Bees won't sting an idiot

Thanksgiving 2011

2011-11-24T17:13:00.000-08:00

The cooking started at 2:30 am. Not because that's what I intended; I just happened to wake up and thought I might as well get the turkey going. By 3:00 am that dude was in the oven on his way to becoming the centerpiece of our Turkey Day feast. Allow me to digress a bit. This years festivities will best go down in history as the impromtu celebration. We were supposed to go to Tennessee for the day but due to several very last minute logistics problems and a slightly sick kid we had to cancel and I was pressed into service to come up with something at least mildly better than Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving dinner of popcorn and toast. Coming out of the shoot I had two made-from-scratch sweet potato pies up my sleeve. That was all I had planned to make since the relatives were providing everything else. I had bought nearly everything needed earlier in the week, intending to make a small version of Turkey day just for my family over the weekend. After sizing up my situation I threw my frozen turkey in some cold water and headed out to join the grocery store malay on Turkey day eve. The crowds weren't really all that bad. I picked up a few things I needed and had a chuckle with someone when we spotted another shopper leaving the store without their turkey. They had left it in the bagging area. The grocery store employees laughed and sent one of their own chasing after the bonehead with a big turkey in tow. People are so stupid.

Besides the turkey I made a batch of fried apples, fancy glazed carrots in grape juice and honey, stuffing, broccoli, peas and cranberry sauce (of course). We wouldn't want to forget the cranberry sauce now would we?. I keep several cans in my well-stocked pantry year-round for just such an emergency.

I do my turkeys sort of like barbeque in that I slow cook them. 225 degrees until the insides are at least 160 deg. By 9:00 am it was done and with 1 hour to rest the meat so the juices wouldn't run out I was only an hour and a half early to show time. I don't cook a whole turkey very often so I tend to err way on the side of caution so we won't be waiting on it. It was done in about 6 hours and while carving it really just fell apart. Juicy and tender to boot. I have to confess that I spilled WAY too much spice on that poor bird but it turned out to be pretty tasty in the end. Whatever it was, it was green and I'm lucky the Turkey came out of the oven brown and not green. I would have had trouble coming up with a valid reason for eating green turkey.

The carrots and apples were made from fresh ingredients and were really good. A suggestion was made to combine them into one dish and I think that is a good one. There is something really good about fried apples in the fall. It must be the slight nip in the air and the smell of dried leaves that does it. Add to that the pumpkin pie spice and fresh lemon juice and you just can't miss.

The sweet potato pie was tasty. Easy made, it is little more than boiling a few potatoes and then mixing them up with a bunch of junk and pouring it all into a shell. Those shells are courtesy of the grocery store, by the way. I don't do homemade shells. It's not in my contract. I copped out on the other desserts. I really wanted to make everyone feel like they were having a big meal so I bought two other pies. Mrs. Smith provided a berry and a chocolate pie. Nothing to it, just thaw the chocolate one and cook the berry pie in the toaster oven.

All in all I was satisfied with the results and I didn't hear any complaints from the peanut gallery. They took about 10 minutes to wolf it all down and it was all over. I've been cleaning dishes in stages so it doesn't seem like so much to do. The refrigerator is so stuffed with leftovers I don't think I'll be cooking for the rest of the weekend. That's not a bad thing either.

Marshall made the turkey in the picture. We kept it on the table while we ate and giggled about it the whole time. It was good enough to take a picture.

After the feast I managed to connive my wife to snuggle on the couch with me (not easily done). I fell asleep and when I woke up she was complaining that I had drooled all over her hair. Poor girl, that'll learn her to marry me.

Tomorrow is black Friday and I'm keeping my happy ass at the house. It'll be turkey for breakfast, turkey for lunch, and turkey for supper. I should really just send out for Chinese.

Naked girls and noodles

2011-07-05T17:04:00.001-07:00

What do car wrecks, topless girls, Vietnamese restaurants, and sharks all have in common? The answer is pretty intuitive if you don’t dwell on it very long. They were all part of our Florida vacation, of course. Read on if you have a minute for all of the noodle slurping, death defying details. Pay attention as there might be a pop quiz at the end.
You remember of course my bellyaching about last year’s vacation. The 4th of July in Destin, Fl. amid hordes of tourists, foreigners, drunk partying college kids, and fat Canadian businessmen. I wanted quiet beaches, a few seagulls, and the occasional banner towing airplane. Naturally I endured the total opposite. Destin was crowded and locked down into a traffic jam the entire time. On our way to a flea market last year, we passed through a dumpy little outskirts town called Navarre. It was the sort of run down, destitute, poor Florida town I had been dreaming of. I mentioned to the wife that we ought to spend our next vacation there away from the upscale tinsel town that Destin has transformed into.
So in February I went to work planning our getaway. I picked out a nice hotel and booked it for 5 days several months in advance. In retrospect, this was an uncharacteristically smart move on my part. The rates went crazy in July and the hotel clerk told me he had to turn away 30 people one night. Apparently, every hotel on the beach was full. I missed out on an opportunity to heckle another hotel guest who was complaining about the high price of her stay to the clerk. Better luck next time.
We found the place easy enough and enjoyed the ride down below Montgomery (after lunch at “Chinatown”) since it was all 2 lane country roads. There was no plan for what to do other than enjoy the beach. That was a slight problem because our beach front hotel didn’t really have a beach to speak of. It was about 10’ wide and 400’ long and faced an inlet. There had to be something better. I asked Kathy to find out what the spit of land on the other side of the inlet was. It looked like another beach. She asked a 12 year old kid running a wave runner concession and the kid told her it was an air force base. We rode over there the next morning and found it to be the beach we had hoped for. Stupid kid. Anyway, the beach was nearly empty that morning so we settled down with our toes in the sand and enjoyed the quiet surf. And that is about all we really did the entire time except for hitting the flea market and eating out twice a day. But what about the car wrecks, topless girls, Vietnamese restaurants, and sharks? Be patient, I’m getting to it.

Topless girls!

Okay, not girls, but girl. MY girl. Kathy had a little wardrobe malfunction while we were out in the surf one day. The wave came crashing over us (the waves were very rough all week) we jumped up, but her bikini top didn’t. She’s standing there, wiping the salt water out of her eyes, and her top was hanging down around her belly. The funny thing was that she didn’t even notice. I finally told her that her tits were hanging out and she quickly put them up. No one else noticed but me and the 450 or so people on the beach she was facing. She’s prone to this sort of accident. Years ago when she took swimming lessons, the same thing happened only it was her little brother and the swimming instructor who were watching. Speaking of bikinis, the first one she tried on was way too skimpy. She was all ready to prance out the door with it on but I told her that unless she was planning on auditioning to be a stripper she might want to opt for something a little more demure.

Car wrecks!

On the last night of our visit, we decided to walk across a long bridge to get to the fishing pier. The bridge was very busy and also narrow. Some clown tried to make a U-turn right in the middle of it and ended up smacking a pizza delivery guy in the rear. After that all traffic came to a dead standstill except for the two of us trucking along in the pedestrian lane. We came up on the scene and Kathy checked out everyone to make sure they were ok (required of Nurses by law). While she was interviewing the victims, I made inquiries to the pizza delivery guy about purchasing a slightly used pizza for a sizable discount but unfortunately it had already been delivered. After we left the accident scene we were asked about what was going on up ahead by every 3rd car or so in line. It was only fun for a little while until I realized it would take forever to get to the fishing pier if we had to explain the situation to so many people. I do admit to having just a little fun telling several of them how screwed they were until both vehicles were towed away by the as yet un-arrived tow trucks.
There were quite a few people fishing on the pier and catching some small ones but nothing really sizable. Interesting that I saw so many foreigners. I suspected they were going to eat whatever they caught. On the way back across the bridge we stopped at a local open-air bar for beer and fish tacos (for me). Kathy had to have a girlie drink but didn’t have enough of them to become interested in the fish tacos.

Sharks!

I saw a shark. We were in the water. We got the heck out of there fast. No, I didn’t see a dolphin, a shadow, or a mirage either so if you are going to tell me it was probably something else just click your heels together 3 times and say to yourself: “it really was a shark”. I’d say it was about 3’ to 4’ long.

Vietnamese Restaurant

The one day we went to Destin for a little shopping we got caught up in a bad traffic jam which is rapidly becoming what Destin is most widely known for. After shopping the chance of getting something to eat without waiting outside in line for 3 hours was getting slim. Kathy picked out a place with a “Pho” in the name of it somewhere so in desperation we headed to it. As soon as we walked in I realized that we were the only two white people in there. Undaunted, we sat down and listened to the incomprehensible jabbering of the regulars while we waited for our food. It was surprisingly good, too. Pretty different from the standard Chinese stuff I’m used to. However; Eastern folks have a different set of standards when it comes to eating, particularly when you talk noodles. They love to slurp. I doubt there is an American alive who doesn’t flinch when he accidentally slurps his own noodle soup for fear that his Mom heard him and is about to slap him upside his head. Apparently, it’s a form of appreciation for a really good noodle in other parts of the world. For me, it’s simply a good way to turn my stomach. They backed us up to a table of 4 noodle slurping Vietnamese in order to ensure that we got the full dining experience. In spite of the ambiance and background noises, the tea was wonderful since it was loose and not the horrible bagged kind so I’m game for a return visit. Next time I’m going back to show those guys who can be more obnoxious when he eats. Maybe I’ll start by putting a chop stick in each nostril just to psych them out. That ought to level the playing field somewhat.

Well, there’s another vacation in the books. 5 days of sun, surf, and sand with a splash of naked girls and noodles.

Take a ride in Mr. Peabody's wayback machine

2011-04-06T08:20:00.000-07:00

In a previous post, I talked about time and how much it has always fascinated me. I also mentioned that time can only move in one direction and that is forward. However; for the period from 2005-2025 time is indeed going in reverse. There is interest in doing things “the old way”. We are going back to our roots, reviving old, long forgotten techniques and skills that were afraid to have been lost in antiquity. I just saw a review on a retro website for a brand new Sony radio that is retro styled. It looks like it came right out of a 1960s yardsale, wood grained case and all. My wife and I went to “Mule Day” in Tennessee which is coincidentally everything mule. Amongst the vendors selling ticky tack, hot dogs, and balloons were a lady showing how yarn was spun and a man who made corn whisk brooms entirely by hand. One of my hobbies is woodworking. The online discussion group I belong to are constantly chatting about the “great handtool revival” and the increasing interest in selling off power tools to be replaced by 100+ year old hand tools. It’s showing up everywhere, even automobile manufacturers are reintroducing old cars that had their original hayday in the 60’s like the Dodge Charger. The TV channel, “TV land” regularly reruns shows from the same time period. I like it. It’s good to have a revival and throwback to the past. Enjoy it while you can because in February of 2025 we are all going to put our toys back in the closet where they belong. Of note during the same period of time is the interest in the Earth and conservation of all things “green”. It’s not just about saving the whales these days. Now it’s everything but Kudzu. I’ve seen more spins on the “green” thing than I can shake a stick at. Just watch advertising and you will see what I mean.

