An indie movie Christmas

Every year is a White Christmas for me no matter what the weather, since my name is White. But this Christmas was also what Doug Barker deemed an "indie movie Christmas" when I told him how it all went down.

It all started with bad weather.



This is the Saturday before Christmas. Ray and I decided the weather was too bad to drive around town, so we walked. It had already been snowy, but it was getting ridiculous. Sunday it would continue to be ridiculous, piling snow all over the place. The National Weather Service, by the eve of Christmas eve, was saying that the weather would be back to normal (rainy) come Friday everywhere, but that the Harbor and Seattle area would probably be decent by Christmas eve.

But we were going to Longview, which is closer to Portland and the beneficiary of a cold stream of air flowing from East Oregon down the Columbia River Gorge. So it was going to be a little snowier out there. But we didn't care, we didn't want to be trapped on the Harbor for Christmas so we headed out. We listened to a CD of Christmas songs, one of which was the Carol Bells by Trans-Siberian Orchestra. One of the few things I appreciate about TSO is that they make Christmas songs absolutely terrifying. Seriously, I cannot imagine why they did not spike this version with a little "Night on Bald Mountain." I think that's the piece I'm thinking of.

It looked like the Christmas angels were having a pillowfight by the time we got to I-5, so we pulled over and asked Ray's dad what it was like on his end on a hill in Longview. "Oh, it's really bad. It's like a blizzard. It's snowing so bad it's dark out here. I'd just turn around if I was you. Just go home." Kris' husband George, however, said he didn't think it was too bad, even though it was kind of snowing where he was. And the snow had tailed off by then so we pressed on.

Well, going down Kris' road it was obvious that we weren't going to be able to go up the hillside and we'd have to stay at her house, which is undergoing some pretty extensive renovating of the walls and was covered in drywall dust and smelled like primer. She and George were basically living out of suitcases in the three or four habitable rooms they had. Somehow, in her fairly small kitchen, she had managed to make a bajillion cookies. I'm not even kidding. They weren't the regular drop kind, either, they were all really elaborate sorts. Because a little home renovation will not stop Kris' compulsive Martha-Stewarting. It would take a much larger force, perhaps nature's own fury, to do that.

Speaking of nature's fury:



look at all that snow. Their house is at sea level.

So we go up to the house for crab louie that night and the roads are just so bad, but Kris, driving with chains, is a champ going up and coming down. So this bodes well for Christmas.

Except that on the way over for Christmas, Kris and George have a, ah, little argument about her driving early on and they pull a Chinese firedrill. And when it comes to who is the better driver in the snow, I'm going to have to give Kris the points on that.

We get up the hill and pull in and Kris starts making the tofurkey alternadinner she and George will eat. So Ray and his dad and I watch some of the Battle of Myrtle Street, a documentary about Aberdeen/Hoquiam football rivalry. It, ah, overreaches in some bits, especially when it intersperses clips from WWII soldiers storming stuff with assistant football coaches narrating how Myrtle Street (the boundary between the two towns, a completely anonymous-looking spot) is where the line is drawn, how you'd better be ready to do battle when you get to Myrtle Street. Because Myrtle Street is where champions are born. George takes this opportunity to call his son, who is in the Navy, to tell him about how the Germans have caught some Somali pirates. His conversation intermingles with the BOMS tape. There is a lot of war talk on this day of Jesus' birth, the promise to all mankind that we will be saved.

Dinner was lovely, early, though, so there would be daylight for driving back. There was pork loin, potato-leek gallette, stuffing, canned cranberry sauce and for dessert, a Yule log and a million cookies and the buttermilk fudge I'd made.

Then there are the Christmas presents. I got the water bottle I asked Ray for, yay! And then I got a lovely recipe book from my aunt Patti. But I looked through it and there was a picture of my recently-lost cousin Aaron with my now-gone grandparents and for a moment, I was like, oh, I'm okay, wow, that's good. Then suddenly I wasn't okay — I was bawling like a baby. Ray's dad, bless his Teutonic heart, continued to make awkward conversation about wrenches with George while I decompensated into tears. Oh, Aaron. I hope you had Christmas with GMR and BDW.

