The Diamond Island

Talk about doomsville city at the garden. We had a frost finally in late October, after having a record hot month. The majority of plants left all seem to have taken a major blow. Even the weeds are getting nervous. The bees are gone, and the general insect population seems to have cleared out. The birds are still around, but not to the degree they were a month ago. K and I were busy scavenging up what we could in the way of herbs, but hoo boy it was brutal out there in the trenches.

Tomatoes go bye-bye. The only thing left is the lettuce, which we harvested gratefully and had a small salad with our dinner, hooray! Pretty soon it’ll be time to dig up the horseradish, I can’t wait! Unfortunately, half my seeds haven’t dried out right, and have grown horrible molds. Still, not bad for my first try. I harvested the last of the basil, and some oregano for a Pizza of Doom I’m making for work. But it looks like the garden goodies have hit the bed and are passing out of time and space until next time folks.

Since it’s Halloweenie, I need my costume. I dug into my enormous bookshelf of tricks and pulled out a 1976 copy of Make-Up Monsters by Marcia Lynn Cox. Oh, I gots ideas galore thanks to this book. Hopefully, with the make-up stuff I have acquired, things will come out neat. Some of these, I haven’t tried out since I went trick or treating with my cousins or my elementary school friends. Oh yes, and I scored a pumpkin, though I’m guessing I’ll be my usual unskilled self and create a rather mundane jack-o-lantern. I don’t know. I just haven’t got the right touch for doing a pumpkin right. Maybe I need a kung fu master to show me what I’m missing. And of course the bowl is filled with candy for the screaming brats. Hopefully K won’t eat all the Mr. Goodbars.

My friend, Dr. C, called me up the other day and we rapped about what he’s been up to. I’m totally psyched for him to be doing what he’s doing. He’s been busting his buns through med school and his residency, and now he’s finally at the point where the powering up starts. Basically, he’s getting to write his own ticket for the hospital he’s going to be working at, and he’ll be living in a fabulous area for his family (and dog). I’m very happy for him, because there were some times where his life was pretty bleak and I was very worried for him.

That brings up another old friend from way back, someone whom I haven’t spoken with in a long time and only hear of through the astrosending, but I was thinking about a lot in the last week. Mainly in the terms of some spiritual connections we made back in the day, which still resonate with me now. Looks like she’ll be getting a website soon, which I’ll shamelessly plug here, but it’s not up yet. So get kraken, Xtine!

Going even further in the wayback machine on YouTube, I found someone posted a copy of The Frog Prince, with Kermit the Frog and Robin the Brave, plus Sweetums the Ogre before he was made safe for work consumption. Oh, wow, this takes me back a ways. I had this on vinyl, along with many other records, and played it often as a kid. But now it’s unavailable on DVD, and only rarely can you catch it on cable (when I was still mooching off my folks). That’s a shame, because the musical numbers are fantastic, and the story itself is both charming and wholesome. I still have the record, but it’s in rough shape. I’d love to get my paws on this one. Still, to see it on YouTube brings me to a deep place inside full of happy feelings and warm thoughts.

This weekend Lush came out with some new products, so K hinted that we ought to go to the nearest store and check them out. Since I was out of bath bombs and shampoo bars, I thought today is the day we replenish our ammunition or perish. Pricey luxury stuff, but its on my top list of bath goodies so we had to go. I stocked up on my usual array of nice things and she got herself some hair treatment prizes. K then proceeded to cut her hair, change it into a nice cerise color, and pamper it with wonderful hair-treatment goodness. Me, I’m set for the next alchemical treatment. I started using a new flavor of shampoo bar and so far its got good value. I was getting annoyed with the generic soup du jour of shampoo you can get at any supermarket, anywhere in crumbsville.

And I worked on my book. I finally decided on a teaser page to show you all. One that doesn’t reveal too much, but gives some good thoughts on what I’m about. I just have to turn it into a PDF and post it, which given the Halloweenie whackiness, might be a few days. I’m 70% through the revisions, so I’m getting closer to my current goal. I’ve accumulated a list of things that will have to be addressed in the polish stage, but I think most of it is minor work. It may be that my work will have only just begun after I finish my revisions, but it’s a major goal just the same. I’m still considering my cover. What color it will be, what the picture and text will consist of, and the spine. I’m not satisfied with my notes, so I predict I’ll have to spend more time on this when I’m not distracted.

