Where My Loyalties Lie

Any questions?

family

I don’t have children. (and I may have mentioned that a few times–:) )  And every now and then Joe will start fretting about who’s going to take care of me when I’m an old lady with crazy purple hair.

He doesn’t have to worry, though.  See, Clover has awesome kids, and we love them madly, and they love us and put up with us despite us being weirdos (according to A-banana).  When they get married and have kids, we’ll get to be honourary grandparents. And when I’m that doddering old lady with crazy purple hair who talks to herself out loud in the store and buys cat food for all the strays–well, A-banana and her brothers will make sure I don’t wander off somewhere and board a bus to Poughkeepsie.

And if I do end up in Poughkeepsie? They’ll come get me.

Thanks, Clover & Pat, for making such awesome kids and letting us share them.

another inspired recipe

sometimes you’ve just got to have soup. don’t care that it’s summer and fifty thousand degrees outside. you don’t feel like cooking and you’ve got all those black beans and some potatoes, and oh–just enough leftover seitan to make a nice chowery soup. so there you go.

Cook up some onions & garlic (as usual) in olive oil. Save half of them for the home fries you’re about to make, and put the other half into your crockpot.  Chop up some raw new potatoes for the soup, and threw them into the crockpot. Chop or slice your seitan until it’s the size you want it, and dump it in. Chop up the rest of the new potatoes, and throw them into the skillet with the onions & garlic. Sprinkle liberally with seasoned salt & fresh ground black pepper.  Pour almost the whole bottle of that gross gourmet tomatoeless-veggie juice that tasted like spinach. Pour in the 2 or 3 cups of black beans you cooked a week ago that have been in the freezer only you took them out that morning to thaw. Look in your freezer and see what else you have to add–try a bag of frozen corn with some black beans and other stuff.  If you’ve got some carrots, scrub & chop & throw some of them in but you don’t have to. Add a couple of veggie bouillon cubes, turn the crock pot onto the low setting, and go to bed.  Oh, but first you have to turn the home fries a time or two, when the bottoms get all nice and browned, and then onions turn into these sweetly hot blackened bits that melt in your mouth.  Put most of the home fries in a glass jar to take to work tomorrow with your lunch, and eat a few because you deserve it and they’re really good.

When you wake up in the morning turn off the crockpot. Let the mixture sit for a while. When you get home from work, take a spoonful and realize that it’s really good. Add a generous couple of pinches of cumin, even more generous pinches of chili powder, and a good fat pinch of roasted red pepper flakes. Mix it all up, taste it, decide that it is a superlative effort, and put it in the fridge to chill overnight. Don’t forgot to put enough into your plastic bowls so you can take it to lunch tomorrow for yourself and EllaDee.  And be glad Joe’s not home to tell you how incredible the soup is and how you absolutely must write down this recipe, because you’ll feel guilty because you never make a soup the same way twice. Every soup I make is incredible, but it’s always different.

Also, although this is not a recipe, unless you want one for split pea soup which I kind of don’t want right now especially after seeing this movie, but The Exorcist stands head and shoulders above the horror & thriller movies. It has a plot that is allowed to develop. Bad things happen to the characters. Scary things happen. It’s still the scariest movie I’e ever seen. Just don’t watch it at 7:30 when you need to be at work by 7:25 the next morning because you were 5 minutes late the morning before and forgot to stay 5 minutes late to make up your time. Because you kind of won’t want to go to sleep after seeing the movie. But then you’ll put on a spritz of your Urban Decay Hard Rock Candy perfume, and it smells good, and your dog will cuddle up and be cute, and you’ll probably be ready to go to bed. But you’re putting Prince Caspian on just in case you stay awake longer than you want to.

La vita è bella

Truly.

Love my job. Love my dogs. Love my husband. Love my family. Love my friends. Richly blessed.

Starting the countdown

And what better way to start than with a Mysterious Ticking Noise?

And you know, it is hella hot out there. You might get sunburned, or you might hurt yourself with a firecracker, or you might blow up your back yard when you light the grill after squirting on way way way way way too much lighter fluid. And then what? You might find this Wizard Swear comes in handy.

Just stay away from the Elder Swear, okay?

Just in case you’re wondering, Harry Potter is way cool. Don’t believe me? See for yourself!!

Riddle me this

What does one call a quesadilla if there’s no queso? I feel a little funny explaining to the nice server at the tex-mex restaurant down the block that I want the spinach-mushroom-onion quesadilla…with no cheese. No butter. No sour cream.  I will tell you, though, that tonight’s was just superlative. They even gave me an extra little scoop of guacamole to replace the scoop of sour cream I asked them not to give me.  I’m learning that I have to be very specific when I order. The last time I ate at this restaurant and ordered the same thing, I ended up with a cheeseless quesadilla that had still been grilled with butter or beef tallow or something. It was nasty. And there was a blob of sour cream on the plate, not to mention the huge mound of whipped cream atop the virgin daiquiri. I’m glad I decided to give it another try, because seriously, my dinner tonight was fantastic.

