The Duck! City croaked another mark yesterday with a high of 88°. And our earliest day of 90° or better — May 3, 1947 — looks like an endangered species as well.
This is a small platter of fried spuds to anyone living in Tucson (101°), Phoenix (105°), or Palm Springs (107°). All records, set yesterday. Helluva note when St. Me Day comes with a chaser of heat stroke. If MarkWayne BillyBob JimmyJoe Knucklegobbler and his ICEholes come looking for you in any of those ZIP codes all you need is a parabolic reflector and hey presto! Instant Death Ray.
Speaking of cookery, the hot soups and stews and anything involving the oven have long since been 86ed from the menu here at Chez Dog. Last night we dined on Martha Rose Shulman’s shrimp and mango tacos with a side of rice and green salad. As “spring” scampers into summer, this ol’ dog needs his wok.
Didn’t we just have a full moon? Is God overstocked with these things and blowing them out? Or has He finally run out of patience and put His foot to the floorboard on the road to the End of Days?
This latest celestial spotlight is the Snow Moon, which, ha ha, etc. Yesterday’s high was 61, 10 (!) degrees above normal. Today’s may be warmer still. What little remains from last week’s snow lurks in dark corners, like ICEholes waiting for women and children to push around.
But we were talking about time, not temperature, yes?
Lately it seems that the instant I’ve finished washing the breakfast dishes it’s time to make lunch. Then, with luck, a bit of exercise, and boom! Dinner and bedtime.
Not a lot of unclaimed space therein to, as Whitman put it, “loafe and invite my soul.” My soul won’t even take my calls. Straight to voicemail they go.
Now, some may say that I burn an awful lot of dawn’s early light slobbering around the Internet like an ADHD kid working out on a Tootsie Pop — the National Weather Service, The Paris Review, various and sundry purveyors of products that I don’t need and can’t afford — before finally biting into its center, the homepage of The New York Times, which almost always shares a deep brown hue with, but is very much not, chocolate.
That this drives me to lunch is only because (a) I no longer drink, and (2) I desperately need something to take the taste of the NYT homepage out of my mouth.
Having eaten my way through the fridge and pantry, I feel a pressing need for either sleep or exercise. And exercise it is, because Miss Mia Sopaipilla is in the bed, and if I try to share a corner of that king-size bed with that 8-pound cat she will get right out of it and stalk around the house, meowing at the top of her lungs. She’s deaf as a post and her voice carries.
So out the door I go. And sure, if it’s 55 or 60 out there I’m liable to stay out a while, because see “the homepage of The New York Times” and “meowing at the top of her lungs” above. Last week I got 100 miles in, plus one trail run.
When I get home I’m hungry again for some reason as Herself inspects a gas range atop which dinner is very much not cooking itself with that look on her face that says, “Some people have to go to work in the morning.” I strive mightily to swallow a cheery, “Not me!” And get out in that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans.
And soon dinner is served, as is something less toothsome on TV, and since some people have to go to work in the morning (not me) everyone is in bed by 8 and asleep shortly thereafter.
Tomorrow, as the fella says, is another day. That Tootsie Pop ain’t gonna lick itself.
Rooting around the Innertubes for some New Year’s recipes I was congratulating myself on picking a couple of winners, both from The New York Times Cooking section, which by itself is worth the price of a subscription.
But when I crowed about this to Herself I found she’d beaten me to the punch. She’d already found her own recipe and acquired the ingredients for it, too.
Good thing I shot off my big bazoo before heading for the grocery. We’d have been eating Hoppin’ John and cornbread from New Year’s right through St. Patrick’s Day.
Meanwhile, I had to quickly re-establish my primacy as tenzo of this zendo. Facing an economy of scarcity — a lack of fresh red grapes, which I dice up for the morning oatmeal — I displayed my resourcefulness in the kitchen, or “skillful means,” as defined by the late poet-gourmand and Zen student Jim Harrison, by locating a wrinkled honeycrisp apple in the crisper and chopping that up instead. In your face! as the sage Dogen has taught us.
Jimbo hated oatmeal. But he’s dead and didn’t have to eat any of it.
Scattered sprinkles, widespread haze, sunny and hot, sez the forecast for the first day of summer.
It was already 75° when we got up at 5:30 to greet the first day of summer. Helluva note when you open the doors and windows to let the cool morning air stream in and the air conditioning clicks on.
The wind was likewise in business, too, so Herself and I decided to go for a short trail run instead of a ride. We’d spent a couple hours yesterday cycling through the foothills and saw all the quail, from solos to pairs to coveys with adults herding thumb-sized offspring.
Today was my first run in a couple weeks so I wasn’t exactly crushing it. Still, it felt good to be lumbering along without all that specialized kit and machinery. Just shorts, shirt, and shoes. Put one foot in front of the other and try not to fall down.
CenturyLink fell down yesterday. Or Lumen did. AT&T? Whatever the hell that outfit is calling itself these days. You should’ve heard what we and the rest of its customers nationwide were calling it yesterday when it went tits up for the better part of quite some time and even the minimalist corporate website vanished like civil rights in an ICE storm.
We’ve been trained by bitter experience not to bother fencing with CenturyLumen’s chatbots and “live agents.” Instead we used our Verizon iPhones as hotspots and never missed a beat, even streaming a couple episodes from season three of “The Bear” as preparation for season four, which kicks off June 25.
Speaking of cussing, anybody who thinks I swear overmuch in the kitchen should check out “The Bear.” That crowd makes me sound like Nate Bargatze doing crowd work at a Southern Baptist picnic, even when I accidentally oversalt the arugula pesto, like I did last night.
It wasn’t quite like eating seaweed straight from the ocean, but it wasn’t exactly Michelin-star-level dining either, chef.
Anybody else feel like their rhythm is a little off? Like you’re dancing with one foot in a bucket?
Makes it hard to shake your moneymaker, that’s for sure.
Today we had a routine AC/furnace check on The List, and in Plague Time these things are scheduled in a window rather than on the dot. Ours was from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., which is a really big dot. Basically a picture window.
I took five at the Piedra Lisa parking lot to snap a quick pic while letting a fleet-footed woman blast past.
I didn’t like the view, but there it was. I usually do a medium-long hike on Mondays, but we both overslept and by the time the morning chores got done I had about 45 minutes to work with if the dude was closer to 10 than 2. Herself had the usual conga line of nightmares moonwalking through her office and I didn’t want to slip another foot-dragging zombie into the mix.
So, boom, I’m out, I’m back. Zip and zip and zip. So pro. No word from the dude. So I figure I’ll do a little light resistance training just ’cause. The phone rings halfway through, a number I don’t recognize, but I pick up on the off chance it’s the dude, which of course it is. He’s five minutes away and on the move.
Anyway, we passed the checkup. The heat heats and the cool cools. I managed a third of a hike and half of a weights session. Herself made bank. What’s not to like?
Speaking of which, here are two new recipes worth a look:
• A simple no-cook pizza sauce from Kitchn. Herself likes these corn-meal pizza crusts from Vicolo and with two of those, this sauce, some mozzarella, a little leftover turkey-taco meat, and a handful of chopped black olives and mushrooms, we had two nights of dinner dialed in.
• Turmeric and black-pepper chicken with asparagus, from Ali Slagle at The New York Times. This was really good. Simple and quick and versatile and really, really good. It goes into the rotation. But “serves four” me bollocks. The only reason we didn’t eat it all at one sitting was that we wanted some leftovers for the next day’s lunch.
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