Category: Food

Week in Review – January 24th, 2021

“A Smooth Transition”

This was a pretty quiet week of working from home and not going anywhere exciting at all.  Well, Diana did sneak out twice – once to get her hair done and once to get her nails done.  Oh, and we had a Presidential inauguration.  As Rex Parker said in his New York Times crossword blog on Thursday: “OK, back to basking in this weird feeling of living in a county run by basically good, basically competent people.  Ahh.”  We both enjoyed the evening gala hosted by Tom Hanks from the steps of the Lincoln memorial.  Bruce Springsteen got things started (and apparently had a positive impact on pea-coat sales):

We watched the new Tom Hanks movie “News of the World” on Friday night, and then finished it on Saturday night.  Quite disappointing after the book – isn’t that usually the case?    The film completely missed what I thought was the core element of the book – the struggle of Johanna as she oscillates between her Native American upbringing and her return to the “civilized” American world.

I finished up week 2 of Couch to 5K on Saturday – everything is still feeling pretty good.  We received our “Year in Review 2020” blog book (300 pages) and Diana looked back to find how far I made it before the break – end of week 4 – so that will be a milestone to aim past.  I did convince McD to try something new mid-week – she went for a run in the rain with me – who knows what crazy activity is next.  After the run I had a short burst of energy for home tasks – installed the replacement Ring doorbell, tried to replace some porch lights but had the wrong shape of bulb, and replaced the steam shower aromatherapy bottle (a lot more work than it sounds) with some new lavender juice – my choice which McD has pronounced as a very “girlie” option.  New bulbs were ordered and that will be my task after this update is published.

Almost forgot – I made a drive over to Grapevine on Friday to the British Food Emporium.  My mission was to pick up some haggis for Burns night on Monday, but as usual I couldn’t help grabbing some other treats – a Turkish delight for Diana, meat pies for me, and some oatcakes to share.  If you’d like to read details  about the challenges with the Scottish haggis population, I recommend this article (I did chuckle when Brent observed that the hagglets look a lot like The Donald):

http://www.robertburns.org.uk/Assets/Documents/haggisarticle.pdf

I had been looking forward to a stop into Redefined coffee, a regular stop when I was driving to AIG, and right next to the British food place.  It wasn’t there anymore – typical, I thought.  A quick search showed it had moved just around the corner on to the main street.  A really good location and a much bigger and more modern shop – just didn’t seem to have the same character as the old place, but the coffee was still the same.

Continuing the British food theme – I shared Vince’s pastrami scotch egg recipe recently.  Here are some pictures of the end result that he shared this week:

Don’t those look delicious.  We’re hoping to sample some when we finally make a visit to his cabin in the Adirondacks.

I watched a documentary about the first person with Down Syndrome to complete an Ironman marathon.

Chris Nikic is such an inspiration.  He doesn’t have any real sense of how far he’s come or how much longer remains, but just keeps plugging away, taking regular breaks for hugs.  A massive achievement.

On a somewhat related theme, I was amazed at this video of a dog limping alongside its owner.  Apparently the dog was taken to the vet to be checked out.  Absolutely nothing wrong with the leg, it was just limping in sympathy with its owner.  Wow!  The owner seemed more focused on the 300 pounds he had spent on vet bills.

Norma in Guatemala was telling me about the “Yardi Gras” houses in New Orleans.  There are no Mardi Gras parades this year and so, in typical NOLA creative fashion, folks are decorating their yards to emulate parade floats.  Some are really amazing.

We received a late entry for the new cactus naming contest this morning, and we’re going with it.  Patty christened it “Mark 3.0” and we’ll just use “3.0” as a nickname.  Apparently the idea came to her in the middle of the night last night.  Our boss when we worked together was Mark and he had quite the prickly personality – so he became knows at “the cactus”.  When I worked with him more recently he proclaimed himself “Mark 2.0”, the kinder and gentler version.  Which was true most days.  Brent’s submission of “Squid Rock” has stuck after we tried it out this week.

I’m a bit more than half way through “The Strangler” by William Landay and am getting thoroughly sucked into the crime tale.  Landay is the author of “Defending Jacob” – we enjoyed the TV series and so I thought I’d try his earlier novel.  Here’s what Amazon says about it:

“Before the New York Times bestselling success of Defending Jacob, William Landay wrote this widely acclaimed second novel of crime and suspense, which was named a Favorite Crime Novel of the Year by the Los Angeles Times and several other newspapers.
 
Boston, 1963. Meet the charming, brawling Daley brothers. Joe is a cop whose gambling habits have dragged him down into the city’s underworld. Michael is a lawyer, always the smartest man in the room. And Ricky is the youngest son, a prince of thieves whose latest heist may be his last. For the Daleys, crime is the family business—they’re simply on different sides of it. Then a killer, a man who hunts women with brutal efficiency and no sign of stopping, strikes too close to the Daley home. The brothers unite to find the Strangler, a journey that leads to the darkest corners of Boston—and exposes an even deeper mystery that threatens to tear the family apart.”

I chuckled at this quote from the book.  Exactly what I had just said to Diana when recommending “Kind of Blue” as an album to send Alicia:

“Kat bobbed her head to the strolling rhythm. “You like it?”  “I don’t know.  Maybe.” “It’s Miles Davis.”  “I know who he is!”  “Here take it.”  Ricky got the dust jacket and offered it to her.  The record was “Kind of Blue”.  “Keep it.  It gets better the more you listen to it.””

And another interesting passage that also includes Miles:

“It was a limitation of human consciousness.  We live only in the future and the past, we cannot perceive now.  Now occupies no space, a hypothetical gap between future and past.  Only an exceptional few could feel now, athletes and jazzmen and, yes, thieves like Ricky Daley, and even for them the sensation was fleeting, limited to the instant of creative action.  Cousy knew the feeling; Miles Davis too.  The boundless improvisational moment.”

I’m looking forward to the conclusion.

I’ve been reminiscing about Austin this week by listening to the local Sun radio station.  They played this excellent new song by Rob Baird.  I’m interested to know who produced this for him as it’s quite a departure from his previous sound.

The Sun radio host went on a bit of Django Reinhart kick and I found these two interesting versions of his tune “Nuages”:

And finally, here’s one from a band with such a great sound that I don’t listen to often enough:

I’m off to try to replace those porch bulbs again, jump on the elliptical for a while, and then settle in for the final day of the NFL playoffs.

Stay safe, patient and kind!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Limping dogs

Week in Review – January 17, 2021

“Playoffs?”

I had only had one entrant for the name the octopus and cactus contest from last week.  Brent suggested “Squid Rock” for the octopus – get it?  (a play on Kid Rock – Brent would say it isn’t funny if you have to explain it).  Much better than “Blink” that I had come up with – he’s blue and shoots ink: bl-ink.  I know – much lamer creativity.  “Wily Peyote” was his best entrant for the plant.  I like that better than “Tortoise” – my idea based on carrying your house on your back in a self contained and mobile unit.  I’ll leave this open for one more week for late entrants before the official naming ceremonies.

Delbert McClinton was the special guest on the BoH Tuesday night supper club this week.  It’s hard to believe he is 80 years old.  I’ve mentioned before that I saw him at the sorely missed Caravan of Dreams club in downtown Fort Worth on my second night in Texas back in 1985.  I was in heaven.  Gordy told a similar story of going to see him at the classic honky tonk, Gruene Hall, in the late 90s.  He made his way to the front row with his girlfriend, now wife, and Delbert sang an entire verse of a ballad to her while holding her hand.  McClinton had a lot of good stories to share.

Vince and I have made a point of sampling many gourmet scotch eggs over the years on our work visits to New York.  The current first place winner is from the Dead Rabbit cocktail bar in downtown.  He sent me this recipe for a Pastrami scotch egg:

A Crunchy Remix: Try This Pastrami Scotch Egg Recipe

Here’s what the author had to say about these:

“Most Scotch eggs begin with loose sausage meat, befitting a dish with roots as an English roadside snack. But as I sat at Pastrami Queen on New York’s Upper East Side a few weeks back eating the city’s best deli sandwich (sorry, Katz’s), it dawned on me that pastrami had serious potential as a Scotch egg sausage swap-in. Crusted with a mixture of coriander, garlic, black pepper and mustard — and blessed with a prodigious fat streak — it has a spice blend that can stand up to even the best sausage meat, not to mention an immutable connection to the city I call my home.

Make sure you get the fattiest pastrami you can find (specify when you order a pound from your butcher), and please (I’m begging) don’t opt for turkey pastrami. You’ll also need to dust off the food processor for this one; giving the pastrami a high-speed whirl binds the meat into an ideal liaison, making it relatively easy to wrap around the eggs. Serve them with a mustardy dressing and your next New York deli-style craving may just be satisfied at home.”

I’m not a huge pastrami fan, but these do sound worth a try.

I received some uplifting news from Alex in New Orleans on Friday.  Finally something to put on the calendar to look forward to – Jazzfest has been rescheduled for the 2nd and 3rd weekends of October.  We’ll have to see about changing our flights that were booked for April.  Should we go for the first or second weekend?  Maybe just move into Denny and Anne’s cottage for both?

