Birthday Leftovers - Saturday 1/17/2009

I bought this Pina Colada bomba at Porto's on the way home last night. I'm just now getting around to it because they gave me a nice dessert at Big Tuna.

Pina Colada bomba sounds a lot less fabulous than this really is. Light white cake with a little layer of pineapple in the middle, coated in whipped cream and coconut and garnished with a fresh flower. Wow, this is one of my favorite desserts.

How to wish SallyKitt a Happy Birthday Jan 16th!

"I am flattered and encouraged by all the wonderful messages I received today!"

This is from an entry I made over on the goal-setting site, 43Things. I was invited onto the team to wish myself a happy birthday today! This is my report on how to do it for oneself.

How I did it: Signed up for the goal. Responded to everyone who wrote to me.

Had a very productive day at work, which felt good.

Offline, I didn't get bummed out that we might not feel up to celebrating on my birthday. Good thing, because it turned out that we went to our favorite sushi bar for a wonderful dinner. Tried several new rolls, drank hot sake, chatted with others at the sushi bar a bit. Hydra told them it was my birthday so our chef made me a really gorgeous tempura ice cream dessert, and everyone sang happy birthday. There were more calls of happy birthday as we left.

Lessons & tips:

Don't focus on what you haven't done by your Nth birthday. What good's that? (And there are the hours between midnight and dawn for that anyway!)

If you are a bit of a regular at a restaurant, consider going there rather than a new place for your birthday meal. It really was nice to have the sushi chefs who have made us great meals all year long celebrate along with us.

Don't set the bar for satisfaction too high. Really enjoy everything that comes your way.

Tell people it's your birthday if it matters to you. Pouting about no one noticing is no fun for anyone!

Resources:

My husband, my mother, my sister and brothers, my online friends at 43T and Facebook, my co-workers, my brick-and-mortar friends who called or emailed or sent cards.

It took me 1 day.

It made me Happy & warm

If you're interested, you can see how we celebrate on 43 Things..by sending virtual gifts!

See more progress on: Wish SallyKitt a Happy Birthday Jan 16th!

Oh, and yes! That's Hydra's gift to me. The new Photoshop Elements/Adobe Premiere 7 software...which I used to enhance the photo, of course!

My Apology Card to One L

Later That Day - Friday 1/8/2009

Tree at the edge of my neighborhood.

I felt so good, I invited Hydra out for a hike. We hiked by the light of the moon!

Next day, the terrible cold descended. Glad we hiked when we did.

Belated Christmas Tea - Friday 1/8/2009

It's hard for me to believe that this was actually so long ago, probably because I was out of it for the next four days with a nasty cold.

We didn't have our Christmas tea before the holidays because I and another coworker were snowed in. Then the boss announced after we came back that there isn't enough money for us to go to tea. This was a terrible mistake, morale-wise.

But Weens came up with the idea of doing our own little tea along with the delayed Secret Santa exchange! So she went to Porto's for pastries and I brought in some of my teacups and my big happy Chatsford teapot (famous in tea circles, dontcha know?) and we had a very nice little gathering.



Weens' Christmas Queen presided over it all!


Cause I know you want a better look. These things are filled with guava, coconut, currents, almond paste, cherries, pears, etc. MMM.

The only dark note was that two people had Jens' name in the Secret Santa exchange and no one had OneL's! And I think it's my fault! Because after the holidays I'd forgotten and Jens told me I had her and she had me, which I had reason to believe.

So wrong. My fault for not remembering. And believe me, OneL is the person to whom this stuff matters the most. She dealt, but it was too bad.

I received some cool techno music from Jens.

Suffice it to say...

it didn't work. I've been down with an horrific cold for the past 4 days. (I'd sigh if it didn't start me coughing.)

The Anti-Bacterial Question - Wednesday 1/7/2009

Last night, Kitty and I talked about the over use of anti-bacterial products these days. I think she was relieved to hear that although I do have a bit of a mania about clearing and wiping off my kitchen counters before bed, I don't routinely swab them with microbe-annihilating potions.

But then I had to admit to her that I use them at work. The hand- and dish-soaps are provided by the office, and I recently added the Purell to my desk.

This is due to the nasty habit we have in this office of passing around colds. Yesterday, 4 of my 7 coworkers were either working sick or out sick.

To avoid the thrill of this particular merry-go-round, I started using my own glass, bowl, plate, cups and silverware rather than share the communal stock a couple of years ago.

When I started here, I was kind of excited at the thought of an all-female office. I just assumed that would mean that everyone would do her own dishes, wipe her own exploded soup off the insides of the microwave, scrape her own burnt cheese off the bottom of the toaster oven.

