Of chicken and crunchy rice

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*Ahem*
I haven’t posted for awhile. I have almost nothing to post about, sooo… I know! I’ll post about dinner!

Tonight’s dinner was chicken and al dente rice (courtesy of Reverend Mother and Mall Diva. I helped, too — I was the Chicken Transportation). Mom had mixed some white rice and some brown rice together, then realized that brown rice cooks very s-l-o-w. Thus, “al dente.”

So there we were, sitting at our peninsula, munching away. (Oh, and just for all you smart-alecks out there who read my sister’s last post, just because I am assumed to speak the chicken language doesn’t mean that I don’t eat chicken.) After awhile, MD said, “You know, I don’t think that I like crunchy rice.”

“Yeah, me neither,” I said. “Is there any more?”

They’re not kilts, they’re aprons

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Scotland is now one year into it’s nation-wide smoking ban, something that I could see Robert the Bruce agreeing to but never William Wallace.

Personally, I’m a lifelong non-smoker. In my youth I considered the economies and relative “coolness” of smoking vs. driving and decided to use that money to put gas in my car. Furthermore, the last few years I haven’t gone to many bars, but when I did I preferred to go to ones that had no-smoking sections. Nevertheless, I enjoyed going to Keegan’s (pre-Minneapolis ban) for Trivia Night even though I knew I’d come home reeking of smoke. It was a trade-off I was willing to make for the socializing. I draw the line at socialism, however, and other people telling a private business how it ought to operate through laws rather than the marketplace. That’s not because the marketplace is any kinder or gentler than the government, but it is a lot more grounded in reality. Not that the marketplace can’t be a cruel master, but at least its focus is on finding ways to entice me to give it money voluntarily while the government is dedicated to finding ways to take more money, preferably while giving me as little say in the process as possible.

Anyway, because of a news thread I’ve been following on a business matter I occasionally come across news stories about the effects of the smoking ban in Scotland (unrelated to my original news search). An article in today’s The Publican, a UK pub-trade publication, takes a look at the results of the past year. It notes that many pubs have been hurt and are even going out of business since the ban went into effect, but that this may not be tied solely to the ban, and that other pubs have not been as affected.

One year on: the Scottish smoking ban
22 March, 2007

Licensees there have faced the new laws with varying success, Roy Beers investigates

Three-hundred-and-sixty-five days into the smoking ban, pubs north of the border are experiencing mixed fortunes.

The ban in Scotland has hit some pubs and clubs even harder than trade pessimists expected, according to the country’s biggest licensee organisation. However, on-trade multiple operators, for example Mitchells & Butlers and Belhaven (now part of Greene King), have reported only minor damage to their Scottish pubs’ drinks sales.

The Scottish Licensed Trade Association’s (SLTA) chief executive, Paul Waterson, says independent commissioned research showed overall pub turnover slumped 11 per cent last year, a more serious decline than the organisation’s own original estimate of seven per cent.

He told The Publican a combination of the ban and discount beer offers in supermarkets was driving many pubs to the wall.

He has warned publicans in England that even some of those pubs that “do everything possible” ­- for example enhance food business and provide smoking areas -­ are still certain to lose trade.

In Scotland traditional wet-led community pubs are said to have been hardest hit, along with community-based social clubs. Bingo halls have suffered a wave of closures. Scotland’s growing pub leasing sector is also said to be under particular pressure.

Making the lease unworkable

James Hickman, lessee of Scottish & Newcastle Pub Enterprises (S&NPE) McEwans Ale House, in the Newington area of Edinburgh, said last week that the ban had been “the major factor in making the lease unworkable” ­ as he prepared to wind up his business with major debts. “Besides the ban driving people away, you see people passing all the time with carryouts from cheap supermarket deals -­ they’re the students who would be our customers, but who can now drink cheaply as well as smoke freely in their flats,” he added.

S&NPE operations and sales director for Scotland, Ken McGown, said: “In addition to the impact of the smoking ban, for which we have sympathy with the lessee, there were a number of other factors which ultimately led to him deciding to move on.”

Loyal customers

“Some (S&NPE) pubs you would imagine would suffer have actually borne up due to a loyal customer base, and pubs with good food offers are reporting a positive response to the smoking ban,” said McGown.