After the presents we headed back down the hill and George only nearly got us in an embankment once and the rear only slid out of control the one time, so it was all good. Luckily, he had Kris giving him helpful pointers about putting the SUV in low gear and going slower. It may have made my top 5 harrowing rides of all time, but I've lived in temperate climates my whole life.

Kris and George were out to Portland that same night, off to Vegas for a week, hopefully their snow will melt while they're gone so they can come back to normalcy. And Ray and I didn't want to take the risk that we'd be stuck driving back in worse weather the next day, so we headed back to Aberdeen, stopping for a brief check on his mom. I managed to soak my foot in melted slush getting across the street. The drive back took a lot of concentration, so no podcasts or anything. Just me occasionally singing a Christmas song.

We got back to the house and ate a salad for dinner then piled into bed and watched a couple of episodes of "Rumpole of the Bailey." I didn't get out of bed until absolutely necessary the next day.

The Gingerbread House

This is the gingerbread house that Ray got fed up with moments into icing the roof. He swore he just "didn't have a vision" and that he's "not creative." But I would beg to differ. If I really had a gingerbread house vision I wouldn't have gone for the Safeway kit. In fact, this year's kit you had to mix the icing yourself, one of the reasons I buy the kit in the first place. Who wants to mess with making the cementy stuff anyway?

I like that the snowman is slouched over, like he's too lazy to even try to be a snowman. Some day I'll go bananas and pull a Frank Lloyd Wright of gingerbread houses. But I'd have to be willing to come up with a vision and purchase bad-tasting-but-pretty candies to fulfill that vision. And buying yucky candies goes against my nature.

Fudging off

So this weekend I tried to make Ed's 15-step/recommendation buttermilk fudge recipe and it was a bust. Sticky and thick it was a filling-ripper. Other people have suggested I just mix up a "no fail" recipe that calls for processed ingredients, but I wanted to go another round with candy making, which has been described as the most complicated part of pastrymaking. And I can't even make a pie crust!

So I went back to the drawing board, Alton Brown style, and did the scientific research and asked Ed for some troubleshooting. We agreed I probably had too large a pot and too shallow a pool of candy for an accurate temp reading. But what the Internet said, which I did not know, was that you should not stir the sugar mixture to keep the sugar granules from sticking up together and forming long crystals. The reason fudge is so fudgey — chewy but easily detached from a larger chunk with teeth — is because the sugar does not all stick to each other.

The other thing I did was get a bowl of cold water for the "soft ball" test. I only had a vague idea what this was supposed to feel and look like — so I thought I would get some experience. Has Alton Brown done an episode where he goes through the stages of sugar? Signs point to maybe.

I started dropping hot syrup into water well before the thermometer had hit the "soft ball" stage and about three more syrup drops later, at the thermometer's "soft ball" stage, I got what I thought I was looking for — a ball that holds together but is still quite smushy. Dang if I didn't feel like I should be in a white coat with safety goggles. I wasn't dropping sugar. I was dropping science.

My question is who determined that there were "stages" of sugar, what exactly each stage was good for candy-making wise and how they learned that dropping in water was the trick to delineate said stages. It must be relatively recent because sugar was not an ingredient to experiment with until the past century or so. At least, that's the story I'm making up.

In order for fudge to get a good set, you have to beat ("aggressively stir," in Ed's words) the fudge. Because after turning into the perfect crystals the fudge needs those crystals stirred up or something. It makes the fudge set up, I guess. So I aggressively stirred the fudge and after a while put in some pecans and then, as I was thinking, is this going the way I need it to go? it got thick and matte and perfect.

Triumph in the kitchen. Next up, homemade puff pastry. Sike.

