No Sweet without Bitter

(listening to J.S. Bach's "Wir glauben all an einen Gott," BWV 680)
For many weeks I have felt unmotivated and uncreative with regards to this blog. I have had nothing to say, or at least nothing I felt was worth saying. I have cooked things, I have taken walks, Lindz and I have discussed what we want to give each other for Christmas as well as why the hell we're living in Raleigh. My mother drove down to visit us.
("Dieu parmi Nous", Olivier Messiaen)
Work has gone through varying degrees of tolerability and awfulness. I had been craving the opportunity to get away for some time on my own, perhaps a road trip. My wish was granted, but not in the fashion I would have wished. My grandmother, the mother of my late father, died on November 5th.
("Prelude and Fugue in G Minor, Op.7, No.3", Marcel Dupre)
Perhaps it was a bit sooner than we expected, but she had wanted to leave this world for years. She had been predeceased by my grandfather and her only son, my dad. She was 93.
I got in my car and drove the 800-plus miles to join my family in Michigan. Here are some pictures which I hastily snapped from the road:
Pilot Mountain, close to the Virginia/North Carolina Border:
 

The West Virginia State Capitol:
 

Of course, it is only when it is too late that a thick-headed fool like myself appreciates the history seen and made by such a person. She was married during the Great Depression, and she lived on a farm. My soft, deedless life does not allow me to comprehend decades of subsistence without the choices, escapes and self-gratification to which subsequent generations feel entitled. My brother, brother-in-law and I were pallbearers. We carried her to her grave which is next to my father's, his father's, and his father's. I pointed out to my young nephew that he was standing in the presence of the remains of two men after whom he was named.
("Fantasia and Fugue in G minor," BWV 542, J.S. Bach)
I'm feeling a bit contemplative and nostalgic, obviously. My thoughts really haven't been on Grandma so much as on my past and my family. I was compelled to ruefully notice how sparse the funeral attendance was. It wasn't because my grandmother wasn't a well-known and well-loved person; it was because so many of the people who knew and loved her had already passed away. However, I was comforted by that which endured: the church which she had attended and in which the pastor officiated her into the hereafter was virtually unchanged since the last time I was there (my grandfather's funeral, over sixteen years ago). The high, vaulted ceiling, the stained glass windows, the narthex's fieldstone floor and the organ were all reassuringly unaltered. The surrounding flat farmland, patches of woods and corn silos are much as they had been for decades. German Lutherans in Michigan are not overly anxious to change things. The funeral luncheon consisted of comforting, Midwestern food: scalloped potatoes, ham, cole slaw, pasta salad, lots of cookies, and stollen, made by my sister in remembrance of Grandma (she had always made it at Christmastime).
We drank beer and talked afterwards. It was good to be home with the family, spending time on the soil which I had taken for granted before I moved away. My nephews and niece are a delight, the silver lining to the cloud of my brooding.
("Toccata, Symphony V," Charles-Marie Widor)
Naturally, I availed myself of things which are available nowhere else. I bought some tasty Michigan beers, and some meat products:

I also drove up to Mount Pleasant to visit, for the first time in ten years, the campus of my alma mater, CMU. Young, beautiful people with their whole life ahead of them were everywhere. They were toting their bookbags over the same sidewalks I had trodden ten years and twenty-odd pounds ago. I strolled by the coffee house where I did a lot of French homework, The University Cup: 

I also had a lovely pint of Two Hearted Ale at a favorite old bar downtown, The Bird.
After a bracing stroll, I headed back to my old home in Saginaw. I headed back to Raleigh the next morning. I had spent three full, satisfying days in my home town.

I need help standing up

Yippee! Good times.

I was making some chicken soup Thursday evening. I was digging around in the fridge, and I felt a twinge. As soon as the words "Fuck Fuck Fuck, not again, Pig Fuckin' Whore, Fuckass Fuck Fuck Fuck!" passed my lips, an electric cattleprod was firmly pushed into my lower back. I was moving slowly that evening, and a couple of beers helped (particularly Bell's Batch 7000, thanks Tim), but the next morning was when I really knew the good times were a-rollin.' I couldn't sit up, get up or roll over without spasms that took my breath away with their intensity.

