Lights out

It was rather shocking how many lights I turned out Saturday evening in preparation for Earth Hour. Exhausted after a day spent at the Eastside Upside-Down Sale, REI, and the Ballard Market, followed by a couple of hours in the kitchen making a giant batch of vegetable beef soup, I decided to spend Earth Hour in a hot bath with candles and a good book.

Two candles give plenty of light for reading, I discovered (wonder how many watts that is?). But the big surprise was that the science fiction novel I'd grabbed, Simon Clark's The Night of the Triffids, opens with the protagonist in darkness. He wakes up to discover that the sun has failed to rise—but because he's in a village where many of the residents were blinded decades earlier, they are going about their business unaware that it's still dark. Then the blind neighbors fall silent, and things get even stranger...

A good book.

Cough suppressant

The cold I got last weekend was mild, but every afternoon a dry little cough starts up and just won't stop! After a sleepless night of coughing, I saw my doctor, who gave me a codeine cough syrup. There's not really that much codeine in the cough syrup, and it's been only slightly effective.

It occurred to me that there must be a folk-remedy cough suppressant. To my utter shock, I discovered that there's plenty of research to show that theobromine, an ingredient in dark chocolate, is more effective than codeine cough syrup in suppressing the cough reflex.

Needless to say, I wasted no time checking this out. The recommended dosage is 50 g (2 ounces). So I melted two squares of unsweetened dark baking chocolate, added a little Grade B maple syrup (long story), and am eating it. Full report tomorrow morning.

John Edwards to speak here in September

A client of mine has signed up Sen. John Edwards to speak at a non-profit's fundraising luncheon here in Seattle September 25. It think it could be fascinating to hear Edwards talk on what should be, at that point, a very hot presidential race.

If you'd like to attend (suggested donation to the non-profit public housing group holding the lunching is $150), please let me know. I'm not sure they've announced it to the public yet, so I'm being a bit obscure here. I'll make a second announcement when it officially goes public.

OK, I get the hint

I've been trying to tell myself all day that I'm allergic to something that's blooming, but it's becoming evident that I'm coming down with another cold. Perhaps this is a not very funny way of reminding myself that I owe a client an article on what to do about working out while you're sick.

Zorg has gone off to the Ballard Market to fetch lemon sorbet, chicken noodle soup, and saltines. I plan to stay in bed tomorrow; at least I won't be missing any good gardening weather.

Journaling

Blogging began as journaling, and now that I write for quite a few blogs, this is the one that's really my "home" blog in that traditional journaling sense. Sometimes I'll take a particular incident in my day, or week, and write about that in such as way as to inform or entertain, which is very much new-style blogging. But sometimes I just write about what's been going on in my life. Which is what I'm going to do right now.

At the moment I'm sitting at my desk listening to my email go "ping" every five minutes. You might think this is annoying, but I'll explain why it's pure heaven.

Mac OS X Mail lets you set up sub-mailboxes and then create rules that filter incoming messages to those sub-mailboxes. You can also create rules that can trigger optional sounds and other notifications when mail is routed to any of those sub-mailboxes.

I've set it up so that I hear a "ping" every time an automated ecommerce system registers an order for the ebook I edited that was released this morning. My payment for the editorial work is in royalties, so, along with the author, I'm enjoying listening to the digital cash register.

This is nice because, after working like a madwoman last week, I didn't bill many hours to projects this week. Instead, I dealt with a possible problem with my mom's car (it turned out to be a false alarm), caught up on the belly dance lessons I'd missed, live-blogged (well, Twittered) the Starbucks annual meeting, started my volunteer work at Folklife, coordinated the monthly weblogger meetup downtown, went to the chiropractor (who pronounced my neck pretty much cured); got the electricians to finally fix the sensor on the front porch light; hung out with friends at Jai Thai; went dancing at the Little Red Hen; saw a rare book collection; and got a great massage.

