Happy Birthday Norm!

Round Two. I have photos this time.

I think there's a guy I know. I remember his name is...um...

I remember once telling my mom that I was going to start calling this friend of mine "Nerg-Drei", which would be appropriate considering I was going to spell his name NRG^3 (see, the "3" is an exponent, like NRG cubed). This stems from his rather regal sounding actual name, of which he is Earth's third incarnation.



Love you Norman. I'm planning on calling, but today is Richard and Dana's wedding (Richard, Rachel's brother, came to our Mexico wedding) and I might not be able to get to it.

Happy Birthday you ol' coot!

Lamb Recipe I Enjoyed

I'm not the biggest lamb fan. I like certain dishes, certainly, and while I have friends and family who love lamb, it's not a protein I'm usually rushing out to buy.

But we had Corrie's Grandma June over for dinner the other night, and I cooked a dish I saw on Lydia's Italitan cooking show on our PBS channel (I think her name is pronounced "li-DEE-uh"). The channel is blippy since it's over the airwaves and in HD (one reason the TV is off most times) but I caught the gist.

Ingredients

Lamb meat; cubed; 3-4 pounds
garlic; smashed; 7 cloves (more if small)
green olives, large ones, pitted; halved, drained; an entire 10 oz dry wt jar
fresh rosemary; on the stick; one stick
vinegar; quarter cup; (I used white wine vin; red wine vin is called for by her; I'd suggest sherry vinegar...)
white wine; 8-12 ounces

Method

Season the cubed lamb with salt and pepper pretty well. Heat oil in a large skillet or pot (skillet's best...the largest bottomed fry-type pan will do) and sautee the seasoned lamb meat until the sides or browned.

Add the garlic around the halfway mark, and the vinegar two minutes later, then add the olives right as it's finishing the searing/browning-of-the-sides act.

Add the wine--it should almost cover the cubed meat--and the stick of rosemary. Cover, turn the heat down and simmer. Check it periodically, but it should be done in 30 or so minutes.

How to tell when it's done: I had a problem with mine that my experience in NYC haute kitchens helped me solve. After the half hour, I still had more liquid than I remember Lydia having, and the glazed look of the meat wasn't there. That's how you know it's done; the meat will be dark, tender, and glazed with a yummy wine/olive/lamb-juices glaze. Mine had too much liquid and not enough glazy color. This occurred because my pan was just not quite big enough, and the meat cooked together, but all up on each other, which hadn't given the wine enough room to simmer away. I tasted the meat--it was done--and realized I just wanted the glaze. I pulled another pan out, got it hot, and poured the wine-sauce off the meat into it. Now I had two pans on the stove-top, one with the meat sauteing on a bit higher heat, and another with the wine sauce "working hard", that is, reducing quickly over high heat. I would pour small amounts of the sauce back into the meat as needed by the meat pan until the glaze developed and all the liquid, besides some oil, gradually became the meat's glaze.

It was pretty damn good. After the meat's done, use a slotted spoon to put it into a serving dish and then serve with the same slotted spoon. There is no sauce with this lamb, and the slotted spoon helps reduce the amount of oil on your plate (this isn't an oily dish, by any means).

This method will work for beef, or pretty much any kind of red meat. If you're trying to use the cheapest stewing meat, you definately can, just make sure you get the seariing of the sides accomplished, add a little more wine and cook a little longer on lower heat.

Sitting Outside at the Meadowlands in February?

I'd like to offer my congratulations specifically to the swampy patch of desolation outside of Seacaucus otherwise known as the Meadowlands and generally to the greater New York City metropolitan area for winning the bid to host the 2014 Super Bowl.

Back before domed stadiums the AFL/NFL championships (eventually to be known as the Super Bowl) were usually played in Florida or Los Angeles, or possibly one other place. Before that, in the "olden days" of the NFL, the championship game would be played outdoors--mainly because that's all there was--in places like Cleveland, Chicago, Pittsburgh, even Yankee Stadium, and in late December or early January.

Now that the new Giants/Jets facility has won the bid, we'll be seeing that again in 2014. I hear the new stadium is nice, beautiful even--it looks good from the pictures I've seen--but it is an outdoor field, with outdoor seats.

Some talking heads are happy about the prospect of a cold weather Super Bowl, taking the old-school stance that "that's how football should be played," while others take the "weather shouldn't be a determining factor in the game, or have a possible effect on the outcome." Didn't the Colts beat the Bears in a mud-bowl in Miami a few years back, in a pouring and steady rain? Just sayin' is all. I don't really have an opinion on that, other than to say that it'll be funny to see the celebrities gawking for the television cameras when the action slows covered in a dead elk to stay warm.

