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New Order and Concert Etiquette
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkOr12AQpnU[/youtube] Our friends Marilee and Paul had planned to see New Order in San Francisco on Friday, but life (ok, work) got in the way, so they gave the tickets to us. I was SO into New Order back in the late 80s. I loved them. Ted and I saw them in concert in 1989, where New Order was headlining with the Sugarcubes and PIL (Public Image Limited). The Sugarcubes couldn’t get the audience interested, and PIL were great. New Order was boring, and a lot of people left before the concert ended. So I wasn’t sure that I would pay to see them again, but since Paul and Marilee…
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Kefta Dog with Roasted Tomatoes
A few weeks ago, a shocking thing happened around here. I turned on the TV to the Food Network, and there was an actual cooking show being aired! I know you’re thinking, “No J, you’re confused. That was a cooking COMPETITION, or else it was a show where Guy F guy drives around and takes HUGE bites out of greasy food”. It wasn’t. It was an actual cooking show, where the host makes a recipe, and you decide for yourself whether you might like to try the recipe at home. I was in so much shock that I ended up watching an episode of ‘Sandwich King‘, a show I of…
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Friday Randomness
What’s new, Pussycat? Anything exciting going on? Interesting stuff on the internet? Stupid politicians doing stupid things, another mass shooting to piss us off and bring us further down into despair. Maybe Prince George got another tooth or Kimye said something arrogant. I’m going to stick my head in the sand and ignore it all for the moment. Ted and I celebrated 21 years together last week. Wait, no…it was our 21st wedding anniversary. We were clearly together prior to our marriage. He worked, I worked, and we went out for a lovely dinner in the evening. It was really nice, though the restaurant wasn’t firing on all cylinders this…
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Give All to Love
21 years ago today, I married the love of my life, my best friend, my partner in crime. As with any marriage, we’ve had times that were good and times that were more difficult, but never once have I regretted the choice we made, to marry our fortunes together. 21 years. Our marriage is now old enough to drink. I keep telling people that, and no one thinks it’s funny but me. Oh well. Our coffee table has a glass top, and drawers inside that can display treasures. We have books in both drawers. One side is Jefferson’s Letters, and is open to a piece titled, Bastille Day. We have…
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Wordless Wednesday
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Meena Alexander ~ Poetry Month
I’m not sure how I came across this poem, but when I did, it broke my heart and moved me so much. Meena Alexander is so talented and evokes a pain of which so many of us are unaware. In this poem, she tells of the pain of three young women, unwilling to put her family into a desperate financial situation so that she may be married…also unwilling to deal with the shame of not being married. It is a glimpse into a very different world that still manages to bring our own sexist culture into focus. A School Teacher from South India By Meena Alexander Portions of a mango…
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Wordless Wednesday
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Quinoa Salad with Peaches and Pickled Onions
We’re kind of late to the quinoa bandwagon, but now that we’re here, I enjoy finding recipes that use the protein packed grain. I saw this one online, and loved the idea of peaches, arugula, and tomatoes mixed in with the quinoa. I wasn’t exactly sure about the pickled onions, but the reviews all said it’s key, and kind of makes the recipe, so I went for it. I’m glad I did. The pickled onions were delicious. Smelly when you’re heating up the vinegar, and also smelly when you’re pickling the onions, but delicious anyway. I subbed nectarines from the farmers’ market for the peaches, because we had them and…
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Deserving More
Last night we went to a graduation party for one of Maya’s friends, and of course there were several families there with kids who had also graduated. I was talking to one of the moms about the cost of college, and talking to her brought a couple of things to mind. 1st, the issue of deserving things that you cannot afford. The daughter is going to an expensive private school, even though the family cannot afford that in any way. The cost is about $60,000 a year. The daughter has worked hard and is receiving scholarships through the school that will cover half of that, bringing the cost down to…
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Dirge Without Music
How fitting is this angry poem, that rails against the unfairness and cruelty of death, in our current time of school and other mass shootings. The bitterness that boils up inside me, inside so many of us, as we hear of yet another child, police officer, teacher, friend, shot and killed. So many deaths, so many broken hearts left behind. I don’t know why Congress can’t stand up to the NRA. Yes I do. Money. Money and the fear that they will be thrown out of office, like Eric Cantor was (not by the NRA, not because of gun control, but an example of watching out for your constituency). So…
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California Chrome
Gosh I’m excited for today’s Belmont Stakes. I am a big fan of California Chrome, I like his back story, I like that he’s local, and his owners and trainer seem like decent people. Of course, being from California myself, I’ve been rooting for him all along. And now, once again, we have a shot at a Triple Crown. It’s been forever, hasn’t it? I find the history of it to be pretty interesting. There was a wealth of Triple Crown winners in the 1930s and 40s. 3 horses won the Triple Crown in the 30s, and 4 in the 40s. Then nothing until Secretariat won the Belmont Stakes by…
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Proud Mama
The other night was awards night at Maya’s high school, where the Seniors with awards of one kind or another are recognized before their families and their peers. The kids who are members of CSF (California Scholarship Federation), the kids who have received special honors from the school or district, the kids who have received outside scholarships, the kids with athletic honors. All are honored. We knew what some of Maya’s honors would be, but there was one (The Walnut Creek Women’s Scholarship) that we did not know about ahead of time. We knew she had applied…it was the scholarship I mentioned in an earlier post. So we’re sitting there,…
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Poverty & Riches
I’m joining Nance in declaring June to be poetry month, even though officially that was April or something. Who cares. We didn’t know about it then, we know about it now, and we like poetry. There’s a song, Hands, by Jewel that I like a lot. For some reason, it is often the song that comes to mind for me when horrible, huge things happen. Not personal things, not like my mom dying, or Genevieve going blind. I mean the attacks on September 11th, or yet another mass shooting or bombing, perhaps a devastating earthquake. In the face of tragedies like these, I find some comfort in the words of…
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Friday Randomness (belated…)
Isn’t that a cute Graduation Invite, for a proud parent to send out to invite her friends and family to show off her daughter, and celebrate said daughter’s accomplishment in school? Yes, it is. See how cute, the picture of her Kindergarten graduation? Her official Senior photo (in my great aunt’s pearls), her other, casual Senior photos? Sigh. The thing is, Maya doesn’t want a graduation party. She doesn’t want to hang out with a bunch of Ted and my friends, feeling self-conscious because everyone is looking at her. She and her friends will have been partying at the ‘All Knighter’ (They’re the Knights), and she’d rather go from party…
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Maya’s Senior Ball
Last night was the Senior Ball for Maya and her classmates. The ball was held in San Francisco, at the new Exploratorium (which Ted and I have not yet seen). They started out with pictures in a local park, then moved on to dinner, then a limo ride into San Francisco for the dance. Home again, then to an after party/sleepover at a friend’s house. She drug herself in at about 6:30 this morning, and as of this writing, is still asleep. I remember my Senior Prom well, what a good time I had, and how nostalgic I started feeling for my classmates, and how we were on the verge…