Easter

I found one more tulip picture today, in part because tulips like most other things, change from day to day.  Just yesterday, they were barely blooming, but today, they are almost past their prime.  Just yesterday it was spring for me, but now, heck, I must be in late summer at least...  Interesting to think about.  If tulips had brains (and souls) would they be wondering, "I'm sagging, I'm fading, wow, is that  a new ache that I didn't have yesterday?"

It was a lazy lazy weekend for me, and I accomplished and did nothing.  I guess it was a recharge weekend after a busy week.  But honestly, I did little besides watch bad movies and eat.  And I cooked a lot so that I could eat--three significant meals, or at least significant for me.  Yesterday I made chicken with a tarragon bread cumb crust and "smashed" new (well, relatively new) potatoes.  This morning, I was up early and breakfast was broccoli, cheese, and mushroom quiche.  Apparently real men do eat quiche, and really real men know how to make it!   It was surprisingly good and it was one of those wow moments, as in why haven't I made this before.  Real men make quiche because it is fall off the log easy.  Ahh, I may be fading and sagging fast, but my cholesterol is still 48.  Bring on the eggs.

Tonight, in honor of Easter, I made rosemary and garlic braised lamb chops.  Truly a simple meal.  Braised and then baked (briefly) chops and crusty bread with Irish butter, and a salad.  Now if I only had a chocolate Easter bunny.  I would pet it and love it and pet it and love and then, bite its ears off.

Sorry to Mr. Steinbeck for that....Happy Easter/Passover/new moon/budding and fading tulips.

If so

these might be worth 5-6,000 of them.

Errant photo

I found this on a camera card, and it is a picture of my favorite place to eat in Tarpon Springs, Florida.    It reminded me of an a column that Mike Royko, the great Chicago columnist wrote once.  In it,  he opined that the best diners and thus the best places to eat were always run by short Greek men.  If you walk into a diner, and the cook in the window is a short Greek gentlemen, you will have great food.

That is good advice, but I offer better advice for picking a place to eat.  Generally, I think that it better advice that you should always always eat at a place, any place, that has a neon guy with a spear on the front of the building.  In fact, I will promise you now that I will follow this sage advice.

Epic fail

In some ways it was a lost weekend.  Not in the sense that it was a bad weekend, but it was just a neutral  blah weekend.  Some parts were fun--I judged a National History Day contest on Saturday, and I really enjoyed it.  I was very impressed with the overall quality, but one junior high exhibit was simply exceptional.  I don't know...I have taught at the college level since 1993, so 20 years, and I have have seen maybe four examples of my students' work that was as good as their exhibit.  It gives me hope.  Seriously.  Their presentation was on the Cultural Revolution in China and their presentation was made better because they could read and speak Mandarin, and could quote parts of Mao's Little Red Book.  I bet 99% of all my students ever would even recognize the title.  And that was after they had my world history class.

The weather drags on, and I am sure that this adds to the sense of almost malaise that I am feeling.  Spring has yet to show itself at all, despite the fervent wishing of millions of Minnesotans.  And Wisconsinites and Kansans and ...  I want tulips to show themselves.  I long to not wear three layers to go get a cup of coffee, and I don't want to lose any more tires/wheels to potholes.  Before spring really appears, we need to go through gross-looking snow season, and then mud season, and, it seems likely, flood season.  Maybe Florida wasn't so bad.

To ease my blah-ness, I thought I would cook today.  I was hungry for roast chicken and I went looking for a new recipes.  I have figured out the chicken, just roasted with garlic (a little) and tarragon (a lot).  I wondered about stuffing, and found a recipe for a Southwest savory dressing with chorizo and optional oysters.  I was a little limited by local food--not many fresh oysters around here, etc.  But, as my students would say, OMG.  As in OMG this is the most terrible thing that I have ever tasted.  Ick.  What was I thinking?  The chicken was good, as were the grilled fresh green beans with olive oil garlic and sea salt.  Yum.  No wine today.

This week will be crazy.  It is eval season and I will be in classes at least 10 times a week for at least three or four weeks.  Also, changes are afoot around campus so it should be interesting as always.  I will be busy, so it will be easier to pass the time until spring finally comes.

Spring. Or not.

