More sadness

Some friendships have profound effects. I have been privileged to enjoy many such friendships in my life. I'm terrible at nurturing friendships. Don't get me wrong. I'm loyal - occasionally loyal to a fault. But I keep my life moving on a personal timeline and sometimes I forget that others don't share the timeline. Consequently, my friends tend to either whiz past me or I move on and then wonder why they haven't caught up. Thing is, every time we are in the same physical location, we tend to go back to the same intimacy we shared before.

In fact, that's how I can usually tell if a friendship was "real" or not. If they seem a stranger when I see them again, I can be pretty sure they were never my friend. I know that sounds harsh, but it is not meant so. There is no harm in being a treasured acquaintance. In fact, I cherish many, many such relationships as evidenced by my 500+ friends on Facebook - not one of whom I would want to give up.

But back to the friendships with profound effects on me. One such friendship is likely in its last stages as a very dear friend from my school days fights the end stages of a terrible disease. I just happened to be in my hometown (for a different function) when I heard of my friend's hospitalization. I sneaked in to the hospital room at midnight and shared the most wonderful hour with friend "X" and mother of said friend. It was a very sweet and special time. One that I shall remember for years to come.

As the days have come and gone since the visit, my friend has grown steadily worse. I'm so grateful I had the chance to visit before comas and unmanageable pain and the like got in the way. But I'm also sorry now that I didn't stay to hold that hand during the worst. Of course, it would have been presumptuous to have done so. There is a family and closer friends than I for that task.

I am of course saddened to lose a friend. And, I feel profound sympathy for the family as they face the unknown. Because of my friend's and my own spiritual beliefs, I am not frightened nor do I believe this is the last I shall see of the friend. But I do have regrets. I regret that I didn't slow down when I should have - to maintain that friendship - and share joy during the times that friend sped past me. I'm not sure I can change at this stage in my life to be a better friend. I'm not sure I should even try...but it is definitely something for me to consider about myself in the months ahead.

Vermont Cheese!

We took off on a day trip today on the off chance it wouldn't rain all day. It didn't! We actually had sunshine for most of the afternoon. We made it to all these places:

I spent HOURS going through Sam's Outdoor Outfitters!

And, we tasted cheese at Grafton Village Cheese Co

They had wine at the cheese place, but I didn't taste nor buy any. I'm only here for 3 more days and that's just not enough time to enjoy more wine. The cheese was marvelous.

After we got home, I went for a walk/run.

A little secret? I'm not looking forward to the next 2 days. The ninja goes back to work tomorrow. But I'm really grateful we had the day today. It's more than I expected.

Hazy Shade of Winter

Sitting in a cozy A-frame beside a bubbling brook in Vermont! Meanwhile, Hurricane Sandy aka "Frankenstorm" is bearing down on the mid-Atlantic coastline. And, all I can feel is excitement! Oh, for sure, I'm worried about the safety of human beings and the financial devastation that storms can cause. I am not callous. However, I sit here secure - with the ninja of course; I would not be so sanguine on my own! - knowing that I'm ready for whatever "Sandy" has up her sleeve!

For example, here's a map of the likely power outages:

I am spending my vacation here in Vermont while the ninja is working. As long as I can read and stay warm, I'll be a happy camper. Heh, that word "camper" may take on new meaning, no?

We went on a search for gas tonight for our generator. Didn't find any, but it's a Sunday evening. Should still be plenty of time tomorrow before Sandy makes landfall. So, after our futile search for gasoline, we ended up at a local bar called simply "The Saloon".

We enjoyed a couple of drinks and cheese-steak sandwiches. We watched the exciting last 5 minutes of the Giants-Cowboys game. While we were sitting there, I realized how different (better - but different) bars in ski towns are from "back in the day" when we were ski bums in Winter Park. The crowd was much more diverse. There was no smoke. I enjoyed watching the young crowd cheering on the Giants (even though I had to bite my tongue to keep from cheering when the Cowboys ALMOST pulled it out!

I'm enjoying this immersion in ski town life again. But likely one week will be plenty for me.

Oh, the headline? Eh, it was just a whim. I posted this status update on my Facebook page yesterday:
"It's a hazy shade of winter up here in Virginia with the still-bright leaves laying on the ground below bare branches and the overcast sky. Puts a person in a mood you know?"

Here is a photo I found that is representative of the scenery I was describing:

Sadness

I am unusually optimistic. I have to pause sometimes to MAKE myself deal with sadness. If I don't stop and FORCE myself to have a good cry, I tend to just move on past hurts and never stop and deal with them. Recently, I've been catching up with 3 old friends and in the course of this, I was caught by surprise at the old hurts I had forgotten about. 