I don't like to miss work, despite the fact that I don't enjoy it. However, in the light of the fact that I was incapable of even the first of many activities that getting to work required, I called in.

Lindz got out of work early and helped me out of bed (where I had been lying motionless for six hours or so). We looked up a doctor online (I hadn't needed my current employer's benefits yet) and before long, Flexeril was coursing through my veins. I'm still pretty much useless, but it's fractionally better.

It's humbling. It's frustrating.

1)Mere seconds and one wrong move are all that separate me from being an invalid.
2)I've had a richly blessed, healthy life. When pain does show up, I'm unprepared for it.
3)Who the hell turned up the gravity?
4)Now that it hurts to even stand up, I'm filled with a desire to clean, fix or improve all sorts of things around the house. When I felt fine, I had no recollection that I even have gutters, much less that they are full of leaves.
5)I do not like being waited on in my own home. I appreciate it, but I prefer to be doing the serving.
6)If I'm still crippled on Thanksgiving (my favorite holiday, when I spend all day in the kitchen cooking and sipping Beaujolais Nouveau), I will be very pissed off indeed.

But hey, what the hell. I'm alive, this will get better, and, after all, God doesn't owe me shit. I've got it easy.

Thanksgiving

(listening to Franck's Chorale #3 in A Minor)
I have much to be thankful for. Generally speaking, I have more than I deserve in life. In particular, I'm thinking of this weekend (all four days of it). I left Sauron's Corporate Pit of Toil on Wednesday afternoon, and I bent all my thought and will toward Thanksgiving dinner. My back had been steadily improving since last week's lumbar sprain, so I was able to do the cooking (I work with a roomful of pharmacists. I gleaned enough information to decide to interrupt my muscle relaxer for a day, allowing me to drink Beaujolais while safely using a knife).

Thanksgiving is a day of cooking and gluttony; it is therefore my favorite holiday. I picked up a few things at the mobbed grocery store on the way home. I was greeted by my wife and her parents, who stayed with us for the holiday. I love having them around. Lindz and her Mom had already made two fine pies: one pumpkin and one cranberry-pear.

(Karg-Elert's "Marche Triomphale: Nun Danket alle Gott")

I got up early on Thanksgiving morning. Lindsey's father and I procured a few more forgotten items at the store, and I started poring over timelines and steps in The New Best Recipe. I was pleased to have been allowed to cook everything (I like being in control of my kitchen), but much work stood between me and six sated diners (Lindz's aunt and a guest were to join us). I had prepared the cranberry-onion confit, a jamlike, flavorful delight, two days earlier. I had already dried a mountain of bread cubes for the stuffing. I began sipping a Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale at 11 am. I started chopping onions, carrots, celery, apples and bacon. This was the menu:

Roast Turkey (a 13.5 pound Kosher bird)
Bread Stuffing with Granny Smith Apples, Sage and Bacon
Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Gravy (made from scratch with vegetables, roux and turkey drippings)
Cranberry-Onion Confit
Green Bean Casserole (brought by Lindz's aunt)
Several bottles of Georges DuBoeuf Beaujolais Nouveau 2005
Pumpkin Pie and Cranberry-Pear Pie with Frangelico-spiked Whipped Cream

I spent a total of five blissful hours in the kitchen. Lindz's folks tidied up the house, went for a stroll, played Scrabble and offered me help several hundred times. They know I love to cook, but they were convinced that I was working too hard. Chopping and sweating four pounds of onions is profoundly relaxing to a weirdo like me. I had a lovely time. I accepted the gracious offers of help when it came time to turn the sizzling bird over. Other than that, I monopolized the kitchen entirely. I even made some pita chips for an appetizer while all this was going on. My back felt pretty good, even though I knew I would pay for it later. The beer and wine helped things, most assuredly.

