Fillet of Soul

Janine upped the ante last night with a sort of crumbly blueberry pie and turkey salad sandwiches. She's got me beat anyway -- she can make all of this great stuff from sheer creativity, where I am still handcuffed to the stupid cookbooks and increasingly disgusting-with-splattered-food pages of Bon Appetit, which is either unjustifiably full of itself as a culinary authority, or abides by a definition of "spicy" approved by Barry Manilow. That jalapeno-covered roasted chicken mentioned below tasted a hell of a lot like roasted chicken NOT covered in jalapenos. I'm gonna have to start jerkin' some shit, just to make sure it tastes like something.

Meanwhile, my job hunt begins. Sigh. I do so hate job hunts.

On the plus side, I did manage to make it a zen weekend by floating down the Salt River on an innertube while drinking Sapporo and... well, no and, I guess. That's about it. Nice central-Arizona scenery, quiet and peaceful except for all the folks there in various stages of one-ness (some of them in the early, louder stages). And a rare appearance by the overt pornographer -- every now and then on the Salt River college-aged girls get so zen (or drunk) that they start taking off their clothes, to the amusement of all nearby, non-scandalized tubers. At a couple of points in the four-hour float, middle-aged piles of goo with cameras were standing on the banks and looking encouraging and hopeful that the svelt, college-aged girls would consider them more of a naughty dare-type prop than just icky, dirty idiots with no lives. It really got pathetic right at the end, as we were nearing the final checkpoint -- a pale, doughy guy in red shorts and a tee-shirt was squatting on the bank, holding a cardboard sign reading, "Show Tits, Free Beer." Of course, by then, everyone was tired, and the ones that had been drunk were probably just feeling ill now, and the feeling of playful lawlessness was gone as soon as we saw the exit staging area. You'd think at least he'd have the address of his porn website, so girls could see pictures of themselves flashing their friends. It'd kind of be like Splash Mountain (I would have made the obligatory Flash Mountain joke, but I believe there's already a site called that, with Splash Mountain photos showing people doing what you'd expect).