Jet Stream

Okay....So....I woke up at 4:30 this morning, on a Saturday, and I'm retired. So what's up with that?! I know! I start my traveling today, another trip. This time to meet my mate in Florida. He has been there, in the hot, sweaty sunshine, for a week. I have been here in the cold, drippy clouds all week. I cannot wait to get some of that hot into my chilled bones.

************************************

Yesterday, I had lunch with the group I call The Ladies Who Lunch, which I stole from Stephen Sondheim's song of the same name that Gwen Verdon sang with such pizazz, a glass of booze and cubes in her hand. This group isn't Sex and the City; for one thing we are in Bremerton, not New York, and we are more apt to wear clogs than Jimmy Choo's, and we're either married or too old to still be in "the scene", but we do have a good time together. Yesterday we ate at a terrific little cafe', The Hi-Lo, on 15th street. It's like a 50s musuem with food. It's exactly my favorite kind of place. You get to choose your own coffee mug from 4 rows of old mugs--I chose the Cowboy Kitties mug--and get your coffee at a bar that is the open back of an old VW van. There is a great collection of lunch box thermoses, an inspirational framed bunch of cassette tape boxes (I have to do this!), a picture of Elvis, a painting of Ziggy Pop( I think it was Ziggy), a small picture of Bowie, a frame with 8-tracks inside! And just 3 doors down is an Italian Bakery, called Luigi's! I bought a big, round perfectly fresh loaf of Whole Wheat Bread with Walnuts and a cinnamon roll. That cinnamon roll was not your usual goopy, sloppy frosted roll ala' that place in the Mall that smells so good. This cinnamon roll was lots of cinnamon and only a little sugar surrounded by a wonderful sweet bread. I'm telling myself it's really a guiltless cinnamon roll and it tasted fabulous.

**************************

The previous makes me think about the way I eat when my Mate is not here to cook for. All my great nutritional aspirations go right out the window. There are no menus, no grocery lists, no well-balanced meals with 4 or 5 servings of vegetables, a small amount of starch and a piece of meat the size of a deck of cards. Here are some of the things I ate for dinner this past week:

• One cinnamon roll/1 piece of toasted wheat-walnut bread with no butter/1 whole bunch of popcorn with a little butter/chocolate chip cookie
• One tuna fish sandwich with lettuce and Kettle potato chips
• One-half a peanut butter and marmalade sandwich with an apple
• One big salad (I was feeling a little guilty on that night!) and later, some crackers with hummus.
• One avocado, halved, with tuna fish in the middle and pine nuts, walnuts and pecans on the side. This was a good one!
• Tonight I plan to finish the two boiled eggs and the tuna fish in the refrigerator--probably mix them together and eat them out of a bowl. I also have half an English cucumber to get rid of. Wait a minute--this sounds like a nice tuna salad! Put a few pine nuts on top and some Paul Newman dressing and ta-da! Oh, and maybe a little dusting with Romano cheese.

*************************

What do these three jobs have in common?

Finish lettuce

Charge phone

Wax face

These are things I have to do before I leave for Florida tonight.

**********************

I just tried to get on Alaska Airlines website--I want to preprint my boarding pass. Guess what?! The site is not available. I bet they are rewriting the whole thing in light of all the changes the airlines have decided they must make. Crapola! Best laid plans and all that. I'll try again later. In the meantime, let me rant about the airlines.

