The Last Cattle Drive

I have been remiss in my reading for the past several weeks, so it was high time to get back to business.

Our book club will soon be discussing The Last Cattle Drive by Robert Day.  When I heard the title, I was pretty sure it was going to be a western, but really, it takes place in Kansas in the 1970s (during the time I was growing up in Wichita...).  If you can imagine driving a herd of 250 cattle to market across northern Kansas, staying clear of the interstate and other modern institutions, well you can just imagine what might happen.

I found the writing pretty funny and laughed out loud at certain points.  I also looked up some of the references to places, and they exist.  Here is one such place - the Garden of Eden in Lucas, Kansas.

Seasonal Haiku

Concert Weekend

A photo from our fall semester

It always seems to take me a day to recover from a concert weekend.  Our schedule is pretty full from the dress rehearsal on Friday night (2-2 1/2 hours), concert on Saturday night and a repeat on Sunday afternoon.

This particular concert of the Claremont Concert Orchestra was unusual for a few reasons.  This was a student showcase with three concertos (one violin, one cello, one piano).  Unfotunately, our cellist suffered an injury to her hand and could not perform, so we had to leave out her piece for the time being.  Since she is only a sophomore, she should be able to play it at another concert in the future.

Secondly, not only was attendance low (for what reason, I do not know), but at the end of the rousing Egmont Overture by Beethoven, you could have heard a pin drop.  Not one person started clapping.  We had to stand up in silence before the audience responded.  That was the most strange feeling.

Our next concert will be with the choir when we perform the Brahms' German Requiem, and I'm guessing that we'll have many more people in the audience what with friends and family of the choir as well as the orchestra.

The People Who Take Care of You, Part 2

A month ago when I was at the Women's Retreat, one of my friends brought along her massage chair and gave some of us an abbreviated back/shoulder/head massage.  It was heavenly.  I took her card and thought about when I would want to visit her in her office.  Well, this is a concert weekend, and I thought it would be great to go into the concert feeling relaxed and refreshed.  I made an appointment to see Suzanne yesterday for an hour-long massage, and it was what I expected, and a great way to end a work week.

If you are local and are interested in massage, you can find out about Suzanne at her website here.

The People Who Take Care of You, Part 1

Last weekend I got a horrific toothache which started in my lower left gum and then moved into my tooth.  On Monday I went to see my dentist, Dr. Arnold Valdez.  After examining my x-ray and mouth, he said that he didn't think it was a cavity or abscess or anything that he could help.  I think he could have easily said that he needed to do some serious work in my mouth, but he didn't.  I really appreciate that he has a low-intervention philosophy.  He did give me a prescription for penicillin, saying that I should fill it I felt it necessary.

The next day asked a friend of mine who is a nurse practitioner if it could possibly be related to sinuses (various places on the internet suggested that tooth pain can be related to sinusitis).  She said it certainly could be, and that I should take some real Sudafed (not the fake stuff - but the kind you have to get from behind a locked glass) and Afrin (three days only).

Short story, between the Sudafed, Afrin and penicillin (the pain was getting pretty bad by then), most of the pain is gone.  My tooth is still sensitive to cold and some food, but I think it is just a matter of time before I'm back to 100%.

Lighter Later!

Tonight it was still a little light at 6 p.m.  I love it when the days are getting longer!

Pina

Tuesday night at the Laemmle again last night.  Having been to several movies recently, we saw the trailer for Pina, a dance movie, and it looked great, so we had to go.  This is a documentary about the life of the choreographer, Pina Bausch.  The vast majority of the movie is devoted to dancing with very short interviews by the dancers in her company.

Most of the dancing will challenge your ideas about movement and what constitutes dance, but I really enjoyed most of it, especially the opening sequence of The Rite of Spring. 

Rhubarb and Elderberry

I hadn't tried a different flavor of cider in awhile, in fact, I haven't had any flavor of cider in awhile now.  I was in the Cheese Cave with Lynn today, and we noticed this one - Rhubarb and Elderberry Filtered Pear Cider - so we had to buy a bottle to split.

I definitely like it better than the one with ginger, and, actually, as much as the blackberry variety.

Comfort Food

While watching the Nate Show one day a while back, I bookmarked the featured recipe for Skinny Mac and Cheese.  I recently decided it was time to try this lower-cal version of the ultimate comfort food.  I have to say, it turned out great, and the asparagus was a great compliment.  Plus, it was really, really easy to make.  To reduce calories even more, I substituted almond milk for the skim milk.

Mardi Gras Sunday

Here is a  low-quality video of the very fun Pilgrim Pickers and CUCC Brass who led the music in church this morning for our Mardi Gras Sunday celebration.  It's great fun to sing songs like When the Saints Go Marching In and This Little Light of Mine every once in awhile.

