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Whiskey for breakfast

The other morning I dreamed that I had whiskey for breakfast. A not-wee dram of single malt in a cut crystal glass with the sun sparkling through it. Very pretty, but even in my dream I was appalled at myself.

Later that morning, after one cup of coffee, I was buried in the paperwork for my new job (the preliminary forms, just so they'll let me in the door). That whiskey was looking a lot less appalling.

I didn't know it then, but "Whiskey for Breakfast" is a song. In fact, there are many songs. Listen to the pretty one [at].

I stuck with coffee and got through the forms, more or less. I am not sure what to put for my address: my permanent address or my local address in Alexandria? My indecision is an excuse to play with my collection of sticky arrow flags. I will find out the answer at orientation. Or perhaps I'll email the long-suffering HR lady.

One of the forms was a blank fingerprint card. The instruction directed me to go to my local police department and get fingerprinted. What, I can't get a stamp pad from Ben Franklin and do it myself? Well, that would be a bad idea. They only gave me one card and I'd probably make a hideous mess of it, my clothes, my kitchen, the cats … Surprisingly, people need to get fingerprinted often enough, outside of being arrested, that it's on the Police Department FAQ. And fingerprinting is pretty high tech now, I discovered. There is no ink, just a scanner, a laser printer, and a person to press your fingers onto the glass many, many times, until there's a good capture.

That's not the last of the forms by a long shot. The packet included instructions for some online forms to which I won't have access for another week.

I can hardly wait.

White Witch approved

After reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, you thought Turkish Delight must be the most wonderful treat in the world and you were sadly disappointed by the cornstarch dusted, rose-scented goo you bought at an international market. You said, "Ptooey! Man, what was C. S. Lewis on?" And you never tried Turkish Delight again, assuming it was some Victorian era "treat" which predated candy that actually tasted good.

Then, years later, you went out for falafel and noticed some goo in the pastry case at the falafel place. But this goo looked different. Chock full of pistachios, for one thing, and less cornstarch.

Tempting.

A couple years later, you actually got a piece and ate it.

And it was good. Tons of pistachios. Very rose flavored. Being an amalgam of sugar and fat, it's also very energizing. Tastes good with coffee. You had some for breakfast today. You are thinking you'd like some more.

If you're local, you can revise your opinion of C. S. Lewis's tastebuds at Aladdin Express. If you're not, I bet you can find a falafel place or Mediterranean bakery where they make their own.

Operation baby shower

If you're going to a baby shower, I highly recommend taking some LED ducks. They were a huge hit with the under-four set and the adults too. Definitely worth the drive out to Short Pump. After the unwrapping, the little kids latched on to the ducks (which stayed in their container in order for easy recovery after the party) and either poked their fingers through the holes to activate the ducks, or gnawed on the container if they weren't quite old enough to grasp the concept.

This baby, of the duckies and all the shower gift buying, is Oz's son's baby. Oz still shudders whenever he hears the word "Grandpa" and he heard it plenty today. Anyway, I'm just the baby-daddy's daddy's girlfriend. Nothing like a Grandma, and I'm only eleven years older than Oz's son anyway. Still, I heard "Grandma" in reference to myself rather more than I expected. As in "Who's this gift from? Oh, Grandma and Grandpa." And "Well, if you get an extra car seat, you can put it in Grandma and Grandpa's car."

The shower was held at the mother-to-be's father's house. When Oz told me where it was, I figured it was a big house. I hadn't figured on the pool, hot tub, and driveway on steroids (parking lot) filled with really big trucks. There was a Porsche too. Obviously going into computers and technology was a waste of time. We should have become hair stylists, like the other Grandpa.

Everyone at the shower had really good hair. The women all had serious hair, cleavage, and high heels. Except me. The mother-to-be does hair too. Now that she's in charge of Oz's son's hair, he's looking downright presentable. She also took charge of naming the baby, which is going to save them a fortune in therapy down the road.

