It’s nothing new that I am moderately obsessed with yellow and gray – I have my own Pinterest board dedicated to it. So when I bought new furnishings for my bedroom, I was drawn to this pretty silver/gold comforter- one, because it’s close to the colors I’m crazy about and two, because it is literally the most comfortable comforter I’ve ever found in my life. The problem I found was that I already had a few things that didn’t quite match – particularly, I have two big brown chairs, and the manzanita branch centerpieces from my wedding that I enjoy in their current spot. In comes Pinterest!

To tie the silver and gold in with the brown, I decided I’d use a Pin as inspiration (Pinspiration? Does the word play ever end?) for some artwork. I hand-drew some branches, then painted them in brown, used a gray background, and used a hot glue gun to attach some cream flower buttons, brown buttons and gold-ish buttons.

I think it really ties things together, and I’m super proud to have actually finished them!

For one month, I’ve been a city-workin gal. For those of you not quite in the know, I finally re-joined the real working world after working as a freelancer for a year. In fact, my July was insane – I went to Las Vegas, accepted a job, visited Florida, moved across the Bay and started a new job… more on the Vegas experience later! But, it was an incredibly hectic and fun transition. It’s definitely a completely different experience than I’ve ever had before, and I’ve been wanting to sit down for a while and lay out my reflections.

First of all, working in a city is neat. This is the first time in my life I feel entirely non-car-dependent… I am within walking distance of a grocery store, a bank, a Starbucks and a BART station (which, technically, puts me in walking distance to much more). I walk less than a block to the station and about one whole block from the station to my work. It is convenience like I have never experienced before! It’s really nice to be close to a lot of things, to not rely on a car, to not have to worry about things like parking or speeding or car accidents or driving after having a few drinks.

Speaking of city conveniences… THE FOOD. The sheer diversity is pretty impressive, but the price is even better. I know a lot of people complain about the cost of living in a big city, but the fact that I can choose from about 90 places within walking distance of me  for a delicious, authentic lunch under $10… the options are mind-blowing, and sometimes crippling. I have to fight myself from sticking with easy knowns to explore more exciting unknowns. I feel like I could live here for my entire life and eat somewhere different every day and still not experience half of what the city has to offer in terms of food.

I read a blog post the other day that said candy bowls were the key to happy employees. Now, I’ve actually worked for that particular company in the past, and I can now confidently say that they’ve got a hell of a long way to go before they have happy employees. Sure, having candy bowls in peoples offices means people are more likely to stop and interact. But beyond that, treating your employees like adults goes a profound way. My normal work schedule recently is about 10am to about 6pm. This doesn’t seem like a huge variation from the norm, but the difference is that my work schedule is my decision. Some days, I do not want to get out of bed, and I’ll start my e-mails and forum-checking and other work duties from home before showing up at noon. Some days, I’ll leave at 4 to avoid BART protests, or at 3 to make a doctor’s appointment. Sometimes, I’ll stay up working until midnight. The bottom line is – I’m doing the work that they want me to do. When I work, where I work, how I work, even how I am dressed – if I am exceeding expectations, I have freedom, and when I have freedom, I exceed expectations. It’s a very “West Coast” sentiment, I’ve found, but after experiencing it myself, I can’t see myself going back to the “other side”.

That’s all I’ve got for now. I’m really loving it out here, and I hope to start putting more of my reflections into blog posts more often… but every time I say that, life gets in the way. Oh well. Come visit.

My spread :

http://yfrog.com/mq94c0j

http://yfrog.com/77nyn0j

Roasted Turkey – I loosely follow Alton Brown’s Good Eats brined turkey recipe http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/good-eats-roast-turkey-recipe/index.html , and I’ve made three turkeys using it. This year I picked up a 21.5lb Foster Farms fresh turkey. My brine was made of about 1/3 gallon turkey stock, 1/3 gallon chicken stock, and 1/3 gallon apple cider, cooked with the salt, allspice berries, pepper, ginger and salt of Alton’s recipe. I don’t water mine down with a gallon of water, I generally throw the turkey in the brine mix and then throw in a bunch of ice. And I use his recipe for the aromatics… they make an incredible gravy! I roasted for the first half hour at 375 then turned it down to 300 for about five hours, maybe a little more. The only time I open the oven is after the first half hour, when I cover the roaster in a tent of aluminum foil. When I pulled the turkey out to check the temperature, it was fully cooked, still moist, and absolutely insanely good tasting. My only problem? It completely falls apart. Completely. It is so moist and amazing that it is LITERALLY fall-off-the-bone delicousness. If I had to pick some problem to have in my meal… I’m happy that was it.