Diana had to wait until after 10am for her run on Saturday morning – that’s when the temperature broke into the 40s.  I went upstairs to the elliptical while she was working much harder on the road.  We rewarded ourselves with a trip to Filtered in downtown McKinney for coffee, crossword, and quiche.

After returning home, I was determined to try and fix Penelope’s cup holder cover latch.  This has been a recurring problem for years and I’m usually able to jiggle it just the right way and get it closed.  The last few days it has refused to play along.  A replacement of the whole unit is available for over $300.  With that information, it seemed like an hour or so of my time to attempt a repair was a good trade.

The hardest part of the endeavor was figuring out the location of the Allen bolts in the glove box that held the unit in place.  That was a solid 20 minutes of effort to extract the annoyance.

That little white piece in the middle is the guilty party.  It doesn’t seem to have quite enough weight to it to fall down and latch reliably.  Cleaning and lubing didn’t help.  I wonder what will happen if I attach a small piece of mounting tape on the top?

It certainly seemed to work with the top off and not mounted back in the car.  I decided to give it a shot.  Reattaching with the Allen bolts wasn’t quite as onerous as the extraction.  Et voila merci!

That was a fun project – made more rewarding by the $300+ saved.  I put air in Penelope’s tires (pressure too low with the cold weather), made some minor repairs to the convertible top, and bid her good night.

A nice steam shower session had me fully relaxed and ready to watch the Rams vs Packers playoff game.

We attempted to ordered Thai for dinner from the new “Spoon and Fork” restaurant – but no delivery option available.  The old stand by of Zin Zen with their fungi salad and shrimp pesto flatbread worked out just fine.

We finished up Saturday watching the documentary “Carter: Rock and Roll President”.  I really enjoyed this film as it showed how much Jimmy Carter enjoyed all kinds of music and what an impact various groups like the Allman Bros had on his election.  A highlight was Bob Dylan quoting “Simple Man” by Lynyrd Synyrd at the end of the film and applying the lyrics to Carter:

“Take your time, don’t live too fast

Troubles will come, and they will pass”

Sunday began with a somewhat earlier run for both of us – temperatures were well into the 40s by 9am.  Then we were off on some shopping return excursions to Target and Lulu Lemon.  The latter unsuccessful as the wait line to enter the store was too long.  The things I do…

I’ve been looking forward to the Saints vs Buccaneers playoff game all week.  This photoshopped picture from Tom Brady is great.  He will be the oldest quarterback to ever compete in a playoff game at 43 and Drew Brees is 41, making for by far the oldest quarterback combination in a game ever.  Both are playing at a very high level and this should be a good game.

I read “& Sons” by David Gilbert this week.  I really enjoyed Gilbert’s short story “Cicadia” in an August 2020 edition of the New Yorker and decided to try one of his novels – “& Sons” got great reviews on its publication back in 2013.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/24/cicadia

NPR said “Smart and savage…Seductive and ripe with both comedy and heartbreak, “& Sons” made me reconsider my stance on…the term “instant classic””

Do you ever look at the author photo inside the back cover of books and try to analyze what kind of person wrote this book?  I am somewhat guilty of that.  Here are two pretty different pictures of David Gilbert and then what he writes about one of the main characters of “&Sons”:

“A. N. Dyer stands in front of us as forever young, peering from his author photo, the only photo he ever used on all of his books, starting with “Ampersand.”  In that picture he’s pure knowing, his darkly amused eyes in league with a smile that edges toward a smirk, as if he’s seen what you’ve underlined, you fiend, you who might read a few pages and then pause and glance back at his face like you’ve spotted something magical yet familiar, a new best friend waiting for you on the other end.”

I loved these two descriptions from a section where one of Dyer’s sons thinks he has successfully pitched a screenplay to a studio, only to find that it’s a ruse to get him to convince his father to offer film rights to “Ampersand”:

“”Well he’s still dead.”  Rainer rose from his chair, like Oscar Wilde playing Winston Churchill getting bad news from the front.”

“The bubbles in the champagne shimmied up the flutes, a hundred phony smiles breaking the surface, like some Esther Williams routine, Richard thought, a memory of stinging sweetness flooding his mouth.”

I love the thought of champagne bubbles performing a synchronized swimming routine.

“He had always been a decent typist.  (Thanks to Exeter, we were all decent typists.)  The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy log.  Instead of sheep he tried counting foxes, the image of fox inspired by the crafty Mr. Tod.  Andrew loved Beatrix Potter as a boy, the fond memory of being read to aloud, the words coming on trails of smoke and scotch, his father’s wonderful voice.”

I was telling Diana about the beautiful illustrations in Beatrix Potter as we were reading a Winnie the Pooh story and admiring the drawings this week.  Something she missed out on that we’ll have to remedy.

I enjoyed the number of Talking Heads “Once in a Lifetime” references included in this paragraph:

“Twitchy and sweaty, with a brand-new retro haircut, horn-rimmed glasses, a vintage suit, a bow tie, he had the vibe of early-to-mid David Byrne, and what with Richard’s and Jamie’s appreciation for New Wave music and their teenage days watching those first videos on MTV, what with the water flowing underground and the large automobile, what with the early evening sky and its remains of light, you may find yourself hearing the same song and asking yourself the same question: How did I get here?”

This book was very large and broad in scale, albeit a bit pompous in places.  I did enjoy the read and being back in New York for a while.

“Greenlights”, the recent autobiography by Matthew McConaughey was a much quicker and lighter read.  It feels like sitting down and having a drink with the author and listening to entertaining and engaging stories about his life.

He attended the University of Texas in Austin to study law – hoping to be a criminal defense attorney, and while his grades were very good, he decided after 2 years that his heart really wasn’t in it and switched to the film school.

All the classic tales are in here – “Alright, Alright, Alright”, arrested for playing the bongos naked inside his house – later dropped for unlawful entry, the efforts McConaughey went to to land the lead role in Grisham’s “A Time to Kill”, and many others.

I particularly enjoyed a tale where he takes an impromptu trip to Mali in search of his favorite musician, Ali Farka Toure.  This was a big surprise – I wasn’t sure anyone else in the state of Texas was familiar with this musician.  I had been listening to Farka Toure’s excellent album with Ry Cooder earlier in the morning while starting the book.  Weird.

Open in Spotify

I enjoyed reading McConaughey’s love letter to New Orleans.

“Places are like people. They each have a particular identity.  In all my travels around the globe I’ve written in my journal about the culture of a place, its identity.  If a place and a people move me, I’ll write them a love letter.  New Orleans is one of those places.”

“Home of the front porch, not the back.  This engineering feat provides so much of your sense of community and fellowship as you relax facing the street and your neighbors across it.  Rather than retreating into the seclusion of the backyard, you engage with the goings-on of the world around you, on your front porch.”

“You don’t use vacuum cleaners, no, you use brooms and rakes to manicure.  Where it falls is where it lays, the swerve around the pothole, the duck beneath the branch.  Like a gumbo, your medley’s in the mix.”

I was pleased to read that on a recent episode of BBC radio’s desert island discs, David Gilmour, guitarist with Pink Floyd, picked the Kinks “Waterloo Sunset” as the number one disc he would take with him to a desert island.  This would be one of mine too, as evidenced by the Ray Davies signed soundwaves painting of this song hanging in the piano room – thanks Diana.

Paul McCartney released a new album a few weeks ago.  It’s the third installment in his series and is naturally called “McCartney III”.  I enjoyed listening to the record but it’s not one that I’ll be rushing back to.  I did enjoy this video by Roman Coppola (Francis Ford Coppola of Godfather and Apocalypse Now fame’s son).  Coppola made this completely remotely from the family vineyard in Napa – utilizing 46 remote cameras to capture McCartney as he played all the instruments and built up the track.  Oh to have ten percent of that talent.

That and the Coppolas – Sofia’s “Lost in Translation” with Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson is one of my all time favourite movies.  I use this Teams backdrop sometimes and put myself at the bar of the Tokyo Park Hyatt having a drink with Scarlett and keeping her safe from Murray:

I had the luxury of quite a bit of quiet reading time this week.  I found myself on a Bob Dylan kick early in the week and a Brian Eno kick later in the week.  Two entirely different artists for sure.  I think I was looking for some calm and soothing escape as the week unfolded.  I decided on a chronological Dylan exploration.  Having never listened to “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” from 1963 from start to finish, I was astounded by the number of all time classics on this album – “Blowin’ in the Wind”, “Girl form the North Country”, “Master of War”, and this favourite:

Brian Eno has a catalog almost as vast as Dylan’s, with quite a variety from his ambient albums, to soundtracks, and numerous collaborations.  Here’s one that I hadn’t heard before and really enjoyed:

Open in Spotify

The weekend brought some jazz, having just introduced Alicia to the classic “Kind of Blue” by Miles Davis, I explored some not heard before John Coltrane:

Open in Spotify

And another 80 year old, the guy with the amazing sax tone – Charles Lloyd:

Open in Spotify

Stay calm and patient with everyone.