Saved by Cranberry sauce

2011-01-06T08:54:00.000-08:00

Yesterday’s theme was food. Everything that happened to me centered around it. Some of it wasn’t too tasty, either.
I get to work and start unpacking my daily supply of provisions only to find out that my Tupperware jug of grapefruit juice had leaked all over the inside of my lunch box, right on top of my daily planner. The next 20 minutes were frantic, wet, and sticky. I got lucky and didn’t have to toss out any important documents. Breakfast went pretty smooth. I don’t know why I added breakfast except that I like to be thorough.
About mid morning I ran into an unexpected treat in the breakroom: an entire plate full of unmolested, homemade chocolate chip cookies. They must have just been placed there because they were still covered in wrap and were piled pretty high. I wasn’t hungry so I simply made a mental note to swing back by later and grab a few after lunch.
When lunch rolled around my ribs were sticking out. It looked pretty good in the cafeteria so I went through the line and got the baked chicken, mashed potatoes, and lima beans. When I looked down I was just a little miffed. The chicken breast was the smallest I had ever seen. It looked more like the breast of a pigeon than a chicken. I’ve seen a chicken breast or two in my tender years and I know they grow them bigger than that. The mashed potatoes were just barely there to represent their species as well. Jeez, the only thing I’ve got a decent helping of is the lima beans. Oh, the lima beans. They have this recipe for lima beans that will send you into orbit. They look plain but that is just a disguise because they are very spicy. I sometimes dream about them. When I paid for my lunch I made a comment about getting the smallest chicken breast I’ve ever seen which only returned a giggle from the cashier. Oh well. So I sit down, reassuring myself that at least they didn’t jip me on those wonderful beans, only to discover that they were both bland and cold. So there it was before me; skimpy, bland, and barely there. It didn’t take me 5 minutes to choke it all down while holding back just a few tears. After the carnage was over I was contemplating a second helping while whining to everyone within earshot of how little I had actually gotten. Theirs’ was as skimpy as mine as well. We all got quite a shock when we later noticed that the lunches rolling off the assembly line were piled high for everyone else! Big, heaping mounds of mashed potatoes, carrots falling off the plate! Chicken breasts with real meat on them! It wasn’t fair. We had been taken, robbed, swindled. After some discussion and further reconnaissance of the area we concluded that the cafeteria folks were afraid they would run out of food if they gave it all away during the first hour. Remember how you skimped on the candy for the first hour or two last Halloween then when it started getting late you were pouring the rest of the bowl into some kids plastic pumpkin, trying to get rid of it? Our situation was surely the same. We grumbled about it, my belly grumbled about it.

Then the little man on my shoulder reminded me that there were homemade cookies upstairs! That’s right! Homemade chocolate chip. Those cookies would hit the spot and provide just enough sustenance to get me through the afternoon before I starved to death and had to be taken to the hospital before suppertime could save me. Without a word I slipped away from everyone on the way back from lunch to pinch a big handful. As luck would have it, a few other people saw those cookies and no one thought to save any for me. Oh the horror! The plate was even gone! Next time, I’ll squirrel those cookies away ahead of time. So now what am I going to do to keep from starving to death? I had to settle (out of court) for some peanut butter crackers.

My last chance to actually enjoy a meal was approaching at a turtle’s trot since I had to work late and the ride home was plagued with a wreck on the river bridge. It seems like there is a wreck every day on that stupid bridge. I haven’t conducted any studies but I believe that the chances of a wreck on the bridge will increase for me if I have the urge to pee on the way home. Murphy carpools with me.

Supper was looking grim. I hadn’t laid any meat out of the freezer and I didn’t expect to find much in the way of leftovers in the fridge due to the fact that there are two grown kids (vultures) living with me. I was determined that I would scare something up even if I had to kill it first. That or order Chinese takeout. As I walked in I was shocked and surprised to find a miniature Thanksgiving meal was just ready. My wife had cooked a whole chicken with stuffing, vegetables, gravy, rolls, and even had CRANBERRY SAUCE too! WOW! What a feast! I didn’t even bother to look around to see if I had the correct address or pinch myself as if in a dream. I just grabbed a plate and started scooping. We’ll see who wins the portion control game this time! I slobbed down a whole plate full of goodies and just for good measure, went back for seconds. That’ll learn ‘em to try and starve ME at lunch! That was one fine meal too. June Cleaver would have been proud of my wife that day. If she had served me in pearls, pumps, and an apron I would have known I was in Heaven because it couldn’t have gotten better than that.
I semi passed out in my easy chair that evening with the dog and life was good. Well, maybe except for a little indigestion from overeating.

Let me out! Let me out!

2010-08-11T16:36:00.000-07:00

I just ran across this old picture on my computer. It's my oldest son Marshall sitting in front of one of his all-time favorite toys: the toy box. He and his little brother were in his room one day playing when I noticed that the noise level appeared to be quite a bit louder and more desperate than normal. I trotted down the hallway to see if they were really going to kill each other this time to find one of them sitting on top of it while the other was locked inside. Figuring that the little one was being held hostage and was most likely terrified of being trapped, I yelled at Marshall to let him out. Just then the wife walks by and says they do that all the time. Evidently, the way she explained how the game was played was for one to climb inside, the other then closed the lid and sat on it. They would both sit there and holler for about 10 minutes then switch places and start over. By now all 3 of them were looking at me as if they couldn't believe I hadn't ever heard of this game before. Sensing their impatience to get back to their claustrophobic fun, I just shook my head and wandered out to my workshop to the sound of blood chilling screams that would have even raised the hair on the back of Boris Karloff's neck.

July 4th, 2010 in Destin Fl. for a mini vacation

2010-07-21T12:53:00.000-07:00

Kathy asked me if I was going to write a journal of our trip to Destin, Fl. similar to what I did for our trip to Sanfrancisco. I’ll hit the highlights and points of interest (for me anyway), give my observations on the oil mess in the Gulf, and fill in the chinks with my usual catty remarks and sarcasm. It’s been a couple of weeks since we got back so I won’t attempt to put it all in order.
The ride down turned out to be really nice. Once we got off the interstate below Montgomery we turned off the beaten path and took the back roads all the way to Destin. It was all farm country on a two lane road. We passed thru several one-horse towns that looked as if they hadn’t changed in 50 years. Lucky for us that Kathy’s Toyota gets good gas mileage. We didn’t see a gas station for nearly the entire time. Some of the ones that we did see were shut down. If you weren’t a farmer in this part of the country, you were in big trouble. I don’t know what kind of work would be available other than farming. I even saw a sign on a trailer asking for work: “day laborer”, work needed. That guy must have been in serious money trouble. It started to rain on the way down and got worse the next day.
We were pelted with a steady downpour of rain the entire first day in Destin but we had a plan for it. Other than narrowly missing several drivers who appeared to be suicidal with their left turns immediately in front of us during the rain and testing the limits of our little buggy’s braking we spent the day shopping. We have been going to a lot of antique shops lately. I look for old woodworking planes and try not to buy tea pots and she looks for everything. I guess it’s a sign of getting slightly older when you see items you really don’t consider junk, just stuff you had 30-40 years or so ago and there is no way they could be considered antique. So we hit several antique stores and gathered a little information about an outdoor flea market that was upcoming on the weekend. Lunch found us nearly the only people occupying an out of the way Asian restaurant. I think it was Japanese and Chinese together. She had sushi and I had tofu. It was all excellent as I knew it would be, judging from my observations on the general hygiene of the place and tacky decorations on the walls. The best Chinese restaurants are to be found in the seedier parts of town and have to be really old and established before the food gets that down home flavor and they can be trusted. We also decided that sushi is the number one choice amongst the residents in that area because it was everywhere we went. I think we ate sushi nearly every day. At the little restaurant I bought her a pair of woven flip flops with some fancy needlework on them. She only has about 200 pairs of shoes in inventory and was worried that she was going to run out. I enjoy buying things for her and since they were smaller than a breadbox, watching her face light up is well worth the money.
Try as I might, I couldn’t find what I wanted in any of the antique stores and try as she might, Kathy couldn’t find anything she didn’t want. I had to talk her out of several items including some that were so large they wouldn’t even fit on top of the car, much less inside it.
The sun came out the next day and we didn’t see more than 5 minutes of rain for the remainder of our trip. We ran right for the beach and expected to be the only ones there because the media reported that everyone cancelled their vacations due to the oil spill in the Gulf. I guess the ones that were there already didn’t know how to listen because the beach was pretty packed. Beach real estate is pretty scarce and what little is available is shared by way too many people. We were given directions to our designated beach access by the hotel folks and told to keep a pass on the dashboard for the guards at the checkpoint. I told you that the beach is getting harder and harder to access and the guards and turnpike are a sure sign that access is being controlled tightly. We had a square of sandy beach that was about the length of the back of a sister hotel to ours with warning signs to stay the heck out of “their” beach on either side of the hotel next door. “No sunbathing or loitering” I pondered this a moment and decided that walking was neither of the two and took my chances and immigrated to the adjacent beaches. As I walked from hotel to hotel, the beach was much less crowded than ours. Beyond the hotels it was empty except for the FEMA crews who were patrolling looking for tar and oil.
The wife eventually decided she wanted to go out into the water. It was very rough due to the hurricane that was heading into Texas. I warned her not to go in above her knees as I figured she would get dragged out to sea by the rip tides and/or strong waves. She went out about 3’, lost her balance (and just about her bikini too), and was unable to get up. I was sitting there watching her flop around in the water wondering if she was ever going to be able to stand up again of if she would really get dragged out to sea when some guy walked over to her and fished her out. That was a close call.
Subsequent visits to the beach were pretty much the same except that one late afternoon on the July 4th weekend we were close to a bunch of college kids who were having way too much fun. Kathy stared and grinned at them the entire time. I figured that she wanted to go over there and hang out. If they would have so much as waved at her, she would probably still be down there with them. Maybe she was planning to conscript a few of the boys to rub suntan lotion on her. I wasn’t being too helpful in that dept. Probably would have been slightly more fun than sitting there listening to somebody bitch about how loud they were, I wish they would turn off that jungle music, when are they ever going to leave, just want some peace and quiet, etc. The kids ended their party by singing, “I’m proud to be an American” at the top of their drunken voices which ended with a round of applause by everybody within hearing distance. They stumbled off, leaving empty beer cans and beach chairs behind for others to clean up after them.
I did get to watch a pervert in action while he took a picture of a young girl in a bikini laying on the beach next to us. He walked past her in a straight line while his head turned around like it was caught in a tractor beam. Circling around behind her, he pulled out his cell phone then snapped the picture while pretending to make a call. He even held up the phone to his ear for a few seconds then walked off behind us. I don’t know if he got a shot of Kathy in her bikini or not since he walked behind me as well. I told her what happened and mentioned the possibility that he might have gotten her too and it freaked her out. Within minutes she knew that she was going to lose her nursing license and everyone from her work would recognize her on the website that this guy was going to put her picture on. She was laying on her belly so it would have had to been a shot of her behind. I had to ask her if she thought the people at work would recognize her rearend or not. She was sure that the pervert would have her on the internet in moments and we had to do something to stop it from happening. She wanted to shut down his website. I told her that it would be no problem as there couldn’t be more than a couple of websites with pictures of girls in bikinis on them. A little while later her ranting and general panic subsided.
She got a little oil on her suit at the beach and spend an hour back at the Hotel trying to get it out. I got a spot on my leg somehow. Other than that, there were a few chips of tar here and there but it wasn’t a big deal.
We ate a lot of seafood while there and paid a king’s ransom for it too. Lunch was nearly as expensive as supper. I paid $70 for a lunch of crab legs for her and grouper for me. We also got to wait for it for over an hour. As a matter of fact, the cost for a meal in the upscale places was even more horrible. I paid $100 for a couple of steaks and some drinks at a place called “Tommy Bahamas bar and grill”. We couldn’t get a table because more of those people who didn’t know about the oil crises were in there so they let us find a spot at the bar. Kathy wanted a Long Island Iced Tea so I got her one. Later I found out they were $11.25 each. She asked me for another so I got it and didn’t think too much about it until it was time to leave. She couldn’t finish her $35 steak so I told her to cut it up and we would take it home in a doggie bag. Watching her try to slice it up revealed that she might be impaired in some way. She was smearing that thing all over the plate and half of it was falling off onto the bar. I asked her if she was drunk but she assured me no problem, she was fine. We got out of there after having my wallet molested and I immediately confirmed my suspicion that she had one too many of those drinks. She was stumbling pretty bad and had bumped into me several times so I got her pointed in another direction and took her to the hotel. I was kind of thinking that the bartender sure did put a lot of alcohol in those drinks while I watched her make them and I also forgot that little miss muffet had trouble holding down even a half glass of wine without getting really silly. After the upscale fleecing, I went back to my usual lousy Chinese restaurants and found the food to be every bit as good, if not better, with pricing that even a cheapskate would smile at. Speaking of that, we were in Publix picking up some bagels and drinks and I also wanted to buy a small can of shaving cream. All they had were big cans which were more expensive than I was willing to shell out. I told Kathy there was no way I was going to pay $1.55 for a can of shaving cream when I knew I could get it at home for $.99. I told her I would just shave with soap and skip the shaving cream. About that time I thought I heard her muttering “cheapskate” under her breath. I turned around and asked her what that snarky comment was and she repeated it for me quite a bit louder. Anyway, I got to eat boiled shrimp that still had the heads on them at the Chinese place. Pretty cool. That and I had some of the hottest (spicy) chicken I had ever eaten. Those jalapeno peppers in there were enormous.
We found the flea market on Saturday morning but there was hardly anyone there. So we headed on down the highway to waste an hour or so in the hopes that more people would show up. Floridians aren’t much for getting up in the morning, that’s for sure. I even took Kathy to a yard sale to see if they were any different than the ones at home. After we got away from the tinsely, touristy part of Deston, it started to look more like the Florida I like. Local businesses, people, and the like. We didn’t see “Alvin’s Island”, the gift shop and junk emporium on every corner. No fancy outlet malls, shopping villages, or boutiques. The flea market turned out to be a lot of fun. They had a little bit of everything and it was obvious that nearly everyone there was a local. After lunch we started to head back to the hotel and got caught in a horrible traffic jam. It was the holiday weekend and I attributed it to tourists/vacationers but we later saw that there was a wicked wreck that slowed everything down. One car was on it’s roof and the other looked like it had been crushed in half. We found out the next day that there had been at least one death. I was bitching to Kathy about all of these tourists jamming everything up and that we were going to have to find another place to stay about the time we came upon the wreck. She didn’t care about the traffic and was simply happy to be there but indicated she was sick of all the complaining.
We looked around at the new trendy shopping villages and outlet malls but I hated every bit of it. There were signs in some of the clothing stores that they had exactly what the movie stars wore, the latest fashions, all priced accordingly. I didn’t find much that interested me. The hurricane that hit the area a few years ago, leveling it, ruined the entire town. Old Florida, with it’s beat up shell houses, old falling down restaurants and charm had been replaced with Hollywood wannabe designer outlets. One day I told her we would try and go inland a bit to find the old cracker Florida and we didn’t have to go too far. Another indoor flea market, some antique stores and my favorite; lousy Chinese restaurants, lifted my spirits.
At one antique store in the scary part of town, I found the holy grail of teapots; an English one that was made in Staffordshire, England. Exactly what I had been looking for and even on sale. I got it for around $16. In another one, I spied a pair of old Stanley woodworking planes laying on the floor halfway underneath some other things. I dragged them out and got down to some serious haggling with the owner. I got them both for $100. I didn’t need them but at that price I couldn’t resist. Those antique dealers are a pretty crafty bunch. The guy knew what they were worth. He told me that he asked someone he knew who was an expert and priced them on the high side for good measure. I told him my intention was to use them and not simply flip them for a profit. I think that’s why I got such a good deal.
On the way home we stopped at this tiny restaurant in the middle of nowhere. It had about 20 tables and was packed full. Everybody knew everybody. Our waitress was serving her Grandpa at the table next to us. The people waiting for a table were visiting with friends who were already seated. The food was incredible. We ate some real country cooking and the total was less than $20. During the meal Kathy had that interested smile on her face while she stared at the people across from us. When the waitress switched her plate and one of theirs, she saw her chance and jabbered with them for 15 minutes. I’ve got to get her out of the house more often.
I think I’m done with Destin. Next time we go to Florida I’m going to try and find a place that isn’t so developed. Navarre just might be the place; right next to the flea market. If I find somewhere fun, Kathy is likely to run off on me with a bunch of college kids or something.

