So Sad

Another biker killed by a vehicle on a bike path. Not a bike lane mind you. But a bike path. You know, where cars aren't supposed to be.

The New York Times link

http://bikeblog.blogspot.com/

Ich bin ein New Yorker

Today, I am a New Yorker. This might shock people who live in the City, and perhaps simply confuse those who don't. But I've never had food delivered. Clean laundry, yes. Dinner, no. If I want take-out food, I've just always preferred to go and get it. It's all so close.

Oh I've seen many-a Mexican men bike around with food. But it was never for me.

Today, for the first time since I moved here over 4 years ago, I called and ordered me a meal. Souvlaki pita and a greek salad from BZ Grill. It was $15 with tip.

Me and the Senator from Virginia

My parents told me I can take personal responsibility for the Democrats regaining the Senate. Here's me with Senator Jim Webb. He's in the back with the blue baseball cap, talking to my father (recognizable by the crew cut and bald spot). You can't really make Webb's face, but it's him, says my mom.

That's me in 1980 with the marshmallow and hip blue jacket scheming about a Democrat takeover of the Senate 26-years in the future. I do remember the fun day playing with the dogs on some farm in Maryland.

Yucatan

I was down in the Yucatan visiting Zora last weekend. I didn't bring my camera but she just e-mailed me some pictures from the trip.

Mayonnaise bigger than my head. And my head is pretty big.
Mayonnaise and coffee, that famous combo. Strangely, though I was there, it didn’t really strike me as strange till I saw the picture here.

I discovered that tricycles were the most common form of taxi and transport in villiages and small towns. The sad part is they'll probably eventually all get replaced with loud motorized vehicles as they get more money.
There was even the occasional bike path next to some major roads out of town.

I don’t know the story here.

Nor here.
Fire nuts were delicious. Really. Don’t snicker. I don’t why the crunchy-coated peanut snack food doesn’t exist here. It’s big in Holland, too. But not with chile and lime.

Hacienda train. These used to connect the plantations to towns. You can tell from the picture that I’m actually 9 feet tall. Must be the chiles. The people were very small back then. Actually, they still are.
The circus is coming to town!
Oh boy!

I didn't go to Campeche with Zora, but I still dig the color scheme at the Hotel Colonial.

AB at KC

Yet more wedding pics

My mother's pictures of the summer are now up at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/skalaeressos

House pics

“Heirloom” dining room furniture arrived today thanks to my wonderful Godmother. It originally belongs to my grandfather and I did grow up with the set. But I haven’t seen it in many years. We’ve dubbed in “Inquisition Chic.” I think it looks great in our home.

I thought it would be a good time to take some pics of the place for those who care. You can compare it to the “before” at “more house pics.”

No, I didn’t clean up the place.

bikes out front

bedroom, looking back

bedroom, looking forward

bathroom

skylight, looking up

my office

as you walk in the front door

1st floor, looking back

living room

dining room, looking “inquisition chic”

dining room table

kitchen and pantry

more kitchen

still more kitchen

and even more kitchen

basement/guest room, looking back

tools

basement/guestroom, looking forward

“Amsterdam” basement bathroom

backyard, looking down from bedroom window

Wedding pics

Wedding pics from Greece from Tal. Click the links at the top of the screen to get to all the pictures.

http://homepage.mac.com/talilama/greekwedding/

And Patty Jean, the Inquisition arrives today between 10 and 12. I'll let you know when it happens.

steamed crabs

I'll put in captions for the pictures later.
But here's a nice description for another Baltimore crab fest. Not directly related to the picture above, but it's still a nice description from Zora's blog.

Baltimore: The Saint Francis of Assisi Crab Feast 2006

I knew crabs were a big part of Baltimore, but apparently, they are so important that you get an automatic pardon for taking the Lord’s name in vain in a church basement.

See, there’d been a lull in crab delivery in Hour Three of the S.F.A. Crab Feast 2006, and one of our party had been moved to bellow, “More crabs, God damn it!” while pounding on the Kraft-paper-covered table with his little mallet. The monsignor, it so happened, was sitting behind him, but he only beamed and said, “Keep yelling!”

