After the deluge

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
Drip, drip, drip.

I’m glad to have logged a couple leisurely hours on the bike yesterday, because today is looking decidedly less velo-friendly.

Something blew me out of a sound sleep around 3 a.m., and surprise, surprise, it was a powerful wind bearing water in quantity. Stripped a metric shit-ton of needles off the pines, slapped one wind chime off its hook, pitched a plastic bucket across the yard, and dumped about 0.30 inch of agua fria in under three hours.

That would be 0.12 inch short of normal … for the month.

We’ll take it. Since we shut down the irrigation system I’ve been watering by hand, and that burns a lot of daylight that I could use for other pasatiempos. Like, say, cycling.

The bike I was riding yesterday, a Soma Saga, sported fenders that I did not need. Long sleeves, knee warmers, yes; mudguards, no. The only evidence of Thursday’s 0.44 inch of precip’ was a little more sand scattered across the foothills streets.

Today might be a very different story, if I were sucker enough to give it a go. Oh, sure, at the moment the sun is shining brightly, and the cul-de-sac is slowly drying out.

But there’s still a 50 percent chance of rain resuming around 10:30. And while I welcome it on the trees’ behalf, I can do without it on my person, thanks all the same. I like my showers hot.

A bouquet for November

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
Never surrender.

Gloomy. Chilly. And yet the roses persist.

Is this some class of literary device? Might there be some deeper significance here?

Who knows? Not me, chief. I just work here.

It’s true that we finally caved and turned on the furnaces, and even so the uniform of the day now includes pants, long sleeves, and occasionally a fleece vest.

Here comes the sun, etc.

Too, Thursday brought a chilly rain, and plenty of it, so much so that I never considered going out for a ride or even a run (I ran on Tuesday, and again on Friday, and twice a week is my limit on that nonsense).

Happily, gloom and chill tend to be shortlived in the desert. Hell, these days the sun doesn’t even peek round the Sandias until shortly after 8 a.m. And boom! There the sonofabitch is, right on time. I’m no gardener, but I’m trying to cultivate patience.

Is that some class of literary device, with some deeper significance?

Beats me. I’ll leave that to others. I just like sunshine and flowers.

Cold as ICE

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
“‘Join ICE?’ That’s a joke, son!”

Herself, who spends more time on the social medias than Your Humble Narrator, tipped me to this fella this morning.

Jesse Welles makes good use of TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, where followers compare the 32-year-old from Arkansas to Woody Guthrie or Bob Dylan. He tours like a fiend, from Austin to Boston, Berlin to Brisbane, and recently popped up on Stephen Colbert’s show, which is where Herself caught his act.

NPR calls him “one of the most visible examples of a new generation of digital-savvy artists bringing folk traditions to a modern medium. … So far, his music has addressed the war in Gaza, the Epstein list and the Trump administration’s claims that Tylenol is linked to autism.”

Well, sir. That covers a lot of waterfront, doesn’t it? Rants you can rock to, and roll with. Give him a listen.

Wishboned

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
Oh, eat me.

What’s on the Thanksgiving menu this year? Why, it’s a heaping helping of the fabled Epstein Files, which everyone expects — hopes? — to feature the sticky deets of something on the order of Caligula, the Joker, and Prince Prospero hosting a masked ball at the House of Usher on the Island of Dr. Moreau.

Bon appétit!

Anyone else get a whiff of teenage miscreants frantically policing up the red Solo cups, roaches, and rubbers from an unauthorized bacchanal as their parents pound on the door?

“Hold on, be right there, uh, just got out of the shower, getting dressed, door seems to be stuck for some reason, no, don’t know what that smell is (sotto voce: open some fucking windows for chrissakes, throw a pillow over that stain on the couch, and … shit, is that Suzi curled around the toilet?). …”

It is the hee, and also the haw. This den of thieves has all the transparency of the Shield Wall on Dune, and I don’t see Paul Muad’dib rolling up on a sandworm with the family atomics to let a bit of daylight into the fucker anytime soon.

What we’re likely to see once the fear-sweat evaporates is the massively redacted, heavily abridged, Democrats-only, Reader’s Digest version of a Nextdoor tirade about The Worst Airbnb Ever, featuring a hidden lo-res camera in the crapper and a creepy host who kept popping over in his bathrobe “to see if you needed anything.”

I mean, c’mon:

Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, said that once the Epstein resolution becomes law, the Justice Department could not refuse to release the files, or release them with the names of perpetrators redacted. The resolution prohibits the redaction of names “on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm or political sensitivity.” 

“They will be breaking the law if they do not release these files,” he added. While true, the only way to enforce the Epstein resolution would be for Congress to hold President Trump’s Justice Department in contempt, and for the department to then prosecute itself for failing to release the files, an unlikely sequence of events.

Breaking the law? Seriously? For this lot, that’s what it’s there for.

Leaf me be

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
Hillborne on my trail.

Autumn remains delightful, if you avert your eyes from the nation’s capital.

I’ve been mixing things up a bit. For openers: riding my way through The Fleet. Six different bikes in a week, including the Rivendell Sam Hillborne, pictured Saturday on the Paseo de las Montañas Trail.

I’m also riding different routes, or old ones backasswards. More dirt, with the mango Steelman Eurocross yesterday and the red one today. Yeah, I know, embarrassment of riches and all that.

Off the bike, I’ve been revisiting neglected recipes, like pasta al cavolfiore from the “Moosewood Cookbook.” You want to add maybe a half teaspoon of a good ground red chile to the tomato puree for that one.

Another old fave — a conventional eggs-and-taters breakfast, generally reserved for Sunday — makes a nice change from the boring old oatmeal or yogurt. For Monday’s lunch, I’ll scramble a couple more eggs and dump them, any leftover spuds, a small handful of arugula, a scattering of diced tomato, and a sprinkle of sharpish cheddar, atop warm flour tortillas. Fold and eat.

If the spuds didn’t survive Sunday maybe I’ll whip up the makings for a classic tuna salad sammich a la Craig Claiborne. I leave out the red onions because Herself hates uncooked onions, and the capers because I hate capers. Instead I add some chopped bread-and-butter pickle chips, because we can both agree on those. Haven’t added any minced jalapeño yet, but I can see it happening. Possibly tomorrow. You can’t stop me!

Posole, in its most basic form.

Rooting through my recipe binder the other day I stumbled across one I’d gone to the trouble of printing, but couldn’t recall ever actually cooking. It’s a Greek stew, from Sarah DiGregorio, and once I started putting it together it came back to me. Why did I only cook it the one time? Very easy, very good, even better the next day, and nicely suited to the cooler weather.

But then, the basic posole I’m making as we speak is even easier, and like Sarah’s stew, improves with age. It takes about five minutes of prep and two hours of simmering. Even the Irish can manage it.

Meanwhile, I’m leaving our Halloween lights up for Thanksgiving. Take that, turkeys!