I have a new drug

It is Facebook. Find me. Friend me. Sadly or luckily, I cannot decide which, my crummy old computer is nigh incapable of keeping up with the tech, so there are some features that I can't really access which I think will either serve to drive me to FB at work or take Ray's computer. Seriously.

So this weekend was the weekend of the big snow; still no photos because I don't have the cable for my camera, that would require going to my apartment and I am very happily ensconced in Chez Kahler. But it was so wild and wooly that the NYT did NOT MAKE IT TO TOWN (and I had a minor panic fit because this was ACROSTIC week and you know I love me some Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon) and Ray's church cancelled service! So we had a whole weekend without either of our liturgies. Even though we were totes prepared for them — I woke up and there was Ray, all sweaty, saying he had just shoveled out the driveway. Man, the dude is motivated.

So we had the day to make buttermilk fudge following Uncle Ed's recipe, which came with something on the order of 14 bulleted points. And we STILL managed to mess it up. Possibly it got too hot, according to Ed's genius diagnosis when I emailed him today. We will have to make another batch with a smaller pot so the thermometer does not get dropped in it because someone has to hold it, hovering, above the boiling sugar. It came out super sticky and with an oily sheen, like the butter separated a bit. It didn't stir so much as it clung together and resisted all attempts to get the pecans in.

So the fudge was not fudgey, it was still pliable-ish and incredibly sticky but we portioned it out with great difficulty (it got less tacky overnight somehow, but still not fudgey). I took it to the least-picky group of eaters I knew — the office. Sure enough, the tin had a mere three pieces left in it at quitting time. Thank you journalists.

The facebook thing is like a drug. I'm friending people I haven't seen in 15 years. I have to get Ray hooked up on it.

Ray just asked: "What do you want for dinner?"

Me: "Do you want me to be honest or tell you what you want to hear?"

Ray: (chuckling) "I want you to be honest."

Me: (small voice) "I want Frosted Mini-Wheats."

Ray: (silence punctuated by an eye roll)

The news from a one-stoplight county

Maybe there's a stoplight I don't know about in Madison County, Ark., and maybe I'm overestimating the stoplight count (I'm pretty sure there's one because I've heard Madison County inhabitants mock Newton County ceaselessly for thier lack thereof). But one thing is for sure, there is no paper more amusing and disturbing than the Madison County Record.

My aunt Patti was kind enough not only to send me a gift this Xmas, but one that had been packed safely with the Record. I must blog it.

The very first thing that caught my eye was what we in the business call a "house ad," which tells the good people of Madison County that they can fax any document "anywhere there is another fax machine" for under $4. Which is still a rip-off price, for one thing, and so quaint in that most people nowadays just send email documents to each other.

Other ads are equally as hilarious, like the ad for Huntsville on the Square, which is one of those multi-sponsored ads by local stores. "SHOP NANA'S Blings n' Things," is a hilarious name. Another store is called "Faux Ever Yours." One place doesn't seem to have a name; its ad is this text: "Huntsville's 'Hippest' Little Boutique ... 'Hip' styles at 'Hipper' prices," superimposed over a gray peace sign. Scare quotes are in a lot of ads, so they are in good company. A to Z Pawn also has an ad.

Then there are the small-town dispatches. Debra Harmon of Forum/Alabam notes that her Thanksgiving was planned around her daughter-in-law's knee surgery, so they went to her folks' place in Russellville.

"We thought it would be best if we traveled to them in our travel trailer," Harmon writes. "While there during our five-day stay, we found the travel trailer of our dreams at the [business name redacted]. We now have much more room and convenience. Our family, [sic] Travis, Tolina, Trent, Butch and I [sic] enjoyed doing some holiday shopping as well."

Janet Little Musteen of Kingston writes, "The first responders and fire department had no calls this week. That must mean that everyone had a safe Thanksgiving."

