Towse: views from the hill

November 29, 2008

Just hanging in the sun.

Filed under: life,photographs — Tags: , — Towse @ 12:49 am

Sun peeking out from behind the grey for a few minutes. (And the grey has since drifted back into place.)

Sitting in my chair, which faces the bay. Reading a library book. Back from a walk down to the Ferry Building for bread from Acme and coppa di testa from Boccalone. Down to the Ferry Building and back up the steps, all 223 of them, but who’s counting?

Concentrating on the words before me (Elizabeth Berg: The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted: And Other Small Acts of Liberation). In the background I can hear the parrots — not chattering, not arguing, not squawking, as they usually do. Susurration. Murmuration. Low. Affectionate.

I get up out of my seat to see what they’re up to.

Just hanging in the sun. [Click on the picture for a closeup look. They blend into the cypress in the smaller view.]

 

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November 28, 2008

Worker dies at Long Island Wal-Mart after being trampled in Black Friday stampede

Filed under: life,news,shopshopshop — Towse @ 5:04 pm

Worker dies at Long Island Wal-Mart after being trampled in Black Friday stampede.

Is Black Friday worth it? Do you really need this stuff on sale? Are you really saving enough money to make all this worth it?

Maybe it’s just that I am not a fan of large pushy crowds, but I decided that getting up in time to stand in line at Cost-Plus to be one of the first hundred through the doors for a 7 a.m. opening, which would score me a free pretty little glass Christmas ornament and a chance for a huge prize, was just not worth dealing with people in mind of a Black Friday deal.

Some stores opened at 4 a.m. Macy’s opened at 5 a.m. Other stores had midnight madness sales. People left their family Thanksgiving dinners early to stand in line to score deals on stuff.

More shopping news:

Gabrielle Mitchell, 28, from Rockville Centre, was out at the stores in Hicksville at 3:45 a.m. waiting for them to open. Almost four hours later, she said she had spent more than $1,600.

But did she need the stuff she spent money on? Does it make her happy? Does it make her happy even through the paying of the bills?

For me it’s much nicer to stay home today and read the paper back and forth over breakfast with his nibs and let the glow of family Thanksgiving keep me warm on a grey day.

Dinner tonight with friends. Money will be spent not for durable goods but for transient pleasure.

And no one dies.

November 27, 2008

!Candied yams

Filed under: food,life — Towse @ 1:34 am

I volunteered to bring the yam-ish dish (among other things) to the family Thanksgiving tomorrow.

Not candied yams, which is what we had at Thanksgiving growing up.

This year I’m bringing sweet potato fries because I like them and hope others will too and, on request of the son-in-law, “those yams you made last year.”

Except. I can’t remember how I made the yams last year so in lieu, I did something entirely different. (Sorry, Bill!)

Cooked and peeled a certain number of sweet potatoes (0.49/lb in Chinatown). Mashed them with a chunk of butter, juice of one orange (10/$1 in Chinatown), shredded fresh ginger (0.79/lb in Chinatown), brown sugar.

Cooked and peeled a certain number of white yams (0.59/lb in Chinatown). Mashed them with a chunk of butter, maple syrup, a dollop of vanilla extract and ginger powder.

Took an old soup can out from the stash under the sink. Took the label off. Cut off the bottom to make a metal pipelike object. Washed thoroughly.

Put the can vertical in the casserole dish. Filled with mashed white yams. With can still in place, piled and patted all the mashed sweet potatoes to fill in the vacant spaces OUTSIDE the can. Used the metal bottom I’d recently cut off the can to press the white yams through the can as I removed it.

Sprinkled sliced almonds around the perimeter of the casserole dish, covering the mashed sweet potatoes.

Voilà!

Mañana I will bake the casserole until heated through and the almonds get all toasty.

Not the yams I made last year. Not the candied yams of my youth.

What shall I call this?

 

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November 26, 2008

12 Great Tales of De-Friending

Filed under: life,web2.0 — Tags: , — Towse @ 2:54 am

My peeps-who-tweet list grows and shrinks, depending on how full my twitterstream is.

Most people who are taken off the list are stored instead on MyDelicious with a /twitterfeed/ tag so that I can get to them and catch up on their tweets but not necessarily wade through five hundred tweets (total) every day. I mean, there was usually a reason they made my twitterfeed list in the first place.

Is it their fault they post in spurts and every four hours I can look forward to a series of nine tweets?

Well, yes it is their fault, which is why they’re now a MyDelicious twitterfeed link rather than on my “real” twitterfeed. (Note to whoever may be fussing about me moving you off my twitterfeed: Unless your initials are TO, the aforementioned burst-tweeter isn’t you.)

Facebook, though, seems more easily controlled. I can look at someone’s updates or not. The updates from X don’t overwhelm the updates from Y. I don’t think I’ve ever defriended anyone at LinkedIn either. I did completely bail out of Friendster soon after the friends of friends of friends began including people I wouldn’t want to have coffee with.

This article on de-friending brings up many issues but #6 (“De-friending can regress mature women into a high school gossip mob”) takes the cake.

November 25, 2008

Second Life affair ends in divorce – CNN.com

Filed under: life,web2.0 — Towse @ 10:45 pm

Second Life affair ends in divorce – CNN.com

Pollard and Taylor met in an internet chat room, got married in RL and in SL in 2005, and then …

[husband] Pollard admitted having an online relationship with a “girl in America” but denied wrongdoing. “We weren’t even having cyber sex or anything like that, we were just chatting and hanging out together,” he told the Western Morning News.

