Time for a new place. Please update your links appropriately.

http://cakeeaterchronicles.com

Thanks!

Posted by: MRN aka "The Husband" at 11:25 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Inspired by the ever fabulous Margi.

A little Marvin Gaye...

Some Bill Withers...

Some musick that takes me straight back to the summer between junior and senior year...

And, of course...

I am STILL pissed of that Michael Hutchence isn't around. Dumbass. A talented dumbass, yes. But a dumbass, nonetheless.

Feel better? I do.

Posted by: Kathy at 09:09 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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To prove, mainly, I haven't been entirely wrapped up in myself the past couple of days. Don't worry, my devoted Cake Eater readers: there will most likely be more cancer-related narcissism over the next couple of days. In the meantime, though...

• Barack Obama: the slumlord's best friend in government. Please read this article from beginning to end and then ask yourself, "Gee, do I really want the Daleys and the Chicago Political Machine running the country? " Because if you think Obama will suddenly drop the Brothers Bozo and the machine they inherited from Dear Old Dad, (and have manipulated and enhanced in ways that Dear Old Dad never thought of, and would have been so proud of) when he gets elected, well, you're deluded.

  One wonders when the MSM will ask this question. Oh, yeah, right. I know. They're too busy licking his balls to possibly apply critical thinking to his campaign. SLURP. {HT: Ace }

• I'm a little late on this one, but do check out Martini Boy's problems with Bobby Jindahl's latest bit of legislative largesse down in Lousiana. The relevant posts can be found here, and here. Make sure to clicky through on all the links, too.

  Well said, sir.

• Uhm, if you really think Steve Jobs is showing he cares about "the little people" with the "$199" iPhone, you might want to think again. Read the fine print.
• All I can say about this is "Go ahead and try it on, buddy and we'll see what the Fifth Fleet has to say about it. "
• To paraphrase the husband: Who knew the French actually had live ammo?
• Anyone else think Sarkozy might be getting a wee bit too big for his britches?

  Too bad he can't turn all that energy toward reforming his own country, which if memory serves, still needs some work.

And now I'm off to make my hip hurt by walking around the lake!

Posted by: Kathy at 08:49 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Aw, man.

Two quotes that seem appropriate. From Braindroppings

SUPER-CELEB KICKS THE BUCKET

I dread the deaths of certain super-celebrities. Not because I care about them, but because of all the shit I have to endure on television when one of them dies. All those tributes and retrospectives. And the bigger the personality, the worse it is.

For instance, imagine the crap we'll have to endure on TV when Bob Hope dies {ed. book was published in 1997}. First of all, they'll show clips from all his old road movies with Bing Crosby, and you can bet that some news anchor asshole will turn to the pile of clothing next to him and say, "Well, Tami, I imagine Bob's on the Road to Heaven now."

Then there'll be clips of all those funny costumes he wore on his TV specials, including the hippie sketch, where they'll show him saying, "Far out, man, far out!" They'll show him golfing with dead presidents, kissing blonde bombshells, and entertaining troops in every war since we beat the shit out of the Peloponnesians. And at some point, a seventy-year-old veteran will choke up, and say, "I just missed seein' him at Iwo, 'cause I got my legs blowed off. He's quite a guy."

Ex-presidents (including the dead ones) will line up four abreast to tell us what a great American he was; show business perennials will desert golf courses from Palm Springs to O.J.'s lawn to lament sadly as how this time, "Bob hooked one into the woods"; and, regarding his talent, a short comedian in a checkered hat will speak reverently about "Hope's incredible timing."

And this stuff will be on every single newscast day and night for a week. There'll be special one-hour salutes on "Good Morning America," the "Today" show, and "CBS This Morning." Ted Koppel will ask Henry Kissinger if it's true Bob Hope actually shortened some of our wars by telling jokes close to the frontlines. CNN will do a series of expanded "Show Biz Todays." One of the cable channels will do a one-week marathon of his movies. And it goes without saying that NBC will put together a three-hour, prime-time special called "Thanks for the Memories," but at the last minute they'll realize Bob Hope's audience skews older, and sell it to CBS.

Then there'll be the funeral, carried live on the Dead Celebrity Channel, with thousands of grotesque acne-ridden fans seeking autographs from all the show-business clowns who dug out their best black golfing outfits to attend "one of the hottest burials to hit this town in decades."----Variety

And all this shit will go on for weeks and weeks and weeks. Until Milton Berle dies. And then it will start all over again. I dare not even contemplate Frank Sinatra and Ronald Reagan.

Eerily prescient, eh? Except for the fact that Frankie kicked the bucket first, and Bob's funeral was private.

