
So with that in mind, I paid special attention to the beauty in ordinary things. Like, for example, a rare morning when the windshield didn't require scraping before I drove to work.
Or the sight of a brand-new set of tires as another furious Midwest winter approaches.
And the sunrise over the interstate...
...as I listened to a song on the radio about a summer sunset.
Grazing cattle less than a mile from the office park, a not-uncommon site in eastern Kansas.
A specialized license plate that read, "ZOIDBRG."
Learning braille from the elevator buttons at the office.
My pirate rubber ducky, the stalwart defender of my cubicle, a gift from a former co-worker.
And last but not least, turning the calendar page on a new month - and the realization that there are 31 days left in this project!
Today's fortune: Culture and customs of China attract you.
My brother suggested that I should walk around my house and take note of all the things made in China. Since I'm lazy, I decided just to look at the stuff on and around my desk, but I think it also proves the larger point - no matter where you go in your house, you're surrounded by stuff made in China.
(But, yeah, mostly because I'm lazy.)
A brief rundown of the made-in-China items I discovered in a two-minute search of my desk:
My computer.
My computer's speakers.
My computer's keyboard and mouse.
The phone.
My cell phone.
The electric fan on the corner of my desk.
The Bret Saberhagen bobblehead doll that keeps me company while I write.
The ukelele off the the side of my desk, the one I should be practicing more.
And that's just the stuff I found; I'm sure the desk, too, is made in China, but I can't see the country-of-origin label (and I'm too lazy to look for it very hard).
Ironically, the one thing you may think would be clearly made in China is actually produced in the good ol' U.S. of A: the fortune cookies. In fact, all four batches I've purchased this year have been made by different manufacturers in America.
Actually, maybe that's not so ironic: fortune cookies are, largely, an American invention, based on a Japanese recipe. I don't need to re-invent the wheel here - for the full story, check out Jennifer 8 Lee's great book, "The Fortune Cookie Chronicles."
I could get into the politics of America's obsession with and dependence on Chinese-made products, but please reference my laziness comments above. Really, everything I know about Chinese culture and customs I learned from Pearl S. Buck.
If you've never heard of her (shame on you), Pearl Buck was an American author who lived in China for decades. She was a prolific novelist, and many of her best works are about the country that became her second home, most famously "The Good Earth," a book that is rightly considered one of the best novels ever written. I have a shelf almost entirely dedicated to Buck novels in my library.
Her signature is also hanging on my office wall, a gift from my aforementioned brother.
Although "The Good Earth" is a masterpiece, my favorite Buck novel, and the first one of hers I read, is called "Imperial Woman," a lesser-known piece of historical fiction about Chinese Empress Dowager Tz'u Hsi, who ruled her country like a gangsta. "Imperial Woman" holds a special place in my library on a shelf with my favorite books of all time.
Pearl S. Buck writes about ancient and modern China in a way that's so vivid it has to be real. And while it may be problematic that I've learned about China through the writings of a white American, I've held a special place in my heart for China ever since first picking up that dusty book up there.
So read "The Good Earth." Read "Imperial Woman," if you can find a copy. Study up on China as much as you can. It may help you out when they become our landlords.
This three-word gem is by far the shortest, and the one least resembling a complete sentence, I've received in nearly 300 tries so far. But it came on the perfect day. Although we celebrated it with a party on Saturday, today is actually Jamie's birthday. I took the day off work and Jamie shrugged off substitute teaching assignments so we could spend it together. Today's fortune wished me happiness - and a day on the town with my wife, a classic Kansas City day, gave us both a memory's worth of happiness.
We began the day meeting Jamie's mom at one of our favorite Indian restaurants for a terrific buffet lunch. CARROT UPDATE - The orange stuff at the front of the picture is called Gajar Halwa, and it's a sweet carrot pudding.
Afterward, we shopped around the Westport area, including a stop at Pryde's Old Westport, a kitchen supply store and one of the most unique shops in the city. Then we headed to Crown Center for more shopping, including a stop at a wonderful-smelling chocolatier, where Jamie and I sampled some cake pops - a small ball of cake dipped in frosting and impaled on a stick. Mine was strawberry flavored...
