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Bird's Blog

Poetry, musings, observations, commentary, rants, confessions...and who knows what else!

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Location: San Francisco Bay Area

Teacher, writer, poet, grandmother, lover, wine-drinker, chocolate eater, beach comber, hiker, traveler, Giants fan, San Franciscan. All work on this blog is copyrighted material.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

You Know You're Really Addicted to Blogging When ...

You log on from a computer at work at 7:00PM after teaching all day in shoes that are too tight for you just so you can say:

I now have a functioning laptop. Yes, it works.

But now, my Internet connection at home won't connect (despite much troubleshooting).

Is this a sign? Am I perhaps meant to blog less?

In the meantime, I've been taking some pictures to post. You will have to imagine:

A picture of the fog, slipping in softly over the city.

The sun rising over the hills across the bay, blazing a bright pink through tendrils of mist.

flap/flap/swoosh!

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Monday, August 20, 2007

Lost in Secret Data Code

Greetings All!

My move is complete and I am happy as can be with my new digs.

Alas, I am experiencing massive technical difficulties, which prevent me from posting and commenting on other blogs (I am currently at my work computer). My own computer seems to have suddenly taken hold of some sort of secret data code - I type, but the characters that appear on the screen do not match the characters as they appear on my keyboad (see my recent comment on the last post - which is in the secret code).

Any suggestions for a fix? I am quite sure I have inadvertently commanded my computer to use this strange data code, but I do not know how to command it to return to the regular alphabet as it appears on my keyboard. Oh, woe is me!

Of course, it's pretty hard to be upset when I wake up to a gorgeous view. And I have been exploring my new neighborhood - taking daily walks to learn the area. My next step is to familiarize myself with the public transport (alas, cannot access the bus routes online at home at this time - so drove to the office instead).

Signing off for now - any code crackers out there - please respond!

Monday, August 13, 2007

Bird in Flight


Moving Day minus one.


Be back soon.


Flap/Flap/SWOOSH!

Friday, August 10, 2007

Cleaning Out The Pantry

The numbers on the digital clock read

4:30

and since I had been tossing and turning, first pulling the comforter up snuggly over my shoulders, then kicking it off to the side – in general – thrashing my bed - since the clock read

4:00

I decided to get up.

And tackle the pantry.

I use a tall, white, tower cabinet for a pantry and one shelf in the kitchen cupboard as a supplement. A partial inventory of the two locations netted (along with various containers of rice, beans, couscous, breakfast cereal grains, chicken and vegetable broth, nuts, dried fruits, capers, oils, vinegars, pastas, etc.) the following items:

Four containers of baking powder. One was unopened and had a “use by date” (henceforth to be known as UBD) of January 1999. The other three were opened and in varying degrees of fullness –but only one had a UBD that allowed the can to be placed in the packing box.

Three plastic, bear-shaped bottles of Grade A Clover Honey. One was half empty and the honey had crystallized and changed color. Another appeared to have perhaps a tablespoon or so left, and the third was unopened (with an acceptable UBD).

Assorted spices (turmeric, lemon grass, saffron, cardamom, celery salt, black pepper, table salt, oregano, whole nutmeg, whole cloves, three bottles of ground cinnamon, two of allspice, a full jar of cayenne pepper, half a jar of chili powder). All of these spices possessed UBDs ranging from 1999 to 2002. I tossed ‘em all, of course. The saffron was a loss – it’s very expensive and I had only used a bit of it.

But hiding in the pantry between a bag of flour and a box of confectioner’s sugar, I found a yellowed scrap of paper sporting several light brown stains in varying sizes. Scribbled across the paper in my mother’s hand is her mother’s pie crust recipe. I know the recipe by heart (as do all my mother’s children). My mother has been dead since November 2000 and I really can’t say how the recipe got lost in the pantry. This morning I tucked it into my 1972 edition of “The Joy of Cooking” that my mother gave me. That book is losing its binding, its front and back covers taped over. Inside the front cover scrawls my father’s sparerib marinade recipe, inside the back cover - my mother’s butter cream frosting recipe. I don’t use this cookbook much any more, but hidden within its torn and battered covers are food-stained and dog-eared pages, many with my margin comments revising recipes, doubling the ingredient quantities, noting different baking times depending on the over I used. Here and there are scribbled pictures and crayon markings from my children, who once sat on the kitchen counter, the book next to them, licking wooden spoons slick with cake or cookie batter and adding their notes to mine. Over 30 years of cooking rest between the covers of this one cookbook, given to me by mother when I turned 18 and left home.

The outdated baking powder, honey, and spices were tossed into a plastic garbage bag. The cookbook rests safely in a box marked “KITCHEN.”

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Thursday, August 09, 2007

Hiatus

Aunty Belle and Boneman have wondered where the heck I am (see comments on previous post).

I have spent the last two weeks:
  • wrapping up a summer program for at-risk high school kids
  • doing some preliminary planning for a spring conference I coordinate (yes, the work starts now)
  • finalizing my fall courses (yup, semester starts in two weeks)
  • going to baseball games (nope, wasn't there the other night to see 756 - drats!)
  • sorting possessions and packing for my move.
My new digs are smaller and I have to downsize. Hey, that view's gotta cost me something, right? I find myself tromping through old photo albums, keepsakes, paintings my former spouse painted for me (now what the heck do I do with those - they've been in a closet for a few years - but I've got no room for them anymore), I've found boxes with the notes he and I used to pass to each other under our pillows. In a quandary about those too.

Found two forgotten boxes of keepsakes from my kids. Old report cards. Notes they wrote me. Ceramic hand prints. Yarn and sock dolls made by both my daughter and son. An old newspaper clipping about my son's winning soccer team when he was in the third grade. Elementary and middle school diplomas. Awards for music (son). Awards for cheerleading (daughter).

I've cleaned out closets - giving two bags of clothes to the Good Will. And culled my book collection -donating 5 boxes of books to the grad student organization at the university where I teach.

And lord have mercy - I dumped about 10 boxes full of old student work and lesson plans in the recycling bins. No need to keep hard copy of the LPs - it's all on the computer. And why have I been hanging on to old student work? I'm nuts!

But I've more packing to do, and moving day is the 14th.

So I am on hiatus - catch you on the flip side in a bit.

Hope y'all are enjoying the dog days of summer!


Bird

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