I hung out with my gamer friends, and it was a blast. We watched the unimaginably horrible Universal Soldier: The Return and had a lot of fun mocking it. The game we played was a nice little gem called Arkham Horror, which is based on the H.P. Lovecraft Cthulhu mythos. In a nutshell, it’s the 1930s, and alien horrors are coming into the town of Arkham as precursors to the outright monster apocalypse of a randomly generated Elder God of Evil. Players take the part of archetypes from the era (Flapper, Gangster, Archaeologist, etc.) and try to gain the knowledge and power to kill the monsters and defeat the ultimate bad monster before the town is destroyed.

It’s one of those games with tokens for every single thing in the game, and it’s a long game, but the mechanics seemed solid and the setting was hard not to get into. Everyone cooperates to stop the monsters instead of competing against each other. And the artwork and production values are very high. It was a blast walking around with my researcher and checking out all the various spooky places for clues and fighting off ghouls and alien fungi with my pistols.

I’ve been trying to record my dreams this October, but something about them has not wanted to be put down on paper. The messages from the unconscious haven’t wanted any photographs taken at their press conference, I suppose. As the Celtic New Year draws to a close, I’ve got a lot to ruminate on from this last year. A lot has happened, both in the external world and the internal.

The family gathering was pulled off with a minimum of fuss.  Charcoal-grilled Nature’s Promise hamburgers, homemade peach cobbler, and plenty of generic chips, freezer-thawed french fries, and garden vegetable salad with mom’s homemade dressing.  Nothing beats a fresh slice of garden grown tomato on your burger, whoo-eee!  Then, crack out the Labor Day punch and talk family business to candlelight in the backyard.  Yeah, the Slack bonus points were a-cumulatin’ in the Slor that day I can tell you.

The book revisions have reached the 55% mark, which is awesome.  I got more done this weekend than I did my week long vacation to sit and write, even though I am sick with a sore throat and a clogged ear.  I can’t explain the discrepancy in the space-time continuum, though I believe it has to do with hitting a stretch where the writing didn’t need as much work, and the fact that the revisions are gaining momentum on the remaining pages.  Still need to do that polish stage, and complete my artwork for the cover, but I’m happy.  The revised material is much better than the first draft stuff.

K has been watching the first season of the Highlander television series, and I keep getting drawn in to watch.  We finished the first season this weekend, and all I can say is Darius!  I still think the first movie is the only one that counts, the others being pretty lame.  Part of that is nostalgia, and part of that is revulsion at the franchising effect on the story.  If you forget the movies, the television series is actually pretty good action, with some nice camp and an attempt to tell a story in exploration of the alternate universe.

The tomatoes from the garden have totally defeated us; we’re just giving them away now.  The weeds have gotten out of control, and the groundhog roams at will.  The sunflowers have pretty much bitten the dust, but there isn’t a seed left on them, so at least they are dying satisfied, so to speak.  We planted some fresh basil, which ought to produce for us some nice pesto in the next few weeks before autumn forces our hand to garden mark two.  We have a lizard now!  About seven inches, black with brown and ochre markings, living in our pile of unused wood.  We threw him some baby tomatoes and the next day we were rewarded with a pile of skins.  Yea!  Feed the animal bonus points!

Even the legendary pizza of doom has a beginning. In Athens, Ohio there used to be this pizza joint called “Big Red’s Pizza”. The railroad used to go through the college town; past a train depot that is now only a run down old building (if it even is still there at all). When the folks and me were in town, we would stop there, get a pizza, and eat down at the depot on the concrete steps near the tracks. Sometimes, a train would pass through and we’d eat in the rumble of the cars and shout out, “box car”, “tank car”, and “flat car” while we munched on pizza and drank RC Cola straight from the glass bottle. If the train car had a Chessie System emblem on it, with the tell tale kitten doing a lie down on the pillow, we’d call out “Chessie System” as an override.