But really, the weather...What're the options for the first or second week of February for the Meadowlands? I'll tell you, and you can decide if you'll be dropping a grand on a ticket. First: snow. If you get one of those blizzardy deals right before, you'll need a zamboni to clear up the grass, but this may be the best choice, since watching the game with snow falling, a real possibility, might be cool. Second: rain. Tell me, is anything more fun than sitting in 33 degree night-time air and getting pelted by sideways sheets of rain being pushed by fifty mile-an-hour winds? Third: clear skies. Don't jump the gun and think this'll be best. It may be, and is the easy choice, but, in February, when it's clear it's ten degrees and the wind feels like searing cold glass on any exposed skin.

Cloudy with no precipitation...that's probably the winner...just the bitter cold.

Maybe contrary to how it sounds here (since I won't be there) the prospect of a cold weather Super Bowl does excite me.

Hey, maybe it'll be seventy and beautiful...

The Domain

I work at a place that's housed in "The Domain", a site in northern Austin where billions of dollars have been sunk into the ground. Where I work is considered, by me at least, the boonies of the Domain, way the hell down south. I've mentioned before that this Domain place kinda creeps me out. I'm going to share a few pictures that might help me make you, my few readers, feel what I'm talking about. I'll give a good explanation, but I don't want to blather on with commentary.

First, to start some blathering (d'oh!), let me say that when I took these pictures, I got to work an hour early, started my photo-project, and then walked until I had only enough time to turn and walk back...I never reached the other side of the place. I was taking pictures and all, but making it barely past half-way?

This first picture is taken at the most southernly point, atop a parking garage, and, when magnified, one can see Austin's skyline ten miles to the south. I need this picture to ground me in some kind of actual real-world existence, because for me, it got really weird after this.



This next picture kind of made me cringe. I like to call it my "Capitalist's Versailles". It does show some things, though. I was beginning my northern ascent through the Domain, and this is still pretty far from the action. On both sides of this courtyard apartments are visible (kinda, behind trees), and these apartments are designed to look like they're from different designers and different eras, and their built upon shops like American Eagle Outfitters and The Coffee Bean. Normally this kind of thing--apartments atop of shops--is called "mixed use", and it occurs in most large cities naturally. Here it felt fake and mildly scary. This picture though, the focus of the courtyard, the anchor at the bottom (or top, as it was) is a Dick's Sporting Goods store. Capitalist's Versailles, I'm telling you.



These next three are closer to the Action, and are closer to the point where I had to turn around and head back. Visible in these again will be strange looking apartments above very high-end stores, glassy eyed trust-fund baby-consumers out walking, hoping to become hipsters, and many other kinds of douchery. Two things I'd like to point out in the first picture: in the upper left and the far right we'll see rectangular banners attached to lampposts, the kind that in small towns advertise a parade or other kind of local celebration or awareness-type activity...in this picture they say "Cadillac". The second thing I want noticed is the square advertisement just left-of-center in the foreground, the one with the either native-american or east-indian looking chick, "Discover your bliss" or some similar nonsense written on it. Those were everywhere. A different example will be in the next picture.



This next picture we get a slightly closer view of the "...bliss..." ad, as well as a more centered "Cadillac" banner, different of course from the last photo, but here on the left, in front of a ubiquitous Starbucks, we'll see an actual Cadillac on the sidewalk. No for-sale tags. No license plates. Just chillin'. There were lots of them.

Should that creep me out as mush as it does?

More apartments on the right...



In any case, this last picture has the same silver Cadillac as the previous picture, and trained eyes will recognize an awning from the previous picture existing in this picture in full. I think that this picture is a beautiful capsule capturing probably everything I think is wrong with the consumer-driven America...little diversity, sparkling fakery in city design, a gross homogeneity in high-end retail stores...



When added to the previous picture, what we get is an Anthroplogie (high-end clothing) next to an Apple store (I am an admitted Apple fan) next to a Banana Republic next to a Starbucks (that Steeping Room is the Starbucks tea shop). All lined up on a fake main-street, surrounded by a hodgepodge of apartment buildings. All very new. All with no character. Well, I guess that "character" remark is subjective to how one would feel about living in a fake city based on an outdoor mall. Is a place's character subjective necessarily?

The apartments aren't that expensive. Three drawbacks to living in the Domain (besides the Succubus-like way living in such a consumerist nightmare would slowly destroy a lefty humanist): no grocery store, no liquor store, no pub. No place to go to unwind after work? No place to get the essential foodstuffs? (Whole Foods should be to the rescue in a few months.) Not that everybody drinks of course, but damn, isn't this Texas and not freaking Utah? (I do recognize that here in Texas there are dry counties...)

