Our Piper Heidsieck who art in Kevin

Blogger announces Hindi transliteration? The hell? I'm just not down with that. Sorry.

What I am down with right now is some tasty Piper Heidsieck that I'm enjoying with my spouse before checking out on this final day of 2007.

At the time of this writing it's just a little before 10:30, which means the missuz and I will be retiring a good hour and a half before midnight. Oh well. I'm old and fat and can't stay up as late as I used to, nor can I remember the last time I was up at midnight on New Year's Eve. Call it Jungenheimer's Disease. I don't care.

What?

Actually I do remember that New Year's Eve that I was up at midnight. My wife and I were in the emergency room at the Naples Community Hospital in Naples, FL because she had ingested nuts . She's allergic to almonds, pistachios, pine nuts, basically all nuts other than peanuts -- they're not really a nut -- kinda like a fauxnad. She's not allergic to that either.

Oh yeh!

There is little sadder than some overworked orderlies counting down the last seconds of the year before they start their twelfth hour of a fourteen-hour shift. Even the noisemaker I heard that night sounded weak. No New Year's Rockin' Eve in the ward less traveled, let me tell you.

Anyway, I've made my resolutions and have found peace with the poured so I won't be long.

If you've stumbled my way in the year 2007, close out your browser, find someone to kiss and enjoy the final moments of the year. If you've found me on the first day of 2008, let me congratulate you on having pried yourself off that toilet and found your way to the site that's home of champagne wishes and White Trash caviar dreams. Indeed there will be a recipe for my sister-in-law's White Trash Caviar, but I'm just not up to it right now.

Did I mention that I'm old and fat? And it's after ten.

Happy New Year.

Insomnial musings

Earlier today I was dead tired and couldn't wait for my daughter to lie down for a nap so I could do the same. Unfortunately our evil cat (his picture on mycathatesyou.com) foiled that plan by constantly trying to either curl up on my neck or, after I attempted to avoid him all together by pulling the covers up over my head, wriggle his way under said covers to stick his nose in my ear. Most annoying.

Now for whatever reason it's 11 o'clock at night and I can't sleep. Funnily enough my wife doesn't respond positively when I roll over and whisper in her ear all the random thoughts that I'm having when I can't sleep, so I'll just humor you with them. Lean closer.

Closer still.

I make no promises as to any rhyme or reason to all this. These are truly just some things I was thinking of as I was lying in bed.

First a quick thanks to my sister-in-law and mother, both of whom took pity on my feet after reading my blog and gave me foot scrub and gel socks respectively for Christmas. The scrub is nice because it doesn't have a girly smell, and the gel socks rock because when I walk around with them on I feel like I'm stepping in goo only its a good feeling goo. Plus, the socks aren't made to cover your entire foot, just the heel and around your ankle. In spite of the fact that my toddler referred to them as tights when she saw me putting these on, they really are a unisex item. They're a bit macho in fact. Kinda like that super hero who wore the wrist bracelets. Who was that? Oh yeh, Wonder Woman. Well, never mind. They're not really like those bracelets. They're way cooler.

In the meantime, I've thrown away the foot shaver not because I won't ever use it again but because my old one's rusted. I'll probably use some Christmas monies to go get another one. Even as hardcore as I am, I won't bring myself to use rusted gear.

I had a most bizarre dream last night. In it I was supposed to go meet someone I used to know about a real estate deal. This particular someone died almost ten years ago, which incidentally was long before I started doing real estate. I wasn't sure where the house was and I was driving through this neighborhood at night and couldn't see the houses very well. I finally came across a 70s looking split-level with wooden stairs leading up to the front porch. I knew this was the house because a blown up copy of the picture I used for my business card (it's on the Flickr badge on the right side of the page) was hanging on the mailbox.

When I got in, the guy wasn't there but his roommate was. The roommate was a kid who lived in my neighborhood when I was growing up. These two people most likely wouldn't have known each other in real life, but in my dream, which ended rather abruptly, they were roommates. Just weird.