Gravy – To make the gravy, I take 3 tbsp of butter and melt it in a pan. Add 3 tbsp of flour, then add some of the pan juices and a little chicken or turkey stock. Mix, cook til boiling, and it gets nice and thick and delicious.

Mashed Potatoes – I am a never ending spout of disappointment, because I absolutely cannot make mashed potatoes. I over-boil them and make them gross and I know it is a weakness. But where I am weak, Trader Joe’s is oh so strong. They have FROZEN mashed potato pellets, and they are wonderful. I used an entire bag, but they’re made so you can make as many servings as you need. I threw an entire bag into a pot on the stove with about 1/2 cup of milk and a few tablespoons of butter. As the pellets melted, they combined with the milk and butter and transformed into a fluffy and delicious mashed potato dish.

Green Bean Casserole – I’ve made this enough times that I know never to use a recipe. Recipes use too much milk and make it too mushy creamy. This year, I used all Trader Joe’s products for this. Two cans of green beans, one container of condensed cream of portabella soup, and one can of fried onions. Drain green beans, add entire container of soup, mix in a bit of onions, mix in a bit of pre-cooked pre-diced bacon pieces, add a little bit of milk (I probably add a half cup or so?) until a little creamy but not WET. Cover with a layer of onions, bake until hot. The end!

Stuffing – This is an amazing recipe. http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Awesome-Sausage-Apple-and-Cranberry-Stuffing/Detail.aspx My changes – I use pre-made cubed stuffing, the kind in a bag. I made it with bread once and it just didn’t come out nearly as well. I don’t use the turkey liver, and I probably add a bit more stock… since I don’t cook it inside the bird, it has to be significantly wetter before it goes into the oven. Generally, put in enough stock until it looks like something you’d want to eat, then add a bit more. I baked this alongside the green bean casserole at 350 degrees until they were both nice and hot.

Random Veggie Mix – Trader Joe’s had some bags of veggies andddd I just couldn’t resist picking them up and attempting something strange. I used half a bag of cut sweet potatoes, half a bag of cut rutabaga, parsnip and turnip, and a whole sliced fennel. Threw it into a pan with butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. AWESOME.

And last but not least… Rolls. I used this recipe http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Blue-Ribbon-Overnight-Rolls/Detail.aspx to the letter, since I am terrified of baking with yeast. I’m always convinced I’m going to do something horribly wrong. The dough rised overnight, then I rolled it and cut it as described, but instead of rolling them into horns, I took each section (1/18th of the total recipe) and divided it into three small balls and put them into a greased muffin pan. Then I let them rise all day while I was cooking dinner, put them into the oven at the end of my cooking, and they came out as delicious pull-apart yeast rolls perfect for sticking a slice of butter into. I will probably make these 100 times in the future, they are amazing and so so easy. Best if served hot, straight from the oven.

And now to share with you my current food obsession… http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/panini-with-chocolate-and-brie-recipe/index.html

Brie. Chocolate. Basil. Sourdough. It sounds really weird… but trust me and make these right now.

AND for a completely different level of food euphoria… add diced bacon.

/dies of a delicious food coma

Software
1 cup flour
2 cups quick cooking oats
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
½ tsp ground cinnamon
2 tbsp butter, around room temperature
½ cup sugar
½ cup brown sugar
1 large egg
¼ cup applesauce
½ tsp vanilla extract
1 cup Craisins

Hardware
Parchment Paper
Stand Mixer (or Hand Mixer plus Large Mixing Bowl)
2 Cookie Sheets
Measuring Cups
Measuring Spoons
Medium Mixing Bowl
Whisk
Large Spoon
Oven (duh)

Procedures
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.
2. In medium bowl, whisk together flour, oats, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Set aside.
3. In stand mixer or large mixing bowl, cream together the butter, sugar, and brown sugar.
4. Beat in the egg. Once combined, add applesauce and vanilla.
5. Working by hand, stir in the flour and oat mix until just combined and no white streaks remain.
6. Stir in Craisins.
7. Drop tablespoonfuls on to sheet.
8. Bake about 11-13 minutes. Cookies will be a bit darker brown at edges.