Maybe I ended up blathering on too long. I'm gonna make it through sometime and have more (frightening) pictures for you, my few but loyal readers.

Gardening 101

Some people might be intimidated by the act of gardening; they may not know where to start, or feel like they may not know enough about actually gardening to be successful, or feel like they don't have a green-thumb, like that's a mandatory thing when one gardens. The advice that I would give, the same advice that Corrie tells people, is: read the instructions on the packet of seeds and then do your best to do what is says. If you bought plants instead of seeds, try to get potting soil if you're going to put them into pots, and regular soil if you want a boost when you put them in the ground. Add water and wait.

Let me tell you, I barely know anything about gardening. The majority of what I know that I didn't learn from the backs of seed packets, I learned from reading a book about composting specifically, not gardening.

In any case, here at the Austin house where we live, there is a rip-roaring gardening "experiment" going on in our "gardening area", aka, the garden. My auntie-in-law has placed many, many tomato plants in various spots of the garden, which in the following pictures will be noticeable, along with summer squash...some of the 'mater plants have already sprouted little greenies. Beans that we planted, along with peas, corn, basil, watermelon, sunflower, and cucumbers of both kinds--pickling and slicing--are all doing well. Even our compost heap is doing well, smelling proper--like earth, not rotting crapola--and looking right underneath the surface.

We did have some problems with aphids and our special Topsy-Turvy deals, which ate the blossoms on our yellow pepper and our jalapeno pepper plants, making it virtually impossible for peppers to grow. We did get one jalapeno, before the aphids could get the blossom. Our third, and final, Topsy-Turvy planter had an heirloom tomato plant--little brown cherry-toms--but the brace it hung from fell, crushing the once thriving plant. Dammit. The jury's still out on whether those Topsy-Turvy planters are all they're cracked up to be. We could have placed them, conceivably, in a place with more sunshine...

Time for some pictures:

Here's our hanging jalapeno (I'm almost ashamed there's no enya in this publishing format).



Here's an overview of our entire garden--behind the fence. It looks seriously green because no one has done any weeding. See, things will grow even if you don't weed. The lettuce, spinach, and arugula were doing well, but have since been choked out by the weeds, so there is that consequence. A thicket of tomatoes can be seen on the left, along with some corn-stalks behind. Beans, peas, and squash are in the foreground.



In the back part of the yard, near a nice large shed that Grandaddy Cooper built, we have our planter with pickling cucumbers. These were hoping to go well with our own dill, which had been thriving, until some insect vermin ate most of it. The dill is there, but less robust. These cucumbers look good, though.



Here is a look at our compost pile. Sometimes the dogs get into it and eat half-decomposed banana peals. Doesn't bother me!



The tree on the left is one of our three pecan trees on the premises, but I've been told that this one in particular is the good pecan tree. The garden is visible in the back-left, along the fence.



We tilled the soil on the other side of the fence as well, and have planted some things out there. There's an eggplant that my auntie-in-law planted, along with another thicket of tomato, which at this point has grown into a veritable rain-forest of life down at one end of the planting area. I'd show pictures of that, but when I took them, I was using Rachel as a scale reference, to show off their size, but she was wearing a bathrobe, and I'm not going to put those up here. Here, though, is a picture of our thriving watermelon in the front, and some of our big sunflowers behind some tomato plants.



We also put some nasturtium out there, along the fence, which was kinda cool, since they don't really need great soil or lots of sun or water (learned from the back of the packet). They'll be thriving later, and they'll also be providing their edible flowers for our consumption.



The shot I'm leaving you with is a close-up of the jungle like atmosphere, with the basil the only thing in focus. To the left of the basil, you might be able to see a tiny green sphere of un-ripe tomato.

Deep Memories

When you smell something that "takes you back", as we say, you're experiencing the hardwired memories from the specific moment you first encountered an odor...maybe that flower reminds us of the summers of our youth; maybe the smell of chlorine reminds us swimming pools. This is not an unfamiliar concept. What's happening is that the olfactory bulb in the brain is close to, and actually inter-wired with, both the amygdala, which processes emotions, and the hippocampus, which is responsible for associative learning. Having a sensory organ's processor that intertwined with those two specific members of the limbic system causes those "takes you back" moments.

While those moments tend to be confined to the olfactory sense, I have experienced similar memory moments with visual cues. For me, and most people of my generation, instead of paintings or pictures, these cues are probably from television and film. Specifically for me, the opening credits of Danger Mouse, or the opening of You Can't do That on Television tend to trigger childhood memories.

