Three Beautiful Things 02/27/15: More a Greenbelt Guy, Lucky 7, One Bowl Curry

1.  It was a good day for deepening my involvement as a resident of Greenbelt, MD.  I secured a library card and went over to the fitness center and bought a ten buck pass enabling me to ride any U of Maryland shuttle bus and, for a ridiculously low price, bought a year long membership at the Fitness and Aquatic Center.  This was one of my first experiences of paying a greatly reduced rate because, at this place, I am a senior citizen.

2.  After I'd been to the Co-op, the only store in Greenbelt that can sell beer (I still don't quite full understand Maryland's laws regarding beer sales in grocery stores) (well, maybe convenience stores can sell beer), the Deke sent me an emergency text requesting that I pick her up some red wine or a sixer of porter/stout.  There's a liquor store on Greenbelt Road, on the same side of the street as Staples, where I had a visit planned, so I went to it and, at first, nearly bought a sixer of Double IPA, corrected myself, returned to the cooler and could only find one porter, Lucky 7 brewed by Evolution in Salisbury, MD.  I took a risk, hoping it would work for the Deke, and it did -- big time.  She loves it. This made me very happy.  I took a gulp from one of her servings, and, yeah, it is really good.

3.  During the day, I soaked and cooked up some chick peas and, upon returning home, I sauteed some onions, garlic, and ginger, later added curry powder, let it cook for a while, added a can of diced tomatoes, let that mixture cook, and then added the chick peas, more cooking, and finished it off my folding fresh baby spinach leaves into the mix.  We ate this over brown rice and garnished it with cilantro and plain yogurt.  For the 107,000th night in a row we ate a one bowl dinner and we totally enjoyed it. (I'm wondering -- would eggplant have worked?)

Three Beautiful Things 02/26/15: Snow Day, Ready to Roll, Perfect Soup

1.  Here's what I don't like about this cold weather and today's snow day:  it cuts into my developing walking routine.  I keep believing that I'll get back to it soon because, damn it, it can't stay cold forever.  Here's what I like:  the Deke had a snow day today and so we go to lounge around our apartment home and work on getting things done and enjoying each other's company.

2.  What did I get done?  Well, with my March 2nd appointment at the Transplantation Center looming, I made photcopies of all my recent medical records so that when I take these records to Baltimore, if they want to keep them, it's no sweat.  I also divided my records into a few categories and folders and if I had to walk out of my apartment home today and show up in Baltimore in an hour, I'd be ready.  (We also have a hotel room reserved for Sunday night.)

3.  Yeah.  That mushroom barley carrot celery onion garlic spinach soup was perfect, especially on a cold day spent mostly indoors.

Three Beautiful Things 02/25/15: Forms, Eggplant, Wildcats

1.  Going to the U of Maryland Transplantation Center for an all-day appointment requires some paper work, mostly filling out of questionnaires about my health history and my mental state.  I sat myself down and filled these forms out today.  I didn't really feel the stress of doing this until I was finished and collapsed on the bed with the Corgis and fell into a coma nap.

2.  I had fun chopping up eggplant, sauteeing it for a while in garlic and seasoning it with red pepper flakes.  After a bit, I poured a cup of water over the eggplant, along with fish sauce and sugar, and let the eggplant steam until soft.  The coup de grace was a generous heaping of fresh basil leaves on the eggplant.  I served it over brown rice and the Deke and I marveled at how lucky we are to experience so much pleasure from such simple food.  This dish was really good.

3.  A Facebook thread initiated by Doug Schonewald reporting Van Troxel's initiation into the Idaho Sports Hall of Fame turned into a discussion, still ongoing, about North Idaho basketball in early 70's and later a look at KHS basketball in the late 50s and on into 1964, the last time KHS won a state title. Coincidentally, while we were gabbing on Facebook about the good old days, Kellogg defeated Bonners Ferry, 53-39, to advance to the state tournament.  Should the Wildcats claw their way to a state title, it would be Kellogg's first since 1964.  I'll keep my fingers crossed for the purple and gold.

Sibling Assignment #157: Pinterest Has Become an Unexpected Source of Happiness

I was responsible for Sibling Assignment #157 and here's what I challenged my sisters and me to write about:

Write a piece about Pinterest.  What do you value about Pinterest?  How has it made a difference in your life?  Can you tell a story about a particular thing you did at a particular time that went really well because you are a part of Pinterest?  On the flip side, is there anything about Pinterest that disappoints you?

Both of my sisters are very happy with Pinterest and you can read about Christy's life at Pinterest, here, and about Carol's, here.

For quite a while, in my own oblivious way, I've been vaguely aware that my sisters and the Deke were signed up on Pinterest.  I never gave signing up much thought.

