The Contortionist

Think I'll skip Obama's speech tomorrow.  Listening to him talking  high road while walking the decidedly low one has become increasingly disgusting.  This is what I expect, always, of Harry Reid, the original rubber man, but with Obama it evokes a certain amount of shame -- as in "We've Been Punked."  I stopped doing coke when it got so bad it just made me sick.  I feel the same about the Democratic Party.

Ice & Fire

I love it when the pasture is all frosty in the morning and covered with a low lying icy mist. Now  the sun has come out and is ruining -- hey the sun is coming out!  Another beautiful day I guess...

Thanksgiving etc.

November 28, 2009

Chris was telling me that the ranch occasionally raises turkeys and that one year they killed, plucked and prepared one only to find that it wouldn’t fit in the oven. We had no such problem with the game hens I made last night and it was all good except the potatoes au gratin which is the only thing I thought I really knew how to make. It kind of turned into a cheesy buttery mess. I loved it of course. Best was my wild rice stuffing which I made with leeks, onions and lots of fresh sage, thyme & rosemary and did NOT overcook the rice.

Sometime in the night a four-pointer somehow injured itself trying to jump the pasture fence (they always jump this fence, and easily – C thinks it could have injured itself on some metal pipes and irrigation heads next to same). Poor thing finally stopped breathing about 1:00 pm. Yellow Dog Zoe meanwhile was tormenting and chewing on a field mouse; hiked up to the dump where C was berating Beatrix for eating a frog (the foam around her mouth was a dead giveaway, so to speak).  I’m glad I don’t believe in omens.

Give us this day...

I’ve had a good success record making Challah – though it is time consuming it looks and tastes great.  But I really don’t need four loaves of Challah; sometimes I just want one loaf of plain old bread.  Yesterday I tried a very simple recipe for one loaf of white bread; it was a disaster.  Perhaps it was the ratio of ingredients (too little yeast, too much flour) but basically it was my lack of skill.  This week I’ll try a different recipe – one that uses the sponge method which I recall from my Tassajara days and seemed to work all of the time.

 Meanwhile, yesterday’s loaf will come in handy when I make the stuffing for Thanksgiving.  And Matt will be here in December.  Right? 

Going Rogue at a discount

Going Rogue: An American Life (Hardcover) -- List Price $28.99

Amazon:  $14.50

Barnes and Noble:  $17.39

Walmart:  $14.50

Broders:  $15.65

Compass Books at SF Airport:  $28.99

Weatherbug puts the temp here yesterday at 29.5, but I don’t believe it. Various weather sites show a 20 degree difference at times and a projected high temp that is lower than the the so-called current. In Stinson it was easy – cold would mean low 60’s, warm low seventies and anything above or below was really cold or just hot. I actually do need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. Does it matter? Nope.

Mary Matalin and James Carville on State of the Union.  So Retro.

Reich on the "Public Option" Farce

Robert Reich's Blog

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2009

Harry Reid, and What Happened to the Public Option

First there was Medicare for all 300 million of us. But that was a non-starter because private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn't hear of it, and Republicans and "centrists" thought it was too much like what they have up in Canada -- which, by the way, cost Canadians only 10 percent of their GDP and covers every Canadian. (Our current system of private for-profit insurers costs 16 percent of GDP and leaves out 45 million people.)
(click to read entire post)

Harry and the Order of the Valium

Listening to Harry Reid re: Health Care Bill.  Or at least I'm trying to -- the man is incredibly boring.  No mention of Public Option.  No mention of Stupak.  But he does say women should be able to get a mammogram before they are fifty.  ??!!!?? Is this man a complete idiot? Why, yes, I think so!

Maybe it's the wine talking, but watching Sherrod Brown on Rachel Maddow -- he looks like a younger and not quite so ugly Arlen Specter. But I hope he is right about Reid not including the Stupak Amendment. Knowing Reid, he will compromise by including something worse. Arghh!

   Pileated Woodpecker

                                         Yellow Bellied Sapsucker

 

Four Pointers

Outside my living room window this morning (which is practically right in my lap) a four pointer with his wife and teenage kid; in the chestnut tree a yellow bellied sapsucker. Woodpeckers seem to like the chestnut tree -- in the last week, the sapsucker, a flicker and the impressive Pileated Woodpecker, which gets capitalized. It is nice to see the horses running across the pasture; true, the cattle sometimes run but they are not what you would call graceful. I would say they run like pelicans dive, sort of galumphully.

I was not happy this morning to find a large pile of  strange poo on the path. I'm no expert on scat but know most of the more benign types and was concerned it might be cougar crap.  Chris of course immediately recognized it as bear.  George further refined this to "apple eating bear."  And while I was glad this was not ferocious beast poop, I was sorry I did not see the apple-eating bear.