Not that we were going hungry or anything. Peter knew his way around this feast, as he’d attended one back right after he’d been down here as part of the PO-lice (he still keeps the entrance sticker from the last one in his old wallet with his badge). When we arrived, he took me first to the buffet line in the back of the drop-ceiling basement, where we could load up on tomato slices, corn, three mayo-based salads, hot dogs, pulled-pork sandwiches, and crab soup.

Peter’s old colleagues, his former sergeant and others, scoffed at this lighweight approach, which would surely ruin his appetite for the main attraction. They held out for the first wave of crabs–which were already 15 minutes behind schedule. Peter’s sergeant’s 12-year-old daughter was working the feast, though, so we were guaranteed to get served first.

Also at our table was a partially toothless woman who perhaps had not actually paid for a ticket, but had won an entrance badge simply by plopping down and insisting. The fact that she was a black bag lady made it pretty obvious she wasn’t with our party full of conservative, ghetto-hating cops, but she didn’t seem bothered. And really, neither did the cops. She happily sipped her beer, and smiled vaguely.

When the crabs finally came, she started slipping them into her purse. Eventually it became clear that she actually didn’t know how to clean a crab–unheard-of in these circles–so Peter’s sergeant cracked one open for her in about eight seconds. I was glad not to be the only crab novice at the table, and I felt better getting to watch a second demo, as the one Curtis had given me, the 30-second version specially tailored to Crab Retards, hadn’t exactly stuck.

Another interesting element to the meal, aside from the novelty of finally experiencing a Real Live and Legendary Baltimore Crab Feast, was that this was only the second time I’d met these people, who are from a chapter of Peter’s life I don’t know that much about. They call him “Pete” and heckle him for being a liberal and try to get him to move back to Baltimore. The first time I’d met them had been under very unfortunate circumstances, back when I was getting really sick last fall. We went to another B’more food tradition, a bull roast to celebrate some cop-related thing, and I’d spent the night feeling queasy and mentally calculating the distance to the bathroom or a potted plant, and I was also coughing horribly and worrying about the fact that my ankle was swelling to the size of a baseball. Plus the music was loud and there were tons of people. Oh yeah, and all these people had really, really loved Peter’s old fiancee. So that didn’t go very well.

This time, on a Sunday afternoon in a fluorescent-lit room, with the musical stylings of the Zim Zemelman band (accompanied by the monsignor on trombone) and the alluring tick-tick-tick of the Wheel of Fortune in the background, the social pressure was a little bit less. It was also aided by the simple communion of picking crabs. It kind of reminded me of that part in Moby-Dick when Ishmael is sitting around working the lumps out the whale sperm (not that kind of sperm–read the book!) with his pals, where he gets all loving and affectionate because the stuff is so lovely and they’re all working together as a team:

“I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say, - Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and serm of kindness.”

OK, so it wasn’t exactly like that. (And let me just add, it’s a testimony to how much I love Moby-Dick that it didn’t even occur to me to snicker at this scene until just now.) It was a little harder and prickly, but it was certainly chummy, being up to our elbows in Old Bay, and making massive piles of discarded shells and little spindly legs, and passing the beer up and down. (I guess now that we don’t hunt whales anymore, beer is the new social lubricant.) And I did have that great feeling of all-powerful omnivorousness, where you get to feel so proud for being a clever human with opposable thumbs and sharp teeth and tool-making skills (except the head of my mallet flew off the first time I tried to whack a crab leg with it).

Also, because we had an almost-endless stream of crabs, plus the buffet, the actual dining pressure was off, making it much easier to just talk to people. Slurping and cracking and reaching for beer, we were a sloppy, merry bunch, united in our dedication to sucking as much sweet meat as possible out of these recalcitrant sea creatures–and ocasionally checking our raffle tickets to see if we’d won at the liquor table. It was also just enlightening to hang out with Republicans, since of course in New York these are feared and loathed people swathed in legend and lore, but rarely seen in the flesh.

Despite the grousing about perceived crab scarcity, and the price of tickets, we all went away satisfied. I had managed to finesse my picking skills with each new crab, I’d argued politics a bit (beerily), and I came away feeling like I was no longer just the surprise wife who’d replaced the good fiancee. Thanks, sweet crabs.