Welcome to my Friday Follies. I figured it was a great way to cover what competes for attention in my brain. You know. In case anyone is actually interested. And since Friday is only so long, I can’t exactly include my entire list.

Question of the Day/Week/Month/Lifetime: Would any of the unthinkably serious crap that is taking place in the world right now be happening if women ruled? Seriously. Clearly, I’m not opposed to men in general. I’m quite fond of four of my own, all of whom are quite pleasant humans. But I will never, ever understand what possesses some to be so consumed with a desire for power, that they destroy what and whomever lies in their path. It makes absolutely no sense.  I would say, “Nuke ‘em ‘till they glow,” but Greenpeace would revoke my membership and I’d have to take my sticker off my Mac.

Now I’ve heard everything: BBC News is reporting today that we can now blame the obese for the planet’s energy woes. I can officially expect the BBC to pick up some of the crap I write since they have decided to bring attention to this illustrious study and call it news.

For the shopper who has everything and can’t resist yet another… um…thing: The ultimate cake server. My VBF handed it to me unopened the other day on our morning walk saying she didn’t want it. I think it was something she received at a dinner party? Lo and behold, a wonder of design revealed itself after I was done fighting with the packaging. Just chuck the magnetized heel, and you’ve got a swanky brushed stainless cake server that may or may not fit in your utensil drawer. My VBF is sooooo getting this back.

For summer travel plans: Consider Paradise your destination. Palm trees, fish tacos, an excellent ball park with a less than stellar ball team, and no more spine-wrenching plunges into bathtub-sized potholes! An end to days of signs warning of sewage spills at the bay? Standard & Poor has finally given our fair city an acceptable bond rating again. We will now get to use plastic to pay for street repairs, faulty sewer lines and broken water mains. Party on! Maybe they can also do something about our pump prices?

My gentle menfolk: I am willing to act like I’m somewhat interested in anyone who can convince me that a person interested in the arts needs to take advanced mathematics. But I think I’ve heard it all before. The RTR will be bypassing pre-calculus for statistics as a junior next year since it’s the lesser of two evils and he has to take a third year of math. The MoH has concocted a bribe — monetary — if the RTR can squeak by with a “C” in Algebra II and Spanish. He does have an “A” in PE, however, which is huge when one considers that actually moving his now more than 6’-tall lankiness is not something he enjoys. And that he has a swim coach who makes the entire class do 45 laps — yes, that would be 45 — to compensate for kids caught sneaking into the locker room early. Maybe the RTR needs to swim with me this summer. And pigs will fly.

My Tiny Paradise:

I saw this guy early this morning when I should have been sleeping in. My VBF had an early appointment so I didn’t have to stumble out of bed at dawn’s crack to walk. Do you think I could actually sleep? Um. No. So of course I got up and thought…Hell. I can take macro snail shots while enjoying my coffee! He looked so cute, I couldn’t bring myself to chuck him over the wall into the early morning traffic. Which probably saved me a law suit now that I think of it. Gawd forbid that I hit someone’s Maserati with snail guts.

On the menu? Feh. I never have a menu. But my friend Gina always does. *sigh* In my next life, I’ll be as organized. Our meals are all mushed around in my head with all this other crap I think about. But I have finally edited the photos from our latest dinner party featuring Rick Bayless’s Mexican cuisine and will be getting around to doing that mammoth post today. And I’m thinking next week is going to be Indian…Tiki Masala, anyone?

Me & my mom: Things are great! We’ve only had 3 arguments, 5 disagreements, uttered 49 sighs of exasperation, clucked our tongues 89 times, and been disgusted with one another once or twice. Don’t get me wrong — that’s all normal — at least it has been since I was In High School. We have our laughs and snorts, too. We’ve been on a few field trips, (Wally World, Target…) have drunk umpteen gazillion pots of coffee, analyzed the state of the human condition at least 14 times, moved my bedroom around, and jeered each other’s candidates with gusto. Her cat finally ventured down the stairs by herself today to be greeted by my hissing pretentious attack cat, and the doggo has stopped following my mom up and down the stairs, realizing her favorite person isn’t going anywhere. Her hips thank her. The dog’s. Not my mom’s.

I’d say that’s enough folly for a Friday.

Don’t you?

I feel so much better now.

Legal Celebration of Game!

