Monthly Archives: August 2008

Gift from Trish as she was “Zen-ing” her loft. My take included a suction cup paper towel holder that falls right behind the strap wrench as best kitchen gadget because it’s not a gadget.

It suctions to the countertop so when one has a hand laced with meat or fowl bacteria, reach out and grab a clean paper towel and the holder won’t move at all. Magic. Thank you, Trish!

Just think about it. No stabilizing of a paper towel holder. That saves time and effort every day. I love these things! If you have any you’d like to recommend please comment. Thanks, Dee

Doesn’t that make one feel safe and secure now that Gustav is a Category 4 hurricane with winds @150 mph and a Cat 5 = 156 mph? Cat 5 is the worst.

My cell phone rang at about 10:30 tonight putting the fear of God in me, death of a family member, serious illness. It was Jim’s mother, a nurse at the VA saying there were emergency personnel on hand and they’re taking in patients from New Orleans, Beaumont and Houston.

Several oil company reps have said they’re taking personnel off the 3.500 rigs in the Gulf of Mexico (I never imagined there were so many).

So what we’re told (nothing by City officials) is that we’re in the “cone of uncertainty,” which is certain for they can’t predict the storm. We’re told to stay put to only allow mandated evacuees on the roadways but we may be among that number soon and Hurricane Rita let us doubt the effectiveness and efficiency of local, state and federal government in dealing with natural disaster.

Right now we plan to stay until we hear otherwise. Seems like a lot of folks from Louisiana are coming to Texas but right now we have no idea if they’ll be safer here. If it gets bad we may just head west instead of north to Jim’s parents.

We’ll see. Jim’s excited for gyros and will set up the Kitchenaid with the grinder and we’re good to go for at least tomorrow. We still have about 30# of ice in the freezer from Edouard, which never hit except as continuous rain, so if we get another 20# and fill the coolers and I really clean out the frig we may be able to keep things cold if we lose power.

Hey, don’t look at me! I didn’t want to live in the Gulf! I prefer earthquakes and arson-induced wildfires. Or blizzards, whiteouts on the highway. Forget about Disneyland, let’s just check out the weather in various sections of the country for a while. Whee!!! Dee

It’s “cold dinner” night tonight. A very nice whole wheat batard (store-bought artisan), hard-cooked eggs, potato salad, sliced ripe tomato with balsamic vinegar, fried green tomatoes in a beer batter, deli-sliced ham and my marinated Kalamata olives.

Jim is no cook but he appreciates Alton Brown for the scientific presentation of his cookery. So now he wants gyros and I now have several pounds of lamb shoulder that I have to take off the bone and grind. I don’t have a rotisserie so will have to use the oven. My grinding attachment has never been used and is still in its original packaging since the first Fry’s opened in San Diego over ten years ago.

Jim will be happy to use my Kitchenaid which has not been used since we moved. I couldn’t find a box that looked like it would fit, so couldn’t finish unpacking the kitchen until he returned with the movers. Turns out he stored it on its side so the grease dripped out and I got kind of freaked out by that.

So tomorrow night is gyros on pita with red onion, Feta and tsatziki. Mmmm, reminds me of my last trip to Greece. Will have to take Jim some day. The little garbage eater (Zoe) can stay at the pet “spa.”

Tomorrow Jim wants to see Trans-Siberian but just told me there’s a sing-along version of Mamma Mia! at the theatre! I’ve always wanted to do that with The Sound of Music. The hills are alive…

I marvel at certain food network chefs (note no caps) who insist on using oblong pans on round burners. This morning I wanted to hug my husband before he ate and went off to work but first I had to flip his eggs, over medium.

Since we got the new pan (see earlier post) he remarked that’s round and I added that it still has a stick-free coating.

Jim can make an oblong or square pan just by walking through the kitchen and dropping it on the stained concrete floor. Why pay more for one?

Instead of writing a book we may just do this for a living, but this is a happy day today and accidentally knocking our pots and pans off the drying rack is not what we’re looking for. We’ll both write our different things. Yeah, they’re really different. But he can appreciate my writing to a certain extent and I don’t understand code but appreciate his efforts.

Let’s have an ode to perpetually round pans. Well, roasting pans need to be rectangular. We like the new T-Fal egg pan.

What would we have been?

Consider education. I look at lawyers and am smarter than most. Doctors, that’s a different field. Mathematicians, don’t even go there as my calculator broke at plus and minus. All right I can multiply and divide but no calculus.

PR people like Lanny Davis interviewed on Slate today? He’s a smart man. Could I do what he has achieved? He knows everyone and interviews everyone which means something in these days. I’d love to go back to the days before Enron and subprimes, to Clintonian era, essentially. But those days are gone and we’ve all suffered.

Look back on your younger days and see what you envisioned back then. I loved my legislative work but always wanted to cook and teach. But what if I went to law school back then when I was writing laws my legal counsel didn’t even care to understand?

All he said to me was “You’re an attractive woman, I’m a man. We both have needs.” After I nearly peed my pants from laughing that was about it for our professional relationship. He was a lawyer. There’s more to the story. This one went high up, politically.

Dreams. If I had kids and not just a dog I’d instill dreams in my kids, I try to do that now through family and friends. Mostly by giving specialty books and trying to be there.

My dreams are sleeping side by side in the bedroom, husband and dog, snoring. It makes me feel like a good wife to write and just listen to them. Perhaps that’s my dream, after all.