stats
I check my blog stats about once a month partly out of curiosity and partly just to make sure nothing strange is happening. By strange I mean a surge in unexplained traffic. The only strange thing that's happened several times is people on bulletin boards or social networking sites (is that what you call those?) like MySpace hotlinking an image from my site.

My favorite part of the stats is the top search strings. I get lots for "you're doing it wrong" and numerous variations which surprises me because why would you look that up? They can't all be looking for me. I also get a lot for reverse mullet and braids and this month Star Wars Valentine. I should probably link to what these correspond to, but I'm too lazy this morning.

The most perplexing one that almost always tops the list is Eva Green. When she first appeared I search online long enough to figure out she's an actress but I know nothing about her and have never written about her. Apparently it comes up on a search because I wrote about a book called Eva in the same post about gardening some scratchy green branches.

I saw something about Eva Green presenting at the Oscars and thought: hey, there's that lady. This morning Eva Green appeared on Go Fug Yourself. Now I know.

Disappear
I misplaced a CD a long time ago. I never looked that hard because I always assumed it would turn up in another CD case. For some reason I thought about it this weekend and decided to go through my entire CD collection and see if I could find it.

My collection isn't substantial. When I lived in L.A. my apartment was a short walk away from at least 3 great record stores and at that time I had nothing better to do every weekend than troll around all three and buy stuff.

I got rid of a bunch of stuff when I moved to the PAC NW and since then my intake has dwindled to about 2 CDs a year, usually gifts.

I moved my CD storage thing and found oodles of dust and lots of CDs I'd completely forgotten about but no lost CD. (I'm not saying what it is because you'd laugh so hysterically you'd probably strain a muscle.)

So where could that CD have gone? I know it didn't end up in the player because that's where I looked when it was first lost. It couldn't be lost behind some furniture because I moved everything during the big home improvement project.

Must be The Borrowers.

One Work Bowl Away From Insanity
Did I really write that I was thinking about more challenging cooking projects that took a bit of work? I must have forgotten my sanity shot that day.

On Friday I tackled a recipe that I knew my husband would love and I didn't fully grasp what I was getting into until I'd already started and by then it was too late and I didn't have a plan B so I slogged ahead.

This was a recipe that involved starting something in the food processor and tossing with something chopped and setting aside. Melting something in a saucepan, combining with something else and putting in the fridge. Mixer. Grater. Spatula. Measure 5 spices. Strain. Mix in a big bowl. Scrape into a baking dish.

By the time I was finished I was shrieking "bitch, bitch!" at the woman responsible for the recipe on the folded up piece of paper on the counter in my kitchen.

Still, it was delicious and it did make my dear husband happy.

We need to factor in that I was still sleep deprived and hormonal and frustrated with a situation that I don't wish to discuss here. I don't always mind big cooking projects. Timing is key.

On Saturday was the tamales which also destroyed half my kitchen so my mantra upon awakening this morning (through gritted teeth) was: no cooking, no cooking, no cooking.

And that would have been fine except I had a big pot of chicken broth from my tamale chicken and I hate to waste things. So I just threw together some chicken soup and a salad and that's going to be my dinner.

Bob had tickets to six, I'm sure thrilling, hours of jazz, which he took his mother to. I graciously decided to stay home. (Meaning I didn't want to go.)

It's storming right now. I'm going to peek at the Oscars and decide between that and the two chick flicks I have stacked by the TV.

The Sky's Alive With Turned On Television Sets
I'm cheating and posting this Friday because Saturday is going to be my no computer day and I'm going to make tamales and draw and stuff.

I saw in the news somewhere that Lost has been losing viewers and this person was putting forth the theory that it was like The X-Files and people are turned off by the confusing and convoluted plot. I was a HUGE X-Files fan and I loved the show continuously regardless of the convoluted plot until Mulder left because the best part of the X-Files was the connection between Mulder and Scully and not whether or not aliens were vaccinating the Klingons, or whatever.

Lost started losing me last season when it became less interesting and most of the characters became unsympathetic. Why do I care about these people?

Nothing happens on this show. We never move forward. It's the same thing over and over. If I have to watch one more close up of Kate's trembling lower lip and then outburst that "because they're going to kill ___" [insert Jack or Sawyer] one more time, I'm going to brain myself with the remote control. We're, what nine episodes into season 3 and we've seen how many characters? I love Jack, too. But an entire episode about his tattoo?

