Coffee heat rising

Rain, Cold, and…A Cold???

by

El Niño has arrived, bringing with it a large, wet weather system: inches of rain in the desert and feet of snow in the high country. This is good, since the region has been enjoying a decades-long drought. A whole LOT of rain is in order.

SDXB had planned to drive into town from lovely Sun City but changed his mind upon peering out the window into the gloom. His decision was clinched when I remarked that I may have a cold. But am not sure. I’ve thought it was the usual allergies — pollen-laden plants are starting to grow, what with the rain we’ve already had this winter. That was why I was camped out at the Albertson’s yesterday, trying to extract a dozen Sudafed pills from the pharmacists. I’d already discovered that a Claritin just about disappeared the runny nose and the scratchy throat, indicating the issue was more allergic than viral. Today we’ll find out how true that is, since I just dropped half of a Sudafed. Much more than that and I’ll be awake for the rest of the year…but if the issue is actually an allergy, a small amount of pseudoephedrine will send it packing.

It is unusually cold here. Enough so that, for the first time in many years, windshields on cars left outside overnight are icing up.

A-n-n-n-d lest you think I exaggerate about Arizona’s legions of driving morons….

No kidding. One of them hopped in his car and charged off down the road, surprised and confused because he couldn’t see through his iced-up windshield. NOT surprisingly, he ran into a traffic-control box and put out all the stoplights for a mile or two around him.

It is impossible to exaggerate the number of morons who infest Arizona’s fine roads. 😀

So at any rate, with SDXB out of my hair today, the next 12 or 15 hours are cleared for work. We’re almost done with the Latina feminist journal — everything is finished except for one long article I farmed out to our new intern, who promises to turn the thing around soon. It’s a long and complicated thing, but I’ve already given it a read. I’ll merge her edits with mine, which will allow me to spot any changes she’s made that are different from mine, collate them, and come up with clean copy. Then it’s off to the editors with that magnum opus!

Two new works of Chinese science came in, both by urban infrastructure engineers. The articles are strangely interesting — the one in hand has to do with the dynamics of plumbing water all the way to the top of a tall high-rise, problem-free. Both are written in fairly dense Chinglish. To the natural difficulty of the subject matter, this feature adds the authors’ wrestling match with the weirdness of an alien language. And make no mistake about it: English is a weird language!

One of the Latina scholars has written an extraordinary story whose quality and interest are so high that, IMHO, she should be proposing a version (of the literary nonfiction variety) to The New Yorker. Most academics are not, when you come right down to it, very good writers. But this lady? She can write her way out of a paper bag. I intend to suggest to our editor that she encourage the woman to send a proposal to that august magazine and also to The Atlantic. Editors at either one, I suspect, would fall all over themselves to get a version of this story written in the mode of John McPhee. Which, we might add, this writer is fully capable of producing.

Ruby is lobbying for food. A clap of thunder rolled through. We must have food to soothe our doggy nerves. Water is falling out of the sky. We must mark that with food. We got wet running outside in the rain. We must dry off with food. The Human says we are a good and a cute and a wonderful dog. Clearly that must be celebrated with food.

Hm. Here’s some spam from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. This particular amusing website was the only market that sold the Racy Books we put out through the now defunct Camptown Races Press. It far outpaced Amazon. Occasionally, it even broke even. You have to pay to get your books up there. You’re certainly not likely to make a profit (unless you know a lot of somethings I don’t know). But if an ego trip is what you’re after (which, far as I can tell, is what most self-publishing authors ultimately come away with), there it is.

Speaking of authors…{sigh}…I suppose I’m going to be reduced to actually working, by way of making a few of them publishable.

El Gobierno Quiere Ayudarte…

by

El gobierno quiere ayudarte… The government wants to help you! HOW, after all, would we ever get by without being made to traipse back out to the car from the pharmacy counter to retrieve still MORE identification so we can buy a package of nasal decongestant? This means, after standing in line behind three customers, I have to trudge outside, dodge the panhandlers, trudge back inside, and stand behind three more customers.

Y’know what I think?

O’course you do, but lest we somehow miss the point: Dammit! If you want to convert a box of Sudafed into meth and snort it up your goddamn nose, you DESERVE WHAT YOU GET. And if you’re stupid enough to buy meth from a drug dealer who has distilled the junk from a boxful of Sudafed, YOU EFFIN’ DESERVE WHAT YOU GET.

