lacking inspiration

I bought some beautiful eggplants at the farmer's market this past weekend. I know I had something in mind for them but I can't remember what it was and now I can't think of anything that sounds appealing to do with them. :(

Suggestions anyone? I don't want them to go to waste.

Reason #259 why I love my neighborhood

I know everybody is a little tired of hearing how wonderful my neighborhood is and how much I love living here but I have to share just one more thing.

Today, as I was enjoying my regular Friday morning conference call walk around the lake, I decided to take a little detour and explore the community gardens that are on the route. I have a friend in town visiting and thought it would be a neat little side trip on the walk. We walked through the herb gardens, the flower gardens, the bonsai garden, the little trails with benches, and observed a group of 60-somethings doing Tai Chi in the late morning chill.

As we made our way through the vegetable gardens back to the regular lake trail, I noticed a little basket on the edge of one of the gardens with a sign on it that read "free produce" so I peeked in. There were three beautiful large zucchinis and I chose one that looked just perfect. So, on the way home, we made a quick stop at the store and got a couple of additional ingredients to make a fresh zucchini and whole wheat pasta lunch. Simply delicious.

I love getting my lunch inspiration from the local community garden! I will make the gardens a regular side-trip on my Friday conference call walks now. Very exciting!!

how to make a lotion vest - for complete dumbasses.

They say necessity is the mother of invention. Well, I submit to you that severe dumb-assery (another new word!) and pain are the red headed step-children of invention. Even so, step-children - especially the red headed variety - are sometimes prone to strokes of genius.

Here it is:

When you are:
a) a complete and total dumb-ass (as I am one)
and
b) you get yourself utterly lobsterized (see previous post)
and
c) you can't raise your arms to reach the burn on your back because of the burn on your shoulders
and
d) the mere thought of someone rubbing lotion - no matter how gently and lightly - on your burn makes you want to cry,

well, then you figure out how to make...

a lotion vest.

It's very simple, really, and disposable: The sun burn alleviating lotion of your choice slathered on a double layer of paper towel multiplied by however many you need. For me it was one for my back and one for each shoulder which made it look like a weird white papery vest, hence: lotion vest.

I'm a dumb-ass. But I did finally get some relief.

Lobsterized - a new word

I went to the beach on Sunday. My favorite beach is Alameda Beach. It's quiet, it's small, there's always a breeze, never too many people, and it's only 15 minutes away.

I went there because I wanted some quiet time. I wanted to read my book, go for a long walk, relax.

I did all of those things and it was lovely. I was even joined toward the end of my stay there by my dear friend Naseem and I have to say thank you to Naseem. She is the one who made me leave the beach that day to go grocery shopping. Something we both needed to do.

Here's why it was a good thing I left. Once I got home, had put all my groceries away, etc. I passed by a mirror...

SO much redness!
So much sunburn.
So much ouch coming my way.
So much STUPID!!!

My upper back, shoulders, and chest are bright red. Like a lobster. I have been lobsterized.

Lobsterized. New word. Painful word.

P.S. oddly, my face didn't change colors. So now I have a pale white face and a dark red chest. Very funny looking indeed.

a traveler's observations

People wear funny shoes. I noticed this while I was at the Phoenix airport over the weekend on my way back from a conference in Chicago. Typically, when I have time to kill at an airport, I read or work. This time I just sat and decided to do some people watching.

Then I realized that watching people's shoes (instead of them) was actually REALLY entertaining. Here are some of my observations (and opinions since I apparently do not lack for those):

Men are by far the more sensible gender in footwear choices but they are still interesting. You can tell a lot about a man and his personality by his choice of footwear:
- old worn out cowboy boots... I look up and the man is indeed wearing a cowboy hat, has a weathered look about him. There's something genuine about him but he looks a little lost in the hustle and bustle of the big airport.
- sneakers with oddly pointy up-turned toes... I look up and the man is also oddly pointy
- loafers with no socks... I look up and, sure enough, he is wearing a polo shirt with the collar popped!
- another pair of cowboy boots, newer, shinier than the old cowboy from earlier and it turns out to be the pilot for my plane.

Now, women. As a woman with a bit of a "shoe problem" myself, I feel like I am fully qualified to make some observations and, yes, judgments on women's footwear choices. Women by far make the more ridiculous footwear choices: wearing high heels while traveling is generally silly (I suppose there are exceptions to this) but wearing shoes - heels - that make you look like you are in excruciating pain with every step you take, well, that's just plain dumb (The assumption here being that if you look like you are in pain then you most likely are, in fact, in pain).

Some rules/observations/judgments (purely my own personal opinions of course):
1. If you can't walk in heels in normal life, traveling in them is worse. You don't look cute. You look ridiculous.
2. Little girls wearing 2 inch wedge sandals that they can't really walk in is also kind of silly. I'm just saying.
3. Strappy 4-inch sandals while pulling a heavy suitcase: you look silly and by the way, you probably overpacked.
4. Fip flops that make your toes go whacky while you walk look funny. Have you ever watched someone walk in flip flops that are too big or too loose or too slippery? Their toes are working overtime! Those toes are grabbing onto whatever they can get ahold of with every step. This canNOT be comfortable!
5. Older women are much more sensible than 20- and 30-somethings in their footwear choices, although often much less fashionable.
6. Black sneakers with day-glo orange shoelaces may go very well with bright colored striped pants, a hot pink and orange checkered jacket and sunglasses inside but darlin', you may match but you're causing everyone else to have to put on their sunglasses. No wonder you're wearing yours inside!
7. 4-inch open-toed wedges - well, any open-toed shoes that are too short for your feet - are bad. Here's what's happening when you do more than just sit and look pretty: when you walk, which you inevitably must do in airports, by the way, your feet slide forward (it's called gravity) and your toes reach out over the front of the shoe, like spider monkey toes, and reach over the edge of your shoe to clasp it and hang on for dear life. NOT cute. I promise.