In Fife, some community-based registered social clubs have shut, while others have seen annual takings ­ and charity donations slashed. Davie Nelson of the Coal Industry Social Work Organisation in Glenrothes, said:

“We’re losing £1,000 per week, and two other clubs have closed ­- some pubs are in trouble too. Local charities will be getting only around half the usual amounts because of the ban ­ and a local wheelchair users’ club has been forced to close for lack of money.” In addition to falling sales, licensees around the country have been dogged by complaints about noise and litter created by outdoor smokers: a North-East councillor last year tried unsuccessfully to ban smoking at outdoor tables.

…

“We were promised a massive influx of customers when smoking was banned -­ and it simply hasn’t happened.”

Read the whole thing.

Tra-la, it’s spring!

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What a pleasure to step outside this morning to get the newspaper and instead of getting a nose full of frozen hair I had it filled with the smell of warm, moist earth and impending rain. It won’t be long now before I can take down the Christmas lights, pull up the orange driveway stakes, or find a place in the back yard to bury the cat (wrapped and boxed in our deep-freeze). I don’t think it’s going to take me four hours to finish that task.

The snow is almost gone, revealing all the goodies the city plows deposited in my front yard and the tire tracks of the yahoos who drove across my lawn over the winter. It’s good to see the snow go, but I’m a little disappointed. Our sump-pump started acting up last year and I had gone most of the winter without replacing it because there wasn’t a pressing need. When the 16″ of snow fell a few weeks ago, followed by the 40+ degree temperatures, I knew procrastination was no longer an option. I pulled up the old pump and went to Menard’s for a new one and other necessary parts (only two trips!) and got it hooked up, then sat back waiting for the deluge. Nothing! The ground has absorbed everything and nothing has made it into the drain tiles. Oh well, at least the job is done.

Without that to worry about (for the time being, anyway) I can focus on the Twins’ preparations for the upcoming season. The team looks a lot more promising this year than last year at this time, what with the League MVP, Cy Young Winner and Batting Champ all on the roster. Now the biggest concerns are who will be the back-up infielder and whether desperate veteran pitching acquisitions Ramon Ortiz and/or Sidney Ponson can fill spots in the rotation allowing our host of promising but young pitchers an opportunity to season a little longer.

It strikes me as a dubious proposition; Ortiz reportedly has the ability to focus like a shotgun when the going gets tough and the portly Ponson has a reputation for bizarre and aggressive off-field behavior. This has been attributed to excessive drinking, but supposedly that’s no longer a concern because Sid is limiting himself to just a little wine with dinner. Uh-huh. I expect to see a report any day now that Ponson has eaten a bat-boy with some fava beans and a nice chianti. Twins management is hopeful that he’ll work out, of course, saying they expect that Carlos Silva’s work ethic would be a positive influence on him. This is like saying Paris Hilton could be a good influence on Britney Spears.

Oh well, it may be spring, but it’s early in the spring when things still look a little gritty and messy. Soon the grass will be green, the flowers will be out, the sump pump will be humming along and Opening Day will be here.

Funnies…

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The reason we continue to get the Strib at home is because we all read the comics. I read every strip, even the ones I don’t like because it’s easier to read them than skip over them. A strip that I do like is “Get Fuzzy,” and one that I like sometimes is “Stone Soup.” The other day after reading these I said outloud, “If I lived in a house with Bucky Kat from ‘Get Fuzzy’ and Holly from ‘Stone Soup,’ at least one of them would be in a bag down by the river.”

One of the three women of the house said she kind of liked “Stone Soup.”

I said, “If I lived with all those women it would drive me nuts for sure!”

Wa-a-i-i-it a minute…

The good retire young

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Another of my “Night Lights” blogs has pulled the plug as Port McClellan has gone dark after two years and two months. I never realized that the Port was senior to my own blog by only a month, but I enjoyed the excellent commentary, clarity and insights. Given these gifts, my presumption and hope is that the blogger, Michael Brandon McClellan, has merely found bigger fish to fry and has turned his considerable talents toward something more remunerative or life-advancing.

Michael and I were “introduced” by another blog on my roll, Portia Rediscovered, that has also been dormant but has promised to return from hiatus in the near future. Also on hiatus now is LaShawn Barber’s Corner, and Suburban Blight is as good as gone (new babies are hard on blogging), while The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns are still crazy, but a lot less frequent.

