Category: Holidays

Oh, eat me. …

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
“Phone appétit, monsieur.”

¡Basta ya! I embarked on a news diet yesterday. As in “fasting.”

Throughout the long Fourth I consumed exactly zero news, save for checking the weather to see if it was suitable for the healthy outdoor exercise.

And really, I could’ve just stepped outside for that.

But still. Shit.

The media had been keening without letup at a pitch that made an Irish wake look like sitting zazen. The Internet is said to be bottomless, the way a cup of joe used to be, but they came perilously close to filling the fucker up.

The fans in my 10-year-old MacBook Pro were approaching a Boeing level of failure. Every hot take a platter of steaming horseshit, smack in the gob. In my Father’s Bistro there are Many Dishes, I mused blasphemously. I sure as hell don’t have to eat this shit.

So I pulled a Level One Roberto Duran: “No más, no más.”

As mentioned in the previous post, yesterday I took my coffee on the couch, not at the desk. After breakfast Herself and I went for a short trail run. I followed that up with a 90-minute ride.

Then I set a loaf of bread to baking, poured the fixings for Sarah DiGregorio’s chipotle-honey chicken tacos into the Crock-Pot, argued with the Voices in my head about which of our many subscriptions we should cancel, entertained Miss Mia Sopaipilla, and served up the grub.

The three of us dined in front of the TV, streaming a couple episodes of “The Bear,” season three. (Spoiler alert: There was less hollering, even when Sugar was in labor.)

Afterward we joined the neighbors for their annual fireworks extravaganza in the cul-de-sac. No flyers or boomers, just ground-level sparklers and sizzlers. But an enjoyable tradition nonetheless.

One of the grandkids was leaping and cavorting throughout, trying to grab a handful of smoke, as grandpa performed his pyrotechnical wizardry. I caught my share of the exhaust while sitting down, in my clothing, eyes, and windpipe, and both Herself and I had to hit the showers afterward to hose off the residue of whatever those wily foreign devils put in their whizbangs.

The Republic I left to its own devices. I expect there was no shortage of counsel, and plenty of fireworks, too.

• Meanwhile, a housekeeping note: If any of you have tried and failed to post a comment recently, and you are using an Apple device, the problem may reside with the Safari browser. Herself was able to comment from an M1 Mac Mini using Firefox. I’ve pinged the WordPress people and will get back to you with whatever they have to say. But in the meantime, you might try using another browser to make your voices heard.

Presidents’ Day (*some exceptions apply)

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Hail to the chief, President Nobilette.

I think we can all agree that some who have held the office do not deserve a Day, unless that day is in court, wherein a judge intones:

“Will the defendant please rise?”

Still, setting dreams aside for the moment, there once was a time when Presidents’ Day was less about presidents, good, bad, or indifferent, or even our first president, than it was about (wait for it …) bicycles.

According to a 2015 story by Yoni Appelbaum in The Atlantic, Americans once honored George Washington on Feb. 22 through feats of cycling.

When the date became a federal holiday in 1885, Appelbaum wrote, the nation “was deep in the grip of the bicycle craze.”

“In Boston, cyclists used the public holiday to hold bicycle races before cheering throngs. Local bike stores opened their doors to entice the race-day crowds, bringing them in off the snowy streets to preview the pleasures of spring. February 22 soon marked the start of the season, the day on which bicycle retailers held open houses to show off their latest models to eager crowds.”

—The Atlantic

As with quality in the nation’s highest office, this glorious state of velo-affairs could not last, of course. As the appeal of the humble two-wheeler began to wane in the early 1900s, the automobile rose up to take its place on the national stage, and the seasonal advertising campaigns shifted gears, from vehicles powered by living people to ones that ran on dead dinosaurs.

This will not stand, y’know? This aggression will not stand, man. So, today, turn a pedal for Liberty! Leave the dino-burner in the driveway! Take your bicycle for a red-white-and-blue spin!

And for the love of George Washington, don’t buy any golden high-tops.

Sweet Christmas

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 25 Comments
Aebleskiver, a.k.a. Danish pancake balls.

Happy happy joy joy to yis all, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Satanists, pagans, atheists, agnostics, the lot.

Miss Mia Sopaipilla made it a very meowy Christmas about 12:45, blasting us both out of bed with her air-raid siren of a morning voice, a symptom of advancing age and p’raps a bit of related hearing loss. “Arise and serve Me!”

No matter. We fell back to sleep, arose at a more suitable hour, and for reasons known only to Herself — “Well, I had this pan, you see. …” we broke fast with strong coffee, mandarines, and aebleskiver, some delicious little balls of sugar, flour, and fat, fried in butter on the stovetop. Miss Mia got some cream. We don’t hold grudges.

My stepgrandfather, John Jensen, was a Dane, but I don’t recall either him or Grandma Maude making aebleskiver for us when we would visit them in Sioux City. When the blood kin were otherwise occupied John would sneak me hits off his cigar and sips of beer, though. Baby steps. You gotta start ’em young if they’re gonna stick it out.

As we noshed we gave ear to the traditional holiday musical fare — “Merry Christmas from the Family,” Robert Earl Keen; “The Bells of Dublin,” The Chieftains (and friends); ”The Christians and the Pagans,” Dar Williams; “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis,” Tom Waits — you know, the classics.

Then we unwrapped gifts — AirPods for Herself (she spends a lot of time on the iPhone/iPad, talking to friends, family and colleagues, listening to music or podcasts, watching “SNL,” Stephen Colbert, cute animal videos, etc. — and a couple graphic novels for Your Humble Narrator, among them the complete “Bodies” by the late Si Spencer, a time-traveling whodunit that got turned into a miniseries by Netflix.

