What I've been doing--with pictures!

A Last Hurrah

Before the store closed, I went to the annual conference of the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association in Denver. As a way of repaying MPIBA in a small measure for everything it had done for the store and for bookselling in general, I volunteered to do anything they needed.

The trade show, featuring publishers, authors, and vendors of sidelines for bookstores, is always a highlight of the conference. You can get a lot of freebies, and nonbooksellers often try to sneak in and grab some swag.

One day's worth of swag from 2008

Hence the need for security to ensure that only registered participants in the event can get in. The guy who promised to do security at the trade show never showed up, and Kathy, the project manager for the association, was beside herself. I said that I would help with security. She said, "You have to be tough." I said, "They don't call me 'Knuckles' Durbin for nothin'." From that moment, everyone at the conference called me "Knuckles." At the cocktail party before the banquet, I introduced myself to a fellow bookseller: "Hi, I'm P-Doobie." "Oh, Knuckles! I'm so glad to meet you," she said. I even made the MPIBA newsletter.

P- "Knuckles" Doobie from Otowi Station Bookstore and Science Museum Shop in Los Alamos, New Mexico, graciously agreed to be our Opening Reception security as well as our registration greeter, and declared she had never had quite so much fun!

Now We're Cookin'

Michele and I took a class in high-altitude cookery at Los Alamos Co-Op Market. Our friend Liz discussed the chemistry and physics of high-altitude cooking, and then everyone in the class got to help make the dinner: Santa Fe bean soup, cornbread, and chocolate chip cookies. We helped chop, slice, and dice the ingredients for the soup.

There's nothing like a sharp knife, and this is nothing like a sharp knife.

Small Business Saturday

Flicker was out of cat fud, so on Small Business Saturday, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we went to Pet Pangaea to get a bag. And naturally I agreed to show my support for small business.

Coming up: why I don't smell so good

Happy birthday! Now call the fire department.

It seemed like a good idea at the time: putting sparklers on Mom's birthday cheesecake. The only problem is that you can't blow out sparklers. And you have pyrotechnic residue on the cake. And if you try to catch the residue by covering the surface of the cake with waxed paper, you'll have a waxed-paper fire right there on the birthday table.

Dinner at Gabriel's

For Mom's birthday dinner, we all went to Gabriel's Restaurant between Los Alamos and Santa Fe.

Here's the Birthday Mom.

To commemorate the event, Chuckbert took a picture of Mom's dinner.

And then Chuckbert took a picture of P-doobie taking a picture of Chuckbert while Mombert and Bobbert cracked up.

Bobbie and Izzy posed nicely with some bunny ears.

Bobbie picked up the check. Seeing her distress, I snapped my fingers to summon a waiter and said, "¡Garçon! El desfibrilador, por favor!" He brought us a parachute and some dried apricots.

Bagels and silliness

Michele and I have breakfast at Ruby K's a couple times a week, and when we were in there earlier this week, we decided to get something sweet. I ordered one of their cinnamon rolls and brought it to the table, and the little guy (3 or 4 years old) next to us said, "That looks really good. You should dig in!" I said, "Your bagel looks really good, too." His mom said it was a chocolate chip bagel. I said, "Chocolate chip bagels rule!"

The little guy, whose name is Torson, said, "You're silly!" I told him that I wasn't silly and that I approached life with all the dignity and decorum that I could muster. He looked at me as if I didn't have mirrors in the house and reiterated his opinion that I'm silly. I said, "I'm not silly. You're silly. Aggle aggle aggle phthhhh bonka bonka bonka!" That confirmed my silliness to him. He leaped up and gave me a big hug.

Then he told me he had to go to the doctor to get a shot, but he wasn't scared, and afterwards, he was going to have some chocolate ice cream. "Whenever I have to get a shot, I get chocolate ice cream after the shot. That's the deal I worked out with my mom."

I said that it was a really good deal. He told me that he wasn't going to the doctor just to get a shot, either. He was going to to get his breathing checked. "I'm breathing really well now," he said, and, to show me, inhaled so deeply that his nostrils were little vertical slits. I invited him to come to the store after ice cream, and he gave me another big hug.

I like little kids. They're so at ease in the world, and they crack me up.

Pie: a cut above

Years ago we were in a restaurant--I can't even remember where--and it offered pie for dessert. The price was "$1.50 per cut." (We see the same phrase in Zagat-rated restaurants and in the menu for the Pan-American Exposition of 1901, so it seems to be nothing new or unusual.)

