Puppy Nell

Newest family member and Thanksgiving cheer

I went home to beautiful Colorado for Thanksgiving last weekend. To me there is something magical about the barren landscape of a Colorado winter. No where else is the sky such a bright blue in late November. The grasses have lost their summer green and instead roll in muted desert colors of wheat gold, chestnut brown and yellow. Upon close inspection many of the shrub brushes are purple or burnt Sienna red. The little lakes and ponds out on the open space freeze over in places, leaving jagged lines of ice across the water. Everything is so still you can sometimes see the reflection of the ponds in the mountain snow and rocks- or maybe I imagined that one day...The leafless trees are perfect for revealing hawks and golden eagles sitting regally on wispy branches, looking over their vast domain.
Nell my baby sister is even more delighted with her surroundings than I am. Nell is my parents new Springer Spaniel puppy-four months old and quite the little rapscallion. She is from the same breeder as my last dog Casey and is something like his great great niece. My aunt's dog Tobie (also related) was visiting for the holidays as well. There were three especially funny puppy moments last weekend.
Springers get their name because of their very athletic ability to spring through bushes and fields. They are trained to spring into bushes and scare all the birds out so that the hunters like Victoria can shoot them. Tobie has had years of springing experience and was bounding through the tall grasses with his usual vigor. Baby Nell-always keen to learn from her elders, just started learning to spring. The grasses were tall enough on her tiny body that most of the time we just saw two ears flying into the air as she bounded through the fields like a little jackalope. But sometimes she didn't get the spring just right. The ground rolls in little hillocks and ditches so the dogs were bounding from one high point to another. Occasionally Nell would be in air mid-bound and would suddenly disappear entirely, only to come scrambling out of some little depression she'd fallen in to. She seemed unperturbed when we laughed hysterically at her depth perception problems and just kept on springing, hoping not to fall into another ditch mid spring.
On another day I was sitting innocently on the couch reading my book when Nell came in the back door. What happened next was so fast I didn't see a second of it, even out of the corner of my eye. My dad said she ran full speed into the living room on the side I was sitting. Instead of coming straight toward me she looped around to the other side of the room, did a one point turn and leapt onto the other end of the couch. From here-still at top speed she leapt toward me like a torpedo and smacker her nose right into my nose. This all happened in about five seconds. I guess she thought she'd get more momentum going at me if she circled the room and leapt at me from across the couch. Painful.
The third cute moment happened outside when Tobie and I were playing fetch. Tobie loves tennis balls, like any other self-respecting dog. He was running happily towards me with his in his mouth, when Nell leapt into the air and knocked the ball straight out of his mouth with her schnoz. She then ducked under Tobie and caught the ball in mid air before it had dropped from his mouth. Needless to say, Nell's love for Tobie is not well reciprocated.
Another great part about Nell besides the fact that we named her after our cousin so have to differentiate between puppy Nell and human Nell is that we think she is the reincarnation of our last dog. She does uncannily Casey-like things all the time. She even looks and smells like him! hehe. But really, Casey decided his life was so good he was going to come back as Nell, which is just delightful!

I'm one of those annoying people who thinks Obama is the Messiah

Recently I have been plagued with an extreme case of voter mania. I spend my days at work scouring the internet for articles on the polls and on the race, study the map of polls for ages and panick when I read articles about voter fraud and people's doubts about whether Barack Obama will actually become president. I'll admit it, I get a little teary eyed with joy when I read the Economist who "wholeheartedly endorses Obama for president" and other such articles. In my spare time at work I've also created an OBAMA!!!! folder where I've downloaded the transcripts of all his speeches.

