Inflatable Home For a Princess

Yesterday morning I awoke to the sound of a giant fan blowing on our front lawn.

Last summer (I think it was last summer) our neighborhood had a block party. Somehow our front lawn ended up being the perfect location for a bounce house for the kiddies. Ever since then our lawn has remained the "perfect location" if anyone needs to set up a bounce house. Here is the latest iteration, a Pink Princess Palace for the next door neighbor's birthday party:



We don't have kids, but I have to admit it was great fun watching the neighborhood kiddies enjoy playing in this inflatable sculpture. It even has a slide inside.

Tamburitzans!!

Every year the Duquesne University Tamburitzan dance and music troupe visits our state as part of their nine month tour. If you have never seen this Tamburitzan show you are missing something spectacular. According to their website, the Tamburitzans are "America's longest-running multicultural song and dance company, the Duquesne University TAMBURITZANS is a unique ensemble of talented young folk artists dedicated to the performance and preservation of the music, songs, and dances of Eastern Europe and neighboring folk cultures."

Wednesday's show started off with a group instrumental that highlighted many of the diverse instruments and beautiful costumes:










All the musicians play numerous instruments, some common and some not so common, such as this nose flute:








Needless to say, this got quite a reaction from the audience.






This year the dancing acts weren't as athletic or exciting as in years past, however we all agreed that the costumes were the most beautiful we had ever seen:

The dancers and musicians are are undergraduate college students and they must go through an intense audition process before being selected to participate in the group. According to the website, they go to "Tammie Camp" in the month of July where they learn and choreograph all their routines for the season's tour. This season's tour ran from August 13 2006 up to May 29 2007, an amazing 70 performances in all.






In addition to the more serious traditional Eastern European music and dances, the troupe also performs humorous acts such as the Siberian Wrestlers.

These guys were really short and wrestled all over the stage. It was hilarious. Of course it ended up being just one guy who had "wrestled" himself by crawling around on all fours. When he stood up and revealed himself the audience went wild.






The last dance was my favorite. It was a Romale gypsy song and dance and reminded me of some kind of gitanos meets West Side Story:

All in all it was an amazing evening of watching some unique and athletic performances. The only tiny negative was the asshole sitting next to me. He was very rude and kept leaning into me, but I heard him tell his wife he had a sore elbow so I "accidentally" bonked it and that stopped his invasion of my space. He also had gastric problems and belched throughout the performance, yuck. Luckily the music was mostly loud so I only heard his volcanic rumblings during the quiet songs. But other than that it was a perfectly marvelous evening.

See you next year Tamburitzans!!

"Truffle" oil, cuisine's nasty little secret

Oh dear, I just read in the paper that "Truffle" oil doesn't contain truffles at all, but rather a chemical compound called 2,4-dithiapentane. The story came out of the NY Times and can be read here.

This story does not surprise me, and for some time I have suspected this might be the case. A few years ago I began ordering truffles from Oregon. I began making my own truffle oil with the truffles I didn't immediately eat. I noticed that 1) I could never get that intense truffle aroma found in purchased oils and 2) the truffle aroma dissipated fairly quickly from my homemade oil as opposed to purchased truffle oils.

I never researched my suspicions. Maybe I didn't want to know the truth, maybe I just didn't have time. I stopped purchasing truffle oil and became a little more careful about making my own.

Here is my recipe:
1) Put 6 -8 small, ripe truffles in a quart of excellent EVOO.
2) Place in a cool, dark place for three weeks, shaking occasionally.
3) Keep this bottle of truffled olive oil in the refrigerator and decant small portions to be kept at room temperature and used as needed. This bottle lasts about a year until the next crop of truffles can be ordered.


(Here is my previous post on truffled eggs.)

It's tough to be a woman

Oh the horrors of waxing. Yesterday I decided it was time to do an upper lip wax. Luckily I'm not dark-haired so I don't have to go through this torture too frequently, and I only do the bikini wax prior to a long dive vacation, so basically every other year or so.

The first problem with yesterday's waxing was that I was out of wax. No big deal, I bopped over to the drugstore to pick up a pot of parrafin. They didn't have the stuff I usually get, which is basically just hardened cosmetic beeswax, melt it, smear it on, rip it off. No, they didn't have the easy stuff, they only had the fancy (bad sign #1), more complicated (bad sign #2), more expensive kind (bad sign #3). The dreadful goo that I bought turned out to be bright purple (bad sign #4), probably because of its fake lavender scent (bad sign #5).

The directions were titled Easy Directions (bad sign #6). So the deal with this wax is you have to warm it, apply a thin layer, put a piece of special paper on top (special anything, bad sign #7), then when you rip the paper off...voilà, all the pesky hair goes with it. So I followed the instructions exactly, when I ripped the paper off...voilà, the purple goo remained in place except for some which spread all over my lips and nose.

OK, I thought, I'll try the paper again...voilà, nothing happened, goo still on face. Now I was getting worried, how in the hell was I going to get the goo off? I tried to remove the goo with hand lotion, nada. I tried alcohol, nada. I tried witch hazel, purple goo still on face. I tried nailpolish remover, if anything the goo was getting harder and more solidified. I began to feel desperate, would I have to resort to acetone? Gawd I hoped not.

