2006

There were 210 posts published in 2006 (this is page 7 of 21).

Lapsang Souchong: Strong Tea for People Who Hate Coffee

I hate coffee.

I like the idea of coffee — and I love the smell — but I think it tastes like crap. Literally.

I had a girlfriend in college who once played a mean trick on me. Willamette had an annual marching competition between classes (don’t ask) just before Spring Break. The losing class had to walk the Mill Stream through campus. Friends made crazy bets with each other. Amy and I made the following bet:

  • If she lost, she would eat a mug of raisins. She hates raisins.
  • If I lost, I would drink a cup of coffee. As we’ve established, I hate coffee.

For some reason I can no longer remember, I was gone on the night of the competition. I got back to the dorm (er, “residence hall”) to find it nearly empty. Only Amy’s roommate, Mari, was around.

“Who won?” I asked.

Mari looked sad. “I’m sorry, J.D. You’ll have to drink a cup of coffee.”

“Crap,” I said.

Mari brightened. “Would you like to get it over with now? I can brew a cup for you.”

“Okay,” I said. I sat down on the lower bunk and watched Mari pour in the grounds and start the coffee-maker.

Amy came into the room. “J.D.’s agreed to pay off his bet now,” Mari told her. Amy laughed. “Good thinking she said.”

The coffee finished percolating, and Mari poured me a cup. “Enjoy,” she said. I took the mug and stared at it. I smelled it. It smelled fine. Coffee always smells fine. I took a sip. It tasted like crap. “Do you want some cream or sugar?” asked Mari. I shook my head. If I was going to do this, I was going to do it right. I took another sip.

I’d finished about half of the mug when a very loud and drunk Pat Kurkoski barged into the room. Pat, who lived upstairs, was a fellow freshman. He looked at me with bleary eyes. “WOOOO-HOOOO!” he bellered. “We won! Can you believe it? We won!”

I set the coffee down. I turned and fixed my gaze on Mari and Amy who were silently dying of laughter on the other side of the room. “You owe me,” I said. But they were laughing too hard to care.

Amy never did pay up on her bet. I tried to get her to eat raisins at dinner the next night, and for several nights thereafter. She refused. I was sorely angry with her for duping me and then refusing to pay up.

That entire setup is just to lead to this: I still hate coffee, but I’ve found that I love strong tea. In particular, I’ve found that I love:

  • Thai tea (the same stuff used for iced tea, but I like it hot)
  • Lapsang Souchong, a smoked tea from China (the “Scotch whiskey of teas”)

Both of these are deep, dark teas with rich flavor. The varieties I buy are highly caffeinated. Lapsang Souchong, in particular, is sometimes used as a coffee substitute, not so much for the flavor as the idea of it. I like the blend from Portland’s The Tao of Tea.

I’ve been brewing myself Lapsang Souchong every morning since we got back from San Francisco. I love its smokey almost-tobacco-like smell. Jeff says it smells like barbecue sauce I love the earthy flavor. I love the fact that these teas are rich and robust, not like wimpy chamomile or mint herbal teas.

I love strong tea, but I still hate coffee.

The Milwaukie-Gladstone Trolley Trail

Kris and I went for a walk through the neighborhood tonight.

As we strolled up Lee and onto Oak Grove, we noted the two houses that had recently sold. We turned onto Rupert and walked past the church. “I wonder what they’re doing there,” Kris said. “It almost looks like the church is developing it for their own use. There’s a driveway that cuts back behind it.”

“And look at that,” I said. “That old house has subdivided its lot; there’s a new building going up.”

Just then a couple in a red station wagon slowed to a stop. “Can you help us?” the driver asked. “We’re looking for the trolley tracks.”

“I think they’re down there at the bottom of the hill,” I said, pointing the way. “Or used to be. There’s just a divided street now.” The man thanked me and drove way.

As we reached the bottom of the hill, we noticed that there were, indeed, trolley tracks still visible, running from Arista back through some yards and out onto the other Arista.