Biscuit bodhisattva

2009-12-23T17:34:00.000-08:00

Anybody who has known me for somewhat longer than 5 minutes knows that I like to cook. I have historically gone in for the strange and oriental pursuits and like to boast that I'm fairly good at it (I like to boast about anything I think I can get away with). It's been more than 15 years since the wife got me that hand hammered wok from the 30 minute infomercial we saw on TV and I'm still spending a large number of Sundays in the kitchen whipping up stir fry and dumplings for the family and occasional stray teenager. Any kid that shows up at my house becomes mine while they are here (usually with my son) and they will always be fed. I get a big kick out of sitting them down at the table and watching them eat. (I like to use them as guinea pigs to try out new things too). We once had a door-to-door salesman show up just as we were sitting down to eat a big Chinese feast. He was young and looked really hungry so I made him sit and eat with us and wouldn't talk business until we were all done. I didn't buy anything from him but he walked away with a full belly. So the other day it was getting close to suppertime and I was wondering what to fix. The idea of having supper at a cheap restaurant was looking good since I'm on vacation and there wasn't anyone here but me and the oldest son, Marsh. As I stood there in my pantry, waffling over the rather bleak selection of supper choices, in walks the other son and one of his friends. I had been hoping to catch him here for a few minutes since I always subcontract out all of my Christmas present wrapping to him and I had fixed his car this morning; so he owed me large, as far as I was concerned. I hit him up about the gifts I needed wrapped and he countered with the excuse that he couldn't because he had a friend over. Not to be outwitted, I immediately volunteered her as well and they were both conscripted into service as gift wrappers. There wasn't a press gang in the King's Navy that could have put those two to work quicker than me. She thought it was fun since she liked to wrap gifts anyway. I thought it was fun too since I wasn't going to have to do it. I like to buy gifts but I'll leave the wrapping for others. I loaded them up with all of my things and just for good measure I also gave them what the wife had left to wrap as well. "Being one of my kids" occasionally is a double edged sword in that you will do some chores.

My belly reminded me that I still hadn't solved the food problem yet and I quickly realized that I wasn't going to be able to bail out and eat somewhere else. I thought about take-out pizza but remembered that I was facing the jaws of 3 hungry kids plus myself and my wallet was already groaning from Christmas spending. No problem, I'll whip up a batch of spaghetti. Cheap, quick, easy. Big problem: no noodles. I swear I had two big boxes of spaghetti noodles and now they're gone. I looked around for other options and started to get a little nervous. Jeez, I needed to go grocery shopping. We were out of everything. All that was left was the chicken in the refrigerator that had been seasoned for the next day's supper. I was going to make Southern style pan-fried chicken. It was going to be a special meal for the wife. You see, all these years that I spent studying the mysteries of Chinese cooking had left a big void in my ability to cook traditional Southern foods. Recently I had been practicing but the results were not too good. I was hitting the biscuits pretty hard and had been interrogating the older women at work for their secrets to biscuit Nirvana. I would bake up a batch, try them, scrutinize them, then back to the drawing board for more questions and answers. I watched Alton Brown on the food network. I studied recipes for hours on the internet. I discussed protein content in the flour on biscuit forums. Some said it was the type of flour, others mentioned shortening instead of butter, perhaps it was my kneading technique. My boss at work even floored me with the statement that he just bought premade biscuits in the frozen food isle and baked those! Oh, the inhumanity of it all! Imagine it if you will, simply popping a few of those floured hockey pucks into the oven and calling them biscuits! I believe that is still a misdemeanor in some formerly Confederate states. I just can't go on about it. I summed up all of my choices and decided that the best thing to do, considering the circumstances, was to cook tomorrow's feast tonight. The wife would understand. She knows kids too and wouldn't want to see any of them starve to death if they missed one supper. (She also knew about my biscuits). So there it was laid out in front of me. I was going to go all-out, hog wild, and fix a traditional Southern supper. Pan-fried chicken, made from scratch biscuits, mac and cheese, and corn. Only logistical obstacle was that I needed to get that stuff cracking right now. I set to work like a wild man, using my years of experience as an Industrial Engineer performing stop watch time studies to prep and cook everything as efficiently as possible and with the least amount of effort.

You're most likely wondering why I didn't make mention of gravy, that most puritanical object of Southern affection. They say it flows in the veins of all the sons and daughters of the Confederacy. I must admit that gravy is my Achilles heel. I just don't get it. When I make my confession about this shortcoming, I usually get grins and suggestions. "Oh it's so easy". "All you gotta do is..." I listen with a sheepish grin and think back to the day that 3 foot high flames were blazing out of the frying pan the last time I attempted gravy. My insurance agent has written a clause in my homeowner's policy that I am not to be making any gravy in that house or my fire insurance is cancelled.

I think I had it all on the table in about 35 minutes. As I was racing around trying to get it all coordinated and ready, I nearly forgot about the biscuits and pulled them out just in time. Brown but not burned, I was happy. The kids didn't say much, they were too busy stuffing themselves. But I did hear one comment: "These biscuits are so good, just like my Grandma makes". There you have it, the ultimate compliment, the purple heart of cooking, an Oscar: "just like Grandma's".

Tea for one

2009-12-08T08:33:00.000-08:00

Tea for one

Tea is the second most popular drink in the world (water is first). Nothing to it; simply drop a few tea leaves into a pot, add hot water and enjoy. Or so it would seem. Actually, tea is sort of a Zen-like endeavour that can best be described as a journey with no end. The proper marriage of two simple ingredients has endless variations. Water is the first ingredient and thankfully the only variation is the temperature. The freaks will argue that the water must come from a running stream and cannot be bottled or (God fobid) come from a tap. I believe the most over-the-top example of water collection is the tea water that was gathered for an empress in China from the dew of plum blossoms in the mountains every morning (it's true). For the moment, I'll just get my water out of the tap, thank you very much. I can't taste the chlorine in it thanks to my filter. Maybe not good enough for the Empress of China but good enough for me. Tea water temp. can (and should) vary from boiled to just slightly warmer than tepid. It all depends on the next ingredient, the tea itself. The same tea will taste vastly different depending on the temperature of the water it is steeped in. I opened a package of "Sencha", a Japanese green tea and became a little worried when I saw it. The leaves were tiny. It smelled different that the other teas I had been drinking. When I tried it, I hated it. Tasted awful. Besides being tenacious, I am pretty cheap, so I wasn't about to throw it away or give up on it. Pretty good combination for a tea drinker. So I started experimenting with this stuff. The first thing I did was to heat the water less. In order to heat water anything less than boiling requires careful observation of the water as it heats in the kettle. I think that some kettles act different than others. I've got a cast iron kettle and it acts differently than my old tin one. Anyway; I had read in "The Tao of Tea", one of the great Tea classics, that tea water was to be heated to various degrees that were described by the size of the bubbles in the kettle. "When the bubbles are the size of shrimps eyes" is the temp. for white teas. "Bubbles the size of crab's eyes" is the setting for green teas. I think that "bubbles the size of fish eyes' is the setting for oolong and black teas but since I don't drink much of these, I don't pay attention to that one. Anybody out there ever seen a shrimp's eye? Or a crab's eye for that matter? Not lately, I'm sure. Well, it's a fun thing for me to tell others about anyway. Gives the whole experience a little bit of mystery to it. So, as I watched my water in the kettle for a crab's eye sighting, I noticed that the size of the bubbles does indeed change depending on the water temperature. Oh, I could get all technological on it and stick a digital thermometer in the water to indicate the ideal temperature but sometimes I prefer the old ways. Besides, who wants to stand there with a probe in their hand when all they have to do is look for the crab's eyes right? I started to pull the kettle off the stove earlier and earlier, noticing the behaviour of the bubbles and the water itself until I got the hang of this fish eye stuff. There is one other sign, which is most difficult and elusive to look for and that is "at the first breath of the water", meaning when you see just a faint wisp of steam from the pot. I don't usually catch that one. I believe it has more to do with the ambient temperature in the room anyway. So, as I progressed to catching crab's eyes, to shrimp's eyes, I noticed that the tea was starting to taste a little better. Tea should feel "silky" on your tongue. You will know what I mean if you get the temperature low enough. When everything comes together, the taste difference is dramatic. I've noticed that some teas are actually sweet, others have a wonderful woody taste, and others simply are hard to describe in words but they do taste good. It's possible to compare tea tasting in the same light as wine tasting. I had a tea in one of Sanfrancisco's Chinatown tea shops that was so good it didn't even taste like tea. It was fantastic. It was also $700/lb. yikes.