DEATH IS ALMOST FUN THESE DAYS

Seems to be it wasn't long ago that when an OLD PERSON DIED the UNDERTAKER put him in a COFFIN, and you sent FLOWERS to the FUNERAL HOME where the MORTICIAN held the WAKE. Then, after the FUNERAL, they put him in a HEARSE and DROVE him to the CEMETERY, where they BURIED his BODY in GRAVE.

Now when a SENIOR CITIZEN PASSES AWAY, he is placed in a BURIAL CONTAINER, and you send FLORAL TRIBUTES to the SLUMBER ROOM where the GRIEF THERAPIST supervises the VIEWING. After the MEMORIAL SERVICE, the FUNERAL COACH TRANSPORTS THE DEPARTED, to the GARDEN OF REMEMBRANCE, where his EARTHLY REMAINS are INTERRED in their FINAL RESTING PLACE.

May your coffin, your hearse, and your grave, be covered with flowers, George.

And I sincerely hope you get to watch the coverage of your own "passing" from a comfy easy chair in Heaven, and that you get a good chuckle out of it.

Posted by: Kathy at 09:40 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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You know, I don't ask for much from my blogging system, except for it to, you know, work. For the past twenty-four hours, the main page of the Cake Eater has been down. I would apologize for this, but as it's not my freakin' fault, I don't see why I should have to. Those of you who access this site via RSS feed, are able to see the content, as are those who would access one particular post via Google, but the main page? Nope. You can't have that.

Apparently, Pixy decided to migrate all the moo knew sites over to the new mee.nu software---without informing anyone other than Ace about what he was doing. I suspect this has gone fine for the majority of moo knew sites, but mine? Not so much. For whatever reason, my site is screwed up. Ah, well. You get what you pay for. And considering I don't pay dime one for this site, well...you can do the math.

For the time being you can access the site at cakeeaterchronicles.new.mu.nu. But seeing as how the people who use bookmarks to access the site won't know this because THEY WON'T BE ABLE TO SEE THIS FREAKIN' POST, this announcement doesn't really matter all that much. Sigh. I don't suspect I'll be posting much until things get straightened out. There's no point in writing anything if the majority of my readers can't access the stupid thing.

The husband tells me that he's hired some dude to help with the migration to the new site at cakeeaterchronicles.com. (Hi to the guy who's helping us out! Sorry I don't know your name. I know you're probably reading this. Thanks for the help!) So, the move to the .com domain, and to new and improved blogging software, should be happening in the near future. It's past time.

And now, my devoted RSS-feed subscribing Cake Eater readers, I am off to the hospital to pick up some CT contrast to chug. Good times!

Posted by: Kathy at 09:16 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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...is what I said to myself when I saw the headline that reported "Tim Russert Dies of Apparent Heart Attack." Sadly, it doesn't seem to be a mistake.

My deepest and heartfelt condolences to his family.

Rest in peace, Tim. You were a decent fellow, and you (and your white board) will be missed.

Posted by: Kathy at 03:30 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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It turns out I was a little slow on the uptake about the Tornado v. Boy Scout Camp story that broke on Wednesday night. The husband pointed it out to me, I clicked and read, said, "how awful," whilst trying to drag the location of the place out of the back of my brain. I lived in Iowa for six years. I lived next door to Iowa for eighteen more. Iowa, in relative terms, is a small state. You learn where everyone's from when you meet people at school, and you peg their general geographic location on a virtual map in your brain, for future reference. You'd think I'd have known that it was near Omaha, but unfortunately the name of the nearest town on the byline wasn't ringing a bell. However, I kept reading the stories yesterday, and low and behold, when the name of "Mondamin" came up, the bell verily went off. Mondamin's where we used to go to buy our apples in the fall, and it's only about forty or so miles from Omaha, north on 1-29. At that point, I started going to the various Omaha news organizations, and read (and watched) further.

I was chatting with my sister, Christi, who still lives there yesterday and she said it was somewhat somber around town yesterday. Three out of the four scouts who were killed by the tornado were from Omaha, while the fourth was from a small town in western Iowa. State boundaries don't have really all that much to do with how scouting---Boy or Girl Scouts---is organized in that neck of the woods, so it, sadly, didn't surprise me that there were kids from Omaha at a camp in western Iowa. Her husband, who was (is?) an Eagle Scout had been to that camp many, many times. Her eldest son, who is also a Boy Scout, has been there as well. In fact, Colin, who also happens to be my godbaby, is to head off to Scout Camp on Sunday---while it's a different camp, Christi is, somewhat understandably, freaked out about the prospect, even though she knows the odds of something untoward happening are astronomical.