On a somber note, it just occurred to me while I was typing this out that while I do know for certain of only one person who died since I got into real estate five or so years ago, there is likely at least one other if not two or even three people I worked with who may have also died. One person I'm thinking of was terminally ill at the time I met with her and her husband to talk about selling their home, and the other two were an elderly couple. When I say elderly I mean elderly as in he was 87 and she was 93. Whenever I stopped in to visit with them the ninety-three-year-old woman would refer to me as her ray of sunshine. On two occasions the husband fell asleep while I was over there chatting with them. Not really surprising I guess, huh?

My wife and I enjoyed a movie from Netflix this evening which we watched in bed on the laptop. The movie was Flannel Pajamas and it got very mixed reviews from other viewers so I didn't know what to expect. I really liked the film but my wife wasn't at all crazy about it.

Netflix allows you to rate movies you've seen with anywhere from one to five stars. This movie had an average customer rating of 2.6 stars but of "viewers like me" it got 3.5. That Netflix keeps a profile of me that is detailed to the extent that they feel they can compare me to strangers is a little bit creepy and often I find the "viewers like you" ratings are way off base, but in this case I agreed. In fact, I'd give the movie four stars.

I do face a small dilemma though because my wife most likely would have given the movie only two or maybe even just one star. Since she and I generally watch movies together part of me feels like I should give the movie a crappy rating, or at the very least compromise and rate it three stars. In all honesty though, I'm not likely to do either of those things. I'll probably give it the four stars I think it deserves. That's what I usually do. If I write a review of it though, I'll make note of the fact that my wife thought it sucked.

On a side note, of all the 1311 movies I've rated with Netflix I've only given 131 five out of five stars. That's perfectly ten percent. Weird huh? That it's exactly ten percent I mean. Weird kinda like that dream I mentioned earlier.

Here are a few of my favorite five-star movies to add to your rental list:

Little Children
The Mudge Boy
The Corndog Man
Hard Candy
Everything is Illuminated
The Chumscrubber
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Fat Girl
Dummy
The Station Agent

Some of those are funny; some are dark; some are more mood pieces. A good portion of them my wife would think are crap. But I don't feel guilty because also rated five stars in our cue is Sex in the City: Season 4. Whaaaaatttt? It was a good show and all, but five stars?

Miranda was my favorite character, but I was disappointed when the actress who played her came out of the closet. Same goes for Jodie Foster. The fantasy was just ruined. I guess I still have a chance with Sarah Jessica Parker though.

Really, what's with those three-name celebrities? Anthony Michael Hall? Edward James Olmos? Nat King Cole? Julia Louis Dreyfuss? Please, celebrities, pick two names and stick with them. Unless the name has Spears in it. Then just please do us all a favor and fade away.

In the last three weeks, a 16-year-old coattail riding celebrity gets knocked up by her nineteen-year-old boyfriend and the first woman elected to lead a Muslim nation state was murdered. Which one of these two women will the American public remember two weeks from today?

We did not put up a Christmas tree this year because we feared fragile ornaments and hooks would be too tempting for a toddler. My wife did a great arrangement of some Christmas things on the mantle though and we also have an indoor-outdoor resin cast of Buddha that we like to put a Santa hat on this time of year. We're not Buddhists or anything, not that it should matter to you. I just happened to see the thing at Target one day and thought it'd look cool in our living room. Santa Buddha comin' down the chimbley tonight.

Other religious articles we have in our home are a replica of the infant Jesus of Prague, a novena of same and a lunch box with Gonesh on it.

Oh yeh, and the Sesame Street Giggle and Go Garage.

Resolutions for the next solar revolution

I foster enough guilt throughout my daily life without piling on the self loathing that comes from not having achieved hastily made resolutions for a new year, but since tradition dictates such behavior, and frankly, last year I made so such undertakings and have come to regret the decision, I’ll humble you the reader with a few promises I have made to myself for the upcoming 2008.

Please note that these are not decisions I’ve made to you per se. As such these are not things to be thrown back in my face when, if again I am struck by tradition, I choose to forego these pursuits because other more pressing responsibilities take priority (other responsibilities may include but are not limited to: husbandry, fatherhood, and la joie de vivre.) I am but one man and am at times stretched thin by the multiple and sometimes contending roles that I play throughout my life so I can’t promise to anyone including myself that I will respect any of these declarations for any longer than perhaps – oh, I don’t know – let’s just say the night of January 16^th.