Week in Review – January 3rd, 2021

“4,948 miles later”

It seems just completely crazy that we were able to drive almost 5,000 miles over the last few weeks.  How did we do that?  One long day at a time.  Monday:  Las Vegas to Albuquerque.  Tuesday:  Albuquerque to McKinney.  Wednesday: “Rest Day”.  Thursday: McKinney to New Orleans.  Sunday: New Orleans to McKinney (and the reason this post is late again).

The drive home from California was uneventful overall.  Diana suggested having Ray and Amy over for “Happy Hour” on Wednesday night  – I agreed as long as there was a stop time of around 6pm.  How do you think that worked out?  You are correct – didn’t finish up until around 10pm and then had an intended early start for the drive to New Orleans on Thursday.

Driving to NOLA on New Year’s Eve was a bit more work.  Things started badly with pouring rain and multiple accidents and lane closures before we ever left Dallas.  There were some brief respites but I was mostly driving in rain and truck spray all day.  It was lovely to see Denny and Anne on arrival and they really spoiled us with some yummy snacks – an amazing cheese board, crab fingers from Tableaux, and some amazing Denny oyster and sauce combinations.

The ladies (with a little help from Denny) were able to polish off the magnum of good champagne that D received from Kris and Cat as a birthday gift.

We did manage to stay awake to usher in the New Year but were asleep in the wonderful guest cottage soon after.

The weather on New Year’s Day was perfect for me – high 60s, sunny, with zero humidity.  We had a very pleasant morning walk and run in Audubon park  – one of the best city parks in America.  The energizer bunny enjoyed the warmer weather and the scenery.

Various groups of friends stopped by for a mostly socially distanced afternoon gathering.  Denny cooked up oysters four different ways – much to the delight of McD.

She especially enjoys the freshly shucked and handed directly to her variety:

You can see the lovely day from this picture of the front porch and Mr. Jack’s house across Webster Street.

We rounded out the evening watching a livestream of Jason Isbell and his band from Nashville that was excellent.  Kenny and I had a friendly Old Fashioned contest.  I think the new wood chip drink smoker that I got from Diana for Christmas pushed mine ahead in the competition.

If it’s 01/02/21, then the Ogan twins must be 18.  They were born on 01/02/03 at 7:33 and 7:38am, and it has become traditional for us to join them for lunch at Commander’s Palace.   Before lunch I had arranged for Laura to take the energizer bunny out for a run – she did a good job running McD down to the levee for a total of 3.5 miles – one of Diana’s longer outings.  A good appetite had been worked up for the jazz brunch at Commander’s.  The only trouble with brunch versus a regular week day lunch is that the 25 cent martinis are not available.  We started with the crazy good turtle soup.  Then Diana enjoyed short ribs with a perfectly cooked poached egg and I couldn’t resist the boudin stuffed and lacquered TX quail.  Both were delicious and also made for great leftovers.  The festivities finished up with the ridiculous bread pudding soufflé and whiskey sauce and toques for the birthday boys.

The drive home on Sunday was very smooth with mostly light traffic and an arrival just after 5pm and before dark.  We are now home to stay for quite a while, with no more road trips on the calendar.

I have nothing much to report on the reading front this week – too much time behind the wheel and enjoying friends.  We did listen to “The Last Days of John Lennon” by James Patterson on the drive.  This is mostly a very detailed and interesting  history of Lennon and the Beatles, with small sections interspersed about Mark Chapman planning his assassination.  I would recommend this to anyone looking to learn more about the Beatles and their interactions over the years.

Michael Drapkin worked with me about a year ago and is currently working on his PhD.  He is a wonderful clarinet player and his thesis is around making orchestras more economically viable by rescoring pieces originally scored for massive ensembles for smaller groups.  Here’s his version of Richard Strauss –  Salome’s Dance of the Seven Veils – from 108 piece full symphony orchestra to 24 piece chamber orchestra.  Michael told me that the biggest challenge for a conductor will be to make sure the violins aren’t overwhelmed by the woodwind and percussion sections.  I think he did a great job and can only imagine how time consuming and detailed this work ends up being.

Changing gears completely, I’ve been on a bit of a jazz funk music kick this week.  Let’s start with the always fantastic Jaco Pastorius and band from his “Birthday Concert” doing “Chicken”:

Even funkier is Herbie Hancock’s “Chameleon”.  I love those keyboard sounds he lays down for the bass groove:

And finally something a bit more current from the reigning jazz funk masters, Snarky Puppy:

Stay calm and patient and at home (easy for me to say after 4,948 miles).

Week in Review – December 27, 2020

“Happy Christmas”

The new TV was mounted in the “family room” (also our bedroom) at Clorinda’s house on Monday afternoon.  She was not at all happy about this activity initially, “You took down my pictures to put up a TV – ridiculous”, but soon warmed up to the idea of watching operas and even enjoyed watching the Saints game with me.  I did enjoy Adamo’s advanced contractor input on the process:  no need for a stud finder – just tap on the wall – and then his marking missed the stud; “my eyes are much better than a spirit level” – and then the TV is a little bit crooked.  Diana is not happy with the ultimate placement, remarking that it needed to be 3 inches higher up.  Some things are just much easier done by yourself.

Diana and Alicia went to visit their friend Amy Adirondack (my nickname for her – her real name is spelled something like Adamac) in Los Gatos on Monday evening.  I took advantage of the quiet to enjoy a documentary called “Antidote” on Amazon.  This is a really good film about creative ways that people and organizations are using to spread kindness in their communities.  One of the segments is about a program at Amarillo college that helps single mothers and other needy students so that they can complete degrees and find better paying jobs.

Clorinda and I shared some dumplings for dinner and then Diana returned with some Thai food – turns out it came from my favourite – Thai Spice in Los Gatos.  I miss having a great local Thai restaurant.  There is a new one in McKinney getting great reviews that I should try.

Tuesday started with a walk for me, run for Diana, up and down Gyspy Hill a couple of times.  We weren’t stealthy enough and were intercepted by Luciano and Massimo and some friends as we reached the top of the hill – it was really Phoebe the dog who gave us away.  A side trip to the downtown Post Office ended up being fortuitous as my gift from Damon was waiting there – no mail on the hill.   I could tell Damon was very proud of his gift and so we FaceTimed with him as I opened it.  What an amazing piece of art he had commissioned one of our coworkers to create (with quite a bit of collusion from Diana).

Isn’t that just great?  I love all the details she captured.  This all started with a photo that Diana took on the day when I picked up Penelope several years ago.  I really enjoyed seeing these pictures of the work in progress that Marcella shared with Damon to make sure she was on the right track:

I enjoyed another beautiful sunset from Clorinda’s deck:

Wednesday evening at Will and Christine’s new apartment had been planned for a while.  We pushed the start time back to 5pm as Campbell worked a full day from their guest bedroom.  They have so much more space in their new place and the high ceilings make a big difference in how large the space feels.  Christine did a great job with interesting appetizers while Will created a smoke infused Manhattan for me with his new equipment.

Diana and Alicia look positively tiny amidst my boys.  Will and I went for a drive in his race car to pick up a Neapolitan dinner from Terun in Palo Alto.  The drive was just long enough for Will to demonstrate all the different exhaust sound and engine modes he has available, that and the multiple Bluetooth and WIFI connections with radar detectors and the like.  I felt like I was ready for a massage after that.  We had a lovely meal and lots of fun exchanging presents.  I really love the pictures that Campbell put together in a guitar body frame:

Then we took some pictures of our own to commemorate what might be a new tradition – Christmas meal and gift exchange at Will and Christine’s place.

Hopefully vaccines will be widespread soon and we can all get together much more often.

Marco and kids arrived on Thursday afternoon to exchange gifts with Alicia before she left early on Friday to spend Christmas day with her Dad and brothers.  Alicia’s gift to Marco was a Dopp kit (toilet bag where I’m from) that was hilariously filled with tiny bottles of different liquors.  “Dopp” is such a weird word for a toilet bag that I did some research:  the name derives from the early 20th century leather craftsman Charles Doppelt, whose company designed the case in 1926.

After Marco and family left, we exchanged our own gifts.  Diana had run out of time for clever tags and so we presented each gift with a “talk track” to give a small hint about the contents.  Here’s Diana presenting an album to Alicia and then Alicia opening her big gift – the very sizeable mixer.

Christmas Eve dinner featured the traditional “Feast of the Seven Fishes”.  Here’s some research on what that’s all about:

“While the tradition of enjoying a large meatless Christmas Eve meal was (and remains) common across Italy—as well as many other Roman Catholic-dominated countries—the origins of the Feast of the Seven Fishes has its roots in southern Italy. The area, which is surrounded by bountiful coastline, has been known for its seafood for generations. It’s also historically poorer than the rest of Italy, with locals preferring fish because of its relative affordability.”

