Inspired by "the fire"

I don't need much of an inspiration to learn - and tonight Jeffro has provided the perfect inspiration. He posted a video on his blog that shows pictures associated with all of the things mentioned in Billy Joel's "We didn't start the fire." I watched the video - natch - and didn't realize that despite being a pretty big history buff, I didn't know like 20-30 of the references once the song was over.

So... here are the ones I didn't know, starting from the beginning (super-obvious ones, like "Brooklyn's got a winning team" I don't include, because I can deduce the reference (Brooklyn won the World Series in '55)

#1 Johnnie Ray: partially deaf, teen idol musician who was considered a precursor to jazz and rock music
#2 Walter Winchell: journalist who began the whole trend of invading public figures' private lives
#3 Panmunjeom: location where the armistice of the Korean War was signed
#4 Marciano: Rocky Marciano, heavyweight boxing champion (could have probably guessed from the picture)
#5 Santayana: George Santayana, Writer who wrote "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
#6 Malenkov: Soviet politician and buddy of Stalin's. Led the Soviet Union for a short time after Stalin's death and was opposed to nuclear armament
#7 Campanella: Roy Campanella, baseball player who was one of the first to break through the color barrier (move from the Negro to the Major League)
#8 Roy Cohn: lawyer involved with McCarthyism and the Rosenberg affair
#9 Peyton Place: A novel that is famous for revealing the sordid underbelly of small town life (I kind of knew it, but wasn't 100% certain)
#10 Pasternak: Boris Pasternak, author of Dr Zhivago (can't believe I didn't know that one!)
#11 Zhou Enlai: Former leader of China
#12 California baseball: I can only assume he's talking about the move of the Brooklyn Dodgers to LA
#13 Starkweather homicide: Charles Starkweather, a Midwest serial killer who inspired Natural Born Killers
#14 Space monkey: Literally, monkeys who were sent into space before humans were. (That's awful! I knew about the Soviet dogs sent into space, but didn't know about the monkeys!)
#15 Edsel is a no-go: I knew it was a car, but I didn't know its significance was that it was a spectacular failure.
#16 Syngman Rhee: First leader of South Korea
#17 payola: The illegal practice of paying to have a song played on the radio (without announcing such)
#18 Belgians in the Congo: The Congo Crisis, when Congo declared independence from Belgium and Mobuto rose to power
#19 Stranger in a Strange Land: Apparently the most famous science-fiction novel ever about a human raised by Martians on Mars (weird)
#20 Liston beats Patterson: Apparently a famous boxing match where Sonny Liston knocked out Floyd Patterson.
#21 British politician sex: Just what it sounds like. Apparently the then Secretary of War got randy with a showgirl, who subsequently lied about it to the House of Commons. Nice!
#22 Bernie Goetz: A NYC subway passenger who shot four guys who were trying to rob him. Got the nickname "subway vigilante."

22 references out of about 120+ total. I'm pretty darn proud.

P.S. Frick! I should have known that there was a Wikipedia entry for the song itself explaining all of the references. All that work searching one by one and I could have just linked to this page. So much for being smart. I didn't realize the significance of the "Studebaker" reference and the Rockefeller reference, but I remember the needles on the shore as a proud EXJersey girl

The problem with not being millionaires

Can't you hear it calling me?

You know, being millionaires would make life so much easier.

I believe that I am very susceptible to SAD - seasonal affective disorder. Basically, as soon as the sun starts setting at 430pm and the weather dips and stays below 65 degrees, I get unhappy. I was born a warm-weather girl, and start shriveling up inside when I can't romp in the sun.

So about this time every year I start dreaming about "quick" trips to my favorite island paradise or other warm-weather destination. My dreamy side starts thinking about spending days in the warm sun, snorkeling gorgeous coral reefs and chasing iguanas out of my pool. My schemer side starts thinking of ways to make it work - flights, places to stay, car rentals, etc.

Then my friggin' practical side kicks in and starts mental adding machine how much it would all cost. $600 for flights, $1200-1400 for even the cheapest accommodations, $450 for a week's Jeep rental, then another $500 at least for food, fun, and miscellaneous expenses.

$3k - just about what we just spent for Henry's new haircut. Sigh.

Ahhh. A night of guilty pleasure

DH and I took my grandparents back to Delaware today. I guess we were all feeling ol' Ben Franklin's timeless piece of wisdom "Both guests and fish stink after three days."

I am happy to be planning the ultimate in relaxing evenings. I'm going to reopen at least one of the three bottles of red wine leftover from last night, build a marvelous fire in the fireplace, and settle in to watch one of my favorite guilty pleasure movies: The Family Man.