For some reason, a batch of stuffed peppers, of all things, woke me up.  Before I explain, let me say that before these stuffed peppers, I'd eaten great meals and enjoyed tasty drinks made from recipes both of my sisters had found on Pinterest.  But, for some reason, the stuffed peppers woke me up.

You see, Carol is a participant in the Bountiful Basket cooperative and when her food comes, she has to figure out how to make good use of what's in her basket.  Near the end of my Nov.-Jan. stay in Kellogg, she invited Mom and me over for dinner and, because her Bountiful Basket had a bounty of peppers, she needed a good recipe for fixing them. The stuffed peppers with mushrooms, rice, and feta were perfect.

I don't know if she had made these peppers before, but I do know that they were so delicious that I thought that I might give this Pinterest thing a try when I get back to Greenbelt.

Now that I'm home in Greenbelt again, I am back to eating a primarily, but not exclusively, vegetarian diet.  My understanding is that plant-based proteins are easier on my kidneys than animal-based proteins.  I had a time in my life about 20-25 years ago, when I was a strict vegetarian, but over the years I've lost the recipe books I used to make tasty vegetarian meals.

With Pinterest, I've struck gold.

Whether it's peanut sauces, Thai stir fries, ways to prepare tofu, vegetable soups, bean soups, or a variety of other meals I haven't tried yet, the recipes I've found in Pinterest have helped greatly boost the Deke's and my enjoyment of nightly dinners.

As a side note, this development in my life embodies what I am enjoying maybe the most about retirement.

I'm no chef.

I know that.

But I cook some pretty good meals here in our apartment home.

I have time to investigate the eighteenabillions of recipes available on Pinterest and have time to shop for ingredients and have time, if the recipe is a bit time consuming, to give over a half a day or so making certain things.

For example, Molly and Hiram visited us a couple of weeks ago and the Deke said something about wanting chicken soup.  I found this recipe.  It required some work:  boiling a whole chicken, giving it time to cool, and tearing the meat off of the chicken.  I could tell that if this soup was going to work, I needed to give my self about five hours to do it right, including the time that the soup would simply sit still and stew before I served it.

I think it's the best soup I've ever made.  It was a bit peppery, but it also had an Italian/oregano/basil component.  It's taste had depth.  It was medicinal for Molly and the Deke's nasal congestion. Everyone loved it and I was as happy as I've ever been after making a dinner.

If you are still reading this, I ask you not to underestimate the power of this happiness.  I love being able to serve meals that people, especially family members, love and when we eat the food together, I experience us growing more closely together in the enjoyment of the food and in the gratitude we feel for our good fortune to eat simply and to eat well.

And, really, right now, I owe this happiness to Pinterest and the many people who have so generously pinned recipes so that a regular old guy like me can bring happiness to my wife and to my family -- and that I can know that my sisters will bring the same kind of happiness to our family when we are together in Idaho and Washington with the great cocktails and meals they prepare and serve, thanks to Pinterest.

******

Coda:  I also use Pinterest boards as storage.  For example, I have a board where I store webpages about things to do in the D. C. area, especially outdoor stuff like gardens and hiking areas.

I store these things for myself.

But I have one board that I wish I could attract more people's interest in, and that I don't, disappoints me.  I have a board titled, "Favorite Pictures Posted by tumblr Photographers".  I follow a number of fellow (mostly) amateur photographers on tumblr and when I am especially struck by one of their pictures, I pin it to this board.  

I'd love it if more people saw their pictures.  It's a small thing, but because my Pinterest account draws little interest, these pictures don't get much attention, well, beyond other of their followers on tumblr.  

So, if you'd ever like to look over this Pinterest gallery of mine, it's here and you can see some good street photography these people have done and some other styles as well.  

Three Beautiful Things 02/24/15: Beltway Sludge, Great Stir Fry, Terrapins Defeat Badgers!

1.  It was time to drive to Groveton/Alexandria and pick up the dogs and bring them back.  I decided to wait until a little later in the morning to head out so I wouldn't be caught in the sludge of rush hour traffic.  So, what happened?  Some kind of road work closed two right hand lanes for a stretch of about seven miles and I got caught in the sludge of road construction traffic.  Ha!  You just never know what'll happen on the Capital Beltway.

2.  I found a recipe for Thai style stir fried tofu and basil.  Lately, fresh basil has been unavailable at the Co-op, so I was ready to substitute lemongrass and see how that worked, but, I lucked out today.  The Co-op had a generous stock of basil leaves.  I improvised a bit on the recipe -- green curry pasted instead of chili paste and I used peanut butter instead of crushed peanuts and green onions instead of shallots.  It all worked out great.  Both the Deke and I enjoyed this stir fried combo over brown rice.

