Buffy the Vampire Slayer Saves Journalist in Baghdad

I listened to a fascinating interview on NPR today. Journalist Jamie Tarabay has been covering Iraq for two years. What has saved her sanity? Watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVDs and identifying with the slayer. What are the comparisons? According to Tarabay there are several...

*Both she and Buffy are slight females who live on the hellmouth.

* Sometimes they would rather buy shoes than deal with the "big bad", but there is no time for a girl to shop.

*They are always under pressure and facing death.

*Buffy asks the questions Jamie would like to ask: Does it ever get easy?

*Who are the bad guys? Sometimes the lines are blurred.

*Sometimes one's job is a lonesome gig.

*They both make a lot of mistakes in a big, bad, scary world.

Listen to the 6.5 minute interview here: Vampire Slayer Buffy Saves Iraq Reporter's Soul

BtVS

Jamie Tarabay:

BtVS is my most favorite show ever! Rock on Buffy, and be safe Jamie...

An Annoying Co-worker (or I'd like to lose my Temper)

Oh the petty annoyances that come with getting used to a new job and new people...

I work with an engineer I will call Katherine Temper. This alias is a nickname my boss and I conferred upon her - it is close to her real name and she does have a temper. At the risk of sounding racist I will say is a typical Eastern European, very blunt, not subtle, and she holds onto her ideas like terrier with a smelly sock. But the worst thing about her is she seems to think I should solve all the problems that fall into the category of "other".

Yesterday she drove me crazy. As soon as I arrived to work she approached me with her first complaint of the day... "Something smells bad in the hallway." I answered, "Well Katherine, do you have any idea what it is?" "I think it comes from Bindu's office." I asked, "Katherine did you look in Bindu's office?" "No, Bindu's not there." I was starting to get annoyed, "Katherine there are no doors on the offices, did you look inside?" "No, Bindu's not there but I think the smell comes from her wastebasket." Clearly this pest wasn't going away so I grabbed her arm, walked to Bindu's office, pulled out the wastebasket, we walked to the lunchroom, emptied it, returned to Bindu's office, where I said, "Katherine, do you think the problem is solved?" "Yes thank you very much," she answered.

An hour later she was back..."The light is out in the office supplies closet." "Katherine, are you telling me we are out of bulbs and need to order more?" "No," she answered solemnly, "the spares are in the closet." "Katherine, in the time it took you to tell me about this you could have changed the bulb yourself. You are an engineer." "Well I thought you might like to know," she answered, "You're on the safety committee and it could be a hazard." I sighed, went to the closet and changed the bulb.

After lunch she approached me again, this time she trembled slightly as if agitated. "I just read a magazine article that says all of America's recycling is being shipped to the poorest regions of Africa and the toxic waste is slowly killing impoverished children." "Yes Katherine," I replied, "I heard something about that. I don't think it's ALL recycling, but rather much of the electronics recycling. It is a very big problem I agree." She stood there staring at me, waiting for me to get onto her careening train of thought..."How can you be certain that our company's recycling isn't going to Africa?" "Katherine, Tri-Ced does all its recycling on-site, but if you wish to research it further, as an exempt employee you are free to take the afternoon off with full pay." This statement was followed by a stare-off between the two of us. She finally turned around and stalked to her office.

I thought I was an underpaid Human Resources professional, but clearly I am an overpaid babysitter.

This morning just after I arrived to work (late due to traffic) Katherine approached me. We made eye contact and there was no escaping her..."Did you see that terrible traffic jam on the way to work? I was stuck in it." "Good lord Katherine," I asked, exasperated, "what on earth could I have done to alleviate the traffic jam for you?" She looked surprised at my answer, "Do? What could you do? I was just worried that you were stuck in it too. Here, I made you a cup of tea."

Katherine is my new friend. Is it a blessing or a curse?

Stanley the Rooster

The place where I have been working since August was founded by an unusual couple. They are vegans, which isn't so weird here in California, but once I accidently showed a picture of a prime rib to the founders wife and she started crying. Note to self...

There is a company cat named Squeakers and once there was a company rooster named Stanley.

Stanley wandered into the warehouse one day when he was still a chick. They hoped it would be a Stella, but the chick grew into a Stanley which meant constant crowing and ocassionally aggresive behavior. Stanley was tolerated, nay revered, and he lived in an old cargo container in the warehouse. Stanley had a tendency to try to peck people on the legs. Some people used the broom to try to swoosh him away; they also kept a spray bottle handy that emitted a strong stream of water that Stanley didn't care for. One guy always wore chaps (he worked with a long upright saw) and he just let Stanley peck away, basically ignoring him. Last summer the warehouse caught fire and Stanley got roasted. In memory we have a Stanley award for the person who demonstrates the qualities of goal-oriented perseverence and tenacity that Stanley embodied. Have I mentioned we are insane in California?