This was a full on traditional baby shower, with games and favors, and also a big family party with lots of men, boys, Swedish meatballs and booze. I realized this was a different kind of shower when the mother-to-be teetered by on her high wedge sandals carrying a blue jello shot. "They told me this one was non-alcoholic." The baby is a boy, so of course the jello shots would be blue.

Having arrived a bit late, we missed most of the shower games, so I was left wondering why everyone was decorated with brightly painted clothespins and beaded diaper pins with plastic baby-themed charms. We did participate in making birthday cards for every year of the kid's life. I got year eleven and wished the kid "Happy Birthday" in three languages. We cut pieces of (baby blue) yarn for a game to estimate the girth of the mother-to-be. The winner of that game was a little girl who had the advantage of being at eye-level with the tummy. As many-feet-too-long pieces of yarn were wrapped around her, the mother-to-be said, "Didn't anybody guess too short?" We watched the grand opening of the huge pile of gifts. I took lots of pictures (Ish. That was kind of Grandma-like, wasn't it?) and wore down the batteries in my speedlight.

We are now partied out. I could never have kids. The ritual alone would kill me.

Buttons and bows

Now it's time to wrap the baby stuff we bought. We don't have any baby paper, which means more shopping. As we dither around in the occasion-specific wrapping paper aisle, another confused shopper wanders through with a cart full of toys.

"You see any Dora paper?" he asks.

"No. Would that be in a little girl's birthday section?" I see they have a section for everything else. Why not little girls' birthdays?

He looks around blankly. "Do they have that here?"

"I don't know. Hey, there's some monkey paper." I point it out to Oz, who has taken one look at the baby paper and shuddered away. The monkey paper is rather horrible, with kicklines of photoshopped chimps in birthday hats.

The guy looks at the monkey paper with us. "Huh. Kind of like her mother." From this I construe that the toys are for his daughter's daughter. Because he wouldn't say that about his wife. Would he?

"Those are chimps. Chimps aren't monkeys, they are apes," Oz points out.

"There's a bag with a picture of a monkey photocopying his butt." It's even more horrible than the monkey paper. Also, it is a chimp, which is an ape.

"Now that would be like her mother."

We don't touch that. The guy wanders off in search of the elusive Dora wrapping. Oz grabs a baby gift bag large enough to hold his baby presents. A blue bow is selected. And some paper with ducks. Our gifts, at least, will be presentable at the baby shower tomorrow.

Time flies

A whole week since I updated. Not meeting my minimum standard, am I?

I have been keeping busy with arrangements for my upcoming (not quite) move to Northern Virginia. (Words are involved. It's like writing.)

I've lined up a place to live: a cute basement apartment in the charming Del Ray neighborhood of Alexandria. It's a serious step up from the basement in Georgetown where I lived in 1989, but not quite as nice as my house. Unlike my house, however, the apartment is a ten minute (according to the bus schedule) bus ride from my office. I signed the lease today. My landlady now has more concrete proof of my employment than I do: my prospective employer faxed her a copy of my offer letter, which is more than I've seen.

I discovered that traffic on the Demon Highway is so horrendous I cannot face it on anything like a regular basis. Fortunately for my sanity, there are an Amtrak station within an easy walk of my office and conveniently timed trains to Richmond.

I'm making a list of everything I'll need to set up a satellite household. Damn. This is expensive. And neverending.

Fraidy cat

I am known to the outdoor cats who live along my walking route. Most of them are glad to see me and get a little chin scratch. Some of them are pretty insistent about that chin scratch and run after me, meowing loudly, if I don't stop long enough with them.

There are other cats, however, who run and hide. Makes me wonder about the kitty gossip grapevine.

This evening, as I was walking up 27th Street, I saw one of those hiders bathing himself in the middle of the street. He saw me coming.

He didn't run up under his porch like he usually does. How odd.

