Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Time vs Result

I remember when we first had someone mow our lawn a neighbor made a point to tell us that it only took the service five minutes to finish the whole lawn. We thought that was great. The neighbor thought the lawn company was ripping us off.

The man who built our wall told us the story of a job he did planting a number of trees. The woman who hired him refused to pay him the agreed-on amount because he took only forty-five minutes to do it, instead of the two hours she felt it should have taken him.

When I got my hair cut at a fancy West County salon, my stylist pointed out an older lady who was having her hair done twice in one session. The lady insisted the hairdresser wash it, roll it, dry it, spray it, and then start all over again with a wash, roll, etc. She had fine hair, and she felt she should get as much of her stylist's time as someone with long hair.

Is there a rule that governs these things? When do we pay for time and when do we pay for a result?

 

Things Look Different

The blog is now Spartan! Bare! But, friendlier for the Apple devices.

If you are on a phone (at least my phone), the menu is available though an icon on the top.Also, you have to scroll down to get to the things that were on the side before.

However, the BlogRoll is back. And, it is shorter. If Feedly says you are inactive, I believe them, with some exceptions. Becs, Silk, I know you will return.

I still have to work through issues with some of the photos.

 

Christmas Ornament

Our tradition of buying a Christmas ornament that encapsulates the year has run into a snag. I no longer remember what many of our existing ornaments represent. I look at the tree and think, “Hedgehogs? When did we have hedgehogs, or see hedgehogs? When was it hedgehog year?”

There are many possibilities for this year's ornament. I could get a skunk ornament and tart it up to look like GlamourSkunk. We went to Mardi Gras and Chichen Itza, no doubt those are contenders.

But really, if Toto toilets made a tiny Christmas ornament ...

UPDATED: they don’t, but I found a silver keychain that will do just fine.

Keens

I have had to throw away my beloved old Keen mules. The heels wore down to tatters, after ten years, as you would expect, and I found myself slanting backward when I wore them.

These were the only shoes I could walk in for an entire day free of all foot pain. The expensive REI tennis-shoes hurt my feet more than the beloved Keens.

These are the leather shoes Gary called my "rubber shoes" so often that after five years I became convinced they were rubber and I wore them into the Atlantic ocean and the dye turned my feet black.

I ordered a new pair of Keens from Zappos, as close to the originals as I could find, and discovered that a) they were not actually mules, they were those annoying constrictive semi-mules, and that b) I ordered the wrong size.

But that was a blessing, because I found a gray pair on Amazon that was the only one left in my size...

and then a similar used pair on eBay that didn't show much wear on the heels.

The Keen people better not have changed their formula, let me tell you. I don't know what I will do without shoes.

Sandwiches

I once heard my in-laws say, "Let's go to McDonald's and pick up some sandwiches."

My first thought was,"I don't think I have ever heard them even consider eating at McDonald's."

My second thought was, "Maybe that’s why they think McDonald's serves sandwiches."

The U.S. Courts and Stephen Colbert have argued what qualifies as a sandwich, and now Gary and I have found ourselves on opposite sides of the debate.

He thinks, first of all, that there is such a thing as a "Filet-O-Fish sandwich," which of course there isn't. ("Show me where it is on the menu," I argued. "Look for a McSandwich.") In his view, any construction of carb, food, carb is a sandwich. Yeah, no.

I say these are the qualities of a sandwich:

A  It is constructed of sliced bread, food, then sliced bread. 

B. You have to use the word 'sandwich' to know what it is. Turkey sandwich. Egg salad sandwich.

1. If you know what it is without calling it a sandwich - Po'Boy,  Hoagie, Hamburger, Lobster roll, French Dip - those are not sandwiches. They are Po'Boys and Hoagies and Hamburgers.
2. You can only remove the word “sandwich” only if it can be referred to by its initials. See PBJ and BLT.
3. You may think you've got me here, but an ice cream sandwich is a parody of a sandwich.

Gary tried to argue Point A, and went back to the Earl of Sandwich, and said that he had his meat brought to him on a roll. I pointed out that Gary was not there, that roll could have been sliced vertically instead of horizontally, and that he is only proving Point B, because his example is the earliest instance of something named Sandwich.

Luxotica Hatred

The Luxotica eyeglasses monopoly. I hate them. I hate them as much as I love Adam Ruins Everything.

I just paid three hundred dollars for them to put lenses into frames I already own. Pig Dogs. Pig. Dogs.

Warby Parker next year.Or better yet, and I don't know why I didn't think of this before, I can loosen two tiny screws, pop in two lenses, then screw two tiny screws in again.

 

Thankful

As always, I have a ridiculous number of things to be thankful for.

My job - One of the many benefits to working where I do is that when you achieve a certain age and tenure, you can go on Cobra insurance and stay on it until you are eligible for Medicare. So, an expensive option, but an option that means that in one year and one month, I could possibly retire without worrying about insurance. I won't do it, of course, because I can't fathom spending over half my life without a job, but it is wonderful to have the option if life takes a turn.

My health - Sometimes I have visitors from the Carnival of MS bloggers portal. I want to apologize to each of you for all the "No new lesions" posts. No new lesions, and any old silent lesions are vewy vewy quiet lately. No other symptoms than my gait and balance and bladder and bowels. I did totter a few times the last time I went out to a friend's house, but she was gracious and might have thought I was drunk. Of course, I credit the Gilenya.

My husband - The doctor says Gary is healthier than he was last year. He needs to write a self-help book titled Sleep Your Way to Health and Fitness. Of course, if he keeps listening to MSNBC, the President will send him to an early grave.

And additionally I am thankful for:

Those little razors you can use to shave calluses off your feet
Fage 2% Greek yogurt and Nutrasweet and all of the foods, really
Cats that make friends after three years
Raccoons that poop in trees and not on your patio
NPR and podcasts and blogs and free entertainment in general
Continued life

Make This for Me: Pie Crust Edition

Well, it is almost Pie Season. It is so hard for me to make a decent pie crust. I thought it would be easier because Gary isn't involved any more ("NO THAT'S WRONG TOO MUCH / TOO LITTLE NO"). But, no, and I think the issue is simply how humans make pie crusts. You have to cut the butter in to the flour, coating each pea sized bit of butter in the flour, then add just the right amount of ice water to make it pliable. Then it has to rest in the fridge and that means it hardens in the fridge, and then it invariably toughens while you work it long enough to roll it into a circle.

So let's look at the timeline. You measure the flour, you cut in the butter, you add the water, you roll it out, you put in in the pan.

Now let's devolve it. Starting at the end of the timeline: they can give me finished crusts in the pan already, but they aren't tender. (Also, doesn't involve enough human suffering, which is what you need for a family gathering.) They will sell me a pre-rolled sheet, so I only do the last step of putting it in the pan, but those have very little flake.

I want them to back up to the butter-cutting stage. Here's what I want: Pea-sized frozen butter pellets.

They could be on rolls, like sugar candy, or stored like astronaut ice cream.

Like that, only butter.

You would scrape or scoop the amount you want, then toss them with the flour. Then you would let them sit until they aren't completely frozen, add the water, roll it out and there you go.

I think this could be a thing.

Guster at Delmar Hall

The Guster concert at Delmar Hall was remarkable.

