On Citrus, Lunch-boxes, and other foodly things.

I'd just like to take a moment out of my day to talk about the glory of fruit and the beauty of a lunch-box.

Erinn recently introduced me to the delicious pummelo, a large bigger-than-a-grapefruit-sized yellow-green beast of a citrus fruit that has captivated me like none other.

As Erinn so aptly puts it, "The pummelo tastes like what you'd think flowers should taste like."  It's a very light taste, but what makes it so much fun is the extreme effort that it takes to actually cut it and eat it.  After looking at some of these images of cut pummelos, I feel like we might have been going about it the wrong way.

Here's how we were peeling and eating it.

1. Cut a small X into the top of the pummelo's skin to give you a place to start peeling.
2. Peel the 1-2 inch thick skin off all the way around with your hands until what you are holding remotely resembles a snowball made of pulp and membranes.
3. Randomly stick your knife into the pummelo and attempt to seperate it into two halves.
4. Peel back the membranes that hold the actual edible fruit bits apart deep within the pummelo.
5. Pick apart and eat as if you were a monkey grooming another monkey.

As you can guess, this method gets quite messy pretty fast.  In about 1 minute on the internet googling "pummelo" I came across this.  The proper way to peel and eat a pummelo.  Even though, somehow, I am the worst out of the group at peeling the pummelo in our own "special" way, I thought our makeshift pummelo peeling method seemed a bit dicey.  Maybe we will resolve to try a more traditional method the next time a pummelo rolls into Erinn's apartment.

Let us now turn to the opposite side of the citrus spectrum in terms of size.  This morning, while at the Newark Natrual Foods Co-Op buying toothpaste, I stumbled upon a fruit that I feel some sort of strange connection with, dating back to before I can remember.  I, for some reason, have always loved kumquats, the tiny bite-size relatives of the orange.

These things are just so much fun to eat, mostly because, unlike the fucking crazy 2 inch thick skin of the pummelo, you can just eat it whole: skin and all.  You have to spit out the pesky seeds, but part of me greatly prefers the easy access style of the kumquat.

The weird part is that for the life of me, I can't remember where I developed my affinity for kumquats.  I think it was from some children's song, or television show; some lost relic of my childhood that's been pushed out by all the mindless online gaming and alcohol that I've taken in over the years.  I hope that I can eventually put my finger on exactly what sparked my kumquat obsession.  I can accurately pinpoint when I stopped eating kumquats in my childhood; it most likely has something to do with me eating them in lower/middle school, when kids giggled uncontrollably when you said stuff like "do it" and "come here".  I'm sure the word "kumquat" drew some fire, and I'm sure I stopped bringing them into school in order to quell the harassment.

All this talk of food is particularly relevant because I have just acquired a new lunchbox.  Having recently moved out, I decided that I needed a good way to save money at work by bringing food in from home, so I settled on this kickass bento style lunch-box thing.  It has 4 bowls that stack up inside a thermos-thingy, and it keeps your food warm/cold for hours.

Technically it's called:

Zojirushi Mr. Bento Stainless-Steel lined Lunch Jar

I have had good luck with it so far.  It's kept noodles, rice, and chili warm, and it's kept fresh veggies fresh all day.  Yay.  Here's a picture of my first time using it at work:

Crappy camera phone picture, but cool just the same.

I never know how to end blog posts without making them sound all "Dear Diary", so here's the end of this post.

That is all.

Greetings, internet.

Greetings, internet.

This Christmas, I went to Colorado to ski.  While I was there, it made me think quite a bit about what the future holds.  There is a part of me that wants nothing more than to get the fuck out of here and live in the mountains, working in some simple job at a ski resort as a lift operator, or restoring hiking trails somewhere, or something like that.  There were so many people in Colorado who were young that seemed extremely happy with their lives.  Maybe it was their dream to run the lifts in Steamboat.  Maybe it was their dream to cure cancer or contribute something in the more traditional sense.  I couldn't really tell.  I've always thought one must follow his or her dream to be truly happy.  I am beginning to see that's not the case.

The ultimately important conclusion is that the people/workers in Colorado were happy then, in that moment, doing what they were doing.  Happiness in existing.  There is something extremely basic and extremely beautiful in that idea.  More people need to find the happiness in their everyday lives instead of dwelling on the bullshit that happens.  That said, if I actually start writing in this blog again, I'm sure I'll use it to complain about all the fucking nonsense that happens to me as I finish this final semester.

This idea of happiness in existing every day made me realize why I enjoy theater.  I have always seen in art a great importance, but I believe that theater has a unique chance to speak to people and relate the plays and narratives on stage to their own stories in their own lives.  Good theater can speak to so many different kinds of people on so many levels, but because it is different every time it is performed, only the great theater rings in the minds of the audience.  It's not like a painting or a movie or a song that you can go back and get literally the exact same experience with the work.  That is, it is an identical piece of art.  Nothing within the artwork has changed.  Theater, on the other hand, is completely different every single night, every single performance.  When you go see a play, it's a 100% unique experience that you will never experience again.  One can see how this can be both a gift and a curse for theater as an art form.  Shows come and go very quickly because it takes a very special quality of work to stay with the average audience member for a long period of time, and even more to make him or her want to return to see the same show again.  However, it makes revivals and remounted productions very interesting for the audience member.

Okay, you might be wondering, "What the fuck does this have to do with the idea of happiness in existence and Colorado and people who operate ski lifts???"

The interesting dynamic of a different performance every night makes it very enjoyable for the performers.  Actors/stage managers/technicians often are asked, "How can you run the same show over and over again!"  It doesn't really occur to them that in good theater, it offers a completely different artistic dynamic every single night.  Especially in the world of sound, the temperature and liveliness of the audience each night directly affects the way you mix the show.

Even as I sit in tech for a play as the board operator, typing this blog, I can still appreciate the idea that each night feels different, and in turn offers a different experience completely dependent on the character of the audience that evening.  I can't think of a better job than facilitating such a unique, important art form.  As a sound person, I have a lot of responsibility in making sure that all the backstage elements come together (i.e. setting up/maintaining the communication system, video feeds, etc).  I feel like there are plenty of people in theater who don't really enjoy that aspect of it.  I, however, embrace the idea that I am using technology to facilitate art, and I like to believe that I make every effort to approach what most would call the tedious uninteresting tasks with the patience and grace of the artists that I am supporting.

Maybe that's why the people in Colorado were so happy.  Maybe they realize that they were facilitating the enjoyment of all the guests on their vacations.  I could certainly find happiness in existing in that type of environment.