T'inking it t'rough

Overheard:

"You t'ink you are somebody; I t'ink I am somebody; ever'body t'ink they are somebody!"

Arguments

Before you get into an argument that might get out of hand, check out this article for some counsel. Here's the link:

Arguments

There's a bit of confusion in the text over the words 'defuse' and 'diffuse", and the spelling may be a bit haphazard, but the advice is generally sound.

This Morning's Composition

Service Station

Took my car in for the regular 3000 mile service today.

My car isn't the one on the left, nor is it the one on the right. It's inside the building, behind the door with the red panels, so you can't see it.

It was very windy today, though the main storm has already gone through and is probably in the Sierras by now, dumping the longed-for snow up there for the skiers.

We had several brief power outages today because of the wind, which must have caused some damage to the power lines. Having to reset all those digital clocks (bedside tables, desk, ovens, etc.) can be a pain depending on their age. For the older ones, if you do it too swiftly and happen to zip past the correct time, you have to cycle through another twenty-four hours. The newer ones have up-down or left-right buttons to make life easier.

Christmas

Last night we all went to Midnight Mass together — my wife, our son, and our two granddaughters.

While I admit to not being a regular churchgoer for most of the year, I have not missed a Midnight Mass for as long as I can remember. It is the one time in the year when I am especially moved by those who have strong religious convictions.

It's like when I watch a documentary about Lourdes, or Medjugorje, or Fatima on the travel channel. The candles, the voices raised in solemn song, the look on the faces of the faithful: some may regard these as overused or superficial signposts of religious faith, but they can have a certain effect upon one's Weltanschauung, despite the secular humanism that someone like me espouses.

Christmas is a time for family, and as I write this, I am awaiting the arrival at our house of some family members and friends. My wife is preparing a prime rib roast, and I have made a stew of bacalhau, or salt cod. There will be Christmas cake and Christmas pudding, baked sweet potatoes with marshmallows, a salad, and a variety of cakes and sweets.

I am grateful for what we have, especially for our health and wellbeing and the love of family and friends.

Peace on earth — we hope and pray for that.

The Blue of the Sky

The old bromide of a picture being worth a thousand words is correct. I plan in the future to post more pictures in the intervals when words won't easily come.

* * * * *

It's been quite cold around these parts, but the sky is so blue it takes one's breath away. From my front door I can see clear across the bay a good ten leagues east to the hills on the other side.

Windows of The City

Warm Greetings and City Views

Warmest greetings for the holidays, and to my friends and relatives my special thanks for the kind words they offered about recent postings to this blog.

In San Francisco yesterday it was lovely, a far cry from the foggy grisaille of December 14. click here My wife had a meeting to attend, and I was free to rediscover a part the city on foot.

A hike up Telegraph Hill gave me more than my daily quota of physical exercise. Some of the photos I took are reproduced below. (Click on the images to enlarge.)

Later we went with friends for dinner at a busy Chinese restaurant on Balboa Street, where the noise level certainly deserved the three bells in our local restaurant guide's rating system. But the food in our judgment would easily have earned three crysanthemums in the guide Michelin (were the editors of that much-respected European guide ever to sample the fare).

Do sleeping dogs lie?

Trolley cables

Family gathering in a park

Tiburon seen from Pacific Heights

More Images of Summer 2006

Dalmatian Coast

Alleyway in Dubrovnik

Olympia 1

Olympia 2

Olympia 3

2006 Summer Vacation

Corfu Windows

Dubrovnik Windows

Tiber & Dome

Valletta - Summer 2006

Santorini - Summer 2006

Ephesus - Summer 2006

Fog City

A New Clock

Here's a link to a different kind of clock.

http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf

Persimmons

If I were to be asked what my favorite fruit is, I'd probably have to say, the persimmon. For me there has always been something vaguely mysterious about the persimmon.

There are of course the different varieties of the fruit. The two main kinds we find in our markets are known by their Japanese names: fuyu (the firm-fleshed non-astringent variety, see photo), and hachiya (the kind with the soft meat that you eat with a spoon, like custard). I happen to like both kinds.

