Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: Mishpucha (mi familia)
More Magic 8 Ball
Jake’s giving me a heart attack. He asked the online M8 Ball, “Will I live to see my next birthday?”
And the first answer was “No.”
He went for best two out of three, and fortunately, the next two were variations of
Yeah, Jake, go ahead, give your superstitious old man a heart attack. See who pays for your college education then.
ANYWAY: I need one of these Magic 8 Balls for my office. You wouldn’t believe how often people ask me questions which are far more appropriate for the 8 Ball than for me.
Is this antibiotic going to work?
Is it a bad idea for me to go flying this weekend?
Is my nose just going to start bleeding again?
One thing is for certain: if I start whipping out the 8 Ball every time I’m asked one of these questions, I’m gonna get one hell of a rep.
D.
Leave Hillary Alone!
So said my son this afternoon. It has become an old, tired joke at Chez Walnut.
Leave Bill O’Reilly alone!
Leave tuna alone!
Leave kitty litter pans alone!
Yes, I’m making those up. Jake hates it when I make shit up and attribute it to him — so, Jake, please take note, I haven’t attributed ANY of that to you.
When he said, “Leave Hillary alone!”, however, I told him he really ought to search YouTube for it, since someone has undoubtedly done this.
Turns out, MANY have, but the Young Turks have one of the funniest versions.
Back to work on the Cosmo Thirteen. Stay tuned, droogz.
D.
The spooky rerun
The first day back at work is always a bitch, and today was no exception. It could have been an easy day, but I had to take one of my patients back for post-op bleeding, so everything ended well past 5 when it should have ended around 2:30. No trip to the gym for me, only a hurried visit to the supermarket to scrounge some heat-uppable food for my family. Oh, and toilet paper. Gotta have toilet paper.
And there you have it, my excuse to rerun an old favorite of mine: fatigue! I’m always griping about fatigue, I know, I know. Maybe if I weren’t so damned tired, I wouldn’t gripe about it so much.
Anyway, this memory got jostled today. The old gf and I write one another, as some of you know, and she was creeping out over the fact a friend of hers was following the advice of a psychic. That reminded me of how negative she was about my tarot-reading shtick back in the old days. I think she even made me swear never to touch them again, but we broke up soon after, so you can guess how well I honored that promise.
In my email today, I finally (after 25 years) told her the story below. Of course, I told y’all the story nearly two years ago, which means she could have read it two years ago if she would read my blog, which she doesn’t. Go figure.
But before story time, I want ALL of my Iowa readers to make it to the caucus tomorrow.
And now: Wheel of Fortune, originally posted here, in case you want to read the comment thread. It was a good one.
Anime without sound
Some acquaintances* send out annual holiday mailers containing all the funny things the people in their family have said in the last twelve months. I read these things with close attention; I’m convinced that if I ever laugh at one of their family jokes, my universe will shatter.
I told Jake, “Maybe we should start saving up the funny things we say and send it to [our acquaintances] to show them how it’s done.”
But is this stuff any funnier, coming from us?
While Jake’s watching soundless anime on TV.
“Hey, Daddy, you really ought to try watching anime without the sound on.”
“Jacob, for that to be fun, I think I would have to smoke an enormous joint.”
Later.
“Hey Jake. Ever notice how if you run it all together, the name of the program is Dragonballz?”
In the mall.
“Look, Jake. Really cold mannequin.”
“Hey Daddy. Do they ever make mannequins with camel toes?”
That’s all I have so far. Grateful, aren’t you?
***
I need to take pictures of the interior of this hotel room. The bathroom is huge. It’s all huge. I wasn’t tempted to take pictures of our big family get-together (oy, we’re all getting older, every one of us, even though in my mind I’m still six — does it show? — my brother’s an obnoxious 13-year-old, my sis is getting ready to go off to college, and my parents are still young) but here in this hotel room I want to take pictures of a shower stall. What’s wrong with my priorities?
***
Why we’re in a hotel when my parents have two unused bedrooms at their place:
We told them we would stay with them for the four nights. Then we learned that my brother, his wife, his daughter and her husband and their toddler — were ALL going to be staying there for Saturday and Sunday night.
Uninterested in playing sardines, we made reservations for a hotel. My brother, apparently thinking the same thing, made reservations for a hotel. We only found this out today, so of course we can’t cancel our rezzies. And here we are. We’re all staying in hotel rooms and my parents have an empty house rather than family around for their 60th anniversary. Don’t we communicate well?
But I’m loving this hotel room, just the same.