Tom was somewhere around the house and no way was I going to let him see me with the big smear of purple goo on my face. I would never live it down. I opened the bathroom door for a peek, I couldn't hear him so I thought maybe he stepped out. I crept to the garage where I hoped to find the acetone or paint thinner, both of which I dreaded putting on my face but it was better than the purple paste. As I got to the garage I could hear him talking to a neighbor! They were both in the garage. Drat!

I ran back to the bathroom, locked the door, and rummaged through the medicine cabinet where I found a bottle of Vitamin E oil. I dabbed a little bit on and the toxic waste started coming off. It took a while, but eventually between the smearing and the dabbing I was able to get it all off.

My upper lip was finally goo-free but also quite red and tortured-looking from all the rubbing. Worst of all, the odious "wax" never did get the hair off my lip. I suppose I should try it again but I'm still traumatized by yesterday's ordeal. The thought of doing that to my bikini area makes chills run down my back. I think I'd better go find the old-fashioned, non-fancy wax before I try it again.

Today when I got to work the office manager looked at me and asked, "Did you get a sunburn yesterday? Your face looks kind of red."

Stay away from this crap!!!

Snickering at Icky Snickers Salad

I was talking to a friend of mine from the upper midwest who went home to visit her mom last weekend. We got on the topic of bizarre foods that have somehow turned into family traditions. I mentioned the Pink Strawberry Jello Angel Food monstrosity that my cousins make every Easter.

Apparently in her family they serve Snickers Salad every Mother's Day. I consider myself to be fairly well versed on the subject of regrettable food, especially from the midwest where I have deep roots, but I had never heard of Snickers Salad.

She says there is hot regional debate on the best recipes, all of which include the basics of Snickers bars, Granny Smith apples, and Cool Whip. The non-purists, those who wish to gild the lily so to speak, will add such ingredients as nuts, cream cheese, sour cream, marshmallows, and vanilla pudding to name a few.

Her family are purists and here is their recipe:

SNICKERS SALAD
5-6 apples, cored and cubed

1 lg. container Cool Whip

3-4 SNICKERS® candy bars, cut into small pieces
Mix all of the above ingredients and refrigerate.

Is it a salad? It looks kind of like potato salad.

I can only imagine what my California friends would say if I brought this so-called "salad" to a pot-luck.

cinco de mayo - a belated Olé

Here is how I celebrated my Cinco de Mayo:


1) I made a Lucha Libre over-the-shoulder tote. It is the mask of El Santo in aluminized Kevlar appliqued onto black Sunbrella with a fluffy pink boa trim:







2) I went to Santa Cruz to do race committee for the Melges 24 Worlds warm-up races. I was on the committee boat setting marks, doing starts and finishes:


After the races I had a Margarita with a sailor named Pepe.



3) On my way home I listened to my Juanes CD, 'Mi Sangre', which is excellent, and then my Spanish vocabulary CD. CD in Spanish is CD, except that it's pronounced "say day."








4) After the regatta I went straight to Foothill Junior College's Psychotronix Film Festival. It was craptastic!! My favorite short of the evening was the Scopitone of Miss Joi Lansing singing "Trapped in the Web of Love." Check out the link!

During the break Sis, Erik, Tom and I went to the car for some cervezas, yum!! After the break they passed out 3-D glasses and we watched a silly 3-D film. It was a great festival but we finally got tired and went home.

May Day

Mayday originated in pagan Europe. It was a festive holy day celebrating the first spring planting. The ancient Celts and Saxons celebrated May 1st as Beltane or the day of fire. Bel was the Celtic god of the sun.

The Mayday celebrations were eventually outlawed by the Catholic church, but were still celebrated by peasants until the late 1700's. Revelers, led by Diana, Goddess of the Hunt,(sometimes played by a pagan-priest in women's clothing) and Herne, the Horned God, would travel up the hill shouting, chanting and singing, while blowing hunting horns.

As European peasants moved away from hunting gathering societies their gods and goddesses changed to reflect a more agrarian society. Thus Diana and Herne came to be seen by medieval villagers as fertility deities of the crops and fields. Diana became the Queen of the May and Herne became Robin Goodfellow (a predecessor of Robin Hood) or the Green Man, also known as Puck.

Besides the selection of the May Queen was the raising of the phallic Maypole, around which the young single men and women of the village would dance holding on to the ribbons until they became entwined, with their ( hoped for) new love.

And of course there was Robin Goodfellow who was the Lord of Misrule for this day. Mayday was a celebration of the common people, and Robin would be the King/Priest/Fool for a day. Priests and Lords were the butt of many jokes, and Robin and his supporters would make jokes and poke fun of the local authorities.