The Interurban Line was one of the first rural trolley lines in the United States. (In fact, I think it was the first.) It was built in 1893, and ran from Portland to Milwaukie to Oregon City. It is likely that our house was built soon after the trolley went in. What is now our back door used to be the front door, and the lot extended back another hundred feet to the trolley. The land was subdivided long ago. When the Superhighway (99e) came in the thirties, trolley usage declined, and it was shut down in 1959. What happened next?

As Kris and I were marveling at the short section of remaining track, the red station wagon happened by again. We waved it down. “Look,” we said, pointing at the track. “There’s some rail still here. We think it used to run at an angle back thataway.”

“It did,” proclaimed a voice. We turned, and there was a man sitting on his front porch, listening to our conversation. “The rail line ran back through there, and then up the other Arista to Milwaukie. And from here, it ran all the way to Gladstone. Over the years, the right of way has been ceded to landowners, but Metro and the Clackamas County Parks District have acquired the entire length. They’ve got the funding and are going to turn it into a trolley trail. You could walk it now if you wanted to.”

The woman in the passenger seat of the car leaned over. “I know a man who has photographs of the old trolley line, all along its entire length. He has photos of every stop.” (Here I was stupid — I should have got the woman’s name and phone number.) The couple in the car waved and drove away, but we stayed and talked with the man on the porch, who introduced himself as Doug Woods, a member of what passes for Oak Grove government. (Oak Grove is actually part of unincorporated Clackamas County. It’s a fiercely independent area that refuses to incorporate even though the larger governments ache for it to become a city.)

Doug was full of area history. He explained how upper Arista used to be split level. “One lane of traffic was several feet higher than the other,” he said. “A few years ago, the county got tired of that and leveled the whole street out, removing the old railway median. Now they’ve got to put it back in.”

In fact, along whole stretches of the old trolley line, people are going to have to make concessions. It’s lain “fallow” for decades, unused, and slowly residents and businesses have staked claims to the unused land. Doug pointed out that the lady who lives next door to him was cranky that the proposed linear park would cut behind her property. It would essentially take away a twenty-foot wide stretch of land that she’d come to use as her own, even though the right-of-way belonged to the county. Further down the line, in Jennings Lodge, the trail has been annexed by a car dealership and by the parking lot of Buster’s Bar-B-Q. These residents and businesses will lose some land they’ve been using for free.


We live due east of the “e” in River Road, just west of the trail.
I’ll let the other neighborhood bloggers share their location if so inclined.

“When it’s all done,” said Doug, “there will be a multi-use trail that runs all the way from Milwaukie to Gladstone. It will be eight-feet wide and completely paved with asphalt. It’ll have soft shoulders. The local high schools can use it for cross-country training. Local equestrians can use it. Bicyclists can use it, but they won’t be able to dominate it like they do the Springwater Corridor. It’ll be a truly multiuse trail.”

I asked him what the timeline for completion was, but he couldn’t say. Plans were already behind schedule. He hoped it would be done in five years, or maybe ten, but there just isn’t any way to know for sure.

We asked him about other stuff in the neighborhood. He told us that the church at the top of the hill used to own the vacant lot, but sold it. It’s being developed, and the fire department had demanded another accessway into the church. That’s why there’s a new road back there. Doug told us about the big white house on the bluff overlooking River Road. The woman who bought it came before the county with a proposal to turn it into a bed-and-breakfast. “Or,” she said, “I could subdivide it. I could legally turn it into a fifteen-lot development.” The country approved the bed-and-breakfast.

We talked for a long time. Twenty minutes? Half an hour? Eventually we took our leave and walked home, better acquainted with our neighborhood than when we’d started.

(I first wrote about the Trolley Trail on 08 February 2005.)

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Kris and I are back from our trip to San Francisco. We had fun, but it’s good to be home.

