Another One Bites the Dust.....

Well, Johnny Nitro sailed off to the Big Gig last Saturday night.  Never new the guy.  He was a cousin of a friend of mine, guitar player, from San Francisco living up here.  Sounds like he, as many musicians, led a few years of ‘dog life’.  That’s when you age 7x faster than you should.  I figure B.B. King has to be what? 150 – 185, somewhere around there with this factored in?  He had to sit down for Obama’s gig, but who can blame him?

I’ve been reading the obituaries more often in the Sunday paper.  I don’t know, it just seems interesting now.  Kind of like when you’re in line, nearing the row of windows you sort of start looking left and right to see how short the other line is.  You can count the people to the window easier in the other lines than in your own line.  Yeah….I check the years of birth and sort of am relieved to see more in the 1920’s and even 1930’s than late 1940’s.  But still I check.  Kind of morbid I guess. 

Every now and then someone born in the 1960’s kicks it (yeah, and the guys I knew who went to Nam) and I think “man, they came and went and here I still am…”

I swore to my family the other evening that I didn’t want them to leave me in a vegetative state – to be dependent on a machine and fluids from a bottle.  They came over, unplugged my computer and threw out my wine.

It’s always something

read more about Johnny:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/02/20/BAN81HR1FE.DTL

Your Fortune Awaits.......

February 3 was the date heralding the New Chinese Year.  2011 is the year of the Rabbit, according to the neighborhood bulletin board in the Chinese/Cantonese restaurant down the street.  Canton is supposedly in Southern China. 

I guess southern Chinese food is like chop suey with grits and ribs maybe, or perhaps Barbeque sauce on the side.

It all tastes much the same to me.  But then I’m not an affection-ado of Chinese cuisine.  I do like Sum Dum, that type of meal where a horde of wait staff wheels around carts laden with various cooked (mostly are cooked) things.  Some of the really fresh entrees have not died yet and other entrees seem to have been dead quite some time.  Almost all of them, dead or alive, are slippery and elude the novice chopstick.  I usually stab it with one stick and eat it like a corndog.  This makes some of the staff frown and gives them something more to talk about in the kitchen.  Did I say talk?  I’m sorry, yell.  I’ve never been in a Chinese kitchen but all seem to have a certain constant din.

My favorite thing about a Chinese restaurant meal is the fortune cookie.  A simple mixture of egg white, vanilla extract, unbleached flour and sugar, the fortune cookie can be just a cookie or a new life.  They’re usually positive and chime in along the lines of astrology in their significance.  All depends on the reader.  They’re fun when they make you think you have friends and will get rich.  I’ve grown to depend on them from time to time, being an architect. 

So there’s this guy in Missouri who’s down on his luck and he has purchased 365 fortune cookies and is living each day by what they say.  Here, check it out for yourself…

http://www.mydailyfortune.net/

I don’t know.  I think I’ll just keep enjoying them whenever I have Chinese.  Every now and then you open one that makes you think twice, however.

It's always something.....

Weather Rodent

My friend, Mr. Cranky, posted this li'l fellow on Facebook today and I can't leave my post without passing this along.

Seems like Punksutawney, Pa. isn't the only town here in the U S of A that has this ridiculous tradition.  They have one of these in Wallingford, a neighborhood of Seattle.  "Wallingford Phil" lives in the crawl space under the Safeway on 45th St.  Having survived being eaten by the homeless, ol' Phil has been faithful, coming out on Feb. 2nd every year.

Feb. 2nd traditionally is the midpoint between the Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox.  In Seattle it's darn hard to tell where the middle is, especially between two equally cold and grey periods of time.  Thankfully, Phil knows, and his emergence helps reset the clock. 

Folks in Seattle can't remember a time when ol' Phil has not seen his shadow on February 2nd.  

"...yeah, it's usually cold and freeze-ass windy around these parts come the first week of February..."  chimes in Fred Mortz of Wallingford.  ".....dang if it ain't sunny though.."

And danged if it doesn't always come true in Seattle.  6 more months of winter.  The skies break sunny for a week or so, right after the annual soaker on the 4th of July.  Then it's time to shake it of and hobble back to the crawl space.

It's always something.......

Getting Ready for Summer in Seattle

I was rummaging around in my basement the other day looking for our lawn chairs.  What started my search was seeing the sun come out.  It was only for five minutes or so.  This is quite an event in Seattle.  Folks take the day off early, the floating bridge traffic snarls due to blindness for drivers and one can see some of the Northwest mole people out on the wet grass, shirts off reading their articles on green living recycling in the balmy 45 degree filtered sunlight.

