One Messy Lady

Beans! Getcher Beans Here!

2011-12-11T11:46:00.000-06:00

(Photograph copyright 2010, all rights reserved.)

Well, here I am again, talking about food. I cook a lot, but I'm no chef. I just like cooking. There's almost nothing I like more than to feed people. I let The Boy take care of the wine, but the dinner ends up being my job. And I love it. I'm doing a small dinner party next week, and I'm pondering the menu for that. I'm thinking a roasted pork rack or maybe some braised pork chops. Both are easy so I can concentrate on the sides.

Feel free to make suggestions, but be warned - I'm going grocery shopping for this on Thursday so I have to decide by then.

That's not what I'm writing about today, though. The day before yesterday, I remembered a magazine article that I saw years ago. It described in detail how to make non-gassy beans. Seriously - fart free beans? Who could resist, right?

I planned this, but I don't have a recipe. There were a couple of nice smoked pork hocks in the freezer, which to my mind is the only kind of meat I'd put in that dish. They taste amazing with the side benefit that they're cheap, too. I also added some double-smoked pork belly that I got a Gene's Meat Market in Lincoln Square. Love that place. When you need pork, that's the ne plus ultra in this town.

Other than that, it's pretty standard. I use canned whole tomatoes, a couple of chopped onions, three or four smashed cloves of garlic, pepper, some Worcestershire Sauce, maple syrup (instead of brown sugar, it tastes a little lighter), stock, and dry mustard. Everyone has their own variations and they all taste good. One large and crucial thing is to NEVER add salt until you're about half an hour or so away from serving. If there's a chance that the liquid will reduce when you're cooking, leave the salt until the end.

The magazine article didn't focus on the exact recipe, though. The key is in the way the beans are prepared long before they go in the oven. Here we go:

1. Soak the beans overnight in water twice as deep as the beans.

2. In the morning, drain and rinse the soaked beans, fill a pot with the beans and water and boil them hard for one full hour. Whatever you do, do NOT boil the beans in the water you used for soaking them. There's nothing in that pot except beans and water. NO salt. No nothing. At this point, salt will only make the beans tough.

3. After boiling, drain the beans and rinse them again. You must not skip this step. The water that the beans have been boiled in will be nasty-looking and brown and there will be a sort of foamy scurf on the top. You have to get rid of ALL of this, and you have to rinse your beans.

4. Now at this point, you get things together. My favorite way to do this is to put all of the ingredients into either a heavy pot or the slow cooker, then dump the beans on top, mix and cook for six to eight hours. In a slow cooker, the setting should be on "simmer", in the oven set the temperature to 225 or so.

5. You can't just ignore them. Every couple of hours or so, check on them, give them a stir and add liquid. Remember that the beans haven't expanded completely at the beginning, so you have to make sure they don't get dry while they're cooking.

That's all there is. Of course, the de-farting happens in steps 1 to 3. Those steps break down the cellulose in the beans so that they're more digestible. You will rinse away some of the starches and so on, but that's what you want.

I promise you that if you follow the first three steps EXACTLY you shouldn't have a problem after dinner. If you're concerned that it won't work, take a couple of Beano tablets before you eat as a kind of insurance. You shouldn't need to, though.

Dinner Cancelled? Whatever Shall I Do?

2011-04-09T13:52:00.000-05:00

Spring has arrived in the City of Wind! Hooray!

How can we tell? Well, the insane temperature fluctuations have begun - low 40s yesterday, mid 60s today and into the 80s or even 90s tomorrow! Naturally, this will lead to some pretty ghastly thunderstorms and the temperature will then plummet on Monday to the low 50s where apparently it belongs. So there. It's not like there are a lot of leaves out or anything, although the daffodils are trying hard.

So... those who read this know that The Boy doesn't work in the city we live in. In fact, he travels every week, which means he generally leaves on Sunday night or Monday morning and comes home on Thursdays. It varies a bit, and sometimes he works in the city for a week, but he's pretty much away every work week.

Yesterday, he was going to be home around the dinner hour. I cheered and declared that I was going to provide one of his favorite winter dishes - nice friendly little braised lamb shanks. He adores this meal. I was planning to serve them with some brussels sprouts and maybe celeriac puree and it was going to be wonderful......

And then he phoned. His flight was cancelled and he was trapped for the night. He's coming home today. Sigh. At least he leaves later in the week this time...

However. I started this lamb shanks in the morning for a nice 8 hour braise. What to do???? Easy, I thought. I'll make:

Yummy Lamb Ragu(ish)

This is not difficult. I use my trusty slow cooker - a Kitchenaid because it has a rubbery silicone gasket thingie around the glass lid that prevents it from rattling while it works (a flaw in Lesser Machines, including a Very Expensive brand) and seals the pot fairly efficiently, so not a lot of liquid gets lost to evaporation.

You needn't spend a ton of money on a slow cooker. Your mother's Crock Pot is fine, and they're still sold in a bunch of different sizes at places like Target. All the thing needs to do is keep food at a specific low temperature for hours on end. My preference is to avoid complicated digital controls - if they crap out, your machine is dead, given that there's no on/off switch. Hence the Kitchenaid, which has a big black dial that says "high, low, buffet, simmer, auto" and that's all. It's my kind of twit-proof.

You also don't need to do this with lamb. Or shanks. You can use a nice, tough old shoulder of lamb, or pork, or beef....or whatever. It all works and it will all come out beautifully.

Recipe

1. Make a mirepoix.

This only sounds impressive. Seriously. It's easy. All you have to do is chop up a big onion, a couple of carrots, and a couple of stalks of celery. It doesn't have to be glamorous or even symmetrical, because you will never see it on the plate.

The ingredients can vary. Some people think celery is too bitter, so they skip it. Others just add more carrot to make it sweeter. The onion is not optional. I add two or three cloves of garlic, too, just because I like garlic.

So put the mirepoix aside.

2. Brown the meat.

Use a tall pot for this to keep the kitchen clean and spatter off your glasses. Also wear an apron and use tongs so you don't have to put your hands anywhere NEAR that hot fat.

Crank up the heat to high, add some olive oil to the pan and put in the meat, turning it until it's browned on all sides. It's all right if some of it sticks to the bottom - don't scrape it off, you want it.

Once that's done, either put the meat directly in the slow cooker or, if you're using your pot in the oven, put the meat aside.

3. Cook the mirepoix.

This is where you start building flavor. Put the veg you've chopped into the pot the meat was browned in. Add a little more oil if you need to, but not much. Cook at medium heat until the onion starts to go transparent.

4. Add tomato paste.

The amount is up to you. If you like tomato - use a little can. If you want to go classic, use a couple of tablespoons.

Whatever amount you use, this is where you add the tomato paste to the veggies, turn up the heat and brown it.

You want to see the color of the tomato get darker, you WANT it to start sticking to the pot - just be careful not to burn it. This step is meant to cook the sugars in the tomato, marry it to the bits of meat you've left in the pot, and make the veggies absorb and add to the whole thing.

This is the most important step in the whole process. It's where all of your flavor starts.

5. Deglaze the pan.

I use a bottle of red wine for this, and NOT the expensive stuff. It's a myth that you should only cook with wine you're willing to drink. Cook's Illustrated tested this a year or so ago and concluded that cheap or expensive, it all tastes good when the cooking's done. A cheap and cheerful red will do nicely. Save the good stuff for drinking with dinner.

Some people use stock for this (I use chicken stock), some use half wine, half stock.... I just toss in a whole bottle of wine. It tastes better and who wants to be stuck with half a bottle of Two Buck Chuck?

At this point, what's in your pot is not looking exactly beautiful. Don't worry. If it's a brown scruffy messy thing, it's perfect. Deglazing is to add liquid to the pan and use it to pick up all of that lovely brown stuff on the bottom. Just add the liquid, scrape the pot to get all the good stuff into the mix, and you're done.

6. Add the meat.

That's it. Either you put the meat back into the pot or dump the pot into your slow cooker, depending on how you're cooking this. I like the slow cooker because it evenly heats the pot to 185 degrees and will hold it there for 8 hours. It's tough to do that with an oven and some ovens won't let you set the temperature to anything less than 200 degrees, which is too hot.

Look at the amount of liquid. For ragu purposes, the liquid should cover 3/4 of the meat in the pot. The bottle of wine should do it, but if you're short, add a little stock to make up the difference.

7. Seasonings.

How you season your food is as personal as your choice of underwear. It's so much a matter of personal preference that what I say probably won't matter to you.

I use a couple of bay leaves, more garlic and salt and pepper in everything I braise. For lamb, I add a couple of sprigs of rosemary, some thyme and a marjoram if there's some in the window box. Some recipes call for pepper flakes.

As a general rule, don't salt your food until the cooking is almost done. If you lose some of the liquid during cooking (and you will), what makes sense at the start will end up being too salty. Herbs tend to vanish in long cooking, too. Add your thyme and marjoram in the last half hour to an hour before serving.

(NOTE: If you're serving your shanks the same night you cook them, add the salt at the end. If you're making ragu for the next day - don't add the salt until you're just a few minutes away from serving.)

8. Now cook it.

That's it. The hard part is over. It took up a lot of space to describe it, but it only takes half an hour to actually DO it. I set up the pot with the wine and tomato paste beside it at the beginning and after that, it's just a matter of putting things in the pot and taking them out.

All you have to do now is set the temperature and LEAVE THE HOUSE. I'm serious. I know it's tempting to pop that lid and have a look. I know you're going to be dying to taste it. It won't do you any good. Open it in the last hour or so to adjust the seasoning or open it early if you need to add more liquid, but otherwise just let the whole mess burble quietly away.

I do this for eight hours. You don't have to. You can cook it for six, or even four hours if you want. It will still taste just fine. For ragu purposes though, you want that meat falling apart and as tender as you can possibly manage. Generally speaking, the tougher the cut of meat you use, the longer you want to cook it.

9. Ragu....

When you do a braise like this and you're serving it immediately, all you have to do is remove the meat, strain the liquid (reduce it on the stove if you need to) and serve it with whatever vegetables strike your fancy and use the liquid as a sauce. It's delicious. I particularly like the roasted cauliflower I posted before or brussels sprouts as side dishes, but it's up to you.

HOWEVER..... if you get a phone call like I did yesterday and you can't serve it immediately....

10. The final step.

Turn off the heat and let things cool for a few minutes. Take the meat out of the pot and pull out the bones, as well as any fat that didn't dissolve and whatever skin or connective tissue is left. This is easy - I just pick up the bits with a fork and pull out anything I don't want.

Put the meat in the fridge.

Now strain the liquid into a bowl and use a spatula to push through as much of the solids as will go easily through the strainer. Toss the solids, refrigerate the liquid.

To serve this the next day, skim the fat off the top of the liquid, add the meat and and heat it, reducing the liquid until there's virtually none left. This is why you didn't add salt during the cooking phase. Once you've concentrated the liquid, you'd be tasting nothing but salt. Add it just before serving.

11. Dinner!

Yay! You finally get to eat!

I looked at a lot of recipes for this wonderful stuff. Many call for serving it with a nice potato and celeriac puree. Many more ask you to serve it over pasta - something like rigatoni or orchiette works best. It doesn't matter what the recipes say, because you have your favorite way of doing things and whatever you choose is going to be wonderful.

Note: This cooking method is easy and VERY good for cheap cuts of meat. You can use the truly tough stuff, the cuts that others sneer at and that you'll never see in restaurants, because when you cook it at low heat for a long time, it's going to be tender and perfect.

This is poor people's food, really. You can feed a family at least one meal based on this, and if you have a big enough pot, you'll get leftovers, too. Onions, carrots, celery.... all are super cheap. Pasta? Potatoes? Not expensive.

I LOVE things like this.

Dessert! My Favorite!

2011-04-01T13:54:00.000-05:00

First, I included a picture of flowers because I'm told it's spring in the rest of the world. We just aren't seeing it here. The temperatures are in the 40s instead of the mid-50s where they belong and it's gloomy and threatening rain for tonight. Hence, a picture of flowers is just going to have to do it for awhile since the real thing just isn't happening yet.

(Grumble. Stupid groundhog. Big fat liar. I wonder what groundhog tastes like?)

Sigh. Now. On to the dessert.

The Boy loves his desserts. It's his "thing", if you will. A meal just isn't complete for him unless there's something sweet at the end and no matter how much I try and convince him that a smooch should do, it's not the same. He's disciplined about it, though. Only on weekends. We're getting to the age where we have to earn our desserts, so we can't eat sweets every day.

I just got one of his favorites into the oven, so I thought I'd spread the joy.

The Boy's Chocolate Cake

I have to comment before I start with the recipe. I have a kazillion chocolate cake recipes, and they're all pretty much the same. I've looked online at chocolate cake recipes, and they're all pretty much the same as well. I wanted to tweak it, though. Most chocolate cakes are too heavy and too sugary-tasting for me. I wanted something light and happy, with none of that slap-in-the-face sweetness and thud-in-the-stomach weight that plagues almost everything chocolate. So this is what I've come up with.

Whisk together in a medium bowl:

2 cups flour. I like cake flour, but you don't have to use it if you don't want to. Cake flour just makes it lighter, but almost all the recipes I've seen call for all-purpose flour. Don't be put off making cake just because you don't have the fancy flour on hand.

2/3 cup cocoa. Use the darkest you can find. I like Hershey's Special Dark, which I buy by the six-pack from Amazon. I've heard all of the yapping about dutched vs. non-dutched cocoa, but the result is always the same. Dutch processed cocoa tastes better. No, I'm not going to debate that. That said, it's not mandatory, either. Use what you have.

2 tsp. baking soda.

1 tsp. baking powder.

1/2 tsp. salt

Cream together (I use a food processor. Your goal here is to make this mixture seriously creamy. Liquid, even. The individual sugar grains should be invisible. No stand mixer can do this quite as effectively. A hand mixer would work well if you have the patience to stand there for awhile.):

1 cup room temperature butter.

4 large eggs.

1 cup brown sugar.

1 cup white sugar.

2 tsp. vanilla. (Or go crazy. Use bourbon. Or a liqueur. The recipe doesn't care.)

In a two cup measure, mix 1 cup milk (I used skim) and 1 cup buttermilk.

Mixing:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. If you have the option to use convection, DON'T. This works better in a conventional oven. I guess convection isn't fatal, though.

2. Prepare two standard 8" or 9" layer cake pans. I use greased parchment on the bottom because it's generally tidier to get the cakes out.

3. Transfer creamed ingredients to a larger bowl. Using a hand mixer... or a stand mixer if you must, but I don't think they're fast enough... add wet and dry ingredients alternately, starting and ending with dry.

Now, the batter you have should be fluffy. Mix the heck out of it between additions. The texture you're aiming for is mousse-like. You should have to spoon it into the pans because it won't pour.

4. Transfer the batter to pans, bake until a skewer comes out clean. About 1/2 an hour to 40 minutes. Don't overbake if you can help it - chocolate cakes can dry out. But you knew that.

5. Cool at room temperature on racks. Make sure they're completely cooled before you take them out of the pans.

And that, as they say, is that. Now some recipes call for ganache as an icing - melt 6 or 7 oz. of dark chocolate in 1/2 cup of heavy cream in a double boiler, cool a bit and spread. Some recipes add corn syrup or sugar, but I prefer 65 or 70% chocolate that speaks for itself. I've also used a buttercream icing on this which can make things too sweet, but it works on this cake.

This recipe is pretty bullet-proof. You can mess with it if you like and have different results. For example, I saw one recipe that called for half whole milk, half heavy cream. That's part of what makes a cake land in my stomach like an anvil - it's too much for me after a meal. I use half skim milk and half buttermilk because the buttermilk does it's lovely chemical thing and makes the batter fluffier and the cake higher.

Some recipes call for all brown sugar, which lends a sort of caramel flavor that I like on occasion. Go ahead and do that, if you like. Use all white, if you want - the recipe won't fail if you do that - but you'll lose some of the richness that makes chocolate cake so good.

What makes this cake fluffy and nice is the fact that it has four eggs - adds volume, buttermilk, which helps things rise, and beating the crap out of it at both the creaming stage and the mixing stage. This is not conventional wisdom. I was taught to gently fold the flour into the creamed ingredients with a spatula and make sure that bubbles were kept to a minimum.

Screw that. Use a good, fast hand mixer and go for it. The first time you make a liquid addition to this batter, you're going to see bubbles. Bubbles are all right at that stage. By the time you're done, this is going to be one thick, but light and fluffy batter and that's what you want. The bubbles will be teeny-tiny invisible little things that won't leave tunnels in your cake.

Trust me.

That's it. It takes about half an hour to mix, another half an hour or so in the oven and you have cake. The Boy loves it and I think he has pretty good taste.

Ah, Paradise! (And a Picture of Aunt Messy in a Bikini!)

2011-02-01T14:45:00.001-06:00

Winter is not my favorite time of the year. You may have noticed this already. But it's all a matter of location. See, Chicago winters can be pretty dreary, and to avoid discrimination, just about every city that has regular snow can be pretty dreary in winter.

This year, though, the stars aligned! There were air miles, in-laws with an empty bedroom in a condo that they rented on Kauai and all of a sudden, I got a phone call from The Boy asking if I wouldn't mind going there for a visit.... I pretended to think about it for a grand total of a second before I yodeled, "Yes! Not just yes, hell yes! When do I leave!"

In the fullness of time, I left. And it is paradise. Make no mistake.

Sunrise over Bali Hai. It was a little cloudy that day, but not for long.

The rocks at the beach at Lumahai. Even if you've never been there, you've seen this beach. The movie "South Pacific" was filmed there. It's considered one of the most beautiful beaches on Kauai, but it's also called "Lumadie" because it's very dangerous. No non-tourist would ever try and go in the water there and they particularly won't get up on the rocks.

See, there is no reef at Lumahai. Nor is there any form of shallow water or shelf going out off the beach. The waves break on shore and are incredibly powerful and violent. One writer pointed out that Kauai is nothing more than a mountain-top in the middle of the ocean, and Lumahai is proof of that.

There are warning signs all over the place. The Boy (a lifeguard in a former life) says that he would NEVER jump in and try and save someone because once you go it, that's it for you. The maytag catches you and your next stop is Japan.

It's my favorite place in the world. I think I caught some of the wave action in the next couple of pictures. It's mesmerizing to watch.

Remember the warning signs I told you about? Didja see the way the waves hit those rocks? Well, stupid is universal apparently, because the couple in the photo appear to have a death wish. As they were getting off the rocks, a massive wave hit and almost had them in the water. They were laughing, too dim to see just how lucky they got.

This intellectual bright light took his two small children to a space between one set of rocks and the next and stood in the water....

...where this happens... and thought it was grand fun. At this point it was about 3:00 p.m. we declared cocktail hour and left the beach. None of us said it, but the real reason we left is that we couldn't watch the dumb any more. This potential train wreck was too much.

Oh, and when this wave broke, the guy AND the two kids were in the water with it. See what I mean?

This will never put me off Lumahai, though. It's still my favorite place. My mother-in-law loves it so much that we've all been instructed to scatter her ashes there when the time comes.

I decided to head to another beach one day. This is a very small beach below the condos at Pali Ke Kua. There is a sandy beach, but the rocks are right off shore. Surfers and swimmers can only get into the water at one end, but the snorkelling is gorgeous and the waves are always good.

I decided to take my camera at low tide and (very, very carefully) explore the tidal pools. I say carefully because those rocks are a combination of lava and old coral. You can't be barefoot on them. Even the sand is very coarse, so surf socks are a must. It's so much fun that I went for a few minutes and stayed for two hours.

And here it is, kids, the photo you've all been waiting for... me in a bikini! And that's as much as you get to see, too.

The first time I went to Kauai the spiders creeped me out in a big way. They still do if they're big and in my face, but the webs are something else again. This is about the best photo I've taken of an orb web. It's a relatively small one, only a foot across.

Another perfect sunset over Bali Hai. Looking at postcards of this particular view (and there are a lot of them), you'd swear they were touched up because the whole thing looks sort of unreal, an idealization of what sunset should be. They aren't. This is it.

It was not easy to board that plane home, I can tell you. Now I'm planning the next trip out there.

(All photographs copyright 2011, all rights reserved.)

It's Official. Winter is Here.

2010-12-13T15:59:00.001-06:00

And doesn't that just suck? I have to admit that I really, really HATE winter. I hate the cold. I hate that it gets dark so early. I hate that going outside has to be such a production. I hate it when people say things like, "There is no bad weather, just inadequate clothing."

I'm LOOKING at you, my darling husband. One day that little statement is going to get you a snowball down the back of your jacket. Or worse....

See, I have always maintained that I was stolen as a baby from rich people in the Bahamas. I was born never to wear shoes. I was never meant to be able to picture what "long underwear" even looks like. I'm one of those people who is meant, truly meant to have a light golden tan all year. My freckles were meant to be visible every day of my life. The words "fishbelly white" were words that I was never to hear in conjunction with MY legs....

I know. We're supposed to live in terror of an errant sunbeam touching our pristine skin. The sky is supposed to fall if....for one second....the thought even crosses our MINDS that this is just a smidge hysterical. Because it is. Sunscreen is the #1 reason that we have to take Vitamin D supplements now. Our bodies can manufacture more than enough of that substance...if we let them.