1. It was a general admission concert with a limited number of seats, and Gary and I scored seats: black metal barstools that became torture devices after a few hours. When the concert was done I required a bit of butt massage before I was able to walk.
2. The seats were against the wall. Everyone else stood and danced. Some woman stood right in front of me, so close that she was virtually sitting on my knee. Then, she said something to her boyfriend. I don't know what facial message I sent to her that she picked up on. Perhaps she said, "Why doesn't this woman plaster herself to the wall to give me space to dance?" I only heard his half of the conversation, which was, "Well, you're standing right in front of her, and you're invading her personal space." Yeah, good call there, boyfriend.  Then -- triumph -- they left between acts.
3. Gary ordered a whiskey instead of his standard Bailey's. He taught me how to drink whiskey - did you know you're not supposed to swallow at first? You leave it on your tongue and keep your mouth slightly open so the fumes can escape. Then after the toxic fumes dissipate, you drink it.
4. The sound quality at Delmar Hall is better than the Sheldon and the Pageant, so audiences like it. I don't know how much musicians like it. Both Steven Page and Ryan from Guster made remarks. When Steven Page commented that it seemed sterile to him, I thought he was referring to the black walls. He might have been commenting on the way things sounded up on the stage. I don't know how music usually sounds to a band on stage, but Ryan from Guster said that the sound was "pristine," and that we could probably hear them fart, and that the music was just going out into the audience and laying there.

 And of course, even though they did not play my favorite song, I still enjoyed it greatly.

Glamour Skunk and Drama Squirrel

All summer long, all we got from the backyard video camera was morbidly obese raccoons grazing on nuts and dog food. And truly, most of them are in cow-grazing-posture, which annoys me because I know THEY know they're being filmed. Be a cute raccoon and eat with your hands LIKE I KNOW YOU CAN!

Then suddenly in the last month the video camera has caught two remarkable things. First, after three years of identical skunks, suddenly we were graced with ...

GlamourSkunk!

Seriously, check out this skunk with her peacock tail and the sassy white bands on her legs. I thought she might be a different breed, but no, evidently God just graced her with smoking hot skunk looks.

Then, there was the high drama of the ...

Suicidal Squirrel

I'm not embedding this one, because it's a snuff film. Well, almost. Any possible death occurs off camera, and it's possible he escaped. I doubt it, because he truly seemed bent on ending his life, balled up at the foot of the tree in the pitch dark at 9:30 pm, and then opting for Fight when Flight appeared to be going well.  

Here's the link, and it's up to you if you go there and if you listen to it (I have watched and listened to it about 35 times).

Fun Updates and Kathy Griffin

October was a busy month for fun. Parties and concerts and comedy.

Granted, Patton Oswalt cruelly bailed on the concert he was going to do in December. It's been rescheduled for next spring. Six months! Six months I have to not lose tickets! Six months to remember that I have a concert coming up! (Remember the Pixies?)

However, Guster stepped in and booked Delmar Hall. That will be the third concert I've seen there in a month. Rename it Demographic Hall and give me a brass plaque on my seat. (It's odd that Guster booked the tiny Delmar Hall when only a few years back they sold out the much larger Pageant next door.)

Kathy Griffin did not disappoint. I still remember her show at the Fox. Her show had more substance now that she's caught so much flack for a) ridiculing the president or b) threatening the president. Pick your term: I could go either way. I know the photo was just a joke, but if she can use that excuse to avoid an investigation, then so can an assassin. Or a mail bomber.

It was interesting how she orchestrated it to bounce between the harrowing photo fallout and her standard fare of tales of living next to Kanye West and wife Kim. Kim got more ridicule than Kanye. Are the mentally ill off limits now? Perhaps she has softened.

Anyone who turned on her when she was down got an extra helping of ridicule, including Anderson Cooper and hometown native Andy Cohen. (I rather imagine there was more in store for Andy Cohen that was edited out on the fly.)

It was very confessional, very interesting, and very one-sided (as one would expect). I have to say I want her lawyer if a President is ever bent on my destruction.

 

Playlist

Our company has participated in a walking challenge the past few years. Teams are encouraged to walk 10,000 steps a day per person. I’ve been to two meetings now where half of us were making laps around the meeting room.

If I’m not grocery shopping or pede-conferencing that day, I need to take two extra solo walks. Those go by easier with a musical accompaniment, so I’ve been crafting the perfect 30 minute walking playlist.

Sly - Cat Empire

Timber - Pitbull/Keisha 

Bang Bang - Jesse J/Ariana Grande/Nicki Minaj

Stronger - Kelly Clarkson

Come On Eileen - Dexy’s Midnight Runners

Crazy In Love - Beyoncé 

Celebrity Skin - Hole

What I Like About You - Romantics

That adds up to 27 minutes. I need one more song to round it out. (Also, the Hole song veers too far over to angry. It’s on the bubble.)

Suggestions?

Steven Page at Delmar Hall

We saw Steven Page at Delmar Hall last week. Remember when I went to see Steven Page in 2010, right after he left BNL, and I complained his new group didn't seem to like him very much? Happily, he and his new trio appear to get along famously.

Famously, or infamously, or former famously: it's a topic on his new album, mainly on this new song, Shooting Star. (Skip the ad and listen to the link. It's so well crafted. Every time I listen to it I notice some new turn of phrase or pun or rhyme, and the music cascades into an eddy in my brain. Plus, and most important, I can't find a single error in the liner notes.)

He played old songs along with the new songs. Some old accompaniments have been completely revised. I think Jane is the one that was most changed. 

The crowd was peculiar. Everyone seemed ... polite? Even I sat there with my hands folded in my lap. I saw more than a few people conducting an imaginary background symphony. Eventually, of course, everyone was standing at the end.

I don't know who books the acts at Delmar Hall, but they share my tastes. Squirrel Nut Zippers, Steven Page, and next month: Guster.

 

Fun in the Future

Wednesday the 17th - Steven Page concert. My right hand is twitching just typing that. So excited.

Later this month - Kathy Griffin at WashU. 

December 1 - Patton Oswalt at Ground Zero of Conservative America: the Saint Charles Family Arena.   Santorum gave a victory speech there. Country music concerts play there, because rock music is of the devil and is best played next to the riverboat casino tha is also of the devil. I honest to god don’t know how he’s going to cuss his way through his show, but then the Squirrell Nut Zippers show was labeled all ages and ... wasn’t. 

I am not going to the latest venture by Sixthman, the company that brought us the BNL cruises and the Rock Boat cruise. That venture is Blues Alive At Sea. If you were planning a Mediterranean cruise and you love Peter Frampton, consider it.

i am going to the opera next season, to every show, and sitting in the best seats in the house. Season tickets to the opera! La LA.

Everything Old is New Again, Again: Part the Second - Squirrel Nut Zippers

I lived in a pop music desert in the 70s and 80s, because I grew up with all KMOX all the time until I rebelled by listening to NPR. Somehow, nothing improved after I married,so I missed most of the 90s bands until after they broke up, and that includes Squirrel Nut Zippers. 

Evidently, the founder and the drummer kept the faith for a few decades and assembled an entirely new band touring under the old name. We saw them at Delmar Hall, a wee little venue built right on top of the parking lot where thieves broke into our car.

It was riotous. The founder, Jimbo, shamelessly old, stands center stage while this theatrical vortex of music whirls around him. The banjo player / violinist hops on one foot and kicks the air with the other while fiddling. The bass player flips her double bass over her head and plays it upside down. The horn section doesn’t pause for breath. 

I was particularly impressed by the kicking fiddler, who goes by Dr. Sick, so impressed that I started to worry Jimbo might feel threatened by his raw talent and then Dr Sick would try to wrest control and there’d be a Squirrel Nut Zippers palace coup. 

It all ended when someone got a tuba and they wound through the audience like a second line. Loads of fun.

