Or better yet, just stay in bed in your flannel granny gown.
Very cold here, and even colder on the other side of the mountains where temps will be below zero at night. I hope to get over to Twisp soon, but not this week.
This is also National Football Hangover Day and 22.5 million people across the United States intend to miss work following the big game. That's a 40% increase from last year. For what it's worth.
That's a cool poster from 1990. This will be the 8th Superbowl in party town New Orleans.
More often than not, we have an afternoon concert on Superbowl Sunday, but not this year. I hope that team that always wins not wins for a change. But I don't really care.
When the Seahawks pooped out early, I started rooting for the Buffalo Bills. We only spent 2 nights in that rabid football town, but it rubbed off on me, maybe lubricated by all those Buffalo wings. But you gotta love the Bill's fans with their snow shovels. (Listen to me, yakking on about football.)
I'm on a mission to get my little freezer used down so I can finally defrost it. On Sunday we're having a small turkey that I bought after the holidays.
Our neighbors from the Valley are in Seattle this weekend, and we're meeting at the art museum tomorrow morning. So a nice weekend shaping up.
Hope you have a good one.
There's a section on techno and futuristic drawing which doesn't interest me in the slightest, but I'm looking forward to the landscape and animal lessons. Realism isn't his thing, but he can draw anything and make it look easy.
The most useful part has just been reviving a drawing habit. The hardest part is staring at the blank sheet and getting started.
I did that mountain sketch yesterday in about a half hour, and when I stepped away, the "rock" in the foreground looked like a giant sleeping (or dead) beaver! John suggested I add some downed cottonwoods, just like Twisp. Rocks and trees, by the way, are really difficult.
Anyway, I'm trying to do one sketch a day and not take myself too seriously. It should be fun.
Guess what? Snowing again in Seattle this morning. I have a dentist appointment 2 blocks away (providing my hygienist can get to work.) By afternoon, we should be done with the snow, but bitter cold. This afternoon I might brave going to ukulele group on the heated patio. It's pizza night.
It's been a long winter. February is the month when we turn the corner to spring. Not this year.
We have to cheer ourselves up in these strange times. Amanda's been playing around with some AI app that turns photos into cartoons.
And yes, we look like a goofy Nana and Grandpa from some cartoon movie! It gave me a toothpick neck and John generously more hair. Ha ha.
Most of us had our share of canned soup growing up. The cooks of the 50's and 60's were seriously into convenience foods. (Unlike now, ha ha.)
Crazy as that sounds, some restaurants had canned soup displays. The waitress would warm the contents in a little pan or beaker then pour it into a bowl for the customer.
I remember feeling important doing that as a 15-year-old waitress at the Thunderbird Cafe in Florissant, Colorado. Mom ran the Thunderbird for a while, and she was the short order cook.
Anyway, we make lots of soup in this house, especially in the winter. A favorite is what we call taco soup, made with leftover seasoned taco meat simmered in (canned) beef broth with (canned) spicy tomatoes, whatever fresh vegetables and maybe beans. John would disagree, but I think the best soup is thrown together and never quite the same twice.
Our weather guru says we're headed into a "historically long" stretch of frigid weather. Some people find cold weather energizing; I find it hard to get out of bed.
There was something for everyone in the weather yesterday. The morning started out with big wet snowflakes, followed by few hours of bright sun, and in late afternoon, bands of snow squalls blowing up our street off Puget Sound. In some places, thunder snow.
Not much snow is expected in Seattle, but icy cold temperatures for the next week. I don't have to leave West Seattle for anything, and both of us glad our commuting days are over.
Browsing through old snow pictures on the blog, it's hard to believe this was Maya and Nova "only" ten years ago.
Grandchildren
by Olivia Stiffler
They
disappear with friends
near age 11. We lose them
to baseball and tennis, garage
bands, slumber parties, stages
where they rehearse for the future,
ripen in a tangle of love knots.
With our artificial knees and hips
we move into the back seats
of their lives, obscure as dust
behind our wrinkles, and sigh
as we add the loss of them
to our growing list of the missing.
