poster art

by the time you read this, i will have left home again and come home again. so good morning from my time warp.

to complicate the temporal confusion, yesterday (that is, the yesterday of when i was writing this) i was going through my pictures that i meant to show you because they were buried in pictures for some of my geocaching logs that i'm only getting around to now and instead of keeping them buried, i thought i'd dust them off, process them, and bring them to light.

last fall connie asked me to make some posters for the tribute tent at out local ALS walk. this isn't a surprise; it's kind of what i do to help.

so here are some pictures of the work on the posters. connie wanted a welcome poster in the style of a set of panels i made a while ago, and she wanted a photocollage of last year's walk (two panels) and a poster with the team names on it.

these are only pictures of the works in progress; of course i have NO pictures of the finished posters.

in the end the welcome poster has text on it that says "welcome to the tribute tent" (no shocker there), the photocollages end up with a little rectangle on each with the walk title and date, framed, and over ALL THOSE INDIVIDUAL NAMES i wrote in silver ink, kind of disappearing, the names of the teams. for the header and footer, in the empty space, i printed in black block letters:

TODAY WE ARE
ALL ONE TEAM.

THANK YOU.

general store

recently i was in a rural general store.

if you wanted, you could buy hunting gear, camping equipment, used videos, assorted sundries, cold drinks, a good pizza,

...and a large selection of very elaborate and ornate drug paraphernalia.

pretty ballsy in a place where they're always driving up and down the street in those big white pickups from the local border crossing post.

three campsites

i have recently made my home on two campsites in the bigelow preserve and one in the seboeis unit.

here are three short videos of those places.

kissing them on the lips

my friend crashco says we should not just face our fears, but run up and kiss them on the lips.

and you already know my list of fears and that i thought it would be a good idea to challenge some of them.

last year i heard of the geocache desbsconeag ice cave. it was on my map and it sounded way too scary, way too undoable for me. too strenuous of a walk (i was in worse shape than i am even now) too underground-y, not for people traveling alone, too dangerous, too complicated.

but it was working on me and i thought that it sounded very, very cool, and maybe i could just go have a look and see what i could do instead of deciding beforehand what i couldn't do and i decided to check it out but found the road to be flooded and that scrapped my plans.

i don't write much here about my geocache adventures, because i write my geocache adventures in my geocaching logs mostly, which end up being sort of a blog about what i did while geocaching, but all the entries are attached to locations and when you look at a page you are seeing the story of a place and not of one person.

it is helpful to remember that stories come in webs; there is the web of my stories that intersect with the web of stories of places that intersect with the stories of items that move from place to place and, well, you get the idea.

so i got into millinocket and i got to the library and rad everything i could find online about the ice caves, mostly trail articles and the odd newspaper "things to do you hadn't thought of" piece, but there was enough information for me to feel all right about going.

so i did.

i'll be telling that story by-and-by through the geocache logs (which you are welcome to read if you have that kind of time), but in the meantime i want to post a couple photos and a video here.

does a bear...?

yes, i take pictures of animal scats in the woods.

yes, sometimes i do poke them with a stick.

yes, sometimes i do touch it with my hand if necessary.

for starters, all this dung in the woods is very informative. it tells you a lot about what species are out there, and if you look closely you can tell a lot about what they're eating, which tells you about the health of the animal and the habitat. it's interesting stuff.

and why, you ask, would it be necessary to touch any of it with my hand?

to see if it's still warm.

if you have in front of you an enormous pile of bearshit AND it's fresh enough not to have developed a skin yet, you NEED to know if it's still warm. this is a safety issue. if you find a pile of really fresh bearshit, you have to get out of there NOW.


if it's not that fresh but it's still today's edition, you have to be careful.

this particular pile is less than eighteen hours old. the bear is pretty good sized, and it's been eating mostly plant material, which means if i looked a little sick or sleepy, i could be on the menu.  this bear would enjoy a little sumthin' meaty. he ain't starving, but he'd like a little more protein.

but this pile has also developed a little skin on it, so even though it's fresh, i know it's at least a couple of hours old and if i just look sharp and stay alert, i won't be seeing the bear, and i won't be on the menu.

great plan

if you've been following along, you already know that i have some phobias: i am afraid of closed spaces, vomit, heights, and the dark. i am also afraid of submerged pipes and large machines that use pipes and that fear extends to any submerged thing that MIGHT be a pipe or a chain or a machine part and that includes power substations.

my friend david tells me that this is not a phobia, but a trauma reaction to an actual event.

anyway, i was on my way to millinocket (i just like to say it: millinocket. millinocket. it's like candy in your mouth.)

uh, anyway, i was on my way to millinocket, or the area just north of millinocket because i had decided that it would be a really good idea for me to visit the debsconeag ice caves.

you know, and go down in them. alone.

the thought of it scared the pants off me and gave me nightmares, so, yeah, that's an awesome plan.

so i was on my way to check out the trailhead and then to the campsite and on my way i stopped to a) scramble around in a steep talus field and b) hike down along the west edge of ripogenus gorge.

tremendous fun.

being on the edge of ripogenous gorge is fun, because as you come down the trail you hear the thundering of the water and then suddenly your brain tunes in to the terrible noise of the generating station.

it is an uneasy transition from pastoral sounds to industrial sounds and yes, my fear does extend to power generating stations and penstocks.

it's not a surprise to me because last year i had been on the other side of the gorge and had been just above the blockhouse, but even knowing it was there it scared me.

and then i did a little light bushwacking along the edge of the gorge and stood right out on the edge, trying to estimate the height of the drop and i am a bad estimator of height (although a very accurate estimator of horizontal distance, provided the distance being estimated is somewhere around 500 feet), but the one thing i knew for sure is that the height of the drop was maybe five or six deadlies, in which a deadly is the height from which you would not survive if your foot slipped and you went over the edge.

pride and self-sufficiency

last night in my beautiful campsite on flagstaff lake my dome light burned out.

i was surprised how much i rely on that thing. i thought i'd get it fixed when i get home, when i have my snows taken off. yes, i realize it's may but the last time i was in northern maine in mid-may i needed snows.

 anyway, i hadn't gotten gas leaving town because i figured on needing to use a bathroom later in the morning and while i know i CAN just go into businesses with public restrooms and use the restrooms without buying anything, i don't like to do it.

 i've been potty trained pretty firmly for a while now, but being on the road requires of me a different kind of training: it helps to have to go when i am at an actual toilet. i do not mind peeing in the woods, but taking a dump is a whole other animal and i'd rather just not.

so i got into monson and it's about lunchtime and i could use gas and the irving there has gas ten cents a gallon cheaper than it was back in stratton, and that's ten cents a gallon cheaper than at home, so it's a win all around.

