Taster Spoon

Keeping up my end(s)

I know, this isn't the post you were waiting for as I hereby break my month-long silence.  Lotta stuff going on, that's all.  But then - and we've talked about this before - you take a little break for one reason or another and it's so hard to get back in the groove, because why post at all if it's not going to be about something significant, and as time wears on the bar inches higher.  So I'm instead going to abide by one of my life rules that has served me reasonably well: Keep Expectations Low.  (See how I put the "reasonably" in there?  The rule in action!)

So what's new? 

1. We are having a plethora of rainbows today! 

2. Because of the holiday yesterday, today is Donut Day!  There is someone who always gets to the donuts before me, who has been cutting the best donut (raised glazed) in half and leaving half.  The Dieting Donut Dissector!  I have been loving the DDD, because I feel like by taking the remaining half I am doing a public service by preventing staleness but also feel like I am getting a whole serving, but it is only half the usual guilt!

In the beginning of January, though, DDD started cutting only about a third of the donut out...leaving two thirds.  This was awkward, but manageable.  I couldn't very well continue to take my usual half, leaving 1/6 of a donut on the tray - that's like leaving a couple of bites.  Not cool.  So I have to either cut the remainder into halves and take a donut third, leaving a third to turn stale even quicker, or simply take all 2/3 of the donut.  You can imagine what I chose.  What with work and all, I've stopped exercising in any regular way, and, let's just say, you can tell.

Recently, DDD showed even further restraint, and began taking just a quarter donut.   Having increased my own consumption from a half to two thirds, it was natural that I seized upon the 3/4 donut as Mine!  But there's no virtue in taking 3/4 of a donut, so my pleasure is substantially reduced.  It's really a net loss.  

Can you see where this is heading?  Today the DDD literally cut out and removed just a bite of the best donut.  A tray full of variety sprinkles, coconuts, cinnamon sugars, chocolate dipped...and 7/8 of a raised glazed with drying edges. 

Which makes me want to say, Come on, man, we had a deal.  You take half, I take half.  You take a little less than half, I do my best for the cause.  Now you take a bite and I have to be the jerk who leaves 3/8 of a donut on the tray?  What would you do in this situation?

3. Have you heard about my haircut?  There's a topic we can sink our teeth into! 

I cut my hair somewhat less frequently than I go to the dentist, but more frequently than I go to the doctor.  I think it's been about two years.  After Ace begged me to get a Real Haircut from a Real Salon for my birthday in September, I hied me over to Yelp - and spent hours weeding out all the reviews from Asians (different hair needs) and was left with very few data points.  I asked friends with good hair.  I cut pictures out of InStyle.  I signed up to be a Hair Model at Edge and waited by the phone.  I pored over the archives at Hair Thursday. 

At Christmas I finally got around to following up on a recommendation from a co-worker whose hair has been looking pretty great over the last year or so.  Mine was dragging me down.  Long.  Droopy.  Ragged rather than wavy.  Anyway, I went to this salon where the lady freelanced, and she was...fine.  The haircut wasn't bad - she cut long layers into it so the wiggles in my hair look like curls that are meant to be there rather than just a failure to blow-dry out the messiness.  Picture Rachel Geller's before she got The Rachel.  Ace agreed that maybe it didn't look particularly glamorous, but said that at least it looked like a Haircut.

So I have no complaints about the stylist - hairwise.  Here's the thing - she is a recently-immigrated middle aged woman with mediocre English, challenging pronunciation and few shared cultural reference points who went freelance only recently but maybe didn't have the book of business she thought she did and is now clearly trying to rally a loyal following, and she oohed and enthused over my hair! my long, wavy, light brown hair! to a degree that was a little overwhelming.  Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of being fussed over but her fussing just had an air of desperation, making me feel less like she uniquely could see my inner beauty and was determined to bring it out and more like she was just buttering me up.   It was a stressful hour.

This doesn't make me excited to go back.  And maybe the reason I get a haircut so seldom is because I have yet to have a fulfilling relationship with a hairdresser.  It's always strictly a business transaction.  You know, gesture at some pictures, read a magazine, look up, cry, pay, tip sheepishly while apologizing for the crying, go home. 