Everything Old Is New Again, Again: Part the First - Landscaping

When we bought the house thirty plus years ago, Gary and I toiled to make a zig-zaggy retaining wall to “retain” about eight inches of dirt. It was made of arsenic-treated pressurized lumber and we had been ASSURED it would last through the ages. Lies! The insects snarfed up that arsenic, the roots splayed it apart, and the sprinkler system eroded it like the Grand Canyon.

Since this year’s vacation fund is being plowed back into the house, refreshing the landscape was at the top of the list. 

 

Those bushes were so tiny years ago, but they have grown. And now they are gone and I remember them just as the hateful spiky plant and the barren azalea.

Now we have a stone wall. (We are debating which lasts longer: a stone wall or a vacation.) I think a dwarf mugo pine would fit there and thirty years from now those stones will still be in place. I hope so, because that wall isn’t going anywhere. It is dug in and epoxied and that’s two tons you’re looking at there.

I have great faith in the wall because it was built by a contractor, José, who works for the local school district, and I know school kids could tear down a wall like that in seconds were it not well made. Gary was appalled to find that José is a Republican, Mexican or not, since he’s a small business owner. Happily, José was good natured enough to let us chant “build the wall” at him.

Even though I had faith in the contractor, and I’ve wanted the wall for years, and I fantasize how it will look when the creeping Jenny and flowering thyme grows in, the process was still remarkably stressful. I understand now why people let their houses fall into disrepair: having someone else do things to your house will keep you up at night. Each night I stayed awake and mentally dug the trench, lay the gravel, arranged the stones, tested the sprinklers, matured the bushes... it was exhausting.

Still, as soon as I get a bush in there and get the lawn re-seeded, I will be back to planning vacations, which are much less worrisome and last a lot longer.

United Way Trivia ... Again

Various friends and I returned to the TeddyJ United Way trivia match this year. This is the match where we placed third last year. It’s the biggest in Saint Louis. It was a bit smaller this year: only 72 tables of ten. 

There’s always a theme. This year it was “Seasons." Initially we were going with Allergy Season (though I pushed hard to make The Verb "Seasons" our theme, mainly so I could be a Spice Girl and Hot Mom’s husband could be, as he requested, Herb Tarlik from WKRP). Then at the last minute we veered instead into Hurricane Season. This required a special tablecloth I made in my basement:

 

This was augmented by flashlights and distress flags. Mr. Friend #4 wore his Weather Channel shirt and went as Jim Cantore, while the rest of us were Hurricane Kris, Hurricane Anne, and so on.

There was also a special hurricane hairstyle that only I was able to pull off (though Friend #4 tried hard and was partially successful).

I bet we would have won the Theme award, but another table interpreted 'Seasons' as TV seasons and each person came as the standout SNL character from a season of that show. You just can't compete with a person wearing a full-on Mr. Bill head.

We moved from 14th place to 9th place (top ten!) after the seventh round. That was the round in which we had cropped movie posters and had to identify the movie. Mr. Friend #2 rattled off "Amadeus. Swingers. The Graduate." followed by seven more in rapid fire. Before that, Anne had done the same thing with pasta shapes. My only chance to contribute was blown in the Cliffhangers round when I said the show with the cliffhanger "Jesse shoots Gale" was, "Oh! I know this! Full House." I was so busy going for the joke that I forgot all about (spoilers) the two times I watched Breaking Bad.

So we felt pretty good about being in the top ten. Five of us stayed on for the official tally. There was a three way tie for first - and we were tied for first. We were gobsmacked. "Wait. He just said Table 36. We're Table 36. I am confused." And then the realization, and the screaming. The rules dictated that the judges break the tie by comparing scores of the final, hardest round, and we got a perfect score on that one. See? See where this is going? How cool am I, so blase about officially winning first place at the largest trivia match in Saint Louis. I didn't even put that in all caps.

I did that when I texted the three tablemates who left early and missed the priceless "first runner up" moment when you realize first runner up is Not You and you won first place at something.

FIRST PLACE. EEEeeeeee I will spend you today, my fifty dollar gift card prize.

Bullets, all inconsequential

• The Horned Melon was supposed to taste of bananas and cucumber. That is a very generous description. It barely tasted of cucumber.
• i decided the painting of my toes was just a failed anatomy study and painted over it, and then did the same to a study of a lemon, and the clinically depressed pomegranate (so called for its grey background and sorry demeanor). You would think I had slaughtered Gary’s children. He’s a drummer so he doesn’t know what it’s like having your failures stare at you while you are trying new things. I still have the apples, the teacup, the croquet balls, and the water droplets. Sheesh.
• My hair decided to turn 30% grey in the last eight weeks. No, there’s been no stress. I told the stylist it was like when my bosom decided to go from 0 to 32C in one week. I’ll try to age gracefully if not gradually.
• I saw an old friend at work, and she hugged me, and apologized as my friends do, because they know I am Not A Hugger. Later that same day I saw an old male friend and I spontaneously hugged him. So I’m a Hug Whore. Men I hug, women I don’t. I don’t know why. I suppose male hugs have no significance, and women’s hugs mean “you look like you need pity” or “think of me as your mother.”
• Gary has been helping me gut the savings account. He bought a toilet that was - let me check - three times want a normal person would spend on a toilet. The new mailbox that is waiting to be assembled was also three times what a normal mailbox is. I am quite pleased with the toilet, all clean and uncracked, and a good three inches taller than the old one. The mailbox will not only be lovely but will be installed on the correct side of the driveway. Why are mailbox positions regulated and other equally important things are not? Like Men’s and Women’s public toilets. Men on the left, women on the right? No. No sense to it. Highway exits need to be standardized too. 
• Our office is moving soon to a new floor and a new Google-like floor plan. No assigned seats. I realized today this is probably to last month of my life I will sit at an assigned desk.

See? Nothing is happening of any significance. Things are fallow and aging and decaying, except for toilets and mailboxes, which keep me young.

Canelé Cage Match

Last Saturday I was full of the morning energy you get when you've been laid up all week and then you put on a bra and leave the house and go shopping. Then you trip over your feet at the grocery and land on your knees and then your chin and then your nose. Then when you recover you think, I'm going to go buy palmiers at La Bonne Bouchée and also an extra treat for me, la LAH, because I am a survivor.

The lovely counter person served up my palmier, and listened as I mourned that they have no canelé.

Ah canelé. I fell in love with them in Paris, then had a bad one in Quebec City. (So bad I left it on a railing for the local birds.) It's essentially a caramel-coated condensed popover, but better. 

The counter person said,"Oh, I go to Nathaniel Reid Bakery for canelé. And they have them at Sucrose, and La Patisserie Chouquette might have them. I like the ones at Nathaniel Reid best. I go there a lot." Three places with canelé driving distance from my house! One not five miles away!

Half an hour later, the counter person at Nathaniel Reid confirmed that the counter person at La Bonne Bouchée came there regularly. I promptly went back to La Bonne Bouchée, and thanked the counter person for hooking me up by giving her one of my spare canelé.

Sucrose though, the one by me, has the best canelé. I was just a touch sweeter than Nathaniel Reid. When I had Anne join me in a canelé taste test that evening, Nathaniel Reid looked more imposing and professional, but had developed a gummy interior, whereas Sucrose stayed tender.

It was so good I might not even visit La Patisserie Chouquette this weekend to see if they also have canelé.

Deep throat and now this.

The search for D.B. Cooper: Investigators say they've confirmed skyjacker's identity by decoding long-lost 'confession'

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/the-search-for-db-cooper-investigators-say-theyve-confirmed-skyjackers-identity-by-decoding-long-lost-confession/ar-AAzi4Zb?li=BBnb7Kz

© 

Two Updates Summer 2018

Oil Painting

(Click back in time to How to Oil Paint in 7 Steps.)

