Monday, May 29, 2017

In awe over the latest Trump/Republican debacles.

How is it that we hear nothing from so many Republicans, not to mention Democrats, about the latest shockers coming out of Brussels, Washington and Montana and other places around the world?  There should be outrage at a president literally pushing another leader aside in order to get to the front of the line.  There should be jaw-dropping outrage over the entire Kushner - Kremlin connection and a demand for Kushner's banishment from Washington.  There should be embarrassment and shame from people in Montana who blithely elected a bully to the House of Representatives after watching him beat up a journalist. 

But while we hear a few "tsk tsk"s there's nothing else. As one editorial in the NY Times stated, the "Republicans have surrendered the mantle of morality."  And the Democrats are just sitting there, perhaps pissed off but not enough of them are calling for any response.  We elected these leaders, they are supposed to be speaking for us, and yet we do not hear them speaking at all. 

It is so discouraging and depressing and depraved.  Proud to be an American?  Not so much these days.

.


Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Bourbon Babes and Beans!!!!

As promised, a new and exciting title to this post!  I am looking forward to seeing how many new readers I get with this title, it should drag them in like flies on barbeque sauce!

What's new?  What did I promise you last night?  Winning the lottery rings a bell but that was a lie. Work situation is so boring that I can't bear to discuss it right now, maybe lower on the page.  The first Mother's Day when my Mom was dead?  That could be sad and teary except that it wasn't. For a second or two the week before that Sunday, I was sure I forgot to get a Mother's Day card and mail it, until I realized that even if I did forget, it didn't matter!  I felt bad for my sister Kate because for the past ten years she and her daughter had taken Mom out for Mother's Day brunch at a winery on the Delta that they all loved and I know that day was tough for Kate.  But for me, it was fine. Mom lived a long life, I always called her on every Sunday, of course, but I hadn't visited Mom on Mom's day for ..... like 25 years since I always work on Sundays.  

OK, work:  finally I have had enough crap at the lovely boutique hotel in Glen Ellen and have cut my hours down to just Saturday and Sunday (and a Monday now and then.)  Now I have three days at the Pt. Reyes Country Inn, where I have worked off and on for the past 20 years.  It's a simple, clear, busy job and the drive out there at 6:15 in the morning is busier than you might imagine but lovely. It's costing me more in gas and wear and tear on the car, of course, and the hours are less, but the peace of mind is a lot better. No more power trips dealing with fellow workers who are Ricardo Cabeza clones, no more dealing with people who think money is a form of entitlement. The guests at the inn are equally challenged in many ways (guests always are, no matter where) but at least they are less pricey about it, and they usually have their horses to deal with instead of their "where should I go to drink today" agenda.  For this season it will be fine.  Next year, who knows. I might win that friggin lottery and be free of all bosses. But as Bob Dylan has pointed out, everyone has to serve somebody.  Boss or bank or bourbon or babes, we all answer to someone.

In case you wondered, I did not set trees on fire last night grilling my steak and it was perfect.  It will serve me well tonight on a bed of greens with some blue cheese and a nice lemon vinaigrette or I may leave off the blue cheese and use my homemade Green Goddess dressing on the salad.  Yummm....

I sincerely hope to get some comments about the lack of Bourbon, Babes or Beans in this blog.  "Beans and babes are my favorite pastimes and bourbon is my favorite drink but hardly any mention of them in your writing and what you said made no sense. What's with that? Bourbon, babes and beans are what's gonna make America great again!  Bring on the b's and add to those three some more like bacon and butter and boobs and boots! And bees because we like honey and bandaids because we have trouble with knives and beer, how can I forget beer and barbeque."  Oh, I only wish.

Or not. 



Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Avoidance of most everything, so let's talk about something mundane to begin with.

