My plan to encourage Barry to cook more, especially for me, is working; he invited me over for dinner on Sunday night, and served baby bell peppers stuffed with ground lamb, rice, and onions – really yummy. Before we were able to eat, though, we had to engage in a little quail wrangling.
Ever since Barry moved into his present house, he’s been throwing out stale bread and crackers for the birds and bunnies in his backyard. This worked well and provided him with a lot of free entertainment until the last couple of weeks, when the latest batches of baby quail started hatching. Some of the parent quail are apparently at their wits’ end as to how to feed all these hungry little mouths, and they’ve started pecking on Barry’s glass patio door to demand more crumbs, leading him to announce, “I’ve created Frankenquail!”
Anyway, Sunday evening he and I wandered out onto the back patio before dinner, and while we were returning to the house one of the quail chicks (a little smaller than a ping-pong ball with legs) skittered inside with us and took refuge under the kitchen stove.
I immediately suggested moving the stove but Barry was afraid that the stove 1) was too heavy for us to move without injury to ourselves, and 2) would squish the quail as well. After a quarter of an hour of hand-wringing, however, he decided that he would worry all night if he just left the bird there – and who knows where it would have ended up if it had come out later on its own? – so we dragged the stove away from the wall and herded the chick into a plastic pitcher. I rushed it outside and deposited it under a sheltering bush. A few minutes later I saw it run at top speed (its legs only a blur) in the direction its family had previously taken.
I hope he (or she) caught up with the rest of the brood. I think it was pretty careless of the parent quail to move on without one of their children. Still, I can understand their problem – herding 10 or so clueless but fast-moving quail chicks must be even worse than trying to herd cats. Plus, quail apparently don’t actually like living in groups; the temptation to lose at least some of the kids may occasionally be pretty strong:
"The Quail is generally a solitary animal meaning they don’t really care for the company of other birds. Sometimes if this bird is in a gregarious mood then they will socialize with one other Quail. With that said, everything changes once mating season rolls around. During this time, different family groups will come together and form flocks as large as 100 individuals. I can just imagine how cranky these introvert birds are after a few days with such a large flock.” ~Wild Facts
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Saying Goodbye
She's started to exhibit what the vet said would be signs of almost total kidney failure - constant drinking, nearly constant urination - and she's almost entirely stopped eating. She follows me around, wailing to be held (this from a cat who always hated to be picked up). When she's not in my lap or trying to get there, she's hiding under the bed.
I haven't even taken her on The Big Trip yet, and already I feel like a murderer, but she's obviously suffering and I hate to see that, too. Of course every time I'm sure she's doomed, she perks up and looks great the next day, but the overall trajectory is definitely headed in a downward direction.
To be continued...
"Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love." ~George Eliot
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Cinco de Margarita
I don't know this for a fact, but I suspect that my husband Tom tasted his first margarita shortly after meeting me, and he instantly fell in love with it. From then on, he was on a quest to find the perfect margarita - frozen, with salt. He didn't like them overly sweet, nor reeking of an excess of tequila, but well-balanced and preferably with fresh-squeezed lime juice.
On balmy Friday evenings we would park ourselves in an outdoor cafe (frequently the one in Manhattan's Bryant Park, behind the main library), or the outdoor tables of one of our usually interior haunts, and greet the weekend with chips, guacamole, and margaritas. The entire family knew of this obsession; one year he received two (matching, amazingly enough) sets of margarita glasses for his birthday, and kept them both. Brian, his older son, inevitably took us to our first Margaritaville restaurant when we visited him in Hawaii. When we moved to Arizona, Tom's younger daughter-in-law accused him of doing so in order to be closer to tequila country; she gave him a shotglass shaped like a squatty saguaro cactus as a going-away present.
That same daughter-in-law had earlier introduced us to the the delights of the frozen margarita bucket. A relative from Georgia had brought her a bucket of On The Border's margarita mix; one adds tequila, mixes, and places the bucket in the freezer. Voila, frozen margaritas on demand! Add friends and it's an instant party. Tom was thrilled to find both the buckets and the mother lode (actual On The Border restaurants) in the Phoenix area. We also found what we thought was the perfect guacamole in a small Glendale restaurant named Lily's; the owner used his Mexican grandmother's recipe, containing nothing but avocados, onions, lime juice and a little salt. Fabulous.