Ok. I'm starting to rant. Never a good thing. I give you pictures of summer. Behold the Chicago Botanic Gardens.

We're Back!

2010-12-03T15:04:00.000-06:00

We lucked out. The last time we went to Japan was three years ago. It was September, and blisteringly hot. I'm talking temperatures in the mid to high nineties (35-38C) every day. Since we walk everywhere wherever we go, planning for a day's jaunt also included stops for buying water everywhere we went. We still had a lot of fun, but we also had cause to be deeply grateful for a culture that has vending machines on every corner.

This time, the weather was perfect. There's no other way to describe it. We only had one day of drizzle, and even that ended by noon. We spend a day and a half in Tokyo, took the bullet train to Kyoto for four days, then returned to Tokyo for two more before we caught our flight home from Narita Airport. Everything went without a single hitch. It was amazing. I kept expecting something to screw up, but no. The planes left and arrived on time. No luggage issues because we never check luggage. There were no snarl-ups at airport check-in or security. Even the lines were short. It was eerie in the nicest way possible.

The main reason (aside from The Boy's work schedule) we went at this time of year had to do with the leaves. In my opinion, there is nowhere on earth with more beautiful gardens than Kyoto. I know a lot of folks will disagree with me. It's all right. What I mean by this is that gardeners in Japan, and Kyoto in particular, always design with an eye to the look of the garden throughout the year. Even in winter, they're beautiful.

I'll shut up now, and let the photographs do the talking for me.

Thanksgiving

2010-11-18T17:49:00.001-06:00

(Photograph copyright 2010, all rights reserved.)

As some of you know, I'm a bit of an advice column addict. I read them, I parody one of them, and I pay attention to what people say, especially when it comes to things that are bothering them in the moment. Having done this for a few years, I have to say that the more people are miserable, terrified, angry, and depressed right now, around Thanksgiving. Don't get me wrong, Christmas is just as bad for a lot of folks, but Thanksgiving seems to bring out the worst in most people.

I get it. I do. I didn't grow up in the best or safest situation, and holidays were awful when I was both a kid and a young adult. NO ONE had a good time. Ever. Not once. There was constant arguing and fighting, foul long car trips, the same people got drunk every year, and it was altogether an experience that left me pretty cold towards all of the holidays.

As I got older, I opted out. For a very long time, the best Christmas I ever had was one where I opted to stay at University, using my bus money to buy myself the groceries to cook what I wanted just for ME. I didn't care about presents, I had no interest in any rituals, and my only decorations were a couple of glitter garlands that were left over in a stationery store on Christmas Eve. I thought that was heaven. Silence on that particular holiday was the best gift I could have asked for. I vowed right then never to get roped in to someone else's drama again, and I've pretty much managed it.

I still see so many letters to advice columnists from people crying in pain over what really is only ONE DAY out of a year. There are fights over the guest list, over the recipes that are to be used, over who has to/gets to host, who has to travel, who hasn't got the money to travel, and the list goes on and on. Thanksgiving - a day when we are traditionally meant to give thanks for what we have, has become a nightmare for many, many people.

This is the busiest travel week of the entire year in the U.S. It means that people who never fly will be flying. The airports will be crammed with tired, angry people, some of whom haven't got the faintest idea what they're about. They make it miserable for those that either have no choice but to fly or who do it all the time anyway and are irritated themselves as they slog through the nightmare that is an airport on a holiday weekend.

Let's not forget the hundreds of thousands of people who will be driving long distances to Mom's or Grandmom's house. Hundreds will die in accidents caused by snow, ice, storms, drunks, fog, morons that insist on texting at 70mph and so on. All so they can get to an overcrowded house to eat the same (usually dried out) bird with the same people that they have every year since birth.

Why not stay home? Why not start your OWN traditions? Why is it that families of all shapes and sizes have to travel to someone else's party? Why is it somehow seen as "wrong" to stay home and cook for the people that you love and are close to you both personally and geographically? Why do people put such pressure on themselves that they can't enjoy the day even if things go perfectly?

There are a lot of people this year who just don't have the money to travel, or who would be stretching a dollar until it screams just to be at the holiday table. Why should they have to deal with pressure and guilt trips if they can't go? Let it be.

The letters show that people's personal issues come to the fore on holidays. People that have always fought will continue to fight. There are threats of canceling parties, refusing to attend if someone else is either invited or not invited. Screaming matches seem to be the rule of the day for so many people. One doesn't want to be in the same house with the family drunk/pedophile/jerk/nasty aunt/miserable granny/bunch of smokers/whiner, and so on, and another freaks out at the notion of NOT having those people attend.

I have to say that I simply don't get it. Thanksgiving is meant to be a holiday where people get together who care about each other. The mere fact of DNA is no guarantee of that, as most of us know full well. So why the pressure? My thanksgiving means surrounding myself with people I care about, that want to come to my home. I believe that we should make our families, not put up with people that we hate just because they're "family".

The Boy and I don't want to be responsible for making anyone do anything. We just want to see the people we care about around a table that has a great meal on it (and I haven't cooked a turkey in ages), with good wine and conversation and usually a great deal of silliness. We would never demand that anyone travel huge distances or bring ridiculous amounts of food to my party. If we couldn't manage the food on our own, we wouldn't be having the party in the first place, now would we?

There is no angst over recipes, china, the "right" serving dishes, the "right" table settings, the "right" way to do things in our house. We don't care how our guests dress. There's nothing formal about our home, ever. People who care about us and who we care about know full well that there are no rules except to have a good time and not worry about anything being "perfect". We provide food, wine, music and a cat that occasionally likes to sit on laps. There's no specific time to arrive or leave. No one has to do dishes - The Boy and I can handle all of that.

We don't always have guests for Thanksgiving. One friend hosts an open house instead of a massive meal, and that's always a fun time. Last year, we were invited to a friend's house, but couldn't make it because The Boy had H1N1 and we were quarantined. It was all right, though. He wasn't desperately ill, so we made a good meal and watched a couple of movies. The year before, the weather was lousy for driving, so we had a gorgeous pork roast and relaxed on our own.

I think that, with all of the misery and angst that goes into holidays right now, we should all step back. If you don't want to see your family for whatever reason, then DON'T. If anyone is going to judge you for it, who cares what they think anyway? If they weren't upset about this, it would be about something else, so let them be as nasty as they want. THEY'RE the ones with the problem, right?

Have a good holiday and relax, everyone. Remember that it's only one day out of an entire year and try not to get involved in drama and agony that will taint relationships for years. We're headed out of the country for a nice long holiday this year. It's going to be great. We'll be virtually unreachable - and we aren't taking computers with us, so no one can e-mail. I suspect it'll go down as one of the best holidays ever, and that's the way I like it.

Cauliflower - The Best Veg On The Table .... And A Poll

2010-11-13T14:56:00.001-06:00

(Photograph copyright 2010, all rights reserved.)

This post is in response to quite a few requests for the recipe for my favorite favoritist cauliflower recipe. I LOVE this dish. So does everyone else that tries it. It's a little fiddly to make, but it's so good, you won't care.

I got the original from the The New York Times over a year ago. I make it a little differently, in the interest of faster cooking, but it's essentially the same recipe.

(To the writer - please accept my humble and grovelling apologies for changing your recipe. It's wonderful, and it deserves to be spread around a bit more, don't you think? I promise that I am not a professional cook or in any way making a nickel from what I write.)

Here goes.

Cauliflower with Almonds, Capers and Raisins

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

1 medium head of cauliflower, washed, trimmed and cut into 1" (or so) florets
1 1/2 teaspoons butter

Set aside.

3 tablespoons bread crumbs (I use panko, and a little more than this)
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon olive oil

In a large oven proof pan (I use cast iron pan for this), saute the bread crumbs in the olive oil until lightly browned. Remove from pan, set aside, then wipe out pan with a paper towel.

3 tablespoons slivered raw almonds
Salt and pepper to taste

Add the almonds and s & p to the pan and brown. Set aside and wipe the pan as before.

2 tablespoons golden raisins
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar (or champagne vinegar if you like it better.)
1 teaspoon water
1 tablespoon of capers, drained
1 teaspoon fresh parsley, minced
1 teaspoon fresh thyme, minced
1 teaspoon fresh tarragon, minced
1 teaspoon chives, chopped fine

In a small saucepan, simmer these ingredients until the raisins are plump and soft. Set aside.

(I don't always have fresh herbs on hand. I've substituted a little minced shallot for the chives, and used dried herbs instead of fresh to fill in what I don't have. It still works, but the flavor is not as intense. Use your judgment, and pick the flavors you like best to concentrate on.)

Now....the fun part.

Saute the cauliflower with the butter in your big pan until slightly browned. Put the whole pan in the oven, and roast until the cauliflower is tender-crisp.

When the cauliflower is done, put it into a large bowl and add almonds, raisin mixture and lastly the bread crumbs.

The original recipe calls for the head of cauliflower to be sliced rather than separated into florets. As far as I can tell, this would mean browning each slice on both sides and then putting it into the oven which would mean a whole lot more work in the end. I freely admit I'm a short-cut goddess in the kitchen. Separating the head of cauliflower into florets means less time cooking and it's easier to serve family-style.

Most cauliflower recipes call for massive amounts of cream or cheese. I think those are far too heavy to be served at a big meal like Thanksgiving or Christmas. There's enough going on on the table without adding something that's going to hit everyone's stomach with a thud. The other down side is that those recipes completely disguise any flavor the cauliflower has of it's own - and it has a nice one.

Need I mention that this has FAR fewer calories and MUCH less fat than the standard gratin?

Yum.

Now, I posted this in response to Pooham's poll on Slate. She asked everyone for their favorite side dish for Thanksgiving dinner. Pooham, I hope you don't mind, but let's ask the same question here.

So give, everyone: What is your favorite side dish for any holiday dinner?

Open Call Response to Jonathan Wolfman

2010-10-05T21:33:00.001-05:00

For those of you who are reading this on The Fly , this is a response to an open call for responses from a poster named Jonathan Wolfman. His question is: "What is your gift? What do you do with it?"

Anyone who wants to respond to me on blogspot is, of course, more than welcome. In fact, I happily extend the question to all the Fraysters who want to answer it. I'll post the link on Salon, too, in case anyone there is interested. This is going to be fun.

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The only answer I have is ..... ready? I make stuff. I'm good with my hands. Doesn't sound like much, does it? I mean, a LOT of people are fairly adept at doing things, of putting things together, repairing things and the like.

It's hard to explain what I mean. I see in three dimensions. I'll never make a painter or be able to draw well. I've tried, and it's utterly futile. I'm foul at math. It's like a foreign language to me. I can't picture it, and that crippled me all the way through school. In fact, my math teacher in Grade 12 gave me a mercy mark just so I could get into university, then made me promise to take geography as my science option. I did.

That still isn't very clear, is it? The thing is, it's a maddeningly ephemeral thing. If you gave me a bag of clay, I could build you what I want you to see. If you hand me a pen and paper, forget it. Whatever I put there won't make a lick of sense. I'm sure there's a deeply complicated explanation for it that delves into brain chemistry, genetics, upbringing, whether I had pets as a kid, and whether or not the water was fluoridated when I was born (it wasn't), but that's just the way it is.

What I do is clay. Clay makes sense to me. It's something I can manipulate - I can make it do what I want it to. When I'm working on something at the clay lab, I zone out completely, sometimes for hours. All I need is my IPod, a bucket of water, some tools and a bag of clay and you can count on me being occupied for as long as it takes for me to either finish a piece or realize that I've missed lunch and I'm damned hungry. Thankfully I have some friends that are brave enough (I get VERY cranky when I'm hungry) to smack me on the shoulder and make me take a break.

Don't get me wrong. It's not easy. As with any art form, there's a massive learning curve. I've been at this for ten years and I'm still learning. I suspect I'll be learning for the rest of my life, which is both maddening and reassuring. It means I'll never lose interest.

There are people who say that working with clay is all about chemistry and physics. Ok. I get that. Clay bodies vary, glazes are incredibly complicated and highly experimental and I know I'll never have the patience to make my own. That's because these folks are all about the mechanics. You can recognize most of them because everything they make is perfect. It is symmetrical. It's usually thrown on a wheel. A whole lot of people make decent money doing this - it's their job. Their work sells because it's generally pretty nice, it's always recognizable and it has a use.

What I do doesn't have a use. In fact, it's utterly useless. I do this on purpose. I figure that if I wanted a bunch of identical plates, I can get them at Crate and Barrel for a lot less money and a ton less angst than trying to make them myself. I get bored very easily, and if what I make became mechanical or mindless to me, I'd quit. I wouldn't see the point any more.

I've never made the same piece twice and if I tried, I probably couldn't do it. That's just the way it is. I work with my hands, not with machines. I don't want to master the clay that way. There are things I'm very good at. Sales, for example. I've been pretty successful at selling just about anything in the past, from couture gowns to nails. It's easy for me - I've been told I'm a "natural", whatever the heck that is. It bores me stiff, though. I had to quit because I just can't muster the energy to care about something I've got whipped.

I've posted a few of my Utterly Useless Pots. They don't hold water - and that's on purpose. I don't want them to have a function. I don't want anyone to hold on in their hands and think "vase", for instance. Other people make better vases than me, to be truthful. My first instructor was Larry Fleck. He always used to ask me what things were FOR. My stock answer became, "Larry, it just IS."

High fired stoneware. The glaze is temoku wiped off, then dipped in yellow salt.

Low fire terracotta with matte black underglaze, matte gray glaze on top. It looks very different, depending on what side you're looking at, which I think is pretty cool.

Utterly Useless Pot. 8" tall, 7" across. Copyright 2010, all rights reserved.

High fired white stoneware glazed with red iron oxide, yellow salt and temoku.

For those who swore they've seen these pictures before....you're right. I've posted them before. I KNOW I have to get on with taking more photos. It's just so much more fun to be in the studio, don't you know.

The above pots are three in a series, and I'm off on another series now. I find that when I find a shape that makes me happy, I play with it for awhile. I want to see where it can go, so I mess with it on different pieces and with different glazes for awhile. It took me six pieces to finish with this one. There's another one that I haven't photographed that's just massive. It's in white with black accents and I have to look at it for awhile because I'm not altogether sure about the glaze.

These are for sale, by the way. If you're interested, you can reach me at onemessylady@gmail.com .

I know where I get this. I come from a long line of carpenters, farmers, harness-makers, boat builders and other craftspeople. If I could go back far enough (and I can't, really), I'm sure that there are "handy" people in my gene pool that go back for centuries. No artists, though. Most of the family are pragmatic and rather gloomy types that would never do something that doesn't have a "use".

There are other things I can do. The handiness is most useful. I sew, for example. For the last couple of years I've been making my own wool coats. I like summer dresses, and when I make them, I know they'll fit. I love being able to wear something that I won't be seeing walking down the street all over the place.

I can also replace taps, install light fixtures, repair tile, and paint interiors. These are all survivor skills that I think everyone should learn, but that's because I'm kind of a tightwad.

Apropos of Nothing.

2010-09-28T12:51:00.001-05:00

(Photograph copyright 2010, all rights reserved. This is an all-vegan, all the time image. See? Tomato. Vegan. I can't even see any bugs. Just sayin'.)

I've been seeing something in grocery stores - ok, pretty much Whole Foods - that's got me a little puzzled. I know that labels sell products. Heck, I even used to collect the wrappers that used to be on the occasional blood orange or mandarin. If there was an interesting label, that's all I was interested in when it came to choosing the fruit for the week. I admit it. I'm as big a sucker as anyone else. I still have a file with those labels in it.

(Disclaimer: This post is in no way a criticism of Whole Foods, their suppliers, or their employees. I just shop there, so that's where I see the odd stuff. It could be ANY grocery store.)

I know that "organic", for example is not only kinda nice to see in our grocery stores, it's also a marketing strategy that's a guaranteed money maker for the producer. Hell, I'd use it too, if I were in their position. Why go organic at all unless you want to make some money based on the label? Money is a good thing.

But, lately the label reading "Vegan" is what I'm seeing, and it's got me bemused. How, I wondered, could someone actually BE a vegan and not know what they can and can't eat? After all, being a vegan is hard work. Research is required to get the right amounts of protein and nutrients in their diets. Reading is required. Cookbooks must be bought, websites consulted, buzzwords memorized, sermons written, disapproving glares perfected.... This is Serious Stuff.

(I have to interject here. I'm not a vegan. I'm not even a vegetarian. I happen to think that the domestic swine should be the most exalted animal on this planet based on sheer tastiness and versatility. You can eat pretty much the whole pig except the squeal, and it's all delicious. I think this is a Good Thing. I have no interest in changing my ways, and I'm not going to argue about it. It just is.)

What led to this speculation? About a month ago, there were two ladies in the baking supplies aisle of Whole Foods earnestly debating the differences between two bags of sugar. One was labelled "Vegan", one was not. I admit I stopped to listen. I do that. Anyone who doesn't is fibbing. The younger of the two was determined that she was going to buy the vegan version. The older one asked, "What's in sugar that makes it NON-vegan to start with?"

The younger lady was really getting angry about this. That label was becoming crucial to her well-being. Then her friend pointed out that the sugar with the "Vegan" label was CHEAPER than the organic sugar from the same company and was in a virtually identical bag. In fact, they were side-by-side on the shelf. Why the price difference? I read the labels afterward. The sugar labelled "Vegan" wasn't organic.

I left, pondering the logic of this and knowing that since these thing aren't based on logic, I was unlikely to get any sort of answer. I told The Boy about it when he got home that week, and asked what he thought of the situation and he said, "You know these things aren't based on logic. I think you might have too much time on your hands. Did you remember to get the Humboldt Fog?"

Fine. I left it alone. I had stuff to do anyway..... like remembering to put the damned Humboldt Fog on the next week's grocery list. Then remembering the list.

The following week, I went back to Whole Foods (I DID remember the list, I just left it in the car. I got the cheese, but forgot the lamb shoulder. Sigh.) Naturally, just walking in the door got me thinking about the "Vegan" label again, so I started seeing the bloody thing everywhere I turned. A partial list, and yes, WTF? should be after every item.

1. Maple Syrup.
2. A spice mix for the barbecue.
3. Flour.
4. Bread. (Good bread has three ingredients. Flour, water, yeast. It ain't rocket science. Oh wait...how can yeast be vegan? It's alive. I'm confused.)
5. Pasta.
6. Ketchup.
7. Tomato Paste. (Which had salt and guar gum added. The kind I buy has one ingredient on the label. That would be "tomatoes".)

You see what I mean? It's everywhere. These are only a few things. I already knew that there was a product called "Vegan Worcestershire Sauce". For those that don't know, Worcestershire Sauce has as its main ingredient fermented fish. It's the fish sauce of the western world and it's a crucial product in most kitchens. I tried the vegan stuff once when they ran out of Lea and Perrin's. Big mistake. It was mostly MSG (a vegan product from the sea) and it STILL tasted sweetish and nasty. Altogether a waste of $4.99. I dumped it down the drain. Probably it killed a few fish.

Now, I can see the need for the label on, say, cookies. I make mine with butter, a vegan no-no. Baked goods are complicated, so fair enough. But MAPLE SYRUP?! Really? What could be more vegan? Or sacred to Canadians, wherever they live? You stick a tap in a tree and boil down what comes out until it's...syrup. Maple syrup in fact. Where are the animals in that? I guess some producers still use sleds with horses in Quebec, but the horses are all right with that. I asked one once, just to make sure.

On that trip, I left the store thinking I just had to write a post about this. Clearly Western Civilization needs to ponder this. Naturally, I procrastinated. Another week passed. Back I went to Whole Foods. I DID write a list, put it in my pocket and consulted it in the store. What was on it? Hmmm. Milk, eggs, yogurt (gotta get the kind with no pectin or the cat won't touch it), crunchy bits, snack items.....a couple of other things. And yes, I actually wrote "crunchy bits". Then when I got to the store, all smug about having the list in hand, I kicked myself for trying to write a list before I was fully caffeinated that morning. The basket was VERY full on my way out that week. That's what I get for being vague.

I was thinking about this and other, weirder things, as I walked the aisle, filling my cart with snack items and crunchy bits. I was still thinking about it when I ran into one of the store clerks. He's a nice kid and very helpful. He's hunted things down for me in the past. So I asked him, "What's with the vegan sugar? ALL sugar is vegan!"

"No it's not," he said, "Didn't you know that?"

"Um, dude, sugar is a plant. If it's not cane, it's usually beets. Or is there some special way to eliminate the bug parts?"

He got a very serious look on his face. "It's the way it's made. When they cut the sugar cane, they put it on a big floor and pound it with cow bones before they put it in the crusher."

I looked at him, "Are you serious? Really? Because I've BEEN to a couple of sugar plants and they're just big steel buildings with big steel machines."

No way. He wasn't buying that. He looked at me like I'd gone off my rocker and went to find brown rice pasta (yuck) for another customer (bet it had the "Vegan" label on it).

So here I have to cry bullshit and ask where in blazes THAT rumor started? Cow bones? What the hell is that all about? Who says something that moronic? Worse, is there something in the vegan diet that makes people believe stupid things? Is that a requirement or is it part of the buzzword memorization?