and to make it even awesomer, the mailman pulls in and he has a right hand drive jeep and doens't mind if i take pictures. and even BETTER: in the store they have gallon jugs of water with screw tops, which i have been unable to find and which i prefer because they stand up to re-use better than the other kind and they also have a big assortment of replacement bulbs, but none of them are the replacemet for my bulb, but while i'm checking out i'm talking with the lady at the counter because i feel that i am smiling SO broadly that i have to explain my extreme happiness or else look deranged. plus i like to talk to people sometimes.

she expresses some disbelief that i might live in vermont where it is "drop-dead gorgeous" to come here, but i tell her it's a different kind of gorgeous and i like it just fine, but i also like to wander. and she says that there's a napa auto parts store in greenville, but they close at noon, so i'd better get a move on.

on the way i pass through a town called shirley. and for five or six miles i keep saying "STOP CALLING ME SHIRLEY!" and laughing at what i believe to be my extreme cleverness. probably they hear it all the time. i bet their local teams use it as a cheer at games.

anyway, i get into greenville with twenty minutes to spare, and sure enough, they have the part. i am very proud of myself for having performed the operation of the extraction of the old part and equally pleased with the installation of the new part, and even though the process only involved a flat head screwdriver and having figured out where to put same, i am also pleased that i am carrying a flat head screwdriver in a place where i know just where it is, which makes me feel like i can conquer anything.

which is good, because very soon i am going to come rubbing up close to two of my phobias. it's not omniscient narrator from the future; it's part of a PLAN. talk to you later.

two pizzas

today it is miserable and cold and rainy, so i didn't do a lot of outdoor activities. i drove some roads, found some new campsites, make an unexpected trip into augusta; you know, stuff like that.

 at lunchtime i happened to be back in stratton and sometimes when i'm on the road i treat myself to an actual sit-down meal in a restaurant and not just a pizza that i'll eat for two more meals. did i mention that it was cold and rainy? and that i'm kind of sick of cold and rainy, which it has been since last tuesday? so i went into the diner, and they have good wifi and i was kind of expecting a breakfast anytime kind of place, but it was a salmon and cream cheese quiche kind of place, and i wasn't sure what to have so i asked the waitress if i was only ever going to eat one meal in this joint, what should i get?

and she steered me toward the flatbread pizza which to be fair was very unlike actual pizza but yet stunningly good. if i remember correctly, it involved garlic and boursin with grilled shrimp and salmon on a thin crust with red onions and capers.

 but then at dinnertime i had to make some choices because i was on my way back from augusta and hungry but not wanting to get a stupid chain sandwich i was looking for something local and i was coming around the corner in -i think- madison? and there was this little dumpy lookin' place called pizza-palooza or pizza-ramathon or something else dumb and it was the hoppingest place on the block so i went in there and asked the guy at the counter if i was only ever going to get one pizza in this joint, what should i have? and he said the kielbasa and pineapple pizza, fresh crust. apparently they also serve a pizza with a premade frozen crust that's thinner and some people like that, but he shrugged when he told me as if he couldn't figure why anyone would prefer frozen to fresh and neither could i.

 short version: the crust is good and chewy, soft on the inside and crunchy on the outside, and tastes a little of herbs and garlic and just enough salt, but it is not brushed with additional fat, which means those flavors are there for real and not just brought out by fats. obviously if i'm having kielbasa as a topping fat is not my primary concern, but i have an eye for foods that are made flavorful with real taste instead of heaping on extra fats and sugars as happens in so much of the crap we get served these days. the sauce is good and the cheese is good, and i was doubtful about kielbasa as a topping and uncertain how it would pair with the pineapple but the guy at the counter knew what he was talking about. and it was fairly cheap as pizzas go. i often expect to pay about a dollar an inch for a two topping pie but this was about twelve dollars for a sixteen inch pie and just that much heaven.

 ok, i have to head to the beach now.

fears

last night i repaired to my campsite, washed up and got into bed.

when i am on public campsites i sometimes fear that i will have unwanted company. it's a risk you take on free public sites, and the closer you are to a town and the nicer your site, the more likely it is that this will happen.

...i think.

and sometimes i sleep uneasy, thinking there are noises in the dark, and maybe not friendly noises. ever since i got here, i have been starting awake in the night by noises that are maybe real, maybe imagined. it's hard to tell sometimes when you're near water and mountains if a sound is close by or if it is reflected.

in any case, i have not been sleeping well.

and last night as i was fussing with my bedding, a thing i  was afraid of happened.

a big truck with bright lights and loud music blaring came roaring out to the little spit of land where i was camped.

sometimes this isn't a thing to be feared. sometimes the local people come and use a site and are good neighbors, but you never know who's going to be unpleasant until they've been there a few minutes.

they parked near me, and noticed i was in my car and the guy kind of skulked over to my side and i didn't know what kind of interaction that was going to be, but he said hello and that he just wanted me to know they were there.

polite, but kind of unnecessary.

and then a bunch more cars arrived and i was thinking great. it's party night out here. but they seemed friendly and maybe even good company against the darkness, and then i noticed that there were little children running around.

ok, now this is totally not threatening, if a little weird.

and then the fireworks started.

no, not metaphorically.

actual honkin' fireworks. chrysanthemum shells and everything. probably very illegal, but maybe permitted, since i can't imagine a display that large so close to law enforcement offices and visible from everywhere in the area would have gone without notice.

but i had from row waterside seats to about a half hour of pretty good fireworks, better than some small towns do at independence day.

and then after a while all the cars and trucks left, and i slept soundly all night.

ranger steve

i was going to do something else, i think, but i got going up a road that i wanted to see where it went, and clearly it went SOMEWHERE because there's a geocache hidden at the end of it.

and it's on the map as a regular honkin' road so i don't think twice about driving on it, even though it is the kind of road you would HATE on account of it's one narrow lane and you have to drive slow and careful.

and i passed the ostensible parking lot where the ranger truck was parked, because even though it was narrower and steeper it still looked like a road.

and then i got to the bottom (i had gone over some sort of ridge thingy) and there was this guy in an orange vest and he looked a lot like the ranger and i hoped i hadn't missed a sign that said i couldn't drive here but thought if he was mad, i could probably
get away with a nice apology and such but it turned out i wasn't in trouble.

turned out he's the manager of the preserve where i'm staying. has been for thirty some odd years. and we made chitchat and he made some recommendations about what to see on these mountains and where i might enjoy biking and if i only had the knees for one hike which one i should do, and we watched a loon and a beaver fishing (he thought) the same school of fish.

it's still nearly fifty degrees out, but a little breezy.

month of MAYhem day 12

maybe you're doing the Month of MAYhem Blogging Challenge™,  but probably not.

when i was busy making my duct tape roses, i discovered that duck tape brand duct tape makes collegiate tape, and it comes in KU jayhawk.