While the whole thing is just horrible, I have to think that if it was a pottery camp organized by Kumbaya-singing hippies, things might have been much, much worse. They probably would have had the kids out on the front porch, to witness the awesomeness of Mother Nature, and there probably would have been more casualties and more deaths. If you go up to either of those news links, you will view interviews with many scouts who were there, and the common thread was yes, we found shelter, we prayed to God to spare us, then when the storm passed, we were on our feet with our First Aid kits at the ready and started applying pressure to bleeding wounds, and started digging out people who were crushed by walls, ceilings and debris. A few kids even broke into a shed where there was an ATV and chainsaws and went out to the main road and started clearing up the fallen trees so that the emergency vehicles could get in to help the wounded. How amazing is that? The majority of these kids are under the age of fifteen and they had the presence of mind to deliver first aid and to make sure that ambulances could get in? That's freakin' phenomenal. When most kids their age would be running around like headless chickens, crying and screaming for the benefit of the cameras, these young men were doing what needed to be done, and I have no doubt there would have been more fatalities if not for their swift action.

What kills me is that, aside from the early media rush, these young men probably won't be covered. By doing what they were supposed to do they ended the story. Katie Couric isn't rushing to western Iowa to cover the aftermath of the storm, or to celebrate the heroism of these scouts---because they didn't believe what they were doing was heroic. They all exhibited the typical Midwestern philosophy of stoicism in their interviews: here's what happened, here's what we did, pray for the kids who are injured and who died...and that's the end of that. They did not fan the flames that the MSM needs to keep a story alive, to justify 24-hour coverage. Because of that, their story will most likely be lost to the annals of time. That's just sad. There are any number of teenagers who have actually received the infamous fifteen-minutes of fame (one kid from Australia comes to mind) for, just in general, being jerks, and these kids are forgotten within the space of a twenty-four hour news cycle.

Because they did the right thing, because they were responsible, they will be forgotten---and that just pisses me off. It's yet another sign of what's wrong with this world: be an asshole, and you'll get as much media coverage as you can take, but be responsible and you'll be forgotten. If people, and the media in general, were really concerned with the state of America's youth as they claim to be, what with all the coverage they give they give these brats, you'd think they'd want to laud kids who aren't like that, who are responsible, and WHO DID SOMETHING WORTHWHILE, if for no other reason than it provides a change of pace. But the media can't be bothered. They should be ashamed of themselves, because, once again, they're proving they're just in it for the sensationalism, but, then again, I doubt they're even capable of shame at this late date.

Posted by: Kathy at 09:57 AM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
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Courtesy of Ace, I, Kath the Cake Eater, have learned that the good fellows at the Old Bailey have put the proceedings online (and they're searchable, too!). Now, we're not talking about the current proceedings. We're talking about the ones from 1674 to 1913.

Delicious stuff. For instance, take the case of one Thomas Whitehead:

The first was one Thomas Whitehead, who being in Newgate, was by order of the former Sessions of the 3d. of June, to remain there upon suspicion of Fellony, whence he once made an escape, and was retaken, and then by the assistance of some Friends he had procured an Order for his Inlargement, and was to have gone forth as the next day, but he being as it seems impatient to be kept so long from his old Profession, the Trade of Stealing, and finding himself by reason of such an Order, not so strictly lookt after by the Keepers as otherwise he would have been; he took an opportunity once more to get away out of Custody, but to little purpose, for falling to his Practise as soon as ever he was got forth, the very Night he was taken for having committed Burghlary, by breaking open an house, and Stealing goods to the value (as the Jury found it) of 4. pounds , the evidence was plain against him, and he had little to say for himself, so that he was Convicted , and (being notoriously Incorrigible) had Sentence of Death pass'd upon him.

Sentence was pass'd upon him on July 17, 1674.

Too bad he couldn't have waited until morning. But then again, I think we all know that thieves who have very little patience are generally the ones that get caught. Not that much has changed in three hundred some odd years.

Go and check it out. It's entirely searchable, so, if you're of English descent, you can check and see if you have some miscreants in ye olde family tree.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:14 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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1 Ace had a piece about that database today. Search for "Thomas Newton" if you want to see something, uhm, "interesting".

Posted by: Russ from Winterset at June 11, 2008 10:33 PM (BhHL1)

2 DUDE---go reread the first sentence!

Posted by: Kathy at June 12, 2008 09:05 AM (vawhH)

3 Sorry about that. The stuff about Mr. Newton was in a separate thread, so I wasn't sure if you had read it or not. Of course, that doesn't mean I didn't read your first sentence also, which was rude of me.