And then another visual cue I found triggered those same types of memories. Actually my brother Dan found the source, photographed it, and sent it to me. When we were kids, the local Fox affiliate was on the UHF dial, on channel 40. What follows is a picture of the affiliate's call logo, which we remember quite well, and anyone around the age of thirty growing up in Sacramento, Stockton, or Modesto might recognize with similar nostalgia.

Good find, my eagle-eyed brother.

Happy Birthday Dan!

Today is my brother Daniel's birthday. I believe that this is the first time I've gotten an annual milestone down on my blog.

Sorry, brother, I'd put a picture up but I'm on my little lappy, and the only picture it has is of yesterday's snowman.

You're almost there, Dan, and it isn't so bad.

Happy birthday! I hope you get to do something fun, or at least enjoy it somewhat. This same number for me was spent with a tooth-ache that I fixed with horse-pill ibuprofins and a touch of beer. I definitely hope yours is better than that, anyway.

Love you.

February Flashback

I wanted to wait until now to post this picture, now, when Austin's humidity mixes with the heat to form a tasty hazy brew that glues your testicles to your leg and your shirt to your back. I hear there's more and worse conditions coming up, but I also hear that the humidity goes away before it gets Sacramento-type hot, which would be good.

In February, when Corrie was off babysitting for the world's newest Dolman, here in Austin we got quite a little storm. It actually dumped some of the white stuff that we were more used to in New York City than folks are here. Rachel, determined to make a snowman, was fielding ideas for what the "theme" of the "display" ought to be. She came up with it all on her own.



The flippers are inspired, along with the sarong over the twiggy arm. The empty Teacte can came from our next-door neighbor, Ben, as our cans tend to be Lone Star.

A local news-person came by to catch a little footage of the snowman and do an interview, but we missed them.

The base ball lasted for almost a week, while the face was gone within hours of the snow stopping its descent from the sky.

Went to the Dentist...

I still have plans to take pictures from the area of Austin where I work, which is kinda like the Twighlight Zone, and I have a nice critique post on a film Corrie and I just watched with a long discussion of the entire genre in which the movie lives brewing in mi cabeza, and we had Corrie's grandmother over for dinner (in which I made a lamb dish I actually liked), but first I need to talk about my teeth.

(Sigh.) In 1999, I went in to have two wisdom teeth pulled; it was a success. I was scheduled for the next week to have some cavities filled. I returned at the proper time and saw that the dentist's office was shuttered--closed for good--without even a notification. That was weird. When I had some molar pain in 2008 I went in and was told some things that only had to do with the emergency I went for.

Those were my last two visits to the dentist.

I originally was planning to discuss my dental woes in rather explicit detail...well, explicit may be an exaggeration. I've decided to do that on a more personal basis, one-on-one with the folks I talk with on the phone or in person with regularly, and refrain from posting my dirty dental-laundry on the interweb for all (or both) to read.

But, I'll be spending plenty of time and money at my new dentist, believe you me.

Please, do me a favor, and go brush your teeth right now. Don't forget to floss after every meal.

Eating at the Driskill Grill

Corrie and I this past Tuesday got dressed up and went to eat at the Driskill Grill, which I believe I mentioned in a the second-to-last most recent post. We were looking for fine dining, and maybe that should be FINE dining or fine dining, or, in normal speak, the fancy expensive stuff where almost as much time is spent trying to make the plate look impressive as is spent in how awesome the food tastes. The snobby shit that's better left in places like New York, Paris, Tokyo, even Vegas nowadays...

That's how we roll. When we look for "fine", we know what to look for. We're very critical. The Internet had certain things to say about the Driskill, and the photos said plenty more, but we still--we just got here from New York, man--had low expectations.

Besides an older gentleman down the way loudly asking for "foy-grus", and then, upon being asked if he'd like the pate or the seared style, answered, "Then I'll have the filet mignon", I can say that the Driskill Grill exceeded our expectations fully, dazzled us beyond what we would have guessed, and, if given the financial opportunity, will be returning to in the future. Since we are incredibly picky and critical, I will share what we ate because some things needed work, but, paying the price we paid we felt it was worth it, and the quality was New York City worthy. This is high praise from people like me and Corrie.

Their menu is set up so you can either get an entree or choose smaller portions of entrees to make your own "tasting" menu. Tasting menus are nice in that you get to, obviously, taste different things, usually things that are needed to get rid of, or euphemistically "chosen by the Chef". Getting to make your own tasting menu really intrigued us, and since the portion was around half, and the price slightly lower, and we were curious how they did things here, we decided to go with that.