Sometimes they come back,
carting memories of sugar cookies
and
sandy beaches, memories of how
we sided with them in their wars
with parents, sided with them
even as they slid out of our laps
into the arms of others.
Sometimes they come back
and hold onto our hands
as if they were the thin strings
of helium balloons
about to drift off.
This is from an 8-page letter Mom wrote in about 1973. We were living poor in San Diego, and they came down from Washington for a visit. She writes about how nicely I had fixed up our dumpy apartment.
From the time I left home as a teenager until well into my 50's, I would get at least one letter a week from Mom. She did not hold back on personal advice or opinions.
Sorry to admit, I'd sometimes dread those multi-pagers written on plain notebook paper in her distinctive long hand. Now I'm glad I saved a few. She disliked and never really trusted email.
She was a fast and prolific paper correspondent, writing not just to her kids, but to dozens of other family members and acquaintances across the country. She was known for her fat envelopes filled with pressed flowers, odd clippings and blurry snapshots with "discard" written on the back, which made us laugh. I had no problem deciphering Mom's beautiful but unusual handwriting, having read it my entire life.
Well, they don't teach cursive anymore, and I guess if you can't write it you can't read it! Some of us remember penmanship class (more popular with girls than boys) and the perfect cursive alphabet always posted above the blackboard in grade school.
A friend mentioned that the National Archives is looking for online volunteers who can help transcribe thousands of historical documents written in cursive. By transcribing these digital pages, it makes it easier for young scholars, genealogists and history buffs to access the information.
I've had lots of practice with cursive, and might look into volunteering. It might be interesting (or dry as dust) depending on the document.
Farewell to January. Soon we find out what the groundhog has in store.
Have a good weekend.
Anyway, it was undamaged so I planted it in a tiny flower pot and brought it inside a few days ago. Nothing smells like a hyacinth in January-- described as "slightly spicy with a hint of jasmine and rose."
Speaking of jasmine, I did a heavy prune (actually, a butchering) on our old one that flops up over the deck railing. It looks like it was chopped by Attila the Hun! Hopefully, I didn't finish it off.
Like many flowering vines, the hardy jasmine is so exquisite when it blooms, but kind of an invasive pain the rest of the year.
The big home project this spring is replacing the 45-year old deck. Hence the jasmine prune. How many times have I painted those splintering boards on hands and knees? The new deck surface will be composite, yea, which should outlast us. We have a contractor lined up and they start sometime in March. That's exciting.
This morning we woke up to grey and cold instead of sunny and cold. Bean soup for dinner. These times they are a'changin'.
Today is the most important event in the year for billions of people around the world. Lunar New Year represents a fresh start. Goodbye Dragon, hello Snake.
Common rituals include marathon meals with lucky foods such as dumplings, fish and noodles.
Many years ago, we were invited to family feast at the home of one of Amanda's friends. What an unforgettable experience, not just the sheer volume of food, but the ritual importance of each dish explained by the host.
Well, coconut shrimp and egg fried rice in this house last night, which hopefully brings some good luck.
Fried rice is fun to make, especially because John dices the vegetables with machine precision and everything is prepped. I just have to throw it together. In this case, with a bit of "lucky" leftover ham.
What a strange month in so many ways. My blog followers have surely noticed my obsession with light. How I've enjoyed our precious peek view of the Olympic Mountains, with spectacular winter sunsets night after night.
Friday will finally bring back the clouds and rain (and a possibility of snow) but this has been the driest January in Seattle since 1985.
By the end of his life, Albert Einstein was convinced that linear
time didn't exist. When his friend Michele Besso died in 1955, right before his own death, Einstein wrote the bereaved
family:
This is not important. For us who are
convinced physicists, the distinction between past, present and future
is only an illusion, however persistent.
This is called the "block universe" theory, meaning
that space and time are four-dimensional, rather than unfolding in a
linear way, as we like to think of our lives gently passing by in minutes, hours and days. This idea that time is an illusion didn't start with Einstein, although he had the science.
In Parmenides (one of the
mind-twisting Dialogs of Plato) they make the argument that there is no
such thing as change, because the entire universe is the set of all
movements at once. Everything that ever happened, or ever will happen,
is happening simultaneously, right now. Smart Greeks.