Diana did all the shopping and then we prepped the scallops, shrimp, salmon, smoked salmon, dover sole and anchovy pasta for dinner with Adamo and crew.  Wait, I hear you say, that’s only six fishes.  Adamo to the rescue with a tee-shirt featuring a fish picture.

That seemed like an awful lot of scallops but only two were left after dinner.  Adamo did a great job of cooking up all the fishes and then Alicia was a huge help with the clean up.  Alicia and Diana exhibited some superior team work putting together the requisite meat and cheese platter.

Here’s Adamo and Amy’s crew all ready for bed on Christmas Eve.  I’m not sure if you can see the antlers on Francesca’s onesie – she’s a deer which led to all kinds of punny comments on Christmas morning.

Christmas Day started with a photo shoot so that we had some pictures of Diana and Alicia together.  I think I did a passable job as the official photographer.  We had to start early as the angry red sunrise foretold bad weather coming.

 

Next was a visit to Adamo’s home to exchange gifts.  Amy and Adamo were so excited about their gift for us – they adopted a penguin in our names from the World Wildlife Fund.  Amy was jumping up and down and so excited.  Frankie was very gentle with the new adoptee – subsequently named Parker.

 

 

Here’s the official adoption certificate:

We had a brief respite in the early afternoon when Clorinda and I enjoyed the Saints football game, and then Marco and family arrived for Christmas dinner.  We had a delicious honey ham with green beans and mashed potatoes – successfully avoiding all the turkey work for the first time in ages.  One of the funniest parts of the week was when Clorinda opened the singing llama present from Marco.  Olivia told the story of him in the store setting off 5 or 6 of them so that they were all singing “in the round”.

Adamo and Amy cooked up some fantastic lamp chop lollipops for dinner on Boxing Day.  I’m not sure I’ve ever noticed a “Halo Moon” before  – Adamo pointed this one out.

Sunday marked the start of the long drive home to McKinney.  We hit the road in the late morning and arrived at Aria in Las Vegas in time for dinner and a drink before bed.  A different but very enjoyable Christmas holiday in the books.

We listened to “News of the World” by Paulette Jiles on the drive.  This has been made into a new film starring Tom Hanks and it’s amazing how clearly you can see him in the role of “Captain” and hear him speaking the lines.

The story revolves around the Captain’s exploits in transporting a young girl, rescued from an Indian tribe, from Wichita Falls to San Antonio.  Along the way he stops in towns to read the news from various east coast and overseas newspapers for the townspeople – this being the only way they get news from afar.  It’s amazing to think about how long a trip like this took in the early 1800s – several months, and with all kinds of dangers along the way.  The girl, Johanna, was captured by Indians around age 6 and spent 4 or 5 years with them – speaking their language and practicing their customs.  The Captain has a lot of patience as he teaches her acceptable manners and tries to get her to remember the English she learned at a younger age.  An interesting listen.

I finally finished reading “Utopia Avenue” by David Mitchell this week.  I really enjoyed parts of the book and found other parts just silly and a bit nonsensical.

The musical details are typically well described:

“Griff started with a tom-tom and came in with a minute’s solo in the style of Cozy Cole.  Then he grabbed his sticks and played a solo, heavy on backbeats and rimshots, with a snare interlude.  Elf watched his hands with a faraway smile on her face.  Griff showed off an Art Blakey press-roll; a skipping run of ostinato; an Elvin Jones rolling triplet pulse; some swing-era cymbal playing; and a glorious free-form crescendo as Elf’s hand slowly rose…and…fell.”

This paragraph reminded me of Alicia explaining what a “cacophony” sounds like:

“Beneath the party chatter and Sam Cooke singing “Lost and Lookin'” lies a composite hum of engines, cars, trains, lifts, horns, sirens, dogs…everything.  Doors, locks, drains, kitchens, robberies, lovers. “It’s like an orchestra tuning up,” says Elf, “except it’s the main show.  A cacophony symphony.”

“She says things like that,” says Dean to Lenny.”

Lenny is Leonard Cohen who the band members meet at a rooftop party at the Chelsea hotel in New York, hosted by Janis Joplin.

I’m going to skip the music section this week as I’m running out of time.

A very Happy New Year to all when it rolls around in a few days.

 

 

 

 

 

Week in Review – December 20, 2020

“1,950 miles later”

The drive from Las Vegas to Pacifica was pleasantly uneventful.  The border checkpoint from Nevada into California wasn’t even manned as we made the crossing.  I continue to turn into a “grumpy old man” – night driving with oncoming traffic not separated by a median is getting pretty difficult.  I struggle to see where I’m going with the oncoming glare.  So, the Pacheco Pass at night wasn’t really much fun.  It’s very twisty and ill lit.  That whining aside, we arrived at the hotel in Pacifica around 9pm.  1,950 miles in the books.  I should have about 10 days now with no lengthy drives.

Once in our hotel room, Diana went on a mission to install the Amazon Firestick so that we could watch all our normal TV and streaming shows.  She was so tired that it was easy to see her brain working but not easy to interpret what was (or wasn’t) being said.  Problem one was that in order to connect to the hotel WiFi one needed to check the “Accept Terms and Conditions” box, but the remote wouldn’t go to the box.  An hour later Diana noticed the “cursor mode” option and that problem was solved.  Problem two – the firestick was installed and working fine but the remote wouldn’t control the TV volume and power, even after a bunch of fancy settings updates by McD.  I looked at some YouTube videos of how to fix the issue and tried a number of things.  An hour later, Diana finally gave up and sat down at her computer.  I decided to try the regular TV remote that we had thought only controlled the Dish satellite system.  Whaddaya know?  Controlled volume perfectly.  Two hours lost, but all TV and streaming options fully installed for our hotel stay.  I wish I had some of that escapade on video.  Funnily enough the firestick remote started controlling the volume just fine the next day with no changes.

We decided to be very safe and get a COVID test before visiting with Diana’s Mom.  Another late hour of work showed that “Project Baseline” was the best option.  After 30 minutes of data entry the site told us that we could make appointments for the Half Moon Bay location on Wednesday morning.  We assumed we could walk in on Tuesday morning and planned that as our early morning activity.

The drive down to Half Moon Bay was quick and pleasant but there was no evidence of any testing activity at the church, other than a couple of tents set up in the parking lot.  I tried to search for related testing locations and came up with a county run drive through site in Daly city – just south of San Francisco.  We finally found the location and 30 minutes later had completed our tests with a 1 to 3 day waiting period for results.

After that interesting activity we were ready for some lunch.  I spotted the City Kebabs and Gyros shop as we approached a traffic light and we decided to give it a try.  The Mediterranean food was delicious with all my favourites – humus, falafels, dolmas, chicken and lamb.  We were able to eat at the little table outside – one day before even patio dining was shut down.

We met Will and Christine for dinner at Town in San Carlos on Tuesday evening.  The street was closed off and the restaurants had made some big investments in building outdoor dining.  We were warm with the heaters and shades even though the temperature was in the forties.  It was funny to listen to Diana and Will deciding on which steak and preparation they were going to share.  I loved my sea bass and had some leftovers for lunch on Wednesday.  It was a real treat to hang out and have a meal with Will and Christine.  We had debated which night to meet and it was fortuitous that we chose Tuesday as all onsite dining shut down in California on Wednesday.

Wednesday began with a walk from Rockaway beach over to Lindamar Beach.  This involves zig-zagging up a decent sized hill.

Lindamar beach

 

Rockaway Beach

I enjoyed a good macchiato at Soul Grind at the mid-point of the walk while Diana ran back for a work call.

The surf was the biggest that I’ve seen in Pacifica – the waves cresting at 15 to 20 feet.  There were a few brave surfers at Rockaway and you could tell they certainly knew what they were doing.  I really enjoyed sitting on the balcony and watching the sea and surfers.  Listening to the surfers in the Soul Grind parking lot sharing their experiences was hilarious – they really do have that whole special slang that you see in movies.

The sunsets in Pacifica are equally impressive:

We still didn’t have our test results on Wednesday evening and so stayed at the hotel for dinner with Diana picking up food at the Moonraker restaurant across the street.  This is one of the nicer places in Pacifica (not really a high bar) and has a great view of the surf when the restaurant is open.  I enjoyed my lobster BLT sandwich and clam chowder.

Thursday started the same way as Wednesday with a pleasant walk between the two beaches and a coffee at Soul Grind.  We worked most of the day from the hotel room and then joined our respective work happy hours.  Diana’s was quite entertaining with one of her colleagues playing a Christmas carol on the tuba.  We finally received our negative COVID test results on Thursday evening and were cleared to head up on Gypsy Hill and visit the family.

Diana chose to start her birthday with a run – and conquered the zig-zag path up the hill – most impressive.  She had texted a picture to Marco (the ultra-marathoner) and asked if he thought she could do it.  He coached her to stand up straight and take little strides – seemed to work.  After her run we did another walk over for coffee and then enjoyed a sandwich from Dinosaur’s – such great Vietnamese sandwiches on yummy bread.

