Friday, April 25, 2008

Just for fun

Driving home from an impromptu pet therapy session with one of K's patients, involving Puppette the birthday girl, I was passed by a flat bed truck with 4 portable pottys on board.
The name made me laugh very hard and call my sister with the pun of the day,.
The port apotty company name was:
Call a Head.
That is so good.
My sister told me there is a local company near her that is named:
Ker Plop.
Back in Hamsterville, I thought Port 'o Let was good.
OK you lurkers, tell me your funny port a potty names.

C

Monday, April 21, 2008

Thoughts...

Spring is arriving.
Little blobs of green and yellow dot the trees and bushes. There is an overabundance of forsythia here. It must have been all the rage as a yard plant years ago.
I have passed several stands of "wild" bamboo. I say wild because it is not in a yard in some cases. It is twenty feet tall and sounds so wonderful when the wind caresses the leaves. I want some in our yard when we get a house.
Back in Hamsterville, I was told it SNOWED!! That is what happens out here, or so I am told.
We spent a lovely day with the nephews. It started with looking at an open house (too expensive dammit all) then meat ball hero sandwiches (too incredible to describe) then to the beach so the boys could play on the slides with the loving help of 4 adults. Next was ice cream from our local shop, made fresh on the premesis. We finished at the near by duck pond watching the ducks paddle around and do duck things.
It was the best birthday I have had in a good many years.
Work is hard, and long and still makes me happy.
K is good, the job is still kicking her ass.

Be well, all.

More sometime soon, maybe later....

C

Friday, April 11, 2008

Wedding Pt 4

Some thoughts on the night.

I learned that this venue where the festivities took place is a “castle” where they will not even entertain reservations for a fete under six figures.

We drove up to a gate that entered a rounded cul’d sac in the truest sense. It was a round walled off area with 4 or 6 statues in niches in the wall. The road continued up a long graveled drive with exquisitely manicured trees lining each side. It ended at a gate house that you drove under and into a cobble stone court yard.

A valet met us and we unloaded for the night.

Dude, do not take my car! I have done valet only once. It seems unnatural to hand a complete unknown youth the keys to a car only 6 months old.

We entered the grand foyer with a coat room to the left and a valet/attendant room to the right. The grand staircase:

At the top was a second foyer with a round table holding cards with our table assignments for the night.

Two men played stunningly beautiful classical music on violins, but it was almost lost in the din of over a hundred voices.

I met people K has told me of for ten years. Some I met 4 years ago at the christening of K’s first nephew. I met K’s cousins and aunts and uncles and second cousins… you get the idea.

Then we shuffled into the wedding hall, I wrote about that already. I noted the abundance of yarmulkes and saw one fall off a head. That is where the thought of bobby pins, not god holding them on came to me.

I laughed at the string quartet playing “All You Need is Love” and struggled to remember what movie I had seen that done in. I still can’t remember.

The rooms were magnificent in the true sense of the word.

In the room with shrimp and vegetable noshes, there was a picture of the castle before restoration. In the statuary alcoves in this room, someone had spray painted a Pac Man ghost in one. To look at it now, it was resplendent and humming with noshers.

The other room with food had a fire place and high ceilings. I looked out the doors to the “lawn” It was out of a European castle in that it was a long grass yard that ran the length of the castle. It was bordered on its edge by a low stone balustrade.

The dining room where over 25 tables were set for 12 people, was oval with glass windows 6 or 7 feet high looking out onto the “lawn”.

It had a wooden floor in the center, for dancing, and I do not remember if it was parquet or not.

The center piece of each table was a large glass vase with budding cherry blossom branches, encircled by smaller vases with white hydrangea and pink roses.

Large glass chandeliers hung over the dance floor and wall sconces soft lit the walls.

The too loud band murdered almost everything: Bon Jovi, AC/DC, The Outfield and an atrocious free form rap in the middle of Gloria Gainor’s “I Will Survive”. No mercy was shown or given to Run Around Sue, Don’t Stop Believing or C C Rider, which the band played about 4 times.

I do not dance. From long history, I just don’t.

The band launched into Billy Joel’s New York State of Mind and K took me to the dance floor.

We were dancing to a native Long Islander’s music, in a castle, in New York. We are here.

This was as if to say we have arrived where we are supposed to be for now. All was right with the world.

Peace

C

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Wedding Pt 3

Dancing.

The father of the bride danced with his wife and they both danced well. There was one wonderful young lady in a stunning ivory dress that danced with graceful abandon, uninhibited.

Then it got crazy.

There is a Jewish tradition of the Hava Nagila dance. People join hands in a big circle and do a step twist step kind of thing that was really catchy. I really think everyone was on their feet for that. At one point, the bride and groom were lifted into the air on chairs and paraded around in a circle.