Well, hold the phone Janet Little Musteen. This was a TG of death, violence and apparently a standoff with a sniper squad at the trailer park. You can read this story here. But the short version is she asked him to "heat up" TG dinner because she had been running around all day (he apparently didn't have anything else to do) and when she sat down to eat it, it was cold. So they had a bad fight, mixed with alcohol, and then he shot her in the face with a shotgun loaded with birdshot. (An aside: Who heats up TG dinner on TG? Did they have a pre-TG TG and that is why their daughter was at her grandmother's? Why weren't they with her there? Or was this like a Hungryman turkey dinner? And if so, how sad is that? It really makes one's mind work.)

Of course, no one heard the shot, so he called the cops to tell them, then threatened to shoot anyone who tried to take him in. This is where things get nuts. To directly quote:

"Hissom called the Madison County Sheriff's Office at 6:41 p.m. on Thanksgiving evening, telling dispatcher Lola Hampel that he had shot his wife in the face (with birdshot from the shotgun) and that he was armed and he would "take out the first officer that comes in the door" of their mobile home on 845 Edgewood Place, Lot 1. The residence is located just south of Countryside Retirement Center and west of Brashears Funeral Home.

"Huntsville Police Lt. Mike Livermore made contact with Hissom from the communications center at the Madison County Sheriff's Office.

"Meanwhile members of the Huntsville Police Department, Madison County Sheriff's Department, Washington County Sheriff's Department K-9 unit, Arkansas Highway Patrol, Arkansas State Police and Arkansas Game & Fish arrived at the scene. A sniper team was also established.

Also, members of Madison County EMS and Air Evac Lifeteam of Springfield, Mo., were awaiting retrieval of the victim at the parking lot of Economy Drug."

If it were my story, I would have made all this stuff about the snipers and whatnot go in the lede. But I can tell by all his bylines, the fact that he is the editor and the fact that he probably is doing all the pagination that Kyle Mooty is one busy guy. The weekly paper grind is hard to explain to the daily journalist, who also rightly feels put-upon, but trust me, weeklies are way harder for less money.

Obviously, this is a disturbing story. Here's another disturbing story. And I am calling shenanigans on the assertion made in the lede by the motel owners. Kyle Mooty reported, I decided.

I've noticed that there is kind of a theme going on with stories that lead off the MCR. A man kills his wife when she complains about a dinner he hasn't exactly been slaving over, a local guy with the middle name of "Caption" is extradited from California after being charged with rape (see the picture, it's priceless) and a woman's body is sent to the state crime lab because there are questions about her death. Also, her live-in bf is taken in on outstanding warrants. Lots of violence toward women of late, no?

It's too bad I don't have the impetus to input the letters to the editor. They are wackadoodle. If you are ever in Madison County, say, writing about its covered bridges for National Geographic or putting your high-end Italian auto through its paces on the pig trail, I highly recommend you pick up a copy. For me, it was like Christmas came even before I opened my present.

Weather outside is ... you can guess

Something I wanted to do today was upload a picture of the gingerbread house Ray and I made. Mostly me, because while Ray helped raise the walls and mix the icing (it was a kit, no baking involved), he did one side of the roof with icing and just gave up. He said he got frustrated with his lack of creativity and told me that he could not have had the "vision" for the outcome. Which is funny, because I just kind of go nuts and don't really have a vision.

But I don't have a cord for my camera. It is at my apartment, I can see it on the bookshelf. I could walk the three blocks, but you know what? The weather is snowy and windy and crazy. It is really kind of inhospitable for walking. And I especially know this because Ray and I went walking right before the snow really picked up.

We hit the town, walking down to the post office, to the library, to Waugh's, where Ray could get a new shirt, and to Kitchen Links, where we looked for a candy thermometer. But they had had a run on the things and the best we could do was a little clip for the top of the pot that would hold the cord of a digital plug-in above the metal rim of a pot.

