The baboons have banded together to open a pub – The Beaded Warthog. Now we need a menu. Here’s a favorite I’d like to serve:
Toasted Cheese w/ Chow Chow
1 nice slice of bread, maybe sourdough
A couple of pieces of cheese – gouda would be good
2-3 Tbs of chow chow relish (or a nice chutney)
Lay the cheese out on top of the bread.
Toast the bread until it’s toasty and the cheese a little bubbly.
Spread the chow chow over the cheese.
Enjoy!
What would you like to serve at our pub?
Last week Steve commented that he thought there was an interesting story as to why I have a beaded warthog. I’ll let you all decide.
About 15 years ago, I traveled to South Africa to do a site inspection with a client. Like usual, I arrived a day ahead to make sure everything is all set for the client. The next morning, after I had met with the hotel and the ground supplier, I got a call from the States. The client and the account executive couldn’t get out of Cincinnati due to a huge ice storm. By the time they would be able get to South Africa, it would pretty much be time to turn around and head home. Believe me, traveling to South Africa is a long haul, so you don’t want to go there to come home immediately!
So the next six days were almost like a vacation including great food and even a little shopping time. I had already found a Nelson Mandela t-shirt for YA (this trip was the week after he passed away), but since there wasn’t a client, my driver and I started taking time to stop at roadside stands as we drove around. It was at one of these stands that I found the beaded warthog.
It’s very common to find beaded animals in South Africa. The locals use reclaimed/recycled wire to sculpt the bodies and then use little glass beads to do the decoration. Elephants make up the majority of these beaded souvenirs, but you can also find giraffes, lions and rhinos. I had never seen a warthog before (and haven’t since either) and it struck me as hysterical because the missing client worked for the swine division of a husbandry pharmaceutical company. I forked over the money happily and added it to the little store of items I had bought for the client.
When I got back to my office, I called the account exec to let him know that I was doing some good notes and also sending the gift items to the client. Since I thought the beaded warthog was so funny I mentioned it specifically. There was an awkward pause and he said “You know, she doesn’t have nearly as good a sense of humor as you.” When I pushed him about what he meant, he broke down and said that she was very sensitive about the pig connection and he didn’t think sending the warthog would be a good idea. He was worried that this would hurt my feelings. Ha – just the opposite – I got a great insight into a client I hadn’t worked with before AND now I have a beaded warthog!
Have you ever had a gift go wrong?
We’ve been getting things back from our desks that have been salvaged and cleaned after the big fire. Boxes of items have been delivered to us and everywhere people are unwrapping items and exclaiming over surprises. I’ve gotten quite a bit back that I figured I would never see again. My CD player, my mug warmer, all YA’s photos, and gymnastic magnets, my beaded warthog and my little fan. Today I got the little plastic panic and eject buttons that I had pasted onto my monitor. It’s like Christmas all over again!
So, to celebrate – a little cubical haiku.
the big office fire
scorched all my accessories
only buttons left
What was your last little surprise? Extra points for haiku.
Decades ago I knew all of my friends’ phone numbers by heart. I knew almost everybody’s address that I sent mail to on a regular basis. I knew my multiplication tables.
Over the years, most addresses have faded since I have them written in my day planner as well as on a spreadsheet. I recognize them when I write them out on envelopes, but that’s about it. If a pixie got into my planner and re-arranged the house numbers, I probably wouldn’t know.
My cell phone has helped to alleviate the trouble of remembering my friends’ phone numbers well. As people have added cell phones to their lives and dropped land lines, I have added their new numbers to my phone’s contact list but I have never memorized any of them. With the exception of my BFF and YA, I don’t think I know anybody’s number by heart any more.
But the cruelest blow happened this morning. I was working on a program and deciding on how many beach towels we needed to order. Without much thought at all, I entered 64 into the calculator on my desk and then hit “divide” by 2. To get 32. As soon as I did it, I realized what I had done. I used a machine to divide 64 by 2. This is horrifying to me. Not that I’m worried about my ability to figure this out on my own, but that I would automatically go to a machine if I needed to do arithmetic. Ouch.