QRI - Do Not Call

One of the things I like about my phone and phone service is the ability to block calls from certain numbers.  This week I have been getting calls from something called QRI.  (I also really like caller id.)  Of course, I do not pick up the phone, but they keep calling anyway - up to 5 times a day.  I looked up the phone number and the name of the company online and found that many people are getting spammed by this telemarketing company.  If you buy something from certain companies, they get your number.  I have no idea what it is that I bought to start this phone onslaught, and I know that I can pick up and tell them to put me on their "Do Not Call" list.  It's just much easier to give them an everlasting busy signal.  Although, if I had an airhorn....

This is not the first company who has called here that I have had to block.

Massive Traffic Jam Explained

At least three carloads of people I know were stuck in this massive traffic jam on the Westbound I-10 last Sunday.  One of those cars held my dear husband and his umpire buddy who had called two games out in Palm Desert and were headed home at 2:30.  Normally I would have expected him to be home before 5, but he didn't even get to our house until 7:30 - making his commute 5 hours.  Two people in our book club who were hiking in Palm Springs that morning never made it to the discussion.

Was it an accident?  No.  It was a huge error on Caltrans' part, as explained in this front-page LA Times article today.  One take-away message was that we should make sure that our earthquake supplies are up-to-date since in the event of an emergency, people are not getting out of here very fast.

Snowy Mountains Today

I shamelessly stole this from one of my Facebook friends today.  The mountains have snow, the sky has puffy white clouds, and the air feels clear today.  It's good to live in So Cal - especially in February!

Thanks DM M for this photo!

Rainy Day Musings about Interconnectedness

It's a rainy day in Claremont.  That's good.  We need the rain, and it's been a dry winter so far.  Wednesdays are my very busy teaching days, and I usually have the car all day long.  We are fortunate to be a one-car family (couple), with one of us able to walk/bike to work.  (Yes, I bike sometimes, too when I don't have to be someplace immediately after class.)  Now that it is softball season, though, one of us needs the car on occasion during the day to go umpire a college game somewhere in the great IE basin.  Today was one such day.

I made a reservation for a Zipcar to tide me over for 2 hours.  With impending rain, however, we thought the game might be cancelled, but we didn't want to give up the Zipcar reservation just in case it wasn't.  I had the option of canceling the reservation without fees if I did so before 9:00 a.m.

The 3:00 game was cancelled at about 12:30 or so, and I already had the Zipcar at that point, so we did a little shuffling of getting a car here and a car there.  Of course, in retrospect, I didn't need the reservation.

My ramblings do have a central thought.  The powers that be at the University of LaVerne did not fully know that their decision to cancel a game had wider-reaching effects than imagined.  They know that they have to alert the visiting team and the umpires (and probably others), but they do not know that their decisions reach to the umpire spouses, as well.  If they had cancelled the game early this morning, it would have saved us a little bit of money and some time-juggling.

I know this is not a big issue, but it does have implications that our actions reach farther than we sometimes realize.

That is all.  Carry on.

In the Garden of Beasts

As a big fan of Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City, I was looking forward to reading his latest one about an American Family in pre-WWII Berlin.  I found this book to be quite dull, though, reading like a dry high school textbook (except for the parts about his promiscuous daughter).

Hearty Italian Soup

There's nothing like a cool, damp day in February, as well as book club coming over, to convince me to get out my tried-and-true Hearty Italian Soup recipe.  About 25 years ago I bought a little cookbook from the check-out line at the grocery store in Madison, and I am still making this soup recipe for family and friends.  You can see from this scan that this print version has been well-loved.  I used Chicken Italian Sausage from Sprouts last night.

Several friends requested this recipe, so here it is.  Click on the photo for a larger version.

Another Best Picture Nominee

I rarely see many of the Oscar-nominated pictures before the Academy Awards, but this year I have managed to see six of the nine.  I'm sure I won't see War Horse, and I probably won't see Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, but, at some point I want to see the weirdness that is Tree of Life.

So, a rainy Saturday proved a great time for another flick at the Laemmle.  I assured H that I thought that Hugo would be better than The Artist, and it certainly was. I had not read the book, and now I may just have to check it out.  For a children's book/film, it seemed to me to cross all generations as just a good story.  In fact, the theater had a pretty good crowd, and I don't think I saw a single child in the whole place.  Scorsese certainly knows how to make a film.

Ben Stein and His Money

For the past six years, the Malott Public Affairs Program at Scripps College has brought a conservative speaker to campus to bring an opportunity for meaningful dialogue in the area of public policy.  Last night's speaker, Ben Stein, was to speak on "Dark Days in America: How to Get to Daybreak."

