I was driving along, listening to the XM radio. steadily changing channels because that is my habit. This song came on:

Yes, indeed. Funkytown. It immediately brought back memories of the skating rink. My friends and I used to go to the skating rink every weekend. We would always have to choose either Friday night or Saturday night because none of our parents would let us go both nights.

In a small town in Mississippi, the roller skating rink was the only entertainment option for us tweens. There was a drive-in movie theater but we were too young to take ourselves there and most of the time the movies were not rated for youngsters.

The roller skating rink smelled like popcorn and nachos. It was always loud with music and voices and the incessant noise of video games like Centipede and Pac Man. There was a disco ball suspended in the middle of the wooden skating floor. When the dj put on a slow song, he would dim the lights and crank up the spotlights on the disco ball.

And when he put on Funkytown, everyone in the place would take to the skate floor. It was crowded and fun and left me with lots of memories of times with my childhood friends. I think I'll take my daughter roller skating this weekend. The local skating rink where we live still looks much the same as my childhood rink and believe it or not, they still play the old songs like Funkytown.

I finished reading A Bad Day For Sorry on Sunday evening. This is one of the best books I have read lately. It is a totally different spin on a crime novel. The heroine, Stella, is a 50 year old woman who operates a sewing shop in rural Missouri with a vigilante business against abusive men on the side. She is fearless and unapologetically middle-aged. But she is in great shape and proceeds to take down bad guys and give out her own brand of justice.

I love it that she developed a reputation in her neck of the woods for being a bad-ass. She shows that age is not a factor when it comes to standing up for abused women. She does it with her own brand of sass which includes some unorthodox methods like using a little light bondage to teach the menfolk a lesson.

I won't give away the storyline but she comes up against some really bad guys who almost win. But you know how these books go. Usually the good guy (or girl) ends up winning.

A Bad Day For Sorry by Sophie Littlefield

I recently ordered a part that we needed for our pool cleaner. It came in a remarkably short amount of time. It was in this box:

The amazing thing here is that the part was made in South Africa. Not China, like everything else we get here in the US.

I am going to have to go against the rest of popular opinion here and state for the record that I am not a big fan of spring. The other seasons are fine with me. I can tolerate summers although Texas summers are hellacious hot. Fall is my favorite by far since the air is getting cooler, leaves are changing, and I always have this sense of new beginnings in the fall. Winter is ok, despite the fact that I cannot stand to be cold.

But spring is tough. And here are my reasons:

• We can't seem to get the lawn mowed because of frequent spring rains. As soon as it dries up enough to mow, here comes more rain. So it looks pretty awful right now with some strange weeds from science fiction horror movies growing about the place.
• I don't like little spring chickens. They are cute to look at but poop everywhere.
• The live oak trees go against all that is normal and shed their leaves in the spring instead of the fall like "normal" trees. So there are piles of leaves in gutters, on the pool screen, piling up on the front walkway, and in drifts inside the garage!
• Many days we get up and the temperature is 39 degrees and by noon it is 75 degrees. No possible way to dress appropriately for that.
• I feel this overwhelming social pressure to participate in spring cleaning "shudder". I don't like it and never have.
• Spring fever means productivity is way down and we just feel like chucking it all in and going to the beach. But real life doesn't work that way.
• OK, I found one thing I like about spring: daffodils. Ok two things: Texas bluebonnets.

 

This is just one of those days when writer's block strikes and there is nothing I can seem to do about it. I have written three drafts of various blog posts this evening and nothing seems to sit quite right with me. For one thing, I am cold. I can't seem to get warm. And it is not really that cold here in south Texas this week. The daytime highs have been 70. But that doesn't help me. My feet and hands are like ice and it is making me grouchy.

I am tired too. The only time I seem to have energy is in the mornings. Then I spend my afternoons dragging along trying to be productive and failing miserably.

Our CPA called awhile ago to let us know that our taxes are ready to file. He called Danny's phone because he couldn't seem to get through on mine. Danny has never dealt with him so when he introduced himself, Danny thought it was someone playing a joke and almost hung up on him. You see, our CPA's name is Ed Sullivan.