The phrase confused me. If pie is $1.50 per cut, does it mean that if you are the first person to ask, for example, for a piece of a pristine raspberry pie, one that had emerged fresh and fragrant from the oven and then taken the air on the windowsill so that it was still warm enough to gently melt the vanilla ice cream, you would be charged $3.00 for your dessert? After all, it takes two cuts to get that first piece. Or is the word "cut" a synonym for "slice"?

I didn't want to ask the waitress, because there are Scared Straight inmates less formidable than the server we had that day. The restaurant must have been in New Jersey, come to think of it.

I couldn't find anything in the Dictionary of American Regional English to clarify the question, so I hauled out the compact edition of Oxford English Dictionary. That was no small feat, because even in the two-volume form, it takes six men and a boy to maneuver it out of the bookcase. And forget about using just that magnifying glass. At my age, I needed my glasses, the magnifier, and the harsh, gynecological light of the bathroom to read the definitions. ("What are you doing in the bathroom, P-doobie?" "Reading the OED to research pie. What do you think I'm doing?")

Definition 23 is "A piece of anything cut off, esp. meat; a slice." Thus, it would seem that a cut of pie and a slice of pie are the same things. So why not just say a slice of pie and not keep me brooding about it for, lo, these many years?

Kitchen lust

Chuckbert's and Mr. Bears' kitchen is wonderful. I hugged the KitchenAid refrigerator. I kissed the KitchenAid gas range. I fondled the KitchenAid dishwasher.

Here is Chuckbert by the range and microwave.

Here is Mr. Bears making pancakes in his new Virgin of Guadalupe apron.

P-Doobie and Michele take a vacation together!

Michele and I had a blast on our vacation to San Diego and Escondido last week. 

Michele surprised me last year with tickets to Madama Butterfly, starring my ultimate hug-honey (after Michele and Natalie Dessay), Patricia Racette, who is an amazing singer and actress; I've been following her career since she debuted at Santa Fe as Emmeline in 1996. We had great seats, and the performance was wonderful (review here). I was emotionally drained at the end. 

Carlo Ventre as Pinkerton That Dope and Pat Racette as Cio-Cio-San

Our hotel was downtown in the Gaslamp District and right around the corner from the opera. It's luxurious enough that you feel pampered, and affordable enough that you don't feel you need to subsist on beef jerky and diet Pepsi from the Conoco station up the street. 

We also strolled around Hillcrest and went to the Ace Hardware Store, which is the coolest hardware store on the planet, and to the Obelisk Bookstore. The Obelisk seems to be scrapping along. Support your local independent bookstores!

We bought bucket hats at the Village Hat Shop so we wouldn't burn our noses and ears.

Two stylin' babes

We also went to Balboa Park and enjoyed the flowers, trees, butterflies, and photographs by Lou Stoumen and Edward Steichen at the Museum of Photographic Arts.


Times Square in the Rain, by Lou Stoumen

Michele's patient butterfly


A yellow columbine in the park

Tree trunk

After "a pleasant walk, a pleasant talk / along the briny beach" in La Jolla, we went to D. G. Wills Books, where I saw this label on a shelf.

LITERARY CRIT., CULTURAL STUDIES & UNIDENTIFIABLE SOPHISTRY

Further comment is superfluous.

Our visit with Chuckbert and Mr. Bears was a delight. We drove to Ramona and Julian and enjoyed shopping for bread, having a peaceful lunch in the garden of a converted cottage, eating pie, and poking around the shops. 

We also got to help celebrate Karl's birthday with the traditional homemade mac-n-cheese and brownies. Mmmmmmmm!

On Saturday we went to La Jolla for a little gallery hopping. We went to the Martin Lawrence Gallery. And There. They. Were. Lithographs by Robert Deyber. We spent lots of time talking with Teresa the Curator. Then we walked around La Jolla. I thought a lot about the lithographs. Then we went back. I bought "Bag of Tricks." 

A rebus

Ike was glad to see us when we got back yesterday. Flicker said, "Oh. You were away?"

Erasing the lines between physics and chemistry

Yesterday at Otowi Station we had our third annual celebration of Einstein's Birthday and Pi Day, and of course we featured Pi Cake. Taking their cue from the cartoon of Einstein holding a test tube with a cocktail umbrella, the bakers at the local grocery store really got into the decorating.

Because Pi Day fell on Saturday this year, we had huge complement of little kids, who smeared cake and frosting from hell to breakfast. Fortunately, Kathleen was quick with the carpet cleaner.


Hap-π birthday, Albert Einstein!

Pi cake

In a response to my grousing about David J., Chuckbert wrote, "I hear Otowi Station is having Pi cake (?!) on Pi day." Here, for your entertainment and delectation, are some images of previous Otowi Station Pi cakes. We get them from the bakery at Smith's grocery store; they're white cakes with raspberry filling and buttercream icing.