With that disclaimer out of the way, I want more than anything to do a better job of telling those around me how much better my life is because of them. That’s resolution numero uno, say thanks to people who rightly deserve it. While I fancy myself a very thankful person, I don’t do a sufficient job of telling those to whom I’m thankful that I’m thankful. Family and friends alone account for the majority of my gratitude and yet while I am quick to tell my spouse at the end of the day how someone in our social circle helped make my life better, I seldom tell that particular person. That’s wrong. Our being thankful falls on deaf ears if we don’t tell the people for whom we’re thankful that we’re thankful. On the other hand, if we tell them we’re thankful, they’re more likely to continue to do our bidding. And isn’t that what life’s all about?

I’m not schmaltzy, I’m not syrupy, and I’m not generally the type people would refer to as sentimental, but what if everyone who read this blog entry took it upon themselves to stop and say thanks to someone -- one person, mind you -- who makes life on Planet Earth just a little bit more tolerable? I’m not saying to do it. I don’t care if you do or if you don’t. I’m just asking that you contemplate what goodness would come about if you were to take the time to express gratitude to someone who deserves it. Again, my life does not revolve around your expression of gratitude. I’m just throwing that out there for all of cyberdom.

Another undertaking I need to look into is doing a better job of watching what I eat. While I’m not at my fattest, I’m certainly not at my thinnest, but more pressing is the fact that I’m approaching the age when calories (especially the empty variety found in wine) aren’t burned as quickly and tend to hang around in the body for longer periods of time until they can be joined by more of their friends and come together to make fat. I remember the days when I could sit and down worthless foodstuffs by the metric butt load with little repercussion, but those days are long gone. The times they are a-changin’.

Just as my waistline seems to fluctuate back and forth between too much and way too much, so goes my spending money from comfortably cush to a small fraction of my average daily balance if you catch my drift. While I’ve struggled at times, I’ve never been destitute. Likewise there have been times when financially I was sitting pretty. But it’s always been a roller coaster ride of ups and downs. You’d think by 35 I would have learned to spend and save more stably but for whatever reason I’ve always laughed in the face of moderation like a former Buddhist monk with a dishonorable discharge. Dining out is both a money pit and a calorie pit, so if I can curb that one, I’ll be in good shape.

You know, I’ve never made resolutions before, so I’m not quite sure how it’s done. Am I supposed to come up with several pages of resolutions or are these three enough? It seems to me like the more I come up with the harder a time I would have keeping track of them and the more likely I’d be to let them each fall to the wayside, so maybe I should just stick with these three. Yeh, I’m gonna just stick with these three.

And another thing, I know that the first day of Qwahhhnzuh (I always opt for the more traditional spelling) isn’t generally when people make resolutions for the New Year but when it comes to self improvement what good does it do for us to limit ourselves to the Gregorian calendar? What does a sixteenth century pope know about my hectic schedule anyway? I give that a gyahh and an oh brother!

Merry Crimmas

Time is a precious thing on a day that demands traveling over the meadow and through the woods to both parents and in-laws with a dog, new tube of badly needed foot scrub and ample amounts of stuff in tow, so I'll make this brief. Merry Christmas to all including those who have not yet accepted Santa as their lord and savior. My yuletide celebration is only half over and already it's been wonderful. The only thing that beats celebrating Christmas at the parents' is Christmas as a parent. Meryl, thanks to you and your mom for making Dad's Christmas incredibly merry and bright. To everyone else, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

What became of Grandpa George?

Last night around four in the morning, I awoke from some weird dreams in which I went to bed with several of our friends. I don't mean I had sex with them (if you're a friend reading, sorry for the suggested visualization.) I mean sort of like a camping trip or a slumber party or something, Elaine and I crawled into bed with some of our friends and went to sleep. The friend next to me was wearing a frumpy nightgown. Weird.