Then there is also the constant fear that for some reason I'm not going to be able to vote. I've gone on the check your voter status page about a dozen times to make sure they changed my address properly. But what if they bomb the voter building? I know horrid thought, I am insane. I don't know who "they" is but you know...
Also, recently lost my license...what if you need a valid driver's license to vote? Can I bring two expired licenses and a passport? This is all silly really, because Califronia is going to vote Obama with our without vote.
Recent accounts of voters in Ohio believing the scam that democrats vote on the 5th has prompted me to sign up for a phonebank party tomorrow. And yet, after all this mania, I'll probably miss the actual election results as I have no TV or internet. I'll be the bleary eyed person on Wednesday morning who asks, "so who is the new president?"

We Don't Come to Play Around

My weekend has me still dancing in my head to "I Kissed a girl and I liked it." and other fantastically catchy songs. Summer aka global warming is in full tilt her in the city with a weekend of 83 degree sunny days and warm, balmy nights. After a ten mile hike with Connor and some of his guy friends in the east bay, I went to some fellow UPSers' house for a BBQ. These guys are a year below Connor and I in school and were in Beta with Connor. Their stories of baling each other out of jail drunk, Funday Sunday's of all day drinking and finding Large cantankerous friends in the tiny Beta closet was good affirmation that Connor and I certainly met at the right time and not a moment too late. After explaining to them multiple times that I am quite allergic to alcohol and can only have one drink, I found myself five shots deep and ready to hit the club scene. My coworker/ friend Crystal with whom I went to Bodega Bay was entertaining her fiance's high school friends for the weekend. 
After paying away my first child's college education at the door (yes that is what $20 dollars is to me) I met the group in a place called the Rickshaw. In the Rickshaw they teach Bhangra lessons until 10:00 and then there is a live D.J. and Indian dancers on a big stage and everyone else is dancing. Most people have been there many times and are quite good at Bhangra. Bhangra is basically Bollywood dancing meets hip-hop. It's extremely energetic and fun. Crystal and the other girls managed to make it look just as rhythmic as the Indian girls on stage but I wasn't quite so lucky. It involves a little bit of shimmy in the shoulders, some suave hip action and throwing out your limps in an elegant and rhythmic matter that made me look more like a starfish caught in mid air than any sort of dancer. Luckily no one was paying attention to my starfish jig as apparently they had all been drinking since sun up. The music was really cool; It was traditional Indian music with hip hop songs overlayed on top of them. We danced non-stop for about three hours and ended up as sweaty messes.

Our next destination was a mere neighborhood away but instead of walking we waited ten minutes for a cab to take all ten or so of us. When a cab didn't come and I suggested walking, the friends marvelled at how much people in San Francisco walk. They are from LA and did various thinks ranging from working in Marketing at Disney, to acting, to rapping, to being too drunk to say what they did. 

When a cab didn't show up, Crystal's fiance Alan called "their car guy" and had the sedan pick half of them up. Wowza. When we arrived at the next club Crystal said, "Don't worry we are on a list. I do NOT wait in lines." Just like she "doesn't do public transportation." I made some exclamation of surprise to which she said, "We don't come out to play around" and marched past the long line of people to the front. Sure enough they opened the back gate and let us all in. This bar has huge ornate chandeliers all over the ceiling. There are about six big round booth tables around the edge that you have to pay to reserve for the night. The rest of the people stand in the middle or go to the bar. Each booth is equipped with an old fashion round-dial phone that you can use to call other tables. Good for situations such as the night we got a call from "The guys at table one" who wanted us to come over and say hello. We peeked over the tall retro-fitted black booths, saw the gray hair across the room, giggled and hung up. It can be a fun game.

Right when we sat sound the waitress brought out a tray and set down ten shots of Patron with lime that we all took together. Then two more waiters came out with a pyramid of elegant clear glasses and iced bottles of Grey Goose Vodka, other alcohol, different juices and toppings. They made each of us our own personalized drink right there at the table and then left us with all the bottles of alcohol. 
The whole time I have that shallow rap song G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S running through my head like I am living in a music video with all the fancy drinks, music blaring, and chandeliers and glasses glittering in the dark. Us girls all got up to dance the rest of the night away while the guys sat at the table. Looking back at them, Alan was in the middle with his arms around all the guys one shoulder cocked, long hair flowing down his back, looking very serious and much like some lord or sultan. The alcohol bottles had those little metal snouts on them and some of the guys were pouring vodka straight into their mouths. One of Crystal's married female friends was grabbing her every place she could find while her husband exclaimed, "I always thought she was bisexual." The night progressed to Crystal and Alan's' apartment for some Wii tennis and golf into the wee hours of the morning. It's my second saturday in a row of going to bed at 5 am and waking up wondering if I'm back in Europe or if life is just this ridiculous. And it is. 