Mardi Gras: laissez les jaunes d'œufs rouler!

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. During catechism on Ash Wednesday we'd troop down to the church to have our foreheads smudged with ashes. If the smudges wore off, we could always freshen them with ashes from dad's cigarette butts. 

Back in those days, when we were orthodox, we couldn't eat meat on Fridays. Here is my recipe for a Pueblo Junior High Tuna Sandwich.

First,  if you're not in a hurry, take a can of tuna, drain off the oil, and empty it into a bowl. Then add some diced celery, a little minced onion, and chopped hard-boiled egg whites. Save the yolk to roll down the aisle in Mr. Baldwin's social studies class. Maybe this time he'll send you out. Add salt, pepper, and mayonnaise, and spread the mixture on crisp toast.

If you are running late, just mix the undrained tuna with mayo and spread it on bread. Stick the sandwich in a recycled Baggie, whose clinging power has been reduced by repeated washings.

Put some potato chips in another gappy Baggie. Put the sandwich, chips, and an overripe banana in a brown paper bag. Or a sugar sack, better. A sugar sack is sturdier and has stuff written on it so you can read it at lunch if you have to sit alone. It's lunchtime's answer to the cereal box.

Put the lunch in your locker. Between classes, pitch your social studies book on top of the bag.

At lunch, open your locker. It smells like you're standing next to Moby-Dick. Fruit flies have formed a deep and abiding relationship with the banana. Take your oily, squashed bag to the cafeteria. Sit down at a table. Marlene, who always laughs with her mouth wide open after swallowing most of her milk or cottage cheese, sits down opposite. Gross. But it's better than eating alone. 

Take out the oil-dampened sandwich. Try to chew it, but the best you can probably do at this stage in the game is just sort of mush it around in your mouth. Dab up the minuscule bits of potato chips, the major casualty in the encounter with the social studies book, with your fingertips and lick them off. Marlene thinks your performance is hilarious and laughs. Wipe her milk off your face.

Lick the banana off the inside of the sugar sack. Throw the banana peel and the bag into the garbage can. Save the Baggies for Mom.

After lunch, everything you touch will smell like tuna. By the end of the day the whole school will smell like a whaling vessel ninety days out of New Bedford. Everyone knows it's you. 

Think of death by embarrassment as your Lenten sacrifice.

Jellied tuna: tasty Lenten fare

Chuckbert's Cheesey Chookies

With all recent posts from the accomplished cooks in this family, I thought I'd share a recipe I tried yesterday, Alton Brown's Parmesan Crisps. I prefer to call them Chuckbert's Cheesey Chookies, because of Chuckbert's fondness for parmesan.

Ingredients
3 ounces Parmigiano-Reggiano
Freshly ground black pepper, smoked paprika, or cayenne, optional

Directions
Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

Grate the cheese on the small-hole side of a 4-sided box grater into a small bowl. We call our box grater "The Butcher of Hungary," because as you grate, it also neatly removes flesh. 

The Butcher.

Using a tablespoon measure, place cheese in mounds onto a nonstick silicone pad or greased parchment paper-lined cookie sheet. Flatten out mounds with the back of a spoon, making sure mounds are at least 4 inches apart. Season with pepper, paprika, or cayenne, if desired. Bake on the middle rack of the oven for 5 to 6 minutes or until golden.

Here are some finished chookies. They have a lacy look because I flattened them too much. I seasoned them with freshly ground black pepper. They are really good!

A Thanksgiving poem and picture for you

To make your family smile and laugh
Be sure to wear your turkey hat!

The scariest Halloween costume

Every year the Chamber of "Commerce" sponsors "Trick or Treat on Main Street," an event downtown that provides a safe venue for the kids to get their candy fix. Otowi Station participates, and this year we handed out about 70 pounds of candy and all our glow-in-the-dark monster fangs, skeletons, and tops. (And what is it with sour Twizzlers? The smell of them made me gag, but the kids snatched them up, and, even more interesting, actually ate them.) We also had dog cookies for the pooches. Pet Pangaea sponsored a Hallow-wiener constume contest for dogs.

One mom dressed as Sarah Palin, and her bodyguard kids were dressed in suits and sunglasses and were wearing earphones. Indiana Jones was out in force, as were men dressed as nuns. The kid wearing the scariest costume of all was dressed as the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

AUGGGGGGHHHHHH!

“Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale / Her infinite variety.” Oh, shut up.

Today marks a first for me. I got the senior discount at Subway. I was glad for the discount but unnerved by the reason.

