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Good-Bye, COVID Cocoon, Hello, Square-Egg McBagels

5/29/2021

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GOOD-BYE, COVID COCOON, HELLO, SQUARE-EGG MCBAGELS

On Wednesday, May 12, 2021, after a year and two months of COVID cocooning, hubby Tom and I, all vaccinated and ready to go, broke out and hopped a plane - two planes, actually - to Los Angeles.

We dusted off and packed our long-unused suitcases and at 5:45 am we were out awaiting our Uber,

...which transported us to where we hadn't been in what seemed an eon, the departure area of the "One of Us" Columbus airport (see post from 4/29/2018, "What's So Funny At The Columbus Airport" https://www.ailantha.com/blog/whats-so-funny-at-the-columbus-airport).

The airport was pretty crowded on this Wednesday morning at 6 am.

I suppose everyone was as anxious to break out of their COVID cocoon as we were.
Sadly, a number of the airport shops hadn't yet re-opened from from the pandemic-induced shut down.

Happily, the Bob Evans was still open so we were able to grab some breakfast.

Sadly, all that was on the menu was coffee, packaged cookies, egg mcbagels, and refrigerated drinks.

And so our first restaurant meal in over a year,

...was a square egg in a round bagel.

But hey, we were good.

To be continued...

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My 2021 Commencement Speech

5/25/2021

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MY 2021 COMMENCEMENT SPEECH

The class of 2021 will be the second graduating class of the COVID-19 pandemic. And though this has doubtless been a weird year of continuing changes and challenges, with some students making it back to the classroom and some completing their learning long-distance, the valiant class of 2021 has reached the finish line.
As I do every year at this time when yet another graduating class ends one chapter of life to begin the next, I will now endeavor to offer the 2021 graduates a few words of worldly wisdom and advice to help them along their way on subjects that might not be covered by the keynote speakers at their socially-distanced commencement ceremonies.
And so here it is, my 2021 Commencement Speech:

1. When shopping in the supermarket, never park your cart in the middle of the aisle while you step over to search the shelves,

...but rather park your cart close to one side of the aisle so the other shoppers can easily pass.

2. When you go shopping or to the movies or to the gym or anywhere where you park in a parking lot, park as far as possible from the building. The extra walking will do you good.

3. To make perfect tater tots:
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Cover a cookie sheet with aluminum foil and spray with olive oil.

Spread the frozen tater tots - any brand will do - on the sprayed foil-covered pan and spray the tots with olive oil and season with salt.

Place the tots in the pre-heated oven and bake for 18 minutes. (If your oven is cool, maybe for 20 minutes). Turn the oven to broil and place the tots on the the broiler rack. Broil for 1 minute.

Check after 1 minute, and if the tots aren't a perfect golden brown, put them back under the broiler for another 15 seconds then check again. Keep checking every 15 seconds until the tots look like this:

Then you'll have a perfect tot with an audible crunch.

4. Remember that even the worst haircut will eventually grow out.

5. It's not how you start, it's how you finish.

6. Make lists. Lists make life so much easier to navigate.

7. Before using a public bathroom always check first to make sure there is paper in the stall,

...and before you soap up your hands check first to make sure the faucet works.

8. Buy a subscription to an actual newspaper, either in print or online.

9. Remember that there are all kinds of people living in countries other than ours. Remember that we are not the only people in the world and ours is not the only country or culture on the planet.

10. Consider this quote:

11. And though life is moving back to normal compared to where we were last year, don't forget that we are still in the grip of the COVID pandemic. People are still getting sick. People are still dying. So live safely and do whatever needs to be done to promote public health in the community where you live.

12. And most important, we'll break free from the coronavirus only when we're all vaccinated. It is in the unvaccinated population that the coronavirus can proliferate and mutate into more contagious, potentially worse, potentially vaccine - resistant strains. So, GET YOUR COVID VACCINE SHOT! Do it for yourself, your family, and your community.

13. And finally: Remember, no matter how great, brilliant, and powerful we human beings may be, we do not rule the world. The microbes rule the world and they always will.

But if we all get our COVID vaccine this will be one battle in which the humans prevail.
Congratulations, class of 2021. May life treat you kindly from now on. And may next year bring you a healthy world.

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Pear Pie

5/20/2021

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PEAR PIE

I didn't know if there even was such a thing as pear pie. In fact I still don't know if there is.
But the thing was, my daughter and I both went to Kroger's on the same day and each of us came home with a bag of ripe pears.

I figured chances were that if we tried hard we could nosh our way through all those pears before they crossed over to the dark side. Or, thought I, I could do something with them.
But then it struck me: What else, besides eating them straight up, can one actually do with pears? Apples, peaches, pumpkin, can be made into pie, as can a surplus of cherries, blueberries, or strawberries. I once even tried making a grape pie, but I wouldn't recommend it.
You don't slice pears on top of your cereal. You can put them into a fruit salad, but that requires at least a few fellow fruits.