The turkey was resting on a carving board on top of the clothes dryer (every horizontal surface in the kitchen's vicinity was occupied by some part of the preparations), and I was bringing everything else together: mashing the potatoes, adjusting the thickness of the gravy and putting the bread, stuffing and green bean casserole into the vacated oven. The house was full of conversation and laughter. I put all the food on the kitchen counters, and the guests filed in to fill their plates. We sat down, Lindsey said a blessing, and we ate. All was right with the world. The food turned out to my satisfaction, and everyone enjoyed themselves. We ate heartily and spent a good while chatting over after-dinner drinks and pie, bobbing gauzily on a sea of Frangelico and tryptophan.

My guests admonished me to stay seated while they cleaned up. It's fairly difficult to fit five people into my little kitchen, but they did it. Fortunately, I was stuffed and slightly drunk, and that allowed me to relinquish control of my precious little realm over which I had held dominion all day. The most impressive feat was fitting the leftovers into the fridge. I chatted with my brother and my friend Charlotte on the phone while this was going on. They spent Thanksgiving together, sipping champagne and nibbling all sorts of good things. They had been the core of my Thanksgiving ritual for years in San Diego, and we had soared to dizzying heights of gluttony and epicurean gratification. We had always cooked lots of non-traditional things and gorged ourselves with whatever conglomeration of transplanted individuals we could assemble. In some ways, it was always the opposite of the traditional, family-oriented thing I did this year. In many ways, it was the same day of good food and good company that one would hope for. I miss the San Diego style Thanksgiving, but I certainly love the Raleigh version as well.

Lindz's aunt and her friend expressed their thanks and said their farewells. The rest of us stumbled off to bed. We spent the next day loafing around, not shopping with the rest of the world. My father-in-law wanted to take us out to dinner. It seemed, however, that all of us were enjoying the quiet of the house. After taking thought, I decided that we would light a fire in the fireplace, get a bunch of take-out Chinese food, and open the bottle of Mumm's Blanc de Noirs which I had purchased a few days earlier. It was perfect. A good sparkling wine goes with anything, but sitting around the table with good company and a variety of Chinese food is as good as it gets. We had some pie afterwards, played a game of Scrabble (I won!) and sipped Frangelico by the fire. Lovely.

So here we are, staring down the barrel of another Christmas. The in-laws have gone home. Lindz and I have enough leftovers to sustain us for weeks. The turkey carcass and a bunch of rice from the Chinese take-out have been reborn as a huge batch of soup. The weather is becoming bleaker. My gift shopping is not done yet. I should bake Christmas cookies. When did I start trying to impersonate a grownup?
(Boellmann's "Suite Gothique," Op. 25)

Clean Dishes, a Happy Back and Organ Music

(listening to Louis Vierne's 5th Symphony for Organ, Op. 47)
I like doing dishes. I like having things clean and in their place (translation: I'm rather obsessive-compulsive about my kitchen), and the washing of dishes is a classic exercise of that impulse. I find it relaxing. I had finished washing some dishes after making pancakes for Lindsey and myself, and I was seized by an urge to take a picture of the drying rack. Towns and universities have often paid artists lots of money to create sculptures which turned out to be silly, ugly or overreaching, so I figured my sculpture of clean dishes was a better deal. 
Various materials are represented: stainless steel, steel-cladded aluminum, porcelain, nylon plastic, borosilicate glass and enameled cast iron. Perhaps NC State will pay me $75,000 to put it in the middle of their library.
I'm giddy with joy at my back's recovery. I can get out of bed! I can stand upright! I can put on my own shoes! Back pain thwarts most expectations of a good day; never take a happy back for granted. That being said, I plan on going over to Durham today and wandering around a bit. I've lived in North Carolina for over two years, and I haven't visited Duke's campus yet. I want to see the chapel.
This evening, Lindz and I will be attending my employer's corporate holiday party. I work in a small outpost of a rather large company, so I will see lots of people who work at larger, more prestigious facilities. The basic points on corporate holiday parties:
1)Free food and drinks on The Man's dime
2)The opportunity to chat with coworkers whose company I enjoy, without being interrupted by work
3)The opportunity to watch people get drunk and disgrace themselves
4)The opportunity to appear at a social function with my lovely, successful and charming wife, which makes me look like a total stud
5)See #1
Today has the makings of a good Saturday. Lindz and I have already had more social interaction this week than we normally do; an alumni wine tasting on Thursday provided a lot of pleasant conversation and tasty wine. We met and exchanged phone numbers with a nice couple who have some things in common with us. We have become accustomed to a quiet, homebody life (although we complain of boredom sometimes), so it was unusual and exciting to find ourselves chatting and drinking with a bunch of young, interesting people until after midnight. We were tired the next day, and it was amusing to think of how we had done that sort of thing all the time in our previous lives. In college, it is unusual to not start partying by Thursday night at the least. We've allowed ourselves to be a bit sedentary and unsocial in our habits; perhaps we are coming around to a period of comparative extroversion. With my tendencies of enjoying dishwashing and organ music, I'm almost a nightclubbing rock star anyway.

