Back In Ye Olden Days with Renno

Another recovery from the draft files....this one's from Nov-2013, with all links checked and the goofy text polished a bit:

As most of you know, I am easily amused, so every Amtrak trip, when the train to Montreal passes Ticonderoga, New York, I get a little giggly, since it invariably reminds me of the classic No. 2 pencils of my childhood and adolescence. [I bet today’s school kids don’t even fill out those endless circles on Scantron forms any more. Being childfree, I have no idea WHAT they do for exams and standardized tests any longer.]

Somewhere in upstate NY. Purty, no?

And in the classic way that my mind works (don't ask) this particular trip I started reminiscing about a historical fiction series I read as an pre-teen, Renno the White Indian, by Donald Clayton Porter. I read through a significant chunk of the series (Colonization of America: White Indian, published 1979 - 1996), but as bad as my memory may be, I am positive that I did NOT read all 28 books. Nine or 10 maybe, but not all the way through to 1996.

I remember loving the historical background, but am afraid to revisit the novels in case the actual writing turns out to be mediocre at best.  However, Goodreads rated the first book 4.18 out of 5 stars, so maybe it's safe to go back and reread it from the start...in my copious free time.

There is a fascinating blog post about the history of the book series itself, Forgotten Books: White Indian -- Donald Clayton Porter (Noel Gerson)  and thanks to Noel Gerson's Wikipedia entry, I am enlightened as to how I wound up reading about Renno & Co: I'd started off with the author's entire 24-book Wagons West series under his Dana Fuller Ross pseudonym. (For blurbs about each of the first 20 books in Wagons West, click here.)

Okay, now totally blogged out and Imma go watch a movie on HBO Go (cancelling arbitrarily assigned premium movie channels would've saved me all of $6+ per month on my cable bill, so hey, I kept 'em).

Purple prose

No pun intended, but good smut is hard work. Really, just like filming a "love" scene in a movie, writing smut seems much more fun-filled and glamorous than it actually is.

First, there are only so many ways to describe certain body parts without either (a) repetition, or (b) euphemisms that make me burst out laughing. I mean, if you get detailed at all, there are quite a few paragraphs to go where you describe, um, certain activities. And after 7 chapters, my readers have been quite vocal about wanting some action! Heh.

Secondly, logistical issues abound. You don't want to accidentally give your characters extra limbs or contort them into physically unlikely positions. I don't care if you work for Cirque du Soleil, some feats are simply not possible. Likewise, just as in a movie, continuity is key. Otherwise, an attentive reader will realize that you have given one participant two left arms. Since I am not writing for Star Trek or Babylon-5, this would not be helpful.

Why am I suddenly concerned about the problems or purple prose? Well, uh, remember how I mentioned that I've started to write fan fiction? (Criminal Minds is my only milieu, by the way.) I'm now up to 20,000 words, with 13,000+ hits this year, and 64 subscribers. (The photo above shows the statistical breakdowns the site provides to the author.)

Yes, 64 random strangers around the world have subscribed to my stories so far. Since I only subscribe to maybe THREE authors I'm kinda proud of that statistic. (There is a lot of dreck out there, as you can imagine.) The only downside is that now I'm afraid to read some of my favorite writers since I don't want to unintentionally absorb their ideas.

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it's also known by another name: plagiarism. Oops.

In school, I always found that I did better in structured writing than "free topic essays" (i.e., write whatever you like, about anything you want; no guidance provided as to topic, format, etc.) which tended to make my mind go completely blank.

This is more like writing for a pre-established universe, a la Star Trek or Star Wars (a/k/a easier for first time writers like me). I'm enjoying the whole process of writing: outlining chapters, constructing imaginary homes with floor plans (more continuity concerns), considering where to end each chapter (I'm on 8 of 12+ for this particular story at the moment), and in general, building an overall framework for my characters to inhabit. Just ignore the part about them being from a TV show. ;)

Right now, I'm dealing with a nasty sore throat / cold / sinus congestion combination, so the behavior or my characters should be really interesting, since I'm feeling waaaaay loopy. (Can antibiotics make you lightheaded?)

And a visit to the dentist enlightened me as the the corollary of giant sinus headaches: toothaches. He showed me an x-ray where one of my molars is literally stabbing one of my sinuses with the roots of the tooth. No wonder my upper jaw hurts!

Yep, I'm a wreck. Took Friday off from work after the dental visit since (a) I felt like roadkill [coughing all night will do that to you], (b) wouldn't be productive at the office in that state anyway, and (c) the dentist told me I looked really run down [he's known me for over a decade -- he's allowed, heh] and that my cheek was all puffy and I sounded really congested. Translation: you're sick! go home! don't go out into the pouring rain and head to work!

There are many other things I need to catch you all up on, but I can only grasp one train of thought at a time in my head these days.

Huh. I've been awake for a whole three hours. Time for another nap.

THUD.

The Green Monster

No, that's not jealousy -- that's my beloved giant sage green couch, which seems to have a black hole secretly embedded in its cushions: once I sit / sprawl / lounge in it, that's it for the afternoon / day / evening. I'm not going anywhere or doing anything after that.