In honor of our four year anniversary of being at war maybe it's time to poke fun at our own fearless leader, and what better way to do it than by using his own words? Here are some Bushisms from almost exactly four years ago:

"We've got hundreds of sites to exploit, looking for the chemical and biological weapons that we know Saddam Hussein had prior to our entrance into Iraq."—Santa Clara, Calif., May 2, 2003

"We ended the rule of one of history's worst tyrants, and in so doing, we not only freed the American people, we made our own people more secure."—Crawford, Texas, May 3, 2003

"I think war is a dangerous place."—Washington, D.C., May 7, 2003

I think Robin Goodfellow should have the last word this Mayday:


"Lord, what fools these mortals be!"
--Puck (Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream)

The human race is doomed

Stupid dumb asshat of the week award goes to 21 yr. old Joshua Poe from Palo Alto:

Palo Alto man arrested after reportedly trying to scare `bully'
By Mark Gomez Mercury News

A 21-year-old Palo Alto man who reportedly told police he was trying to scare a teenage bully was arrested early this morning on a host of charges, including attempted murder, after he allegedly fired several shotgun rounds into the teen's apartment.

The trouble started Wednesday night when Joshua Poe, 21, broke up a fight between a 17-year-old boy and 20-year-old man at a house party in Palo Alto, according to police agent Dan Ryan. Poe stopped the fight by hitting the two on the head with a rifle barrel; the pair involved in the fight went separate ways without further incident, Ryan said.

Police allege that in an attempt to stop the 17-year-old from further bullying, Poe went home, grabbed a shotgun and ammunition and rode his bike to the Midtown Court Apartments, located near Middlefield Road and Colorado Avenue. After knocking at the door just after midnight, Poe fired several rounds through the front door and forced his way into the residence. Once inside, Poe allegedly chased a woman with the gun.

He was chasing her around, demanding to find the kid," Ryan said. "The kid came out and took him on."

The 17-year-old confronted Poe with a knife, police say, and a fight ensued. During the struggle, the shotgun was knocked to the floor and the knife was broken. The two were still fighting on the second-floor landing when police arrived.

"Poe thought one of the kids was kind of a bully," Ryan said, adding that Poe wanted "to put a stop to his bullying" by getting a shotgun to "scare him."

Poe was arrested on suspicion of several counts of shooting into an inhabited dwelling, two counts of burglary, assault with a deadly weapon and attempted murder.

Although police report there was drinking at the party, Ryan said it sounded as though Poe "was clear-headed and had a plan of action."

Inappropriate work clothing - how I stack up

Monster conducted a survey of 18,000 people and can reveal what people shouldn't wear to work in the summer months. Here are some of the results. Let's see how I stack up to Monster's professional image:

- Shorts or Short-Cut Capri Pants - While shorts are great attire during personal time, they can be inappropriate for the workplace, as they indicate that a worker has a "vacation" state of mind.
Minus 1/2 point: I love wearing capri pants to work in the summer. I even got the boss to get a couple of pairs and doesn't she just look fabulous with her long legs? Shorts? Fageddaboutit!

-- Flip-Flops - A separate Monster Meter conducted last summer revealed that an overwhelming 80 percent of workers deem flip-flops unacceptable in the workplace.
Minus 1 point: I own so many flip-flops I had to clean out my closet so they would fit. I own a pair of faux fur-lined flip-flops for my early spring collection.

-- Revealing Clothing - This category includes short skirts, unbuttoned shirts, midriff-length tops and clothes that are too small. When on the job, workers should ensure that clothing accentuates their brains over their bodies, and remember that undergarments were designed to be worn under garments.
Plus one point: Nope, I don't do revealing clothing or undergarments worn on the outside, although one halloween when I didn't wear a costume I wore my undies on the outside just for fun.

-- Loud Colors or Patterns - Just because wild animals sport bright colors to attract a mate, eye-catching clothing should not be used to impress colleagues.
Neutral: Plus one point for not doing this, minus one point for fear of creativity and joie de vivre.

-- T-Shirts - The only work-related activity where t-shirts are appropriate is at a company softball game.
Minus one point: Guilty as charged, and to make it worse they all have hideous sailing logos on them.

-- Wrinkled Duds - Linen and cotton are both popular materials for the spring and summer, but they wrinkle easily. Workers should launder and press clothes made of these fabrics to retain the finished appeal they had when purchased.
Eh? Even I wouldn't wear wrinkled clothes to work. Do other people do this? Plus one point for me then.

Final Tally: a positive .5 points for me, hoorah!

I wonder if Monster has done a survey on how many people blog at work instead of actually doing their work? heh heh

Don Ho - In Memorium

I just heard on the radio that Don Ho passed away four days ago on April 14 2007. Why wasn't this bigger news? How insulting!

I read that when asked about his distinctive "hushed" crooning style, Don claimed that when he started his first band he was such a bad singer he sang softly so as not to drive away the customers.

In the early sixties he got a gig at Duke's in Waikiki. It was there that he developed his trademark of performing with a drink and cigarette in hand. It wasn't his singing, but rather his witty and amusing repartee with the guests that earned him the title 'Mr. Waikiki.'

His biography is on his website, www.donho.com.

Daughter Hoku Ho carries on the family tradition of performing:

Hmm...I wonder if the whole brouhaha with that jerk Don Imus had anything to do with keeping the death of Don Ho out of the news?