Eavesdropping, Again

I Should Have Been a Sleuth

 

 

You never know who will be sitting at the next table at the coffee shop! Today was especially productive because the man and woman at the next table are talking so loud that it doesn't even seem like eavesdropping.

They are planning some huge event, something they take SERIOUSLY. They've got different-colored Post-it notes with names written on them in black Sharpie marker, and they're moving them around in little piles all over the table, representing the people who will be sitting together at their event (WHAT is it??) The notes get shifted back and forth to group people in baffling ways, then shifted again, and then all over again. They're never satisfied with the groupings.

The blue Post-its belong to celebrities. Steve Martin and Brad Pitt and Katie Someone-or-other (I missed her last name.) There were more names that I didn't catch, also some celebrities that turned down their invitation. The man and woman call the blue Post-its the "Important Ones".

The pink Post-its are for "Presenters" - whatever that is!

The yellow Post-its have the names of "Unimportant People" written on them. Yep. They've even set a few yellows aside for "Uninvited Unimportant People", so that they'll know what to do with them when they show up to the big event.

Apparently, the "Important" ones will stay put at the tables and the "Unimportant Ones" and the "Presenters" will move from table to table at pre-determined intervals. This is getting odder and odder! Is this a Hollywood-style Pitch Session? Food does not seem to be involved with this particular event.

Are the man and woman event planners? Agents? Fund-raisers?

I've never heard/seen anything like it before. What's especially galling is that I (a decidedly "Unimportant" person!) am left with no answers whatsoever. Sometimes eavesdropping is so frustrating...

Five minutes later: The man just left a bunch of crap on their table, used cups and napkins and pastry crumbs. The woman left five minutes ago...

Seven minutes later: I just cleaned up their table. There were two crumpled-up pieces of paper. Of course I flattened them out and looked. One said: "Execs??" The other piece had a rough sketch of what looked like a floor plan, and the words "Flow Plan" at the top. I missed my calling! I should have been a sleuth.

Good News!

Good News for a Rainy Winter Day

Yeah!

I just found out that my erotic novel, "Inn on the Edge" has been selected as a finalist in the EPIC book awards...and I am so excited I can hardly stand it. I have checked the website several times in the past hours, and - YEP! - THERE IT IS! - Gail Bridges, finalist in the Erotica category.

A Link to the page: EPIC Finalists

The Novel

It will be on 50% sale during March through Amazon and other outlets

I didn't find the news by myself; it turns out the announcement email they'd sent me went to my email's "spam" account. Who knows when I would have found the notice? Or if? I was lucky - a writer friend saw my name on the EPIC list and sent me a congratulatory note. I read her note in disbelief, then I staggered around with my head in the clouds and my toes barely skimming the ground for an entire day.

Self-portrait of me, being all excited

Now, it seems that the next step is to wait until March to find out who the winners are. According to the EPIC finalist's page, it looks like I am up against three other finalists in the Erotica category.

Good luck to us all!

Krumkake and Memories

Krumkake

(Recipe Below)

I made Krumkake this morning. I love these delicious rolled-up Norwegian cookies that are as pretty to look at as they are to eat. Oh - the choices! Do I fill them with whipped cream goodness? Or do I leave them as-is (I choose to leave them alone.) Do I take a bite of the cookie in its rolled-up form? Or do I carefully break off pieces with my fingers or my teeth and delve toward the center slowly, a layer at a time, as if I were a cookie archaeologist?

Right now, as I'm sitting at my laptop at the kitchen table, my fingertips are still smarting from handling them. My back and feet ache from standing in one place for over an hour because I had to make a double batch even though I knew it would take forever to prepare the entire platter full of cookies! It was worth it.

 The Krumkake Iron

Let me tell you about the first time I ever saw Krumkake. It was all due to Ruth Hansel, a widowed neighbor and a member of the church I attended as a child. Ruth was very tall. She was thin. She spoke with a mild accent. She had a great, loud, huffing laugh that made me want to laugh too. I remember thinking Ruth was strong-looking, as in a squared jaw and large hands and a no-nonsense manner about her. To me, Ruth was a kind, generous, fascinating 'old lady' - looking back, I imagine she was some eighty years old.

My oh my, could Ruth make Krumkake! She invited me over to help her make them one December when I was nine years old. I showed up at her door with the apron my mother had stitched for me. "Come in, Honey!" Ruth called from the kitchen, "I can't leave the iron."

Her kitchen was small, with scant counter space. But every inch of that counter space was filled with teetering stacks of white rolled cookies, hundreds of them, thousands of them (at least to my eyes.) Plates and platters and cookie trays held rows upon rows of them.