Some thoughts:

The yarmulke stays in place with hair pins, not the will of god as I saw many fall off in the Jewish mosh pit the dance floor became.

The little dude in the Yarmulke could DANCE!!

The band had to be flexible enough to destroy pop songs but have the ability to play Jewish traditional tunes as well. Almost brought them up in my eyes, almost.

Because the parents of one of the lucky couple had a long police career, there were a lot of police types there. Several times, men in suits, no smiles, walked by and looked at my glass to see what I was drinking (H20 as you who know me understand) look at my belt line, my shoes and then my eyes. Then they would dismiss me. It felt like I was being sized up as a potential threat. Interesting to say the least.

By now, many of the older people in the crowd had turned off their hearing aids. Amplified horribly horrible music is, well, horrible! So the conversation was even louder.

Then the bride and groomy cut their cake. It was a nice cake.

We were served desert. A chocolate cake, a cheese cake and a small chocolate cup filled with raspberries and blueberries. Wow! And then we all got a piece of the wedding cake.

Burp!!!

Monday, April 7, 2008

Wedding Pt 2

The opening act was a beautiful salad with a delicate vinaigrette to compliment the field greens, bordered by a raspberry reduction drizzle with two big candied chest nuts at the corners, a cube of the most wicked bleu cheese ever and an orchid flower anchoring the other two corners.

I did not notice, until my brother in law pointed it out. You could tell I was not from around here. I ate all my dandelion green salad, the cheese and the walnuts. Most people at our table only ate the cheese or nuts. K and I ate it all! Hmmmmm, ok, it was not iceberg lettuce so no self respecting Long Islander or New Yorker was going to eat it. Pity, it was superb!

When the salad was served, the band played quiet dinner music and conversation was had at a near normal level. There was a lot of talking since no one was eating the salad.

Then, as the fantastic servers were clearing and setting up for the entrees, the band got back into it. The sheer volume of the band was surpassed only by its magnificent butchery of music.

The first notable sacrifice was so bad, K almost did not recognize the song “Boogie Oogie Oogie” by A Taste of Honey. K loves disco music, it was her era and she has many fond memories of school and friends around that music. But she almost missed that it was a song she knew and liked.

They played the first dance for the couple and it was one of my favorites, a song I sing to the dogs sometimes, when we are dancing around the house or doing chores Dream a Little Dream of Me. A dance for dad and daughter to “I Loved Her First”. Then more overly loud crap until the entrees.

OK, Here it got wow.

Apple sage stuffed chicken


fillet mignon

or Chilean sea bass (they spared no expense).



K had chicken, bro in law had fillet, I had the sea bass.

I have never had Chilean sea bass before. It was done medium so the outer edges were firm and the middle was soft. The flavor of the fish was so subtle that the accompanying sauce was ideal and ample. The band was sedate again and there was not as much talk as people ate, having waited over a half hour since the offending weeds and raspberry drizzle was set before them.

Then more dancing….

Sunday, April 6, 2008

The Wedding Pt 1

Weddings...
A lot can be said about them.
A new beginning, the end of freedom, hope springs eternal.... pick your favorite.
K and I went to a wedding of one of her family members.
Now, there are weddings where you elope and tell no one, those where there are a few special guests, ones where the families come and then there are once in a lifetime shin digs that defy, well, explanation.
I am going to try, in several posts I am sure, to describe this one.
Where ever to begin?
A man and a woman came together to be joined in holy wed lock.
It was a Jewish/Catholic shared ceremony. That was a first to me.
I was raised in Leave it to Beaver Land where minorities were so rare........
SO the string quartet played Pachabel, exquisitely as the 9 groomsmen and 5 brides maids walked the aisle. Than the groomy and then the Bride with loving father to hand her off, er, give her hand.
The invocations in Yiddish and American English took place. I have never heard that much Yiddish. But the Rabbi, when speaking American, sounded a little like a bad Al Pachino imitation.
The groom stomped on a glass, we all yelled "Mazel tav!"
The quartet played "All You Need is Love" as the newly weds and the wedding party exited.
Much milling about and a bee line for the open bar ensued, like slow cattle to a free flowing river.
There were two feeding stations for noshing, one was veggies and salami and cheese and crackers and such. The other had an Oriental food bar, a fillet mignon and turkey breast carving station, an Italian pasta bar and seafoods. There was one bar open for shrimp, only shrimp.
Then, over an hour and a half since the nuptials x 2, the main meal was announced...
We all went into a huge ass ornate room with a band playing so loud, you had to yell to your seating mate to be heard. We searched for and found our table. I have always wondered at how they do the seating at a wedding. The pattern at this one was familial, cousins with cousins, immediate family with immediate family.
They announced the parents of the happy couple and then, in a manner any stadium announcer would have envied, they announced the Bride and Groom.
Then it got weird-er.

C