I just got back from a trip to my hometown and I allowed myself to wallow in it a bit on the plane ride to and fro. I just went ahead and cried it out. I have to say that a good cry does the heart good. 

I now return to my regularly scheduled optimism - until the next time I need a good cry :)

Countdown to a lovely date

6 days until the ninja and I hit 19 years. What a fantastic ride it's been. Tonight I'm sitting alone. He's out of town. I opened a bottle even though I was drinking alone. This seemed a good fit.

I'm not sure why this seemed like a such a good fit. But he does still rock my world! My playlist tonight:

Chris LeDoux - Tougher than the Rest

BoDeans - Still the Night

Stevie Nicks/ Don Henley - Leather & Lace

This is just a partial list...some others are just too personal to share...even here where nobody ever comes :)

Unskewered shish kebab

The ninja grilled a nice shish kebab tonight accompanied by roasted garlic-rosemary potatoes. Shish kebab shown here un-skewered. I paired it with a 2010 Sonoma Zinfandel.

The meal was delicious! Tasty end to a worthwhile weekend day. I started with 3 sets of tennis myself, then watched Serena Williams win the Wimbledon Final, finished some work and then had a great workout at the gym with my new trainer, Luke.

My next task is to prepare my speaker notes for Toastmasters. The meeting is Monday night. I'm to lead the Table Topics portion of the meeting.

My chosen theme is "Song Lyrics". I've talked before in these pages about my affinity for lyrics. That affinity is long-standing. As a college Sophomore, I took a Poetry and Drama class to satisfy one of my Literature requirements. The teacher was quite hip. He compared classic poetry and plays to current popular music and film. I wrote two papers in the class, one analyzing a Van Halen song from the 5150 album and my final paper analyzing the Jimmy Dean hit "Big Bad John". I made an A in the course.

I won't use either of those songs in my discussion on Monday. But I may tell the same story! I'll report back about how this goes.

A "leg man"

Want to know what a "leg man" is? Here ya go: http://himmelink.com/romance/2011/04/06/why-im-a-leg-man

Meanwhile, I'm a lyrics woman. I've never connected with music unless I understand the lyrics OR - and this works well with classical and jazz - someone tells me verbally what I'm listening for when I hear an instrumental piece.

I was therefore shocked to find myself tearing up and even feeling tears slide down my face while I listened to this:

http://youtu.be/-lN1-r4cvts

It's been a long time since a musical arrangement moved me in this way! But, like the leg man who suddenly realizes the object of his affection has a beautiful bosom, I fell in love with this one. The lyrics are beautiful, too, of course. That adds to the experience, no argument there. But in my mind's eye,  I am slowly twirling in the ninja's arms around a dance floor. He is in his frock coat from our wedding, I in a sleeveless, black dress with a twirly-swirly skirt and heels which in real-life I would be a klutz in. We are gracefully dancing around a hardwood dance floor with sawdust and with stars above it. If I close my eyes now while I'm typing this, I can see the silhouette of Berthoud Pass or Devil's Thumb in the light of a full moon and feel the cool breeze of a Rocky Mountain summer evening (more specifically, Winter Park/Fraser Valley, Colorado). It's late-July or early-August. For some unknown reason the ninja's visiting me in the middle of summer. Perhaps it's raining in Kansas and the fields are too muddy for his tractor. For whatever reason, he's visiting me and we are dancing...

And, see? That doesn't have anything to do with the lyrics. While I write this I'm listening to this over and over and getting quite stuffed up from the blubbering.  I hope that doesn't detract from your experience with the song.

Now, for the wine...

The wine I'm enjoying tonight has nothing to do with the theme of the post. Before I came home, I stopped for a bag of Stacy's Pita Chips and some garlic and herb goat cheese. I've paired this with a very nice Chardonnay:

Some wines I want to try

I found two articles in the Wall Street Journal one about 2011 Bordeaux. and the other one about NY-finger-lakes Lemberger. I'm dying to try these wines.

French?

I shall need a French wine this coming weekend. I began my enjoyment of the French Open last Sunday. I always cheer for the underdog unless he's playing against Nadal or Federer or an American.
On the women's side, since Venus didn't manager to make it deep into the tournament, in her absence, I shall most likely be a Stosur fan.

More to come...

Steak House

Oh, this title is true on two levels this evening: the menu and the wine pairing. The ninja and I grilled marinated filets, topped them with bearnaise and enjoyed them with a salad and our very first attempt at fried green tomatoes! The ninja did not of course share my wine pairing. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure what he's drinking this evening. But I'll give you 5-1 it has tequila in it.