Let them eat fuckin’ cake!

Okay, okay, let’s admit it: weirdly enough, I did have some fun traipsing in and out and in and out of the Albertson’s.

First, on the way back in, I pass the BIGGEST, yea verily THE BADDEST, most MASSIVE dude you have ever seen in your entire life, marching out of the store with a bouquet of flowers in his paw.

Awwwww…soooo adorable! And, alas, born 30 years too late.

Moving on, I rejoin the pharmacy line, where I fall in behind an Old Dude. He’s loafing in an electric scooter which, as it develops, he doesn’t really need. But in his old age, he has discovered which side his butter’s breaded on. He and I chat about the joys of retirement, which allow us to not give a damn whether we’re first in line. He says he loves to go fishin’. I ask where he likes to fish. He names a park pond over in Po’ Folk Country, where if you fork over a fee for an “urban fishing license” (don’t ask, goddammit: el gobierno quiere nothing more than ayudarte!) you can catch catfish, a creature he finds delectable. And you know he comes from your father’s social class, which causes you at once to love him and to fear him. 😀

The guy behind the counter, also born about 30 years too late, is another of the cutest things you’ve ever seen.

It takes this lovely creature a good 10 minutes of farting around, filling out online forms and more online forms and MORE online forms to sell you ONE BOX of menacing nasal decongestant. This is OK, because of course it provides you just that much more time to admire his adorableness.

How can you possibly be annoyed when you get to absorb this much cuteness and adorableness from an array of random males?

Well, of course, you can’t.

You CAN be annoyed, however, when you get home and find you can’t break into the mini-Fort Knoxes with which El Gobierno arranges to protect you and your brainless children from yourselves. It damn near takes a chain saw to break the lid off the squirt bottle of nasal decongestant, and putting the Sudafed knockoff away in such a form that you can get at it in the middle of the night without driving yourself into a flying rage breaks your fingernails and requires you to find a jar with a lid and a blank label in your garage junk collection.

So yes. Yes, you are pissed by the time you get these medicaments into your house and into a state that allows you to use them without rage-inducing hassle when you will need to use them.

Porque el gobierno quiere ayudarte. By golly!

Eatin’, Workin’, Doggin’…Rainin’?

by

Workin’…

WooHOO! I’m halfway through the last piece in this issue of Chicana/Latina Studies, our semiannual client journal. This issue seems to be an especially good effort. One of the authors is such a good writer and she has such an interesting subject that, IMHO, she could be writing her stuff up for The New Yorker. She’d need to put out some effort to learn to write creative nonfiction and escape the academicese, but given the quality of her style, I’d say that would not be an unreasonably tall order for her.

What with The Kid’s project to streak through a new master’s degree program (while holding down her usual two full-time jobs…), I suggested that if she wanted me to do the whole job, rather than splitting it the way we usually do, that would be okay by me….

Yipes! Don’t break the Internet leaping at that one, Kid!

😀

So I’ve been reading all the copy for the entire issue, which is fine by me because a) not a lot of work is in-house just now and b) things having been mighty slow over the past quarter, I sure can use the monnaie.

It’s gone a lot faster than I thought it would. So I think, anyhow: these things will still have to be subjected to a second reading. But still, it appears that won’t take so very long. With any luck. the copy can wing its way back to the journal in another couple days, record time for a whole issue’s turn-around.

And lhudly sing huzzah, a new spectacular Chinese scientist is at the door, wanting an estimate on an arcane paper. This is good: we have missed our beloved Chinese scientists. It has been a slow 2018 Q4!

Eatin’…

By golly, I can not figure out why anyone spends their money and their time on third-rate fast food, when it’s so quick, so easy, and so amazingly delicious to toss together an amazing meal out of real, unprocessed, healthy food.

Today it was a few scallops sautéed with some garlic and some cut-up asparagus, tossed over some Italian pasta (tagliatelle!) and doused with some Pomí tomatoes, an Italian answer to canned tomatoes that comes in a box.

Failed to take a picture of that, but did grab one of some shrimp and spinach that was awesome…and now, having “organized” the 87 gerjillion images on the hard disk, have lost it. But…it was awesome. And took all of about 10 or 15 minutes to fix. To wit:

  • Defrost and peel a few big shrimp (once called “prawns”), per diner
  • Chop one or two cloves of garlic
  • Cut a lemon in half
  • Grab a bag of frozen chopped spinach out of the freezer
  • Pour a little olive oil into a frying pan.
  • Get some curry or cumin off the spice shelf
  • Optionally, have a tablespoon or two of butter at hand.