The shelf life of the fuyu may be longer than that of the hachiya. With the hachiya, it can be difficult to tell when it is exactly ready for eating. And herein lies the mystery. A hachiya persimmon may look from its color and feel as though it is already ripe, but when you cut it open, sink a spoon into it, and transfer the soft flesh to your mouth, you could be in for a surprise, and not a pleasant one at that.

If the hachiya isn't perfectly ripe to a jelly-like softness, it will make the inside of your mouth feel as though all your taste buds had been suddenly cauterized. It is a most unsettling sensation. But when it is fully ripe, the flesh of the hachiya can be heavenly.

The fuyu, on the other hand, can be eaten even when it has an apple-like firmness, though it is usually more delicious when you let it ripen and soften a bit.

Our Asian markets around this time of year have an abundance of persimmons, usually of the fuyu variety. The hachiya is not as common, and is more expensive, costing as much per piece as a whole pound of the fuyu.

Persimmons are good also in baked goods.

Ants

Never underestimate the intelligence of ants.

In the summer, when there is abundant food to be found in the wild, ants may be disinclined to invade our homes. Picnics are another matter. I mean, if we are going to spread food out in the open within marching distance of a nest of ants, we have only ourselves to blame.

It is a source of amazement to me that, in the wintertime, ants from the outside are able to make a bee-line (please excuse the metaphor) for sweet things inside the house.

Like today, for instance.

I took down from the top shelf of the kitchen cupboard a tin can (actually a former cookie container) in which I keep a stash of chocolates. Mostly the chocolates are in the form of bars, acquired at various times, but there are also the individual foil-wrapped chocolates, including some that the cabin steward on our last cruise had neatly placed on our pillows each night.

It has been said by those who study such things that a chocolate a day, especially a dark chocolate, is good for you. (Or maybe, sometimes, two.) I subscribe enthusiastically to that view. My daily chocolate is something I look forward to with keen anticipation.

Well, today, the ants invaded my tin can. They were not yet there in force, thank heaven. The ones that made it in were probably the scouts, the outriders whose job it is in the tightly-organized bureaucracy of anthood to find new sources of food, especially the high-energy sugary stuff. They had found my stash. How did they know it was there? And how did they get past all the obstacles to reach the inside of the can, which, though it was not airtight, had scant space even for an ant to penetrate?

The triangular cardboard box of the bar of Toblerone had been opened (probably by myself) and the foil had been carelessly, and hastily, folded back. There they were. A score or more of the little creatures, madly scurrying around upon being discovered. Some even ran up my arm.

These scout ants move faster than the worker ants who will follow later. Had I not chanced upon the invasion, I am convinced that the entire stash of chocolates would have been covered by a teeming horde of worker ants by the afternoon, each one of them carting off a tiny piece of chocolate to take back to the old queen in the hive.

My chocolate stash is now kept in ziploc plastic bags inside a plastic jar with a screw-on lid. I think the chocolates will be safe there. I have a feeling that the ants, intelligent though they are, have not yet been able to figure out a way to penetrate plastic. At least, I hope they have not. But, with evolution, who knows what the future holds.

The Unbidden Tune

'Sfunny how some days I wake up in the morning with a tune running through my head, a tune from a popular song of 'our time', the Fifties (Doris Day? Patti Page?), a catchy tune repeated over and over without surcease. If I try consciously to get the tune to stop, it may do so for a spell. And then suddenly it returns unbidden, sticking in my consciousness like a nettle. (Speaking of which reminds me now of how the guy invented the loop-and-hook configuration of the Velcro fastener from wondering how nettles would stick to his trouser leg.)

So here's today's tune. It happens to be The Birthday Song. It happens to be "Happy Birthday" sung in Portuguese. I recall that a large group of us were on a visit to Portugal in 1997 (after the first major surgery of my life), and we were all having fun in a restaurant in the town of Mealhada, which is famed for its roast suckling pig. We were singing all kinds of songs, from national anthems to Auld Lang Syne, and then we discovered it was someone's birthday, and so we sang:

Parabéns a você
Nesta data querida
Muitas felicidades
Muitos anos de vida!

Tenha tudo do bom
Do que a vida contém
Tenha muita saúde
E amigos também

Hoje é dia de festa
Cantam as nossas almas
Para o menino(a) "aniversariante"
Uma salva de palmas!