Day One
We left home at 7:15 on the morning of Thursday the 10th. Because I’ve always wanted to make a longish road trip, and because we thought it would be cheaper, and because we wanted greater freedom, we drove our own car. In a way, this was a challenge for me. I’m normally a speed-limit driver, but I surrendered this compulsion early on, and by the end of the trip I was a certified California driver. (“You don’t need to use your horn,” Kris told me this morning as we drove to meet Rhonda and Mike for breakfast. Oops.)

We stopped in Medford/Ashland for lunch (and to see the southern Oregon crime lab). After a way-too-long two-hour break, we hit the road again, crossing into California at 2:00. The amazing thing about crossing the border is that California immediately looks like California. It doesn’t seem possible, but it’s true. The afternoon drive was pleasant, though at one time I freaked out because I couldn’t see any hills — the land around us was flat and open. That’s unnatural. We also drove through a large swarm of moths just west of Sacramento. That was disconcerting. And messy.

We crossed the Bay Bridge from Oakland to San Francisco at about 7:15, twelve hours after we’d started. We’d made the 635 mile journey in about nine hours of driving time.

My first culture shock was the traffic. San Francisco drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians seem to view traffic laws as mere guidelines. And the drivers enforce their view of the guidelines with ample usage of their horns. San Francisco streets are filled with a cacophony of tooting horns. There are also no left-turn lanes. (“Three rights to make a left,” Andrew told me later in the trip.)

When we arrived at our hotel on Fisherman’s Wharf, I was perplexed to find that it would cost us $32/night to park. Yikes! I worried further about how much to tip the parking attendant. (My fretting over tips was a recurring theme on this trip.)

After a far-too-expensive mediocre dinner, we hit the sack, exhausted.

Day Two
Tiffany arrived on an early flight. The entire family gathered for a two-hour paid sight-seeing tour on a pseudo-trolley car. This was actually rather useful. The narrated drive around the city gave us a rough feel for where things were located. We headed up Columbus, into Chinatown, downtown to Union Square, up to Nob Hill, through the Presidio, and then across the Golden Gate Bridge. By doing this tour first, I was able to get a rough feel for the city’s geography, and we were able to plan our agenda as a group.


It was cold and VERY windy when I made this shot.

In the afternoon, the women shopped at Ghiradelli Square. I waited patiently. We also made our way to Lombard Street and walked down the “crookedest street in the world”. This is not a must-see attraction, although it’s easy enough to find and do.

Day Three
On Saturday we strolled up Columbus to Chinatown. We spent a couple hours looking at the shops, which were filled with all sorts of strange and wonderful things. Kris and I took a sort of perverse glee at the poultry shop: in the right-hand window were the fresh chickens, alive and clucking — down the hall was a boiling vat; in the left window we could watch the no-longer-alive chickens being butchered by an expert worker. It’s lucky I think chickens are dumb, or I might have wanted to rescue them.

We ate lunch at a dim sum restaurant. Dim sum is a sort of light meal. (It’s only for breakfast and lunch, not for dinner.) A waitress brings around various dishes — vegetable wontons, pork wontons, BBQ beef buns, hunks of chicken, balls of sticky rice, etc. — and the table selects those they’d like to share.


Adventurous sisters…

In the afternoon, we kids walked down to Union Square. Kris and Tiff shopped for shoes. I waited patiently.

We also found time to stop at City Lights, a notable San Francisco bookstore. It sucked. It’s just a run-of-the-mill bookstore now with run-of-the-mill surly bookstore employees. (Is this a requirement for bookstore workers? Even Powell’s has this problem.)

Day Four
On Sunday we drove to Golden Gate Park so that Kris’ mother could see the carousel and the bison paddock. Then, on a whim, we stopped to explore the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood (map), once a center of Sixties counterculture. It’s now a center of pretentious wannabe counterculture. Still, Haight is lined by dozens of vintage clothing shops. The women had fun shopping these. I waited patiently.

