5.11.2006
Memory Lane
Take a few short trips down memory lane. Write the truth, embellished memories, or just make everything up! Use the starting phrases to get you started down the path.
I remember learning... how to cook pancakes back when I was ten or eleven or twelve or some relatively miniscule age compared to my current ancient number. My mom always made pancakes for us out of whole wheat flour and a bunch of other things that were heavy-duty and sat in your stomach like lead weights or a McDonald's Sausage Biscuit. You weren't going to be hungry for hours after eating a couple of them. There was an elaborate procedure that consisted of mixing about five kinds of dry ingredients, including baking powder (what's that for? I still have no idea), eggs, milk, vanilla extract, and a bunch of other things that I can't even pretend to remember. When heating the griddle, you'd wet your hand and then flick drops of water onto its stinky cast-iron surface. If they danced, you'd have to rush with the big bowl of batter and then drop three or four even dollops onto the griddle quickly so they wouldn't cook at different rates. I never got that part down. When bubbles popped on top of the pancakes, it was time to flip them. Of course, as thick as they were, the other side always ended up a little dark and slightly scorched, at least when I made them. Nowadays, I just use Bisquick with better personal results. Modern convenience tastes much better...
I remember biting... into an orange and nearly puking at the rotten taste. Oh, yes, it looked fine on the outside, but inside, yeeech! I wanted to vomit, but the best I could do was spit out the offending bit of flesh and try to flush out the taste with the bland wintergreen candy heart taste of Peptol Bismol.
I remember the balloons... choking the sky in a vast, transparent globular array of color. They were so beautiful that I wanted to jump up and float with them into heaven. I watched them drifting on the breeze up and up, taking their precious cargo with them: letters we'd all written as a class project. Three weeks later, my postcard was returned from a spot a couple of hundred miles away. I wanted to attach myself to a balloon and see where I ended up after the postcard came back. Maybe I'd end up in Hawaii.
I remember falling... in love with the Fuzz the first time I saw his little kitten-face. He was tiny and long-haired, a little brown tabby fluffball who I wanted to cuddle. He ran behind my stepdad's desk and hid for awhile the day the breeder brought him to our place. His beautiful amber eyes peered out and seemed to say, "Don't cuddle me just yet. Throw me a piece of paper first!"
I remember learning... how to cook pancakes back when I was ten or eleven or twelve or some relatively miniscule age compared to my current ancient number. My mom always made pancakes for us out of whole wheat flour and a bunch of other things that were heavy-duty and sat in your stomach like lead weights or a McDonald's Sausage Biscuit. You weren't going to be hungry for hours after eating a couple of them. There was an elaborate procedure that consisted of mixing about five kinds of dry ingredients, including baking powder (what's that for? I still have no idea), eggs, milk, vanilla extract, and a bunch of other things that I can't even pretend to remember. When heating the griddle, you'd wet your hand and then flick drops of water onto its stinky cast-iron surface. If they danced, you'd have to rush with the big bowl of batter and then drop three or four even dollops onto the griddle quickly so they wouldn't cook at different rates. I never got that part down. When bubbles popped on top of the pancakes, it was time to flip them. Of course, as thick as they were, the other side always ended up a little dark and slightly scorched, at least when I made them. Nowadays, I just use Bisquick with better personal results. Modern convenience tastes much better...
I remember biting... into an orange and nearly puking at the rotten taste. Oh, yes, it looked fine on the outside, but inside, yeeech! I wanted to vomit, but the best I could do was spit out the offending bit of flesh and try to flush out the taste with the bland wintergreen candy heart taste of Peptol Bismol.
I remember the balloons... choking the sky in a vast, transparent globular array of color. They were so beautiful that I wanted to jump up and float with them into heaven. I watched them drifting on the breeze up and up, taking their precious cargo with them: letters we'd all written as a class project. Three weeks later, my postcard was returned from a spot a couple of hundred miles away. I wanted to attach myself to a balloon and see where I ended up after the postcard came back. Maybe I'd end up in Hawaii.