I finished the weekend off with a picnic in the park with my other friend/ coworker Rory and her husband and their friends. (being the fifth or seventh wheel is becoming a theme) It was incredibly. The Marina Park is right on a nice little beach. Because of the way the bay arcs, you look out at the bay and across the the tall buildings and towers of the Financial district. It was so sunny it looked like the buildings were gilded in rosy gold, where the windows glinting off the sun. To the other side is the Golden Gate Bridge, very close and bright red in all it's glory. We stayed until the pink and blue colors of the sunset descended on the bridge and it started to cool off. Connor met a bunch of his friends at the park and they played football and frisbie. We ended the weekend with a trip in the back of pick up and another BBQ at Connor's house. His friends are catching on to my somewhat strange sense of reality and have started following all my statements with, "Recently said on Lindsaynews.com" A good summer weekend before Thanksgiving indeed! My weekend has me still dancing in my head to "I Kissed a girl and I liked it." and other fantastically catchy songs. Summer aka global warming is in full tilt her in the city with a weekend of 83 degree sunny days and warm, balmy nights. After a ten mile hike with Connor and some of his guy friends in the east bay, I went to some fellow UPSers' house for a BBQ. These guys are a year below Connor and I in school and were in Beta with Connor. Their stories of baling each other out of jail drunk, Funday Sunday's of all day drinking and finding Large cantankerous friends in the tiny Beta closet was good affirmation that Connor and I certainly met at the right time and not a moment too late. After explaining to them multiple times that I am quite allergic to alcohol and can only have one drink, I found myself five shots deep and ready to hit the club scene. My coworker/ friend Crystal with whom I went to Bodega Bay was entertaining her fiance's high school friends for the weekend. 
After paying away my first child's college education at the door (yes that is what $20 dollars is to me) I met the group in a place called the Rickshaw. In the Rickshaw they teach Bhangra lessons until 10:00 and then there is a live D.J. and Indian dancers on a big stage and everyone else is dancing. Most people have been there many times and are quite good at Bhangra. Bhangra is basically Bollywood dancing meets hip-hop. It's extremely energetic and fun. Crystal and the other girls managed to make it look just as rhythmic as the Indian girls on stage but I wasn't quite so lucky. It involves a little bit of shimmy in the shoulders, some suave hip action and throwing out your limps in an elegant and rhythmic matter that made me look more like a starfish caught in mid air than any sort of dancer. Luckily no one was paying attention to my starfish jig as apparently they had all been drinking since sun up. The music was really cool; It was traditional Indian music with hip hop songs overlayed on top of them. We danced non-stop for about three hours and ended up as sweaty messes.

Our next destination was a mere neighborhood away but instead of walking we waited ten minutes for a cab to take all ten or so of us. When a cab didn't come and I suggested walking, the friends marvelled at how much people in San Francisco walk. They are from LA and did various thinks ranging from working in Marketing at Disney, to acting, to rapping, to being too drunk to say what they did. 

When a cab didn't show up, Crystal's fiance Alan called "their car guy" and had the sedan pick half of them up. Wowza. When we arrived at the next club Crystal said, "Don't worry we are on a list. I do NOT wait in lines." Just like she "doesn't do public transportation." I made some exclamation of surprise to which she said, "We don't come out to play around" and marched past the long line of people to the front. Sure enough they opened the back gate and let us all in. This bar has huge ornate chandeliers all over the ceiling. There are about six big round booth tables around the edge that you have to pay to reserve for the night. The rest of the people stand in the middle or go to the bar. Each booth is equipped with an old fashion round-dial phone that you can use to call other tables. Good for situations such as the night we got a call from "The guys at table one" who wanted us to come over and say hello. We peeked over the tall retro-fitted black booths, saw the gray hair across the room, giggled and hung up. It can be a fun game.