While picking up my mom's car, I ran into a friend from college I hadn't talked with in, oh, 33 years (though I've seen her in Seattle-area theater productions). We had a long chat and I'm going to take one of the fitness classes she teaches in Madrona. I was at the Little Red Hen to hear my friend Geoff play bass with the Bouchards; it turned out to be an extremely friendly place for dancing, and I ran into a fellow I used to dance with 15 years ago at the Tractor Tavern. Dancing is certainly much nicer now that the clubs aren't filled with smoke, and I'm hoping to get back to the Hen soon.

I also found out about a third-Friday SF Trivia night at the Wayward Cafe in Greenwood, sponsored by the Browncoats Meetup. Didn't get there this evening, but Zorg says maybe next month.

SALE! (Herban Pottery is closing)

In the mid 1990s, when I had a bungalow in Wallingford, a small garden pottery story opened nearby on 45th St. Run by a young couple, Herban Pottery had simply the most gorgeous, creative, inspiring selection of terracotta and glazed garden pots, everything from the rustic to the sleek.

I spent huge amounts of money there. And I still have many of those beautiful, durable pots.

Of course, the business grew like mad, moving to SoDo and expanding into a couple of warehouse-sized spaces at 3200 First Ave. South.

We just put in a tiny patio addition to our front brick walkway, and I'm looking for a pair of antique-style wrought iron or cast aluminum chairs with a very small matching table. As Herban Pottery wasn't at the Garden Show, I decided to call them to see if they had the furniture. That's when I discovered they're closing soon, and are selling their current stock, much of it at 25 - 80% off, through the end of March.

See you at the sale?

Play "Mousie" for me

I thought letting the two tabby cats in and out of the house every 15 minutes this week was really annoying—until it started raining. Then the big tabby curled up on the bed and went to sleep. The little tabby started fetching her toy mice and bringing them  to me—in the shower, in the kitchen, at my desk. The arrival of a mouse is followed by a 5-minute grace period during which I can either get up and play "Mousie" with her or have my office bulletin board destroyed.

"Mousie" started a few years ago as a game in which I would throw mice down the basement stairs and she would chase them. It evolved into a game in which I would follow the mice down, she would run up, and I'd toss them up to top of the stairs, where the cat would leap in the air and field them.

At that point, the big tabby got involved. She'd thump halfway down the stairs, sit in the middle, and play infield. She is so good at it that sometimes the little tabby gets disgusted and leaves.

But usually I pitch to both the infield and the outfield. Eventually, all the mice are upstairs again and then I toss them to the little tabby as we gradually make our way down the hall and into the livingroom. Eventually one of us gets bored.

But on a rainy day, the little tabby, who has the metabolism of a hummingbird, is ready to play again 30 minutes later. We have played "Mousie" about six times today. There are white and gray mice scattered all over the house. If I see another mouse, I'm going to scream.

More alarms at night

This week is made up of a series of informal meetings, in person and on the phone. Thus far, at least one of the meeting participants has been late and flustered. Half of the time it's the other person; the other half of the time, it's me. Which makes me want to be very understanding and humble in those instances in which I'm the organized, on-time party.

This reminds me of the advice Ernest Thompson, the marvelous dean of Erza Stiles College, gave us in his retirement speech: "Be kind to one another."

Many of the emails I received today were particularly intense. People were reporting deaths in their families, sending me compliments, asking me out to lunch, and offering me assistance. So I spent more time than usual trying to answer attentively and appropriately. I have some amazing friends!

There was an email from my mom tonight that made my hair stand on end. In it she casually mentioned that she'd gotten an odd phone call from her bank this evening and had given out some of her account information before she began to suspect it wasn't her bank, and hung up on them. She said she was going to call the bank when they opened in the morning to see if there was a problem. Eeek! 

I called her in Florida (fortunately she stays up late) and insisted she call the bank's 24-hour 1-800 number immediately to freeze the account. She just called back to say she'd called them, they didn't have any evidence of usual activity, and they had frozen the account. Whew. Now I think I'll just stop reading email for the evening...

