here goes

Pomegranate wine, pleasure and politics

Yesterday, had the distinctive pleasure of having some pomegranate wine.  (I can't believe I spelled pomegranate correctly on the first try! My spelling is almost never right.)  The wine was concocted in 1998 and had been "aging" peacefully in a hard-to-reach shelf over my refrigerator ever since. When the friend who brewed it and gave it to us came over, he noticed almost right away that I had it sitting out on a counter.

He told us all the bottles he had attempted to age had gone bad, so he did not hold high hopes for our lone bottle.  However, -- amazingly -- it was still good.  By "good," I mean it was not soured or spoiled.  Pomegranate wine does not have enough sugar to keep the yeast happy, so it is by nature very dry and sour.

It is not good to drink on its own, so we decided to use it in margaritas. The drinks I mixed and we enjoyed were some of the best and most unique drinks we've ever had.

I'm expecting my political campaign to be like the pomegranate wine, that is, difficult to take on its own, but quite a pleasure when mixed with other things.

To keep my sanity, I'm starting to plan fun times with friends who have absolutely nothing to do with my town or my campaign.  Sunday, I'm talking with an old college friend and taking my chiropractor to visit a coastal town she's never seen. Thursday, I'm going to see a play with another friend, a funny and controversial one.

Day by day, I'll get by, I think.

To be or not to be

I've been soaking up as much German as I can before I head out to Europe. My hopes for stunning fluency have been dashed by a couple of things. First, I seem to have a mental block against learning German words that start with "be-" like "bestehen" which means "to be." For some reason, those "be-" words find no foothold in my brain. Fortunately, words that begin with F or G stick just fine.

The other reason for concern is that I felt an intense lack of confidence in my diction when my German-speaking cousin called me early on Saturday morning. I'm not at my peak verbally before noon anyway, but I was still dithering too long in convesation about which verb was the right one.

German uses a lot of base verbs, like "nehmen" or "stehen" and adds a prefixes to change the meaning in subtle and sometimes drastic ways. "Stehen" normally means stand, so to say "get up out of bed" is something like "aufstehen." After hesitation and many "um"s and "ah"s, I did manage to cough up the right verb to tell my cousin I had not actually gotten out of bed when she called, but that I was already awake. A great little book called Using German is helping me sort everything out.

In the meantime, I've been shopping and taking care of business. I'm always nervous about flying anyway, so I'm lingering over the pleasures of the people and scenes here in Silicon Valley in case I don't return for a while. For instance, I took my personal shopping assistant at Nordstroms out to lunch after I bought a couple things for our trip. This time, I insisted on buying, though. Also on Friday, I picked up our tax returns from our accountant, who gave me a big old hug, too.

It's a nice life I have for myself because my accountant and sales clerks give me hugs for stopping by. I'll hate to disrupt it for a week of travel-related stress.

Happy Birthday, D!

Let me be the first to wish you a very happy multiple of 5 birthday (which is only a few multiples shy of being 20 x 5). Wow! Hope I get there someday and still have the vim and vigor that you have for your place and time in life! You're an inspiration to us whippersnappers I hope you know!

I'll call you later today to talk a while and to check that you got both envelopes we sent. Also, I'll fish for compliments about how this post gives readers a general sense of your overall accomplishment for living so long and so well without revealing the specifics of this particular milestone.

Regional differences in speech - Intresting

I am recovering from a Midwest twang and my husband has his Texas drawl under deep cover. Even so, I was delighted to find this very interesting (that's "int e resting") pointer on a blog I read periodically, Syntax of Things

This link has a pointer to a quiz prepared by Harvard University to measure regional dialect differences and a state-by-state breakdown of results.

I remember when my hubby had to explain to me at great length why he thought that "pen" and "pin" are pronounced differently. After much coaching on his part, I altered my pronunciation behavior to accomodate his views and my expanding understanding of enunciation. (Out of politeness I won't describe in this public forum what word I told him to pronounce differently than he had learned.)

Even though it's not included in the Harvard study, I've noticed since that "interesting" has four syllables for some people and only three for others. Personally, I favor four, but now there is accounting for regional variations.

Bidding good friends adieu

Tonight I am awash with bittersweet feelings. I just sent out an evite for a going-away party. While I am glad to plan the party (and even to pay for large portions of the food and entertainment), especially in light of great things these friends have done for me over the years, it is hard to see friends leave. We start counting up all the missed opportunities when we talked about getting together, but did not. Such partings are tinged with regret.

Also, I've planned and produced enough events to know that, unless I do a lot of recruiting of help on the day of the party, I'll spend so much time running it that I don't have time to talk with the friends who are leaving. That would add to the feeling of regret.

It is hard to be happy when planning such a party, so I decided to add a novel tidbit to the invitation. I requested that everyone prepare to give the pair a toast to send them off. People in my acquaintance would do well to tell others what they think of them and how they'll miss them. Everyone should practice giving toasts now and then. I was with them on the night many years ago when they first became a couple, so I should be able to come up with something moving.

I suppose the party would be a success if the people there tear up and cry a little. Really it is odd, calling this thing a "party." It's not festive.

Promises, promises

So, during the past month, I promised about 20 people I would send them photos of various things and people. Trouble is, I've gone all digital (until my new Lomo arrives) and my photo processing capacities are nil at the moment. I just installed drivers for my digital camera this evening. I was all ready to install my Adobe photo management software when I realized the the CD I put in my drive was for Macitosh. That was 4 hours ago and I have yet to find the Windows version of the CD.