I had a friend when I was about five who sincerely believed that if she didn't cover her mouth when a dragonfly went past, it would sew her mouth shut. I knew a girl in high school (not the brightest penny in the till) who sincerely believed that not only could you GET pregnant from a toilet seat, it happened all the time. She believed that even AFTER she got pregnant in Grade 11. I still look for the occasional four leaf clover. Until she died, my great-grandmother firmly believed that if she used a curse word, then said part of the rosary, God would be all right with the bad language.

The sugar thing I don't get. I've always, based on the preaching I hear all the time, firmly believed that veganism was more a religion than a lifestyle choice. Many vegans, especially professional vegans, sound more like evangelists than health mavens to me. Having heard the twaddle about sugar, I have to wonder just how many other idiotic superstitions are out there.

I'm going to start some of my own.

1. Ooooh, did you hear? Every time someone butters their toast with real butter, a robin dies.

2. It's a scientific fact that if you eat pork, you'll get a little curly tail. Doctors cut them off all the time without telling their patients about it.

3. Did you know that regular gasoline has cow fat in it?

4. Refrigerator factories use live mice to test the seals. They put a mouse into each fridge and time how long it takes for it to die.

5. Steel factories use baby pig and dolphin blood to make the steel stronger.

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Can anyone out there come up with any more? I want to see how long it takes for someone to tell me one of these things that BELIEVES it!

(Ok, I just read online that some sugar processors, when sourcing the activated carbon that is used as a filter, buy it from companies that use bones to make the char. Fair enough. I guess that's not vegan. I STILL want to know where the hell that kid got the idea that beating cane with cow bones is something that any manufacturer would bother with. I also want to know why it's a bad thing to use cow bones, a byproduct of the beef processing industry, to make char? Would the bones be better off in a landfill?)

Now...for the rant!

2010-07-12T15:40:00.006-05:00

Now to that rant I promised yesterday and didn't deliver... Except I can't do it. Not the way I planned, anyway. I can tell you a story. Let's see how that goes instead.

For the past four days, I've been trying to give money to Steve Jobs. And what a job that's been! I've never had so much hassle and kerfuffle trying to get someone to take money from me. It's a nightmare.

So, the back story is this. The Boy (That would be my husband, a nickname I shamelessly stole from Christie Blatchford which is another long story altogether.) never buys things for himself. Hardly ever, anyway. It's not that he can't afford to spend money on himself, he just doesn't do it. For example, he gets his jeans and polo shirts from Land's End. Overstocks. Work clothes he'll buy when he needs to and he doesn't skimp, but just for his own pleasure, not so much.

This means that I was overjoyed when I finally heard him express a wish to purchase something! It's rare. When it happens, I make every effort possible to make this easier for him. See, he hates shopping. No one could ever make him set foot in a mall even at gunpoint. Heck, even if someone had ME at gunpoint, he might think twice. Going to any store is something that he sees as a cubic waste of time.

Driving with him is a hideous experience. Parking, especially when he sees the rates, makes him bananas. Actually going in to a store? About 90% of the time, forget it. He'll stand outside with his hands behind his back, looking like the Secret Service. He does, too. Especially when he's got that leather jacket/beret combo going. Hubba hubba.

So. A few months ago, he expressed an interest in an IPad. Even though he's a PC guy, he figured the IPad would be a nifty way to read magazines and whatnot while he was traveling (which he does every week). Also, he then wouldn't have to do his shopping on the company computer - even though the company doesn't care about that. He just doesn't think they need to know about his new acid-green chair. Whatever. It sounded like a good idea to me.

He decided to wait. It takes awhile for Apple to get it right sometimes, so this made sense to me. When the time came, he decided to take the leap. He decided that he wanted the 32G wi fi only IPad. NOW. That's right. In 21 years of working for the firm, he has never owned his computer. It's never been an issue. On this, he had to have the machine immediately. Bless the lad, I can see his point.

So. We decided to go to an Apple store and just buy the blasted thing. Saturday, after we went to the Farmer's Market and then the gym, we showered, had a snack and set out. I decided to go to the store in suburbopurgatory because the parking is free, which would supposedly make him a little happier. I called the store before we embarked, they said they had what we wanted in stock, and we left.

It took 40 minutes to get there. This was not fun. All the way there, and keep in mind that we're dealing with a 40-nevermind-year-old guy, he was muttering: Are we there yet? Jesus Christ, YOU RAN A YELLOW! You're going to get us killed! Killed! You're driving like a bat out of Hades, woman! Oh dear Gawd. How the hell long does this drive take, anyway? What? How long has that construction been there? Do you come this way often? Well, I can see where that future suspension repair is going to come from! Oh Geez! Now we're in the suburbs! Yuck. I'm getting hives!

I was serene. I am long since used to this nonsense. Since he doesn't enjoy driving himself, I do it and while I've yet to follow through, he knows that if the whining gets to be too much, he can walk home. That is, there's a limit, he just hasn't quite hit it yet. Generally, when we leave the house he has no keys with him (Why should he? I have them, right?), so he settles down eventually. Faster even, when he realizes that he forgot his wallet, too.

So. 40 minutes for the drive. Five minutes to walk to the Apple Store so I could have the following conversation:

"Hi," I said, speaking to the kid at the door, "We're here to buy an IPad."

"Do you have an appointment?" she said.

"No. Can't I just go to the desk, get one, pay for it and leave?"

"Oh no. You have to talk to a salesperson. There's a 30 minute wait. You should have made an appointment. No one can speak to you now."

Can you see where this is going? The Boy heard the part about waiting and headed for the door. I caught him, found a guy in an Apple shirt wandering around, cornered him and told him what I was after. He wasn't thrilled about it, but he went in the back room.

"Sorry," he mumbled, "They aren't in stock. We probably won't see any for a couple of weeks."

"What is this, IKEA? (We all know IKEA is just Swedish for 'It's out of stock.')" I was getting testy, what with The Boy heading for the door and the thought that whoever I spoke to had told me that they WERE in stock, in fact that they had lots of them. The idea of hanging around waiting for a 12-year-old salesperson for half an hour didn't thrill me either. Not to mention the 40-minute drive in 90 degree heat.

"I don't know who told you that. We've been out of those for days."

"Doesn't Best Buy have them?"

"Yes."

"Do you know which ones have got them?

"No, and I'm not allowed to phone and find out."

So we left. The Boy was surly about it, but there's a Best Buy across the street from the Apple Store, so I figured we could ask there. A slap-happy optimist, that's me! They didn't have one.

*And here I have to insert something of an apology to Best Buy. I have long complained about the staff and their terrible attitude, especially to female customers. I have learned the way to navigate there, and I'll share it. Don't wander around the store. Go to the greeter at the front, smile and ask if they can find out if what you want is in the store. They're happy to do it. In fact, when they don't have something, they'll even phone around and find out if another store has it. This time they only thing they could do is tell me to check another store that happened to be on our critical path homeward.*

We checked a second Best Buy store and they couldn't help us either, but the guy did find out that the store that stocks IPads is so far on the other end of the city that it isn't worth the drive. It's PAST the downtown Apple Store by another 20 minutes in the car.

So we went home. The Boy was disappointed. After all, we had spent half a day TRYING to spend six hundred bucks. Being thwarted is a powerful thing. Emotions were running high. We went for a walk, stopped at our local for a beer, and determined that we would just order it online. We did just that. We felt better. Ok, I had a hip cramp from all the damned driving and he was still vibrating even AFTER I told him that the truck had been at least 30 feet away when I made that left..... ok, maybe ten.

Sunday morning rolled around. The sun was shining. The world continued to rotate. Everyone in the house was still breathing. A good day. We made another trip to the gym, (That foie gras isn't free any more. We have to earn it.) got home, make breakfast and commence to check e-mail.

"Oh shit-bugger-damn, those assholes!" The Boy trumpeted, "That is the absolute goddamned limit! I'm done! I quit! I'm going to order an HP web thingamie right now!"

He was clearly still reeling from the drive. I had no idea he was so traumatized. I poured a little coffee into him and made sure he was eating. Also, he isn't a patient soul at the best of times, and he was being tested severely by that point. Frankly, I'm surprised it took him that long to bust out the bad language. It turns out that the IPad we ordered wouldn't be shipped until the end of the month, but we were guaranteed to get it......right about the time we're going to be out of town for a week.

Now I was getting pissed. I had picked up on the psychosis and decided that dammit, I was going to get him the blasted machine no matter what! I suspect this is similar to parents who are desperately determined to get the hottest new toy for their kids at Christmas. Whatever. I was DAMNED if he wasn't going to get what he wanted within the next 48 hours.

First, I went to the web site. No dice. I couldn't open the invoice, even by signing in on my account (they make you have an account, even if you only spend fifty cents on a piece of string there). I had no choice. I phoned Apple. This takes time. To find the phone number, you have to spend about half an hour online. That's how many hoops you have to jump through.

Once you have the number and dial it, a perky male voice comes on, informs you that it can handle any question you have (yeah, right) and you have to say "operator" a dozen or so times while it runs through the entire call menu three times. No shit. This is the way it works. The machine switches you towards a human, after telling you (no matter what time of day it is or even what day) that they are "experiencing higher-than-average call volumes and you'll have to suck it up and wait...unless you want to go back to Automated Guy.

I got a human. Here's the conversation:

"This is Cedric (I'm making that up), how may I give you excellent customer service today?"

"Hello Cedric, I need help with an online order. Can you access order number (13 digits plus letters) for me?"

"Well Mrs. -----, I can't do that from here. I can send you back to the automated service, though..."

"NO!!! Gawd NO! Please no! Can you just transfer me to..."

"I'll transfer you to sales, ma'am."

(There was clicking on the line. Lots of clicking. And Musak. From Dr. Zhivago. Fitting. Something that sounds like half a dial tone. Then another voice.)

"Hello Mrs. ----. This is Tina (I'm making her name up, too). How may I give you excellent customer service today?"

"Tina! So glad to hear a voice...any voice (I was starting to sound a little unhinged, but I think she's used to that), can you access Order number....."

"Yes, ma'am! Here it is! It's going to be delivered August __."

"Er, Tina, we're going to be out of town. Can we change the shipping to overnight? That way we'll get it before..."

"I'm sorry ma'am, we can only do that if you cancel your order and reorder."

"Ok, let's do that. Right now. The same credit card..."

"I'm sorry ma'am, you have to do that online. You can cancel the order with me, though."

At this point, I'm shaking and on the verge of a nervous breakdown, "Tina," I say in gentle, dulcet tones, "Honey, I'm trying hard to give you folks money here, and I just can't seem to do it. Can you at least tell me if that thing is in stock?"

"Oh no ma'am! If you re-order now, you'll lose your place in the line and it'll be September before we can ship it. And I'm not allowed to tell you if an item is in stock."

"Fine," I muttered softly while humming a Ramones tune and clicking a pen on my teeth, "just please cancel the order."

I hung up and The Boy spared me a pitying glance before returning to his newspaper. We've had the "why on earth do you think they'd help with anything" conversation many times. I live in hope, but it's really the triumph of hope over experience.

We read the papers, I baked a cake, we started to prep dinner, there were cocktails. Things were looking up. Naturally, I had a brainwave. The downtown Apple store was going to close at five, and it was ten to five. I stopped everything, and reeking of onions and gin, ran to the phone.

Someone actually answered. This is a minor miracle. When you phone an actual Apple location, the phone system ALWAYS tries to send you to the national call center. That way lies madness, because if you do push the wrong button, you'll be told that they can't give you the phone number to any store AND they can't transfer you.

"This is Dillon (another made-up name), can I help you?"

This voice sounded kind of cranky. I was reassured in a way. It sounded as if the artificial perky had worn off.

"Dillon. Do you have the 32 gig IPad wi fi in stock?"

"No. No one has that one in stock. Nowhere in the country is THAT MACHINE.... *puff puff* in stock. We have the 64 gig version here."

"Great, here's my credit card number, put one on hold and I'll get it first thing in the morning."

"Ma'am. No. We aren't allowed to do that. No holds, not for anyone, not ever."

"Ok, then just pay for the thing..."

"NO! *long shuddering sigh* I mean no. We need to take an imprint of your credit card."

Ask yourself, people. When was the last time anyone ever took an imprint of your card? I smelled bullshit.

"Fine. I'll be in first thing in the morning." I hung up.

This morning, I was at the store less than five minutes after it opened. I walked over to the cash desk in a purposeful manner, asked for the 64 gig whatsit and waited. She looked for a millisecond as if she were going to ask if I had an appointment, so I said, "Listen, kid. No appointment. Just a credit card. Do. You. Have. The. Machine."

She turned and looked for it. For a second, it looked like she was going to say something, but found the cabinet empty, shivered for a second, opened another door and found the thing. On a pile. Beside ANOTHER pile of the same device, the one that whatshisname couldn't even tell me if the had or not, but could certainly never put on hold..... that had cards labelled "Hold for..." on them taped to the boxes.

I rallied. I paid for the IPad. Told the very nice cashier what I'd been told the day before and also told her that her company wasn't doing her or any of the other staff any favors.

--------------------- --------------------------- ---------------------

That was the adventure of my weekend. It sucked. I was going to write a profanity-laced rant at Apple, at the lousy service, at the crappy set-up they have going, about the shit customer service...but then I had a think as I was driving home this morning. (Parking downtown for 36 minutes, $17.00. Worth every nickel.) There was very loud music (Smashmouth. Fush Yu Mang, their best disc.) on the CD player. It's calming.

See, the people that work at Apple are terrific. They are smart young people. They know their stuff. They are extremely well trained and they honestly and sincerely do their best to help their customers. They're nice. Honestly and without any qualifiers, these are nice people trying to do a good job. NOTHING in the surreal journey that I had to go through to buy a one pound piece of cool technology was their fault. NONE OF IT.

This is what I think it's about.

It's all about a sales strategy that pretends to be as cool as a 70s night club. They deny access. They abuse their customers because they are laboring under the delusion that the customers want to be treated like crap. It doesn't matter if you have the money to spend, you have to wait in line. You can spend half a day and a tank of gas to spend your money there and they don't care. They have actually convinced a whole lot of people that this is cool! It's working for them.

Sadly, when someone like, say The Boy, just wants to buy and go home to play with his purchase, he's not allowed do it. He's like an increasing number of their customers. He has money and he wants to spend it with the minimum of hassle. He doesn't give a rat's behind if he's supposed to think waiting around for a commodity product to be handed to him is "cool". He's past all that crap.

Like he says, after all the years he's spent working, "I AM The Man."

Is this all an elaborate upsell? I ended up spending a hundred bucks more than I planned just to avoid going through this process again. Think about it. I'll grant you that I could have got stubborn and decided to wait. I'm generally pretty tight-fisted when it comes to overspending. This was too much for me, though. I paid a hundred bucks to escape. I wonder how many other people do the same?

It's too bad, really. I LIKE Apple products. We both have IPods. We like them. I'm writing this on my MacBook. I like it a lot. I've got a couple of IPhones on order (and do NOT get me going on how "cooperative" AT&T is, please), and they're going to be fun. I know that.

I can't help feeling as if we've been taken, though. I wonder if Mr. Jobs, safe from the scrutiny of actual people in his sterile lair, understands exactly how pissed off people are getting? I wonder if he understands how unfair he's being to his sales staff, because they're the ones who have to deal with customers...like me. Frustrated people. Unhappy people.

Do you think he's paying them enough to deal with that?

A Rant.

2010-07-11T12:15:00.006-05:00

Can't rant right now. Still too angry. You'll hear it all after I have a couple of cocktails, I promise.

Happy Canada Day!

2010-07-01T11:12:00.006-05:00

Yes kids, it's Canada Day! I know it's also the Fourth of July long weekend, but since I am Canadian (for the next couple of weeks, anyway), I feel compelled to bring to you images from your Neighbor To The North. Also America's largest trading partner.

We Canadians are notorious/famous for our sense of humor, our maple syrup, poutine, media figures (Peter Jennings, Pamela Anderson, Wayne Gretzky, John Candy and a whole bunch of others, anyone?), outstanding scenery, oil, gas, um.... and a whole bunch of other stuff that drives some Americans around the bend.

For those of you who ARE Canadian and living here in the States, for the next couple of days, say words like house, louse, and mouse a lot. People either think the way we say those things is "cute" or they go slightly batty. Try it! It's fun!

So here you go. I give you this song and a few photos for the day.

No matter where you are, have a terrific long weekend!

Coastal Rain Forest, Vancouver Island.

This might LOOK like simple graffiti, but it's actually a remnant of the big fight over legalizing marijuana country-wide. Medical marijuana IS actually legal, but that doesn't mean a whole lot yet.

Queen's Park, Toronto. Yes, it's a government building which is not so very exciting, but it was a pretty day, so why not?

The east coast of Vancouver Island. I took this picture at a wharf just before we went into the fish shop to get crabs and oysters for dinner. YUMMY! And no oil spill, either! (Just sayin'.)

Father's Day

2010-06-08T10:19:00.003-05:00

I think I've written on this topic once before. If I have, then you can stop reading right now. I won't mind. If you think I'm tiresome on the subject, then go ahead and tell me, I'll feel free to ignore that.

Every year around both Father's and/or Mother's Day, there are glowing tributes all over the place written by people who truly adored their parents. Some of them head directly into what I like to call "The Land of Smarm" because NO ONE is that wonderful. Make no mistake. I've met and know a lot of genuinely wonderful people of both genders and all I can say is that not one of them is as wonderful as hindsight seems to make the parents of some writers. There are, after all, no perfect humans.

I know that it's tempting to editorialize the lives of people who have died. Turning dead people into saints is common and has been for who knows how long. It's natural not to want to dwell on the down side. No one wants to know after the fact that good, kind Uncle Freddy who loved puppies and kittens and gave a fortune to children's charities was screwing his secretary(ies) for the entire length of his 48 year marriage. And managed to knock them up. Or that Auntie Jillian was a compulsive gambler who went bankrupt four times and left her kids alone in the house while she went to win it all back. Families don't talk about these things while the people in question are alive - after they die, all of the nastiness is erased from discussion altogether (at least where other relatives can hear it).

But, and here's where so many people are going to declare me evil and rotten, what if there is no up side? What if the LAST thing someone wants to do on Father's Day is listen to someone blither on about how "special" and "important" all fathers are, and how they're all just fantastic human beings who deserve a day of worship all of their own?

See, there were many, many years when the very thought that I might have to participate in some celebration that would involve my father made me nauseous. I felt ill at the thought that I would have to sit through a dinner where I would be expected to make nice to my father. I distinctly remember being in Grade Three or Four and being made to sit in the hall for an hour because I flatly refused to make a glittery card for my father. I just could not do it.

The man was a rat bastard. He was scum. He was living proof that even violent, verbally abusive (yet stony sober at all times) scum do indeed reproduce. When he died by his own hand in 1997, I was relieved. Those of you who adore all of your relatives can't relate, I'm sure. Save it. Believe me, I've heard the line, "But he's your faaaaaaaaaaaaaather, you have to love your faaaaaaaaaaaaaather" all my life. And no, I don't. I do remember lying awake at night wishing he would die in a flaming car wreck on his way home from work.

Here's the kicker. I'm not the only one who feels that way. Not even close. My childhood was pretty rotten, but what I went through is nothing compared to what other kids experienced or are experiencing right now. There are thousands of us. We don't ask for sympathy. We don't care about that.

At 46 years old, I'm well past the obsessing, the fear, and the self-pity. It's done. My tormentor is long since moldering in the ground and that's the way it should be. He and my past no longer have any power over me. In fact, I'm having fun. Life is good. My father-in-law IS one of the best people I've ever met and his son is just as wonderful. Better actually, but I'm biased. I'm grateful for both of them.

So, you ask, what the hell is this all about? Not much. Just remember, those of you who are tempted to canonize all fathers because your own is wonderful, that all fathers (or mothers for that matter) are NOT worthy of praise in any sense. If you find yourself tempted to yatter on about how there must be SOMETHING to adore about every father, save it. We've heard it all before. And you're wrong.

If you run across someone on either Father's or Mother's Day who is dancing around singing "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead" buy them a beer and count your lucky stars that you don't have cause to do the same. If you know someone who isn't participating, or is saying the equivalent of "Bah, humbug" leave them alone. Don't make excuses. Don't brag. Don't try and talk them into anything. Accept that not everyone had your experience and leave them alone.

For those of us who are going to get increasingly queasy as we get closer to the holiday - it's just fine to feel that way. Shut off the television when the treacly movies come on. Throw out the newspaper when the poetry about Dad contest finalists are published. Make barfing noises when radio shows featuring the three hairball choker Tributes to Daddy are on the radio. Those of you who go to church can skip it that day without guilt.

It's all right. You aren't alone. In fact, you're still standing, which means you won. Never forget that.

Things I plan on doing that are "bad" for me. A Messy Poll!

2010-05-28T13:26:00.004-05:00

I keep hearing about all of the things in life that are going to kill us, and I'm really starting to wonder just how seriously to take them. Of course, whenever I say things like this, someone gets all indignant and tells me how horrible I am that I would do such things and how dare I even consider it....