Anyway, the first image that popped into my head of several people in the same bed was from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory when Charlie's grandparents are all bedridden in the living room of their humble pauper's apartment. Actually all the grandparents weren't in the same bed. One set of grandparents slept in one tiny bed as I recall and the other slept in another. These people ate cabbage stew for dinner. It's not like they had a Wamsutta king size or knew their sleep numbers or anything.

There was Grandpa Joe of course, who ends up going to the chocolate factory with Charlie, and Grandpa Joe's wife was Grandma Josephine. I don't know for certain, but something tells me these were Charlie's mom's parents. Then there was Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina. Likewise I think these were Charlie's dad's parents though I'm not sure. It's been forever since I've seen the movie and, as best as I can remember, it doesn't really go into a lot of backstory about Charlie's life.

Did Grandpa George ever have any lines? I know it's an odd question and all, but this is what I laid awake trying to remember. Did Grandpa George . . . have any lines? I honestly can't remember if he did or not, and while I did manage to eventually fall asleep without resolving the issue, the question still weighs on my mind. Was it a speaking role? Or did he simply lie there in the bed and just re-act to the other actors?

Aside from Grandpa Joe who we see in almost the whole movie, I don't think we see the grandparents except in a couple of scenes, do we? Let's see -- there's that scene where Charlie gets home from school, then there's that scene where the old folks are listening in on the wireless and hear that all the golden tickets have been found and then there's that scene where Charlie comes bounding in like his mom forgot to give him his hyper medicine or something saying he found the last golden ticket and that it's not bootleg. If there were lines written for Grandpa George it would have likely been during one of these last two scenes I think.

The Internet Movie Database claims that the role was played by Ernst Ziegler and that sadly it was his last role before dying of emphysema in 1974. Sadder still is that his name apparently didn't even appear in the credits of the film. He doesn't have much of a rap sheet with IMDB either so he'll likely best be known to most for his roles in such gems as The Naked Countess and Naughty Knickers, both German movies that came out in 1971 and 1970 respectively.

It really only just dawned on me that of all the things I could lay awake thinking about (predeterminism vs. free will, life on other planets, Cousin Oliver's disappearance from The Brady Bunch) whether an uncredited actor had any lines or not in a film is probably one of the most obscure. But did he have any lines? I don't know that I'm going to clog up my Netflix queue with some 1970s dwarfsploitation to find out, so someone is just going to have to tell me.

Besides, those Oompa Loompas? A little on the scary side.

Too much stuff

For the most part, I do not find happiness in stuff. Sure, I own things that bring me pleasure. I just don't like stuff for stuff's sake. I think that stuff equals stress. The more stuff you have; the more stressful your life becomes.

Think about it. If you have a lot of stuff, you then have to find a place to put the stuff. If you have too much, you have to step around the stuff. When people come over you have to say to them Careful, don't break my stuff. The momentary happiness that comes when acquiring new stuff quickly fades when it is overtaken by the desire to have yet more stuff. And there is always more stuff to be had.

I hold these truths to be self-evident regardless of the season but Yuletide seems to always be the time of year when I think about them most. Some people give gifts at Christmas; others just give presents. To me a gift is something the receiver wants or at least likes once he has it whereas a present is merely something the giver wants to give. He just presents it. Really, I don't think the giver wants to give it so much as he feels like he has to give it.

Here ya go! Here's some stuff. Not sure if you really want the stuff or not, but now I can check your name off the list of people I gotta get stuff for. Thanks for alleviating my guilt by receiving this stuff.

I know there are some people out there who love stuff. They simply adore stuff. When asked what they want for Christmas they'll reply with a big grin More stuff please! Many feel the one with the most toys wins and no amount of stuff is good enough if you can point to someone who has newer, better or just more stuff than you. Let the stuff race begin!

Another thing that gripes me is this rampant commercialism in the air this time of year. So many people suffer from C.C.S. or Constant Consumer Syndrome. It's not just adults. It's kids too.

In my late teens I worked at a major toy store chain over three Christmas seasons. During that time I saw holiday consumerism at its most evident. The mania usually starts with some craptacular television commercial advertising a toy that's equally lame. Because the kids depicted in the commercial smile like they've just been given a lifetime supply of kiddie crack, child viewers think they simply must have the product in order to go on living. They convey this misthought to their parents who further validate the falsehood by vying to secure the item for their kid.