Messiah

(listening to organ music of Anthoni Van Noordt)
Golly, I feel pretty durned cultured. This evening, Lindz and I attended a performance of Handel's Messiah at Duke University Chapel. The wide-eyed rapture I sustained during its three hours of music is evidence that I inherited my late father's love of sacred music. I suppose my cd collection would also serve as evidence, but enduring those hard pews at Duke is the true test. Lindz's tailbone still hurts; bless her.
The performance was fabulous, the orchestra, choir and soloists were top-notch. The glorious place where they did it was what made it so magical for me. A gothic church with exquisite stained glass windows and a vaulted ceiling 73 feet above one's head will take one out of a humdrum state of mind. The Messiah is a great piece of work, both in quality and quantity. After three hours, you feel like you've gotten your dose of couth.
Dad would have burst with glee; he traveled to many cathedrals in Europe in his days, but a performance of this caliber in such a grand church would have really been something special for him. I enjoyed it enough for the both of us.

Stollen

(listening to "Don't Take your Guns to Town," Johnny Cash)
In the interest of being homey, domestic and Christmas-like, and to uphold old German traditions, I made stollen:


("The Ballad of Ira Hayes," Johnny Cash)
It's bigger, uglier and more decadent than the stollen that my recently departed grandmother used to make. Just like me. Nevertheless, I'm pleased with how it came out. I used candied pineapple, mixed candied fruits and toasted walnuts in there. Stollen is a thing that varies, so I made my own version of it.

Der Raleigh-Stollen Schmeckt Gut

(listening to "Protection" by Massive Attack)
 
 
I got positive reviews from everyone who ate some of my stollen. I'm glad I decided to make something German. I adapted the recipe from The Joy of Cooking. I used candied pineapple and toasted walnuts, which do not appear in the original recipe. I took it in to work for a potluck, and my my supervisor's boss asked if she could move in with me. I think I'd just like a raise, please.

Christmas in San Diego

 
 
 
 

Second Wedding Anniversary in Raleigh

 
   
 
Lindz got the desserts are from a bakery; we didn't make them. They went famously with the bubbly.

It's Twenty-Aught-Six, Y'all

(listening to "The Great Concerts," by the Dave Brubeck Quartet)
What can I say? If one judges 2005 by headlines, it was one of the most God-awful, disaster-filled years that this planet has seen in a while. The environment is screwed up, war abounds and human nature is still human nature. However, when I take the small, me-centered view (which is easier and more quickly gratifying anyway), it's been a pretty decent year. My grandmother's passing was bittersweet; she had wanted to go for some time, but my nostalgic side awoke and yearned for a multitude of bygone gramma stuff. Things would mean nothing if you could have them forever, though.
In contrast to the previous two years, Lindz and I have not moved, changed jobs or gotten married this past year. That prevents quite a bit of turmoil right there. We've been a bit bored and unsatisfied at some times, blissfully comfortable at others. It's simple and quiet here. Perhaps 2006 will be a more challenging, fulfilling year. I wish to prevent my brain and body from getting any softer, and getting into a better job would be lovely. The present job is tolerable most of the time, but I want more.

I'm not usually given to New Year's resolutions because I believe attempts at self-improvement should happen all the time. But what the hell:

1)I will continue to not rot my brain watching network television.
2)I will continue driving a small, paid-for, fuel-efficient car.
3)I will continue to make Lindz's lunch and morning tea every day.
4)I will finish reading at least one book from the pile beside my bed.
5)I will fix the leak in the master bathroom shower.
6)I will have a glass of wine (got that one done already).
7)I will brew beer.
8)I will destroy the Sith and bring balance to the Force.