Speaking of phone calls, the next time a telemarketer calls you: politely ask the telemarketer to give you their home phone number so that you may call them back at a more convenient time for you. After all, they are calling you at home so why can't you call them at home?

The main thing that has been going on around here is our major construction job on the outside of our house. It is a huge, expensive mess and drives me crazy some days. We've had to take everything off the walls in our house and move things away from the outside walls because of all the hammering, sawing, and general mayhem being perpetrated on the outside walls of the house. Except that we forgot about the liquor cabinet.

Last week I was working in my home office and Danny was working on his computer at the kitchen table. I heard a crash of glass breaking so I went into the kitchen and asked him what happened. He was having a "grouchy day" and responded all huffy-like that he had no idea what it was and why was I blaming him, etc. I didn't see anything broken so I assumed one of the workers outside had dropped a light or something. I gave Danny the evil-wife look and returned to my office.

Fast forward to last night: I went to get a German beer stein out of our liquor cabinet. We have one of those fabulous 1970's mirrored closet liquor cabinets:

So I opened the door and there was a general crunching of glass and a bottle of vermouth rolled to the floor and miraculously did not break. The vibrations from the work outside had caused all the liquor bottles and glasses to move to the front of the shelves and some glasses had fallen off. No bottles of liquor were broken but they were hovering precariously on the edges of the shelves.

I shouted for Danny and he helped me get all the bottles and glasses out of the cabinet while I gave him heck for our conversation last week about breaking glass. All told, we only lost a couple of brandy snifters. No liquor was wasted either in the writing of this blog post or in the Great Liquor Cabinet Upset. All the bottles are now safely stored on the dining room table until such time as the work finishes on the house which will probably be 2012 at the rate they seem to be moving.

I decided to cook something substantial for dinner last weekend. Something that took hours to simmer and cook. I decided to prepare Braised Short Ribs of Beef from my favorite cookbook, The Silver Palate Cookbook by Julee Rosso & Sheila Lukins. I have cooked most of the recipes in that cookbook but the short ribs are not something that I had tried yet.

Well, let me just say that this recipe turned out wonderfully. The ribs were so tender and flavorful. This is a very easy one pot dish. I used my largest Le Creuset pot to braise and then cook the ribs. The only change I had to make to the recipe was that I had to omit the whole cloves. I am sure this changed the taste quite a bit but I had run out of cloves and did not want to go to the store again.

Here is a copy of the Braised Short Ribs recipe.

The earth has apparently stopped on its rotational axis and started spinning the other direction. How do I know this? Warren Buffett, the greatest investing guru of all time, dresses up like Axl Rose and sings in a Geico commercial.

I am currently reading, yet again, September by Rosamunde Pilcher who is one of my favorite authors of all time. She just had such a way of telling stories. September is set in Scotland and, I know this sounds odd as all get out, but as I read it, I use a Scottish accent in my head.

Then I was visiting a blog today that I frequently read, and the author of this blog posted the lyrics to When Irish Eyes Are Smiling. What do you think happened? Yes, I started reading and immediately my mind was reading with an Irish accent.

Is this the normal way of things with everyone else?

Happy St. Patrick's Day to everyone

I picked up a copy of Iconoclast: a neuroscientist reveals how to think differently by Gregory Berns when I was waiting around at the airport in LA last week. I have found it to be very interesting reading. It is written by a scientist for laymen to read.

Mr. Berns shows example after example of people who have overcome their natural mental roadblocks and gone on to greatness. He explains how our brains work and where ideas come from.

The most compelling thing I took away from this book is the author's explanation of the efficiencies that our brains carry out by using shortcuts of which we are not even aware. His biggest suggestion to train our brains to overcome those efficiencies and learn to think differently: expose your brain to new situations such as travel, learning new languages, and simply taking in new information every single day. It will force you to think creatively.

Iconoclast on Amazon.com