17 Grapefruit in the Mail

What happens when a box arrives at your house, heavy and burdened down with grapefruit?

Well, you get your tools out:

And get to work:

And work it was, as you can see nearly four quarts of raw juice, pulp, and seeds:

But only the grunt work is done, as now the slow burn of straining nearly a gallon of juice and pulp begins, paced out at six ounces a time, with a bowl in the back to collect the spent pulp:

At the end, what we have is two solid quarts, another pint, and tiny glass of thick and tangy juice:

And a pint of pulp left over:

That was just discarded. I usually like my juice pulpy (or "with flesh" as the Latvians say), but this juice is so thick and mineral rich that it just didn't matter.

Thanks ma.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

I was thinking of ripping off an idea for St. Paddy's Day. I'm thinking of calling it "The Stations of the Beer Baron". It utilizes great quotes from The Simpsons season 8's episode "Homer vs the Eighteenth Amendment", in which Springfield enacts prohibition and Homer becomes the Beer Baron.

I'm still working out the details, but here're some examples:

"That's funny, I don't feel stupid.":

"Ahh, it's been St. Patrick's Day for hours and I'm still sober.":

"I'm the Prime Minister of Ireland!":

And the last station must obviously be the last shot from the episode:

"To alcohol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems."

In the past for St. Patrick's Day posts I explained historical things ('11), talked about my own (fuzzy) memories ('12), and even mentioned in passing about working SXSW ('10).

The Stations of the Beer Baron is a work in progress...

Happy Pi Day

March 14th, (3/14) in math nerd circles, and the circles of those folks around them, is celebrated as "Pi Day".

The spot for the Robot Crickets book signing was called Rebel Bite, but originally it was called:

For the few folks who check in on these many (many) blogs, they may have noticed I've been lagging with regular posts. That probably won't change for a bit of time. Maybe here and there posts might pop up, but I've gotten involved with a time consuming activity, and posting will be light.

Also, I have some long-ish posts I've been cooking for a while: one's about the abstraction of "truth" in Japanese culture compared to our Western tradition; I've got one entertaining post about sap (seriously)(maybe it's not that entertaining); and there're posts about iPeople and the first non-combat explanation I ever heard for the utility for automatic rifles (besides how much fun they are to shoot).

There's also a birthday coming up, a 15th birthday:

Fifteen.

New Pope is an Argentine; I'm Busy on my New Phone

This isn't our best shot from the Vatican, but it does have the least amount of people. That square is packed full today, as the announcement came down that new Pope has been chosen, and he's a white guy from Buenos Aires. I was hoping for one of those fiery black guys from those African countries where they still regularly kill gay people. A black Pope? Sweet. But if it was one of those highly intolerant priests it would reinforce my views on the relevancy of the Catholic institution.

Corrie took that picture while I waited in line to get inside St. Peter's Basilica. That might have been right before or after the last time they picked a new boss-man-for-the-catolicos.

Watching for the smoke's color to change means a great deal, apparently, to a great many people.

Well, for us, our new phones arrived, and like two years ago, we feel like we're entering a new era. Samsung Galaxy II is what they're called, and it turns out that I was the last to know bout them.

So, some wild stuff is going on in an autonomous block in Rome, and it has about as much effect on me as the following comparison does on them over there:

The first is my older phone, and the middle was my first "smart" phone, and the one on the right is the Samsung. Both "smart" phones have the property that their screens are basically the same size as their preceding models.

Oh...and this is the first Pope from the Americas, and he's taken the name Frankie, er, Francis, after Assisi, one of the great reformers. Is that a hint? Maybe they'll finally acknowledge that NOT ALLOWING THEIR MIDDLE MANAGEMENT TO ENGAGE IN SEXUALLY INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS WITH ADULTS MAY BE A BAD IDEA.

3000 Miles

We arrived home on Sunday evening, March 3rd, drained physically and emotionally. Last week I'd had my first book signing for Robot Crickets. It was a fun time and a success. My enthusiasm for the future of my writing and my other work items was surging.

(Corrie tagged it to make it accurate.)

The next morning, Sunday the 24th of February, Corrie got the call that her Grandmother June had passed. Viewings and services and burials were planned for the coming week.