Longtime blog readers may recall that I first posted about this movie on November 26, 2005. Shame of it is, I've watched it probably twice more since then. And, rather than just coming upon it and watching it through, I'm actually planning to watch it tonight, indeed planning an entire evening around it.

Well.... at least I'm consistent.

Thanks for Thanksgiving!

13 people, 5 bottles of wine, 3 crazy grandparents, 2 cats, and a totally denuded turkey.

It was a real fun Thanksgiving - thanks for being a part of it!

Eliza says she's thankful that the dishes are done!

Calgon... take me away

Well, having family visit is about as stressful as one might expect. Interestingly, my grandma isn't much of an issue; she constantly is cleaning and trying to do little things around the house, but that's not too bad or out of control.

It's been tough on my grandfather though. He's like 80% deaf, bored, and I think depressed. I don't think that he can hear what most things are going on around him, but sees people laughing and chatting, and doesn't know why. Of course, he's of the generation and personality-type that would never admit to it, much less go to a doctor for help. I'm encouraging my grandmother to speak with his doctor, but beyond that there's not much I can do. Try and keep him as engaged as possible when we're home, but beyond that I don't know what to do.

I'm the kind of person who just wants to fix stuff - to the point of trying to micromanage problems out of existence. I know logically that there is nothing that I can do to fix this, but it's having a emotional toll on me.

Luckily the holidays happen only once a year. It's the most wonderful time of the year.

It's beginning to look a lot like Thanksgiving

So major Thanksgiving milestone crossed off the list today... I bought the turkey! A 12 pound Butterball. For the past couple of years, I've been buying fresh heritage birds from Whole Foods, but after reading an article in this month's Cooks Illustrated, I learned that I was doing it all wrong.

#1 - You're not supposed to buy a fresh turkey from the store. Federal regulations mean that the bird can be as close to freezing - even partially frozen - and still labeled "fresh." Ice crystals form in the meat, breaking it apart and destroying the flavor. In this case, frozen is actually fresher. (thanks also to Alton Brown for this little factoid, but Cook's Illustrated had it too)

#2 - Integral to turkey flavor are two components: fat and salt. Although the Cooks Illustrated article preferred a certain brand of kosher turkey, I couldn't find it in any of my grocery stores (I hit 3 different ones). So I bought one from their merely "recommended" category, rather than the "highly recommended."

#3 - I am philosophically opposed to the factory farmed and bred livestock industry (indeed, the whole tenor of the agricultural sector in this country has us eating lower quality food, albeit for cheap), which made it difficult to buy such an obvious industrial bird. I got over it for just one day.

#4 - The reason that the bird is so reliably flavorful is because it is injected with salt and chemicals to bind the salt to the meat. Again, I'm not really a fan of having my food industrially flavored. I got over it for just one day.

It's tough being an American, adhering to American mores, when I've lived and traveled in parts of Europe that are deeply wedded to traditional agricultural practices. Then I remember that it is Europe that brought us Creuzfeld Jakob Syndrome (better known as Mad Cow disease), is currently recovering from foot and mouth disease, and is now dealing with bird flu. So the paragons are not infallible.

But what I wouldn't give for some true French Brie... unpasturized of course. And true Italian prosciutto, or Spanish Jamon.

Is having a clean house really worth the effort

I have been cleaning nonstop today (well, virtually. We did go to the grocery store; no we haven't bought our turkey yet). DH and I have:

- Steam-cleaned the carpets in all but two bedrooms (the rug doctors you can rent from the grocery store, IMHO do a better job than the guy we hired three years+ ago to do it for 10x the price)

- Re-set up the blue room (this will be my grandma's room, so it had to be spit spot perfect). We rearranged the bed, added a dresser and mirror, and took out the chest of drawers and desk.

- Cleaned the kitchen. Actually, this is still in progress; I am going to clean the ovens sometime, but it takes 4 hours, so I hesitate to do it tonight.

- Rearranged the linen closet. If my grandma saw it the way it was, she'd be doing it herself.

- Cleaned the two guest bathrooms. Again, this is still in progress.

I still have a huge! to-do list. I want to sharpen my knives, chop some wood, clean the fireplace, dust the den, etc...

I hope you people appreciate this!!! :)

Guilty pleasure... revealed

I've revealed my guilty pleasures before - at least in terms of movies (Family Man, 50 First Dates, etc). Jeffro has been quite open about his guilty pleasure: the Goo Goo Dolls.

This morning, I realized that I hadn't admitted to perhaps the most shameful guilty pleasure I have.

Celine Dion.

I know, I know. But before you throw assorted rotten fruit and vegetables at me, let me explain.