Sauté the shrimp with the garlic in the olive oil. Sprinkle the shrimp with curry or cumin, to taste. Don’t overcook. About the time you figure the shrimp is done, squeeze some lemon juice over it.

Remove the shrimp from the pan. Add a little more olive oil or, if you prefer, the butter. Add as much frozen spinach to the pan as you think the diners will eat. Stir this over medium heat until it’s defrosted and cooked to your taste. Add a teaspoon or so of sugar, if you so desire, to soften the flavor of the spinach.

Pile the spinach on a plate. Top with a few cooked shrimp. Et voilà: very easy, very fast.

Fill out the meal with a sliced tomato and some sliced avocado on the side.

Doggin’…

Cassie the Corgi steadfastly refused to use the doggy door installed, lo! these many years ago, for Anna the German Shepherd and Walt the Greyhound. So I shut it and locked it and forgot about it: it became part of the wall. As it were.

Welp…of late I’ve been invited on this day trip and that day trip. My son has indicated less than high joy at the prospect of babysitting Ruby the Corgi while I gallivant around the state, and my friends have evinced even less excitement at the thought of taking her along. I can’t leave her locked in the house all day. And I certainly can’t leave her out in the rain, heat, and coyote territory for eight or ten hours at a time.

Would she….? Could she…learn to use the doggy door?

Who’d’ve thunk it: the answer is she sure can. She quickly got the idea of pushing her way out. Coming in is a different matter: she doesn’t seem to remember that if she can get out through the plastic flaps, she can get back in through them, too.

I think a week or so of drilling (read “bribing with doggy treats”) will persuade her that she can come as well as go.

She’s a smart little dog. But one must bear in mind that she’s not a puppy. Dogs, like humans, tend to get sot in their ways as they age. So it will take a little longer for her to set both ideas in her mind: out and in.

Not real thrilled at the idea of going off and leaving that thing hanging open… She is, after all, decidedly not a German shepherd. A grown man can climb through that thing (and has). But I think I can disguise the area around the opening so it can’t be seen from the back wall. If someone’s going to climb over the cat barrier to break into the house, they’ll break in through the back door or a window, anyway. So though the dog door does indeed present some risk, it’s probably no worse than any other risk here in the ’hood.

Rain…

Not so much, despite the alleged “atmospheric river.” {snicker!} It had been sprinkling shortly before the dog and I rolled out of the sack this morning, but despite beautiful, plump, fluffy clouds floating through the blue, blue sky, no serious rain has developed. It is, however, perfect weather for a doggy-walk. Particularly if you’re a corgi.

 

 

“River of….” FOG?

by

One of the reasons, I think, it’s so difficult for many people to take global warming reports seriously is the silly hysteria with which weather news is reported.  The high point of this trend comes to mind: the time the local media ALERTed us to the (terrifying!) approach of a TYPHOON, barreling across the deserts of southern California, bound to smash into beautiful uptown Phoenix and level everything in sight. Be scared, be VERY scared!

Typhoon. {snort!} The day of the typhoon dawned clear, blue-skied, and calm. It continued in the same mode as the sun made its happy way across the zenith: through a perfect, crystalline empyrean. Nary a cloud appeared in Helios’s sight.

Ever since, we’ve learned to ignore the overheated click-bait and just go on about our business. Mare’s tails foretell rain. Heavy, low clouds announce the likelihood of imminent rainfall. Lightning, thunder, and the sound of a freight train bearing down on you suggest you might want to take cover.

Welp, this time we were told that (eeeeeeekkkk!!!!!!!) a RIVER OF RAIN was cascading toward our happy vales.

And indeed, California — on the western slope — did get some substantial flooding. But by the time the “River” climbed not one but two mountain ranges, it was more like a burbling stream.

We got a full, quiet, lovely day of slow, soft, sifting rain. A delicately indolent rain was still sprinkling when I went to bed last night.

The result: this morning, a spectacular fog!

How fantastic IS that? This was what it looked like along about 8:30 ayem. And this:

Fuzzy, eh?