We each had a plate of appetizer; we split a salad; we had three small entrees; we had sorbet; the wine we chose was out, and got a slightly more expensive Pinot Noir for the same price as our original choice. That's the structure. I'll get started with the explanation.

At fancy restaurants a guest will receive an amus bouche, not an appetizer or bread, but something to cleanse the palate and settle the stomach while also possibly letting your senses know good food is coming soon. Our amus was a ginger sorbet on a really cold Asian style spoon, and, we noticed, everyone around us got watermelon instead of ginger. We thought that was because I made a note on the internet reservation site about our NY background, and they knew we'd be in for it all. Plenty of people wouldn't like this sorbet. We thought it was great. It was spicy in a sweet way, and the ginger really stuck with your mouth, tingling for a while. Even as the tingling faded, as the bread arrived, I noticed my stomach feeling chipper and excited. Unexpected? You bet. Surprisingly high quality? Yup. Passed the first test without even knowing it.

The bread that was brought to the table was replenished anytime it might appear we'd want bread, and I mean all throughout dinner. There were two breads: a locally bought French baguette, and a made-in-house wheat loaf with walnuts, golden raisons, and apricots. Oh man, that dark loaf with the walnuts and raisons was great. After the first time, I told the guy to just re-stock that good stuff.

Since by their menu they charged this much for each person when it came to appetizers, we each got a plate of dates for an appetizer. These were the originally Arabic (but now usually grown in California) medjool dates--big beautiful juicy suckers, wrapped in bacon and stuffed with mascarpone cheese and Portuguese chorizo. They came three to a plate, plated on three lines of coulee, with some extra virgin olive oil present. These were really great, well executed, well put together, well seasoned, and too many. In New York, the chef would have the balls to only offer two as an appetizer, since that's the right amount. Three is too many, but here in Texas, giving a guest only two may be seen as a short, so three is the number they give. My plate had some wayward olive oil, too. It wasn't that nice. Not too bad a complaint, if there had to be one.

The salad we split came next. It was a green-leaf lettuce affair, dressed with a vinaigrette comprised of the oils of avocado and pumpkin seed, set into what appeared a planter made of pastry wafer, all smartly placed on a rectangular plate with green and orange oil swirls. It looked like a planter--a pastry jar, maybe--with a plant coming out the top, which was the green-leaf lettuce salad. The greens were properly dressed--not too much, not too little--and the dressing was original and different. It was garnished with fried plantain chips, which were a little salty (and if I say something is a little salty it's meaningful, not like some jack-mo off the street who lives off Mrs. Dash), but not inedible. The pastry dough planter might have been the best part; it was freaking great.

Our first "tasting" entree was the kaijiki, a fish from the Pacific, usually caught by people calling Hawai'i home. It was seared like you'd find with tuna: seared on the outside and totally raw in the middle. Unlike tuna, kaijiki is a white fish, and the inside was the pale yellow you'd expect with cod or tilapia. It was fantastic, if not even having been better the day before. It came on a bed of yellow lentils and blanched green kale. Thinking about it now, I would have chosen black "Tuscan" kale, but that's my thing. The lentils were crazy--al dente something fierce, almost like being underdone, but they weren't. They were great, and like the kale, were seasoned well (someone who knows fine dining knows this phrase means "enough kosher salt").

Next we had a lamb chop. It was encrusted with pistachios and a very light (almost unnoticeable) wasabi root sauce. It came on a bed of ratatouille and blue-cheese and barley "risotto". The blue-cheese and barley "risotto" was written on the menu like that, with the quote marks, and I know from (NYC) experience that that means "barley sexy-ed up with butter and the blue-cheese". The barley "risotto" was great; the cut of lamb was really nice, cooked medium for Corrie, very tender and juicy, well seasoned...the flavors came together. The ratatouille on the other hand, needed some love and more seasoning. All that made it onto our plate seemed like star-squash in tomato sauce, and it needed salt. Ratatouille is not a bad dish, or garnish, and is now very well known from the Pixar film. It consists of squash, tomatoes, and eggplant cooked in a tomato based (sometimes with vinegar or capers) type of sauce. Corrie doesn't like eggplant, so I didn't mind that not being present...more salt would have been nice. The madeira sauce that was around the base of the barley was slightly over reduced. Madeira is a wine that comes from an island of the same name and is part of Portugal.

So far, we've had "wayward olive oil" and "not enough salt" (fried plantains are always too salty or not enough; there's very little middle ground) and "slightly over reduced madeira sauce". At this point we're very impressed.

