I Did It! Last NaBloPoMo 2013 Post

Well...it's November 30th, the last day of the November NaBloPoMo. I made it! 30 days of blogging.  So there's that.

I can't say I'm happy with the work as a whole. There are a coupe of good posts, but for the most part it was either weekly features, a meme or two, or just kvetching about not having anything to say.

But I did do it. Hopefully this will get me blogging at least more regularly. Maybe.

In any case, I don't know that anyone read any of this, but if you did - thanks!

Have a fabulous holiday season...maybe I'll see you here soon.

Pandora Pandemonium - The Black Friday Edition

Did you go shopping? I did not - no way!

Let's see what pandemonium Pandora causes today.

The Monster by Eminem featuring Rihanna - I had heard of this song but don't remember actually hearing it. It's not awful, and apparently the usual Eminem darkness. I'll re-listen to it and pay attention to the lyrics.

Die Young by Kesha - I can't stand this girl, I find her tacky and crass, but I have to say, as wholly inappropriate as her songs are for a woman my age, they're a lot of fun. Just don't pay too much attention to the lyrics.

Summertime Sadness by Lana del Rey - I LOVE this song and it is everywhere! Del Rey's voice is gorgeous.

Set Fire to the Rain by Adele - Interesting this should shuffle up after Lana del Rey, who seems to be Adele's heir apparent. What do you say about this song? It's gorgeous and Adele is phenomenal, her voice soars in  this.

You Make Me Feel So Young by Frank Sinatra - Wow! We start with Eminem being all dark and depressing, and we end with Frank Sinatra all happy and upbeat! This recording comes from his album named "Songs for Swingin' Lovers" - indeed! Different much? Haha! It's Frank, it's awesome...'nuf said!

We got an eclectic mix from Pandora today!

If you're in the US, I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that you have a safe and not too expensive weekend!

Throwback Thursday - Thanksgiving 1996

So much has happened to people in this picture since it was taken.

The picture was taken at the Strang family home in Warminster, PA by my father-in-law Lonny, who passed away this past April. The handsome gentleman on the right, Grandpa Strang was my husband's paternal grandfather passed away, and the lady second on the left - Grandma Van - has also passed away. All left empty spaces in our lives.

At the time the picture was taken my sister-in-law Cathy, third on the left, was still in college - she has since become an RN, gotten married and had two boys. My brother-in-law Kevin, at the end on the left, was in his senior year in college and after graduation moved to Texas in 1997 to teach music at an elementary school where he wound up meeting his wife and they have two girls. That's David, now my husband, on the back right - we were newly engaged to be  married a year later and he, of course, moved to Miami. The third on the right is me - since then, I got married and eventually lost both of my parents.  Next to me is my brother-in-law Rich, at that point he too was engaged to be married the following June, he and his wife have two daughters as well.

David and I spent this Thanksgiving at Rich's house. This time there were six "new" beautiful young faces ranging in age from 2 to 13, and sadly there were empty spaces of those we've lost. I'm so thankful for all of them, new and old, here and gone.

My Best Friend

That's my best friend Cris and me earlier this year taking a Pirate Duck Boat tour of Miami Beach, because that's the kind of thing we do. We also go to the opera, to shows, to concerts, for dim sum, we're in book club together, we try new foods because they're there, we go to the movies, we go on food tours, we buy wines and try them, we're co-captains of a fantasy football team, we host a Blog together. We do lots of stuff.

We're also there for each other for bad stuff. Other than listen to her when she needs to talk I don't know what or if I've done anything for her, but I do know what she's done for me. She sat with my dying father and Alzheimer-ridden mother while David and I made funeral arrangements for my dad a few hours before he died.  She helped us clean out my parents' apartment when my mother was no longer able to live by herself and had to be put in an assisted living facility. She helped me deal with David's hospitalization and watched me break down when in a delirium he didn't recognize me.

