Are we there yet?

My wonderful roommates came to cheer me on at the finish and took this photo of me.


I burned 3000 calories on Sunday in four hours and twenty-two minutes. I will spare my thoughts on running a marathon because I already wrote something about it five years ago, but I'll say that it is still really hard despite having actually trained this time. (And by training, what I mean is I ran a total of 25 miles this month leading up to it.) Still, it was fun.

I want to ask for a raise in this way: "I think I deserve a raise. For all you know, I work really hard."

(I am, incidentally, writing this while at work. Also, is putting incidentally inside parentheses redundant?)

How Not To Ask Out A Girl

Back in college (when I still did quality thinking), I decided that the best girls to ask out were ones I did not know; random ones on the street or wherever. My reasoning was that this: a) made for a better story, b) made rejection less painful because there was less personal and emotional investment in it. Last week, ten years later, I attempted this.

There's this cute barista that works at the coffee shop on my block that I frequent. I used to see her more often but I'd seen her only twice or so the past couple months. She is cheerful which counts for a lot. I'd never spoken to her before. When I went in, I ordered a "a short latte" ... "umm. with caramel" ... "and soy", replace ellipses with half-second hesitancy because cute girls make me nervous. I mentioned how I hadn't seen her much lately and she said she only worked a few days because of school. Above the static of steaming soy, I found out she was in her last year ("finally"). I would have said more but there were customers behind me so I took a seat and pretended to read and write for an hour.

Then, I had an idea, because I have a habit of working towards ideas more than I do towards success (probably because I expect to fail and wrongly think this makes it better somehow), and asked her if she'd mind if I used a computer for a few minutes as it is an internet cafe. I went over to a computer and opened Word and typed "Dear Miss Barista, Perhaps I can interest you in a drink after your shift, Customer #5, Andy" and I printed it out, and you should know that everything gets sent to a printer behind the counter because you have to pay for printouts, and I went to the counter and told her I had printed something. She, nosy barista, reads the note as she walks over and says she has a boyfriend and thanks me for being nice, and I leave.

I do not know if she really has a boyfriend but I've decided that I'm simply not good looking enough to pull this sort of thing off. And rejection still stinks.

Sweet Bear Vets for Tooth

I went to the post office to try to mail something only to discover that no one was working because it was Veterans Day. I think we've got it all backwards. Surveys show that a third of the homeless population in the United States are veterans. Instead of a day off, we should make everyone, including the veterans, work on Veterans Day. Then we can simultaneously fix the two large concerns of our country: homelessness and the package that sits on my desk waiting to be sent.

Success!

So I have a minor fixation with pizza. Other things I (pretend to) have fixations with: ponytails, pocky, diet coke, the little mermaid, flan. Anyway, New York is the best town for pizza. It's also the best town for a lot of other things, like friends, but let's stick with pizza. Seattle is a crappy town for pizza. Seattle is generally underwhelming when it comes to food, but the pizza is spectacularly bad. People will say something like "the pizza at this place is so good" and then I go there and realize people here have no idea what good pizza is. Thin, with a nice crust that is chewy and not a cracker, not too much sauce, not too much cheese. The only place I've had a really good pie in Seattle is at Serious Pie, which isn't really NY style, but is thin and puffy and delicious.

I have spent a lot of time making pizzas from scratch. They are never really that good. Always too crackery and not chewy. Probably better than the average slice here in seattle, but not necessarily worth the effort, and certainly not better than what you can get for $2 in new york. (Strangely, a slice of shitty pizza in seattle is $3. Bastards.)

This flusters me because pizza can't be that hard to make. This is logically true. At least one person on every block in new york city knows how to make a decent pie.

Finally, this past week, I have made good pizza. Not corner pizzeria, but fancy old-style NY pizza like at Grimaldi's or Lombardi's or John's, etc. I do not know if I'll ever be able to recreate it again because I just eyeballed everything, but hopefully I can; I remember most of what I did, and remember how everything felt. Tonight I made a classic margherita with some ricotta:






My roommate calls it the best pizza she's had in Seattle. I should open a restaurant. I can sell pizza and General Andy's Chicken, the best-selling foods of New York.