Sailing from Santa Barbara to San Francisco

It turned out that the weekend following our trip from Ensenada to Santa Barbara would be another good weather window for leg two of our journey, SB to San Francisco. The weather gods told us Saturday would be lovely and Sunday would be less so. We figured if we could at least get around Point Conception that would be a good thing, so we rendezvoused at our house Friday after work, drove the rental car down to Santa Barbara, and loaded ourselves onto the boat. The only SNAFU this night was that Nick dropped the bottle of rum and broke it. Gah! We would have to rough it with vodka and tequila only.

Doogie checks weather and navigation.

We left beautiful SB harbor around 1:00 a.m. on a calm and clear night and rounded Pt. Conception before sunrise. Pt. Conception is notoriously nasty and difficult to round but we were blessed with perfect conditions.

Dan-O enjoys the sunrise:

Later on as we were off San Simeon the wind picked up a little and Nick and Tom hoisted the mainsail...

...while Dan-O enjoyed watching:

Dan-O enjoys a beer after the exhausting job of watching the others work.

Saturday was calm and flat as we motor-sailed up the coast.

Dan-O enjoys doing something other than just enjoying himself:

Tom and Doogie on watch just after sunset Saturday night:

We knew the weather was going to start getting rough that night but we hoped to be able to make it at least to Monterey by Sunday morning. We rounded Point Sur about 2:00 a.m. and sailed by Monterey around 6:00 a.m.

We felt we were on our home turf and barring any surprisingly nasty weather could probably make it all the way to SF.

Nick suits up with PFD and tether for the winds and waves to come:

This is what Saturday looked like from our galley window:

This is what Sunday looked like:

The view inside, heeled over, but not too bad:

After a day of bashing upwind we entered the San Francisco shipping channel and sighted the Golden Gate Bridge:

The channel is notorious for its big swells and we weren't disappointed that day:

Yee haw!! Let's surf home:

Things calmed down just outside the Golden Gate and we calmly sailed under just before sunset.

We made it! We're inside the bay and pass Alcatraz on our way to South Beach Harbor. Home sweet home...

Sailing from Ensenada to Santa Barbara - We meet a few obstacles but finally overcome.

The Red Boat syndicate (Tom, Rich and I) decided to bring our beloved Schumacher back to the SF bay area from Ensenada. We'll take her back down to Mexico when we have more time to vacation there. We didn't want to take time off from work so we decided to try to bring her up in 2-3 weekends. It worked out pretty well. First step, Ensenada to Santa Barbara or somewhere in-between depending upon our speed and the weather. The first weekend in January had nasty weather all along the coast. We checked with Commander's Weather for the following weekend and it looked like it would be worth a try...

Our plan: Tom, Rich, Synthia and Sylvia would fly to San Diego Friday night and rendezvous with Nick (flying down from SF) at 7:30 p.m. Our driver Sergio would pick us up and take us to Ensenada, arriving there by 10:30 p.m. We would unpickle the boat and leave the harbor by 12:30 a.m.

Rich's dad was our ride to the airport. We're all there except Tom:

Mati and Terry join us and we're still waiting for Tom:

Tom finally arrived and we caught our plane for San Diego. We arrived and waited for Nick, we waited, we waited some more. Nick finally called and said his flight was cancelled. What a bummer! This meant that if we were one person down our watches for the trip up the coast would be longer. Yuck!

Luckily Nick managed to catch a later flight, (the last one from SF to San Diego) so we treated Sergio and his buddy to dinner while we waited. Nick finally arrived at 9:30 p.m. and we waited for his luggage, and waited, and waited, but it never arrived. Nick was a sport about it, and we decided the rest of us could part out our extra polypro, fleece and foul weather gear so he could be fully dressed for the voyage.

We finally arrived in Ensenada at 12:30 a.m. and it was completely socked in by pea soup fog!! We had a crew meeting, should we leave or wait until morning? We felt we could delay no longer so we decided we could drive with our instruments, i.e. radar, and decided to leave ASAP. Call us crazy but we left the dock at 3:30 a.m:

We drove out of the harbor using our radar and our ears. I stood on the bow and listened for ominous noises such as waves hitting breakwaters (yes, and we had to alter course) and seals barking on half-sunken wrecks.

It was thick fog all night and all the next day. Thank goodness for radar or we wouldn't have been able to avoid that ship, yikes!! A big empty ocean and we were on a direct heading to hit it!

