Capping off another terrific Christmas: from left, Bouncing Buddy Banzai the Spinning Japanese Chin; Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein, who clearly had too much eggnog last night; and Miss Mia Sopaipilla.
Preparations for the annual holiday feast have begun at Chez Dog. Herself’s gift, a Canon Vixia HF M41 camcorder, is charging on the kitchen table (she aced a video-production class this fall) as she assembles a raspberry cobbler.
Next up is a cornbread-stuffing recipe we’ve never tried before — the cornbread itself is already done, and top-notch it is, too — followed by an appetizer of toasted baguettes topped with a rich spread of prosciutto, butter, Parmigiano-Reggiano and pine nuts (also a newcomer); mashed spuds; sauteéd spinach with mushrooms; giblet gravy, cranberry relish; and last but not least, roast turkey.
I usually do something offbeat for Christmas, like a Northern New Mexican feast or a chicken cacciatore, but this year I decided we needed the comfort food. The leftovers are the best part of a traditional turkey dinner — turkey sandwiches, turkey enchiladas, turkey soup, and whatnot. You cook like a mad bastard for one day and reheat leftovers for three days. What’s not to like?
Meanwhile, the traditional Humiliation of the Animals has been accomplished. The furry swine failed to get me a MacBook Air or an iPhone 4, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let that pass without retribution. You can order that stuff online, f’chrissakes. No messy human interaction or trips to the mall required:
“Hello, how may I help you?
“Meow.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Meow!”
“Come again?”
“Meeeowwwwwwrrrr. ... Oh, fuck it, Buddy, you try.”
Finally, enough snow to shovel. And shovel, and shovel, and. ...
We finally got a snowfall worthy of the name — about eight inches’ worth over a couple of days, just in time for solstice.
Lacking a gym membership and possessing the feeble upper body of the geriatric cyclist I suffered through multiple repetitions of precipitation redistribution between other chores — running VeloNews.com, cooking, serving as staff to cats, fetching the holiday vittles from Whole Paycheck, some last-minute gift-shopping and a welcome visit to the backcracker (though she probably found it less so, as I make her earn those BMW payments).
Nearly eight inches ... and just about the biggest dumper we've seen in our eight years here.
The VeloNews.com thing has been particularly irksome. I haven’t worked five days a week for 20 years — not at the same mind-numbing task, anyway — and frankly I don’t know how you poor bastards stand it. We’re still minus a web editor, and I’m minus a 2012 contract until said executive gets hired, so with eight days remaining on my 2011 deal with these people I’ve been spending more than a few of our very short daylight hours revisiting many of the late George Carlin’s fabled Seven Words.
A couple things caused me to dial down the volume a bit, though. While motoring around in the snow the other day I noticed some poor sod in a hard hat, up to his tits in a right-lane ditch, digging away as the heavy holiday traffic slalomed around him. As working for a living goes this makes pixel-pushing look like sharing a hot tub with Elle MacPherson, Scarlett Johansson and a couple flagons of Perrier-Jouët Belle Epoque.
Then my friend and colleague Hal Walter reported in from Weirdcliffe, recounting a tile-and-carpet project that turned into your basic 17-day nightmare, forcing him and his family from their home as appliances and furniture were torn from their proper places and stacked in the living room while various artisans were hired and fired. At least I get to be pissed off in my own house.
And finally another friend and colleague, Charles Pelkey, who has been enduring weeks of chemotherapy for cancer, had another health scare. While taking his latest infusion he developed a dysrhythmia that sent him to the ER for a battery of heart tests; seems potentially fatal dysrhythmias are a rare side effect of the drug Taxol and his oncologist wasn’t taking any chances.
Happily, the problem disappeared when Charles got on a treadmill and elevated his heart rate. And better still, the doc decided that enough was enough already and gave Charles a get-out-of-chemo card — he had been slated to continue treatments through the holidays and most of January 2012.
Me, I take an aspirin now and then when I get a brain cramp.
So it looks like I don’t have anything to bitch about, goddamnit. But wait … I can always bitch about not having anything to bitch about! It’s the best present ever!
Here’s hoping y’all have nothing to bitch about, too. Happy holidays to you and yours.
"You said a bad word," says Mia. "And another. And another. And another. ..."
What’s been going on around here, you ask?
Well, let me think here for a minute. Hmm. …
We had the big Thanksgiving Day U-turn from Bibleburg to Fort Collins and back on Thursday; a full day of VeloNewsery plus dinner with our across-the-street neighbors Larry, Jill and Wendy on Friday; lunch with (and saying adios to) our wonderful next-door neighbor Judy on Saturday, with an extra-large side of work; and work work work on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, culminating in yet another dinner with friends tonight, a northern New Mexican project to which I tended between bouts of pixel-pushing for the Boulder boyos.
Whew. Long week for an old dog. And it ain’t over yet.
As you might imagine, something’s had to give around here, and that something is exercise. My ass is approaching critical mass, and I ain’t talking about the traffic-snarling bicycle parade, either.
I did sneak out for a 20-minute “run” this afternoon before putting the beans on the stove. Folks probably thought they were seeing a particularly ugly, sluggish zombie on the prowl.
And I probably managed to sweat off a couple of grams running around the kitchen, chopping, mincing, slicing, sautéing and stirring bits of this and that until in desperation, running out of time, I finally dialed down the menu from cheese enchiladas in green sauce with one side of beans in chipotle and another of red chile roasted potatoes to a bare-bones platter — bean burritos smothered in green with a side of the aforementioned spuds.
The bad news is, I probably put those lost grams right back on by going back for seconds. Plus pie. Did I mention pie? Oh, Lord.
Meanwhile, we will return to our regularly scheduled snark come Thursday, when I have a day off — and the weatherman is calling for wind-driven snow and a high in the 20s. I foresee much grumbling and the first stationary-trainer ride of the season, not necessarily in that order.
Herself and I ordinarily start our Thanksgiving Day drive north to dine with my sis and bro-in-law by listening to Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” and finish the drive home with Sam Kinison’s “Live From Hell.” It’s not exactly your typical family tradition, but then we’re not exactly your typical family.
Alas, this trip we got rooked out of Arlo — KRCC wasn’t playing it until noon, when we were well out of range, and KUNC must have played it before we got in range. *
So we listened to Sam on the way up and Richard Pryor’s “… is it something I said?” on the way back. And thus, since the Comedy Rule of Three is clearly in effect here today, and in order to shine a bit of comedic light on the festival of consumerist idiocy called “Black Friday” that precedes The Greatest Bullshit Story Ever Told, we herewith present a portion of George Carlin’s 10th HBO special, “George Carlin: 40 Years of Comedy.”
* Incidentally, we did finally get our Arlo fix around 8:30 p.m. Bibleburg time thanks to the miracle of the streaming internets. There may be a god after all.
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