Santa Barbara, Nexus of Delight

It's heartbreaking. Every time I've been there, it has been idyllic. The bar is raised to impossible heights, but each visit to Santa Barbara is ludicrously pleasant. This time had some perversely nice twists. First, I was simply accompanying my wife on her business trip, so the expenses were considerably less than if we had simply gone there of our own volition. Next, the weather was flawless. Not just "Oh, Gee, it's nice, considering it's January," but nice enough to compare with anywhere, any time of year. Lindz attended a multi-day business conference replete with presentations and lectures; I wandered around. I took pictures, drank beer, wrote in my journal and plowed through The DaVinci Code. During our stay in Santa Barbara, my harshest dose of reality was the need to purchase band-aids for my blisters (I had been walking in sandals all day, each day). Hellish. Absolutely hellish. For starters, here's the view from our hotel room that greeted me at sunrise our first day (I would have missed it were it not for the three hour time difference):

And I wandered.


Pelicans on Stearns Wharf are unafraid of humans; I was able to get close:

A slice of sky from underneath the 101 overpass at State Street:

A sidewalk in the afternoon:

I don't know the exact age of this edifice, and the picture does not quite do justice to the fine stonework. Perhaps my brother will drive up there and photograph it properly:

Fulfilling my duty as a spouse, I attended each evening's social events with Lindz, and we chatted with political/commerce-minded folk from around the country. That was pretty much my only requirement during the trip, which served to prevent me from wandering too far or getting too drunk. All things considered, I'm quite the lucky son of a bitch.
Lindz's conference concluded, and we headed into the hills for some wine tasting. We pulled off from route 154:


Here are some backlit cows grazing near Sanford Winery, of Sideways fame:
Incidentally, this place is my favorite. The wine is superlative. They make a lovely, seductively complex Sauvignon Blanc, and their Pinot Noirs are of peerless stature. We brought back a bottle of the Pinot Noir 2001 La Rinconada Vineyard. It's the shit. Rich, deeply extracted fruit with licorice, mineral and spice notes. Probably the best pinot I've had the luck to drink, and I've had some good Pinot. It's a bigger wine than many Cabernets. The place is unassuming and quaint:

We started south for Los Angeles (we got a hotel room near LAX because our flight departed early the next morning). The sun disappeared behind one of the Channel Islands, and Lindz snapped a picture while we were driving:

We were in a daze; the drive had been so beautiful. We drove through fine Santa Barbara County scenery during photographers' fabled "Magic Hour."
After that, via Ventura and Thousand Oaks, we gradually descended into the ordeal of traffic that is the hallmark of that hateful tumor of a city, Los Angeles. What potent mixture of drugs allow Angelinos to maintain the will to live? I'd likely put a shotgun in my mouth if I lived in that Disneyland Trashcan. Lindz was kind enough to put up with me as I swore at the traffic. What can I say? It was an infuriating and confusing undertaking just to fill up on gas on Sunset Boulevard, and two hours earlier, we were sipping great wine in Buelton.

Like photography, life is meaningless without contrast.

Panorama from the End of Stearns Wharf, Santa Barbara

 
 

French Onion Soup

 
 

Pain a l'Ancienne

 
 

I'm Still Here

First, the food. I made this salad of spinach, arugula, julienned carrots, red bell pepper, red onion, toasted almonds, shaved parmesan, flank steak and blood oranges. We dressed it simply with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, coarse salt and pepper. It was pretty durn good.


I've been lazy about posting here. Sometimes I don't feel like I have much to say. Days in the cubicle farm trudge along like clones in grey suits marching off a cliff's edge: all the same, all fruitless. Well, not entirely fruitless. The paycheck serves its purpose. Work is work, whether or not one applies a dreary metaphor to it. Life away from work has been just fine. But...

My surviving grandmother had a major stroke. She suffered a very serious medical incident, but, when I take the long view, things are good. She is in a better nursing home than we hoped for. She and her daughter (my mother) are speaking for the first time in years. Grandpa is being looked after by the family more than previously was the case. As my sister aptly put it, a giant alarm clock has gone off.