The last tasting entree we had was the filet mignon. Since Corrie asked for the lamb chop medium, I got the filet med rare. It came centered on a rectangular plate on a swirl of purple potato puree (there are no "mashed" potatoes in fine dining, only "puree") that had been hit with truffle oil. To each side of the meat lay a bed of blanched brussels sprout leaves, on top of which they laid quartered king oyster mushrooms--nevermind that they called them trumpet mushrooms. I know the difference. These were not trumpets, they were king oysters, but they were great. The purple potato puree had just enough truffle oil to not make me want to gag (not a huge truffle fan, personally), the brussels leaves were tender without being mushy, seasoned well; and the meat was tender and delicious. That meat was really well executed.

I don't want anyone to think Corrie and I can be wowed substantially by exotic or perceived "fancy" foods. We're wowed by crisp plates, good choices in menu component combinations, and excellent execution.

My sorbet, blackberry, felt and tasted more like a gelato than a sorbet. That's not a complaint. Corrie had lemon, and it was tart and tangy and good.

One overall criticism that I had, from the very beginning, that I wanted to wait until now to mention, so any of my readers making it this far could read about the food, its plating an preparation, was that the china didn't match. The date plated would fit in at a chic Chelsea Asian restaurant, as would the salad's and filet's plate, while the sorbet liner and the lamb chop plate could be from a modernist place, with round plates and extreme-yet-subtle striping. And the bread plates were small white china with leafy relief type sculpturing along the outer layer. Plates that we never used, that were on the table and removed once any kind of food arrived, that were only there to make you feel like this is a restaurant and not your table in the corner of your home's kitchen, were large white china with a gold leaf design. They were pretty, yes, but didn't match any other piece of china we saw. It was something we strict critics have to mention, but didn't, of course, ruin any part of our experience.

All said and done, leaving full and drunk on grub and not the wine we slowly sipped, I'll give you an idea of the price in slang terms, slang that we'd use when we were younger: with tip and wine, it was under two bills, but not comfortably. Plenty of people would never consider what we paid an okay price for a dinner for two, but Corrie and I aren't those people. We're snobs who, while living in New York City, gained the culinary vocabulary to converse about what we expect and what we're getting. And the room on a credit card to make it happen.

Well worth it.

Sequel to an Earlier Knicks-Note

With the NBA playoff finally entering the last round before the finals, I wanted to return for a moment to a post that I wrote last September about watching the New York Knicks regress as a franchise, and about how the entire season would be a preamble in the courtship of LeBron James, the premier player in the Eastern Conference.

The post also touched on New York's crazy media presence, where a story, even if based on rumor and hearsay and gossip, that's deemed important/tawdry enough will be given prime real-estate in the paper. In New York when it's about sports, that means the "back-page". The front-page of the Post and the Daily News are headlines concerned with celebrities or murder or the big news of the day, while the back page is reserved for similar stories from the sports world.

Earlier today I read a recap of the Yankees game last night, and read about A-Rod hitting a grand-slam in seventh inning, which is late in the game, but not like a walk-off slam. I thought I'd check out the Daily News' back-page to see if it was about A-Rod passing Frank Robinson, a Hall of Famer and classy ball-player, on the all time home-run list. Here's today's back-page:



Gossip. Hearsay. Close-friend and former Knick Oakley says his pal will say no...Alex is there, at the top...Rumors are big news and will sell those trashy papers. I did read, rather often, the Daily News, which I deemed far superior to Rupert Murdoch's Post, but they're both trashy.

But here, the Knicks are beloved and a punchline (or punching-bag?).

Brief Notes for a Tuesday

Something Weird: I got up this morning and after heading to the bathroom went to the kitchen to get a glass of water, and it was weird not seeing Tony asleep on the couch.

Something Cool: I worked a double on Mother's Day and we did more than a thousand people. Today's day off is going to be great because both Corrie and I aren't working, we're getting dressed up and going to eat at the Driskill Grill at Austin's oldest and swankiest hotel, the Driskill Hotel. "Fine dining" as it's known today around the world, is either directly stolen from the French, or indirectly stolen by using the same methods and presentations but with local fare. Of course, the tradition of eating well was brought to the Gauls by the Romans, but that's another story. But, the idea of eating out at a restaurant is much newer than you might guess, and the "restaurant experience" grew out of the older tradition of the bourgeois going on vacations and staying in hotels or pensions. Even the words "hotel", "restaurant", and "pension" are all French.

The original, classic, famous early restaurants all grew out of, and were created because of, their mother hotel. Peasants and serfs don't visit Grande Hotels, and certainly don't eat in their vast and beautiful eating chambers. And now, sorta full circle, after checking some other places, it turns out that one of Austin's finest restaurants is in one of her nicest hotels.