The guy who ran the joint, “Big Red” as I remember him, made what must be the greatest pizza I have ever had the pleasure of eating. I’ve eaten good pizza, I’ve eaten pizza that sent you to other universes of ecstasy, but nobody could do it like this guy. His Kung Fu was beyond any comprehension. The Spartan layout, the smell of his goods cooking in the ovens, every morsel of detail about his pizza, the guy’s unassuming and plain demeanor; these things are imprinted on my brain like a stain that won’t come out. One thing I remember was a large cardboard, full-color poster of a man in a top hat, with an umbrella in a suit. His torso was a huge red beefsteak tomato.

One day, making the best pizza in my reality came to be too great a burden, and Big Red left the business to get into computers, and I never saw him again. The joint closed, and was empty for a while, but has since reopened as something else. But before he left, he passed on a few secrets to my folks, and when I was old enough, they trained me in the ways of Pizza Kung Fu. Since then, I have strived to meet the challenge and find the secret formula for myself. I’ve come close, at times, either to the crust or the sauce, but never in enough combinations to match the flawless, complete, bountiful flavor, texture and ineffable magic that radiated from Big Red’s effortless gifts. While it is perhaps my greatest recipe in my bag of tricks, and is indeed legendary, with the power to cure minor ailments of moodiness and depression, still it is not “the one”.

So I raise a toast to Big Red, wherever he may be. To the inspiration of my quest, and the creator of unforgettable experiences.

Coming up is K’s birthday, and that means valuable cards and prizes for her. In true game show fashion, she opened a catalog, pointed at the object of her desire, and said, “this!” Whatever you say drill sergeant! “This” turned out to be a yogurt maker from a health food catalog specializing in juicers. The ordering experience was friendly, but odd. It’s in the catalog, but not available yet. You can have a confirmation number, but call back tomorrow to get it. I guess that’s to be expected from a catalog where wheatgrass juice is considered a tonic equivalent to a Potion of Healing. Might very well be, but let me be the judge of that!

Yogurt making sounds fun, so why not? Healthy, probiotic stuff! You heat up some milk, throw in some culture powder, fill the nifty containers, put on the lid, and turn on the machine. Well, okay, not quite. The instructions that came with the maker, and the ones on the label of the culture container were both wrong, and we got a bunch of milk that smelled like yogurt, but that’s it. After some research on the internet for formulas, and the use of coffee filters to filter out the whey, yes we now have yogurt. Fresh is good. Much better than store bought. But the hoops are a little more than was advertised.

My legendary pizza of doom recepie continues to gain daily in power. We ordered a pizza from Pizza King and it was way good. Me, ever the pizza master, always examine a pizza to see how it was manufactured, and wow! Secret kung fu trick discovery! They curl the pizza crust inwards to get the edge crust, so I give it a try on my next pizza training bout. Most cool. Sauce drip and overpuff of edge crust eliminated, plus new handy curl makes grasping easier for muncheroo destruction! Overall, a nicer, more appealing look of pizza, and I achieve 100% toppings containment with less handling time. The only drawback is the technique is slippery, and the edge crust cooks very hot, and becomes a little too crunchy. Clearly, there is an additional kung fu maneuver in there to be mastered, but baby steps, I tell myself, baby steps to world pizza domination.

The rum punch alchemy experiments are drawing to a close, to the satisfaction of pirates and barbarian raiders everywhere. My secret orc investors should see a nice return on their brain-bashing, party vertical initial public offering, thanks to my frankenstein efforts. I still have some finalizing to do, but the basic recipe goes like this:

A big glass punch bowl
2 Grapefruits
4 Valencia Oranges
8 ounces of Water
9 ounces of Appleton White Rum
14 ounces of Appleton Rum (The regular, amber colored stuff)
15 ounces Myer’s Dark Rum
30 ounces of fresh squeezed orange juice
64 ounces of Nature’s Promise Pomegranate Juice

I use a grater to grate the skin of the grapefruits and oranges into the bowl, then squeeze the juice in. I don’t go ape with the grating, you’re looking for the citrus tang, not necessarily volume. I leave the pomegranate juice for last, since you’re going to have to add until you get the taste you want. I usually end up having to add the whole thing anyway, and make any difference up with more orange juice. You want the tingle of the alcohol, without the bite or the flavor, so you won’t know you’ve gone too far until it’s too late.