So today I pre-emptively did some tidying up BEFORE getting sucked into the green monster's gravity well. So although there are still mounds of Stuff piled hither and yon, one can actually see a reasonable amount of floor space in the living area. Shocking. (Remember: baby steps, a/k/a, the journey of a thousand garbage bags begins with a single pile of trash....)

Another sign that I am feeling somewhat better these days is that I actually have a celebrity crush. (I've noticed that I tend to have severe celebrity crushes mostly when I am not in a relationship, but for the last few months, I didn't even care about age-appropriate yummy looking actors.) Currently, it's Thomas Gibson from Criminal Minds.

He kind of reminds me of my ex-ex-bf, The Consultant, but only in that general police description kind of way: black hair, fair skin, preppy-looking, soft-spoken, and oh yeah, HOT. (Well, to me anyway -- such is personal taste, but at least I'm consistent.)

Okay, on to less dorky subjects, such as my round of vicarious travels via mystery novels on my Kobo e-reader:

• Broken English - Amish mystery set in Ohio; 2nd in the series
• Girl Who Played With Fire - book 2 of the Stieg Larsson series, set in Sweden (Noomi Rapace, the actress in the Swedish film adaptation, is excellent, by the way; she's also exactly 12 years younger than me* -- yikes! feeling old...)
• Man From Beijing - also set in Sweden (mostly) but eh, won't be reading more of his novels
• Hangman - a Faye Kellerman novel, the 21st in the Rina Lazarus/Peter Decker series, set in the Orthodox Jewish community in Los Angeles
• Storm Prey - the 20th John Sandford book in the Prey series; set in Minnesota during the winter (brrr... very appropriate)
• Am now in the middle of The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest - book 3 of the Stieg Larsson Millennium Trilogy

* Speaking of birthdays, that is indeed my birthday cake above, made by my sister, and decorated jointly by her (the chocolate shavings) and both of my grandnephews (the M&Ms), and demolished by the family at her house on the day itself. Babies galore this holiday season, with visits to 9 younger relatives ranging in age from 7 years to 7 weeks. Wheeee!

Purely P*rn

There was a reason I bought this tiny print many years ago: it does indeed express my acute... fondness for doing laundry.

So while I have made VAST improvements on the state of Chez Squirrel (my knitting lady friends can now be allowed back into my home as there is somehwere for them to SIT) one of my 2 laundry hampers [brights vs. darks] is stilll staring reproachfully at me. Oops.

But I put my shredder through its paces today, oh yes indeed. And I'd made a mix CD for my morning exercises which turned out to work equally well in terms of getting my a** moving a la housecleaning.

Lady GaGa may have eaten my brain, but she and many others (Tom Jones, Rihanna, Nelly Furtado, KC & The Sunshine Band, The Shanghai Restoration Project, and Lisa Stansfield circa 1990) powered me through several hours of cleaning on Sunday.

The cleaning was wedged in between two evenings of multi-course feasts at opposite ends of the budget spectrum.

Saturday night I went out with my friend Jane and the other 2 bridesmaids for dinner at A Voce in the Time Warner Center, which should've been a tipoff that it was a good thing I'd just gotten paid this week.

Does not the facade intimidate, er, I mean, indicate that you'd better be prepared to be swarmed over by hordes of black-garbed waitstaff? (Um, do I sound bitter? But actually, the staff was very pleasant and unobtrusive, and the evening was entertaining. And as A helpfully reminded me, it did indeed generate some luscious food porn.)

When I looked at the menu at the office on Friday afternoon (to scope out food options for my WW points), my hair turned a little whiter than it already is (from the prices).

But I sucked it up and resigned myself to the $$$$ since I had had weeks beforehand to poke around and raise an objection. Next time I know, that as Anthony Bourdain says so succinctly in his new book, Medium Raw (which is hilarious, by the way -- thank you Kobo and New York Public Library!) Chapter 3: The Rich Eat Differently Than You and Me. (I plan to read that chapter on the subway in the morning, so no, I dunno how differently, according to Mr. Pottymouth.)

My appetizer, though delicious ("Insalata di scarola - escarole, warm pancetta vinaigrette, soft boiled farm egg, pecorino romano") I did not capture for posterity as it was, well, a salad. And my wine ("Vernaccia di San Gimignano, Rocca delle Macie, Tuscany") though delightful, was also not memorialized.

My entree I tried to capture without a flash (BIG mistake) but I present here nonetheless the yummity Cappelacci del brigante ("hand crafted pasta, marinated mussels, garlic, marjoram") which I demolished happily.

For dessert, Jane ordered the semifreddo ("semi-frozen chocolate chip mousse, bitter orange, cocoa pizzelle").

Meanwhile, I was torn between this option below, the torta (chocolate walnut tart, cinnamon gelato, caramel) and what I eventually ordered.

When I appealed to our server (who remained elegantly nameless, thankfully) for help she grinned and laughed. (uh oh...) One was the house specialty and the other (the torta) caused the pastry chef to be hired/stolen from her previous employer. Heh. Decisions, decisions...

Since the other two bridesmaids helpfully ordered the torta, I was free to head straight for the house specialty, the Tuscan doughnuts ("Bomboloni alla Toscana - tuscan doughnuts, bittersweet chocolate"). That innocent description did not do justice to the superfluffy dough, dusted with crystal sugar and filled with warm custard.