Notes
• Parchment paper is amazing. If you’ve never used it before, you will use it forever and ever once you start. If you cannot find or do not have parchment paper, you can just use non-stick spray on a cookie sheet, but if you do that you are compromising the amazingness of this recipe and I do not take responsibility if it isn’t good.

• You can substitute a bunch of things for the Craisins, or mix and match add-ins! Raisins or other dried fruit work fine. Chocolate chips are great, and even better if you add some coconut. It’s a very versatile recipe.

Oh, did I mention difficult? Part of the fun of the Layton series is learning how to re-assemble your DS once you’ve thrown it against a wall. Or a loved one. Sorry about that.

I don’t remember where I heard about their Ladies vs. Gents Puzzle Challenge… probably the Twitters. But I was excited! The very first one was in San Francisco! I live in San Francisco! Or, near it. Unfortunately it was on a Tuesday which meant I ended up making a trip into the city alone, but it’s nice to explore sometimes.

So, yes, I made an hour train trip specifically to try out the new Layton and see what they had going on. I am a giant freaking nerd.

I walked up and saw the iconic London phone booths and I smiled a little. I’ve been to London, and the monument in Union Square Park reminds me of something you’d see there. But the rest of the area couldn’t be more West coast, and the dichotomy was amusing to my moderately traveled brain.

When I got there, there was one line that was really really long and one line that wasn’t so long at all. I quickly learned that the long one was the men’s line and the short one was the women’s line, from a nice young chap dressed quite similarly to Layton’s apprentice, Luke. In fact, I asked him if he was Luke, and he looked at me like he had no idea what I was talking about. Strike one, Nintendo.

I got in line and watched as the girl in front of me struggled through some puzzles in the phone booth, amused, thinking “Oh I got this.” I asked the girl what they were basing their scores on, whether it was tries or time, and they said both, I had three minutes. Okay. So I started on a puzzle and quickly realized that these bitches set me up. It was a fairly overcast day, but there was quite a decent glare on the screen, and my puzzle was mostly based on colors that I really couldn’t see at all. It took me two tries and about a minute to finish my first one, and which point I stepped out and said “Two!” And they said “Two puzzles?” And I said… “No, two tries, was I supposed to keep going?” and they said “Yes, but uh, I guess your time is up.” No watch, no timer, and I know it wasn’t three minutes because I stood in line and watched how long they gave the other ruffians. They gave me my free shirt (tadaaaa, highlight of my experience) and I walked away, almost running into a girl dressed as Flora Reinhold who was drinking a cup of Starbucks. I didn’t dare ask her if she knew who she was supposed to be.

I want to send out a giant memo typed in capital letters that tells marketing directors that sending your shitty interns to do your public marketing events isn’t a great marketing strategy. Not one person there seemed to give a flying fuck what was going on. Not one person tried to talk a bit more about the game. And really, not one person was qualified to be taking the results, because they didn’t seem like they had any clue what the game was supposed to be, and they definitely didn’t have a clue how to communicate their directions. Maybe this would be a more effective event just to grab people who had never heard of the game before, but I’m not sure. The entire thing felt so entirely sloppy, mismanaged and a waste of potential that I don’t know if I’d buy the game if that was the first time I had tried it.

Plus, the fucking puzzle made me want to throw their DS at the wall.

(Professor Layton and the Unwound Future goes on sale Sunday, September 12, and I will probably be purchasing it sometime shortly after. The series really is fantastic and despite my disappointments in their event, the new game seems just as intriguing and challenging as the rest.)

This is actually a weird topic for me to suddenly feel like writing about. I’ve never been huge on the Duke franchise, though I know many who are. But I became quite excited when I realized that I actually personally KNOW a handful of people  involved in both the game development and marketing with the new Duke Nukem wranglers. So it is by pure fluke that I even ended up paying attention to today’s release shindig.