I found a potentially great bookstore called Forever After books, but it was marred by an awful user experience. “You can’t bring that ice cream in here,” the guy behind the counter told me. Fine. I can understand that. I stood outside and finished my ice cream, looking at the books in the window. But when I went inside and wanted to actually examine some of these books, the guy told me I couldn’t. When I wanted to examine some plastic-wrapped pocket books just inside the door, he came from behind the counter and hovered over me while I looked. “Can I open this to see what it’s like inside?” I asked regarding one book. I could not. What the hell? Fine. I won’t buy it then. (I’ve never been in a shop that wouldn’t let you open a plastic-wrapped book or comic. It’s absurd.) Signs were hung all around the shop declaring that customers were not allowed to do this and were not allowed to do that. There were several books I wanted there, but ultimately I decided I would not give my business to a place that treated its customers with such contempt. Kris’ father later pointed out that given the nature of its clientele — the riff-raff we saw along Haight — most of the store’s policies were understandable. Maybe so. But I still think it’s a poor idea to treat all of your customers as if they were crap.

Day Five
On Monday we said good-bye to Kris’ family and drove north to Berkeley. Michael Rawdon had recommended a store called Comic Relief, and I wanted to check it out. I paid for half-an-hour of parking and entered the store. I knew right away that I was in trouble. There was little hope of me getting out of the store in thirty minutes. And while I’d done well on my budget until this point, I knew that the store was going to strip me of a lot of money. I was right on both counts.

Comic Relief is a shop devoted to the sort of comics I buy: bound volumes collecting several issues at once. The store contains thousands of these books, as well as a wide selection of graphic novels and, to my delight, comic strip compilations. (More than anything, I’ve come to love collecting comic strips.) I didn’t score anything particularly rare, but I picked up some fun stuff. “I’m glad this shop isn’t in Portland,” I told Kris. “I’d be broke.” Comic Relief was awesome.

We then drove to Novato (thirty minutes north of San Francisco). Andrew Parker, a good friend from grade school, had offered to put us up for a couple of days. His wife Joann prepared a fine meal for us, although I was heckled for my picky eating habits. (Which most of you are already familiar with.) We ate cheese and bread and crackers and lasagna and consumed a lot of wine. The conversation was great fun as we learned about Joann’s life in Texas, and about what these two do for a living.

Day Six
Andrew and Joann indulged us on Tuesday, driving us back into the city so that we could catch a couple of attractions we’d missed before. In particular, I wanted to see the Cartoon Art Museum. I’m glad we went, as this was one of the highlights of the trip for me. We also indulged Kris by paying an exorbitant fee to walk through an exhibition of artifacts from Titanic. The display was neat, no question, but not worth the price. Also, I was offended by the many blatant grammar and punctuation problems in the signage.


We first met in second grade…

We wanted to take our hosts out for a nice dinner, but instead we returned home where Joann prepared a delicious cheese fondue. Yum. (Thanks, Joann and Andrew — we owe you a nice meal the next time you’re in Portland.)

“It was less dumb than I thought.” – Kris’ review of the Cartoon Art Museum

Day Seven
We said goodbye to the Parkers and drove north on 101. We stopped in Santa Rosa to attend the Charles M. Schulz Museum. This was disappointing. The exhibits aren’t awful, but they are rather dull. I was hoping for a more comprehensive history of Peanuts and an exploration of how it fits into the context of comic strip history. Instead we got an exhibit on Woodstock and an exhibit on the kite-eating tree. Lame. The museum is new, though, and there’s room for future improvement.


A mural made up of thousands of individual comic strips.

In the afternoon, we departed the highway to drive through the redwoods on a scenic byway. We stopped at one point to take a short jaunt through the trees, marveling at the mass of one fallen specimen. It was ginormous.

We stopped for the evening in Arcata, which was a mistake. The town is home of Humboldt State University, and this was apparently the week that new students arrived in town. We managed to snag one of the last hotel rooms, then drove off to look for someplace to eat. Downtown Arcata might be considered quaint, with its old buildings and its central square, except for the loud and scraggly young adults who had gathered to tell stories about their summer. There was also a greater beggar density here then there had been in San Francisco (and the density in San Francisco was staggering).