My new practice starting tomorrow is to not turn on the calculator until I actually need it.
What technology has crept up on you?
Today’s post comes to us from our own Crystal Bay.
In the early days of Animal Fair, Dad had to hire six women from the community to make his animals on six sewing machines. As they gained popularity, he moved into the old Tonka Toy building, then to Chanhassen, Animal Fairs final resting place.
Most of the early business was solely dependent upon large companies seeking promos for their products. Such was the case with Jolly Green Giant. He designed a little facsimile of the giant in their ads, appropriately named “Sprout”. They were really cute little guys and everyone loved them.
This corporation immediately put in an order 10 times the ability of Dad to produce at that time. In desperation, he corralled every extended family member and anyone in the community to help fill this huge order. I was just one of many. We worked every weekend and night. His business depended upon delivering the promise goods.
My job was to glue noses on each of these Sprouts. Unfortunately, I did so with airplane glue. Every time I worked there, I walked out higher than a kite. No one understood my bizarre behavior at the time. Not even me. I later wondered if this explained my unusual behavior as an adult.
We did end up getting the order filled and it saved his ram shackle business.
How do you do with deadlines?
A little over three years ago, Dale wrote a piece when NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft approached and photographed Pluto. He included several nice photos and gave us an update on the PTA (Pluto Tourism Association) about groups wanted to book some serious vacation time on the planet (or whatever Pluto is categorized as this week).
Today, after 3 years, New Horizons is doing a flyby of 2014 MU69; it will be the most distant object every visited by a spacecraft. Even NASA realizes that 2014MU69 is a terrible name – they have nicknamed the object, an icy Kuiper Belt object, Ultima Thule, which means “distant places beyond the known world”.
Scientists are not sure if Ultima Thule is one object or two objects circling each other and are hoping this flyby, which will happen at a whooping 31,500 mph, will clear up that mystery. After the New Year’s flyby, it will take a full 6 hours for the radio signals to arrive back at earth.
It’s amazing to me that just 117 years after our first machine-powered flight, we will be waiting for signals from a spacecraft that has traveled a billion miles since it passed Pluto three years ago. I wonder if we’ll still be getting signals in three more years when it is a billion miles farther from Earth and if we will be vacationing on 2014 MU69 by that point?
Have you ever had a speeding ticket?
Today’s post comes from Crystal Bay
My dad’s dream was to live on a lake so that he could go fishing every morning. He had a second dream: having his own factory to design and sell stuffed toys. Some of you may remember “Animal Fair”? Some will remember his factory in Chanhassen.
He was very gifted as an artist. The way he designed a new stuffed animal was amazing. He’d have a dream during sleeping of a new animal, and, in the morning over a cup of coffee, he’d sketch it out. He then knew how to lay it out one-dimensionally on fabric, cut it out, sew it, turn it inside out, and stuff it. It looked exactly like the one in his dream. Most every animal he ever made went through this extraordinary process. On Saturdays, he’d practically give the toys away and donate many to charity.
One day, he produced “Henry”, named by my son because he looked like a classmate. He made them from 6” high to 6’ tall.
Bringing this history up to Dad at 81 years old, one morning, while reading the Variety section, I spotted a big picture of Henry. Reading the article, I learned that there’s an international Henry fan club, a web site. and even an annual convention. They’re now worth a fortune. In this article, the founders of the club lamented that they’d never found his creator, the birth, of this beloved dog.
I immediately phoned them to tell them who brought Henry into life. They flew a delegation out from CA to meet with Dad that very week, and updated the Henry website with the story of Henry’s modest beginnings.
You can only imagine the old man’s astonishment!! At Dad’s memorial service just one year later, the company, Princess Toys who’d bought him out, sent a box full of little Henrys to give everyone in attendance. Sitting next to his urn is a Henry dog on my living room shelf. It seems that Henry will live on into perpetuity.
How do you get your creative ideas? What were your favorite stuffed animals?
Today’s post comes from Crystal Bay.
