happy birthday - here's your disasters!

Today is my 44th birthday and we had sun, hail, a tornado, and now massive flooding.

see sewer lid popped off lower left corner of the pic near the white truck

And my Aunt Mary sent me the best birthday card:

Here's the video of the car:

work, walk, and lube

My new swamp cooler has finally been installed! Hooray! And as soon as the rain from the storm we had dries up I will take a picture of it. I also had new vents installed inside my house, but am going to have to do some repainting and dry wall patching because they're slightly smaller than the vents I used to have.

I also got my treadmill fixed today (for free!). The incline wasn't working. The guy who came to fix it is as enthusiastic about treadmills as I am and told me about all these things I could do to make my treadmill better. He also put in a work order to get me a new motor because my existing one ticks (it's a slight annoyance, but why not get a new motor, especially since it's free and an upgrade to the one I have).

he seemed surprised at the amount of mileage on my treadmill and dubious that it was just me using it so I showed him my fitbit status in the colorado group - my goal is to be in the top 5 by June

He also said "oh, you've got the best lube! and you got the wand!" Haha. I ordered a product called lube n walk for my treadmill (you have to put lube under the belt - I do this once a week). It's pretty cool, you put the lube on this wand contraption thing, slide it under the treadmill belt, and slide it down the length of the belt. One side lubricates the deck and the other side wipes dirt off the underside of the belt. I like killing two birds with one stone. He told me the lube that normally normally comes with treadmills isn't as good as what I have and is so thick it can cause the belt to stick to the deck which is exactly what the lube is supposed to present.

He said "I have to give you this tube of lube but you can throw it away when I leave." At every service call he has to give clients the crap lube that comes with the treadmill. Maybe that's a way for the company to get your belt to wear out so they make more money, I don't know.

And, he said it was "excessive" to vacuum out the motor compartment every week. What ever.

Now the only thing I have left to fix is my sprinkler. The overflow valve is leaking. That's getting done next week. I was going to try to fix it myself but am afraid I might break it and that would be an even more costly repair so fuck it, I hired a professional. I did research how to fix it and came across this lovely instruction step. I keep repeating it to myself for reasons unknown to me:

yes, let's place a bonnet on the poppet and load it on a rocket

Finally, Jess sent me this pic from the jazz festival. At first I thought it was because it showed the food tent, and she was like "no, look, there's you slaving away at the stove!" Fucking asperger's. I didn't even realize I was in the picture until she pointed me out.

note the paper towels and you can almost see the sanitizing spray sitting RIGHT behind me - I should have recognized myself because of that...

buckets, bruises, best brazilian street food

I woke up at 530 on Saturday morning since I had to be ready to go by 645 to help Jessica and Edglas set up their brazilian street food tent at the 5 points jazz fest. I probably could have slept until 6 but I was worried about how the jazz fest would go. We had staged food and other stuff at my house with the plan of moving it in increments to the jazz fest since it was so close to my house so I felt weirdly responsible for the jazz fest being a success.

Welton street was blocked off but they let vendors in at 7 for set up. I was worried because I didn't have an official pass like Jessica did and she was like "when they see your car (stuffed with a tent, tables, coolers, a fryer, etc.) I'm pretty sure they'll let you in."

It turns out we were the very first vendor to arrive, and we were so early the location of our tent had not been identified yet. Niecy, who was in charge, gave us a spot right in front of one of the jazz venues. This was great for Jessica because it brought people by the food tent. It was great for me because the bands that played there were amazing and I got to listen to their music the whole day.

