grandchildren

You know before I became a grandmother, I used to see all those treacle-filled little treasures in the all the catalogs.  I'm not a very treacle person and mostly find little guardian angels to put on your rearview mirror offensive at best.  But one thing I can agree with in all this pop culture "wisdom" is "If I had known how fun granchildren were, I'd have them first."

Fun barely begins to cover it.  From the moment I held my son's baby burrito as he insisted on calling her in her swaddling, I was hooked.  She looked right up in my face as if to say "Hi, Grandma."

She finds Grandma and Grandpa infinitely entertaining.  We are just such fun people, unlike Mom and Dad with all their rules.  We have a clock that chimes and a large flower garden.  We take lots of pictures and buy lots of things.  We even let her cook.

I knew we had a pact the last time she visited.  Earlier in the day, she had done something outside the rules.  She immediately pointed out that her uncle led her into doing this and was in fact doing it too.  Later, another rule violation occurred.  This was in fact something Grandma had let her do earlier.  Did she throw Grandma under the bus with her uncle?  No siree.  She took her chastisement and moved on.

The worry and the fret of raising a child disappear with a grandchild.  I don't care when she sleeps through the night or how many times she says thank you.   I do care that she stays safe and will tell her no if she could get hurt.  Otherwise,  I'm so ok with almost everything she does And she returns this favor.  She's ok with almost everything I do.  

And all the little things she does just like her daddy.  Or just like her grandma.  Nature trumps nurture is some of the smallest nuances.  Her sleeping patterns from birth have been those of her father's as a child.  Naps are such a nuisance.  And she fights them every step of the way and makes sure they are short.  She loves outside like her grandmother and great-grandfather.  She really hates being cooped up in a house.  She begs to be let outside.  

She is a most endearing little bundle.  Even when I see echoes of family members, she remains her own little person with her own opinions.  She loves turtles and frogs.   She loves the color purple, despite our attempts to dress her in pink, Grandma's favorite color.  She thinks her 3 uncles are the funniest people put on this earth.  She only poses nicely for Grandpa when he is taking pictures.  She loves games that Daddy invents, like throwing the stuffed animals.   And only Mommy knows how to read a book.  

In other words she is perfect.

It's San Francisco!

Where to begin where to begin.  Probably the food.  So many things, so little time

The first night we ate at Koi Palace in the Serramonte Plaza in Daly City.  Very authentic Asian food.  It was very good.  I was a little off my feed because of the traveling, but the food was great.  The meal began with peanuts and pickles.  The peanuts were ok, but the pickle was to die for.  I could never decide if it was regular cucumber pickle or daikon.  It seemed too crisp for cucumber, but it was fabulous.  We sat by the koi pond and watched them swim around and around.  Very nice.  David had oysters with bok choi and I had Mongolian beef.  I was trying to be conservative, but I really like the bok choi best.  It was cooked perfectly.  I've never been able to achieve what they did with bok choi.  It was done, but the leaves weren't mush.  The bottom stem wasn't hard as a rock.  It was heaven.  I ate it out of our hotel fridge all week cold.  Did I mention the helpings were huge?  I highly recommend the place and recommend being brave in your choices.

Second day, breakfast at Joe's by the bay.  This small caf was next to Repo Depo, so not a show place.  But yum.  I ordered a bagel.  It was cut, grilled, and cream cheesed before it was served at the table.  And it was 1.95.   Good coffee, good prices.  Anything you might want.

We ate Cow Palace show food following that.  It was Sysco, so what can I say?

Our evening meal was a catered pasta bar with some very yummy tortellini in a cheesy white sauce.  And tons of other stuff.  Dessert tray had some very nice profiteroles which were not gooey with condensation for which I was thankful.  It was very nice and served on the floor with the exhibition gardens.  Flowers with dinner is a good thing.

Next day north to Mill Valley.  We ate breakfast at the Depot where they featured organic scrambled eggs.  They were the best eggs I'd ever had. They tasted like eggs.  It was amazing.   I was done with mine almost before David got started.  Lunch was carry out salads/sandwiches from the little corner store.  Good, but nothing to write home about.  The eggs, however, wow.

Dinner was Alanna's Cafe in downtown Burlingame.  If I lived near here I'd eat there once a week.  Comfort food is how it's advertised.  You need a comfortable belt after diving in here.  We had some wonderful salads--mine was greens with warmed pear and blue cheese.  Oh I could have eaten that alone for dinner.  David had turkey meatloaf; I had the sausage platter.  The entire meal was perfect.  We were stuffed to the gills, so no dessert.  I couldn't leave the side vegetables alone, even after I was full enough.  They were crisp, but not uncooked and not cold.  I could have eaten there every day.