You can also puree pears into baby food, but that requires a baby.

And so I circled back around to the idea of a pear pie, the grape pie experiment notwithstanding,
Now that I'd decided to make a pear pie, the next decision was how to construct it.
Now, when it comes to fruit pies I generally - not always, but generally - follow one of two models: There's the Apple Pie model, which involves a fruit filling between two pie crusts:

...and the Cherry Almond Streusel Pie model, which involves encasing the fruit in a crust on the bottom topped by a butter crumb and almond topping.

I went back and forth between the two options, until I happened to look into the freezer and came across a single pie crust left over from a one-crust Cherry Almond Streusel pie I'd recently made.

I also found a bag of almonds in the back of the fridge.

This meant that I had everything on hand to make the Cherry Almond Streusel model. So a Pear Almond Streusel Pie it would be.

Here's the recipe, as I figured it:

Pear Almond Streusel Pie
The Pie:
A couple pounds of pears, or enough to fill a pie plate
2 tablespoons of quick-cooking tapioca
1 cup of sugar
1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 9-inch unbaked refrigerated roll-out pie crust

Peel and slice the pears.

Mix the pears with the tapioca, sugar, and cinnamon. Let stand for 15 minutes.

The Streusel:
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup flour
1/2 cup slivered almonds
Mix the flour and brown sugar then cut the butter into the flour and sugar until the mixture is crumbly.

Mix in the almonds.

Roll out the pie crust, place it in a 9-inch pie pan and spread the pear mixture into the pie crust. Spoon the streusel mixture over the pears.

Bake at 375 degrees for 45-50 minutes, until the filling is bubbly and the topping well-browned.

The pie came out of the oven looking quite nice.

But, of course, the proof is in the taste, and so in order to give it most benefit I served up the Pear Almond Streusel Pie with full regalia.

Then came the tastes test.
Tom declared it delicious.

Theresa proclaimed it outstanding.

Me, I thought it was...I don't know...Sweet. Crunchy in a nice way. Juicy. It tasted good enough. And yet there was something about the flavor that was kind of elusive. I couldn't quite put my finger - or rather my tongue - on exactly what my Pear Almond Streusel Pie tasted like.
Still, it was a whole lot better than that grape pie.

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A New Term: "Liz Cheney"

5/15/2021

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There is now a new term to add to the lexicon: Liz Cheney.

Liz Che-ney /liz CHā' nē/ noun (After Liz Cheney, 21st Century politician):

1. A person who, in following their conscience, confronts beliefs and/or behaviors of their peer group, political party, or group affiliation, and in so doing suffers censure or persecution. Example: He used to be the company spokesperson, but when the company instituted a harmful environmental policy he became a Liz Cheney and was demoted to mail clerk.

2.  One who fearlessly speaks truth to power in spite of the consequences .

Pulling a Liz Cheney verb :
  Behaving in a way that exhibits characteristics of a Liz Cheney.  Example: I have half a notion to pull a Liz Cheney and tell the board of directors what I think of their unethical practices, except that I'd end up fired, so I won't.

Having a Liz Cheney Moment verb: Exhibiting characteristics of a Liz Cheney, but only for a very brief period of time. Example: After the U.S. Capitol was attacked by Pro-Trump terrorists a number of Republican lawmakers had a Liz Cheney moment and condemned the attack and proclaimed Donald Trump responsible. But when these Republicans understood the consequences of standing up to Donald Trump they retracted their words and instead attacked Liz Cheney, who did not retract her words of condemnation and was subsequently was ejected from her seat  of power among them.

What the world needs now is love and more Liz Cheneys.

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The Mysterious Thingies

5/9/2021

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THE MYSTERIOUS THINGIES

It sometimes feels as if the world is awash in mysteries.
For example, there was the time I received the beautiful bouquet of eighteen white roses with no name on the accompanying card (See post from 12/9/2019, "The Mystery of the Roses").

That mystery was solved several days later when some sleuthing revealed that the roses were a gift from my nephew Randy and his wife Anusha, whose names had been left off the card (see the post from 9/13/2020, "The Mystery Is Solved").

(The mystery of why their names were left off the card remains unsolved).
Then there was the time flamingos mysteriously showed up in the yards of my friends.

Okay, I was behind that mystery (See post from 3/11/2021, "The Pink Flamingo Mafia").
And I'm also behind the mystery of the bunnies that show up in my neighbors' yards every year on Easter Sunday morning (see post from 4/9/2021, "Pies, Bunnies And Christmas Breakfast").

I will admit that I give as good as I get when it comes to the propagation of mysteries.