[wife] Taylor is now in a new relationship with a man she met in the online roleplaying game World of Warcraft.

Be careful out there, folks! The online world can splash over into this one with nary a warning.

[via HMB @ unlibrarian]

The Dunlap Question, redux

Filed under: life — Towse @ 6:15 am

The Dunlap Question

Someone asked elsewhere: What would you choose, Sal?

I’m still pondering.

Would I relive my life knowing what I know now and be constrained to live through =everything= knowing, for instance, about an upcoming miscarriage or divorce, the death of three siblings and my parents, all the crap and miseries? I couldn’t even spend more time with my sister or brothers or parents than I did because that would not be a life that was “just exactly as before.”

I’m not sure the happiness and satisfaction would offset the crap I’d have to live through again.

If I were oblivious, mind swept clear of understanding and memories, then maybe I would, but if I had to reprise my entire life with my memories intact and with foreknowledge of what unchangeable sadness was coming up next September. …

Probably not.

But … if … at the end of the reliving, I’d get more time, wouldn’t I? More time would be good.

Or would I be asked again when today rolls round again, would I be asked again at this instant, to make the choice again and choose whether to feed back into the infinite loop?

The question is a different one from whether I would change anything that had happened to me in the past. To that one I always say “no changes,” because all that came before — even the deaths and the sadnesses and the broken hearts and the wish-I-hadn’ts — led to where I am today and I’m pretty happy with today, thankyouverymuch.

The Dunlap Question

Filed under: life,people,shopshopshop — Towse @ 12:04 am

Item listed in an upcoming Sotheby’s auction.

Item: a sheet of paper with the header, THE DUNLAP QUESTION, with typed questions and scribbled answers from F Scott Fitzgerald. (est: $8-$12K)

The basic question is followed by questions that refine the basic question and answer.

You make a quick survey of your whole life, remembering all your pains and all your pleasures, the humiliations and triumphs, the regrets and satisfactions, the miseries and the happiness. Then suppose you are compelled to make the following decision, with no alternative?

1. Live through your whole life again, just exactly as before, with no opportunity to better it by your present experience, or

2. Die instantly.

Which would you choose?

***

Interesting question.

The person posing the questions: Gilbert Seldes

***

I’m still pondering.

November 13, 2008

Foggy day in town (and then not …)

Filed under: life,photographs,San Francisco,weather — Towse @ 10:52 pm

The fog had been creeping in since we woke up. The radio said the San Mateo Bridge, south of us, was fogged in, but we didn’t have fog. Then. … The fog from the south showed up at our doorstep.
7:54 a.m.
 
 
 

9:08 a.m.: The fog is hugging the underside of the Bay Bridge. The cars heading west come out of a cloud and into the sun, then head back into a cloud.

9:09 a.m. : Some birds hanging out in the notorious cypress tree down hill from us. Watching the fog that’s crept over the bay.
 

 

The cranes over at the Port of Oakland on the east side of the Bay are just barely visible above the fog.
 

10:06 a.m. An hour later, the fog begins to clear and a sunny, San Francisco fall day appears. Not unexpectedly.
 
 

The crows rule the cypress roost. Later they’ll make way for the parrots. There are a variety of bird types that share turns watching from the lofty perch. The only bird that’s unwelcome by all is the hawk.
 

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November 11, 2008

The court will overturn Prop. 8

Filed under: commentary,culture,election2008,life,politics — Towse @ 7:29 pm

The court will overturn Prop. 8 by LaDoris H. Cordell. (op-ed in today’s San Francisco Chronicle)

I was reading this commentary in the Chron this morning — a commentary I agree with totally, btw.

LaDoris Cordell was a Superior Court judge in the south bay back when I lived in the south bay, so I was surprised when she mentioned she was lesbian.

That’s odd, I thought. I knew she was a woman judge, not all that common, and a black woman judge at that, even more uncommon, but I hadn’t realized she was a lesbian black woman judge. Huh. What do you know? Had I just not been paying attention? Was it just not important? Had I forgotten? (I’ve forgotten a lot of things.)

But then, I went to college, then to law school, opened a law practice in a black community, became a law school administrator, and then went on to a successful career on the bench. Along the way, I got married and had two wonderful daughters. I was perfect. And then one fine day, as these black voters would have it, I chose to simply throw it all away – to become an Untouchable? Ridiculous. I did not choose to be gay anymore than I chose to be black.

Ah. Penny drops. Cordell was married with a family when I knew of her, so I knew of the black woman judge aspect of her life but at that time, the lesbian side wasn’t front and center. I didn’t know and, frankly, had I known, wouldn’t have cared.

Good commentary.

I also liked Keith Olbermann’s commentary on Proposition 8 but for Pete’s sake, he can sure over-emote, can’t he? Easier to read his commentary than to watch it.

November 6, 2008

Name the New White House Puppy!

Filed under: election2008,life,people,politics — Towse @ 5:57 pm

We were watching Obama’s acceptance speech and he was talking about Sasha and Malia and I said to his nibs, “And they get a PUPPY!”

… the next thing Obama said was, “and you have earned the new puppy that’s coming with us to the White House.”

Well, now there’s all the yammer about what =sort= of dog they should get and whether it should be a pound puppy or not.

What to name the puppy? is the next question.

Well, here are some ideas from the New Yorker, including “Checkers”:

I think they should name it “Chesapeake” and call it “Chess,” as a fitting counterpoint to “Checkers.”

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