Today, Gary paid me a compliment on my current oil paintings and I immediately went out and bought some professional equipment. I am happy that expensive brushes do not lose their bristles as fast as cheap, but given that they were ten times the price I expect perfection. I also splurged on Grumbacher white paint, after reading an alarming article on how yellow your white paint will turn in five years.

Just imagine if I were a knitter and Gary complimented me. I would be buying my own sheep and a loom at this moment.

Drugs

(Click back in time to The High Price of Drugs.)

I've refilled my expensive MS prescription twice so far this year, and I keep waiting for the big hit to my health savings account. I didn't realize it, but the the co-pay assistance company was cheerfully paying for it each time. After the last time, they called me and we worked out a plan that will suit all parties (the insurance will be satisfied that I paid the deductible, not someone else) and I won't be out any money except the shipping costs.

It's a scary plan, in that I 1) ignore that I have a Health Savings Account and 2) put my share of the drug cost on my credit card (more airline miles for me). Surprisingly, my share is only a thousand dollars a month, and it's a testament to our screwed-up healthcare that I just typed that "only" with all sincerity.

Then, a few weeks after I pay, the co-pay company reimburses me. Since, technically, I paid for it, the first three months takes care of my deductible, and the insurance company is content that I've weighed the benefit of the drug against the cost to me.

I am absolutely the most fortunate of MS sufferers, seriously. A stay for another year!

 

Proofreading the Liner Notes Again

I was listening to Lookin' Up on the latest BNL CD, the delightfully-named Fake Nudes, when I heard the lyric: "I feel like a lightning strike / Every time I rock the mic."

This was about the hundredth time I'd heard that line, since I'm back to listening to only one song per CD on repeat, but it made me remember that I had been slacking off on my job of Unsolicited CD Proofreader. (See: BNL, Barenaked Ladies Are Men and Nellie McKay, Pretty Little Head.)

So, I had to check the liner notes to see if BNL spelled "lightning" correctly, or if it's spelled as "lightening" again.

I am glad to report they spelled it correctly this time.

Sadly, a few lines earlier they had "one foot on the peddle / One hand on the wheel." 

I mean, I could try to tell myself that it's a pun, they're driving off to peddle their music, but there's also a "you" in place of a "your" -- well, it doesn't speak well for any proofreaders at Vanguard Records.

Naked Chicken Chalupa Review

We were driving home from the movie theater, and Gary said, "Where do you want to eat dinner?"

"At home," I replied.

"I want to eat out."

"Where, then?"

"I don't know. Where do you want to eat?"

AT HOME, I thought loudly. But what I said was, "Anywhere. I don't care."

Suddenly we were in a Taco Bell drive-through and I found myself eating this for dinner:

That is a Naked Chicken Chalupa. What looks like the "shell" is a deep fried chicken patty.

Disgusting, I know, but I am somewhat charmed by food in disguise. Pancakes that look like turtles, cupcakes that look like muppets, and now chicken that looks like a taco.

Well, technically, chicken that looks like a chalupa, yet it tastes (as so many things do) like chicken. And, even better -- looks fattening, tastes light. I kept gnawing away at it, trying to work out why it felt so much healthier than a real chalupa.  Finally I realized that since the "filling" was nothing but cheese, lettuce and tomato, I was eating an inverted carb-free chicken sandwich.

Would I eat it again? Not a chance. Would I eat the new KFC chicken crust pizza they only sell in Japan and the Phillipines? I'm not sure. I imagine that's just going to taste like chicken parmigiana. Would I eat the chicken cupcakes the author anticipates in the link above? Absolutely.

In related news, I have gained back ten pounds of the forty I lost a few years ago. No more fast food for me.

Triple Witching Day Miscellany

• Holiday

There needs to be some term for when three holidays fall on the same day. You often get a Passover/Easter overlap, but when it hits April Fools Day, I just don't know how to act. Even though picturing Christ emerging from the tomb and giggling "April Fools!" is pretty satisfying.

• Passwords

I spent six hours yesterday changing all my passwords. (Usually, this is where I'd type "I do it every year," only some websites cheerily told me I last changed it three years ago.)  Six hours. Sixty-eight passwords. I know there must be some new technology that I can use. I was very particular about changing my password safe, ticking each one off the printed list, and now it occurs to me I didn't shred the printed list.

(One hour interlude while I locate the shredder and shred the list).

• Guitar Update

In my crawl toward my goal of playing both the melody and accompaniment, I have made a small breakthrough. It looks like I'm 3/4th of the way there on Blowin In The Wind. I can play the melody notes and 2 of the three harmony notes. Now I just need to train my thumb to hit the bass notes. Of course, my "thumb" is actually my birth defect, so it'll be extra inspiring when I get it right.

• Druuuuugs: The Reckoning

You know how I have that great deal in which the drug company pays my deductible each year, so essentially I pay nothing for my $6,300 a month MS drug? It's a great deal for me. Of course I'm aware it sucks for the insurance company, and no doubt all our rates are higher because of it. Well, the insurance company sent me a letter stating that they wouldn't let the drug company do that any more. I protested as much as I could, and then gave in, since the drugs go generic next year and then my drug company free ride is over anyway. Even if the generic is 90% off, it's still $630 a month ... or $7,560 a year, so I might as well get used to paying my deductible anyway. Technically, I've got four years worth of deductibles invested in my health care savings account, because I knew this day woud come. I'm not complaining, I got nine years worth of fabulous drugs for free. I'm not complaining about my MS effectively being cured either. I'll pay what I have to for stable MRIs. And now if I go on the generic version, we get to see how much of my total remission is due to the placebo effect. Science!

Big Night For BNL Fans

Way back in May 2009, I was sad that BNL had broken up, and did not like the new situation.

Little did I know that a mere nine years later, BNL would be playing together again - temporarily.

Tonight they get inducted into the Canadian Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the Juno Awards. (Economic Canadians - they don't have a separate rock and roll induction party but wrap it instead into the Junos, which seem to be the Canadian Grammys.)

And since they are being inducted, all the past members are getting together to play "If I Had a Million Dollars" and "One Week". All the members - including Steve and also the bass player's brother Andy, who was the early pianist, I think.

Supposedly I'll be able to watch it live today (Sunday March 25) if I go here.

I anticipate that it will make me sad and nostalgic.

 

 

And So It Begins

While we were in New Orleans, Gary greatly coveted one of the "throws" from the Bosom Buddies breast cancer awareness Krewe. Sadly, we were up too high on our balcony to catch any, but they were palm-sized breast stress balls. 

Of course I got him one for his birthday month. He appreciated it. Then this is what was next to my face when I woke up in my bed the next day.

The "hide the toy" game is afoot. So far it has been cuddled up with the rat skeleton, in the fridge, and in the drawer by my bed where I put the remote.

Big Vacation: The Takeaway

For both of us, the big Rock Boat/New Orleans vacation awakened the part of our brain that says, "I could do that at home." 

For example, Gary ate some cruise ship Indian food that wasn't unpleasantly spicy. He thought he might try his hand at making Indian food at home. We bought the spices and we discovered that Tandoori is pleasant and Garam Masala is of the devil and is to be shunned. And just yesterday I made some Butter Chicken that had 1/4th the prescribed garam masala and it is excellent. I'm looking for more Indian dishes I can weaken and undermine.

In New Orleans, after hearing some classical guitar at Cafe Beignet, I decided I could do that too. The guitar player was simultaneously playing the solo and the accompaniment. He was kind enough to talk to me and he recommended some on-line resources where I could learn the classical guitar techniques he was using. I've practiced every day. It's been easy so far, since I've already fumbled my way into all the individual skills, I just need to put them together.