On more than one occasion I saw a parent who was driven to tears because they were faced with not being able to provide for their kid the latest fad toy. Can you imagine a grown man crying because he can't get his hands on a Tickle-Me Elmo or a Cabbage Patch or a Baby-Poops-Herself doll. I've seen it, and it ain't pretty.

I kid you not when I say that one December I received a phone call from a woman who said to me Where are the Baby Oopsie Daisies? I know you people have them hidden in that store somewhere. Where are they? You should have heard the venom in this woman's voice. She didn't even preface with hello. What's more, Baby Oopsie Daisy was a piece of crap. Most of them got returned defective by the end of January.

Teddy Ruxpin was another holiday ripoff. Remember him? He came out back when parents first started relying on animatronics to read to their children. His price tag fell from $99 to $25 within a year. Why? Because when it came time for storytime, Teddy Ruxpin, that late-80s reason for the season, failed to deliver. He looked good in the commercial though.

I am not a Negative Nelson. I do enjoy receiving gifts, and I enjoy giving gifts even more. I just have a few cardinal rules when it comes to spreading the Christmas cheer via brown paper packages tied up with strings. These are a few of my most pertinent things:

Generally speaking, I feel uncomfortable telling someone what I want for Christmas. If I want something for myself I buy it. If I don't buy something I want, it's because I can't afford to buy it, and if I can't afford to buy it, I really don't feel comfortable asking you to buy it for me.

Often I think the most prized gifts are those where the giver said at the time I just thought of you when I saw it in the store. These aren't things a person would pick out for himself, but they hold meaning because whenever the receiver looks at them, he knows someone thought of him when they were purchased. Clothes often fall into this category. For this reason, I seldom return gifts unless they happen to be the wrong size. For me, cashing in a gift to get something else takes away from the joy of receiving it.

I am fortunate in that I was born into a family of great gift givers and later married into a family of great gift givers. If you are reading this and are from either of these families, please keep the gifts coming. If you are not related to me and are reading this blog (by the way, I think you people now number into the high single digits) cash is always welcome. I like to invest in coal this time of year.

For another view on stuff, click here. I found that after googling "more stuff."

Kevin' Bootleg Peppermint Patties

When I first blended belongings with the woman who is now my wife, I found myself surrounded by new kitchen toys I had never before played with. I'm talking about a vegetable peeler, an apple corer, a basting brush, a nice mixer, a cheese grater, parchment paper, and cutting boards just to name a few. In return she got a collection of 1980s Smurf figurines and a tattered chair from Rooms to Go. Isn't cohabitation grand?

With all these new accouterments I took to baking. I especially enjoy making cookies or cakes or pies or brownies or any other confection that I can polish off while sitting on the couch and watching the Tyra show. Just kidding. I hate that show, but I could maybe turn the sound down and still eat the cookies. She is kinda hot. And Kevvie Monster loves cookies.

My mother made candy when I was growing up, but for the most part my family was not a baking family. I do recall my sister baking once when she was about six. Of course, this would have been when she made a yellow cake in her EasyBake oven, which incidentally ran off a regular light bulb as best as I can remember. I think she was nine by the time it was finished cooking.

Yesterday I popped into my parents' house to see if they had any Crisco. When I told them I found a recipe on joyofbaking.com for peppermint patties, my father said, "Why don't you just go out and buy a bag?" Whatever. That's like telling somebody who likes to fish Why don't you just run out to the Kroger and pick up some fillets? Clearly my father did not know the joy of baking.

My mother thought for a second and then said, "We have some, but it might be kinda old."

"Like how old?" I asked.

"Well, remember when your sister had that EasyBake oven?" she said.

Anyway, I trekked to Kroger to get a new can of Crisco.

I have mixed success with recipes I get off the internet. All too often I find a recipe that for the necessary ingredients might list only flour, eggs, sugar and butter and then go on to say in the directions Now gradually fold in the creme fraiche and the pumpkin puree. Where do these mystery ingredients come from?

