Healed: Tibetan Soup Stock

-Roasted and ready to go.-

They had warned us about the altitude sickness, but I had assured myself that my strapping twenty-eight year old physique and mental acuteness could overcome something as trivial as natural response. Turns out, not so much.

My head was throbbing like I had just survived a Skrillex concert having been duct tapped directly to a two story subwoofer. Rising to over 11,000 feet (about 3500 meters) Lhasa is one of the highest cities in the world. If you're not from there, then you'll quickly notice the drop in partial pressure of oxygen. There isn't really less oxygen, but since there's less pressure in the atmosphere, it's not as tightly bound in the air. Imagine that instead of drinking water from a cup you poured it on the floor and like the animal you are you're licking it up. There's the same amount of water, it's just not as neatly compact as at sea level. This means you're drawing in significantly less air in Lhasa.

The result is a feeling of being hungover after a night when the next morning you look at the bottles strewn about the living room and wonder how you're still alive. Heahache, dizziness, aching muscles, and a gut punch of nausea are all common symptoms. I was feeling all of it, as were the rest of the people in my tour group and when we checked into our hotel at two in the afternoon more than a few people went straight to bed (or broke into the canisters of oxygen, which were available for $12 in the mini-bars).

New Gardenings: Carrot & Vanilla Soup & Beanilla Giveaway

-Nothing to do with the post, but feel free to also comment your thoughts on the new banner. Spring Red Fire garlic wrapped up with Tahitian vanilla beans. It was time for a change.-

I plant bombed my old apartment. Not intentionally, mind you. Rather, it happened because my old apartment complex was run by a bunch of managerial hellspawn who feed off the wails of their tenants. Cenobites of property management unleashed after you sign the Lament Configuration Lease.

When Fiance and I were gardening we took very good care of everything at our old apartment's precocious little square of dirt. We planted tomatoes and tomatillos, enough so that we were gaurnteed volunteers the next season and assuming that no one totally rips the ground apart volunteers will spring forever more year after year.

In fact, whoever gets our old apartment with its untreated mold and possible cancer risk will get a boon of food from the plot of land out back. Tomatoes, sage, rosemary, eggplants, chilies, basil... oh they are in for a treat. Assuming they garden and don't let some of the other plants go Napoleanic on them like the blackberry bush or the two types of mint we planted. In the ground.

You see, we kept a rather close eye on them both and kept them in control. Now, I imagine, they are running wild and are creeping across the yard with the stealth of ninja. When the hot weather comes they'll raze across the yard and the neighbors' yards with a fury of a million women scorned.

-Fueled by rage. Pure rage.-