A few days ago a new mystery arose when I discovered on my porch a small but rather heavy oblong package that jingled a little when I shook it. I couldn't recall having recently ordered anything that should be of that size. When I opened the package I found this:

...obviously jostled in transit. I rearranged the contents to get a better perspective.

Not only had I not ordered these...thingies, whatever they were, but I could not imagine who in the world would. They appeared to be some kind of utensils - maybe for serving hors d'oeuvres? But how could you spear, slice, or spoon with any of them? I tried to picture one of these little apparatuses next to an olive or dip bowl or beside a round of brie. The image was rather icky. They looked like gold-painted plastic but were rather heavy pieces of gold-painted metal.
The whole situation was annoying, not only that these little doo-hickies had been sent to me by mistake, but that they were such dumb, garish, useless little doo-hickies.
Especially annoying was this tooth pick dispenser thing.

I mean, seriously, three toothpicks? Who in their right mind would go to the trouble of dispensing three toothpicks at a time? Upon closer examination, it didn't even look like the toothpicks could be detached from their thingy. So they were just show toothpicks. How ridiculous!
And then there was the message written on the box under the thingies.

What was that even supposed to mean? I figured it was supposed to mean "Made in China,"
That evening I shared a text on our family thread about the mysterious thingies.

(As it turned out, I was mistaken about the box having come from Amazon; one loses sight of the fact that, though rare, it is within the realm of possibility that a package might show up on one's porch that did not originate from Amazon. This happened to be one of those rare cases. Had I looked closer at the package upon its arrival I may - or may not - have realized this, which would have slightly altered the narrative arc of this story, as will soon become evident).
A couple of my children thought this could be some kind of scam, specifically one called "brushing," which involves an Amazon vendor hiring people called "brushers" to order the vendor's products through Amazon. The brushers then write a glowing review of the product - specified as a "verified purchase" - on Amazon and the good reviews left by "verified buyers" help sales of the product.

However - here's where the scam comes in - the vendor doesn't actually send out the product ordered by the "brusher," but some cheap, random thing which is sent not to the "brusher" who ordered it, but to a random address. Hence people sometimes receive random stuff from Amazon and have know idea why or where the stuff came from.
We figured that must be the provenance the thingies, though exactly what they were remained a mystery. We spent a good while texting back and forth, joking and musing about the mysterious thingies,
Then one of my daughters texted this photo, which she said she found from doing an online picture search:

Though the photo was very small and unclear on my phone screen, I said that yes, those were the thingies!
My daughter then texted this:

This was an OMG moment for us all. Everyone who knows me wells knows that I am a Salvador Dali super fan. All of a sudden these stupid, non-functional thingies didn't look so stupid or non-functional anymore; they looked like...Dalis!
Wait, I thought: Last December I ordered for myself for Christmas a Salvador Dali Persistence of Memory clock.

Could there be any connection between the Dali clock and the Dali thingies?
Definitely some kind of scam, the relatives on our text thread agreed. "Do they look cheap or expensive?" asked one.
"This ain't cheap," wrote my daughter, accompanied by a Sothby's auction price for a set the Dali cutlery:

I looked up the U.S. equivalent of 44,100 GBP: $61,627.54.
Now the family text thread lit up with urgent advice: I needed to immediately check my credit card, my credit report, my Amazon account, my bank account. I asked the thread members if they thought I should maybe call the FBI? Just to be safe? What if I were an inadvertent dupe in a Dali smuggling scheme and someone came looking for the $61,627.54 thingies?
That was when the case broke wide open with this text from my daughter:

My daughter went on to elucidate that the ad that showed up on her Facebook was from a company called oumytrade for a set of beautiful Dali pieces,

...selling not for 44,100 British pound sterling, but for a very affordable $39.98 U.S. dollars,

...plus tax and shipping, which brought the expenditure to $50.00.
"The ad wasn't clear whether the pieces were authentic Dalis or replicas," my daughter explained, "but for $50 I had to give it a try."
Alas, as we learned, they were indeed copies. Though, as it turned out, not very convincing ones. A little research on our part revealed that the actual Dali Cutlery pieces were of a silvery gold, each piece intricately detailed,

...some resembling whimsical sea creatures with tiny gems for eyes.

...and all the pieces engraved at the base with Dali's signature.

Apparently oumytrade had filched the Sothby's ad for the Dali Cutlery:

...substituted their own company logo and switched out the price from 44,100GBP to $39.98:

The pieces they then sent out had barely a hint of detail, and no Dali signature.
The authentic Dalis:

...the oumytrade Dalis:

The Dalis I received had no tiny gems for the eyes but did have tooth picks for prongs.
The authentic Dalis:

...the oumytrade Dalis:

My daughter knew right away that she'd been scammed by oumytrade when she saw my text about receiving the box of funny-looking thingies, which in no way resembled the photograph of the beautiful Dali thingies - whether real or decent knock-offs - she thought she had ordered. But she decided to make the best of it and at least let all of us on the text thread have a little fun with the mystery.
And, in truth, for my daughter's fifty-dollar expenditure we we did have an evening's worth of fun, winding up with lots of laughter when she finally sprung the joke and the story of how she'd been hustled.
We noted that this was kind of like that story from a few years ago when a (supposed) art restorer promised this:

And delivered this:

In short: my daughter was promised by oumytrade that her mother would receive this:

...and I was delivered this:

I'm still laughing. But I'm sure poor Salvador Dali would be flipping in his grave.