So I've determined that water temperature plays a big part in the preparation of tea. I think that this is of primary importance, the other variables are of lesser concern but merit discussion anyway. The amount of tea placed in the pot also determines taste but this runs in conjunction with the steeping time. Add too much tea and you better decrease the steeping time. Too little and let it sit longer. It's all about balance. I believe that the taste of the tea will be different depending on how much is in the pot. Take two pots of tea, side by side, one with too much tea and the other with not quite so much. Let them both steep, one for a little while longer than the other (the one with the lesser amount of tea in it) and they won't taste at all the same. I prefer to fix a pot of tea with the intention of only using the leaves once. Some like to throw the leaves in there and pour the water over them mulitple times, letting the tea steep longer after each pour.

So what's left? Why, the tea of course! Every tea has it's own method of preparation. The water temp/steeping time/quantity of tea leaves is different for each one. It took me nearly the entire jar of that Japanese Sencha tea to figure out how to correctly make it (at least to where I liked the taste). I went from hating it at the beginning, to loving it in the end. It really was wonderful stuff and taught me tea preparation. I need to dig around in my tea stash and see if there's another bag of that stuff hidden in there.

Man's best friend

2009-11-17T17:52:00.001-08:00

So there I was, sitting in my easy chair, chatting with cupcake, quietly discussing our upcoming date on Friday. Scooter was on the couch sleeping and, after a fashion, woke up to jump in my lap for his daily visit and back massage . He had that friendly look in his eyes, as dog's do when everyone is home and they insist on being the center of attention. He usually won't come to me unless I call him so I was rather enjoying his uninvited company. I knew all he really wanted was his back scratched but I didn't mind being used. Petting a dog is very therapeutic and tends to make me forget my worries easily. 30 seconds into our little nightly visit and Scooter pukes all over my lap! K A T H Y!!! GET THIS LITTLE BLANKETY FRICKIN" SOB OUT OF HERE BEFORE I DROP KICK HIM INTO THE NEXT COUNTY!!!!! I guess we'll try it again tomorrow night.

Sanfrancisco day 7

2009-09-29T19:11:00.000-07:00

Fisherman’s wharf

Our last full day in Sanfrancisco and all we had left to do was to take a tour of the bay. I was a little worried that we had run out of things to do. The guide book that I bought said to avoid the wharf because it was too touristy and did not capture the real feel of the city. At the end of the day I was in disagreement with the tour book about the wharf. It turned out that we had all kinds of things to do and see. We started out on the tour boat. It was a little hokey; what with our “tour guide” being Captain Nemo and some other silly characters. It was informative though, and the cruise around the bay was very nice. If I had another day I think we would have sailed across the bay to the tiny town of Salsilito. It was recommended by Captain Nemo as a fun place to spend the day shopping and looking around. We saw Alcatraz island. Pretty creepy even from just the boat. Here again, the tour book said it wasn’t worth going to but I think I would have liked to walked around on it anyway. We got to sail right underneath the golden gate bridge, then turned around and headed back. I think the whole tour was something less than 2 hours. I’ve left a few pics here of sights from the boat and one of Kathy in her scarf. She now looked just like the rest of the local Sanfrancisco hens. A good many of them were wearing scarfs. I bought that one for her in Chinatown, of course.

Back from the tour boat we walked along the waterfront and took in all the sights. The famous walruses on Pier 39 were there. I wasn’t impressed. I had more fun looking at all of the boats along the way. There were quite a few fishing boats there of all sizes and shapes. They were in varying degrees of seaworthiness too. A couple looked like they were about to sink right there at the pier. We came upon the very last of the Liberty ships from WWII that was on display. We didn’t go on it. There was a submarine from WWII there as well. I’ve been on a couple of these before so we didn’t take the tour. We did tour several boats that were moored along another pier though. There was a very large sailboat named the Balclutha that we spent a couple of hours on. Very neat ship. It was used to haul timber to Australia then used to haul salmon from Alaska. It was huge. There was also a large steam powered tugboat named Hercules that we walked thru. The tours were fun.

For lunch we stopped at a large bar with very lousy service but pretty good food. Then it was more sight seeing. There were all kinds of shops and street vendors selling mostly jewelry and portrait painting. The guide book said that the food along the waterfront was way overpriced. I disagreed again. I felt like it was way overpriced in the whole city. We never did get a bargain on any food.

At the opposite end of the wharf is what is known as the Ferry building. We looked around in it for awhile and what do you know, there was a tea shop there. Imperial Tea Court. (Okay, I knew about it already but I wasn’t letting on). We had tea in what I figured was the closest thing to an authentic Chinese tea house as could be had on the North American continent. The tea was served in gaiwans, which is a Chinese cup with a lid and a saucer, not the tea pot most are accustomed to. We enjoyed it as best we could but considering we were a little hot from the long walk, it would have been better to have something cold instead of hot tea. Oh well, I had to do everything and time was really running out on us. I picked up a tea decanter while we were there and actually restrained myself from buying any more tea. I had already shelled out over $150 for about ½ pound of the stuff in Chinatown a few days earlier.

The street car ride back to the hotel was interesting. We were packed in that thing like sardines. This was the same line that had passed us a day or two ago and left us to hoof it back thru North Beach.

We did some shopping and looking around in a huge mall when we got back to Union square. The mall must have had 10 floors. I gave up and gave out after about 5. We saw so much that we just couldn’t take it anymore. We even ran into another tea shop. It was about that time that I had had all I could take. A slick talking salesgirl tried to sell us some hand lotion or something that was supposed to be the fountain of youth but we managed to get out of there without buying any. She wasted about 45 minutes of our time too. I wasn’t too happy about that but she wouldn’t let us go and Kathy isn’t the type to just walk away like me. There was a leather shop that we wandered into that was having a fashion show. We were invited to stay for it and were even offered champaigne but when I saw the prices on that stuff, we beat a trail out of there. Way out of my price range. The girl that spoke to us looked like a plastic surgeon’s worst nightmare. She had every plastic surgery operation you could think of and they all turned out the same: terrible. She didn’t even look human but at least she was very friendly to us. This place had a couple of young girls at the entrance standing around looking pretty with next to nothing on too. The things they will do to separate you from your money. Unbelievable.

That evening finished our adventure. The next morning we packed and headed over to the bagel shop for breakfast and a packed lunch then it was time to wag all of those suitcases around until we got to the airport. I have never been so happy to be able to dump those things off. I humped them from the hotel to the train thru downtown Union Square, then thru the airport terminal to the tram, and finally to the ticket counter at the airline. I couldn’t believe that we managed to fit all of the junk we had bought into those suitcases. It’s a shame that you have to bring your own food onto the plane but air travel just isn’t the experience it used to be. It’s horrible and I doubt it will ever get any better.

Well, seven fun days of shopping and sight seeing complete! Our 25^th wedding anniversary gift to each other was little more than a dream fantasy two years ago when we first started talking about it and I’m glad that we saw it thru. We started planning for this about 9 or 10 months prior to leaving. I also never thought that we would actually go. When it was getting close to time to be making reservations I threw out the idea of Plan B to Florida instead but Kathy really wanted Sanfrancisco. A couple of days after getting back, I asked her if she would like to do it again and she said “Hell no!” I think I might have walked her too much. She was a trooper though, never complained a bit the entire time, even when I screwed up the streetcar schedule a few times.

Sanfrancisco day 6

2009-09-16T18:41:00.000-07:00

The Sanfrancisco Zoo and the Hang Ah tea room.

Day 6 of our adventure saw us heading to the zoo. I had high hopes for it since SF is such a large city and the bigger cities usually have the better zoos. Well, it turned out to be less than stellar. It wasn’t really much better than any other zoo I had ever been to. I’ll post a few pictures just for fun anyway. On the way there, I started to get a little cocky with the transit system and nearly had us going in the opposite direction that we should have gone. Lucky for me, we were saved by yet another local resident who pointed us in the right direction. I just love those locals. They have got to be the friendliest people on the planet. The zoo is a long ride from where we were staying so we got to see quite a few sites on the way to it. Mostly, it was “how the other half lived”. We went thru a few areas that looked pretty grim. I was glad the train didn’t stop at any of the scary places.

As I said, there isn’t much to report about the zoo. The pictures tell the story well enough. When we got back to our room I wanted to take another crack at Chinatown and specifically, the Hang Ah tea room. I told Kathy I wanted to head over there to get some dim sum since the last time we were there all we had was tea. While there, another local mentioned to us that the Hang ah had the very best dim sum in all of Chinatown. A pretty big boast since there had to be at least 500 Chinese restaurants in the city but I had started to put a lot of trust in the locals and if he said it was the best, then that was good enough for me. We headed out with my assurance that we wouldn’t have to do a lot of walking since we were both tired from hoofing it around all day at the zoo. My perceived familiarality of the MUNI transit system was faulty again. The street I wanted to go up didn’t have the street car line I thought it did so I told her we would just have to walk a little bit to the next bus stop. Trouble was there wasn’t a next bus stop. We got to within eyesight of the Chinatown gate and I said we might just as well walk it in. The road was steep and we had already gone many blocks and Kathy was winded. Then something else hit me. Just where had I seen this place? I wasn’t sure. We walked around while I tried to find a landmark to get my bearings but it wasn’t happening. Further and further and no dim sum. It was very late on Sunday afternoon and I was getting worried that they would shut Chinatown down on us before we had a chance to eat. I was getting pretty worried about Kathy so I resorted to leaving her in one spot where she could rest while I ran up ahead and scouted around for our destination. I eventually found it and dragged her up one last steep hill before we got to the alley where it was located. In we went, panting and red-faced, for the prize at the end of the line.

The Hang Ah isn’t known for its décor. Inside it is all plastic dinnerware and colors. The white walls are trimmed in green and orange. By green and orange I mean bright, plastic green and bright, plastic orange. It is tiny. The dining room couldn’t have been much bigger than two typical bedrooms. We got the same waitress as last time and she was really happy to see us. A Chinese girl (imagine that in Chinatown), and had come over from China to get work. She was from Guangdong, I think. We chatted with her the entire time we were there. She had no concept of America from a geographical standpoint. She didn’t know where Alabama was and I don’t believe she had ever looked at an atlas of the country. I guess I am just more interested in geography than the average bear. I encountered the same thing with a guy I met on the wine tour who was from South Africa. He didn’t know anything geographic about the United States. He didn’t even know where Florida was and this guy was studying to get his PHD. Heck, at least a hick like me knows where Cape Town is.

Dim sum at the Hang Ah is a little different that what is considered traditional. You order what you want, and then they bring it to you instead of wheeling it up on a cart and tossing it out at you. Everything we tried was fantastic. The rabbit shaped dumplings were the best. They looked just like little bunnies right down to the ears and tiny eyes. Almost too good to eat. I had read that this place was the first dim sum house in Chinatown and had been in existence since the 20’s, I think. There were even pictures of Chinatown beauty pageants from years ago hung on the walls. I was disappointed in the tea. It was served in that all too familiar, stainless steel pot that is the epitome of Chinese restaurant tea. I have eaten in hundreds of Chinese places, from crummy, run-down hole in the walls, to really fancy ones and except for one place, they all have that same sad looking disgrace of a tea pot. Lucky for me that my favorite place back home serves me tea on a nice ceramic one like God and Buddha intended. We stuffed ourselves then said goodbye to the waitress. If I ever get back to Sanfrancisco, I believe this place will be my first stop.

