| Some comments about my family |
[Aug. 19th, 2008|08:02 am] |
I just left a comment in ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) wordweaverlynn's LJ, as we were talking about family, and parental aspirations. And I talked a little bit about my maternal grandfather. I liked what I wrote, so I'm copying it here.
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| The Ward 8 and my niece. |
[Aug. 8th, 2008|11:40 pm] |
Edited to Add: I realized that this post, made just a couple days ago, actually fits this month's Mixology Monday topic: Local Flavor. See, the Ward Eight was created in Boston's Ward Eight -- an election district containing Dorchester and part of the South End. It was for a victory party for a local politician from Ward Eight. It's significant to note that said victory party was being held on the night BEFORE the election . . . that's the kind of ward Ward Eight was at the time. So, since one topic for this month is a drink which was invented in my city, this actually fits right in. End of Explanatory Edit
Today being 08/08/08, there was a small party at my parents' house on that theme. I made up some Ward Eight cocktails for it.
Now, the Ward Eight is not one of the world's great cocktails. It's okay, but it's not spectacular. You make it right, and it's pleasant enough, but that's really all. Rye whiskey, lemon juice, orange juice, and grenadine (which, remember, means "pomegranite juice and sugar", not "red food coloring, high fructose corn syrup, and artificial flavorings"). It's decent, but it's the sort of thing that you make because you're going to an eight-themed party, or something like that, more than because you want a Ward Eight cocktail. Now, there's nothing wrong with lemon juice, orange juice, pomegranite juice, sugar, and rye whiskey, and they actually go together fairly well. But "fairly well" is not the same thing as "fitting together in perfect singing harmony", the way that, say, gin and dry vermouth do, or Campari and sweet vermouth, or rum and pineapple juice. . . you get the idea.
I made some up, and they went over about as well as could be expected, especially since, of the crowd who was there, the only one who actually is a drinker by nature is my mother -- and she's allergic to alcohol. (Well, she's alergic to SOMETHING that goes ALONG with alcohol, anyway. We've found occasional things that don't make her break out in a rash, but we haven't nailed down exactly what. But she drank an entire Americano -- Campari and sweet vermouth -- the other night with no ill effects, then had a sip of Chartreuse and broke out in hives all over her face. And when we were in Italy last summer, she could drink wine as much as she wanted. So we seem to have discovered that she can drink Italian things but not French things.)
My niece Winter was there, too, and she wanted to help me make the drinks. I had her juice the lemons -- I cut them in half, she juiced them, and we both worked on peeling strips off the outside of the lemons for garnish.
Now, as she is ten, she is not allowed to drink whiskey yet, but she wanted to try the stuff, so she mixed herself up a Ward Eight sans alcohol -- lemon juice, orange juice, and grenadine.
I taught her how to do the three-count free pour, and she poured 'em, and shook 'em. I opened the shaker and strained it out for her, because her hands aren't large enough for it yet, but she did the rest. She took the glass, twisted the peel to release the oils, and garnished the drinks.
Her version was more popular around the table than mine.
By, like, a LOT.
Since her drink was a success, I told her that she gets to name it, and that I'd blog it. She decided to just go with "Kids' Ward Eight."
So, here it is:
Winter Rose's Kids' Ward Eight
1 oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice
1 oz orange juice
1 oz homemade grenadine syrup
Shake well over ice, and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a fresh lemon peel.
I'm so proud of her. She handles a shaker like a pro. |
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| One more thing: |
[Nov. 22nd, 2007|10:37 am] |
I am thankful that, for all the weirdnesses and problems North America has had over its history, we still managed to develop a holiday dedicated to eating a meal with family (chosen and/or biological) and reflecting on reasons to feel gratitude. |
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| I have a great deal in my life for which to be thankful. |
[Nov. 22nd, 2007|10:27 am] |
I can lead off by mentioning Lis. Every day I see her and wonder how I managed to be lucky enough to end up with her.
And I am also thankful for all the rest of my friends -- all of you reading this (those of you I know in person, and those of you I know only through LiveJournal, too) -- those of you I've known for years, either online or meatspace, and those of you I've only met, meatspace or online, recently.
I'm thankful for my family. I'm one of a relatively few people I know without any family-conflict issues. Again, I don't know how I lucked out to be born into my family, but I'm thankful for it. That is why our family tends to adopt people into it -- a few of you are my siblings simply because my mother and father adopted you. My parents are like that -- if you have a rocky relationship with your own parents, or if you have a GOOD relationship with your parents, but they're too far away for you to see very often, or if you have a good relationship with your parents and you see them a lot but you want MORE parents, too, my parents will take you in and give you love.
And the rest of my family is similar. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins: everyone in my family is honorable, caring, clever, and decent. I don't know how I lucked out to be born into this family.
And then, Lis's family, too -- I managed to marry one of the only OTHER people I know whose whole family is honorable, caring, clever, and decent. I am as thankful for my in-laws as for the part of the family into which I was born.
I am thankful that we appear to have found a medication which controls my Depression, and is allowing me to restructure my life to be effective and productive. I am thankful that I am now in the process of making that restructuring, and that I feel like I am making some progress toward it.
I am thankful that we have a house, for which we paid a reasonable price, and which allows us to have rental income. I am thankful that we rent to good people who I like having as neighbors -- marquisedea and her boyfriend Josh upstairs, and vonbeck downstairs. I am thankful that our house is warm and dry, and comfortable. I am thankful that I have a kitchen in which I can cook, and that we have bookshelves full of books. I am thankful that we have plenty of warm, comfortable, and reasonably-good looking clothing to wear, warm jackets, shoes that keep our feet dry.
I am thankful that we have a washing machine and dryer so we don't have to go to the laundromat -- it makes life a lot easier. I'm thankful that we have a dishwasher. I'm thankful for our standing mixer, our electric kettle, our rice cooker, our Henkel's and Wusthoff knives. I'm thankful for our refrigerator, and our pantry, full of food.
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| My parents just left and Lis just called me from the airport in DC |
[Nov. 10th, 2007|08:06 pm] |
I was supposed to bring papersky's book FARTHING with me to Nana's, to lend to Mom, but I forgot. But then, when we were at Nana and Papa's, Papa had been experimenting with baking with candied fruit, and had made a cake-like-thing. Both Dad and I quite liked it, but Papa wasn't thrilled with how it came out, so Mom and Dad took half and I took the other. But I forgot my cake. And I left before Mom and Dad.
So they phoned and asked if they could drop by and drop off the cake and pick up the book and visit for a while. So they did.
As Mom and I were talking, Dad happened to see an old Alan Dean Foster paperback I had lying around on the kitchen counter, and started flipping through it. I told him I was done with it, so he could take it with him, so he was. And, later, as they were getting ready to leave, Dad started flipping through FARTHING, and started reading it.
Mom teased him, "Your son is standing RIGHT THERE in front of you, and you're standing there reading, instead of talking to him?" I said, "Well, see, now you see where I get it. Seriously, I can't be offended by this, since, among my friends, this is a perfectly normal social interaction -- standing there reading next to each other. Sometimes we'll read particularly cool passages out loud."
Mom and Dad laughed.