It started losing me halfway through last season because it was so awful and Michael couldn't go 5 minutes without saying, "My son!" and then Claire couldn't go 5 minutes without saying, "My baby!" But then, the end perked up and I got back into it. I don't hate the show but it's not my first choice when the DVR is filled with shows.

And while I'm bitching about shows, let's talk about 24. I wasn't even going to watch 24 but I have some fans in my office and I didn't want to be out of the loop if it turned out really good. The only thing I like in 24 is Jack Bauer. But holy crap, this show wrote the book on the same thing over and over.

Every season we have to have a bunch of really stupid bystanders to stand around saying stuff like, "Jack, what's happening?" and "Jack, I'm afraid" and what about scene after scene after scene where they download the schematics of the Louvre onto Jack's PDA even though they're top secret but somehow it always works and there are never any platform issues or software glitches. Chloe says, "Jack, I can't do that." and Jack says, "Chloe, you have to try." And 2 seconds later: ta da! It's done. In less time that it takes to update your operating system they can redirect satellites and have a team at the landing pad in a remote area located 4 hours of gridlock away.

And then there's always someone trying screw-over the president. I'm going to delete from the DVR and just keep up by overhearing people talk about it at the office. Maybe.

Finally, I'd like to talk about Heroes. I liked it enough to add it when it started and I've enjoyed it. They have Steven-freaking-Carrington on the show for Pete's sake. But holymoly has a show ever gone from zero to we-take-ourselves-too-damn-seriously faster? And it's kind of like the shows above, we're barely moving forward. I want something to happen. Not just everyone standing around crying/bitching/confused about their abilities. I thought The 4400 had abilities.

I'm sticking with the show although the Niki/Jessica plot is completely uninteresting. But I love Matt Parkman and I really love Hiro, my favorite TV character in a long, long time.

Also, just in case I haven't said it lately, Veronica Mars is the best thing on television.

Bob took this photo I can't remember what year, maybe 2000-ish and we were at a Filmpark in Germany.

Job History
My first job out of college I worked at a place that helped people get a contractor's license in the state of California. My job title was research assistant and the place called itself a school and I suppose that's at least partly true.

At that time, individuals seeking a contractor's license needed 4 years of experience and then they had to fill out a somewhat complicated application and take a lengthy examination. I have no idea how they do it now. What our company did was take an experienced applicant and completed his application and prepared him for the examination.

You could make a good argument that we weren't doing the world a great service because the operation was based on a hardcore sales drill. Some of those men were shamed into signing up for the course and many of them weren't smart enough to do the application or pass the examination without our expert hand-holding. Do you really want that guy building your swimming pool?

And for the record in terms of gender, I remember one woman going through the entire time I was with the operation which I think was about 2 years. There were some complications with that job that I'm not going to get into right now and but let's just say that the people who ran the place were not very nice but I liked my job and working with the students.

The purpose of this post is to mention a particular student that I thought about yesterday when I was driving home from work coming up under the topic of: I wonder whatever become of _______________.

Once the salesman finished emptying the student's wallet, he was brought to me for processing which included collecting information for the application. They had to choose a name for their contractor's business and it couldn't be vague or misleading. You couldn't call it "Super Special Contractors Inc." if your license was just for plumbing. And if you were a sole proprietorship you couldn't have a business name that sounded plural.

I remember this one guy and his wife who sat there bouncing a tiny baby on her lap and they wanted to call the business Joe-Bob Plumber & Son. I explained the whole sole proprietor/not plural thing and they were disappointed. They hoped their son would want to go into business with his father someday.

I was horrified that this poor little baby, couldn't even walk yet, was already saddled with the expectation of taking over his father's business. (And if I recall further, Dad didn't pass the examination on his first attempt.)

So I wonder what happened to that kid. He'd be old enough to work with the old man now. Did he go for the plumbing or did he run off to New York to become a dancer and bitterly disappoint his parents?

The photo is from around 1974 and that's me with the pretty smile and my grandfather, Fred Wilder of the Orleans Wilders.

Wide Awake I'm Not Sleeping
The sleep thing WAS going a lot better. I woke up at 4:30am every other day this week and since I go to bed between 9pm and 10pm, that's decent enough sleep to keep me functional and not a danger to myself or others. This morning I woke up at 2:30am. Wide awake, brain grinding on overdrive. By 3:30am I wept quietly into my pillow. Enough already.