now, see, at the time KU was soing good in the NCAA men's hoop tournament, and cr went to KU and while she's not a huge fan, she has some fondness.

so i thought it would be a hoot just to call my local hardware stores and see if they had any.

you know, as kind of a longshot.

so i called every hardware store within a 20 mile radius of my house and asked. i also called office supply stores and craft stores.

four stores were closed because they are not open on sunday afternoons, including richmond home supply, which is my regular hardware store.

both of the staples stores i called had ugly automated phone systems. i had to wait over four minutes to get through to a live person on one, but at the williston store i waited under a minute and got a pleasant person who could tell me with certainty that although they were aware such a  product existed, they did not carry it.

most of the people i talked to were very lovely.

the conversation went kind of like this:

hi, my name is (my real first name) and i'm calling to see if you have any duck tape in the kansas jayhawks collegiate pattern.


duct tape?


yes. duck tape brand makes a collegiate line that comes in KU. do you have any?

most of them were friendly and bemused and some of them knew without looking that they did not carry duck tape in any kind of prints, and some knew that the only print they carried was zebra stripe.

at the ace hardware in south burlington it took two people to tell me they only carry solids. at the ace hardware in colchester the guy said "you lookin' how many we have?"
"no, i'm lookin' if you have any at all."

they didn't.

at a.c. moore in williston, they were able to tell me right away that while they carry duck tape in a lot of colors and patterns, they do not stock the collegiate line. they recommended some stores that also sell duck tape.

at the ace hardware in essex way, the young man laughed and said "i think you'll have to wait for them to win the championship before we carry that!" and i gave him a lot of credit for quick thinking.

when i called micahael's, their answer to my very specifically phrased question was "uh, i think we only carry duct tape from duck tape", which was kind of sad because i had already specified that it was a duck tape brand product.

at the ace hardware on north ave in burlington, i was on hold twice and talked to two different guys, but they were able to tell me for sure that they only carry duck tape in solid colors, but if i wanted to special order, they could get me some by wednesday.

oh, thank you, i said, but the game is tomorrow.

and he laughed and wished me luck.

northland cash supply

all right, now that the cat's out of the bag i may as well tell you that i'm writing to you from a parking lot in maine, and i won't pretend you're reading it in MY present, because i know darn well that i have scheduled this thing to run a little over a week from now, which a) gives me a little cushion on the road in case i have a day or six in which i cannot blog, and b) it nicely fulfills my requirement that when i am on the road i do not tell anybody where i am.

so i'm in stratton, maine and yesterday and today i did a little shopping at fotter's market, because if you can't get everything you need there, you can get everything you need to improvise with until you can get what you need.

and i needed a pizza last night, so i went to northland cash supply and general store across the street and ordered me the veggie pizza, and the guy made it and when i went to pick it up, he said "this is going to be  a GOOD pizza" which i thought wasn't really necessary because a 16 inch pie for under twelve dollars doesn't have to be that good a pizza for me to be happy with it.

but he was right. it is a good pizza. it is so good a pizza that i ate four slices of it, which was more than i could comfortably eat, but is was SO GOOD!

i'm not sure yet what i'm doing today, but i'm pretty sure it involves the study of some maps.

comments

hi, everybody.

according to my usual practice i left my home on may 1 and have been living in my car.

also according to usual practice i'm not very specific about where i am or how long i am gone. for all you know, i'm home already.

i am actually scheduling these posts a good deal into the future, so even i don't know where i am when you read this sometime in my future.

one thing i do know is that while i am still reading many of the blogs i read every day, i am commenting less than usual (which is pretty infrequently because often i just don't have anything to add to the conversation) but hey, i'm writing this with my laptop balanced on the stickshift outside a public library in northern maine.

and now i need to go out and play.

product

i went down into richmond first thing in the morning to get a haircut. it is my usual haircut with the clippers, but i put it off until just before i left for my trip, because nothing beats a shaved head when you're living in your car.

and while i was there a guy came in looking to buy some product. apparently the day before or maybe last friday he'd been in to get a haircut and he didn't know what they'd put in his hair, but he wanted to buy some of it.

they figured it out.

"you liked it?" they asked him.
"my wife did." he said, with the look of a man who has seen God.
"well, then. you want some more of THAT." we all said.

clark's sunoco

normally i don't g out of my way to eat gas station sandwiches, not even if they make them fresh there.

and i certainly wouldn't go out of my way to get a sandwich made in a gas station off of exit 12 in williston, which is the closest gas station to my regular grocery store.

but last time i went on a road trip, i got a late start to my day and happened to have bought gas there at about lunchtime before the trip started properly and i got the italian sub, and it was one of the best sandwiches i've ever eaten.

i don't imagine the guy did anything terribly fancy with it, but he got it RIGHT. and that counts for a lot.

feral apples

bit by bit i am wading through the mountain of stuff i was gonna tell you about but then got distracted doing other stuff i wanted to tell you about.

about a year ago while i was out on the road i listened to the audio version of michael pollan's book the botany of desire which made me start to pay attention to feral apples when i saw them.

not wild apples, because mostly what you find along the country roads and old farm lanes in the northeast US are apples that used to be somebody's trees on purpose.

i started to pay attention when i read or heard something about old apple varieties and i learned that these aren't heirloom apples, either, because apparently the term "heirloom" refers to varieties that are known and catalogued and somewhere (or maybe a few somewheres) there is a project to find and record the huge number of what they call "lost varieties" of apples.

apples are perhaps the most wildly heterozygous species on the planet. that's why apples have to be grafted to be cultivated. you have no idea what wild apples will come up like, no clue if the offspring of a perfectly good domesticated apple will have fruit anything at all like its parent.

if you're looking at the land along the old rows where there used to be farmsteads, you can guess what the apple will be like. if it's a single tree growing next to a cellarhole chances are very good that it is a sweet and delicate eating apple. if it's one of several growing where the dooryard used to be, those are probably apples for sauce or pie, not as sweet, but with some strength so they'll keep. large thickets of apples off away to the fields are cider apples, or spitters, or cattle feed.

and i started to think about small batch jams.

even spitters make decent jam, some of them.

so i thought i'm go out in my neighborhood and gather up the drops and sort them out into varieties and maybe even identify them and then make some jam and some applesauce from them.

i found a lot of different kinds of apples, many of which could be classed as maybe belonging to one variety or at least related varieties. i was going to make a batch or two of single variety jam, but then each variety was so different i kept them all separate.

for weeks i had little piles of apples all over my livingroom, waiting to be sorted, washed, peeled, and made into something.

i spent hours trying to identify them, but even with old apple guides i was having no definitive identifications.