I initially thought Jess would limit my participation to running shrimp and chicken and whatever else was needed from my house to the food tent. But after we got set up she happily decided to keep me around. Literally at the opening of the fest (actually, the fest officially started at 11, we got our first order at 10:58) we were mobbed and not even the brief rain we had around 630 (I think it was 630, I was too busy to check my watch) made people leave the line.

this is the line at one of the slower periods of the day - it goes all the way back to that guy in the blue shirt where the red arrow is

 One of the things I had to do was to walk huge (think the buckets at home depot) buckets of dough from my house to the festival. The buckets were full of wet dough, i.e. REALLY FUCKING HEAVY. We had sort of made friends with the guys that were running the power because Edglas had to start cooking at 930 and at 920 we still didn't have power (they got it on at 935). So as I was walking empty buckets from the festival and full buckets back from my house the power guys, who were stationed at the entrance to the festival, would call out "hey, it's the bucket lady!" followed by some other comment like "I hope there's chitlins in that bucket!", "nothin sadder than the bucket lady with an empty bucket!", "check it out! bucket in a backpack!" (my arms were so bruised from carrying the buckets that around 2 pm I had to put them in my expedition back pack because I literally couldn't hold them anymore), "aw, bucket lady's got a small bucket!" (said as if I was carrying a puppy - I was carrying a small bucket full of vatapa) and then, at the end of the night, as I was bringing two cooler back to my garage "bucket lady's got two coolers! over achiever!"

Jess' sister showed up at 1045 and they made plans on how the line was going to work (Jess to take orders, sister to make orders, Edglas cooking, me cleaning and running food to the fest from my house). That all went to shit as soon as we were mobbed by people (around 11:05). Jess was like "I need you to cook!" and I was like "I don't even know how to turn on a propane stove!" In any case I ended up cooking the shrimp and the chicken (I have never cooked either before) as well as helping Edglas with the dough for the acaraje.

Edglas making black eyed pea dough fritters - the bread for the acaraje - that fryer is super hot - I helped by beating the dough with a whisk and then holding the tray when he removed the dough from the fryer - at first he would only put a few of the fritters on the tray before telling me to set it down - eventually he figured out my arms are stronger than they look - fucking twig arms

once beaten, with the whisk seen in the bowl, he rolls the dough on a big wooden spoon before dropping it in the fryer

I started out cooking chicken - I was worried about the shrimp because I can't even touch them without having an allergic reaction

I finally took on the shrimp and managed to make it without fucking it up OR having an allergic reaction

 The funniest thing that happened to me at the jazz fest was when a guy came up to me and said "I have been watching you hustle for the past 45 minutes. I am really impressed by the way you run your kitchen (I was running back and forth between my cooking station and Edglas' cooking station while also cleaning and sanitize spraying everything in sight and, maybe, this guy figured that meant I was in charge????). I'd like to offer you a job in my restaurant as a cook."

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! I can't cook ANYTHING!!!! Except, now, shrimp and chicken.

Anyway, we literally were slammed from open to close. When we had 10 minutes of rain we had to close down the cooking stations and were telling people in line that it would be a 20 minute wait for food after the rain stopped (obviously, can't have hot cooking oil mixed with water). It didn't matter. People waited.

One of the stranger things that happened yesterday...Jess had a best friend (from the age of 4) in Carbondale, who died at the age of 23. Yesterday the friend's mother, who was visiting someone in Denver, decided to go to the jazz fest and came to our tent. She didn't know that Jess was starting a business or that she was going to be at the jazz fest, it was a total coincidence. Nice reunion for the two of them.

Anyway, we busted our asses until 8 o'clock and then began the onerous process of breaking down the tent and moving everything back to my garage. We finally finished at 930. I hadn't eaten anything all day but wasn't hungry at all. And I had thought I would be tired but was so wired up from the festival that I managed to stay awake long enough to watch a movie. According to my fitbit, I walked 14 miles yesterday.

Today Jess and Edglas came over to pick up their stuff. They brought me this:

Edglas picked out this orchid because he said it looked brazilian. Jess said she was going to give me cut flowers but Edglas insisted on the orchid. I hope I don't kill it because it's so beautiful.

And Edglas paid Jess and I a huge compliment. He said he never met two stronger (he meant in the physical sense) women. Ha. I was like "so don't judge my arms because they're skinny!" and he laughed.

They also gave me this card:

I'm going to try to help them at their next event. Maybe my cooking skills will get better. And if you've never been, and you love jazz, food, and people watching, I highly recommend the five points jazz fest.

There's other stories about what happened, but my arms are like noodles right now and that's all I can write...