For drinking containers, every fiesty plunderer ought to use the pirate mugs from Archee McPhee! These things are solid construction, have got character out the wazoo, and fit nicely in your hand for easy access.

The blackberry/cherry/orange rum punch was a success, but the work involved in straining the juice was a little too hard core to justify the result. I’ll tag that one for a furture development project down the line. You’ve got to be cutting edge when you’re a pirate, ahrrr!

Edit 02-04-2008:  It should be noted that the fresh squeezed orange juice is in addition to the Valencia Oranges.  You are squeezing the Valencia Oranges into the mixture for the fresh tang of citrus, but you will also be adding orange juice from a container.

The madness of August has officially started. I’m talking about tomato canning season. Water must be boiled constantly. Tomatoes must be washed, blanched and sliced. Jars must be filled, sealed and steamed. And that’s assuming the quest for tomatoes has been successful.

In the past, the family made trips to the farms near the coast. We would fill up six bushels or so with tomatoes, rain or shine. You end up sweaty, dirty, and smelling of pesticide. Our reward would be a pit stop on the way home at a local restaurant that sells some awfully fine fried chicken.

You get home, and the time clock starts ticking. The tomatoes begin to press down on one another and lose their firmness. Then they start to rot. So you have to do a certain amount of jars every day to stay ahead of the curve, and by the end it’s a brutal, haggard rush to get those final tomatoes in.

The folks refuse to use air conditioning, so the kitchen gets really hot. You burn yourself handling the tomatoes to remove their skins. Your clothes acquire a red paste spatter. The entire kitchen is devoted to the process of canning, so food has to be drawn from leftovers, kept really basic, or brought in.

Why is this madness endured every year? At the end, you have about 120 jars of tomatoes that can be used for just about anything – salsa, spaghetti sauce, and chili. It’s a ray of sunshine you can call upon during the winter to get you by on that tough day. Plus, they make fantastic gifts!

It’s taken the family about 15 years to get the formula down right. The process has been honed down to every tool and the time it takes at each station. The last two years, the trip to the farm has been abandoned for a new development.

I don’t quite remember farmer’s markets being this prevalent in the past, maybe we were just too busy to notice. But we’ve been getting our bushels in installments from the markets, and that makes all the difference. The time clock of rotting tomatoes is removed, allowing us to rest between bouts.

The madness has lessened, but the benefits remain. An accident of nature, or a slight expansion in brain power? I know not.

So, what’s on the slab for tonight’s dinner, you ask? Well, lately the dinner manufacturing process has been receiving a variety of randomly created vegetables from the garden. Today’s beam-aboard material is lots of jalapeno peppers, and boy do I love the heat produced by these puppies! I dialed into my brain stem and that old reliable chili manifestation visualized itself for my tantalization. Hey, is that the buck-buck of helpless chicken patties? Yes! Victory is mine. Still have the pesto-goodness from the previous night to rely upon, and there’s that vegetable soup experiment K made as a secondary backup. I’m tellin’ ya, when you make your Cook Roll (and making your Garden Roll adds that bonus), everything comes up videos.

Of course, when I whiff that Roll, then its time to order up the community-pool wheel of taste. Mrm. Grease and processed material made by human misery or robot slavery. Yeah, the beat-down is part of the equation. Sometimes the land of android invasion requires you to rely on that rat-in-a-box, because you’re too tired from blasting away at the pincer-bots and gorgonoids to think about how you’ll plot coordinates for the refueling stop to restore your body’s health bar. Eesh! Thank goodness I put some experience points into getting Cook and Garden on my character sheet. It’s a sharing, cooperative work for K and I.

The battles against the potato beetles, the gnats dive-bombing my ocular mechanisms, the shaking of my fist at the cousin of the Caddyshack gopher as I find another tomato skin left right where I can find it at the dramatically appropriate time. The confrontation with the earth and her feral friends teaches wisdom, gets my head in the right place, and surprises me with the tasty manifestations of plant reproductive rackets. We take it back to the honeycomb hideout and it makes for a few more bonus points when the meal gets made. Making it yourself is one degree of better. Making it yourself with your own produce, well that rocks it to the crypt!