Birthday dinner was hosted by Adamo and family at their home.  I enjoyed looking over the kid’s task lists for the day.

Massimo’s tree in his room is certainly right up there with the Charlie Brown version:

Luciano is quite proud of his ability to count to one hundred.  I liked Diana’s bobbing head encouragement:

McD likes to have surf and turf for her birthday meal and Adamo made sure she was fully taken care of:

Those are lobsters that he caught diving and they were delicious.  While the cooking was underway, Diana was reviewing her hand made cards from the boys.

After dinner Grammie and Massimo relaxed and watched Rudolph.

 

 

One other thing that I came across that I thought was worth sharing.  Look at this 4th birthday card that Andy made for Massimo – he’s so creative with his cards.  He had seen Massimo in that jacket and thought he looked like a zebra.

Saturday was a pleasant and quiet day.  We ordered dinner from Mezza Luna in Princeton (just down Highway 1 from Pacifica) and ate with Adamo and the noise making crew.  The pizza and calamari were both very good.

Sunday started with another walk across the hill for coffee and a breakfast burrito at Soul Grind.  Then we packed up and moved from the hotel to Clorinda’s house just in time to watch the Cowboys defeat the San Francisco 49ers.  The Saints played really well against the Chiefs in Drew Brees first   game back from injury but were edged out in the end.  Adamo and I are in the midst of a project to install a TV at Clorinda’s.  Our small helpers are being exceptionally helpful.

We listened to the Ann Cleeves book “Raven Black” on the second section of our drive.  This is the first in the Shetland series – I read the 4th “Blue Lighting” a year or two ago, a gift from Mum and Dad and enjoyed it.  This one was a tad formulaic with the introduction and exploration of all potential guilty parties and Diana and I enjoyed trying to figure out who we thought were the leading contenders.  Neither one of us was close.

The story is set against the local Shetland festival of Up Helly Aa which celebrates the Viking history of the island, and culminates in the burning of a long boat.  The Guizer Jarl is the leader of the squad that builds and ultimately burns the boat, and one of the characters in the book was the Guizer for that year.

I was introduced to the “Nutcracker Suite” by Duke Ellington this week and really like it a lot – terrific arrangements and playing.

This led me to Ellington’s “New Orleans Suite” which might be even better.

I came across this performance of Led Zeppelin covers by Government Mule with Jason Bonham (son of Zeppelin drummer John Bonham) on drums.  What a great job Warren Haynes does on guitar and vocals – he really is one of the most under-appreciated guitarists working today.

I’ll finish with another Christmas related song that I heard for the first time this week – “Christmas Must Be Tonight” by The Band.  Great stuff:

Stay safe and patient- there’s an end in sight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week in Review – December 13, 2020

“Road Trip – Again”

The reprise of the road trip to California was scheduled to begin early on Friday morning and so we exchanged some gifts from under the tree on Thursday evening.  I’m always so impressed with Diana’s wrapping skills.  She got a special edition book of Winnie the Pooh stories and is looking forward to me reading bedtime stories from it.  I’m working on the voices – it seems like everyone sounds a bit like Eeyore.

The car was 90% packed up on Thursday night (including the fancy new Yeti champagne transporter) so that we could get a quick start on Friday morning.  We were underway by 9am and arrived in Albuquerque around 10 hours later.   The 645 miles in one day was just about as much as I can handle.  We did stop for a late lunch at the Drunken Oyster in Amarillo, and I couldn’t help but order the Cajun fondue that we enjoyed so much on the last road trip.  We made just one navigational error – a wrong turn just before arriving at the hotel – same one I almost missed last time.  Bit of a slow learner.

Saturday began with a walk across the hotel parking lot to the Marigold Café, a new place since our last trip.  It combines Indian and American foods with New Mexico influences in creative ways.  For example, my breakfast taco was served in fresh naan bread rather than a tortilla and included some delicious green chilis.  Diana’s avocado toast was also excellent and she raved about the bacon.  I’d like to return and sample the tikka mac ‘n cheese.

Our tummies pleasantly full, we made the short drive to Santa Fe.  We drove past downtown to the gorgeous and impressive Santa Fe Opera house just north of town.  The gate was closed and so we couldn’t get too close but the setting is really unique, with open air views of the high desert and mountains.  We were glad the snow came a few days prior to our visit so that we didn’t have that driving challenge.

After checking into the lovely, historic La Fonda hotel, we walked over to Canyon Road and had a ramble past all the art galleries and sculpture gardens that line the street.  I really enjoyed these wind machines – so creative and attention grabbing.

We walked back to the square and then enjoyed coffee and a slice of quiche at the hotel.  I was interested to see the red chilis hung as ornaments on the square.  Here’s the view from our hotel room balcony.  The cathedral bells are quite loud.  Fortunately the Trump rally (no masks in sight) in front of the cathedral cleared out quickly.

Why did we take the time to detour up to Santa Fe on an already long road trip you ask?  Very solid question.  Our friends Amy and Ray were getting married on Saturday evening at the La Fonda hotel.  We hadn’t planned on attending but couldn’t say no after Amy heard we were just going to be an hour away in Albuquerque.  Here’s Diana dressed up for the wedding with the favour that Amy left at the front desk – red chili peppers.

I hadn’t realized the ceremony was to be on the balcony of the bridal suite, in the evening, during a snow storm.  I was not dressed properly.  And certainly not for the extended event that the “celebrant” (artsy name for the lady presiding over the ceremony) insisted on presenting.  I swear that as the snow increased, she spoke slower.  There were several elongated descriptions of special parts – mixing sand together, the water ceremony etc.  My toes were quite iced up by the end.  The setting was lovely, and when we finally reached the exchange of vows, Amy and Ray were clearly very happy and did a great job.

Diana had the right idea when we made it back inside – thaw your hands on the chimney.

Here are a couple of other inside pictures.  I did have a jacket and tie on for the ceremony – first time in at least 10 months.

I particularly enjoyed meeting and chatting with Amy’s Dad Bob – what a fun character.  That and learning a new game, “Cheers to the Governor”, that the kids introduced.  I highly recommend it – you can find the rules online.  Diana and BP enjoyed getting their pictures taken on the snowy balcony when we went back downstairs.

We loaded up and headed out early on Sunday morning – destination Las Vegas – a mere 8 hours of driving away.  On the road by 8am and we should be relaxing at the lovely Aria hotel on the Vegas strip by 6pm or so.  All was smooth with some slow initial going on the snow in Santa Fe and the pace picking up when we merged onto the interstate down to Albuquerque.  And then everything changed – and not for the better.  There were multiple semi-truck accidents on I40 – we sat stopped on the highway amidst all the trucks for 2 hours straight at one point.

Thirteen very long and tedious hours later, we rolled up to Aria.  Vegas is so quiet that the restaurants have very reduced hours – we were lucky to grab a quick drink and bite at the Aria Pub.  The juxtaposition of the old, classic Santa Fe La Fonda with the huge, glitzy and modern Aria was quite dramatic.  The scale of the place comes through in this picture where the super cars out front look like models.

After our quick dinner, we walked down the strip to Bellagio and watched the fountain show with Christmas music.  Always such an impressive sight.  On the way we passed through a new and extremely upscale mall called “Crystals” something or other.  We were amazed at this tree where each ornament was one of the Swarovski crystal special editions – I hate to think how much it cost to decorate that tree.

Passing the smaller Eiffel tower at Paris hotel reminded us of a wonderful dinner we enjoyed there and of the very special 50th birthday dinner that we enjoyed with Mum and Dad at the real version in the real Paris.

Back at Aria, we relaxed with a cocktail at the “Lift Bar” and enjoyed a talented musician covering all kinds of music from different eras.  What a treat.

 

Upstairs BP was marveling at all the neon sights.  I hate to think about how much money these Vegas hotels are losing every hour with so few people around.

 

 

We finished listening to the Michael Connelly audio book of “The Law of Innocence” on the drive to Albuquerque.  It’s amazing how a good story, well read, can help the time pass.  There were just enough twists to keep our interest and not so many that it gets ridiculous – which seems to be the trend these days.  D kept picturing Matthew McConaughey in his role as the original “Lincoln Lawyer” as the story unfolded.

I didn’t make too much progress on “Utopia Avenue” this week, but am happy to report that my interest was held much better again.  I suspect I’ll finish the book off quickly on arrival in Pacifica as I get plenty of quiet reading time with Clorinda.

 

 

 

I heard the John Fogerty song “Broken Down Cowboy” on the Sirius Deep Tracks station on the drive.  I liked it a lot and was surprised that I hadn’t heard it before.  It’s not on Spotify but I did find this live version from the Royal Albert Hall:

“If I was a gambling man
Never would’a let you play that hand
With a broken down cowboy like me”

This Chuck Berry song came on while we were eating lunch at the Drunken Oyster in Amarillo – they played great music.  Quite different than his normal stuff:

An early Tom Waits song that Jesse covered on the Tuesday Night Supper Club show:

And finally, to recognize the 40th anniversary of John Lennon’s passing, one of my favourites.  I can remember pretty vividly walking to school with Drew Kirkland and David Smith the morning after the assassination and talking about how important Lennon’s contributions to music were.