We ate at Jambalaya, which had decent food but terrible service.

Day Eight
We got a slow start on Thursday, which made me cranky. After breakfast, we stopped north of Arcata for an hour-long hike through the forest. Unfortunately, there’d been a recent bear siting: a black bear and her two cubs were known to be in the area. Now, I may not have mentioned this before, but I’m terribly afraid of bears. I know it’s irrational, but I’m certain that I’m going to die by mauling. The entire time we were hiking, I was petrified we’d be attacked. It didn’t make for a nice jaunt in the woods.


Our hike through the Redwoods featured many ferns…

I was even crankier when, by two o’clock, we’d only travelled one hundred miles. But then things turned around. I entered some sort of mystical driving “zone” and for four hours cruised up the Oregon Coast, grooving to techno tunes while Kris read a book. At six, we found ourselves in Florence on the Central Oregon coast. “Where are we going to stay tonight?” asked Kris. “I don’t know,” I said, and just then we noticed a sign that pointed toward Eugene. We were both starving, and decided Eugene offered the best hope of a good meal, so we cut east.

We made excellent time for fifteen minutes before our journey was brought to a halt. We found ourselves in a long line of semi-trucks and RVs and other big vehicles. A minivan had flipped ahead and was blocking both lanes of traffic. We turned around and found another highway that headed north, snaking through the hills to Junction City, which is just north of Eugene. We couldn’t find a decent place to eat in Junction City, and I didn’t want to go south to Eugene, so we drove north, desperate for food. Finally we stopped at a Wendy’s in Albany. We were willing to eat anything at this point.

“It’s nine o’clock,” I told Kris. “We might as well drive all the way home.” And so we did.

Conclusion
We had a fun trip, but it’s good to be home. I regret not seeing more of San Francisco. We didn’t do the Alcatraz tour. We didn’t head south to see Michael or to meet Ramit. We didn’t do a lot of things.

But I guess that means there’s a reason to go back!

Skinflint on Vacation

This is the first vacation I’ve taken since developing a frugal mindset. It’s tough for me to let loose. My pennypinching ways are causing me pain.

For example, we drove to San Francisco because (a) I love to drive, and have never had a chance to do a long trip like this; (b) having our own car would allow us greater flexibility; and (c) I believed it would save us money. (We’ll tally expenses at the end to see if it really did so.)

However, as soon as we arrived at the hotel I was greeted by a rude slap in the face: we must pay $32/night in parking! This had never even crossed my mind. I’m a hick at heart, and hicks never pay for parking. This setback is going to cost us 6.4% of our vacation budget. That’s basically the equivalent of a hotel stay on the drive home. (We’re driving back up the California and Oregon coasts.) This made me sulky until Kris pointed out how ridiculous I was being. There’s nothing we can do about the cost, and we can afford it, so we should just roll with it. It’s a bummer, yes, but what can we do?

We’ve exercised our frugality muscles in other areas.

We packed some fruit and water and snacks from home so that we didn’t have to stop along the way. These snacks will also stand us in good stead so that we can avoid paying for breakfast. To save a little money, we fueled up and ate lunch in Ashland. (There’s no sales tax in Oregon.)

Aside from the Parking Debacle, I had one other minor case of non-frugality. I was drowsy while driving, so we pulled into a rest stop to get some caffeine. I could have had a Coke for a buck, but I decided to try a Red Bull energy drink. There was no price listed on the vending machine, so I assumed they were also a buck. Bad assumption. The machine took my dollar and asked for $1.50 more. Holy cats! I pressed the coin return, but no luck. It wouldn’t refund my money. I threw good money after bad and ended up with a $2.50 beverage. (Which, fortunately, did its job: it woke me up.)

Today we join Kris’ family for a touristy exploration of San Francisco. I’m surprised at how overwhelming it is. I don’t have much experience outside Portland and, especially, its rural towns. San Francisco is big. And cosmopolitan. And a little intimidating. (Yet very, very exciting.) It feels sort of European, actually. My goal is to forget about the $32 parking and just have fun. And stay frugal.

