Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Fossil spotting
Up early this morning, so I went out to breakfast at a local greasy spoon, the kind of place where the musical selection spans from “Where the Boys Are” to “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” decor consists of mounted steer horns and old gas pumps, and the walls are filled with pictures of both Bushes (signed, thanking the owner for his continued support), John Wayne, and Ronald Reagan. A children’s book, Who Was Ronald Reagan? prominently displayed. Anti-Obama bumper stickers filling the dead wall between pictures of Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani.
At the table next to me, the owner pontificated about the Olympics — specifically, about our chances to surpass the “pinko Commies” if we snagged just one more gold medal.
Framed on the wall above my table: that photo of a leering George W. Bush, waving at someone off camera, with the caption, “Miss me yet?” To the owner’s character traits, I add irony impaired.
I’ve never paid much attention to the decor, but that “pinko Commies” comment opened my eyes. Since I don’t follow the Olympics, I wondered which Commies he was referring to — the Chinese? Or does he think the Soviet Union still exists?
D.
Irony indeed. The pinko commies would have been China, which, as I write this, is still in the lead in the medal hunt. But this comment is made two days after your post so who knows how many times the lead has changed hands since then? I like to think of the owner gnashing his teeth with impotent rage as the ‘pinko commies’ took yet another gold that should have been HIS by right.
And since you now close off comments after some infuriatingly short period, I am going to take the opportunity to tell you that Chris and I were at one of your favourite restaurants yesterday – we had to day to ourselves and treated ourselves to lunch at Cin Cin.
Ooh! Cin Cin! I wonder if we’ll ever get back there.
I put a time-out on comments back when it seemed the only way to block certain kinds of spammers. I suspect I can modify it. here goes . . .
There! Now it’s set for 20 days.
So what did you eat there?
Chris had broccoli soup with ricotta dumplings and a salad of beets and things. (It was, for Vancouver, pretty warm and she wasn’t ravenous.)
I had roasted tomato soup and crab linguine.
We each had a sampler of Italian wines, 3 – 2 oz glasses.
Chris had what she describes as the best dessert she’s ever eaten – it was dark chocolate ganache over hazelnut-chocolate cream layered around a milk chocolate and hazelnut wafer, a little perfect glistening almost-black dome with a bit of gold leaf on top. It had raspberry something, the most fragrant candied orange, and hazelnut brittle in three little piles nestled against it.