Yes, we want to attempt Uncle Ed's melt-in-yer-mouth buttermilk fudge. If only we had the recipe.

Ain't no party like a banjo party

It is snowing outside, people. And it is kind of sticking. To roofs, trees, grass and cars if not sidewalks and streets. It may stick around in crusty, frozen form as cold Arctic air from Canada drops in to say howdy, but this is kind of a pleasant surprise. We don't get much in the way of snow in these parts.

Perhaps clamming in the snow is called for tonight?

If we do go clamming, we can use those clams to make clam fritters because Ray got a mixer yesterday. Not that he didn't have a hand mixer, but he didn't have a grinder, and he realized his mixer was a little on the inadequate-for-a-foodie side so we had to go to a mall for one of those Kitchen Aid jobbies. Not just any mall, though, one in Olympia. We had another mission — get out of the Harbor.

We first hit downtown Oly for Xmas shopping. Got my brother his gifties, finally. I can't say what they were because he might read this. Ray got toys for his cousin's kids at this amazing toys store, possibly the best one I have ever been in. I sat at the "game table" doing little logic puzzles from this game which was way more fun than you would have expected from a game that takes the shape of a chocolate box.

After bumming around downtown Oly, especially checking out the galleries (we saw one painting, of a young, attractive Native American woman in a deerskin-type non-covering dress-blanket of some sort reclining against a young, attractive Native American man with no shirt on. Tribe was uncertain, and there was no background. But the title of the painting, "The Lovers," totally cracked me up. I hope that as soon as the mascot wars are over and there are no Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians and the Atlanta fans stop the tomahawk chop, that all that attention and effort will be focused on the new-agey sexualization and fetishization of Native Americans. If you can explain to me why these or these or this aren't something more than plain tacky I will listen. Maybe.) Oh, hai there bluecorn comics, wow, that was some good information, thank you!)

The same gallery also had very expensive watercolors of cats and some pictures of wilderness that looked like they were done by sixth graders with colored pencils. But a grown-up had done them. A grown-up who clearly didn't even know the rules of perspective, composition and drawing from life before breaking them. And here I am thinking my robot art looks bad because I can't get the weight of the lines right and I want to draw curved where robots are rectangular. Why must *I* feel shame in this world? How come some people come with so much shame and self-criticism while others clearly have none?

This was a "classy" gallery, too.

So we ate at Lemon Grass in Olympia and it was so, so much better than anything we ever could have gotten in Aberdeen. The green curry was divine. Ray got the apple curry.

Thus fortified, we hit the mall. I nearly decompensated just doing the parking lot. We drove for a good ten minutes before finding a spot and of course there were jerks in the parking lot. I was glad to put it all behind us.

We were in and out of the mall relatively quickly. By some stroke of fortune, we were parked near the entrance where the Santaland was, and we saw the Victorian carolers and the loooooong line of kids waiting to see Santa. One little girl with red ribbons in her hair and a black velvet dress and white tights was doing an excited dance wherein she kind of punched the babydoll she was carrying. It sounds scary, but it was totes cute. As we walked away from the Santaland, I heard a kid go, "no, No, NO!" Ah, Christmas at the mall.

We were pretty much in and out with the light chrome-colored mixer (we both had different opinions about ideal colors — I liked the "green apple" and the Martha Stewart blue (not on website, it's a Macy's special. It's kind of Tiffany blue.) because I'm a funtime girl and Ray liked the white and black ones because he's mister "let's not get crazy, now." The chrome was a third for both of us. Compromise, that's what it's all about people.) We got the grinder so we can grind up clams for fritters.

So we left Olympia and headed back to the Harbor and got ready for the Festival of Lights in Montesano. An earlier post will show that the Banjo band has been pressuring me to become one of them, and to come out to the FOL and go to a post-FOL party at Bob Carter's house and museum.