Oh. My. Goodness.

Since they were huge and plentiful, everyone got to try some, and also the chocolate dipping sauce. There was no graceful way to eat them (that I could figure out anyway) and so by the end of dessert, my fingers were a sticky mess and I was a happy camper.

Since it is now very, very late (or early, depending on how you look at it) I will have to hold off on describing Sunday night's feast with two neighborhood friends.

Shoe meet Other Foot

have I mentioned that I have started to tutor a student in English as part of a volunteer project through my alumnae network? Have I also mentioned that I accidentally cracked my Palm TX with the Chinese dictionary? (I've always had great timing that way.)

Yes, my poor little noggin is quite tired after one of those sessions. Makes me want to email my Chinese tutor and thank her all over again. (I'm not saying my Mandarin is anything but atrociously rusty, but she was a good tutor.)

Work has also been insanely busy (so much so that my boss is asking the powers that be for another headcount) so I'm going to toddle off to bed now, since I've asked my work to wake me up at 6:00. (No, she's not calling me; I'm staying over after my weekly visit & we watched CRIMINAL MINDS together. Heh.)

Nitey!

The geekfest continues

So I may be 42 but it feels like I'm going on 22... every other weekend, I bring my dirty laundry to my sister's house and do laundry there. Heh. The key attraction is that her laundry room is COOL, while my building's laundry room, though capacious, is broilingly hot in the summer.

So as a thank you, I told her she was my date last night and took her to see Inception, which was completely absorbing and very complex (but hey, what do you expect from the director of Memento? BTE, nice URL for Memento, eh? Heheheh) And like his previous matryoshka doll of a movie, it would not only be difficult to explain the plot of Inception, it would be So Wrong to spoil it. Even most of the trailers were for a more interesting breed of film. RED, for instance, is an acronym for "Retired Extremely Dangerous" and looks extremely entertaining, that is, if you find the idea of Helen Mirren as an assassin lots of fun (which I do -- hee hee hee).

(Belated note to self: so far, of the 6 movies of his that I've seen, all were engrossing, so I'd better keep an eye out for Christopher Nolan's work in the future)

On the "home" front, I've finished Stones Into Schools on my Kobo, and have now started Game Change which I'm finding to be like the literary equivalent of an episode of West Wing: fascinating yet hair-raising.

Also from the library, the eBook of Anne Perry's latest William Monk novel, Execution Dock, awaits me.

Life is good.

And the photo above is from the entry area of Kittichai, where I went for a Summer Restaurant Week dinner this past Wednesday night with my friends Jackie and Marci. Food p*rn to follow in another post, but their decor is tres chic, no?

Geeking out

So okay, first things first -- if you've noticed that my blog has been going through more design permutations than the blowout estimates for the BP oil spill (BLEH!!!) then you're right, but finally I think I have finally settled on a design (for a while anyway). Blogger has been locking down their old and new template designs, allowing only limited tweaking to each, and I kept discovering something that really irked me about each one, but I think I am going to stick with this one. Really. I mean, what better design for a librarian than one with lots and lots of books, right?

And speaking of books, I decided to finally join the e-reader throng and get a Kobo from Borders. (It was actually released in Canada much earlier via one of their massive book chains, I forget which 'cos I'm a insular Yank. ;-P) For me, the 2 most important criteria were weight [according to my eBay/postage/diet scale, it weighs a mere 5.2 oz! by far lighter than the Kindle (10+ oz) or Nook (11 or 12 oz, depending on the version)] and file formats (this reads ePUB files from the library, but the Kindle does not).

Plus, it comes preloaded with 100 classics, so while I am pondering where to spend my free $20 Borders card (essentially reducing the price to US$129 + NYC tax) I have something to read and experiment on (e.g., adjusting font sizes etc.) While the Barnes & Noble Nook (which my friend Marci bought) and Kindle (which my friends Ellen and Jackie have) may also do so, 5.2 oz trumps all. (Note: a regular mass market paperback weighs 6.8 oz. according to my shipping experiences with PaperBackSwap.) Believe me, I have been obsessing about this purchase for months, as you can see by the comparison spreadsheet I created.

You can also see that I finally upgraded my cellphone to a LG enV Touch. It comes with a full QWERTY keyboard when you open it AND has a 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera (!) so I can generally leave my regular digital camera at home now, unless it's for a big occasion, such as the triple baptism of last weekend (but more on that another time).

And now that I have installed multiple updates (I finally succumbed to Windows XP service Pack 3, in order to run the Kobo eReader software, and needed Adobe Digital Editions, in order to read the NYPL eBooks) and figured out how to "check out" the eBooks and sync them with my Kobo, I am off to meet my friend Sam for dinner and a show: I'll Be Damned, which is a musical comedy version of the Faust tale, except featuring a comic book geek. (No ceramics this afternoon because the MTA would have required me to take 2 subways and THEN take a shuttle bus to get to the pottery studio! Nuh-uh. Not on a heat advisory warning kind of day.)

On my way there, I will be reading my first eBook from the library, Stones Into Schools, by the man who wrote Three Cups of Tea. It's about building schools (most of them for girls -- yay!) in Afghanistan and Pakistan. (Think about trying to do THAT the next time you are fighting your own battles with government bureaucracy!)