I came to work early. I'm going to get my stuff done and do some cleaning and organizing this afternoon since my brain is going to be mush. Then I'm going to leave early and relax this evening and sleep like a baby tonight. This is just a phase. Everything is just a phase.

On to part 2 of my new recipe procurement strategy.

The main challenge is to find things that we both like. Bob's favorite meal is meat with a huge side portion of meat and extra meat on the other side. I prefer to accessorize with meat and usually only with seafood and poultry. My favorite foods often involve legumes and greens which Bob will politely eat a portion of and then root around in the refrigerator to see if there is any meat. Fortunately he is very happy with seafood and poultry and I almost always have a package of Trader Joes sausages in the fridge that can be whipped up and served alongside the lentil chard soup.

The next issue is the ingredient list. I love rich fatty food as much as the next person and Bob even more than that but I don't think it's healthy for us to eat a trough of macaroni and cheese three nights a week. So any recipes that call for two cups of heavy cream or 3 pounds of cheese are rarely brought out. I also don't like frying even though I think browned things are delicious so any recipe with extensive frying is generally skipped over.

Also remember I had this digestive meltdown last year which if you're truly interested you can find here. Start around April 10th. Going back and finding that I see that last April I also made gumbo and had insomnia. At that time the two were related because the gumbo turned my digestive system into a rebel attack on me, the empire, and I couldn't sleep during any of the battle scenes. Since then the rebels have been conquered although there are minor uprisings if I eat more than a tiny serving of anything fatty and delicious like French fries or chips.

The other ingredient tidbit is I hate when a recipe has about 35 items, 25 of which you don't normally have on hand and especially those things where you have to buy a bottle of something that costs $16 and you only use 1 tablespoon.

This weekend I think I'm going to make tamales which is not a new thing. I think my next new thing is going to be paella and I need to buy smoked paprika and I need to start scouting out recipes.

Pudding
Both the Oregonian and NYT Food sections have big articles about pudding this week. Completely different articles written by different people. Is late February pudding season? Does pudding go hand in hand with the Lent season? What secrets does pudding have to offer?

Both articles include something called Indian Pudding, NYT's is Indian Cornmeal Pudding and this apparently has some connection to American Indians. I had no idea. Where did the tribes get the milk?

I recently found a blog via megnut where a woman is going to cook everything in the French Laundry cookbook. I thought she had a post where she talked about challenging herself in the kitchen and I'm not finding it right now so either I'm making it up or just can't find it because, as usual, I'm doing this in a big hurry. This is just like the whole Julie/Julia project where another woman cooked everything in Julia Child's Art of French Cooking Cookbook.

I'm not insane enough to attempt to cook every recipe in a single cookbook but this got me thinking about trying harder to find recipes for things I haven't made that would be fun and yummy and take some work. The thing I like about cooking is the tangible reward after all the work is done that can be shared and appreciated by others. My least favorite part about cooking is dishes.

I don't mind general dish duty but when I'm into a big complicated thing and every pot and bowl and tray and spatula in the kitchen gets dirty and I have to constantly stop and wash and dry for reuse, or put away so I have a place for the next steps or else I have to reconfigure the dishwasher to cram more stuff in or empty it and that eventually makes me cranky. I should point out that I'm the kind of person who can't go to bed if there are dirty dishes in the sink.

At the moment I'm wondering about making one of these pudding recipes this weekend and I have more to say but there are people paying me to write a memo about the Indian Civil Rights Act and not to write about me and my recipe selection strategy so perhaps a sequel tomorrow.

My Office Window


(Dang, when I first did this I had cute little arrows pointed to the different items but when I saved it they disappeared and I don't have time to fix it right now. OOF!)

Update: Okay, arrows fixed. What I forgot to mention earlier was how he cleaned the window. He has a little suction cup and he used it to help himself swing back and forth like a tick-tock -- I swear I'm not kidding -- and he swept his squeegee back and forth to clean the window. It took about 10 years off my life just watching him (meaning trying very carefully not to watch him).

And to answer angelfeet's question: this is only the second time in two years I've had someone wash the outside window and last time they used one of those elevator bench things that goes up and down and it was two guys. I hope we do have the same guy because a photo series would be awesome. I also thought it was funny that as soon as I took out my camera he stopped what he was doing and smiled for me.