You know what I want?  I want a hairdresser who says, "OMG!  Look at this MOP on your head!  Sweetheart, your hair needs some CPR.  Look at your eyes!  We need to draw some attention to these eyes!! Why are you hiding these cheekbones, honey?  You know what would look so good with your cheekbones?  You just sit back and let me bring out the gorgeous.  You know what you have, you have Jennifer Aniston hair!  Can you believe Jon Mayer?  Srsly, good riddance to Brad if you ask me.  OMG, are you seriously wearing White Musk right now?"  Someone who will flutter around and make me feel like a million bucks for $80.

Okay, fine, I want a homosexual.  Is that homophobic?  Or homophilic?  Maybe I should clarify that I don't precisely want a hairstylist because he likes dudes, but rather that I am seeking a certain set of personality characteristics.  And of course for him to have hair talent.  There was just such a hairstylist at the salon shared by Madame X.  He was cooing over and gossiping up a storm with his client and I looked at them longingly.  But I can't just go to the salon one day and hope that she is busy and he is not.  The salon is like a freelance workspace where the stylists rent their stations but have all their own clients.  You make appointments via their personal cell phones.

What to do, what to do.  Perhaps I was taking the wrong route by focusing my research on the hair angle.  I thought about asking my neighbors whether they "knew any hair stylists."  But I have a hunch they'd take it the wrong way, besides which, they don't seem like they would know any hair stylists.  I considered asking another friend who, while also not the type in question, seems like he'd be a little more up on the Scene and in the past has been a straight (ha ha) shooter about, you know, at which clubs in the Castro girls are welcomed/tolerated/discouraged, that sort of thing, and would probably not get his nose out of joint from my wishful stereotyping.   But he's moved away.

So I am adrift.  On a sea of wavy hair.

4.  I'm about to start traveling for almost three solid weeks.  I'm pretty excited that I am so deeply involved with work at the mo, what with the economy and all, but I'm also looking forward to checking in on some of my favorite ladies, one of whom I haven't seen in, gosh, three years?  She's a trapeze artist/salsa dancer/world traveler who keeps her independence as a freelance software developer.  She cannot be contained.  When you ask her where she is from, she says "Manhattan."  Actually, she says, "Manha-N." She is the New Yorkiest person I know, and she is going to go country and hike around the Appalachian Trail with me this weekend!   I wonder if she owns boots.  We have one of those relationships where, as long as I've known her (college, freshman year), I've done all the pursuing, and I don't mind a bit.

RAW IS WAR

What do you do when all your girlfriends are on the verge of delightful motherhood?

You console yourself by doing all the things pregnant girls can't do!  Go wild!

Like, buy raw milk at the farmer's market.

Hippie? 

Even lowest-common-denominator RealAge published an article suggesting that if you are going to drink milk at all, at least some of its nutritional benefits are destroyed through pasteurization.  It may help with allergies.  On the flip side, the New York Times depicts devotees as death wishing crazies.  But I'm young, I'm single, I have life insurance!

A quart of skim and a quart of whole were both $4.25.  A pint of cream was $10.  Naturally I got the whole.  I figured I could separate my own cream, thanks anyway, nice try. 

I was kind of excited by the prospect of un-homogenized milk, ever since I went to the San Mateo country fair last summer.  I prefer skim anyway, but was completely converted when I looked at a homemade sign made by a little girl for a 4-H project, explaining how milk is obtained and prepared.  She described the milking process and the pasteurization process, and then, just as straightforwardly, explained the homogenization process, which distributes the cream and remaining white blood cells throughout the fluid.  White blood cells?  You mean pus?

If that doesn't turn you off milk, nothing will.  My solution was to stick to skim, in the hopes that nothing was distributed throughout the milk, no pus mixed in with the cream.

It was fun - so olde tymey! - to see the layer of yellowish cream on top of the whiter skim in my glass bottle of milk...only I had no idea how I was supposed to "skim" it off.  I don't have a cream skimmer.  I can't even do the butter churn on the dance floor.  And I've had enough experience pouring things to know that you don't always get the top layer, or the bottom layer, or whatever layer you're trying for.  And then I remembered - my gravy separator!

I poured about half the bottle into the separator, only couldn't see the clearly delineated cream layer anymore.  So I put it in the fridge, and lo, what was left in the bottle sure looked like skim milk.  I had a small glass.  Would it taste strange and funky like that time I got 16 ounces of goat milk yogurt?  Would it taste "ethereal" like the milk in that New York Times article?