Back in the saddle (again)

It had babies! Dunno if you remember my previous post about the quirky porcupine cake at one of the gourmet delis near my office, but apparently mitosis occurred, with almond sliver quills sprouting on the babies just like the "parent". Hee! And this photo has absolutely nothing to do with anything except the fact that it amused me.

At this rate, if I see the babies again, I may have to just break down and buy one out of curiosity. However, the thought of having to figure out the correct number of points is distinctly offputting...

Yes, I finally rejoined WW this month. I am back in the saddle again, since the last year's events have wound up back in MY saddle again! So far, I have lost 3 pounds, which I visualize as half a sack of sugar (or flour). One sign of progress: going up the concrete steps in the subway station near the office no longer hurts my knees -- hooray!

So when I visit my sister on the weekends, I look forward to her lightly dressed, super tasty salads with fun ingredients, like this one, see? Last Friday, I also (even) managed to steer myself away from the black holes of WW points in the Grand Central Station food court, and instead got a really fabulous Greek salad with: stuffed grape leaves, kalamata olives, red onion, feta, mixed greens, cucumbers, grape tomatoes, and spicy chicken kebab chunks. It was quite flavorful, so I will have to keep this place in mind for future commutes to CT.

If I've been quiet on here lately, it's not so much from any BAD reason but just the fact that I am busybusybusy these days. Last weekend, for instance, I attended a triple baptism in CT: my newest grandniece, and her two newest girl cousins. (Three cakes! Yum!) I also visit and stay over at my mom's every week. (Come to think of it, it's a wonder I managed to lose any weight this past week!)

I've also rejoined the ceramics studio in LIC, and decided to mix it up by taking a handbuilding class instead of my regular wheelthrowing endeavors. My first project was this gigantic planter. (Keep in mind that everything shrinks about 10 pct after firing.) However, once they told me that it was going to cost $51 to fire (!!!) I decided that the experience of constructing it was sufficient (i.e., I didn't love it $50 worth) and cut off to cylinder, smoothing the base into a nice platter instead. Heh.

When hearing my laughing about this experience, one of my classmates commented that it was good that I had a sense of humor about it (some students would have been freaking out in distress) but hey, I try not to take most things too seriously these days. Refinancing my mortgage? Serious (and avaoidable while my rate is 3.0 pct -- score!) Throwing out an unfired piece? Not serious.

Perhaps that is why I found this new subgenre entertaining: monster mashups of classics. Since Jane Eyre is my favorite novel of all time (I've even re-read it more than once, unusual for me) I couldn't resist this when I had a hefty Borders coupon. I mean who HASN'T wanted to put a stake through Blanche Ingram or the Reed family? Heheh. Now I may go and reread the original again. Next up: either Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or The Girl Who Played With Fire, probably the latter, as I want to see the Swedish films of the trilogy with my knitting buddies.

Also, I started volunteering for English language tutoring at Sanctuary For Families, a domestic violence shelter/counseling organization. I know how hard it is for my my to access services without English, and it's little enough for me to do (since I'm not doing any of the heavy duty stuff). Right now we're in the organizational stage where they're screening me (they asked for references!) and setting up the tutoring schedule.

The photo shows a donation event for SFFNY organized by the Princeton Women's Network of NYC since many of the women and their children arrive at the shelter with nothing but the clothes on their back.

The Kitchen Sink

How is it that after getting it completely empty yesterday, and topping it off with a baking soda scrub no less, my sick is now once again full of dirty dishes? And this, despite ordering in for dinner last night with my sweetie. Like laundry, some fun chores just seem neverending. Sigh.

I guess I'm just cranky with myself because I've done a whole lotta NOTHING this weekend -- despite it being absolutely gorgeous (sunny and 70ish) weather -- and have been diligently avoiding organizing my tax papers so that my accountant can deal with the whole mess before I go on vacation on April 8th. In other words, my aggravation is basically all self-inflicted. Genius.

So yeah, my sink awaits me. Again. But part of the reason it's full is that I made beef fried rice (top photo, in one of my newest bowls back from the kiln) out of an assortment of multi-cuisine leftovers: rice from Thai delivery last night, smoked beef brisket from Southern BBQ doggy bag the other night, along with its accompanying collard greens and pork/ham seasoning, two "new" eggs, and of course, the remainder of my (rather wilted) scallions and some freshly minced ginger, two seasonings I always think of as Chinese even though many countries use them.

I have to say, the end result tastes pretty good (or it could be that I have a weird palate -- either way, as they point out in Alone In The Kitchen With An Eggplant, only *I* have to eat it, so there) even though it is perversely amusing that I had to find instructions for this quintessentially Chinese recipe from The Joy of Cooking!

The second photo in this post is part of my dinner last night from Wondee Siam V. (I don't have any photos of my sweetie's dinner because I didn't think about it till he'd already decimated his meal. Heh.) My yam ped yang salad ( crispy boneless duck with pineapple, green apple, red onion, scallion, cilantro, peanuts, cashew nut, lime juice & chili ) was excellent, and I still have lots left over: a 3-meal dish!

And then we both / each ordered tom sum, otherwise known as green papaya salad, which is the photo with the crushed grape tomato. (Between the peanuts and cashews, SE Asia is a dangerous place for those with nut allergies.)