So to hell with the lot. One day "sugar is poison", the next it's not. Coffee used to be "poison", but it turns out it's fine, too. Margarine instead of butter was Gospel for twenty years or so...until someone found out about polyunsaturated fats, trans-fats and all of the other nasties that margarine contains that will kill you. I'm bitter about that last one, by the way. I have always like butter better, and I was deprived for far too long.

What am I going to do then?

1. I'm going to eat the good stuff. That means things like pork belly, foie gras, lamb - all of the meat products. Whole eggs. Butter. I'm going to cook with it, bake with it and put it on my toast, just like I do now, for the rest of my life.

Dessert. I'm going to eat desserts. In all their sugary glory. That's what gyms are for, right?

2. I will NEVER eat things that health enthusiasts tell me I "have" to eat. There will never be soy or foodlike soy products in my house. NEVER. Weird, uncookable grains? No thanks. Brown rice? Yuck, tastes like dirt. Even yogurt. I never particularly liked the stuff. It tastes like milk gone bad...oh wait! It IS milk gone bad!

3. I'm never going to stop drinking. Wine is good. Red wine is better. There's nothing like a lovely bourbon to bring smiles (I recommend "Noah's Mill) to my life. Good Scotch. The next time someone accuses me of "alcoholism" because I had two glasses of wine with dinner, I might just smack them.

4. I quit smoking in my late 30s after smoking for 20 years. I did it only for the sake of my health, NOT because I didn't like it. When I hit my late 70s/early 80s, I'm going to take up smoking again. I LIKE smoking. Nonsmokers will never understand this. I'm all right with that.

I'm an addict, I admit it. A full decade after quitting, the cravings are still there. There are many times when I'd like to mug that teenager for his/her cigarettes, sneak into the alley and smoke'em all. The funny part of this is that whenever I say this to former smokers, they either remain silent (because they agree) or they loudly proclaim that they would NEVER..... But they never say they don't want to do just that.

5. I'm not giving up the sun. I can't do it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of lying around on beaches or lounge chairs, but I'm damned if I'm giving up the sun on my face and the Vitamin D I get from it. Screw supplements, I want the real thing. If you live in a place that has winter for more than six months out of the year, you understand me.

Let me go further. Sunscreen sucks ass. It makes me itch. It makes my skin do weird things. It smells funny. I'm allergic to some of them.

Yes, I'm a fair-skinned person with a few (not many) freckles and red hair. I don't really tan, and what I consider to be a tan (on me), most people snicker at. I'm not just fair, I'm fishbelly white. But I LIKE my freckles. I already have a wrinkle or two, but I'm going to be 47 this year. I've earned them.

________________________________________________

Naturally, I don't plan on paying any attention to people who seem determined to suck all the fun out of life and preach at me to obey them in all things. I find the older I get, the less likely I am even to be polite to these folks. They're pretty obnoxious and the kind of nosiness they display is something I find really irritating.

I guess I really AM on the road to curmudgeonhood. Hmm. I'm ok with it, too.

So here's the poll:

What "bad" things are YOU not giving up?

In praise of real people.

2010-05-24T14:04:00.002-05:00

We love to hate the people that provide the services we need. Over the years, it seems like every single time I have to deal with, say....cable that doesn't work properly, dodgy electricity, insane phone bills that make no sense... no. A comprehensive list would only serve to piss me off again, and I'm actually in a pretty good mood, all things considered.

Here's one of my main peeves. Have you ever noticed companies like the cable company or your cell phone provider has a sweetheart of a promotional deal for new subscribers about four times a year? This irritates the hell out of me. After all, here I am, a loyal customer for ten years or so, and I GET NO BREAKS.

Sign up for the new texting plan.... get unlimited free texting for six months! WTF? How about cable television? Sure, they advertise the premium movie channels for a ridiculously cheap price for NEW SUBSCRIBERS only and we longstanding customers get hosed, right? Sigh. We have to pay full price and beyond for the service that others are getting for free, and there's nothing we can do about it!

Or is there?

For years, these companies have been shunting customers off onto web sites in an effort to cut down on the number of humans they have to pay and provide with benefits. For the most part, I have no trouble with this. As someone who has moved a lot, it's convenient as hell to just go online to cancel service and reinstate it somewhere else. I like it.

But there are always questions that just can't be answered by the machines. You have to PHONE for help. This is where I go bananas. In the past, I would sit on hold (I know you've all done this, bear with me), push buttons for half an hour, finally get a call center person who couldn't do anything that wasn't already online, and would therefore transfer your call and hang up on you without getting through to another person. Start over. Repeat as necessary. The whole process (IF you got help) would take hours, suck up half the day and leave me limp and exhausted, fit only for a stiff drink and a long nap.

Still - what choice did I have? It's not like you can just refuse to pay your bill until the problem is fixed, right?

I think things are changing, though. Clearly I'm not the only one that has problems with this nonsense. I've complained all over the place, and it seems that so have a whole LOT of other people. So much so that I've been pleasantly surprised not once, but TWICE in the last month.

Ready? I'm still reeling. This was too easy!

1. About two weeks ago, I got my cell phone bill and it was insane. Never mind how insane. Just nucking futz. It was bad. I figured there HAD to be a better way, so I bit the bullet and called AT&T.

A nice young lad answered the phone. I told him about the insanity of my bill, he called it up and said, "Wait a minute (clickety click)..... do you NEED two thousand free texts every month?"

"Heck no!" I responded, "How did THAT get there? I don't use more than a hundred or so a month and it's not listed on the bill!"

"Hang on (silence, followed by clickety click) I can reduce your bill by thirty bucks a month just by cutting your texting limit in half.... (silence, followed by MORE clickety click)...Ok. Wait a minute. Ok..... Wow.... (silence) hang on here... You're paying WAY too much for roaming! Let me just...."

Now at the time, all I did was make affirmative noises and hope he was getting this right. I figured he was on a roll. I was right. By the end of the call, he had cut my bill by just over fifty bucks by changing the texting thing (I have 7 gazillion unused minutes, by the way, and he let me keep them), and giving me a discount that I should have been getting all along for roaming. I was shocked....

"Ma'am, could you hold for just a minute, please? I have to talk to a supervisor about something."

I agreed, and about three or four minutes later, he came back on the line.

"Thank you for holding. Here's what I did. You get your discounts, and we are back-dating them for six months because of the error with the roaming charges. Your next bill will be around ten dollars, and the discounts will all be applied for the one after that."

I thanked him, he gave me the stock canned answer (Is there any other way we can provide you with excellent service today?) We hung up. I was in shock. It had to be a freak thing, right? I mean, no one gets a deal from the phone company!

2. A few months ago, The Boy suggested that I cut HBO. We don't watch a lot of television, and most of it is time-shifted anyway because he's away all week. We watch whatever we watch on weekends and there's only so much time available. I did it. I must have been nuts. I missed the entire season of TWO of my favorite shows. So today, I just thought screw it. I'm reinstating HBO.

Now, there was no easy way to do that on the web site. I puttered around on it for twenty minutes or so, then gritted my teeth and called them. I did the menu thing. I groaned when I realized that I started this whole sleigh ride just before I meant to have lunch and would probably be starving to death by the time I finally finished. I sighed.

But...but.... There was NO HOLD TIME. You heard right! Comcast - the former call center from hell had someone answer the phone right away! The cynic in my was convinced that it would just be someone who would redirect my call.....but no. No, she didn't!

She reinstated HBO for me, then told me to hang on. When she came back, she said, "Aunt Messy? I just checked to see if you were eligible for any discounts, and I see that we can offer you HBO for ten dollars a month for the next six months."

She asked me to hold again and came back in a minute or so.

"Ma'am? I asked my supervisor if there was anything else I could do for you and she has authorized me to give you the promotional rate on your Internet service for six months as well. Sorry I couldn't find anything else."

Again, there I was, shocked at how easy this was. My cable bill has dropped by $45.00 for the next six months!

________________________________________

Is there a moral here? Yes. As much as these companies hope and dream that all of their customers will just do business online, it's not going to happen. Seriously - I have Comcast internet, so just how am I supposed to deal with a problem if it craps out? Exactly. They will ALL need to have people available to actually talk to customers.

Now note that not a single discount that I got was available online. How's that for a kicker? By spending about an hour on the phone, I cut about $90.00 per month off my bills for the next six months! There is no down side here. Sure, the bills will go up at the end of that period, but who cares? It's not like they're going to ask for my savings back, is it?

After the six months has passed, I'm calling them back. If the only way I can qualify for loyalty programs and discounts is to be nice to a call center kid twice a year I am all over that. It costs me nothing to do that at all. In fact, I suggest that all of you try the very same thing. You have nothing to lose, right?

Questions...Always Questions....

2010-05-14T14:15:00.004-05:00

For anyone that's interested in the pictures....

These were taken on a recent trip to Portland OR. We had one sunny day, and that's the one we decided to spend at Washington Park, which is huge and gorgeous. Sadly, we were early for the roses, even though it was the first week in May. Spring there was so cold and wet that everything slowed down.

The pictures were taken at the Japanese Garden. That azalea is actually two plants. Over the years they've been pruned into a perfect ten foot diameter circle. The second is a Japanese Maple and it looks overexposed because it is. I was standing inside the canopy looking up when I took the picture. I was more interested in the structure of the tree than the leaves.

________________________________

Some of this is prompted by the fact that The Boy and I have applied for citizenship. Our forms are in, and we got fingerprinted by Homeland Security a couple of weeks ago. If things go at their normal pace, we will probably be sworn in by the end of September/beginning of October, in time for the November elections. We'll see.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a very official looking envelope in the mail, addressed to me by name, that looked a lot like the Census form. Now, I sent that in as soon as I got it - it was in the mail the very next day. This envelope looked about the same, so I opened it, figuring that it was either a duplicate (strange but I imagine it happens), or I'd screwed something up so they were asking me to re-do.

I opened it, and there was an official-looking letter inside with a huge black heading that said "2010 Congressional District Census". In very tiny little black print underneath that it said "Commissioned by the Republican Party". Now it was addressed to me by name and signed (by machine) by a Michael Steele, who I've never heard of. I'm sure he's a nice man, even if he IS a Republitard.

The cover letter was filled with loaded language that interspersed the usual paranoid idiocy with things like:

" Barack Obama was barely in the White House a month when he dropped all pretense of "hope" and "change" and laid bare his real agenda of massive tax increases, government-run health care, amnesty for illegal aliens (it's ok, The Boy and I are legal), and bigger, more intrusive government."

You get the gist. It's a three page letter, demanding that this "census" be returned by 28 May and also begging for money. We've seen it all before. Still....when I looked at the survey it was STILL iffy as far as I was concerned.

The form LOOKS like the real Census form. There's a blurb at the top about being selected for the survey and so on, and in small print with a white line through it that was meant to look like a copier malfunction and so virtually unreadable; "This is not a U.S. Government document."

Neat, hey? Oddly, this "malfunction" is present ONLY on that small line of text.

The rest of the printing job is beautifully done with not one error as far as I can see. It has all sorts of numbers on it, a tracking code, due date etc. I know that this is an old advertising/marketing trick. No one reads the text of the letter, right? Most people just toss that out. No one really pays attention to the exact wording at the top of the survey, either. They just fill in the boxes. It's even postage paid.

There are 21 questions, and they read like the typical paranoid Republican bullshit we've been hearing since the last election was called.

"5. Do you think the record trillion dollar federal deficit the Democrats are creating with their out-of-control spending is going to have disastrous consequences for or nation?" (Like the Shrub didn't start that whole sleigh ride.)

"9. Are you concerned that as other countries like China buy up hundreds of billions of dollars of our national debt they will have more control in directing our nation's future economic policies?" (Hmmm. A new take on the Yellow Peril bullshit that was around a hundred years ago?)

I found these questions hilarious, but that's just me. No, they really ARE hilarious. So there. The funniest part of the whole thing, though is Page 4 of the "census". It's a donation form that is designed to take credit cards. Gotta love political parties! The whole thing seems like a lot of work to ask for money, don't you think?

It's also funny that this is coming to me. Not only am I not registered to vote, I CAN'T do that. I'm not a citizen!

___________________________________________

However, this got me thinking, and I have questions about politics here. I'm Canadian, so give me a tiny break here before mocking me.

1. Do you have to declare a party before you go into a polling booth?

2. When you register to vote, is that done by a civil servant or do you have to register with party officials? If it IS a civil servant, do you have to tell THAT person what party you're affiliated with?

3. Why do party officials count the ballots? Isn't that begging for trouble, or at least corrupt counting practices? Shouldn't the people counting be neutral? In Canada, that means civil servants.

I am genuinely confused by this. I've voted in a lot of elections in Canada, and we were always taught that the secret ballot is sacred - that no one has a right to ask how you're going to vote. Ever never. It's not just that no one answers the question, no one asks because it's considered so rude.

Also, Elections Canada used to (I don't know if they still do) count damaged and defaced ballots. Defacing a ballot- usually by drawing a big black X through it) is considered a legitimate form of protest. Essentially, if you deface your ballot, you're making it clear that all of the candidates are idiots so it doesn't matter who gets in.

There are no exit polls in Canadian elections - again with the secret ballot. All campaigning has to stop before the vote and the bars are closed. Apparently a favorite tactic among the politicians of yore was to park a wagon full of kegs of beer outside polling stations.

So anyway, what gives? I was raised believing that it's nobody's damned business how I vote or for who.

That's right - you got it. Messy asks for help AGAIN.

I love a good vacation!

2010-05-03T16:01:00.005-05:00

I'm back! Despair not, for there will be SHADDAPS! all over the place in the next couple of weeks.

We went West this year.....ok, we usually go west, but this time we went to a city that I have never been before, namely Portland, Oregon.

Now, I'm the first to admit that I just like all things West. Westerners are more laid back. They're in less of a hurry. They don't seem to rush to judgment like people from other parts of the country. I should say continent, because Western Canadians are pretty much the same. In short, they just see fun in life a little quicker than most.

Portland is a gorgeous city. I have to sift through my photos and I'll post them for you later if you're interested - if not, tell me and I'll post them anyway. What the heck, It's my blog, right? The gardens are stunning. Washington Park is a wonderful resource for the city, a beautiful retreat for urbanites who need some green and downtime. We walked, we ate (Park Kitchen, Gruner, 23 Hoyt - all fabulous) we took some pictures, it was lovely.

There are craft breweries. Lots and lots of them. One young man told me that Portland is called "Beervana", and I can see why. The creativity of the brewers there is legendary. You cannot go wrong in a pub there - it's all good.

Our main goal was not the city of Portland, though. Always remember that we are Wine People, and that Oregon is the home of Pinot Noir. It was wineries we were after, and The Boy was determined to go to the people who produce some utterly spectacular wine and buy "from the farm gate" as it were.

See, many of the producers that we like are very small. They often make less than a thousand cases of wine in a season. Because of this, distributors aren't interested in dealing with them. The small producers have limited access to the markets and a lot of them aren't even interested in selling all over the place. Their entire production goes to certain restaurants and people who belong to their wine clubs as well as locals. You have to go to the winery to buy from them and everyone's good with that. (Westerners, remember?)

Doing this takes a little research. The last time we were in that area, about 15 or so years ago, there were maybe 20 wineries in the area. Now, there are over 100. Many of them have tasting rooms that are open to the public. Some of them are by appointment only. Research is in order, and phoning ahead is crucial. We went early in the year. A few of the tasting rooms were not to open until the beginning of May.

But going early was a good thing. See, there are a lot of people who do what we did. A LOT. During the summer, the Willamette (say it like Dammit) area is lousy with tourists, all tasting wine with some buying and some not. It's been a major economic boost to the area. Going early in the season, though, meant that the winemakers were free to talk, and they're happy to do it. These folks are passionate about what they do, and it shows.

Now the other thing you need is a place to stay, and there are a whole lot of B & Bs around. We lucked out and went here . Bruce and Susan were brilliant hosts. They went out of their way for us and made dinner reservations, appointments with some of the wineries we wanted to go to and Bruce's breakfasts are out of this world delicious. In fact, his scones are currency in some of the wineries. At Archery Ridge, when we mentioned where we were staying, the man behind the counter popped out with, "Got scones?"

It was a blast. Like I said, it was early in the year, and it's been a cool spring, but the weather just didn't matter. The people were terrific, and Bruce and Susan were so wonderful we're going back there again....maybe in the fall?

A couple of tips. Take a rain jacket. Don't bother with the fancy clothing or shoes. You will literally be walking in farmyards. Don't forget your GPS. Seriously - take your GPS. It saved our marriage....no looking at maps necessary equals a happy couple. Trust me on this one. The roads meander and the addresses and the maps don't coincide all the time.

So it's Tax Day! Who cares when the sun is shining?

2010-04-15T14:33:00.007-05:00

This morning, I put on my gym togs, planning on working up a sweat before coming home to actually accomplish something. It didn't work. I was drinking my coffee (I can't work out without that), and looking out the window and I just couldn't stand the idea of being indoors on such a gorgeous morning.

So I didn't. I trekked off through my neighborhood with my trusty camera, randomly snapping photos of ... I don't know. Everything. Nothing. Cool stuff? You be the judge. I was just having fun, here.

Magnolia.... They're everywhere.

Brown Line tracks. Yes, those ARE houses backing on to the tracks. Expensive ones, too.

Just a random architectural detail that now faces an alley. I think the alley was once a street, but it's hard to tell. There's a lot of this glazed terra cotta work around here, you just have to hunt for it.

I love these trees. They're nothing fancy, just weeping willows, but they're gorgeous, aren't they? When the leaves finish coming out, they'll be silvery.

These are just a reminder that Tax Day also means spring is here and I have proof! This is what we waited for all winter. Now everyone should go out and spend at LEAST an hour outdoors today.

House Cleaner Mafia?

2010-03-19T14:40:00.004-05:00

(Photograph copyright 2010, all rights reserved.)

I guess hindsight is not 20/20. Ok. That's a bad pun, but it fits with the picture AND the situation that my best friend, Mother of the Cool Niece (henceforth to be known as MOCN) called me about on her lunch hour today. I need to give you background, first.

About four years ago, while MOCN was still living across the courtyard from me, she was raving about her cleaning lady. " A goddess", she said, "and she doesn't charge the earth, either!"

So I hired this Cleaning Goddess (henceforth to be known as CG) and, you got it, she was a tornado in the house. The place literally sparkled when she got through with it. Every corner, every crevice, every spot where dirt might accumulate glistened after four hours of her time. She cleaned the TOPS of the shower heads. She vacuumed the baseboards BEHIND the heavy furniture. She dusted the doors, the door frames, the blinds (all we have are wood blinds) and the window frames. In four hours, she could do what I couldn't manage in three days.

The house was so clean it made me slightly nervous. Really, who vacuums baseboards that you can't even see more than twice a YEAR, let alone twice a month? No one I know, because life is just too short to move furniture all the time, right? All this and she adored the cats, too! Plus, she was NICE. A sweet young woman from Poland with permanent resident status, a husband who drove truck (at the time, anyway) and a thoroughly engaging and pleasant person.

MOCN and I recommended her to several people. At one point, she was working for another three or four people in this townhouse complex and everyone agreed that she was a great cleaner with a sterling character who never, ever broke anything. Ever. She came, she cleaned, she got paid, she moved on. Two to three houses a day, five days a week. She made good money. This was a busy lady, as you can understand. Anyone who does work that good can write their own ticket in this town.

Alas, as always seems to happen with young married women.... the CG got pregnant. Sigh. She worked until her fifth month, but had to quit because she just couldn't manage the lifting any more. She recommended a friend, I told her that she was welcome to come back whenever she was ready and that was the end of it. I didn't go to the shower, but I did order a car seat off her registry. This was last spring. By my reckoning, she's had about ten or eleven months off by now.

I ended up firing the lady that was recommended because she just wasn't doing a good enough job. For the same money that the CG was charging, the new lady made the house look like, well, like I did it myself. It just wasn't worth it to have her come in twice a month to do what I do every week, right? Again, I thought nothing of it and resigned myself to doing my own dusting and toilet scrubbing and waiting for the CG to come back to work.

So. We come to today. MOCN called me on her lunch hour with her ethical dilemma. The CG's recommendation for MOCN's house worked out extremely well. Almost as good as the CG herself, so MOCN kept her and paid her exactly what she'd been paying before.

MOCN doesn't generally manage to get home during the day. Even though her office is walking distance from her house, her job has her driving all over the city most of the time, so when it's cleaning day, she leaves the cash for the cleaner on the kitchen counter and comes home to a clean house. It works well for her. Today, though, MOCN had to go home for a few minutes to pick something up and the current cleaning lady was just finishing. They chatted and MOCN found out that the CG not only has no intention of coming back to work, she was taking a THIRD of the wages away from MOCN's cleaner and all of the other ladies that she'd recommended when she went on "maternity leave". The poor girl was terrified and BEGGED MOCN not to tell the CG what had been going on.

It seems that the "sweet, lovely" CG was taking a third of the wages of ALL of the women that she said were "substituting" for her while she was on maternity leave! For almost a full year! How's that for a sweet deal? I suspect that she's making at least what she was making before, because her substitutes have to have found other clients on their own during that time and CG is taking a third of THAT money, too! MOCN was furious. Hopping mad. So mad that she fired the cleaner on the spot.