Right when we sat sound the waitress brought out a tray and set down ten shots of Patron with lime that we all took together. Then two more waiters came out with a pyramid of elegant clear glasses and iced bottles of Grey Goose Vodka, other alcohol, different juices and toppings. They made each of us our own personalized drink right there at the table and then left us with all the bottles of alcohol. 
The whole time I have that shallow rap song G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S running through my head like I am living in a music video with all the fancy drinks, music blaring, and chandeliers and glasses glittering in the dark. Us girls all got up to dance the rest of the night away while the guys sat at the table. Looking back at them, Alan was in the middle with his arms around all the guys one shoulder cocked, long hair flowing down his back, looking very serious and much like some lord or sultan. The alcohol bottles had those little metal snouts on them and some of the guys were pouring vodka straight into their mouths. One of Crystal's married female friends was grabbing her every place she could find while her husband exclaimed, "I always thought she was bisexual." The night progressed to Crystal and Alan's' apartment for some Wii tennis and golf into the wee hours of the morning. It's my second saturday in a row of going to bed at 5 am and waking up wondering if I'm back in Europe or if life is just this ridiculous. And it is. 

I finished the weekend off with a picnic in the park with my other friend/ coworker Rory and her husband and their friends. (being the fifth or seventh wheel is becoming a theme) It was incredibly. The Marina Park is right on a nice little beach. Because of the way the bay arcs, you look out at the bay and across the the tall buildings and towers of the Financial district. It was so sunny it looked like the buildings were gilded in rosy gold, where the windows glinting off the sun. To the other side is the Golden Gate Bridge, very close and bright red in all it's glory. We stayed until the pink and blue colors of the sunset descended on the bridge and it started to cool off. Connor met a bunch of his friends at the park and they played football and frisbie. We ended the weekend with a trip in the back of pick up and another BBQ at Connor's house. His friends are catching on to my somewhat strange sense of reality and have started following all my statements with, "Recently said on Lindsaynews.com" A good summer weekend before Thanksgiving indeed!

A Small Tribute to Coddled Eggs

I was eating my coddled egg this morning and felt ridiculously happy. The day had already begun quite well. I forced myself awake at 6 AM and ran down Nob Hill to the gym so that the evening was free to watch our dear gun toting Alaskan Governor make an ass of herself on National television. I took the cable car back up the hill as the day was breaking over the bay. I chatted with the cable car driver over the not-so melodious jinggling as the turquoise waters of the north bay came into view. At the top of the hill I jumped off the car and bolted towards my quaint and lovable new studio, holding my breath through the stinky hallways (I like to tell myself the already exorbitant rental price would be even higher if they painted the walls and replaced the moldy smelling carpet) I thought, what could possibly make the morning better than a coddled egg?

As I enjoyed my egg, I fell into a deep contemplation about the current state of coddled eggs. Are they a distant memory of the past? Are they extinct? Was anyone else in San Francisco enjoying a coddled egg at this very moment in their equally tiny and old fashioned studio? I feared they fell out of favor in the Carter administration along with a feasible energy program and true oil conservation.

I grew up with them, my mom grew up with them, but is the rest of the world bereft of this small pleasure?

