Because Dinosaurs!

Calmer Half and I have some interests in which we both can geek out happily, and some areas of interest where the other half of the couple has no joy and even less interest in the subject. 

Sometimes he humours me, and despite his "get from Point A to Point B as directly as possible with no stops unless critical to health or logistics" attitude, he'll exude restraint at me while detouring to see a giant meteor crater. (Wheee!)

Sometimes, he doesn't. 

That's where friends come in. This morning, after rack pulling 208 pounds (2 reps, 3 sets), I eyed the lat pulldown machine and decided I'd had enough of being adult for the day. So I texted CV Walter. "Wanna run away with me and see dinosaurs?"

She texted very sleepily back that she needed to find the shower, and then her clothes, in that order. So give her 45 minutes. I texted her the equivalent of happy noises, and then gritted my teeth and did my lat pulldown exercises.

I then went over to her place, kidnapped her from all her intentions, and took her to...
coffee first.

What, do I look like a monster? I'm not going to inflict random road trip on people without coffee!

We may have had coffee and gelato for breakfast at The Duck (it'll always be Odd Duck Coffee to me), but we did at least have breakfast bagels with egg and salmon and capers and cream cheese so it wasn't all caffeine and sugar. 

Then we drove off to Seymour, TX, to see all the dinosaurs! And the dimetrodons, which are, just read the sign NOT DINOSAURS. (Yes, it's in all caps. Posted right next to "Rules To Be A Dinosaur".) Just ask any six year old boy, That's Important.

Some museums are full of themselves and think they're there to "raise the public consciousness" and you're gonna get lectures on cause of the moment and fashionable crises while you're just trying to have fun. Not the Whiteside Museum of Natural History: this place is rich in artifacts and feels like it was made by a bunch of scientists letting out their inner six-year-olds. 

Right down to the little plastic dino toys hidden in some of the exhibits. And the way the T. Rex is positioned so she looks like she's looking at you no matter where you move.

And they even have the actual lab where the paleontologists are working on the actual fossils brought in from the dig with the cool toys at the end of the building, with large windows so you can see them. one of them may have caught me squealing over the miniaturized sandblaster the size of a ballpoint pen, and came out to geek out over the awesomeness. Next thing you know, we're crouched over a juvenile dimetrodon's clavicle, exclaiming over the amazing job of freeing from the stone, and the person who's put in all the work to make it look so good is showing off the nerve attach point, and a hole where something bit all the way through before it went from fresh meat to fossilized...

Utterly cool. 

I stopped on the way home and bought fresh raspberries and roses for my Calmer Half, and he seems just as happy that he missed all the excited female squeaking and squealing and gigglage. 

See the exhibit warning label:

Futures Contract, Vegetable Edition

Yesterday I did something that I've wanted to do for years, but never felt stable or capable enough to manage: I got a futures contract in unspecified vegetables and berries filling a specified sized container, delivered in 21 installments over as many weeks. 

The marketing people call that a "Community Supported Agriculture Share." 

The difference being, instead of the jargon-heavy contract for a standardized commodity, I handed cash to the farmwife over a handshake, and the details were written on the margins of a flyer advertising last fall's corn maze. 

We both come out the better for the deal - the farmers get stabilized cash flow, up front, with no credit card vendor fee biting their profit margin, and they get a solid estimation of minimum demand for the crops they are planning. Even better from a risk-forecasting point of view, by not specifying the contents of the box beyond "grown on our farm (or the berry farm & vineyard across the road)", if they have a crop failure or an unexpectedly abundant harvest, (or on the demand end, an unexpected run on a particular vegetable / failure to sell a particular vegetable at all,) they can substitute the box composition, and normalize availability between CSA Share buyers and the farmer's market stall.

This isn't necessarily weighted in favor of the market stall, either; I know the early harvest of high-tunnel strawberries are going in the CSA boxes instead of available at the farmer's market... which makes solid sense, in rewarding high-volume customers willing to assume delivery risk first. 