The Kitchen of the Sahara Continues
So I tried this new cookie recipe from the newspaper and what a giant forking disaster. I was supposed to beat some butter with sugars and then add a mixture of flour, cocoa and baking soda. There was salt, baking soda and vanilla as well. The recipe said it might be a tad crumbly but not to worry about it. Divide my dough.

Does anyone see a problem here?

I actually stood there with the recipe in my hand thinking: okay, I know what a stick of butter is, right? I know what a cup of flour is, right? I even know that if you just scoop your measuring cup in the flour you're likely to scoop too much so I don't do it that way. I have no idea what went wrong but either the recipe was corrected later and I missed it or the magical drying vortex of my kitchen struck again.

That pile of dust can't even fake being dough. Side note: the scary red color comes from the raspberry-chocolate chips.

I gamely packed my dust into logs by sheer force of will and wrapped them tightly! with plastic wrap and stuck them in the freezer. Then I made the gumbo which turned out fantastic. There are few cooking smells as delicious as when the finely chopped celery, onion and bell pepper hit the roux in the pan.

Time to bake the cookies.

That red thing is the silicone baking mat which at this point, I don't love or hate. The recipe said not to worry if when I sliced my cookies, they got a little crumbly, just stick the cookie bits back together.

The cookies that look like turds? Those are crumbs I squeezed in my fist to get them to hold together.

The whole mess was still crumbly out of the oven but I thought what the hell: we'll call it scrapple. Wikipedia says that scrapple is a savory mush and something about offal. What's that stuff they have at the frozen yogurt store that looks like cookie crumbles? I thought they called that scrapple.

Bob ate half the pan and said they were great.

I finally took the time to figure out how to use Google Reader and I would give you a link but everything I try just brings up my Google Reader which as it turns out, is sort of like every time a drug addict turns on his computer, there's a big pile of drugs sitting there.

I thought this was going to be a great time saving device and I wouldn't be clicking on blogs that haven't been updated. No this has turned into an obsession of I must keep up with every post. It tracks all my blogs even when I'm not around so when I log on, all the posts I used to miss, are right there waiting for me. To be perfectly honest I completely love it.

I had a fabulous day in the sun. I took a few photos. My NaBlo prize, in part, was a Flickr Pro account and I'm trying to use it more although can't stop suffering from photo insecurity. Here's the feed if you want to subscribe. You can do that with Google Reader, too. I can't believe I'm pimping for Google.

On my walk a dog ran out and barked at me and chased me. I should have taken a photo but it all happened so fast. Of course, the dog was a big as my fist and wearing a pink sweater and his people were calling him (her, it, whatever) Mimi so I wasn't scared this time.

Tomorrow is no computer day and I'm planning on some writing and sewing and making of delicious gumbo. And feeding the sourdough. I can't get that baby to thrive.

Sunshine On My Shoulders ...
Today is one of those magical days we get around here, usually a bit later than this, when it's warm and sunny and unbelievably perfect. You could never appreciate it unless you'd spent the last several months dark and cold and damp and knowing full well that from now until July there will be plenty more of the same.

I just went downtown to pick up our vegetables and everywhere I looked there were people walking or biking or pushing strollers or playing with dogs. Even the squirrels smiled and waved when I drove by. That's why I'm going to spend the day inside watching television.

Just kidding! I'm going to go for a walk and take pictures and do a bit of yardwork. Maybe vacuum the inside of the car. Maybe even read for a bit on the front porch, one of my favorite things to do when it's sunny and not too cold (or warm, depending).

I don't spend a lot of time reading the newspaper for a lot of reasons but one major reason is that it's so negative and doomsday. This morning I read 3 great stories.

(1) There were some hijackers on a plane. They didn't speak French so the pilot made an announcement in French telling the passengers what was going on and warning them that he was going to do a bumpy landing and when the hijackers fell over, to be ready. He did exactly that and the passengers kicked the hijackers asses. Excellent!

(2) A champion paraglider was caught in a thunderstorm and lost control and flew higher than Mt. Everest. When she saw the weather situation she radioed her ground crew and basically said, "I'm toast, it's been nice knowing you." She even lost consciousness but later landed and lived. Cool!