By the way, the fog was freezing ass cold:


Finally at around 4:00 the next afternoon we motored toward San Diego harbor (to go through customs) and the fog cleared:

It was great after a night and day of sailing alone in the dismal fog to see activity once again:


We pulled into the customs dock and waited for the agents. Nick took a taxi to the airport and retrieved his luggage, hoorah!

After going through customs we left San Diego to continue our journey up the coast. We hated to leave the warmth of San Diego but as we left the fog was already rolling over the hills. We had another foggy night to look forward to:








Sometime in the early morning we broke through the fog and were treated by sunrise and a clear sky:






The weather warmed up enough for t-shirts and lunch al fresco. Kippers anyone?











Why yes, I believe I'll have a beer with that!












We made great time up the coast and in the afternoon began to see the oil rigs that signified Santa Barbara was not too far away:











As we approached Santa Barbara harbor we spied the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier:










We finally sailed into Santa Barbara and got a slip.



Nick couldn't wait to get some coffee but ewwww, did they put his coffee in the tip cup?? Gross!!






The Red Boat was happily tied up until our next leg up the coast.




We had a bite to eat, rented a car, and drove back up to San Jose, arriving around midnight. Next step: Leg two from Santa Barbara hopefully all the way to San Francisco.

Eeewwwww, Double-Dipping grosser than we thought!

Last Halloween after the Great Pumpking Regatta in Richmond, my sister, Erik and I were sitting near the snack table at the Richmond Yacht Club watching our fellow sailors mack on the eats. We were appalled and horrified at the lack of manners of many of the troglodites who came by to graze. There were two things in particular that completely grossed us out:

1) Several heathens grabbed a chicken wing, sucked off the meat then threw the naked and violated bones back on a platter that still contained food.

2) Double-dippers. There were many but one woman in particular was absolutely disgusting. She repeatedly dipped, munched, redipped, munched and dipped a final time. Sometimes salsa from her once-munched chip would fall back into the salsa, mingling with the communal salsa to form a fertile brew of bacteria and God knows what else.

We wondered, were we justified in our queasiness at this lack of etiquette or were we simply overreacting to normal human behavior?

Today vindication arrived. My friend Nut, knowing of my pet peeve, sent this article about double-dipping to me...

Keep an eye on the salsa this Super Bowl Sunday: A researcher inspired by a famous "Seinfeld" episode has concluded that double dipping is just plain gross.

"That's like putting your whole mouth right in the dip!" George Costanza was admonished on the show after he dipped a chip twice at a wake. That's not too far off, said Clemson University professor Paul L. Dawson.

Last year the food microbiologist's undergraduate students examined the effects of double dipping using volunteers, wheat crackers and several sample dips. They found that three to six double dips transferred about 10,000 bacteria from an eater's mouth to the remaining dip sample.

"I was very surprised by the results," Dawson said in a telephone interview Thursday. "I thought there would be very minimal transfer. I didn't think we would be able to detect it."

The professor said the students' research didn't get into the risk behind such a bacteria transfer, but they got the idea.

"I like to say it's like kissing everybody at the party — if you're double dipping, you're putting some of your bacteria in that dip," Dawson said.

The results of the research are scheduled to be published in the journal Food Safety within the next six months, he said.

Enough said!! And hey look, you can even purchase dip bowls that remind the heathens so you don't have to!

Merry Christmas!!!!!

Merry Christmas from crazy California!

(my neighbor's cactus)

Melting Pot Cooking - Hot Dog Maki, Weenie Royale, and SPAM Musubi

This picture just in from Betty in Portland:

Great picture!! And great timing because it reminds me of a fascinating report I heard on NPR a couple of days ago.

The report is a Kitchen Sisters episode on the impact of the internment on Japanese American cooking. The episode is called "Weenie Royale" and is named after a dish still served and eaten today by many people.

The prisoners in the internment camps, forced to eat what was provided to them, cooked weenies, bologna and many other things in ways that made the odd and foreign food more palatable and comforting to them. You can read the episode here:

Weenie Royale: Food and the Japanese Internment.

Weenie Royale Recipe:

Ingredients:

1/2 white or yellow onions, chopped

1 tablespoon soy sauce

2 hot dogs

3 eggs

Cooked white rice

Saute the chopped onions with a tablespoon of soy sauce and cook at medium to high heat until they are caramelized. While you wait for the onions to caramelize, cut the hot dogs in julienne slices and beat the eggs. After the onions are caramelized, add the hot dogs and cook for 2-3 minutes. Then add the beaten eggs to the onions and hot dogs until the eggs are done. Serve on top of cooked white rice.

Speaking of odd cultural combinations, we go to Kauai in a few days and I can guarantee that we will see a lot of this:

Spam musubi is one of Hawaii's favorite snacks. Spam was introduced to Hawaiians by American soldiers who were stationed there. The Hawaiians did what most cultures do when introduced to a new and unusual food...they made it uniquely theirs.