At 6:02 this morning, spring came to Central Minnesota.  I am glad it did, because when I heard the weather with the 6AM news, it was -2 with a wind chill near -25.  Certainly it is warmer now--by tomorrow, it should be almost 15 degrees.  I can imagine crocuses and tulips following soon, as soon as almost three feet of snow melts and four feet of the tundra thaws.

Minnesotans are not necessarily hardier folk than the soft, coddled thick-blooded people who live in say, Florida.  We have simply adapted by cloaking our bodies in high tech layers of down and fleece and thermal "this and that."  Those less capable/less durable folk in warmer climes can get by in t-shirts and shorts. All those layers have pluses and minuses.  Certainly avoiding frostbite is a plus.  Hiding and disguising our bodies is mixed thing.  I never knew that the person I see almost every day at the local coffee shop was a woman until she shed four layers one day while searching for her ringing  phone.  I am certain that I have maintained my beach volleyball physique through the winter but I really am uncertain as I haven't seen my self in less than two sweatshirts and a down coat since October.  That is why around here April is the cruelest month--people see themselves uncloaked for the first time in months without the covering/sheltering snow, and it can be a shock for everyone. Trust me--don't visit the first warm weekend without serious sunglasses and the physical ability to look away.

That is but one of the many adaptations we have made to survive.  It has even affected how we eat.  While those who actually experience spring are already nibbling on fresh new green things, we are still buying lettuce by the head and bag that was picked/packed weeks ago in sunny Mexico.  Asparagus for us right now is in a can, and the only thing green around here are leftover St. Patrick Day decorations that flutter in the still bitter breeze.

But we have lots of time to ponder and be creative, so it is perfect for a poetry challenge.  So, by sometime Saturday, come up with a poem about spring.  It can be of any format, though I suppose sonnets about spring would have to win.  How many lines are they?  You should try to use  the following words:

Incandescent
concrete
magnet
wing
journey or destination

Or not.  Throw together some ditty or doggerel and send on to me.  I will post all that are received sometime this weekend, probably when I am not shoveling or slipping and sliding in our continuing winter.

Prolonged trip...

Sigh...it had gone too well.  No car camera hotel packing eating sleeping trouble at all.  And all I wanted was that streak to continue so that I could be at home in my own bed, even for a short night.  

Delta had other plans, though.  When they were changing a tire (how prosaic for a 100 million dollar plane) they discovered another problem with the wheel and delayed the flight.  As I mentioned, I only had 39 minutes in Atlanta so I left the plane for other alternatives.  When I was leaving the plane, they said it would be about 45 minutes late.  By the time I got to the gate to talk to the desk, they said a 90 minute delay.  By the time I got rebooked, the delay was up to three hours.  Can't you walk to Atlanta in three hours? 

So I am in Orlando.  Still.  Stuck with nary a toothbrush, though the nice people at the Hilton fixed me up with a toothbrush and all the necessities.  I laughed as there is a tiny bottle of Brute aftershave, and some Mennen Speedstick deodorant in the little bag they gave me.  Honestly, I haven't used either since high school all those years ago.  I'll smell good tomorrow--yesterday's clothes and yesteryear's scents!  It could have been worse, I guess.  At least it wasn't AXE or something like that.  Maybe someone can just Fabreze me!

I shouldn't really complain as it isn't like I am sleeping in the terminal.  This is actually the nicest hotel I have stayed in all trip.  I guess I just wanted to be home.  It will happen soon enough.

Ending a trip

It is my last full day of goofing off, and it was a quiet, but good day.  I left Fort Myers early and headed to St. Petersburg and the Dali Museum.  That was eye-opening.  It is a great story how it got there--Cleveland didn't want it, so St Pete volunteered.  I think that Cleveland might be kicking herself, but this was before Cleveland got so cool with the R&R museum and good stadiums.

Dali has talent, of that there is no doubt.  His early work was in the style of the very best impressionists and technically, you can tell his work is very good.  However, I suspect that he might be just a few fries short of a happy meal, to use one of those trite phrases. Wow.  Weird weird stuff, like LSD hallucination weird stuff.  I am glad I went, but even though I looked hard in the gift shop, I couldn't find anything that I liked enough to buy and put on my wall.