Greeting him, I knelt down and held out my fingertips in the universal "Hey, kitty, get your chin scratched" signal.

He still didn't run. He walked over and sniffed my fingers.

"After all these years," I said. "Finally."

I lifted my hand to rub him between the ears and he ran under a parked car.

Okay. Baby steps.

I didn't wear my blue suede shoes today

I do in fact have some. They need some serious breaking in and I'm not sure my feet are up for it.

That's about the extent of my commentary on the thirtieth anniversary of the Death of Elvis. (Does that sound like a Terry Pratchett character or what? Death of Rats, Death of Elvis. Death of Elvis wouldn't have too much to do except hang around the bar and comb his hair, because of course Death of Elvis wouldn't have a bare skull.) Way back on the day it happened, my reaction was basically "Who?" because my musical education had been pretty much limited to the Top 40 stylings of WLEE.

My childhood was tragic in the insidious way of water wearing away a stone drip by soul-poisoning drip.

Speaking of drips, a massive line of thunderstorms has been rolling through town for the last five hours. The thunder shakes the house. Water pounds on the roof. There is a damp smell.

I'll try not to think about the smell.

It's probably nothing.

Me and the ladies who lunch

Okay, so I skipped lunch. Fueled only by coffee and a chocolate truffle shaped like a pig (it was a big truffle), I headed out the road to Short Pump in search of light-up duckies.

The princess was telling me about a baby shower she'd just been to. One of the gifts was a set of duckies with LEDs inside which flicker in a multicolored pattern at a touch to the electrodes on their bottoms. "They're from Nordstrom. Only $12! I was telling Mountain Man [the husband] about them and he said, 'Those sound like something you'd like.' So I'm going to go get some."

Coincidentally enough, Oz and I will be going to a baby shower in less than two weeks.

So. Quest for duckies. We'll also get them something practical.

I found the duckies pretty quickly amongst all the highly gendered baby clothes (you can dress your kid in anything as long as it's a blue bear or a pink bunny) (only a slight exaggeration) (well, they had blue bunnies too).

The label says "Ages 3 and up."

Obviously these are for parents. No way will the power cell last three years till the kid is old enough to play with them. But very cute! The salesgirl said, "Oh, these are like the new hot baby gift. We are selling them like crazy!"

The Animal Squirters (insanely cute little rubber animals that squirt water) have no age label, so I grabbed a pack of those too. They're too big to choke on and we'll just hope there's no lead in the paint. If we buy a car seat, that'll cancel out the foolishness of the toys, right?

If you too go out looking for duckies, be sure to check out the great big saltwater aquarium in the Nordstrom baby department.

Then, with my Nordstrom shopping bag over my arm, I ventured out into the mall. Even though I hate shopping. But the mall is there and I am there, so I might as well look around.

I found a sale at Ann Taylor. I got a pair of slacks and a sweater at 70% off.

Instead of quitting while I was ahead, I went around looking for more baby stuff. Great color choices: pink or blue. Sheesh. This is the rich people mall. You'd think they'd have variety instead of unending bi-chromatic blandness. Where are the monkeys? That's what I want to know. A not-pink or not-blue onesie with monkeys on it? That's too much to ask from the mall.

It's not too much to ask from Google though. In 0.11 seconds I found a flying monkey onesie, sock monkey onesie, and monkey-including offerings from the Funky Monkey Baby Boutique.

Fight the pink and blue hegemony. Shop online. Not that you have a choice.

Capacity

After I get back from my walk, I ask Oz if he's still hungry. After demolishing tonight's dinner (mostly potatoes), he'd announced, "That was really good. I ate it all. I may want dessert later."

Now he says, "Well, if you feel the need for waffle cones full of ice cream, I'll take you out."

"I don't know about that. I might just have a coconut pop."

"Or if we have to go out and get a half gallon of Cherry Garcia … "

"They don't sell it in half gallons. You'd have to get four pints. I don't think you could even eat—"

"Don't!" Oz wags a finger at me.