My engineer also ordered catfish pad pett ( fish sauteed with thai eggplant, lime leaf, basil, bell pepper and red curry paste ) which was tasty and gone baby, gone. I thought I'd give the gui chai a whirl ( crispy chive pancakes wrapped in rice noodle/mochi ) but though tasty, they were not memorialized. Whoops.

We wound up our spicy dinner with some spicy viewing. Now hold on -- I just mean that my engineer found a commercial-free showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show on TV last night, only a few minutes after it had started. So we settled in and watched the whole film (again), with occasional consultation of IMDB to see where various folks were these days. (Yes, we lead a very exciting life here in the big city!) Throughout the film, I kept trying to imagine explaining the plot to my 80-year old mom who was raised in rural, pre-Communist China and... nope. No dice. Couldn't visualize that conversation, nosirree.

Neither can I visualize what I an going to do about any future cookbook acquisitions, since my "foodie" bookcase has now been filled to the gills. (You knew that had to happen sooner or later, right?)

While most recent items have made their way into my home via PaperBackSwap, I bought The World Encyclopedia of Cooking Ingredients on Friday, which coincidentally has Thai eggplants on the cover, which were in the catfish dish.  I thought a visual encyclopedia would be handy the next time I ran into some baffling cooking ingredient (and less than a day later, I did), plus it was in the bargain books section at my local Borders, AND with this week's 30% off coupon, the grand total (WITH tax) was $3.80! A reference book on food on SALE -- how could I resist?

Blink is indeed via the swap club, and kept me company on the subway on Friday (just started it). Picturing Hong Kong: Photography, 1855-1910 came out of the dumpster at work: our office is moving in a few months, so we have been vigorously purging (if only I could apply that discipline AT HOME!) and both my engineer and I thought this book was interesting, especially since we've both been there (separately).

Coincidentally, my book club is currently reading The Piano Teacher, set in midcentury Hong Kong, but since I have developed a dislike of said teacher, I am having a hard time progressing with it. (British colonialist attitudes, while historically accurate, tick me off to no end.) One can only hope she will become less annoying as the book goes on, otherwise I will not have a lot to say at the next book club meeting (i.e., it will remain unfinished).

Blue is the new grey

So lately, I've just been feeling kind of BLEH, you know -- the lovely midwinter blahs, especially with the delightful weather we've been having this season, where below freezing and wet were the norm. Speaking of which, we are due for -- yes, you guessed it -- another winter storm this week. (The above photo is from our LAST storm. I couldn't take any photos this morning because my screens had frozen solid against my window frame. Whoops. So I could open the windows, but not remove the mesh, and shooting through a fine grid is really not conducive to a sharp photo, eh?)

I don't know if the whole lack of coordination, concentration, and motivation is just the usual winter woes, or I am just learning to readjust to my post-chemo, post-amoxycillin, tamoxifen-for-5-years world.

My attention span these days has definitely suffered, since I barely read anything longer than a magazine article, blog post, or the free newspaper. Apparently, this is not so unusual, according to one of my books, Your Brain after Chemo: A Practical Guide to Lifting the Fog and Getting Back Your Focus, which was co-written by an oncologist and a health science writer who, ironically, became a breast cancer survivor.

(Speaking of which, I discovered Monday that a former coworker has passed away this weekend. She had been a breast cancer survivor for several years. After a life-threatening battle with advanced beast cancer before I knew her, she and her husband had drastically changed their priorities and appreciated the truly important things in life (e.g., seizing any travel opportunity they could, not letting the turkeys get them down, etc.). Her attitude at work was always helpful in reminding me how to balance dedication with perspective. I had not know her cancer had recurred, andnow I'm sorry that I can never tell her how valuable her sense of perspective was to me when I worked with her. I will just have to tell her husband instead, via a card -- all that I can do now...)

So yeah, I know that I have many things to be grateful for, and I regularly remind myself that if losing my last 10 pounds of chemo/treatment weight is my worst problem, life ain't bad.

Having said all that, I will now return to my whining. ;-P

For example, although getting out of my nice cozy bed is usually a half hour process every morning (at least), this morning I woke up at 4:55 AM (that is just SO wrong) and realized I had turned on one of my bedside lights in a bizarre autopilot mode.  While pondering that oddity, I had an excruciating cramp in my left calf.  So much for rolling over and going back to sleep. (Ironically, I had made the decision to NOT stay up late watching ladies figure skating on the Olympics... so I wouldn't be tired!)

On the bright side, that means I had time to make myself some McCann's oatmeal (with currants and honey) from scratch this morning, not usually a feasible task on a workday, considering it takes over 30 minutes. (Yes, even when mopey, I can be perky -- are you getting mental whiplash yet? [heh]) Oh, and to watch BBC World News while ensconced on the Green Monster in my robe, while eating said oatmeal, which gives me a pleasantly nostalgic feeling for my trips to Asia (the watching, NOT the oatmeal!) now that it's been a few years.

In any case, not even my beloved ceramics classes were giving me joy.

I thought that meant that I was just being droopy, as with everything else, but then I took a slip decoration workshop at my friend and former teacher Sara's new studio on the Upper East Side, Earthworks. (The studio and shop has been there for many years, but she is now the [new] owner.)