Posted by: Russ from Winterset at June 12, 2008 02:09 PM (dyz/7)

4 No hassles, dearie.

Posted by: Kathy at June 12, 2008 03:57 PM (vawhH)

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Courtesy of Ace, I, Kath the Cake Eater, have learned that the good fellows at the Old Bailey have put the proceedings online (and they're searchable, too!). Now, we're not talking about the current proceedings. We're talking about the ones from 1674 to 1913.

Delicious stuff. For instance, take the case of one Thomas Whitehead:

The first was one Thomas Whitehead, who being in Newgate, was by order of the former Sessions of the 3d. of June, to remain there upon suspicion of Fellony, whence he once made an escape, and was retaken, and then by the assistance of some Friends he had procured an Order for his Inlargement, and was to have gone forth as the next day, but he being as it seems impatient to be kept so long from his old Profession, the Trade of Stealing, and finding himself by reason of such an Order, not so strictly lookt after by the Keepers as otherwise he would have been; he took an opportunity once more to get away out of Custody, but to little purpose, for falling to his Practise as soon as ever he was got forth, the very Night he was taken for having committed Burghlary, by breaking open an house, and Stealing goods to the value (as the Jury found it) of 4. pounds , the evidence was plain against him, and he had little to say for himself, so that he was Convicted , and (being notoriously Incorrigible) had Sentence of Death pass'd upon him.

Sentence was pass'd upon him on July 17, 1674.

Too bad he couldn't have waited until morning. But then again, I think we all know that thieves who have very little patience are generally the ones that get caught. Not that much has changed in three hundred some odd years.

Go and check it out. It's entirely searchable, so, if you're of English descent, you can check and see if you have some miscreants in ye olde family tree.

Posted by: Kathy at 09:49 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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It's gloomy here. It's all sorts of cloudy, dark and, despite the fact it's sixty or so degrees, chilly. Bleh. (Oh, and it just started raining! Wonderful!) For every good day we get, like Monday, when it was seventy-two and beautiful, we, apparently, are doomed to five crab-monster-inducing days. Sigh. I've really had it with this state and its fargin' weather.

But that's not the reason why I think it's going to be a bad day. Sure, it's an omen, but omens only have weight if you give it to them. I choose not to. No, it's going to be a bad day because I have my first dental appointment in, oh, five years or thereabouts later this afternoon.

I am dreading this.

I've recently decided that it's time I start getting other things, things not related to the rest of my medical woes taken care of. Like my teeth. And my eyes. Both of which have been somewhat neglected in terms of receiving checkups over the last little while. I've been toying with the notion of going to the dentist since last summer, but decided that would be a bad idea while I was immunocompromised from the chemo. I didn't really need a mouth infection on top of all my other maladies. I kept putting it off because, really, the last thing I want is to spend more time in medical offices, waiting for a doctor to show up. But the time for avoidance has passed, and so, today, I embark on a visit to our dentist to get my teeth x-rayed and cleaned. Woot! {insert lackadaisical pumping of fist into air here} They've even set aside an extra half-hour for me because it's been such a long time since I've been in. Joy!

I was actually surprised when I called in to make the appointments for the husband and myself and found out they actually still had our charts readily available. The lady I spoke with pulled them right off the shelf as I was chatting with her. Okedokey, then. I figured they would have long ago been shelved in some archival facility, but, no, that was not the case. Again, joy!

I really do despise having my teeth messed with. Well, let me correct that. It's more the thought of having my teeth messed with that I despise. When I actually get in the chair, I'm as docile as a lamb. I'm used to it, in other words. How could you not be after my childhood and adolescence, when not a month passed without me firmly ensconced in either my dentist's, my orthodontist's, or oral surgeon's respective chairs. I don't know how my mother stood driving me around to all these various appointments. Yea, verily, my mouth was screwed up. Too many teeth and a small-ish jaw do not make for a pretty smile. So a plan was hatched early on: teeth would be pulled to make room for the others to spread out. Then would come the full-set of braces, accompanied with monthly wire replacement/tightenings and rubber bands (which I got very good at shooting across the family room at one of my brothers while we were watching tee vee, just because I knew it would gross him out.)

