I like to stay connected to people from my home town through the local newspaper and social media. I had to giggle the other day after seeing a Facebook post about a guy I went to high-school with. Jono was a couple of years older than I, but we were in band together and he lived just down the street from me. He was always a lively and fun loving person in high school. I was sad to learn he had died, but had left a lasting memorial to himself with a very interesting headstone on his grave.
I gather Jono was very proud of that recipe. Jono was from a pretty devout Roman Catholic family and is buried in the Catholic cemetery in Luverne. I can’t imagine what the local priest thinks about that headstone. I have yet to try the marinade, but the ingredients look good. Most of my favorite recipes would be too long to carve into a headstone. Maybe I could have the titles of my favorite books of all time carved there instead. That would mean, though, that I would have to do some funeral planning, something I have yet to do.
What would you want people to remember most about you? Have you done any funeral preplanning? What is your favorite kind of whiskey?
The first phase of the bathroom project finished up yesterday afternoon. While it was the most anxious-making for me, it was also the shortest. The plumbing part. Now comes the long part – the contractor putting the bathroom back together again.
Plumbing went really well. Really only two issues: having to go next door to use the neighbor’s bathroom and the dog. The toilet usage problem is fixed, as I also had them fix the toilet in our bathroom basement, so from here on in, I don’t have to go next door. The dog issue will be easier from here on in as well. The contractor won’t be traipsing in and out and in and out as much as the plumbers. (At one point on Monday, there were six of them in the house at once!) Poor pup was just beside herself with all the coming and going. From here on out, I can keep Guinevere upstairs, in either my bedroom or my studio, out of sightline of the contractor.
I made cookies for the plumbers yesterday… they were working like Trojans and I was sitting on the sofa watching videos about Australian vets… it seemed only fair I should provide some sustenance. This is normal for me to do beverages or little snacks for folks working at my house. The plumbers were both shocked and it actually took me a bit to convince them that I really made the cookies for them. Apparently this is a rare occurrence for them. YA laughed when I told her that I had to practically force them to eat the cookies. “They just don’t know you” she said, “they’ll probably fight over you the next time somebody needs to come out.”
When I was a kid, we had a tv but we weren’t a big tv-watching family. Except for Sunday night. From 6-7 was Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, then from 7-8 was Bonanza and then 8-9 was the special treat – The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Normally that kind of show wasn’t something my folks encouraged, especially since it wasn’t over until 9 p.m.! Looking back I’m sure this was more for my father than for us kids, but since I benefited from it, I never questioned it.
David McCallum played Illya Kuryakin, an agent for U.N.C.L.E. (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement). The show was written primarily for Robert Vaughn who was a bigger star, but millions of starry-eyed pre-teens and teens made David into a popular star. The producers promoted him to co-star pretty quickly. I had a massive crush on him – I didn’t even realize until years later that he was Scottish, not Russian. I’ve re-watched all of the episodes over the years and David did a pretty credible job with the Russian accent.
I always enjoyed seeing him in some role or other, especially when he played the bad guy. I’m not a big NCIS fan so didn’t seem him in that role but I knew he was there. Good looking to the end.
I think I’ll have to look up The Man from U.N.C.L.E. to see if I can watch it online… would be fun to see him again in what I think of as his signature role. (Feel free to disagree with me if you want.)
The news these days isn’t usually much of a laughing matter. And then, every now and then…..
Two weeks ago, in Chapel St. Leonard’s, a seaside resort village on England’s east coast, a ritual mass murder was reported to police. Bodies were seen inside the Seascape Café by passersby. Unfortunately when the police arrived, the bodies were mysteriously gone; turns out the passersby had witnessed the end of a yoga class, when all the participants were doing a final yoga meditation.
I couldn’t find any comments from those who had reported the mass murder but the yoga instructor took it very seriously and made sure that everyone in the community was reassured on her Facebook page that the group is not a “mad cult or crazy club”.
What kind of activity do you prefer at a seaside resort village?
½ large white onion (or one medium), chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
2 macho nacho peppers (a smidge hot), chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 can sliced carrots (including liquid)
1 can yellow corn (including liquid)
¾ c. frozen peas
3 veggie bouillon cubes
3 brandywine tomatoes, chopped
Salt & pepper
1 tsp. Penzey’s Justice spice
½ tsp. chili pepper flakes
Chopped fresh basil
2 c. cooked rice
2 c. water (to make it soup)
2 veggie hot dogs (completely optional), sliced
I’ve told the story of the kitchen sink stew that I took to a church potluck – just threw in what I had and it was a big hit. Well, I did it again!