So, you must know what the dilemma is by now. What should MOCN do? The cleaner she fired didn't do anything wrong, and she needs the income from her cleaning jobs, including MOCNs. Then again, like MOCN told me this afternoon, she's damned if she's paying some racketeering, lazy-assed, slimeball for work that she's not doing! Now, I know some of you are thinking this already - it's not fair to the current cleaner, right? Why should she be victimized twice? First she's being extorted, then she gets fired. Hardly fair. If I could get the girl to go along with it, I would call the CG and tell her the girl was fired. Then I would let the cleaner know that she was off the hook with the CG and she could just keep cleaning my house and keeping the money.

It would be tempting to do it that way, but I don't think I'd go for it right away. The burning question in my mind is, "Why is that girl so scared that the CG will find out that her nasty little secret is out?"

Photos....

2010-03-16T10:13:00.006-05:00

(Photographs and original art work copyright 2010, all rights reserved.)

Top: 18" tall, 18" diameter. Terra cotta, Gloss Black glaze wiped down, then covered in Matte Gray glaze and low fired.

Middle: 10" tall. High fired stoneware. Glaze is Temoku, which has been washed off, leaving only traces. Afterwards, the piece was dipped in yellow salt. Don't try this unless the kiln gods are smiling. This combination can run and destroy a kiln shelf.

Bottom: Terra cotta, Matte Gray glaze with Red Underglaze, low fired. The red wasn't supposed to be glossy.... Oh well.

Ok. For those that are curious, I'm talking to you, Schuyler, These are three recent pieces. I've been playing with the three-lobed base for a little while, and I think I'll do one more piece before I move on. I tend to do things in series and beat up a shape until I'm happy with it. these haven't quite hit the mark for me yet.

I also tend to go through phases where I'll fiddle around with one thing for a couple of weeks, so once in a while I have to take a break from that and make something in a couple of hours from start to finish. These are fiddly - I'm right now firing something that I did in a single three hour session.

Some of my best work is done in a short session using minimal tools. When I do this, I use my hands, a soft rubber rib, and a tiny dental spatula. I don't necessarily remove the tool marks or fingerprints, either.

Here we go again!

2010-03-14T11:54:00.003-05:00

(Photographs copyright 2010, all rights reserved.)

Ok, it's an aaaaaaawwwwwwwwww moment! Meet the newest addition to the Messy household. I give you Charlie (as in Parker...the Bird....). He's 15 weeks old and stinkin' cute. Also, he's as tall as our adult cats and yes, I know what that could mean. He's doing all of the obligatory cute stuff and so far doesn't seem to be afraid of the older cats. I suspect there will be some - er - leveling before we're done here.

But that's not why I'm here. No, I have a conundrum, and I'm going to ask....everyone else for advice. Oh, I know what I SHOULD do, and I know what I'd tell OTHER PEOPLE to do, but I'm asking anyway. Ready?

As some of you know, I'm what The Boy calls a stay-at-home-mom-with-no-kids. What I've been doing for the past few years is working on things that I love to do, but never had the time for, one of which is take clay classes. By way of explanation, I don't make functional things. Ever. If something I make looks like it might become a vessel of some sort, I poke a hole in it. It's just my "thing". I don't throw pots on a wheel either, I hand build everything. A fair number of people work that way now, but not many did when I started. I'm regarded as somewhat radical because of this.

So. We moved here, I found a new place to take classes, and a new teacher is a good thing. I've learned a lot from my first teacher, so I figured I'd take an advanced course. As luck would have it, there's a resident artist from Japan working at the studio for a year or so and I signed up for her class. She's a terrific instructor. I've learned a lot.

Here's the "but". This is an advanced class, and it attracts a different sort of student. Now you have to keep in mind that clay folk are a mellow bunch. "Instruction" is pretty much like herding cats. Generally, teachers work with the first-timers and there are various assignments given to teach the basics. Those who have already done that sign up for class and pretty much do their own thing, asking for help if necessary.

There's a student there who is younger than me by about a decade. She has an MFA, which is as far as you can go in educational terms, and never lets anyone forget it. She doesn't have the time of day for anyone but a friend of hers and the instructor. In fact, she's so busy telling the instructor (patient and kind soul that she is) what she's done that if anyone DOES want to ask a question it's generally not happening. I find this student VERY irritating, because as far as she's concerned, the rest of us shouldn't even be there. We aren't as "important" as she is and are therefore beneath her notice.

I am battling an intense desire to smack this person. She seems to have an issue with me personally and because I don't play those games, she's getting more pointed. Last week, for example, I went to class tired (we had got back into town late, after a LONG travel day) and I know my patience was thinner than usual. I started dumping out tools on the table to get to work, said hello to the instructor and went to get a cup of tea. When I got back with it, I walked up to the instructor with a finished piece to ask a question about glazes, and this broad shouldered me aside (!?) with a question of her own. She then addressed the air, saying, "I don't know why some people bother taking this class."

I left. I figured that I was too tired to deal with that kind of crap and I'd probably put my foot in it within a millisecond if I stayed. Besides, we'd been gone for a week and I needed to hit the grocery store.

I know I'm going to have to suck this up to some extent. There are a LOT of things I'd LIKE to say, but I won't - at least not where anyone else can hear me, if you get my drift. Clay classes, after all, tend to attract a pretty eclectic group. There's an older man in the class that I absolutely adore. He's a sweetheart, and his wife is a lucky lady. There's another "artiste" that spends a lot of time staring into space. The usual.

So, how patient should I be, everyone? It's not like they can fire me..... I just don't get why it is that some people are so freakin' competitive that they feel compelled to deride everyone around them who isn't a True Believer in their greatness. So tell me. Can I let'er rip?

Betcha never thought Messy would be asking for advice, right? Right?

Ah, Vacations!

2010-03-10T15:49:00.008-06:00

(Photographs copyright 2010, all rights reserved.)

I'm back! Surprise, 'tis I!

Yeah, ok. No one noticed I'd even gone, I know it...and I bet Schuyler's going to put up prettier pictures than mine, too. Sigh.

However, these photos are of what I consider to be one of the greatest places on the planet. I know everyone will have a favorite place that they like better, and that's just fine. We hiked through coastal rain forest (Cathedral Grove) in pouring rain and didn't get wet because of the trees, then went on to the Little Qualicum River (not so little), and on a perfect, sunny, gorgeous day, we went to Dave's Peak (And who the heck was Dave, anyway?).

We hung out with The Boy's parents, did a lot of hiking, eating and drinking and had a grand old time. The trip involves trains, planes, automobiles and an hour and a half ferry ride, but it's always worth the trip.

(Check out that moss!)

Flowers From an Alberta Summer

2010-03-01T10:02:00.007-06:00

(All photographs copyright 2010, all rights reserved.)

I'm done with winter. It's March and I'm ready to see some color again. To that end, I recently bought a nifty scanner so that I could have photos from my non-digital days on my computer. These are just a few. You'll be seeing more (whether you like it or not!) over the next few months. Consider this post a reminder that it really WILL be spring soon.

Smooches All Over...

2010-02-12T13:42:00.010-06:00

(Photograph copyright 2010, all rights reserved.)

Ah yes, we all know that this weekend is, for some, The Big Day. Valentine's Day and Christmas Day are the biggest proposal days of the year. You can tell by all the diamond ads on television. Oh the romance, oh the recession.... I suspect that the flower orders are going to be smaller this year, the jewelry less splashy (or nonexistent) and a whole lot more people are going to be noshing on chocolate instead.

And what's wrong with that? Is love about presents? It's not, am I right? Romance doesn't have to come with shiny things or expensive out-of-season flowers. No, it can be all about the smooching and canoodling, too. So in honor of the day, I give you a photo gallery from my local paper, The Chicago Tribune. Sadly, the paper is intensely hostile for me to post a link, so you will have to go to: http://www.chicagotribune.com and the galleries are on the lower right hand side of the home page. It's worth it - there are very cute pictures there.

Oh what the heck... Here's a poll, too:

Do you remember your first "real" kiss?

Can you tell us who? when? where?

(Check it out - the Valentine's Day special from my favorite paper The Globe and Mail Happy reading!)

Sex Offenders Underground

2010-02-06T15:24:00.006-06:00

(Photograph copyright 2010, all rights reserved.)

Some days, I open the morning paper - in my case the Chicago Tribune online - take a casual glance and suddenly can't even turn away long enough to sip my coffee. I'm sure we've all had that experience. Every once in a while, something hits you like a tone of bricks and it's like a train wreck, you just can't look away.

This morning's headline was Unregistered Sex Offenders Roam Chicagoland . (Ok. The Tribune sucks at this.They'll take you to an error page instead of the article. Lame. Just go to the front page and you'll see the headline.) It seems like a pretty sensational headline, doesn't it? Something you might see on a grocery store tabloid, not a "real" newspaper. I read the article and got myself an education today.

According to the Trib:

- There are almost 800 sex offenders in the Chicago area who have been missing for more than a month. (This means that they registered an address at the time they were paroled, then moved/left/went underground.)

- No arrest warrants were issued for more than 80% of them.

- Of those offenders with previous criminal convictions, no warrants were issued for 90%.

- Police are hit and miss on searching for these folks. For example, they don't check to see if the offender is still alive. In one case, they ignored Social Security when they notified police that an unregistered sex offender was receiving payments at a certain location.

Between mid-December of 2009 and mid-January of 2010;

- Chicago ALONE had 591 sex offenders missing in that time period.

- In the entire region including Chicago, there are 771 missing offenders.

- Only 135 arrest warrants have been issued for the entire region.

- Even during traffic stops, where the in-car computer system TELLS the police that the person they've stopped is a missing or unregistered sex offenders, MOST of them are never arrested.

The article goes on, citing various cases including one offender that was recently arrested for repeatedly sexually assaulting a 14 year old girl.

It's a mess. The police don't want to make arrests without warrants. Individual officers are told not to make arrests by their superiors. The courts are reluctant to issue warrants because full jails are very expensive and judges are elected officials (an idiocy about which I will rant at another time). This is not strictly an Illinois problem. Several other states are in the same fix. In ALL of those states, sex offenders are merrily offending, safe in the knowledge that no one is even going to come and look for them.

The article concludes with the announcement that the federal government is looking into this and threatening to withhold grant money from states that don't clean up their act in the near future.

Why was I so shocked? Like a lot of people, I hadn't even considered that this kind of crappy enforcement was going on. I figured that sex offenders were automatically registered before they got out of prison (they aren't - they have to register THEMSELVES after they're released), and that law enforcement, even if they didn't watch them every second, could at least find them if necessary. Another illusion blown, right?

So, what do you think? Have you heard anything about this where you live? How long do you think it's going to take states and municipalities to get a grip on this problem?

Inquiring minds and all that.

Messy Waxes Sentimental... and a poll...

2010-01-17T21:33:00.004-06:00

(Photograph copyright 2010, all rights reserved.)

Oh, all right. I admit it. After all the bitching and whining and slamming of morons is done, your Messy is a sloppy sentimental old fool after all. Proof.

The Boy is off across the Big Pond to conduct some Very Important Business that apparently only he can manage. This will apparently take only a millisecond. He left around dinnertime today and will get home on Wednesday around dinner time. It hardly seems worth taking the passport out of the safe deposit box, but there you are. When you gotta go you gotta go. I expect he'll come home tired and crabby, so I'll make sure to have some dessert on hand. When The Boy gets cranky, the only thing you can really do for him is throw food at him and tuck him in for a good ten-hour sleep.

In any event, I was feeling rather sorry for myself. I rooted around in the wine cellar and found a bottle of Mauro 2005 from Castilla y Leon. This sounds much fancier than it actually is. What it IS is a nice Spanish temperanillo that has a lovely nose with florals and fruits, with some tannin at the finish as well as a nice dry hint of gravel and saltiness that drinks very well now and for another five years or so and is available for less than $20.00 a bottle. It was splendid with the pasta I made for dinner and has enough heft to be splendid tomorrow night with cassoulet.

That said.....

I WAS feeling sorry for myself, so I was wandering through the cable guide for tonight and found a movie that I haven't seen since it was in the theaters....in 1968. That's right kids, I AM that old. Mind you, I was five at the time, and it was a matinee. My mother took me to the theater and then to the Woodward's lunch counter (store now defunct, alas) for a milkshake, where she broke the news that I was soon to have a baby brother.

Now you have to realize that I already had a baby sister. When she was new, I apparently guarded her crib and was not at all thrilled at the idea of strangers holding her or even getting NEAR her, for that matter. As a three-year-old, I took the notion of "take care of your sister" very seriously. She was a stinkin' cute pudgy baby with black, black hair, very fair skin and bright blue eyes, like a summer sky in Alberta under a high pressure system, which is pretty damned blue if you know what that looks like. I was terribly jealous of her eyes. Mine are green which I felt at the time were VERY ordinary and downright boring, given that my grandfather and uncle had the same Sprite-bottle eyes. I didn't find out that MINE were the unusual color for a good many years after.

I remember that movie as being the most magical thing in my life to that point. I was lost the minute the opening credits ran. It was (for those of you that are old enough) Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I remember it quite clearly. The song rang in my head for days after. (Chitty bang bang, chitty chitty bang bang, chitty chitty bang bang, we love you....) I was allowed my very own popcorn for the first time - there used to be a child size option - and I got to tell the lady at the concession to put double butter on it. I even gave her the money myself. Mom had a box of Smarties and a bottle of Orange Crush, which we shared. I felt very grown up and was allowed to wear my grey and black kilt with the ruffled shirt and the black patent Mary Janes for the first time. I had picked out the lace trimmed ankle socks myself and felt terribly grown up.

Tonight, I watched the movie on the Retro Channel for the first time since that day. The songs were still the same and I remembered all the lyrics, too. It was made at a time when Dick Van Dyke was still good-looking and we all thought of England as green and beautiful, with odd and happy people strewn over the countryside. There was the Baron of Vulgaria (a crude and no doubt non-politically correct character that was a parody of a German baron, which was all right because everone, 23 years later, was still stinging after WWII), the Toy Maker, the Child Catcher and the Baroness, all looking exactly the way I remembered them. There were little blond children that were weirdly well-behaved and a shaggy dog and everyone was smiling all the time, because truly bad things Just Couldn't Happen.

I remember getting my brother too, a few months later. Both my brother and sister were adopted, by the way. Up to the time I went to school, I firmly believed that to get a baby, one simply went to the doctor's office downtown and picked up a naked baby (you didn't even get the diaper, Mom brought all of the clothes with her). It was a grand adventure for me. Here was this platinum blond, blue eyed infant and he was OURS. Magic, just like the movie.

So, and you KNOW I have to ask.....

What was your favorite movie when you were a child? What is the movie that you saw that has stayed with you for all the time since? I think we all have one, we just need to think about it for a bit.

Sob Why was I surprised?

2010-01-12T15:59:00.007-06:00

(Photograph copyright 2010, all rights reserved.)

So this morning, I was listening to NPR when the alarm went off, and thought I heard that one of the folks on my "Most Loathed Human Beings" list has actually been given a job at Fox News. I thought I was still dreaming, so I rolled over and closed my eyes. Then, while a certain cat was trying to persuade me that it was hungry'o'clock for real, I heard it again. Fox News has hired Sara Palin (forever to be referred to as "Wailin' Palin") to be a "commentator". I'm sure you all know it by now. If you don't, then take a look at this .

That's right, kids. What I THOUGHT I was hearing turned out to be nothing more than the truth! Wailin' Palin gets to be on TV ALL THE TIME, and she's being paid for it! I suppose I shouldn't be shocked. We all know she's a media hound who would do or say anything to get attention. Hell, she's even fighting with a 20-year-old kid who said nasty things about her, and that was from first-hand experience on his part! Instead of letting that go, she's on the warpath trying to keep him away from his own child. Idiots, all.

Then that moronic book came out, written by a ghost writer who was either trying to make her look stupid or just couldn't do any better given the material. She got a whole new media tour after that. In fact, the last time I mentioned that dreadful parody of a book, Google, in their infinite wisdom, chose to run an ad on this blog from some political organization who was giving it away for FREE! That's right. Hey, it's an automated service, what can I say? THEN I found out that it was on the New York Times Bestseller List because thousands and thousands of copies had been pre-ordered to give away. Sarah couldn't help but to make millions on that deal. After all, she got paid when the books were ordered. The fact that they were given away afterward had nothing to do with her.

I know. I shouldn't be shocked. We all know that there are a LOT of morons out there "commentating" on various news stations. I guess we should be grateful that she didn't get a job on a newspaper. Think of the poor copy editor trying to make sense of her "clever" pronouncements before a deadline! I can see it now: "The Sky Is Blue Because It Isn't Green" with Wailin' Palin's byline. (Probably I shouldn't have mentioned that last. I probably jinxed things and she WILL get a newspaper column now.)

Naturally the folks at NPR, unbiased as they try to be, interviewed someone who actually LIKES Wailin' Palin. Either that or someone from Fox who knows just what to say and keep her job. In any case, that person said that Palin is a "bubbly person" who "knows what she's talking about" and "speaks to many things that people find important." Something like that, anyway. There may be one or two people who actually think she's smart. If you're one of them, let me know. Remember I thought I was having a nightmare at the time.

Now, I don't think I've ever met anyone with a brain who takes Fox News seriously. They've become the mouthpiece of the Republimentalist Party, and have long since given up even the pretense of being a real news outlet. I can't remember the last time they even squawked when someone said that out loud to them. Years. It's been years. I guess that in a country that elected a failed actor with Alzheimer's disease whose main claim to fame was spending YEARS being upstaged by a chimp as President not once, but TWICE, anyone can do anything.

But lordy is this going to be FUN! I can hear the comedians now. The laughter. The mockery. I don't know how long this gig is going to last. I sincerely hope that Wailin' Palin keeps sounding as stupid as she has proven herself to be. At least that way, we don't have to worry about her trying to run for anything again. Her salary is rumored to be in the millions as well, so she'll probably stay there as long as they'll let her - and there are even rumors that she'll get her own show!

I'm feeling better now. I'm actually picturing her and Oprah fighting it out for ratings for the next year. *snicker*

Happy New Year! Or whatever.

2010-01-01T10:52:00.003-06:00

(Photograph copyright 2010, All rights reserved)

We made it! We have finally left the aughts, the naughties, the zeros and have moved on to the 2K tens, the MMX's the tweens/teens. What a relief! It seemed like the last decade was never going to end.

For the past decade, we were listening to the sky fall. War, pestilence (hello H1N1), Michael Jackson kicked the bucket - I don't get the fuss over that - and we also lost Johnny Cash - a MUCH bigger deal in my opinion. We're finally shed of the Bush family, which is a good thing. Here's hoping that W confines himself to pissing off his neighbors by fencing in their (very expensive) Dallas neighborhood and having his security question them every time they dig up a bulb in their yards. We have Obama, which is also good. He's a whole lot smarter than Bush, and that's going to be absolutely necessary to clean up all manner of messes.

(Why the hell did we go to Iraq in the first place? WMDs? Didn't they KNOW that was a lie? They did? But...but...Oh, I see. Or not.)

Hopefully we'll see the end of idiots like Sarah Palin and her brood. Carrie Prejean can go make cute blonde babies in the 'burbs with her high school boyfriend and no one will ever miss her. There were a lot of morons around this past decade....I'm looking at YOU, Paris Hilton. And all of your little friends, too.

The economy's supposed to be improving. This is a good thing, although driving around in my city yesterday shows me that it may just be the triumph of hope over experience at the moment. I'm seeing a LOT of empty storefronts in some areas. Empty store fronts not only of the trivial sort, but long established businesses that have already seen a bunch of recessions. What was it about this one that made decades old companies finally give up? We still hear about insanely high jobless rates. Mortgages are still going sour and banks are still being shut down.

I think that this is a lesson learned for many people. We all need to acknowledge that things will NEVER be like they were before and that's a good thing. The Boy and I were speculating a decade ago about when the merry-go-round would come to a screeching halt. Taking out home equity loans to pay for vacations and weddings always did seem moronic to us. Seems like the ants outdid the grasshoppers yet again. It's a hard, hard lesson for many. Here's hoping they don't get caught out like that again.

People are all the same. They have to be bitching about something, and now it's the TSA scanning their sagging, pudgy bodies, as if anyone CARES what they look like in their skivvies. I happen to agree with Saletan's latest article on Slate. If a scan is the way to catch would-be bombers, I say go for it. I'd sooner be safe than dead. There aren't many pragmatists on The Fray, though.

I sound terribly negative, don't I? I mean, here I sit in a nice warm house, which is a good thing given that we have wind chills of -20F today, contemplating going to a movie later and being pretty sure that all will be well this year. I plan on indulging in beautiful fresh popcorn and having a hot chocolate (and damn the calories). Then I'll come home and write the SHADDAPS with a cat or two on my lap. Later we'll light up the tree and have a bit of bourbon in our eggnog and speculate on the year to come.

Nothing is going to change instantly, I been around long enough to know that. We have to take our fun where we find is and stop being so uptight about things that we don't see the fun. We all need to drink the wine, go to the parties, eat the food and enjoy what we have. All of the newscasters are telling us that we need to put our heads down and endure all of the problems we have right now, but where's the fun in that? Always remember, plus ca change, plus ca meme chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Enjoy yourselves, take care of each other and help who you can. What more can anyone do?