Sure, I know it won’t be nice until summer.  But I was excited – and just couldn’t wait until July 15^th, the first day of the week-long Seattle summer.  With only a week of summer I figured I would get the drop on it by repainting my lawn chairs now with Rust-oleum.  They would certainly be dry by June.  Plenty of time to get them ready to run out to the yard and use them for the summer week.

I found the lawn chairs finally.  They had accumulated a bit of rust.  Looked high and low for my can of Rust-oleum but it wasn’t in the basement.

I went out to the garage and found it on the shelf.  The irony of the condition of the can was not lost on me.  I’m heading out to Costco to get some green spray paint.  Maybe I’ll see if the summer furniture is on sale yet.

It’s always something…

Pause for Reflection

Sometimes you see something that is just so stupid it grabs you.  I saw this in a New Yorker Calendar last month. 

It’s always something

A centuries-old argument

There have been squabbles in Catholic-Jewish relations for centuries.  And as recently as two years ago disappointments arose again, this time from text in the Vatican’s Good Friday prayer.  One can research this, but the holiday season of good cheer and all that has inspired me to write of the wonderful story that happened about 400 years ago.

Back then the Jewish folks had a modest residency at the Vatican.  This had been on and off again over the centuries.  One day the Pope had words with the Jewish delegation and decided to once and for all evict them from the Vatican.  This caused uproar with the Jewish Community such that the Pope agreed to a deal. He would have a religious debate with a member of the Jewish Community; if the Jew won, the Jews could stay; if the Pope won, the Jews would leave.

The Jews realized that they had no choice.  Attempting to catch the Pope off guard they picked a commoner among them named Moishe to be their representative.  Moishe asked for one additional rule for the debate.  To make it more interesting, neither party would be allowed to speak during the debate.  The Pope was skeptical but willing to go along and he agreed.

The day of the great debate came.  Moishe and the Pope sat opposite each other.  For a full minute they were motionless; then the Pope raised his hand and showed three fingers.

Moishe looked back at him and raised one finger.  The pope then waved his fingers in a circle around his head.

Moishe then pointed to the ground where he sat.  The Pope looked at him and quickly pulled a wafer and a glass of wine from his ornate satchel.  Moishe pulled out an apple from his paper sack.

The Pope was dumbfounded and stood up, raising his hands saying, “This man is too good.  The Jews can stay.”

An hour later, the Cardinals gathered around the Pope asking him what had happened.  The Pope said; “First I held up three fingers to represent the Trinity.  He responded by holding up one finger to remind me that there was still one God common to both our religions.  Then I waved my finger around me to show him that God was all around us.  He responded by pointing to the ground, showing that God was right here with us.  I pulled out the wine and the wafer to show him that God absolves us from our sins through His Son.  He pulled an apple from his sack to remind me of Original Sin.  He had an answer for everything!”

Meanwhile, the Jewish Community had crowded around Moishe.  “What happened?”  They asked.  “Well,” Said Moishe, first he indicated to me that the Jews had three days to get out of here.  I indicated back to him that not ONE of us was leaving.  Then he indicated that the whole Vatican as well as the city would be cleared of the Jews.  I let HIM know that WE were staying right here.”

“And then….?”  Asked a woman. 

“I don’t know,” Moishe said.  “He took out his lunch and I took out mine….”

Inner Peace Discovered

I saw this awhile back on Dr. Phil.  I don’t usually watch him but I had just thrown a paperweight across the room in a fit of uncontrolled rage watching a brief segment of Hannity on Fox News (which I had stopped on while surfing the cable).  It shattered an expensive vase and damaged a lamp.  I was about to throw the remote through the TV itself.  Picking it up, my thumb hit the buttons and Dr. Phil popped up.  I saw this as a divine intervention.

I feel compelled to pass this along via my blog because I found it to be the best advice I’ve had in some time. 

Dr. Phil proclaimed “…the way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the things you have started – but have never finished…”

So, I looked around my house to see all the things I started and hadn't
finished.  I made a resolution right then and there.

Before leaving the house this morning, I finished off a bottle of White Zinfandel, a bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream, a package of Oreos, the remainder of my old Valium prescription, the rest of the cheesecake, some Doritos, a box of chocolates, and a half bottle of scotch.

You have no idea how freaking good I feel right now.

Pass this on to those whom you think might be in need of inner peace.