I have to be honest with you.  It just tasted like milk.  Skim milk. 

Pregnant ladies can relax.  You're not missing anything over here. 

I think I'll go pour myself a cocktail, light a cigarette, have some sushi and dye my hair.

I love everybody today.

Ace's alarm popped off at 7:00 today, which was 10:00 in Washington, D.C.  To my surprise, it was tuned to NPR.  Usually it's about half a channel off of some loud rock-ish station that makes me want to beat him.

This morning, he rolled over to hit snooze and I shouted, "No!  Don't you want to hear the inauguration?!?"

He pointed out that we still had two hours to wait, but I wanted to hear what the temperature was, who would be on stage, the debate over whether Rick Warren would use the "J" word, what the concert was like the day before, where spectators had come from, how many people had camped out since two in the morning and how many people had been taken to hospitals for hypothermia...

I've been doing a little jig all day.  Everybody seems to be in a good mood.  Even the commute traffic seemed more polite.

At work we had been warned not to stream any coverage over our computers so as not to overload the network, and as consolation they had a blueberry pancake breakfast (and helium balloons!)  in our biggest conference room, where they showed coverage on our big projector screen.  Except, they weren't showing TV, they too were streaming from the Internet and right in the middle of President Obama's inaugural address the connection got completely chopped up (because everybody ELSE in the world was streaming) so everybody took their pancakes into the small break room and watched the little wall TV there instead.

We filtered merrily out to our desks to work, but then after a continuing legal education video at lunch back in the big conference room, somebody switched back to CNN.com and we all stood around for another fifteen minutes, pretending we were still picking at our lunches while we watched the parade.

Maybe it's because people who work in the law are programmed to look for things that can go wrong, but it seems like all day everyone has been biting our nails. 

This morning, Ace said to me, "How many snipers do you think there are?"

I looked at him in horror and said, "DON'T SAY THAT."

He quickly corrected, "No, no, I mean, how many secret service and security snipers do you think there are?"  He gestured towards the humongous throng carpeting the Mall, and my swelling happiness was dampened a little.

After lunch, as I was being impressed by the First Lady's willingness to walk a mile in pumps and pondering whether the Second Lady might have considered a below-the-knee skirt, one of my colleagues murmured, "I can't believe they're just walking along the street like that, out in the open." 

Another guy walked in to grab a brownie, glanced at the screen and said, "Look at all those buildings and windows!  How could they possibly secure all that??"

Our IT person investigated the chicken salad wraps and said, "I hear that limousine is like a tank."

Well, never mind.  If I may quote one of the great orators of my generation, "On this day we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord."

Ooh, just trying to find that quotation, I read his speech and got all teary-eyed. 

I'm glad everyone else in the office seems equally distracted and joyous.  It seems important to take a minute to absorb this - as rare as they are, we don't often get the benefit of time to fully experience moments where ideals and hopes are made real and tangible. 

But only a minute.  There is work to do.

Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens

We've had a housekeeper come a couple of times.  (I could say cleaning lady,  but "housekeeper" makes me feel like the narrator in Rebecca, where I'm handing off luncheon menus and groundskeeping requests: "A fire in the library tonight, Mrs. Danvers, if you please.")

Everyone I know who has had a housekeeper has told me it's worth every penny and they'd never go without!  Last year we phoned up the cleaning lady who works for a few friends and is by all accounts impeccable (she dusts the door jambs), but she came by to give us an estimate and her initial once-over was going to cost $400.  So we put it off...indefinitely.

Then we visited friends who moved away from California to a ridiculously enormous and fabulous farm house on the East Coast.  I swear it is 10,000 square feet and done up like a high end B&B - just gorgeous.  And the lady of the house revealed that she does not have help cleaning, despite the fact that she has a very full time job outside the home and vacuuming alone takes her two hours.  Her husband intimated that hiring a housekeeper was, in a word, sinful.  (He's a self-reliance kind of guy.)  Part of me was aghast.  Part of me secretly agreed.

And since then I have been unable to justify - morally - hiring help when we have 1600 square feet and two able-bodied adults.  I wondered whether people who have cleaning ladies are really SO ENTHUSIASTIC because their lives are that much improved, or if it's perhaps because they're trying to convince themselves that it's something other than wanton laziness.