In spite of completely ROTTEN refs and Peyton Commercial King Manning, the Sunshine Boys have won. Without L.T. and without their first string quarterback.

Clearly, the MoH and the RTR are not very happy…Bwahahahahahaha!

Of course the carnage on the field is allowing the New Cheating England Patriots some glee in anticipation of their supposed perfect season and Super Bowl win.

But.

The fat lady has not yet begun to sing.

Just wait.

Cheaters never win, Bill.

The head has cleared, my throat no longer feels like the tunnel of death, and I can sort of tell that there are things on Earth that don’t smell like s*ot.  Sorry.  I just can’t spell it.  It’s disgusting.

But I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to say Happy New Year to you all.  I tried to make it around to your blogs and hope I didn’t forget anyone.  Well, it’s not exactly like Santa trying to get around to all the giftees in the world, you know.  But still.

It was nice “seeing” you again and reading about what you’ve been up to even if the MoH is now in bed, I’m up alone, the T.V. that Best Buy has still not delivered parts on is blaring, the RT is snuggled in his bottom bunk unfortunately not as much on the mend as I, and well…

…I’m not sleepy.

Must have been all that decadent lounging on the sofa and in bed for two days with Kleenex sticking out of my nose.

Hopefully you’re smiling.  And if I can wish anything for you, it’s that.  That you’ll smile as you head into 2008, believing that good will happen when you least expect it.

Imagine what could happen if you did expect it.

See you soon.

So we made it to Virginia and after a few days of very grey skies and a refreshing chill in the air, it totally warmed up to near 60 degrees and then rained. Sheesh. And today?

The freaking sun is out. What’s up with that? You would think that when you fly across the damn country for the holidays at least it could pretend like it was going to snow. Feh.

That list I made before I left had to get done or we wouldn’t have been able to get on the plane. So no problem there. When the shuttle driver arrived at the front door to collect us, the house was decent, the presents for the older boys were snuggled under the tree and as an added bribe to them to take care of the house while we were gone, we had the RT open one of his presents we couldn’t take…a gamer’s computer (HP Pavilion Elite) with a 22” flat panel monitor and a humongous graphics card (XFX GeForce 8800 GT XXX) and I have to swagger around a bit when I say that even though I have absolutely NO idea what I’m talking about) that had to have its own power source (or some kind of a fan thingy installed). We had it installed before we left the store (Fry’s Electronics, thank you very much and NOT BEST BUY Bwhahahahahahaha Losers…) by a sales/tech guy who was completely cool, talked the entire time he was putting it in and answered everyone else’s questions at the same time — including “The Wife” on his cell a couple of times regarding being home on time for a change. The guy works 16 hour days. Amazing. We came home with a fist full of rebates I now have to complete so we can actually have a few checks in the mail at some point in the next century. I’ve done them before and I swear we never get anything out of them — most likely because I forgot to cross a “t” or dot an “i.”

Now the cool thing about this computer is that it also functions as a TV, so that helps us out a bit in the area of ensuring that we can all be in separate rooms watching different programs and never see each other ever again. Trick. AND (drum roll…) now neither the MoH or the RT has to use my Mac. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT.

Seriously. It’s mine, mine, mine. ALLLLLLLLLLL mine and they don’t get to TOUCH it.

EVER. So I’m sure the two older boys (okay, so they’re men, but you know how that goes when you’re the mom, right?) are enjoying it while the RT is away. And you can imagine the RT is sweating a bit because he had to leave it at home and is now stuck in this female infested house for the holidays. My sister does have a Wii, though, so people have been having a blast with that. I haven’t succumbed, but most likely will tonight after a couple glasses of wineski.

Enough of that nonsense.

So I just wanted to let you know we were all alive and well, have celebrated my mom’s 70th birthday in true style (there wasn’t a fancy dress in the house…) and took some photos I’ll have to try and share later. Totally hilarious. Oh, and “we” constitutes my sister’s family (husband and two younger daughters) her oldest daughter and her boyfriend (who left Monterey, CA to live here instead and are holed in upstairs indefinitely..) my mother (who’s living in the basement sort of indefinitely, but actually more like temporarily…) a dog, and three cats who all have to be kept away from one another. Oh. And us. Quite the household.

Today, more lists are in order — but they’re the lists I’m good at that include miles of ingredients and a sequence of what to prepare in which order. With one last trip to the grocery store (there have already been two…) we’ll be ready to hunker down for a fun night of dessert making, toasting (instead of the roasting we did to my mom last night), and preparing for our holiday breakfast and then dinner later.