I Blame the New York Times!

2009-12-18T10:28:00.006-06:00

(Photograph copyright 2009, all rights reserved)

The Boy, as most of you know, is only home on weekends. Over the years, we've adjusted to this nicely and I generally arrange things so that he can spend that time relaxing. Given that he generally works a 70 to 75 hour week, I figure it's only fair for him not to have to bother with things like lugging a vacuum around and braving a grocery store on a busy Saturday. It works. This frees us up so we can go out for dinner, shop in our neighborhood and do whatever it is we WANT to do, rather than noodle around with boring chores.

Now, one thing we both love about living in Chicago is that it's a city of neighborhoods. If you don't live here, it's hard to know what I mean by this. It's sort of like living in a big city composed of a whole bunch of small towns. There are height restrictions for building in most of the city, which means that no building is permitted to be more than four stories high and there are a lot of mixed use properties. There are a lot of buildings that are retail at ground level with residential space above, for example. I like this a lot. It keeps things relatively civilized. I've lived a downtown canyon or two in my time and I have to say that it's very alienating.

To get back to the neighborhoods... See, Chicagoans are very attached to their neighborhoods. In each little area, you can generally walk to anything you need. There's a pub, a couple of bars, half a dozen restaurants, a clothing store or two, some art galleries - you name it, you can find it in your neighborhood. That's why, when you hear someone talk about Bucktown, Lincoln Park, Andersonville or Humboldt Park, everyone else nods. We know what that means, and since Chicago is also a city that drives, we've been to most of those places to try out new restaurants, for example.

This is all background. I figured I'd best include it because it leads into a very angst-ridden situation where we live.

A couple of weeks ago, The Boy was reading his Sunday edition of the New York Times, when he bellowed, "Goddammit, there they go again!"

I asked him what was wrong, and he said, "Look at this! Just look! Some bobo reviewer blew into town and reviewed our favorite restaurants again!"

He read off the review and sure enough, there was a whole lot of glowing, almost worshipful text about a couple of places, Kuma's Corner and Great Lake Pizza, which has not only been given glowing reviews by the Times, but GQ and a couple of other national magazines as well (Yes, it IS that good).

"Oh, fercrissakes!", The Boy muttered, "NOW look what's gonna happen! More goddamned fat suburbanites in freakin' Dockers are gonna be taking up all the seats! We can't get a decent meal in this neighborhood as it is with all those idiots and it's only going to get worse!"

We'll leave him muttering for a few minutes. I was actually kind of amused by this. The Boy has always sworn he's going to grow up to be a curmudgeon and it's really starting to show.

Chicago is renowned for its restaurants. Some of the best eating in the country and in a couple of instances the world can be found here. We have a lot of famous places and chefs here. All you have to do is Google places like Avec, Alinea, Schwa, L20, Bin 36, Xoco (Rick Bayless' latest), Urban Belly, NoMi, Moto, Tru and so on (it's a LONG list) to know that in this town we take our food seriously. Naturally with all of the super-famous places come a lot of places that are not so famous, but are also really, really good. This is where the neighborhoods come in.

Our house is on a street corner that is the exact convergence of THREE terrific neighborhoods; Ravenswood, Lincoln Square and Andersonville.

All three of these neighborhoods are within walking distance and all three have their attractions, the most important of which are food related. In the past three or four years though, some magazine gurus and a few newspaper gurus have decided that where we live is "edgy" and "sophisticated" and have been beating the world over the head with reviews of all of our favorite places. It's maddening. We adore the Hopleaf Bar , for example. It's our local. It's where we go when we're done with the day's zooming around and want to stop for a drink before making dinner. They also happen to make the most delicious mussels and frites I've ever had, bar none.

Then, the Hopleaf got Reviewed. I think it was Food and Wine magazine that mentioned it, but don't quote me on that. I could be wrong. The next time we went in...well, you know what happened. The Boy's "fat suburbanites" were all over the bar and bitching that they couldn't get reservations in the restaurant (they don't take reservations) and had to wait instead. Every time the crowd dies down a bit, another reviewer shows up. It's maddening.

"It's not just the Hopleaf, though is it?" The Boy was on a roll, "No, it's every damned place in MY NEIGHBORHOOD! I KNOW it's an edgy neighborhood! That's why I LIVE here!"

He was irked. He's irked every time this happens. I can't say I blame him, either. Lately it seems that every restaurant in all three of our neighborhoods has had a glowing review in a national forum. In the past year or so, we've had reviews for Ann Sather , A Taste of Heaven (Made notorious by a sign that the owners put up requesting that little children stay seated and use their "inside voices" in the restaurant. Parents were furious, other patrons ecstatic), Bistro Campagne , Cafe Selmarie , Chicago Brauhaus and most notoriously Hot Doug's . One of our favorite stores Scout was also reviewed in a shelter magazine not so long ago. I have to congratulate the guys that own it - they deserved the review. A bunch of other similar furniture and vintage stores that have moved in to the same area, which is good for all of us, especially in this economy, but still!

(For those that are interested, Hot Doug's not only makes the best hot dogs on the face of the planet, they also famously flouted the moronic (and thankfully temporary) ban on foie gras bylaw that Chicago City Council was dumb enough to pass a couple of years ago. Doug, bless the man, continued to make his justifiably worshipped foie dog and pay the fines that he incurred. Sadly for those of us who like GOING to the place, it was also very favorably reviewed by Anthony Bourdain on his show "No Reservations" last year. Now if you want to go there, you have to join the lineup at 10:30 in the morning and stand in the cold until you can get in. Sigh. Anthony, I'm a fan, but dammit man, you've highjacked my hot dogs! )

I could go on. And on and onandonandon... but what's the point? I know that a lot of neighborhoods in a lot of cities have gone through the same thing. The people that live there have pretty much the same thing to say when the trendsters show up and start blocking the sidewalks and taking up all the good seats in their favorite bars. I'll let The Boy have the last word...

"Next time another damned reviewer shows up someone should... toss him in the nearest puddle! Yeah...or steer him to Rogers Park or something."

(You do realize that I've deliberately left some places out, right? I have SOME loyalty, after all.)

A Christmas Rant

2009-12-15T12:13:00.007-06:00

(Photographs copyright 2009, all rights reserved)

I have a confession to make. The photo on the bottom is from LAST Christmas. Yes, that's Sarah up there in that tree (slightly blurry because the tree is moving, of course) and she's a lot bigger now. We ended up with just lights on that tree because decorations seemed fated to hit the floor no matter what we did. Also, you'll notice that there's no topper on the tree. This is because the only one we have is glass. It's gorgeous...and I refused to allow it to be anywhere near tiny paws.

This year I was smarter about it. I got shiny plastic and tin decorations that are unbreakable and if they do fall, no kitty will be harmed. They can't climb the tree any more because the branches are too close together, which is a good thing. Maybe next year I can use the glass ones....However, the second photo is hot off the presses - my improvised disco-fabulous tree topper. It's all plastic all the time, and I fully expect The Boy to pick on me no end because of it. I think it's cute, so it stays.

I have to confess, I love Christmas. If you know me, you know it's not for religious reasons. We have no children and not a ton of family, so it isn't about family for us either. Generally we spend Christmas on our own. I happen to like it that way. The Boy doesn't work in the week leading up to the holiday and he certainly doesn't work between Christmas and New Year's, so we get that time to ourselves - the rest of the year, he's out of town all week and home on weekends only.

I'm a sloppy sentimentalist at this time of year and only this time of year. Even Christmas shopping is fun. Finding the perfect gift is something I love doing. I adore getting the tree and decorating it. I LOVE putting up the outside lights, and I usually do that on my own, too. None of these things are terribly important to The Boy, but I suspect he likes watching me have fun, so it's all good.

I'll grant you that for many, this is the MOST stressful time of the year. If that's true for any of you out there, I highly recommend spending a quiet Christmas. Tell the families you're staying home and relax! Take away all the pressure of travel, cooking, family fights, etc. and opt out. Even if you only do it for one year, it will help you reconnect with the holiday and truly enjoy it. It's lovely and you can visit anyone you WANT to see AFTER the day.

However...this was a rant.

Every year, my mother sends a Christmas box. It's full of The Boy's favorite jam cookies, a book or two and things like fuzzy socks and kitty toys. Nothing fancy, just some ordinary and useful things. She wraps the box in brown paper, covers it with Christmas glitter stickers and tosses it in the mail in early December. However, by the time she's done (and haven't we all done this), it's not such a small box. In fact, it used to be the size of an apple box - now it's reduced to about half that size.

Our postie is great, but there's a size limit to what she's allowed to put on the truck, so this package is invariably left at the post office for me to pick up. I never thought of this as a big deal, and the actual picking up of the box is never really out of my way, usually just a quick stop on my way to somewhere else.

But then we moved....here. And our local post office, the Ravenswood Station in Chicago, is a disaster area. It's a big station with only a tiny frontage. There's space for only four cashiers at a time. No big deal. The staff have been there at the same station for a long time - that's a potential problem. Now, post offices in Chicago have been rated as some of the worst in the country in terms of service, speed and accuracy in deliveries. This was last year, and they're supposed to be working on improving that. I haven't seen a lot of problems, myself. Like I said before, our postie is a wonderful lady who's generally in a great mood and the station where I go to get stamps and send things out is wonderful.

That Ravenswood office, though. Yeesh. Put it this way. One year I was picking up the Christmas box. At that time, you were meant to go to a door and ring a bell, whereupon a postal employee would take your orange ticket, look at your identification and hand you your package. That's pretty standard. THAT year, I went to the box and rang the bell and....nothing happened. I went to move to the regular line after I had waited about 15 minutes with no response. It was 9:00 in the morning and the line was already out the door, because there were only two people in front, but I figured this was better than standing in front of a locked gray door...

No dice. One of the cashiers pointed at me and said, "You don't get packages in this line! If you line up here, we won't serve you!"

So I went back to the door and rang the bell again, whereupon the woman sang out AGAIN, "We know you're there! The more times you ring that bell, the more time you'll have to wait!"

I was seething. It took ANOTHER 15 minutes for someone to answer the door. Finally I heard the lock...and it was the woman who had been barking orders at me (and by this time, four other people). She seemed furious and delivered a long lecture to all of us in line that we were "mean" and that she didn't have to do anything for us. She looked me in the eye and informed me that if I ever rang that bell again, my package was going back.

Now this is only one incident with these people. I have been in there several times, and I have NEVER ONCE seen any of them crack a smile unless it was to a family member or friend. Several times I've been there during business hours and all four cash desks were closed at the same time. Seriously. ALL of them. On one memorable occasion, about half a dozen of us in line phoned the Post Office to complain at the same time. When someone finally opened their register 20 minutes later, we were all on the phone.

----------------------------------------------------------------

This brings us to today. I started the day in a terrific mood. All I had were a couple of errands to do, namely pick up the Christmas box and hop to Target to get one last present for a friend. No, I won't tell you what the present was. She reads this. There's some other stuff that needs doing - I have to make some cookies and do the big grocery shop for Christmas Eve dinner (game hens), but none of that needs to happen right this red-hot second. I actually had a really fun post to put up here this afternoon. Sigh.

But I went to the post office first.

As always, I went early enough so as not to hit the lunch rush - it was about 10:30 a.m. by the time I'd parked and got in the door. Again as always, the line was out the door, but there was a glimmer of hope because three people were there and they were actually taking clients. I went to the door right behind another lady who had already rung the bell. We waited for a minute or two, then the lady that I like to call "The Yeller" shouted that we had to get in line because things had changed. I took this as a positive development because the line seemed to be moving.

The three cashiers were talking to each other as always, and I've learned the hard way that they just don't exert themselves to push the line through. It was slow, but moving. There was an older Hispanic woman in line about three people ahead of me and when she stepped up, all hell broke loose.

Now this woman was obviously taking care of two grandchildren while their parents were at work. One of them was about six months old and sound asleep in a side-by-side stroller which was parked in a back corner out of the way. The other was a little boy of about three or so who was so bundled up that he could hardly move (think Charlie Brown). He was standing beside the stroller, waiting pretty patiently for a little kid.

When their grandmother got to the cashier, she had an orange tag like about half of us that were in line. The cashier took the tag and brought back the package, then demanded that the older woman sign for it and show some ID. This lady had no English, so it took a minute to get that across to her. It WAS a big thing to the cashier. She demanded, in English, a driver's license. Repeatedly, and getting louder with each repetition. Finally another fellow standing in the line translated, but it took a minute for them to get organized.

And this is where the fun starts. See, the grandmother, who had no English and was illiterate even in her own language, made her mark on the clipboard. She signed with an X. Signing with an X is perfectly legal. You can even sign a will that way. At one time, it wasn't even that uncommon. I clearly remember taking credit card slips that were signed that way. No, I'm not that old.

The cashier went skyward. She was demanding in English that this poor lady who didn't understand a word she was saying write her name. This cashier kept repeating "Write your name!" louder and louder while everyone in line looked on, getting more and more uncomfortable. She was oblivious. This was an inconvenience to her and everyone was going to know about it. It was obvious that she was starting to get out of control and didn't give a damn who knew it.

Meanwhile all the grandmother saw was a woman three times her size yelling things she couldn't understand. In about three minutes, this cashier, who was given a perfectly legal (albeit unorthodox) signature managed to reduce an elderly lady to tears. Finally the gentleman who had translated before stepped up to help. He somehow managed to get the ranting cashier to hand over the package and get the woman and her grandkids out the door without further incident.

The cashier settled down to take a few more people, muttering all the while about green cards and illegals (and if anyone wants to have this debate, let me tell you right now that it won't be entertained here). It took a few minutes, but it finally registered on her that about a dozen people would have gleefully thrown her in the snow and left her there, and she got angry again. NOW the muttering was about "doing my job" and "I don't have to take this shit" and whatnot. No apology. No acknowledgement that she might have been wrong. Nothing. She was just pissed because ... I don't know, people saw her lose it? Hard to say.

Naturally, when it was my turn, she was the free cashier. She looked me in the eye, put up her "next window" sign and tried to leave. It didn't work. She had to take me. I handed her my orange pickup card and when she went in the back to get the box, she pretended she couldn't find it. There was yelling out of the back room - she was claiming it was never there. She continued this game until I think someone put the box in her hands.

I have to admit that I couldn't resist. When she finally handed me the box, I asked if she wanted me to sign. She paused and said no. THEN she closed her window.

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This is not a rant about the Post Office in general. Working with the public is never easy. The job is boring, they're on their feet all day and I'm sure that there are a lot of nasty people in that line up per HOUR, let alone on a daily basis. I know all this. I've worked my share of retail, I've waited tables, and I know how it can be. I've been there. I also know that if I had EVER treated a customer the way that poor woman was treated today I would not only have been fired on the spot, I would have deserved it.

We've had terrific postal service for the entire 9 years we've lived in the States. I have to admit that I'm still agog that people get mail on Saturdays here, because I don't think anyone else has that. One of the ladies that works in the station near us in Texas went a long way out of her way to help us get our mail when we moved here. The station in Chicago that I go to for stamps is also amazing. The staff are universally quick and pleasant and truly nice to people. They hustle because they know that if they get people through the line quickly they'll be dealing with happy people instead of cranky ones. I've never had to wait in line there for more than ten minutes, and that's during the Christmas rush. To everyone at the Graceland Postal Store at 3024 North Ashland Avenue here in Chicago, happy holidays - you guys are great.

No, this was one person, in one station where I suspect everyone has worked together for far too long. They seem to have made a collective decision that customers are nothing more than an inconvenience to them, put on Earth to get on their nerves. I've seen that staff displaying all kinds of behavior ranging from deliberately slow to rude to (today) downright mean. There was no excuse for what happened there this morning. None.

A message to you ladies: Being polite to customer is NOT a favor. It's your JOB. Deal with it or get out. No one wants to be treated badly.

-----------------------------------------------------------

I didn't just post this out of the blue. I DID contact the Post Office about it. Eventually I got a local customer service number. The folks at that office deal with complaints like mine and worse all the time. I told the woman I spoke to there about what happened and told her that I was going to put it in this blog. She was very nice about it, took my name and number and let me know that a Public Relations person will probably be calling me. I have no problem with that. In fact, if they contact me, I'll post about that conversation right here.

(This just in. I just got a call from someone in Public Relations. He listened, he told me that the retail manager was heading over to that station this afternoon and...we'll see. Like I said I'm not holding my breath. However, he DID say one thing that's interesting. Apparently, they've started a new initiative to make it easier for customers to report problems. There's supposed to be a telephone number posted in all of the post offices in this city that people can call to report problems. Obviously, it wasn't posted in that office, or I would have called it and saved myself some work. For any Chicagoans that want it, that number is 312-983-7800. He'll be checking in to see what I've written here. I gave him the URL and let him know that I was happy to have him comment.)

At the same time, I'm a cynic. I know that nothing is really going to happen because of this. Questions will be asked, none of the cashiers will have seen anything, and the one that lost it will claim I was seeing things. There will be no disciplinary action taken, no one is going to be put on notice to behave themselves and things at Ravenswood Station will go on as they always have. I don't really care. It's not as if I have to go there more than once a year anyway. It's clearly a localized problem

I'm still angry, though. How is it that anyone can feel free to abuse someone like that woman was abused today? Who does that? What kind of twisted logic makes that all right? What's with the racist crap? What kind of society do we live in where someone in a public position can be that nasty and her co-workers watch this and do nothing? Does she get some kind of sick thrill from hurting people?

This appalling behavior is not all that unusual. I know that. My own great-grandmother never learned to speak English well, even though she was born in Canada. This sort of thing happened to her all the time. There are jerks all over the place who seem to think that they can force someone to understand them just by yelling loud enough. They don't understand (or choose to ignore) that this can be frightening, especially to non-English speakers who don't understand what they could have done wrong, but it is terrifying to someone who is elderly.

Oh well. So much for the good mood of this morning. I guess I might as well sit down and pay a stack of bills, right?

Toys for Who?

2009-12-07T11:14:00.004-06:00

(Photograph copyright 2009, all rights reserved)

Christmas is coming. I finally faced that fact last week and went online to do some shopping. It went surprisingly well, especially the clothing shopping. How many of us have gone looking for say, a nice warm sweater for someone only to find that the one you want isn't in stock at the store that sells it, or if it is, the size is never right? I stopped doing all that running around years ago. It's tiring and aggravating and by the time I'm done with the shopping I'm so cranky that it's not even fun to watch someone open the gifts any more. I've become an almost 100% online shopping girl and my life and marriage are happier because of it.

However...I don't just have adults to shop for any more. The Cool Niece is going to be three in February, and while she's already a book addict (thank her Mom for that), toys are required. Now, I have no children. It's been a VERY long time since I've been to a toy store, and I have no idea what's out there. Clearly things are considerably more complicated now than they were when I was a kid, but the basics are still around as far as I can see. I think it's pretty ridiculous to buy a laptop computer for the 4 to 8 year-old set. I've never been a fan of overcomplicated toys that "do" stuff. I figure that if a toy has a specific purpose, then it's a pretty boring toy. After all, how many times can a kid look at the same flashing lights before deciding that they've exhausted the possibilities?

Therefore I cast my eye on building and construction toys. The Cool Niece has blocks big and small, and also Duplo, which is the outsize Lego for little hands. I remember the buckets of Lego I had when I was a kid, and the big cardboard tubes of Tinkertoys were guaranteed to hold my attention for hours. I clearly remember spending half a day at a time with a friend building incredibly complicated structures, trying to use every brick in the bucket to build a house...or a bridge....or a forest. Sometimes we included the Tinkertoys as well. After all, it's easier to get height when you use them.

Clearly the kid is too young for such things now. Next year or the year after is soon enough for that. She would just get frustrated with the small pieces. I settled for a Mr. Potato Head , which should satisfy her current fascination for putting things together. It also comes with a suitcase full of extra parts which she'll enjoy greatly because for some reason she likes tidying up. The Boy picked out some really lovely picture books for her, so we're set for this year.

And thank goodness we are. I ran across this in the New York Times this morning. It seems that the construction toys of yore have become too complicated for even parents to put together. The woman interviewed was frustrated beyond belief with a toy someone had given her son that defeated her entirely. I read this and thought....wait a minute here? This is Lego! Lego is about hours of creative fun!

Alas no. Lego has managed to almost completely suck the creative fun out of its toys. I went to the website and saw literally dozens of toys, all of which must be assembled according to instructions. There is no creativity there. You build a truck and there it is, a truck for the kid to play with. I have to ask what the point of that is. Why not just buy a bloody Tonka and have done with it? Seriously why go through that? No kid is going to dismantle and rebuild the Lego version of some of these complicated things. It seems incredibly counterintuitive to me.

I was pretty disgusted by the whole thing, so I did more searching and found the Lego Large Brick Box . Thank goodness, I thought, the company hasn't completely sold out! Then I looked again, and was shocked to find that even in these supposedly enlightened times, there's a pink box for girls and a blue box for boys. In fact (and this is a topic for another day) when I Googled "building toys for kids", what I got was "building toys for boys", which is a sad statement as far as I'm concerned.

