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Guest Blogging!
Hey Everyone, Py Korry (aka, Ted) has invited me to make a mix of six songs on his site! I pick the songs, according to his rules, then he mixes them and puts them online for your enjoyment. Check it out, and let us know what you think. Weekend fun!
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Brentwood Corn
There are two Brentwoods in California….the Brentwood down near Hollywood, where the rich and famous reside, and the Brentwood in the ‘Far East Bay’ or the ‘Far Western San Joaquin Valley’, whichever sounds better to you. 😉 Our local Brentwood is known for the quality of their corn. When you go to the grocery stores or farmers’ market, the signs proudly proclaim, “Brentwood Corn”, and you know you’re getting the good stuff. Well, we went to Brentwood the other night for dinner. Ted’s mom had heard good things about Cap’s Oak Street Bar & Grill, so we all piled in the car and took her there for her birthday dinner.…
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Friday Cat Blogging
This is Acidophilus, Ted’s cat. But this is pretty much the only view we ever got of her, because she was a feral cat. Ted, for those of you who don’t know us personally, is VERY allergic to cats. VERY. His eyes puff up like a boxer who has been hit in the face 3 too many times, his throat constricts, and asthma kicks in. And that’s from being in a room where a cat has been. I’ve never seen him actually have to deal with a real live cat. So, back when he lived on Fell St. in San Francisco, he lived on the 2nd (or was it 3rd?)…
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Thirteen Grammar Pet Peeves
Here is where I make everyone think I’m a big grammar snob. I don’t THINK I am, but maybe I’m wrong. I’m a horrible speller (though I promise to TRY to run spell check before publishing my posts from now on!), and I do not claim to have perfect grammar. I loves me a split infinitive from time to time, but it drives me crazy to read (or hear) certain mistakes over and over again. It’s careless, and I think people should take a little bit of care when they’re trying to communicate. Otherwise it distracts them from your meaning, and you’re not communicating well. Here are the ones that…
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Why do IDIOTS get away with crap?
Remember the plum tree that keeps me awake? Well, two corrections…as someone pointed out, it’s the fence making the noise, not the tree…and it’s actually a cherry tree. Not like the kind you go pick cherries from in an orchard, but the kind that drops cherries all over the sidewalk and they make a mess and you step on them and track the juice in on your carpet. Yeah, that kind of tree. Anyway, we’re tree hugging liberals, and we certainly don’t want the tree cut down…just pruned a bit, so it doesn’t knock down our fence. We live in a condo complex, and Ted is the president of the…
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Happy Birthday
To Vin (Ted’s uncle), who thinks blogs are stupid, so he won’t be reading this. I hope he has a happy birthday, anyway. 🙂 To Pat, my ex-CEO, a guy who defines aging well for me. He rides his bike to the farmers’ market on Sundays. Twice if he needs to load up on heirloom tomatoes. He’s got a gorgeous significant other, and she’s not 40 years younger than he is. He defines a ‘superstar husband’ as one who realizes the value of wife and kids, and does his share in the care of children and home. He wanted to learn more about Civil Rights in the south, so he…
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Father Bob
The other day, I mentioned a poem by ee cummings, that was introduced to me by a teacher of mine, and I said I would tell you a bit about him someday. Well, today is the day. That teacher’s name was Bob Hanlon, and he was my Latin teacher, as well as my Composition in Literature teacher in High School. My first day of 9th grade, when I first saw him, all I could think was of the Beatles’ line, “I am the Walrus”, because he was kind of pale, kind of roundish, and had this big, walrus-like mustache. But the more I got to know him, the more I…
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Our Weekend So Far
This weekend has been busy so far. Friday evening we went to a potluck hosted by some friends from Maya’s school. One nice thing to come out of that was that the only other girl there for Maya to play with was E, a girl who she doesn’t really get along with at school or in scouts. They had a nice time, and I’m hoping that opened her eyes a bit to the possibility that this girl might be OK. Not that they will necessarily hang out at school or scouts, but that maybe when they’re the only people around, they can get along then. There are dynamics involved when…