The MoH and RT are out today with my seester doing the turismo thang in D.C. I’ll venture out on Wednesday (which is our wedding anniversary) and make like a tourist myself. Maybe I’ll even twist the MoH’s arm a bit for a swanky dinner or something.

In the meantime, I sincerely hope you are warm, doing what fills your heart — regardless of what it is — and that you are healthy.

Thanks for visiting my little space in the Bloggosphere so often this past year. You have helped to take me from the exhausted, burnt out, frazzled, and completely flattened person that I was, to a person who laughs much more than she used to, and who has also recovered something she thought she’d lost for good — writing.

YOU ROCK!

Screw the memes I have to do. (I really WILL do them. I promise. And my fingers are NOT crossed behind my back.)

But the MoH and I had the perfect recipe for a Monday. We went to our local cook’s haven, Great News in Pacific Beach and spent the evening with Brian Malarkey.

What?

You don’t know who Brian Malarkey is? Feh. Where have you been? He was one of the finalists on Top Chef this year, and the recipient of Chef of the Year from the San Diego Restaurant Association. Of course he should have won Top Chef, but that’s beside the point. WE got to enjoy his magnetic personality, sense of humor, and great cuisine tonight. Here. In Paradise. It was so worth it.

The sky was clear, the air clean, and the Pacific stretched as far as the eye could see. That orange glow was shimmering just above the deep blue horizon. Gorgeous. But a tad cool. Okay, so about 50 degrees F.

But I forgot my camera. So how convenient that we were an HOUR early and I could whiz home to get it and then slide into my seat and look forward to a couple of glasses (well…three if you count the one the MoH didn’t quite finish) of Two Buck Chuck. And the MoH says after the class, “That was pretty good…what was it?” “Koolaide,” I replied, “and you’ll be sorry in the morning.”  The MoH does not imbibe.

The menu for this cooking class was “Asian Inspired Malarkey.” Brian is the executive chef at The Oceanaire here in San Diego. Of course, we seemed to be the only people in the audience who hadn’t eaten there, but that’s because we’re busy paying taxes. We love to eat out, but only do so on special occasions during the year. Actually, we thought we’d enjoy The Oceanaire before this Monday’s class, but time has gotten away from us lately. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to improve our record in that department, getting out to try local food more than we do. I know. Quite the novel concept. Where would San Francisco be without all those Food Bloggers sampling local faire? S.O.L.

Ahem.

The menu Brian and his right hand man prepared for the 50+ group this evening was lovely:

Kumamoto Oysters on the Half Shell with an Asian Inspired Mignonette

Sesame Crusted Big Eye Tuna with Ocean Salad and Micro Wasabi

Shiitake Mushroom and Ginger Soup with Bean Sprouts and Cilantro

Japanese 7 Spice Petite Filet Mignon with Ginger Butter

Green Tea Ice Cream (from a local vendor whose name I regrettably did not get)

Y.U.M. Truly. We’d never had oysters before. Clams, yes. Mussels, yes. But oysters? Um. Nope. So this was big. And I appreciated what Brian had to say about them because the information helps when you slurp something live into your mouth and do notice the slightly briny “Mermaid’s Kiss” with a hint of cilantro as you swallow the creature and smile.

I did not get a stripe on my arm for this accomplishment, but I FEEL good. DAH-duh-DAH-duh-DAH-duh-DAH.

The Ahi Tuna? Oh. My. Sesame seeds all ‘round and seared and then sliced and served with a compound butter. Goodness. I love Ahi this way. But what really made it was the “ocean” salad we waited for while Brain took questions (mostly from the MoH) about his Top Chef experience. The seaweed, thinly sliced and plated under the ahi was perfect. Fresh . Crunchy. Amazing. Totally. I have seared ahi with sesame seeds, but would never have thought to have the seaweed. Who knew? Delicious. It has to be THE reason why I’m a morsel and not a lithe waif. *Make a note to strike the Barefoot Contessa like I didn’t already know this.* Just kidding, Ina. Could you send me a pound of buttah, please?