Ornaith Murphy - SF Bay Area mystery

Today is the six-year anniversary of the mysterious disappearance of Bay Area single-handed sailor Ornaith Murphy. This is what the Oakland police department web site has to say about the mystery:

"Ornaith was last seen in Oakland on December 16, the day after her estranged husband's disappearance. She owned a 1980 39-foot fiberglass auxillary sailboat named Sola III. The vessel has dark blue circular emblems with one gray swirl painted on both of her sides. Ornaith normally berthed the boat at the Oakland Marina in the Jack London Square area of the city. The vessel disappeared on the same day as Ornaith; it has never been located. The boat was captured on a video surveillance camera pulling out of the Oakland Marina at 8:36 p.m. on December 15. It had about one week's worth of food on it when it disappeared, and no safety or foul weather gear.

Kieran and Ornaith planned to meet on the day of his disappearance to discuss legal issues. Ornaith was seen working on her boat that day. A man fitting Kieran's description was seen near the boat on the evening of his disappearance, but it was never established that the man was in fact Kieran. Witnesses reported hearing loud banging sounds coming from near the Sola III the evening he disappeared. The witnesses could not be sure that the sounds were gunshots, however.

The next day, December 16, Ornaith called her niece from the Sola III. She said she was in a marina in Berkeley. Ornaith's niece invited her to breakfast, but Ornaith declined the invitation. She has never been seen or heard from again.

Ornaith and Kieran are described as a witty, intelligent couple who enjoy reading classic literature. They amassed a small fortune through real estate speculation and have two sons together. Their marriage crumbled after Kieran had an extra-marital affair. Kieran was living in an apartment in the Nob Hill area of San Francisco when he disappeared; Ornaith resided with her niece near Jack London Square in Oakland, near her boat. Both were the defendants of a lawsuit at the time of their disappearance; one of the buildings they owned had caught fire and a child had been badly burned.

Ornaith's family reported her as a missing person from Oakland. The estranged couple may be traveling together aboard the vessel. Another theory is that Ornaith shot Kieran and committed suicide shortly afterwards. There has been no evidence to support this, however, beyond the noises heard by witnesses.

Kieran was supposed to vacation in Mexico shortly after he disappeared. He and Ornaith's sons say it would be uncharacteristic of them to leave without warning. The Sola III was not equipped for an extended cruise and Kieran did not know how to sail it. The United States Coast Guard has been involved in the search for Kieran and Ornaith, but no evidence has been discovered. Neither of the couple's credit cards or bank accounts have been used since their disappearances. Their cases remain unsolved, but their disappearances are considered suspicious."

Ornaith was very well-respected by the local (and international) sailing community for her able seamanship and her ability to handle tough situations. She was known for assisting other sailors in trouble and for her single-handed trip around Cape Horn where she lost her rudder but managed to pull through. I only met Ornaith once or twice but my friend Synthia was a pretty good friend of Ornaith's. Ornaith was instrumental in Synthia's own single-handed sailing career and she went so far as to loan Synthia her Cal 39 Sola III so that Synthia could sail it in her first single-handed Farallones race. I was on the race deck for Synthia's finish and proudly watched Synthia and Sola III cross the finish line.

Sometimes I think of Ornaith and wonder what happened to her and her soon-to-be-ex husband Keiran, will we ever know what happened to them? I suspect this mystery is one that may never be solved.

Back on the blog

It has been a long time since I've posted, and here are the reasons:

1) My dear father died and I felt I should do a post on him, but every time I tried to write something it upset me too much, so for now I think I'll remain mute on the subject until it feels right.

2) I started a new job and I have to commute. The commute there is fine, but the commute home is dreadful and it's pointless to leave before 6:00, 6:30 is even better. Compared to my prior job where, including my commute, my entire work day was 8:15 - 5:15 (9 hours total), my current entire work day, including commute, is approximately 12 hours, give or take a half hour. Blech.

3) I've been addicted to two Mexican telenovelas. These shows have a life span but they are on every weeknight. The second one just ended, but it was replaced by a new one, Pasión, that's even better. It's so good that I don't fast-forward through it like I did the other one. Pasión stars Fernando Colunga. He is my all time favorite telenovela star and in Pasión he plays a pirate, so basically this show is irresistable. Do you blame me?...

And my favorite:

I wanted to name my new boat 'Fernando Colunga' so I could say things like "I need to spend the weekend cleaning Fernando Colunga's bottom," or "Fernando Colunga rides much smoother when I keep a firm hand on the tiller," or "Have you noticed that Fernando Colunga has the tallest mast in the marina?" Alas, my boat partners voted against me.