Well, I was supposed to deliver the Toyotamobile to Chuck’s for its regular oil change and check-up, along about 9:15. Started to make the 20-minute drive and thought…whooaaaa! I ain’t makin’ this drive through the rush-hour traffic with a bunch of crazies who have never seen fog in their lives. Got about half-way down to Main Drag East when I realized I couldn’t see far enough down the street for it to be safe to drive at all, much less on an arterial crowded with my fellow homicidal drivers. So returned to the shaque, called Chuck on the phone, and begged for a new appointment.

That notwithstanding, it was really amazing outside, so forthwith saddled up little Ruby the Corgi and headed out for a doggy-walk.

That little dog was beside herself with sheep-herding joy. She knew she had found the Climate For Which She Had Been Born! Somehow, we had magically been translated to Wales!

As we crossed into Lower Richistan, I realized I could not see three houses down the street from where we were.

It was the kind of weather phenomenon we called “tule fog” in California: mist that rises up out of wet ground when the temperature conditions are right. It’s patchy and in some spots very thick, indeed. A friend in graduate school lost a brother when he drove off the road on the way home from UC Berkeley to Salinas one holiday weekend. A few years later, she did the same thing, but managed to escape the wreck alive.

Far as I can tell, no one killed themselves in the fog this morning. So…it was just an amazing sorta thing.


Strange. Very strange. But…no river there.

Life in the Big City: Moron Edition

by

You think I exaggerate when I whine that my life is over-run with morons? Consider last night’s adventure, not an uncommon one in these parts…

Many of the neighborhood lanes here in the ’hood have no sidewalks. That’s because when the tracts were built, the area was out in the country.

People wanted to feel they were living in semi-rural suburbs, and (more to the point) it was cheaper for developers to neglect building sidewalks. Nowadays, though, we live in the big city, not in some sleepy suburb of a sleepy small town. Alas, many of our honored citizens just cannot grasp that as fact.

So…last night I’m headed down to the church. As usual, I putter along the ’hood’s smaller lanes by way of avoiding the back-wrenching speed bumps our City Parents have installed, since I’m already in plenty of pain and would rather not be treated to more of it to get to a main drag.

It’s after dark. I turn off the sub-feeder street that runs along the east side of the park onto a pretty road that gives its name to Lower Richistan, so as to get to Main Drag East. Just as I make the turn I see this whitish thing floating in the air some yards in front of me. Whaaa????

It’s a big old dog’s off-white rear end.

I know this dog: he’s a Great Dane mix, very mellow. But it takes a second to figure out what the pale patch looming through the dark is.

Fortunately I stop the car while I ponder this through. Mr. Dane is accompanying his human, who is dressed completely, head-to-toe, in black or navy-blue. The human is INVISIBLE in the dark. Not only that, but s/he’s pushing a black stroller, which is similarly invisible.

The only way I spot them is that a car passes on Main Drag East, a block ahead, and its headlights backlight them.

A-N-N-N-N-N-D this genius is walking right up the MIDDLE of the right-hand lane of the road. If he hadn’t had that dog with him, I would’ve hit him and his baby.

I almost stopped to let him know he was invisible and suggest that maybe he might want to at least get out of the middle of the road. But then thought ya can’t fix stupid and went on my way.

The walker had on a pair of sneakers with tiny reflective patches on the heels, but they were so small as to be unnoticeable. This is NOT a safe thing to rely on whilst stumbling around in the dark.

Dunno about you, but I can remember being told in grade school — more than once — to always wear light-colored clothing when walking around outside after dark. An adult who’s old enough to spawn a child shouldn’t have to be told this. Wouldncha think?

The Frost Is on the Palm Tree…

by

…and on the neighbors’ roofs. The Human, consequently, is suffering a spate of severe indolence, much to the disgust of the Dog, a creature of crisper climates. Soon, though, the loafing primate will be forced to get up and trot around the ’Hood with the canid. Then it’s off to the Walmart to pick up some household necessities.

It was 36 degrees out there when the Dog and the Human rolled out of the sack this morning. Just now — along about two and a half hours later — the back porch thermometer claims the ambient temp has warmed to a cozy 41 degrees. Ruby just trotted in, bearing a prize mummified orange, which (unless I get off my duff and steal it from her) she will soon chew up into messy crumbs. There she goes…off to her nest in the back bathroom.

Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner is hung up on the new moron-protection equipment at the bottom of the pool. People with not very good sense will swim to the bottom of a pool’s deep end with their long hair floating sexily loose in the water and…surprise! Their hair gets stuck in the main drain (which has very powerful suction), they panic and can’t get loose, and they drown. So to protect such bright folk from themselves, we all get to be inconvenienced: the mandated non-hair-catching drain covers, which were not required by law the last time that pool was replastered, stick up off the floor and trap Harvey, so that he just sits there while the pump runs for eight hours at a time.