I paired my steak with a beautiful, big Cabernet Sauvignon called - you guessed it - Steak House. The wine is an 89-point, $11 bottle that I chose for the label (duh!) and for the price (the 91-point bottle was $26; the 93-point was $55 and the labels were absolutely NO COMPETITION!) Of course, I knew the menu and there was never a doubt in my mind that a Cab was a necessity.

In the following snip, turn up the volume. You can hear the garden fountain in the background and at the end you can hear the panting of the 15-yr old cattle dog when she walks out on the porch to see what the heck I'm doing...

The Fried Green Tomatoes, you ask? Oh, yeah. They turned out quite nice, fried in walnut oil...

The rest of the day was the usual: tennis, bumming around Oak Ridge and around in the yard and in the house. We do have a new member of the family. Creevey II. Here's his story:

Our former tabby (Creevey the First) abandoned us in the last month we lived in California. He had been two-timing us at the house 3 doors down for several months. We think he sensed we were short-timers and he abandoned us completely several weeks before we left for good. We still caught glimpses of him, but he never got close enough for us to nab him and put him in a cat crate for the cross-crountry trek.

Meanwhile, we've settled in Oak Ridge, TN. We've nurtured our flower garden through a Winter and Spring. And, now I've begun watching the chipmunks have their way with my bulbs. I'm furious. So, we visited the Animal Shelter last Saturday. I was immediately drawn to the tabby in the first set of cages. But, the tag on his cage said "On Hold", so I wandered aimlessly past several more banks of cages eyeing longhairs and kittens but being drawn back to the tabby the whole time.

I finally got up the nerve to ask about him. Turned out the label on the tag was wrong. So, we adopted the tabby. He's been with us barely over 24 hours. Not sure how it's going to work out, but so far he's doing better with the Border Collie and Cattle Dog than Creevey the First ever did.

A Quiet Sunday Afternoon

Played tennis earlier.

Came home to the best pizza in a VERY long time. It's the ninja's work. It's one of those "semi-homemade" things. He didn't get the recipe from the website in that link, but his recipe is in that vein. He used a store-bought whole-wheat crust and a store-bought sauce. To mine, he added Canadian bacon, pineapple and spinach that he saute'd in olive oil. I don't know what he did with his pizza, but it was probably a lot healthier, probably had a lot of peppers and mushrooms on it...

Anyway, it truly was the best pizza I've had in many years. The ninja outdoes himself quite often. Probably part of the definition of ninja...

Now, we're sitting on the couch watching "The Cowboys" (the 1972 John Wayne film). This is a sort of "heaven" to me - this afternoon. This was the first movie that I can remember watching in the theater! Daddy took me to see it. It has stuck with me all these years.

A couple of quotes I dug up on imdb.com:

When John Wayne informed Bruce Dern that Dern's character would shoot Wayne's, he told Dern that audiences would hate him for it. Dern responded by saying, "Yeah, but they'll sure love me in Berkeley." 


Despite their political and social opinion differences, John Wayne and Roscoe Lee Browne shared a love of poetry. They sometimes quoted their favorite verses between takes of the film.


Now, the best line from the movie so far: (and, believe me there are too many "best lines" to count in this one!)

Ann Anderson (Wayne's character's wife of many years): I'll think about you before I go to bed at night"
Wil Anderson (Wayne's character):  "You do and you won't sleep." Delivered with that impish grin on Wayne's face. This exchange came shortly after she told him that she only wanted 2 things from him: to come home and a strand of blue glass beads. He said "you don't ask for much" and she said "I don't need much."

They just don't write 'em like they used to!

My accompaniment for this afternoon is a truly lovely Chardonnay. I know. Probably not the best pairing ever. But I had this bottle open from last night. Don't worry. I use one of these cool gizmos to seal my wine for up to 3 days:

This 'truly lovely Chardonnay' is one I bought recently for a party. The party had a too-large-contingent of teetotalers in attendance :(

The only thing left to complete this perfect day is the view when I look down at my keyboard...

New year, new energy

I love the Christmas Season for many reasons (not the least of which is "the reason for the season"!) I'm unashamed and unapologetic of the fact that I celebrate my Lord's birthday. However, that is not the reason for this post and it's probably the most "religion" you'll hear from me in this public forum.

Instead, I just think the timing of the Christmas season and the New Year's Day holiday and even Thanksgiving is fortuitous. It's a long holiday season. Love that bit. Lots of time for reflection and time off from work and all that. It's a very "positive" season what with all the gratefulness and the giving of gifts and the time with family and the making of resolutions and so forth.

All of these factors serve to make me feel rested and renewed. In turn, I feel ready to take on new projects and tackle old ones from different angles and find new perspectives for old problems.

The world looks different, brighter, friendlier and more exciting - all at the same time. To that end, I saw the above list of New Year's "Resolutions" yesterday. It sums up all mine very nicely!