There are other terrific building toys out there as well. Tinkertoys is still sold in its iconic tube, although the parts now are made of plastic rather than wood. Yeah, I know that dates me. It's still made by Hasbro and you can still buy instruction sheets which tell you how to make more complicated structures out of the basic parts. It's also relatively inexpensive, with a 200 piece set for under forty bucks.

Meccano is still around as it has been for a century now. It's for older kids, of course, but it lets them play with electric motors and learn how things go together. What I didn't realize about it is that ALL of the sets built over the entire lifetime of the company are still the same standard sizes. This means that theoretically, your child can use yours and even your father's old Meccano to make even bigger projects. I think that's pretty cool.

The Boy and I are design wonks, so I was happy to find a really large scale building toy from Offi that allows kids to build rooms inside of rooms and forts in any shape they want. It's made of heavy cardboard interlocking sheets and when the kids are done with it, it's completely recyclable.

I noodled around online seeing a whole lot of new building toys for kids, some that looked great and others that seemed pretty lame to me, like a "tree of life" complete with birdhouse that looked like something that maybe would appeal to an elderly craft fan, but that a kid would build and then squash with that battery operated front end loader that they got for Christmas last year. Eventually I found a terrific site that covers most of the bases. It's called Mastermind Toys . It's a nice site with categories separated by age and interests, perfect for a neophyte toy shopper like me.

The Sky Is Falling!

2009-11-29T14:46:00.004-06:00

(Photograph copyright 2009, all rights reserved)

All right, all right. I give in. More correctly, I can't help myself. See, I have this "thing" if you want to call it that, about people who earnestly declaim on subjects that are utter nonsense, quoting twaddle from unknown Internet people and chain letters as if it were.....well (said the irreligious and occasionally blasphemous writer who can say these things because no one's the boss of her here).. like Gospel.

All right. There were a lot of things that led up to this, not the least of which is an utterly ridiculous movie. Ok. The world is going to end in....2012. Truthfully, I have no idea why people are saying this now, except that it has something to do with the Mayans or the Aztecs....or was it the Inuit? Some First Nations group who are all conveniently dead and can't answer any questions or go over the calculations for us. We'll just have to believe them. Er...we'll just have to believe what "someone" is TELLING us about what that particular First Nation had to say because they're all dead. A long time ago. Really really. After all maybe Someone in Authority got a supernatural e-mail about it or something and naturally knows more than us, the Great Unwashed.

Anyway, a great many people are taking this seriously it would seem, so I just had to look into it. Of course, I'm just barely old enough to remember that the world was ALSO supposed to end in the 1980s a bunch of times, and there were a whole lot of people who were convinced that the End was coming every year of the 90s, and let's not forget 2000, either. A lot of people have toxic out-of-date canned goods and stale water left over from that one!

(Disclosure: The Boy and I spent the evening of Dec. 31, 1999 on a beach in Hawaii drinking vast quantities of very good champagne and waiting for the world to end. We may not have noticed it, being half snapped at the time, but I do remember lovely fireworks....or maybe it WAS an Apocalypse and we all just missed it altogether. It was a great deal of fun, though.)

After that non-event (there wasn't even any turbulence on the flight home, sorry guys), I've ceased altogether taking news of our Coming Doom seriously. I consider these dates to be good excuses to throw dinner parties and drink a great deal of wine and my friends are all happy to be fed by me if I supply the wine, too. It's a win-win, and the next morning, we can all crow about it and brag that the world ended and none of us even had hangovers. My kind of party.

I see that my views on this are echoed by Sybil Adelman . This is a lady with the right idea. If the world is REALLY going to end and there's nothing we can do about it, then why not drink the wine and have the fun? It's not like we'll be around the next day to whine about the credit card bill from the restaurant, right?

So I Googled 2012 predictions and found...a whole lot of very earnest stuff about the whole situation. There are sites like the-end.com, 2012predictions.net, 2012endofdays.org, and they all say pretty much the same thing. We're doomed, the sky is falling, The world is going to Hell LITERALLY this time, and our gooses are cooked unless we.....do whatever the crackpots that own the web sites tell us to do, most of which appears to be to buy their book. One wonders why they're SELLING the books if the world is going to end, anyway? Do they think they might need money afterwards?

Sigh. In the spirit of Apocalypses (Apocalypti?) everywhere, Smagboy kindly sent me a link that has a reasonable list of prior dates when the World Was Going To End. There are elaborate mathematical formulae provided for many of the dates and they all include something religious (but not necessarily Biblical) that has the reasons for it. Now, at the time, a LOT of people were utterly convinced that the world really was going to end. Seriously. Even the illiterate types who didn't even know what year it was....you'll have to read the list.

I have to kind of laugh at all of this. I suppose that some people find some sort of "meaning" in their lives contemplating the end. No doubt there are a lot of bitter folk who see it as an "up yours" to the universe. Judging from what I've seen about it there are a LOT of people who take it very seriously, though, and to them I say this .

What?! No More Oprah?

2009-11-21T14:18:00.005-06:00

(Photograph copyright 2009, all rights reserved)

Well, it's true, all true. The rumors that have been roaring around Chicago for months have been proven right. Oprah Winfrey is shutting down the show. It's been 25 years, and according to the lady herself, that seems a nice, round number for the last show. Of course the last show isn't going to happen until AFTER the 2010-2011 season is over. You all know this, it's been all over the news. We heard about the "tearful goodbye", all of the emotions flinging around and all the drama. Apparently the networks are scrambling, business people are freaking out, and according to a bunch or articles in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicagoan on the street thinks it's all pretty much no big deal.

See, Chicago likes to "claim" Oprah, but Is she really a Chicagoan? Consensus is not really. Yes, she DOES own a ridiculously expensive condo in a downtown tower and she can certainly afford it. If nothing else, she's a smart business woman. Sure, she occasionally shows up in the city - mostly to film her shows in the windowless studio she built in the relative wilderness of the Near South Side.

As for where she LIVES - well that would be California. Has done for many, many years. I can't say I blame her for that. The winters here can be pretty awful. I guess I can't blame her for never mentioning any of her supposed home city's world class restaurants, history, architecture or museums. I haven't watched the show for (ok, I'll admit it) a good decade and a half. Maybe I missed it. After all, it's a national show and it wouldn't do to appear to "local" in character, right? The viewers probably couldn't be expected to process that the show is created in the vacuum of the tasteful, yet bland studio that is actually in the third largest city in the US.

Oh! I forgot. She DID have that massive, self-consciously "cool" party on Michigan Avenue this summer. Now THAT was an event all right. Hundreds of police and armed guards zealously guarded the Port-a-Potties against people who had been standing outdoors for twelve or so hours waiting to see the fun. Even AFTER the people were allowed to pee, they found that there were nowhere near as many as needed. Oh yeah, I did mention that the party was on Michigan Avenue, right? Yes kids, that party made it virtually impossible to enter many office towers for literally thousands of people who actually had to get to work that day. That was fun, too.

That party caused a whole bunch of disasters for the people who actually LIVE in this city, but hey, it was great fun, right? And it wasn't Oprah's fault - it's not like she even knew any of the bad stuff was going on until the next day. No, her priorities were right where they've always been; with the celebrities that she imported for the show, the cameras, and making sure that all of the people who were invited to the party were smiling for the cameras. Nothing was allowed to interfere with making a perfect show, including the people who live here.

You might already have guessed that I don't have much time for Oprah and her show. I always thought that she was just a little too...too... I don't know...self conscious? That doesn't sound right. She always seems to me to have gone straight for the schmaltz and substance be damned. For years she's filled the air with horrible, ghastly stories told by people who she hugs and calls "survivors". I can't help but think that she studied ratings, had a bunch of focus groups and built a guest profile that would appeal to the most possible number of people. The guest had to be:

1. Either attractive adult or a cute child,

2. Had to either suffer a horrendous illness or injury,

3. OR had to be an abused woman (more on that later).

This person was absolutely required to cry attractively without getting swollen eyes or a drippy nose for one full hour if necessary. Oprah would then hug them, wipe off a tear or two (thank you Maybelline for that waterproof mascara), talk to some sort of "expert" or two about the problem, then shill for the expert's new book on that very subject.

There were celebrity interviews, too. Everyone who was anyone had to be on the Oprah show if their movie or book was coming out. That's life on talk shows in general. I feel for the actors/writers, etc. who have to schlep around the country flogging their work and having to answer the same insipid questions a thousand times. I found it all pretty tedious to watch. Who wants to hear people talking about their book? READ the bloody thing!

She's crossed some lines, though, and this is where my boredom started to become active dislike. Her trite yet popular talk show seemed to morph into something that I was truly uncomfortable with. There was the disaster of a school that she started in Africa which ended up being a "dating" pool for pedophiles and it just got creepier and creepier as far as I'm concerned.

The book club, for example. An endorsement by Oprah could send a writer to the top of the bestseller charts, guaranteeing for some that their (very and perhaps more worthy) books would never be published because they were too much of a risk. Initially all of these books were the same. Someone gets the crap kicked out of them and lives to tell the tale. The end. Then there was the great car giveaway fiasco, wherein the mighty Oprah gave everyone in the audience a car.....THEN found out that the audience would have to pay tax on it as income. She offered to take the cars back, but those that opted to keep them had to suck it up.

Lately there's been the kerfuffle about her celebrity "causes". Perhaps the biggest screwup in the history of the show was the Jenny McCarthy fiasco. For those of you who don't know, dear Jenny believes that she personally cured her son of autism, which she blamed on vaccinations. When it came out later that her son had never had autism, but a seizure disorder that was easily treated, the silence from Oprah and her crew was deafening. No, Oprah had a NEW cause - an anti-science, conspiracy theory driven, dangerous cause that got her massive amounts of attention - vaccines are evil, kids and it's ok if thousands of children die of preventable childhood illnesses as long as the evil pharmaceutical companies are prevented from sticking them in the arm! I found this jaw-droppingly awful. I still can't process that Oprah seems to believe this. I thought she was smarter than that.

It seemed that every celebrity with a crackpot diet, cancer "cure", fitness plan, New Agey bullshit happiness plan, you name it, just went to give Oprah higher ratings. If it sounded too good to be true, she was on it like white on rice, baby. The wackier the better and she applauded all of them, no matter how moronic they sounded. It didn't matter that it was all crap and that she was actually damaging the people who took it seriously. She used her power (I can't resist) for evil, all in the name of ratings and money AND PEOPLE LET HER DO IT.

Oprah has no real science education. She's not particularly brilliant when it comes to literature, or history. She is in the media, though - that's her real metier. Say things that SOUND convincing to a large enough audience and the content is actually meaningless, right?

So. Now she's going off-air. There's still the magazine. She gets to be on the cover every month, too. She's starting her own television network. The New York Times pointed out that these things are full-time jobs and not to be undertaken with the distraction of a TV show. I have to admire her ability to take a silly half hour of TV and turn it into a media empire. When it comes to making money, Oprah could give lessons to just about anyone.

I have to believe it was all calculated. ALL of it. The causes, the giveaways (Lady Bountiful clearly was an appealing alter ego), the parties, all of these are monuments to a massive ego with terrific business sense. Standing back, it's hard to swallow the carefully crafted image of the last 25 years wasn't a massive and very clever manipulation of public opinion for the sole purpose of making money. I think that the mind behind them is extremely clever and the people Oprah has working for her are no slouches. But then, I'm no fan. It all looked so blatant and obvious to me that I chose not to buy into it.

Now fans of Oprah, relax. I'm an opinionated old thing, as you can see if you read all of the above. I hope it doesn't sound like a rant - like I said, I'm opinionated and I hate feeling as if someone were trying to orchestrate my opinion. Besides, the show has another year and a bit to run, and I suspect it will be in syndication for decades to come...Ok, rethink that last. Oprah is too smart for that. The show will be on repeats on HER network for years to come.

Sarah, Please Go Away Already!

2009-11-18T12:08:00.003-06:00

(Photograph copyright 2009, all rights reserved)

Everyone knows by now that Sarah Palin's book "Going Rogue" is out. There are reviews all over the place, major arguments are happening all over the web, and I fully expect a couple of women to come to blows on the el sometime soon. No doubt it will be picked up by the Chicago Tribune and highlighted on the daily police blotter. If that happens, I promise to post links to both the articles and the mug shots.

I've resisted saying anything about it. There are some pretty good reasons for this, not the least of which is that I can't vote in this country - I have a Green Card, but I'm not a citizen. Another reason is that I have no intention of buying or reading the book. Even just based on the reviews so far I can tell that I have better uses for that money (like buying lotto tickets) and it seems like a cubic waste of time.

Still, the reviews and commentary have been pretty interesting all by themselves. Christopher Beam wrote an unauthorized Going Rogue Index that is absolutely hilarious. The Huffington Post has a slide show outlining the biggest lies told in the book and is inviting readers to add to the list. Time Magazine lists reviews from a bunch of sources, both positive and negative. Probably one of the most balanced reviews out there comes from the venerable and respected New York Times . I read their reviews all the time and generally agree with the reviewer. The Times is a safe bet when it comes to reviews that are thorough and authoritative.

The most interesting one I've found so far is from Margo Howard , formerly of Slate Magazine. It's concise and well-written, as is all of her work, but that's not even the most interesting part of it. It's the comments and arguments happening on the discussion board UNDER the article that I'm finding interesting. The readership on WowOwow is mostly women, and women have a lot to say about Mrs. Palin, ranging from (apparently) blind adulation to outright loathing and disdain. It seems there's not a lot of middle ground there.

I know, eventually I'm going to have to weigh in here. After all, even though I can't vote, it was hard to miss all of the election goings-on last year, particularly since I live in Chicago and that's where the President lives. Personally, I like Obama. He's smart, educated and knows about hard work. The Boy met him several times before the election while he was commuting to work in Washington and found the former Senator to be a most engaging and interesting person. I think he was a good choice for President, especially considering the alternative. The last person we need running this country is yet another geriatric heart attack waiting to happen or a former drunk with a gun fetish.

That said...

I don't like Sarah Palin. I just can't. I find her to be an abrasive, badly educated, arrogant lightweight whose main interests are most emphatically NOT those of the rest of the country. The whole business of parading her pregnant daughter around the country while touting abstinence "education" is probably the most blatant hypocrisy we've seen in modern times. Hauling her baby around on the campaign trail along with the other kids is skirting the edge of child abuse. Her made up "feud" with a nineteen-year-old kid is absurd.

Why would anyone who can't answer a simple question about what newspapers she reads think that she's qualified to run an entire nation? Does she sincerely believe that the President, ANY President has every single move rehearsed and pre-written in every situation? I used to joke that we only saw Bush and spouse when they were facing the camera because they didn't want anyone to see the strings in their backs, pulled by Cheney and a couple of other cronies. Looks like Sarah would volunteer for the installation.

I watched the speeches and debates during the latest presidential campaign. I paid attention to what was said on all sides. The candidates made the usual number of gaffes and misstatements, which they either corrected or apologized for over the course of the months leading up to the election. It was business as usual. Sarah Palin added entertainment value. Her life is a train wreck, she can't form full sentences without a teleprompter, and she never, ever acknowledges that she might be mistaken about something. It's always someone else's fault. I was embarrassed for her a lot of the time. It was like watching someone pee themselves, you don't quite know what to do and you WANT to ignore it, but you can't look away.

She'll make an estimated ten million dollars on the book. Hopefully that's enough to make her go away after the book tour. Her supporters have pre-ordered tens of thousands of copies, which guarantees it a spot on best seller lists even if those books molder in warehouses unread.

So what do you think? Am I full of crap? Is Sarah? If you see any reviews that look interesting, post them. I'd like to see them...

Remembrance Day

2009-11-11T08:50:00.008-06:00

I know. For all of you Americans it's Veteran's Day and judging by the local papers, it's all about the kickoff to Christmas shopping and maybe a parade of old guys in dated uniforms showing up at a War Memorial. At least, that's what it looks like when I look at a newspaper. I suspect that it's considerably more serious for many.

However, I am Canadian. Proudly Canadian. We do things differently. Remembrance Day for us is mostly about WWI. Naturally it's expanded, all Canadians that have fought all over the world are honored, but it all started in 1917. At the 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day every year, one minute of silence falls all over the country.

My personal hero has always been Billy Bishop, a pilot who, in an airplane made of balsa wood and canvas, managed to become the Ace of Aces. For those of you who have been to an airplane museum, you know that these things look like toys to us now. It's impossible to imagine not only flying one of them, but taking what would seem like insane risks. I'm quite sure that today's pilots would sooner play catch with a grizzly than face machine gun fire in one of those insubstantial vehicles. Billy Bishop flew and fought in one of them for literally years.

We've all heard (and most of us Canadians memorized) McCrae's famous poem, "In Flanders Fields". Many don't know the background to it. Dr. McCrae wrote it during a twenty-minute break after having spent 17 full days treating and losing young men at the battle of Ypres in 1915. He was no stranger to combat and it's inevitable result - the Boer War was his training ground. He continued his work until 1918, when he died of pneumonia.

I know this is all uncharacteristically serious for me - try not to drop dead with the shock. Someone needs to remember, though. The ads that are all over the place, exhorting us to go shopping and spend money are offensive to me. This day, November 11, should mean more than that. If we can't give one minute of silence for those that have fallen, then we don't deserve what they died to bring us.

I can't believe this. Ok I can, but yeesh.

2009-11-04T15:41:00.004-06:00

(Photograph copyright 2009, all rights reserved)

Ok. I have to post this article Driver in fatal crash, etc. that was in the paper this morning. Last week a woman was struck and killed while at a crosswalk. The driver of the car was drunk and blew through a red light at a terrific rate of speed. His victim was seven months pregnant and died almost instantly. Her baby was delivered at the hospital and might have survived had it not been so dreadfully injured in the accident.

The guy that killed her had 15 convictions for license violations. 15. Un-freakin'-believable. His Mommy said that he "never ran a red light", which tells you what a moron she is. You have to read the entire article, though. As things stand now, license violations are impossible to enforce. They write tickets. People go to jail for a month or so. That's it.

Lawmakers across the country have tried to solve this problem for years. The most effective way to do it is, when someone is caught driving without a license, to confiscate the vehicle they're driving. Period. Gone. Never to return. It doesn't even matter whose car it is - the assumption is that whoever was stupid enough to lend the idiot his/her car is as culpable as the driver. Now we know this works. Other countries just don't have this problem, or not to the extent it exists here.

However....and it's the big however... these laws can't get passed here because every time someone tries to bring it up for a vote, the screaming starts. The loudest faction, and the one that (in my opinion) HAS to bear some responsibilities for these needless deaths, is the one that says that confiscating cars discriminates against illegal immigrants. Seriously. They say that. It's like giving assholes who have lost their licenses free rein to kill or maim at random.

Now I am so liberal that liberals give me funny looks. I think that the whole situation regarding who is "illegal" in this country is ridiculous. (BTW yes, I have permanent resident status.) All you have to do is live in Texas for 15 minutes to see just how crucial these people are to the economy. We need a guest worker program of some sort, because we all know that no "real American" is going to do what these people do for those wages. This is one of those issues that's going to come up and bite us all on our collective ass one day, and so it should.

But the cars... I can't think of a better deterrent than kicking some jerk out of his car on the side of the road, calling a tow truck and letting said jerk walk home after he/she is informed that the car is being sold at auction. Some people will probably have to go through this more than once, but seriously, most people can't buy enough cars to do this more than....I don't know...twice?

I also apply this to people who drive drunk. The first time the car is towed and can be retrieved after a hefty fine is paid. Do it again and sayonara car. Like most people, I'm good and tired of hearing about drunks killing people on the roads.

So what do you think? Does this make sense? It's really the only thing I can think of that would pose a real deterrent to the idiots behind the wheel.

Question O' The Day, A Messy Poll!

2009-11-03T14:05:00.004-06:00

(Photograph copyright 2009, all rights reserved)

Ok. Today I decided that I need a pair of jeans. I don't buy jeans often, but in the last year and a half or so I've had to get rid of seven pairs, so I've been slowly replacing them. Now these were fit issues, nothing to do with wear and tear. In fact, I keep worn out jeans longer than I probably should. I don't need to buy them "distressed", life with me for a pair of jeans is distressing enough.

I discovered, on the trek to buying jeans, that I only like one brand. Levi's. Period. Nothing else will do. They just fit me. No gaping waists, the "long" is just long enough, and they have some room in the seat so I can wear them and breathe/eat/get in and out of the car. Not only that, I buy them at standalone Levi's stores because I hate department stores that much. Besides, if they aren't on sale, they're the same price at either location so why not go for the good service, right?

So today, I trundled off to the store to get yet another pair of Mid-Rise Straight Leg Levi's and did what I always do. I took three pairs each of the two sizes that I'm most likely to wear (no, I'm not telling) in three different washes to try on. Out of a dozen pairs of jeans, ONE fit perfectly. ONE in twelve. I didn't even think about the wash - the ones I bought happen to be a nice flat black - but I didn't care. They fit. I would have taken the faded blue, too. In fact, the number on the size tag doesn't even matter, just the fit. Think about that, and consider what an unholy time suck it is to shop for them.