The only reason it took me this long to do this?

I had to find a friend who likes to cook, in order to be willing to split the product with me. I don't actually eat that many vegetables, and wasting good food is a sin. Now that the North Texas Troublemakers have grown so much, I have not one but two friends who are willing to divvy up the box, and if I throw in eggs I get from a neighbor, they're willing to pay for what they want upon delivery. Their cash flow might not be able to handle the up-front cost of a CSA share right now, but they can manage weekly payments of same.  

Besides, they'll not only pay in cash, but in kitchen scraps. Those will go to the neighbor to feed the chickens, which will result in more tasty eggs...

Unfettered capitalism: everyone wins!

Now for something completely different!

So there I was, standing on a corner, minding my own business, when suddenly these two bad dudes...

Actually, I think I was running around trying to clean the house, and make headway on far too many projects, and being
mildly sad that most of my friends went off to MarsCon while I'd made the adult choice to stay home. And it wasn't Sumdood of EMS fame, it was the Three Moms of the Apocalypse, who are good friends, that decided I needed to be in on the Postcards From Mars fun. 

Something about yanking my chain on my inability to write an 8,000 word short story, and how they mostly keep ending up as novels... so let's see if I could write a story in 50 words.

I didn't expect to make the cut, much less end up on the cover!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BW239Z38/

How Did You Expect This To Go?

How do you expect this to go?

At the gym, and everyone present is lifting weights. One gent attempts to go up in weight on bench press, and fails the rep. His spotter quickly grabs the bar and assists in muscling it up onto the pegs before it can be unkind to the gent's chest. 

Another guy, who just deadlifted roughly 400 pounds, commiserates with him. "Hey, man, as Taylor Swift says, shake it off."

A brief silence descends on the gym. 

"You listen to Taylor Swift?"

...

How it actually went:

The guy who's deadlifting grins as he starts to unrack the plates off the bar. "I have a teenage daughter!"

"Oh, yeah, then you've heard it all! Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus..."

A third dude chimes in. "Hannah Montana! So much Hannah Montana!"

I love this gym.

Well, that was a trip!

Was on the road for 10 days for a conference, and learned a lot of things. It's a good thing when I come back with at least a hundred hours of homework to do in order to dig into information and implement what I learned. Some of the panels, I was definitely behind on the power curve... and some, I was nodding along and going "Yeah, we already do that."

Then I went to lunch, and got propositioned and my bag got stolen.

I should explain. I met up with Kacey Ezell, who is an awesome person as well as good author, and a mutual friend of ours, whom I'll call B. We decided to go to a restaurant in the casino next door, where the ladies had a wonderful steak the night before. The easier way to get there from where we were was to actually go outside and get a little sunshine, while walking around the sidewalks of Vegas... something that none of us were eager to do alone. As we walked along the entry/exit drive to our hotel/conference center/casino, a car started pacing us and the driver calling out. I looked in confusion at him as what he was yelling made no sense. He didn't have any Uber markings, wasn't a taxi, so why was he calling for me to get in the car?

B looked at my confused face, and broke the obvious news to the slow one in the group. "He's propositioning you."

"Oh! It's been so long, I didn't recognize it!" (Middle age. It's a thing.) "No thank, you. I'm married!"

This did not discourage the man, who switched to imploring that he needed more of my big booty in his life, and other salacious requests. After we parted ways from where he could easily follow (with some muttering of unhappiness at the fact that none of us were carrying, and we all now regretted that decision), I looked at the other two ladies. "Great. Now I feel very self-conscious about the size of my ass. After five years of weightlifting, I may have done too many squats, presses, and rack pulls."

The response was a teasing grin. "Or maybe... you've finally done just enough!" (With friends like these...)

So lunch in the Very Nice Cafe proceeded apace, and all went well, until we finished off a baguette. They came in little paper bags, and I flattened and folded the sack in to clearly show that it was empty, and encourage the waiter to bring another while we were distracted by talking. None of us were anticipating that it might trick the recognition filter of a pickpocket, but it got neatly swiped off the corner of the table by one just the same!