I've had only two best friends in my life. One when I was a child and we eventually drifted apart in our mid-teens. After her I've been blessed with lots of wonderful and important friends in different aspects of my life, but none of them were *best friends* - until I met Cris in 2000. She was a friend of several of my life-long friends through their kids' school, but somehow I had never met her. Until I did.  It took over 20 years for me to find another best friend, and when I did, the connection was immediate.

Soon we were - as we call it - sharing a brain. I'm not easy and often I don't perceive things or react to things or do things like most people. It's not because I'm special, it's really because I'm weird. And, as it turned out, so is Cris. More often than not, she and I will react or respond to something completely differently than everyone else. This happens a lot. One of us will say a couple of seemingly random, unconnected words and the other will know exactly what it means, while everyone looks at us completely clueless as to what's going on - it's as if we have a "twin language" like those you see on TV where only the two kids understand it.

It took me 20 years to find my best friend - and now she is moving to Baton Rouge because her husband's job was transferred there. I know she'll remain my best friend regardless of the distance - but she won't be here. Who will I go eat new foods with? Who will go to some weird tour or museum exhibit with me? Who will listen to me ramble when my brain is full and overwhelmed and weary?

What am I going to do when she's gone?

I don't know.

'Toon Tuesday - Classic

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On the Road Again - Day One

 

So yeah - Day One = North-bound I-95 Florida. Exciting huh?

 

For the first night we stopped in Brunswick, Georgia. There's a monster storm heading towards the I-95 corridor tomorrow (Tuesday). We're going to hit the road earlier than usual - hopefully before 7 a.m. - if we have to drive in crappy weather at least it'll be in daylight. It's going to be wet and cold and yuck.

 

I'm not amused.  Bah!

Miami Book Fair International - Sunday

Well another Miami Book Fair International is over - and it was a great one this year, befitting its 30th Anniversary.

Today was a beautiful day for the fair, this was what it looked like from my Metro-mover ride this morning.

The first presentation I saw was Junot Diaz, he was as always a fantastic speaker.

Immediately following Diaz was the phenomenal Nikki Giovanni. She was so funny yet compelling - I'm so glad I got to see her.

And after Giovanni - another woman who is a legend in her own time, Amy Tan. She didn't even read from her latest book, she just told stories about her mother and grandmother in the way only Tan can.

After these three successes I figured I'd grab some "fair food" for lunch. I had one of those only in Miami meals - corn dogs and avocado salad bought at a Colombian Food kiosk. It was yummy!

Every year I accidentally come across a presentation I didn't know about that winds up being interesting. So today I planned to eat at one of the tables at the food court and then go home. There were no tables available, and I remembered the Spanish pavilion had lots of comfortable seating so I went there. It turns out that a few minutes after I arrived they had a scheduled presentation on African influences on Spanish (from Spain) music. It was awesome!

May MBFI continue thriving for another 30 years - and I plan to keep going to all of them!

Miami Book Fair International - Saturday

I'm really tired, so I'll just share some pictures from some of the events I attended at the Book Fair today.

The picture above is just part of the panel for the book by the former Rock Bottom Remainders. The panel included (pictured) Mitch Albom, Scott Turow, Amy Tan, Ridley Pearson, Dave Barry, Roy Blount Jr., and (not pictured) newly anointed American Book Award winner James McBride. The panel was *hysterical*.

I had seen Dave Barry and Roy Blount Jr. along with Brad Metzer on their own panel presenting their latest books - also very funny.

Also brilliantly funny and evocative Delia Ephron!

I'll be back tomorrow! See you then.

Lola Shuffle - The Book Fair Weekend Edition

The most wonderful time of the year! Let's see what Lola shuffles up for us...

Ready to Take a Chance Again by Barry Manilow - Love him! This is a great song!

