Smashed Squirrels

When I wake up in the morning I watch the sun come up on the neighborhood trees. Before the Big Wind I would watch the neighborhood squirrels darting from their home in that palm tree, along the electric and telephone wires to the huge pine tree in front of my apartment. Sometimes I would watch the crows or the green parrots on the same wires. No more. Where are they? Adrian noticed this too. The squirrels didn't just entertain me in the morning, they were always scarpering about. No more. We decided that the big wind picked them all up and blew them. . . where? Is there a block wall with animal and bird bodies smashed into it? Or are our birds now in Temecula? If you see them, let them know I miss them.
Pie perfection. In his eternal quest to increase diabetes in the San Gabriel Valley, Adrian has now perfected the lemon meringue pie. He is working through the fruits of the season, despite Emily asking for peach whenever anything else shows up. Summer, Emily. For now, lemon.
Natalie posted this great picture on her blog. Love this family.

Reading continues. This week I've juxtaposed The Drop, Michael Connelly's latest Harry Bosch mystery, with BossyPants by Tina Fey. Both good. Fey's book seems to me like it would be more pleasing for women than men. I recounted some of the passages that made me think so to Adrian. He agrees. She reads the book so it has her wry tone. I like that. And I've found a great new to me podcast - Best of the Left. Always interesting. One thing it has underscored for me is that folks on the left are not the final aribters on truth. We miss it sometimes ourselves.

I've signed up for two new PALAC groups that will start in January. One is about ginseng collecting along the China and North Korean border. The other is based on Montaigne's essays. Should be fun.

OH MY!!! (Updated)

Did you hear that we had a big wind in Southern California? Kajillion mph winds blew through on Wednesday night and toppled trees, took out electricity, and ruined my life. You may think that is a little severe and I would agree. It didn't take out electricity everywhere. In fact, the people in the house on the corner, just down the hill from us had their GX DX porch light on all night, proclaiming their poweredness to all us poor fools up the hill.

Adrian was driving home during the big wind. He said it was stunning. I'm happy he made it home safe. First thing I thought of was the packages of chopped up bunny that I am going to use to make a rabbit terrine in a couple of weeks and the rabbit legs I had confit-ed earlier in the week. This is expensive stuff. I didn't want it to die in a dead freezer. Adrian's first thought was that he promised to make a chocolate cake for his fans. Our second thought was that we would not have Internet connectivity and we couldn't recharge any of our electronics. Groan.

We took the freezer stuff to my old boss Bill's house. They have a beautiful home in an area we thought would be most likely to have trees down and electricity off. Luckily, no. So we got to power up our cell phones and iPod. Then we came home and made a cake by hand. Sure, people have done that for hundreds of years, just not us. Until Thursday. It looked really pretty.

Still no electricity on Friday. I was pretty miserable. I couldn't update my podcasts, I'd buzzed through everything I had on my iPod. I went to bed on Thursday night at 6:00. Sun is down at 5:00, my apartment is pretty dark anyway (except for that porch light down the road.) and candles don't give you Internet connectivity. I listened to a really good book, The Night Circus, throughout the night. I have been relistening continually because a lot of stuff happens in this book. Went to bed at 5:30 on Friday, thinking, now I know how depressed feels.

I was miserable. Yes, I felt like a naked rat mole. I just wanted to stay in bed with my slow metabolism and try to keep warm. How the Hell do people survive really major disasters? I guess the secret is that humans are resilient. My major problem was not having control over when electricity was coming back. If I knew the answer was never, I could make plans and move on.

At 5:45 on Saturday morning, our electricity came back. The bathroom light went on and two Norman's jumped up. Adrian got up to turn off the light. I got up to turn it back on and then turn on my laptop. Ahhhhh. LIG.

UPDATE: Just saw this about the damage to the Arboretum in Arcadia. We used to drive out to the arboretum when we were kids and have visited often since moving to the area. This is very sad news.

A Thanksgiving Gift

We spent a wonderful Thanksgiving in Northern California. We drove up Monday to stay in Albany until Wednesday. During that time the deadly duo of Adrian and Peter cooked. These guys both like Cook's Illustrated. Adrian has been trying to perfect his pie crust using their recipe. He got to sous chef for Peter while making apple turnovers for our Tuesday dinner. Now, thanks to Peter, he can turn out a perfect apple pie. That night he returned the favor by making the most delicious chicken with dates. We were certainly giving thanks for that meal.

Then we drove down to Fremont to help Natalie and Kevin prepare for our Thanksgiving dinner for 12. There was a lot of really good food. Natalie made two types of stuffing. Num. Peter made a perfect gravy. Trina made butternut squash, Karen brought a green bean and tomato salad, I made brussell sprouts and the turkey. And there was more. Blimp.

Most fun was seeing everyone. Our newest grandbaby, Matthew, was adorable. I know, that's his job, but he could have been whiney and pissy. Instead he bonded with Maggie, laughing and smiling sweetly. Then he showed off his rolling and almost sitting and almost crawling abilities. Both of his grandmothers were there. It's fun to watch their joy. I've got to say, it was a night to be thankful for. Great company and good food. LIG.

Where Have I Been?

Wow, July. What have I done since then. Well, nevermind. One thing I know for sure is that life is long and memory is short. I'm still very active in my Pasadena discussion group. This week I was in the office 4 days. Seems none of the other ladies knows how to print labels using mail merge. Or merge information into letters going out to our members. It's nice to be able to offer something unique. This fall term I attended two groups.

The first one read Updike short stories. Karen and I agreed long ago that we do not like that man. So fixated on sex and running around on his wife. But my friend Susan was leading the group and she assured me that there is more to Updike than that. There is. He does write well. Or he uses a lot of lovely adjectives and descriptors. But just about every story involved some guy's wandering eye and raging hormones. Oh, and Updike is confirmed anti-gay and probably has issues about race. But never mind. The company was good. I've met even more nice ladies who I will enjoy spending time with next time we talk about fiction.

Then there is my non-fiction group of the season. The book was written by Jim DeMint, godfather of the Tea Party movement. (And I can't remember the name. Sure I could look at the picture at the beginning of this post, but that would mean reading more DeMint.) They do love that man and this book sorta tells why, if you can read it. I met more nice people in that group. All of us had difficulty reading this simplistic and fundamentally misguided book. But the discussions were great. Our last group was yesterday afternoon. I asked one of the ladies, as we were walking to the house, what words she writes in her book as she is reading. We always do a lot of underlining and making notes in our books so we can talk at the meetings, referring to the correct page. She wrote the same words in her book that I wrote in mine. We laughed a lot about that. She said her family would be surprised. I told her mine wouldn't. I asked her what she was going to do with her book when the group was over. In fact, the whole group discussed what they were going to do with their books when we were done. Burning was mentioned often. I was going into the office, so I figured shredding was a good alternative.

One of the big problems with the book was that he states facts, but doesn't say where he got them. There is no index and the only footnotes relate to resources written by him or some other people's speeches. Most of us read the book with a computer on our laps or in our hands. We did the research he should have done. And maybe if he had done it right, we would not have been as beholden to Wikipedia. And he's disingenuous. People he can't stand are always good people, but wrong. He had great hope for Obama, but lost it in one day. I had great hopes for Bush, but gave him a lot of chances before I gave up completely. After all, whoever is President is responsible for all of us. Right? If he succeeds we all benefit. Right?

Anyway, going to that group made me more aware of the man. Cain wants him in his cabinet. DeMint's name is in the news every day. I hope that all changes soon. Or at least by this time next year.