The FOL was pretty crazy. I thought it was a little ole parade, but there were something like 70+ floats and parking was insane. The Retired Senior Volunteer Police were out in force, making sure the rowdies didn't go out of control. We drove over and it was snow-showering, emphasis on the showering, and we feared the worst — two plus hours of standing out in the cold rain — but Montesano was really lucky to have missed that precipitation. There were a few minutes of snow, but that was it, thank heavens.

So we stood in the cold, our fingers and toes gradually losing feeling, bouncing up and down to generate heat, while some crazy floats passed us by. There were a lot of ATVs with Christmas lights. There was a "Mambo Schoolbus," a bus pimped out with so many lights all over, even the rims, yo. I could totally imagine my school bus drivers of yore driving it — Jackie, Zebra Lady ... Joe could have totally picked up more women driving that thing (he had a penchant for calling out, "you need a ride?" to fine ladies walking down the street. This worked ONCE and I don't think he got a phone number out of it).

Pictures are worth 1,000 words, but dang it I left the camera at home. Stormy Glick brought his reindeer out of his exotic animal farm and Santa led it down the street. There was a motorcycle pulling a functioning carousel (small scale, obvs, with lit up deer as the horses and stuffed animals riding them) that was all lit up and pretty. There was a guy on a ... I couldn't find a picture of this, but I kind of want one ... it's a toy horse made for even a big old dude to ride and your feet are off the ground. There are wheels on the bottom. You pull on the head or something and it kind of propels it forward. You can steer with the head. There do not appear to be brakes on it. Whatever this adult hobbyhorse is called, it is a fascinating creation that made the kids freak out.

There was also a Santa on a toilet in the plumbing company's float. A live man, dressed as Santa, on the pot. Pants up, but still, on a toilet. When the kids saw that they went bananas.

The Banjo band came by, playing Christmas songs. I can't imagine how their fingers didn't fall off from the cold, and neither did they, really. Apparently the tuba player had it worst, what with all that brass and silver conducting the cold straight to his hands and mouth. A flag-pole situation might have been near developing.

Finally, around two hours after we got there, there were fireworks to symbolize the end of the parade. That was enough, we were back to the car and to Bob and Cathy's place, where we went straight for the hot cider.

Ray and I and some of the folks from the banjo band, including a fellow named John who plays first chair violin with the Seattle Symphony (not too shabby!) got a tour of the museum, and Bob got the player piano going with a rag. It was from a roll recorded by George Gershwin, it was basically Gershwin playing. John got teary-eyed at that, he was so overcome.

The food was great. There was delicious clam chowder, chili, some kind of round sourdough bread that had been split into lots of sections that had been loaded with butter and cheese and then baked until it all ran together and a whole table full of desserts. Seriously, there were about ten dessert servings per person. These people love their desserts.

Some chatting was done, petting of the Carters' many many dogs was done, and then it was banjo playing time. Andy and Linda, who is the most bestest banjo player I've ever heard live, put me right in between them and we all rocked out with "I'm Looking Over A Four-Leafed Clover," "Ma," "Down Yonder," "Chinatown," "Just Because" and maybe a Christmas song. A fellow with a six-string banjo tuned like a guitar sang a funny song about how it's a sin to tell a lie. He wants the band to learn it, but he was playing it in the key of A, which made everyone shake their heads. They will do it in C, thank you very much.

I'll catch up now that I can start going to the banjo band sessions late. Apparently they're having another party Tuesday night before, during and after playing, and I'll be getting some of the banjo band's program books.

Ain't no party like a banjo party 'cause a banjo party don't stop. Seriously. We didn't make it home till after 11 p.m., which is kind of late for our old selves. We saw it was snowing when we got into town, but we didn't expect it to continue until, well, it's still going strong. Almost puts me in a mind not to go out and get my NYT. Oh, what am I saying! I know I have to have that crossword.

Elk Stroganoff

There were still plenty of NYTs at the grocery store. Yay.