(3) There was a local story about some people who lost their dog. I know this happens every day and this story was in the paper because it happened to a newspaper reporter. Still. They put up fliers and a bunch of people helped them and they found their dog. Another happy ending.

To end this story, I will tell you that I got in bed at 8:30pm and slept until about 7:30am. I think this is going to be a super spectacular day.

More of the Same
This afternoon I went to see a new movie called Music and Lyrics which I'm not going to recommend until it comes out on cable and then only if you like Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore and dopey romantic comedies where the leads have no chemistry but the pure force of their personalities make the show worth sitting through.

The review in the paper gave it a C+ and that's about right. It said the movie seemed long and that's also right. Regardless, it was a nice way to spend a couple hours yesterday afternoon since I like Drew and Hugh and dopey romantic comedies. Everyone made fun of me when I saw The Lake House, too.

The movie opens with a parody eighties video that is spot on and totally hilarious and you can see it right now on YouTube. I recommend you watch that.

This weekend I'm going to drag the sourdough out again and see if I can make it do anything. And I'm going to work on this sleeping thing. The situation seems to be improving. I still wake up in the night but fall back to sleep more quickly. Also, rumor has it that tomorrow is going to be warm (60 F!) and sunny so I'd like to scratch around in the yard a bit. I wish it wasn't so muddy.

The Darkness of Night
I know I said I wasn't going to talk about this anymore and I had such a great night on Tuesday night. Something like 7 solid hours of zzzs. Then I got cocky. This morning I woke up at 3:30am. Just me and the dark.

While I had all that quiet thinking time, I tried to come up with a good Valentine's story for you. I don't have any super great or super bad tales to tell. Last year's story about dinner with my high school boyfriend is the best of the bunch.

I sort of remember a Valentine's that was probably 1989 or 90 when I went to see Faster Pussycat at the Roxy by myself. I could be making up the date and I spent about 3 minutes yesterday researching it and had no luck and didn't want to dig any deeper.

The club was packed and it was an awesome show (whatever day it was) except this bitchiass photographer who came along and put a steel box camera case or whatever on the floor right in front of me and stood on it. And not for a minute to take a few pictures but she wanted to park there. Unfortunately, it was a rambunctious crowd and my elbows and the elbows of other unhappy fans flew about until missy photographer moved on.

Bob and I don't like to do anything special for Valentine's. It's a stupid "holiday" invented for profit and disappointment. I usually bake him something fun and seeing as how Valentine's landed on Wednesday and there was no optimal baking time, I'm going to make something fun this weekend. I found these wacky raspberry flavored chocolate chips at the market which is one of his dream flavor combos so something with that.

This the best I can do on 5 hours of sleep.

Sleepless in Vancouver (WA)
This is ridiculous. I crawled in bed at 8:50pm and fell right to sleep. Then I woke up at 12:30a. I was so thirsty I drank two tankards of water. Then I tossed and turned for a couple hours. I can see why people turn to drugs for this problem.

My finished loaves were about a C+. They tasted okay, hot from the oven, but the crumb was nothing to write home about and the crust was hard and not pretty.

I will endeavor to write about something other than insomnia and bread baking tomorrow.

The Science of Sleep
Whenever I can't sleep, I always think it's something I'm doing wrong. Those cookies I ate. That glass of wine I drank. Those vitamins I took. I think sometimes the body just doesn't want to sleep. There's nothing to blame this latest bout of sleeplessness on. Except possibly thinking too much but I don't want to get into that now.

My sourdough came to life somewhat yesterday although I don't think it was as active as the professional baker would like. But after babysitting that bowl for three days, there was no way I was going to put it back in the fridge until next weekend.

I did the math on all the fermentation and rest periods and figured out the latest I could start the bread and still get into bed at a decent hour. Of course I calculated wrong and needed an additional one-hour-fermentation periods and since I didn't want to stay up until 11pm, I cut all the wait periods short. I was still shaping loaves after 9pm.

This recipe calls for 12-24 hours in the fridge and then straight into the oven. Initially I thought I'd bake them this morning but since I didn't get them into the fridge until so late and I leave the house for work at a dark and ungodly hour, I decided to wait until tonight.

In sum: I've been working on this since Friday morning, cut corners pretty much every step of the way and still have no freshly baked sourdough bread for my efforts.

This morning I found concrete bits of dried dough in various places around the house. Also, new knife update: I managed to slice a finger on my left hand. 8 fingers left.