WHAT ARE THEY THINKING? If they cut flights and they increase fares and they make it worse than riding on a bus to take a flight, who will fly? And won't that mean that they'll have to cut flights and raise fares further and then WHO will fly? I think only the wealthy will fly--and the wealthy will require things that we who flock like lemmings into the coach seats have learned not to need. We've given up our peanuts and now even our dry, awful pretzels. We've learned to live with that blood clot thing in our legs, with the unsanitary pillows that are as fluffy as hard-tack, with the blankets they probably just stuff into another plastic bag complete with cooties, for the next unsuspecting lemmings. We've learned to live with the not-so-polite attendents who are getting closer and closer to surliness--wouldn't you be near to snarling through your clenched teeth if you had to serve unhappy lemmings all day and night? We've learned to bring our own food, which we try to eat while keeping our elbows tightly at our sides and our feet wedged between our under the seat carry-ons, trying not to spill or drink too much because, heaven forbid you should want to get OUT of where you are sitting to clean up or pee! We've learned not to attempt to bend over to reach anything on the floor if we don't intend to get our heads stuck against the seat in front of us half-way down. We've learned, that if we can get OUT to the miniature cubicle called a restroom and we can get INTO it, we had better lose weight before next time, because that damned miniature toilet in that damned miniature "room" doesn't seem to accomodate so well anymore as our asses aren't MINIATURE! (although with the food they are NOT serving anymore, we might be miniature before we reach our destination.)

But those wealthy fliers are going to want MORE. Won't the airlines find themselves in a miniature pickle?

**************************

I have gotten so annoyed with the Bremerton Sun, oh, sorry, the Kitsap Sun, lately, that I have subscribed to USA Today. The Sun had so little national news for the past many years that I felt isolated in a backwater and the nightly news on the TV wasn't doing it for me. On every trip I take I buy a USA Today because it's so interesting. Now it's delivered to my mailbox Monday through Friday. I am in newspaper heaven. It's serious enough, but not too serious, colorful, good entertainment news, pretty good book news, GREAT internation news and national news, a wonderful weather map and if you were into sports I bet you'd love the fat sports section. I love to read about the most expensive house on the market today. In Friday/Sat/Sunday edition this week there is an article titled "What is your favorite food memory of a Specific Destination?" This is in the TRAVEL section! On page 1 and 2 of the main section are huge articles about McCain and Obama. I am in heaven! On page 6A is an article about "Blacks optimistic and anxious about Obama". On page 11A the article "Pop culture vies with conservatism in Afghanistan". I don't think the Sun even HAS an 11A! It's gotten so tiny, if I had a bird I'd have to buy two or three Suns to cover the bottom of the bird cage!

*********************

Some friends are asking me to blog more about Greece and I will later. Let me just put this in for now. It's a list I made near the end of our 2 1/2 week most recent trip:

Things I Wish I Could Take Home With Me

1. The birds that sing so loudly I can hear them

2. The train--convenient!

3. The sun

4. The ice cream

5. Mary and Lambrose and Eliza and Pan (cousins) Mary and Lambrose are movie loving intellectuals, Eliza is their 7 year old daughter and Pan is 38, a computer nerd like my Mate.

6. The marble floors

7. The refrigerators--the freezer on the bottom has 3 drawers in it, like a dresser! Ingenious!

8. The c'est la vie attitude (litter-oh,well. Striking worers-oh, well. Grafitti-oh, well-what can you do? Let's go have ice cream and Kaffes!)

9. Frappes (made with Nescafe' and ice, shaken to make a foamy head)

10. The friendly dogs--all were friendly. Michael was anxious of them at first, but learned they were harmlesss, even when barking.

11. NBN-translated Evie-soda--orange or lemon, less sweet than any soda I've had in the US

12. Fresh vegetable markets open all year long

13. The fresh bread bakeries (bread, butter, marmalade and coffee for breakfast every day)

Things I would not bring back:

1.The litter

2. Rude Greek men--I ran into them, or rather they ran into me, more often this time than during any previous visit. Maybe they are mad at Americans more than ever.

3. The Greeks love of liver and other organ meats. Yuck!!! Kokoretsi for Easter looked wonderful, barbecued over the same coals as the lamb, but ACK! Nasty!

********************

Last post for a week. I'll tell you about Orlando and the hot humid heat when I get back. My wish for you is good weather in the coming week, maybe a surprise or two and a discovery of a good show on the TV.