Today I don't know what we would have done regularly, but Ray got $20 to see High School Musical at the High School from his accompaniast, also the grandmother of the male lead not-so-coincidentally. So obviously, we had to see the matinee. This was particularly special because it had a cast of non-Aberdeen school guys, because the need to have guys overwhelmed the population of drama-lovers at the school.

The kids were terrific, but there are a couple of structural problems with "High School Musical." First, the character of Sharpay is a snooty drama club president who never wears black and wants to play the lead against her brother's lead. In a romantic musical which presumably will require some level of macking. Ew. Also, who ever heard of a snooty drama clubber? The leads also met during a kids' karaoke night, which female lead Gabriela Montez describes as "romantic." She's a brain, allegedly.

Also, Disney obviously did not spend a lot on the lyricists. "I'm soaring, I'm flying," "reach for the stars," there are a few cliches that were not covered but I'm sure that was just for lack of trying. Well, I'm probably just crabby and old. Yeah, I'm definitely a no-fun old crab. Young people, you will be like me some day, a wet blanket.

The kids, however, were really good singers and dancers who can put on a show. Ellen's grandson was a surprisingly good dancer for such a lanky kid. We saw him in the "receiving line" after the show giving his great-grandmother an autograph. Awww.

We saw little Kallie Distler at the show. She, very surprisingly, remembered who I was and said hello. So cute and sweet.

So okay, the big thing tonight was the elk stroganoff for dinner, with a side of canned peas (yum) and acorn squash mashed with brown sugar and cinnamon and butter. There are a lot more recipes for elk stroganoff on the Internet than you could imagine. Ray was excited to have a recipe, but I said we had something better — a method.

What we did was take the elk steaks, sliver them and toss them with flour, salt and pepper, fry an onion and sliced mushrooms, add the elk, let it brown up, then add a can of beef broth and about 1/2 a can of tomato paste, a bunch of nutmeg and a big pinch of thyme. I let the broth bubble out a lot, added a bunch of sour cream and some good glugs of sherry and then, when it was all incorporated and hot, served it over egg noodles. It was really good. Maybe next time I would change the broth situation so there isn't so much sodium, but I like elk. I'm going to have to learn to hunt, I guess. It seems like it's more of a lifestyle than clamming, and the equipment is a lot more involved, too. But there you go. Besides, the world needs more liberal arts graduates who hunt.

The Dump

I'm really pushing it -- it's nearly noon and I have not yet acquired my Sunday NYT. There are 2 places in town to get it and I'm basically looking at missing out not only on a crossword but the acrostic. I am living dangerously.

So the dump was awesome. Along with the regular household hazardous waste, Ray loaded a 55-gallon drum that still had a little diesel sloshing around the bottom. He inherited a lot of old boat thingies when he bought his grandparents' house, and since neither of us are boat people, nor do either of us drive diesel, he decided to load one of the two drums up for disposal. He was a little nervous that the waste people would not want it.

But they did. The guys at the dump were superexcited, even moreso when they learned there was a quart of 20-year-old diesel in the bottom (even though gas isn't $4/gal anymore)

Last night we also hit the Harbor Art Guild gallery (yes, the HAG) for its grand opening. Really nice. We ate dinner at Stiffy's and I had one Manhattan that basically got me a little drunk. There was a precious little Yorkie there that was not at all yippie, and a group of regulars having conversation bawdy enough to make Ray uncomfortable. (Sample conversation: Man on cell with wife: "Where are you? ... Having fun dancing? What? ... Well, I don't care when you come home but you'd better be home when you (get it?)!")