First of all, many of my most vivid morning memories involve coddled eggs. My tow-headed older brother- a gourmand from the beginning- invented “egg stew” which was always a breakfast favorite. This consisted of chopped up soft boiled coddled egg with generously buttered toast that was ripped into tiny bits and tossed in with the egg to soak up the yolk and compliment the dish’s soft texture with a little crunch. Not only did we fight bitterly over who got the most egg stew, we perpetually drove my mother nuts by making her late for meetings with the deep involvement of creating egg stew. Now maybe you can’t relate to this BUT, a couple words on why you should love coddled eggs:

1. The name of course. Everyone likes the idea of being coddled, even when we pretend to be adults. I even like being coddled when only a couple years before I thought both coddle and swaddle meant to paddle someone violently with a blunt object. Under said pretenses , I might have threatened a certain blond friend about swaddling and coddling her with an oar on some menacing early and dark morning.

2. They are made in beautiful porcelain coddlers. They are egg shaped and usually have colorful and ornate designs like orchids or birds.

3.They are the same as hard or soft boiled eggs, except you don’t burn your hand when peeling the hot shell, you just simply crack a raw egg into the coddler, boil it in hot water, scoop the egg out of its coddler and voila! There is your eggie. Bon apetit et bon matin!!

Visit to Paradise

I just spent the past week in my favorite place in the world. While I was there I sculled a single shell, swam across the cove every day with my dad, sailed with my cousin, ran in the trees, canoed with my mom, water skied with my brother complete with a face plant that felt like a truck injury the next day, and lazed on the floating dock like a seal soaking up the sun.

The sun however, was very minimal, while the life lessons on genes and nutrition were plentiful. New Hampshire is having a record high rain year and as a result, the blue berries were going wild. Besides the two blueberries pies I made,  I recently acquired a new found love of pancakes. I now have to make up for 22 years of pancakeless mornings by having blueberry pancakes virtually every single day from here on out (a daunting task). Just as I was frying a badcake (as my dad calls them) in oozing butter and watching the blueberries bubble purple on the sides, my 86 year old Grandfather went into his yearly lesson about the genes I inherited. The monologue goes a little something like this,

"Oh Robinson women, they are doomed. Doomed to be fat. OOOhaaahhh you should have seen my sister. She was enormous. And my mother ahh gaadddd! They all start out so thin. Oh when Lizzy (my aunt) was your age she was just beautiful. Thin and beautiful. But then every year she got a little more and a little more well covered. You watch yourself. Every year you'll add a little more on and then one day you will realize you have quite a bit more than you ever anticipated or desired!" 

He speaks of it like a disease I am doomed to and can only watch passively. It doesn't matter if I have a boyfriend over for dinner for the first time, or a room full of cousins; he will still give the lecture.  Luckily I find these little lessons absolutely hysterical. He seems to be worrying himself sick about the doomed poundage I am fatefully walking into. And every year, it was this exact age that "Lizzy was still thin at 22 (insert 16,17, 18 etc). Ooohhhhahhh but the year after that...." 

Besides the life lessons I reviewed, the week was the most peaceful I've had this year. It was incredibly stormy, which made it absolutely beautiful. The storms usually started with wind and lightning in the late afternoon. We sat on the deck and watched the wind whip the leaves of maple, birch and cedar into the darkening sky. The lightning was coming down right behind the lake on the other side of the cove and the combined sound of thunder and and rustling leaves lulled me into a happy stupor. Right before the rain came, all the colors deepened, the blue of the mountains, the green trees, the sky reflecting lake and the heavy clouds. The rain came in torrents that didn't let up until morning.

Most years you can sit down on the dock and swing your feet around without touching water. This year the water was above the sagging parts of the dock. When a boat wake came by, the water jumped through the slats in the wood, soaking the entire dock. And the mushrooms were just having a field day. In a place where I have never seen mushrooms, they were suddenly as abundant as trees. One was literally as big as a toast plate (read: the small plates)  They were spotted, pink, red, brown, lumpy, white, growing on trees, floating in the lake, and even growing on the benches. 