Other times the person submitting the recipe has the math skills of a three-year-old. If the recipe calls for one cup of sugar, the directions will say to use half the sugar for the dough, half for the filling and then sprinkle the remaining three tablespoons over the dessert before putting it in the oven. Unfortunately I never discover these discrepancies until I'm elbow-deep in flour and egg white so I spend the next hour trying to look up alternative formulas on the internet to figure out what the correct ingredients and proportions are. Very frustrated.

Also sometimes people who upload recipes to the internet do so hoping when you read the ingredients you'll be impressed with the contents of their pantry. If you've ever pulled up recipes online you know what I'm talking about. Knowing full well you don't keep this stuff in your kitchen, they'll list obscure ingredients just hoping you'll run out to a specialty store and buy them. I'm not going to drive out of my way and spend half my paycheck so I can get olallieberry extract or flaxseed paste, much less ask the guy at the meat counter if he can special order for me some eye of newt. That's just plain dumb.

Another problem I face when making food -- something I have no one but myself to blame for -- is that I either toss the recipe or file it away in some place I can never find it. My wife is good about keeping track of what cookbook a particular recipe is in or where she wrote it down on a recipe card. I'm just not good at that, so I've decided when I make something that tastes half-way decent I'm going to post it here. I don't care if you make it, but this way it'll be easy for me to find the secret formula when it comes time to whip up another confection.

So to start, here's my doctored up recipe for the joyofbaking.com's peppermint patties. I call them Kevin's Bootleg Peppermint Patties. Let it be said that I fully believe you should never follow a recipe exactly as it's written, so in the event you do make these, don't be afraid to substitute ingredients, use different amounts of something or whatever.

You need:

2 cups powdered sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons soft butter (salted or un- doesn't matter)

1/4 teaspoon peppermint extract (the joyofbaking recipe says you should use peppermint oil instead but readily admits that it can't be found in a grocery store -- Again, no thank you pretentious ingredients.)

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 tablespoons evaporated milk (if you don't have it, just simmer two cups milk over low heat until it reduces to one cup and use three tablespoons of that.)

a 12-ounce bag of semi-sweet chocolate (or dark or milk or bitter or whatever)

one tablespoon of shortening

Mix together the powdered sugar, the butter, the vanilla extract, the peppermint extract and the evaporated milk until it forms a moist sticky dough. If it seems too moist to work with, chill it in the fridge for thirty minutes.

Line a cookie sheet (or two) with parchment paper. Again, if you don't have parchment just use aluminum foil, wax paper or the Sports section.

Now pinch off small balls the size of a marble and lay them out on the cookie sheet. I think in my best batch I fit about 60 of those buggers on there. Next flatten them so they're about the same circumference and thickness as two quarters stacked on top of each other. Put these in the freezer to chill for an hour or so.

Melt the chocolate and shortening in a double boiler over low to medium heat. If you're the type that likes to live on the edge, you can melt chocolate in a microwave but I don't advise you put it in there for more than twenty seconds at a time before stirring. Once you burn chocolate the entire batch of it is ruined.

Retrieve the flattened peppermint balls from the freezer and dip them individually into the chocolate making sure they're coated. Use forks to lift them out and put them back on the parchment-lined cookie sheet. Put them back in the freezer for thirty minutes or so to get them to harden and then dip them again in the chocolate. Then put them back in the fridge to set.

These candies freeze well or you can keep them in the fridge. My wife liked them just left out at room temperature.

I joked earlier about eating a whole batch of something during the Tyra show, but if you don't watch it, these could easily be gone by the first commercial break.

Enjoy.

Food allergies for thought

I am not one to adopt causes and then try and convince others to hop on my band wagon. I especially despise these ax-grinding awareness ribbons that are still littering people's bumpers. For the most part, I prefer to stay unaware. That having been said, I just came across and left a comment in response to a blog post dealing with food allergies, something my family deals with, and thought I'd share. I won't preach. This blogger says it better than I could. Just click if you care. If not, I'll be back to my regularly scheduled banter shortly.

http://www.gnmparents.com/food-allergies-are-serious-business/