32 Flavors by Ani DiFranco - Such a prolific talent as a singer and a songwriter. This is one of my favorites.

Reasons by Earth, Wind and Fire - EPIC slowdance song! Clocking in at around EIGHT minutes, you wanted to be dancing this with that one special boy! I was around 12 or 13 when this came out...and I had a special boy with whom I used to dance this. <swoony>

 

 

Waterfalls by TLC - A great song, with a message that was very powerful for its time. For me all their songs will always be tinged with sadness because of Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes' tragic death. It makes this song that much sadder. And remember the groundbreaking (for its time) video? Classic!

 

 



Seasons of Love by the cast from RENT (the movie) - One of my favorite movies, and one of the most beautiful songs ever. Perfect.

 

 

Wow! Lola was on fire today! All great songs.

Have a wonderful weekend...don't forget to listen to some music.

Throwback Thursday

My "tribe". I've been friends with most of these women since I was in college. A couple since high school! These are my family and I love them all so much.

This was taken in 2005, at the "Quinces" of the woman on the bottom left's daughter. She was the first of the kids to reach that milestone, and now most of the children of all of them are in colleg or already graduated from college.

Time flies!

Why?

Is this over yet?

Because...no.

'Toon Tuesday

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Doctor Who and Me

It's true, I'm a Whooey! Most Doctor Who fans call themselves Whovites or Whoites - I prefer Whooey. Every Doctor Who fan has "their" Doctor, usually but not always it's the first Doctor they saw when they started watching the show, and it is so with me. See the weirdly sexy guy up there by the blue box? That's Christopher Eccleston, Doctor #9, the first of the "modern era" of Doctors, and *my* Doctor. While I acknowledge David Tennant (Doctor #10) is a better all-around Doctor, Eccleston will always be the one for me.

Do you know the story of Doctor Who? Very briefly - Doctor Who is an alien, he's from a planet called Gallifrey. The planet's indigenous inhabitants are called Time Lords, and I guess Time Ladies? In any case they can travel through time and space without limits and they live for a very very long time. Doctor Who, due to very complicated circumstances does nothing but travel across space and time and  pretty much somehow saves the world or the universe every week.

The show debuted in London on BBC on November 23, 1963, the day after President Kennedy was assassinated. An inauspicious beginning indeed. Yet - here it is and here we are on the verge of celebrating its 50th anniversary.

Appropriately I think, I got into Doctor Who through the marvels of cyberspace and virtual reality. "Mat", one of my best friends in Second Life (we'll get into that another day) is a HUGE Doctor Who fan, and he was forever talking about it and showing me Doctor Who stuff, he even has a TARDIS and can regenerate in SL. I asked him about it one day and that opened the floodgates and, I guess changed my life, in at least a small way.

It started with him giving me a brief explanation and some You Tube clips to watch. That in turn, god bless him, triggered 73,914 questions which Mat calmly-ish answered (he gets a little riled on the "Why can't the Doctor be a woman?" question). So I gingerly tread into the Whoverse via streaming Netflix. I asked Mat with what episode I should begin, and he recommended one from the "classic" Doctor Who period - those are the ones that ran from 1963 to the mid 80s. I think the one I saw was from the 70s or early 80s. That was a mistake. I simply couldn't get past the cheesy dialogue and the horrendous "special effects". This was years after the original Star Trek and the effects were so inferior I just couldn't get into the story.

After that failure Mat told me to just start watching the modern era - the ones that started in 2005 with Eccleston as the Doctor. I was hooked with the first episode and I've been falling down the time hole ever since. Now, I'm atwitter with anticipation for this weekend's 50th anniversary episode "The Day of the Doctor". Who would'a thunk it?

Later, in December, in "the Christmas episode" the current Doctor, played by Matt Smith (not my favorite but he's grown on me a bit) will leave the show, therefore regenerating into the next Doctor to be played by Peter Capaldi. With Capaldi, they'll be returning to an older Doctor, which should he interesting given that his companion is played by a very young Jenna Louise Coleman.

We'll see where the new Doctor takes us - but before that we have a grand adventure coming up this weekend!

