You Have Reached Your Destination or Kinda Like the Movie
New Orleans Bourbon Street
From Guest Blogger Jim Luce
Wisconsin is an Indian word for “White Out.” We had snow up to the window sills in February, which we’d hand-fashioned from ice to a faux oak finish. The average daily temperature was fifteen-degrees-below-Antarctica. Celcius. My wife and I decided to make a break for it and drive to the Mississippi/Louisiana Gulf Coast. The problem with leaving White Out for the warmth of the South is that you have to drive the entire length of Illinois. Illinois is an Indian word for 2000 miles of corn and soybeans. You also have to drive the entire length of Mississippi. The Mississippi Gulf Coast is beautiful, the rest of the state is, well…Illinois. Mississippi is an Indian word for “pretty much just Illinois.” Since it’s a long straight shot from northern White Out to the Gulf Coast of Pretty Much Just Illinois it would be easy to find our way. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, I plugged in the GPS we’d named Tommy Boy—after the movie of the same name, one of the all time great road trip movies—and told him to take us to the coast.
“You want to go where?”
“The Gulf.”
“Yawn. Proceed south for 2000 miles. Then you have reached your destination.”
“We want to go to New Orleans, too.”
“Proceed south for 2000 miles, then turn right. Then you have reached your destination. Wake me when we get there.”
We wouldn’t dream of taking a trip without the God-like Tommy Boy, his wonders to perform.
Tommy Boy guided us right into the heart of New Orleans, Louisiana, and straight to our hotel. Louisiana is an Indian word for Eat Stuff That Crawls. New Orleans is a French word for Show Us Your Breasts. The Big Easy is also one of America’s most dangerous cities—when I turned on the TV the lady said “…at this time last year there were 13 murders in New Orleans.” She stared into the camera, face serious, eyes sparkling. “Sources within the NOPD tells us that this year the total number of murders is up to 35.”
Whoa. People, slow down, pace yourselves, it’s a long year. This is only the middle of February. I went out on our balcony and heard loud hip-hop thudding on the street somewhere. It got my head bobbin’, got my rap goin’. “Yo, y’all, we so cool, all old and stuff and up in N’awlins, all up on the roof and stuff wit’ da people down below….” I went back inside in case someone might hear me. Somebody else can be number 36.
Thanks to a coupon we picked up at the Eat Stuff That Crawls Welcome Center, for $54 per night our first room came complete with a giant cockroach. Apologetic, the hotel immediately gave us another room with a toilet that wouldn’t flush. My wife and I talked that over and decided if we played our cards right we could bargain them down to a room with bed bugs and no air conditioning but decided we’d probably done the best we could for that low price.
We did all the touristy stuff required of us (it’s in the Rules section of the passport that allows you to drive through Illinois, right next to the section titled Mental Competence Declaration), and moved east to Ocean Springs, Mississippi. After ten days of beach basking and Cajun gluttony our finances laid claim to the fatal number 36. It was time to head back to White Out, but first I wanted to load up on boudin sausage since it was unobtainable anywhere but down here in Cajun country.
“Tommy Boy, take us to Specialty Stuffed Meats.” We’d been told by the desk clerk it was only two and a half miles but a little hard to find.
Indeed. Two towns and seventeen miles later: “You have reached your destination.”
“We have reached your *&^! butt you remedial piece of satellite misdirection. This is a low rent….”
“When possible, turn around, you have passed your destination.”
“Tommy, can you interpret WTF? I did not punch in ‘Dollar General’, ‘Payday Cash’, or ‘Shorty’s Bail Bonds’.” We programmed you for ‘Specialty Stuffed….”
“In 240 feet bear left, then turn right.”
“WTF?”
“Turn around.”
I spent that last afternoon on the beach, watching the ocean…gathering about me peace, love and understanding. We were heading home tomorrow but I thought we might wing it without the GPS. Tommy Boy and I were experiencing trust issues.
Book Review — The Lost Hero
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The Antiquity background on which the story sits is interesting and, dare I say, educational. Although the story is not a Harry Potter look-alike, the main characters are: Jason, the bewildered and reluctant leader, Leo, the comic relief and goofy genius, and Piper, the girl in the trio who seemingly has no useful powers but is the “heart” of the trio.
The writing is good and reads well, but this is a big book with nearly 600 pages. Since it is the first book in a series, this means a serious investment in reading time. Nevertheless, if only because of all the Gods (Greek and Roman) and all the associated monsters and fabulous creatures, The Lost Hero is a fun read.
Quilting–a hobby or an obsession?
From Guest Blogger Margaret Loyer
I don’t sew. If necessity demands, I can replace a button or mend a hem. I can even darn socks. However, that doesn’t make me a sewer. My four sisters all sew but somehow I missed that gene.
I’m on holidays at the moment with my oldest sister. Since we drove, she brought along her sewing machine and enough paraphernalia to outfit a craft store. My sister isn’t just a sewer but a quilter and an obsessive one at that. Since she started quilting seven years ago, she’s made more than 100 projects ranging from table runners to queen-size quilts.