One of my goals was to travel Florida on the backroads and byways and I really did fail at this.  It was/is too easy to hop on a freeway, and often, those little state highways are nightmares of stoplights, strip malls, and uncontrolled intersections and farm machinery.  I did do better today and took Highway 19 from Tampa/St Pete up to Tarpon Springs.  At times it is a dreary drive, but at least it wasn't freeway driving.

Tarpon Springs is one of the best surprises of the trip.  Someone at the conference mentioned it and said it might be fun.  It is the sponge capital of the New World, and a community made up of mostly Greeks.  It is cute, touristy, laid back and fun.  The downtown had nice antique shops and a great book store (now the former home to an early Modern Library copy of Madam Bovary, with a dust jacket that I have never seen-yay!).  Closer to the sponge docks are streets with Greek restaurants and well, sponge stores.  A way above average Greek meal was dinner--it was 50 times better than the non-existent Greek place in St Cloud!  It was good advice that brought me here, and I am glad I made the effort.

Tomorrow I head back.  I have 39 minutes between flights in Atlanta, and I bet no one is taking bets on that one working out.  We will see--why rush?  The waiter at dinner tonight said why go back?  He suggested I stay and work at the place and just move to Tarpon Springs.  I am not sure about that, but I know that I shiver thinking about Minnesota weather again after a week of 80-85 degree weather.

Baseball, continued

I went to my second baseball game in as may days and doubled the size of my new hat collection when I went to a Twins game.  The game was less fun mainly because of the stadium.  The design, or rather the placement of the park meant that on a sunny day (remember, 92.4779 percent of our days are sunny!) everyone at the game is in fairly direct sun.  And it was hot (our average temperature is 84.314 degrees, all year around!).  I lasted into the 5th inning and I left.  It wasn't that good of a game, but really the park seemed like some great big grill where thousands of pasty white Minnesotans who were seasoned with months of  hot dishes and beer sizzled on a spit.  The fact that I resembled so many in this pack didn't make it any prettier of an image.

Plus, while in theory I had a good seat for photos, I was way too hot and fighting the sun for good shots.  That I fled the field because I was uncomfortable just further shows my appalling lack of commitment to the genre.  What it did convince me again of was when I DO like baseball.  I learned this in the early 1990s when I was in grad school.  It was fall, and finally cool in central Indiana and  midterms were rolling in and I actually had to grade and do the stuff teachers did.  I found this combination of grading midterm essays and baseball, either on the radio and especially on TV to be perfect.  Maybe because by then most baseball games actually mean something as they head down the home stretch.  I would watch a period of baseball, wait until they kicked a goal on the course or out of bounds and made a first point and assist, and while they were changing the net near the blue line on the pitch for half-time , I would placidly grade on with the perfect background noise droning on in the background.  Now that is when I like baseball!

Florida has been interesting, and I really have been trying to get a handle on it.  In some ways, it is the least hospitable hospitality state I have ever been in.  Tourists of whatever ilk are often treated with sometimes snide indifference.  I have to think that this is partially caused by the transient nature of so many of the patrons.  Short change someone?  No biggie.  They won't be back and there will, as one person said, one horde or another of tourists coming in right behind them.  Hotel room not quite clean or markedly expensive for what you get?  Hey, what choice do these sheep have?  They have to stay someplace.  I think that this even explains the general state of the food--tourists are grist for the mill of commerce, not gourmands, so it doesn't really matter if the fish is overcooked or the fish taco is less than authentic or perhaps even safe to eat.

Don't get me wrong.  I admire the machine.  One source says that there are 405,915 hotel rooms in the state--Orlando alone has 140,000.  Imagine having probably more than 300,000 guests in your home every night of the year.  If you rounded up 100 people in Orlando, 15-20 of them would be a tourist, more on certain events and holidays.   That it all works as well it does is a testament to how hospitable people probably are.

Oh well.  Tomorrow it is some culture, I guess, as I am going the Dali museum and then on to Tarpon Springs for some Greek food tomorrow night.  My visit to Xanadu/nirvana/paradise ends on Tuesday when I head back to a probable snowstorm and below zero temperatures.  Maybe this place isn't so bad after all...