"Krumkake!" Ruth hollered. (She always hollered.) "Come in! Wash your hands! Take over for me at this iron, would you? I'll show you how."

And she did. Ruth taught me how to put the perfect amount of batter on the iron, how to let them cook until the steam stopped seeping from the edges of the iron, how to lift the cookies with the edge of a pancake turner, how to roll them up - QUICK! QUICK! - on the handle of a wooden spoon.

Quick! Quick! Before they cool!

My cookies weren't as pretty as hers. How could they be? She was a master who made untold numbers of them every year of her long life (I imagine!) Gradually, my attempts became better-looking and Ruth allowed me to stack my cookies alongside her perfect ones.

Best of all, I presented a platter of Krumkake to my family at the end of our afternoon together.

I now have my own Krumkake tradition, thanks to Ruth Hansel. I bought my own Krumkake iron ten years ago. I found a recipe that seemed close to Ruth's. I practiced my rolling technique, and soon I was making stacks of the cookies.

The batch of Krumkaka I made today are destined for a cookie exchange my husband and I are going to tomorrow. It always pleases me to offer a type of cookie that one doesn't see very often - I admit, I enjoy the "ooh's and aah's" and the excited faces as people reach for a cookie. And I think of Ruth, who taught me to make them.

Krumkake

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup sugar

3 eggs

1 teaspoon fresh powdered cardamom

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup flour

6 Tablespoons water

Directions:

Cream together the butter and the sugar. Scrape the bowl. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well and scraping the bowl each time. Add the vanilla and the cardamom. Add the flour. Add water until batter is the consistency of a thick cream sauce.

Spoon approximately one Tablespoon onto ungreased preheated Krumkake iron. Cook about one minute until lightly golden brown. While warm, roll around a wooden spoon handle.

My Cat has Devil Eyes

In honor of Halloween: Smokey with the Devil Eyes!

Scary, aren't they?

I took this picture of him in July, when we were going through some boxes that needed sorting. Pretending to be a true cat, Smokey-the-devil-cat jumped into a just-emptied box. But I caught his true nature! (No photoshopping - the green flash of his eyes looked just like this when the flash went off. Weird!)

*** A Halloween Challenge ***

Out of nowhere, this Devil Cat jumps up in front of you, hissing and growling! You must fend him off - but the only thing you can use is whatever happens to be to your immediate left.

For me, it's a banana. Good luck to me!

What's to your left?

Aliens and Cinnamon Rolls

Aliens and Cinnamon Rolls: What do they have in common?

Yes. It tastes just as good as it looks.

 





It's been more than a month since I've posted here, which is hard to believe. Life has thrown hammers at my head, and wrenches, and an anvil also (might as well throw in the entire tool box!) - but now I'm tentatively putting hands to keyboard and getting back to writing and blog-posting. It feels so good to get the creative juices flowing again.

I've been working on "Drawn to Scale", a new, just-for-fun sci-fi short story. I'm already more than seven thousand words into it (that translates to about 24 pages). Maybe it will grow into a Novella? I don't know, and I don't really care. I'm enjoying the writing.

The main character in Drawn to Scale is an alien linguist who has come to Earth as a Happiness Corp Volunteer (think Peace Corp). She has just experienced an unexpected "togetherness moment" with her Earth man counterpart ... but she's horribly embarrassed and upset because no one bothered to tell her that on Earth it is appallingly rude to mash up cinnamon rolls between your hands and lick off the resulting goo.

As you can see, I'm having fun with this story.

I am currently at the Starbucks in the hospital lobby while my husband is at his Yoga class. I'm eating this surprisingly delicious cinnamon roll in honor of the pastry in my story. Research, you know... although I'm not eating it the same way my character would!

The drink is a Pumpkin Spice Latte.

Oh boy, I think I'm going into sugar euphoria!



 

Cool Vintage Album Covers - Downsizing, Part Four

They Sure Had Fun With These!

Springsteen...!

...And so did we. Yesterday, as part of our summer downsizing effort, we dug out Richard's collection of record albums. He has kept maybe a hundred of his favorite albums through the years, and through many moves. He is now ready to part with most of them. He and Micah and I spread out in the living room (again) to look through them and admire the covers. Micah couldn't bear to part with a good number, so they'll be living on in the family. Heirloom record albums!

They're heavier than they look.

A good number of these albums are from, shall we say, before my time. I know of most of these bands and albums, but I can't say I am very familiar with the music. Others, such as Pink Floyd, were still going strong when I was in high school. (I graduated in 1982) Still others, I recognize and like the songs, even if they were considered "old" by the time I was interested in listening to them.

I couldn't help myself. I took pictures of some of the best covers, they're so cool and weird and colorful. I thought I'd make a little gallery of them to share with you - so sit back, get comfortable, and take a walk through history with me.