Now, the sales clerks know this. They will flat out tell you that you should take more than one of each size into the fitting room with you. There's no quality control in the Land Of Jeans. NONE. Not even in the $200.00 plus premium jeans market. Waists can vary up to two inches in each size. Length can do the same. It doesn't matter how much or how little you pay or what brand you buy, that variance is going to be there. I figure this about triples the amount of time it takes to buy what amounts to a pair of work pants.

So, given that quality control in the Land Of Jeans is so lousy (this applies to men's jeans, too), how in blazes does anyone ever manage to buy jeans online? I wouldn't even attempt it. Can you imagine how many returns and exchanges these companies must get? What nightmare.

So here's the poll:

1. What is your favorite brand of jeans? (C'mon now, everyone wears them and everyone has a favorite.)

2. Do you hate shopping for them as much as I do? Are you brave enough to shop online for them?

3. And if jeans aren't your shopping nemesis, what garment do you MOST hate shopping for?

4. What do you actually sort of enjoy shopping for? (I'm a shoe nut. I could spend the day shoe-shopping. Oops. I have, too.)

A Restaurant Review

2009-10-30T10:15:00.009-05:00

(Photograph copyright 2009, all rights reserved)

I've decided that since I live in a city that's renowned for its restaurant scene, I'll let you know whenever I try a new place or revisit an old friend. We don't eat out often, but when we do, we do it up right. It's difficult to make a truly bad choice here, that's how many accomplished chefs we have right now, and I'm loving every minute of it.

The other day was my friend's birthday. Weeknights are awkward, but we decided to have a go. She had to pick up my Cool Niece at day care at 4:30 p.m., so we decided that I would pick up some takeout and drive to her place for dinner. No problem. Except our favorite takeout joint Yes Thai is closed for renovations. The food there is amazing, truly wonderful thai food that concedes to American tastes only by offering varying levels of spiciness in a few of its dishes. However, they were closed, so there was much sighing and a little whining while we tried to figure things out.

As my friend was heading out of the office, she called me and mentioned Urban Belly a place that's relatively new and has had consistently wonderful reviews. We hadn't been there ourselves for a couple of reasons, the main one being that they don't take reservations so there's a perpetual lineup. It's not a place conducive to eating with a 2 1/2 year old, even if we did come early enough to get a table. Plus, call me cranky, but there is no goddamned way I'm going to stand out in the cold for an hour or more waiting to eat. Neither do I appreciate a bunch of people staring at me while I'm eating and audibly groaning when I order some tea at the end of my meal. I simply will not do that.

They do takeout, though. Wonderful marvelous BEAUTIFUL takeout. I ordered a couple of different dumplings to start. One was squash and bacon, the other was duck. While I was ordering, the lady that took the order apologized for not having the regular duck and said that they had substituted foie gras..... I was on that like white on rice.

(Note: I am a dedicated carnivore. I LOVE the foie. I am a friend to the pig - as long as it's prepared correctly. I see baby lambs and think "Yum". I don't care if it's politically correct or not, I sincerely don't care what anyone thinks of that, and I will probably mock unmercifully anyone who takes me to task for it. It's a non-issue and I don't want to hear about it.)

I also got a couple of noodle dishes, some gorgeous melt-in-your mouth spare ribs with rice, and wrinkle beans that were....perfect. The dumplings were pure heaven - nice clean flavors and perfect texture. The short ribs were small bites that were perfectly seasoned and tender. I ordered two noodle dishes, because this is their specialty and it's what they do best. One was a ramen noodle with pork belly, shitake mushroom and pho broth, the other was soba noodles with bay scallops, oyster mushrooms and Thai basil broth.

We put the Cool Niece to bed and ate in silence. That's how good everything was. I suspect that the rest of their menu is just as wonderful. You could just close your eyes and point and no matter what you landed on, it would be wonderful. There are very few places that either of us would say that about. On most menus there are things that occasionally fall flat. You don't, for example, order the chicken in a restaurant that specializes in fish, and for good reason. Most of the time when people try that, they end up watching enviously as their dining companions moan their way rapturously through their dinners and kicking themselves.

The chef at Urban Belly doesn't do that. It's a short menu. There are no "consolation dishes" for the picky types that want something generic to eat because they're familiar with it. When you eat there you know that you will get the best possible iteration of every dish they make, and it's enough. If you come to the City of Wind, consider it a destination, even if you can't get a seat.

Question O' The Day

2009-10-27T15:55:00.003-05:00

(Photograph copyright 2009, all rights reserved)

All right. I give up! The Boy has been hassling me to pass this on to you as a kind of poll and to mess with everyone's mind. And why the heck not, right? After all, I LIVE to ask the strange, dumb, oddball questions, right?

First, and I can't stress this enough, don't do this at work. Seriously. I refuse to be responsible for anyone who gets in trouble because they didn't bother reading a simple warning, so I will repeat myself:

DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT DOING THIS AT WORK, ON A WORK COMPUTER, OR ANYWHERE BUT YOUR OWN HOME WHEN THERE ARE NO CHILDREN PRESENT. I DON'T WANT TO PISS ANYONE OFF. GOT IT?

Right. Here's what you need to do.

1. Do a Google search on any woman's first name. Any name at all, but no surname.

2. When the search is complete, go to the top left corner of your screen and click on "Images". You will then be presented with a bunch of thumbnail photographs. Are you there? Good.

3. Below your Google search box, there's a little gadget called "Safe Search". Click on that, then change the setting from whatever it is now (usually it's "Moderate") to "Off", then search the name again, clicking on "Images" when the search is done.

What you will find is that all of the pictures of "Jane" or "Mary" (or whatever you used) will now change to porn. Nothing else. No matter what female name you search this way, you will get pages and pages of porn.

Now to complete the test, do the same thing, but put in MEN'S names. All you will see is a bunch of (reasonably fully clothed) celebrities and sports types. NO PORN.

So tell me, kids... What the hell is that? Why do women's names ONLY seem to generate porn, ad NONE of the men's names do? Who made that decision? Is it deliberately sexist? If so, why? Why bother?

See? I told you it was a maddening question! Anyone have any insight for me? We're all dying to know.

Here's what I want someone to try...if they have a lot of time on their hands and nothing to do, that is... Google a bunch of women's names and let us know WHICH woman's name generates zero porn. When you get bored with that (I think it's impossible to find one), do it with MEN'S names and let us know which ones generate ANY porn.

Bwahahahahaha!!!!!!!!

Question O' The Day

2009-10-26T12:45:00.003-05:00

(Photograph copyright 2009, all rights reserved)

Oh dear. Late again. Oh well. Nothing new there. Weekends are horrifically busy in the Messy Household, so you'll have to bear with me.

Now on Sundays, The Boy and I have a bit of a tradition. In the afternoons, we head out walking, cameras in hand and time things so that we end up at our local at exactly 3:00 p.m. for a delicious beer before we head home to make dinner. While there, we pick up a Chicago Reader (http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/Home ) . It's very entertaining. Perfect, in fact, for perusing whilst sipping a delightful alcoholic beverage on a chilly afternoon.

It carries Dan Savage's column and something called "News of the Weird" which is a roundup of oddball news stories around the world (go have a look, it's hilarious), but the most entertaining thing is a section of the classified ads called "I Saw You". You can see it here, http://chicagoreader.selectalternatives.com/gyrobase/Personals/ISawYou . Essentially, it's a section of ads that people send in saying things like (NOT A REAL AD I MADE IT UP):

"You were the guy in the kilt vomiting in the gutter outside the L--------- Bar on the 19th. I thought you were revolting, but cute. I was wearing a long black leather coat and nothing else. Please call me, I want to have your babies."

There are usually a dozen or so of these a week, most considerably more benign than my example. People see each other on the El or at a bus stop, grocery store, hair salon - you name it - then post one of these ads hoping to get in contact with the person they're admiring. Ok, I get that. Seeing or having a short conversation with someone and being chicken to ask for a phone number...most of us have been there.

But, but....here's the question.

How many of these ads get answered? How many of you out there would answer them? Have you ever done that? Do you KNOW someone that has?

(Note: I just called The Reader and spoke to someone in their classifieds department. He said that they don't really have a way to keep track of which ads get answered and which don't. He added that he thinks this is one of those questions that you never really want to know the answers to anyway. It's better to keep the magic alive and allow people hope. That said, they have had people call and tell them that they met through ads in the paper and they're getting married. So all of this isn't as silly as I thought it might be.)

Question O' The Day

2009-10-22T16:58:00.004-05:00

(Photograph copyright 2009, all rights reserved)

Oh dear. Here it is the end of the day, and I'm finally getting to this. This is a question from The Boy - it would have to be, since we women don't tend to frequent men's washrooms, right? I'm sure there's a real answer to this one, too.

In all men's bathrooms, no matter where you go, there is always one urinal set way down close to the floor. Someone posited that they were for kids, but then why do they exist where kids don't go, like bars? They can't be for disabled people, because in many places the toilets are located either up or down a narrow flight of stairs. They have them in other countries, too, so it's not just an American thing.

So help us out here.

What are the lowest of the low urinals FOR in men's restrooms?

Question O' The Day

2009-10-21T13:59:00.004-05:00

(Photograph copyright 2009, all rights reserved)

People don't know how to park their cars. Has anyone ever noticed that? I'm not talking about parallel parking on the street. Chicago is full of on-street parking, and I have to admire people who can just whistle their way into a parking spot roughly the size of a Kleenex box, especially when they're driving full-sized vans and big sedans. Disclosure: I can't parallel park worth a damn. It must be because I'm a Westerner and there are parking lots in the West because there's just more room. I don't know. I've never learned how to parallel park correctly and I live in fear that I'll have to take a road test one day for a license renewal.

No, I'm talking about parking lots. I've seen so many fender benders and near misses in parking lots (and garages) that I've developed my own set of rules for them. You may call me paranoid, but that's just the way it is. Whenever I see a new-ish car covered in dents, I know that person has to park in a lot at work and they've given up. Rules:

1. If you see a new-ish Cadillac that is covered in dings and scratches, park FAR away from it. It has become de rigeur for grandmas who really shouldn't be driving at all to buy these things (it's the old "surrounded by steel" argument - too bad those cars are mostly plastic), and since they have no intention of ever owning another car, they don't bother getting collision insurance. They don't care who they hit, and therefore they don't bother with mirrors (even if they're tall enough to see them) when they back up. Stay away.

2. Don't park near white vans, especially if they have rust on them. Silly? No. Everyone knows that white vans mean "serial killer", right? Every time you hear about something dreadful happening like little kids being propositioned outside of schools, or muggings and rapes and abductions there's always a white van involved. Besides, every cop show ever made that's featured a hideous kidnapping or other crime involves a white van. White vans have bad pop-culture karma. Seriously, when you start noticing these things, they show up everywhere. Weird.

3. Don't park anywhere near an SUV that has one of those "honor student" stickers (My child is a coke dealer in the South Loop, My son is on his fourth DUI, etc. ) or the even smarmier little Mommy/Daddy/Kid/Pet stick figures pasted to a window. These people never pay attention to where they're going. They're either abasing themselves to their kids in hopes that they little buggers will shut up or shouting at them to shut up. Usually the golden lab is in the front seat, slobbering all over the windshield. You don't want to get near that.

4. If your car is new, make sure you get it good and dirty before you go to a grocery store in it. A new car in a parking lot is an idiot attractor. They'll be on you like a fat kid on a Smartie, and you will end up at the body shop for it.

5. It's SAFE to park by the tricked-out little putt putts that the kids are driving these days. This only seems counterintuitive. No matter how rough the occupant looks, they aren't interested in getting into any fuss with insurance companies or cops. Besides, if they are young kids, you have to know that they've fixed up their cars on their own nickel, so they know what stuff costs - no parent is going to pay for any of that.

Ok, those are the main rules. I have a strategy for dealing with these poxes on humanity. When I go somewhere that has a parking lot, I go during off-peak hours. I have no day job, so thats relatively easy. I park away from entryway doors, preferably in a corner somewhere with at least two spaces between me and the cars on either side. Call me paranoid, I can take it, but I just don't like spending a fortune on body work and I won't drive a bunged-up vehicle.

So here's the question....

Why is it that when you do that - park away from as many other vehicles as you can manage - some asshole always has to snuggle their minivan or pickup right next to your driver's side door?

As a corollary, why do they do that when you're in and empty lot? It's not like they're going to run out of room, yet someone ALWAYS does that! Why park so close?

Enquiring minds and all that....

Question O' The Day

2009-10-20T12:32:00.004-05:00

(Photograph copyright 2009, all rights reserved)

Ok, this is another of the Great Imponderables, and I think it's generational.

When I was born (Yeah, back in the Dark Ages), my parents owned, a VW Bug. This was the original Bug. No seat belts, no airbags, eensy little wheels, three speed transmission, top speed of 50 mph, one of THOSE Bugs. Now, I was almost born in the front seat of that car. Apparently I was in a hurry.

We had that car until I was almost four years old. My sister was a year old at the time. It was replaced with (and guys, you'll know what I'm talking about) a Chevy Bel-Air station wagon in LeMans blue. By the time they got rid of THAT car, my brother was eight years old. It was faded (that was a shitty color for fading) and rusted almost to bits, but it ran and went to the son of the mechanic that had somehow kept it running for just over a decade and 300,000 miles.

My experience is not unusual. Most of the parents of my age cohort drove either sedans or station wagons, unless they were running a small business, in which case they drove vans. Kids sat in the back seats arguing on long car trips or in the very back of the wagons or vans concocting mischief that, if we'd followed through, would have resulted in our parents killing us long before adolescence.

I remember clearly plotting with a friend to dig a tunnel between the tool sheds in our respective yards. Never mind that we would have to traverse a large lot, dig under a paved alley, a garage and another house, we figured we could manage it. We even had a place for the dirt - there was a vacant lot across the street from her place. Then we found out there was a concrete pad under her tool shed, so we gave it up in favor of rigging our bedroom windows so we could sneak out at night and read by flashlight on lawn chairs in our side yard.

Ok. I'm rambling now. To the question.

We now live in a townhouse complex of 21 units. Young (ish) couples were the main buyers of these units and in the past five years, they've been reproducing like bunnies. It's hilarious - someone is always pregnant. Now in EVERY SINGLE CASE, almost as soon as the test comes back positive and the word spreads, a brand-new 3/4 ton truck appears in the couples' garage.

So what is that? Some will say that they want their kids "surrounded by steel", but car design today is advanced to the point where that is meaningless. Besides, I've seen SUVs after accidents and the front compartment is fine, but the back seat is smashed to shit. So that's not a real argument.

The other excuse is that there's a lot of stuff to haul. Ok. but that hasn't changed in the last 50 years. You still have to load the kid, the diaper bag, the stroller, etc. and that can be managed in a car with no real strain.

So tell me. Why is it that the mere act of making a seven or eight pound baby that entitles people to a truck that is designed to haul eight adults and their camping gear, as well as the dead deer they bring back from the hunting trip?

Question O' The Day

2009-10-19T09:47:00.003-05:00

(Photograph copyright 2009, all rights reserved)

Happy Monday! No? Not happy Monday?

All right. We'll let that go. I'm finding it a happy Monday because after five days of the head cold that has been tearing its way through everyone I've seen or spoken to in the last ten days, I can almost breathe again. Almost. Not quite...

So. The Great Imponderable of the day is one that I KNOW has a real, concrete answer. It's going to take someone who knows someone who knows someone to get that answer, but I have faith. Plus everyone's heard the question, many have posed it themselves and I've yet to hear an answer that makes any sense yet.

I do not shy from the difficult questions! I LIVE for the difficult questions! So here you are.

What IS it with the bathtubs in the Cialis ads? Who came up with that brainwave? Did someone find it evocative, or are we meant to be asking the question? If that's the case, why bother with a big mysterious ad campaign for a drug with a very simple reason to exist?

Can you get it? Anyone? Anyone know whose agency came up with it?

I live in hope.

Question O' The Day

2009-10-18T07:41:00.003-05:00

(Photograph copyright 2009, all rights reserved)

Aha! More creative answers. Clearly keeping the questions less, shall we say, concrete leads to some interesting things. So. A little background to this one.

We used to live in Texas. North Texas, to be exact. It's the Land of a lot of things, but what concerns us here is that it's also the Land of Freeways. It was...interesting to get used to. There's nothing quite as intimidating as taking a one-lane exit and flinging yourself practically vertical on one of the monster fly-overs that engineers are so fond of there. It's like being inside an abstract sculpture, but at 70 miles an hour. It took me a month of finding alternate routes to get the nerve to use them and another six months to get used to it.

However. Texas had money for roads, but what they didn't seem to have is money to clean them up. There was garbage all over the place. Some things were downright dangerous. Road gators, for example, are chunks of tire that fall off of semi-trailers at high speed. Retreads are legal there, and they cause horrendous accidents. I only ever saw them on the road, though, so there was some creative dodging at high speeds that I just looked on as a challenge.

To the point. Of all the debris on the freeways, the one thing we noticed the most were.....shoes. Lots of shoes. Shoes all over the damn place. There were other items of clothing and if in fact you could stop and pick them up, you could create an entire wardrobe on one trip to Dallas. But it was the shoes that got me. So here's the question.

Why is it that you only ever see ONE shoe on the road? Where's the other one? IS there another one? Are there THAT many amputees flinging their shoes around willy nilly while they're driving along? Do the shoes go feral and hit the road hunting for mates? Are there herds of feral shoes, then, roaming the South?

Hmmmm.

Question O' The Day

2009-10-17T10:35:00.003-05:00

(Photograph copyright 2009, all rights reserved)

All right. Clearly these questions have been WAY too easy so far. I've pondered. I've combed my brain. I've picked the brain of everyone I've spoken to in the last week. Still I was having trouble.... Then I had an evil thought. A Great Imponderable that probably HAS no answer! Ready?

Why is it that in a box on animal crackers, only the monkey gets to wear clothing?

Question O' The Day

2009-10-16T08:44:00.004-05:00

(Photograph copyright 2009, all rights reserved)

Wow. I'm on a roll. There are REAL answers to the Great Imponderables! This is very exciting, but now I feel the need to try and come up with things that will stump all of those smart folk out there....Hmmm. Ok, I consulted The Boy and this is his idea:

Where does all the fat go from skim milk?

Question O' The Day

2009-10-15T12:53:00.001-05:00

Ok. Another Great Imponderable, or at least something we've been pondering, although I suspect it does have a real answer. Ready?

Where does all the caffeine from decaffeinated coffee go?

The Question O' The Day....

2009-10-14T09:38:00.002-05:00

The Boy (my husband, with apologies to Christie Blatchford of the Globe and Mail, who coined that term lo these many years ago) suggested that with all of the people out there looking, reading and observing the world in general might have some insights into the Eternal Questions.

I'm taking his advice. He's right. But then having an answer for everything and KNOWING the answer for everything are two entirely different propositions. So let me know. This is his first burning question:

Where does Barney Rubble work?

MessyONE finally has a home!

2009-10-14T09:31:00.002-05:00

Thank goodness for that. For those of you who know me from Slate's Fray, I have no intention of changing anything about what I write or the way I do it. For those that don't, beware that I am an unapologetic smart-ass who occasionally uses some blue language, because sometimes things just make more sense that way.

This is all about having the fun and poking fun at the pompous, the rude, the obnoxious, the odd....and anyone or anything that strikes me (or you!) as interesting or out of the ordinary. If you ask for my advice, you'll get it. You may not like what you hear, but it'll be as straightforward as I can make it. Keep in mind that I am NOT a counselor of any kind. Just an opinionated lady with a fair amount of life experience.

Tell me anything you want. If you see a news story, hear a rumor, want to answer a poll - just do it. I'm here.

One Messy Lady

Beans! Getcher Beans Here!

Dinner Cancelled? Whatever Shall I Do?

Dessert! My Favorite!

Ah, Paradise! (And a Picture of Aunt Messy in a Bikini!)

It's Official. Winter is Here.

We're Back!

Thanksgiving

Cauliflower - The Best Veg On The Table .... And A Poll

Open Call Response to Jonathan Wolfman

Apropos of Nothing.

Now...for the rant!

A Rant.

Happy Canada Day!

Father's Day

Things I plan on doing that are "bad" for me. A Messy Poll!

In praise of real people.

Questions...Always Questions....

I love a good vacation!

So it's Tax Day! Who cares when the sun is shining?

House Cleaner Mafia?

Photos....

Here we go again!

Ah, Vacations!

Flowers From an Alberta Summer

Smooches All Over...

Sex Offenders Underground

Messy Waxes Sentimental... and a poll...

*Sob* Why was I surprised?

Happy New Year! Or whatever.

I Blame the New York Times!

A Christmas Rant

Toys for Who?

The Sky Is Falling!

What?! No More Oprah?

Sarah, Please Go Away Already!

Remembrance Day

I can't believe this. Ok I can, but yeesh.

Question O' The Day, A Messy Poll!

A Restaurant Review

Question O' The Day

Question O' The Day

Question O' The Day

Question O' The Day

Question O' The Day

Question O' The Day

Question O' The Day

Question O' The Day

Question O' The Day

Question O' The Day

The Question O' The Day....

MessyONE finally has a home!

Sob Why was I surprised?