On my to-do list Saturday was “cook something”. YA and I are staring down the barrel of a large home-improvement project and have discussed some economizing so I decided to just use what I had on hand, from the pantry and the garden. Cooked the onion, pepper and garlic in olive oil, then threw in everything else… finishing up at the last minute with a couple of veggie hot dogs.
Not to toot my own horn, but it is FABULOUS. I mean, stand-in-front-of-the-fridge-with-a-spoon-eating-it-out-of-the-pan good. Even better warmed up with a piece of cornbread. Unfortunately YA agrees so it’s not lasting long. Hopefully I’ll be able to re-produce it again some day.
Going home the other day and I was thinking about the grassy strip down the middle of our driveway. I don’t remember that happening when I was a kid. And maybe it’s because back then several tractors had narrow front tires. Meaning the front wheels were right under the hood and ran down the middle of the road, so maybe that kept the grass down.
Dad bought a ‘wide’ front end for the 730 tractor at some point. It had to do with mowing hay and how you didn’t want to run over what you had just cut. It also gives the tractor more stability, but that wasn’t such a big deal back then. There were even some tractors that had single front tires. (Dad used to talk about getting new rear tires on the 630 tractor, then mowing in the calf pen where there is a pretty good hill and the tractor slid sideways down the hill because the lugs on the new tires were too straight.) After he arrived at the bottom, unscathed, after he got off and kissed the ground and thanked the Lord, he ordered different tires to be put on the tractor. Not that wide front tires would have helped that. All tractors have wide front ends now. And we have a grassy strip down the middle of the road.
Along the lines of ‘remember when’, I miss grocery stores loading your groceries. I know there are a few that will still. Was that a convenience or not? Seems like it would have been. The store employees wouldn’t have to go get carts and there wouldn’t be cart corrals taking up parking spaces. Let alone checking ourselves out in the store. Barlows, which was the ‘fancy’ grocery store when I was growing up, had an underground grocery delivery system. They had two lines of cars picking up groceries; the groceries were put in totes, which came up in an island between two lanes. Faster service, I guess. We never went there. It just sounds like a cool idea. Only once in my life do I remember going to a full-service gas station. It was prom night, and I was in a tux. I got full service that night. No inuendo intended.
I talked about all the acorns a couple weeks ago. Mixed in with the acorns is goose poop. Rochester is known for the Giant Canadian Goose. There are mixed opinions about those gooses. They used to be bragged about and families would travel from all over to see and feed the 5000+ geese at Silver Lake. The power plant discharged warm water into the lake, so it never froze over, which is why the geese liked it so well. As you can imagine, that is a lot of goose poop. I remember the city buying a ‘Mean Green Poop Machine’. The local Post Bulletin had a snipped about it.
“The Green Machine’s days were less bright. Ballyhooed on its arrival as the same equipment put to work around Buckingham Palace (a certain park department leader was heard to exclaim that if it was good enough for the queen of England, it was good enough for the city of Rochester), in the end all the machine delivered was a big, filthy smear to rival that of any political mudfight.”
The machine arrived in May of 1999. It sat in storage for a long time and was ultimately traded in on something else in roughly 2015. They tried hard to market them; there was goose poop art, and the goose is on the Rochester city flag.
There was talk of an updated city flag. I don’t know what became of that since the new design finalists in 2018.
Mother Clucker was down to 9 chicks last time we saw them. They’ve pretty much decided they don’t have to listen to Mom anymore and they spread out all over on their own. She seems to have abandoned them; or at least given up shepherding them. The last few days we just haven’t been down there or around enough to see them. Last night when they were all in the pen, I only found 5 MC Chicks. Four were on one side, one was all alone in mama’s old nesting spot, and all the spring chicks were jammed in behind the screen door. It’s possible there’s more chicks in there somewhere.
My soybeans have begun to turn yellow. You can see from the header photo, they’re not even Humphrey tall. Once they start turning yellow, within a few days the entire field will be yellow, then the leaves all off. Harvest could be a month out yet for me. Some guys will be going any day now.
Had my young friend Josh out last week to climb on the roof and do all those things I *shouldn’t* do anymore.
He made it look so easy! He made it look like I should be able to do that. And I’d climb to the top of the ladder…but that last step from ladder to roof, I just don’t feel comfortable, nor trust myself, doing it. And I didn’t. And he got it all taken care of. Over the new shop area, he replaced the old poly skylights with steel, and replaced a missing skylight down in the pole barn. I checked a couple more things off the list.
Yesterday was the first day of fall, and it was cool and cloudy, I noticed this week that the leaves were just starting to change color. The garden is finally slowing down. I am done canning tomatoes.
Fall has always been my favorite season. Not too hot, not too cold. (We won’t talk about the Ocober 5, 2005 snowstorm that shut the area down for three days and broke off hundreds of tree limbs.) I like the cooler nights.