Redsox

I went to a baseball game today, the first game in almost 2 years.  I even tried to take photos.  I suppose I would judge my work as semi-publishable.  By that I mean that if there was nothing better, these might be published if the paper had to.  Thinking back to my newspaper days, these would be almost insurance shots.  You know, you are at a game, not much is happening, and you have to have something so you shoot whatever moves.

I was shocked at how out of practice I am--I lost the ball, couldn't even point the camera sometimes, and pressed the shutter late.  Often.  I have lots of pictures of guys already standing up, brushing themselves off, and having a Coke--I thought I was getting them when they were sliding into second!  Part of this I will blame on equipment.  Amateur D-SLRs are fantastic, but they still have a lag time between when you press the shutter and when they take a photo.  Seriously, if you wonder why there are still cameras that cost $6,000, that is one of the main reasons.  That, and better motor drives.  

I would have to say that there may be a difference in motivation for me as well.  When I depended on this for my paycheck and was on deadline, I took this pretty seriously.  Honestly I know I missed two fantastic plays and photographs that would have been far better than these.  On one of them, I was eating a crab roll, and said/thought, wow, that was a great play at third.  The other time I missed a collision at second that also would have made a great photo.  I was buying a beer at the time, and the beer guy was in my way.  That probably wouldn't have happened "back in the day."

Moon, again...

I am not sure why I find the trees so intriguing here--perhaps it is because I don't know the names of them, and they are a bit different than the normal birch trees that I so often photograph.  This tree framed an almost full more quite well.

Speaking of names of things, an alert reader pointed out that the bird by the osprey nest that was photographed and posted a few days ago is a Pileated woodpecker, not a "just some kind of woodpecker."  I sure that this is one of many errata that people believe that I should add to my blog, and I will as people notice errors and omissions.

Play

So I pulled into my hotel tonight and saw this sign out of the corner of my eye.  First I wondered what kind of neighborhood this hotel was at, and then I thought, wow, this might be better than HBO!

Then I saw the rest of the sign, and I resigned myself to HBO...

Ford, Edison, and Naples

Today was an historic day of sorts, or at least historical.  I got to play the history nerd and I spent the day at museums of sorts.  I visited the Henry Ford and the Thomas Edison estates and got to see how the other half lived.  Nice spreads, if you don't mind getting lost in your own home.  They have kind of made them into time capsules and that is always fun.

I made it to Naples and got to see historic Naples as they call it.  Quaint.  I found it kind of funny--let's just say this.  I am pretty sure that the real history had a bit more diversity than was portrayed in the official version on display and referenced.  Also, all of it is put out there like this is some sort of paradise, and that life has been, is, and will be darn near perfect.  324 days of sunshine a year, perfect average temperature and on and on and on.    Except for the hurricanes, yellow fever, things that can eat you in the woods and water, a sun that can fry your innards, a very very red county and things like that.  Otherwise this place is darn near perfect...

I gave up doing much around 4:00 and just went for a walk.  The waterfront and the fancy part of town is nice, though a bit out of my income bracket.  I really want to eat at least one decent meal, and while I thought money wasn't much of an object, I revised that pretty quickly.  I browsed one menu where the cheapest item on the menu was $26.00, and that was an appetizer!  I am certain that there are good, reasonably priced places to eat, but I have not found them yet.  There are a ton of middle of the row chains, and lots of "family" type places. And some appropriately sleazy places in strip malls.  I think the vast middle is served by mediocrity and there are a few very good expensive places and then there are lots of places that have easy to chew food with the senior menu on the front rather than on the back page.  It's in big type, too.

I did stop at one nicer place and try a drink that was suggested.  Supposedly, the better quality, aged rum, rum about 15 years old is supposed to be good when sprayed with a little lime juice.  Maybe the rum was too old, or not old enough or the lime was old or something but I have to say I was not a fan.  I even drank two different kinds, just to make sure.  Don't say I didn't give it the ol' college try.  I am a fan of old things--they do get better with age, just like me.   I like really old scotch and port, for example.  Rum, I think, belongs in drinks with umbrellas.  Though old stuff (and people) are expensive and if I ever found someone mixing a $100 bottle of rum with pineapple juice I would be a bit disappointed.

Tomorrow is baseball--mid-80s, the Redsox, and stadium food.  Might be kind of fun, and perhaps I might even find a photo tomorrow.