Of course Tom is gone now, and Lily's also died during road construction that cut off almost all access to the restaurant, but a bucket of frozen margaritas still lives in the freezer section of my refrigerator. Tonight is Cinco de Mayo, and although I'm a little fuzzy as to what it's all about, I'll gladly celebrate any holiday that allows me to pull out the margaritas, chips, and Wholly Guacamole.
"If life gives you limes, make margaritas." ~Jimmy Buffett
On balmy Friday evenings we would park ourselves in an outdoor cafe (frequently the one in Manhattan's Bryant Park, behind the main library), or the outdoor tables of one of our usually interior haunts, and greet the weekend with chips, guacamole, and margaritas. The entire family knew of this obsession; one year he received two (matching, amazingly enough) sets of margarita glasses for his birthday, and kept them both. Brian, his older son, inevitably took us to our first Margaritaville restaurant when we visited him in Hawaii. When we moved to Arizona, Tom's younger daughter-in-law accused him of doing so in order to be closer to tequila country; she gave him a shotglass shaped like a squatty saguaro cactus as a going-away present.
That same daughter-in-law had earlier introduced us to the the delights of the frozen margarita bucket. A relative from Georgia had brought her a bucket of On The Border's margarita mix; one adds tequila, mixes, and places the bucket in the freezer. Voila, frozen margaritas on demand! Add friends and it's an instant party. Tom was thrilled to find both the buckets and the mother lode (actual On The Border restaurants) in the Phoenix area. We also found what we thought was the perfect guacamole in a small Glendale restaurant named Lily's; the owner used his Mexican grandmother's recipe, containing nothing but avocados, onions, lime juice and a little salt. Fabulous.
Of course Tom is gone now, and Lily's also died during road construction that cut off almost all access to the restaurant, but a bucket of frozen margaritas still lives in the freezer section of my refrigerator. Tonight is Cinco de Mayo, and although I'm a little fuzzy as to what it's all about, I'll gladly celebrate any holiday that allows me to pull out the margaritas, chips, and Wholly Guacamole.
"If life gives you limes, make margaritas." ~Jimmy Buffett
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Enjoying Julia
Between the new job, the old jobs, tax season and my ailing cat, it's been a long hard month, so today I treated myself to a little break. In between the housecleaning and the laundry I watched Julia Child: The French Chef, a 3-DVD set I checked out from the library.
The DVD sleeve says "includes 12 original episodes of the French Chef," so I thought that's all it was, but the first disc in the set is the PBS American Masters episode "Julia Child: America's Favorite Chef," a lovely biography with extensive information about her early life and also about her relationship with her husband. The biography includes a fascinating video clip of the young Julia as bridesmaid in a gigantic picture hat, towering over everyone else in the wedding party, and the news that early in her adult life she turned down an offer of marriage from the heir to an "enormous" publishing fortune. I was also unaware that it was the attack on Pearl Harbor which sent her to Washington and from there to Ceylon, where she was to meet the amazing Paul Child.
The other discs were in their own way even more fun, especially if you cook. I couldn't help but laugh during the petit fours episode, when Julia kept assuring us that her fondant would reach the correct consistency "any minute now," and it stubbornly refused to harden. In the days of live television, something like that must have messed up the timing for the entire show. I also wondered how they flagged her about mistakes before the advent of teleprompter machines and in-ear microphones; in one show she erroneously stated that the recipe contained a half cup of almond extract; after a few minutes she looked startled, apologized, and said that the amount should be only a quarter of a teaspoon. I visualized someone (perhaps Paul) frantically waving a chalkboard off camera.
Such fun. I'm inspired to spend tomorrow cooking wonderful things that I can eat during the rest of the week.
"If I can do it, you can do it...and here's how to do it!" ~Julia Child
The DVD sleeve says "includes 12 original episodes of the French Chef," so I thought that's all it was, but the first disc in the set is the PBS American Masters episode "Julia Child: America's Favorite Chef," a lovely biography with extensive information about her early life and also about her relationship with her husband. The biography includes a fascinating video clip of the young Julia as bridesmaid in a gigantic picture hat, towering over everyone else in the wedding party, and the news that early in her adult life she turned down an offer of marriage from the heir to an "enormous" publishing fortune. I was also unaware that it was the attack on Pearl Harbor which sent her to Washington and from there to Ceylon, where she was to meet the amazing Paul Child.