I had to visit the dentist a lot during these times simply because I had weak enamel at that point in time and had a lot of cavities. I could stand the orthodontist and the oral surgeon: they were both decent guys. I hated the dentist, however, mainly because he started off as such a nice guy when I was little, but really got nasty as I---and he---grew older. My mother hates him, too, because he was the one to pull the first four teeth that needed to go. I saw him coming at me with the pliers (and I swear to God they were pliers---the kind you have in your long-unused, dusty toolbox in the basement) and started screaming my head off. I was six or seven-years-old at the time, and he would not allow my mother to come in and hold my hand. She could hear me screaming from the waiting room and has never forgiven him for this. In fact, the only time I remember my mother bribing me when I was a kid was because of this guy---and that's saying something because my mother did not rely upon bribery to get us to do things; she's above that. Yes, sometimes, there were rewards afterwards, but never did she actually coax you into something. You did it, because you were supposed to and that was that. Anyway, the plan was to pull two teeth one week, then I was to come back and have the other two pulled the next. I didn't want to go to the second visit, obviously, and Mom knew it. She didn't want me to go to the second visit, but she knew it had to be done, so she took me to King's, a restaurant near our house that no longer exists, and bought me lunch out, a big treat, as a bribe before we went to the dentist's. I barely remember our conversation, but I do remember her telling me that I needed to be brave and that it would be over with before I knew it. It must have worked, too, because I don't remember the second episode being nearly as bad as the first. I don't remember the second episode at all. After that, when I needed teeth pulled, I went to the oral surgeon and was sedated properly.

But the dentist was still a thorn in my side. He regularly yelled at me and told me not to be such a baby whenever I flinched as he came at me with a shot of novocaine. It's not like I screamed or anything, but rather expressed normal hesitation at a needle being brandied near my mouth and he couldn't freakin' take that. He had absolutely no patience; he was one of those doctors who hated having to actually take care of people whose mouths were not in perfect shape. I put up with it because my father had expressed that we went to this particular guy because he was a member of the parish, and my father liked him, hence to keep up good, neighborly relations, the dentist's word was law and I was to take whatever he threw at me. (For my red-headed sister, this meant putting up with a very bad sunburn she received in his chair because the lighting was faulty.) The final straw was when I was about to go off to college, and had a very bad cavity. He screamed at me for a good five minutes or so before getting on with the business of filling said cavity. After that, I never went back to him. He was an asshole and I said as much to my father when I told him I was never seeing the guy again. My mother was completely on my side, and when I had my wisdom teeth removed a year later, I subjected myself to the whims of Creighton's dental school, rather than going back to him.

Ever since, dentist visits have been sporadic. Whenever various dentists ask me why I don't keep up with regular visits, I throw these horror stories at them and, surprisingly, they seem to understand, even if they would like me to visit more often. Our current dentist is a really good person, and I like her a lot. She gets in, she gets out, and she chides very little---she leaves that to the hygienists, but I can fight them off. So, it's time to visit. I need to chat with her about how menopause is going to affect my teeth. She doesn't know about the cancer diagnosis, and it's time to talk with her about things. I've gotten a lot of information about how this could possibly affect my bones, and have received recommendations regarding calcium intake, to keep them strong, lest I lose density and start up with the osteoporosis, but I haven't a clue as to what it means for my teeth. It's time to find out.

God willing, there will be no cavities, and I will be set up for an appointment six months from now. We'll just have to see what happens. Then, after this is done, it's off to the ophthalmologist to work on the eyes, which have also been neglected! Woohoo!

This health care business is tiresome.

Posted by: Kathy at 09:46 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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On Thursday night, one of my brothers, Steve, called up in the middle of the service of an elaborately prepared lasagna. I don't make lasagna every day, so when the phone rang in the middle of dinner, I was annoyed. I was less annoyed when I heard the husband exclaim, "Hey Steve!" when he picked up the phone.

Steve's one of these high-falutin' business types who flies all over the country at least twice a week. Since he lives in Billings, Montana, if he's flying to Detroit (he's in the "automotive sales industry"---read he's a dealer), he's generally reduced to flying Northworst, and if he's got a decent layover, he generally gives us a call. Generally this means schlepping it over to the airport, where we hook up in baggage claim and have a nice visit for about an hour or two. The past couple of times he's called, I haven't been able to make it because, as he's one of these 'fly by the seat of your pants" types, he usually only manages to call me to let me know about his layover when he's taking off from Billings. This doesn't work out too well, even with my flexible schedule. But, we do get to see him from time to time and this past Friday morning we got to see him again---and this time he brought his wife with him!

Shocking, no?

Well, you're probably thinking, "whoop-de-freakin' do. Kathy got to see her sister-in-law. YAWN!" Hold up there, my devoted Cake Eater readers, because it was new and unusual, because I hadn't met this particular sister-in-law yet, and they've been married almost a year. Weird, no?