I also saw more loons this year than ever. If you've never heard a loon, I can't even explain the sound they make at night. Its somewhat like a wooden flute, hollow and elemental, eery and long. The sound reverberates down the cove. They are incredibly graceful looking with their bright white and black spots. One day I rowed to a little neighboring cove to look at the lily pads. There were blue lily pad flowers as well as yellow ones. I stopped rowing and started to meditate with my eyes open. A couple of ducks became comfortable enough to walk out on a half submerged tree right next to me. Then two loons glided right by me. They started calling in a short chortling whistle that they don't do at night. The echo seemed to be bouncing of rock walls in every direction. It was incredible. The sunsets were a whole other blog so I will stop boring you all. Needless to say it was very hard to leave. 

Tirade against the sink

Hello my lovely doveys! Now that I realized that I have a two person readership for which I am infinitely grateful , I can address you more personally. Also apologies for my long stint of silence, it has now ended. Which sadly means an update that may be too long to read.

This twilight zone that I work in....well I think I had it all wrong. Behind the glitz and glamour is a world I had only hoped to be ignorant of. Let's start with the kitchen sink:

We (I use this word sarcastically and with an ironic dose of cynicism) can now proudly boast that we are a sustainable company, dedicated to waste reduction. However, this involves a transition so radical and alien, that some people don't really know what to do. Once upon a golden time there was a trash can where one could dispose of unwanted paper coffee cups, resplendent with gooey Starbuck's sugar free sugar. But what is the modern cosmo woman supposed to do when the ceramic mugs cannot be disposed of in the trash can?

Of course! The kitchen sink is the latest trend of last year's trash can! By noon the sink is piled so high with mugs and plates that one can barely turn the water on without back-splash off the ceramic behemoth. Never mind that the dishwasher is right next to the sink and completely empty. Once I was even caught in the naughty act of loading a dish and was told cooly "Oh you don't need to do that. The cleaning people do that." 

This latest insight that we in fact have cleaning people makes the poster above the sink a curious and suspect piece of art. Right above the sink is a compelling picture of a naked baby in a sink full of dirty dishes. He is saying "Clean up after yo' self sucka!" Then in big bold letters at the top it says, "Don't make chubby baby do your dishes!" 

This heartfelt plea to clean up after ourselves  seems to imply that the cleaning people are....chubby babies? Are we just hoping that they don't read or speak English and won't be offended that we are calling them fat infantile cannards???

OH! Speaking of babies. Today I took part in a brainstorm at work. I thought it would be a good way to see if I want to get onto the creative team in my firm. We were brainstorming new ideas for a wine brand that caters to adventurous people. We had a list of what "THEY" (the other, strange adventurous being) likes and does. We were told that statistically speaking they don't watch TV, don't work in office jobs and are typically divorced. From this we accurately gleaned that our crowd of target adventurers are "losers, loners and babies" Why did we decide that they were babies you might ask? Well because people who can't sit still to watch TV, and who don't have office jobs (and I quote from a senior planner) " don't have the fucking attention span to sit their asses down for more than five minutes" People who can't sit in offices are babies. 

Let me tell you, my ideas for this adventure brainstorm were not wanted or appreciated. We decided that we should go for a sustainable, environmental bend to appeal to these adventurers whom we so abhor. I learned that sustainable means something completely different in this world. It is measured in dollars saved, not water saved; it is the latest marketing gimmick; it is the hottest buzz word and if you can use it to your advantage, you are on the cutting edge of profitability and street cred. Marketing a product as sustainable has nothing to do with the actual thing. 

I munched endlessly on cookies and tried to act mature while we decided how best to manipulate the tree huggers.

At the end I said to the senior, "I'm sorry I didn't contribute more, I am still figuring things out and learning a lot by just taking it all in and seeing what it is you are looking for in terms of ideas."

Her response: "Well if you figure it out let me know, I'll still be here tomorrow."

Oh also, she said that she "hates nature" and lived in Colorado for five minutes and then realized that there was "way too much fucking wilderness" 

Oh my there is so much more to share. Perhaps I should leave this at that and tell you the rest later. 

Tata my loves. I hope you live in the other sphere of our dichotomized world!