Woman's got a voice. She's undeniably confident. She's pretty clearly happy with her life. She's a powerful woman, much in the model of an Oprah or a Condi Rice. She has fun and laughs and seems to be approachable.

I saw her on the Today show this morning, laughing and chatting with the gang there, and I just loved her. Sure, some of her schtick is corny, but considering where she came from (a family of like 14 kids or something ridiculous like that) and what she's become purely through her singing talent, I think it's pretty darn admirable.

There. I've said it. The truth will set you free.

The "Power of Love" is a great song.

All cats... all the time

I just realized that my last five or so blogposts have been about my cats - well, Henry specifically. This one is no different, except that it has to do with Eliza.

We let the cats outside for a brief time this afternoon - Henry on a leash, because I didn't want him getting his surgery site in dirt or anything. Eliza went about her normal routine of chomping on some grass.

Suddenly, she darted about ten feet and pounced on a bird. She didn't quite know what to do, but she kept trying to get at it with her mouth, in addition to pouncing. I yelled at DH to get the cat - because I had Henry still with the leash on the deck and didn't want him getting into trouble while I was trying to get the bird away from Eliza. DH ran over and picked Eliza up and brought her into the house.

The poor little bird sat stunned, but alive, on the ground. I got DH a pair of workgloves, so that he could move the poor little sparrow from the open yard into the bushes, where he could recover without getting picked off by a hawk. DH picked him up, and away the little bird flew over the fence and into the trees (although he almost hit the fence on his flight over it).

I was rather surprised that Eliza had any hunting skills left, considering she such a lazy, fat cat. Of course, if she really had skills and wasn't just curious, that little bird would probably have been dead.

Free: One cat to good home.

I love my little kitty, but he's driving me up the wall. Henry found a way to tear his lampshade collar (made out of a material similar to hospital gowns or something like that), shimmy it off (not over his head, but down his body like he was taking off a skirt), and then bite and break two stitches that are holding his little surgical site (there are 6 others still holding). We've brought him to the vet both yesterday and today for check-ups due to his badness, and while he's okay and doesn't need to have the stitches replaced, he can't be permitted to get to any more.

On top of that, he's lost some weight and developed a heart murmur. He's only eating half of what he should be to maintain his weight, and in general he's just being a royal chore. The stress of taking care of him is definitely affecting DH and me - we're snapping randomly at each other about the dumbest things.

I love the little stinker, though. He's sweet when he's not being a troublemaker. I'm just so anxious for this episode to be behind us.

Weekends... I've had better

Ugh. I'm so depressed. I gave myself a three-day weekend, taking a much deserved Friday off and planning to completely veg the days away.

Vegging out and destressing are not options when you have a cat recovering from surgery, I've discovered. I spent most of the day concerned about him not eating, not drinking, and not going to the bathroom. He finally managed to eat some food (after I started force feeding him with a syringe) and go to the bathroom late Friday night, after which I slept in until nearly noon on Saturday.

Saturday ended up being more of the same, trying to get him to eat, drink, and eliminate. It's turned into a near obsession, with us falling over ourselves to cater to his whims. Add on top of that my father spending the night between DC-area jobs (he didn't get to our place until nearly 130am) and it was a sleepless night. Henry thought that the best way to get our attention was to bang himself into the door repeatedly at 4am. Sadly, he was right. I probably spent an hour or so sleeping on the bed in that room (well, not really sleeping) while the nocturnal cat walked all over me, pounced on whatever part of my body I moved, and rubbed his head on my and purred loudly into my ear.

Sunday was a capstone day; DH's grandmother had called on Friday night, concerned that no one was going to host Thanksgiving and that she might not have anywhere to go. I had planned to coordinate with my grandparents this weekend, and they expressed a preference to come to visit DC for the weekend. So that's that. Despite my vow last year never to host Thanksgiving again, I'm hosting again this year. So for the next two weekends it will now be non-stop work to get the house in order for guests on the holiday.

Wanna come?

Henry is an internet star!

Normally leaving Henry home alone in his condition would make me a total nervous wreck. Is he peeing? Is he eating? Is he in pain or suffering?

DH was a genius and set up a little system with the camera in his Mac Powerbook that took a picture of Henry every minute and organized them into little photo albums for each hour. It gave both of us great peace of mind to be able to see Henry sleeping or looking out the window. There were quite a few times when I laughed out loud at whatever the camera had captured.

Anyway Henry is doing okay. He's sitting here next to me with his giant doughnut collar off, resting atop a pillow. With the collar off he can finally curl up into a tight little ball like he likes to.

I'll try and take some better quality pics of him soon and post them for posterity.