We passed a furniture gallery that had absurdly ABSURDLY priced home decor. I was particularly taken with a brass paper towel holder that was heavily discounted.

I stared at it so long Gary became concerned that I might think SEVEN HUNDRED AND EIGHTY FIVE DOLLARS was a reasonable price for a PAPER TOWEL HOLDER and, in a panicked voice, said, "I really like the paper towel holder we have now."

Lost in my thoughts, I murmured, "I'm trying to see how I can make that at home ..."

Seriously, look at that. A spring, a drill, some resin figures, a rod, there you are.

But to be honest, forget resin, I was thinking I could make my own out of brass, because I had visited the Rodrigue "Blue Dog" Studio and there was an explanation right there on the wall about how you cast things in brass. Plus, there's a WikiHow page.

(The people who run the art galleries in New Orleans are very very open about the techniques every artist uses. By the time I left for home I knew 1) how to use red paint, newspaper, and asphalt to create an open water effect, 2) how to make a faded effect using acrylic paint, and 3) how to use alternating layers of resin and paint to make a very effective trompe-l'oeil goldfish pond sculpture.)

Speaking of the Rodrigue Studio, if you went to the link above you know this is what the studio looks like (minus the piano, that was gone):

We were in the studio with a toddler who had learned the word "pup" that very day. That little girl was bouncing between works of art like a Roomba, and when she'd land on one she'd point and say "pup!" in complete amazement. Like, "My God, there's another one. I just saw a painting of a pup over there, and here's another right across the room. WHAT ARE THE ODDS?" Then she'd go off in a random direction and find that she was just toddling around and MY GOD THERE'S ANOTHER PUP. ("Pup!")

It was my favorite part of the entire trip.

Big Vacation: Mardi Gras Really Gets Going

After the clerk remarked on how it might "start to get a little crazy this afternoon," we decided to make a special visit to Bourbon proper. One corner of Bourbon was under our balcony and it hadn't been busy at all. 

Yes. Things had picked up one block away.

I had expected to see girls rasing their tops for beads and throws, because that's the tale you hear about Mardi Gras, but I saw none of that. What I saw was:

A middle-aged man on a balcony pantomiming to a twenty-year-old girl, "Lift your top and I'll throw you these special beads."
The girl pantomiming back, "Perch here on my middle finger, buddy. And I still want those beads."

After this exchange went on two minutes he tossed the beads in resignation. Hah! No boobs for you.

I don't know why he was so intent on seeing this young woman's breasts, because a girl could strip off her top and walk about with just a few dollars worth of glitter applied to her nipples. We saw two young women who had purchased this service, which seems much more efficient than having to get into a power struggle with some guy on a balcony.

I took in the revelry while leaning against a door out of the crowded street. When we moved, I noticed my butt was wet.

Gary asked, "Did you sit down?"
"No, I was just leaning against the door of that bar."

Yeah, in all my anticipatory imagining of men peeing in the streets I always pictured them peeing into the gutter. Gary explained it's easier to hide the peeing if you pee directly on the wall at groin height. Fun fact!

Somehow, even with the carousing horde, parades were still snaking through the crowd on Bourbon and then on to the relatively empty side streets. Even though we'd amassed all our beads in the Taxi Bead Tsunami, I wouldn't have minded some other parade trinkets. Of course I've never had the mid-air eye-hand coordination required to catch something,so when the Krewe of Prima Donnas marched past I cupped my hands and made eye contact. One of them gently tossed something at me from one foot away.

Of course I didn't catch it, and it fell into this puddle:

When I looked down it was frankly the ugliest rubber bracelet I have ever seen, but she threw it right AT me and I felt obliged.

I fished it from the puddle, and because I had to squat there was time for other revelers to shriek, "Lady get out of that puddle that's nasty!"  I felt I already had pee on my butt and that I could wash my hands more easily than my jeans and get into the spirit, uptight people. Laissez les bons temps rouler.

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How to survive a killer Mardi Gras, circa 1889 | Writerspace

Big Vacation: The Parades in NOLA

I didn't know about Mardi Gras parades before we went to Mardi Gras. For example, I didn't know they have parades two weeks before Fat Tuesday. Here are some other things I didn't know:

1) A Mardi Gras parade is sponsored by a social club called a Krewe. We don't have Krewes in St. Louis, but we have social clubs like the Elks and the Shriners. The only parallel I could draw was if the St. Louis Shriners parade became so popular that people traveled from Europe to participate in it.
2) There are two types of krewes: walking krewes, and larger krewes that hold motorized parades. A walking krewe might parade through the French Quarter, or a subset of a larger Krewe might have a walking parade before their motorized parade with giant double-decker floats.  
3) At all parades, the paraders hurl beads at the outstretched hands in the crowd.  In addition, people on balconies throw beads to any crowds below. We had to sign an agreement with the hotel that we wouldn't fling anything off our balcony.
4) Paraders also throw special things called 'throws' that have some significance to the group sponsoring the parade. They are much valued. The all-female Krewe of Nyx threw decorative shoes and handbags. The breast cancer group threw bras and soft squeeze balls that looked like breasts (NSFW).

Right before we arrived, there was not a parade but a stripper protest march. The government shut down some of the stripper bars on Bourbon. Strippers took to the streets - specifically Bourbon street -  to express their displeasure at having their livelihood taken away right before tourist season. Everyone had an opinion about it.

We saw these parades:

Parade 1 happened when we were in the taxi driving from the port to the hotel. The taxi stopped at a light while a walking Krewe parade marched in the opposing lane.

"Do you want beads?" the driver asked.

Yes please, we said, and he rolled down the windows on the parade side. He made a subtle little gesture at the paraders and a TSUNAMI OF BEADS hit the side of the taxi and poured into the back seat.

Parade 2 was also in the French Quarter - and this Krewe only does walking parades in the French Quarter, because dogs can't drive floats. It was the dog parade for the Krewe of Barkus, which is a clever play on Bacchus, one of the oldest Krewes.

Parade 3 was our first big motorized Krewe parade on Canal street: the Krewe of Ancient Druids. We got there insanely early, and it was pouring cold rain, and we got right up on the barrier. Great for photos, right? Nope, Gary spent so much time giving the crowd updates from the Parade Tracker iPhone app that the battery died after the first blurry, rainy shot.

Still, everyone appreciated Gary announcing "The parade has moved one block closer!" every five minutes.

Parade 4 was our second big Krewe parade, the Krewe of Babylon. We were well back in the crowd this time, next to drunk boys yelling, "WHERE ARE THE TITTIES." There was also a beer vendor who was an expert at giving counting out inaccurate change. At one point he pressured me into watching his cooler of beer while he took off. I protested but found myself doing it anyway. He came back and insisted I watch the parade from on top his beer cooler. I protested but found myself on top of the cooler. I got down as soon as possible. It's conceivable that this was when I lost my backup passport ID card.

Gary got some video of this one.

Parade 5 was the one I had planned for: it was a parade that was scheduled to go right under our hotel balcony, and the Krewe was the breast cancer awareness group The Krewe of Bosom Buddies.

That one was at 11:00 am on Friday. By 2:00 pm three other parades had gone below our balcony and I felt a little silly for thinking I'd worried we wouldn't see one. .

After 2:00 we went down to the front desk to get wrist bracelets that identified that we were guests of the hotel. I was surprised it would get so crazy outside that this would be needed. I'd seen three parades that day: how could things get crazier? 

More on that later.