Eeyore's Birthday

April 24th, or the Last Saturday in April, was the day of this year's, and the 47th overall, Eeyore's Birthday Party Celebration out at Pease Park.

I remember at some point in the past the first time Rachel mentioned "Eeyore's Birthday", some kind of hippie festival, and I stopped her and wanted clarification: Eeyore? Like from Winnie the Pooh? The answer was emphatically yes, and, do you know any other Eeyores?

I did some research: a group of UT students back in 1963 got together to have a Saturday celebration, named it Eeyore's Birthday after a specific story from the Winnie the Pooh world where Eeyore thinks everybody's forgotten his birthday only to find there's a surprise party in his honor. By 1974 it had been moved from its original park to Pease Park (one of the more beautiful and difficult disc golf courses in town) and had been basically taken over by the dirty hippie elements that "keep Austin weird".

Many of the original elements exist: around-the-maypole activities; sack races for kids and still-sober adults; face and breast painting...Newer elements take the form of drum circles and, I'd assume, the vast bartering of certain items for other items, probably mostly all of them ingestible.

The event is free, and there are t-shirt and beer sales, with all proceeds going to charity. The event is organized by "Friends of the Forest", a non-profit conservationist society. If you know people who are Friends, they'll expect you to volunteer for the beer tent for a few hour shift--in exchange for free beer afterwards--and recruit as many friends of yours as possible to also volunteer. If anybody out there who reads this knows Corrie's cousin Rachel, then you're probably not surprised to hear that she knows a Friend, has volunteered every year for the past seven, and has brought many of her friends under the tent in that time. Tony arrived the Friday before, and even he worked. I would have, but had to go to the paying job instead.

Corrie worked, and took the pictures that will follow. She and Rachel decided to wear something special for the party, and eventually Corrie's "fairy wings" came to envelop a feathered halo contraption that, while wild and feathery, was successful as an attraction in and of itself; I hear she was photographed many times by many folks.

Volunteers get a version of the t-shirt that gets sold, but with a different color shirt, so other volunteers know not to charge them for beer. This year the for-sale shirt had this year's design on a black t-shirt, while the volunteers had the design on a blue shirt. Simple enough. The designs the last few years have been, uh, interpretive at best...rather cool I've thought, or strange or post-modern in an impressionist kind of way. This has been because of lawsuits from the Disney Corporation for improper license infringement, since the image that was invariably used was the Eeyore from the animated features.

Before I get to the pictures: the name "Eeyore" is a representation of the onomatopoeic braying "hee-haw" sound a donkey makes, but utilizes two Cockney accent contrivances--the common "h-dropping", and the "silent r" phenomena.

Here are the pictures that either Corrie or Rachel or somebody else took, as I saw none of this first hand.

The first is an announcement of when it closes, and probably one of the pictures that would anger a Disney lawyer.



Here is a picture of a hippie-inspired banner. I'm sure the chronically depressed stuffed donkey would be heartened to see it.



Here are some confident ladies getting their breasts painted, soon to be among the rather large group of ladies walking around with pigments rather than clothes on their upper-halves.



Here's Corrie in her feather-halo-with-wings working a keg.



Here's a group of ladies, including Corrie, Rachel, and Steph (our roommate) among the other women.

The Guyton Ranchette

Susie Guyton (nee Dolman) is Ron's sister, and Ron is my father-in-law. Susie and her husband Paul live in Austin, and Paul's bought a nice little handful of acreage about 45 minutes from town. This past January Uncle Paul, as he's known around these parts (which is funny since I already have an Uncle Paul; he's enjoying life back east, in Virginia), invited me out to what he calls the Ranchette. I suppose he calls it that because it's not large enough to be a Ranch proper.

January was the "winter" around here, and that meant putting on a jacket and some boots and hiking around a cool little property. The trees were plentiful but without leaves, and a perimeter walk was pleasant but quicker than I would have guessed when we drove up to and passed through the property's gate. Uncle Paul showed me around, we talked about projects that he had on his mind, I mentioned that I'd be willing to do things, and he mentioned he'd be willing to let Corrie and I visit on our own from time to time.

A few months later, and all of a sudden I notice that I have two days off in a row (which, now, has turned into a regularity). I asked Paul if we could spend the Tuesday night out at the Ranchette, do any chores that needed being done, you know, just get away from town for an evening. He said sure, and if I wanted, there was a trench that he'd started in the attempt to unearth a pipe. I eventually got to the pipe (machetes are my kinda tool).