A Knife is Not A Toy
As predicted, I whacked my finger on the new knife's first day out but it took awhile. I stayed blood free until my final dinner task: putting together the salad.

I injured myself on the first item so our salad only had fennel and greens.

My sourdough is a big disappointment. I have no idea what I'm doing wrong. I followed the instructions exactly and got a big ol dried out ball of dough with gunky flour chunks falling off of it that did not expand whatsoever although it smells nice and sourdoughy. I re-fed today and looks like more of the same. Tomorrow I'm going to feed again and add 50% more water and see what happens. If it is still does doo-doo I'm going to stop by the bakery next week and see if they can give me any tips. I'm thinking my kitchen must be some sort of Sahara-vortex which renders all of my baking projects overly dry. I'll see what the professionals think of this theory.

Tired as I was yesterday I didn't sleep for crap last night. Woke up at 3am, wide awake. Dropped off again at 5am and woke up around 7:30am not feeling at all rested. We've got a hot date tonight to meet friends for dinner and then see Merle Haggard I've got to be up for that. My nap utility is on the fritz -- I used to be a champion napper. As soon as the Olympics made it into a category I expected to be team captain but lately I settle down with my blanket and stare at the inside of my eyelids for 15 minutes and then give up.

I finished book #3 this morning. I'm having a tough time this year. I worked on Fortress of Solitude for several weeks and only made it to page 60. It's just not clicking for me. In the meantime I bought Eat Pray Love (book #3) and gobbled that up. I am now developing a small stack of books that I'm determined to read yet when I pick up I have no problem putting back down. Books that lots of well trust people I know enjoyed. I think I'm going to give Fortress one more try before it goes back in the pile.

Tomorrow is going to be the computer free day so I'll see you next week.

Bread Baker
Wednesday night I did my bread baking class, which I expected to be awesome and I loved way more than I expected. It was the advanced class which means that we worked with sourdough for our leavening insead of yeast.

I took lots of notes and would tell you more except I am so tired right now I can barely keep my eyes open. A couple of details that I will mention are that the first thing they did when I walked through the door for class was take my coat and hand me a glass of wine: then I was certain it was going to be great. While there I bought a kitchen scale which will hopefully help me troubleshoot my perpetual baking problems, and a big new shiny chef's knife, pictures of my gouged fingers will surely follow. The people in the class and the teacher who is the head baker at Pearl Bakery were TOTALLY into it. We learned a lot in a few hours. Then we made sandwiches with our bread and asked more questions and visited while we were eating.

The teacher is doing a pie making class in Spring and I plan to be the first one enrolled.

Meanwhile, I fed my starter a few hours ago for weekend baking and I think I already screwed up but we'll see. I always panic during new cooking/baking adventures.

I got home at 10pm on baking night and took awhile to wind down and get to sleep. Then off to the office the next morning and then we went to Arts & Lectures last night.

The speaker was Suzan-Lori Parks who was fantastic - very funny and very real. She didn't seem to take herself too seriously. Told great stories. I've never read anything by her but she read a little bit at the lecture and now I'd like to track down some of her stuff.

But again, we got home late and I was wired and couldn't fall asleep right away so I'm a little drag-ey ass today. I'm going to go try napping and see if I can perk up a little for the rest of the afternoon/evening.

Baby's On Fire
When I was in high school, one of my favorite albums was Sammy Hagar, Standing Hampton. I made a tape for my car and listened to it at least a 10 times a day when I wasn't listening to Journey or Styx (please click on the Styx link and look at the band photo. Ooooh. I can't stop laughing.) or Triumph or some other awesome guitar rock.

I saw Sammy live my senior year, at the Fabulous Forum with rockin' opening band Night Ranger. Was there ever a better time to be a teenager than the early 80's?

With all the recent Van Halen whoo-ha in the news I heard Sammy Hagar on the radio and I tried to remember the last time I heard Standing Hampton. It's probably been 20 years and I've been yearning to hear it again. But I don't want to buy it. I already did. I just don't know where it is although I'm sure it got the boot during a move. Lugging records around was always such a pain. I want to see if it sounds good now even though I couldn't have even told you the name of one song on that album. Until last night.