down on the corner there's a tall slender tree (maybe a relative of an orange pippin?) that drops a beautiful yellow apple with red stripes that is the sweetest, lightest apple you ever tasted, but the time between when it falls from the tree and the time it starts to go bad is about twenty minutes.

and it bruises easy.

which brings us to why storeboughten apples are such crap, anyway: they're not raised for taste anymore. they're raised to look pretty, be blemish free, and to have a long shelf life.

crap, all of them.

but out on the country roads there's a tiny olive green apple with dark red striping and a tough skin with a complex fruity taste, like peaches and pears and apples all together.

and there's a light green apple with moss colored spotting that tastes fresh and grassy. and a yellow apple with bright pink spots that's so sugary your hands get sticky, just picking them up.

and you can make applesauce and jam from all of them.

for jam, it's just equal parts by weight of sugar and fruit, macerated for about a day and then finished in a pan until the natural apple pectin and the sugar thicken to make a gel that will set. you get a feel for it.

for sauce, you just cook down the apples with a little sugar until it's sauce.

and for apple butter, you start out like you're making applesauce and then you keep adding apples and cider until after about 18 hours it slow simmers down into a dark brown paste.

and since your house is full of apples, you can make apple bread, and apple turnovers, and apple syrup and you can even use the peels and cores to boil out and make jellies. i used mine to make apple ginger jelly.

you want an awesome lunch? toast an english muffin and lay on some apple jam and top it with slices of brie. it is GOOD.

those apple trees were somebody's livelihood once, somebody's bright autumn dessert, and it makes me happy to use them and not leave them forgotten on the backroads.

happiness

sunny saturday afternoon dinner in the oven lying on the sofa eating a few cookies and watching football.

no, not that abomination played by drug-addled overpaid wife-beating bounty-hunting  violent thugs; actual football.

and i can hear the crowd singing and i have stood in the supporter section and beaten drums, so i know those tunes and it makes me smile.

a field guide to north american holidays

today is cinco de mayo. it is not a holiday i celebrate, but just for the occasion i have whipped up a little field guide to holidays as celebrated by americans, or at least the portion of north americans who have the stones to call themselves that even though they're just 1/3 of north america's large countries.

so without further ado: a field guide to north american (US) holidays.

• january 1 - new year's day:  nurse a hangover. watch football. begin to break resolutions made yesterday.
• third monday of january -  martin luther king jr. day: either make lukewarm comments about the niceness of getting along or make barbed comments about race mixing. take your pick.
• february 14 -  valentine's day: fall prey to perpetually spiraling cycle of unrealistic expectations, resultant doubts and disappointments. children engineer cruel popularity theater. men buy expensive presents that are never good enough. women pout. advertisers attempt to make men feel inadequate if they do not buy enough cars/diamonds/chocolate/flowers.
• third monday of february - presidents' day: there used to be holidays for washington and lincoln, one each, but it was combined to make room for MLK day and not everyone is so thrilled about washington and lincoln these days anyway but what you should really do to celebrate is buy new cars and appliances.
• march 17 - st. patrick's day: who is st. patrick? some irish guy? drink huge amounts of green beer and eat any food that can be dyed green. advanced players eat corned beef and cabbage and maybe soda bread. get crashingly drunk. make tasteless jokes. 
• mid-late april (movable) - easter: buy expensive candies and toys for children. dye eggs. eat ham.
• may 5 - cinco de mayo: drink tequila. make sure it's the kind with the worm. order many cervezas. eat tacos. have no idea why.
• second sunday of may - mother's day: buy your mother greeting cards and flowers. the greeting card industry loves you.
• last monday of may- memorial day: go to barbecues. drink a lot of beer.
• june 14 -  flag day: what? there's a holiday called flag day?
• third sunday of june - father's day: buy your dad useless crap he doesn't want. barbecue. drink beer. the greeting card industry really loves you.
• july 4 - independence day: does anyone actually call it that anymore? barbecue. drink a lot of beer and wine coolers. engage in as many different violations of the us flag code as you possibly can. watch fireworks. make slurred speeches about the greatness of america. do not for a second consider the constitution or try to understand it.
• august 15 - christmas shopping season opens.
• first monday in september - labor day: drink beer. barbecue. complain about unions and poor people.
• second monday of october- columbus day: schoolchildren still learn about the goodness of white people. everyone else shuffles their feet, clears their throat and does not know what to say.
• october 31 - halloween: (old-style) children go door-to-door begging for free candy in costumes they have made. adults cheerfully admire the costumes and hand out candy. everybody remembers to say "please" and "thank you". (new style) children go heavily supervised from venue to venue in expensive costumes demanding free stuff to which they are entitled. adolescents sneer at everybody. adults wear sexually suggestive costumes and get drunk. (alternate modern version) commit crimes of arson, vandalism, theft, and assault. call it "fun".
• november 11 - veterans' day: pay lip service to the idea of veterans. do not do anything to see that they get proper medical care or benefits. wave the flag.
• fourth thursday in november - thanksgiving: get together with people who annoy you. eat too  much. drink hard liquor. watch football. save up horror stories to remind you why you can't stand all these people the rest of the year. go to big stores and shop fiercely.
• fourth friday in november - black friday: formerly the day when christmas shopping started in earnest. this day now marks the day when advertising and promotions for shopingshoppingshopping go into a month-long full fever pitch.
• late november-late december (movable)- hanukkah: what? there are still jews in america? oh. well, then. aren't we being super nice to recognize that their most important holiday comes around now? won't they feel appreciative?
• december 25 - christmas: the culmination of the five-month long shopping competitions. crashing of exhausting unreasonable expectations of buying enough, decorating enough and happy shiny perfect family times that if only you'd bought enough stuff you would have been a good person. unwrap presents. compare price tags. drink. eat. watch football.
• december 31 - new year's eve: do you have a date yet? because you are a loser if you don't have a date to go out and drink champagne with at the crucial moment when the calendar whirs around to its arbitrarily set start point yet again. drink heavily.

still in the closet

i had a leak in my roof.

no, i don't know when it started, but over time i began to notice the sound of dripping, but only in my living room, which is on the first floor.

i looked in my closet, which is above the place where i heard the dripping, but didn't hear or see anything.

after a long time of doubting my sanity on this issue, i finally began to see watermarks. first in the living room, then in the closet.

after a LOT of testing and checking, uli was able to find the source of the leak and he's been working on fixing it. so far there is only a little moisture being wicked in by the chimney, and we're keeping our fingers crossed.

but there's a good deal of water damage to the ceiling in both the livingroom and my closet, so uli has been here to start off the work in the closet, and while he was up there he discovered that when i had lights installed over my bed, the incompetent workmen (who also stole some things) moved my insulation to install the lights but didn't bother to put any back, which is why my bedroom has felt so blasted cold.

so. fix roof, fix ceiling, change out light not to code, put things back to right.

this means also sanding off the dreadful popcorn ceilings, at least in the closet and the livingroom.

because you can't just have one corner of a room without.

uli is very patient with me and tolerates a lot of general picture taking, even stopping once or twice to tell me that if i was taking pictures, now would be a good time.

expensive, yes.

cool to look at, you bet!

and my heating bills will go down.