In the late 50s, the U of M commissioned Dad to create their mascot, Goldie Gopher. He had no idea what a gopher looked like, so on his way from our hometown, Ames, he saw some critters scurrying around the border of Minnesota and Iowa. He got out of his car and madly scribbled drawings on a sketch pad.
He was in his 80s when my 20-year old son asked him, “Did you really design Goldie Gopher?” Then, for the first time, the story came out. Yes, Dad created him – but – not knowing the difference between a gopher and a chipmunk, he made a hybrid of the two. He drew a chipmunk body and slapped some big front teeth on the model.
To this day, Goldie Gopher remains a gophermunk. His original sketch is pictured below this post . My son wrote up the story and it headlined in the Minnesota Daily. Just think – he got away with this for more than half of a century. You’ll never look at him the same way again now.
How do you think sports mascots make a difference to a team? What teams do you follow, and why? Know any good gopher, squirrel, or chipmunk stories?
When in my early twenties, I escaped the “mundane and uncultured” Midwest and found a temporary mecca in exotic 1970 San Francisco: the ethnic restaurants, funky bars, antique shops, art museums, concert halls, and the art fairs (which I’d never seen before). After a couple of years in the crowded city, I opted for Half Moon Bay environs – 45 minutes south of S.F. on the Pacific Coast – a town of (then) 5,000 souls,.
There were the schools, a library, a “general store”called Half Moon Bay Feed & Fuel, a bookstore, a few restaurants. Forclassical music, there was the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society at the Mirimar Beach Inn. But the center of the art world at the time was the fall Half Moon Art & Pumpkin Fest, where I bought my first local art – a soft leather-bound journal, and a wonderful pottery bowl in my favorite shape.
My next two locales were Brooklyn, NY, and Minneapolis, so of course there were plenty of opportunities to find art (and art fairs). Now that we’re in Winona, MN, I’m aware that I never really needed to leave Small Town Midwest to find art – or maybe it “grew up” while I was not looking. This town, and many other surrounding ones (Lanesboro for one), have much to offer culturally.The ads in my Big River Magazine reveal that every little town along the Mississippi has some kind of art gallery or art center, wonderful sounding restaurants and cafés, community theaters, independent bookstores, charming B&Bs, wine bars, and often a natural foods market.
When we were on our road trip Southeast in September, we traveled some back roads for a break from the freeways. I love traveling through the small towns, and I found the same kind of variety of cultural opportunity. One example would be the in historic downtown Paducah, KY – Paducah Area Painters Alliance Gallery – whose byline is “Protecting good people from bad art.”
Do you have a neighborhood or small-town art center nearby?
Where is your favorite place to view the visual arts?
The electronic display on our range/oven is more on the fritz than off the fritz these days. Most days a good “thunk” to the side of the range will turn the clock/temperature display back on but with the holidays coming up, I thought it was about time to get it fixed. Unfortunately one of the two broken parts isn’t made anymore and although we could send it in to try to have it rebuilt, but it would take 6-8 weeks and there is only a 70% chance of success.
So I took the day off; after voting and a nice breakfast out, YA and I started out for our hunt. As we drove to the first place on my list, a place that does refurbished appliances, YA gave me her list of “requirements”. She wanted stainless steel with a grill in the middle of the burners, electronic display separate from the light switch, a bigger drawer in the bottom; I lost track of her desires after that. My list was shorter – gas, cheap.
My requirements were met within the first five minutes. YA spent quite a bit of time googling ranges at Home Depot and Warner Stellian before giving up and agreeing to the range I liked. I know her idea of shopping was to hit several stores and mull over many alternatives before making a decision. It’s hard for me to imagine a more horrible scenario for spending a day! I do not have the shopping gene; she has it in spades!
Of course getting the old range disconnected and then the new range connected is going to take a while – Centerpoint Energy does not make it easy for you to buy an appliance that they don’t sell you. Looks like we’ll be thunking the side of the old range until after Thanksgiving but hopefully not into December!
Do you start your holiday shopping before Thanksgiving?
Trail Baboon 