I liked it better when my family and I were immortal. The years have slithered by stealthily, and now they grip my heart with an iron fist. I am fat, stiff and slow. Family members, whom I once viewed as eternal and immutable, wane and yield their lives. Members of my wife's family suffer various maladies as well. All I can do is get busy and live more.

Extreme Makeover: Orangewino Edition

The duvet cover in the guest room is a turquoise and brown item from Anthropologie. I like the color combination, so I chose it for my blog. I took a black and white picture of my maple cutting board and merged it with html color #00CCCC, and it is now the background (complete with knife marks).

Shelf Improvement, Taxes and a Russian Chemist

(listening to Louis Vierne's Symphony #4)

Our little hallway closet had shelves of stained pine, which we replaced with tidy, white MDF. I glued some corks onto one of the old shelves and hung it in the den.

I'm sipping a glass of The Reverend. It's chilly outside (by the standards of this unusually mild North Carolina winter, anyway), and it's nice to drink such a rich, warming beer indoors.

It's been a pleasant weekend of putzing around, not being broke, and going out for a bit of social activity. Thursday was payday, which always puts a spring in my step before bills and expenses suck it all up.

Friday evening, I chatted with my mother for a while over the phone. It's an unfamiliar thing, to hear her talk about her parents as people who actually exist. I really don't understand the reasons behind the schism that existed for so many years, but perhaps my grandmother's stroke was enough to at least partially break down that wall. Mom did say that Grandpa is an odd old man, and not altogether likeable. It's weird to hear anything but silence on the subject.

After the phone conversation with Mummy, I went out for take-out Mexican food. We have a very respectable place near us (no ground beef to be seen, and they have multiple salsas which all have flavor and texture!), and we ate wolfishly when I brought it home. We washed it down with RedHook IPA, and all was right with the world. We had some tasty Dagoba chocolate afterwards (Xocolatl, with cayenne pepper, and Eclipse 87%, the darkest dark chocolate I've ever had).

Saturday was grey, but I got a few things done. I bought new printer ink cartridges, so we could print out our TurboTax forms. We get to pay the government quite a few bucks this year, much to our chagrin. I wouldn't be quite as annoyed if our money was actually getting used for anything good. Conservative? Is that what Republicans are? What the hell does that mean? Fight an expensive, ill-informed, strategically idiotic war and just let the deficit keep growing? Is that the platform that the Republicans stand on? Brilliant. Here's my check, Bush, you incompetent, backward moron. Even the staunch Republicans among my coworkers have run out of excuses for you. The fact that I have to pay for your mistakes infuriates me.
{deep breath}
Anyway, in addition to reading a bit and doing some grocery shopping, our Saturday evening concluded with drinks at a bar in Durham with an old friend of Lindsey's, the friend's sister, and the sister's boyfriend. It was a pretty well-educated, well traveled group, so the evening was stimulating. The boyfriend, Dmitriy, is a Russian-born PhD who is a chemist at UNC Chapel Hill. Among many other things, we talked about graduate studies. Perhaps it was the two pints of Allagash White talking, my something inside me, again, told me that I need to be done with the menial shit that I'm doing and earn a PhD in English. I'd rather be teaching and writing than shovelling bullshit for Big Pharma. At any rate, I think I'm too much of a pain in the ass to not be an academic.

The next morning, I swilled down a pot of coffee as I made scrambled eggs with cheese and rosemary roasted potatoes on the super duper quantum leap of potato technology pan. I was pleased with myself. I went out and wandered around a couple of stores for fun. At HomeGoods, I got an Emile Henry pan for only fifteen bucks. It's a fun store, if you're a dork like me. I went next door to Total Wine and got a couple of my favorite $10 reds, J. Vidal Fleury's Cote-du-Rhone and Tenuta del Portale Starsa Basilicata. I also got The Reverend there.

For dinner, Lindz cooked a very tasty gnocchi/meatball/red sauce dish out of a Rachael Ray cookbook. We really get into a groove of enjoying the weekend just before it ends. Bummer.