...i hope.

keyboard

last august my laptop keyboard died.

to be fair, not all of it died; just certain keys. i was suddenly without v, b, n,  comma, period and question mark, along with a few others scattered about.

it began to be a challenge to write anything, even though i'm familiar with lipograms and not that long ago wrote a series of essentially the same geocache log as a set of progressive alphabetical lipograms. you can start reading them here if you like.

so anyway, my laptop isn't all that new, but it isn't that old either and we were going to get it repaired, but that would have cost as much as a replacement, but the nice boy in the computer store told us that IF the problem was just the keyboard, it was a $20 part.

otherwise, i was going to have to ship the machine to some repair place and then they'd make an expensive repair and we decided that it was worth $20 just to see.

so i called up dell and asked for whatever department sells replacement parts, and got a HUGE runaround and a bunch of guys in some call center who wanted to know a lot of information about my machine that wouldn't be necessary to simply buy a replacement part, but would be very handy in trying to upsell me a plan for something or other.

i just want to buy a part, i kept telling them. i do not need a plan, or a technician, or an appointment with a service center. is there a way to just buy a part?

it was a few months ago so i'm not sure i remember clearly, but i think they hung up on me.

so i went to the website, which is similarly organized. what i wanted was to find a page where i enter my model number and the part i need and it tells me my options. it took me a LOOOOONG time to find such a page.

and i'm pretty good at finding pages and such, so this is an indication of the consumer friendliness of the site.

surprise, surprise! the website is geared toward making it super simple and FUN to buy tons of new things, but really, really hard to find replacement parts for things you already have unless you want to pay money to talk to a service center who will charge you a lot of money to replace a $20 part.

but find it i did.

and (did i mention that my laptop isn't all that new?) when i finally got to the page that listed what parts were available for it, there was exactly one keyboard, so i ordered that.

two days later it arrived at my house and i installed it.

old keyboard, access panel removed

i knew how to do this because the nice boy at the computer store explained it to me: "see that little access panel? pop it off and slide the keyboard right out. you'll see a connecting cable and you should disconnect it and then just drop the new keyboard in and close it up."

so that's what i did.

without keyboard

only after i had it all installed, i noticed it was a spanish language keyboard. that might not seem like a problem, but spanish language keyboards have some keys that english language keyboards do not have, and many of the punctuation marks do not correspond to what's labeled on the keys.

i thought: fine. i will just change my keyboard preferences over to spanish and everything will match, plus how cool will it be to have an ñ key?

new keyboard, installed and tested.

turns out that to do that, you have to change your whole system over to spanish, and i was not prepared to do that for the sake of a few punctuation marks.

it is what it is. it was the only replacement keyboard available for my machine, and it works just fine and every time i can't find the apostrophe, it serves as a happy reminder of my first computer repair.

summary of a blog

first off, i am not linking you to it. i read it because it's a train wreck, and i don't want to encourage it.

but i have been reading it for a couple of years. i drew some conclusions about what the writer's life had in store and hung around mostly to see if it's going to be as miserable as all that.

but i'm going to summarize a number of the posts and the general arc for you.


i'm a skinny little white girl from the midwest, but really under the skin i am black. black people are my people and because i speak spanish passably well, i think i'm hispanic too.

i am a reasonably competent musician but sabotage my work by alternating periods of creativity with periods of missing appointments and leaving my partner to fend for himself.

i use a lot of drugs.

i have a new girlfriend. we have sex a lot.

my girlfriend thinks i use too many drugs. i'm not sure she really loves me.

i have a job as a tutor and have a special relationship with my students. i'm not like other teachers. i really GET the kids.

my therapist thinks i use too many drugs. i am going to fire her.

here is my poetry. i am the best poet in the world.

people don't really like me.

the secret to a lasting relationship is to be very hot and to have a lot of sex.

i love my job so much because i am special and kids really want to learn because i have a personal relationship with them.

my new therapist thinks i use too many drugs. i will fire her, too.

my dream job is to work as a teacher in the public schools. the world will notice how special i am.

i got caught trying to shoplift and i am outraged because the store asked me to leave instead of letting me pay for the item. it is inconvenient to have to make a second trip to buy it later.

here is a draft of the last paper i wrote. i like to talk about racism.

my sister was embarrassed that i was shoplifting while out with her. i am not talking to her anymore.

i am surprised that a student i tutor would take advantage of me. i have such a special relationship with them.


here is a picture of me when i'm high.

i never have enough money to pay my bills.

everyone who thinks i need to use fewer drugs just hates me and doesn't want me to succeed.

i am angry that i am being sued for unpaid debts. 

the only reason i am being held back from success is racism. i am oppressed.

why are people judging me? 

racism is also the cause of schizophrenia. 

i am confused. people are following my blog, but nobody comments.  i think this carries a secret dark meaning.


i have finally gotten a position as a student teacher in a public school. now i will make people take notice of how special i am!


i share personal information with students and am reprimanded. it is unfair for people to judge my style. i am creating rapport.

here is a video of me while i'm high.

i have been informed that i am not going to be hired to teach full-time in this district. their loss. i will focus my attention on charter and magnet schools, because i am special and better schools will appreciate me.



i am angry that you are judging me. i judge you right back.




you'll see.




i am the world's best poet.

crash course

you thought it was going to be yet another tale of injuries, didn't you?

no.

these days i am in love with this youtube channel.