I really like my parents. |
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| Just visited my Nana. |
[Nov. 10th, 2007|05:35 pm] |
Lis is in Washington DC for a conference, Elizabeth Bear(matociquala) is in Boston for a signing at Pandemonium Books (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) pandemonium_bks), and I just went with my parents to visit my grandmother and grandfather in Marblehead.
My grandmother has Alzheimer's, and I don't much like it. My grandfather is dealing with it okay, all things considered, but their kids who are reasonably local -- which is most of 'em (the farthest one away is Providence, Rhode Island) do try to make sure to visit a fair bit to help take some of the stress off of Papa. Besides, they like their parents, and Nana is still Nana even if she does get confused as to where she is, when it is, who you are, and what you just said.
She mentioned several times that she wanted to go home. She asked Papa to complain to the manager because she didn't like the room we were sitting in. She told us several times that she didn't feel comfortable entertaining in someone else's house, but she'd LOVE it if we came over to HER house in Marblehead, because she had a GORGEOUS house. At another time, when Papa was explaining that this WAS their house, that they'd lived in it for fifty-two years, she said, "Oh, yeah, big shot rich man -- says he owns a house."
Have I mentioned that Alzheimer's terrifies me? Well, it does. I'm hoping they come up with a cure for it before Mom gets it. And I'm REALLY hoping they come up with a cure for it before I get it.
Anyway, it's funny what Nana does and does not lose track of. She ALWAYS knows that she's married to Papa Tunny, who is a good man, and adorable, and whom she loves very much. She doesn't always RECOGNIZE him, although she almost always does.
The weird thing is -- I think she only vaguely recognized me, and only intermittently. But she wanted to know where my wife was, and when I told her she was at a Christopher Marlowe conference in Washington, DC, she said how my wife was SUCH a smart girl, and so pretty, too. I couldn't do anything but agree wholeheartedly.
See, I think she doesn't always remember ME, but she remembers Lis. Even though I was there and Lis wasn't.
It's possible, of course, that, in her mind, Lis got conflated with one of her daughters, since I guess you could see some similarities -- all of her daughters are black-haired Jewish women, as is Lis, so it's possible that Nana just remembers Lis as among her daughters, and thinks of me as "one of the guys who married one of her daughters," rather than me being the grandson and Lis being the one who married in. Which would explain why, at family gatherings, Nana always seeks out Lis to tell her that she and her husband should come over and visit, rather than telling ME. It really is kind of adorable -- I guess there's not much of a question that Lis is an integral part of our family. |
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| A phone call from my nephew |
[Sep. 20th, 2007|11:45 pm] |
Forgot to blog this earlier.
So, yesterday afternoon, the phone rings; I answer it.
"Hello, Uncle Ian."
"Hello, Drew. How are you doing?"
"Uncle Ian, can you do me a favor?"
"Depends what it is. Go ahead and ask."
"Can you answer a question?"
"Sure -- what is it?"
"Why do dragons have gold?"
"I give up -- why do dragons have gold?"
"I don't know. That's why I called."
"OH! I'm sorry. I thought you were asking a riddle. Dragons have gold to sleep on. It's very comfortable for dragons."
"Thank you, Uncle Ian. I love you."
"I love you too, Drew."
His mother, my foster-sister got on the phone then, and explained that Drew and she had been talking, and he'd said that, if HE were a knight, he'd go around and kill dragons and take their gold, and then he started wondering why dragons had gold in the FIRST place. She didn't know; it's not like they ever BUY anything, and so they decided to think of who they knew who WOULD know the answer. After all, they have THIS friend for gardening questions, and they call Leila for marine biology related questions, so they figured that I was the go-to guy for dragon-related stuff.
I'm very grateful to papersky for writing the book that explained this fact about dragons, so I could enlighten my nephew, who was entirely satisfied by this answer and felt it made perfect sense and explained much.
Drew is now reading on a second or third grade level, and has started reading some of his father's manga. The age-appropriate ones -- the other ones aren't anywhere the kids can get to them. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 16th, 2007|01:33 pm] |
Lis noticed that, in two years, Talk Like a Pirate day will fall on Rosh Hashana.
When we informed my parents of this, my mother, who typically runs High Holiday Services at her community, got very thoughtful and said, "Remind me of that a month before, because I'm not going to remember, and it ought not pass without recognition."
My father thought a moment, and said, "Arrr! Who by cannon, and who by cutlass. Who by scurvy, and who by walkin' tha plank. . . " |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 31st, 2007|10:25 pm] |
So, since my cousins Todd and Kate both graduated college and moved into their own houses, my aunt and uncle have decided to move to a smaller house. The house was bought to house Jackie and David, and Todd and Kate, and Jackie's father Gus, who had his own, well, father-in-law apartment, I guess you'd call it. Since Gus died a couple years ago, and Todd and Kate have their own places, they really need only a third of the space they had before.
As usual, when someone in the family moves to a smaller place, or dies, Lis and I are given a chunk of their books, and most of their booze. I'm the only one in the family who is likely to actually DRINK the stuff. Everyone in the family has, like, a bottle of Canadian Club which was bought in the Sixties and is about two-thirds full, a couple flavored brandies, some liqueurs, maybe a dark rum -- nobody in the family drinks much, so the stuff that they DO buy tends to be either the stuff you make girly-drinks from (which is fine by me: I love girly drinks), or reasonably high-quality stuff. I mean, they may have bought the bottle of Meyers Rum twenty years ago, and are never going to drink it, but, y'know, Meyers is actually pretty good, and you wouldn't want to throw it away, so I get it. 'Cause I'll drink it.
It DOES mean my liquor cabinet is kind of filled-to-overflowing, and includes stuff I don't drink, but, in general, it's a good deal.
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| Being raised for emotional and mental health |
[Aug. 24th, 2007|10:36 am] |
So, I was just thinking about my own emotional and mental health.
Seems to me that one's psychic health (using "psychic" to mean "emotional and mental", not, y'know "ESP-like") is partially genetic and partially from experience -- that is, it's both nature and nurture.
A bunch of my friends are psychically less healthy than they ought to be, because of incompetent parenting, or because of traumatic social experiences growing up. A bunch of my friends have had reasonably-decent childhoods, but are genetically predisposed to poor psychic health.
Now, I'm not THAT great mentally and emotionally -- but I think I'm better than my genetics would indicate. I have my problems, biochemical in nature, but I am more stable and able to form trustworthy friendships than I'd expect, given my biology.
So, that suggests to me that my parents did something right. And I've been trying to think about what lessons I learned from them that have led to me being as sane as I am.
One of the big ones, I think, was that my mother, whenever she yelled at me or punished me for doing something wrong, would ALSO explain that, "Just because I'm mad at you doesn't mean I don't still love you." So, for me, "conflict" =/= "abandonment". |
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| Finishing off the 22nd |
[Jun. 24th, 2007|10:30 pm] |
We came home from the farm, and had a couple of hours until our dinner reservations at a relatively-nearby restaurant (at which Fabio's son-in-law worked). Some of us took a dip in the pool, or a quick nap, or chatted, or whatever, and then, eventually, we all changed for dinner and came down.
