I fell down with no one there 30 June 2010

I spent a good portion of last night getting my iPod to just the way I like it.  I’m rather surprised that songs take up so much data space, but then I’m used to mp3s running a max of about 3-4MB.  Some songs from iTunes go all the way up to 10MB.  Yikes.  Anyhow.  I’ve decided that I really should delete off the songs that I tend to skip past anyhow and finally get rid of the pre-loaded songs that came on the iPod.  The one song I have left to delete is Metallica’s “One,” from the S&M album.  Ugh.  I just can’t listen to that song.  It’s Kurt’s favorite Metallica song, but it just creeps me right the hell out.

I did add disc 1 and 2 of Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits (and now I just need to find disc 3 so I can add “River of Dreams” and “We Didn’t Start the Fire”), as well as Lily Allen’s “Smile” and “Alfie,” and Patti Labelle’s “Lady Marmalade.”  I can’t decide if I want to add Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin” or if I should just go with the Glee cover.  Seems rather pointless to have them both, though they’re both excellent.

But alas and alack, I cannot find my beloved “Kilroy Was Here” album by Styx!  Yikes!!  I have probably mentioned this here before, but that album is all I had to listen to one summer that I spent in southern Virginia at my real mom’s house.  I was probably seven or eight, and for some reason she didn’t have her boarder living with her.  I know this because my greatest memory of that summer is of being in the blue room, which had been the boarder’s bedroom, listening to my mom’s tape of “Kilroy Was Here” over and over and over again on the stereo in there.  This is why I could sing, from memory, the entirety of “Don’t Let It End” for years afterward.  It’s probably also why I can kill “Mr Roboto” on Guitar Hero like it’s nobody’s business.

That’s why I want to find the whole CD, though, and not just download a couple of songs from iTunes.  That, and I know the CD is around here somewhere.  We have hundreds of CDs, scattered across two rooms and several different storage methods (some in original jewel cases, some in CD storage books, some loose and stacked up in precarious towers), and though I believe I’ve laid eyes on every CD we own, I still can’t find that particular disc.  It’s quite a bummer.

Yes, I know I could probably download the whole thing, but dammit, I want my CD!  I am somewhat old-skool, and I want my hard copy of it.  And yes, I still do own CDs.  I went into my favorite record store this weekend, looking for a copy of the new Mumford & Sons album, but they  hadn’t even heard of the band.  That part blew my brain.  Mumford & Sons isn’t a terribly well-known band here in the States, but they’re also not obscure.  I have to say I was really quite disappointed in them.  But the ladies that were in there seemed pretty new; they didn’t offer to order it for me and I didn’t even think to ask.  Oops.

I do have to say that I am in love with iTunes.  Not so much that every song runs me 99¢ to $1.29, but I love that I can just look up a song on my iPod and download it right then and there.  And I love being able to buy just one song at a time.  Why else would I have Gorillaz’s “Rhinestone Eyes” on my iPod?  Talk about random… Kurt has a buddy  at work that adores 8-tracks, and so every time we go to the thrift store, we pick him up a bunch.  He likes them because in general they’re old albums, written back in the day when singers and songwriters would plan how an album would flow from one song to the next.  You really had to sit down and listen to an album from start to finish, and songs were put in a particular order to evoke certain emotions or to tell a story.  Nowadays, the albums are just a collection of singles; it doesn’t seem like there’s much thought that goes into song placement.  So it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to pick up an entire CD, unless you know you like that band and you’ve heard several of the songs on the album.  That’s why I want to get Mumford & Sons; I’ve already downloaded “The Cave,” but the rest of the CD is stacking up to that first single, quality-wise, for me.

The only problem with my iPod is that it’s not exactly child-appropriate.  Grace knows to ask if a song is Grace-appropriate, which cracks me up, because she has her own mp3 player.  But she’s always wanting to listen to mine when we’re in the van going somewhere.  Considering that I have the explicit lyrics versions of both the Black-Eyed Peas and Kid Rock, I really need to be quick on the fast-forward button so she doesn’t hear words that she really shouldn’t be.  I’m so thankful, though, that I never did expose her to Hannah Montana and Radio Disney.  I have been listening to so-called “adult” music since I was her age, everything from Michael Jackson and Madonna to Neil Diamond to Lynyrd Skynyrd, and I managed to turn out just fine.  Heck, my favorite song when I was six years old was the Beastie Boys’ “Fight For Your Right to Party.”

True story.  If my parents knew what I was listening to, I am sure they’d be appalled.

UPDATE: I found my CD!  And now I am joyously listening to Styx’s “Kilroy Was Here,” from start to finish.  I am super thrilled!

