The Blog: Spellbound by our own imperfect lives...

Here is what Regis said about this mess:  Lake Augustus in the back yard. The damned dog, Gus, for which the lake is named, is to blame for this quagmire. How one dog could destroy that much grass in six short months is a marvel. If Gus would just go to the bathroom on the neighbor's lawn like our old mutts all would be well. And this is our dinner. Two recipes from Alton Brown....pan seared sea scallops and a spinach salad with warm bacon dressing. Regis took this wonderful photo. I asked him to study up on food photography and I'm sure that's what he's doing right this minute. I think I got the searing down but it sure fills the house with smokey fumes. Both doors are open and I'm sure the town cats are headed our way. I'm tempted to just go to bed even though it's only 6:30. The weather is wretchedly depressing and tomorrow might be worse. Why do I dwell on it? I walked home from work today, thinking that the sidewalks were bare o...

We like to take pictures of the food we cook so Regis suggested that we do a year in food pictures. We figure it will be good motivation to learn something about food photography and good motivation to prepare interesting food because who wants to look at pictures of Campbell's chicken and stars soup every day, right? Last night, we had flank steak seasoned with Penzey's Northwoods Fire and then broiled. It's much better on the grill but in February, what can you do about that? I love the flavor as you can tell by the finger-licking. We serve it with lots of grilled red peppers and onions, some shredded cheese, and a nice chipotle salsa. We have these left-overs around for several days but I don't mind. We always run out of the peppers and onions before the meat. Tonight I made mushrooms stuffed with Prairie Pride chorizo sausage and provolone. I added some minced onion, minced garlic, and the mushroom stems minced to the sausage mix. Cooked them unde...

I get spam comments almost every day now. Usually they are trying to sell me counterfeit cialis or oxycontin. I am asking them to cease and desist or I will surely go on a rant and then they'll be sorry. I don't want to buy drugs from some weird off-shore factory website. I don't want cialis. I don't want oxycontin and I don't want my penis to grow four inches. Who sits in front of a computer and composes this crap? Get a life and a real job. Regis laughed when I asked him about it. He said computers generate that kind of spam. A pox on the computers that do this. And a pox on the person who invented it. I might just shut off the comments for a while to show them who's boss. Regis and I are making our favorite dinner: flank steak and grilled peppers and onions. So pretty and so delicious. Steak is seasoned, peppers and onions are sliced and ready. I must be cranky today. The spam thing irritated me, then I got my hair up over something stupid on Facebook. ...

We celebrated Elliot's birthday yesterday afternoon in Eagle Lake. His other grandma and grandpa (Brenda and Steve) hosted the party and it was a fun event. Check out the photos in the slideshow. There are a ton of them because Regis was camera happy and I am too lazy to sort them. His grandma and grandma from Rochester (Nancy and Larry) came, too. Lucky boy to have three grandmas and three grandpas at his birthday party! One of the other grandmas commented that it's too bad he has to have so many. I don't think she meant to say that it's bad all of us are living (boo) but that it's too bad divorce and remarriage leads to lots of relatives. My thought on that is that life is what it is. Better to have a lot of grandmas that none. I was listening to On Being on my iPod while Gus and I walked this morning. He talked about the Dalai Lama and how he's been living in exile for fifty years and has endured some true hardship, yet he is always laughing. Life ...

I see I haven't written a post since Tuesday. I wonder what I have been doing. This is a great story. We have a customer, Danny, who owns the Road Haus in Henderson. He's a quiet sort of guy who drinks shots of espresso. I noticed him because people who drink their espresso by the shot instead of at the bottom of a sugary drink are not that common. We finally struck up a conversation and now we visit from time to time when he comes in, which is often. One afternoon, he came back to my office and asked if I had a minute to meet someone. He had a fellow named Jeff who is the Chamber of Commerce president in Henderson. He laughed when he said that because he said, it's a small job. Henderson is a tiny town. We had a nice visit about marketing, for which I am responsible but about which I know little. He told me I should check into a recording studio going into the Carnegie building in St. Peter. Danny said when his wife worked for Nye's in Minneapolis, they did a l...

I don't think they can celebrate St. Patrick's Day in Texas like we can at Patrick's in St. Peter. You better come home soon. Your seat on Geezer's Row is getting usurped by some young punk with tattoos and a backwards baseball cap, Tom. You might have to fight him for it. I've been wearing a red hat around town and stirring up some trouble so when you get back, we can take care of all of it. I miss you both. The weather here is wretched. It's been like March for months...drippy, marginally cold, gray. That's what bars are for, right? We put the word out that we were looking for a dog sitter, then we decided to take matters into our own hands. We wrote an IEP for Gus. That's an individualized educational plan. We had a team meeting and Regis contributed what he knows about dog psychology from his dog obedience classes and I contributed what I know of special education. We came up with a good plan. Here is part of it. Knowing that we are ...

The weekends always come to a screeching halt. Here I am on Saturday coming out of the thrift store in Mankato. I never used to like thrift stores or consignment shops because I thought they smelled funny. Now, I  have gotten over the funky smell and I just like getting cool stuff for not much money. This photo was taken from the car where Gus and Regis wait for me while I shop. They don't seem to mind. We celebrated Alex's 3rd birthday this afternoon. It was fun even though I was injured. More about that later. Here is the evidence that a good time was had by all. Ella lost three teeth in the last week. It hardly seems possible that she is old enough to lose teeth already. So, my injury. Last night, I tripped on a shoe and went over to the left where I whacked my left hip pretty good & my left hand as I tried to catch myself, but the real damage is that I wrenched my back on the right side in the process and now I'm experiencing muscle spasms as a resu...