Nobody particularly came UP with the idea of changing for dinner -- it's just that ONE person started putting together an outfit, and then someone else thought that changing was a good idea, and we all dressed up just a little -- not much, but enough that Nonnie noticed, and said, "You all look nice," and looked pleased that we all had demonstrated that we thought that spending a night out with our family was important enough that we'd do a little something to mark it.
In any case, it was the last night that Meghan and her if-he's-not-scared-off-by-this-he's-gotta-be-a-fiancee Patrick were going to be around, as they were going home the morning of the 23rd, so that was another reason to just, y'know, look a LITTLE nicer than usual.
It was a traditional Italian meal, and we ordered it as such -- antipasti, primi piatti, secondi piatti. The place was known also for its pizzas, which, I guess, you could get served either as primi or secondi.
Nonnie was convinced that we'd ordered FAR too much food when she realized that the antipasti plates that were being brought out were brought one per PERSON, rather than one per every three or four people.
And yet. . . we pretty much cleaned every one of those plates.( Read more... ) |
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| Friday the 22nd |
[Jun. 24th, 2007|07:32 pm] |
One of the other things we learned back on the 21st was that the 22nd was going to be a train-strike day. Only a few critical trains would be running on Friday.
So, we let everybody back at the house know this, and suggested that this made an excellent excuse to just chill and take it easy.
See, my grandmother is an Italian Catholic (not hugely practicing). My grandfather is Protestant, at least technically.
They run the family business together, along with my father, his brother, and his brother-in-law. Plus other people, too, but the point is, what happens when you add the Italian temper and temperament to the Protestant work ethic?
You end up with a situation where, when you suggest to my generation the idea of having a day just hanging around the beautiful villa, lying out by the pool, maybe wandering down to the village for a beer or coffee, and generally taking it easy and hanging out, they react not only enthusiastically, but with genuine relief. Lis and I hadn't been in Italy when everyone else took the day trip to Lucca, but, frankly, I'm GLAD we weren't there. Everyone agrees that Walter is an AMAZING driver for being able to take the ten-person van down the medieval streets in which they had to fold in the mirrors on both sides in order to fit, but nobody seems to really dwell on the fact that they were only IN those streets because everyone was completely ignoring Patrick, who had the map and was saying, "Um, we need to turn left here to avoid going into tiny little medieval streets in which our van isn't allowed. . . "
In any case, Fabio, who is the owner of the villa we are renting, came by and asked if we all wanted to go on a car tour of the area. He'd take his van, we'd take our van, and he could show us cool things in and around Bucine.
This seemed like an excellent, low-key plan, and we did it. We drove over a bridge in which the structural part was Roman work, and above it was medieval work, and then they put modern pavement on it. We stopped at an apiary to watch them extract honey from honeycomb. We went to a partially-restored medieval castle, which is now a village with five families in it. We went to the winery that Fabio is part-owner of, then went to Fabio's father's farm, and saw the more traditional setup with which his father-in-law makes and bottles HIS wine. As well as meeting the gentleman and wandering around his farm. And then we went out to dinner.
That's the overview. Let me now zoom in and tell you a couple cool bits from here and there around the day. . .
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| The rest of June 21 |
[Jun. 24th, 2007|07:04 pm] |
We used Lis's cell phone to call my parents to let them know we'd be late, and sauntered off to the train station, spending as much time as we wanted just looking at stuff. And we got to the train station in plenty of time to catch the next train. Which we couldn't figure out where it was. On the track that we THOUGHT the train was supposed to be, a different train was. We were a bit confused, and after a few minutes, we watched that train pull out, and I looked at the schedule on the wall again.
"Hey, Lis?" I said. "Do you think it's significant that, when we look at the schedule for THAT train that pulled out, and the schedule for the one WE wanted to take, they both leave from the same track at exactly the same time, and go to exactly the same stations?"
"Hmm," she said, and we wandered off to find someone who worked for the trains, to ask if we had just missed the train that we wanted which was disguised as a different train.
We found someone, and he looked at me, and said, "Shalom!" He was the third or fourth person who recognized me as Jewish -- I forgot to mention that the guy selling the leather jacket was ALSO Jewish, and recognized me as such.
Now, I don't consider myself to look, y'know, NOT Jewish, but I don't think of myself as looking TOTALLY OBVIOUSLY Jewish, either.
Apparently, however, I need to re-evaluate.
And, yes, of course, that HAD been our train.
We shrugged, and wandered off to the cafe in the train station to get a soda or something, and phoned my folks to let them know that we were going to be even later.
We wandered around the station for a bid, and Lis said, "Hey! Look at that!" "That" was a woman in an incredibly cute short black dress, bolero jacket, heels, and pearls, who just swayed VERY nicely while she walked. She was quite a worthwhile sight to look at, which showed that there were some compensations for missing our train.
And a thought came to me, a useful thought for being on vacation in Italy: "Yes, where I'm going is going to be very nice. But, where I am is ALSO very nice. It will be good to be THERE, but it is also good to be HERE. So, I will get THERE when I get there, and it will be nice, but, until then, I will be HERE, and that's not bad, either."
We got back to the villa, and everyone had put on a big spread for dinner for all of us, which, as we were a couple hours late, we hadn't had to help cook. And it was really good, as well as just being good to hang out with everyone.
We started to finish up eating, and my sister and a bunch of my cousins took some of the plates and stuff into the kitchen, and came back with carrying a cake with a candle in it, and singing "Happy Birthday" to Lis.
All in all, a pretty good day. |
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| So, picking up on Wednesday, June 20: |
[Jun. 22nd, 2007|02:20 am] |
Lis and I were in a sleeper car going from Paris to Florence. We'd swapped bunks, because I decided that I wanted the window open while I was sleeping, and, when we went through towns, the streetlights threw light onto the bottom bunk, which bothered Lis. But I don't mind that, and the top bunk was higher than the window, so light didn't shine on it.
I woke up looking at a beautiful sunrise. And, we passed through a town, the first stop in Italy. It was gorgeous watching the red sun rise over the town.
Then it occurred to me that we were supposed to go through that town something like 4:15 in the morning, and it was now quite a bit more like 6:15.
We were scheduled to arrive in Florence at 7:06 AM, and there were several trains from Florence to Bucine. We had not, really, expected to make the 7:13 train, especially since we had left half an hour late. But we now realized that we weren't going to make any of the OTHER trains, either, except MAYBE the last one, the 9:34. Well, not the LAST one, but the last one until 11:something, which would get us to Bucine at too late to go back to Rome at the time we had to in order to catch the train to Castelgandalfo.
We had plans for the afternoon and evening of the 20th, you see.
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| Spent the afternoon with my niece |
[Apr. 17th, 2007|08:35 pm] |
Winter Rose is staying at my parents for the week. She and her brother have been getting weeks at "Grandparent Camp" and "Auntie Leila and Uncle Bear Camp" this summer -- going to Wayland to stay with my folks, and going to Florida to stay with my sister and her fiance. Just one kid at a time -- they don't have to share the experiences with their sibling -- doing stuff with your sibling is good, too, but getting your grandparents and aunts and uncles to your self is better.