When planning our holiday, I knew that quilting would be a major activity. So true. In the first three days, we visited seven quilt shops and two craft stores. My sister bought 13 pieces of fabric and innumerable spools of thread and notions. Our evenings have been spent plotting the route to the next stores, usually working a circular path to encompass as many as possible in one day. If tomorrow goes as planned, we’ll visit five more stores and travel close to 200 miles, all in the name of quilting.
I never properly appreciated the variety of material available for sale. You can find fabric for any age and any theme. Animals are plentiful as are flowers, trees, and pagodas. Colours are not one-dimensional. Do you want blue? It can be light or dark, robin’s egg or midnight, with stars or unadorned. Cotton may be a type of material for the uninitiated but it’s just a guideline. You have to know if you want batik (tie-dyed), prints, or solids. Bolt after bolt must be perused to ensure the right combination of colour and pattern. Some quilt patterns call for as few as two contrasting fabrics while others ask for as many as 23 pieces of fabric; that’s a lot of perusing.
So far, my contribution has been to consult mapquest.com and to navigate. I’ve also been helpful in finding sales on thread or refill chalk. My sister will grudgingly admit that I did find the one piece of yellow fabric needed to complete a child’s quilt and that had eluded her and the sales clerk for several minutes.
Watching my sister sew has also been eye-opening. I have often said that it’s a lot of cutting and sewing, then re-cutting and re-sewing. I was right. It also requires a level of dedication that is far beyond what is applied to most careers, except perhaps if you’re a rocket scientist.
In my next life, I want to come back as a rocket scientist.
Cooking – a Right- or Left-brain activity?
By Guest Blogger Margaret Loyer
The answer lies with recipes. A right-brainer scoffs at a recipe. If they use one, it’s only as a starting point with guidelines. They decide how to make something based on what’s in their cupboard.
A left-brainer follows a recipe religiously. It may be one from a book or from their memory because they’ve made it a hundred times. However, the base instructions must be there and only minor tweaking is allowed.
My sister, Cathy, is a right-brainer without par. Case in point, when my husband and I and Cathy were in Hawaii several years ago, we were invited to attend a welcome party with others at the timeshare resort where we were staying. I pulled out a piece of paper on which to write a shopping list of ingredients needed to make a shrimp appetizer that I knew by heart. My sister started looking in the refrigerator to see what was there. She ended up pulling out leftover chicken, tomatoes, onions, and salad dressing, then putting together an amazing topping that she spread on crackers. I was astounded that she could just wing it with whatever was on hand. What does that make me? A left-brainer.
I can look at a recipe and decide if I’m going to like it based on the ingredients. However, I cannot look at a recipe and decide what I have to change so that I will like it – unless it’s something simple like replacing peppers with celery. I have to try a recipe at least once before I’ll change more than that. Sometimes I’ll get really adventurous and I won’t put in the salt or I’ll decrease the amount of sugar. I may get palpitations as I’m doing it, but I persevere. No one can say I don’t live on the edge.
Next time I’m in the kitchen, I’m going to consider creating a meal based on the wildest combination of ingredients I can find in the refrigerator and cupboards. I may not do it, but I’ll consider it.
It Doesn’t Hurt Much When Llamas Kick
by Guest Blogger Robyn Williams
When it’s time to halter them, to cut their wool or their toenails or vaccinate, they force me to follow them to the fence. They keep their big round rear ends to me, shifting right or left as I try to maneuver to their sides. They each kick when I’m behind them, drawing one hind leg up and out. It’s a medium-weight Bette Davis slap, but faster than you’d imagine such an ungainly creature could move. The trajectory’s always the same, connecting about mid-shin, and doesn’t hurt a lot. But because guard llamas will kill coyotes by stomping them to death, I’m certain they could hurt me if they really felt threatened. I think they’re just being crabby.
Once they surrender and allow me to slip a halter over their noses and buckle it behind their ears, they’re mostly docile and will follow me with little argument. Mostly. If one balks, the other stops dead in his tracks and there’s no pulling them anywhere. All I can do is walk around behind them and force them to circle and avoid me, and once they are both moving they’re likely to keep following. On hot summer days, I tether them to the fruit trees in the back yard where they enjoy the shade and mow a perfect circle in the grass around each trunk.
They are fat and complacent now but when they were young and still had testicles they were fierce fighters, brawling like teenage boys. One would get a little too close, they’d square off, stretch their necks, point their noses in the air and spit. Spitting is a normal llama-to-llama behavior and though most people think llamas will spit at humans, it isn’t really common. It is entirely possible to get caught in the crossfire, however. And it’s not merely spit but the llama equivalent of cow cud and more than a little nasty. If spitting wasn’t enough to get the other to back off they’d charge, butt their broad chests and bash each other with their long, muscular necks.
Their territoriality with each other is a strange contradiction to their need to be together. If Sparky is tethered and Alf is led away, they cry to each other in a mid-pitch, throaty hum. Alf will turn to look worriedly as he’s led away, and Sparky is attentive, ears pitched forward. It’s clear they are distressed when separated. They are old brothers, have been alone together nearly their entire lives. Is it just their genetic programming as pack animals? Is it the animal version of what we know as love?
Friday, February 25th, 2011, by robynwilliams, Filed under: Commentary| animals, kicking, llama| No Comments