3.  I went online and found the radio broadcast of the U. of Maryland's men's basketball's team huge game with the visiting Badgers of the U of Wisconsin and listened to it.   The Badgers sit atop the Big Ten standings. They had only lost twice this season and were ranked 5th in the nation.  The Maryland Terrapins, led by senior Dez Wells and freshman Melo Tremble jumped to an eleven point half time lead, held off the Badgers in the second half, played great in the final two minutes, and triumphed.  I had a great time swapping comments about the game, via text messaging, with the Byrdman back in CdA.  I'm starting to get a little more excited about living so close to College Park and getting into Maryland's teams.

Three Beautiful Things 02/23/15: Backlash, Great Drive Home, Dinner and Rest

1.  Adrienne and the Deke took Jack to day care.  Later they went to Costco together.  I had a quiet morning doing some writing and starting to learn about the backlash Particia Arquette's comments last night instigated among women of color feminists.  I'm learning a great deal about long held resentments and about strong perceptions of white privilege I've known next to nothing about.

2.  The Deke and I blazed down the Garden State Parkway, the New Jersey Parkway, left I-95 onto I-895 to skirt around Baltimore and go through the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, returned to I-95, and hit our only real traffic snarl about six miles from home as I-95 fed cars onto the Capital Beltway.  But, slowly we inched our way to the Kenilworth exit and soon we arrived home, very happy after a splendid weekend in Metuchen and Nyack.

3.  A bowl of pasta and with eggplant, onion, yellow squash, and tomatoes brought a nourishing conclusion to our day and we settled in, resting up for the demands of the upcoming seven days or so. My March 2 all day appointment at the U of Maryland Transplant Center in Baltimore looms in the next week, as do the final preparations I have to do to get ready for it.

Three Beautiful Things 02/22/15: Clearing Snow, Growler and Gill, New Friends and Boston Sports

1.  Overnight, several inches of snow fell and so Jack and I went out and he helped me knock the snow of of Adrienne's car and our Sube.  Not only was Jack a great help, he had all kinds of directions to give me about what snow should be knocked off first and what next and next, etc., and he knew what parts of the car he could work on what parts to delegate for me to do.  He's a great workmate.

2.  Over in Nanuet, there's a superb tap house and beer shoppe called Growler and Gill.  I fell in love the second the Deke and Jack and I walked in the door with the shelves of manifold beers covering one of the walls and more, the din of happy beer drinkers, and, as I made my way to the tap counter, the great list of  16 beers on tap.  I also liked that they had a variety of glass choices, starting with the pint glass on down to a taster.  I ordered an amber from New Jersey (can't remember the name or brewery).  Later I had a Founder's All Day IPA.  After pizza, I closed out my tab with the perfect after dinner beer, and one of my very favorites of all beers, Flying Dog's Festina Peche.  I held off on this beer until I was done eating thin crust cheese pizza and also some pepperoni/bacon.  I asked when I first arrived if that keg was in pretty good shape and the most helpful woman at the counter said it was in great shape, so if I waited I wouldn't risk having the keg blow.  As I settled my bill, I remarked that I didn't think I'd see Festina Peche this time of year and she told me it was a keg they'd had for a while and I smiled, remarking on my good luck that I could have one of these fruity and slightly sour ales "out of season".  This was a totally unexpected pleasure.

3.  We had dinner with Dave and Phyllis.  Phyllis and Adrienne work together at the Salvation Army. The Deke had had dinner with Phyllis and Dave and Adrienne and Jack on one of her earlier visits.  I was very happy that we hit it off right away and soon I learned that not only is Dave a Bostoner, her's a devoted fan of the Boston sports teams.  Me, too.  We had an especially great time reminiscing about the Red Sox and enjoying the successes the Pats, Celtics, Bruins and Red Sox have had in the last fifteen years.  This, too, was a totally unexpected pleasure.

Three Beautiful Things 02/21/15: Bagel Blow-Out, Arriving at Adrienne's, Ahead of the Snow

1.  I woke up in Metuchen to a generous Ted bagel blow-out.  He loves to buy guests bagels from a hole-in-the-wall joint downtown and gets anything his guests order.  I'll just say that I had a sesame bagel untoasted with sliced lox and a cinnamon raisin bagel toasted and a side of cream cheese.  The sesame bagel was my meal and the raisin cinnamon was my dessert.  Ted and Sally served us Peet's coffee, a perfect way to round out a great morning of conversation and bagels.

2.  The Deke and I hit the road around 11:30 and made out way up the Garden State Parkway to New York and then a short distance into New York to the village of Nyack where Adrienne and Jack live.  To Jack, I am Bop and it took Jack a little while to warm up to me.  Maybe I wouldn't look so scary if I had gotten a haircut .  But, Jack came out of his shy shell and before long I had a new friend and learned all about different toys and bots, wonderful playthings beyond anything I could have ever imagined when I was four years old.