... and Jamie enjoyed a chocolate, Halloween-themed pop.
One of the boutiques at Crown Center featured a perplexing deal on greeting cards.
Finally we drove downtown and then across the 12th Street Viaduct to the West Bottoms, where Jamie and I spent some time at Jaskki's, a cool hookah cafe, where Jamie made a furry friend named Loki.
We were also treated to a grimy-but-beautiful industrial view of the Kansas City skyline, some West Bottoms warehouses and the 12th Street Viaduct.
Now we're back home to watch a movie. Jamie is using her birthday prerogative to pick the film, and she's making me suffer through "Beaches." But I don't mind. I was blessed with happiness today, and the chickiest of all chick flicks won't take that away from me.
Today, I did what I promised I would do on Friday. I took my wife to the Kansas City Renaissance Festival, the first time I've ever been, and to refresh your memory it's a place I said I would never go because, well, I hate that kind of thing.
I thought I hated it. And truth be told, I kinda still hate it. But you know what? I had a lot of fun. Jamie had a lot of fun. We laughed, smiled and held hands the whole day. Truth be told, it was the perfect day. And why wouldn't it be? I was spending it with the prettiest maiden in all the land.
We started out by watching some jousting, which was pretty cool although nobody was stabbed to death with a lance - a bit of a letdown.
Then we enjoyed some of the local entertainment.
Jamie took some time out to smoke a hookah, one of her favorite leisurely activities.
And I ate a giant piece of meat, one of my favorite leisurely activities.
The turkey leg was just as delicious as everybody told me it would be. It's just too bad they didn't have a Tofurky leg for my vegetarian wife.
One last funny story, which pretty much sums up the day. Right after we walked in, from the corner of my eye I saw a sign which I thought said "Wine Tasting." I wouldn't have minded boozing it up a little to make the costumed dorks a little more tolerable. But on closer inspection, the sign actually said "Magic Wand Testing." I didn't really need to test my magic wand, so we passed on by.
Honestly though, we had a blast, and - I never thought I'd say this - I wouldn't mind going back again next year. The Ren Fest is a good time, even if it's not your thing. And for me, it was a perfect opportunity to fulfill today's fortune. By experiencing something new with people I wouldn't normally hang out with, I gained a new perspective on a different culture. And although I don't believe I'll evert be a part of that culture, I truly enjoyed spending time surrounded by it for an afternoon.
When you attend a male-dominated Carnivore Party, it's not a good idea to bring up the fact that a fortune cookie is telling you that you have a heart of gold. The fellas tend to ridicule you.
But that's okay. I displayed a heart of gold anyway. This morning, as Jamie was sleeping, I snuck out of the house and bought donuts and some herbivore-friendly items for Jamie to eat at the Carnivore Party (unfortunately, her back is still tender, so she stayed home). That was pretty golden-hearted of me.
My brother Marty - who also has a heart of gold - has been planning a Carnivore Party for months, and today it finally happened. The rules were simple: everyone attending had to bring some kind of meat that could be made outside on the grill. Vegetables were begrudgingly welcome, but only as an afterthought to the meat. Then we spent the (thankfully) breezy and relatively cool afernoon cooking over open flames.
Marty
Everything cooked was added to a list, which by the end of the day looked like a restaurant menu in Man Heaven.
Everybody also brought sauces, marinades and rubs, and the selection was a bit overwhelming.
My contribution to the party was Marinated Buffalo Chicken Strips, which is exactly what it sounds like: chicken strips marinated in buffalo sauce. Since I have such a golden heart, I'll even give you the recipe for the sauce: 1 cup melted butter, 1 cup Frank's Red Hot Sauce (or a little more if you want it spicy), a couple teaspoons of vinegar, and salt and pepper to taste. I marinated the strips in the sauce overnight. Here's what they looked like on the grill:
And the finished product, which I served with bleu cheese dressing:
My brother came up with a brilliant idea to incorporate this blog into the Carnivore Party. He had an interesting thought for coating some chicken with this:
Yeah, that's crushed-up fortune cookies. We dredged the chicken in an egg-and-milk mixture and coated them in the cookie crumbs.