It's late

I throw the laundry into the dryer in the basement, then head up the stairs to gargle with hot salted water.

The nightly whisker count: Kaylee is bedded down in the bathtub (the cast iron is still warm from my bath). Zoe is in the basement, looking for Kit Kat (who, sadly, will never appear again). Sheba is in the bathroom, asleep on a towel next to the sink that is designated a cat bed. (Towels for humans hang on the racks.)

A teaspoon of Grade B maple syrup and I'm off to bed. This cold is making me crazy.

Fortune favors the prepared mind

The quote in the title of this blog is from Louis Pasteur. I saw it this morning and through how appropriate it was to last night's Democratic primaries.

What I'm about to write is simply a personal record of what I think I saw on television last night; it's not an invitation to a political flame war.

I watched both Clinton's speech in Ohio last night and Obama's speech in Texas. Here's what I saw:

Clinton reminded me of dozens of successful black women I've met, people who have succeed by working three times as hard anyone else while being ignore, discounted and patronized. People who raised kids, scrubbed floors, got dumped by their men, and still managed to stay in school and get their MBAs and start their own businesses. Clinton shone with determination and pride. Like the women I've known, she was plain spoken, short on vision, and a bit scary. (Yes, I said black women.)

Obama reminded me of some of the brilliant young men I worked with in Silicon Valley. He was eloquent, he was sharp, he was poised. But in his eyes I thought I saw glints of puzzlement and annoyance -- just a slight narrowing of the eyes and tightening of the mouth that said, "Hey. I was great. I was more than great. I kept to the high road. I was original. I was passionate. WFT—I should have won!"

In other words, an attitude of entitlement.

Obama's speech, while a little subdued, was inspiring and visionary. He may yet win. But, as Hillary has known all along, it won't be easy...

In Naples, Florida

I have never been to Naples, Italy, but for the past 20 or so years I've made an annual visit to Naples, Florida, where my mother spends the winters.

It might as well be a foreign country.

Downtown Naples is one of the wealthiest communities in the nation, a place where brand-new beachfront mansions worth millions are routinely torn down to be replaced by even newer ones worth slightly more.

Outside of the city core are miles and miles of walled communities with condos, artificial lakes, and golf courses, interspersed with miles and miles of construction sites for even more such walled communities -- even though the low-end condo market is completely gutted and older condos languish on the market for years. Churches are huge, with buildings and parking lots that look more like community colleges. Shopping centers, eerily identical, abound. Cars are predominantly white, American and very, very large.

I worry that the flat landscape will encourage alien space ships to land here and that, if they do, an analysis of the local culture will result in annihilation of our planet on the grounds of total vapidity.

Somethings never change in Ballard

OK, maybe I got a little carried away about Ballard turning into a post-Yuppie enclave ("Flee Ballard").

Because this afternoon I saw something on NW 80th St. that I'd have a hard time imagining in any other Seattle neighborhood.

Our first clue was the crows.

Three of them were pecking at six salmon scattered across a lawn. At first I thought the fishes might be some kind of yard art, but on closer inspection, it was clear they were real salmon, frozen, and still covered with ice crystals. As Rae and I drew closer, the crows retreated. Then the front door of the house opened and a woman emerged.

"There are frozen fishes on your lawn," I said.

"Oh yeah," she responded. "I put them there. The birds will eat them."

She walked to her car, got in, and drove off, leaving Rae and me to wonder.

"Do you suppose she bought the fish to feed the birds, or do you think she had them in her freezer and they were too old to use so she's giving them to the birds instead of just throwing them away?" Rae asked.

I had no idea. But I was relieved to find out this wasn't one of those strange phenomena you read about in which fishes rain from the sky. It was just...Ballard.

Kit Kat (1992? - 2008)

Kit Kat was our next door neighbors' cat but found it convenient to visit with us on a regular basis. Sometimes she just came in through the basement cat door for a bite to eat, or to watch TV with Zorg. If her family was traveling, she moved in for the duration, making her home in Smokey's old cat bed in the laundry room.