I remember falling... in love with the Fuzz the first time I saw his little kitten-face. He was tiny and long-haired, a little brown tabby fluffball who I wanted to cuddle. He ran behind my stepdad's desk and hid for awhile the day the breeder brought him to our place. His beautiful amber eyes peered out and seemed to say, "Don't cuddle me just yet. Throw me a piece of paper first!"
5.10.2006
What I did on my summer vacation...
The classic assignment! Start with the given letter and fill in each line with something you have done on summer vacations... [Assignment includes each letter of the alphabet]
Ate tons of avacados. Belted out choruses of Veterans of the Psychic Wars. Choked on pollen and dust. Dove into refreshing pools. Eschewed thinking about work or school. Fanned myself with programs at outdoor concerts. Got to musing about Lord of the Rings. Hit punching mitts during hardcore boxing workouts. Itched the Fuzz's soft and luscious fur. Jumped rope. Kinged my husband rocker of my world. Luxuriated in a fizzy bath. Made iced tea. Nodded off in the sun. Often dreamed of Santa Cruz waves. Piddled the time away doing nothing constructive and loved every minute of it. Quested for the perfect Nepalese thangka. Rented a boat on Lake Chabot. Sat on the balcony and read about computers. Taught myself how to do handstands in the pool. Under a shaded canopy, read the paper and shared waffles with my husband. Valiantly struggled not to give in to my urges to loaf on the Santa Cruz beaches, but failed. Watered my peace lilly. X marked Sacramento on the map. Yanked pumpkins off the vine a month before Halloween. Zonked out in the warmth.
Ate tons of avacados. Belted out choruses of Veterans of the Psychic Wars. Choked on pollen and dust. Dove into refreshing pools. Eschewed thinking about work or school. Fanned myself with programs at outdoor concerts. Got to musing about Lord of the Rings. Hit punching mitts during hardcore boxing workouts. Itched the Fuzz's soft and luscious fur. Jumped rope. Kinged my husband rocker of my world. Luxuriated in a fizzy bath. Made iced tea. Nodded off in the sun. Often dreamed of Santa Cruz waves. Piddled the time away doing nothing constructive and loved every minute of it. Quested for the perfect Nepalese thangka. Rented a boat on Lake Chabot. Sat on the balcony and read about computers. Taught myself how to do handstands in the pool. Under a shaded canopy, read the paper and shared waffles with my husband. Valiantly struggled not to give in to my urges to loaf on the Santa Cruz beaches, but failed. Watered my peace lilly. X marked Sacramento on the map. Yanked pumpkins off the vine a month before Halloween. Zonked out in the warmth.
5.09.2006
Congrats...
Write a letter congratulating yourself on something you did especially well today. Perhaps it is staying on a diet OR avoiding someone who usually gives you grief OR taking procrastination to a new high OR doing this exercise!!!
Dear Elizabeth,
I commend you for the fine job you did today not falling asleep in today's meandering Windows Server 2003 class! Well done! Well done! I know it was a major struggle when your teacher ambled on and on about how great a website Sysinternals is, and how you should immediately download PageDefrag and run it on your virtual server after you'd already finished the labs and powered the machine down, despite the fact that you were hoping he'd FINALLY hit how to set up Disk Quotas, for which there was no lab. But you survived! And you triumphed!
I know how that funky French accent can get on your nerves or can lull you into the deepest depths of blessed slumber. I know how sometimes as you stare at the Powerpoint slides that he attempts to lecture from while telling you how to obtain illegal copies of Star Wars, your mind drifts off into nothingness. But you fought the doldrums and you won! Bravo! It is a feat worthy of the mightiest of warriors!
Congratulations again, my brave soul! You have conquered the demon of boredom and ridden away victorious in the final chapter of your server book! A fine job indeed!
Thank you for this wonderous feat!