To make a long story short, for many years, Steve was married to---and there's no way to put this politely, so I shall simply be blunt about it---a bitch on wheels. I won't name her here, but my family obviously knows who I'm talking about. They married when I was ten or eleven, and she fell out of love with him somewhere around the time when his money dried up. Steve is a resourceful guy, and he managed to rebuild his fortunes bigger and better than before, but she never let him forget about what happened way back then. And that's not just a turn of phrase, either. She really NEVER let him forget what happened. She brought it up constantly. She never cut him any slack, because even though he was seeing to her every wish and desire, it was never enough to overcome what had happened when I was a sophomore in high school. I loathed spending time with her, because she never let us forget how he'd let her down. She nagged. She whined. She regularly retired to her room with migraines whenever we visited. She was, in general, an overwhelming pain in the ass, and we couldn't stand her. Which was fair enough, because she couldn't stand us, either.

So, when my mother announced, about two years ago, that the witch had filed for divorce just shy of their 25th wedding anniversary, the majority of us silently cried, "Hallelujah!" We were, of course, worried about the kids, but we thought this was a good thing. He'd given it his best shot. Really and truly he had. He'd done everything possible to save his marriage and it wasn't enough for her. He moved out, bought his own house, and settled in for life as a single dad. He was doing pretty well with this, although I know for a fact he was lonely, but fortunately God smiled upon him and brought him in contact with his new wife, who was not new to him, because she was the mother of one of his daughter's friends. They fell in love and got married quickly---yea LDS Church----but they kept the wedding small, with just their respective immediate families, so only one of the sibs had met her beforehand. That particular brother told me she was the "Anti-{Insert Ex-SIL's name Here}" so that was good enough for me. But I was still curious to meet her. And I finally got the chance on Thursday.

And she's SO nice. And NORMAL. And smart. And easy to talk to. And I am SO glad my brother married her! Woohoo! While the situation was a little weird, because you usually meet your sibling's intended before the marriage, not after, I'm glad of the outcome. The ex-SIL has remarried, as well, so it looks like everyone's getting on with their lives. (And apparently she married a gold digger, so maybe, just maybe, there's some justice in this world and she's just going to get hers.)

The only thing about Steve's visit that bugs me is that the dingbat left his credit card at the restaurant where we had lunch. This meant I had to go back down there three times---first to announce the loss to them and to see if they had it, second to check and see if they'd found it yet, and third to actually pick it up when it turned up---and the bugger didn't even say 'thank you.' He just called, told the husband about it, the husband told me about it, and I was dispatched to take care of the problem. Hmmph. When we called to say we had it, he never called back to say, "Thank You for saving me a shedload of trouble!" Hmmph. It would have taken him less than a minute to do so, but he didn't bother.

Stupid brothers.

I'll drop it in the mail today after I "forgot" to do so on Saturday. If I can make it to the post office today. You know, with my busy schedule, it's hard to get make time for petty errands like this one.

The rest of our weekend was fairly uneventful. Fortunately, we didn't get pounded with the storms they got to the south of here, so this meant, despite the threatening weather, we packed a picnic dinner and meandered over to the Lake Harriet Rose Garden for a little Shakespeare on Saturday night. The Cromulent Shakespeare Company put on Love's Labour Lost, which was not a play I was familiar with, so my expectations were not high. I have to say, however, they were very good. Both the husband and I were impressed. Usually, when you go to Shakespeare in the Park, it's usually a wash of an experience: you get the cheap thrill of sneaking a bottle of wine without getting busted for open container violations, but the acting is usually substandard, and the language, usually, gets completely lost in the trees (or in the case of the Lake Harriet Bandshell, the noise of the jets coming in for a landing at MSP). Not here, though. The staging was simple (no sets, no stage, they simply used a hill to seat the audience and set up on the flat in front, with a magnificent bank of trees as a backdrop.) and the actors, unlike the people they usually get to populate free plays, had a respect for the language, and actually---gasp---developed their characters. It was, by far, the best Shakespeare in the Park experience I've ever had. If you have the opportunity to go to one of their performances, I would highly recommend it.