But here's the thing.  Ace and I have different concepts of cleanliness.  For him, it equals tidiness - everything in its place, no stuff lying around.  For me, it equals, well, clean.  Mopped floor, scrubbed toilet.  There's no question I am the messy one, and when I have to pick up after myself, I do it.  But I don't do it as much as I should and in those in-between times, when my crap is everywhere, Ace goes quietly crazy.  On the other hand, he doesn't notice the dirt or the scummy tub, so it doesn't occur to him to use a squeegee, say, and when we have guests I feel like it is my burden to spend a weekend mopping and scrubbing and vacuuming.  I know that I'm cleaning for me, but I still feel unduly burdened because it is joint dirt. 

So at our Halloween party, a friend glowed about her cleaning lady and said that she reluctantly took a break when she was between jobs, but as soon as she got her offer letter at a new job, the cleaning lady was the first person she called.

So I got her number.  Setting up our first meeting was confused and hectic because she doesn't speak English but she had an opening that very week.  No turning back!

She comes once a month, so she's been here twice.  The first time, our house had degraded into tornado territory, and I spent hours the night prior picking everything up.  But when we came home that night, the place smelled like roses and I felt the cares of the world slide from my shoulders.  It wasn't just tidy (Ace had been satisfied when we finished the picking up), it was clean.   (When I noticed she'd used almost an entire $8 bottle of Mrs. Meyers' geranium-scented cleaning solution the cheapskate in me had a conniption, but I tried to keep perspective.)

This last time it was less roses, more gas leak (an unlit burner had been left on) so it wasn't quite the arbor of delights, but I had been able to use the night before to spend a little less time picking up and a little more time organizing my desk.  I hope it continues this way, that each time I'll have kept the debris a little more in line than the last time and can make progress on organizational tasks that I've put off for - let's face it - years. 

Oh yeah, and she polishes the teakettle.  We've been making good use of it this fall, what with Sleepytime Tea and hot water bottles.  As mentioned in an earlier post, we didn't turn the heat on until after Thanksgiving.  Ace just got the bill and our gas usage for November was a third that of last year.  Now we just turn it on for a couple of hours when we get home and turn it off when we go to bed.  The house is usually around 56 degrees.

So speaking of my favorite things, I wanted to pass on a tip from my mother.  My mom gives me lots of advice.  I usually pretend to ignore it, just to be difficult, but I also usually take it to heart.  One good recommendation she gave me years ago was CuddlDuds long underwear.  They're now called CuddlSilks.  It's long underwear that is actually quite sheer, so you can wear it under everyday work clothes.  I wear them every day, now.  They're so convenient that I wanted to add a couple to my closet, so I went to the depressing Sears over at the Sad Mall (Sears is the only place I've ever seen them), and they were 50% off!  Now they have a bamboo variety.  They package it up like it's all eco-friendly to use the "replenishable resource" of bamboo!  Because cotton doesn't grow on trees, you know.

(Although, it's my understanding that cotton is a crop that requires lots of resources, pesticides, what have you, that do harm the environment so that 's why you should insist on organic cotton.)   

Let's close this post with the warm woolen mittens.  I got that periodic notice from Skype that I hadn't logged in in a while (IT at work removed it from my computer despite my whining and then my parents moved back from Singapore anyway), and I had to make at least one call or they'd keep my remaining eight Euros.  So I called a long lost friend in England only to discover she'd just gotten some terrible news.  That's neither here nor there, but I've been teaching myself to knit, per Sharon's skill-building imperative, so I used her as the inspiration for my first project: I decided to make my friend (shall we call her Pom?  PomWonderful?) mittens.

I totally made a mitten!  I used a pattern out of the original Stitch n Bitch book, which I got from the library.  (Recommend.)  I should have taken a picture, it was absurd.   It was about a foot long and eight inches wide.  I put my foot in it and considered keeping it for cozy toesies.  But then I tore it apart and started over. 

I know, they don't look remotely professional, but PomWonderful is pretty forgiving.  If I made her wait until I had real skill, she'd be waiting a long time.  Next I'm going to try a matching hat with a cable in it.

Update: I tried starting the hat, but my 9" needle is way too short.  I'll have to buy another pair of needles this weekend so I can work on it over the Christmas holiday.  This so-called frugal hobby is wiping me out on equipment.

I'll be sad to be done with this project.  The fuzzy wuzzy yarn is just too soft.  It's called Sensations Angel Hair, and it's 22% wool so I'm hoping it'll be a little warm. 