Not so, my friends.

But at least I was made aware of and made to release that sexist little nugget.

I started using my own private utensils because I was fed up with always carting other people's clean dishes back to the little kitchen area. And if they want to leave a bowl soaking until smelly creatures colonize it's surface, it's not my problem.

The water we have to wash dishes in doesn't get very hot, so I want to just limit myself to my own personal germies, thank you very much. I even have my own (nice clean) dishtowel so I don't have to leave my dishes in the drain rack (which is in the same room as the toilet...don't get me started on what The Today Show would say about that!)

Every year at some point a cold (or two) gets shuffled around the office, bolstering my separatist inclinations. When one person is out sick, it's almost a given that I or another coworker will have to go to her desk and work on her computer or get her USB drive to work from. I unabashedly wipe everything at her desk down with those Kirkland anti-bacterial wipes.

I'll admit that it's doing a number on my hands, drying them out a bit more than usual even for this time of year.



Other than that, I think I'm handling the situation quite rationally.

Out with the Old - Sunday 1/4/2009

What are these things anyway?

Hydra was going through his closet and came across some of my old computer games. I thought I'd see if this one would still run. Ha! It's on 5 1/4 inch disks! (Also on the smaller ones.) And it it can be run on either Windows or DOS 3.0 and higher.

When I first started working on computers in nineteen-hundred and eighty-nine, we had a system called NPS at UCLA that used 8 inch floppy disks! It went away shortly after I arrived, and we modernized to these 5 1/4 inch babies.



We took the toys and lights off of the tree and then suddenly there was just this big tree lurking a bit awkwardly in the living room.

When we wrestled it into a huge plastic bag and hauled it outside, I felt like we were kidnapping it! Eek.

Oh, and FYI, I had a personal best this morning at the gym: 60 minutes of cardio level elliptical machine "running" (heart rate between 145-150 the whole time), for a total of 5.52 miles! My longest both time and distance-wise.

This was to rid myself of my end-of-vacation / beginning-of-the-new-year screaming hollowness. It didn't really make me a better person, but it made me feel like one.

Road Trip! Bakersfield - Saturday 1/3/2008

Whew, the fog was thick between Tehachapi and Bakersfield! It actually got worse than this, but by then Hydra stopped taking photos and was digging his nails into the dashboard.



Hydra alive and well inside The Pyrenees Cafe. It's located on a rather desolate and industrial feeling street, but it's pretty interesting inside. The bar, which is visible over Hydra's shoulder in the next room, seems very friendly and lively. The dining area has rows of long tables and you eat family style.

The cabbage soup was really good. The rest of it, frankly, was just okay. We loved this place the first time we came here, and it still earns points for being a throw-back to another style of eating place. There was a lot of garlic on the chops and chicken we ordered. I like a lot of garlic, but I like it cooked a bit more than this was.



I'm on a photo scavenger hunt for a list of 43 pirate- and surfer-related items. This counts as a treasure chest, I believe!



My entry into this week's themed photo contest (RED) on Facebook : the little red wagon outside an antiques mall in Bakersfield.


This is here just because I thought it was interesting. It's like an electric chair for soup!

Pretty elaborate set up, here: a single metal mug with prongs on the back of it that plug into this machine. This booth had a lot of very old vending machines. Like pre-Mad Men old.

We went to several antiques stores and malls up there, and didn't end up buying anything. What makes it interesting is when you come across a booth like the one with all the old vending machines in it, and you feel like you've learned something about the (obsessions of the) person who finds this stuff and salvages it.

It's like they're curating their booths rather than merely stocking them.

Goofy, but Fun - Friday 1/2/2008

I'm participating in an online photo scavenger hunt and this is one of my first "gets" : a ship! This one has apparently run aground against the (empty) lobster tank at Red Lobster.

This month's theme was chosen by last month's winner. It's a combination of Pirate and Surfer imagery, which doesn't really interest me in particular, but it's been fun to find ways to get the shots.

That New Year's Post - Thursday 1/1/2009

It is so, so very nice to be home day after day. We're all as calm and happy as this.

Had a nice breakfast with History and Cowgirl, and sat around the table and in the living room talking until late in the morning. Lovely way to start the new year.

Of course, the new year is that time when we look back and forward.

I always get this hollow feeling that I haven't accomplished much. I didn't publish enough, or even submit enough. I didn't follow through on some ideas. I didn't finish rewriting my 2006 NaNoWriMo novel. I didn't rewrite my first novel. I didn't lose 20 pounds. I still haven't figured out what to do with all the wood in the back yard from the tree that broke in half in October.