(In retrospect, it might have looked, from the wrong angle, like a flip wallet by the way I folded it. Wish we could have seen his face when he realized what he'd gotten!)

...While it was wonderful to network, learn things, and get hugs from friends, frankly, I won't miss that town.

Once we Escaped From Vegas (thankfully with less traffic jams, inane and insane drivers pulling stupid human tricks, and GPS misplacing itself than on the way in), we regretfully decided there wasn't enough time in the day to properly see the Grand Canyon, and made our way to Flagstaff. 

I know humans can acclimatize to anything. Not just because my life has moved from Alaska to Texas, but because people appear to happily live in Flagstaff, and elevations even higher. I, on the other hand, was winded just standing up. Thank G-d for oxygen in a can. 

That said, the food was lovely at The Northern Pines. As for the company, it was even better. We met up with Larry Lambert, who blogs at Virtual Mirage. You know, for a man I'd never met before and only seen a picture the size of my pinky nail that may or may not be an inaccurate avatar... I had no problem looking out the window as he walked up, and going "That's him." There's something about the breed of men my Calmer Half knows and enjoys spending time with that you can just immediately pick out from the body language and the walk. 

The conversation ranged all over the map, from firepower to philosophy to politics to pictures of an elk who's fond of visiting (quite the handsome critter) and flying. I'll just say that it'll be worth going back to Flagstaff to visit with Larry again, and he gives good hugs.

On the way home, Calmer Half yielded to my plea for a side trip, but told me I had to pick one: the petrified forest, or the meteor crater. ...of course the crater won! I'd love to fly over that thing and see the ripples in the bedrock from a good height, because just what I could see standing on the lip of the rimwall was amazing. 

Albuquerque was not so bad the second time, not after Flagstaff. Well, and the second time it didn't have seriously sketchy and twitchy gent eyeing the van while Peter was checking into the hotel that had me making a slow smooth movement for a piece of hardware... A night without incident and a morning with excellent coffee have me thinking better of that city than first exposure. All the same, I was very happy to get back to our tiny town where "youth run wild" means the cows have gotten out, and are eating my neighbor's roses.

Not that I had to get back to Tiny Town, Texas to see youth run wild. Just north of Claude, two black angus yearlings who were clearly in high spirits after finding or making a break in the fence came pelting at I-40 in the that bouncing full-tilt run of "you can't catch me!" Calmer Half hit the brakes, as did everyone else - Thank G-d the semi behind us had Very Good Brakes - and the beeves stopped just short of the asphalt, so close to the hood of our vehicle I could see the snot flying as they snorted. 

...Getting chewed out by the cats for being gone was kind of anticlimactic after that. 

Everything's fine

Kili-Cat occasionally expresses Strong Opinions with vocalizations that would school an irritated sailor, if only we could translate. Sometimes, it's with an ungentle nip that doesn't break the skin. And sometimes, with a well-placed bit of vomit. Which, hey, at least she doesn't say it with scat.

At least, that's for Calmer Half and myself. From vets I have heard "Come get your hellion!" and "that furry little buzzsaw" and her folder at each new vet sprouts fluorescent stickers saying things like DO NOT TAKE TEMPERATURE RECTALLY!! 

I like the latest Vet; when I warned her with the dreaded phrase, "She's usually very sweet at home, but..." they took me seriously. And mirabile dictu, Kili has yet to go into attack mode around them, and it's been 3 years. 

Well, we had to leave for an overnight trip (one of those "do you want to leave the house at 4am, and fight the metromess's finest rush hour traffic, to make it to this appointment? Or overnight in a hotel nearby?" decisions), and came back to find 6 piles of vomit around the house. I suspected Strong Opinion about us pulling out The Luggage of Feline Lamentation, but that was a bit excessive, so off to the vet we went. 

Besides, I've had her on new food for a while: I wanted to check she was actually doing fine on it. 