So Winter is in town this week, and I went over this afternoon to see her. She's a wonderful person. One of the first things about her is that she's really well-behaved. And, y'know, there are some kids for whom being well-behaved comes at least SOMEWHAT naturally. Not Winter and Drew -- they, by temperament, are little devils, but their parents have actually instilled manners and behavior into them. That's why it's worth mentioning -- this is something that is an effort for her, that she nonetheless manages. I'm always impressed by that whenever I see her -- and the same is true for her little brother.
Another thing about her is that she is really talented at math. And by "math", I do not mean "arithmetic" -- she's good at arithmetic only because she actually UNDERSTANDS how it works. She was having fun being annoying at me with the "Why?" game, and we'd managed to get to "because you're nine" "why?" "Because last year you were eight" "why?" "because eight is one less than nine, and if you add one to it, you get nine" "why?" "because if you define the set of non-negative integers as set S, and define 'zero' as the cardinality of the empty set, and we define 'addition' as. . . " "SIMPLIFY YOUR ANSWER!"
I would have, too, if I actually understood what I was saying, instead of trying to spew a half-remembered lecture that a friend gave me a while back. But note: Winter's genuine reaction to that is that, if I did even a halfway competent job of EXPLAINING what I was talking about, she would have understood it. And she's right. She would have. She has an excellent logical mind and can grasp mathematical relationships very well.
So I taught her one of the card tricks I know that is based on noting positional differences of cards, which she understood immediately.
We also went out for Chinese food, and the people at the next table complimented her on how gorgeous her hair is. And the same thing happened at Ben and Jerry's where we went for free cone day. She gets so annoyed at that, but does her best to accept the compliments gracefully. Yes, she does have piles of red ringlets on top of her head, and, yes, it IS adorable, but she gets so tired of hearing it all the time. |
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| I had a pretty good Easter |
[Apr. 8th, 2007|07:01 pm] |
Since half my family's Christian, we have Easter at my grandmother's every year. Which is always a bit fun, since it, by design, falls within Pesach (if you're Roman Catholic or the vast majority of Protestants). (That's the whole thing about the "The first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox, or whatever it is -- it's designed to get it to fall in the week of 14 Nissan, which is Pesach. See, since Jewish months start on the New Moon, the 14th of the month is the full moon, and therefore, the Sunday after the full moon after the Spring Equinox is the Sunday within Pesach. Except if it's a Jewish leap year, in which case it's one month out, since Jewish leap years add an extra month in.)
But there's usually enough food for my parents and Lis and me to eat, what with the salad and the potatoes and the asparagus and the salmon and so forth.
So, we had a big meal and hung out with family, and then Lis and my cousin Erica and I fell asleep on various sofas and beds that are around my grandparents house, and that was Easter. It was really pretty nice. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 7th, 2007|12:42 pm] |
Okay, Leila and Kent, and Mike and Erin -- you have GOT to see this.
I know you're both arguing about how to work in Princess Bride to your weddings, as is the family tradition, but I think, after seeing this, you'll agree that we need to add in THIS tradition, as well. |
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| A story I forgot to tell you guys |
[Mar. 18th, 2007|10:20 am] |
So, I've been intending to blog this for a few weeks. It was at the night-before-my-cousin's-wedding shindig, and my cousin's wedding was on Erev Purim, so this was on the day before.
So, we were at the night-before-my-cousin's-wedding shindig, and one of the people there was my cousin's friend Chad, and we were talking. And he told us something that happened to him at work. He's working as a pharmacy tech. And he was filling a prescription for a woman and answering some of the basic questions about co-pay and stuff, and then she asked a question about drug side effects or interactions or something, and he said, "I'm not the pharmacist -- I'll go get him."
So he does, and the woman asks her question again, and the pharmacist answers, and then the woman says, "So you ARE the pharmacist, aren't you?"
And he says, "No, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night."
(After they all crack up laughing, he does confirm that, yes, he is the pharmacist. For those outside the United States, it's the tagline from a particularly amusing series of advertisements, with the motif that Holiday Inn is so comfortable that you'll sleep well enough to feel more competent than you actually are. . . ) |
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| Fifty-eight years ago today |
[Mar. 10th, 2007|12:27 am] |
rebmommy was born.
I consider this a particularly good thing, since, had THAT not happened, I wouldn't have been born, either.
I am aware that many other people consider rebmommy's birth to be a good thing, too.
I love you, Mom. You get that for free, for being my mother. I honor you, as well. That, again, is just one of those things I have to do because you're my mother.
But, in addition to that, I respect you. That one, you earned on merit, not just by position. "Honor" -- that's one of the ten commandments; I HAVE to do that. But nothing says I HAVE to respect you -- I respect you because you deserve respect for your wisdom, your humor, your intelligence, your kindness and your competence.
And I like you. If we weren't related, we'd still be friends.
I am fortunate to have a mother whom I not only love, but who I respect and like, too.
Love you, Mom. Happy birthday. |
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| Another realization about my family |
[Dec. 24th, 2006|11:50 pm] |
This was brought on by the thing in the LAST story about how my Aunt Sue was going to swipe the duck from Mom, then give it back.
If she HAD done that, that would simply have been a normal part of how my Aunt Sue and my mother interact. They have this thing about stealing things from each other, then giving them back as presents. It's a game -- they try to see how large and obvious an object they can leave each other's house with -- and then see how long it takes the other person to notice.
And THAT led me to realize something else about my family, that's always been kicking around the back of my mind . . .
In order to understand my family, studying mythology kind of helps.
If a friend of mine is about to meet chunks of the rest of my family, I mention to them, "You have to understand this: I'm the normal one in my family."
It's not strictly true. My cousin Kate is probably actually the white sheep of the family. Even so, I think I'm more "normal" than at least half of us.
And I realized that my Aunt Sue is a trickster figure.
( Read more... ) |
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| Second night of Hannukah, at my parents' house, with other family |
[Dec. 17th, 2006|12:56 am] |
I really don't remember all the stuff Lis said I had to blog so that she wouldn't have to. It was my niece's birthday, approximately, (she's now nine) as well as Hannukah. So presents were had.
We gave Winter a swiss-army knife, which her parents will hang on to, and let her use when she asks for it and can be under supervision. She also got a Problem-Solving Kit that I put together. It's got, y'know, stuff in it. That can be used to solve problems. Like duct tape, and a sewing kit, and band-aids, and a screwdriver with multiple heads, and a mirror, and a brush, and a pad of paper, and a pencil and pen, and a small waterproof container ("I could keep medicine or something in this, and then, if it fell in the water, it would still be good!") and a little thing of WD-40, (which her parents may confiscate, because a. they don't trust her with it, and b. they may use it), and a bandanna, and a small poncho -- I think that's most of it. It all fits into a particularly overstuffed camera-bag-sized bag.
Her parents want me to put together a couple of those kits for them, too. Tony wants his to include a Pantone kit. I said, "Wait -- doesn't that cost, like, lots of hundreds of dollars?" He confirmed it does. Much as I like and respect him, um, no.
Lis made a holiday music mix CD, which we didn't play for folks. It's good, though -- the Kinks, the Waitresses, blink-182, bunches of other stuff.