For the ride home, we caught what appeared to be the last street car out of Chinatown. It was getting late and they were starting to roll up the sidewalks. I finally got my directions right and found the original car line I had wanted to use so the walk was quite short. It was barely 6:30 in the evening and Chinatown was getting very quite and dark. Kind of fitting to see it this way since we would not be coming back for the rest of our stay.

Sanfrancisco day 5

2009-09-03T17:23:00.000-07:00

Japantown

Day 5 of our big vacation and today was destination Japantown. We headed out on the MUNI transit system and got off waaaay too soon. I must have misfigured our stop off point and we had to walk for a while to get there. This area was very nice. I found out later that Japantown is bordered by Pacific Heights which is one of the most upscale areas in Sanfrancisco. We hiked on in and I was taken back a bit with the area. It was pretty demure compared to Chinatown with all it’s glitz and tinsel. There were no throngs of tourists. No mobs of Japanese people going to the market to get the best deal on fish. It was pretty quiet. We poked around in a few places and didn’t see much until we came to the Soko hardware store. Oh my, this was my kind of place. They had tons of woodworking tools and many of them were Japanese tools. I picked over everything 3 times before going downstairs and getting overwhelmed all over again with all of the kitchen wares they had for sale. Nothing touristy about this place. They just had a lot of Japanese stuff. We looked around and I told Kathy we would come back to pick up some goodies I had my eye on.

We nosed around a little more, into a couple of small shops and a grocery store but we were mainly looking for the Japanese mall. When we found it, it wasn’t like what you would expect from a mall. There was not really any parking and it looked like it was tiny. Once we got inside, we found out that it was fairly good sized. Every store in this place was Japanese, right down to the Japanese dollar store. That place was hilarious. We looked thru furniture stores, antique stores, even a drug store. I started to blow off the drugstore as a waste of time but the more I looked, the more interested I became. There were literally tons of items in there for sale that you would never get in any regular drug store. The antiques were amazing, and the prices matched. I didn’t even know what half of that stuff was but it was expensive. In the tour guide I had bought there was a couple of sentences about a restaurant in Japantown that was one of the most authentic ones in all of Sanfrancisco. I didn’t have much faith that we would find it but we ran right into it. It was in the mall and had to be the smallest restaurant I have ever seen. It was more like a café and only had about a dozen tables, half of which were out in the walk area of the mall. I showed the small write-up about the place to the waitress and she took it back to the kitchen for them to see it as well. I asked her to have them sign my book but they refused, stating that they couldn’t duplicate the owner’s signature. I felt bad about that but I guess it was some sort of Japanese thing. While we were there an older gentleman struck up a conversation with us (the typical friendly as heck Sanfranciscan). He asked us why we were there and we told him we were celebrating our 25^th wedding anniversary. He was impressed and said that it was unusual to find anyone that had been married for that long anymore. He said that he and his husband had been married for 20 years themselves and …………….????? (insert loud record needle scratching across the entire album here). Well, we both smiled kind of sheepishly and said that was “great” that they had been together for that long and prayed there would be no more details on the “marriage”. He caught us totally off guard because he just talked and acted so normal. His “husband” came prancing over a while later and we knew who wore the pants in the family at that point. He had been haggling for a piece of expensive jewelry next door and was a giddy as a little school girl about it. It was only going to cost $1,000 and he had been working on the owner (a friend of his) for quite a while to get it to that price. The older guy said that he had all of his money tied up in jewelry since he was afraid to invest in anything else. Evidentally, the guy was quite wealthy. I’d be wealthy too if I never had any kids. Anyway, the conversation was pleasant and entertaining, especially watching the faggy one skip back and forth from the jewelry store. He wasn’t the least bit interested in eating his lunch and left his “husband” to fend for himself. Oh well. We left the little café, after having completely enjoyed our wonderful lunch, and spent a couple more hours exploring the mall. I stuck my head in a sushi restaurant where the food goes around a huge table in little boats. The smell nearly knocked me over but I would have tried it anyway. That mall turned out to be bigger than I could guess and we took in every bit of it. There were many Japanese restaurants. If I ever go back to Sanfrancisco, I just might stay in Japantown. It was really neat. Out of the mall and back to Soko hardware for my goodies. I bought two Japanese chisels and a Japanese saw. I also bought my souvinear tea pot. It was so different that I couldn’t resist. I had looked at easily over 500 tea pots and bought one from a hardware store, of all places. This one was unusual because of it’s texture and color. I like the shape too. Kind of small and really rough on the outside.

The guy we were talking to at the café told us to head over a few streets to Filmore because the shopping was supposed to be real good. We went the opposite of what I think he really suggested and ended up in a not so nice part of town. It felt like we were in the “hood” and we weren’t liking it so we went back. My plans to take a certain MUNI bus line were foiled when I found out that the street only went one way. I would have to find another route back. No matter, there was a little park just up the road that I wanted to see. The traveler’s guide said it was nice even though the guy at the restaurant said it wasn’t worth looking at and there wasn’t anything up there.

The walk up the street started out nicely. Lots of neat little stores to window shop in. Problem was, the street was getting steeper, and steeper, and even steeper. The farther we walked, the more strenuous it became. I knew where the park was, it just seemed to be more out of reach than I had anticipated. I was getting a little worried about my sidekick too. She was trucking along, not complaining a bit, but I knew she was running out of gas. We had to stop to rest many times before we got to this mountain park and I do believe the oxygen up there was a little thinner than down in Japantown. When the edge of the park was in sight, the hill was really steep, so much that I was a little concerned about our chances of making it. We troopered on like a couple of Mt. Everest sherpas and finally made our base camp at the edge of the park. Along the way we stopped and chatted with another local while we caught our breath. Friendly as always, she was pleasant and well spoken. Originally from Pennsylvania and quite happy to have that state in her rear view mirror to boot. At the park entrance, the steps were nearly straight up and looked to be about 2 stories high. This was beginning to get to be more trouble than it was worth but I was going all the way regardless. We trogged up the stairs and scaled our way to what I initially thought was the summit of this place. Turns out there was another area that was even higher but first we had a nice rest on a park bench.

In front of the park benches was a children’s playground. There was a small birthday party being held for a little girl. She looked to be about 5 or 6 years old, in a pretty dress that could have been a ball room gown, barefoot, with long blonde hair that was tangled from the wind. There were 4 or 5 of them in all, running around and laughing, taking a bite of cake that their mother was holding for them when they got the notion, then racing off for more fun. I watched them while I was still panting from our hiking ordeal, figuring that the steep streets didn’t even affect the locals, and amazed that these little kids had so much energy and joy. The whole scene didn’t look right to me. It was windy, a little cold, and the air was wet with a slight fog. Looking around it was obvious that we were on one of the highest points in the city. The view of Sanfrancisco bay was ours at a glance. And right in the middle of it there were these little munchkins, racing around barefoot in their fancy dresses, as the birthday party drew to a close. There was some cake left and I was wondering if they would offer any to us. We weren’t too close to the party but I wanted some cake and some more Sanfranciscan conversation. The little ones were rounded up while a couple of parents exchanged contact information. Everyone was thin. I couldn’t imagine being overweight in this part of town. In the city a car is not really necessary but even with a great public transportation system, there is going to be a vast amount of walking. The party faded off and we began to notice another curiosity in the park; there were several really nice looking dogs being walked by their owners. It was a dog show. Petigreed and neatly groomed, we watched all manner of fancy pets paraded thru the area. I wanted to make the final assault on this mountain park in order to reach the highest point, so after a 30 minute rest we continued on. It wasn’t too bad to the top. There was a small forest up there with some huge trees. We walked around and admired the view, a little curious about the young couple snuggled together on the ground all wrapped up in a blanket in a never ending embrace. After a while we decided to head out of the park but we kept hearing very funny noises from the trees. They sounded like monkeys, or at least something we had never heard before. After several minutes of puzzling, the mystery was solved when a dozen birds flew out of the trees. They were some sort of parrot or cockatiel that was native to the area, told to us by a lady we ran into down the path. There was a large hawk way up high in a tree that would just sit there and never fly off. The other birds were not happy with the situation and were squalking loudly. The lady told us that the hawk was part of a mated pair that had a nest and tried to raise babies. The babies died and one of the hawks flew away. The other one had been sitting in the very top of a tree, preening itself for days without flying. She was worried that it wasn’t eating and was going to die. She had been watching the hawks for a long time. We chatted with this lady for over 30 minutes before finally leaving the park. It was a steep downhill walk but certainly was easier than it was going up. My plan was to head to the waterfront and maybe check out the Ferry building before it got too late. We walked several blocks and admired the architecture along the way. There were some large, spectacular houses in this area. Halfway down the mountain we spotted a cable car and jumped on and rode it all the way to the end of the line. From there we looked around the waterfront and Ferry building a little and decided to get home since it was getting late. I was getting pretty cocky with the street car system by now so we headed to a stop and waited for one to pick us up. About the time we saw one coming, it was already passing us by! The stupid driver even waved at us. I couldn’t believe it. That line would have dropped us right off next to the hotel and here we were, stranded. I thought that maybe it only stopped at that place at certain times of the day so it was time to start hoofing it back. That was going to be quite a bit of hoofing too. We walked (uphill again) for several blocks to try and find another street car line that would take us home. I had a general idea of where we were but didn’t realize it was that far to the hotel. Before we knew it, we were right in the middle of the red light district. Hoochie coochie bars and adult night clubs everywhere. By shear luck, we also ran right into a restaurant that was supposed to have really good Italian food. It was called “A Tu Tu Qua”. The wine country tour guide had told us about this place a couple of days before. We went in and had supper. Two appetizers, a small pizza, and two glasses of wine for $70. Jeez. I felt like my wallet had been molested. Anyway, the food was very good and it was unique. The pizza didn’t even have sauce on it. I made a new plan for our trip back to the hotel and it looked like it was going to take us thru Chinatown again. I realized that we had landed in North Beach which borders Chinatown on the North side. Just outside the restaurant was an all Chinese band. They were playing Chinese instruments that had that funny kazoo/whiny sound. The band was pretty large with about 12 people in all. They weren’t half bad and drew a pretty decent crowd. Kathy got right up next to them and admired their weird looking instruments. Some of them only had 1 or 2 strings. A little farther along Chinatown and we managed to catch a street car back home. This was by far our most adventurous day and was my favorite. We slept good that night since I guessed we must have walked several miles in all that day.

Sanfrancisco day 4 a few more pics

2009-08-19T18:24:00.001-07:00

A few more pics of the Japanese Garden

Sanfrancisco day 4

2009-08-19T18:08:00.000-07:00

Day 4 saw us heading to the Asian Art museum. On the way there we ran into a small street fair that can be best described only as a Persian bazaar. We checked out the bazaar, Kathy bought an orange dress so she could look like a hippy local, and we proceeded on our way towards the museum. It was about what you could expect out of any museum with the exception that it was all slanted towards ancient China, Japan, and other Eastern/Middle Eastern countries. The big exception to the everyday happenings of a museum was the special Samauri exhibit. There were several Samauri coats of armor on display as well as swords and other artifacts in a few special rooms. We weren’t allowed to take pictures in that section and had to pay extra to get to it. It was worth it though. After the museum I decided that I wanted to head over to Golden Gate Park and take a look at the Japanese Garden there and hopefully find the Japanese tea house. We had lunch at Munch Haven (our new favorite restaurant and a local hangout) then jumped on a street car after I worked out the logistics of the next destination. We had no sooner got on the street car when Kathy realized that she had forgotten her camera at Munchies (I started calling it Munchies instead of Munch Haven because I like that name better). We argued and fussed for a couple of stops then jumped off the street car to hoof it back to Munchies in what I was positive was a futile attempt to recover her camera. I told her over and over that it was gone and that was that. Well, when she dashed in there after it the guy who waited on us had it behind the camera and already was getting it out when she walked in. Very nice people in that town. I was amazed that it hadn’t grown legs and walked right out of there.