No one knew how old Kit Kat was. Her family acquired her 10 years ago in the Green Lake neighborhood. Kit Kat had belonged to their next door neighbor, a reclusive man, and she got in the habit of visiting back and forth between the two houses. One day Kit Kat insisted on moving in, and they discovered a few days later that her original owner had died.

Kit Kat's family moved in next door to us in Ballard five years ago. At first, Kit Kat and our aggressive deaf white cat Sheba had disagreements. But over the years, they learned to get along. Kit Kat liked to visit all over the neighborhood, greeting residents and guests with her squawking meow. If you picked her up and talked to her, she talked back, echoing your voice.

This summer Kit Kat developed health problems they thought were attributable to a thyroid condition. But after a few months, it seemed as though something else were going on, and eventually she was diagnosed with an untreatable cancer. Because I'm home during the day, and because her family had to travel out of state quite a bit, Kit Kat was spending more and more time at our house. We began sharing responsibility for her care, and taking her to the vet.

This past week it was clear she was failing rapidly. But even as late as last night, she insisted on keeping up her schedule of visits back and forth. She slowly dragged herself to their house when it was time for her owner to come home from work, and late last night, she yowled until her owner carried her to our basement door, where she crawled in through the cat door for the last time.

This morning we all took her to the vet.

New Ballard slogan

Not so long ago, our staid Scandinavian neighborhood inspired the ironic bumpersticker "Free Ballard."

But the invasion of condos, condo denizens, cocktail bars and cryptically named boutiques, coupled with the disappearance of most of the street parking, has inspired a slight modification of the slogan.

Spotted today on a Subaru outside Cash and Carry:

Good news, bad news, then vacation

Good news first: Aaron, our artist/contractor friend, has done a spectacular job on our little front patio. He removed the "bark your shins" wall of the raised bed, moved it back three feet, and poured a little concrete patio with enough room for two chairs and little table.

The dull red concrete of the new patio blends extraordinarily well with the existing weathered brick, and the new section of the concrete wall for the raised bed is colored with a bit of lamp black so it blends beautifully. Aaron put a compass rose pattern in the patio, using a contrasting mortar. (Now no one will get lost trekking through our front yard!) The cats added some nice paw prints, as well. It was delightful having Aaron around—he helped me with a few other remodel projects, as well.

Now, the bad news: The neighbors' elderly cat, which moved in with us when their little girl became severely allergic to it, is dying. We worked with the vet on Saturday to get Kit Kat a few more days, but things aren't looking good. Zorg spent much of the evening with the cat, the neighbor came over to visit, and now I'm about to take pillows and blankets down to the TV room where the cat is on a little heated cat bed, and keep her company. If she's still with us in the morning, the neighbor and I will take her to the vet, and most likely she will be put down. One of our cats, Sheba, is clearly unnerved by seeing the other cat in so much pain. She has been yowling piteously all day.

A week from today I'll be heading to Florida to visit my mom in Naples for a week. I think by that time I'll really need a vacation.

Food news from Belltown

A little after 4 p.m. today, I trudged into The Grindhouse at 318 Blanchard in Belltown and looked blearily at the pastry case.

I'd had five hours of sleep, an early-morning battle with Microsoft Word, a long morning at a seemingly endless exhibit of Roman antiquities from the Louvre, and followed it all up with two hours of interviews with previously homeless people for an article I'm writing about a new public housing development in Belltown.

"Try a Lamington," the barista suggested.

A what? OK.

A Lamington turned out to be one of the most delicious pastries I've ever tasted — as good as any of the afternoon treats I've had in Paris, Florence, or even Vienna.

The Lamington hails from Queensland, Australia (well, the local version is from the Australian Pie Company in Burien). Named after a Baron Lamington, the a past governor of Queensland, it's a cube of light-as-air moist yellow cake, dipped in the thinnest layer of chocolate, and coated in finely grated coconut.

