Kitchen Scraps

How wonderful to sleep in until 6 am. Leisurely coffee with Kevin and some Mafia Wars (*blush*) online. Kevin made yummy scrambled eggs with cream cheese and herbs, and I made toast. Then I picked up my bamboo hat and we went out into the garden. Until my stooper gave out, it was delightful to bend over and pull weeds, feeling the sun on my back but not on my head. The perennial bed gave a sense of satisfaction as I cleaned out the tiny weeds as far in as I can reach. My blood pressure is sufficiently controlled these days that I actually get light-headed when I straighten up too fast, which is good news.

I had a moment of bliss, weeding and chatting with babysasquatch as the kitties lazed in the grass under the grapevine. Ahhhhh. Gotta enjoy summer here while it lasts. Now he's cooking the currants he picked a few days ago for homemade pie after supper!

Foie. Gras. Jelly. Donut. Oh my dear Hestia.

“We’re just like our parents,” says a colleague of mine who came out right after college, in the mid-eighties. “We fought really hard so that our children would have things easier than we did, and now we resent them for it and sit around complaining that they lack character because they had everything too easy.”

And our tales of struggle for liberation are as irrelevant, unpleasant, and dull to young gay men as our parents' tales of the Depression were to us. Oy.

Via bitterlawngnome: The Gay Generation Gap.

It had been a horrible year. After Dr. King was assassinated, the cities went up in flames, then RFK was killed just as he was about to run and win, the Vietnam war dragged on and on, Walter Cronkite was showing us unsettling pictures, my mom had just gotten divorced and we had had to move again... then Nixon decided to go for it in prime time, and we watched a man walk on the moon. It was a much-needed tonic. No wonder there were (and are!) people who thought it was faked for the publicity value. We were riveted to the TV.

Oh, hell yeah.

When we went to Winco earlier in the week, Kevin bought an eggplant and asked me to make baba ganouj. I did, but we didn't eat it, and I didn't coat it with oil, so it sat in the fridge for three days and got kind of dried out. Not so appetizing, and we had no pita bread or good olives or whatnot to go with it.

Today Kevin marinated onions, green peppers, and chicken thigh meat in oil and citrus and herbs, then skewered it and grilled it over coals. With jasmine rice and the much-increased-garlickiness purée for a sauce, it was really really fine. Yum.

Born November 4, 1916, in St. Joseph, Missouri, Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. became a United Press correspondent in 1939. He was one of the first journalists accredited to American forces after the United States entered World War Two in 1941....

I remember the office building downtown, long torn down, where there was a gilt-painted window: "Walter Cronkite Sr., D.D.S."...

My landsman Walter Cronkite has died at age 92. Olav ha-shalom.

I really really really really REALLY love arugula.

Oh boy. I have never played an online game before. Hell, I played Ms. Pac Man three times in The Transfer in SF in, oh, 1984. But I am playing Mafia Wars on Facebook -- and am thus doubly damned!

But if you wanna play, be sure to send me a facebook friend request so I can invite you into my mafia!

My sister Sharon (but not Sharon) was working in a hospital lab, and for some reason I was there to bother her. She kept telling me she was going to get in trouble because I was there and her boss was a tough nut. The boss was coming; I was going to hide but it was too late. The boss came in and was wearing the old-fashioned habit of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, minus the headgear. I got all nostalgic and wanted to tell this Gorgon nun how her order ran the hospital where I was born, blah blah, but she cut me off after I asked for 30 seconds to talk to her. I called her "bitch!" and walked out.

Then: I had traveled to somewhere, not St. Joe, to visit a family of old friends, not the Tovars. They had a marvelous barbecue grill and they loved the food I could make from it. It was time to leave, and suddenly I was in a car with Kevin (but not Kevin), who asked me if I had gotten ready for the homeward trip. I realized I had not picked up my luggage, or bought train tickets, or even made reservations. Suddenly I was slone again, walking back to the house of my friends to get my bags. I got my suitcase and walked out, saying "I love you guys!" when I realized I had taken their barbecue.

Then I woke up and had slept in until 5:45!

It's my Friday, thank goddess. Next two days off, then three on, then two off, then five on, two off, five on... and it's August. I am supposed to have the whole month off, though they are already talking about how "we" feed pre-season football. Hm.

My friend Dusty called to ask a favor: he has bought a car, having been without for some time, and needed a ride to Airway Heights to the licensing office. Having just been there with Kevin, I knew right where to go. Afterward he came and hung out a bit and saw the house for the first time. He said it suits me, which was very pleasing.

Gave him a ride home and stopped by jefu and hippybear's house to say hi, after a good dinner: we went to the Chinese buffet.

I know, I know. Yeccchh. But it was GOOD. The pans looked a little bedraggled, but that is because they hardly put any food in them -- they continually cook small batches of a couple dozen dishes, all of which were way tasty. Good sesame chicken, yummy veggie lo mein, sesame balls with bean paste inside, REALLY fine string beans, perfectly crisp and flavorful, wrinkled from the wok, not from age. Delicious tiny Manila clams, perfectly steamed with no intrusive flavors over the sweet marine taste. Yummy fried meat dumplings with a fine strong ginger sauce. Good fried rice with no sugar or soy sauce, Allah be praised. Crispy chewy spicy sweet Mongolian beef. Then Kevin had some ripe juicy cherries and salad. It was a marvelously satisfying meal.

And now the All-Star game is on, yay! The president looked great; he's very telegenic.

I wanted to splurge just a little bit. I went to the state liquor store and spent $8 on a three-pack of the silliest little 187-ml bottles of Codorniù sparkling Spanish cava. They have little champagne-cork-shaped screw tops under foil wrappers. But why three?

Seems to me that the telephone call has taken the place of the telegram as the deliverer of dire news. (Haven't gotten such a call, *ptui ptui ptui*, just thinking about it.)

HBTY
HBTY
HBDsweetsmartogam
HBTY!

And many more.

HBTY
HBTY
HBDsweetsmarthotmuchmissedchickenfarmerbill_bill
HBTY!

Wherever you are.

An NPR story just reminded me of 1972. I was in ninth-grade Spanish class and we got a monthly? semimonthly? periodical of some sort, a Weekly Reader-esque tool for studying the language. One issue had a shiny little square floppy phonograph record in it, with a song that suddenly sprang into my mind this morning:

uno de enero
dos de febrero
tres de marzo
cuatro de abril
cinco de mayo
seis de junio
siete de julio
Sán Fermín
la la la la la la laaaa...

Adios Robert McNamara, died in his sleep at 93. Peace upon him, as ironic as that may seem.

Hey GBLT folk in the military, Colin Powell is still your friend.

Lucy came to the kitchen-table door and meowed. I told her, "Go around to the other door and come in through your cat door." And she did, popped in just like that! Milton jumped in and out through the hole before the door was installed, so I think he'll be fine with it, too.

We now have a cat door. The reciprocating saw was not the best tool for me to use, but it worked.

EDIT: And we have a working washing machine, thanks to a guy named Matt and a check for $150.

HBTY
HBTY
HBDfiercewomanmomfriendandartistkdotdammit
HBTY!