And then I got on the plane. Now I can't stop looking at people's feet.

It's a small world

Had I been a boy, my name would have been Jacob Wayne. For purposes of this particular story, the Wayne part is of interest. You see, the day I was born, as my parents were rushing to the "hospital" (another story for another time), they decided that they would give me their good friend Wayne Schwandt's name as a middle name since it was his birthday that same day.

Of course my name is not Jacob Wayne. However, Wayne Schwandt and his wife at the time, Ann Schwandt, remained friends with my parents and even visited us in Germany in the early '80s.

When I was telling my dad a few weeks ago that I was going to a wedding in Bellingham, Washington, he brought up my almost-namesake and remembered that Wayne Schwandt once lived in Bellingham, Washington, he even made it big, got himself elected to the City's Development Council or some such thing.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there. I was in Bellingham over the weekend for my good friend Mike's wedding. His bride and her family are from Bellingham and I must say, it is a really nice little town. Very pretty. Especially when the rain stops and the sun comes out.

The wedding was lovely. The ceremony, although a bit long, was very enjoyable and entertaining. After the ceremony the bridal party (of which I was a member) went around Bellingham and found really beautiful locations to take photos. One such location was an old run-down Boilermaker's building. The bride used to work for the Boilermaker's Union. That's how she met my friend Mike during the 2008 presidential campaign. The building was really neat, old wood, rusty siding, big metal doors in a green that matched our dresses perfectly. And, even though it was supposed to storm and rain all day long, the sun came out for the pictures and it was simply beautiful.

The reception was at the Ferry Terminal. It's a fairly standard ferry terminal but there is a room upstairs with windows overlooking the water and the view of the sun setting was breath taking.

When I walked into the reception area, I stopped to get my name card of the name card table and the ends of my pashmina caught a line of name cards and, like dominoes, a whole row of name cards fell flat. Oops! I hurried to pick them all up and put them back in order.

As I was setting down name cards, I saw that I held in my hand name cards for "Wayne Schwandt" and "Ann Schwandt" and I thought, "impossible!"

So I finished putting all the toppled name cards back in place and went to find the bride's father, Dean. Dean and I hit it off immediately when I had arrived the day before. He's a retired federal judge and was delighted to meet the "lawyer that Mike lived with" who drove all the way from Oakland. (He also kept taking pictures of me saying, "give me that smile again!") So, I said to Dean, "Dean, tell me about Wayne Schwandt."

He as a little perplexed but humored me, giving me Wayne's basic resume: served on the City's Economic Development Council, elected to several public positions, long time friend of the family, the bride went to school with Wayne's daughter. I asked if he was from Oregon. Yes, indeed. Then, as I was about to explain, Dean turned around and gestured to the man coming up the stairs saying, "Wayne, I'd like to introduce you to Katy McKenzie" not knowing exactly why he was doing it.

Wayne had a quizzical look on his face and so I said, "Kirk McKenzie's daughter" and his face lit up in a mixture of shock, surprise, and elation. "Holy Cow!"

Anyway, the rest of the evening was a blast. I got reacquainted with Wayne, met his new wife, also got to spend some time with Ann and their daughter Mullane. Mullane told me that just last week she had found the journal she kept before their trip to visit us in Germany when her mother made her learn a new German word every day.

The bride, by the way, was very confused as to why I was hugging and talking to her best friend from high school and also that friend's parents. When we all explained there were laughs all around. All of my table mates at the reception were old friends from Columbus and when they heard the story, they did two things: 1. They all agreed "Leave it to Katy McKenzie to know someone at a wedding in Bellingham, Washington!" and 2. they all called me Wayne for the rest of the night.

And fun was had by all.

Pictures of me and Wayne and me and Ann & Mullane.

I don't like mornings like this...

Generally, I've never been much of a morning person but I've gotten used to the fact that I do, in fact, have to get up every morning and so I do. I have my morning ritual which includes the usual, shower, brush teeth, put on make-up, get dressed, etc. but it's mornings like today that make me realize that I really like my morning ritual. More importantly, I like my morning ritual to be quiet.

I guess that's no surprise for someone who has apparently become very sensitive to noise in adulthood. Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking for complete silence here. I've gotten used to the sounds of the neighborhood, the kids getting to the school across the street, the (very) frequent trash pick-ups, neighbors yelling for their kids to get in the car to go to school, etc.

But every once in a while, my neighbor's landscaping team shows up at 8:30am. This is right when I'm sitting down at my desk with my first cup of coffee of the day and start reading through the news, emails that came in over night, etc. It's supposed to be a pleasant time of day.

Here's what it means for the landscaping crew to be next door:
1. chatting & laughing among the crew while they wait for their boss to arrive (totally ok with me and not that unpleasant of a sound. Only problem is that it is happening directly under the window I am sitting next to!)
2. revving of some motor-powered thing, apparently to make sure it works at full power and at low. I can't figure out what it is, either a leaf blower or a wood chipper or something in between but it's very loud and annoying
3. my neighbor's valiant efforts at Spanish as she tries to communicate with the crew who only speak and understand Tagalog and some English, which means she just keeps getting louder and louder, especially over the noise of the motorized thing
4. one of the crew's hacking cough and the accompanying intermittent hawking of phlegm and spitting, which is just kind of disgusting.

Finally, at 9am they begin their work, which brings with it a whole other slew of sounds which I am mostly fine with other than the continuous revving of the motorized thing and, with it, the smell of exhaust that fills my apartment.

My conference call this morning is going to be simply delightful.