Onward to Golden Gate Park we grabbed the next street car and got off at the entrance. Golden Gate Park is a mighty big piece of real estate and it was getting sort of late afternoonish on us. We had some serious hiking to do so we put it in high gear and proceeded to march our way thru it in search of the elusive Japanese garden. We finally got to it after what seemed to be a couple of miles walk. What do you know; they charged admission. Another chance to clip a poor tourist. $10 got us both in. It is a very nice place. The pictures will tell the story. We found the tea house too. It was small and pretty Spartan. I really liked it. We sat down outside on the edge of the seating area and ordered tea for two. A tiny Japanese girl dressed in a kimono and those wooden, cloggy, looking Japanese shoes brought us a pot of tea. I found out that in Sanfrancisco, the Japanese made the best tea overall, at least as far as restaurants are concerned. I can’t compare their tea to the tea we had in Chinatown at the tea shop, but then again, that was the best tea I had ever had in my life. $700/lb tea is wonderful tea and it had better be for that price. Anyway, we also got some Japanese snacks with our tea. I would have fell in love with this little tea house if it weren’t for the fact that it was packed to the brim with people. I doubt most of them truly understood what tea was all about. They were too busy stuffing themselves full of those snacks. I was looking for a very quiet place to enjoy the scenery and relax. The tea was supposed to just be the final, perfect, accompaniment to my enjoyment. The surprise at the end of the tea house fantasy was a bill for $8.25. Yikes. If I were to calculate out how much tea they put in that pot I bet it would come out to be $400/lb anyway. Oh well, I’m not going to have tea in a Japanese tea house like this back home so I sucked it up and forked over the cash.

By this time we had seen everything in the Japanese garden and decided to get out of the park before dark. I had read scary things about the park after dark and I didn’t want to find out how true they were. We grabbed another bus and headed out for our next adventure. On the way to the park we went right thru the Haight Ashbury district. We wanted to get some T-shirts for family so we got off on the main drag and proceeded to go shopping, possibly hoping to get a glimpse of either a real hippie or maybe Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead (that would have been a miracle since Jerry has passed away but hey, this was where he was from). We didn’t see any hippies to speak of but we saw all manner of touristy, hippie wannabe shops. It was 1965 and it was all for sale. The 60’s stuff was vastly overpriced junk that didn’t impress either of us. We tried a few stores and didn’t see anything that turned us on until we wound up in a T shirt shop. Kathy bought two T shirts for the princely sum of $56. I nearly lost it and the shop owner had to have heard me complaining about the exhorbitant cost. I walked out of the shop, knowing no good was going to come out of my bitching and decided to see if I could tell where this mythical Haight Ashbury corner was. After about 5 whole minutes of puzzling, I realized that I was standing on the very corner of Haight and Ashbury itself. Pretty neat. People were taking pictures of the street sign and everything. And we even got some authentic T shirts to commemorate the occasion. Further down the street we encountered a “Hemp shop”. Everything in the place was made out of hemp. There was a sign when you first walked in warning you not to ask if they sold dope, pot, mary jane, weed, marijuana, and a dozen other names for it. I got a kick out of that. I spotted a wallet (also made out of hemp) for $12 and bought it. This same wallet was $18 at the Persion bazaar and I prided myself on actually getting one over on some touristy vendor thief during our stay. I came to within a nickel of buying that wallet at the bazaar. I had seen them on the internet and they looked like they would hold up well so I was glad I got it.

Another hop on Sanfrancisco’s famous MUNI public transportation system and we found ourselves once again in the hustle and bustle of Union Square. If I had to do this trip again, I would not stay downtown. I think I would stay in Japantown which is where we journeyed to the very next day.

Sanfrancisco vacation day 3 a few more pics

2009-08-09T12:04:00.000-07:00

Sanfrancisco vacation day 3

2009-08-09T10:23:00.001-07:00

Wine tour

Day 3 was our day to take the wine tour. It was going to be great. They would pick us up in front of the hotel and drive us around all day and if we had too much wine, well it just didn’t matter. I picked out a company that only took out small numbers of people. Our group was only about a baker’s dozen and we all fit just fine in the touring van. The tour guide was friendly and chatted all the way to the Napa and Sonoma valleys, pointing out sights and attractions that we would have easily missed if we had gone up there ourselves. The other couples that were with us were a pretty diversified bunch. We had people from London, South Africa, Canada, Georgia, Mexico, and of course us from Alabama.

It is only a short drive from downtown to wine country. Very rural with grapes growing on every hillside. It was also quiet and the weather was warmer than in the city. We pulled up to the first winery and they immediately started pouring wine down us. There were 5 different ones to try at this place and I bellied right up to the bar to get my share. The hostess told us that the type of wine we would be having had a real “smokey” taste to it. When I tried it I changed “smokey” to “aged in a rubber tire”. Yuck. It was Sangeovese wine and I had never had it. I hated it and told the hostess that it tasted weird. I wanted to say it tasted like it had been made in an old inner tube but just barely managed to keep my mouth shut. She didn’t like my comment and pretty much gave me the cold shoulder after that. As I get older, I have learned to keep my mouth shut. The problem is that I don’t yet have the ability. Oh well, at least I told her the truth. I didn’t care for this winery and decided that they were just trying to sell us a bunch of overpriced tire fodder. The area was very nice and it was easy to get caught up in the wine making business, seeing that it was such nice scenery and looked to be a very laid back, quiet way to make a living. We pushed on to the second winery and everything was a little different. We were all seated at a large table together instead of a bar. The hostess poured everyone’s wine then described to us what we would be tasting. She said the first one tasted like grapefruit. It did. Very good stuff. The next one was supposed to taste like cherries and it did. Loved it. The others were pretty much a spot on to what she described we would be tasting. The name of the winery was Jacuzzi, just like the Jacuzzi bath tubs. The winery was owned by the same people who invented the Jacuzzi, thus the name. Neat. I’ve seen Jacuzzi wine in the store and said to myself that I would never buy something just for it’s silly name. I went looking for it the other day and couldn’t find any. I’ll turn some up one of these days.

The last winery was one that was more of a large production outfit. Our tour group was combined with two others from the same company and we all went on a complete tour of the facility. The guide was well versed in his job and described the process in great detail. At the end of the tour we had our wine tasting. The wine that they made was sparkling wine, which is like champaign but can’t be called that because it does not come from the Champaign region of France. I didn’t care, it was very good. He told us what we would taste, and like the other winery, his description was right on the money. After the tasting, people were allowed to ask questions. One question in particular caught my attention. There was a couple who were trying to decide what alloy of stainless steel the wine vats were made out of. He asked the guide if it was 304 or 316. The guide said that the answer to that question was beyond his scope of knowledge but since he was a former machinist, he knew what they were talking about. I thought it was a really dumb question and figured that the people who had asked it probably owned a machine shop in Michigan and that was their only point of reference. Oh well, some people. Also kind of made me wonder what a machinist was doing at a winery conducting tours. I figured he got laid off during the downturn in the economy.

We had lunch in a very small café that was in a tiny town in the Napa valley. The name of the town was Sonoma, not to be confused with the Sonoma valley which was pointed out to us. The food was very upscale and we enjoyed it. After lunch we were allowed to walk around town for about 45 minutes and we had fun looking in all the small shops. It was a pretty touristy place, like just about everywhere we had been while in the city but we enjoyed poking around and exploring none the less. The town didn’t look to be more than a few square blocks in size. I really love those tiny cafes, some of them had seating outdoors and it was really nice to just enjoy the lovely weather with a meal.

We were the last ones to be dropped off at the end of the day. I didn’t care for the reminders to tip the host but I gave her a pretty good amount anyway.

Sanfrancisco vacation day 2

2009-08-07T07:28:00.000-07:00

Chinatown!

Day two saw us heading to Chinatown. We started off our day by walking down market street, threading our way thru the homeless people to a little café called Munch Haven. Breakfast was wonderful but expensive. This little place was really neat. Tiny, and inhabited by locals, it wasn’t too busy. We felt like we had found a place that wasn’t touristy. We were in a section of the city known as “The Tenderloin”. I had read horror stories about the Tenderloin and even early in the morning, I knew they weren’t kidding about it.

Back up Market street we got in line to ride a cable car for Chinatown. It was early so there wasn’t a big line. The conductor was calling for people who were going to work to get in the front of the line. The tourists would have to wait. The cable car ride was slow but fun, nothing I would ride unless I needed to really get somewhere. We jumped off and walked several blocks to Chinatown.

Right at the Chinatown gate we strolled in and found out that we were a little early. It was dead in the water. All the stores had not opened yet. Not to worry, I had been studying up on Chinatown and I knew that the REAL Chinatown was on Stockton street a block over. We hiked up the hill to Stockton just as it was awakening. The open air markets are a real blast to your eyes, ears, and nose. Especially your nose. I smelled things and had no idea what they could possibly be. I’m not taking wonderful smells either. It was pretty funky. Kind of a fishy, herby, weird sort of thing. There were lots of shops selling herbal remedies that were dried roots, fungus, mushrooms, and God knows what else. The idea is to tell the doctor at the counter what is ailing you then he prepares a concoction of these dried mysteries and you go home and brew a tea out of it. Drink the tea and hope that it doesn’t kill you in the process, then you are cured. I didn’t buy any. There were lots of Chinese people, mostly elderly, buying groceries and meat at the open markets. We strolled thru and saw butchers cutting up fresh pork, fish markets where the fish were laying out in the open and still wiggling, and even saw an old woman who had a large fish in a cardboard box that she was trying to sell to everyone who walked by. Sort of a miniature yard sale. It was cut up in weird sections and looked a little scary. There was no behind the scenes food preparation going on either. Everything was done right in front of you. The butcher shop was really something. All those people hacking away at the carcasses right in the open. The little shops had just about everything imaginable for sale and it was pretty hard to negotiate the narrow isles. I really enjoyed the Chinese restaurant supply places and wanted to buy everything I touched but there was no way I would have been able to pack it for the trip home. I will get these things on the internet one of these days. One item that I really wanted to bring home was a teapot to remember the occasion. I’m becoming sort of a collector of these silly things and have amassed about a dozen or so. I only really need a couple to brew just about any kind of tea. I must have looked at over 1,000 teapots of all sizes and shapes. I saw teapots that would hold over 5 gallons of tea to tiny ones that would hold only about 1 ounce. I just couldn’t find one that was really “me” though. Towards the end of the day I told Kathy that I thought I would try getting a tea pot in Japantown another day instead. After buzzing thru the area I began to notice that the majority of the stores were either grocery/vegetable markets, restaurants, herb stores, or junk shops. There wasn’t a large variety. We did notice a pet shop in the area but it had went out of business. I won’t try and spin a joke about Chinese restaurants and pet shops but it’s tempting. We were pretty tired from running around looking in all of the shops and decided we would try our luck at lunch. Kathy picked out a dim sum house that looked pretty nice and it turned out to be yummy. We were seated at a very large table that could have held a dozen people. There were others at our table and they must have thought we looked pretty out of place in there since we were the only two white folks in the place. It was packed too. I took that to be a good sign. The food was really good and we ate our fill. After a while, an elderly lady at our table struck up a conversation with us. She was friendly, like all the people in the city, but her English was only slightly better than our Chinese. Anyway, Kathy enjoyed talking with her. She asked how much our bill was and we told her around $20. She said we got out of there pretty good. The dim sum was a little different than what I was used to but it was great. I had some Chinese broccoli that was wonderful. We also had pot stickers, custard muffins, and other things that I can’t even name. The best thing about this place was that you didn’t ask for tea, they just put down a pot right in front of you. I was disappointed that it came in that ugly stainless steel pot just like at home but I guess that is the North American standard for Chinese restaurant tea pots. One lady who was bringing the dim sum out in carts would get right behind me and yell what she had in Chinese. I didn’t know what her game was but she made me jump more than once. Once out of the restaurant we continued on our way to discover new treasures.

