Before the Weekend

I just had a wonderful weekend in San Diego. Before I did that, I had a good couple of weeks, meeting with friends and working on my needlepoint. The picture above includes all my tools. The directions are on the right, the cloth I'm filling in is on the left. And the magnifying glass I now need to read some of the directions. Yes, my distance glasses won't work, my computer glasses won't work and my reading and needlpoint glasses don't always work. What will I do when the magnifying glass doesn't work? It is very relaxing, anyway. This picture is of a woman in her garden. I've been working on her flowing shawl for some time. Relaxing AND slow.

I had lunch at the Los Angeles Farmer's Market with Rachelle. We have had so many OMG meals together we usually try to find something exciting. My bad. I selected DuPar's because I've heard about it all my life. What yuck. The good thing is that I could focus all my attention on Rachelle, not the food. Great time.

Then last Sunday our old Times' group met. No really, we are all old except for Idalia and her husband. I'm not sure how they like hanging around us codgers, but I enjoy seeing them. And I was feeling really good because I finally registered to vote. Remember, that was on my lists of don'ts. Don't forget to register to vote. I registered as a Republican again. It was the Reps who were at my local farmer's market on Saturday. I was really good, behaved myself and didn't ask them a million questions about how they could be so.... Oh, yea. I'm going to find that out in my class starting in October.

I'll write about my fabulous time in San Diego very soon. I have to develop my pictures first. :)

Don't

Don't read Dexter is Delicious, even if it is on sale through Audible. Sure, the show on, what? Showtime? is really good. But this writer does not care about cutting up folks, especially live folks. With Dexter, that can be okay because you know they are really bad guys. I also realized I'd never listened to one of these books before so I could skip over yucky parts. But this book is beyond worlds yucky. You might like that. I don't.

Don't forget to register if you have moved from state to state. I missed the primary. Sure, those Republican broads would have won without my vote, but I would have felt I was doing my duty. Now I feel unAmerican. Mr. Fox-what's-his-name would not like me to feel unAmerican. Oh, yea, Beck. So I will mail in my registration this weekend. But here's what I'm thinking. Tell me I'm wrong, because I'm sure I am. California is screwed. Screwed. SCREWED. SCREWED. Grey Davis was expelled for failure and now we have Ahnold, doomed to failure from the beginning and failing big time. I want the EBay lady to try her hand and fail. Failure is on the horizon for these coming years. We won't do well no matter who is there. Why not let the rich lady fail like the rich man did? If there was hope, would the voters have put Brown on the roster? I like Jerry. But this is an accident ready to happen or continue to happen. Unless we repeal the property tax initiative, we will remain screwed for eternity. OR tax business property on a different schedule.

Don't vote for the Fiorino witch. Yucky, pucky. AND there is only hope if the dems keep the Congress. What do you think about that wonderful Elizabeth Warren who is on the side of us middle class folks. Love her. Let's make sure she can be elected to head the consumer finance protection agency.

Don't forget to live life where you are. I am attending 3 classes, beginning in October, most for 6 weeks. Two are book groups discussing "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "The Help." I'm re-reading Mockingbird. It's been a long time. The last one is "Scrutinizing Conservative Thought During Fall Elections." Oh, I'm going to love that one. AND my old boss is leading the discussion. He's a little mild-mannered. I will try to be the same. For a while.

Don't forget to send your love to your niephews who keep in touch with you. Mark called, Natalie and Julie wrote. It's all good. AND I even love those not in contact. Go figure. Going to see all the folks in San Diego next weekend with Karen and Peter. Coolness. Don't ever forget family.

Lazy Days of Summer

One Sunday in August, Maggie came to visit Eric and I in Arlington. Cindy was working at home on a proposal that knew no end. Eric and I took Maggie to a bookstore so she could get a free book that she earned because she read many books. We went to lunch and the Trader Joes to pick up some groceries for the Heins' house.

Then we got to play. Cindy suggested we play in the sprinkler in the back yard. I loved playing in the sprinklers at our next door neighbor's house when I was growing up. There seems to be nothing more cooling, even a swimming pool. Maggie did not have another child to run through the sprinklers with, so she tried to find out how to manipulate the water to go over the fence to water the neighbor's yard. She also washed a doll's house and her aunt. That last was the most fun. For both of us.

Isn't this a beautiful setting? The garden is behind Maggie. Even though those lovely lawn chairs were low, I was able to get my big butt out of them easily because they are sturdy and have good places for me to push myself up. Because of that, I was able to change the water direction on the sprinkler every now and then. That meant we got to think of a lot of ways to get Auntie Peggy wet.

We had a wonderful time in the yard. Then we dried off and played with Katie's Beanie Babies until it was time to go home. We should have counted, but I think Katie has about 50 BB's. We looked at and named every one of them then selected our favorites. Maggie's favorite fell behind the couch. She does love to torment her auntie, wanting to see how she manipulated this body to retrieve the dog. I was even more clever and retrieved it when nobody could watch.

I do believe a wonderful time was had by all.