The rumors spread quick and started early. We knew days in advance that something Duke related was probably coming to PAX, and we anxiously awaited the 10 a.m. PST live stream (Note: Feed replay is available through the link). When it started, we were greeted by the lovely Elizabeth Tobey of 2KGames (Did you know she is one of my wives? I bet you didn’t) and her apparently hamfisted and attention-deficit cameraperson. It all quickly got… weird. Technical difficulties are almost expected with mass streams, and this one got off to a late start, had some initial hiccups with what I can only assume was massive server load, and suffered greatly from flaky microphones (especially during interesting parts, like interviews). But that is all completely understandable. The biggest WTF moment for non-PAX spectators, I believe, was when Gearbox Software CEO and President Randy Pitchford unveiled his massively giant career erection and introduction us to footage… we wouldn’t get to see, due to ESRB restrictions. Heh. Okay. I can understand that. It even makes me laugh a little. Elizabeth and Hamfist were wooshed out of the room, we heard something in the background, and we then watched as Hamfist managed to go from play screen to play screen capturing the same 12 seconds of elevator footage each time. Oh, and then there were some interviews. And then she went back in, we saw Randy again, we got wooshed again, and I stopped fucking watching.

The first thing that confused me was trying to find the new Duke Nukem website. I tried dukenukemforever.com, I tried dnf.com. I honestly didn’t even think to try dukenukem.com until a while later. Not a HUGE deal. BUT HERE’S THE CLINCHER. When I finally FOUND the website, I clicked the little “Like” button so I could follow the feed and have it on my Twitter. As did apparently over 500 other people. But that “Like” button leads to a link to dukenukemforever.com, which is a GoDaddy parked domain. Yeesh. For those looking to fan Duke, the correct link is apparently this one. Maybe.

The second was that I had no idea how to spread this information best. I re-tweeted the live feed, but 2KGames themselves were using multiple hash tags, which REALLY GRINDS MY GEARS. I wanted Duke to TREND but I had no idea how to make it happen! With such a major release, you pretty much have to start the party line, then try to keep people on board. Now, as I say that, Duke Nukem Forever (with no hash tag) has jumped to the number one trending topic in the US, mostly due to an insane number of retweets from Wil Wheaton and Kotaku, so in the end the goal was reached. I just felt like in the moment, some potential was lost, and it maybe felt a little sloppier.

The third was that the footage was nowhere to be found online yet. Yes, she said it would be there “later”, but I am impatient that decision confused me as well… and it apparently not only confused but absolutely enraged many fans. There are basically a couple of scenarios I’ve played out in my head that could have happened.

1) Some sort of exclusivity with PAX or another entity kept the release of the footage online. I can get this, but honestly, if this is it, you gotta say it up front. Exclusivity and Penny Arcade don’t usually have much to do with one another, so honestly this option would be perplexing to me. There’s potentially a lot of politics or restrictions that goes on behind the scenes, but I’d be simply curious to the answer if this is the case.

2) Thoughtlessness. Someone simply didn’t think about having the footage released at the same time as the PAX announcement. I’m really hoping this isn’t true at all, but I have to at least include it. A generally harmless mistake, but a mistake nonetheless, could easily be to blame.

3) Strategy. This is what I’m betting on, but what I’m also torn about. Announcing what is essentially the re-awakening of Duke in a personal, in-the-moment (however sloppy some feel it was) live feed. Holding back a little something from viewers. Letting conference-goers experience and spread their excitement. And finally releasing footage and more media information a little later. It surely builds up the anticipation, and that’s why I’m pretty positive that this is what those pretty little marketing geniuses must have dreamed up. But at the same time, I’m hesitant. What happens if the footage doesn’t live up the absolutely massive expectations that have been built up to it just over a couple of hours or days of non-release? What happens if the gaming community is so perplexed over what could look like sloppy marketing that they quickly doubt the ability of the developer to actually follow through with making a good product? Many gamers vehemently embrace an “open” strategy of… everything. And when doors are closed in their faces, the knee-jerk reaction isn’t just to wait and check back later. It’s to pound the FUCK out of that door until someone realizes that there is a MOTHERFUCKING MOB waiting to see a BADASS MOTHERFUCKER PISS IN A URINAL AND FUCK SOME HOES.

That’s inappropriate. But honestly, this was a post about motherfucking Duke Nukem, and you should know better.

I want to thank Elizabeth and 2KGames and Gearbox Software for their sneak peek this morning and for maybe helping get this shit out by 2011, and I hope I can write some more when we see what the fallout of this epic announcement is. Oh, P.S., if you wanna save me a t-shirt, I’ll buy you lunch.