The very next place we came to was an authentic tea shop. It was tiny and we were the only people in there. The entire shop was about the size of an average bedroom. We sat down at the little counter and talked with the owner for about an hour about tea. He served us several varieties and we all had a great time sipping tea and talking about everything. We came out of there with over $150 worth of tea and that was for only two 8 ounce bags. This stuff was EXPENSIVE. It was also very good. He let us sample a very high grade of tea that sold for $700 a pound. I have never had tea that good. The taste was unlike any other tea I have ever had and to say the least, it was incredible. I learned a lot about tea that day. The owner’s wife also gave us a couple of small bags of tea as gifts. The tea shop visit turned out to be one of the most rewarding aspects of the day.

We wandered around for a couple more hours and saw a little more of the real thing. We went past the Hang ah tea room and I told Kathy we would come back another day for tea. I will discuss the merits of the Hang ah tea room in a future blog. Right past this place (we were in a small alley) we peered into a room that was filled with people playing Mah Jong. No way we were getting in there (it was packed) but I felt like this was part of real Chinatown life. Kathy was afraid we were going to get mugged in the alley so we pressed on. We also found a lovely park that was full of Chinese people playing a game that I think is called “Go”. It kind of looks like checkers but the playing pieces are placed on the intersections of the squares and not in the square itself. It was a very popular game and there would be two guys playing and about a dozen watching them. It could have been the national championships for all we knew. Kathy asked a man if she could take his picture but he pointed to some others. I told her that people don’t always like to have their picture taken. Could have been that there was just a little bit of gambling going on and I figured that they didn’t want to advertise themselves.

Back on the street, we plowed our way thru the rest of Chinatown. I wanted to find the fortune cookie factory but never could locate it. Try as I might, it eluded us for the entire visit. Kathy wasn’t as enthusiastic about finding it as I was but it really wasn’t a “holy grail” type of thing for me anyway. I just wanted to see how they made the stupid things. Chinatown is really “tinsely”, brightly lit, and full of tourists on the main drag and we ended our trip where we started. At the end of the day I told Kathy that I was in “sensory overload” and couldn’t take it anymore. It was just too much to see.

As far as I could tell, we pretty much covered nearly every square inch of Chinatown except for that stupid fortune cookie factory. We even got to the outer limits and saw some of North Beach. This area is Italian and we switched from ducks and pieces of barbequed pork hanging in the windows to the smell of coffee and garlic. We didn’t take too many pictures in Chinatown. I was so intent on seeing everything that I just dragged my poor wife around at high speed and wouldn’t hardly let her stop long enough to snap many pictures. She took nearly all of the pictures on the trip and did a great job with them.

Sanfrancisco vacation day 1

2009-08-06T10:00:00.000-07:00

Last fall I asked my blushing bride of some 24 years where she would like to go for our 25^th wedding anniversary and she said, “I’d really like to go to Sanfrancisco”. So for about 10 months or so we talked about it, studied up about it on the internet, and mapped it all out. The following series of 7 blogs will document our trip in words and Kathy’s pictures. I’ll try not to bore anyone with details, instead focusing on highlights and interest.

We arrived at the Sanfrancisco airport easily enough after being packed like sardines for the day in 2 different airplanes. Air travel is not the comfortable, luxuriant, travel option it used to be. Gone are the days of free meals, free baggage check, and generally, free anything. I’m famous for my stingy, cheap, outlook on my wallet so I’m going to be mentioning (whining) about how expensive everything was. $7 for an airline salad that consisted of some lettuce and a few pieces of chicken ain’t a good value in my book. This after paying $60 to check my luggage. After the plane ride it was time for the train. We took the BART (Bay area regional transportation?) train and got off at the stop I thought was ours. I spent weeks studying the city transportation system and my notes indicated it was only a short walk to the hotel. Slight problem was that the short walk had to be in the right direction and I had a little trouble with that. So we humped our luggage through the downtown area like a couple of lost Sherpas in our attempt to find the holy land known as the Parc 55 hotel. Sanfranciscan’s are famous for their friendliness and we found over and over how true this was during our stay. We asked for directions to the hotel and were delighted at how helpful the person was. However; there is one niche of city society that aren’t so friendly. More on “them” later.

After finding the hotel we both collapsed on the beds and unwound for a while. I later suggested we go for a walk and try and get our bearings so we ventured out for a big walk around the hotel (1 square block). Walking is the other big thing about Sanfrancisco and we did a ton of it. I lost 5 pounds after only 1 week in this town but I suspect that I’ll find it when we return to good old fatty Alabama. We got a little bolder after the 1 square block jaunt and thought we would expand our horizons slightly so we crossed the street. Well, what do you know, in about 2 seconds we were approached by one of “them”: street people. Homeless, luckless, toothless, nasty, vermon. “Rodney” wanted to sell us a map of the city. It seems that he worked for a homeless shelter for orphaned children and the money was going to be put to good use. The map was only $.25 cents and contained lots of discounts on all kinds of city attractions. Well, he wasn’t getting my quarter. Uh oh. I turned around and there she was, kind hearted and nearly in tears, Kathy was searching thru her purse for the quarter that was going to save all of those dear homeless orphans that “Rodney” was caring for. As soon as he saw her purse come open, he immediately announced that a dollar would be better. Well, how about that. He wound up clipping her for about $1.50. “God bless you Mame, you have saved their lives”, he preached. I later found out that the maps were free anyway. We overheard him running the same story to a lady behind us. She wasn’t having any of it. His response to her was to spit a string of the most venom laden 4 letter words that we had ever heard. That cured Kathy of her generosity towards the street people. We were hit on all week by all manner of scary looking, foul smelling, people that barely passed for humanity.

We snuck into a really neat diner that had a 50’s motif for a bite. It was decorated with all kinds of 50’s memorabilia. There was an Indian motorcycle hanging from the ceiling, a VW microbus half stuck out of a wall, pictures of betty boop, neat stuff. The food was fantastic and the price was right up there in the clouds. Oh well, we’re on vacation!

Lost and found

2009-07-13T07:50:00.000-07:00

I hate clutter. Every now and then I have a tendency to toss out junk in our house that appears to have been abandoned and is devoid of any future potential. My constitution sometimes backfires on me though. The wife, kids, and even the dog don't have any real affection for my "throwing away parties". I'm learning that the formally useless, tossed in the corner, seemingly forgotten, piece of junk of yesterday is now today's treasure but only after the owner has discovered that it was thrown into the scrap heap. I get howls of protest. I get death threats. The worst is "the flying dagger look" which is always administered with deadly silence. Believe me, when you've been the recipient of silent, flying daggers, you in a heap o' trouble, cousin.

And so, yesterday while the wife was doing some ironing (after my sarcastic remark slyly indicating that I would just do it myself), she discovered that some essential accessory to her brand new iron was missing. (This is the very iron that I just bought her with all the bells and whistles. The top of the line one that she has used about twice in the last 8 months. Yup, thats the one). I immediately came under suspicion of foul play. She knows that if anything is missing, I must be blamed. It's automatically my fault. No need for a prosecutor, jury, or judge. Sentence is pronounced and it's always the same: guilty on all charges. Send him straight to the electric chair.

She starts by asking me if I've seen this widget that fills the iron with water. Who me? nope. Never seen it, never heard of it, never used it, etc. Don't even know what it looks like. At that instant she knows I've chucked it. "Did it again didn't you"? "YOU THREW IT OUT"! "My filler bottle"! Oh the agony! She ranted and raved like she had rabies. My ass was grass and she was the lawn mower. Well, I very quickly started attempting to mentally review everything I had eighty-sixed in the hope I would remember this stupid thing. No luck. I couldn't place it. Not that I would reserve much memory for an iron accessory. But it was important to her and we don't want Momma upset cause that ain't too fun. I next asked her if she had looked for it. Of course, everywhere. It's nowhere to be found. She's scoured the house and two surrounding counties and it is gone. And by the way, in case you haven't picked up on this, it's my fault that it's gone. Past experience with the rest of my clan is that if they say they have looked for it, they are only talking about the space from their eyes to the tip of their nose.

She had me believing that I had indeed thrown this thing away. Heck, I figured she was probably right and I was pretty much resigned to my fate of having her give me a good shellacing about it for the rest of the day, if not the rest of the month. She has the female instinct to not forget about injustices done to her and will bring it up years from now, just in case it might come in handy in an argument or a pending decision to go to an expensive restaurant.

With her trailing off into the bedroom, mumbling about the same crime committed against her for the upmteenth time a certain part of my being kicked in and started to gnaw at me.

I really, really, really hate to lose anything.

It drives me crazy. I will look for the rest of my life until I find what has been lost or at least I can verify it's untimely fate. I lost a strut off a model airplane (in flight) years ago and looked for it for hours in a huge field without success. That field is now a Home Depot and I cannot drive past it without looking on at least one side of the road to see if it's there. Nevermind that the plane was sold in 1995, I want my strut back. It's not just my stuff either, it's anybody's. An aquaintance in the model airplane club lost a muffler off his plane in the same field and I helped him look for it for hours. We never did find it. That muffler haunts me to this day and it wasn't even mine.

I thought that maybe there was a chance that I might actually be innocent of the charges levied against me and proceeded to look for it. Like a bloodhound I started sniffing out every nook and cranny in the laundry room. Our's is about as big as yours is; about the size of the average walk-in closet so there aren't many nooks or crannies. I'm not too clear on what a cranny actually is either. One of these days I'm going to have to do a Google search on crannys and see what pops up. Probably get at least one search result from ebay anyway. I guarentee it. The water filler bottle wasn't behind the washer or dryer and that left me with the cabinet under the sink. Upon opening the sink I started to get a suspicious feeling that I was going to hit pay-dirt because I found the owner's manual to the iron right off the bat. A little digging around and there to be found underneath the dog's puppy training pads was what I was positive was the previously lost water bottle thing. I was grinning from ear to ear, holding it up in front of me like a first place ribbon won at the county fair pie eating contest. Oh and it was neat looking too. Real sleek and sporty like something that might come out of an expensive designer catalog. Probably was inspired by something that Georgio Armanni made for some Italian supermodel. I sort of remembered it from when we took the iron out of the box. It wasn't the kind of thing that a guy would use since you can fill an iron by holding it under the faucett. Apparently, females don't do it this way. Note that I didn't make a jab at them and indicate that they weren't technically savvy enough to fill an iron with water. I'll let that snide remark wait for another day.

I strolled out of the laundry room, holding my prize out in front of me just like an olympic torch bearer and proceeded to look for my bride. I also briefly considered the merits of those puppy training pads since "fluffy" hasn't been doing too good in that department lately. Maybe I should just throw them out. I filed my report mentally and concentrated on the business at hand. Changing from my shit eating grin to my best poker face, I walked into the bedroom. There she was with her back to me in the walk in closet, putting away some clothes, most likely still fuming about the loss of her most prized of all tools. When she turned around I held it up in front of her and said, "Here it is, you want your ass eatin' back"?

