americas last top models [upn.com]

Does the idea of living with a bunch of hot young women ( approximately nine to fourteen other female strangers, where you will have little or no privacy) appeal to you? How about regular face time with Tyra Banks? If this sounds good and you’re in the subsection of the population that is actually female and age 18 to 27, you’re ship is about to come in!

The casting director for America’s Next Top Model [upn] and a band of merry model hunters will be making a stop in Seattle next week. You still have time to download and fill out the application [#]. Think hard — you want to be dramatic as well as beautiful. It’s TV. The trickiest questions include: “How often do you lose your temper? What provokes you? How often do you get drunk? How do you act when you get drunk?
Who is your favorite supermodel?”. You have until August 2nd to come up with compelling responses and get yourself all prettied up and head downtown to Macy’s where the Seattle-area supermodel wannabe community will be converging on the store from 10 am until 5 pm to charm the casting directors.

Come to think of it, even those not eligible for the competition might want to swing by to have a look!

When you think Detroit don’t think urban decay,^{1, 2} think metblog. As a semi-recent transplant from the Great Lakes State,³ I’m more than happy to welcome Michigan’s first metblog to the fold!

See for yourself — detroit.metblogs.com went online today.

crib notes:

1. “Urban Decay” [seedetroit.com]
2. “Detroit is for lovers” by John Roderick of the Long Winters [#]
3. Sufjan Stevens’s “Say Yes! To Michigan!” site [#]

Mold is a significant problem in the Northwest, and nothing I had really given any consideration to until it severely impacted my life.
Part of my reason for making the decision to move into the city had to do with mold. The complex I was living in is steeped in the stuff; it grows on the balconies and when I was in a basement unit it took over my bathroom and closets.
I suspect what happened is that a particularly stressful period in my life lay my immune system in such a state that the mold entered my system and caused an allergic reaction. It became so severe that I could no longer stay in my unit – coming home meant uncontrollable sneezing, watery eyes, and a nose so raw and itchy it would bleed. So I switched units and had a 6 month reprieve.
I had taken measures to reduce mold in the new unit – Dry-Z-Air, air filtration and bleached paper towels in the single-paned window sills to absorb condensation and moisture. It was mostly effective – until I started the process of moving into the city.
I imagine the spores are lodged in the couch, clothing and mattresses from my former unit. As I moved items my allergies returned full-force – sending me into sneezing fits, making my nose raw again and affecting my energy and moods. Some mold species release toxins which cause a variety of symptoms – dermatitis, depression, fatigue, inability to concentrate and headaches in addition to the more common symptoms I experienced beforehand. In immuno-suppressed individuals and the elderly, it can lead to serious illness and hospitalization.

The entire building has moisture-retention issues that make it impossible for me to stay. If you find mold or mildew in your home, here is what you can do about it:

1) Reduce moisture in the air by using dehumidifiers, Dry-Z-Air, bathroom fans, and ventilating as much as possible when using the dishwasher, cooking and showering. Remove carpets from the bathroom if they retain moisture.

2) Take care of any leaks, plumbing issues and existing mold. Get your landlord on it immediately if you rent. If they don’t, you have the right to take legal recourse. Contact the Tenant Rights Hotline at 206-723-0500

3) Remove mold on surfaces using 3% hydrogen peroxide or 1/2 cup to 1 cup of bleach per gallon of water.

4)Throw away or recycle old books, newspapers, clothing and bedding if it cannot be properly cleaned.

5) Turn up the heat to keep the humidity down.

6) Vacuum thoroughly and remove the vacuum cleaner bag at once. Spores left in bags can grow and spread with further uses.

7) If possible invest in a HEPA filter to remove mold spores in the air and use a HEPA vacuum as well. Check heating and cooling ducts for mold and take care of them at once.

8) For upholstery and other hard to clean items a fungicide spray may help. Make certain it is registered with the EPA. If the mold spores have settled into the filling of furnitures or mattresses and they are too valuable to dispose of a professional needs to be brought in. I have contacted Healthy Buildings for advice and local references for furniture abatement. I’ll keep you posted.

If you have allergies:
Wear a mask, gloves, and goggles when cleaning infested areas.

Avoid carpets and upholstered furniture in your home.

Scour your bathroom and kitchen with bleach freqently and take extra steps to reduce moisture in your home environment.

