school. I am the executive culinary assistant for a TV chef, so I spend my time developing recipes, testing techniques and products, coauthoring cookbooks and the like. The work is interesting, the hours are weird, but I love what I do, and am grateful to be able to make a living at it, despite being a college dropout.
I have a small, weird-looking dog who is letting me know that I have to take him out before we have a problem, which is good because apparently I can’t
Reader’s Digest
my e-mails either! Do you have any pets?
Alana
A—
May I call you A? As in A’int you grand, and A-List, and A for effort and any other positive thing you can associate with A’s. I do have one cat. His name is JP (for Jackson Purcell). He is fifteen years old, and in sprightly health, much to my chagrin. He is a devil in a cat suit and I let him loose in the neighborhood every day in hopes he won’t return, but he keeps coming back. My ex went out to the farmer’s market for broccoli one day and came home with him instead. I would have preferred broccoli. When we split it was decided that he was too old to move to a different home. I mentioned that she was a lot older than the cat and she was moving, but that did not go over terribly well. I have reluctantly come to love him in spite of his horrible personality. I will miss him when he is gone. But not for long.
I wish you a lovely evening whatever your plans, and hope that I get to meet this dog of yours one day, as I have always preferred canines as furry companions. (See what I did there? Because if I get to meet the dog, then I get to meet YOU, which is rapidly becoming a major focus of my day and a serious distraction from my work.)
RJ
“Barry, this guy is IN MY HEAD.”
“He sounds fabuloso. What on earth are you worried about?”
I chew on the end of my pen, a horrible habit I picked up when I stopped biting my nails. All chefs are orally fixated, we suck straws and chew toothpicks and smoke like fiendsand bite our nails till the cuticles bleed. I’m down to just pen chewing, which I find the least offensive of the chefly jawing, and is only bad when I occasionally get too aggressive, which you can tell by the stain of ink in the corner of my mouth. “I am worried about his fabulosity. No guy is this great right off the bat, no red flags. And he is COMPLETELY un-Googleable. I can’t find one thing online about him, no Facebook, no MySpace, no articles or references. And you know, in this day and age, if you can’t Google-stalk someone, it is because they have taken great PAINS to not have an online presence. So what is he hiding? Is he using a fake name so that I can’t find him? Witness protection? What?”
“Do you even HEAR yourself? You sound like an insane person.”
“Because I am having a really hard time being calm and casual about this, and we know what happens when I get too excited about a situation with POTENTIAL.”
“Oh, yeah. That isn’t so good historically, is it?”
No. It isn’t.
8
T he movies have ruined me. Don’t get me wrong, I love movies. But as someone who spent my formative years watching an endless combination of John Hughes teen flicks and early Meg Ryan romantic comedies, I’m sort of broken when it comes to dating. My expectations aren’t just high—they’re stoned out of their gourds with one hand on the Mallomars and Pink Floyd on the stereo. Deep down I sort of have always believed that my Mr. Right will appear outside my window, boom box akimbo, blasting Peter Gabriel. That he will come running to find me before midnight on New Year’s Eve to tell me that when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start right away. That we will “meet cute,” that he will woo me in some silly and utterly romantic fashion, and that, despite a setback or two, we will eventually live happily ever after.
When I met Andres in Barcelona during the last month of my
I have a small, weird-looking dog who is letting me know that I have to take him out before we have a problem, which is good because apparently I can’t
Reader’s Digest
my e-mails either! Do you have any pets?
Alana
A—
May I call you A? As in A’int you grand, and A-List, and A for effort and any other positive thing you can associate with A’s. I do have one cat. His name is JP (for Jackson Purcell). He is fifteen years old, and in sprightly health, much to my chagrin. He is a devil in a cat suit and I let him loose in the neighborhood every day in hopes he won’t return, but he keeps coming back. My ex went out to the farmer’s market for broccoli one day and came home with him instead. I would have preferred broccoli. When we split it was decided that he was too old to move to a different home. I mentioned that she was a lot older than the cat and she was moving, but that did not go over terribly well. I have reluctantly come to love him in spite of his horrible personality. I will miss him when he is gone. But not for long.
I wish you a lovely evening whatever your plans, and hope that I get to meet this dog of yours one day, as I have always preferred canines as furry companions. (See what I did there? Because if I get to meet the dog, then I get to meet YOU, which is rapidly becoming a major focus of my day and a serious distraction from my work.)
RJ
“Barry, this guy is IN MY HEAD.”
“He sounds fabuloso. What on earth are you worried about?”
I chew on the end of my pen, a horrible habit I picked up when I stopped biting my nails. All chefs are orally fixated, we suck straws and chew toothpicks and smoke like fiendsand bite our nails till the cuticles bleed. I’m down to just pen chewing, which I find the least offensive of the chefly jawing, and is only bad when I occasionally get too aggressive, which you can tell by the stain of ink in the corner of my mouth. “I am worried about his fabulosity. No guy is this great right off the bat, no red flags. And he is COMPLETELY un-Googleable. I can’t find one thing online about him, no Facebook, no MySpace, no articles or references. And you know, in this day and age, if you can’t Google-stalk someone, it is because they have taken great PAINS to not have an online presence. So what is he hiding? Is he using a fake name so that I can’t find him? Witness protection? What?”
“Do you even HEAR yourself? You sound like an insane person.”
“Because I am having a really hard time being calm and casual about this, and we know what happens when I get too excited about a situation with POTENTIAL.”
“Oh, yeah. That isn’t so good historically, is it?”
No. It isn’t.
8
T he movies have ruined me. Don’t get me wrong, I love movies. But as someone who spent my formative years watching an endless combination of John Hughes teen flicks and early Meg Ryan romantic comedies, I’m sort of broken when it comes to dating. My expectations aren’t just high—they’re stoned out of their gourds with one hand on the Mallomars and Pink Floyd on the stereo. Deep down I sort of have always believed that my Mr. Right will appear outside my window, boom box akimbo, blasting Peter Gabriel. That he will come running to find me before midnight on New Year’s Eve to tell me that when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start right away. That we will “meet cute,” that he will woo me in some silly and utterly romantic fashion, and that, despite a setback or two, we will eventually live happily ever after.
When I met Andres in Barcelona during the last month of my
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