The National Anthem

Our national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner. I'll start out by saying that I don't particularly think this is the best song to be our national anthem. Personally I'd like to see Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" be the national anthem - the song's story is still relevant, it completely secular and most importantly it's singable.

But today I came across a post on Facebook about the way the Star Spangled Banner "should" be sung. The post indicated it should be like this

And that is beautiful...no question.

But see, here's the thing. According to The Smithsonian, "...there is no single official version of the anthem designated for civilian use." So, technically - barring messing up the actual lyrics - there is no "wrong" way to perform the anthem because there is no official "right" way. Of course, we've all seen horrid renditions of the anthem, especially at sporting events, but even though they're bad, I guess they're not wrong.

For me and many in my generation Whitney Houston's 1991 Super Bowl performance is the definitive interpretation.

Despite great controversy, for prior generations Jimi Hendrix's performance of the national anthem at Woodstock is the definitive one.

Jose Feliciano's version at the 1968 World Series was roundly criticized by the "establishment" - I think it's beautiful though...

And I love this Marvin Gaye performance at the 1983 NBA All-Star game

I like that there is no specific way the anthem has to be played. I think it allows for the anthem to remain relevant and "alive". While the "traditional" version will always give me goose bumps when played during the Olympics and similar events, other versions can give me goose bumps as well.

Napoleon Dynamite

Have you seen this movie? It came out in 2004 and when I first saw it I *hated* it. It was one of those train-wreck movies that are so bad you can't stop watching it. I didn't know what was happening, or why. It's not that I didn't understand it - it's hardly complex - I just didn't understand why someone would think anyone would care about this mess. So I wrote it off as two hours of my life I'd never get back.

But then a friend whose tastes I usually share and who is a "cinema" buff told me that she loved it. What? Seriously? So, since I respect her opinion, I gave it another shot, this time with an open mind and looking for the ironic humor she swore was I there. And you know what? The second time, I didn't hate it. I kinda got it.

While not my favorite film, or even in my top 50, if I'm flipping channels and it's on I'll stop and watch for a bit. The llama, the interpretive sign-dancing, Napoleon's epic dance at the school assembly - they're funny. I laugh-ish. I can see why a studio picked it up for next to nothing at the Sundance Film Festival and why it has a cult following. It's quirky and irreverent, and it's self-effacingly dumb. There's a certain charm to that.

It's also, at its heart, a "sweet" movie - a story of a friendship between three high school misfits and their families in a town in the middle of nowhere. There's no epic grand finale where they all become fabulous and leave Preston, Idaho. But in their own way they all get their quiet, simple happy endings. Really, what more can anyone ask for than to finish watching a movie and having a smile?

The ZOMG! It's Almost Thanksgiving! Pandora Pandemonium

Are you ready? I am I guess, we're driving up to PA to spend Thanksgiving with the in-laws. I'm in charge of wine - which totally works for me!

So, let's see what Pandemonium Pandora gets into today.

Mo Ghile Mear by Sting and The Chieftains - I really like Irish music and The Chieftains, when you add Sting to the mix well...wow!

Give Your Heart a Break by Demi Lovato - I liked this song but wasn't really sure who Demi Lovato was until she started on Glee. It's a cute song, she's a cute girl. A happy Friday tune.

Yo Solo Quiero by Roberto Carlos - I love this Brazilian singer! I went to see him in concert a million years ago with my mother - he was so handsome! I had sort of forgotten about him, but a few weeks ago on of those Internet rumors started that he had died! I saw it on Facebook and got so sad...but it was a hoax. It did, however, lead me to set up a Roberto Carlos station on Pandora!

Not Again by Staind - OK, I don't remember why I created a Staind channel. I remember I heard a song by them that I  liked, but I don't remember the song and I really don't like this one. I think I'll be deleting the station. Sorry Staind! Maybe if you buy a vowel...

Drift Away by Uncle Kracker - I liked this song the first time around in the 70s by Dobie Gray, and I like it even more now by Uncle Kracker. I like everything I've heard by Uncle Kracker - it's so relaxed and cool. This song makes me smile.