Big Vacation: Music on the Boat

One appeal of the Rock Boat is the intimacy you feel with the artists. I had many chances to be a giggling fan-girl to the musicians, but at least once I chose to be a gracious fan-lady instead.

One evening I'd been watching a Cowboy Mouth concert on the pool deck, but Gary wanted to listen to a female group on the other side of the boat. To leave we had to walk toward -- and then past -- the stage, just as Fred, the lead drummer/singer (I know, it's unusual) was demanding the crowd "come a little closer, now." Since everyone was scooting closer to the stage anyway, I thought I'd blend right in, but I made the mistake of making eye contact with Fred and not letting go.

Fred continued demanding, "Come a little closer now, little closer now, LITTLE CLOSER NOW LADY WITH THE BLUE SHIRT LOOKING RIGHT AT ME LIKE I'M CRAZY!"

I just laughed and didn't break stride. Please. Fred's stage persona isn't as loud and bossy as Gary is in real life.

When I was having my ten-prune breakfast at seven the next morning, I walked right past Fred in the near-empty dining hall. I gave him a gracious fan-lady nod, and he gave me a big smile.

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Gary had his own chance to be called out from the stage when we were at the Choir! Choir! Choir! show. Let me recommend Choir! Choir! Choir! to anyone in Chicago or the Northern U.S/Southern Canada., where they are appearing soon. Prepare to laugh, prepare to sing, because that's their deal - the two guys coach the audience through a group harmony sing-along by using comedy and crowd-shaming.

The singers spotted Gary five rows back, scowling, his jacket draped over his crossed arms, having none of this group singing thing I'd insisted we see.

One of the duo said to Gary, "Sir, Sir .. I need your jacket."

Gary handed over his jacket to the people in front, who put it on stage.

"Thanks!" the singer said. "That's to make sure you don't leave."

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You can always spot Talent on the Rock Boat, because:

• They are generally tall.
• They are shiny. It's as if all the eyes that have looked at them have worn them shiny like a river smooths a rock.
• They all wear badges that say TALENT in large letters. They don't wear them all the time, though, I never saw anyone wear their badge in the buffet line, for example.

This is not the criterion Gary uses to identify talent. We were on the bus for our shore excursion to Chichen Itza, and Gary remarked, "There are EIGHT musicians with us on this bus." I quizzed him and it became clear he thinks any man with high-quality, ornate tattoo work is a musician.

However, there WAS one actual artist on our bus: Matt, the guitarist from Cowboy Mouth. (If you look at the photos on the Cowboy Mouth photo site, Matt's the one with the high-quality, ornate tattoo work.)

Matt came in very handy when this happened:

When we heard the unmistakable sound of the bus tire going flat on the way back to port, Gary promptly said, "We're going to miss the boat. It took two and a half hours to get to Chichen Itza, and we've been driving back for - "

I said confidently, "They'll hold the boat. The Cowboy Mouth guitarist's on our bus, and the boat's not leaving without him."

A new "rescue" bus arrived sooner than expected and we made it back with five minutes to spare --  I imagine Matt the Ornately Tattooed Guitarist gets the credit for that. 

Big Vacation: The Food Part 2: Food in NOLA

Everything we ate in New Orleans was the best, each in its own way. (And was appropriately ... mobile, in case you were wondering.)

The Most Color Coordinated: When we ate at the hotel buffet, I noticed my root vegetables were Yukon Gold potatoes, trendy purple potatoes, and green peppers - or purple, green and gold, the Mardi Gras colors.

The Most Versatile: Grits. Most of my meals were grit-based. The best of all was the Barbecued Shrimp and Grits at Tujague's Restaurant. The "Barbecue" sauce was delicious - not a BBQ at all, but a very complex brown gravy. The grits were of the same durable consistency as the cheese and bacon grits at Stanley, not creamy like the grits at the Old Coffee Pot.

The Most Decadent: Monty's is across the street from the Cafe Du Monde, where they serve the most well-known beignets - a pastry that is too sweet even for my palate. Evidently Monty's looked at Cafe Du Monde's deep-fried pastry dough covered in powdered sugar and said "Hold My Chicory Coffee."

They took the puffy square of raw pastry, sliced it into french-fry shapes, and then deep fried those. So, instead of a deep-fried puffy square, they multiplied the available surface area of crispy deep-fried goodness and then put powdered sugar over that. It knocked back the sweetness quite a bit since it bumped up the fried bread surface exponentially. I say that without shame.

I suppose in a few years a place will open next door and they'll take the beignet fries and enrobe them in dark chocolate or something even more decadent.

Best Restaurant Overall: Muriel's, where we had gumbo, and chowder, and feta and crawdad crepes, and crabcakes, and bread pudding, and King Cake with the obligatory baby - only the baby was just perched on the outside and it was painted gold.

I pocketed it and dropped it into Gary's Baileys later that night. He claims the alcohol ate off some of the gold on the baby's scalp.

In the right light you can see that there's a deliberate hole. I say it's the hole you have to leave so you don't suffer "skin suffocation" like in Goldfinger. Or, since there's another hole he's sitting on, he might be a bead.

Anyway, Gold King Cake Baby came home with us and has been perched on every meal, including tonight's frozen pizza.

 

Big Vacation

Ten years at TeddyJ has earned me four weeks of vacation, starting in January. I didn't even wait a full month before I embarked on a two-week visit: one week on the Rock Boat and the next in New Orleans for the start of the Mardi Gras.

(Sorry to disappoint, but I didn't visit Antarctica, like Dave on a research ship and Big Dot on a luxury liner. I don't think I'll visit Antarctica until it becomes touristy, because I defiantly love tourist traps. I can see it now: I could get off the boat and there's a spot where I could feed the tame penguins, next to a Margaritaville if I need wifi and artificial light, and then I would hole up in a boutique rehabbed research station.)

We spent recklessly. We almost made it to the last day before we had an argument how to pack the objet d'art we got at Skull Paradise in the French Quarter. (Skull and anatomy posters for the medical bathroom - one in French). We also got this years New Orleans 2018 print from Mousie to go in our Mucha-themed bedroom.

This time we actually visited the Voodoo and pharmacy museums.

Surprisingly, we stayed healthy the whole time, despite these risks:

• It was freaking cold in New Orleans the night we sailed out on the Rock Boat ("The Big Freezy," quipped Tyler, the BNL drummer).
• Similarly, when we sailed back to New Orleans it was raining during the return BNL concert.
• This horse tried to bite Gary when he made kissy noises, as you do with a horse.

• I then made kissy noises and it tried to bite me as well.
• One woman on the flight home was so obviously sick the pilot came back and checked on her. Her fiancee lied and said she was fine.
• The weather, now that we are back, has been insultingly cold. I can think of no other term for it. I go outside and I grow indignant.

There are many more things to post, about the weather and the food and the little girls and the beads and the beer man. But right now I have a headache from working all day, which also makes me indignant. What is this world in which I work instead of idling about the southern shores?

2017 Year in Review

The Year in Resistance

"Good march. I wonder how long Trump will last." - Me, after the St. Louis Women's March in January

Even though we attended the Women's March, Immigration March, Planned Parenthood March, Tax March, Science March, Climate Change March, Healthcare Rally, Truth March, and Impeachment Rally, the Pence Regency / Trump Presidency persists. Gary protests virulently on Facebook every day, and we dressed as Russian trolls for Halloween, but other than that the Resistance seems to have gone dormant. I long for a march on the anniversary of the Women's March, preferably one with the brass Dixieland band.

The Year In Music

We went to see Cabaret, BNL, Doobie Brothers / Chicago, Foreigner, missed the Pixies because we are stupid, but saw Katy Perry. I stepped out of my pop music comfort zone to go to the opera with Anne.