Seek treatment for your allergies. Accupuncture, homeopathic remedies, and natural immune support have all been effective and are non-invasive to the body.

RSVP: [upcoming.org]

Per our usual custom of trying to hang out on the fourth Tuesday of the month, many of your favorite Metroblogging Seattle authors will be having food and drinks at the Elysian tonight and we’d love it if you would join us. Come by if you have suggestions for the site, want to find out more about writing for us, or just want to talk and have a beer. To help us plan ahead, please sign-up for the upcoming.org event and let us know that you’ll be there:

Tuesday — 26 July
7 pm

Elysian Brewpub in Capitol Hill [#]

1221 E Pike St

It’s the site’s one-year anniversary. No gifts required!

update: the forecast for cupcakes looks promising!

Mmmm… mojito!
Mojito recipe: 2 oz. rum, mint sprigs,
sugar, club soda, ice, wedge of lime.
Muddle the mint with sugar in a tall glass.
Fill the glass with ice. Pour rum and club soda.
Garnish with a lime wedge. Cheers!

Happy [hour] Monday!

So what, if the week just started? [And for crying out loud, it's not even past noon yet!] What better way to jump-start the new week than with a little shindig after work at our local neighborhood bistro?! Any day really is a good enough reason to party.

Happy hour is never just about the food and cocktails anyway. For me, it’s a way to unwind after an intense workday; a time to catch up and converse with friends, friendly bartender and pub regulars; a celebration or commiseration; and a revelry to conclude the day and begin the next.

Below are a few of my fave hot local digs for all-night happy hour on Mondays. Yes, happy hour all night long!

Got anything better planned on a Monday after work? See you after 5 pm!

All-Night Happy Hour Mondays in Seattle:

.. Axis
$2.99 refreshing fresh-fruit kamikazes and wood-fired pizzas; half-price on appetizers such as calamari, fried pickles, honey-glazed prawns and other delish foodstuff.
All-night happy hour on Mondays and Sundays. Starts at 5pm.
2214 First Avenue in Belltown.

.. Ohana
$3.00 appetizers and selective cocktails and beer. Happy hour menu includes agadashi tofu, various sushi rolls and handrolls, mini-salad and spam musubi.
All-night happy hour on Mondays and Sundays. Starts at 5pm.
2207 First Avenue in Belltown.

.. Tango Tapas Restaurant & Lounge
1/2 price bottles of wine every Monday. Regular happy hour menu until 7pm. Delectable menu includes: delicious mojitos, savory sangrias and tasty tapas like tortilla relleno, queso fundido, boquerones salad, and other scrumptious Spanish and Portuguese appetizers with a Northwest twist.
1100 Pike Street, in downtown Seattle/ lower Capitol Hill neighborhood.

.. Wasabi Bistro
1/2 price bottles of wine every Monday. Regular happy hour menu until 6pm. Happy hour includes house sake and wine, selective sushi rolls and fried bar snacks.
2311 Second Avenue in Belltown.

.. The Whisky Bar
$1 Miller High Life all day, everyday. $2.50 Jim Beam and $2.50 Absolut all-day on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. $1 PBR, $2 wells and $3 martinis, 12-9pm daily.
2000 Second Avenue in Belltown.

Of course, there are heaps of fabulous happy hour deals going on everyday in the city. Read the previous post, “Ultimate Happy Hour Spots in Seattle,” for the growing list.

Salud!

Other Edibles* reads:
.. “Cooking for the Kiddies”
.. “Tamarind Tree, a hidden treasure in Seattle’s International District-Little Saigon neighborhood”
.. “Get your Bite on this weekend”
.. “Cooking, Culture and Shopping”
.. “Ooh La La”
.. “Sushi in Seattle”
.. “Neighborhood Farmers Market– The Old Hot New Thing”
.. “Sweets in Seattle”
.. “Eat Good, Do Good with FareStart”
.. “Ultimate Happy Hour Spots in Seattle”

Any recommendations for me to check out? E-mail me at missaquino@gmail.com.

[*** “Edibles” is an ongoing series about good eats, gastronome adventures of a self-indulgent epicurean, and everything culinary (in Seattle

Summertime isn’t just about the heat — it’s also about the incredible bounty you may be getting out of your garden (did you know food grows on trees, or that you can often just find it lying around on/in the ground?). After you’ve eaten all you’re going to eat, and canned and jammed, and stewed and baked, and given away to co-workers and neighbors for the umpteenth time, what else is there to do with your agricultural rewards, other than composting them?