3.  As the day wandered into the late afternoon, snow began to fall and I got curious about what was happening back in Maryland and so I started to read dispatches from around D.C. and the Capital Beltway of the worst possible driving conditions and combinations of snow and ice falling from the apocalyptic skies.  It should clear up by Monday when the Deke and I will return.  I'm grateful that our travels, so far, have been clear and easy and hope that the same will be true for Monday.  

Three Beautiful Things 02/20/15: Dog Delivery, Heading North, My First HopDevil

1.  It was a great day in the Subaru.  It began when I leashed up the corgis and secured them in the back seat and we drove down I-495 to Molly and Hiram's -- they are looking after Maggie and Charly while the Deke and I hit the road and head north.

2.  I decided to head back to Greenbelt via I-295 and it was a parking lot out there -- standstill traffic for a few miles -- but eventually things got moving again and the Deke and I packed some stuff into the Sube and headed up 1-95 and then the New Jersey Turnpike and arrived in Metuchen, NJ so we could visit the Deke's cousin Sally and her husband, Ted.  I had never met them before and we hit it off right away and piled into one Sally and Ted's rigs and headed downtown to Hailey's Harp and Pub, a popular watering hole packed wall to wall with people (I think Ted knew them all!) and offering a generous and various taplist.

3.  I was very happy to learn that Hailey's Harp and Pub was serving Victory Brewing's highly regarded HopDevil IPA and I can't remember ever drinking it before.  OH MY!!  What a fine IPA.  It is as nicely balanced and easy to drink as any IPA I've ever drunk.  Yes, it hits the nose and mouth immediately with hoppiness, but those hops don't dominate the beer and give way to a subtle sweetness, but that's not the finish.  I slight bitterness is.  Lord, I wished that beer was not an intoxicating beverage.  I could have quaffed this HopDevil all night long!

Three Beautiful Things 02/19/15: Hunkering Down, Hot Soup, Listening

1.  The wind chill continues to unrelentingly freeze the greater Greenbelt suburbatropolitan area and I am just not the hardy soul I used to be and so I hunkered in all day, doing laundry, cooking, and continuing the kind of reading I've mentioned in this blog the last couple of days.

2.  The Deke and I need hot soup -- not just temperature hot, but peppery hot.  Today I put together our Ninja food blender and after I sauteed a couple of onions, cooked down some cauliflower, broccoli, and celery, I put the contents in the blander, returned it to the soup pot, and added coconut milk and some red wine vinegar.  I seasoned the onions while they sauteed with pepper, cumin, garlic powder, tumeric, salt, and red pepper flakes and the end result was a soup that I, at first, thought was too hot -- but it wasn't.  The Deke and I are both fighting colds and the chill outside our apartment home and the soup was perfect.

3.  This evening, I listened as the Deke talked (did not complain) at length about the challenges of her job and, that despite all the difficulties, how glad she is to have moved so far out of the comfort of  Charlemagne into a school that is not only challenging her professionally, but on a deeply personal level as well. She has never worked, or studied, or done anything in an overwhelmingly African-American environment before (I never have) and it's demanding for a variety of reasons, many that go way beyond the fact that this particular third grade group is (and has been since kindergarten) a behavior problem for everyone.  I don't have a firm enough grip on how to talk about these challenges to write about them and I'm not sure it's my place to do so.  I admire the Deke's determination to learn, to serve her students, and to talk with me about her work, about this move we've made.

Three Beautiful Things 02/18/15: Jessica Williams and Ester Bloom, Black Bean Soup, RIP Jerome Kersey

1.   With the frigid weather occupying Prince George's County and beyond, I was content to continue to follow links on Twitter again today. I learned more even more about racial tensions in the world of feminism, much of that tension focused on Jessica Williams' public statement that she sees herself as unqualified to take over has host of The Daily Show and her indignant response to a piece written by a white feminist, The Billfold's Ester Bloom. Bloom argued that Jessica Williams was a victim of Imposter Syndrome, a name for the way underqualified men round up their resumes for jobs and qualified women round down -- when, in fact, they are qualified. Ester Bloom suggested that Jessica Williams was selling herself short and  recommended that she get the best Lean In group of all time together and this group could give Williams a pep talk. That's all she needed.  Williams found the Bloom piece offensive, both condescending and presumptuous. She resented being considered a victim. She told Bloom, "you don't own me". 

By today, Ester Bloom had apologized, writing, "I was wrong. I was offensive and presumptuous; I messed up, and I’m sorry. Williams should not have had to deal with this shit: my calling her a 'victim' of anything, my acting like I know better and could diagnose her with anything, all of it." I learned from reading other responses to Bloom's piece that this was not a superficial show biz dust up, but that Bloom's well-intentioned presumptiousness, as a white feminist, came off as oblivious and maternalistic and it struck a nerve in many of Jessica Williams' followers, far beyond the world of entertainment.  The resentment runs deep.