The Year in Idle Pursuits

I don't know if Gary will want to revisit the NaughtiGras this year - it'll be on the tail of a pretty exhausting holiday. I know, I know, I just came off of an exhausting holiday at Universal Studios. Next year I'll be sure to space out my vacation time better. Thinking of that, seven years from now I need to be sure I don't visit an escape room and a cave the same week there's a total solar eclipse. 

The Year in Personal Growth

Well, I don't know about personal growth, but I know marital growth has occurred. We've started identifying what makes us crazy. We still say "You ALWAYS do that when - " and then later we fill in the blanks. We always do seem to fight tenaciously over questions neither of us know the answer to. Where we are when we're lost, how to hang a ceiling fan, how to use Gary's new iPhone. If one takes an opinion the other (Gary, let's be real) takes the opposing opinion, and then the fight is on.

New Year's resolution: no more of that. More protests and concerts and idle pursuits.

A New Store by The Mall

Some last minute Christmas shopping took us out to the mall, and I was surprised to see that this new store has popped up on the outer road:

Hm, Tactical Sh*t, I respect your in-your-face attitude.  I respect the strength of your views. I would respect a well-regulated militia, if I had ever seen such a thing. I admire you so much I would like to open an abortion clinic in your parking lot and call it Abortions-n-Sh*t. Next door I would put a head shop called Sh*tHeads, and then one of those government offices where they surgically implant the tracking microchips which I would call Microchip R Ass. Sorry. A*s.

(It seems to have taken the place of the Uncle Sam's Military Surplus Store about half a year ago. I wonder if all Uncle Sam's are being rebranded. I would imagine not. After looking at the abysmal Yelp reviews, I would say they don't have a good prognosis.)

Dentists on Parade

This time last year my fancy West County dentist sold his practice to a dentist not three miles from my house. Convenient! Lovely!

I walked in and almost walked out. The reception area wasn't just shabby - it was mangy. Mangy in that every wall had a dead animal hanging on it. Dead deer head, dead fish, dead deer, dead fish, then a dead fish on the way to the exam room. (No dead deer in the exam room itself.)  I went to the bathroom to check for dead fish and found very old linoleum and hair in the corner.

After I came back home and expressed my dissatisfaction to Gary, he insisted I make an appointment with his dentist. Gary's dentist is a perfectionist whom Gary loves.

I now see why Gary likes this dentist. He has the cool toys.

Lobby video flat screen: there is a flat screen in the (hairless) lobby that plays testimonials for the Invisalign brances on a loop. I love a before-and-after, but these people had perfect teeth before and slightly more perfect teeth after. They should have hit Gary up to be a tooth model instead: his Invisalign really made a difference.

Stand up panoramic 3-D CAT scan: You just stand there in a lead apron and some machine pivots around you and takes a very disturbing photo of your teeth that looks like those 3-D baby ultrasounds. This is used later to show you why you need the Invisalign treatment, which must be the bread-and-butter that buys the office all this cool stuff.

Comm Devices: The hygenists all wear a tiny communications device so they can converse about status and where things are. Mine reported that another client had been very concerned because he could hear the voices, couldn't see the tiny device, and didn't know where the voices were coming from.

After I got my water cleaning and Creamsicle tooth polish they - of course - tried to sell me on Invisalign, and I was impressed enough to look at an estimate, which was three times what Gary paid for his. Nope. I also had a cavity, one missing filling, and then later that day the back of one of my teeth sheared off, so I had to come back the next day. That means I got to appreciate the tooth filllng technology:

Mylar: l've never had a dentist wrap plastic around the base of my teeth and permanently leave it there. I don't know why he did, and it agitated me when I could feel it with my tongue after the novacaine wore off. It's been a month and I don't notice it anymore. I did look it up and he didn't just forget it, it's supposed to stay. Can't figure out fro the scholarly article what the point is.

I have left the best for last.

Jaw prop: They said, "Open wide" and then stuck a piece of plastic between my molars that KEPT me open wide. Genius. Genius.

THIS is what sold me (and made me consider even getting the Inivisalign when it's half off). 

 

 

 

Orlando Vacation: In General

Hygiene

Day 1 - I washed my hair, did makeup, wore deodorant.
Day 5 - Did none of those things. Why would I? The heat and humidity in Florida knocked out all my good works by noon.

Health

Day 1 - Fruit for breakfast, smoothie for lunch, salad for dinner.
Day 5 - Cheesecake for breakfast, cookie for lunch, gelato for dinner.

Surprisingly, I didn't gain any weight while there, no doubt because I walked 30,000 steps a day.

Rides

Speaking of weight - Gary couldn't fit in several of the roller-coasters. That was fine with me: I'm no longer a roller-coaster fan. Similarly, I couldn't fit in one of the rides myself. (I didn't want to go on the Mummy ride anyway. Nyah.) It was an indoor roller-coaster, and I don't do roller-coasters anymore. (Stupid roller-coasters.)

I do love those new virtual roller-coaster rides, though. They are genius. You're never more than five feet off the ground, but with the 3-D visual input and the jolting of the machine your brain is convinced you are on a roller-coaster, or being picked up by a giant ape, or plummeting to the earth. And - the best part - if you start feeling motion sickness you close your eyes. You suddenly realize you aren't really moving that much. (For some reason I forgot that little trick when I was on the Harry Potter Forbidden Journey ride. You could as well call it Hurl Over Hogwarts. It's a very convincing flying ride in which you play Quidditch and fly on a broomstick. I will not be doing any real or virtual Quidditch in the future.)

Future Plans

First, just like everyone who has stayed at the Universal Portofino Bay Hotel, I now want to go to Portofino Italy. I don't use the term "everyone" loosely. I was walking on the piazza, thinking, "This makes me want to go to Portofino," when a man passed and said to his companion, "This makes me want to go to Portofino." Of course, there won't be a Starbucks at the real place and I imagine the room won't have twelve foot ceilings or a water taxi to take us around.

Second, I understand that Disney wants to compete with the Harry Potter World. There are only a few actual rides there - the attention to detail is the "ride." To that end Disney is supposed to open Star Wars World in 2019. So, Gary's saving up for that now.

Orlando Vacation: Halloween Horror Night

For the last thirty-plus autumns, Gary will see a Haunted House billboard and say,"That sounds scary! We have to see it," and then every year we don't see it. We've never gone to any of these haunted houses because Gary always decides it won't be scary enough. "We have to see it" changes to "That looks dumb."

Still, I bought tickets for one of the Halloween Horror Nights. On those nights, Universal closes at five so that they can convert empty rides and spaces to haunted houses. These haunted houses are not dumb. They ruined me for all lesser, local haunted houses. These are top-drawer professional scary set design from movies like The Shining and Saw, populated with equally professionally made-up vampires and ghouls, and layered on top of it all is a hideous soundtrack of bone-crunching and blood-slurping.

For anyone else who has never been to a haunted house, you shuffle through a maze that winds through a set while terrifying creatures jump out at you. And even though I was expecting a scare around every corner, around every corner something jumped out and it still scared me! I screamed every single damn time. I can't imagine why it didn't bore me after a while, but they did such an excellent job of orchestrating the cadence of the scares that it was always a surprise.

The first house was scary, and each house after that was scarier. One house was designed so it pointed you toward a false exit then trapped you in a small corner with monsters. By the fourth house my psyche decided to fight back, and every time some thing clawed at my face and screamed at me, I screamed NO back. Yes, as if was the nineties and they were strangers in a dark parking garage.