Last night as I shuffled out of my yoga class there was a old but shiny Honda Accord with the windows rolled down cranking "Baby's on Fire" in the parking lot. Right in front of the yoga studio. Do you love it? I need to get my hands on that album.

Meanwhile, that song brought back another long and deeply repressed memory of going skiing with my lame high school boyfriend ("bf") and his family. Sometimes memories of my own person lameness startle me. It's making me shudder to even type this story. You know when you're out doing something and there's a group of people who are so stupid and clueless that even years later you're still talking about it? That was us on this ski trip. I'm probably going to have to turn out the light and sit back with a washcloth on my forehead when I'm finished with this.

I'd never been skiing and bf had been once. His parents got a cabin in Big Bear and I was invited to join them for a ski-tacular weekend. We rented our gear in the Valley somewhere and I got whatever they recommend for beginners. I didn't know what I was doing.

Since the bf had already been skiing once, he advised that I didn't need to take a class. I could just learn from him. I had no ski clothes, so I was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. No hat. No gloves. I put on my skis in the parking lot and scraped along until someone noticed the stupidest and most clueless person alive and advised that perhaps that wasn't the greatest idea and I should take the skis off immediately, aim the pointed ends to my chest, then fall on them.

I never did catch on to the idea of getting off the lift so I went straight from the chair to a full frontal face plant. Every single time. I spent the entire day falling down. My jeans were soaked. I was cold. Why do people like this? I wondered. I exaggerate little when I say I hated every single second of it. I did manage a very basic snow plow down the bunny hill and then to stop: face plant. I never did figure out where the enjoyment was.

Back at the cabin, the bf decided to light the fireplace. WHOOSH went the gas. I can't get this lit. Can you get this lit? How the hell do I get this lit? He sticks his head into the fireplace with a lit match and WHOOSH. The fireplace is lit. So is he. He was not hurt but his eyelashes, eyebrows and top of his head were singed to a stinky crisp. Thus: Baby's on Fire.

The second day no one skied and his mom and dad were mad because we wasted such a great opportunity for so much fun. Then we sat in traffic getting out of there. Why do people do this again? For our final act of stupidness we didn't have a ski rack so, I kid you not, we had the windows opened a crack and the skis stuck through perpendicular to the car and sticking out the windows on either side. At one point a police officer followed us and yelled at us over his PA. It wasn't worth stopping us. He probably hoped natural selection would finish us off.

Rock of Ages
(Grandma and Grandpa -- probably around 1935 -- just a guess.)
I am 43 years old and can count on one hand how many people close to me have died.

And of the people on that list, most died when I was young, or were far away in Germany, or played a part in my life when I was young but I rarely saw before they died.

I can remember attending three funeral/memorial services. Two of those were for my husband's relatives.

My Grandma, who died on Tuesday, is the first person that I had regular lifetime contact with, that I've lost.

How can that even be possible?

I'm amazed and don't get me wrong, completely grateful, although it's not hard to fear that the second of half of my life is going to make up for it.

I didn't have a spectacular relationship with my Grandma and I wondered how I was going to feel when this finally happened and I felt a lot shittier than I expected. And also angry. And I know all about the 5 stages of Grief but I wasn't mad at her - she was 94! She had a good long life. And I wasn't mad at God. She was 94! (And why have I decided that shittier has two "T"s. Maybe it should be shitier. But that doesn't look right. Who gets to make the rule on that?)

I was just mad. About everything: coffee stirrers, red trucks, clouds. It made no sense.

I told Mom I wanted to help with the obituary and I wanted to submit something to the tribal newsletter. Being Indian was not Grandma's thing, but she was an elder and our culture respects elders. And I want a nice story in the newsletter about my Grandma like all the elders get.

She was the last one standing (or, whatever) out of 17 children. There should be a medal for that.

So all afternoon I looked at what Mom had sent me about Grandma and I tried to figure out how to expand it and make it bigger and make sure that we didn't miss out on anything she accomplished. What would she want to be remembered for? I didn't want anything to be missed.

The part of me that was so mad at her for [redacted] remained silent. It's not denial. It just realized all those things don't matter any longer.

You read all these obituaries and everyone was well loved and brilliant and did amazing things and you wonder, what about all the assholes?

I'm not one who shies away from discussion of death and I'm always telling my husband what to do if I die young and tragically: "The password to my secret bank account is [redacted]" "No teddy bears at the side of the road" and "Don't let them say I was so nice and great when I was really cranky and drank too much and had trouble finishing things."

