mycalicocat

I met Newt Gingrich today. No kidding. I think maybe I should make up a list the way birders do, in order to check off various sightings.

I don't know why everytime I try to post a photo i wind up posting two, but have a second helping.

For fun, try www.jacksonpollock.org
You can create your own pollock, or just fool around with colors.

I am going to post my chicken wings photo above, because it came out in the paper looking about the color of raw chicken. It was one of those days. So much for the perils of art. It was fun to play Jackson Pollock for a while after that.

Pet peeve - having one's work come to naught.

Kentucky has just released its new edition of the "Core Content for Assessment," which is a fairly good statement of what "students should know and be able to do." But I am very worried about the implications of the following fragment from the science section:

"Students will describe:
• the effect of the Suns’ energy on the Earth system."

I think the effect would be that we'd all be burned to a crisp.

I could have said pet peeves, but that has always implied to me that one cherishes such things. Anyway I invite one and all to share some things we find annoying. Some of mine are silly, some are specific to my profession (or seem to be) so I assume you have some silly ones too.
1. Lou Dobbs when he gets on his Mexican obsession.
2. All the immense piles of stuff that come in the Sunday newspaper and have to be thrown away, and the nothing that is left after that.
3. The plastic wine bottle corks that won't actually go back into the wine bottle after you open it. I have taken to trimming them with a sharp knife.
4. Elected and appointed officials who take on an expressionless stare while citizens speak a public hearings and then don't acknowledge what the citizen said. As in "Your two minutes is up. Next."
5. A certain kind of very fat, round loopy "Care Bear-Strawberry Shortcake" handwriting that is almost impossible to read, and which shows up most frequently on the forms used for engagement announcement.
6. Pills that come in those flat aluminum foil things with the bubbles to hold them in place.

http://llamachik.deviantart.com/gallery/

check it out.

At times in my newspaper writing I really get the feeling I'm channeling my mother. I sat down, a while ago, to write a food page column and immediately thought of "Meet Mr. Meatball."
Mama was published a whole lot and was paid for her work, but she still loved getting money in the mail. Once she made up a couple of sheets of meatball recipes, entitled "Meet Mr. Meatball" and she photocopied this and sold this through little classified ads in women's magazines for several years. It cost $1 --meaning a dollar bill and the buyer had to include an SASE. She illustrated her typed-up recipes (which probably had plenty of xxx's, her standard correction method) with a little meatball man. Usually Mama twisted my arm into illustrating anything she wanted illustrated -- like the time she badgered me into drawing little okra-people climbing up a ladder and sliding down into a pot -- but she drew this one herself, sort of like a lumpy bumpy Wal-mart smiley face with stick legs and arms.
sPorcupine may remember Mr. Meatball. I can see it clearly and I also just turned her idea into a column with recipes (with due credit to the original author of course).
This also led me to the realization that for all practical purposes I am paid NOTHING for writing a food column on a Friday night, so her dollar bills look pretty good in retrospect.

Check out inmuffinscorner.blogspot.com which is the new blog of the Queen of Sheba. I will get the link changed shortly.

On the way home, I stopped by Kroger and bought a package of Johnsonville Smoked Brats and a package of hotdog buns. (I mention the brandname because I think they're the best) Cooked two brats in a plastic leftover container with some water for two minutes in the mike, then put them into buns, wrapped them well in paper towels and miked them another minute so buns were hot, but soft, not tough. Added ordinary yaller mustard (No fancy Dijon stuff) and chopped onions. (I actually spent good money on a carton of onions finely-chopped by somebody else).
Ate while watching news of war, thinking that maybe fewer people would go to war if they had Johnsonville Smoked Brats and TV sets and computers and all the blessings we have. Potato salad would have been a good side, but I didn't miss it. Beer would have been a good beverage for this, but diet coke was fine.
Just a reminder that there are good things to eat that are easy to fix. I would not hesitate to serve brats in a bun with mustard to the Queen of England.
Anybody else got some yummy-but-n0t-complicated suggestions? I really do have this 800-lb gorilla of a food page to do every week!
Thanks to sporcupine for fighting through a complex California Ripe Olive Web site get me the recipe for "Near Nicoise Salad."
And to Gruntled for his splendid essay on Philly Cheese Steaks which was in Wednesday's HDJ Food Section with his photo and by-line.
Barely, does Alabama have some special food of its own -- i.e. something you always want to have when you go back? Ditto to Princess Whatever. We probably need your S.C. hash column all over again.

Sorry I disappeared for so long. I’ve let my job chew up my life again for a while, but hope to get back to important matters like blogging, reading, finding lost items and staying in touch with real people.

Other Questions:

1. Does anybody have any organizational ideas that actually work – as in helpful tips of any sort or survival schemes arrived at over the years – about keeping up with stuff – and I mean all kinds of stuff from lens caps to sticky notes with telephone numbers on them of people who should be called. How do you stay organized, or – if you happen to be deep-down-disorganized – how do you avoid total chaos?

If the very idea of having organizational tips makes you roll on the floor laughing, thoughts on that side of it will be welcome, too.

My only good organizational discovery of recent times is on-line banking, which has, along with the debit card, vastly simplified my bill paying and checkbook balancing.

2. Any good ideas about stuff to read?
I have just ordered James Lee Burke’s latest, along with a new Robert Crais and some Lord Peter Wimsey stuff. At the moment I believe I have read everything published by Deborah Crombie, Janet Evanovich, Elizabeth George and am waiting for them to write more – along another line - I am waiting for Haven Kimmel and David Sedaris to write more. I wonder if they would write faster if I e-mailed them.k'kkf;'lksdlks';lkf

Also, I admit to liking Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels, which always seem to be available at Kroger.

3. What to think about while falling asleep. Tina and I (being genetically similar) agree that, like our mother, we tend to get negative if we allow our minds to ramble – so we both either read until comatose or listen to music. Any ideas about the falling-asleep process? Are we alone in this? Do normal people just shut their eyes and go bye-bye?

4. Now, a request that’s job related, but still fun. I am doing a food series on all 50 states. Have done Idaho (naturally, potatoes) and Pennsylvania with help from Gruntled, who actually has a photo and byline in today’s paper, writing on the joys of Philly Cheese Steaks.

Now, I need to hear from anybody who has spent time in other states regarding what food would be good to feature. This can be a major product (potatoes for Idaho, lobster for Maine, beef for Texas) or a singular food – like the aforementioned Philly Cheese Steak, that is not quite as good anywhere else.