What a revelation!

As you can see, I really dug learning about different slip decoration techniques (just a bit) which gave me a whole new appreciation for the multifaceted uses of infant nasal aspirators! (That would be baby snot remover bulbs to us childfree folks. Ladies -- you too can recycle 'em for craft projects! Hee!)

My favorite technique was the feathering / feather combing, as evidenced by the predominance of my attempts. (That link was to the definition, while THIS link shows a truly crisp example.) The designs remind me of Florentine marbled paper, but there are so many other feathering / marbling techniques to try too!

Just remember when looking at these photos of the unfired tiles that the grey blobs will actually turn blue after partying with the kiln fire.  Then, after its bisque firing, it's time for choosing the flaze colors, which will have a significant impact on the tints of the final results. These disk-shaped sample tiles below, for example, are all exactly the same slip colors, but underneath different glaze colors.

Okay, time to get dressed and trudge off to work through the multiple inches of snow.

Duck season

Wabbit season! (Sorry, have been seeing that Elmer Fudd Geico ad too often lately.)

But really, there's a reason for my duck-luv-fest, in preparation for which, my sweetie and I each had hearty servings of McCann's steel-cut Irish oatmeal on Monday morning.

He observed (without much hope) that perhaps the cholesterol-fighting properties of the oatmeal might help us prepare for the onslaught of duck fat headed our way that afternoon. (Please -- snorting in derision is so undignified. I can hear you all from here, so stop that. ;-P)

There were 8 of us so it seemed only reasonable to order to ducks to prevent any unseemly squabbling over the squab. (Okay, they're not really squab, but hey, poetic license.)

After presentation of the goods, the chef came tableside to carve 'em up for us. We kept him busy with our platters of poultry, but boy he was FAST!

Et voila! Platter # 1, which died a quick death at one end of the table. Platter #2 did not live much longer at the other end of the table either.

Afterwards (I am completely skipping over the platters of: sauteed spinach with garlic, salt and pepper shrimp, Grand Marnier shrimp, and vegetable lo mein [long life lo mein] which we also devoured) we wandered around Chinatown, as it was a pleasantly warm --for February-- and sunny holiday Monday. Here is some dried seafood, which my mom and I are not fans of, as we both think they merely bear a passing resemblance (when reconstituted) to the deliciousness of FRESH seafood.

And of course, no trip to Chinatown is complete without a gluttonous descent to one of the Aji Ichiban locations (a/k/a Munchies Paradise -- literally). I managed to snag one snap before one of the clerks told me there were to be no photos (?!)

My sweetie and I discovered another outpost of our dearly departed Hong Kong Supermarket, but neither he nor my Mom (for of course she has already scoped it out) feel that it compares to the original location in selection (or price). Sadly.

Still, it was entertaining enough to wander around and find veggie duck shelved right next to seasoned pork stomach in the refrigerator case. Heh.

Finally, I just had to stop and take a photo of this restaurant's signange. Notice the amusing oxymoron here?

And now, lunch time (back at the office) is OVAH!

Click carefully

One of these is not like the other. *snarf* Somebody was clearly not paying attention when they posted their romance novel on PaperBackSwap this week. Hee! And apparently the owner hasn't noticed, because it was still up there in the Cooking category yesterday.

Okay, I promise to shut up more when I'm back at work, but since I'm effectively quarantined at home at the moment, and my sore throat disinclines me to chat on the phone, daytime television is a wasteland, there's only so much TiVo I can plow through without my eyes crossing, and I'm not feeling well enough to concentrate on a good (or bad) book, I'm afraid this leaves me eyeing my blog rather a lot. Sorry.

Yes, I do take 3-4 hour midday naps like a geriatric patient (actually, my 80 year old mom is WAY healthier and more vigorous than me!) and sleep 8 our more hours a night, but still, lack of energy (yes, I know -- it's called: being sick) does not predispose me to tackle my hamper of dirty laundry or clean my mind-bogglingly messy apartment.

Jeez. Yeah, I'll take some cheese with that whine.

Actually, I know that I am very lucky to have such supportive co-workers ("stay home till you're well and don't worry about the work") and an employer with a sensible sick day policy that discourages presenteeism (see: stay home, above). Trust me, I realize that life is pretty darn good, especially when I can stay home on days with 8 degree wind chill, like today.

So to that end, I will use the rest of this post for fun, silly things like the perfectly named FoodPornDaily. Oh my. Can't remember how I wandered across this site, but WOW. A new photographic standard to aspire to, methinks.

(And the reason I never use the term "food p*rn" in full on my site is not because I'm a prude, but because I want to avoid spam engines, since whenever I even mention ins*mnia, I get spammed!)

Pinova apples are my new fruit discovery at the supermarket. They just looked so gorgeous that I bought 2 on my way back from the GP on Wednesday, and now I want MORE! (Besides the one above, I actually killed off the other one yesterday as well. Heh. Toldja I liked it.)

They're a crossbreed between multiple strains/varieties of apples, juicy and with a crisp crunch and a mild taste that's vaguely... dunno, banana-y? In any case, I think it's way more interesting than the Golden Delicious from which it's partly bred.