Stay patient and safe.

 

Fortnight in Review – December 6, 2020

“Feast and Famine”

After a busy Thanksgiving weekend, this week was very quiet with our only real outing to downtown McKinney for coffee today.  Diana took my picture with the Xmas display outside the coffee shop.  Not quite a Christmas card since Diana and BP didn’t make it in.

Rewinding a fortnight (remember when we used to have to rewind VHS and audio cassettes?), we experienced a quite unexpected and very boisterous rain storm on Monday night:

Thanksgiving was a much more pleasant weather day.  We passed on cooking a turkey feast for two at home and headed to Perry’s steakhouse for a late lunch/early dinner.  Champagne and lobster tails make my McD very happy.

She said several times that the grilled lobsters were perfectly cooked.  A nicely cooked sea bass makes me happy.  So we were both very happy with our meals – and had plenty of leftovers for a late dinner.  I laughed when we checked in on the chaos at Amy and Adamo’s home and heard that Adamo had said, “maybe we can go out for lobster on Thanksgiving twenty years from now.”

We drove to Austin for the weekend on Friday morning, checked into the Intercontinental downtown (changing names to a Royal Sonesta the following week), and got ready for an early dinner at Peche – why not start out at one of our favourite Austin eateries.  We started with some very decadent escargots (no lack of butter or garlic) and then I had a delicious redfish on a bed of the barley risotto that I enjoy so much.  Diana had an equally decadent foie gras on grits.

After Peche, we walked across the street to the Parker Jazz Club (capacity reduced from over 100 to 30) and enjoyed our first live music in 9 months with 12 other folks.  Kris and the team are trying really hard to keep the place going with very limited seating weekend shows and live-streaming.  The house band was excellent as always – although the new drummer over plays too much for my liking.  Kris might have played almost all of his 8 or 9 instruments – going from bass flute to multiple saxophones and a flugelhorn.

Saturday was a rain day – light drizzle all day long.  That meant we couldn’t do our walk/run along the river and had to settle for the ellipticals in the hotel gym – surprised to find it open and we had it to ourselves.  We did walk down Congress Avenue for coffee and a TacoDeli treat before the workout.

Brunch was at the Odd Duck – one of my top three Austin brunch spots.  The shrimp and grits with a perfectly cooked deep fried egg were fabulous, as was the ceviche with green curry sauce.  It’s always so hard to choose from all the options – and the menu is new every time we go.  Diana loved their take on the Paloma cocktail.  I’m now expected to try and replicate that – oops, maybe she’d forgotten already and I just reminded her.

After lunch we made a visit to the office to drop off an old laptop that I’d been hanging on to for a while and then visited the Yeti flagship store next to our old apartment.  Diana was determined to purchase one of the ludicrously priced coolers that keep ice solid for several days.  Then a trip to Warby Parker to get our glasses adjusted.  What a productive afternoon.

I hadn’t made any plans for Saturday night and we decided we should revisit the Parker jazz club and make another donation towards trying to keep the joint open.  This time we had dinner as well, splitting a yummy burger.  There was a slightly larger audience but still nowhere near the reduced capacity.  Kris was in a New Orleans mood – which suited me just fine.  I was interested to hear him share that he and Ryan Davis (piano) had been playing together for over 20 years, including 14 as the house band at Eddie V’s steakhouse.

Sunday was a dry day and so we were able to execute a 4 mile circuit around the river trail, culminating with another snack at TacoDeli.  Then another excellent brunch at Suerte – my top ranked Mexican restaurant.  The masa that they make all the corn tortillas and tostadas from is ridiculously good.  Diana had a smoked salmon tostada and I tried the bacon and sweet potato tetela (like a corn based pie with bacon and sweet potato puree inside).  They were both perfect – particularly the mornay sauce, which I learned is a classic béchamel sauce enriched with a blend of Gruyère and Parmesan cheeses.  We have really missed the creative food that is so readily available in Austin.  And the great live music.

Diana was still a bit hungry after her tostada and so we had an excuse to get an order of the best tacos ever – the suaderos, and a side of sweet kolache.  Yum yum yum.  My tummy is wishing it was living back in Austin after revisiting all these food pictures.

After brunch we met our friend Neffie at Fixe – a new place she introduced us to that specializes in southern comfort food – supposedly the best biscuits (scones) in Austin.

 

 

We passed this sign on the walk to Fixe – so nice to be able to walk everywhere again.  My Mum had just been telling us the story of the Battle of Bannockburn where the English tried to sneak up on the Scots at night, taking their boots off for stealth, but were foiled by the thistles that made them yelp and awake the sleeping Scots.  And like a responsible Scotsman who payed attention in History class, I do indeed remember that happened in 1314.

Neffie kept us laughing until it was time for our concert at the Austin City Limits Moody theater.  It’s always fun to browse the pictures of the musical greats that have played there – from Edie Brickell to Ray Charles and everything in between.

Nicki Bluhm opened the show for the Band of Heathens (BoH) and had a much more impressive voice in person than we hear her on the Tuesday night livestreams.  She was able to effectively fill the theater with just her voice and acoustic guitar.  Here she is with her husband Jesse, the bass player for the BoH, performing the first song that Sonny and Cher ever did together:

This was the BoH 15th anniversary show in their hometown and they didn’t disappoint at all, with a great mixture of songs from their new album and classics.  “Miss Ohio” was an early favourite:

“Call Me Gilded” is a highlight from the new album and the harmonies are on good display:

And I’ll finish the reprise of this outstanding show with “Hurricane” transitioning into “LA County Blues”:

Three nights of fantastic live music.  What a long overdue treat.

We started Monday with another workout at the hotel and then made the drive back to boring old McKinney.  The rest of this week was our normal work from home routine, culminating with the aforementioned trip for coffee.  Our only other excitement was a trip to “Run-On” after coffee to get runner D fitted for some new shoes.  She’s been complaining of cold and numb toes and we’re trying to fix that with some new shoes and socks.  45 minutes later and I think she’s all fixed up – it’s nice that the store encourage you to go outside and run in the shoes they recommend.

I’ve been enjoying “Utopia Avenue” by David Mitchell (best known for “Cloud Atlas”).  The book is about a group of musicians who form a band in the late 60s and early 70s.  It started really well and is dragging a bit in the middle.  At almost 500 pages with 200 or so to go, I’m hoping it grabs my interest a bit more soon.  Although a work of fiction, famous musicians and other characters from real life make appearances in the book – sometimes entertaining and other times feeling pretty contrived – particularly in their dialogue.

I’ve come across a decent amount of music that is new to me over the last couple of weeks and I’ll save some for the upcoming posts.

I’ve always loved the song “Gypsy Blood” by Mason Ruffner and was interested to sample a more laid back recent offering.  Here’s what a review said: “If you were waiting for Mark Knopfler to score a Sundance entry set in Grand Isle, this is your lucky day.”  That caught my interest as I love Knopfler’s scores and Grand Isle is an area where Denny and the crew go fishing annually.

Some more reading provided this update on Ruffner’s activities since “Gypsy Blood” in the 80s:  “In the mid-’80s, after Sea-Saint and before The Big Easy, transplanted Fort Worth native Mason Ruffner was a welcome national focal point for the New Orleans scene, a guitar slinger equally adept at blues, country, Tex-Mex and jazz who fell in love with the Crescent City and, somewhat oddly, folded the town’s rich piano tradition into his music. He was a critic’s darling, but perhaps taking a cue from so many of his local heroes, he soon disappeared into the wilds south of Austin.”

The dobro sound on this one is perfect:

A Colin Lake song popped up on a playlist and I did some research on him also.  We saw him at the Telluride Blues Festival but I didn’t know much about him.  He’s spent the last few years sailing around Latin America.  Interesting to read this piece about Antigua – a beautiful and artsy town surrounded by volcanoes in Guatemala, where I enjoyed an afternoon right before COVID arrived to shut down travel.  “Once in Antigua, Guatemala, Colin found the change in atmosphere inspiring and picked up a few gigs around town.  While dusting off his catalog, he gleaned new and deeper meaning in the lines and melodies of his own songs, rediscovering them as though they were not his own.”

Stay safe and kind.

Week in Review – August 16, 2020

“103 Years Old”

Hello again.  Not much happening here in McKinney this week.  Just working from home, reading, eating, exercising and sleeping.  I’m pleased to announce that with all this time eating at home, McD has become an accomplished outdoor griller.   Burgers, steak, salmon, shrimp and veggies are all cooked perfectly these days.  Here’s some perfectly cooked shrimp and a lovely salad that I enjoyed:

My annual physical (personal M.O.T.) rolled around again this week.  ECG, prostate, and most blood tests (still waiting on a few) all show positive and healthy results.  Maybe I’ll be brave enough to go for the day long full battery of tests that my company offers next year.  In addition to this torture, I also had my weekly Physical Therapy appointment.  It really wasn’t too bad but certainly stretches the limits of what my leg and hip can do.