The general opinion was that they might have been better pan-fried, but since this was an outdoor cooking fiesta, they worked just as well on the grill, and they looked pretty good when they came off.
Here's a picture of me eating the first-ever (to our knowledge) piece of Fortune Cookie Chicken.
And you know what? It was pretty damn good. The sweetness of the cookies added a nice mild zest to the chicken. I'd like to make it again - maybe pan-frying it the next time.
Everybody got in on the grilling action, including my dad, who made his famous grilled pork chops basted with honey mustard barbecue sauce.
Later in the afternoon, my brother's best friend Lee produced a styrofoam cup from Marty's freezer. Inside the cup were six dead cicadas. Lee was planning to grill them, and he surprisingly found five other brave souls to try them as well. Of course, I was one of them.
Lee and one of the bugs.
We de-winged the creatures and dipped them in egg wash before coating them each in a different kind of rub. To keep them from falling through the grill, we placed them on a sheet of aluminum foil. After they came off the heat, they looked like this:
I ate the one in the upper right. And just so you don't think I'm lying, a video exists. I will upload it to this blog at a later date.
The cicada was better than I expected. The flavor was actually pretty good. But there were two major problems which will probably prevent me from ever eating a cicada again. One, when I bit into the bug, his innards sprayed into my mouth, which was quite disgusting. Two, the bug's exoskeleton was inedible. I should have shucked it like a boiled shrimp before eating it.
All in all, it was a hell of a party. My gut is full of meat, and I'm back home now with my wife. After a crazy day, I can reflect on today's fortune. "You have a heart of gold." It's a nice thing to hear. Sometimes I feel like my golden heart is tarnished, and sometimes I believe it's only fool's gold. But then my wife, who is worried that I may have gotten too much sun today, brings me a bottle of water and rubs my back and shows me what a real heart of gold looks like. And my own golden heart glistens, because I want to be a better person for her.
Today's fortune: You will find hidden treasures where you least expected.
My Little Brother Rayne and I spent the day at the Kansas City Zoo. Rain was in the forecast, but not a single drop fell on our heads, and the temperature never climbed above 80. All in all, it was a beautiful day for a walk through the zoo.
The zoo, obviously, is filled with animals, so I don't consider those the "least expected" treasures this fortune refers to. But I got some cool photos, so I'll sprinkle them in to this post.
One of the least hidden treasures there is the zoo's now-famous polar bear, Nikita, who is housed in a new $10 million exhibit. Nikita, a three-and-a-half year old male, put on quite a show for us, swimming laps around his pool and taking a walk on the fake glaciers.
The first hidden treasure we encountered was literally right under our feet. While crossing a bridge in the sprawling Africa section of the zoo, we looked down into the water and saw dozens of turtles swimming around. Later on, we saw turtles - including some gigantic ones - as part of the official exhibit, but this first batch was unmarked and easy to miss.
Another hidden treasure was watching an 11-year-old boy standing mere feet from giraffes be much more fascinated by a chipmunk running loose on a path. "Chipmunks are cuter," he said.
But giraffes are taller!
And then that same boy found a hidden treasure of his own - a quarter in the tray of a vending machine. To distract him during the long walk between exhibits, he would play with the quarter, sometimes paying more attention to the coin than to the chimpanzees staring back at us.
To help with those long walks between exhibits, the Kansas City Zoo has done a great job of adding transport mechanisms throughout the park, and we rode 'em all, including a tram, a train and a boat. They're also nearly finished installing a sky tram (a.k.a. ski lift) over the Africa exhibit. I snapped this photo from the ground tram.
In the end, I found a hidden treasure by realizing Rayne was right: although the big animals are the headliners at the KC Zoo, the small ones are pretty darn cute, including these meerkats, one of whom seemed to be angry with me.
At the end of a long day, we were both tired, but we promised each other to return to the zoo soon. It's a lot of fun. And even though I spent the day looking at wild animals, I discovered the wild animals I love the most right inside my home.