I'm thinking back on my days in the English Department at Lane Community College, thinking back on our well-intentioned, and sometimes successful, and sometimes not, to hire minority faculty in our department.  It turned out to be more complex than I thought it would be -- I had a very simplistic understanding of how this might work out when I was division chair, as well as when I served on several search committees at Whitworth College as the Affirmative Action representative, (and wasn't always welcome).

I don't have anything intelligent to say -- only that I'm understanding how even the best of intentions can come off as presumptuous, pater/maternalistic, and oblivious.

I guess I'd rather have good intentions and be eager to learn, and possibly be naively offensive,  than have undermining intentions and be defensive, closed-minded, and cynical -- attitudes I experienced a lot in my academic work and read a lot in my many tours of the World Wide Web.

I'll keep reading and listening, not in service to some bankrupt, lazy, divisive, scornful idea like political correctness, but in pursuit of understanding some fraction of the messy, complicated, many-sided, frustrating, often foggy truth reality realities of living in the USA.  

2.   Even when in pursuit of understanding, a guy has to eat -- right?  My favorite bean is the black bean and so I cooked some up and created a chicken broth based soup with onion, carrots, celery, red pepper, and canned diced tomatoes, seasoned with salt, pepper, cumin, oregano, garlic powder, basil, bay leaves, and crushed red pepper.  I cooked it up early in the afternoon and then let it stew for a couple of hours before heating it up again and enjoying a solid meal, a perfect way for the Deke to combat the respiratory infection she's fighting and for both of us to stand up to this current Maryland cold snap.

3.  Back in the fall of 1984, the Portland Trail Blazers played the L. A. Clippers in a preseason game at Mac Court in Eugene.  MQ and I went together and after the game we both were mightily impressed with a player we had never heard of.  He ran the floor, hustled for rebounds, could score, and played relentless defense.  Who is this guy?  Well, it was Jerome Kersey, and this evening I read the sad news that Jerome Kersey died at the age of 52.  That great hustle and passionate play defined Kersey's career.  I'll continue to think back to the years he played and remember him with a ton of enjoyment.  

Three Beautiful Things 02/17/15: Twitter Links to Learning, Portage Not Snapshot! :), Dude: Hey! Commit!

1.  Twitter is becoming a source of expanding my understanding of how a wide variety of thinkers see and understand the USA.  I follow quite a few academics, both men and women, involved in the large tent of African American Studies (this enterprise goes by many different names) and I see myself making up for reading and study I didn't do before I retired.  Today was a great day for such reading. I learned more about slave ships, different perspectives on the recent NYTs book review of Lynching as Racial Terrorism; I read a long statement a black Mississipi federal judge made to three white men who killed a black man in Jackson, in what the Atlanta Black Star described as "the unconscionably brutal 2011 lynching of James Craig Anderson during a 'nigger hunt'"; I read about students at the U of Oregon doing research on the Warm Springs Reservation, following the research protocols structured by indigenous scholar Eva Marie Garroute's concept of "Radical Indigenism":

By asking scholars to enter (rather than merely study) tribal philosophies, Radical Indigenism asks them to abandon any notion that mainstream academic philosophies, interpretations, and approaches based upon them are, in principle, superior. … Entering tribal relations implies maintaining respect for community values in the search for knowledge. This respect is much more than an attitude, it requires real commitments and real sacrifices on the part of those who practice it.

Today, I read much more than I've listed above and this has been true for me for a while now.  For many months, I've used Twitter as a way to get reports on traffic in the DMV area, find articles on sports, to access links to the BBC, NYTs, and other news outlets.  I've expanded this and the links I am finding to different kinds of research and opinion pieces is giving me ways to understand all kinds of things about the USA, the area where I live, debates going on among all kinds of thinkers and writers, and approaches to research and education and teaching that are eye-opening for me.

2.  Well, I took a break from reading articles and debates and got the Subaru out from under the 4-6 inches of snow that fell last night and made my way to the Co-op to buy the Deke some porter.  I decided to see how New Belgium's Portage would work.  The problem is, well, instead of pulling Portage off the shelf, I pulled off New Belgium's wheat ale, Snapshot.  The Deke said she'd give the Snapshot a go, but it didn't work for her.  I decided, what the hell, I'll go back and I picked up the Portage on trip #2, in addition to a few other things we needed, and the Deke was very grateful for my efforts.

3.  All I have right now is five 8 x 10 frames, but you'd think I had 105 given all the work I'm doing trying to figure out what pictures I want to have printed to fill those frames -- and a couple of 5 x 7s. I received these frames as gifts on Christmas Day 2013 and, still, to this day, I can't seem to make up my mind.  I've enjoyed looking at the thousands of pictures I've taken over the last several years, but, c'mon, man, I tell myself, commit, dude.

