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...