First, I was looking at how many people read the blogs over the past month or two and for one of them over 250 people read it! WHAT!!!!  How could that be?  I think it's the title because it had NYC in the title, and some robot searched for that and some robot algorithm sent it out to some searchers, blah, blah.  Anyway, it was sort of amusing, just wanted to pass that on.  So tell all your friends!  From now on, starting tomorrow, I am going to have really catchy titles to each blog that will attract lots of robots and we'll see what happens.  Titles like "Bourbon Based Babes"  to appeal to bourbon drinkers and those who like wet t-shirt contests.  Or "Cool Cukes for Cooking" for those who like cucumbers and are cool hipsters who like to cook.  (What?)  Or "Hillbilly Beans and Weenies" for those who are reading the "Hillbilly Elegy" memoir and who like beans and weenies, maybe at the same time or two different sort of people, some like beans and some like weenies of other sorts.

So you can see how this new strategy is going to totally open up my blog readership and attract new and interesting people and comments!  I can hardly wait!  "I like beans and hillbillies but where's the good stuff about hillbilly weenies?"  That would be a stellar comment.

I have  been reading a lot of trash lately, not sure why, but there you have it. However, I read two good books, one fiction and one fact.  The non fiction is "A House in the Sky" by Amanda Lindhout and Sara Corbett.  Amanda was a somewhat naive and reckless traveler who was captured by renegade soldiers in Somalia in 2008, held for more than a year, raped, tortured, almost starved to death but she miraculously held on until she was released.  It's a harrowing memoir, one that I don't really recommend because it is so sad, brutal and desperate. But if you want to read a memoir about a woman in captivity who finally gets free, check it out.

The fiction I just read is not a lot less brutal but a great story and the writing is incredible, images that stay with you for days.  "The North Water" by Ian McGuire tells the tale of rogue sailors in the late 19th century traveling north for whale and seal blubber but the expedition goes wrong, the weather turns on them and survival is left to the fittest. The first half of the book was good but the second half is outstanding. It's not a pretty story but a couple of the characters are so vivid and honest, you can't help but marvel at McGuire's language. Unlike the above book, I would recommend "The North Water" to anyone who wants to be taken into a ship of thieves, wastrels, outlaws and misfits and sail north where the sea is frozen, food is naught and survival is the only thing to attempt.  Sounds good, right?  It is.

Food:  in this hot weather, and it was 86 in my living room last week, who wants to cook?  But one must eat.  My new go-to meal is to cook some thin pasta, drain and toss with some sesame oil and it will last a couple of days in the fridge.  Make some peanut sauce (recipes abound on the internet) and thin it a little with hot water.  Toss it with a portion of the pasta, top it with all kinds of raw crunchy veggies: chopped snow peas, radishes, carrots, celery, seeded and peeled cucumbers, red bell peppers..... toss it all together, add some toasted sesame seeds or toasted almonds. It's cool, refreshing, lots of veggies means it's good for you.  It's a departure from a regular salad (less greens, of course) and filling and not a ton of calories.  Add some chicken (leftover, of course) or pork or shrimp if you want protein.  It is good and filling and doesn't heat up the kitchen.  A good cheap white wine, you are good to go.

Tonight, however, since it isn't 90 degrees outside right now, I am grilling a steak!  Yes!  Red meat!  I have opened a delicious Gundlach Bundschu Merlot, which tastes like a Merlot (the noble grape from France) should taste: deep, complex, subtle tannins, distinct merlot fruit.  It will be so lovely with my steak. Along side will be a small salad and a sauteed zucchini:  first I take a handful of raw almonds, slice them in thirds (yes, it would be easier if I had sliced almonds but I don't so leave me alone) and saute them in a little olive oil. Once toasted, take out, toss in the pan with the now hot oil a zuke that is thinly sliced. It takes less than a minute to cook, salt and pepper, throw the almonds back in and that's it.  Done. It can be done as the steak rests, of course. 

Time to light the fire, my first bbq of the year.  Let's hope I don't set the trees on fire.  thanks for listening, more to follow soon. Stuff on work, the dead Mother's Day celebration, more food and wine, dog eccentricities, the plan to toss Mom's ashes over the cliff, neighbors and my winning the lottery.  Stay tuned.

xo

Sunday, May 21, 2017

It's been a while: changes keep on coming.