Three Beautiful Things 02/16/15: Emergency Trip to Shoppers, Averting a Dog Food Disaster, Green Curry

1.  The Deke and I spent another night at Molly and Hiram's and awoke to a bulletin that our region would be ravaged, starting in late afternoon, by a massive snow storm and that we could expect the DMV region to be paralyzed.  I sped to Shopper's supermarket and piled a shopping cart high with eggplant, onions, mushrooms, broccoli, yellow squash, cans of tomatoes, coconut milk, curry paste, bullion, and other emergency supplies, saving us a trip to the store in Greenbelt, should we be fortunate to make it back to our apartment home alive.

2.  We joined other drivers grayed with anxiety on the Capital Beltway and made our way back to Greenbelt.  Surprisingly, our trip went smoothly, but when we arrived, I realized we were dreadfully low on dog food.  I decided I could get to the Co-op and back ahead of the impending doom of the snow storm.  Once at the store, I helped an elderly woman load her groceries in her car and then entered the Co-op where I jostled my way through the mob of other frightened shoppers and plucked a bag of Rachel Ray dog food off the shelf, picked up Dingo treats for the dogs as well, paid the nearly frozen and dispirited checker, and got back to our apartment home before the snow event got underway.

3.  Earlier in the day I had bought green and red curry paste and decided that green curry would be a great dinner as the temperatures continued to plunge and the snow started to blanket our region.  I had also, for the first time in my life, bought coconut oil.  I sauteed onion, garlic, and ginger in the coconut oil, then added cauliflower, green beans, mushrooms, eggplant, and red pepper.  While these vegetables slowly became tender, I made a mixture of green curry paste, fish sauce, sugar, soy sauce, and turmeric, dumped it in the vegetables, let them cook more, and then poured in nearly two cups of coconut milk and added cilantro and spinach.  While this awesome Thai mess cooked, I had been making brown rice, and soon the Deke and I were eating bowls of a warming dinner, a perfect way to fight off the cold and wind and snow outside our sliding glass doors.

Three Beautiful Things 02/15/15: What Have We Done?, Courageous Return, Gyro Dinner

1.  The callous deep freeze won't leave.  Njorour and Aeolus continue to ally themselves in a frigid rage, driving even the most hardy among us indoors.  The streets are empty, abandoned.  We continue to shelter the children, keeping the blinds closed so that their innocent minds remain unexposed to the cruelty and misery of these vengeful gods.  Soon angry thundersnow will deafen us and blanket us in their anger.  Lord, what have we done?

2.  Molly and Hiram braved the salt and slush of Pittsburgh and the howling winds of I-70 and courageously steered their way back to Groveton.  They fell into their town house exhausted, gaunt from fear, and we celebrated their return as David and Olivia fell joyously into their arms.

3.  The Deke and I decided we'd like more time with the Diaz family and so delayed for a day the gruesome drive back to Greenbelt and Molly and the Deke sent me out into the calamity of wind and cold and dark to Mama's Kitchen where I picked up a bag of gyros. We ate them lustily and gratefully, relishing the lamb and feta and tzatzki splendor of these Greek piles of pleasure.

Three Beautiful Things 02/14/15: Njorour and Aeolus Join Forces, Sheltering the Children, OMG! No Milk!

1.  Things grow more desperate by the day.  Today the battle between Njorour and Aeolus ended. Today the wind gods joined forces and roared into Groveton, VA and turned those of us who are lions into cowering lambs, driving the strongest of us indoors for shelter against the wind.  Will this Norse/Greek occupation ever end?  Will I ever be able to take a daily walk again?  Things grow more desperate by the day.

2.  The Deke and I protected David and Olivia from the anger of Njorour and Aeolus by keeping them indoors and they responded like champions, playing together all day, including joining in with their Nana to make stuff at the dining table.

3.  Indeed, desperate times call for desperate measures.  In a panic, I realized, as the sun set and the wind howled in Groveton, that we were out of milk and so I walked into the teeth of the wind to the Subaru and, with great resolve, steered my way to Giant, and with the other shoppers, gaunt from their own battles against the cold, got the milk and few other staples, like a little plastic box of brownies for the Deke. !

Three Beautiful Things 02/13/15: Njorour Outdoes Aeolus, Document Box, Unexpected Nostalgia

1.  Impatient with the futile efforst of Aeolus to keep me indoors yesterday, today Njorour, the Norse  God of sea, wind, fish, and wealth swooped into Greenbelt and with his seething and frigid exhalations of jealousy and rage, sent temperatures plummeting to near zero and not only outdid Aeolus, but succeeded in keeping me indoors, forcing my rational self to decide it was not a good day for walking.  Njorour tested my hubris and I triumphed rather than being transformed into a stiff, frozen corpse on the February tundra of the Greenbelt Lake trail.