Pool Dude says I need to replace Harvey (who was replaced just a year or so ago…and whose life expectancy is a good eight years or more) with a model that has wheels. Right. That’ll be $380, which I don’t happen to have laying around. So…I dunno what to do about that. Maybe just take Harvey out and manually vacuum the pool every week or two. What a PITA.

I may ask Pool Dude if his company can come up with a better price than Leslie’s can. They are, after all, a local outfit, and one of course would rather buy local, all other things being equal. But…not now. Probably not until after the end of the summer, unless I win the lottery.

As soon as the rush hour traffic abates, the dog and I must set out for the daily mile-long circuit around the hood…though I must say, I’d like to take this dog somewhere else for a change of scenery. That would require getting in the car, though, something I find increasingly aversive as the days and months go by.

Yesterday I drove out to Tempe to meet The Kid at our favorite fancy restaurant. She’s now engaged in a new master’s program, with an eye to changing careers altogether. She wants to become a psychological therapist, a calling that (IMHO) she would be very good at.

It only took about 20 or 25 minutes to get out there. But it took over an hour to get home.

Normally one would figure the rush hour begins at 3:00 p.m. here. So at 2:25, westward bound on the 202, it did not register with me that I’d best get off the freeway at 32nd Street rather than driving all the way through to the northbound 51. That was dumb. Yards past the 32nd Street offramp, the traffic started to back up. People as usual were jerking and darting around and cutting each other off…I mean, really, estúpido, what good DOES it do you to be one car-length further on down the road than you already were? So in my inimitable manner I did a bit of my own highly skilled jerking around and cut off the guy who had just cut me off to get into the lane to go north on 24th.

Damn, I’m good! Outa my way, ya crazy fools!

I shoulda been a stock-car driver. Did you know one of my freshman-year roommates raced stock cars? Yeah. Back in the day: she was one of the only female race-car drivers in the country. Nineteen and aught-sixty-two…

The offramp is moving slowly, but it is moving. We cruise past several hundred cars (no exaggeration) becalmed in four side-by-side stopped lanes and we slide off onto 24th Street. From there it is a long drive on the surface streets to the north side of North Central.

I decide to take a favorite short-cut, darting west onto Missouri. Unfortunately, so many people now know about this route that one no longer does much darting on it…unless one is cutting off another of one’s fellow homicidal drivers, of course. Traffic is moving, but at a leisurely pace. Naturally, I forget about the damn school: see a school bus way on down the road. Thank the gods and goddesses, it turns off into a neighborhood. One annoyance out of the way, anyhow.

The favorite restaurant was disappointing: for the second time in a row. The last time, I thought it was a fluke — really, this is one of the best places to eat in the entire Valley. But now it looks like the operative term is was, not is.

Usually the hired help is primo: today the server was well-meaning, for sure…but…well…okay, let’s say it: stump-dumb. He didn’t know a lot about the restaurant business, apparently, and he certainly knew almost nothing about the level of cuisine usually served up there.

But that was probably OK, because the level was decidedly not at its high-water mark. Feeling less than ravenous, I ordered an hors-d’oeuvre  platter of Greek-ish delicacies priced about the same as an entrée, and a cup of fancified tomato soup. The soup had a kind of chemically taste (supposedly “smoked” tomatoes: I suppose the smoke was applied from a bottle). The hummus was overspiced (possibly that’s why it was misspelled on the menu? not really hummus but hummus-like: hummous…). The falafel balls were overcooked, dry, and came with too little tahini to moisten them — just a few smears spread on the plate. The Kid’s salad was…well, a salad: what else can one say?

The wine? I’ve had better from Walmart’s liquor shelf, and got the whole bottle for the six bucks we each paid for a glass of the day’s “special.”

The only part of the meal that was outstanding was the dessert. A berry shortcakey concoction, it was excellent. As for the rest of it: taken together, dessert included, it was decidedly not worth the $43 and change we each paid.

So. I’m thinking the next time I go there, I’m gonna order a cup of coffee and the dessert of the day. Period. I’m sure not dropping another $43 on another meal like what we had yesterday.

Well, the sun is half-way to the yardarm, the frost has melted off the neighbor’s shingles, and so…away!