"What? Because then you'd have to prove that you could—"

"Don't!" Again with the finger. He adds, "I know I could eat two pints."

Lost

As we were finishing up our lunch in our favorite East End eatery, a guy with a family reunion T-shirt came in and asked for directions to Byrd Park.

"Uh, do you mean Dorey Park?" the waitress asked. Dorey Park is just up the road from the restaurant.

"No? Byrd Park?"

Oz and I know where Byrd Park is. It's way back in town. The poor guy is suddenly deluged with directions, from Oz who doesn't ever remember street names and from the waitress who can at least tell the guy how to get to Main Street. Still, the directions are along the lines of "then you turn at the stop sign, but it's a traffic light now and it used to be a stop sign."

In the meantime, the waitress brings me a pen and a sheet of notebook paper. I say, "It's not hard to get there, but it's more than seven steps so you'll never remember if we don't write it down." Out loud and in pen, I methodically start to list the directions, starting with the road outside, while Oz and the waitress continue with the local color fountain of extra helpful information.

Some other family reunion people wander in to see what's going on and ask about funnel cake, there being a sign near the eatery.

I'm still working on the directions. Oz is listing all the places they'll pass on the way to the park. "Shockoe Bottom and the farmer's market. Then downtown and … "

The guy says, "That sounds like what we passed on the way out here." He's been looking confused, what with the directions involving a lot of roads turning into one-way wrong way streets and roads veering off and changing their names. It doesn't help that both Oz and the waitress are getting street names confused, so he's hearing way more street names than are warranted by the actual number of streets he'll be driving on. At least he'll see some familiar stuff along the way.

"It's a lot easier than it sounds," I assure him. In fact, once he gets to Main Street, he will only have to make one other turn. It's getting out to Main Street from the East End backroads that makes no sense.

When we finish, the guy takes the directions outside and suddenly more reunion people (easily identified by their T-shirts) come in and start buying cookies and bottled drinks to sustain themselves till they get to the picnic. When we leave the restaurant, we find a whole family reunion convoy out in the parking lot and the guy is going from car to car to explain what's going on. Probably something along the lines of "um, just follow me."

I hope they made it. Now I'm wishing we'd driven over to the park later to see.

101.8 ° in the shade

I keep checking the weather site for better news, but the story doesn't change. Boiling hot till Saturday. Even now, it's 11:30 pm and it's still 92 °.

Today was all about hiding from the heat. And fretting over things I can't control, but that's nothing to write about here. I've been lying low and reading a lot. Nothing, sadly, that I fell compelled either to recommend or deliver warnings against. I did laundry and folded it up. I researched financial instruments. I learned what a put is. In theory, I'll have a steady source of income soon and I will be investing. It doesn't hurt to be prepared. Once I start working, I probably won't have time to noodle around and learn this stuff.

Tomorrow will also be about hiding from the heat, but I have some midday appointments which will add a certain level of challenge.

Are these doldrums? I think so.

Bears of Doom

Bear Affair carnival ride as seen on I-95 last Sunday.

This isn't the first time we've seen these bears. Back in 2003 I photographed them from a different car on a different stretch of I-95.

I've never seen this ride in action, only in transit. I did a little googling and found where I could buy my own (used). It looks like you just stuff people into the bears' tummies and spin them around while they scream and perhaps barf. Some people video the process from inside the bears. I couldn't find any video shot from outside the bears.

It's like that old joke, "Outside of a book, dog is man's best friend. Inside of a book it's too dark to read." Only with bears and screaming.

Out of town

"So, how long are we in this hellhole?" Oz asked.

Hah. Hah. We were at the Hilton in Old Town Alexandria. A three-star hellhole with fluffy towels, superb air conditioning, and Starbucks in the lobby.