La Via Strangiato (Live in Rio) by Rush - Rush is my husband's favorite band in the whole world, so I created a Rush station to be familiar with them and stuff.  I don't love them but they're OK. But, this recording is 1) Live in concert - I'm not a fan of live recordings at all, 2) It's an instrumental, which is OK, I mean these guys are really good - even I can tell, but 3) this recording is 10 minutes long! That's too much instrumental Rush for me.

Ooops - that's six songs instead of five. Well, you got a ten minute instrumental Rush bonus! YAY you!

Have a great weekend!

 

 

 

Nope...Not Gonna Do It...You Can't Make Me!

What is the matter with people? Why would anyone *shop* on Thanksgiving? The stores of course are catering to the insanity. For heaven's sake, there are some stores opening during the day on Thanksgiving, others are opening at 6 p.m. or 8 p.m. - you know DINNER time! What the hell is that?

Bah!

In My Fridge

First of all this is not my refrigerator, but it's close enough. This refrigerator comes from this source.

I went back to the NaBloPoMo prompts for today's post - in fact this prompt was for yesterday, but it sounded fun. The prompt was: "Name five things inside your refrigerator right now and how you feel about them." OK then.

Here are my five items - in my refrigerator this very moment:

Trader Joe's Caramelized Onion Dip - I just bought this today. I've had it before and it is *so good*! I mean, I'm an onion dip fiend, but this onion dip is made from caramelized onions, so it's sweeter and better because, well, caramelized onions! It's low carb, so when I dip low-fat mozzarella cheese sticks, it's diabetic-friendly.

Left Over Plain and Fancy Meat Stew - This is one of my favorite slow-cooker dishes. I got the recipe over 10 years ago from an online forum about the book "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" and it's been part of my "rotation" ever since.

Vita Herring in Sour Cream - Love this! It's chunked herring in an onion sour cream sauce. Even though it's sour cream, it's actually kind of sweet. My father used to love this too, so we would share this while we watched movies on the VCR. It's one of the many foods to which my father introduced me.

Heinz Ketchup with Real Jalapeño - This is a new-found delight for me. I have historically not liked jalapeño stuff, but for some reason, I really like this. I use it on all sorts of stuff - scrambled eggs, Cuban tamales, even on hot dogs. It has a kick to it but isn't painful in my mouth like other jalapeño sauces. Yum.

Angry Orchard Elderflower Hard Cider - I love hard cider, but this one, not so much. I don't like beer, so since I discovered hard cider I've been hooked. It works when beer is the natural pairing for food. I like both dry and no so dry ciders, but this one is too flowery. It doesn't pair well with food and isn't tasty enough to drink alone. I bought a six pack months ago and there's one left. I wonder if hard cider goes "skunky" like beer does.

So now, you tell me about what's in your fridge...

'Toon Tuesday

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The Other Happiest Place on Earth

Trader Joe's FINALLY opened in Miami! I love this place. Until last month I had only been to stores in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and I'd have to stock up on all my favorites - Cookie Butter, Candy Cane Joe-Joes/Dark Chocolate Peppermint Joe Joes - if they were available - they're only out for Christmas and they sell out quickly, Dark Chocolate Covered Pomegranate Seeds, and the famous $2 Chuck (ok now it's $3 Chuck).  So I wouldn't buy *real* food. Now I can!

Tonight for example we had Kobe Burgers, but we had them without buns, like chopped steak, they were fantastic and it was only $5.99 a pound! They also have a great frozen foods, bagged greens, cereals, yogurts, snacks and cheeses. They're never going to be my mine super market, they're more like a specialty store with really good prices.

Sadly, I haven't gotten the Cookie Butter yet, they sold out on opening day, and due to the crazy crowds I didn't get there till a week later. I can't wait till they restock...and those Candy Cane Joe Joes aren't too far away!