Kili was Not Happy about this. In fact, she sounded like a little serial killer with a chainsaw still distant in the smoke and fog, with occasional pauses to hiss at the vet tech. 

According the Vet, she has gained a pound, "which is just fine in a geriatric cat; we're worried about them losing weight at this point, not gaining it." She also has "beautiful clear eyes, nice ears, lovely well-taken-care-of coat, a little tartar on her teeth but not unexpected at her age, everything's fine on her internals, a little arthritis but also not unexpected at her age, and the vomiting is well within normal for cats, especially ones who eat a dry food diet, given her age..."

MrrrRRrrrrRRRrrrrROOROWOWOLLLLrrrrrrrr!!!

"...and disposition."

Canned debate

 Or, how my Calmer Half wins the fight we didn't have. Because old age not only brings treachery, but patience and cunning.

A few years ago, my love bought some kitchen jars for me that he thought were what I wanted. They were beautiful, with olivewood lids and silicon seals (things I like). They also sucked, because the lids come straight off when I pull up, so any attempt to grab from the top results in broken glass and spilled grits. Also, the mouths were too small to get a half-cup measure in. 

So, rather than get more of them, I promptly started using quart and half-gallon mason jars for other grains, sugar, and ground flours. I didn't get rid of them, because I wasn't going to waste money already spent. Same reason for the mason jars: I had them, and why waste money when I've already got something that will do? 

It wasn't an ideal solution, but it was the duct tape and safety wire solution of kitchen organization. My love got these lids for the canning jars to make it easier to pour, clearly designed to turn the jar into a sort of sippy cup, and they made it better. However, the flours still clump, and the much smaller hole means it's a pain when things clump.  

A few days ago, my darling overheard the smothered yelps of pain and growl of frustration as I smacked the glass jar into an arthritic hand, and hurt myself more than it moved the clumped almond meal inside. I was grumbling (endemic to weather change and arthritis acting up, not this particular jar) as I then started rolling it on the cutting board to try to break up the clump so I could pour out a third of a cup.

He came out of his office and asked if he should get better lids, or more of the pretty jars instead? I recognized a "problem! fix problem!" air about him, and decided truth would be more useful than tact. Unfortunately, I didn't so it in a gentle, kind, or loving manner. 

You might even say I attempted to bite his head off and gnaw on his jugular. My darling simply waited it out, like a stone calmly letting a wave break over him, as I snarled that I did not like either alternative, and did not want him spending more money to improve makeshift containers I already disliked in the first place. When I was finished, he simply asked, "What do you want?"

That was the right question.

I finished pouring the almond meal, and cradled my hands to my chest as I grumbled that what I really wanted were vacuum-sealed plastic containers, but I wasn't going to spend the money on them, which is why I was making do with the glass jars in the first place. 

I got this puzzled look, completely ignoring the way I was snarling and focusing on the single relevant fact. "I've never heard of these. What are they? Can you show me?" 

So I limped over to his computer, pulled up amazon, typed in kitchen vacuum storage containers, and then informed him that I hadn't done any research because I wasn't spending the money, and I was going to go get a painkiller now.

As I made a cuppa to take the painkiller with, I heard faintly from his office, "Ouch! Yes, I see what you mean about the price!"

I thought this would be the end of it, but no.

An hour later, he's in my office. "Love, I just sent you three links, to three different sizes. Which would you prefer in the pantry?" 

As I was in much less pain by then, I was much calmer, and just looked at him with puzzled disbelief. "Love, didn't you see the price tag on them?"

He gave me this look like when I'm supposed to be somewhere in fifteen minutes, and haven't started drinking my tea or finding my clothes yet. "If I'm going to reorganize the pantry, then best we start with the containers we'll be using when we're finished. Decide what you want, so I can get that out of the way." As I opened my mouth to object, he shifted to a guttural tone of pure command. "You are NOT hurting yourself again."

...and that is how he preemptively wins the fights we don't have.