I didn't become perfect in every way, or even in a few ways.

Thank goodness, I have this online community, 43 Things, that helps me set goals and keep track of my progress. I can look back and see that a few things did actually get done. I'm going to tag some people to do this too.

10 Things I'm happy I accomplished in 2008.

1) I read 46 books in 2008

Favorites were The Last Summer of the World by Emily Mitchell, All Will be Revealed by Robert Anthony Spiegel, Exploring with Fremont by Charles Preuss, How to Pick a Peach by Russ Parsons, The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith, So Brave Young and Handsome by Leif Enger, and The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean.

2) Connected with people: I visited my brother in Texas, met two people I previously only knew online, and vacationed with my old friend in Santa Fe for a few days, called my mother a lot, called my sister quite a bit, spent time with Hydra's cousins.

3) I tried about 25 new recipes.

4) I made a lot of my Christmas gifts.

5) Although it was called the Fall 2007 issue, my essay came out in Weber: The Contemporary West in January.

6) Poets & Writers published a photograph I took.

7) I watched 120 movies in 2008. That's whatever that is. I guess I feel good that I wrote personal reviews of all of them on my other blog, Curioscopy.

8) Gave three $25 loans through www.kiva.org.

9) Visited 10 cultural institutions in 2008. My favorites : Taos Pueblo, Petroglyph National Monument, The California Route 66 Museum, Manzanar National Historic Site.

10) Met with my writing group every other week. They sustain me.

I'm tagging Los Angelista, The Last Noel, KathyR, Fingers to the Bone and Yesha to do this too! Because I'm interested and so I won't feel like such a braggart.

Anyone who'd like to comment with their own list, I'd love it! Some of you don't have blogs...imagine that!

New Year's Rockin' Eve - Wednesday 12/31/2008

The table settings for our dinner. Same stuff we used for Christmas dinner. Well, we did take the time to wash everything in between.

Our friends History and Cowgirl came up for the night. This tradition has been going on for probably seven years now. They brought fixings to make a lentil salad.

At one point, when they were both buzzing around the kitchen, chopping, shredding, slicing and checking the boiling pot of lentils, Cowgirl said I was a like a scout leader guiding them along. Well, only because they didn't know where things were in my kitchen.

Cowgirl and History are vegetarians, and it's always fun to come up with a veggie meal for the evening. I made a casserole using asparagus and fresh mushrooms in place of green beans in that classic Campbell's Soup recipe. Sort of updates it while it maintains its comfort food status. Also made shaved Brussels sprouts with garlic, capers and fennel seeds (yum!) and black eyed peas with salsa (served hot) and....


Another pineapple upside down cake. Is this going to be my signature cake? Maybe! I've tweaked it a little each time I've made it. I prefer crushed pineapple to rings and tossing a handful of pecans into the topping turned out to be a very very good idea.

History and Cowboy made spiced apple cider with rum to top off the evening (that and a little champagne.) It involved cloves and a sliced orange, too. Very good. In fact, I'm sipping at leftovers right now.

We actually stayed up till 12:05! This may be the first time we've ever made it to midnight together!

I think 2009's going to be a good collection of days, no matter what.

How to Spend Your Time Off Work - Tuesday 12/30/2008

I started the day with a telephone writing date with my sister in Indiana. We catch up a little, decide what we're going to write about and hang up. One of us sets a timer for an hour and calls the other after we've written for an hour. Then we talk about how it went and maybe give each other a little feedback.

It went well for me today. I expanded a scene that has conflict and sets up more conflict. Anyway, right now it feels like a good day's work.

Went to Barnes & Noble where I sat drinking an iced tea with a shot of melon syrup and auditioned a pile of books. Skimmed F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," which has very little to do with the current film version. But it's okay. The short story reminds me of Gogol short stories, like "The Nose." Meant to be imagined, not filmed.

Went to the gym for an hour of cardio and weight machines. Did this yesterday with addition of a dip in the whirlpool. Oh, Tomasina, it's way over-chlorinated and nothing as sweet as the one at Burke-Williams. Sigh.

Called my mother and talked with her for about an hour. When I arrived home there was a UPS package from my nephew. One of his amazing Indiana photos, framed!

We called to thank him and ended up talking for an hour or so.

Wonderful to be in touch with my family. They are good, creative people.

Killing Your Own Food and a Giant Spool of String - Monday 12/29/2008

Wrote in the morning. Went to the dentist to have a permanent crown installed.

Had a very interesting conversation with the tech about killing and eating one's own food. He is going to Arizona for New Year's Eve. They'll hunt and kill a wild boar and eat it.