Addendum: Kris notes that I’ve also been flustered by tipping. When we travel, we normally stay in motels. Because we’re traveling with her parents — and because this hotel is being subsidized by inheritance money — we’re staying someplace a little nicer. People keep doing things for us. Some guy parked our car. Do I tip him? I don’t know. I asked the woman at the front desk, and she seemed offended that I had asked. Faux pas piled upon faux pas. Fortunately, I did know how to tip the bellhop — one-dollar a bag, right?

J.D. the Duck

“Lieberman lost,” Kris told me today.

“Lost what?” I asked.

She fixed me with her gaze, shook her head, then ambled upstairs. “Lost what?” I called after her.

“I’m going to watch the news,” she muttered.

I went upstairs to watch the news with her. Apparently Joe Lieberman, Democratic Senator from Connecticut, lost a primary election. Connecticut has primaries in August? What are they smoking over there? “So what?” I said. “Who cares?”

“I’m not talking to you,” she said. I watched the rest of the Lehrer News Hour with her, and my questions were answered. Then I went downstairs to take a bath.

Kris came downstairs as I was soaking (and reading an article in Men’s Journal about the twelve greatest sports cars of all time). She pulled back the shower curtain and stared at me (and my fleshy lumps). “You know what the difference between you and Celeste is?” she asked. Celeste is her good friend and co-worker.

I thought for a moment. “I’m happy?” I said, hoping that was the right answer. I snuck a peak at the Corvette pictured in the article.

“No,” she said. “The difference between you and Celeste is that when I said to her this morning, ‘Lieberman lost,’ her reply was, ‘Omygod — are you kidding? How do you think this will affect the upcoming elections?’ When I said to you, ‘Lieberman lost,’ your reply was, ‘Lost what?’ That’s the difference between you and Celeste.”

I half-listened, half-read a great run-down on a classic Jaguar. “Huh,” I said. “I thought you were going to say the difference was that I was happy.”

“You know what? A duck is happy. A duck! A duck walks around all day oblivious to what’s going on in the world. That’s what you are: a duck. You’re a duck.”

I tossed my magazine onto the floor and slid back into the warm water. “Quack quack,” I said. Kris sighed and left the room.

We’re leaving for San Francisco in the morning. We won’t return for a couple weeks. I hope to be able to post while I’m gone, but no promises. Maybe we should have paid the housesitter to write weblog entries, too…

Recipe: Thai Salad Rolls

Kris and I biked down to the Milwaukie Farmers Market today. I had my lawnmower blade and my hatchet sharpened (both have received a ton of use in the past two years). We picked up some fruit and vegetables. (There were tons of strawberries available!) On a whim, I purchased a $1 salad roll for a snack.

“That looks pretty good for you,” Kris said. The salad roll contained lettuce and carrots (and a little krab with a “k”) wrapped in rice paper. It was good for me.

“It tastes good, too,” I said. And then I realized that this might be an excellent way for me to start getting veggies into my diet. So we picked up some spring roll wrappers on our way home.

With the help of my Thai cookbooks, I threw together the following recipe, which is pretty damn good:

J.D.’s Salad Rolls

In a small bowl, mix two tablespoons of fish sauce, two tablespoons of lime juice, ¼-teaspoon brown sugar, one teaspoon ground pepper (I used cayenne — you could probably just use chili powder). Heat this mixture in a skillet. Add ½-pound ground beef. Brown. When the beef is nearly done, add one diced shallot. When the meat has cooked, pull it off the heat and set it aside.

Slice a head of iceberg lettuce. (Use iceberg. You’re after texture as well as taste. Your high-falutin’ lettuce isn’t going to work here.) Grate a couple carrots. Mix the two vegetables together.

