Red Nose

Hope For The Brand New Year

We welcomed the New Year quietly, clinking glasses of Veuve Cliquot (Yes! No flies on us!) and smooching. We'd tossed around several ideas for New Year's Eve, including having dinner at fancy restaurants or going out to some First Night celebrations, but in the end we decided to skip the traffic, save some money, and avoid the amateur drunks.

I concocted a rather elaborate (for me, anyway) dinner of grilled lamb chops, crescent rolls, oven-roasted garlic potatoes, and broccoli in cheese sauce. (Tip: Cheese sauce is very easy to make from scratch, but just let it be pale. Do not try to add a drop of red food coloring. It makes for a rather lurid side dish.) For dessert, we had chocolate pound cake and coffee ice cream topped with caramel sauce.

It all turned out very nicely, if I do say so myself. As Pop would say, "You'd have to pay at least 10 bucks for that in a restaurant!"

Today Joe had to work, so I spent the morning loading up my new Nano. Then I spent the afternoon performing the year's first corporal work of mercy by visiting Mom.

So it was a peaceful day. Peaceful is a good way to start a new year. I hope for lots of peace this coming year. Also:

• I hope to get healthier.
• I hope to write more.
• I hope to juggle more.
• I hope to do some cool new stuff at work.
• I hope to spend more time being happy and less time being worried and anxious.

Now, I guess I have to translate that into goals, and milestones, and blah blah blah, but right now I'm just going to relax, and enjoy the rest of this first day of 2008.

Looking Back; Looking Ahead

It's not like 2007 was a complete and total bag of shit, because it wasn't. There were lots of wonderful things.

The scrapbook cult marathon last January was lots of fun; I created a lasting record of my volunteer week in New Orleans and Joe rubbed of lots women the right way.

In March, we braved the weather and joined a bunch of wonderful people for 3tacon in Green Bay. Cheese and wine, brats and booyah, a moonlight sleighride and much revelry. What a party!

The jugglers came to town in May! I saw some amazing juggling, as usual, and took a lot of pictures, as usual, and created a video featuring fire. I also juggled a little.

I went to Minneapolis for the STC conference, my 23rd year in a row. I learned a lot, ate a lot, and danced a lot. Pretty good for a business conference!

Three of my bestest pals joined Joe and me in Ocean City for the JMJ Memorial Meat-Up, a long, lazy, wonderful weekend.

We celebrated at two family weddings in June, one of each side of the family.

And then Mom's health took a nosedive, with hospitals, nursing homes, and finally a move to assisted living. The summer was full of tension and emotion, which is only just now smoothing out. But we also participated in the StoryCorps project, and now some of Mom's memories are preserved for all of us to share.

Fall has been better, although I flamed out with NaNoWriMo. The year has closed out well, with Joe's new job, a wonderful Christmas, and a restful holiday.

The year is over now. It does no good to dwell on the bad, so I won't. There was too much good stuff and plenty of fun.

So here's to 2008! May it be joyful and rewarding. Happy New Year to all.

Clinky; drinky!

Muttering At The End Of The Year

It's been awhile since I've done Unconscious Mutterings, so here we go!

I say, and you think:

1. Memorable ::  Unforgettable
2. Resolution :: Weekend
3. Goal ::  8 against the Sens!
4. 2008 ::  Gotta be better than 2007
5. Sensational ::  Game against the Cowboys!
6. Popular demand ::  Back by
7. Old ::  Friends
8. Music ::  Food of Love
9. Intense :: Where you sleep when camping
10. 2007 ::  Good riddance!

Resolution Weekend is the yearly scrapbook cult marathon event, but we're not going this year. That's okay; we're going somewhere else!

I'm also quite happy that I was able to get in mentions of my Caps great win against the Eastern-conference leaders, the Ottawa Senators. The score was very unhockeylike: 8 to 6! And Ovi had 4 goals all by his ownself! And he played the day after getting stitches in his leg from a skate-blade cut! Woo!

Of course, I also had to watch my Skins play the Cowboys, with a playoff spot on the line. It was especially nice to see the Skins play so well, holding the Cowboys offense to 1 yard rushing. Granted, the game was meaningless for the Cowboys, but please. One yard? Come. On.

Finally, I couldn't resist the bad pun there in number 9. I mean, it's like an order.