Elizabeth
Dear Elizabeth,
I commend you for the fine job you did today not falling asleep in today's meandering Windows Server 2003 class! Well done! Well done! I know it was a major struggle when your teacher ambled on and on about how great a website Sysinternals is, and how you should immediately download PageDefrag and run it on your virtual server after you'd already finished the labs and powered the machine down, despite the fact that you were hoping he'd FINALLY hit how to set up Disk Quotas, for which there was no lab. But you survived! And you triumphed!
I know how that funky French accent can get on your nerves or can lull you into the deepest depths of blessed slumber. I know how sometimes as you stare at the Powerpoint slides that he attempts to lecture from while telling you how to obtain illegal copies of Star Wars, your mind drifts off into nothingness. But you fought the doldrums and you won! Bravo! It is a feat worthy of the mightiest of warriors!
Congratulations again, my brave soul! You have conquered the demon of boredom and ridden away victorious in the final chapter of your server book! A fine job indeed!
Thank you for this wonderous feat!
Elizabeth
5.08.2006
Those were the days...
THOSE WERE THE DAYS... Finish the story. Start with...
Back in 1938, before I ever heard of sliced bread, One Nation under God, and saw my first television, I was a captain. I like to say this because what I was a captain of inevitably disappoints many people. I mean, does hearing, "I'm a team captain for the Modesto String Beans Corps," disappoint you at all? Funny how that works, isn't it?
My favorite days as team captain were those odd July 16th casserole bake-offs when the town's leading moms would get together in Town Square and compete for the hearts and stomachs of the judges. I have to say, I was a pretty damn good captain. Each year, on July 15th, our team de-stringed pounds and pounds of the beautiful beans String Bean Jane, as we used to call her, grew in her acre of land out back. We de-stringed and we parboiled. And then we opened cans upon cans upon cans of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup. It was like a factory, like an assembly line. Lines and lines of us all operating with robotic precision. I was amazed to see us churn out 60 casseroles in a single day each year. But, then again, I was an organizer in those days. I could set up a system like no one's business. And those casseroles tasted like heaven! We'd won the bake-off fair and square for nearly a straight decade. String Bean Jane's string beans tasted of the blessed earth of fair Modesto.
But that was before Calamity Louise came to town and destroyed everything. Calamity was a calamity-- there was no way else to describe her. She swung those cans of Progresso soup like they were twin pistols right from the holster of her apron. I'd never seen anything like it, nor had String Bean Jane, who immediately befriended her.
"You have to show me how to do that, Louise," she said on July 14th, one day before our baking fest.
"I'm starting a new team, and I need all the help I can get. You join me, I'll show you the soup trick..." Calamity was indeed a foul calamity.
"Sure! I need a few new tricks around the house to amuse Harry," String Bean Jane said.
"Your dog?" Calamity asked.
"My husband. He's dreadfully bored all the time, and I can't figure out what to do about it," String Bean said.
"You've got it. Your beans and my soup will nail this year's contest."
"I wouldn't count out Joanna's team. They've won every year since 1928. She's pretty mean, and damned if she's not a great captain. She runs a tight ship." High praise indeed from String Bean.
"You just come by tomorrow, and we'll whip up a bit of delight with these little cans of mine. Campbell's makes crap soup."
String Bean dropped by later that day to drop me the news. "Sorry, Joanna... You can't have my beans this year-- Louise and I are entering the contest together."
"What?" I bent over to retrieve my jaw from the floor.
"You're just going to have to go to the market tomorrow instead. I'm teaming up with Louise this year."
"Are you joking me? Why?"
"I can't talk about it, Joanna. It's really too embarassing..." She turned and left, slamming the door behind her.
I phoned up the team for an emergency meeting. We were all equally flummoxed, pissed off, and despairing all at the same time. It wasn't a pleasant feeling, really. And we'd have to use those horrible canned beans from Joe's General Store. Bleech! I hated those, much as I love a real string bean casserole.
I hung my head as my team paraded our measly 30 casseroles to the Town Square. Jane and Calamity were already there, beaming with an intensity I'd never seen on anyone's face before. Dammit!