Last night I whipped up some really good black beans for today’s lunch.  As always, started with a little olive oil, some thinly sliced purple onion, and some slivered garlic. Then I tossed in about 2, 2 1/2 cups of cooked black beans (if you’re using canned, rinse & drain first) with a little seasoned salt, a pinch or two of crushed red pepper flakes, a larger pinch of cumin, a squirt or two of agave nectar, and a few tablespoons of salsa verde.  The combination of slightly sweet and slightly hot was very tasty, particularly with the coconut quinoa (1 cup quinoa and a can of coconut milk, cooked in the rice cooker). If you like your food hotter than I do, just add a hotter salsa–although I find salsa verde to be quite hot–and perhaps a little more of it. You don’t want it too soupy, though.

It would probably make a great wrap: smear some guacamole on a tortilla, layer some fresh washed baby spinach leaves and some very thinly sliced red onion. Mix together the quinoa (or rice) and beans, and mound half a cup or so, depending upon the size of the tortilla, and wrap it tightly. Serve it with some blue corn tortilla chips, a little more guacamole, and some salsa.

Today was a great day at work. Our team got mixed up a bit, and we got a fantastic new team lead. I have to say, the leadership makes all the difference. In two days I’ve gone from hating my job to loving it. I hope to continue working with this team lead, and getting to sit right next to one of my bestest friends makes the days very pleasant.

Yay!

Congratulations!!

True Random Number Generator Min: Max: Result: 18

 Renee G. is the lucky winner of Rawvolution.  Thanks to you all for playing, and I hope you visit often.  I’ll get another book up shortly, and we’ll do this all over again.

David Tennant-y Goodness (and a smidgen of Robert Pattinson)

Okay–my first acquaintance with David Tennant was in his incarnation as Barty Crouch, Jr., in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. He was gross, definitely, but I remember telling Izzybella that I thought the actor was actually quite good-looking. She said I was nuts.

And then I saw Doctor Who and thought he was one of the best-looking men I’ve ever seen.

Okay, so I like my men slightly geeky. Moving on: I did not have the good fortune to see him play Hamlet, but thanks to teh internets, I still got to see what he looks like as Hamlet.

This is the wallpaper on my laptop. Fortunately my husband is perfectly confident and doesn’t feel threatened by this. I hope that he does more movies, because 3 seasons of Doctor Who cannot satisfy my David Tennant cravings.

And since I’m watching Goblet of Fire, I have to show you that I like Cedric Diggory:

MUCH more than Edward Cullen:

who seems to be going through a phase where he doesn’t believe in combs.

One last taste of David Tennant:

What nature doesn’t do to us…

will be done by/to our fellow man.

What is truth?

 ”What is Truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.” (Francis Bacon)

Not even what is Truth, the abstract concept, but what is true?  Where is the truth behind all the politicians and their rhetoric? Where is the truth in the media? Where is the truth? What’s right? What’s honest? What’s right?

“Let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.” (Richard M. Nixon)

I think America’s doing a fine job of humiliating itself.

“I’m not going to be the first American president to lose a war.” (Richard M. Nixon)

World War I was called “The Great War” because it was such a horror that at the time it was inconceivable that there could be another such war. And then came World War II. And Korea. And Vietnam. And the Faulklands. And the Gulf War.  And the War on Terror, just to name a few. Why are we still at war?

“It’s reasonably clear that the official reasons for the war cannot be taken seriously. The Bush Administration is carrying out a serious assault against the general population. They have to prevent people from paying attention, and the only way anyone has ever figured out how to do that is to terrify them with tales of monsters who are about to destroy us.” (Noam Chomsky)

There’s no question that there are monsters out to destroy us.

But it seems that sometimes we are the monsters.

 

“War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support.” (Colin Powell)

I agree. War should be the last resort. I don’t think it is, though.

“When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.” (Plato)

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our English dead! In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility; But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then initiate the action of the tiger: Stiffen the sinews; summon up the blood.” (William Shakespeare)

How many lives does it take to close the wall up with our dead, or with the enemy’s dead?

“You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.” (Jeannette Rankin)

War always comes at an unbearably high cost.

“The opposite of war is not peace, It’s creation.”  (Jonathan Larson)

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. . . . The chain reaction of evil–hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars–must be broken, or we shall be plunged ino the dark abyss of annihilation.” (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Sometimes my sister and I are joking around, being juvenile, and we’ll start the touching game. You know the one I mean, where your parents holler from the front seat that from now on, no one is to touch anyone. And we’re quiet for a moment or two, then one of us will slowly reach out an index finger and touch the other. That leads to more touching until we’re punching each other. And one of us will usually say something like, “Dad! She hit me back first!”

“A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.” (WOPR, from the movie War Games after learning the futility of “playing” Global Thermonuclear War by playing a seemingly endless series of Tic-Tac-Toe with itself)

There are no winners. There are only losers: wives who have lost their husbands, sisters who have lost their brothers, brothers who have lost their sisters, parents who have lost their children, children who have lost their parents, nations with people who have lost their homes, their livelihoods, their families, their innocence.  For you believe your cause is just, and I know mine is. You know that God has ordered you to wipe us out, just as I know that you are the Godless enemy.

 

I’m not saying I’ve got all the answers.  I just have a lot of questions.