And Brian’s Top Chef experience details were interesting, too: He didn’t get to speak to his wife for FIVE weeks. They take away your wallet, your keys, your cell — everything. And then, if I’m getting this correctly, they send frequent letters reminding you of your obligation to remain silent on the outcome of the show. With respect to the filming, each day, there’s either a quick challenge, or a main preparation. In Brian’s opinion, the only quick challenge that mattered was the one that took place at the French Culinary Academy (I’m sure I’ve gotten this incorrect). And speaking of culinary academies in general, in his opinion, those interested in his line of work would be better served volunteering for a few hard days with a chef, then signing on to work in that kitchen (if you passed the chef’s scrutiny) and learning from the ground up. You’d earn money as you were learning, as opposed to paying nearly 50K going to an academy. Sounds good to me. Maybe in my next life since I’ve essentially learned by trial and error, reading, by example, and anything else that counts for the last 40 years or so.

Other points of interest in the evening: Brian recommended many local places to find great ingredients, and fresh food. I did know of a few, but a couple I can’t wait to schlep to are & Spice" target="_blank">San Diego Coffee, Tea, and Spice which concocts the spice mixtures Brian used, and Specialty Produce which is where the chefs in San Diego get their goods. Now how could I have NOT known about this? Unbelievable. I’m there this coming Saturday.

News at Eleven.

Anyway…it was a lovely evening. The worst part about it was the ending, and finding out that it was still Monday, instead of Friday, which would have been perfect.

An early birthday present for the MoH with more to come later in the week.

What’s up with these December babies, anyway?

Gluttons.

It’s 10:03 am and the first stream of game day monologue has been uttered downstairs. “Okay. It’s time. Let’s go.” And a more quiet, less assertive mumble that seems to have had something to do with the kick off.

But the MoH’s ready. He had his official jersey pulled over his ancient Eddie Bauer waffle weave tee.

And the Gap jammies Santa gave to him a few years ago.

It’s currently 47 degrees F in Paradise on this Sunday morning after a few days of semi bracing rain.

And we are reh-dee-4-sum-FOOT.BALLLLLLLLLLL.

“INTERCEPTED! Antonio Gates. Ninth interception this year. OH! MY! Don’t throw it to that side of the field. Don’t throw it…”

I guess it’s safe to go down there and read the Sunday paper in happy sports land. It’ must be his matching game day attire.

“They’re just gonna run a freakin’ blitz until you guys do something different. COMEON!”

Well, maybe not.

“ComeON. When are you gonna play like a professional quarter back. Pull your head outta your butt.”

Phil Rivers should heed the MoH’s advice.

The Chargers should know about the dedication of this particular fan.

And his game day suit.

I love December. I’m sure you’re thinking it’s made easier because I’ve never had to deal with snow and sludge, freezing temperatures and pipes that burst. Those things are rarely experienced in places like San Diego, Key West and the south of Spain. But living as I have in the warmer climes my entire life has only my heart grow fonder.

And speaking of hearts, mine is wired for anything that can be even remotely construed as hopelessly romantic — Jane Austin, The Goodbye Girl, Sleepless in Seattle, Harry Nilhsson’s “Without You”, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese…Dorothy and Toto…I can’t help it.
Oddly, all my loveliest swoonable memories can be traced back to December. The MoH and I became inextricably involved in December of 1987. For me, it was almost as painful as an unrequited crush in junior high. Thankfully, my life with the MoH has had a lovely outcome — one that has endured 20 years.

I get sappy when I hear certain songs and have warm memories of going to movies, or sitting on the same side of the table in tacky restaurants sipping margaritas and holding hands. Doing crossword puzzles, taking long walks, and window shopping in malls filled our spare time because they were free and neither of us had any money.

We also wrote love letters to one another.

I still have them, and get a bit squirmy thinking of the pages that are raw with emotion. It’s a wonder they’ve survived me, always on the verge of ridding myself of anything that could be classified as embarassing to myself. But I tuck them away each time I happen across them, glad that they mark a time that mattered so much. Some day, they’ll belong to the RT so he can be mortified that his parents felt the way they do about one another.

When I first knew the MoH, I remember my understandably horrified mother questioning the extent to which I might be in love with “that boy” one night while I was ironing in her house where I was living with my two older boys, not quite 5 and 6. The MoH is nearly seven years younger than I, but no, I wouldn’t have classified him as a boy.

And I did fancy myself in love with him.

Still. We can’t help ourselves.

It has made all the difference.

It’s called perspective. And I wouldn’t trade it for the world.