You’ll need eight rice-paper wrappers to make the rolls. (Mine were actually tapioca wrappers.) Rinse a cutting board so that the surface is wet and set it on the counter as your work surface. For each salad roll, run the wrapper under hot tap water for a few seconds per side. (It should be rather “al dente” when you pull it away.) Lay wrapper flat on your damp cutting board.

Fill the wrapper with about an ounce of the meat preparation. Add a handful of the lettuce mixture. Top this with about a tablespoon of your favorite Asian sauce. You might use peanut sauce or Vietnamese sweet chili sauce. I used some generic Thai dipping sauce.

Fold the ends of the wrapper onto the mixture, then tuck one side over and roll it tight. Wrap in foil for later snacking!

These things are delicious!

It took me three or four tries to get the hang of the wrappers, but once I’d figured them out, they were pretty easy to use. I have grand plans to prep a bunch of these at the beginning of the week so that I can take them to work as snacks. Tastier and healthier than a candy bar, don’t you think?

Revolutionary

On this day in:

1945 — the Atomic Age dawns when the Enola Gay drops its payload on Hiroshima at 8:15 am local time, killing 140,000 people
1970 — the Cronk Age dawns when Andrew slithers into this world
1991 — the Information Age dawns when the world wide web goes live

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip – Complete Pilot Episode

Aaron Sorkin has a new show debuting on NBC in a few weeks. It’s a sort of “behind the scenes at Saturday Night Live” show with the terrible title Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

Now, I’ve complained a lot about Aaron Sorkin in the past. His dialogue is mannered. His characters all have IQs of 185. He steeps his stories in politics. But the thing of it is: I love his work. For all its annoying flaws, I love his writing. Nobody on TV writes like he does.

Someone on YouTube has posted the complete pilot to Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Kris and I watched it tonight before NBC had a chance to cease-and-desist it. (Who knows, though? Maybe NBC actually seeded it there. That would be some smart marketing, I think.) Here are the five files that make up the show. So long as they’re still posted at YouTube, you’ll be able to watch them here:

The pilot has its moments. Kris and I were both giving each other looks over the Network-esque opening, though it would have been nice if the show didn’t devote thirty seconds to telegraphing this homage to the general audience. (Come on, Sorkin — you’ve trusted your viewers in the past, do it again. We see it. We see it.)

The pilot has some rough spots, too. I like the woman who plays Jordan, but she doesn’t seem strong enough somehow. “It’s because she’s wearing that dress,” Kris told me. But it’s not. It’s just her voice isn’t strong enough. Give me Natalie from Sports Night! Or Felicity Huffman.

Speaking of which: one of the joys of an Aaron Sorkin show is watching his ensemble, that group of actors that follows him around from place-to-place. It’s like being with old friends. Hell, this whole show is like being with old friends.

Currently I watch a grand total of zero television shows. (I download Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who and sometimes NBC’s The Office.) Beginning September 1st at 10pm, that number will increase to a grand total of one.

(Will you look at this, NBC? Somebody posts the damn show early and I devote and entire blog entry to promoting it. That’s free advertising, you idiots. Free advertising! Stop the presses! In a sign that Big Media might finally be “getting it”, NBC has released the pilot episode on DVD to Netflix subscribers — this YouTube plant may indeed be their own.)

Not Writing

I feel like my life is so busy that I ought to have plenty to write about.

I could write about Kris’ tom-astrophe last night — all of her ginormous tomato trees collapsed under the mass of an overhead watering, which resulted in a panicked and futile attempt to stand them up again — but she’s prohibited me from mentioning it.

I could write about poor Tiffany’s nightmare evening — she came home to find big, lovable Porter (my favorite of her four cats) with some sort of respiratory failure, rushed him to the vet, learned he had lymphoma, and had to put him down — but the thought of it makes me sad.

I could write about my sleep problems — I got a new mask for the C-PAP machine but it sucks, I haven’t been getting to bed on-time, and my rest has been fitful — but that bores even me.