Yesterday, we didn't really do much at all. Sunday is the husband's one day off per week, so we usually try to keep it simple. Too much activity ruins it. Yesterday was no different. Because we'd been around the lake the night before, we decided not to go over there again, and stuck around the neighborhood instead. I'd been bugging the husband for a couple of days now to play Scrabble with me (The chemo brain pops up every now and again if I don't keep rewiring my gray matter by doing crosswords and playing Scrabble and I've been lax in this lately.) and we decided to be that couple. You know, the one who hangs out at the coffee shop and plays a game to while away the time? Yep. That's us. And it was very pleasant. We sat outside, and the husband kicked my ass by fifty points! ARRRRRGGGGGGHHH! Again, in case you missed my Master Class in "How to Win At Scrabble", if you get stuck with the 'Q' at the end, you're fucked. No if's, and's or but's about it. Then we watched some tee vee, had dinner, went for a walk, and watched some Sunday night tee vee. We have two recommendations for new summer viewing. First off, we like In Plain Sight on USA. The plot revolves around a US Marshal in Albequerque who is assigned to look after people in the Witness Protection Program. She's a bit dysfunctional, but a highly inventive character. I think the program's still finding its legs, but it's pretty good on the whole, and sure as hell beats reality tee vee. Also, the Discovery Channel (ah, my beloved Discovery Channel, how I love thee. Let me count the ways...) started airing When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions last night, and if you run across the reruns of the first two episodes this week, and are something of a space junkie, I would highly recommend watching. It's not the most expansively researched piece I've ever seen on NASA (Werner Von Braun isn't even mentioned when they start chatting about the Mercury and Gemini rockets), and is very astronaut-centric, but it is interesting nonetheless. NASA has opened their film archives and there's all sorts of footage that's never been seen before. The first two episodes deal with the Mercury and Gemini programs, respectively, and they're jumping head first into the Apollo missions next week, so catch up while you've got the opportunity. Gary Sinise narrates and does a very nice job with it.

Posted by: Kathy at 09:56 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.

But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together toward Victory!

I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory!

Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

Posted by: Kathy at 11:31 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Aw, crap. Bo Diddley has passed on.

Posted by: Kathy at 11:33 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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We've finally had a gorgeous summery day. Sunny, warm, not too humid. It was perfect. The only extra thing that the husband and I could ask for is, ahem, for it not to be Art Fair weekend. The Art Fair was fun the first couple of years we lived here in the Cake Eater Pad; ever since, however, it's become an absolute pain in the ass. For three days we're inundated by people. Lots and lots of people. Who crowd out the way to our usual shopping destinations. Like the grocery store, the drug store, etc. They're all over the place, and, quite frankly, my greatest personal fear is that the husband and I are going to get caught up in one of these moo-ish crowds, that he (meaning the husband) is going to lose it entirely, and that there will be broken necks and blood running into the sewers. If people could just learn how to freakin' WALK, we wouldn't have a problem. Alas...suffice it to say, we're over it, even if there are a gyros or fried little donuts covered in cinnamon sugar suddenly within walking distance.

Anyway, today, as I mentioned, was gorgeous, but a little before six pm CDT, I noticed the sky was going dark gray. Everything went still around six, and then, about five after, all hell broke loose. The wind howled. The rain poured, and completely overwhelmed our gutters, bypassing the downspouts on both sides of the house, but, most importantly, I experienced something I'd never experienced before: a hail storm that lasted longer than five minutes.

Want to see what that sort of wreckage looks like?

Here's the steps on the front porch

Here's a quarter, for scale

Here's my freakin' shredded hosta. One of them. Everything's pretty much trashed.

Here's the street...all flooded and icy on the last day of May

See the tents in the distance? That's the Art Fair. The poor bastards. I'm fairly certain they closed early today. Again. Just like yesterday, because there was another storm then as well. Quite frankly, with the amount of wind, ice and water, I'm amazed that any of those tents are standing.

Some dude crossing the street in not the best choice of available footwear. That had to be cold.

At the time of this writing, it's 7:43 CDT. There is STILL hail on the grass and the sidewalks. Because the front came through, it broke the warmth and we dropped, oh, about fifteen degrees in five minutes. As the ground is warm, and the air is cold---we have a nice fog settling in. According to radar, there's another round coming in later. GOOD TIMES!

Posted by: Kathy at 06:45 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Harvey Korman, dead at age 81.

Everyone seems to be posting Blazing Saddles clips in tribute, so I shall go another way. I humbly present "Went With the Wind," The Carol Burnett Show's parody of Gone With the Wind.

Perhaps these clips don't showcase Harvey's talents directly, but the sketch simply would not have worked without him. It just wouldn't have. His Clark Gable impersonation is DEAD ON PERFECT.

I just don't know what to say, other than watch the clips and see him in action. And if you're really looking for something to while away the time, go surfing on YouTube. You'll laugh---and you'll laugh hard. That, perhaps, is the best tribute one could offer, and I'm sure he'd have liked that. Because, if nothing else, it's pretty obvious Harvey reveled in a good laugh.

Posted by: Kathy at 09:55 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Much like everyone else, I have one hundred and one different ways to cook chicken. Fortunately for us, because said one hundred and one recipes were becoming a little stale, I found a new one in a little magazine dearest Chrissy signed me up for last year, as a treat when I was suffering through chemo.