That means a night of sleepless mental wandering through all the boxes I have at home and that I've thrown away and, after a few days, a trip to the local technology megastore to buy another copy of the lost software.

In the meantime, those photos are burning holes in my flash cards. Now, let's see.... Where did I put those?

Just kidding... I know where they are.

I think....

It's been decades

It's been decades since I've done anything colorful with eggs, So I had fun doing this. Happy Easter!

Blogging thoughts after 41 days

After 41 days of blogging, it's about time I made more improvements to the look of my blog's format. This is a good time to give a shout out to one of my regular readers, Calissa. Overnight, she transformed her site, So Shmoopy, into a slick-looking blog and added some really interesting features I would really like to try out some day soon.

For instance, she included a java script on her site that tracks referers to her blog. It is a rather unusual feature to let a blog's readers know which sites refered to the site with in the last 24 hours. One of these days, I might add it to my site.

My next priority is to get a banner. Again, Calissa helped out by letting me know about Banner Maker Pro. I have a rather unprocessed image already sort of prepped. Just this week, I found out I have Photoshop installed on my computer at work (doh! -- how could I have missed that!?). All this time, I could have been fiddling around with photos with a professional-quality package (instead of Paint, Photoshop Album or whatever).

Calissa doesn't update her blog very often -- could have something to do with having three small children. But, she did upload little avatars of her family from a Doll Maker website. (Sorry, no men's art available and also no older women). Mine looks like this .

The thing about blogging is that it is easy to get in a rut, to sit down one day and feel that it is all a person can do to write something clever or heartfelt or intelligible (forget proper spelling, even). That has surely been my experience, so improving my site's appearance and usablility has not always been a priority. As always, it is educational to get out and see what ideas others have. So, thanks Calissa, for the ideas.

So, that said, the actual improvements will wait till another day.

I did sign up for Bloglines, a free, web-based blog and news aggregator that makes tracking blogs I'm interested in a lot easier.

Free Passion

Even though Jeff of Syntax of Things, wrote by far the best account I have read anywhere about what it is like to watch The Passion of the Christ, I will still, however humbly, recount my experiences. Unlike Jeff, I cannot claim I was changed the day I saw the movie and I won't write with as much sensual detail as he, but here goes anyway.

I saw the movie for free with a church group who bought out the theater for a matinee showing. When I responded to my acquaintance's offer of a free ticket, I knew I would be going with a church group even though his message had no mention of it. I knew he was involved in his church and that church groups were buying out theater showings to evangelize people. What better way to see the movie, I thought, than with true belivers?

As the day to watch the movie grew closer, my dread grew stronger. I had very little desire to watch a man get pummelled to death for two hours. What made matters worse were that Saturday was such a lovely day. I met my benefactor at a farmer's market (looked better than the movie -- why don't we stay here?). We drove separately to the theater, but parked next to each other. As we walked beneath the towering eucalyptus trees in the parking lot, the dappled sunlight shifting on the pavement, we each confessed our reluctance to see this movie. He because he doesn't watch many movies and he expected to be overwhelmed. I because the topic is 1) old hat and 2) a bit on the dark side of the treatment. I confessed that it helped that I had seen ahead of time how the special effects had been done, that I expected to be able to distance myself intellectually from what I saw.

When we got to the entrance, my acquaintance gave his free tickets to his church people who stood out front trying to give tickets away. He had four extras because I was the only person to accept his offer. Even though they bought out the theater, they didnt' have enough takers. We sat in the sun by a fountain to talk. Fortunately, my companion did not try to evangelize me. Rather, he asked me who I thought would win the election. He was depressed when I told him Bush would win because of the gay marriage issue.

As for the movie itself, there was only one scene I found difficult to watch. The scourging scene went on and on. Jesus' memories had a rather hallucenitory quality that added a certain dimension to the film. The biggest surprise for me was my revelation about Pilate. If he had only just handed him over to the Jews in the first place, Jesus would have died hours before he did. I'd never quite caught that part of it before.

After the movie, four of us stayed to watch the credits. We stayed because we were in the front and could not see people clearing the theater as quickly as they could afterwards. The first words spoken after the movie were mine:

"Muppeteer? What was that for? The baby?"

After a few dozen more credits, the stranger next to me said, "I think it was for the demon in the garden with Judas."

My companion was too stunned by the sights and sounds to talk much. He leaned on me psychically as we walked back into the fading sunshine. I have built up a tolerance for movies by watching a lot of them. He offered to "answer any questions I might have." That's code for being interested in Jesus.

I confessed I had attended a fundamentalist Christian college, so I actually knew a lot about the topic already. He wound up asking me a few questions.

I thanked him for treating, and I was glad to have seen it, but I won't be buying the DVD.

Prod a professional (writer, that is)

Paul Davidson, -- writer, Hollywood producer, comedian -- has a special Friday feature at his blog. He takes reader requests. No topic too large, strange, or small.

Why participate? Well, if Paul selects your topic, he will provide a link to your site on his apparently high-traffic blog. Free advertising. Involvement. Visibility. That sort of thing.

Why do I submit entries? Mostly, it is to express those questions that niggle my mind when I'm alone. I'd like to share the joy and fun.

Since this is only his second week of writing this column, it's too soon to make observations about what topics Paul writes about, much less to give advice about how get selected. The deadline for entry is not too clear, but I suspect it is sometime before 6 a.m. on Friday. Paul's guidelines for submission are rather vague and informal, which adds to their charm.

Paul is interested in consumer issues and, so far 100% of his Friday columns have been about low-cost consumer products for personal grooming. However, I think some experimentation is in order, topic submission-wise.