***
We had some yummy dim sum today at a place called Chang’s (on Decatur, near Tropicana, if you’re interested). You always know you’re in for a treat if none of the help speaks English and you can count the gweilo patrons on one hand. We ate: jellyfish salad, shrimp balls (shrimpballz?), these itty bitty ribs, barbecued pork bao, those fat noodle things with shrimp inside, pork shiu mai, lotus seed-sesame seed ball things, and a Chinese donut. Only after I had stuffed myself did they trot out one of my favorite things in the world: little fried fishies. Smelt, I guess. I felt like begging the waitress, “ONE. Just one inch of one, oh just a taste, pleeeease.”
Which was, incidentally, the opening of a Rona Barrett memoir. Jeez. The things I remember from childhood.
***
We had our big dinner at Cheesecake Factory. This was fine, actually, and could have been far worse (Olive Garden, anyone?) My brother made a toast: To another sixty years. Earlier, my dad was talking about his WWII medals. “I wonder who will get these when I’m gone.” They mean a lot to him, those medals, but it’s a funny thing what people value. Yeah, I’ve talked about this before. What do I value? Photos. No — stories. If my dad can give me the stories behind the medals, I’ll keep the stories and my brother can keep the medals.
My sis did make that photo scrapbook for my parents, by the way. Really cool gift, and I think my mom appreciated it. I even heard her say, “Thank you,” followed shortly thereafter by, “Wow. You could really make money doing this for people.”
Family.
D.
*Remember, I have a few local readers. Wouldn’t take many clues for them to figure out whom I’m talking about.
Snow is overrated
But who am I to complain? Karen did all the driving, while I sat in the back seat thinking, go slower go slower go slower, expecting us to spin out at any moment, slide down the hillside, and have to use up all those survival supplies Karen so neatly packed away.
We’re not in Vegas, by the way. We’re in Medford. With luck, we’ll make it to Vegas only a day late. We had a choice between staying the night in Medford and having an excellent chance of getting to Vegas tomorrow, versus flying to Salt Lake City tonight and having an excellent chance of being stuck in Salt Lake City for the duration. We chose Medford.
United Airlines (“Ted,” in case you haven’t flown United lately; and you know what? It’s a lot easier to get pissed off at Ted than some faceless corporation) truly ticked me off with their bungling, but then they offered to set us up at the Rogue Regency, and my anger is fading fast. The bottles of Pyramid Apricot Weizen and Big Sky Moose Drool may have something to do with my improving mood. Also, after trekking across the 199 through all that snow and sleet, I wasn’t all that excited by the idea of flying for four hours, then taking a taxi to my parent’s house, and getting in, I dunno, around 10 PM. This is a more civilized way to travel.
We fly out of Medford at 3 PM tomorrow. Our connection is in San Francisco. ONE of Jake’s grandmother’s will get to see him tomorrow, that much is certain.
Meanwhile, I’m liking this hotel. The restaurant food is great! Karen had a seared salmon — essentially sashimi — I had a burger and crab cakes, Jake had a Philly cheese steak sandwich. Jake didn’t like his dinner, but Karen and I are happy.
Wish us luck tomorrow.
D.
Survivorgal
The lack of Federal response to Hurricane Katrina’s victims first put the idea into my wife’s head: you had to be able to survive a week, maybe more, without any assistance whatsoever. You couldn’t count on having power or running water. You would have to rough it. And while we don’t get hurricanes in the Northwest, we do get tsunamis. Tsunami warnings, anyway — lots of them.
Then, last year, the tragic story of the Kim family got a great deal of local airtime. They were trying to make it from I-5 to the Oregon Coast, and when snow made for poor road conditions, James Kim decided to take a logging road. He thought it would lead to the coast, but it dead-ended. By then, they had run out of gas. Hiking out for help, James Kim died of hypothermia, but thankfully his wife and kids survived.
But I think it was Survivorman (Les Stroud) who finally convinced my wife that she should send me out to buy hundreds of dollars of survival gear. Below the cut: the end product of my efforts.
Tiramisu variations
I must be feeling better. After finishing my cases today, I lifted weights for twenty minutes, stewed in the sauna for ten, went grocery shopping, came home, and spent three hours in the kitchen.
Oh so cleverly I split some of my ground beef, using some for burgers (tonight), some for meatballs (tomorrow night). Mostly, though, I made Karen another tiramisu. My plan is working: thanks to this calorie-loaded confection of mascarpone cheese, whipped cream, eggs, espresso, and pound cake*, my wife has gained three pounds. If I can get her into the low nineties, my job is done.
(Yes, I realize I’m not doing her lipid profile any favors, but cholesterol will only harm her decades from now. Falling on an unpadded butt, that could happen any time.)
What’s a patissier to do? She doesn’t like cheesecake, so tiramisu is the most fattening dessert I can make (440 calories for a typical serving; but hey, I wonder if she’d like spaghetti carbonara?) She’s finally getting a bit sick of the same old same old, so tonight I used Amaretto for the liqueur, omitted the cocoa powder and shaved chocolate, and topped it with powdered sugar, cinnamon, and shaved/toasted almonds.