So every year I let whatever I’m not going to eat, rot on the vine or on the compost heap and wince at my mother’s voice in my head — the one telling me about all the starving children. Then this year, I called Hopelink to find out what kind of hoops I would have to jump through to get rid of my food, which, while being perfectly edible and gorgeous, is still coming at me from all sides.

The answer? None. No hoops — well, except for them not being open on the weekends. But any time Monday to Friday between 8:30AM and 5PM. They’ll take your extra produce, and even give you a receipt (I’m just happy I won’t have to pay them). They’ll even take APPLES — and here in Washington apple trees grow wild by the roadside.

So please: consider giving your neighbors and co-workers a rest this year, and google up your local foodbank for an alternative solution to the sudden rain of food.

With the warmer weather here to stay for a while, everyone seems to be more relaxed, more friendly. It’s as if the heat is making us move slower, and as we’re here to stay we may as well chat for a while. At the Home Depot about a week ago, as we were fondling shears in the garden department, a man stopped us and pointed at a wood-handled pair made by Corona, “I work in the gardening industry — these are the ones you should get.” We picked them up, but me being a girl and all, I had to touch every other pair in that same class to get a feel for what I was missing out on. “The wood pair are the best,” called out a passing sales assistant. I guess everyone gets a vote today.

At Trader Joe’s I picked up a couple of small pieces of aged cheddars to try out — a 3- and 4-year-old pair of toddlers from Canada. At the checkout, the sales clerk told me how much I was going to love them. “Try them in a macaroni and cheese,” he urged me. This was something that hadn’t even crossed my mind: I assumed cheddar separated rather easily when heated.

Over at Whole Foods, I opted to get the Charlston Chicken Salad for dinner (a day or two a week, I get the night off from cooking, and the Whole Foods prepared food section is great for treating myself to someone else’s hard work, because there’s so much variety). I knew based on the listed ingredients that I’d probably like this one, so I decided not to taste-test it. But then… “Are you sure you only want a small box?” asked the gentleman behind the counter. I allowed as to how I might want seconds, so he talked me into a medium. Then he pointed past me, “go over to the bakery and get some pita bread. You need to put this chicken salad into the pita with a bit of sliced-up onion and some lettuce and tomato.” His eyes rolled back up in his head in bliss, “it’s going to taste wonderful.”

Silly me. I was just going to eat it out of the box.

Okay, you’re going to laugh at me.

But I don’t care. I can laugh your suspicious looks off my shoulders. All things feel liquid to me. I feel remarkably buoyant, alive, and tanned. Why, you might ask? What is my summer secret?

Water aerobics with senior citizens.

Nearly every day, at 11 am, I’m bobbing in the limpid blue water of the Magnolia outdoor pool. (More formally, the Lowery C. “Pop” Mounger pool.) Red ankle weights strapped to my calves, styrofoam buoys in my hand, I’m already dancing underwater. And over the course of the hour, I float and leap, execute awkward jumping jacks, and scissor kick my way to the shallow end. We fake being Kossack dancers in twelve feet of water. We pretend to be helicopters. We do crunches on our backs, with the deep end glittering below us.

Before you laugh too hard, you should know that it’s a damned fine workout.

In my previous life, I never would have done water aerobics. Oh sure, I love water avidly, but I used to body surf in the waves of Southern California beaches and do flips off the diving board. Always a water baby, I’m happy when I’m living languidly. But water aerobics? Too silly. Instead, I grunted at the gym, tried to love running, and pushed myself to more fitness. But a bad car accident in December of 2003 left me in crippling back pain, unable to move. The doctor recommended the pool. So I limped into the Queen Anne pool one morning to find dozens of snow-white heads bobbing in the water. I had misread the schedule–not lap swim, but Hydrofit. Oh well, I thought. How hard could it be?

The old people kicked my ass.

It’s a good workout, without being hard on the body. Those styrofoam buoys may look flimsy, but they take on the weight of the water. My arms have never been so toned. And you can do anything in water without taking pressure on your back. Within a few classes, I was hooked. I went almost religiously for the first six months. And now, my body healed and back to kayaking, yoga, and hiking, I’m still going to Hydrofit.

