The Next Dark Age
We're in it Now
Custom Trail Mix
A few weeks ago, at my neighborhood Fresh Market, I was in the bulk food section and saw an interesting trail mix. It involved dried cherries, pistachios and cashews. I bought a container.
I loved it so much that the next day I went back and bought another container. And then my mother discovered it, too. This was going to get expensive. Then I remembered nutsonline.com, the website from which I order almonds and pine nuts for Kiwi the Grey. I wondered if they had something comparable.
Boy, did they. It’s called Custom Trail Mix.
Basically, you can take your pick of all of the stuff they sell and have them mix it together in a five pound bag. How much stuff is that? Example:
There are 11 kinds of nuts listed, plus a “mixed nuts” option. I clicked on “Almonds”. There are more than 45 options listed just under almonds. Prices vary depending on the items you choose. I picked:
2 parts dried bing cherries
1 part dried cranberries
1 part roasted, salted pistachios
1 part roasted, salted cashews
1 part mixed nuts
As always, the order processed quickly. Once it arrived, we filled an airtight container, then put the rest of the bag in the freezer. So far, I am very pleased.
It should be noted that in the end (meaning, after I paid shipping), this was more expensive than buying five pounds of the original trail mix in the store. But seriously. Custom trail mix.
I am a Convert
I may have told you that I do most of my banking online. I was actually a pretty early adopter, because I fell all in love with the way you could schedule when payments are going to be received. And the bank sends the funds in time to meet the deadline. In however many years I have used this service, I have only had two problems. The one that was Chase’s fault, they told me about immediately and offered to pay any fees that I may have incurred due to the delay. The second problem was on the receiving end – and Bank of America was just wrong.
However. I have held out on using the ATM to deposit funds. For some bizarre reason, I have felt like I need an actual person to deposit my money. Because people, you know, never make mistakes.
Well, Chase did some good marketing with those commercials, so I went over to Dominick’s to give it a try. I figured that at the Dominick’s ATM, if something bad happened, like my check was shredded instead of scanned, there would be people right there. People.
I endorsed the check with a “for deposit only”. Then I started the transaction. The ATM offers to print a scan of the receipt, with the scanned check on it.
It was beautiful. It took less time than a teller, who has to type in your account information. I just logged in to check my account, and there it is.
I may never set foot in my bank again.
Ridiculous Creature of Habit
The “Get a Grip on the Starbucks Factor” experiment lasted five or six weeks. It failed for two reasons:
- I had to remember both to buy more coffee and to bring it to work; and
- I was right in thinking that the protein of the hot chocolate in the morning made me less hungry
So it was back to the coffee cart run by the deli in our building. Francisco didn’t miss a beat, even my first day back. Grande hot chocolate, skim milk, no whipped cream. With peppermint syrup instead of the vanilla when it is in season. Even on the first day back I didn’t have to tell him what I wanted. Even the peppermint part. We exchanged “good morning”s, he made the drink for me, I said “thank you” and left.
So. Every morning we do this.
This morning, I headed downstairs early because I had a meeting at 9am. Francisco wasn’t there yet. There was a new girl at the coffee cart. Well – not new, because she has worked at the deli for awhile. And not a girl. A lady. She asked me what I would like.
I was totally dumbfounded for several seconds. Francisco happened to walk through the door that second, and I nearly said, “He knows!” But instead:
“Uhhhh. Grande. Hot chocolate, please. With. Ummm. Skim milk. And…”
I knew there was another high-maintenance thing I always say, but she was halfway through steaming the milk before I remembered. “And no whipped cream! Um. Please.”
I had somehow forgotten the words “grande skim no whip hot chocolate”. Technically, Starbucks says “nonfat” instead of “skim”, but I haven’t adopted that last piece of the lingo. So rebellious, I am.
(rolls eyes and posts)
In Case You Needed to Go "Awwwwwww!"
Both of the newspapers I “read” regularly – the Chicago Tribune and USA Today – have added sections on pets. No, I do not call it news. But I think we can agree that sometimes the news just sucks, anyway. USA Today posted a story from a reader about her Newfoundland named Rosie. Isn’t she the cutest thing? It is a “did you ever wonder what your dog does all day while you are at work?” story.
It will make my mother cry because it sounds like something my late, great dog Dallas would have done.
Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin
Book 11
That said, I really loved this book.
The Civil War, Ken Burns
I borrowed my mother’s DVDs of The Civil War when I went on vacation and just now finished it. Of course, I had seen most of it before, but always in bits and pieces. Not full episodes in order.
The episodes are broken out by year, so it is mostly chronological. There are some exceptions. For example, I was rather rankled that 1864 ended without mention of the Battle of Franklin, but that turned up in the 1865 piece.
Burns pulls together artists to read the first person narratives Morgan Freeman reads for Frederick Douglass, and a few other African Americans of the time. Julie Harris reads for Mary Chestnut (I really have to pick up her diaries) and some other southern ladies. It was distracting when their rather distinctive voices were reading for more than one person. I got over it. Oh, and Jason Robards read for General Grant, which was awesome.
The visuals are photographs, panning in and out and from one side to another, which was fine. And there was also video footage – some was modern landscape of the battlefields and landscape and some was footage of the aged soldiers from early in the last century.
Finally, we have the historians, like the famous Shelby Foote, give some perspective. David McCullough narrates the entire thing.
As a pretend student of history, I found it all very effective and entertaining. Although it probably took me so long to get through because I still get emotionally involved in the stories. If my perspective changed on anyone, it was General Sherman. I never liked him much, which I imagine is primarily due to too much Gone with the Wind in my youth. But two things about him stand out:
First, when the rest of the Union was…well, mean to General Grant..to him or about him, Sherman always had his back. When Grant was benched for no good reason, when the rumors about the booze ran rampant, when people called him a butcher. Sherman was always his friend. I like that. Also, Sherman was the first guy to say out loud and in public that this was going to be a long and ugly war. People gave him such a hard time for speaking what he knew to be true and he fell into a deep depression. But Dude was right, and I have some sympathy.
I was hoping for some more on General Longstreet, but no dice.
I couldn’t watch this over and over like a TV show, but to revisit every few years might be interesting. But seriously, I have books to read.
Aunt Anne Wins
You might recall my telling you that my nephew Alex was unimpressed when I gifted him with a hardcover copy of Ramona the Pest for his 5th birthday last month. I spoke with my brother today, and now it seems the kid can’t get enough of it. They rode their bikes to the library to check out Beezus and Ramona and Ramona the Brave. Um. Yeah. Wait until they get to Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. I outgrew Judy Blume before she was done writing about Peter and Fudge.
Sandbag Day
A year ago in Fargo, North Dakota, the snow melted as the rains came and the Red River threatened to drown the whole city. Volunteers came out in droves to help sandbag.
It is happening again this year, but the timing is even worse – the college kids who did so much good a year ago are on Spring Break this week. So Fargo has recruited high school and even grade school kids. I read an AP report earlier in the day that talked about a three year old with his little plastic shovel out there with his big brothers.
This report on MSNBC talks about schools shutting down classes so kids can help sandbag. If there is one funny thing about this, it is the idea that a town that never calls a snow day has called a sandbag day.
One Lost to Live
I sat down in front of the family room television last night and turned on the pop up video of last week’s Lost. Because it is time for my mother to step awaaaaay from Madness. She watched the first two seasons and then quit. I forget what made her mad, but it may have involved Shannon losing Vincent. Again. After explaining the pop up concept to her, we both realized it wasn’t doing enough to catch her up. And it also didn’t explain where exactly Vincent was.
As I was talking her through it, I was reminded of those weeks when we first discovered the soap opera channel on cable. On Sunday, they would run a marathon of the entire week of General Hospital and we turned it on a couple of times. Because Luke and Laura were back! And Robert! And Anna! So I tried to catch her up on what LukeandLauraandRobertandAnna had been doing for all these years. Or anyway, what they were doing when I was in college. And it was all so convoluted.
Explaining the last three years of Lost was like trying to catch up with General Hospital. Except with phrases like “the space/time continuum”. But it turns out that YouTube has plenty of videos for just that purpose. But it’s funnier if you actually know who Dr. Chang is:
Joker
This is Joker, a bunny that I am babysitting for a friend on vacation. He is a charming bunny and has a favorite game.
At night, when I open his cage door, he comes out and gets right in Shadow’s face for as long as he can stand it…then runs back into his cage. Shadow also likes it, because he gets to feel like a big, bad herding dog.
The Next Dark Age 