She’ll tire of this version soon enough. Here’s one for crespelle (crepes) stuffed with a tiramisu/zabaglione mixture and topped with berries, but it omits the espresso. Ignoring the essential question of whether tiramisu is tiramisu without the coffee, would Karen cringe at a version lacking that necessary caffeine kick? Probably. But my main objection is storage: those crespelle are going to go stale fast. I like a tiramisu which can last several days in the refrigerator.
From that same website, here’s an attractive recipe for parties: Duomo Tiramisu. It doesn’t look any more difficult than the standard recipe, but it sure would wow the guests.
Here’s a compendium of tiramisu recipes. Most of these are tiramisu trifles, the standard recipe taken in the berry direction or the chocolate direction, but there are a few unique items, like tiramisu pizza, peach brandy tiramisu, and for the coffee-hater in your family, root beer tiramisu. Of these, the peach brandy version sounds the most interesting. They don’t omit the espresso, which leads me to wonder how well the peach and coffee flavors will meld.
One of the joys of googling: you can test your imagination. Does banana tiramisu exist? Oh, yeah. Peanut butter tiramisu? Apparently so. Tiramisu erotica? Yuppers.
By the way: Tiramisu Toffee Trifle Pie might sound good, but any recipe calling for instant coffee granules and “mascarpone or cream cheese” — or cream cheese, are you fucking kidding me? — should suffer culinary kareis**.
I think I need to sleep on it. That shall be my goal: a novel application of basic tiramisu principles, one which preserves the caffeine and calories yet takes tiramisu into an altogether new direction.
Tiramisu hand roll, anyone?
D.
*Ladyfingers are traditional. We prefer the flavor of pound cake, pound cake is readily available in the grocery stores (not so, ladyfingers), so pound cake it is.
**One of those nasty punishments from Leviticus. I think it means “premature death.”
We’ve got to stop getting the kids drunk.
This is one of two good photos I took yesterday.
No, they weren’t really drinking all that wine. At least not while I was watching.
D.
Supporting the war effort
Apparently, I support our President, because today I followed his advice “to go shopping more.” Yeah, that’s all we did today. Eat. Shop. Eat. Shop.
I needed clothes. My shirts have threadbare cuffs, my dress slacks are getting threadbare in the knees, and just the other week, one ripped clean through. I haven’t split the asscrack on any of my pants (lately), but only because I tend to wear the knees out first. Did I really need to spend this much money on clothes? Probably not, but I have a funky body. My neck is a 17.5, my arms are Lilliputian. When I find clothes that fit, I buy them.
Meanwhile, my son got his grandma to buy him a Roboquad. We were almost defeated by the packaging. Almost. Jake is downstairs now, trying to get the hotel staff to dig up a Phillips-head screwdriver so he can free Robie from his packaging base.
Jake to the TSA gal in the airport: “What do you mean I have to leave the water bottle? It’s water. See? I’m drinking it. Isn’t that proof enough for you that it’s a nontoxic substance?”
Nope, didn’t wash. I reminded Jake of all the Kafka he has read, and told him the TSA rules would fit well into any Kafkaesque bureaucracy. You would think that would convince my son to suppress his sense of humor, since TSA operatives are humorless by definition, but no. On the way to the plane, one of the agents said something condescending to him (he looks several years younger than his true age), and he replied, “No. I expect you to die, Mr. Bond.”
That worried me. Would TSA Dude interpret this as a threat and jail his twelve-year-old ass? But I guess Jake’s apparent youth saved him. The guy wrinkled his upper lip as we passed, grunting, “Nice kid.”
Thus far today: crappy eighteen dollar breakfast in the Hyatt’s restaurant (um, that’s the bill just for ME, got it?), crappy five dollar coffee from the Hyatt’s lobby, top notch die and go to heaven lunch at Amber India, shopping trip at the Stanford Mall, mandatory pilgrimage to Fry’s Electronics, where Jake scored his Roboquad. We haven’t decided on dinner yet.
It’s been fifteen minutes since Jake went off in search of a screwdriver. I wonder when I should alert the authorities?
D.
Sitting on my tush
. . . waiting for time to pass because our plane is delayed. Delayed at the San Francisco end, which will come as no surprise to those of you who have traveled through SFO.
Oh, well. Guess we’ll just have to eat dinner in the City, maybe take my family to Ti Piacera, which I loved when I was there by myself. We could do a lot worse. All of this assumes we get off the ground at 4:30.
If all goes well, perhaps I’ll be able to post some photos later. MUCH later.
D.