After we got the kids to bed (which, y'know, is significantly different from getting them to SLEEP, but one does what one can), we sat around sharing stories of our geeky past, and random hacks and pranks we've played on people, or had played on us.
Um. Those of you who are under thirty and have never used legacy systems may not get most of these. They depend on things like how DOS works.
Like changing someone's C prompt from
C:\>
to
C:\>format c
That was funny.
Or figuring out how to EXACTLY duplicate the sound of the tone that told people that it was time to change classes, in a school which did a sort of tone over the loudspeaker instead of a bell.
And then playing that tone fifteen minutes before the end of class.
In a school which used a recording of a bell as the signal for changing classes, swapping out that recording for one of "Flying Purple People Eater."
Messing with the bells so that, over the course of the day, every class period was progressively five minutes shorter.
Breaking into an instructor's email account, and then sending him email from his own account informing him that he might want to consider choosing a harder-to-guess password.
I don't remember them all. But it was clear -- we're all pathetic geeks and have been our entire lives.
And it also was clear that being a pathetic geek is actually a hell of a lot more fun than most other ways to be. |
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| I've not been writing much about my life in the past week or two |
[Oct. 28th, 2006|08:20 pm] |
I've posted a bunch of stuff on Shakespeare stuff, but haven't written much about what's been happening.
So, let me start with my grandmother Grace, since it looks like this is all turning out well.
Early last week, my cousin Meghan convinced my grandmother Grace to see a doctor about the cough she'd had for the past thirty years. Because Grace hadn't seen a doctor for longer than that, so hadn't had a chance to deal with it.
Turns out she has acid reflux, and the doctor put her on Prilosec and the cough went away in two days, and she no longer had heartburn, which she'd had forever and wasn't aware that you're not supposed to have. Which made me feel better, since it only took me fifteen years to figure that out -- well, from when I was sixteen until when Lis told me that heartburn isn't normal and talk to the doctor about it.
And, as long as they had her there, they did a physical on her. And discovered a partial blockage in one of her arteries. So they scheduled her for an angioplasty this past Monday.
In doing the angioplasty, they discovered that things were worse than they thought, and did a triple bypass on Tuesday.
She apparently looked like hell and wasn't accepting visitors on Wednesday, still looked like death warmed over on Thursday, but we saw her today, and she looked, well, entirely normal.
For anyone who's wondering where I get it from, I asked about what they were doing for pain meds for her, and she said that she was on them on Tuesday and Wednesday, but for now, she didn't see the point. Lis keeps trying to explain to me that not wanting pain medication four days after major surgery is actually stupidly macho, and not actually something to be impressed by and want to emulate.
Lis was asking me, "So, dear -- what are the lessons we can learn about avoiding doctors for thirty years from your grandmother's situation?"
I said, "If you avoid doctors for thirty years, you will be tough enough that you can go home five days after major surgery with no pain medication, because you're JUST THAT COOL."
Lis just shook her head sadly. |
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| On Secret Family Recipes |
[Oct. 14th, 2006|11:17 am] |
So, someone made a comment stating that they don't really get the point of Secret Family Recipes.
Well, they're cool. That's enough right there.
I have knowledge of three Secret Family Recipes, and, of course, I'm not going to betray any of those secrets, but I thought it might be interesting to discuss them.
The first one, of course, is Auntie Debbie's Chocolate Dream Pie, aka, "Chokklit Pah." It's very easy to make, which is one of the reasons it's a secret -- if y'all knew how easy it is to throw together, you'd be nowhere near impressed with it when I do make it.
The second is chicken soup. ALL good chicken soup recipes are family secrets. I don't know why. They just are. My recipe is actually my own Secret Chicken Soup Recipe, which takes ideas from the Secret Chicken Soup recipes of my mother, mother-in-law, and grandmother-in-law. The stuff's pretty good, but I'm not going to count it as a real Secret Chicken Soup recipe until I perfect it, which will take another couple of years. I'm getting close, though.
The third recipe is a cordial, a specialty of my in-laws, and it's amazing. It's called, for lack of a better name, "Mountain Dew", but, instead of being the raw moonshine which that name implies, it's a dark, sweet, almost syrupy cordial with a deceptively potent kick. It can be sipped, but is also very good over ice cream. It is a secret family recipe of my in-laws. It is their secret family recipe in the same sense that the tombs of his ancestors are General Stanley's ancestors in Pirates of Penzance:
MABEL. Oh, Frederic, cannot you, in the calm excellence of your wisdom, reconcile it with your conscience to say something that will relieve my father's sorrow?
FRED. I will try, dear Mabel. But why does he sit, night after night, in this draughty old ruin?
GEN. Why do I sit here? To escape from the pirates' clutches, I described myself as an orphan; and, heaven help me, I am no orphan! I come here to humble myself before the tombs of my ancestors, and to implore their pardon for having brought dishonour on the family escutcheon.
FRED. But you forget, sir, you only bought the property a year ago, and the stucco on your baronial castle is scarcely dry.
GEN. Frederic, in this chapel are ancestors: you cannot deny that. With the estate, I bought the chapel and its contents. I don't know whose ancestors they were, but I know whose ancestors they are, and I shudder to think that their descendant by purchase (if I may so describe myself) should have brought disgrace upon what, I have no doubt, was an unstained escutcheon.
Just as the Major-General assumed a responsibility to maintain the honor of his ancestors when he obtained the manor house which contained them, my in-laws assumed a responsibility to maintain the secrecy of the secret family recipe when they took possession of the property which contained them. I don't know whose secret family recipe it was, but we know whose secret family recipe it is, and I shudder to think that we would break the secret. |
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| Gee, but it's great to be back home. . . |
[Sep. 25th, 2006|07:18 pm] |
Back from Florida, where we visited Lis's family for Rosh Hashanah.
As most of y'all know, I hate Florida, but love my in-laws. So, I put up with Florida for their sakes, and it's worth it. They're good folks.
This time, Lis's aunt and uncle and cousins were in town from Milwaukee and Phoenix, and we were up from Boston, along with her parents, brother, sister-in-law, nephew, and grandparents, who live there, so it was a real gathering of the clan -- although, for Lis's family, a "gathering of the clan" is a lot smaller than it is for us. There aren't many more than a dozen Ribas in her family -- "Riba" isn't that uncommon a name, actually, but all but a dozen of them are unrelated to our Ribas. So, if you encounter a Riba, and wonder if it's a relative -- it probably isn't.
That said, what the Ribas lack in quantity, they make up for in quality and general insanity-of-the-good-sort.
Our nephew continues to gain adorableness by the day. He's two-and-a-half, and is unusually articulate for that age, which, I suspect, is one of the factors in him being far, far less two-year-old-like than most two-year-olds. I mean, he throws tantrums and stuff, of course -- he's two -- but of much shorter duration and intensity, and of lower frequency than I'm used to. I suspect that the fact that he can actually communicate what he wants helps that.
Also, the fact that both his parents are really good and skilled parents helps. And I think they just also got some good luck-of-the-draw on behavior.
So, yeah. Good services both days, extremely good holiday meals by Lis's mother and her grandmother, good company, good time. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 9th, 2006|11:23 am] |
My aunt and uncle now have eleven credits on IMDB. They're really genuine working actors.