After the competition was over and the judges had, of course, declared Calamity the winner, Jane stopped by our stand. "I'm sorry guys, but Harry's been really bored, and I needed to you know... turn him on in the intimate way... I just love that soup can trick! I can't wait to try it out on him tonight over dinner!"
Poor Jane! She'd told me about how boring her night life was, and I sympathized. While Harvey wasn't exactly exciting, he did leave me reasonably satisfied. Still, we didn't have a friggin' trophy, and that made me a most grumpy of the grumps to poor Harvey that night.
The next day, I was taking my mid-day stroll and did a bit of a double-take. I'd have thought I was facing Harry, but for the large black circles surrounding both eyes like a tar pit.
"Harry! What on earth happened to you?"
"I can't tell you, Joanna. Really, it's quite embarassing. Do me a favor, though, and stay away from that Progresso soup stuff. It really hurts!" Harry turned and bustled away.
I couldn't stop laughing when I ran into String Bean Jane later that day. She blushed a bright red, and said, "I just couldn't get the hang of it, Joanna... Will you let me back to your team next year?"
"Sure," I said, laughing.
"It's not funny!" she said, and then a guffaw escaped her pursed lips.
Back in 1938, before I ever heard of sliced bread, One Nation under God, and saw my first television, I was a captain. I like to say this because what I was a captain of inevitably disappoints many people. I mean, does hearing, "I'm a team captain for the Modesto String Beans Corps," disappoint you at all? Funny how that works, isn't it?
My favorite days as team captain were those odd July 16th casserole bake-offs when the town's leading moms would get together in Town Square and compete for the hearts and stomachs of the judges. I have to say, I was a pretty damn good captain. Each year, on July 15th, our team de-stringed pounds and pounds of the beautiful beans String Bean Jane, as we used to call her, grew in her acre of land out back. We de-stringed and we parboiled. And then we opened cans upon cans upon cans of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup. It was like a factory, like an assembly line. Lines and lines of us all operating with robotic precision. I was amazed to see us churn out 60 casseroles in a single day each year. But, then again, I was an organizer in those days. I could set up a system like no one's business. And those casseroles tasted like heaven! We'd won the bake-off fair and square for nearly a straight decade. String Bean Jane's string beans tasted of the blessed earth of fair Modesto.
But that was before Calamity Louise came to town and destroyed everything. Calamity was a calamity-- there was no way else to describe her. She swung those cans of Progresso soup like they were twin pistols right from the holster of her apron. I'd never seen anything like it, nor had String Bean Jane, who immediately befriended her.
"You have to show me how to do that, Louise," she said on July 14th, one day before our baking fest.
"I'm starting a new team, and I need all the help I can get. You join me, I'll show you the soup trick..." Calamity was indeed a foul calamity.
"Sure! I need a few new tricks around the house to amuse Harry," String Bean Jane said.
"Your dog?" Calamity asked.
"My husband. He's dreadfully bored all the time, and I can't figure out what to do about it," String Bean said.
"You've got it. Your beans and my soup will nail this year's contest."
"I wouldn't count out Joanna's team. They've won every year since 1928. She's pretty mean, and damned if she's not a great captain. She runs a tight ship." High praise indeed from String Bean.
"You just come by tomorrow, and we'll whip up a bit of delight with these little cans of mine. Campbell's makes crap soup."
String Bean dropped by later that day to drop me the news. "Sorry, Joanna... You can't have my beans this year-- Louise and I are entering the contest together."
"What?" I bent over to retrieve my jaw from the floor.
"You're just going to have to go to the market tomorrow instead. I'm teaming up with Louise this year."
"Are you joking me? Why?"
"I can't talk about it, Joanna. It's really too embarassing..." She turned and left, slamming the door behind her.
I phoned up the team for an emergency meeting. We were all equally flummoxed, pissed off, and despairing all at the same time. It wasn't a pleasant feeling, really. And we'd have to use those horrible canned beans from Joe's General Store. Bleech! I hated those, much as I love a real string bean casserole.
I hung my head as my team paraded our measly 30 casseroles to the Town Square. Jane and Calamity were already there, beaming with an intensity I'd never seen on anyone's face before. Dammit!