Things at work always pick up in the fall, especially for those of us who work with children. Bad news at parent-teacher conferences means the phones start ringing at my agency from calls from frantic parents wanting help for their ornery children. Fall is a time of truth and reckoning for some of us.
What are your favorite things about fall? Any favorite fall songs or poems? Did your parents ever get bad news at parent-teacher conferences?
I’ve gotten to the point where if anybody is willing to give me a shot to keep me from getting some disease, lay it on me. So I found myself once again at the pharmacy yesterday getting this year’s flu shot. For many years I didn’t get the shot but then about 15 years ago I got the flu one winter and it was dreadful. Flu shot every year for me since then. I know it’s no guarantee but I’ll take all the help I can get.
When I sat down for my shot, the pharmacist asked me which arm I preferred. In thinking about it, I realized that the last few years, every shot but one has been in my left arm. I asked her if getting all my shots in the same arm would cause me to get a “Popeye” arm. She laughed out loud. And then assured me it wouldn’t happen. (I can’t stomach watching the Popeye cartoons anymore. They are so violent and Olive Oyl is such an irritating damsel in distress. Ick.)
Before I left the pharmacy, she said that I probably wouldn’t have any soreness in my arm but if I wanted to, I could do extra arm movements to help out. So once again I was doing the chicken dance in the car on the way home!
My local library (Washburn) has several little tables and displays at the entrance. There is a revolving bookcase for the Book Sale, a table with the library’s BookPage publication and other library information (and masks). Then there is my favorite display curated by the Washburn librarians which they change out every couple of weeks. There is always an easily discernable theme but they choose books from all genres: fiction, childrens, non-fiction, poetry. I love seeing what the librarians come up with and I often will pick a book from the display.
The beginning of September was all about bees and honey. I noticed The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King, which is a favorite of mine. Last week they put up a new theme – cats. All kinds of fun stuff and I couldn’t help but be drawn to Claws for Alarm, a cozy mystery that I assume includes a cat. You all know that I can’t keep away from silly titles so I scooped it up.
As soon as I got home I looked it up to see how far along in the series it sits – I usually like to start at the beginning but wasn’t sure I wanted to read a bunch of cozies to get to the cat story. That’s when I found out that “Claws for Alarm” isn’t nearly as original/funny as I thought it was. I found FOUR books with the same title – all of them fall into the cozy genre. These were easy to find so I’m guessing there may be more. I even found this:
So now that I’m not as impressed with a silly title as I was when I was standing in the library, I’m not sure if I’ll read it. Or maybe I’ll go off the deep end and read all four to see which is best!
What’s the last “unusual” title that you’ve picked up? Did you finish it?
On Friday night my BFF, Sara, and I went to see Arsenic & Old Lace at Theatre in the Round over on the West Bank. This was Sara’s birthday present from me….we decided a few years back to give each other experiences instead of things for our birthdays. She chose Arsenic from a list of plays showing this fall. I was looking forward to it; I’ve seen the 1944 A&O starring Cary Grant and Boris Karloff several times and was interested in how the play would measure up.
I haven’t been to Theatre in the Round for many years. Actually except for theatre that has been gifted to me, I’ve hardly been to any theatre in years. (Single parenthood kind of whoops the-evening-entertainment-that-costs-money craving out of you.) When I first moved to the Twin Cities, I did volunteer ushering there for a couple of plays but full-time work while my wasband was searching for a job wore me down and I needed my nights back.
The production on Friday was quite nice. The entire play takes places in the living/dining room of the Brewster sisters; no-nonsense set and props (like the sisters) without too much bric-a-brac to pull your attention away. Lighting was pretty straight forward (nothing fancy like I see in Ben’s photos) and the sound was very good. If the actors were mic’ed, I couldn’t tell; we were in the third row and didn’t have any trouble hearing all the dialogue.
Casting was superb! Not that easy when one of the actors needs to resemble Teddy Roosevelt and another absolutely has to look like Boris Karloff (there are repeated mentions of this in the script). I was a little worried that that these two would be weak links, hired for their looks, but they were both great. Jonathan (the Boris look-alike) was particularly good. Both Brewster sisters were excellent; Abby had a great way of waving her arms to punctuate her lines that was very effectives. And a shout-out to the young woman who played Officer Brophy; she really sparkled in her role.
I was easily able to put aside my Cary Grant memories and enjoy the play on its merits. It was very funny and a couple of times I laughed enough to cry. The woman behind me snorted a few times!
If you’re in the Twin Cities and up for a great night of theatre and comedy, I highly recommend it. I think it’s running for a few more weeks.
Tell me about a favorite theatre experience you’ve had!
Trail Baboon 