The Four Quartets, by T.S Eliot, is a complex poem that tackles the great mysteries of time, death and faith. It's one of my favorite poems and considered the culminating achievement of T.S. Eliot's career.
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
From Burnt Norton, Four Quartets
But now-- that poem is stuck in this English major's brain.
The West Seattle Ukulele Players have started meeting at a local tavern/restaurant called The Bridge. The enclosed patio is much warmer than the CP Coffehouse patio, which is open to the elements. Hopefully we won't wear out our welcome before spring.
The bartenders close the door to the inside restaurant so not to annoy the few afternoon drinkers and diners, but the sound of 30 or 40 ukulele players belting out "Jambalaya" does carry.
All the music we play has been airdropped to our iPads over the past two years. What a mess. Even a compulsive librarian has trouble keeping hundreds of singles, various books, song decks, holiday playlists and such organized on the device.
And new stuff gets airdropped every week, so the situation keeps getting worse. There is much head scratching and tapping screens, as well as bad words spoken to devices while trying to find buried songs. It would be almost impossible for a new person to jump in and figure all this out.
I'm not crazy about playing some of the great rock classics our leader is partial to. For example, the ukulele can't do much for "House of the Rising Sun," or "Desperado." The best part is just being part of this fun group. Ukulele players on the whole are cheerful, friendly and like minded-- a comforting thing in dark and confusing times.
Have a nice weekend.
Blueberry pie for dessert last night, a sweet treat at the end of another long winter day. We finally finished watching "100 Years of Solitude" on Netflix. It was beautifully filmed in Columbia, but heavy going with all the weirdness and violence.
Today is National Pie Day, created in 1986 by the American Pie Council to commemorate Crisco’s 75th anniversary of “serving foods to families everywhere.”
A big can of Crisco was ubiquitous in every kitchen and used for almost all frying and baking. It was considered healthy and much cheaper than butter, even margarine, which in our house was doled out for table use only. Crisco is on the trans fat blacklist now, and like lard, you would be hard-pressed to find it in a Seattle grocery store.
We had pie at least once a week growing up, from molasses shoo fly to egg custard. All cheap. Mom could whip up a pie for a few pennies if she scored free fruit. In retrospect, we got small potions of meat and vegetables, so the hungry family often filled up with bread and dessert.
John, on the other hand, reaches for the impulsive good stuff when he occasionally goes to the store to buy wine. I never know what he's going to find, and more than once I've shouted, "Have you gone crazy?" But I'm happy to cook up what he brings home.
Bonne Maman has a hold on the preserves industry, and now the brand has expanded into pie filling, which is essentially preserves, imported from France. So far we've had the apple and blueberry. One jar makes a small but intensely jammy pie and not overly sweet, like typical canned filling which is mostly corn syrup. Delicious and relatively quilt free.
The first primroses outside the grocery store are always a cheerful sight in January. The potted bulbs will soon follow, then the parade of little plant temptations starts. Down the primrose path we go. And why not?
They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.
Ernest Dowson
I've finished the first two lessons of my online "Absolute Beginner's" drawing class and passed the quizzes. So far, so good.
The instructor is a video game designer, what we once called a cartoonist. But of course he can draw just about anything, and now we're watching his demonstration videos, which makes the class more interesting.
Students are encouraged to post questions and drawings on the class discussion board. And they do. There are definitely some non-beginners showing off their expert drawings while others are struggling with cubes and stick figures. Just like the in-person drawing class I took years ago. We all crave individual attention.
I'm not exactly an "absolute" beginner either. I like drawing flowers especially, but want to get better at landscapes and animals. I tend to dive right into the details, instead of starting with a rough layout. If the proportions of the drawing start out wrong it's just an uphill battle. So I'm picking up some good tips, if nothing else.
We stayed home yesterday and made pasta sauce and ignored our screens as much as possible. I'm working my way through "Anna Karenina" on audio book, all 35 hours of it. Nothing like a Russian novel to escape reality, not to mention, a reminder that things never change. In the evening, John listened to the championship game on the radio. Go Buckeyes. And that was our day.