We had planned to make an epic drive to Austin to see Grandma June and say goodbye, as the end was coming into view, the very next weekend, the 2nd and 3rd. Common sentiment is that she had waited until all of her kids had become grandparents (her oldest and youngest had each just become grandparents in the last two months).

We left Monday night around 8:30 with me driving a rental car. About 10 hours later, after two gas fill-ups and outside Las Cruces, NM, I got a speeding ticket. We needed to switch drivers, which we did. Switched again after Junction, Texas, when we picked up US HWY 290, and made it to Austin by 6:30 PM Tuesday evening local time, for us, though, it was 4:30, making it there in twenty hours.

Wednesday was the viewing, Thursday the service at a daughter's church, Friday the drive from Austin to Odessa (another six hours in the car), Saturday the burial and then the drive from Odessa to Scottsdale. We'd planned to make a detour through Roswell, which may have been less miles, but would've added some hours. On Saturday, after a draining and emotional week, I decided to skip it, and just head down I-20 to I-10, and on towards El Paso, nearly 300 miles. Corrie did roughly the next 300, getting close to Tuscon, and we switched again, and I finished the last hundred miles into Scottsdale: 2:30 to 12:30 (local time, 1:30 from when we left), making that an 11 hour stretch.

Sunday Corrie drove to Quartzite, and then I drove the rest of the way home (under six hours). 20 + 6 + 11 + 6 = 43.

43 hours in that rental car, ignoring the around-town cruising.

That, and those 3000 miles traveled from Long Beach to Austin to Odessa and back again, form the physical structure of the trip we took, the outline that gets filled in with the memories and emotions of a long week of celebration and mourning. It's the oppressive background.

I've got pictures and anecdotes, as being around Corries extended family will produce moments of both, and I got to be a pallbearer for the first time in my life. We stayed up too late each night as well, which is what happens when your buddies are cooks, but that makes catching up on sleep a fantasy.

I'll be getting to that stuff in the coming days.

RIP Grandma June

Corrie's Grandma June, originally June Harrison, of the Texas-panhandle Harrisons, then June Dolman, then June Chase, has passed on to the great beyond. She was energetic and spry in her final days, keeping a Facebook presence close to the end. Here she is on Corrie's 30th birthday party dinner:

Here's to hoping you're enjoying your voyage, Grandma June.

She was a Rosie during WWII, living in Morro Bay. She was also the person who bought at auction the first copy of my handmade book The Big Weirdness. There was also lots of stuff in between, but I'm not the June Harrison scholar. I surely did enjoy my brief time with her, and tonight we leave on a driving odyssey that will take us back to Austin, and then to Odessa.

Posting among all the various blogs will be light for the rest of the week.

Post 900!

This marks the 900th post on this, the original Caliboyinbrooklyn weblog. I did some calculations on the totality of my other posts, from my usual stable of of blogs, as well as some that probably nobody knows about (like, does anyone known that I keep a tumblr account?)(there're only two posts over on it, but still...) and my final tally of posted posts including this one: 1447.

2009 was in Brooklyn;
2010 was in Texas;
2011 was my 20/month reserve, and is mostly California, but there's definitely some Texas there;
2012 was all California and the explosion of the Caliboy Network;
2013, and we'll see how it shapes up, seeing as how today is my book signing for Robot Crickets.

I haven't really been screaming about my first published book on, well, any of my blogs, really. That could be a fault...

Earlier today, while preparing for this specific post, I started to look up information on 1447, like maybe, did anything cool happen that year, or were there any cool facts about the integer. Then I realized that I had to get the hell out and get my last rounds of preparations done. That consisted of a handful of face-to-face friendly reminders that tonight was the night, and that the other small-business owners were going to be there.

Gathering local small business owners was a task I set for an ulterior motive for the signing, so maybe interest might peak a little higher, and that ultimately I'm comfortable in a role of community facilitator. I found that by telling the small business owners I talked to that the other owners were being supportive and showing interest, that I turned that conjecture into fact. It was a cool and mostly successful social experiment.

In the year 1447, Vladimir Dracul II, prince of Wallachia, a (mostly mad Magyar) leader best known as the inspiration for Dracula, was assassinated. So that's something...

Here's something else:

Thanks to my readers and supporters throughout the aether and on more solid ground.