sleeping dogs lie

my dog in his natural state, content and asleep, a state of carefree
dreams.

o christmas tree!

this is my very first christmas tree and I have wanted one as long as I can remember. I understand my orthodox jewish father objecting—but we celebrated christmas with santa and gifts, what was the deal with that? anyway, I married a lutheran who had promised his grandmother he would never marry a jew. and he didn't want a tree? what was that all about? so when I spotted this beauty in the alley and asked myself why it was rejected, I settled on its original owner heading off for some pre-christmas vacation and not wanting to come home to a carpet full of dried out needles. this is my tree now and next year I will get one for inside. 

these guys

next year after I finally put up a christmas tree, I will hang cranberries and popcorn strings on it and if I'm lucky an army of snowmen such as these.

mmmmmmmmm cookies

every year I make cookies for chanukah and christmas. these are ischler cookies and chocolate shortbread cookies and soon I will make spritz and sour cream cutout cookies, but the making of the latter has been more or less taken over by the rest of the family. I really love cookies.

wisconsin

held's is the place to go for old-fashioned butcher shop ambience and the hypnotic aromas of smoked meats and aged cheeses. it is the stop to make if you are traveling to or from middle-of-nowhere wisconsin north of milwaukee. if you are a vegetarian forget it.

egyptian thing

This is an Egyptian thing I saw at the Field Museum. I think this is what I would have done if I had lived back then, drawn royal cartoons. 

tiles

these are four of the more than 100,000 photos I took of tiles and repeating patterns in Spain. OK, maybe not 100,000, but that is how you might feel if you looked at all my pictures. They were irresistible. 

hay cerdos en españa

so it turns out that there ARE actual pigs in Spain, but I did not see a one of them, only their legs, deliciously air-cured and hanging in bars and cafés and restaurants and town squares (Trevélez) and grocery stores. I saw sheep and horses and goats and one eagle and many dogs. Where are the pigs? Then I saw this cabeza and I figured it belonged to one of the many deliciously air-cured legs. I have never prepared the head of a pig and I imagine it is incredibly gross, but seeing this in the Boqueria did not make me want to become a vegetarian as it did a few of my workmates. A pig head! You can also buy olives and cheeses and beautiful fruits and vegetables within yards of this cabeza, but the cabeza is much more fascinating.

jamón

This is how the world should be: you walk into a bar, order a cortado, a glass of beer, a croissant, tomato bread with air-cured ham and aged cheese. This is how the world should be. This is Spain.

crazy guy's house

If you just sit in the back yard and watch the squirrels climbing around the crazy guy's back porch, it can be very relaxing and amusing. The stock market and John McCain disappear. Those squirrels are living INSIDE his porch, but they don't go in through the open windows; they have found access through the rotting window frames. Their huge nest must be for show, because the back porch is surely a better house for them. 

this pepper

I am having trouble getting this to look right, so I am posting two (!) things the same day. First of all, I want to say that the pepper you see below this post is a real pepper grown by Michael in the back yard. It tasted as perfect as it looks.

So, just to tell you, I have worked more hours in the past three days than in the past three weeks and I must say it feels GOOD. Really good. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh. 

And to comment on this disaster of a country I live in, I am not hopeful anymore about the economy or how the US looks to the rest of the world. I was hopeful last week, but now that the wizards in our government have decided to try to make up for all their mishandling of the economy by putting the country, that is, us, into debt for all eternity, I don't see any bright spots.

On a positive note, the weather has been really amazingly beautiful lately. 

merry christmas

This is a wholly unoriginal observation, but they have ornaments and Christmas food on display at Cost Plus World Market! 

By the time the real holiday rolls around, we will have elected a new president, please lord let it be Obama. On that note, Please lord guide Obama in the right direction, that he shall not stray toward the trivial back and forth that so tempts him, and instead guide him toward the things that are important, such as educating our citizens in the wrong that has been done and the right that can be done. Amen.

dream

toe painting/navel gazing

Trying to add structure to a day when you are used to having the constraints of a job do it for you is difficult. Oh sure, a weekend is nice with nothing to do but run a few errands, or maybe the weekend sucks because you have no time to yourself. Well, too much time to oneself is not always the best thing, especially when it is accompanied by the nagging feeling that you Should Be Doing Something, Should Be Earning Money. After you get the oil changed and paint the baseboards and finally get the knives sharpened and do the laundry and come up with all sort of creative menu concepts, it's time to confront the list of people you ought to call to Find Work.

Of course, I am speaking from the luxury of the position of not having to get more work Just Yet. But it's right there in front of me, and even if I had all the money in the world instead of just a teeny tiny percentage of it, I would still need to Do Something. 

But all the money in the world would be helpful. The fantasy is having all that money and spending a lot of time figuring out who to give it to. That would be satisfying, take a lot of time, and get me involved in all sorts of things I'm not now. I could get involved with those things anyway, but oops I don't have all the money.

I should just go work for Obama for a month and then get a real job.

it's really just a picture of the grand canyon

OK, so this is the Grand Canyon with me standing boldly on one of its infinite edges. You should know these facts so that you, America, can choose what I do next in this life. I can do all or some of the following:

design and lay out a page electronically
draw nice pictures 
communicate in excellent english
be polite
bake excellent cookies
habla un poco español

correct your grammar, (directly or behind your back)

I have a blog now

Now I can begin my quest to let America decide what I will do next to Change My Life.