After the competition was over and the judges had, of course, declared Calamity the winner, Jane stopped by our stand. "I'm sorry guys, but Harry's been really bored, and I needed to you know... turn him on in the intimate way... I just love that soup can trick! I can't wait to try it out on him tonight over dinner!"
Poor Jane! She'd told me about how boring her night life was, and I sympathized. While Harvey wasn't exactly exciting, he did leave me reasonably satisfied. Still, we didn't have a friggin' trophy, and that made me a most grumpy of the grumps to poor Harvey that night.
The next day, I was taking my mid-day stroll and did a bit of a double-take. I'd have thought I was facing Harry, but for the large black circles surrounding both eyes like a tar pit.
"Harry! What on earth happened to you?"
"I can't tell you, Joanna. Really, it's quite embarassing. Do me a favor, though, and stay away from that Progresso soup stuff. It really hurts!" Harry turned and bustled away.
I couldn't stop laughing when I ran into String Bean Jane later that day. She blushed a bright red, and said, "I just couldn't get the hang of it, Joanna... Will you let me back to your team next year?"
"Sure," I said, laughing.
"It's not funny!" she said, and then a guffaw escaped her pursed lips.
Flu time... and Far Far Away
Been down for the last several days with the flu, courtesy of my Windows Server teacher giving me the bug when he had a weird "conversation" with me that involved a cliched, yet oh-so-sexist comment. Sexist comments apparently really do make me sick ;-) That, and not getting any real lecturing from this class. Thank the gods for the labs... Suffice to say that I'm writing this next little vignette in his "honor."
Think of a person who really bugs or annoys you. Think of a place you'd like to send this person. Then-- mentally-- send them there!
The post card arrived on my doorstep a week ago, and I was a little surprised, since every little bit of mail is usually crammed impersonally, and often incorrectly, by our loafer of a mail carrier, who can't sort for crap, into our huge bank of apartment mailboxes. But this one was different, and it was a Sunday delivery, which I have never ever seen in all my 34 years. Something was different about it, all right.
I picked it up with trepidation, my heart slamming in my chest. There was no address, no return post office box, nothing. The front of the post card glowed a bright neon pink, like those stupid plastic bracelets I used to wear in middle school. Yeeech! I thought, and nearly dropped it in disgust. But part of me was intrigued.
Touch this to your enemy, and you will live happily ever after! What on earth? At the bottom was a line of fine print: Look into the pink, and you will smile for the rest of your existence! I cleared my throat of the sick phlegm that had dripped down from my stuffed-up nasal passages.
A quick flash of anger sliced through me like a lightening bolt. Damn him! I thought. I remembered, and cursed him. "Behind every great man is a woman!" he said, and coughed over my lab computer screen.
I dragged myself into the classroom two days later, still reeling from the fever. I was an hour early, so I was surprised he'd still beaten me there. No one else had, however.
"Good evening, Elizabeth!" he said.
"Hello, I have something for you!" I said, handing him the card.
"For me?" he said, and reached for it. The second the card touched his calloused hand, he was gone. There were no sparkly transporter effects a la Star Trek. There was no fading into nothingness. Just boom! Gone. The card drifted to the ground like a piece of down fluff.
I bent over to pick it up, and drew my hand back from its shiny neon pink surface. It rippled for a moment and then something formed gradually, almost like a Polariod. Purple waves splashed over the side of a boat that was heaving in an ocean that reminded me of the crab boating promo I'd seen of a show on the Discovery Channel.
It can't be possible, can it? I asked the universe. The waves seemed to jump toward my quivering hand.
Almost against my will, I picked it up. Eventually, as always, curiosity overwhelmed my good sense. I stared at the waves-- the picture reminded me of a pink-tinted video iPod. And I stared at the boat. As I looked harder, the card seemed to zoom in on the boat's occupants.
"Get to work!" I heard someone yell. Jumping, I looked around. The room, though, was eerily empty.