Next lunch was In 'n' out Burger.  finally.  I had to see what Julia Child meant about that being the only fast food place she'd go.  I was shocked by the concise menu.  It's burgers.  No fish.  No chicken.  No chili, salads, or trinkets.  Burgers.  And fries.  It was good.  I confess I like Culver's better.  No accounting for taste.  But that is not to say that In'n'out isn't head and shoulders above most other burger doodles.

I forgot lunch when we got there.  We stayed at the Airport Hyatt and ate at the Knuckles Sports Bar when we arrived at 2:45 (4:45 tummy time).  I had fish tacos with all the trimmings; David had a large burger.  Both were good and refreshing after basically nothing all day.  Oh wait I had a banana before we left Des Moines.  Even after the fast, neither of us could finish.

Ok, back to Friday.  We ate with my aunt, uncle, and cousin at Foreign Cinema in the Mission District of San Francisco.  A very cool concept.  There is a heated patio with movies projected on the wall while you eat.  I hasten to add we were in the adjoining dining room which does not really afford a view of the movie.  We had 3 different starters--carpaccio, a galette (actually a piece of galette), and melted soft cheese with fruit and veg.  All fine.  The galette was underwhelming--no real hit of flavor.  Very like a luncheon quiche almost anywhere.  I had a nice risotto which was very creamy and nice, but no surprise.  Others had fish (2 sorts), pork chop, and an East Indian inspired chicken which turned out to be very good.  Desserts were ordered.  I had creme brulee which had a hit of rose water.  Very subtle, but very nice.  The accompanying lavender cookie was ok.  But it was fun in a bustling city restaurant.  My aunt felt we were rushed.  Maybe.

Saturday, we headed for Palo Alto.  Did sightseeing.  Ate at Madison and Fifth.  Ok this was cool.  We ordered salads instead of appetizers.  The other diner's salads arrived.  Mine did not. The waiter rushed back and they made it up before the others had eaten much at all.  My hat is off for how quickly they fixed the error.  I had an asparagus chop salad.  Everyone enjoyed their choices.  We were starting to comment on the presentation.  Both of the other salads were composed and beautiful.  Mine was vertical and inviting.  Next came the main event.  Three of us had pasta--black, green, white represented by the three of us.  My partners in pasta had seafood types--clam and a mixture.  Plentiful, beautiful, fabulously cooked.  I had veal meatballs and parpadelle with mushrooms.  Very good.  The piece de resistance was ordered by my uncle. It was seafood risotto.  It was served in a hollowed out grapefruit with the seafood spilling out the top.  It was so gorgeous and gooey with cheese.  But we weren't prepared for the gorgeous dessert presentations.  My aunt and Uncle shared a profiterole with chocolate sauce, and I had panna cotta with caramel.  What gorgeous plates!  Vibrant green and yellow sauces surrounded the plate, encircling the caramel.  The panna cotta had lovely flecks of vanilla bean.  Fabulous.

Ok that was just the food.  I'm so hungry now. Next installment will be sightseeing and such in the city by the bay.

Liquidity

So the economy keeps going in the toilet.  I've not gotten a straight answer from any show I've seen about why assets keep being devalued while prices of goods keep going up.  It is a mystery.

However, I've gotten the feeling lately that it's related to 20somethings in a room playing a video game.  I believe moving stocks from one portfolio to another is just another form of Tetris to these kids.  Really.  It's easy to do with the click of a mouse, and often you can win the game by increasing your score.  Sometimes of course you lose.  Oh well, you can start over the next day.

And of course you can.  And if no one really needs the monopoly money you are playing with, that's fine.  Because in the game and on the screen and even on your statement, it's not real money.  It's a representation of money.  It's a Platonic ideal of money.  Until the owner wants to take it out of the game.

This is called liquidity.  People need the money to be money.  Not an ideal of money, but the real thing.  None of the entities who have these Tetris games have all the money to cover the ideal money.  And, as in Monopoly, if all the money is removed from the game, the game is over.  This is called a run on the bank.  It's when everyone cashes in, makes liquid, at once.  And it is likely to happen when assets become devalued.  Other sources of money are needed if the price of the house won't cover a loss.  Non-liquid assets must become liquid.

And ultimately, the need for liquidity is caused by someone else's greed.  Oil profits jump out of sight.  People need to cover the unexpected outlay.  More money goes out of the game.  Eventually assets are devalued.  Even the assets of the people who started it.  So it bites everybody in the butt eventually.

At least this seems to be the answer.  I'm a little scared by the powerlessness of "the experts" and people in control of the game.  They don't seem to know how to stop it. Or don't want to.  I don't know.  It is a mystery.  But it ought to be a crime for it to hurt all the people who aren't even in the game.  I'm fine with someone's 5 million dollar house falling to 4.75, but I'm not ok with someone's 60,000 dollar house falling to 40,000 when they are carrying a 45,000 dollar mortgage.

Maybe solving the mystery might be in order here.  Ya think?