2.  With our move from Oregon to Virginia to Maryland, documents related to our house sale have come flying through the mail to two different addresses and I sorely wanted to find one of those documents as I prepare to file our tax return and after much careful searching in our box of documents and files, I found it.  I might be one phone call shy of being ready to visit the tax prep. guy.  I'm eager to get this task done.

3.  The Deke and I piled a couple of bags each into the Subaru and squeezed ourselves onto the bumper to bumper cluster tangle of the Capitol Beltway and made our way slowly, but without incident, to Alexandria to spend the weekend with David and Olivia while Molly and Hiram travel to Pittsburgh to see Hiram's brother dance the role of the Beast in the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater production of Beauty and the Beast.  I haven't been to Groveton/Alexandria since I went to Kellogg and I sincerely enjoyed being back on Rt. 1 and seeing the familiar unbroken line of franchise businesses, strip malls, and big box outlets that defined so much of the two and a half months we lived in Groveton with Molly and Hiram.

Three Beautiful Things 02/12/15: Hounds of Aeolus, Rusty Letter, Quick Meal

1.  Something has enraged Aeolus, the Greek god keeper of the winds here in the greater MVD area and starting late this afternoon the great Aeolus began to unleash hell winds from the Arctic upon us. I had thought his angry hound winds had begun to howl in the early afternoon and I was ready to cancel my daily walk, but, as a test, I walked to the mailbox at the entry way into our apartment complex and, not having suffered frost bite or nearly died from exposure, I decided to keep going and got in about two and a half miles by going up to the business park on Ivy Lane, after a stroll around the perimeter of our good sized apartment site.

2.  It's been a long time since I wrote a letter of recommendation, but a student of mine from 2011, a student I've stayed in touch with, asked me to support his efforts to gain scholarship aid, and this morning I got that letter written.  I felt like the Tin Woodsman in need of having my letter writing joints and muscles oiled.

3.  Lentils mixed with corn.  Quinoa. Salsa. Parmesan cheese. All thrown together in a bowl. Quick. Easy. It worked.  Made me and Deke laugh at how easy each of us is to please.

Three Beautiful Things 02/11/15: Scrooge Writing, Thinking About the Deke, 1970 Oakland Raiders

1.  I thought about it long and hard and concluded that I am a Valentine's Day Scrooge and wrote about it this morning, and now Sibling Assignment #156 is complete.  I didn't name names or go into great detail about how my Scroogery came into being, but you can learn the general facts and join me in relishing the fact that it's a day blissfully ignored by both the Deke and me, if you click here.

2.  I enjoyed a sunny walk through the skeletal trees and close to the icy shores of Greenbelt Lake this afternoon, with my head full of thoughts and questions about the difficult challenges the Deke faces day to day in her job.  When she came home today, the news was good: she reported that several of her home room students experienced breakthroughs in the world of fractions and a handful of her students stood before the class and explained how it is that even though 12 is a larger number than 5, in the perplexing world of fractions, 1/12 is smaller than 1/5.  Her students are also deeply interested in the reading they are doing about Rosa Parks and are having trouble wrapping their minds around several facts:  Rosa Parks broke a city law when she didn't leave her seat on a Montgomery bus (it was a law?), the Deke was a little kid when this happened (how old are you?), and the Deke lived in an all white suburb of Chicago and didn't know any black people growing up (this fact is really astonishing to these Prince George's County third graders), among other things.  These children have no idea how much the Deke is learning from them, and, second-hand, me, too.

3.  Via email and the wonders of videos on the World Wide Web, Byrdman opened up for me a really fun trip back to the 1970 NFL season and the heroics of the Oakland Raiders' forty-three year old back-up quarterback and kicker, George Blanda, as well as the pleasure of listening to play by play genius, Bill King.  Not only did the videos take me back to that season, they also triggered a ton of memories of things that happened in my funny personal life as a junior at Kellogg High School.

Sibling Assignment #156: I Admit It: I'm a Valentine's Day Scrooge

Carol assigned the three of us this task: "Think back to celebrating Valentine's Day in Elementary School, and share about any memory or memories you may have from one or more of those celebrations, and how it made you feel."

If you go here, you can read about how much Christy loves Valentine's Day and, here, you can read about how all the feelings of Carol's boy crazy youth are now reserved only for Paul.

Well, I am going to have to invoke the Fleetwood Mac option on this assignment.  I'm going to pretend that when any of us cannot answer the question as given, we would say to the other siblings, well, sib, go your own way.