Here is the basic outline of how Ben Stein said, last night, we get there. We will have smart people, like Steve Jobs, and people like you who are teachers, policemen and military personnel, doing small heroic things turn this country around. (I paraphrase, but don't simplfy.)

Huh?  That's it?  This, after telling us that we have the worst educated society in recent memory (he told many funny anecdotes about people he has spoken with who can't even name five rivers in America, or even people who can't subtract three-digit numbers).  He offered not one suggestion about how to fix education, but did manage to say that money won't do it.  Our schools, apparently don't really need the air conditioning, he said (when moments later he thanked the people backstage for turning on the AC because he was getting warm, and that AC is a better invention than the internet).

Stein is a funny speaker, but in terms of depth of content, I found him utterly lacking.

Winter Concert

As far back as I can remember, or at least since 1995 when I started teaching strings in the Claremont USD, we have never had an elementary string orchestra with this many students - 65!  We had our first concert of the year last night, and along with the orchestra, we had about 80 beginning students.  For as many kids as we had running around like penguins (black and white attire), we had no behavior problems, AND the kids sounded great!  Now the bar is set for an even better May concert.

The Artist

Tuesday night at the Laemmle featured the Oscar-nominated The Artist.  Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 97%, and we agreed that it was a cute film.  But best picture? I think not.  I loved the dog.  I wish there had been more dancing.  The interior scene in the Bradbury Building was fun.  However, the middle slogged along and could have been about 20-30 minutes shorter.

If you haven't seen it yet, I would recommend a wait for the DVD.

Greek Tempeh Pita

Total deliciousness.  I had leftover pita bread and wanted to know if there was a recipe somewhere for tempeh and pita, and, of course, there was.  You can buy tempeh in the soy products section of the store.  I didn't find any tzatziki sauce at the grocery store, but Trader Joe's had a greek salad dressing with feta which worked very well.  I know I can actually make tzatziki sauce, but I was short on time.

When the garden tomatoes are ripe, I will make this again.  Here is the recipe. This one is a keeper.

Free Fro-Yo

While driving up Indian Hill just now, I saw an extraordinarily long line near the Laemmle.  As I approached, I noticed that the line was snaking into Yogurtland, and I knew that there must be some sort of deal going on, so when I got home, I looked online and found this LA Times notice. Free frozen yogurt plus toppings from 4-7 today.  Too bad I don't have time to stand in line right now for it.

Busy Weekend

It's been a busy weekend with little time to blog, so here is a brief rundown.

Saturday was given to a music teacher's workshop in Redlands for much of the day, followed by a 60th birthday party for a long-time friend for most of the evening.  A little Costco shopping in the middle rounded out the full day.

This morning at CUCC we voted overwhelmingly to call our new associate minister, Eileen Gebbie who will start "very soon."  The sanctuary was filled this morning to hear Eileen preach and to have the vote.

The service was filled with all kinds of music today (see my post in my music blog) from a multigenerational rendition of the 150th Psalm, to the newly formed youth choir, to the adult choir and the gospel piano playing during communion (and vote-counting).

Now for the Super Bowl and getting ready to start another week.

Friday Night Fun

Isn't this how everyone wants to spend the beginning of their weekend?  Changing a car battery in the Costco parking lot - so much fun.

At least
1) we didn't have any place we had to go tonight
2) Costco carries batteries
3) I have a husband who is capable of coming to my rescue

Chickpea Burgers

Tonight's dinner - Chickpea Burgers.  This recipe calls for a tahini sauce, but we used some plum chutney instead which worked very well, I think.  Also from our garden - butter lettuce.  Tomatoes are not in season in our garden, so those were from Sprouts.

If you like falafel, I would recommend this recipe for you.

3rd Annual Copper Chef

When I was growing up, I knew about only two kinds of tomatoes.  One kind came from the store,  the other from the garden.  Last night at the HMC dining hall, four dorms (of 8) participated in the second round of the 3rd annual Copper Chef Competition where the secret ingredient was tomatoes.

Last year in the second round, the secret ingredient was pomegranates and you can see a video of the event here.

Here are the four appetizer entries.

 Here are the students hard at work.

 Here is the table with a variety of ingredients in the center from which to choose.

 The judges must not only rank the food on various qualities, but they must be able to add up their scores.  Good thing everyone has a smart phone with calculator these days.

Here are the main course entries.

 The winner of this round was South Dorm.  Here are the five judges and all the students who participated.  I'll have to say that this was nothing like what would have happened when I was in college during the Stone Age!