And by the way, those senior citizens are super cool. Mary, my 74-year-old friend, has a smoker’s laugh that fills the air when we talk about the missteps of the Mariners. Jean, who sounds just like Carol Channing, has been around the world a dozen times and shows no sign of stopping at 90. And there’s a 98-year-old guy there who’s in much better shape than I am. They have a wealth of living in them, and they’re centered, able to laugh at themselves, and alive. I’m starting to prefer them to my younger friends.

Since I’ve started writing this, I’ve looked out the window and seen at least a dozen guys on bicycles, sweating up the street, all of them pretending to be Lance Armstrong on his way to victory. Me? I’m planning on putting on my bathing suit soon, meandering over to Magnolia, and slipping into that warm water for another hour of bliss.

And maybe they’ll turn on the slide today!

As part of my annual effort to ignore the Bite of Seattle, one of those festivals that actually WAS much cooler back in the day and now sucks, I headed out to beautiful downtown Ballard to meet a friend for chai at Mr. Spot’s Chai House. Post-spiced tea goodness, we made our way over to the world-famous Archie McPhee’s, stopping off along the way at the Ballard Sunday Market. If you’re not already aware of the great tradition of local “farmer’s markets” in the Puget Sound area, you’re missing out. There are many and each one has something to offer. The Ballard Sunday Market runs all year, others are seasonal. Every Sunday from 10 am to 4 pm a segment of Ballard Ave NW is closed to traffic to host a plethora of local food producers and craftspeople. Fresh salmon, fresh vegetables, artisan cheeses and breads, vegetarian meals and all sorts of snacks are available along with unique clothing, accessories, jewelry, and unique handcrafted art. It’s a great little market and as a bonus, since it’s Ballard you know there will always be the most interesting mixture of people.

Ballard’s Farmer’s Market is a great, eclectic blend of vendors. West Seattle’s is almost exclusively focused on food and horticulture. Broadway’s features live music and cooking demos. If you’re like me and enjoy grocery shopping, you will love being able to “meet the producers” (as they say at the Pike Place Market) and be exposed to fruits and vegetables you may never have previously considered. If you hate grocery shopping, you will still love the markets for their value and convenience.

If you need more info on local open air markets, visit the web site for the Neighborhood Famers Market Alliance Markets which is all about the Seattle markets or the King County Puget Sound Area Farmers Markets page, which offers listings of farmers markets in King, Snohomish, Kitsap, Pierce, Jefferson and Clallam counties.

Like most people, I have my tried and true favorite foods, but I honestly can say that some of the best meals I’ve ever had have been meals put together from random ingredients bought at a farmers market. Having a vendor who knows his or her product well enough to present all of its possibilities makes for happy shopping and having a fresh made meal from fresh made food makes for very, very happy eating.

You’ve been streaming Death Cab For Cutie’s new track, “Soul Meets Body” [myspace] for the past couple of weeks to take the edge off the anticipation for the upcoming release of Plans. And that episode of the o.c. where they play the Bait Shop just hasn’t turned up in the re-run cycle. What’s the D.C.F.C. fan to do with themselves?

Luckily, you can get your fix through the miracle of the modern DVD release party. If you missed your chance to see Drive Well, Sleep Carefully at SIFF, you’ll get another chance to see it for free on the big screen on Monday night at the Triple Door:

With a major label deal in hand, Death Cab For Cutie have the release of a live DVD. Called Drive Well, Sleep Carefully: On The Road With Death Cab For Cutie, the film shows the band at the tail end of their grueling 2004 US tour. Director Justin Mitchell shot the entire film on 16mm film, incorporating live performances and behind-the-scenes, in depth interviews. In addition, the DVD, which was produced under Plexifilm’s new Plexi Productions banner, will include rare footage like an acoustic performance in San Francisco, rehearsal footage and deleted scenes. [tripledoor]

Rather than an investigation of the psychology of the band, the movie functions as more of a set of filmed concerts, following the gang as they tour the country in a fancy tour bus. The quality of the recordings is excellent; so it sort of allows the viewer to get the DCFC groupie experience without actually giving up a year to travel from coast to coast to catch a bunch of shows.

If you can’t make it to the screening, you can buy the DVD & stream 10 minutes of video at Amazon [$] Watch the Showbox sections carefully — you’re bound to see someone you know rocking out.

(via searatonein [lj])