Also, an official Guinness Extra Stout T-shirt in medium, because (a) I am no longer extra stout, and (2) a man of any gravity (or its opposite, comedy) can never have too many beer-related garments.

At some point there must be time for fat-burning exercise, because Santa knows we’ve been very, very bad, if only in a strict dietary sense. Also, I want to be able to wear that shirt.

So, go thou and do likewise. Mind the aebleskiver. Also, and too, the Guinness. Though I bet they make that T-shirt in an XXXL, too. Call it an inspired guess.

Blank Friday

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments

Chicken cacciatore with succotash.

Another Thanksgiving feast has come and gone (though leftovers aplenty remain) and here it is Blank Friday already and I haven’t snapped up a single solitary bargain, not one.

Herself had requested Emeril Lagasse’s chicken cacciatore for dinner, and I decided to add the traditional accompaniment, Martha Rose Shulman’s stir-fried succotash.

Butter cookies.

Somewhere along The Path for reasons unknown we got detoured into butter-cookie construction, and as a consequence I was a wee bit tardy getting started on my own preparations, which are extensive.

These dishes are not complex — the succotash needs just four minutes in the wok — but they involve more than a few ingredients, among them Emeril’s Essence, a spice mix with eight components.

The cacciatore itself has 20 more. The succotash? Eleven. Many cups and bowls for the mise en place, many, many of them.

For the cookery I needed a large Dutch oven, a pasta pot, and a wok. Knives, spatulas, spoons, graters, cutting boards, colander, oven mitts, rubber gloves, yadda yadda yadda. Clean as you go, etc. Stand back, gimme room, and so on.

A memory with fewer holes in it would have been nice, too. For some reason I had it in my head that the simmering phase of the cacciatore would last only 20 minutes, which was 40 minutes short of actuality. This put a slight hitch in my culinary gitalong and thus we were late sitting down to the actual eating, which annoyed Miss Mia Sopaipilla, who is a stickler for schedules (her own).

Didn’t matter. We’d lunched on eggs over medium and pan-fried potatoes, so we weren’t drooling and ravenous. We didn’t have two-legged guests waiting, growing surly with drink, reawakened memories of past slights, and plans for vengeance. And we didn’t have to drive home afterward.

During the final cleanup, which was extensive, we sang along with Arlo, singing loud to end war and stuff. We hope yous all did likewise. There’s a lot of it about.

In which various turkeys come home to roost

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

No, I haven’t started cooking yet. But this is what it should look like.

Must be Thanksgiving or something.

Many a comrade has been checking in with Your Humble Narrator. There’s Charles Pelkey, who is now (a) a retired shyster and (2) with wife Diana, an empty nester; their kids, Philip and Annika, have fled Wyoming for the libtard swamps of Oregon. And Matt Wiebe, the renowned former tech editor, university-professor emeritus, and boat-breaking salmon fisherman, whose offspring are scattered far and wide; at least two of them, Willie and Esti, will be spending the holiday in Fanta Se with their ould fella and mom Lori.

Also billing in were Chris Coursey and Merrill Oliver, two of my oldest bros (oy, are they ever old). Especially Chris, a.k.a. The Supervisor, who yesterday in the Sonoma Whine Country marked the latest in a long string of birthdays. I expect he gummed down a little strawberry Jell-O with some chocolate frosting on top, wet himself, and fell asleep in the puddle as Merrill took a few snaps for posterity and/or The New York Times (“Notorious Santa Rosa Supervisor Drunk On Job (Again)”).

Actually, Chris, Merrill, and a few thousand of their closest friends plan a “birthday units” ride on Friday. Could be miles, could be millimeters. More as I hear it.

Bike-industry refugee Tim Campen chimed in from South Carolina with a few piquant observations about the good times in Gaza. He and wife Jill recently welcomed their Blue Zoomie son Ellis home after a tour in Saudi Arabia, and they must be relieved to have him back in the Land of The Big BX.

And Hal Walter filed a dispatch from Weirdcliffe, where some psycho was exercising his Second Amendment and Castle Doctrine rights just a few miles as the crow flies from our old hillside fortress off Brush Hollow Road.

Hal was trying to track developments as he, Mary, and Harrison prepared for their traditional Thanksgiving trip to Taos, where other people will do the cooking and washing up for a small (well, maybe not so small) consideration.

Alas, while there is said to be a “newspaper war” raging in Weirdcliffe, neither “newspaper” was engaging with the story, and Hal and his neighbors were getting most of their “information” from Facebutt.

We spent a little time nosing around on the Innertubes, and learned that shortly after being spotted in Salida the suspect was found to be hightailing it through — wait for it — New Mexico.

With three in the bag and one in the hospital I can only assume our man felt he was ready to step up from the farm club to The Show, where middle-schoolers routinely cap their classmates over a bit of the old side-eye.

But our Juan Laws said nope, thanks all the same, we got all the local talent we can handle. And they took him into custody just outside The Duck! City. So near, and yet, so far. Will he have to pay $50 and pick up the garbage? Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, the gendarmes have not popped round to invite me to assist them with their inquiries. I met a few psychos during our stint in Weirdcliffe but this dude wasn’t one of them. In my day property disputes were generally restricted to questions like: “Shit, was this your beer? Sorry, thought it was mine. Get another’n from the cooler. Whaddaya mean we’re out?”