"You! Get to work!" The picture zoomed in on an irate captain or first mate or something (hell, I don't know), and then zoomed out to focus on the teacher, who stared, stunned, as the boat slammed him from port to starboard and back again.
"How am I? How did?..."
"Get back to work!"
"But I! What?"
"Pick up the goddamn net, and work!" the captain or first mate or whatever yelled.
A wave slammed over the port side and drenched my teacher.
"Pick up the fuckin' net, lazy ass!"
He grabbed a hank of net that was lying near his drenched shoes and screamed as the picture zoomed in on a crab's claw that clamped on to the webbing between his left thumb and the rest of his fingers.
The card was sure right! I chuckled as I drove back home, occasionally glancing at the teacher shivering as Alaska's waves periodically washed over him as he struggled to keep up with the crew.
I wonder what's going to happen when crab fishing season's over...
Think of a person who really bugs or annoys you. Think of a place you'd like to send this person. Then-- mentally-- send them there!
The post card arrived on my doorstep a week ago, and I was a little surprised, since every little bit of mail is usually crammed impersonally, and often incorrectly, by our loafer of a mail carrier, who can't sort for crap, into our huge bank of apartment mailboxes. But this one was different, and it was a Sunday delivery, which I have never ever seen in all my 34 years. Something was different about it, all right.
I picked it up with trepidation, my heart slamming in my chest. There was no address, no return post office box, nothing. The front of the post card glowed a bright neon pink, like those stupid plastic bracelets I used to wear in middle school. Yeeech! I thought, and nearly dropped it in disgust. But part of me was intrigued.
Touch this to your enemy, and you will live happily ever after! What on earth? At the bottom was a line of fine print: Look into the pink, and you will smile for the rest of your existence! I cleared my throat of the sick phlegm that had dripped down from my stuffed-up nasal passages.
A quick flash of anger sliced through me like a lightening bolt. Damn him! I thought. I remembered, and cursed him. "Behind every great man is a woman!" he said, and coughed over my lab computer screen.
I dragged myself into the classroom two days later, still reeling from the fever. I was an hour early, so I was surprised he'd still beaten me there. No one else had, however.
"Good evening, Elizabeth!" he said.
"Hello, I have something for you!" I said, handing him the card.
"For me?" he said, and reached for it. The second the card touched his calloused hand, he was gone. There were no sparkly transporter effects a la Star Trek. There was no fading into nothingness. Just boom! Gone. The card drifted to the ground like a piece of down fluff.
I bent over to pick it up, and drew my hand back from its shiny neon pink surface. It rippled for a moment and then something formed gradually, almost like a Polariod. Purple waves splashed over the side of a boat that was heaving in an ocean that reminded me of the crab boating promo I'd seen of a show on the Discovery Channel.
It can't be possible, can it? I asked the universe. The waves seemed to jump toward my quivering hand.
Almost against my will, I picked it up. Eventually, as always, curiosity overwhelmed my good sense. I stared at the waves-- the picture reminded me of a pink-tinted video iPod. And I stared at the boat. As I looked harder, the card seemed to zoom in on the boat's occupants.
"Get to work!" I heard someone yell. Jumping, I looked around. The room, though, was eerily empty.
"You! Get to work!" The picture zoomed in on an irate captain or first mate or something (hell, I don't know), and then zoomed out to focus on the teacher, who stared, stunned, as the boat slammed him from port to starboard and back again.
"How am I? How did?..."
"Get back to work!"
"But I! What?"
"Pick up the goddamn net, and work!" the captain or first mate or whatever yelled.
A wave slammed over the port side and drenched my teacher.
"Pick up the fuckin' net, lazy ass!"
He grabbed a hank of net that was lying near his drenched shoes and screamed as the picture zoomed in on a crab's claw that clamped on to the webbing between his left thumb and the rest of his fingers.
The card was sure right! I chuckled as I drove back home, occasionally glancing at the teacher shivering as Alaska's waves periodically washed over him as he struggled to keep up with the crew.
I wonder what's going to happen when crab fishing season's over...