Ten Things About This Christmas Season

Well, it's not quite the twelve days of Christmas, but here are ten things about this Christmas:

1. It was not white. Oh, we've had white Christmases around here, but normally we don't. In fact, this Christmas was fairly warm -- in the 50s, if you please!

2. As usual, Joe was first up. He's always been the first one up in our household, even when SonnyeBoy was little. He did wait until 7:30 to wake us, though!

3. The Egg and Muffin Toaster continues to work perfectly. In fact, I bought English muffins at the store yesterday, and the egg produced by the poacher is the exact size of the English muffin. Perfection abounds.

4. I saw four movies today: The Devil Wears Prada, Dreamgirls, For Your Consideration, and The Life of Brian. This only one I hadn't seen before was For Your Consideration, another silly, inspired Christopher Guest piece.

5. Hurray for Fawlty Towers!

6. SonnyeBoy offered to demostrate his EVOC (Emergency Vehicle Operator's Course) instructor skills to me as we were driving the other day, but I was too big of a wimp to take him up on it.

7. Joe has to work on New Year's Day. Bah.

8. I actually made gravy from scratch for Christmas dinner! I've watched Mom create delicious gravy from the pan drippings, flour, and Kitchen Bouquet forever, but I wasn't quite brave enough to wing it my first time out. So I grabbed the good old Joy, and looked up a recipe for easy brown gravy, and we had butter, flour, chicken broth, and Worcestershire sauce, and yay! Gravy! Who knew?

9. I love everything that I got for Christmas!

10. Tomorrow I'm going to make dinner reservations for New Year's Eve. I'm not completely sure where yet, but I know it will be good. We'll eat out, then come on home and raise a glass at midnight. Then, we will smooch.

Vacation Is Exhausting Me

This vacation is doing me in, what with all the family gatherings, movie watching, present admiring, and other stuff. I don't know if I'll make it through another four days!

Today was relatively quiet. Joe went off to work at his usual time this morning. The day stretched out ahead of me. I had three things to accomplish today: get a chest x-ray, have lunch with Mom, and do the grocery shopping.

The x-ray of my chestal area went fine; I just dropped into the imaging center, handed over my copay, and sat until the x-ray tech called me back. She did not look sorrowful and pitying when she came back to let me go, so I'm not anticipating any bad news. Then again, I suppose they practice looking noncommittal, so who knows. Then again, I did not receive an urgent call from my doc this afternoon, so all is probably well.

Lunch with Mom almost went down a very bad road. She was feeling cranky, which means that nothing I said was right and nothing about her living situation was good. I have learned not to follow when she starts down this road, so I just said nothing and let her go. Sure enough, she pulled a quick u-turn and came back. I think the turning point was when I actually found a small fruitcake in the store for her to give to her pal. At one point she said, "I always call it 'the place I live' because I don't want to call it 'the home'." I joked, "Maybe you could call it the sorority house, or the dorm." She actually laughed at that, and then admitted that she had made some friends, that she was getting great care, and that she really had it good. And so it goes, back and forth.

Grocery shopping kicked my ass. My back and knees started pinging away toward the end of the trip, but I got everything on the list and then some. Joe usually does the grocery shopping, so this was a late Christmas present to him. I'm really glad I went -- pasta and Italian sausage sure beats Cheerios for dinner!

Come Inside The Smoke Shop

Joe really enjoys his job, really he does. As with any retail job, though, he meets his share of, um, challenging customers. He also meets really interesting and neat people, too. Many of these stories are really way too good to keep to himself, or to share with only me, so I -- being the blog aficionado that I am -- suggested that he share his observances with the entire internet! What better audience, I ask you?

He toyed with the idea for a while, then decided to go it. I set him up, registered the domain, and got it all together.

Therefore, I proudly present:

Even if you don't care for cigars, go for the stories. And if you do care for cigars, you'll find out what makes a good cigar good. It's not all cigars and customers, though; he also has a great review of that cinematic classic The Brain That Wouldn't Die.

Yay, Joe!

A Perfect Poached Egg

I love the Egg McMuffin. You do too; don't lie to me. And now I can make my very own Eggamuffins at home, perfectly every time, because we own the Egg & Muffin Toaster, made by Back to Basics.