They also set up "Scare zones" though the park where you could be frightened without waiting in line. This was personalized open-air scaring. Those ghouls had a harder job of it, because you weren't trapped and tense. On the other had, you never expected them. There was a nice man on stilts, for example, wearing a tuxedo and white face paint. I smiled up at him. He stared impassively. When I turned my back on him he doubled over so his face was hanging upside down in front of mine. I shrieked and saw him give a tiny little satisfed upside-down smile before he unfolded from his jack-knifed position.

You can get a peek at him, along with some other creepy characters in the dark video below.

Once the open-air ghouls realized we were easy marks (as opposed to the sullen teenagers), they played us like puppets. I gave the Grim Reaper the high sign and pointed at Gary, as if to say "Sic' em." The Reaper expertly side-swiped Gary and Gary screamed like a woman.

Since I'd been using the "NO" technique in the houses, I tried that on a street vampire who spotted me. "DID YOU SAY 'NO?'" he bellowed. "I HEARD YOU SAY 'YES, YES, SCARE ME!'"  Then he lunged at me. I screamed and cowered.

Of course, the worst ones were the chainsaw-wielding clowns. As individual clowns revving up chainsaws, they were bad, but when they surrounded people and threatened them with a circle of chainsaws, well, I was glad I had not been targeted there.

Finally, one added bonus to the Halloween Horror Nights is that you also get to see the night-time version of this scary event: 

Orlando Vacation: Animals

Fox - We saw our fox as we were leaving on vacation. Let me back up - we have an old, ratty fox. Squinty eyes, mangy fur. When we met him his tail was bone with a tuft of fur at the end, but it's grown in a little. His tail's like a Brazillian landing strip now.

What I'm saying is: he's a distinctive fox. We spotted him on the first day of vacation when we were driving out of the subdivision on the way to the airport. One o'clock in the afternoon, padding down the sidewalk, like he was going to his Job as a Fox early because these people were leaving and someone had to watch the house.

We felt it was a good omen.

Boo Boo The Poodle - Our hotel, the Portofino Bay Universal resort hotel, is a "pet-friendly hotel." We were on the bottom floor, where I think all the pets stay because the rooms have sliding glass doors that open on to the piazza and the little lake there. Actually, our room is at very far right of this photo:

(No, I didn't take that photo. I got it off Wikipedia.)

We had two very quiet pugs on one side and a lonely poodle on the other.

Our room adjoined Boo Boo's via a locked door. We heard the poodle bark often, we heard his parents argue, and we heard them say, "Bye, Boo Boo" when they left for 18 hour stretches. Boo Boo barked like a fading smoke alarm: just when you'd forgotten about it: beep! there it is again, just for a moment. 

I met his owner one day on the lake. "Has he been keeping you awake?" the owner asked. "Oh, he doesn't bark at night." I said POINTEDLY.

Ducks -  Of course, there were ducks, and of course I fed them room service bread, as you do. I fed them twice. The first time it was by the clock tower in the photo above. Then, two days later, I was sitting right outside our room (as I say, to the right on the photo above), when I saw a duck in the center of the lake swimming my way and quacking. By the time he got to me he had five of his friends in tow, demanding bread. I had to oblige. It felt very much as if he saw me across the lake and called out, "Hey, there's that plump lady who fed us Tuesday. Let's hit her up."

Raccoon - Well, the vacation began with the good omen of the fox trotting to our house, but the first thing that greeted us on our return was a dead racoon splayed across the backyard. Of course, I thought it was a mafia hit, but the corpse had no holes. I thought then it had been found in a trash can and flung in to our yard, but that thing weighed fifty pounds. Then, naturally, I thought it had died of the distemper that is affecting raccoons in south St.Louis city. But, none of our raccoons have shown any signs of distemper in the hours of videos we take of them.

I don't know. The raccoon party may be dying down at our house. It's been two years, surely Gary must be tired of this hobby by now.

Another Night at Trivia

The best I've ever done at Trivia was winning a disputed first place at a very small school fundraiser trivia event.

So, when Marcia (Friend #3) announced her intention to Win It All at the Teddy J United Way Trivia, I was skeptical. TeddyJ Trivia is the biggest in Saint Louis.

 

She said she was assembling a dream team and I was key. We agreed Gary was not as key, but he could come if we couldn't rustle up another player. As it turned out, he came and filled out the team, which also included Friend #2 and Spouse, Laura and Spouse, plus Anne, who deserves a number (I dub Anne Friend #9).

The powerhouses were Marcia and Evan, Laura's spouse. I was useless and only contributed one answer during the Governmental Departments round. I also think I spawned the good-natured chorus of boos for the Department of Labor, given the worry they've caused us these last few months.

My other contribution was to back Anne up during a debate over one question: “What Southern Hemisphere constellation is half-man, half-horse?”

Marcia in her lust for gold scribbled down Sagittarius without consulting anyone, but Anne stopped her. “Southern hemisphere. Sagittarius is northern hemisphere. We never see the southern hemisphere constellations.”

“This is true.” I said. “Big Dot in New Zealand sees a rabbit in the moon and all sorts of peculiar things.”

Marcia scratched out Sagittarius and said, “So what's it called?”

Anne said, “I don't know. The Centaur? Centauri? Centaurus? Centaurum?”

Marcia wrote “Centaur.” Then she scribbled it out and wrote in Sagittarius again.

“No” I insisted, “It can't be Sagittarius, that's the wrong hemisphere.” She scribbled out Sagittarius and wrote "The Centaur."

Then I had an inspiration. “It's not The Centaur! It's Centauri. Like the nearest star, Alpha Centrauri.”

“That's not a constellation, that's a star,” She stubbornly scratched out "The Centaur" and replaced it with “Sagittarius.”

I lamely argued that Alpha Centarui could be a star in the Centauri constellation, but she was not moved. We went with Sagittarius.

I am sure that at this moment, you are all saying, "Alpha Centarui IS a star in the Centaurus constellation, everyone knows THAT.”  And you are right, so it follows we were wrong. It's moot anyway, since we never wrote down the actual name of the constellation, which is “Centaurus.”

It only came up again when we eventually actually placed third, right behind a two-way tie for first. Anne laughed, “We could have said we were first if you'd listened to me about the constellation.”

I am very smug about coming in third, actually. It's quite an accomplishment, and came with a ten dollar gift card. I could use it to buy this ...

 

... and put it on Marcia's desk.

Trivia Bullets

Friends: the Lost Episodes - Last night I saw an episode of Friends I had never seen before, even though I made a special effort to check off every episode a while back. (I bought the ones I hadn't seen on Amazon, only a month before they went free on Netflix.) I just recently found The One Where Chandler Greets Every Woman With a Kiss after he's caught kissing Monica. For other people, this would be like finding SuperBowl II.

Exhausting dream - You know the unpleasant experience of searching for a word? Last night I spent an entire dream with Sandinistas in a tavern searching for "a word that means rendezvous, but it's Spanish and it starts with an S." "Sabotage?" "That's not it." "Tryst?" "That's not not it." HOURS OF THIS. Of course I woke up and went for the thesaurus. No such word. Cruel dream.

Movies - Gary's been on a summer blockbuster kick lately, but I convinced him to go see The Big Sick instead of whatever action movie's out this week. I found it hilarious. He hated it. I don't know if he hated the movie as much as he hated me controlling what movie we saw. Evidently there are some areas where he is the Authority, and areas where I am the Authority. Now that he reminded me of the rules, I'm resisting the temptation to exercise my authority in the gardening area. I could redesign all the landscaping and he couldn't question it. I'd better go do that before he wakes up.