Go Auntie Ellen and Uncle Rob! |
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| My sister's fiance is being reactivated. |
[Aug. 28th, 2006|11:39 am] |
He's 42. But he was in the Special Forces, so he has useful skills, and is therefore being called up.
I was just talking to Sibling, and we were commenting that, in all honesty, his brain is far more useful right now than his ability to be shot at, so we're really, really hoping that he's stationed, ideally, stateside as command-and-control, codebreaking, or training, or at least nowhere near the front lines. We thought about how we could get this message to someone, and I pointed out that at least ONE of us has to have our phones tapped.
"Yeah!" she said, "and I'm on a cell phone anyway, so they're definitely listening: his name is XXX XXX XXX, and he's stationed out of XXX XXX XXX, and he's really going to be more useful in a training or control role, so that's what you should do -- it would be a waste to put him on the front lines. Plus, he's got many years of experience as a police officer, so he can help set up that sort of thing, too. See? This is the good part of illegal wiretapping!"
He's 42, engaged to my sister, and has a teenage daughter. He's got a number of years in various police departments, and a postgraduate degree in theology. If they ask him to carry a gun and be shot at, he'll go and do that, and won't even complain about it any more than average, but I hope, for his sake, for my sister's sake, and for the country's sake, that they have a better idea in mind. |
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| Independence Day at my in-laws |
[Jul. 4th, 2006|05:56 pm] |
Well, let's see. We got to meet someone who's working with Lis's parents, and she's cool. Then we got to attempt to see the Space Shuttle lift off, but it must have been behind a cloud. If the skies are clear, you can see the contrail from the Shuttle lift-off from the street in front of my in-laws' house. But we didn't see it.
And our nephew Nate was there. And Nate's parents -- Lis's brother and sister-in-law -- but they said fewer absolutely adorable things.
Nate is 28 months old, so, about two-and-a-third. And he's really smart and adorable.
Among other things, I taught him the "Sneak sneak sneak. . . POUNCE!" game. In which you sneak up on someone, saying "Sneak, sneak, sneak, sneak. . . " and then you POUNCE on someone and give them a hug.
He spent much of the rest of the afternoon going, "Neak, neak, neak, neak. . . POUN!" |
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| Florida for Independence Day |
[Jul. 1st, 2006|10:31 pm] |
Guess where I am? Florida!
Okay, my grandparents-in-law read this occasionally, and, if they do, posting this is ruining the surprise. Um, so, if that's the case, hi Bubbe and Zayde! I'm in Florida!
Hopefully, we're going to see them before they read this, so we can surprise them.
We certainly surprised Lis's mother. Pleasantly, I hope.
See, a couple weeks ago, Lis's father emailed Lis saying, "So, we're having a barbecue for the Fourth -- want to come?"
Lis told me about the email, and asked if I could think of any good reason not to do so. Lis and her father decided that it would be even more fun if we kept this all quiet from the rest of the family to surprise them.
Our cat is staying with felis_sidus for a few days -- nearly a week, really, since we dropped the kitty off a day or two early, and are going to pick her up a day or so late, just to give us chances to pack and unpack without our kitty underfoot. Boopsie LOVES her Auntie felis_sidus, and, even though she's an elderly cat who dislikes disruption in routine or change in general, settled regally into felis_sidus's home within, like, an hour of when I dropped her off. If she HAS to have a change in her routine, going over there is quite acceptable.
So we're here. We haven't seen Lis's folks since, like, October, so it was definitely about time. |
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| A few random things I've been meaning to post for a while |
[May. 29th, 2006|10:53 am] |
1. Lis and I saw a Dippin' Dots, Ice Cream of the Future vending machine at the mall that had a different name. I don't remember what it was, but it WASN'T called "Dippin' Dots", and it DIDN'T say that it was "of the future", which means that we are now in the future. And it's dystopian. So we went and looked at puppies.
2. Happy birthday, Leila.
3. I was thinking about the play "You Can't Take it With You" that Theatre@First put on a while back, and something about it disturbed me. So, the whole play is about this lovely, eccentric family that effectively drops out of society and does their own thing, unconcerned with the outside world. They get into some trouble because the grandfather refuses to pay income tax, because the outside world just doesn't matter. Who cares who's president, or what's happening in the world?
The play was 1936.
There's something fundamentally disturbing and somewhat evil about a play whose message is "Don't worry about anything outside your own home, or about the country, or about the world," in 1936. |
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| This is embarrassing. . . |
[May. 28th, 2006|09:20 am] |
Um.
So, I just loaded up Semagic, my LJ client.
It lists folks' birthdays.
It's my sister's birthday tomorrow.
I totally forgot about that until I saw it on my LJ.
Um, sproutntad, I don't have a card or present or anything for you, because I totally spaced on that. But I do love you, sibling, and I'm proud to be related to you. You're a damn good human being. |
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| Easter dinner on Pesach. |
[Apr. 16th, 2006|08:28 pm] |
So, as a lot of you know, I come from an intermarriage. Okay, both my parents are Jewish now, but that's pretty recent. Dad's family isn't Jewish, and so Easter dinner was today.
You know, for not being Jewish, the non-Jewish part of my family does a pretty good job of accommodating us Jews.
We showed up at my Uncle Walter and Aunt Diane's house in Bolton, about an hour away from our house, at about 11:30. It was pretty small -- just Diane, Walter, two of their four children (Erica and Meghan -- Liz is in Barcelona, and I forgot to ask where Stephen was), my Uncle Bob, my grandparents on that side -- Papa Ralph and Nonie Grace, my father, and Lis and me.
Of course, one of the main courses was the traditional ham, but Diane also made a salmon fillet with dill and lemon for folks who keep kosher. There were two quiches which weren't Peasadich, but there was a potato pancake thing, sort of like a flat kugel or a giant latke, that was -- and was delicious. There was a stewed cherry tomatoes and onions thing that was fantastic, and asparagus.
Dessert included a cheesecake and cream puffs (from Costco -- they're really good) -- not kosher for Passover -- and grapes and strawberries with sour cream and brown sugar to dip them in -- kosher for Passover.
Dad, Lis, and I had no trouble finding plenty to eat. And it was amazingly good, too.
So, that's my father's side of the family. I like them. |
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| What I've done today. |
[Jan. 24th, 2006|02:05 pm] |
Let's see: in Kingdom of Loathing, both my multis ascended today. I started a second account the day I ascended my first character, and ran the first character as a hardcore Oxygenarian, and the second multi as softcore. The softcore character ascended for the first time a while back, and I reincarnated him softcore again, so I did a hardcore oxy ascension in EXACTLY the same amount of time that it took me to do two softcore ascensions.
In other news, my cousin Todd ripped half a tooth out of my mouth using a pair of pliers. 'Cause, see, that tooth had cracked longitudinally, and the outside half of it was wiggling around and lose, so Todd pulled that chunk of the tooth out, then snipped up the raggedy bits of the gums with a pair of scissors.