Watery Memoir

Just finished reading John Waters' book, Role Models. No, I just finished reading the negative reviews on its Amazon page. One reviewer said she blamed getting this book on Terry Gross of NPR's Fresh Air. That's funny because I got this book because I too listened to John Waters on that program. Terry is great interviewer. And the books always sound so interesting.

Waters reads his book for Audible. Nobody else could do it. Dry, drool, totally self-aware. On Fresh Air he talked about the first chapter, which is about his admiration for Johnny Mathis. That chapter was fascinating. Unlike the reviewer mentioned above who hated the Leslie Van Houten chapter, I liked that chapter. I worked with one of her brothers, the one who was adopted. When I met him, he had changed his name back to his Korean birth name, although it seemed more Japanese to me. I don't blame him. There is a lot of hate associated with those Manson folks. What Waters does so well is to help you understand more about these people than what is on the surface. Van Houten went to a very bad place in herself, thanks in large part to drugs and the times. There but for the grace of fate could have gone many of us. Fascinating reading.

My hairdresser in Virginia had just come back from a vacation in Provincetown, MA. I never knew this was a gay hang out. Tennessee Williams hung out there, so did John Waters. You know how I love these connections.

You must have guessed there was some chapters I didn't love. The perversities at the end almost undid me. To each his own, I always say, as long as they aren't hurting other people. But I really don't need to know about it. Really. Do not. Need. To know. But now I do. Yippee.

Would I recommend this book? Sigh. How curious are you?

New Favorite Recipe

Some people take lots of pictures as they cook. I don't. But I can still picture this great corn and rice side dish that I made this evening. It was supposed to be quinoa with corn and scallions. But we've been infested by grain/flour beetles since I came home from DC last fall. The quinoa didn't make it. Luckily, I found a bag of shelf stable rice with lime and coconut milk from Trader Joes. To the rescue.

2 ears of corn, cut the kernels off and scrape the cobs for the creamy insides.

1 jalepeno chile, seeded and diced.

Sauté these in a little olive oil. It might have been better to brown the corn a bit more than I did. Maybe it would be good to start with the corn so your eyes don't burn with the browning chile bits.

4-5 scallions, sliced thin up to the deep green. Add to pan.

1 bag of TJ's rice with lime. Add to pan.

I added a little water to scrape the browning bits off the pan and make the rice a little fluffy.

Juice from half a lime. It's what I had.

A little smoked salt, if you have it.

A cup of chopped cilantro. Add at the end. The original recipe calls for mint. Maybe that would have been good. The TJ rice has basil in it. Maybe you could substitute a basil/flat parsley mix. The green looks really good with the yellow corn.

I will be making this as long as there is fresh corn at my farmer's market. Although I imagine you could use frozen corn, that seems soggier to me. The fresh corn has a bite that I like.

Can you picture it? Pretty, hunh?

From the Land of TOO Much Information

When I told Adrian that I was reading a book about traveling to Mars, he said his friends had been talking about the book. It's called Packing for Mars. Anyway, Adrian said his friends don't like the idea of manned flights to Mars. Very understandable because some of them work on the Mars Rover project. They should read this book. People who are thinking about funding a manned mission to Mars should read this book.

Don't get me wrong, this is a great book. Full of information about the human body and how these bodies are affected by space. Full of history about manned (and monkied) space flights. If she didn't have such a wry viewpoint, this could have been very boring. As it was, it just left me wondering why we should pay to send anyone up in space. It was a surprise that she said at the end that we should fund this dream because we wouldn't spend the money we save on anything better. That could be true, we could buy a lot of bridges to nowhere. Or we could fund unmanned flights, learn more and tax the bodies of astronauts and taxpayers less.

Remember I said it was full of information about the human body as it relates to space? Think of a part of your body or a body function. Think of it in space. It's discussed here. Skin, fat, bones, brain, heart, urination, defecation, sex, saliva, everything. Everything. Everything.

This would probably be a better book to read than to listen to. As it was, this was a very good book.

Traveling Music

I traveled from California to Virginia with Eric. Then we drove to Cass in West Virginia to ride a train. Then we took our trip to Maine. We listened to books for much of that time. I did learn something very interesting about Eric while doing that. Yes, he loves his mysteries, but he really likes non-fiction, too. I learned that when we had finished 61 Hours by Lee Child. That was a pretty discouraging book. Not just because it was a bad book, but Lee decided to split his book into two parts. It ended very abruptly in the audible book version. They failed to mention that there would be a second part printed some time in September. Naughty. You should really read the one star reviews on Amazon. HI-larious. And all so true. Funny thing is, I'll still read the one coming out in September.

After that disappointment, we were left with non-fiction, which I love. It seems that Eric is also fond of it. The Big Short was as depressing as Reacher, but for different reasons. This was very well written and ended when it should - when none of us had any more money. It's about the idiots who helped end a world economy as we knew it. It wasn't malicious, honest. Just making a bit of money here folks, nobody was meant to be hurt. Michael Smith does a very good reporting job. I may be tempted to read Liar's poker by him, but, well, depressing.