Back in 1997, the Deke and I emailed each other through a lot of the summer.  We made each other laugh.  We told stories.  We revealed that we each had an encyclopedic memory of the tv cartoons of our youth.

It wasn't like we were emailing each other across the country or even across the state.

We lived about six blocks from each other.

In late August, the Deke emailed that enough was enough and said we ought to get off line and go do something. (Somewhere in this period of time we also decided to write scenarios of things we might do -- we've both kept them -- neither of us submitted "live in Maryland" to the other -- and when I get the story straight, I'll have to write about this one day.)

We decided to go watch the Eugene Emeralds play.  Jerome had given me a couple of tickets and I'd been looking for someone to use them with me, and so we walked from 940 Madison to Civic Stadium and back again, and somewhere, either coming or going, stopped at Field's for a drink.

That night, this happened.  Here's the conversation:

Out of the blue, I said, "You know what?  I hate Valentine's Day."

Deke: "Really!  Me, too!"

Me:  "Let's get married!"

Ha!

I didn't really say we should get married, but I could have, and, as things played out, Deke and Molly and Patrick and Adrienne moved into my house in November and we did get married in December.

I don't want to get into the details of why I don't pay attention to Valentine's Day and am very happy to be married to the Deke who also doesn't pay attention to Valentine's Day, except with Molly, Patrick, and Adrienne when they were younger and with our grandchildren now.

She bought M, P, and A chocolate when they were younger and right now Valentine's Day cards for the grandchildren are ready to be mailed.

(Sibs: If you have sent or are going to send me a Valentine's Day card, no problem:  I'll enjoy the thought.  I'm not that big of a Scrooge!)

I know that my ill feelings about Valentine's Day do not go back to elementary school.  All I can really remember about Valentine's Day back then is that some kind of a card exchange used to happen and the best part of that was that I felt some of the twinges of attraction to girls in my room that felt fun and made me act silly and that I didn't know anything about.

I pretty much have one generalized memory of those days and it's all harmless.

As I got older, though, Valentine's Day turned into a pressure day.

Like I said, I won't go into detail, but with more than one woman in my life over the years, Valentine's Day could have been renamed Anxiety Day.

I had little feeling for the day and I so on the run up to Valentine's Day, I never gave it much thought. When I did give it thought, I resisted buying a card or flowers or chocolates (that seemed so cliche), but I never made any real effort to replace the cliche with something else.

Within myself, I just didn't care.

But, if I didn't do something -- well, on more than one occasion my inaction brought about tears of disappointment and, in one case, I was with someone for whom Valentine's Day was in the same holiday league as Christmas or a birthday.  She showered me with gifts and I didn't have much to show in return -- maybe a chocolate truffle or something.

One Valentine's Day during that time in my life, I remember driving all over Eugene, racking my brain as to what to buy and where that would bring happiness on Valentine's Day and not disappointment or criticism.  I can't remember if I succeeded.  I only remember the pressure I felt -- well, and the resistance, too.

I hated it.

This year, when Saturday rolls around, the Deke and I will wake up in Molly and Hiram's townhouse while they are in Pittsburgh to see Hiram's brother play the role of the beast for the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater.

We'll have coffee.

We'll help David and Olivia with breakfast.

I'll probably go to Huntley Meadows or even go into D. C.

Sometime during the day, I might say:

"Deke.  You know what day it is?"

Then, in a pretend mushy voice,I'll croon:  "Happy Valentine's Day..."

"Whatever."

Three Beautiful Things 02/10/15: Tuscan Chicken Stew, Dinner for the Children, Nilsson to Sleater-Kinney

1.  Here's what I enjoy about retirement:  After some recipe research, I landed on a chicken stew ("Tuscan Chicken Stew") and so spent much of the afternoon simmering a whole chicken in water and chicken broth and some vegetable broth, seasoning and simmering vegetables, letting the chicken cool, pulling the meat off the chicken and putting it together with the vegetables, straining it all through cheesecloth, and letting it all stew for a couple of hours.  The result was a soup that temporarily helped  Molly with her stuffed up nose, satisfied Hiram, and really pleased the Deke.  It was fun spending an afternoon making this meal, being able to send a container home with Molly, and having a container for ourselves here at home.

2.  I also pleased David and Olivia, our grandchildren.  All I had to do was peel an apple and cut it into pieces, slice a green pepper into lengths, and melt cheese between two warmed up tortillas.  I also poured the children some milk.

3.  Having purchased headphones yesterday allows me to go into a personal music pleasure zone without interfering with what the Deke is doing, and tonight my personal concert included "Jump into the Fire" by Harry Nilsson, "Taxi" by Harry Chapin, and a series of songs by the Oysterband and other trad/rock bands on the Oysterband Pandora channel.  I ended my evening in grand style looking at and listening to youtube videos of Sleater-Kinney over the years, a deep pleasure.