Spent Grain Bread and Death

  

I've been lazy, and I haven't had much to say.

My computer at home is broken.

My maternal grandmother died, at the age of 90, on Good Friday.

It makes me frustrated and philosophical.
To shape that frustration into something tangible, I intend to build a table. It will be a big, 8-foot long table for the deck. The kind of table that is meant to be laden with food and surrounded by a big group of people. It will be a fitting memorial to my Grandma, who laid out countless holiday feasts and spent little time sitting down to eat them. Her concern was others' happiness.

My sister and her hubby came down for a visit. We hung out. We ate and drank. That's pretty much it. It was bliss. They brought me some spent grains from a batch of the absolutely sublime Howell at the Moon Stout which my brother-in-law made (with newly increased involvement on the part of my sister). It makes an excellent addition to bread.

The Gramma Table

In memory of both of my departed grandmothers, I have constructed the Gramma Table. My father-in-law helped by offering advice and an extra pair of hands. He probably prevented some mistakes, injuries and obscenities.

It's bigger than it looks here. It's eight feet long and over two feet wide. It weighs a lot, over 200 pounds to be sure. We've already eaten at this table twice, and it was only finished this morning. This evening's dinner showed that it goes well with beef kebabs, couscous, Mozart quintets and birds. I like it.

The Polar Kangaroo

I harvested a bunch of fresh chocolate mint and shoved it into a bottle of vodka. 24 hours later, I took it out. I stirred some of this vodka with ice cubes and a wee bit of dry vermouth, and voila! A Polar Kangaroo! A kangaroo is the purist's name for a martini made with vodka instead of gin, and it's polar because of the minty freshness.

A tasty cocktail for those evenings spent telling Commander McBragg stories to your buddies at the Royal Exploration Society Club.

"There I was, surrounded by box jellyfish, with only my trusty diving knife and a few feet of kitchen twine..."

Arrival in Jamaica

Lindz and I just went to Jamaica to attend the wedding of a friend of hers. We sort of declared it our own honeymoon as well. Here's a few tidbits from Day 1.

That's Cuba down there, as seen from a comfortable, first-class seat on an Airbus A320 EOW. The nice flight attendant gave me Scotch on the rocks and little shortbread cookies. A wise man once said, "It is better to go first class than to arrive." Lindz's folks helped us out with the plane tickets (they have enough miles saved up to go to Pluto).

After braving the skies above the menacing Tropical Island of Communists, we landed in Jamaica and spent an hour or so in the customs line with legions of fat, ugly Americans. I don't include my wife and myself with the fat, ugly Americans because she is slender and good-looking. I am married to her, therefore I am svelte-in-law. We finally made it to our tour company and headed for the resort.
Here we are, crawling through Montego Bay traffic with our driver, Hennis, at the wheel of the Toyota HiAce van:

Although it's difficult to make out, I zoomed in on Hennis's false teeth. Had he put them in his mouth instead of the dashboard, I might have understood his heavily accented descriptions of towns and natural features:

Jamaica is a lush, beautiful place. We drove for about an hour and a half from Montego Bay to Negril on a road that followed the coast.

We arrived at the resort and inhaled some tasty coconut shrimp and conch fritters. The first item on our agenda was a "Welcome Cruise." After some logistics, waiting, sweating, bus riding, waiting, sweating and paying, we got on the boat and started drinking. It rained at first, but a gloriously clear evening ensued.
Here are some locals in a boat. I believe they were trying to sell something to the folks on a nearby catamaran.

A woman who resembled Brigitte Nielsen was quite naked on said catamaran:
  
After everyone on our boat was suitably full of rum punch and beer, the captain and crew pulled up close to shore and offered everyone the opportunity to swim to shore and jump 40 feet or so into this cove:
   I did not partake, but I was told that if one jumped inexpertly, one would undergo a thrillingly painful seawater enema.
This is the sunset that we enjoyed near the end of the booze cruise. By this time, I had already endeared myself to the company that brews Red Stripe.

Lindz and I got off the bus at our resort, had a tasty dinner at the restaurant, and went to bed. A day of uninterrupted travel, drinking and swimming really takes it out of you.