'scuse me. world history episode #14 is out and i have to go watch it.

mac 'n' cheese

a while ago i decided to make macaroni and cheese. maybe it's odd, but even at my age i had never done it.

well, REAL mac and cheese.  i made mac 'n' cheez back in my college days.

so i looked at a recipe or two and settled on this one, but played pretty loose with it from the beginning.

i go ahead and toss paprika and cayenne or whatever i feel like in the roux, and i use a whole onion, which i cook a little in a pan before putting it in. sometimes i just cook them until they're transparent, and sometimes i let them caramelize a little. it's also good if you toss them in raw and let them simmer like the recipe says.

as for cheese, i use whatever cheese i have in the house. cheddar, american, swiss, jarlsberg,  fontina, brie, what-have-you. i don't bother with a breadcrumb topping. maybe a little sprinkled parmesan on top if i have it handy.

this week i made one with about half american cheese and half sharp cheddar, both from cabot, which is locally made and quality cheese.

i like the smoothness of american cheese. (not pasteurized processed cheese food product, mind you)

last month i was talking with cr over a plate of this stuff and we both said that this is not the mac 'n' cheese we remember our mothers making. neither of us EVER remembers seeing our moms start with a roux.

i checked with my mom and she said she just tossed the macaroni in the dish with some milk and layers of cheese and baked it. and i remember that it was delicious.

mine is delicious, too, but a little bit of a different animal.

i am having some for dinner. it's good leftover, and it freezes well.

lunch at my house

it isn't very exciting, but it is delicious:

i saw this recipe for eggs and kale on toast and since at the time i happened to have a bunch of kale (i had never bought kale- this one came to me as a hand-me-down) and i went right ahead and made it.

it now figures in my favorites.

i modify it a little, serving it on english muffins, which are my preferred toast. and i have used both fresh lemon juice and bottled lemon juice; both work just fine. similarly, you can use fresh garlic or garlic-from-a-jar.  i play kind of fast and loose with the actual amounts, and i have not found that i have reached the quantity of garlic that is too much, but there IS a point at which the lemon juice is way too much, so be prudent.

today i went ahead and tossed some miso in the pan with the greens, and it was yummy.

good and good for you.

eat more kale.

it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood

fred's been gone a long time, but we still miss him.

i remember afterschool i discovered if i ran out right after dismissal and didn't talk to anyone i could usually make it out of the parking lot and to the corner just in time for the light and get on the interstate, placing me in front of the TV just in time for mr. rogers' neighborhood.

if you are confused because it sounds like i was old enough to drive, that's ok. my true love affair with fred (i'm old enough to call him fred now) and his show began october 6, 1981.

i was home sick from school, the kind of sick where you have the tv on but if you get stuck with a bad channel, you're maybe not well enough to get up to change it and it was before we had any such thing as a remote in our house.

so i was watching tv when the first footage of the sadat assassination came fresh into the news rooms and in a hurry to get the scoop, every channel put it right on the air without even looking at it.

it only played once in that raw unedited form.


it was carnage. and it was on every channel. a little later when i was able to get up and lay just under the tv, turning through the channels looking for something i could watch, there were channels that kept playing the (now edited) footage and channels that had on other programs, but i noticed that every show- every. damn. show. - was either full of violence or unkindness or fun at someone else's expense and then i got to the channel where fred was putting on his sweater and he was that day the single voice in the wilderness, asking us to be better people than that.

telling us that we were fine the way we were.

when i was in college i found i had friends who loved fred for the same reasons i did (maybe minus the story about the assassination) and we often left our 2:00 class as soon as we could because that gave us eight minutes to run across the quad to watch fred on tv.

and i remember a party at which someone appeared in a slinky black dress reclining on the piano (we were music majors) to sing it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood as a torch song. you don't even have to change the words. it works fine just like that. sing it breathless, with a few appropriate pauses.

i have always wanted to have a neighbor
just like you
i've always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you
so
let's make the most of this beautiful day
since we're together, we might as well say

it's a beautiful day in my neighborhood. yes, this is my neighborhood.

would you be mine? 
could you be mine?
won't you be 
my neighbor?

in the late 80's my dad ran into fred on a beach and told him that his two daughters were very big fans, but my dad for some reason didn't tell fred that his two daughters were 18 and 21 years old.

but he said he hoped it was a beautiful day in our neighborhood wherever we were.

and you know, fred? it is.

getting to know mister rogers
fred rogers
mister rogers and me
best acceptance speech ever

next stop brasil

ok, so you're both aware that i like to click through random blogs.

the other day i spent fifteen minutes clicking random blogs without bothering to read them.

why?

well, first let me qualify that. i read some of the first one and i read one other one, but it was otherwise just dozens of clickthroughs.

for some reason, when i hit the random button from my own blog (a handy starting point) the first blog i went to was bilingual english/spanish. the second one was spanish. then there were a string of blogs in portuguese, and even one in portuguese about BEING IN SPAIN.

then there was a madrid based english language blog consisting of one page telling you it was rubbish and should not have come and then dozens of other spanish or portuguese blogs.

how did i get in that string?

*cue twillight zone music*

open letter to matthew inman

hey, were either of you following the short-lived flap over at the oatmeal last week? i can't really say i was, because by the time i read about it in the mary sue, it was already over.

short version: matthew inman (whose comic i follow regularly) drew a comic that was representative of his personal experience in the gaming world but pretty far off of the experience of many women in the gaming world.

some people wrote in to criticize him for it.

and instead of digging in his heels, he said pretty much the equivalent of "wow. i'm sorry. i meant to express something about my experience and hadn't even considered how different other people's experiences are and i certainly didn't mean to belittle anybody and for good measure here's a check made out to an appropriate organization", which is a refreshing and lovely response to criticism, especially in today's media climate.

and i wanted to write and tell him what i thought about it, but i don't see a contact link and didn't feel like adding to the drowning sea of likes and reblogs in his comments, so i am writing it here.

dear mr. inman,

i saw the controversy over your girl gamers comic before i saw the comic because the comic itself was buried in my rss feed and by the time i saw it, i already knew how the story had come out and therefore had preconceived notions about it.

i follow your comic regularly and i know enough to know that while sometimes i find your work to be a perfect fit with my own perceptions, sometimes we are worlds apart. that's ok; i am as bored with people with whom i agree all of the time as i am with people with whom i agree none of the time.

had i seen your comic, i would not have liked it. i would have thought "wow. that certainly is a different view of gaming than i experience" and i probably would have just chalked it up to one of the differences between us.

but a number of people did write in to speak with you about it, and instead of painting yourself into the corner, you were gracious and flexible and you sounded like you had maybe taken the time to rub two brain cells together and try to look at the issue from someone else's viewpoint.

and without being asked or told, you went ahead and wrote out a check for what looks to me like quite a lot of money, just to make your point.

if you ask me (and i know you didn't), your response was sufficient at the moment you acknowledged you understood why some people were upset. you went from being mensch to hero when you backed up your words with action, and i hope people remember this when it comes time to think about where they might do their webcomic-related shopping.

so thanks.

love, flask

snowball

here's a super fun little timewaster you can play with.

i found it via boingboing and i like to use that link because there's no nice place to park it when you're not playing. like a lot of cute flash games, you need a tab with a link to park it in between games, if you're like me and leave a tab open so you can play it at odd moments without having to look it up.

it's a cute pinball facsimile, and does a pretty good job for a flash game. i loves me my pinball, so i don't take that lightly.

rose red

last monday at catamount i shed my first blood of the season.  i cut a corner too narrow and fended against a tree with my right forearm, so i have a pretty big scrape there.

it didn't seem like much at the time, so i didn't wash it out immediately, but it turns out it was a pretty dirty tree and there's some stuff in there which means it's sore. it's healing fine, but i underestimated the depth and dirtiness of the scrapes, figuring it wasn't worth bandaids and cream.

it may still not have been worth it, but i get to think about it pretty close for a few days yet. it looks very nice along with the bruises from this friday.

in other news, i'm ready to show you a thing that came off my worktable last week.

a while ago i saw a bunch of posts about duct tape roses which made the rounds about valentine's day. i thought they would be cool to make, so i got me some duct tape and started making them. the first few were really hard, but i got the hang of it, and they're something you can do while you're watching TV.

i found some online tutorials for it, but this one is my favorite:

so i got to work on them, and had enough to bring them to my mom's for everyone at easter, plus the secret project i was working on, related to the pennies.

here are my photos of some of mine.

foot bed

ok, so i'm going through the piles of stuff is started accumulating to tell you about later, and i'm kind of doing in in reverse chronological order at least as far as the pictures go. by the time i get around to last october, it will probably be next october, which will be fun.