How to take the train to downtown SF

As promised, here are my "don't ask me how I know" instructions for getting to the office from the Peninsula via Caltrain!

The Muni is located right next to the CalTrain station (i.e. East of the train station, on that 280 off-ramp that turns into the Embarcadero). The $1.50 (flat rate, exact change) Muni looks like a train, but then goes underground somewhere around the Ferry Building. You want the first stop after it goes underground, Embarcadero. It's a ten minute ride at most. Then it's about a two block walk (away from the water) to get to the office. You will encounter two Starbucks en route.

In the morning, there's a CalTrain that arrives around 8:15. At that time (i.e. rush hour), every Muni that leaves from 4th and King goes to Embarcadero Station, so you can just take the first one that comes.

When you're going back in the evening, you have to be a little more careful about a few things, and leave yourself more time, accordingly. First, you have to be sure to buy a Muni ticket rather than a Bart ticket - same station, different machines. You need exact change, and the Muni machine - a turnstile - doesn't take dollar bills. So you have to go to a machine to convert your dollar bill to a dollar coin, and a different machine to convert your other dollar bill to quarters (the change machine doesn't take dollar coins). And then you have to get on the right Muni line - T and K, I think, but you'd better look at the sign. If you are returning home much after rush hour, the correct Munis are few and far between and you can wait in the station for half an hour until you get anxious about missing your train and end up taking a cab anyway, which is $8. After rush hour, the trains depart every hour, so you don't want to miss yours.

This was all very confusing to me the first few times, but I think I've gotten the hang of it and now you can learn from all of my mistakes. Here are some other things I learned:

Depending on the day of the week, your local CalTrain station may not have enough parking, and you will have to try to find street parking that doesn't have a two hour limit. Also there may be varying ways to buy your parking spot, from remembering your slot number and typing it into a machine near the train, to buying a receipt from the machine and running back to your car to stick it on your dashboard. So far all the parking machines and CalTrain ticket machines I've seen take credit cards.

Also if you're in doubt about where to wait, remember that the trains run on the right-side track, and once the train is in the station, you may not be able to run to the other side.

Out of My League

 I never would have imagined I'd ever become jaded about awards ceremonies. 

   

Early on in Ace's and my relationship, I was startled to discover that a triathlon takes a whole lot more time out of the weekend for speedy people than for the rest of us - because they must wait around until the whole thing wraps up so they can get their medal or plaque.  And in the beginning, I was tickled. 

  

I felt like a special person just attending the awards ceremonies, and paid careful attention to looking casual and comfortable there, lolling around on the grass, so bored, like, of course, this is totally my crowd, when in fact it is nothing like my crowd.  I have hierarchy issues and am not one to so much as make eye contact with my betters. 

 

It's a funny thing, sport, the way it puts the talent and the wanna-bes into separate social spheres for what are mainly practical reasons.  For instance, I may get along well with a fast cyclist, but I'd never meet them, because we ride at different speeds and would have no opportunity to talk.  Whereas I think Ace conducts a lot of his socializing with certain people over the course of long bike rides and runs, and develops a set of fast friends through proximity as much as anything.

 

When I swam with the Masters set at Stanford, those of us in the slow lanes used to joke that the fast people had no idea who we were because they never looked South.  This is mainly because the whiteboard on which the workout was posted (and the coach) were positioned next to Lane 1 (on the North side of the pool) so the 1:25 people had no reason to ever look down across the rest of us, bobbing and straining to hear the joke.  We knew who THEY were, but they had no idea who we were.

There's also the factor that there's probably a lot more attrition among slower people, perhaps less dedication (maybe it's less inherently rewarding to consistently bring up the rear, maybe they have too much else going on in their life), a lot more people coming and going, and so the community of the slow is necessarily less tightly knit. 

So I don't mean to suggest that fast people are snobs (which, no question, some are), but only to say that there is clearly an 'in' group, and that dating Ace has, for me, been an odd experiment in athletic social climbing.  Suddenly I found myself sharing the joke (I had thought it was a joke but it actually wasn't) that someone had signed up for San Jose mainly because they were out of olive oil.  And as pleased with myself as I was to do Boston and those national and world championships last year - they had the important secondary effect of making me feel a lot more comfortable around Ace's peers, like I was good enough in my own right to talk to them - to make eye contact.   