I loved receiving this picture from my sister-in-law, Amy, this week.  That’s our newest niece, Frankie, our nephew Massimo, and their Great-Grammie.  I love the looks on both of their faces.  And the best part, Grammie turned 103 yesterday.  She’s still walks unassisted and had cooked an apple pie for the visit.  Truly amazing!

The New York Times crossword puzzle was kind to me today.  The Sunday puzzle usually takes me about an hour – it’s easier but much larger than Friday and Saturday.  Today was my best time by far.  You’ll notice that I finished this at 7:34 am – courtesy of Diana’s early morning weight training and walk – she likes to get them in before the weather becomes too oppressive.  The theme was “Alternative Cinema” – I really like the clue that I highlighted here:

With so little excitement these days, I’ve been wondering how to add something interesting to the blog.  So… here goes with a new segment.  I’m going to share my exploits in learning new songs on the piano and guitar.  First I’ll tackle “Racing in the Street” by Bruce Springsteen – a long time favourite:

Let’s talk about those lyrics:

“I got a 69 Chevy with a 396,

Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor,

She’s waiting for me tonight,

in the parking lot,

of the Seven-Eleven store”

Other than the “69 Chevy”, it’s a bunch of Greek to a Scotsman.   We don’t have souped up muscle cars and drag racing in Scotland – at least that I’m aware of.  The Anglo/American cross culture flow may have changed that by now.  To break it down, “Fuelie heads” are defined in my Google search like this:

“The 461 head is more popularly referred to as the “Fuelie” head, because it was introduced as standard equipment on the 1962 327ci Corvette engine that was fed by a mechanical Rochester fuel-injection system. In some bench-racing circles, all double-hump heads are classified as Fuelie heads.”  Got it?

“Hurst” is basically a gear lever: “Hurst proudly maintains a wide variety of exceptional shifter products for the performance enthusiast including automatic shifters, legendary Hurst manual …”

I hadn’t heard of 7-11s until I was in training in Fort Worth and frequented the 24 hour convenience store just across from the apartment complex where we were housed.  Apparently 7-11 parking lots are a gathering place for street drag racing competitions.  I remember going to my first amateur drag racing event many years ago with some friends from Gearhart.  Quite an experience to witness the strategy of amateur racers going through the heats with a wide variety of vehicles.

Back to the practicing – and for the guitar, I’m very early (1 day) into learning “Pride and Joy” by Stevie Ray Vaughan.  When I first visited Dallas for training with the oil logging company in 1985, Stevie’s song “Change It” was all over the radio.  The first riff caught my attention and had me cranking up the radio every time.

Hearing him live in Dallas in 1986 was a musical highlight.  I remember being a huge fan of the live version of “Pride and Joy”.

On our Executive Committee meeting this week, I was presenting a request for some capital spend, and one of the members said he wouldn’t approve unless I played something on the guitar that he spotted in the background.  He specifically requested  some Stevie Ray.  I managed to dodge that request but it did give me the idea for this new segment.  Here’s my attempt at the first few bars.  The song only gets more difficult from here.  Going to take some hard work:

I listened to a short story called “Climbing with Mollie” by Bill Finnegan on a couple of my swims this week.  A small MP3 player that clips onto the strap of my goggles and some waterproof earphones made this possible.  Those and a bit of patience deciphering how to find an Audible book download file, convert it to MP3 format, and load it onto the player.  Then some trial and error with different sized earphone end pieces and “fitgoo earbud insertion helper”.  Now I’m all set to listen to books while swimming.

Finnegan won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for his memoir “Barbarian Days” which is about his fascination with surfing while he grew up in Hawaii.  The book that I listened to is about his adolescent daughter, Mollie’s, passion toward rock climbing.  She had been a bored non-participant in group sports – counting daisies on the soccer field and rejecting swim team – but took to rock climbing immediately.  Mollie proves to be a natural-born climber and Finnegan gets hooked as well.

As Mollie progresses in the sport, the descriptions of her activities get more detailed and technical.  I really enjoyed learning so much about how climbing “problems” are rated and named.   The duo travel from indoor gyms to rock faces in Central Park, Mexico and Canada.  I was interested to hear about their time near Queretero in Mexico – that’s where our corporate office for Mexico and Latin America is located – and one of the last places I traveled to before lock down.  The descriptions of the nearby town of Bernal have me looking forward to a return visit.  Pena de Bernal is the name of the monolith that dominates the skyline.

I ordered “Nashville, scenes from the new American south” with text by Ann Patchett (author of “Commonwealth” and “The Dutch House” and one of my very favourite current authors) and photographs by Heidi Ross, expecting a series of short stories about the city.  Instead it turns out to be mostly a photography book with short notes from Patchett.  I have enjoyed flicking through the beautiful photos for places that we’ve visited, and places that we should visit on our next trip.  Here are a few of the pictures that I enjoyed.  “The iconic Delbert McLinton at the iconic Union Station hotel”:

My favourite Delbert tune:

He’s clearly traveled a few miles since recording this song.  The second night that I spent in the United States, I saw a Delbert McClinton concert.  I convinced a few of my oilfield logging classmates, including a couple of Argentinians, to accompany me to the Caravan of Dreams music club in Fort Worth and really didn’t know what to expect.  I can still remember how much I enjoyed that show and the feeling of being right at home with great blues and R&B music that wasn’t going to be easily found in Scotland.  Isn’t it fun when a photograph can bring back so many memories?

Here’s a look inside the Parnassus bookstore that Ann Patchett owns with her husband:

The shop appears to have quite a nice music section.

And finally, a weekly lunch date that Sturgill Simpson and John Prine (famous Nashville based singer songwriters) enjoyed at Big Al’s Diner prior to Prine’s passing from Covid a few weeks ago:

I read the book “Silver Sparrow” by Tayari Jones this week.  Sometimes I really can’t remember what possessed me to order certain books, and this is certainly one of those.  I suppose it popped up on one of those “if you liked this, you’ll love this” lists or on a book review that I trust.  Here’s what the Los Angeles Times reviewer had to say:

“Tayari Jones has taken Atlanta for her literary terroir, and like many of our finest novelists, she gives readers a sense of place in a deeply observed way. But more than that, Jones has created in her main characters tour guides of that region: honest, hurt, observant and compelling young women whose voices cannot be ignored . . . Impossible to put down until you find out how these sisters will discover their own versions of family.”
—Los Angeles Times

The book opens with the line, “My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist.”  A unique opener for sure.  Silver Sparrow is the story of two young women, Dana and Chaurisse, who are the daughters of a bigamist father.  Only Dana is aware that her father has another family and Dana’s existence must be kept a secret from her father’s other family. The first half of the book is told from Dana’s perspective and the second half is told from Chaurisse’s perspective as she slowly begins to realize that something isn’t quite right with her family.  The last quarter of the book was certainly the best, as all the threads come together for a somewhat predictable finale.  Not sure I’d recommend this one to any of you, but it did keep my attention for a couple of days.

We’ve been working our way through the Hulu series “The Handmaid’s Tale” over the last few weeks.  What a truly bizarre and disturbing story.  Perhaps mostly because we have the sense that it’s not such a long leap for our society to become something like this.  That being said, the acting and directing are excellent.  Several episodes have had us on the edge of our seats.

I’ve commented a couple of times on the music in the show.  There’s not much of it and the deep selections had me convinced that the musical director was British.  When Roy Harper’s “How does it Feel?” showed up in an episode this week I was convinced.  What do you think Google revealed?  The music is selected by a lady who lives in Austin!  The Harper song took me quickly back to an old favourite of his from University days – “When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease”.  If you listen you’ll hear one of the things that draws me to this – that’s right, the excellent brass band accompaniment.  Coupled with the poignant lyrics, it’s right up K alley.

Now that I think about it, I believe I wrote about discovering this song again quite recently.  Apologies for the duplication.  Well, not really, it’s a great song.

What’s on deck for the coming week?  Well, let’s see: a haircut on Monday; Physical Therapy on Tuesday; 3 swims worked into the calendar (I plan on listening to the audio book version of “American Dirt” for company); reading the new Churchill novel, “The Splendid and the Vile”, by Erik Larson – it covers the years 1940-1941 and the last part of the jacket blurb reads, “this book takes the readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when – in the face of unrelenting horror- Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.”  We can only wish for a tiny bit of that these days.

Stay positive, calm and kind.

 

Fortnight in Review – July 5th, 2020

Did you miss me?  Nothing very exciting is happening, shocking I know, and so I skipped blogging time last week.  Here goes with the news from the last fortnight.

Before we made the trip down to Austin to start packing up the apartment, Diana finished the Couch to 5K program with a 30 minute run.  I’m so proud of my new runner.  And she’s still going out every other day even in the steamy, humid weather.  You can see that the hot tub is ideal for pre-run stretching.