Well, back out into the real world this morning, which means scraping the windshield. Still cold!
We went to the Fir Island Farm Reserve Wildlife area near the scenic town of La Conner, a popular viewing area for the migrating Snow Geese and Trumpeter Swans that winter on the fallow farmlands and rich estuaries.
In the past we've seen massive flocks here, but yesterday only a glimpse of a few honking geese flying high above. The smart ones.
It was hunting season, with the unpleasant sound of gunfire all around. That was part of the problem, but we also heard that the wintering flocks were sparse this year. No one knew the reason why.
Still, it was a nice outing. We had lunch at a restaurant on the Swinomish Channel watching the boats go by. We browsed the shops. I bought a cutting board shaped like a ukulele. It was that kind of day.
Whisk in whole milk and about 4 teaspoons sugar...
Meanwhile, Amanda, Tom and the girls are vacationing at Big White Ski Resort in British Columbia. That's Maya on skis. Those fantastical snow hoodoos are called "ghost trees."
January 17th is Ditch New Years Resolution Day. Those old-fashioned resolutions like "repelling
impurity" and "exercising economy in expenditure" sound nicer than "drink less" and "get
out of debt."
Thirty-eight percent of Americans don't make resolutions at all. John is one of them. Of
those of us who persist, year after year, only eight percent manage to keep them. "Lose
weight" is the resolution most destined to fail.
I started my online drawing class this week. The digital classroom takes a bit of getting used to. The first lesson just covered artist's tools and was like reading a book, followed by a quiz.
Hopefully, he will do some video demonstrations when we get into actual drawing technique. I'm not sure how else you would teach it? This makes me appreciate Amanda's effort and discipline, completing an advanced degree remotely like this.
The weekend rolls around again. Sunday looks to be sunny and cold, so we might make our trip up to the Skagit Valley to see the wintering snow geese.
Remember when watermelons all had black seeds? The lady on that cover looks like our Grammy Bleam.
I told John the other day that I clearly remember a few relatives who were born in the 1800's. The century before the last. The Victorian age. Now that's something to wrap your heard around.
Anyway, those January seed catalogs were such good entertainment on a winter day. I miss them. Burgess had an especially lurid one. Most things wouldn't grow in our climate, but there are still a few plants in this yard that came from Burgess.
You would browse for hours circling pictures, carefully fill out that tiny paper order form, then mail it off with a stamp. And then wait.
How fast things move now and how high our expectations. Thanks to Amazon, with a few clicks, I can get just about anything thrown on the porch this very afternoon.
"According to research and expert opinions, yes, the internet has likely made people more impatient, as it fosters a culture of instant gratification by providing immediate access to information and services, leading to a decreased tolerance for waiting or delays; many users expect things to load quickly and become frustrated when they encounter even slight delays."
Incidentally, the above is an "AI research" summary from Google. Meaning, a human did not write that paragraph.
Chinese New Year is January 29th, and Costco had these impressive lucky bamboo plants, along with other festive goods for the holiday.
According to the tag, this was grown in Canada at Morgan Creek Tropicals. That company made a sweet little deal with Costco, because there were pallets of plants for sale.
I usually succumb to at least one impulsive purchase per trip, considering it my reward for the effort it takes to shop there and "save" money. Ha ha.
Bamboo plants bring good luck and cleansing energy into your home, and the number of stalks corresponds to what energy you want to attract. These had six tied stalks, which attracts wealth. Perfect choice for Costco shoppers. Anyway, something fresh to look at on my desk as we trudge on through the month. We are stuck a weather pattern of gloomy fog and low clouds, but no precipitation. Strange, for January in Seattle, which is usually one of the wettest months.
Oh my. From up here in the damp and cold Northwest, the devastation in Los Angeles is heart breaking to watch. We have not seen anything this horrific in our entire lives, or even imagined it, for that matter.
Fire is the great leveler, affecting every socioeconomic group in that diverse city, not just "west coast liberal elites." Many dreams, large and small, have gone up in smoke. Predictably, the disaster has now become politicized, adding insult to injury. I guess finger pointing is the new normal when disasters happen.