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Saturday Poetry
OK, after the last three days of serious, personal family stuff, mostly written by someone else, I’ve decided to lighten things up a bit, and bring you a poem today, also written by someone else. Who knows, maybe this will become a Saturday tradition, a poem that I love but did not write. no man,if men are gods;but if gods must be men,the sometimes only man is this (most common,for each anguish is his grief; and,for his joy is more than joy,most rare) a fiend;if fiends speak truth;if angels burn by their own generous completely light, an angel;or(as various worlds he’ll spurn rather than fail immersurable fate) coward,clown,traitor, idiot,dreamer,beast- such…
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The Final Chapter
Thanks everyone for sticking with this long, long tale. Luckily, it is one with a happy ending. I met my dad in 1987, this story was written in 1990, and now here we are, almost 20 years into this parent/child relationship. I feel like I know my father now a lot more than I did then, and we have the best relationship one could expect, seeing as how we have never lived in the same state, talk about the same town or house. Being the oldest of his daughters, I got the privledge of being the first to make him a father-in-law, the first to make him a grandfather. My…
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The Saga Continues…
I hope that some of you are still interested in this very LONG story, which could in reality be summed up thusly: “A man and a woman have a child. Child grows up without man. Meets him at age 21.” The end. But we like stories, we like to know how things come about, why we are who we are, etc. So I’ll continue. Today, Part II. Belated Fatherhood by Susan Stanley (continued) Joycelyn Ward Fleeing the Father The meaning of a tale depends upon the teller. With each telling, the tale shifts, choosing how it wants to be told. We sift, resift and sift still again, accommodating our evolving…
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A Tale In Three Parts
I didn’t grow up in what you might call a ‘traditional’ family. My mother raised my brother and me by herself, and we had no contact at all with our fathers or their families. When I was 21, my mom got in touch with my dad, and he came to California to meet me. That was almost 19 years ago, and we’ve had a pretty good relationship ever since. I will never have the childhood that I would have had if they had stayed in contact with one another, but the childhood I did have was a good one, mostly happy and secure in the love of my mother. A…
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Tuesday Cooking
I’m working on a longer post, which I had intended for today, but you will all just have to wait for it until tomorrow. It’s about how I came to meet my dad at the age of 21. That’s your teaser. For today, you get this yummy recipe, which I made for dinner last night. It was SO Yummy. Comes from Sunset magazine, 2003. Spaghetti with Roasted Tomatoes and Toasted Crumbs Ingredients: 2 cups cherry tomatoes, rinsed and halved Salt and pepper 2 tblsp extra virgin olive oil 1 clove garlic 2 tblsp finely chopped parsley 6 oz. dried spaghetti 2 slices sourdough bread, torn into pieces 2 tblsp chopped…
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Russian Cooking Class
The main fundraiser at Maya’s school is a Spring Festival, which combines with a live auction, and raises much needed funds to keep the school doors open. The big ticket items tend to be the quilts, which are made from squares made by the students and sewn by dedicated parents, trunks made by woodworking parents, and excursions put together by the teachers. One of Maya’s teachers, Zhanna, is Russian. She emigrated from the Ukraine about 10 years ago. Her offering for the auction was a day of cooking, where the parents and kids would learn to make traditional Russian food, enjoy the pool at her condo’s clubhouse, and all around…
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Failure to Thrive
Any parents out there know what this term means…when you have a newborn, and they’re not doing so well. Well, no newborns around here, but what with the weather being 103 yesterday and me getting all grumpy because I was hungry (just for dinner, it’s not like I even missed a meal, for goodness sake) and then I had a hard time sleeping last night because, though the fog came in and brought much needed relief from the heat, it also brought a wind that pushes the plum tree next door against the fence, causing a creaking noise ALL FRIGGIN NIGHT LONG. I’m just saying, it was hard to sleep.…