I thought I'd post it, just in case you were looking for your one hundred and second way to cook chicken. And, as it's a grill recipe, the seasonal timing is perfect. (For those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway.)

Misted Ginger Chicken

Makes one chicken

Combine in a bowl:
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon fresh grated ginger
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon fresh minced thyme
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
Minced zest of one lemon

In a spray bottle, pour one bottle/can of ginger beer or really good ginger ale.

Spread the rub on the chicken bits (in the actual recipe, they call for a whole chicken, split on the backbone, with each breast, thigh, wing, and leg neatly folded into two, easily grilled bits, but as I had plenty of chicken in the freezer and none of it was in whole-form, I simply used the bits and bobs from a fryer.), making sure to spread the rub under the skin and on top of the skin.

Grilling the chicken is a bit of an adventure, because they call for you to use a technique called "indirect grilling" by which you place the chicken bits around the edge of the grill, and not directly on top of the flame. This takes longer, but the results, I guarantee you, are worth the extra time involved.

Place the chicken bits on the grill, away from the heat source, and don't move them for the entire cooking time. You don't need to flip them at all, as they will cook nicely without your efforts. All you need to do is, every ten or fifteen minutes, mist them with the spray bottle of ginger beer/ale to keep the skin moist, and to flavor it. The ginger ale/beer lightly carmelizes under the heat and provides a nice flavor and crispiness to the skin. And that's it. That's all you have to do.

It took about forty minutes or so to cook two thighs and three legs. If you cook the breasts, I would suspect it would take a bit longer, simply because most chickens nowadays have huge boobs. But the flavor of the ginger entirely transformed the chicken. To paraphrase the husband, most chicken dishes taste like, well, chicken, and don't transform into anything new. The ginger brought a entirely different flavor out of the chicken. He enjoyed it tremendously, particularly because I served it with the first of the sweet corn I could find, and a salad. It was a nice, light supper on a warm day.

Highly recommended.

Posted by: Kathy at 09:25 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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It's very dry, but Freeman Dyson's review of two global warming tomes in The New York Review of Books is well worth the time it will take to muddle through.

Posted by: Kathy at 12:36 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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A billionaire who doesn't own a home. Or a car. Or any of the other trappings that come with massive wealth.

After making his billions, Mr. Berggruen, 46, lost interest in acquiring things: They didnÂ’t satisfy him, and in fact had become something of a burden. So he started paring down his material life, selling off his condo in New York, his mansion in Florida and his only car. He hatched plans to leave his fortune to charity and his art collection to a new museum in Berlin.

For him, wealth is about lasting impact, not stuff.

“Everybody is different and I think that we live in a material world,” he told me. “But for me, possessing things is not that interesting. Living in a grand environment to show myself and others that I have wealth has zero appeal. Whatever I own is temporary, since we’re only here for a short period of time. It’s what we do and produce, it’s our actions, that will last forever. That’s real value.”

When I pressed him on why he no longer got much enjoyment from acquiring more “things,” he said this: “First, I don’t need it. Secondly, maybe in a bizarre kind of way, I don’t want to be dependent on it or have the responsibility. I don’t get that much enjoyment out of saying ‘I own it.’ ”{...}

Curious.

Because when I say I don't have a problem not owning a car right now, particularly when gas prices are as high as they are, people freak out---and they do freak out, and in the process wind up treating me like a freak. They can't get their heads around the notion that you could live without one. Then they quiz you incessantly about how you manage to survive, whilst they're not very subtly trying to suss out the "real" reason you don't have a car. Or haven't bought a house, or whatever else it might be that they own and you don't.

I wonder if his billionaire cronies give him shit for not having a mansion and a Ferrari. Or if they simply let him be "eccentric." Because if they do let him off the hook, well, that would be something different, wouldn't it? Because it doesn't seem like middle class people let you off the hook if you choose not to follow the same thirty-year payment plan that they do.

Because, if you're not wealthy, I guarantee you, there is no such thing as "eccentric." There's "crazy" and "bat shit loco."

You can probably guess what most people think I am when I tell them I get around by bus and rent the Cake Eater pad, instead of paying a mortgage on a depreciating house.

Posted by: Kathy at 04:54 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Ok. Finally, I've gotten around to figuring out how to upload all of the posts Kathy made on Blogspot before moving here. You can now find the archives (low on the left column) that were missing from August 2003 to December 2004.

The pictures didn't come across and the formatting is hash, but they're now available.

(You have no idea what a pain in the ass this was.)

Posted by: MRN aka "The Husband" at 10:49 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Ahem

I waited nineteen years for this piece of shit?

Posted by: Kathy at 09:56 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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