P-doobie [sniffling]: "And . . . and then the little whippersnapper asked me if I were over 55, and I told the young scallawag I was, and . . . and then I got the discount."

Otowi Station staff: "Dash it! You are younger than springtime, you crusty old fart!"

Squashed

Michele and I planted four hills of squash. Only two survived (thank god): zucchini and yellow crook neck. We thought we had been really diligent in keeping up with the zucchini, but one got away from us. Michele found it this morning. It is 18 inches long and weighs 4 pounds. The only thing we can think to make with it is a lamp.

Michele holds the freshly picked zucchini.

The zucchini is as big as Casey.

Raise a tortuga to Neil Murphy

Neil Murphy, who founded Senor Murphy, Candymaker, died recently in Tucson. We've all enjoyed the pinon brittle, tortugas, chocolate-covered caramels, and other delights that his company produced. Today, to honor Senor Murphy's memory, please eat a piece of great candy.

Meet Zetz!

Michele and I got the house a Blendtec Total Blender for . . . um . . . National Chocolate Chip Day (August 4)! Its name is Zetz, which is Yiddish for a smack or a whack, and also onomatopoetic for the sound it makes. We've made smoothies, and I'm going to try some grape jam with the grapes from Mr. Mac's arbors ("Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant."--Proverbs 9:17). Tonight Michele made a smoothie with yogurt, blueberries, and honey, and mine was strawberry, frozen banana, and blueberries. Yummmmm!

Zetz

It's okay. I'm wearing gloves.

I don't know what's happening with food workers in Los Alamos, but it ought to be stopped.

This week I met one of our local authors for coffee at the Coffee Booth. I stepped up to the counter and ordered a coffee in a mug, and the young man got a ceramic mug and inspected it for cleanliness, as the staff there always does. He found a speck of something, and instead of giving me a different mug, he reached inside, scraped the speck carefully with his finger, dumped out whatever was in there, and handed me the mug. I asked for a to-go cup

Several months ago I was standing in line at the Subway next door. The staff there wears plastic gloves on their hands when they prepare the sammitches. The other customers and I watched in disbelief as the young "sandwich artist" scratched her head with her gloved hand and then went back to the customer's order. The customer said, "You just scratched your head!" And the young woman replied, "It's okay. I'm wearing gloves." We went to Ruby K's.

I gave Subway a wide berth after than, but went back about a month ago. This time the young man who was making a sandwich scratched his butt and returned to making sandwiches. The customer said, "You scratched your butt!" The young man replied, "It's okay. I'm wearing gloves." We went to Ruby K's again. (I'm also writing a letter to the president of Subway.)

Michele recalls a time she was at an ice cream parlor in New Hope, Pennsylvania. It was a hot day, and the ice cream in the cone that the helper was preparing began to drip a little. So he licked the drippy part and then handed the cone to the customer. Michele said the only sounds in the place were those of crickets chirping, pins dropping, and tumbleweeds rolling across the deserted streets.


It's okay. We'll put on gloves.

A sure-fire crowd pleaser or death on a cracker? You decide!

Even the mere mention of Velveeta imitation processed cheese-like food product gives BobBIE the All-Overs. This concept, featuring Agnes and her best friend Trout, might send her right over the edge.

Does it bother anybody else that Velveeta is not refrigerated in the grocery stores?

A narrow fellow in the greenhouse

A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him,--did you not,
His notice sudden is.

The grass divides as with a comb,
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun,--
When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.

Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;

But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.
--Emily Dickinson

Michele has her herbs and peppers in the greenhouse, and lately, when caring for her plants, she'd hear a rustling. At first, it was hard to locate the source, but one day the sound seemed to be coming from underneath the tarp floor. She stood still for a few seconds. There it was again! Then she felt something move under her foot; the movement immediately caused a tighter breathing and zero at the bone. (Less poetically, she shouted the name of the Redeemer--though not in a sense of worship--levitated, and air-walked out of the greenhouse and into the yard.)

Snakes are good. Snakes are our friends. We are especially glad to have them in the greenhouse. We like to know, however, where they are at all times so Michele doesn't need to be defribrillated every time she snips some thyme.

So she hit on a solution. She decided to stand on the step into the greenhouse and sweep a broom gently over the tarp to warn the snake that it's time for her to water the plants. The sweeping worked well for a while, but then apparently the sound started to resemble the rustling of a mommie snake.

Now the snake comes when called.

Michele is thinking of ways to make a pathway around the racks so that she can walk without worrying about the snake, and the snake can say hello without being stepped on.

Some of Michele's plants and her narrow buddy, under the tarp.