We also started to listen to Write it When I'm Gone. The full title include "Remarkable off-the-Record conversation with Gerald R. Ford." Remarkable. Really? Remarkable? I didn't make Eric listen to the end. Yikes. Trivial. Really boring. "I had this great access, and I promised him I wouldn't print this detritus until he was dead, and now he's dead, so, I guess, well, I said I'd print it, right?" Think about that time. Nixon resigned, Ford who had been named VP was now named President and surely other stuff was happening in the world. Surely. It would have been wonderful to read all about it. All the secret bits that we never knew as well as the out there bits that we have forgotten. I'd say a remarkable waste of his access and my time.

Better for the sheer joy of listening was The Truth (with Jokes) by Al Franken. This is the third of his books I've read. AND it was read by him. Nothing better than hearing his irony-dripping voice reading his own work. It was written before he actually ran for and won the senate seat from Minnesota. But you can hear him edging to that decision. This is his take on the 2004 election. Man, I loved this book. But I am part of his constituency. Wouldn't like him as President, but I sure like a skeptical person sitting in the Senate. Are my glasses too rosy? Would I see him pandering to special interests like most of Congress if I was in the same room? Would I miss seeing him ... fill in the blank; my mind is too full of the stupid things our politicians do. Golly gee, I think I'm going to take back America, when our politicians were honest. When was that again?

Anyway, I liked that book.

Then there is Nothing to Envy by Los Angeles Times reporter, Barbara Demick. Wowser, this is a mighty fine book. I've linked all these books to their Amazon pages. Almost nobody didn't love this book (although you should read the only one star review.) Hum, speaking of writing - almost nobody didn't? Nearly everybody loved this book. That includes Eric and me. Demick lives in South Korea, but met with many people who have migrated to there from North Korea. This is their story. And what a story to tell because it includes the deterioration of the poor, misguided country. That little troll keeps stirring the pot, we should all know what's going on there. Bravo. Read this book. Please.

He Remembered Me!

I went to the farmer's market this morning. Didn't go last Saturday because I already had too much food in this house. I needed some peaches and berries and grass-fed beef so I had to go this week. There are now little bug nets over all the fruit. I guess while I was gone, the market must have been invaded by fruit flies. So sad. Probably a civic-minded Pasadena damsel trying to make us all safe from dangerous vermin.

The peaches looked wonderful, we still have all berries, the veggies were uncovered (okay, that convinces me that vegetables have less sugar.) The beef man was missing. Either I was too early or he has taken the summer off. We will see next week.

Best thing was seeing the man who sells the Middle Eastern prepared food. He was shocked and pleased to see me. He also remembered that when I left in June, I walked off without all the food he sold me. He said he followed me through the market, but somehow didn't catch up. He seems much more able than that! Anyway, it was fun to be remembered. And he gave me all my stuff for free, since I'd already paid for it.

I choose to think that he was just happy to see me. Imagine having to remember that every Saturday, Now he can forget all about me. Sigh.

Take This Waltz

I am home, have seen no one but my dear friend, Adrian. This is the life.

OK, so now that nobody is looking anymore I can tell all - my inner most feelings about life and all the people who are in mine. Nah. Although that might be fun. And destructive. And meaningless. I mean, what the heck, nobody is looking. Except Karen. Here are pictures of our trip to Maine. The best is the video of a white sand beach in the Acadian National Park. Lovely. I like that it ends with Eric walking the beach. You have to watch the whole thing.

Summer was eventful. I worked for some very nice people, made new friends there whom I will never see again. I almost died of humidity and heat. What a dreadful climate they have in DC. The world has always known that, but you have to experience it at its worst to really understand. And this was the worst. The news guys told us that every night. Cindy was amazed that I could live in So Pas without AC, since I kept the one in my room in Arlington going day and night. But really, dry heat, cool nights, blessed So Pas.

I nearly finished my tapestry, but have run out of some colors of thread that I need. But then I realized that, like my blog, nobody will ever see it. So I'm using "close" to finish it. I work on it an hour every day while I watch Perry Mason in honor of my mother. She loved that man. Soon I will start my new needlepoint. It's going to be as frustrating as this one was, lots of little flowers. When I am done with it, I will have 5 of these tucked away somewhere in the apartment. Maybe I do need a will. If I bequeath it, does that mean they have to take it?

And, of course, I've been reading. Books beyond measure. I think I'll save the list for my next posting. I also listened to some of the great music I have on my iPod. This is my "play this as I die" playlist. It lightens my heart to hear this wild mix of songs. I grin whenever I hear Leonard Cohen or someone singing his song. "I want you, I want you, I want you." Sung with his deep, raspy voice. I'm his. But I'm also Bob Dylan's, who takes me back to a dorm room in LA. I sing along with Mary as she sings Hush-a-by. This is the song that I used to sing to Adrian. Before he asked me to please stop singing. He told me the other day that he was listening to a Kate Hudson interview when she said that her child has asked her to stop singing. He felt a certain kinship with that kid. I bet Kate doesn't listen any better than I do. "I am not, the boy next door."