 After much deliberation, I chose this one as my favorite.

Micah said it reminded him of "Where the Wild Things Are".

How cool is this?

Micah likes it too.

 This one has nifty little windows cut out for the faces. 

I wonder, how much extra did that cost them?

Woodstock! I didn't know there was an album.

It looks like an illuminated manuscript.

This blog post is bringing up some fun stuff. As I'm sitting at the kitchen table, putting this post together, the three of us are talking about the albums. "Do you know As Tears Go By, by the Rolling Stones?" asked Richard. I knew it, but Micah didn't. It's beautiful, I'd discovered it on my own years ago. In no time, I brought the song up on YouTube. Here is the YouTube link to the great live performance we just watched:  As Tears Go By   And now, back to the Gallery of album covers!

I have no idea who this band is, but the cover art is cool!

Yikes. Was someone high when they designed this one?

I like it, though!

This one has an amazing center.

Neil Young...weird...

he looks like he's carrying a puppet of himself on his back.

...And Bruce! 

We went to see him in concert years ago, with some good friends.

That's all for now. I don't know how much more of our downsizing project we'll get to this summer - seeing as how summer is over, but we've made substantial progress. It's been a lot of work, but I know we will thank ourselves later. Thanks for reading, as always!

Downsizing, Part Three - Destroying Hard Drives

In Which We Enter ... Hard Drive Hell

There were at least five of these monsters lurking in our basement!

We'd been putting it off for years. Why take the effort and time to take apart and deal with our old desktop computers when they can sit on shelves in the far reaches of the basement, not bothering anyone? As I've shown in a previous post, we have plenty of basement shelving.

Two of our many basement Gorilla Rack shelving units.

But the collection of old computers, keyboards, mice, monitors, and printers (not to mention fax machines and copiers and old telephone systems) was getting out of control. Way out of control. They were taking up too much space and collecting dust, and who needs to keep huge old computers from fifteen years ago, anyway? It seemed important at the time to keep each one for security and backup when we brought a new computer into the home, but now, so many years later ... not so much.

Besides, we have this downsizing thing going on. It was time to deal with them. And that meant taking out the hard drives and destroying them.

It turns out that it's a PAIN IN THE BUTT. The internet said to unscrew the tiny screws on each corner of the hard drive case, separate the parts, take out the disk, break the disk in pieces. Not a huge deal, right? Well, the internet was wrong.

First, we took the computers apart just to get the hard drives out. Big job. My son and husband worked on it while watching a soccer game on TV, and it took a while, several hours maybe. Then they put the sides back on and donated the gutted computers to Goodwill (they accept them like that, no problem).

See the tiny ridged tip of the screwdriver bit? Maybe if you squint?

Second, the aforementioned tiny screws! Richard and I looked high and low for something that would work on them, but they turned out to be some specialty thing in a weird shape. "Security screws," the lady at the hardware store told us, shaking her head. "Sorry, we don't carry them." She did, however, point us in the right direction. "Look for a T-7. I think it might be a T-7." Richard finally ended up getting the correct one as part of a bigger set on Amazon. It wasn't a T-7, but a few sizes larger. Those little screws were a pain in the butt, for sure.

The miniature set, with the destructo screwdrivers!

Third, once we had the proper tool, the screws themselves were easy to get out. But then the two sections of the hard drive refused to separate. I believe the internet mentioned super-heavy-duty magnets...? Maybe? We finally resorted to taking screwdrivers and wedging them open a few millimeters at a time, with plenty of elbow grease and cussing. Several were opened by sliding the cover sideways with an obscene amount of effort. Two of the five never got more than half an inch opened, like the one pictured below.

One of the failures.

Fourth, of the ones we did manage to open, we found we couldn't get the disks off their holder. Bummer! What a thing to discover after so much effort! The things must be made to fall out of an airplane, or to be driven over by a war tank, jeez! (Then why do computers crash so often, hmmm?)

Fifth, we showed those disks a thing or two by using the screwdrivers to scratch the crap out of them, at least for the disks we could reach. Unfortunately for us...there were two disks in each drive, one on top of the other, with (it appeared) both sides active. We figured if we couldn't get to the second one, then no one else would be able to either. Right?

Maybe we'll get back to them later and do more destructo work. I've heard you can take sledgehammers to them? Drill nails through them? Drill through them? Dip them in acid? Or maybe we'll decide that the scratching we did was enough.

 Hard Drive Carnage

You can easily see the scratches we made with the screwdrivers...

and my reflection as I shot this image! 

Don't tell Richard, but I thought prying them apart was kind of fun!

...So there it is. Not so easy to destroy a hard drive!