Gus got a hair cut about a week ago. His hair grows fast and gets kind of unmanageable so he goes to the beauty shop once a month, same as I do. He's looking whiter and curlier all the time. I got a hair cut about a week ago, too. It was supposed to be a hip, asymmetrical look but I didn't know how to style it so I was frustrated for several days, spent the weekend in wigs and hats, and finally asked Regis to cut it. Thank goodness, he refused, but he did offer to set me up with his barber in town. I didn't have the gumption to go back to my stylist, which is what I should have done. So, I go into this distinctly man-land barber shop. I mean this place is (on purpose) an old school barber shop with the row of red chairs, a striped pole, two old-fashioned chairs, and a barber who looks like the reincarnation of Elvis. I didn't know the protocol of this kind of shop and ended up with the wrong guy and I got very nervous when he came at me with a clipper ...

I've been reading lots of food books lately: A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg, Comfort Me with Apples by Ruth Reichl, & The Art of Eating by M.F.K. Fisher. And this lovely piece from the NYT: Sips of Home, Bites of Memory . There is real comfort in reading about food during the dark days of winter. I've had conversations with friends about my focus on food and whether or not it's healthy to spend so much time thinking about food, reading about food, looking for recipes, cooking. I think it's very healthy and I think it makes food more important, maybe sacred is the right word, than it was for me in the past. I had a thought as I was lounging around this morning. My job has changed a lot since I started. In the beginning, food and coffee were reduced to numbers on a calendar and bank deposits and payroll. Now that I am focusing on promotion, the joy of food is coming back. I didn't want to think about food much less read about it for a while. Numbers...

I'm sitting in my leopard chair looking bleary-eyed out onto the frozen tundra and feeling glad that I don't have to go out into it. Winter gets long no matter what the conditions, because, as we have discussed before, it's the lack of light. I had a busy week doing what I am not sure. I think I was grumpy for part of it which takes a bite out of the calendar. Friday night we went to a Winterfest event, a wine tasting at the Ecumen Assisted Living Center. Seems like an odd place to have an event like that but what the hey. It's a lovely building and it was set up nicely for the tasting of all Minnesota wines. This is a picture of me with John Mayer at the wine event. Regis said we won for Chapeau of the Evening. That means hat in French which Regis knows because the Catholic bishops wore those big hats but you can't call something of that dimension a simple hat so they call them chapeaus. I am a bit disconcerted by my most recent hair-cut which Patrick tell...

I spent all day at home but working. I'm writing a marketing plan, something about which I know very little. The title of it is "A Marketing Plan as Written by a Poet" which I am really not either but I thought it was an apt analogy. Like brain surgery done by an auto mechanic. No offense to auto mechanics...I couldn't do brain surgery either. I've learned a lot about marketing and promotion but I have experienced brain overload. I have too much information and no framework for it so it's all floating around in the dusty shelves of my head...little parcels of information floating in space, looking for a place to land. Network hubs, anyone? I took a break mid-afternoon and read some in my book, The Art of Fielding. It's a great book and I love the writing. I have to say that it is what helped me not only endure but maybe enjoy a teeny tiny bit the Super Bowl last night. The book is fiction but it is about a character who plays shortstop as an art. I won...

This is what I do on Sunday morning. I sit in my leopard chair with my faux fur, in front of the faux fireplace, with the Variety section of the paper, a recipe to review for dinner, and my laptop. See the Valentine's Day tree in the background? When the days and nights are so dark and gloomy, the twinkling red and pink lights cheer me. After Valentine's Day, the tree will be decorated for St. Patrick's Day and then it will retire to the basement for the spring and summer. This is the Valentine's Day table. I forgot to take a picture of the crow with the red glitter LOVE sign around his neck. Oh, yeah...here it is. I went to Mary's Flowers yesterday to spend a gift card. I wanted something cheerful for the table. We stopped at River Rock first so I took a couple Hermits to Mary and her colleagues. Mary said she wanted to send something with me so she picked out one of these yellow and red roses at the same time I was picking out two m...

I listened to an interview with Bobby McFerrin on my walk this morning. He said many interesting things but there are a couple I am pondering right now... He talked about the healing power of singing and wondered why we don't do it more often in our culture. I thought the same is probably true of writing and reading poems and making snow angels. So, in the future, I will not hesitate to sing along with Alison Krauss. He said he makes a mistake in every show he does and he just doesn't worry about it anymore. What a great way to think.  Here's a fun way to start your day!

This week was a busy one but I'm not sure why. Last weekend was pretty calm except for the gambling bash we went to on Saturday night. Work has been a little crazy. When I started at River Rock, I was trained to do everything from counting the money for the bank deposit to washing dishes. Gradually those things have been deleted from my job description so I can focus on marketing and promotion. I knew practically nothing about those things, having spent my career in education teaching sex offenders: not a thing for which you search for clients. I have had to learn a lot especially since we're not a big corporation and don't have a huge advertising budget. I have learned to look for opportunities to promote River Rock and its mission. It takes a lot of time...more time than there is in a day. A few days I got up very early and did some work in the dark and quiet. I have books to read and a marketing plan to write. A marketing plan. Right. I entitled it: A Marketing Plan ...