When we arrived in Austin, I decided to walk with Diana on her warm up and then rendezvous with her as she turned back around to head for home.  My leg was feeling great and so I ended up crossing the river at I-35 and walking down the other side for a coffee at the cafe by the rowing facility.  After the short break I still had plenty of energy and so walked down to the Lamar St bridge and then back to the apartment.  My new Apple watch, a birthday gift from my lovely wife, showed that I had been able to close both my exercise ring and my active calorie ring with the 4 mile walk – woo hoo!  I’m back in the game.

The next day my leg still felt great and so I repeated the routine.  It was quite a bit hotter and more humid and after 2.5 miles I was really thirsty and my leg was starting to hurt.   I did come across this guy with incredible balance and strength:

Rather than call McD to rescue me and suffer the humiliation of that story, I chose to soldier on and walk to the nearest store for a big bottle of water.  On arrival at the apartment my leg wasn’t feeling so great at all.  You are all correct – I totally over did it – where’s the common sense?  Why didn’t I work up to it a bit slower.  I honestly thought that after the first day of walking everything was good to go.

I finally made it to the doctor yesterday as the pain really hadn’t subsided very much.  The x-ray shows everything is fine and I did just significantly over do it.  The doctor was not particularly happy with me.  I’m limited to half mile walks for several weeks when the pain goes away.  Do you think that I’ve learned my lesson.  I know – hard to say.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I helped a guy who bought our queen bed and mattress load it into the elevator and his truck.  The guy was recovering from a recently broken rib and so we made quite the pair.

Maybe all of this was just a ruse to avoid having to pack up the apartment and load up the first set of stuff into the car?  Poor Diana had to do that all by herself – resulting in some of the most scientific packing that I’ve ever witnessed.

We had a couple of big dog encounters over the last couple of weeks.  Rachel brought Pride the Great Dane over to hang out.  He’s mellowed quite a bit over the last few years – he’s seven now – but still won’t jump in the back of Rachel’s SUV without her helping him in.  What a silly dog.

Then down in Austin we got to visit Wash and Zoe, the Irish Wolf Hounds.  Zoe performed her party trick with Diana – and she’s quite a bit smaller than Wash.  We had a really nice extended visit with Brad and Josalyn as well as the dogs.

Josalyn had hand painted my name on to a drinking buddy for Brad.  She used a toothpick to get fine enough detail.

This is a cutting from a huge agave plant that Brad moved from his house in San Antonio.  It will be making the journey back to McKinney soon.   They say it’s impossible to kill these plants – we’ll see about that.

We sat on our balcony on the evening of July 4th and watched all the fireworks along the horizon.  The downtown river fireworks show with live orchestra was cancelled.  We had a great show from about 9pm until after midnight.

Diana suggested that we should visit some of our very favourite Austin restaurants while we still could, scared that we won’t be back to Austin very often and that they could all easily go out of business soon.  We started by walking over to Peche for some of their decadent menu highlights – steak tartare, foie gras, and amazing stuffed quail.  What a treat.   Social distancing wasn’t a problem as we were the only folks in the place at the start of our meal.  The owner, Rob, told us he is doing a good take out business and has some decent dine in days.

Our next stop was the patio at Suerte for the ludicrously good suadero tacos.  These are the best tacos I have ever tasted – such an amazing combination of flavours.  The aguachile appetizer was also very tasty and refreshing.  The meal was rounded out with a choco taco.

Our final stop was at Comedor.  We tried to sit on the patio, but I was melting and so we moved into a spacious enclosed booth inside.  After an excellent ahi tuna appetizer that was just on the borderline of too spicy for McD, we tried the much vaunted bone marrow tacos.  These were indeed a treat – you fill your taco with kale and then layer on the bone marrow, the kale intended to soak up some of the fat.  We will really miss the creativity and quality of so many Austin restaurants.

I haven’t done a lot of reading lately, but hope to get back to it this weekend.

On the music front, I’m really enjoying the new Bob Dylan album “Rough and Rowdy Ways”.  It’s quite something that he’s creating such quality music at 79 years old.  Charlie Sexton, Austin native who we’ve seen several times in tiny clubs there, adds some excellent guitar work to the album.

Margo Price is a bit outside my wheelhouse, with more of a Country flavour, but I like her new album quite a bit – good quality songs and production.

Greyhounds is a new band to me that I heard on a playlist this week.  Doing some research I discover that they are a song writing duo based in Austin.  They have written for and played with several of my favourites – Tedeschi Trucks and JJ Grey included.  I’m going to need to check out some more of their music.

Stay kind and patient.

Week in Review – June 21, 2020

“Chilling at Home”

The usual live music streams kept us company on Tuesday evening – Hayes Carll (this week from his front porch with fiddle accompaniment), followed by the BoH Supper Club.  Both were well done as usual.

Wednesday was the 3rd anniversary of that lovely day in Cozumel.  I found a card with the caption “May the Honeymoon Never End”.  It’s funny to me because we didn’t have an official honeymoon and I think McD has given up on it now.  We did have a planning session a few months ago but couldn’t come up with anything that we really liked.  Some nice flowers took the sting out of the message in the card.

Diana made anniversary dinner reservations for us at Rye in downtown McKinney.  I decided to trim up my large beard, wear a collared shirt and some non-workout shorts for the occasion.  We sat outside on the sidewalk and enjoyed a delicious meal.  Here are the descriptions of the shareable plates that we enjoyed from the Rye menu.

Ceviche

tx striped bass, yellow curry crema, cilantro, celery, fish sauce, lime, sesame oil, fish skin chicharrón.

Blue Cheesecake

grilled local mushrooms, danish blue, pecan, rye cracker crust, lavash, wild arugula, cherry gastrique

Queso Stuffed Wagyu Sliders

tx craft wagyu, green chili queso, green chili-bacon jam, thousand island, brioche buns.

Those Wagyu sliders were ridiculously good and rich.  We took one home so that we could enjoy our final plate of chicken baos.  It was wonderful to get out and celebrate in what seemed like a very safe socially distanced environment.

Finn turned 27 on Wednesday and Will spoiled him with a beautiful meal.  King crab legs, rib-eye steaks, and baclavas for dessert (a special Finn request).  He looks a wee bit pale and skinny but a lot better than he did last year at this time.
That’s Nicole in the family picture.  Apparently they reconnected in the last few weeks.  She visited us in McKinney with Finn several years ago and we approve.

 

Captain Denny

The Ogans teased us with pictures of them enjoying a day in the Florida panhandle on a pontoon boat.  We did try to rent one when we visited but waited too late to think about it.

At work we migrated our major financial systems to a new cloud environment on Wednesday and Thursday nights.  I was quite nervous about this activity and it all went very smoothly.  Much better performance now and glad to get that behind me.

I briefly attended several happy hour online calls on Friday evening – I suppose it’s kind of like hopping from one bar to the next.  First a work one with the financial team who helped with the migrations, then Diana’s girlfriends from California (with occasional husband participation), and finally a FaceTime with the Wahbas.  We finished up in time to catch the last couple of songs from a Lyle Lovett and Robert Earl Keen song swap live stream.  Seeing them both reminded me of the night that I broke my finger.  Keen was the emcee and Lovett an Austin City Limits Hall of Fame inductee.

 

 

My crazy running wife successfully completed Week 8 Day 1 of Couch to 5K with a solid 25 minute run.  I’m very proud of how she’s kept after it.  At the end of week 8 she should be ready for her 5K run – we’ll have to pick that out.

After the run, we were joined by the contractor who’s putting together an estimate for our master bathroom remodel.  What have we embarked upon?

Diana made me a delicious omelet with chorizo and I heard from “My Three Sons” on Father’s Day, which was very nice.  The funniest picture I got along with special greetings was from Anne:

I started “Sontag” by Benjamin Moser this week.  At over 700 pages it might be with me for a few weeks.  It’s described as “The definitive portrait of one of the American Century’s most towering intellectuals: her writing and her radical thought, her public activism and her hidden private face”.  I can’t honestly remember what drove me to pick this biography, but I’ve started and I’ll do my best to finish.  I don’t know too much about Sontag and so I’m sure I’ll learn a lot along the way.

Over to music – I really enjoy Dawes and this is a great song from them.   Great sound and guitars.

Here’s my other highlight from the same Dawes album:
https://open.spotify.com/track/0HOvoZ4m0aJp6vY4fVrI51?si=4BWHYwuHS-uxuaZy7oXsYg
I’m a huge fan of the Richard and Linda Thompson album “I Want to See the Bright Lights” but had never heard the album that this song is from.  The guitar work on this is truly unique and so nuanced:
https://open.spotify.com/track/5ZU85Wow0Fdrkm7JsUFc30?si=Fbl2tSPMSfCn6yTx_GBiQg
And finally a song from a band that all the music writers are raving about the last few years, The 1975.  I listened to their new album this week and was amazed at the diversity of musical styles at play.
https://open.spotify.com/track/4NGs8bDJyNV1dgnAbUVZS6?si=WAz7rG7MTySWsNXoxHqR_A
Stay kind and patient with those who forget to be!