I could write about all of my weblogs — Animal Intelligence is now up and in testing, Get Rich Slowly was on Metafilter yesterday (which makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside), and Four Color Comics is experiencing a re-birth — but I write about that sort of stuff enough already.

I could write about how I’m starting another diet, about how the kittens and the chicken continue to live in harmony, about how Simon climbed on to the roof of the house, about how I’ve been rather busy at Custom Box lately, about how Kris and I have learned we need a picnic table at Rosings park, about our upcoming trip to San Francisco. I could write about all of that.

But I’m tired. So I won’t.

July 31, 1945

My father would have turned 61 today. In memory, here’s a piece that my Aunt Virginia posted at her site a few weeks ago: her memories of growing up with Dad.

July 31, 1945
Hospital stays in that day were much longer than now, so I suppose the date is actually around August 10, 1945. 

We tiptoed around the house, everything had to be quiet.  My mom tied a hankie around my nose so I wouldn’t breathe out any germs.  I quietly approached the bedroom and under the window was a basket, and in the basket was a tiny new baby.  It was a brother.  I looked at him, but I dare not touch him, I might give him some germs that were on my hands.  He was so tiny and looked so sweet, how I longed to touch him, but that must wait. 

As he grew older (at about 9 months) his crib was kept in the living room.  He learned that by standing up and pulling on the edge of the crib and wiggling back and forth, that he could make the crib move, and that is just what he did, from one end of the living room to the other.  The only problem, at one end of the room there was a wood stove.  I always worried that he would run into the stove and get hurt but he never did. 

As he grew older he would follow me whereever I went.  I loved my little brother and played with him by the hour.  We made mud pies  (without germs. of course) and we made roads in the dirt with his roadgrader and dump truck, my big brother helped us and we built a road from the house to the woods which was over a quarter of a mile away (I’ll probably get some feedback on this) but we drug the hoe behind us to scrape the ground wide enough for our trucks.  There was a cowpath most of the way so it wasn’t too hard. It went through the barnyard, down the lane, through the woods and over to a patch of timber which my father was having someone log it.  The big firs were on the ground and there were little houses to be made under the limbs that were held up by their branches.  There were logs (little short limbs we would cut with an ax) and bring them up to the house to be put in the log pond that my older brother had dug and filled with water.  We played for hours. 

Soon he was old enough to enjoy the Bobsey Twins (books) and I read to him by the hour.  We were together almost everywhere.  I remember one time we were staying at my aunts house and we found a tame chicken. We played with it and dressed it until the poor thing died. Of course we had to have a funeral.  My cousin (who is a preacher today) preached his first funeral sermon that day and after the burial and so much mourning. We decided to play funeral.  We took turns being the dead one and the only thing we could find for a casket was the bathtub. So first one of us and then the other would take turns being dead while they other would solomly and mournfully sing “Jingle Bells”  (the only reason I know this is because my aunt told it many times in my hearing) 

For many years while we were growing up we would stay with my aunt for a couple weeks. We would look forward to this vacation with anticipation. We turned summersalts and cartwheels on the lawn in the evenings. One evening as he was teasing me I went running around the house to get away from him and straight into my boyfriend who had arrived and was talking to my dad at that moment.  (Pop still teases me about that, the problem is, I didn’t know he was comming and was caught in my playclothes, not dressed up at all) 

As we grew older Steve and I would talk together about our plans and dreams for the future.  I got married at 16 and Steve worked for my husband peeling cascara bark during one summer. He went away to school and we sold his VW for him. He wrote, I wrote.  He just loved my first baby and would carry her around when ever he could.  He was a great tease and of course would tease my little girls till it was a fright.  He would tell them he would put them on the roof of the house if they wouldn’t be good. Of course they loved him dearly in spite of all the teasing, there was no one like uncle Steve. 

Time goes on, he fell in love with a pretty young lady and was married, had his own children and they grew up.  The day came when he told me he had cancer and of course after a long hard battle he was gone, and all I have today are memories, but, Steve…

“I’ll Always Remember”

Happy birthday, Dad.