Oh my god. You've got to try one.

(Here's a recipe for Lamingtons — but I wouldn't advise using pound cake. It's the light fluffiness that's so amazing.)

Our hearts "heart" cats

This evening we took over care of the neighbors' terminally ill elderly cat. She's been such a wonderful friendly kitty that we are happy to be her hospice. (The neighbors' daughter is very ill — with asthma, possibly exacerbated by the poor cat — and it's logistically very difficult for them to give the sick cat the attention she needs.)

So Zorg and I are getting back into the caring-for-a-cat-with-cancer mode again: pillows on the floor, heating pads, all types of tempting cat foods at all hours, and compounded medications so as not to torture the poor cat with pills.

But there is some good news. A research paper presented at the International Stroke Conference this week reveals that cat owners are far less likely to die of a heart attack or stroke than people who miss out on the cat-owning experience. (Surprisingly, the study found no similar beneficial effect to dog ownership.)

In defense of carbs

Ten years ago, fat was the bane of dieters. Today, it's carbs.

But there are carbs, and there are carbs.

One one hand, you have Minute Rice, Ritz crackers, instant oatmeal, and white bread. And on the other hand, you have brown rice, Rye Krisps, steel-cut oats, and breads like Ezekiel Bread and Dave's Killer Bread.

The difference is whole grains and fiber. The high-fiber carbs are very filling and nutritious. Eaten with a little cheese or peanut butter, they're a whole meal.

Somewhat to my amazement, I've come to love brown rice. I cook a big pot of it every Monday morning, and live off it for the rest of the week. (See the brown rice recipe, below.)

Brown rice heated up with a little cinnamon and brown sugar and chopped apples makes a quick breakfast. Leftover baked chicken or leftover vegetables (or curry) can be mixed with brown rice for lunch. And brown rice pudding with currents makes a very good dessert or evening snack.

My favorite brown rice dish is brown rice pancakes. I mix cooked brown rice with lots of browned onions, eggs, a little potato flour (or regular flour) and a pinch of baking soda. Then I drop the batter by 1/4 measures into a frying pan with oil to make something very similar to potato pancakes.

It turns out there are many types of brown rice. I've been using the plain, large-grain brown rice. Here's the basic recipe:

Either:
• 2-1/3 cups of rice to 4 cups of water
• or 3 -1/2 cups of rice to 6 cups of water

Rinse the uncooked rice three times and drain well. Put the water on to boil in a separate saucepan. While waiting for the water to come to a boil, put two tablespoons of oil in the bottom of a heavy, tight-lidded sauce pan, then sauté the well-drained rice in the oil while you wait for the water to boil. Do this over fairly high heat. It has to be stirred constantly, otherwise it will scorch. This process coats the rice with the oil and evaporates the water from rinsing. The rice will begin to smell very nutty after a minute or two.

When the water in the other pan has come to a vigorous boil, pour it over the rice in the sauce pan. It is very important at this point not to stir the rice anymore, not even once. Let it come back up to a vigorous boil, put the lid on, turn it down as low as you can and cook for 45 minutes. During this time, do not lift the lid or do anything else to it. When 45 minutes is up, turn off the heat and let the rice sit undisturbed for at least 15-20 minutes before serving.

(cross-posted on Food, Fitness, Fashion)

Where did the weekend go?

Yes, I know for some of you the weekend is still here (Presidents Day Monday). For me, Monday is a work day but with many of my clients and teammates taking the day off.

Three of my web content writing projects are winding up at the end of February, and I'll be starting a new project that is solely blogging. That's exciting because not only do I love blogging but the company has a full-time, professional editor to review the writers' work. I haven't had the luxury of working with one of those in eight years.

Those Dems know how to delegate — not

It's a hack, it's a party insider, it's Superdelegate!

Holy vote count, Batman — Zorg explains it all.