I may be taking a job up in Alexandria soon, so this was a preliminary exploration of the area where I'll be living and working during the week. Weekends will still belong to my beloved Church Hill, where Oz will be holding down the home front and the cats.

I have to say, I hope this Richmond trend of neighborhood blogs catches on in Alexandria. I went googling around and all I found was the Del Ray Sun, which simply does not compare to the Church Hill People's News. I'm longing for a crime map. None of the leasing agents will give me a straight answer (even when I say, "Really, I live in the 'hood back home. I'm just wondering about the break-in frequency around here … ") and without being intimately familiar with the area, it's hard to evaluate a prospective block.

We did find great Lebanese food in Old Town. I discovered that the neighborhood where I'll be working (and possibly living in the "luxury" apartment building right there) looks really post-bio-warfare on the weekends. No people. Just tall brick and stucco buildings. Pretty much like Trani's vision for downtown Richmond. Creepy.

Then our local friends took us out for Indian food and ice cream in Del Ray, the tree-filled residential area on the other side of the tracks, complete with Subarus, Birkenstock-wearing professionals, and cute cottages which I would totally buy if I had a spare half-million in the bank. I have discovered a few affordable rentals in that neighborhood. We may be going back up again soon, if only for the ice cream.

Taste of the season

I went to the farmer's market. I bought no tomatoes, though there were lovely tantalizing tomatoes everywhere for, like, a dollar a pound (so if you don't have a free source, get yourself to the farmer's market). I bought onion-rosemary focaccia, a pound of the cutest little oriental eggplants you ever did see and two sweet Italian peppers, one red and one green.

The eggplants were almost too cute to cook. They were very dark purple with black tops like little emo haircuts, and looked like they'd popped out of a Japanese print or off this Japanese map. If I hadn't been hungry this afternoon I might have indulged in a little food photography, but I settled for admiring them as I cut them up. The peppers were long, thin, and dramatically curvy. I found a live caterpillar in one. I think maybe that one was a little too organic. I called Oz to ask him if he minded sharing his dinner with a caterpillar. "I don't think he ate much." He said, "A little caterpillar poo never hurt anyone." Well, I washed the pepper out pretty good and trimmed off the bits that looked chewed.

I peeled and seeded and diced a half buttload of tomatoes (a quantity of approximately the same volume as one of my buttcheeks) without cutting off a fingertip. Peeled tomatoes are dangerously slippery. I usually use canned tomatoes, but I have to say, using fresh is worth the effort. If you have time. Can you tell I'm still not employed?

All that plus an onion, a ton of garlic, a bay leaf, some basil, and a cup of marsala became eggplant scallopini marsala. It was cooking away and smelling fabulous when Oz called to tell me he was stuck in traffic. So I turned off the heat and took a break from cooking to nibble on the focaccia and drink marsala. As a general rule, one should never cook with booze that one wouldn't drink. It's good to confirm the quality once in a while.

Once Oz got home I boiled up some pasta to go with the scallopini. Grated parmesan on top. I've made this dish before, but I think this is the best it's ever tasted.

We still have tomatoes. We still have leftover salsa. I walked into my neighbor's yard today and saw that even more had turned red. It's a vegetable plot to take over the world.

Knee deep in nightshade

My total tomato consumption for the day was a spoonful of leftover salsa on my burrito at lunch. The jolly red rows of tomatoes on the counter, they mock me. I'm not sure what I'll make next. Perhaps I'll try cooking them into a sauce. Maybe with a little roasted garlic? But it's supposed to be 96 °F tomorrow, so stirring a steaming pot of tomato sauce sounds thoroughly unappealing.

My neighbor is getting back from vacation soon. I'm sure we'll have plenty of tomatoes to hand back over. If she'd been growing zucchinis I'd have thought she timed her vacation on purpose. Come to think of it, I think she is growing some zucchinis.

Oz made sure to remind me about tomorrow's farmer's market down in Shockoe Bottom. I'll be shopping for vegetables which go well with tomatoes.