And there's some chicken-and-egg aspect to it, as well.  I got that roll-down spot to Clearwater in 2006 because I had tagged along to an awards ceremony with Ace - I got it just because nobody better qualified in my age group was there to claim it.

 

I took a step back from triathlon this year for a couple of reasons, one, I really wasn't enjoying it as much as I had.  The looming events that had once provided really helpful and positive motivation to exercise had morphed into pressure that made me feel constantly inadequate.   And two, let's face it, I wanted to go out on a high note, and 2007 was really an amazing year for me.  (On paper, anyway.  In terms of accomplishment and self-discipline I'm more proud of my first Ironman.)

I've discovered this year that I've lost my sense of awe with respect to the fast people.  I've learned that being fast is a product of both natural aptitude and hard work, and that one can make up for a lack of the other to a surprising degree.  So people's finishing times doesn't actually tell you that much about them, about how well-rounded they are, or about how full their lives are.

I realized I was in a different place when we were talking to a friend after the race and he remarked that he came in second.  I had no idea whether he was looking for congratulation or commiseration.  And I was neither impressed nor sympathetic, because I realized that the statement contained no meaningful information.

Anyway, I watched Ace finish up his "season" (he had done two races this year) by competing at Treasure Island Saturday.  It was an entertaining race to watch, because, I don't mind telling you, he trained very little.  He runs about 5-10 miles a week with Run Club, he rides his bike for a couple of hours on Saturday mornings if it's not raining, and he joins me at the pool on Sunday mornings if we manage to wake up in time.  The big joke this past week was that he was 'tapering,' because he missed one of the runs.  

On race morning, we nearly overslept as Ace hit his snooze button in his sleep until at one point I groggily said, "Don't you have a race today?"  He raced his car up against surprisingly dense traffic for a Saturday morning, and fifteen minutes before his group was set to be in the water he had yet to register. 

The announcer called out his name a few time at the start of his wave as a force to be reckoned with (because he had won last year) and Ace had the grace to wave sheepishly.  I watched the first lap of the swim, saw him round the buoy and pause to sit up and look around in surprise that he was in the lead.  As I angled the camera for his first lap of the bike, I chuckled as he passed me, asking, "how many laps?"  Of course I told him the wrong number (thankfully he clarified with someone better informed).  And then I was looking the wrong way when he ran past me on the final lap of the run.  The announcer called him out again, because, to both our surprise, he won. 

The organizers set the awards ceremony for some five hours after he finished.  We killed time as much as we could - snacking and napping and getting free ten minute massages, but come on.  After a couple hours Ace said we could skip it.  I felt bad.  I didn't have big plans, I could nap some more, it seemed ungrateful to bail on receiving a medal.  But I was also irritated by the inconsiderate planning.   Making people give up their entire day?   To wait three hours in the rain?

Supposedly he'll get it in the mail.

With Our Compliments II

[friendly butt pat]

"Wow, your jeans are so soft!"

"Why thank y--"

"You must sit a lot."

How is an airship different from a blimp?

No, seriously - I don't know.  But apparently it's causing lots of excitement among the nerd herd.

We're estimating "the first zeppelin in U.S. skies for more than 70 years" to land at Moffet this evening.  I guess enthusiasts have been tracking it.  I'm sure we'll go over and look at it.  They're offering balloon rides, oops, I mean airship tours, for $500 an hour.  Worth it?

My window looks south, but I don't see anything yet.  We've had summer-hot weather all week, and it's hazy.

Also this weekend, I hope to hit the haunted Toys R Us.

And the house of that guy in Redwood City. 

Ace got himself a costume yesterday.  It's so him.  But he tells me mine is so me, so that's cool.  WB had the great idea to recycle the chicken once again and go as Yes on Prop 2, but I felt it was time to change it up. 

Really, I was just walking through Wal-Mart (I literally went in to buy just a spool of white thread!) when it totally jumped out at me.  It's the first time either of us has outright bought a costume in at least four years, but boy what a load off.  Remember when I was sewing a stingray on that flight to Hawaii?  Talk about a vacation killer. 

I'm falling way behind in my crafting.  I tried making the most of a car trip to Yoshi's on Monday by getting my embroidery on in the back seat, but all I got was carsick.   I'm going to have to reel my gifting plans way back in.  Sorry!