Or on second thought, maybe he'd appreciate the humor.

 Reference:
https://www.oumytrade.com/products/023

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I Don't Got Your Number And I Know You Don't Got Mine

5/4/2021

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I DON'T GOT YOUR NUMBER AND I KNOW YOU DON'T GOT MINE

These days I often wake up in the morning or sometimes the middle of the night with my heart pounding from a bad dream. COVID dreams, I've heard these awful nocturnal apparitions called, and apparently a lot of us have been getting them over the past year. Manifestations of our repressed anxiety over the epidemic, they say.
Most of my COVID dreams have been pretty bizarre and farfetched, but then there was the one I woke up from yesterday morning. What made this particular mind movie so frightening wasn't that it was more bizarre than usual - on the bizarre scale it ranked only medium - but that the really scary part was not all that farfetched.
I dreamed I was running through a crowded, surrealistic-looking airport, maybe like the one in Madrid,

...or Chicago,

...trying to escape someone or something that was chasing me. I made it out the gate to the runway and was tearing across the tarmac, desperate to make it up the steps and into the plane before the door closed. There were people in the door of the plane anxiously calling and waving for me to hurry. I made it inside the plane a second before the door closed. I was sitting, breathless and disheveled, next to a kind, grandmotherly woman who tried to calm me and assure me that I was safe now. The plane was headed to Chicago where I could call my daughter who lives there to come and fetch me.
Then it hit me! I didn't have my cell phone! I'd dropped it while I was being chased through the airport! The grandmotherly woman told me not to worry, that I could borrow someone else's cell phone. Except...I didn't know my daughter's number! I didn't know anyone's number! The numbers of everyone I knew were stored not in my brain but in my cell phone! Without my own cell phone I couldn't call anyone!
That's when I woke up, as breathless and sweaty as if I'd actually just been running for my life through an airport. But this time my dream-terror didn't dissipate as usual within a few moments of waking up, because it took me only a few moments to realize: OMG! If I were to arrive in Chicago without my cell phone I couldn't, in fact, call my daughter!
I sat up in bed and scrolled through my brain in search of the numbers I could call if I lost my cell phone. I came up with three: My husband's number and the numbers of two of my four children. Not the numbers of my other two children. Not my sister's or any of my other relative's. No number of a friend to call in a pinch.
This got me to wondering: How many phone numbers do most of us have memorized? How much of a pickle would most of us be in if we were stranded somewhere without our cell phones?
I then did a survey that included my spouse, my sister, my kids and their mates and a couple of their friends. How many numbers besides your own do you know? At the low end of the respondents was my hubby and one of my sons-in-law who had memorized one each, that of their spouses. A friend of one of my daughters shared that she knew three numbers, two of which she would never under any circumstances call. At the top end was my son's girlfriend, who had twelve numbers memorized. The others had anywhere from four to ten numbers they could call, mostly the numbers of their partners, their parents, a couple of friends or siblings, and/or their work numbers.
However they all knew 867-5309, from the catchy Tommy Tuntone pop song "867-5309/Jenny" about a guy who's in love with the voice at the end of a number that he discovered written on a wall.

As for me, I believe my nightmare was a wake-up call. My new resolution is to learn all the numbers I need to know without relying on my cell phone's brain.
Maybe I should try putting them to music?

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Good-Bye, COVID Cocoon, Hello, Square-Egg McBagels

​Available On Amazon Kindle

​GOOD-BYE, COVID COCOON, HELLO, SQUARE-EGG MCBAGELS

My 2021 Commencement Speech

Available On Amazon Kindle

​MY 2021 COMMENCEMENT SPEECH

Pear Pie

Available On amazon Kindle

​PEAR PIE

A New Term: "Liz Cheney"

The Mysterious Thingies

THE MYSTERIOUS THINGIES

I Don't Got Your Number And I Know You Don't Got Mine

​​I DON'T GOT YOUR NUMBER AND I KNOW YOU DON'T GOT MINE

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GOOD-BYE, COVID COCOON, HELLO, SQUARE-EGG MCBAGELS

MY 2021 COMMENCEMENT SPEECH

PEAR PIE

I DON'T GOT YOUR NUMBER AND I KNOW YOU DON'T GOT MINE