Drum Corps

In addition to my other failings as a human being, I'm a drum corps geek.  First let me try to explain drum corps.  The appreciation will follow suit.

Properly called Drum and Bugle corps, drum corps is an uber marching band.  As the name would indicate, it began with drums and bugles and usually an honor guard to display the colors.  I mean bugles here.  The no-valve kind.  And these corps were usually started by or associated with a VFW club.

It is now a youth organization with scads of kids 15-22 involved.  At 21 or 22, depending on how your birthday falls, you "age out."  You are no longer eligible to march.  It is against the rules to march someone over 22.  

The organization that checks these things is called DCI (Drums Corps International) and is headquartered in Indianapolis.  DCI oversees 2 divisions of corps--world class and open class. World class means the corps has no more than 150 members and travels all summer--Memorial Day to mid-August, meeting other corps for competitions all over the United States. Drum Corps does thrive in other countries, but all of the 24 world class corps are American.

The evolution of the sport has been incredible.  I have gone to shows for about 40 years, and my how it has changed.  When I first became aware of the activity, the performances were still very military and the instruments very limited.  The color guard had increased from the original honor guard, but they carried flags and marched like the other performers.

Now the color guard dances and changes outfits and generally adds color and movement to the show.  A front ensemble has been added with any number of percussion instruments.  The brass players perform on trumpets, mellophones, baritones, and tubas.  And the effect is amazing.  The sound, the color, and the movement keep the audience enchanted for 11 minutes.

Being a geek does mean talking to other geeks about performances from the past.  Some corps are no longer in existence, but were part of making drum corps what it is today.  27th Lancers and the Bridgemen each leap to mind.  The Lancers really pushed the envelope of guard work and uniforms and generally creating entertaining and melodic shows away from classics or military music.  The Bridgemen added humor.  Lots of it.  Putting a pin in the pomposity of music and competition was their specialty.  I really miss them.

Drum Corps has now become a Broadway show on a football field.  And the most amazing thing from the stands is remembering that the oldest kid on the field is 22 and performing in this astonishing and complex way.  The kids all memorize drill--their positions on the field.  Of course a marching band means that in 11 minutes, any given kid is all over the field.  How they do it I will never know.  And the drill can change as improvements are made over the course of the season.  So yesterday you ended halfway through on the 35 yard line and today you end of the 40.   The fact that so few collisions happen shows the kids' dedication.

All over America, come summer, these kids are on the road in your neck of the woods.  They will probably perform at a football field near you.  Give 'em a look.  You can be a geek, too.

First March Post

In like a lamb or a lion?  Considering the snow (again) and the mess that was yesterday, I'd predict some very lion like utterings.  

Self-promotion is the topic today.  Two august organizations got took recently--a publishing company and Food Network.  I say good enough for 'em and I'll tell you why.

In the first instance, a book was published as a "memoir."  First of all, with all the hoopla around Running with Scissors and other "memoirs" by nobodies, don't publishing companies have a clue?People lie when they relate stories about themselves.  They aggrandize themselves.  They make other people in their lives look at fault.  That used to be why memoirs were written by people whose lives you were slightly familiar with.  If Helen Hays publishes a memoir that claims that she was once president, we know that's not true.  But if she says she hated a co-star that she seemed cordial with, it adds to our understanding of acting.  That means she was an even better actress than we thought.

"Memoirs" about people we don't know are novels.  We don't read this to get the inside scoop about a movie we liked or another book we read.  We read it to be a voyeur.  And we either identify with the main character or feel superior to them, just like a novel.  So on the face they are fiction for us.  And bring out mostly the least desirable aspects of our characters.  They encourage us to press our noses to the neighbor's window.  We are not educated or uplifted by the "lessons" of these books.  We've sated our voyeurism.

And if publishers get raked over the coals for providing a "reality book" that turns out to be neither true nor a book, they ought to be.  Publish the damn things as fiction.  Or don't publish them at all.  Maybe publishing well-written and well-plotted books might be a plan.  Just sayin'.

Heard of P. T. Barnum?  "There's a sucker born every minute."  Just as the publishers swallow these self-serving "memoirs" as true,  Food Network apparently hires chefs without a scrap of evidence that what they list on their resumes is true.  How can it be harder to get a job at McDonald's than it is to talk your way into a tv show?  Because these people or their publicists do a good pitch.  They do a good interview.

Apparently, hiring decisions are now based on the applicant's verbal accounting of himself.  Hello, people lie.  Some people lie about everything.  Some people lie only occasionally.  But they all lie.  Isn't this why spouses can't testify in court?  They are thought to have a vested interest.  Gee, and ya think a job applicant doesn't?  All HR departments ought to own a dog as the final decision maker.  Dogs are a better judge of character.  It beats this system of believing every person's self=promotion.

By the way, have I mentioned that I joined a gang after being thrown out of the castle by my father,  the Duke of Kent?