I owe several days worth of writing here.  Books, jobs, meals, movies, Mother's Day, the heat, dog, cat, bird, fish.

Tomorrow I have a day off. I will compose then, at least something. Don't get your hopes up but something.....

Thanks for checking in, whoever you are.

Saturday, May 6, 2017

Shaken. Not stirred.

There is no rhyme nor reason for the random choices we make in the evening when picking something to watch on our small screens of entertainment. I decided, for some reason that I cannot remember, to watch the first James Bond movie, "Dr. No" yesterday evening. As it scrolled on the screen (and yes, I know there is no scrolling anymore, but I like to say that) I realized that I had never seen it before! How could that be? Doesn't matter.  I watched it and it was James Bond with NO GADGETS!  Seriously, he had nothing but a gun and a Geiger counter. There was no M to invent strange and useful tricky things like the magical briefcase that appears in the second movie, "From Russia, With Love" that I am watching right now.

I might have seen parts of FRWL over the past 50 years but I know I have never watched it from start to finish. Most of it takes place in Istanbul, a city I visited and loved, so it's very nice to revisit that city via this movie.  Plus, the cool thing is that these are fun movies to watch! Yes, they are sexist and dated in many ways (what they could have accomplished if they only had a computer!) but that's part of the enjoyment. They were not technological and the movies don't have CG stuff, they have explosions that were created with gas and explosive stuff. The explosions look real because they were real, there wasn't any way to fake stuff in the 1960's unless it was a cartoon.

Anyway, these first two  Bond movies are simply old school fun. The next one up is "Goldfinger" which I will skip because I have seen it numerous times. In fact, I saw it in an actual movie theater in Redondo Beach, with either my brothers or some other boys, in 1965, a year after its release.  But after that was "Thunderball" which I will check out in the next few days because I might have missed that one as well. Sean Connery is a handsome youngish man, and it's a pleasure to watch him work his silly movie magic.  We all need silly magic now and then. And don't we all want exploding briefcases, and an Aston Martin with knives coming out of the wheels and an apparatus that will let us fly without wings and a watch that can make coffee and a shoe that does laundry?   Where is M when we need him?

Shaken. Not stirred.

(P.S. If you google "James Bond gadgets" you will get a Wikipedia list of all the gadgets in all the Bond movies. It's quite revelatory because there are gadgets we, the viewing public, did not even know about unless we were totally paying attention in a completely gadget geeky way.  Check it out if you are a fan of Bond stuff.    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_James_Bond_gadgets#Dr._No

Friday, May 5, 2017

The difference, according to me, of grieving and just remembering.

Confronting death on a personal level means confronting life and mortality on that level as well. They say there are many stages of grief but I don't know what stages there are when you don't grieve but you just remember what isn't there any more. The two are not the same by miles. 

This is sort of related to my Mom's death, of course, but it is really related to so much more. Her death made me sad but it didn't make me mournful or depressed. It created many pockets of memories that appear now and then, but I think that's rather normal. But there is no grief.

There was a book review in the New York Times last week, the book I cannot remember but I wrote this down, written by the person who reviewed the book, and I am dismayed I cannot remember her name either. But here is the quote: "Grief is the final act of love, and recovery from it is the necessary betrayal on which the future depends. There is only this one life and we are the ones who are here to live it."  This resonated with me. I thought about it for a while and realized that the only person I have ever lost that I grieved for was Martha Meade, my excellent friend who was killed 5 years ago. Her death was sudden and terrible and it left a gaping wound to my heart and my mind and my psyche. I grieved for Martha but as the quote above says, the lessening of the grief, while it sometimes felt wrong, was necessary because life did have to go on, the future was dependent on trying to put the grief away.  The loss never goes away but the gaping wound does begin to heal.

There are more deaths to come, of course, none that I want to imagine or consider. There will be grief and more wounds but I am glad my Mom's death wasn't a terrible loss to me. It was her time.