In Europe and some parts of the US, it's called Pinova, but it is also marketed as the Pinata apple. Since the licensed (!) US grower is in Washington state, it's not surprising that there is a Seattle restaurant which is making all of its apple dishes exclusively with the Pinata/Pinova.

Wednesday I also scored a 3-pack of Honeycrisp apples (YES!!), which are keeping the Pinova and Fuji apples company in my bowl... but not for long! The Pinova WAS the big apple on the lower left, and the Fuji is the darker one underneath the others. Right now, I'm off to another serving of Greek yogurt to help replenish the GI bacteria that is also being carpet-bombed by my horse pills.

Bye!

Home Disrepair

So although I was a bit wistful that my (last of 2009 vacation days) vacation / semi-staycation ended yesterday, I was happy to have a job to return to... but it was not to be.

Now don't worry: I haven't been laid off (or at least, I'll worry about that when they move our offices down the street sometime mid-year -- you know, like when you moved homes as a kid and suddenly various things "got lost in the move" that oddly enough, your mother never seemed to like in the first place).

No, late last week, I picked up a horrible sore throat somewhere, and although I feel much better today, I sound very much worse, with all of the volume and projection of a rubber ducky / doggie squeak toy. So even though it (mostly) no longer hurts to swallow, my voice is now so bad that my mom and my sweetie both have problems hearing me when I'm standing next to them in the same room, much less when I'm trying to tell them something on the phone.

So it was not surprising that when I got to the office today, my co-workers looked at me first with relief (i.e., yay, you're back to share the work) and then cringing with alarm (i.e., eeek, you're sick -- go away and don't breathe on us).

Since it was pouring rain today, with winds up in the 50-65 mph category, they were amazed I even came in. (I mean, seriously, check out some of the damage; they also closed off some streets downtown since the winds blew stuff off construction sites and even a sign off the Brooklyn Bridge!)

But I didn't want to pull the ever suspicious sick-day-after-vacation (even though that actually seems to happen -- honest -- to various people, myself included) so I went in since I wasn't feeling sick, if you see what I mean. However, after hearing me they all kindly but firmly told me to GO HOME. And really, in their shoes, I don't blame them -- I wouldn't want someone who sounded like me to breathe all over the workplace, come to think of it (duh).

Um, am I protesting too much?

Anyway, I came home, changed out of wet clothes and into fuzzy jammies and robe and noticed that my bedroom window shade looked a bit odd.

Well, that would be because I have a leak. See the hole? And the discolored wall? And the now ruined, expensive custom-made (by a previous owner) window shade? Oops.

One of the handymen came to inspect it (there's a reason I am happy to fork over the annual holiday bonus check to the building maintenance staff), looked perturbed (since there was no way to tell how many floors this affected), and went off to check if my upstairs neighbor was also having problems. Not surprisingly, they were not home in the middle of the day, so I won't know for a bit what the situation is.

Honestly though, I can't get that upset about it. It's only stuff. After the year my family and my sweetie's family have had, it's not that big a deal. It just means I get to start another savings fund at Smarty Pig for long-delayed home repairs, or perhaps get to check out just much my home insurance really covers... Perhaps if I lived in an apartment as small as these nutjobs, er, people do, then I might be more freaked out.

I did think that the binder clips my friend Laura sent me were hilariously appropriate today though. Ain't multilingualism grand?

Instead I retired to the couch, to curl up under the quilt made for me by my friend Shelley, and watched some of my TiVo backlog. (Another sign that I'm sick: watching hours of cooking shows does not leave me hungry, not even peckish. In fact, I wasn't hungry at all today, a most unusual occurrence for Ms. When's My Next Meal or Snack?)

Come to think of it, my TiVo probably represents an odd cross section of interests, all starting with C: cars (my sweetie loves watching Top Gear in particular -- I watch sometimes because the guys are funny, especially the episode with their mothers (!), but the technical aspects of the car talk are incomprehensible to this non-driver), cooking (I am currently obsessed with the cooking shows on commercial-free WLIW - Create and found out today they have Sara Moulton episodes -- woohoo!), and crime (CSI classic [in Las Vegas], although occasionally the Miami one is amusing, but never EVER the LA-masquerading-as-NY one, The Closer sometimes, and Numb3rs).

And then after endless cups of warm tea for my throat, I surfed across a 1959 Hammer Films color version of The Hound of Baskervilles, co-starring of course, Peter Cushing and a very young Christopher Lee (who looked distractingly like a young Nicolas Cage -- weird). Check out the trailer for the movie, which was actually pretty good (the movie, that is -- the trailer is just classic Hammer horror cheesefest, which is fun in its own way). Christopher Lee actually gets to play a good guy this time, in well tailored clothes and no cape.

But for pure super-cheesy fun, I recommend two things:

• a 1974 Hammer Films - Shaw Brothers co-production, The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, a/k/a The Seven Brothers Meet Dracula (randomly interspersed kung fu battles + Peter Cushing + Christopher Lee + gratuitous scenes of topless village maidens which earned it an R rating in 1974). How could you resist a film which stretches its budget by flipping the film stock and showing it twice?? Example: shots of screaming villagers running left, and then... running right, over exactly the same hill. Heh. And then, the shameless tagline: "Black Belt vs. Black Magic!"
• Fashion shoots from the 1980s! Check out the 1986 Vogue Classic Knits book I am sending on to its next owner (via PaperBackSwap): the hair! the colors! Andie MacDowell when she is blessedly silent!