But unless you do something really dreadful (see Hitler, Stalin, Hussein) everyone gets a "bye" when they die.

Even Darth Vader was redeemed before he died. It's a relief. I only want to remember the good things.

There's a particular story about making apple sauce which I'm not going to tell here except to say it was not good. But this summer I canned my own apple sauce and as I was doing it I was thinking: my Grandma taught me how to do this.

Tomorrow is my no technology day. We're going to celebrate Priscilla's birthday with a day of football. (Bob said I could bring a book.)

Next week I have major events including my baking class on Wednesday and Arts & Lectures on Thursday. Not sure how much you will see me here but I will try.

As always: I appreciate all the comments and I'm visiting your blogs and photo streams but don't always leave a note.

Listen to the Plogic
Last night I was sitting in my room doing my computer thing and I hear my husband laughing hysterically in the kitchen. The laughter goes on long enough and with enough force that I know this is about me. Something I did is funny.

I wander in there with my "now what did I do?" face on and he's holding this bag of chips and wiping tears from his eyes and telling me how funny I am.

The chips are almost gone and I clipped the top half of the bag off so I wouldn't have to get half my arm greasy reaching into the bottom of the bag to get my chips. I can't see the hilarity in this. Seems perfectly plogical to me.

Anything Anything
Last weekend during my day of cooking I broke out the vinyl again and listened to Dramarama Cinéma Vérité which I listened to once last year and still think sounds great.

The album includes a hit called "Anything Anything (I'll Give You)" which at least three different times in my life was discovered by a radio station I listened to frequently and played to death and then some. I loved the song the first time I heard it and I love it still but I can recall the feeling of "enough enough (already)" if I hear it more than once in one day.

[Huge aside: Bob has got me hooked on The Tube a music TV station that plays actual music videos and a huge mix of fun stuff including Led Zepplin and lots of the 80's dawn-of-an-era stuff like Duran Duran and INXS. The other night I saw a U2 video where Bono is sporting the mother of all mullets. I've found myself glued to the The Tube a couple of times with that old, "just one more to see who's next" and the only thing to save me from being there still would be Phil Collins or a simliar horror such that I fled the TV. More than once I've complained about too much Billy Idol but last night they had a video of his ballady song called Sweet Sixteen, which I had completely forgot about and sounded fabulous.]

Back to Dramarama: when I graduated from college and lived in L.A. I wrote live show reviews for a free music newspaper. I could swear I've written about that before but my feverish searching hasn't come up with a previous post. I'll have to dig up some of my reviews.

Before I wrote for the newspaper I wrote reviews for myself in a notebook because it was my dream to be a writer for a music magazine or something in the music business and this was how I prepared.

I saw Dramarama headline a show at the Country Club in Reseda. The date says March 6, 1981 which can't possibly be right since (a) according to Wikipedia the band didn't form until 1982 (although I always was ahead of the curve … ha!) and (b) I was in high school in 1981 and was probably not even allowed to drive to The Valley to see a show.

The date we're going with is March 6, 1987. The show featured one of my favorite local bands at the time Love/Hate which is a topic for another post. I remember nothing about third band on the bill: MIA.

Much as I loved the music, I was not impressed with the band as illustrated by my unfinished review.

It seems to be a rule of blogging that you always need about 20 more minutes than you have on any given post. My allotted time is up. But here's my masterpiece, typed up from the orginal, carefully printed in pencil on white notebook paper:


DRAMARAMA, MIA, LOVE/HATE
MARCH 6, 1987

It's not that Dramarama isn't a cool band. They sport some pretty sharp compositions, and perform clean and tight pumping and grinding motion-thrills stuff. They looked pretty cool onstage, 6 guys and 5 TV screens showing clips and an obtuse selection of random-yet-not-random clips of this and that. And the audience got to hear all the best tunes from their New Rose release - so what was the problem?

Call it a petty witch hunt or what have you but there is something just slightly offensive about watching a swaggering, preening lead singer looking not unlike some USC frat boy strutting arrogantly around stage hiding behind his Ray-Bans and cigarettes and under the pretense of audience participation passes out cookies to the clamoring KROQ teenyboppers. The show was great so what with the attitude?

MIA suffered if only from a lackluster response from the Drama-Audience.