...i hope.

both of you regular readers already know that i have a long-standing problem with foot pain. it has to do with a truckload of arthritis degeneration especially in my left foot, where i also have bone spurs in three of my metatarsal joints.

plus i'm carrying around some extra weight, which never improves that sort of situation.

last year i saw a podiatrist who suggested that he rig me up a storebought insole modified with a metatarsal pad because it would be cheaper than a custom orthotic.

surgery, he said, is also an option, though a temporary one, because bone spurs tend to grow back and although they can round off the chisel points on my metatarsals, they will only sharpen up again as the joint damage progresses.

ok, so we went with the cheap solution, and why not?

it did make an improvement, but what it did mostly was shift the pain to a different location, but it bought me some extra time on my feet before the pain set in.

and then i was in a parking lot after a race and we were talking with our friend doug about crashco's calf injury last summer and rehabilitation of same and doug had rather a lot to say about it in a way that suggested he spoke with authority.

"so what are you," i ask him. "an orthopedist?"
"no", he says. "i make prosthetics and orthotics for a living."

now we have been friends with doug for maybe thirteen years, but when i say "friends", we are more "parking lot friends". we see each other twice a week in summer and make chitchat about the weather or the course or whatever, but it's reasonable in this context that i might know a guy thirteen years and not know what he does for a living.

so then we get to talking about what doug could maybe do for me.

so finally last week i got myself into his office (orthoteknics) and he made me an orthotic.

well, a pair of them. it is really interesting to run in them because they give my feet support that just hasn't been there for a long time and i am amazed to feel how i've been compensating over the years.

and doug was a good sport about it and let me take pictures.

so he's got this cute machine with a grid of rubber pins like those contour toys with the metal pins in the plastic frame and you put your foot on it and the pins come up and there's a little form that fits over the pins to make the form of the metatarsal pad and then it sends all this information over to the computer and produces essentially a topographic map of your feet.

and you know how i love maps.

so. interesting machinery, pain mitigation, maps.

boo-yah.

more numbers

both of you know i made a little fuss last month when my car turned 100,000 miles.

last week there was another lesser milestone, but i like number patterns, so i took a picture for you to enjoy or not.

i find that in the aftermath of the bike crash, i just feel tired. i'm spending a lot of time lying down not because i'm too tired to sit up, but because the parts of me i use for sitting are the most bruised.

too tired out to do much standing and walking around only hurts because, well, when you walk, you move those areas where your legs attach to one another.

so i'm doing more lying down than i would like, but maybe it will be good to rest.

things that begin with tr...

if you do not want to read anything about my squishy bits, this post is not for you.

let's start with wednesday, shall we? i thought maybe i would go for a little bike ride and racked my bike to go to catamount (get your own blasted link) and when i got there i was missing a wheel.

...which made me look back on that suddenly stopping and reversing pickup truck and that second pickup truck meeting an officer of a local police force that i do not like and the subsequent flurry of state and local police officers in the area with a little paranoia.

did i lose my wheel where it had maybe caused an accident? was i being looked for?

probably not.

but all the way home i was a little nervous, plus i really wanted to find that wheel and i was driving my route backward looking for it and that's when a passing car ticked a stone into my windshield, which is why i was getting it repaired yesterday morning, which is why after i got done my grocery shopping i decided to take my bike ride just up the road instead of going to all the trouble of racking my bike and going back out to williston.

i decided to ride from my house up to the preston pond loop trail by way of notch road , take the trail across to stage road and come home. it combines a nice steady dirt road climb with some trail riding and it gets me out and back very nicely.

and there were pretty flowers!

i saw my first trillium of the season but it was not unfurled, so i didn't stop.

oh, let's be real. i was climbing on a thing that's kind of tricky to me and managing to pick good lines and keep going, so no way was i stopping to take pictures of it.

but i had gone to the trouble of putting my camera (complete with hard case) in my jersey pocket, so i was thinking that i would have to keep an eye out for more pretty flowers, especially up where the trail levels out, and on the western slope, where things are likely to be more developed.

trillium

and i'm moving happily along, feeling good, putting my tires right where i want them which is a big, big plus if you're going over any kind of rocks and stuff and i was even tearing it off with a little style and that's when i noticed the trout lillies and more trillium, and i was thinking that i would have to be on the lookout for some nice ones to photograph and i'm still picking my spots pretty well, even with the mudholes and waterbars.

i will pause here to tell you that my weight combined with that of my bike is well over 200 pounds. and (spolier alert!!!) a slow-motion fall on a bike can be much more dangerous than a speedy fall, because you go right down instead of sliding or rolling.

so i was looking off to the side at a lovely little trout lilly and noticing the trough of a waterbar in the trail and i was thinking "alex, can i have "things that begin with "tr" for 500 please?" and then i thought "ha. "trebek" begins with "tr" and that was the last thing i thought before things went very bad.

i had, in that moment, decided to make a little hop to go over the mudhole in the waterbar instead of just putting my weight full back and rolling, but gotten it wrong and so i managed to fully commit to preloading my front shock, only where i landed that front tire was not on the other side, but stuck right down in the trough.

a thing with my kind of mass carries some pretty good inertia. so when my bike suddenly stopped moving forward, i did not. and instead of flying over the handlebars and rolling or skidding as i might have done had i been moving faster, the whole of my weight came crashing down with my squishy bits on the headset.

this is where i fell.

this was followed by the immediate ricochet back so that the seat jammed into my back (i'm still clipped into both pedals, so the bike hits me carrying the force of all of my weight), which was immediately followed by another sickening fall forward, but no, not mercifully onto the ground, but placed just so the headset jammed into my belly and my squishy bits were  most forcefully and painfully struck by the top tube.