I just talked to my brother, Texaco, a couple of days ago. He and his wife live in an area of Texas where there are few regulations on how you can use the land. They have about 8 acres now and are looking to add more. They're going to raise chickens for eggs and meat, rabbits and maybe goats.

I was going to say that I have complicated feelings about all this, but when I really think about it, I don't guess they're all that complicated after all. Although I was a vegetarian for about 5 years in my thirties, I grew up in a farming area where my grandmother butchered her own chickens and one of our neighbors butchered a hog in his front yard every year. My brother bow hunts and gets a deer every year, which they use for food.

Killing simply for sport is abhorrent to me, but I can't really fault people hunting for food. I think one of the reasons we overuse meat in the U.S. is that we don't really pay attention to the consequences, or think about where it came from. It seems a lot more honest than picking up a package at the meat counter in the grocery.

Anyway, it was an interesting conversation and I think he gave me the framework of a little story I can use in my novel.

What about the giant spool of string? That's what Hydra spent his afternoon hunting. He uses it to fix part of Dodger's playset, which Dodger promptly destroys. We couldn't find a small ball of it in the grocery stores. They had it at Smart & Final though! Wow.

Hmm, turns out the photo is mildly relevant since people use this culinary grade string to tie up roasts.

Return to Unurban - Sunday 12/28/2008

I think every time I visit the Unurban Cafe, which is on the easternmost border of Santa Monica, on Pico Boulevard, I have raved about it afterward. Hydra wanted to go check out guitars down the street at McCabe's, so I hung out and wrote a bit and listened to the music.

This place has a very homey feel. So homey that it resurrects those wild ideas that sometimes grab me and make me think I could be happy spending hours and hours owning and operating a coffee house.

Sigh.

Helpful - Saturday 12/27/2008

It's time to take down the notes I posted on the fridge that helped me time out Christmas dinner. Not really complicated, but it's best to write these things down.

In pencil.

So you can adjust them when something puts you off by 15 minutes.

Yet More About Food - Friday 12/26/2008

Royal Riviera pear courtesy of Mishegoss. Perfectly cored fruit courtesy of Kitty. The melon baller works perfectly for this.

A few seconds later I scattered bleu cheese over one of the pears. Mmmm.

Christmas Day - Thursday 12/25/2008

Another overexposed photo of a Christmas tree! I'll bet the Internet is just buzzing with these right now.

Next year, maybe I'll think to set up a tripod rather than settle for another shot like this. The cousins arrived from Orange and San Diego counties bearing gifts.


The roast beef was tender and delicious, the salmon--which I poached in the microwave--surprised and impressed the diners, and these simple cheese crisps--which were requested--were a hit again at least amongst the women-folk.

It was a good day. They arrived around 11 am and stayed until almost 6pm. It rained a little and gusted a lot, which kept us from our traditional walk between dinner and dessert, but it was a very nice day inside.

Hmm. There's an awful lot about food here around the build-up to and celebration of this holiday. I love cooking for people.

Christmas Eve - Wednesday 12/24/2008

Hydra sneaks past with some last minute gift wrapping.


I prep the rib roast for tomorrow's feast. It pleases me wildly that I can step out my kitchen door and snip fresh rosemary from my herb garden.

Prelude to a Bliss - Monday 12/22/2008

I went to Tomasina's house before our writing group's Christmas celebration and walked with her and her dogs in Arroyo Seco near her house. She tells me that California plein-air artists have been painting here for years.

And they still are! Check out the work of Paul Chamberlain and others here.


This is Biscuit the wire-haired Dachshund. She toddles along behind while Tory the rescued chocolate lab surges forward. But when tomasina offers to pick her up, the fifteen-year-old scampers along like a pup.

"Uh-uh. You're not carrying me. I can do it!"


The hillside is insanely green after the recent rains.



Tory would like to be immortalized in a plein air painting, but all I have with me is this Nikon D80.


Biscuit finally allows Tomasina the pleasure of escorting her along part of the trail. I got to carry her a little, too. She's a sweet dog, even if she is a little opinionated.

We met up with Braveheart at Tomasina's nearby home, and then went to Burke-Williams where Tomasina treated us to relaxation massages! We enjoyed the steam room and whirlpool prior to the massages. I was barely able to walk after my rub down. It really gets me out of my head.

We picked up Thai food from the fabulous Saladang on the way home. Chili beef, yellow curry chicken, green curry eggplant, pad Thai and Thai BBQ chicken. Yum. We know how to order a mean meal.

Back at T's place, we enjoyed the meal, exchanged gifts, I read a little of something I'm working on, and we made commitments for 2009.

Lucky us!