Cleared of all these false charges, I exited the bedroom, beaming with delight not because I was once again a free man, but because the water filler thing was FOUND.

Hey Grandpa, whats for dinner?

2009-06-22T10:20:00.000-07:00

I enjoy people watching. Most everyone has certain little quirks about them that can be revealed by little more than casual observation. Of all the strange behaviours that can be observed in my fellow man, eating seems to be a really good venue for some genuine entertainment.

My poem, "Ode to an m&m" was inspired by a friend at work. We were talking while she was eating m&ms. She noticed me taking a fair amount of interest in the manner she was eating them and explained to me her method. I didn't know that there was an exact method for eating m&ms but she assured me that she could only do it one way. I have watched others eat m&ms and the procedure does vary to some extent. One guy even uses the "great big handfuls at a time" method and I must admit that I find that one a little hard to watch. Anyway, her details are in the poem (see earlier post) if you wish to imbibe.

A friend relayed a story about a lunch at a pizza buffet in which a fellow there would very neatly stack all of his pizza crusts on his plate in order after trimming them down to the same size with his teeth. He suspected the guy might be an Engineer which was later confirmed. We'll save the excentricities of Engineers for a later post. Being a member of the Engineering fraternity, I doubtless could write for a few miles on this subject. This same friend of mine would always take a big gulp of soda in his mouth and swish it around loudly like you would mouthwash before swallowing it. He didn't gargle it but he was close.

I've come across more than one person who will only eat one item on their plate at a time. I tried quizzing one of these single item eaters once about why they ate that way and did it matter which food was eaten first but was warned it was a bad idea by my coworkers. Evidentally, they knew him better than I did and realized that my curiousity might be misconstrued as heckling. Nothing could be further from the truth but if you asked anyone who knows me they just might tell you otherwise. I have always wondered what the criteria is for eating order. Kind of a "chicken and the egg" sort of question isn't it?

Anybody who's spent more than 1 meal with a child knows that they are the kings of the wierd eating habit. I much prefer adults because you pretty much expect a kid to do some funky things with his food. A kid peeling the crust off a peanut butter and jelly sandwich has nowhere near the entertainment value of an adult doing the same exercise.

I have my moments too but mostly I like to mess with the ones I share my meal with. I am right handed but I have eaten left handed since I was about 8 years old. Nothing special, I just wanted to see if I could teach myself to do it that way and I do like to be different from the rest of the crowd. It stuck and now I eat left handed nearly all the time. I also have a distinct affinity for Chinese food so I eventually learned how to eat with chopsticks both left and right handed and became better at it with my left hand than my right. A guy in a Chinese restaurant observed me using chopsticks left handed and finally, not being able to contain himself any longer, came over to my table and announced that he was proud that there was at least one other person in these United States of America that knew the correct way to use chopsticks. I floored him when I told him I was really right handed. The look on his face was well worth the training it took to learn how to use them with my left hand.

I'm sure that the good Dr. Freud had an explaination for all of these silly eating behaviours. Probably a term that is at least 8" long and can't even be pronounced without voice lessons. I don't want to know why, I just want to be there to enjoy them.

I'll see you at the buffet, as I deftly pinch up each tasty bite with my left handed chopsticks, seemingly unaware that you are watching, only to become my next curious victim who noticed that something isn't just quite right.

Do you have the time?

2009-06-12T08:28:00.001-07:00

Time fascinates me. Every person or thing that has ever crawled, walked, or flown on our island Earth has had a specific amount of time doled out to them. Everyone's time is different. Total length of time is determined by our actions, the affects of the environment on each of us, and by the influence of the positions of the celestrial bodies at the moment of our birth. We don't know just how much total time we have. A few will know how much time they have remaining. Of them, such as the condemmed prisoner waiting for his execution, I wonder if they waste the time they have left waiting for their time to be over, watching the clock as the hours and minutes tick away.

If death and the total length of time available are taken out of the equation then we all have the same amount of time. Each one of us has exactly 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days per year. "I don't have time for that". Ever heard this statement? Probably at least every week. Actually, when you consider time to be a constant then the lack of time is really just a scheduling/priority factor.

Everything changes with time. As we go thru life, we may experience periods of time that are frought with extreme difficulty, financial success, romance, and an entire host of other influences. Situations improve and grow steadily worse; all with time.

Along with time there has to be motion. For without motion everything is static, like in a vacuum. Time only travels in one direction and that is forward. We can look back in time but it is only history and memories.

Time always travels at the same speed but it seems that depending on your age it might be going too fast or too slow. At 8 years old we can't wait for Christmas. At 15 we are going crazy as we wait for our 16th birthday so we can get a driver's license. Each week takes a month. A couple of additional significant life events and then you wake up one morning and you are a full grown adult. At this point you might look forward to the next holiday as you anticipate spending time with family but the holidays will start to blur into one another as you get older. Before you know it, 10 years have passed. What's the next thing to look forward to? Retirement. It's the gateway to the end of everything. The start of the golden years, the final slip down the path towards the end of our time.

Make the most of your time.

Ode to an m&m

2009-06-08T10:13:00.000-07:00

I pair my goodies two by two
First the red, then the blue

The colors true must always match
It’s not that hard but there’s a catch

The single ones can’t get the nod
I toss them out for they are odd

To keep them thusly would be a crime
I don’t know why but haven’t time

To understand why I sort them so
OCD is fun, don’t you know?

I munch my candy always in pairs
Happily chewing but must take cares

They have to be eaten as a team
No singles allowed, see what I mean?

First the shell next comes the candy
I split them deftly if not succinctly

Give it a try, lets have a go
m&ms are fun, don’t you know?

Death to Backpacks

2009-06-02T05:55:00.000-07:00

What is the deal with backpacks? Grown men are coming to work with a backpack strapped to them every single day. For the last 25 years I've managed to make it to work with just my lunchbox and my planner. If i'm feeling sporty I might carry a thermos full of coffee but since I've switched to tea that has fallen by the wayside. Is the backpack a sudden fad or fashion statement? I wonder what they have to carry back and forth in them. Maybe they are stuffed with provisions in case they get stuck in their cubicle and don't want to risk starvation. It could be that there is an extra change of clothes; perhaps on the off chance of a bladder malfunction (for that matter I think bladder control is way overrated anyway). My most sneaking suspicion about the contents of these misused contraptions scares me. You see, I think that they are carrying WORK home with them. Yes, work or maybe I should call it "homework". A sure fire way to diagnose a workaholic is to catch him carrying his work home with him. I used to work for one of these guys. He was asked by a subordinate once what he liked to do in his spare time. He response was "I eat, sleep, and work". What a shame. To think that he was going to spend his life doing nothing other than those three tasks was really disheartening. I got after him about it once. He had a very pretty, sweet, wife and 3 daughters. I told him he should spend time with them since I had heard that's what married people do occasionally when they aren't at each other's throats. He looked at me with the "deer in the headlights" look. He just didn't get it. His wife threatened to leave him once if he didn't take a vacation with her and the girls. It was a traumatic experience. I was assured that this was a "working" vacation and he would be checking in every day to see if he was needed. For the last two weeks prior to the vacation he worked himself into a frazzle every night, trying to get it all done. He stayed late. The very last night he was there until 10:30 p.m.. I thought he was going to have a nervous breakdown over this vacation thing. His reward for all of his hard work was a notice of termination a few months later. They bagged him. He was so distraught that he went to the President of the company and literally cried for a job. They felt sorry for him and let him stay on for a little while. He was exiled to a storage area all alone that had no air conditioning and went right back to work, sweating at his makeshift desk like a hog in his white, long sleeve, dress shirt; the uniform of the executive. I just laughed. An out-of-work workaholic is kind of like a heroin addict in dire need of a fix. They also want you to be right there with them and that is the facet of their being that scares me the most. We were all once told by our workaholic boss prior to his fall from grace that we were going to start working Saturdays; and Sundays too. Sunday too? He said he would get us pizza and it would be kind of a "party" type of atmosphere on Sunday. We did the Saturdays but told him to stick the Sunday pizza party where the sun don't shine. Sensing the feel of tar and feathers on his skin, he never mentioned Sunday to us again.

I've lost touch with him (we never actually were in touch) but I know that wherever he is, he's wearing a backpack that is loaded to the hilt with work, just in case he needs a fix. I really don't care if others want to work themselves to death, just don't try and drag me down with you. The only reason I work is because I can't get someone to pay me this much money to stay at home. Oh, I get some satisfaction from work but I don't get my jollies out of it. These backpackers need to reevaluate their priorites in life. Has anyone ever been on their deathbed, murmuring to their family "If I could have only gotten in a few more hours at the plant". I doubt it.

Back in the day backpacks were for boy scouts and school children. They were utilitarian. I saw quite a few even as late as college. Then years later they started sneaking them into the workplace. The workaholics must have their own website or forum to discuss and track trends. It's spreading. I'm getting worried about it too. I saw a high-level manager come tooling into the breakroom one morning, sporting a backpack and an ear-to-ear grin. He looked like an 8 year old on his way to school. I was tempted to tell him that he was going to be late for homeroom but managed to suppress myself (very rare display of tact on my part). The teeth marks on my tongue are still healing.

Not gonna catch me with a backpack. No way. When I leave the office every afternoon I forget all about it until tomorrow morning. I don't work for free. I don't work at home either (just ask my wife ha ha). I've got my eye on you backpackers. Repent! Give up your sinful ways! Stop carrying work home with you! Get a life! If you can't get a life of your own, at least don't interfere with mine.

And for heaven's sake, give that silly looking thing back to your kid.

The tao of Scooter

2009-05-26T10:09:00.000-07:00

On pleasant afternoons when I get home from work I like to sit out on the patio and enjoy the weather. It doesn’t have to be warm out but sunny is a must. Sunshine is a wonderful vitamin and I try to get all I can. There is almost always a breeze blowing gently if not more so and it serves to bring the plants to life. The ornamental grass “plumage” sways and ripples as the wind tosses it about. The wind is not unlike white noise and makes me drowsy after only a few minutes. Eventually I sit lower in my chair until I’m at a respectable slouch. My head looks upward then my mind wanders thru random thoughts of time and space. After I’ve solved all of the current problems in the world, excluding cancer and Democrats, I like to study the clouds. The big, white, puffy ones always resemble one type of animal or another. Their wispy curling and march across the sky remind me that the world is in constant motion. The colors are vibrant and I can see multiple shades of gold, green, and blue. Everything that has ever lived has seen the same sky but in another point of time. I wonder what they have thought as they looked upwards. It’s required and equally understood that I have to have a pot of green tea nearby. The very simplest of drinks, it is merely dried tea leaves steeped in water in which the perfect cup is difficult to achieve. Tea can only be enjoyed when there are no distractions. No books, magazines, television, or bikinis. I violate this mandate occasionally but I really prefer to be alone with only my thoughts and usually, Kathy’s dog Scooter.

Dog’s are master’s of leisure. They quietly sleep up to 18 hours a day including random naps. They are a study in relaxation. I sit and watch Scooter lying on the patio, his fur shimmering in the breeze and I know that he is thinking the same thing as I am, only on a slightly different plane. I can see it in his face, eyes half closed, nose pointed upward slightly to better catch the smells available for scrutiny, seemingly smiling at the sheer enjoyment of being outside with a full belly and no fence to contain him. After a fashion he rolls over on his back, paws flopped towards the sky, and scratches himself by slowly twisting his body a few times. Then it’s off to another spot a few feet away to take in more of the beauty we know as Earth.

The external and internal distractions are calling me away. I don’t want to get up but the chair and the responsibility we call life have other plans. I call to Scooter to come along and at first he is unresponsive. A second call and he obediently trots in the house, happy to be on another patrol through the kitchen to find a treasure that dropped off someone’s last meal.

He has a zenlike state of mind that I can only hope to reach.

Contentment