The other discs were in their own way even more fun, especially if you cook. I couldn't help but laugh during the petit fours episode, when Julia kept assuring us that her fondant would reach the correct consistency "any minute now," and it stubbornly refused to harden. In the days of live television, something like that must have messed up the timing for the entire show. I also wondered how they flagged her about mistakes before the advent of teleprompter machines and in-ear microphones; in one show she erroneously stated that the recipe contained a half cup of almond extract; after a few minutes she looked startled, apologized, and said that the amount should be only a quarter of a teaspoon. I visualized someone (perhaps Paul) frantically waving a chalkboard off camera.
Such fun. I'm inspired to spend tomorrow cooking wonderful things that I can eat during the rest of the week.
"If I can do it, you can do it...and here's how to do it!" ~Julia Child
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Smiling All the Way Home
Website design is one of the few professions that requires its followers to move back and forth quickly and easily between their left and right brains. This is necessary because a successful design should be both aesthetically pleasing and technically sound. Of the website designers I've met, most were either techies who searched for their inner artists as an afterthought, or photographers or illustrators who had decided to use the Internet as a marketing tool and then struggled with the technology. Almost none grew up equally comfortable with art and science.
Although I enjoyed drawing and painting when I was younger, I didn't become seriously interested in commercial design until after I finished my master's degree in IT. Once I decided to try to make a living as a designer I embarked on a crash self-study course in the principles of design. I spent two years reading everything I could get my hands on about layouts, typography, color theory, and sub-categories like icon design and accessibility, and practicing with Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and a graphics tablet. By the time I did an internship with a real web design firm I was a fairly competent journeyman designer, but I was blown away by the artistic talent of some of the other interns. Fortunately I was able to trade technical tips for design criticism, and I've continued to learn and improve ever since.
My main strength as a designer has been the ability to really listen to my clients' wishes. One of my proudest moments was when a woman told me the logo I designed for her firm "spoke to her soul." However, the client who gave me the bulk of my work over the last few years was a very critical person, and rarely satisfied with my designs even when his clients loved them. I suppose this kept me humble (and prevented me from asking for a raise), but it left me totally unprepared for my current contract. So far all of the design work I've done at my new workplace has been greeted with unadulterated praise. Even when someone has asked for a design to be tweaked, he or she has hastened to assure me that what I've already done is great. One associate said I have a real designer's eye. Yesterday three of my client coworkers descended on my cubicle to tell me that the latest project I did for them was "awesome." To be on the receiving end of this kind of feedback on a daily basis is a novel and pleasant sensation.
I really hope this company considers hanging on to me for the long term. I'm getting to spend all day every day doing work I thoroughly enjoy, getting paid well for it, and being patted on the back to boot. I am self-motivated enough to jump through hoops for any employer, but I'll jump through flames for unconditional praise.
"There is no charge for awesomeness..." Po in Kung Fu Panda
Although I enjoyed drawing and painting when I was younger, I didn't become seriously interested in commercial design until after I finished my master's degree in IT. Once I decided to try to make a living as a designer I embarked on a crash self-study course in the principles of design. I spent two years reading everything I could get my hands on about layouts, typography, color theory, and sub-categories like icon design and accessibility, and practicing with Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and a graphics tablet. By the time I did an internship with a real web design firm I was a fairly competent journeyman designer, but I was blown away by the artistic talent of some of the other interns. Fortunately I was able to trade technical tips for design criticism, and I've continued to learn and improve ever since.
My main strength as a designer has been the ability to really listen to my clients' wishes. One of my proudest moments was when a woman told me the logo I designed for her firm "spoke to her soul." However, the client who gave me the bulk of my work over the last few years was a very critical person, and rarely satisfied with my designs even when his clients loved them. I suppose this kept me humble (and prevented me from asking for a raise), but it left me totally unprepared for my current contract. So far all of the design work I've done at my new workplace has been greeted with unadulterated praise. Even when someone has asked for a design to be tweaked, he or she has hastened to assure me that what I've already done is great. One associate said I have a real designer's eye. Yesterday three of my client coworkers descended on my cubicle to tell me that the latest project I did for them was "awesome." To be on the receiving end of this kind of feedback on a daily basis is a novel and pleasant sensation.
I really hope this company considers hanging on to me for the long term. I'm getting to spend all day every day doing work I thoroughly enjoy, getting paid well for it, and being patted on the back to boot. I am self-motivated enough to jump through hoops for any employer, but I'll jump through flames for unconditional praise.
"There is no charge for awesomeness..." Po in Kung Fu Panda
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)