Okay, I probably should mention that Todd is a dentist, the pliers and scissors were both surgical steel and designed for this, and I did have Novocaine for it. I'm going back for a temporary filling on Friday, and I'll get a crown in a month, after Todd gets back from a friend's wedding in India. He's been prepping for the trip to India by eating a lot of curries, and watching Bollywood movies from Netflix. |
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| Monday in Chicago |
[Jan. 16th, 2006|03:28 pm] |
First, something that Lis reminded me that I forgot to mention about yesterday: Lis and Nate and I were in Aunt Paula's kitchen, and Lis leaned down and said, "This is your uncle Ian," and Nate said, "Yin." Lis said, "That's right! It's Ian; can you say, 'Ian'?" and Nate said "Yin" again. Lis nudged me and said, "You could do the same thing for me. . . " and I said, "This is Lis!" And Nate said, ". . .okay."
Also, Nate speaks Japanese, I may have mentioned. The main things he says are, "Buzz," "Woody," "Finty an' neon," (aka, "To INFINITY AND BEYOND!!", Buzz Lightyear's battle cry), "No" (he's a toddler), and "Hai". Which is what he uses for "Yes." The fact that he's a toddler with a word for "yes" is far more remarkable than the fact that the word he uses is Japanese. I mean, there are MILLIONS of toddlers who speak Japanese, but many fewer than that who say any word that means "yes" on a regular basis.
( Read more... ) |
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| Our second day in Chicago |
[Jan. 16th, 2006|12:35 am] |
We got up on the early side, got showered and dressed (the hotel soaps are Rusk soaps, by the way, which turns out to be one of the few brands I can use, so I got to have the rare pleasure of using the HOTEL soap instead of the soap I brought with me), and went down to the corner to The Corner Bakery to grab a something light for breakfast. At a couple minutes before 8 AM, we met up with Josh, Missy, and Nate to drive up to Milwaukee -- we picked up our cousin Barry at his apartment on the way. Barry lives in Chicago, but his parents were the folks we were visiting, so, as long as we were driving up there, there was no reason not to have Barry along. Especially since we like him and all.
( Read more... ) |
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| In Chicago |
[Jan. 15th, 2006|12:59 am] |
So, we're in Chicago. We got in this morning, and Lis's brother and sister-in-law picked us up. He booked rooms at a very nice hotel, Hotel 71; I'm posting this from their business center, which has free wifi.
It's within very easy walking distance of Grandma Rose's condo, so we walked over there in the early afternoon, while Josh, Missy, and Nate (who is two and adorable) took naps. We spent a good couple hours hanging out with her. Josh, Missy, and Nate had been over in the morning -- it was the first time he'd gotten to meet his great-grandma, and she him. She loves him to pieces, but as she is not strong or in good health, she could really only socialize with a toddler for an hour or so. Lis and I, however, are generally less strenuous than a toddler, so we could hang out for a couple hours.
( Read more... ) |
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| The Olive Garden, a review |
[Jan. 8th, 2006|11:06 pm] |
So, Lis and Dad and I got there and put our names in to wait. About a half-hour wait for a table for three. You ever notice that, the more mediocre the food, the longer the wait? I mean, BAD food, you can get seated right away. GOOD food, you've either made reservations, or the line moves pretty fast. Okay, fine, during a summer weekend, you can spend fifteen minutes in line at Kelly's Roast Beef, so it's not ALWAYS true. But still, I only ever see the big areas where you wait for half an hour for your number to be called at mediocre places. I doubt it's a direct cause-effect relationship, but I wonder if they're not both effects of some third cause.
So we sat down to wait, and handed Dad a copy of The Day I Swapped My Dad for 2 Goldfish, by Neil Gaiman and Dave MccKean, because Lis had gotten it out of the library knowing that Dad would enjoy it. Which he did. Instead of simply reading it to himself, though, he read it out loud to us, and showed us the pictures. Which meant that ALL of us enjoyed it. That was fun.
After he finished, we talked for several more minutes, and then a table opened up in the bar area, so we sat there. We looked at the menu, and I mentioned how happy I was that Dad now kept kosher, because of the time when I was about fourteen or so, and he totally traumatized me by ordering the calamari at an Italian restaurant. He took the little squids and lined them up and did a Rockettes' kick line with the tentacles.
( Read more... ) |
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| So, I was just telling my parents about my Octopus/Inteligent Design theory. . . |
[Jan. 1st, 2006|02:00 pm] |
We're at my parents' house; my niece and nephew and their parents were over for the weekend for New Year's, and they just left, and Lis is asleep, and I was telling my parents about how Intelligent Design actually all holds together, if you assume that HUMANS aren't the creature that was designed. As I said, "So, all you need is to think of a creature without joints, without teeth, and whose eyes don't grow from their optic nerves, but are intelligent and have the ability to use tools. . . "
And Dad said, "Oh! Octopuses!"
I explained about Cthulhu and the Flying Spaghetti monster are probably therefore just visions of the Great Octopus.
And I explained my further theory about how, according to this theory, the purpose of humans was to be controlled by the Intelligent Designer to create global warming to make large shallow seas over the coastal areas that humans have built up, so that the octopuses could have the benefit of our structures while they created their own society.
And Mom said, "So, the Bush Dynasty is being controlled by Cthulhu in order to destroy humanity?"
And Dad said, "It explains a lot about Cheney -- he always did have that kind of fishy, Innsmouth look to him."
I said, "Yeah. This has actually been keeping me up at nights. . . it all hangs together all too well. If you can come up with ANYTHING that would be an argument against this, anything that will make me feel better about this, I'd love to hear it."
Mom and Dad were quiet and thinking for a while. And Mom said, "Well, they'll probably need a small slave population of humans to work the dry-land areas for a while. . . ."
(Other comments: "Well, if the Greenland ice caps go, the sea levels will go up about fifty feet. Once the octopuses get MIT, it's all over. On the other hand, they'll also get Logan Airport, which should slow them down some. . . 'I dunno, man, I went to this place near the shore, and I was stuck there for six freakin' hours. . . '") |
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| I'm in trouble with my family. |
[Nov. 24th, 2005|09:31 pm] |
Specifically, my cousins.
See, I didn't make my sweet potato crunch to bring to Thanksgiving this year.
Apparently, my cousin Lindsay and her fiance' Darren were talking about it on the car ride over, and were really looking forward to it. So was Mike, who'd explained it to his girlfriend Erin.
And there wasn't any.
I did bring a chocolate pie and a cranberry pie, both of which had about a quarter eaten -- which is good, mind you, because there were ten pies, a cake, three trays of cookies (two of which were homemade), a trifle, and two trays of chocolates, for 23 people. So while the lemon-yogurt pie (DAMN good pie, by the way) was half-consumed, no other pie managed over a quarter gone, so I can count them both as successes. Even the lemon meringue only got a quarter-eaten, and that one usually goes fast. Two pumpkin pies, a squash pie, lemon-yogurt, cherry, deep-dish apple, lemon meringue, cranberry, chocolate mousse, and I forget what the tenth one was. The cake was a chocolate frosted birthday cake for my uncle Rob, and wasn't touched, so they just re-boxed it to take to another birthday party he's having.