And now, to bed, to hopefully recover my voice in the morning.

Sisterly stuff

Yay! I found the rubber spacers for the Mario pot/oven. Those of you who've seen my home (thank you for not running screamining into the night, by the way) know that many things reside there, some of which have been "put in a safe place" and so, um, well, occasionally I run across those safe places while on a completely different errand. Whoops.

This photo also gives a better idea of the color, sort of a darker orange, like the persimmon fruit they are named after by the Mario folk.

Remember how I, er, mentioned that I have a lot of STUFF? Well, my previously semi-empty cookbook bookcase is rather full now. Oops. In fact one night, I came back from the compactor room downstairs (see? I do really try to chuck stuff out!) to find my sweetie rearranging the shelves (he's an engineer -- he likes things organized, heh) which inspired me to tidy the shelves up a bit this week. Librarian + food nut = ever growing collection of cookbooks. You are SO shocked, I can tell.

Yesterday I treated my sister to a Wednesday matinee showing of JERSEY BOYS. I am happy to say she had a great time, since Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, although perhaps "oldies" for my generation, were popular (the first time around) when she was a teen. In fact, she told me yesterday that Sherry was one of the only things that would get get me stop crying when I was a baby, and so now I know why she always sang the phrase "Sherry Baby" to me when I was a little girl. HA!

We had a fun time, being part of the matinee crowd (despite the nighttime photo of Times Square from my cellphone that I am sharing from another evening) and it was quite eye-opening to see the demographic of the normal Wednesday matinee Broadway crowd: my sister may be 60 but she certainly doesn't LOOK 60! And my hair looked positively pitch black in comparison with the sea of blue that surrounded us! Whoa!

In fact, when we got there around 1pm, there was such a long line that I was startled and wondered f the performance was at 1:00 and not 2:00pm! I mean, it's a Broadway show, not a movie theater: you have assigned seating! When I asked the box office clerk what was up, she politely indicated that she had NO idea but hinted, "YOU know to come back at 10 minutes to, right?" (heh) Why yes, yes I do.

So my sister and I went off to have a quick lunch at the corner diner (an excellent one I will have to keep in mind) and of course, to use their facilities (hey -- would YOU want to battle all of the blue hairs for the very few restrooms at the theater before a 2-1/2 hour show?!)

It was interesting to see the matinee cast, because there was a different actor portraying Frankie Valli (he only does the 2 weekly matinees -- the singer I originally saw in December, Jarrod Spector, does all of the evening performances and was on the 2009 Emmy telecast) and they had switched the performer who played Bob Gaudio. I preferred my "evening" Frankie but sister liked her "afternoon" Frankie and was perfectly happy with his performance, and since yesterday was all about having a fun day out for her, that's all that matters :-)

We continued our day out with a nice dinner at the Elm Street Oyster House where we had delicious seafood. I wound up splitting my towering crab and avocado stack appetizer (yes, that was an appetizer) with my sister.

We then went on to our respective entrees, a pan-seared red snapper with broccoli rabe for her, and the pan-fried oyster appetizer (yes, I ordered an appetizer) for me. Yuummmm... no wonder our server said the pan-fried oysters were his favorite (appetizer), and they were rich enough that the smaller portion was perfect.

Afterward, we came back home to my brother-in-law and the home health aide (she and my older niece were waiting for him when he arrived home from the adult day care center in the late afternoon) and I saw how my sister patiently negotiated things with him, and gently taught the aide the best way to manage him.

Once again, I was impressed by how much grace, strength, and good humor my sister has, dealing with a spouse of 35 years who has regressed to the mental status of a child. As anyone who is the parent of a toddler knows, they can frequently be frustrating enough to make you want to scream, but my sister is just calm and persistent when trying to get him to change his clothes (left to his own devices, that doesn't happen very often), or put on his coat, or drink his juice, or ... the list is endless.

Fortunately, as I've mentioned before, his temperament is still similar to before the disease -- gentle and good humored -- but he can be very stubborn: just like a two year old, sometimes "No!" is the easiest answer to any request, especially if you don't understand what the person is saying, and he frequently no longer does (comprehend your meaning, that is).

If I understand it correctly, (which I probably don't, since I don't have his test results) my brother-in-law has a combination of Alzheimer's, frontal temporal lobe dementia, and fluent aphasia. The aphasia is best demonstrated by his communication style, which is clearly articulated, fluently spoken, but incomphrensible, as if you threw in the air a pile of the magnetic poetry words used on fridges and used them to converse with another person.

Occasionally, he will still surprise you with a short burst of coherent conversation, so you can't completely discount what he says. For example, he asked me how my mom was and it was at a moment when he understood who I was, and (presumably) who my mom was. Then again, my sister asked him yesterday how his day was, and he replied that it should have been taller.

So I do what little I can, whether it be to take my sister out for a show (she is really surprised/amused by my fondness for Frankie Valli songs) or to act as her own personal geek squad for her computers, although replacing the missing period key pried off by my younger great-nephew is a little beyond me.