one damn thing after another
My computer won't boot. I'm taking it in today but dog only knows when they will be able to get to it.
I can read email and lj from one of the kids' computers, but I can't work on current writing projects (yeah, so sue me, I'm about three days late in backing up and it makes a big difference), except for maybe a couple of stories. Posting is annoying from any computer but my own, but, we'll see.
In any case, it's about nine hours till I see Frank again and hear the full story, and during that time I get to rack the wine, take the computer in, and attempt to clean things. Oh, and walk the dog. Who totally went with us yesterday to both the Lighthouse Field and river mouth cleanups. At the latter we recovered 443 cigarette butts, just the nice fellow and me, in about an hour. Later we went to this hotel on the beach where we were offered munchies and information about more volunteering and good speeches by ocean conservationists and some of our favorite politicians. The speeches were extremely flattering to out community but the best part is that they managed to combine urgency and optimism. The guy who's paddling a surfboard from Crescent City to the Mexican border has not quite become accustomed to public speaking and mostly just said "I'm actually a lousy surfer" and "We have thirty years to save ourselves," a number which I think will remain the same for at least twenty years. He also said he had been hassled by orcas and stalked by sharks, especially off Ano Nuevo, which is infamous for it, I think because it is the biggest elephant seal rookery on the coast (and the first one where their population began to rebound after they almost went extinct from hunting for fur forty years ago).
Other volunteers went right into the river and pulled out many things, including a water heater and a swingset.
As the celebration of International Coastal Cleanup Day ended, a man in the audience drew our attention to an immense raft of brown pelicans right outside the window, feeding on anchovies as close as six feet from the sand, accompanied by a pod of sea lions doing the same thing. And two people in kayaks, ignored by the pelicans. Right next to the wharf. Those pelicans also nearly went extinct forty years ago, from eggshell development problems caused by indiscriminate DDT usage. DDT has been outright banned for most uses since then. Now (much, much later, realize: it's not a cause/effect relationship) there's a severe resurgence and spread of mosquito-borne diseases and some people are saying that DDT is the only weapon that really works against them. It will be interesting to see, first, if that's true, and secondly, if it's possible to develop a DDT use protocol that doesn't destroy birds and helpful insects.
Department of irreproducible recipes: moussaka with sulfur shelf mushroom. Make a safflower and nutmeg flavored bechamel with whipped egg whites -- I forget what that's actually called -- prepare eggplant as usual (salt, let drain, rinse, sautee in controlled amounts of olive oil until limp), prepare sulfur shelf mushroom by slicing very thin and sauteeing in generous amounts of olive oil until a rich apricot color, layer these with tomato sauce enriched with oregano and cinnamon, put the bechamel on top, bake at low-medium temperature maybe an hour: I'm not sure of the last bit as I was late home from attempting to buy pants (most of my old ones are like clown pants now) and the nice fellow just turned the oven down to low till I got home. This is very successful. The sulfur shelf is famous for "tasting like chicken" and Emma was sure there was meat in it and, while she doesn't like a lot of meat preparations, she liked the sulfur shelf. It's called sulfur shelf because it grows as a bracket and it's really very brilliant yellow and orange in parts.
I can read email and lj from one of the kids' computers, but I can't work on current writing projects (yeah, so sue me, I'm about three days late in backing up and it makes a big difference), except for maybe a couple of stories. Posting is annoying from any computer but my own, but, we'll see.
In any case, it's about nine hours till I see Frank again and hear the full story, and during that time I get to rack the wine, take the computer in, and attempt to clean things. Oh, and walk the dog. Who totally went with us yesterday to both the Lighthouse Field and river mouth cleanups. At the latter we recovered 443 cigarette butts, just the nice fellow and me, in about an hour. Later we went to this hotel on the beach where we were offered munchies and information about more volunteering and good speeches by ocean conservationists and some of our favorite politicians. The speeches were extremely flattering to out community but the best part is that they managed to combine urgency and optimism. The guy who's paddling a surfboard from Crescent City to the Mexican border has not quite become accustomed to public speaking and mostly just said "I'm actually a lousy surfer" and "We have thirty years to save ourselves," a number which I think will remain the same for at least twenty years. He also said he had been hassled by orcas and stalked by sharks, especially off Ano Nuevo, which is infamous for it, I think because it is the biggest elephant seal rookery on the coast (and the first one where their population began to rebound after they almost went extinct from hunting for fur forty years ago).
Other volunteers went right into the river and pulled out many things, including a water heater and a swingset.
As the celebration of International Coastal Cleanup Day ended, a man in the audience drew our attention to an immense raft of brown pelicans right outside the window, feeding on anchovies as close as six feet from the sand, accompanied by a pod of sea lions doing the same thing. And two people in kayaks, ignored by the pelicans. Right next to the wharf. Those pelicans also nearly went extinct forty years ago, from eggshell development problems caused by indiscriminate DDT usage. DDT has been outright banned for most uses since then. Now (much, much later, realize: it's not a cause/effect relationship) there's a severe resurgence and spread of mosquito-borne diseases and some people are saying that DDT is the only weapon that really works against them. It will be interesting to see, first, if that's true, and secondly, if it's possible to develop a DDT use protocol that doesn't destroy birds and helpful insects.
Department of irreproducible recipes: moussaka with sulfur shelf mushroom. Make a safflower and nutmeg flavored bechamel with whipped egg whites -- I forget what that's actually called -- prepare eggplant as usual (salt, let drain, rinse, sautee in controlled amounts of olive oil until limp), prepare sulfur shelf mushroom by slicing very thin and sauteeing in generous amounts of olive oil until a rich apricot color, layer these with tomato sauce enriched with oregano and cinnamon, put the bechamel on top, bake at low-medium temperature maybe an hour: I'm not sure of the last bit as I was late home from attempting to buy pants (most of my old ones are like clown pants now) and the nice fellow just turned the oven down to low till I got home. This is very successful. The sulfur shelf is famous for "tasting like chicken" and Emma was sure there was meat in it and, while she doesn't like a lot of meat preparations, she liked the sulfur shelf. It's called sulfur shelf because it grows as a bracket and it's really very brilliant yellow and orange in parts.