Of course all the pies were homemade, although many of us have started buying crusts, just because crusts are annoying to make. I mean, most of us CAN make pie crusts, and some of us can make GOOD pie crusts -- but, well, for those of us whose pie crusts end up about as tender and flaky as basalt, the store-bought ones are quite a good choice. I HAVE made good pie crusts in the past, but it's just usually more work than I care to do for a marginal improvement over the store ones. Besides, the pies I'm making are with graham cracker crusts, and, for THOSE, the store-bought variety is usually virtually indistinguishable from the homemade kind. Unless you do something particularly impressive with your crusts. Which I don't.
I also made and brought cranberry sauce, which few people ate. But those who did liked it quite a bit.
Uncle David made a cranberry-orange relish, which was good if you like that sort of thing, but I liked mine better, because mine was just cranberries, apple cider, and sugar. And a little molasses. And spices. More New-England traditional. |
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| Everyone say hi to sproutntad! |
[Nov. 16th, 2005|09:16 pm] |
sproutntad just made herself an LJ. This will mainly be of interest to browngirl, cheshyre, copperpoint, deerdancer22, felis_sidus, gilana, kyshwn, not_the_angel, rebmommy, and vonbeck, but I know that other people on my friends list have met her, too.
It's my sister, Leila. |
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| My mother just phoned me up . . . |
[Oct. 21st, 2005|10:53 am] |
. . . to ask why I haven't posted in my LJ in a couple days.
This is one of the wonderful things about my family: I don't get "you never phone" complaints from my parents, and I'm now free of "you never email" complaints. Now all I have to do is maintain my LJ, and I'm okay.
Seriously, though, I was sick, and slept for 27 hours, and am better now.
In other news: I've started playing a free online game called Kingdom of Loathing. In it, you take one of six character classes (Turtle Tamer, Seal Clubber, Pastamancer, Sauceror, Disco Bandit, or Accordion Thief), and then you go around adventuring. It's basically text-based, and the graphics are all static stick-figure drawings. It's got a wonderful sick sense of humor.
Like, for instance: a week or so ago was Columbus day in the United States. A user, Christobal Kolon, user ID# 1492, had a new item for sale in his store: Comfy Blankets. If you "rest"ed with one of the blankets equipped, you recovered extra hit points.
You also got The Grey Plague, which spreads from player to player in the in-game chatroom, and appends the word -cough- to the ends of things you write. . .
It's probably going to be a whole-game sort of quest thing to get rid of the disease. But it's just funny. |
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| Help me be mean to my mother! |
[Sep. 10th, 2005|12:26 am] |
So, Mom and Dad just got a new cable modem.
I want to see if I can make it so that she never has another productive moment again.
Okay, first link I thought of was Homestar Runner. She could start with this, although, since she was asking what They Might Be Giants have been up to recently, this or any of the Puppet Jams under Puppet Stuff in Toons might be good choices.
So, what else? I'm not sure if Mom's the right sort of geek to appreciate that much of Irregular Webcomic, or Casey and Andy, although I think Dad is.
Orisinal will probably be a good timesuck for her.
Any other favorite online timesinks? |
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| My cousin's a pretty darned good dentist |
[Aug. 25th, 2005|11:52 pm] |
So, I had a tooth cleaning, from my uncle, yesterday. I mentioned that I'd had some pain in the gums next to the tooth where he'd done the root canal, and he took a look at it, and said that it looked like the filling was chipping, and scheduled me for an appointment with my cousin Todd this morning. Todd graduated from Tufts just a few months ago, and is now in practice with his father and our grandfather.
So, he took a careful look at the tooth, and did some drilling and gentle probing, and eventually found a tiny-but-very-sharp chip of SOMETHING that was jammed right in the gum, totally hidden from view, and looking exactly like part of the tooth, and it felt MUCH better once he pulled that out. And then he repaired the filling and got that all nice and working, too.
I'm mainly posting this because I can't get over just how much pain I'm not in. I mean, I really do stop registering pain after a while, and now it's gone, and it's such a relief. Ongoing pain just wears you down and I'm usually in quite a bit of it. As, I suspect, most people are. But there's a big source of pain fixed. |
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| Oh, one thing that from WEEKS ago that I wanted to mention |
[Aug. 25th, 2005|01:19 pm] |
So, several weeks back, I was at my parents' house for dinner, and my sister phoned, and we were talking and all, and the subject came up of what would happen if Jesus came back to Earth right now, and showed up. What would people do?
My sister said, "Middle Eastern male, from Gaza, wearing weird clothes, talking about overthrowing the government and the end of the world, and not in English? He's in Gitmo."
And silence came across the room, as we realized just how right she was.
Seriously. If Jesus came back, is there ANY way he wouldn't end up in Guantamo? |
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| Okay, a little more on my weekend |
[Aug. 21st, 2005|09:13 pm] |
So, Lis came home on Friday, fell on the bed, and fell asleep for a couple hours. So we got on the road a bit later than we intended. I'd rather hoped to be in Ludlow, VT by around 9 at night, but we actually got there closer to 11 pm. On the drive up, Lis read to me to keep me entertained while I was driving. It was the sixth book in the Princess Diaries series, Princess in Training. I like those books. They're much, much better than the movies. Actually, in this book, Mia takes a couple jabs at the movies. . .(yeah, in the world of the Princess Diaries, the movies have been made. It's just that they're fictionalized versions of a real person rather than a book.)
This was, in large part, an anniversary celebration for my parents. My folks have been married for 35 years. They've been together for 37. And they've also been married for about five years, since they got married after Dad converted. But this one was for their thirty-fifth anniversary.
What Mom and Dad wanted to do to celebrate was to go up to Ludlow with their parents and us, and the eight of us would go to the Ludlow Zucchini Festival.
What is a zucchini festival, you ask? Well, as far as we can guess, about nine years ago, someone realized that EVERYONE hates zucchini, and thought that a festival to help celebrate how much everyone is sick of zucchini would be a good idea. There are zucchini baked goods (e.g. zucchini muffins, breads, and cookies), zucchini fries (which are actually really good), a prize for the largest zucchini, Mr Zucchini-Head contests, zucchini carving contests, zucchini races, and so forth.
And the centerpiece of the whole thing: the Zucchapult Contest!
More about that later.
( Read more... ) |
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| A couple notes from a weekend with my family. |
[Aug. 21st, 2005|05:22 pm] |
So, yeah, we spent the weekend up in Vermont at my grandparents' cottage in Ludlow. All four grandparents and my parents were there, and it was quite nice.
Anyway, just a quote from breakfast this morning. The house next door to my g'parents is under construction.
Nonnie Grace: You might think I'm crazy, but I think that the contractor who was working on that house has packed up and left.
Papa Ralph: The two things have nothing to to with one another.
Yeah, my grandparents do a fair bit of insult comedy with each other. Actually, all four of my grandparents do. You really need a quick wit to do well.
Fortunately, Lis does fine. Last night, at dinner, we were talking about the bris that we were going to today, for tigerbright and teddywolf's baby, about which I'll post later.
Lis asked my parents if they'd heard about some of the weird and funky bris customs that have shown up in Alaska recently. They hadn't.
Lis said, "Yeah:
There are strange things done under the midnight sun
By the men who mohel for gold. . .
Father looked at her, then banged his head repeatedly on the table. I think Dad likes and respects Lis. |
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