The Ranchette in the warm days of March is significantly different from the cold days of January. The trees were green and lush, the perimeter walk was shady and satisfying, life was pulsating everywhere. We even spotted a few turtles in the pond. Wildflowers were blooming, but not quite fully.

Their colorful beauty and abundance prompted a conversation between Corrie and I about wildflowers. We tried to figure out if they're pretty weeds, or something else. The "national" flower of Texas is the Blue Bonnet, which is a pretty blue wildflower that grows all over the place out here, mostly thanks to Lady Bird and her seeding efforts.

Here, in the hill country in central Texas, Blue Bonnets, Indian Paintbrushes, little star-shapes in solid blue, white, or purple, and these crazy red suckers are the really common wildflowers. Pink clovers also seem to be all over, but they're usually termed a pretty weed, at best.

So, I looked up some stuff about wildflowers. It seems like some horticulturists don't like even the term "wildflower", preferring the more accurate, when appropriate, "native specie", "introduced specie", or "invasive specie". It does seem like they mostly agree that the notion of a "wildflower" is that it grows wild, is not intentionally seeded, would grow wild anyway, is not cultivated or hybridized. It turns out that even when a wildflower is invasive, calling it a "weed" is inaccurate, due to the roots and relative delicateness of the flower structure. California Poppies and the Texan Blue Bonnet are two of the more famous wildflowers.

Here are some pictures from the Ranchette. I've included some of the flowered views, but my old camera is, well, old, and sometimes the contrasting beauty gets lost. When you see a hill of color floating on top of greenery from a distance, it really hits you in the chest.



I'm trying to photograph some blue bonnets and those crazy red blooms. You might need to click on the picture and blow it up.




I like the tree that was felled in a winter wind storm that is still alive, and sprouting green, left of center.



Corrie's in the foreground in this one, but a wave of the red wildflowers are off on the left side of the frame.

Pictures from Louisiana

I've been able to procure some pictures from the trip that I made to Tony's in Louisiana that I didn't have before when I posted last month.

The first shows a few things...center frame you can see what looks like a road that's been washed away, and a sign facing it mentioning the wildlife preserve or no drag-net fishing. I like it because it shows human's futile attempts to conquer something as deceptively harsh as Louisiana bayou.



The next picture is something you might have to look closely at, for in the distance, left of center, an oil tanker is visible. This angle plays tricks with your brain, since all you can see is reedy grass and you extrapolate that it's grass off into the distance. But not in the patchy swamps in southern Louisiana.



The next two shots are of the "beach" of Calcasieu Lake, with the oyster shells instead of sand.





And, lastly, any group of pictures from that tiny trip to Sulphur (and closely beyond) wouldn't be complete without an entry in the "mystery mud" section.

Happy May Day

May 1st as a day of celebration--May Day--traces it's origins to northern European Germanic and Celtic tribes celebrating the first day of summer. In those times, spring began on February 1st, summer on May 1st. The beginning of May was the traditional "end of the dark wintry period" for northern Europe, and by having summer start on May 1st, you get to have the summer solstice, at that point in calendar history on June 25th, at "Mid-Summer", which became another reason to party.

Shakespeare's comedy, "A Mid-Summer's Night Dream" wasn't just a random description of a warm evening, but rather an identifiable-at-the-time event: the solstice, and most likely a party to boot.

Since the pagan days, and the christianizing of pagan celebrations (see Christmas vs Saturnalia), there are still northern European May Day celebrations, but sometimes now referred to as Walpurgis Night, named after the lass Saint Walpurga, a British lady who traveled to the Frankish Empire to assist with some conversions. The Franks, as you know, were a very successful Germanic tribe who left their home city, Frankfort--still the most populous city in Germany--and founded their own kingdom, calling it Frankreich. You might be more familiar with another spelling of the current country's name--France.

Saint Walpurga, popular in post-christianized Germanic populations and conveniently a woman, was able to blend in with the pagan and slightly Roman May Day celebrations of Flora, their goddess of flowers, and was canonized on, you might be able to guess, May 1st.

As the tradition of highjacking popular celebrations and implementing your own meaning has always been popular, the socialists and communists of the world highjacked the First of May as a day of celebration, and declared May 1st Labor Day, or International Workers' Day. In many countries that actually celebrate a Labor Day of some kind, it usually falls on May 1st. America uses Labor Day to mark the symbolic end of summer, and chooses the first Monday in September.

Here's a Soviet poster celebrating May Day. I enjoy the confident workers. My politics don't align with the Soviets, but icons of confident working people I feel more comfortable with than pagan-inspired post-christianized icons of Walpurga.