Last night I made those savory leaf pastries everyone is talking about, only my bucket of 100 cookie cutters didn't include any leaves (!) so I made them pumpkin and moon shaped.  They could have been anything.  (Seriously - no leaves, but you do include a football helmet?  What kind of shape is that?  Are football players really into decorated cookies?)  The pastries, though, were kind of awesome, mainly just in that they worked out as filled pastries.  They weren't bricks, and they didn't leak too badly.

I used this recipe for pastry, switching out some of the white flour for whole wheat, and switching out the water for vodka.  (I keep hearing about the Cook's Illustrated obsession with vodka pie dough, and I don't really know their recipe, so I guessed.) 

What I think really worked well was cutting the butter into quarter inch squares before freezing it.  Making pastry after that, even by hand, took no more than three minutes.  Genius!

They had good flavor and were flakey, but they were sturdy enough that the health conscious among us could roll them quite thin.

I made up a batch of sweet pastry too, but I'm reluctant to turn one of the many pumpkins scattered throughout our living room (I think we're up to about 24) into a pie yet.  Need something to throw at the sixteen year old punks in sweatshirts pretending to be trick or treaters.

Do you have plans for the holiday?  What are you going as?

Haunted

Yesterday a friend forwarded to me and a list of other people that e-mail asking us to sign the petition objecting to illegal immigrants' getting social security benefits.  I sent a quick 'reply all' expressing my skepticism, and she shortly thereafter sent around an apologetic link to a website 'debunking' it.   

But not before another recipient Replied All, said "I agree with [Tasterspoon]!" and then went OFF, and I mean went OFF, on everything from Christopher Columbus to the surge in Iraq.  

I felt bad for having triggered the rant, since I hadn't actually done anything but point out the flimsiness of the e-mail and its premise.   But I felt really bad for possibly making my friend look like a dupe among her friends, when I could have just replied to her only.  I didn't mean to!  Irritation moved me to respond, and I thought that if I Replied All I could discourage further circulation.  But she did that just fine with the followup.  So I goofed, and I'm still feeling bad about it.  

For what it's worth, I did end my reply by expressing appreciation for her motivation to be politically involved.  And in a general sense, I mean that! 

But when I think about it, I'm honestly kind of annoyed by a lot of purportedly activist communications that do little other that stir up emotions based on misunderstanding.  I picture this "petition" landing in the president's Inbox, and have a little more sympathy for the government's apparent conclusion that we're a country of idiots.  (And I don't mean just this administration.  I'm sure every president's staff gets an enormous amount of ill-informed commentary and advice and it embarrasses me no end.)  

It must be a very hard thing to govern people who don't know what they're talking about, yet believe passionately in what they're saying (and count me among those people).  And it must also be a hard thing to decide what's best for the people you govern but at the same time respect their own judgments and convey that respect.  It's an awfully delicate thing.  

I didn't mean to talk about this; I guess the Queen's post reminded me of yesterday, because it's the only political thing I've gotten since I took myself off the MoveOn list as well as that of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (was anybody else suckered into that one back in '01?), and, I don't know, LiveNation, is that political?  I don't know where they got my info. 

I haven't been getting any solicitations or robocalls or anything...with the exception of a weekly recording that informs me that the warranty on my 11 year old car is about to expire and I should buy an extension.

And you want to talk about stalking, I was riding alone in the elevator Wednesday when the emergency call system picked up all by itself, and I heard the same message about my car warranty about to expire.

I'm being haunted by the ghost of a warranty extension salesman!

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum

As I was driving to work this morning, I passed a woman standing on the side of the road, holding a big piece of posterboard.  She was expressionless, and held it over her head, looking a little like John Cusack.

Only it wasn't a boombox, it was a handwritten sign, with an arrow that pointed directly across the street and said, in thick sharpie, "<-- SARAH AT VTS TREATED ME LIKE DIRT."

It's not what one expects to see on a sign held by a person on the side of the road.  My first thought was, "jilted lover," but why would the sign identify her employer, how was that relevant?  Fooling with her Yahoo personals would be much more to the point.

So then I wondered if VTS was an organization that provides assistance to [crazy?] people and had offered poor service.  I looked across the street where the arrow was pointing, but all I saw was a taikwondo gym.

Google had nothing.  All it came up with was, "Did you mean VTA Mountain View?", which is the light rail, and I didn't.