THEN i fell to the ground, landing directly on my camera.

it's fine, thank you. remember that hard case?

i have not yet looked in the mirror, but let's just say that anyone seeing me nude would have a good idea of the size and shape of my camera case.

well, for a few minutes i just laid there in paralyzing pain.  then i laid there for a while more in paralyzing pain.

"wow", i said to nobody in particular, "that fall would have KILLED a man."

trout lilly, red anther

and then i noticed that i had fallen near some pretty flowers,  so i took pictures.

 

trout lilly, yellow anther

mud and angry red skin, showing tire print

then i got up and rode home.

i am experiencing what your dentist calls "some discomfort".

old, fat and slow

well, you can't do anything about the first one, but the other two are at least partly in your control.

i STILL haven't lost an ounce (not an ounce!) but i am stronger and looking trimmer, which is really the goal anyway.

actually, the goal has nothing to do with appearance. my goal never has anything to do with appearance. i wash my hair before i go to bed and sleep on it wet. the only time i care what i look like is if i'm going to something like a funeral and i wish to show respect by looking presentable.

a long time ago i was standing in front of a class and i took off the hat i'd been wearing and a kid in the front row piped up to say "you really DON'T care about your hair, do you?" and half the class held its breath to see how i'd respond to this possible insult, and the other half laughed, knowing i would laugh too.

so the real reason i would like to lose weight is because no matter how powerful you are, extra weight is extra weight. i want to feel lithe and light and strong again. someday i want to be state champion again. it won't be too hard if i can get back in shape, since my goal is to do it in the over 60 age group, so i have a few years to get in shape, and let's face it: usually only two or three girls show up for that race anyway, and often only one finishes.

what you ask for

a number of years ago i wrote to the admissions office at ithaca college asking for a poster i could put on the wall of my classroom.

you know, because in college admissions they HAVE those sorts of things to send out.

and it seemed like a perfectly reasonable request; i am a graduate of the school of music there, and i got a top-drawer education and i was working as a music teacher in the public schools and thought my classroom would be a nice place for an IC poster.

they very promptly sent me back a lovely package containing some glossy brochures and a t-shirt. granted, it's a very nice t-shirt and one of my favorites to this day, but not exactly what i asked for, and doesn't even meet the purpose of the thing i asked for.

i just shake my head.

anyway, the video of the last home choir concert (which actually is the Last Home Choir Concert- don't get me started) is posted, so you can watch it if you like.

http://www.ithaca.edu/music/live/ondemand/20120324_choir/

The Listserve went live last night, and i got my first email from it. i do not think i am going to be disappointed. you can sign up, too.

beans, beans, fritos, and cheeese

this is a non-commercial blog. i do not monetize it. granted,  i do sell stuff off of my zazzle panel over there to the right, but what you see is the height of aggressiveness in my marketing.

but hey, they're my own designs, and if i'm going to keep a blog for my words and a podcast for my music and photo galleries, i may as well let you see my designs for zazzle. i'm already out there showing off.

i do not run advertising here. i am not morally opposed to paid advertising on blogs. if both of you made enough click impressions to warrant it, i might use advertising even though i think it spoils the look of the place.

what i promise you, though, is that you are never going to see a post here in which i pretend to be all breathless and excited about a commercial product and pretend it's not advertising.

i only mention it because i'm about to drop a whole lot of brand names for absolutely no reason than these are the ones i use in my kitchen without fail. if i do not have these particular items in these brands, i do not make this dish. yes, it does make a difference.

often when i write to you about what's in my kitchen i am writing about some precious little thing i am making from scratch using fresh ingredients. and yah, boo, that's most of what i eat here.

but sometimes, yah, i WANT beans, beans, fritos, and cheese. i make no apologies for it. one time a long time ago a waiter at  the moosewood restaurant told me there's no such thing as junk food. even twinkies have their place on the table.

and if you are wondering why a waiter at the restaurant should dare to talk about menu and nutrition, the moosewood is a labor collective, so the guy who waits your table on monday might be head cook on tuesday. they KNOW about food.

uh, anyway. last week i got me a hankerin' to eat beans, beans, fritos, and cheese.

no, it's not the same as beans, fritos, and cheese.

because there are two different kinds of beans.

start with original fritos corn chips. no newfangled sizes, shapes or flavors will do. pour a half bag of those suckers into your baking dish (you probably should use MY baking dish for best results) and shake them down to settle them a little.

on top of those pour in a can of goya coloradas guidsadas (that's kidney beans with sauce). si es goya, tiene que ser bueno. yes, pour in all the sauce.


yeah, shake it down a little, because the pan is looking kind of full and you still have stuff to put in there.

next cheese. i use white american cheese from the cabot creamery and although i buy cabot products whenever i can this is actually the least fussy of the brand names. any real american cheese will do. that is, any pasteurized processed cheese, as opposed to any pastuerized processed cheese food product, because you want to be using something made with actual cheese instead of an oil emulsion.

but i use cabot cheese because it it made locally and i can go see the place and even though cabot creamery is now accepting milk from away (read: western massachusetts), it's still pretty local and pretty clean.

so i lay in three or four slices of cheese and then on top of that i put in a can of old el paso refried beans. i use the vegetarian ones, but any flavor will be just fine. i have tried other brands, but do not like them as well.

then when i get it smoothed in (it will not look nice, no matter how smooth. it will still look like dog food, and not quality dog food at that) i lay over it another three or four slices of cheese and pop it in a 350° oven until the cheese is all melty and starts to bubble and maybe even brown a little, about forty minutes.

then i let it sit for ten or fifteen minutes to get its bearings before i cut into it to put it in the plates. there is no way to make it look good in the plates, either. it looks like slop.

i pour two taco sauces over it, because that's how i like it. i use both old el paso medium and ortega medium because the two of them together give me the taste i want on this dish.

more about pennies

so if you're been following the top secret penny project, once i had collected the pennies i thought i should do something with them.

so this isn't really part of the whole project, but adjunct to it.

i hope it gives you a giggle.

opening day

saturday was opening day at catamount.

i went, of course.

i used to go every year for both opening and closing and a lot of the days in between but in recent years i have been out on the road at both opening and closing, so i've had to settle for just a lot of days in between.

you know i've been riding and running and in general trying to get into shape, and i was surprised that i only lasted an hour out there; it was all my shoulders could take. i keep forgetting that you use your upper body a lot more on trails than you do otherwise, so i never stop being surprised that i'm sore.

i think maybe i will go back this afternoon. the weather is nice and i need to do some exercise-y thing.

yesterday i went to play golf with the crashcos so even though it wasn't a terribly aerobic workout, at least i was outside and moving.

and they're so patient. one of the drawbacks to living alone is that i don't get to talk much to live people but when i finally do get to see live people i have rather a lot to say and end up running my mouth a lot.

i think they understand.