This machine -- this machine! How do I adequately sing the praises of this machine? I bought two of 'em, based on the recommendation of Farhad Manjoo, the tech columnist for Salon.com. He describes the ins and outs of the gadget better than I can -- so well that as soon as I read his post I clicked the link and ordered one for Joe (well, me really) and one for SonnyeBoy. I mean, what young man doesn't require a perfect egg sammich from time to time?

Anyhow, I wrapped both boxes identically and had my boys open them at the same time. As soon as the ooh's and ah's died down I grabbed Joe's box and initiated a system test. First of all, the documentation was good, although the Quick Reference Guide left out a couple minor details. After washing the egg poaching parts (as instructed!), I filled the water reservoir with enough water to cook my egg to "medium," set the toast hue to darkish (I like my toast to be toast), and inserted the bread. I broke an egg into the egg poaching pan, and assembled the poaching parts. Then I took a deep breath, pressed the "egg and toast" button, and pushed down the toaster level, which activated the magic.

Sure enough, both egg and toast were done -- perfectly -- at exactly the same time! Had I thought to cook up some bacon or sausage, I could have kept it piping hot in the meat warmer as my egg and toast were cooking.

I mean, how absolutely cool is this?? On the one hand, an excellent toaster of bread, English muffins, or bagels; on the other hand, a flawless egg poacher (or boiler of eggs, from soft to hard -- bonus!).

Best of all, this is a gadget that has no chance of ending up dusty in a cupboard (like the smoothie maker) or pulled out once a year (like the apple-peeler-corer-slicer). This one is on the counter, and there are a dozen eggs in the fridge.

But not for long.

And To All A Good Night!

For the first time in several years, I actually cooked a Christmas dinner!

From the looks of things, it turned out pretty well. I overdid it on the mashed potatoes and veggies, but better to have too much than not enough, eh?

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Party Eve

Christmas Eve -- time for our traditional family gathering!

We've been getting together since I was a kid. We lived right down the hill from church. Every Christmas Eve the grownups would go to midnight Mass, then gather at our house for breakfast and general carousing.

Once Mom and Pop moved to Seizure Leisure World, the party moved from breakfast after midnight to dinner at -- well, dinnertime, with present opening as a main feature.

Eventually, as the grandchildren proliferated and my folks got older, the party became too much for Mom to handle, so we started rotating the party. After Pop passed away and the grandchildren started having children, the exponential increase in present buying and party organizing overwhelmed us.

We called a halt to the presents and began having the party at a local restaurant. This arrangement worked really well for a couple of years, and then we seemed to reach some sort of familial critical mass. So my younger sister started having the party at her house, for the siblings and childless grandchildren.

And that is where I have been tonight! My sister served a great meal: shrimp, chips and salsa, fried potatoes, salad, string beans, and as God is my witness the most perfect, tender, rare roast beef it has ever been my carnivorous heart's delight to experience.

I mean, this beef was the pinnacle of roast beef. It wasn't just roast beef, it was Roast. Beef. I kneel before this roast beef and drool, it was that good.

Now I'm home, having shuttled Mom back to the home and tucked her into bed. I've put the presents under the tree and stuffed the stockings, and now I just have to relax and listen for the sound of sleigh bells on the roof.

Slowly, I Decorate...

I got the lights on the tree and plopped the angel on top, but that's as far as it went. We may just go minimalist this year and leave it at that. It's quite pretty, even without ornaments and gold garlands, so unless I get really inspired later tonight or tomorrow...

Luckily, we have a holiday tomorrow, so I have more time to get everything done. And you know what? If it doesn't all get done, that's okay. The point is to celebrate, and relax, and enjoy the holiday, and I will do just that.

Meanwhile, I did the grocery shopping for Christmas dinner and wrapped most of my gifts. The few that are left won't take very long, so that's Job 1 for tomorrow morning. Then I'll tidy up and make the place look presentable for guests. I sandblasted the bathroom this morning, so the most onerous task is complete.

But damn! My knees have been singing bad blues tunes all week long. You do a little gentle dancing at a holiday party -- hardly more than a brief shimmy, really -- and boy do you pay the price.

The week is stretching out ahead of me -- Christmas Eve, Christmas, and then five days of nothin' to do but enjoy myself. Then New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, and then...

Aw, damn.