We also saw Driftwood's "Nunsensations: The Nuns hit Vegas" or something. Buzzkill accomplished. It turned out that the show was also maybe a little too raunchy for Ray's taste, especially because his favorite grocery bagger was in the audience (she's youngish and a little bit, uh, delayed). I think it's patronizing to withhold raunchy jokes from any portion of the populace except kids whom you'd have to explain it to. Let them learn about it from their peers, on the streets, in completely unhelpful, scary and fact-free ways, just like I did. But Nunsense is not really that raunchy (there was a near-reference to something that starts with the word "blow" and a loudly proclaimed "BULLS--T!" from a puppet). What was actually offensive was a joke about "Mexifornia" and one about an outsourced (to Pakistan) catholic help line: "I said I was suicidal and he asked if I knew how to drive a truck." Bah dum-DUMB. The show has been selling out -- to the point that people are sitting in the aisles! I guess it is for the cast, who danced and sang their little hearts out and had better material in last year's "Mashuggah-nuns." Seriously, that is what it is called. And yes, it was completely meshuga.

In other news, there is elk steak defrosting on the counter for dinner. Is it tender enough for stroganoff? I really need to google up on cooking game meat. Now that the depression is a-coming, I may be forced to hunt to survive. And between myself and Ray, I believe that the Nunsense/Stiffy's (yes, that's the name of the bar, what to expect, huh?) incident, I think Ray is altogether too innocent to kill an animal like a deer or elk. But me? I'd blow its brains out and rub blood on my face while blathering crude words of Anglo-Saxon origin, apparently. I'm just that feral.

Banjo mafia

They make you offers you can't resist. Like free lessons and party invitations. All I gotta do is make sure I remember them in kind, right?

So it looks like Ray and I will be jamming with the banjo band next Saturday instead of clamming (we can do that some other day that weekend anyway, and Ray pointed out that we have plenty of clams in the freezer, even though I pointed out that clamming is not really about keeping inventory).

So I have finished "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz and it was spectacular. Highly recommended. It mentioned Arawn on page 2, and I was a nut for the Prydain Chronicles in fourth grade, so I was sucked in immediately. It is about a Dominican ubernerd and his family, and to say more would be to say too much. Read it.

I also read "The Abstinence Teacher" by Tom Perotta, and it was pretty good. I didn't get the main story of opposites attracting, but the rest of it rang pretty true. Perotta also shares my skepticism of the way the word "choices" is deployed in education, if you read through the lines. There is a "mean girl" aspect to "you made your choice," a very narrow black-and-white deal, that while necessary with some kids for boundary-setting purposes, does not exactly make anyone, kids or adults, feel like nuance or even fair dealing is coming into play. All I know is when people start saying something about a choice you made, it is a lecture, not a conversation. It is a fact-finding mission, not a discussion to achieve understanding. And you're in the role of toddler, which is exactly how adults, or children who may often have to act as the adults in their family, want to be talked to, let me tell you.

Also, in prison, "choice" is a big, big word. I've been in prison a lot (for work, silly!), and I am consistently impressed with how much it has in common with school. Budding sociologists might want to pursue this line of inquiry, comparing choice in educational pedagogy with correctional rehabilitation methods. It might be a rich, rich vein to mine. Especially if you compare high school graduation rates (WA is 67 percent in 2001 is the first googleable abstract I can find, but it is in comparison to a reported 82 percent) and recidivism rates (60 percent of dudes, 50 percent of dudettes according to here but anecdotal evidence suggests these 5-year rates are in actuality higher).

Anyway, I choose my choice. When I'm not wandering blindly in the thicket of life, being distracted by stuff.

There were slash fires on the top of the hills that were clearcut by the highway tonight. That the wood could burn makes me a little relieved that maybe the hill is dry enough that we have a few more months before the soils loosen enough for the inevitable landslide. We were on our way to a party that had Swedish meatballs. And Pelligrino sodas in little bitty bottles. I love Arranciata. It was a hoot, and I may have come up with a depression-proof business idea that is, in a word, "Bartertown," with the help of an ex-journalist. His wife told Ray, "journalists are crazy." Yes, like foxes. Luckily we are short on follow-through. We'd rather write 15 inches then move on to something new. That's just who we are.

In other news: I get to go to the dump tomorrow. I may not even try to get out of it.