And now I shall leave you with the video to Mumford & Sons’ “The Cave,” the first song I heard of theirs.  I love it so much, and it’s one of Grace’s favorite songs.  Enjoy!

For there is nothing we can do 17 June 2010

I’ve given up on worrying about how quickly time is passing.  I’m still shocked by it, though.  Each morning I wake up, wondering how the hell it’s already the middle of June, or whatever.

But time is flying by precisely because I don’t want it to, so instead of fretting about it, I’ll just deal with it.  It’s not like I can do anything about it anyway.

I have gotten addicted to a new way of drinking coffee — and it’s a testament to how cool it still is in Rhode Island that I’m still drinking the stuff.  When I lived in Virginia, once the temperatures got really warm, I couldn’t stand to drink a hot beverage like coffee, so I laid off the stuff all summer long.  And if you know Virginia, it’s got looooooooooong summers.  Here it’s still cool; in fact, the high for yesterday was still in the high 60s, which makes for cool mornings.  Today, however, it’s muggy as all hell — and I just want it to rain already to break the humidity.

But the forecast isn’t calling for rain, so I guess I’ll just have to suffer.

Anyhow.  So my coffee.  When I was in Louisiana visiting my dear friend Elle, I had my very first café au lait complete with a side of beignets at the Café du Monde in New Orleans.  (“But Mom, they’re not doughnuts!  They don’t have holes!!!”)  I also spent my last night with Elle’s parents just outside the city, since Elle lives nowhere near the airport, and I had to get on a plane at noon.  And again, a cup of café au lait to start my day.  Yummmm.

Now that’s all I want, when I want a cup of coffee.  But first, you have to start with the right kind of coffee.  It’s got to be coffee cut with chicory, which has been popular in Louisiana for many years.  I know during the Civil War both sides roasted chicory and used it as a coffee substitute since real coffee couldn’t be gotten at any price throughout most of the war.  Straight coffee tastes a little… off to be now, though I couldn’t really taste a difference when I first started drinking coffee with chicory.

Bonus: There’s got to be less caffeine in coffee with chicory, since chicory is caffeine-free.

The only problem with drinking coffee with chicory is it’s somewhat hard to find here in New England.  There are a few local grocery stores that will carry it, but not any of the major ones.  And it’s not cheap either.  I’m used to spending $6 at the commissary for a large can of Yuban Dark, my preferred ground coffee before I went to Louisiana.  But now I’m spending between $5 and $6 for a one-pound can of Luzianne coffee with chicory.  Yikes.

My friend at Grace’s school says I can get it from Amazon, but I haven’t found it to be available yet.  Hopefully moving to Virginia will make it more readily available, especially since the commissaries (yes, plural! YAY!) down there are so much bigger than our tiny store here.  I’m not too worried about how much it is, though, since if I bought my coffee out in town every day, that’d be at least $2 each day for Dunkin Donuts, and more like $4 for Starbucks.  Six dollars for a can of coffee that lasts me three weeks ain’t bad in comparison.

So how do I drink it?  I brew it as specified in my coffeemaker, and then the magic begins: I splash in a bit of milk, add some Splenda, and whirl it up with my handy-dandy milk frother.  Then the coffee goes in, as I continue to whirl, so it all mixes up together.  Let me tell you, it’s super, super yum, with very little of the bitterness that makes people not like coffee.

I should get Kurt to take a sip.  He hates coffee (I KNOW.  And they let him be a Navy chief?!  Weird), but it’s because of the bitter taste.  I wonder if I adulterate with enough milk and sugar, he’ll be able to stomach it.

Not that I want him drinking my coffee, mind.  It’d be a scientific experiment only.

In more important news, the USS Forrestal has left Newport for the very last time.  She was homeported here for the last twelve years as a pier-mate for the USS Saratoga, as the Navy decided what to do with them both.  Saratoga will eventually be a museum, I believe, while the Forrestal is slated to be sunk, possibly as target practice, and will become an artificial reef.

The Forrestal is a pretty famous ship.  Back in 1967, she was operating in support of the Vietnam War, when a rocket accidentally discharged on the flight deck and caused a huge conflagration.  The rocket may have hit John McCain’s jet (they’re not sure if it was his or another pilot’s), and while the rocket didn’t actually detonate, it ripped off the wing of the aircraft and caused jet fuel to spray all over the deck and subsequently ignite.  One hundred and thirty-four sailors died, while 161 were injured.  Yikes.

On Tuesday, Forrestal left Newport to be towed all the way down to Philadelphia, and from there the Navy will decide exactly what it wants to do with her.  Of course, I had to head down to the base to take photos of this historic event, since soon the Forrestal will be below the waves.

The set of photos I took can be seen HERE, but I’ll leave you with one of my favorites — the Forrestal making its way beneath the Pell Bridge on her way out towards the open ocean.

When friends were friends forever 14 June 2010

I’m going to have to start keeping track of all my social engagements on my calendar.  This is starting to get ridiculous!

The first year we lived here, I had nothing really going on.  The second year is when I had that group of friends that lived right here on my block, so the six of us were almost always together, at least in twos and threes.  But most of them moved away last summer, which made me think that my carousing days were over.

They’re not quite over, though they have slowed quite a bit.  But what a weekend I just had!

My friend M, who lives two houses down from me, held a crab boil on Saturday.  They’re about to move to Georgia, but all the seafood there is probably ruined by  the oil spill in the Gulf.  So the husband decided that they were going to gorge on seafood before they left.  Last weekend it was lobstah (ohhhhh yummy), and this weekend it was crabs.  They were good too, though there is just no way to eat crabs without making a ginormous mess.  Our other friend E, who lives next to M, changed her shirt three times over the course of the evening while we chomped our way through three dozen crabs.

They were oh so good, though.  And I had made this amazing tomato/avocado bruschetta that topped bread coated with goat cheese and cream cheese:

Now doesn’t that just make you start drooling all over yourself?  It was so super good, yet deadly easy.  My favorite kind of recipe!  What’s funny is how I even acquired the recipe.  I’d run into one of the civilian groceries here because I needed fish for dinner, and the commissary doesn’t sell much, and what they do sell is crazy expensive.  As I came out of the store with the girls in tow, I ran into the mother of one of Grace’s classmates, and she told me she was going to buy the ingredients for a tomato/avocado bruschetta to take to a bbq she was attending.  I knew right then I needed the recipe, so I begged it from her.  I’m so glad I did.  It was a total hit at the crab boil.

The weather didn’t really cooperate with us on Saturday.  It was overcast and cool, and partway through the meal, it started to sprinkle a bit.  There was no way we could move everything inside, and besides, crab is just too messy to eat indoors.  We had to just power through the rain shower, which made it even more fun.  The girls thought it was the best thing ever, to eat outside while it was sprinkling!

Yesterday we had another bbq to attend, this one with coworkers of Kurt’s.  They’ve moved up to the central part of the state — which means all of a 30-minute drive away.  It’s going to be so weird to move back to Virginia, a pretty large state for the eastern seaboard, that has counties half as large as the entire state of Rhode Island.  It was a nice drive up to our friends’ house, though the GPS took us the weirdest way possible, though quite a scenic way.  I had no complaints.

Our friends had made so much delicious food, and it was a last chance to say goodbye to the gent, DE, that retired last Thursday.  I’d gone to his retirement and taken a few photos for Kurt, since he was part of the ceremony.  I’m going to be a blubbering idiot at Kurt’s retirement, I just know it.  There’s a part where a flag that has flown over the US Capitol gets passed along from Chief to Chief as they each salute in turn, and when DE was presented with it, he did an about-face and presented it to his son.  Right there, the tears started to well up in my eyes.  Then as a fellow sailor read out the poem about the retiree finally being able to stand down because “we have the watch,” I lost it all over again.  It was so moving, so poignant.  Even thinking about it gives me chills.

Unfortunately I couldn’t recreate that delicious bruschetta because my friend is gluten-intolerant, and we didn’t have time to procure some gluten-free bread.  It’s a hard thing to come across on this tiny island.  But I did bring her a lovely orchid in a pot, as opposed to a cutting, so it’ll continue to grow.  When I saw it, I knew it was perfect for her because it was so simple yet elegant.  Then she told me she’d had orchids at her wedding, so that made my gift even more special.

But as soon as we got home, it was time for me to head out to E’s house so the three of us, E, M, and I, could watch Away We Go. E had wanted to see it downtown in the theatre on one of our movie dates, but it just hadn’t ever happened for us.  It worked out better this way, giving us yet another excuse for a girls’ night in.

And boy, did we take advantage of it!

Copious quantities of wine were involved, and I even had to call Kurt at one point to bring us another bottle.  Haha.  Good thing we all live next door to one another!  I have photos on my camera of the three of us dancing, yet I don’t really remember that part.  Oops.

All that wine meant I felt like crap all day today, and I’m still not back to 100%.  It was totally worth it, though, to have one last hurrah with my closest friends here in Rhode Island.  I will miss these ladies so, so much.  But I am grateful that I had them for the few years I did.  They really did enrich my life in many wonderful ways.