And so it goes, old friends move on, new friends arrive. There has been some darn fine writing and/or analyses lately over at Scottish Right and Uncorrelated and I’ve linked Away With Words so much lately that if I do it again I’ll probably be accused of stalking (you can feel free to sneak over there). The Llama Butchers are as prolific as ever, even if exclamation marks sometimes outnumber the words in a few posts. I’ve also become enchanted with the adventures of the ex-pat Kelleys, marvelously chronicled over at Half a World Away. There’s a book in there, trying to come out.

The way things go in the blogosphere you should get over and enjoy these blogs while you can.

Rehearsing

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My wife, the Reverend Mother, preached a sermon yesterday. In it she described how there is a book being written about our lives, every day, and that one day that book will be opened. But there is also, she said, a script for our lives that has already been written and that we can follow. I know both are true.

The first book is scary. Many things are in there that I wish I could rewrite, or delete entirely. Unfortunately, all my rough drafts are there, unalterable:

my missteps…

half-finished thoughts…

idle words…

careless plots and sketchy character development —

all of it, just waiting for a real Author and Finisher.

The script, however, is comforting. It means that I, like an actor at rehearsal struggling to learn a new part, have a guide to fall back on; someone who knows what the plot twists are for and how the story ends. It means that in any scene, if I lose my way or forget my part, I can stop and say,

“Line, please.”

I Want To Go To Keegan’s

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…So therefore, I must write.

I’m sitting in my pajamas on the couch listening to my sister practicing a new language. She can speak it pretty fast, and I can only make out some of the words; but for the most part it sounds like this: “buckbuck buck BUUUCK, buck buckbuck buck buck.” I’m not sure what it means. Maybe she’s turning into a chicken.

I’m also watching the bird tear apart an old newspaper we rolled up and stuck in her cage. She’s crazy about it. All day she chews on it. In the morning when my mom takes the blanket off her cage, she’s already tearing away. There’s now newspaper confetti all over the floor.

I have today off, but my cousin is coming over for a foil. She’s been blonde for a few years, but last time we put in some lowlights and it turned out gorgeous. We’re going to do it again today. It’s also my day to cook, and after that, Tiger Lilly and I have to go to practice a drama that Princess FlickerFeather is putting together and I am assistant director of. It’s to a song by Third Day called “Thief”, and it’s about the thief that was on the cross next to Jesus who ended up in Paradise. Bet you can’t guess when that one’s going to be performed!

So anyway, I’ll see y’all at Keeg’s a week from Thursday!

St. Pat’s regurgitation

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I know that the title for this post doesn’t sound appealing, but I’m swamped with work, travel (travel for work) and with getting through this thing we call Life. Rather than let this significant excuse for public drunkeness holiday pass by unremarked I’d thought I’d re-run a previous post that described some of the college St. Pat’s hi-jinks I enjoyed back in the day. If you read this last year at this time, well, I hope the re-run isn’t as noxious to you as that morning-after taste in the mouth. If you didn’t see this last year, then just forget this entire paragraph and sit back and enjoy some refreshing adult entertainment.

I don’t think there will ever be a St. Patrick’s Day when I don’t think about my first semester of college when I enrolled in the Spring term at the University of Missouri-Rolla campus. UMR is mainly an engineering college but it was close to where I lived at the time and a convenient way for me to knock out some general liberal arts credits before transferring to the main Mizzou campus in Columbia.

St. Patrick’s “Day” was actually a 10-day party at UMR. The campus was about 90% male then, almost all in grueling engineering classes that seemed to require binge drinking in order to cope. The reason St. Pat is such a big deal at UMR is because he is deemed to be the patron saint of engineers for having driven the snakes from Ireland and thereby creating the first worm drive (engineering humor). The rites and festivities of the season were under the auspices of the St. Pat’s Board: upper classmen (some I think were in their 30s) elected by their fraternities, eating clubs and campus organizations. For most of the year their duties seemed to be based around regular “meetings” marked by drinking and carousing. Come March, however, they were especially prominent in their filthy green coats (part of their semi-secret initiation rites) as they enforced the rules and protocols of the holiday (for those familiar with the St. Paul Winter Carnival – especially in the older days – think green Vulcans).

Part of the tradition was that all freshmen males were to have beards in the week or so leading up to St. Pat’s, and were to carry shillelaghs (an Irish cudgel). Most people think of shillelaghs as being a bit like walking sticks, but at UMR there were specific requirements: the shillelagh had to be at least two-thirds the height of the student and at least one-third his weight, and it had to be cut from a whole tree with at least some of the roots showing. The punishment for being caught beardless by a Board Member (and they usually traveled in packs of two or more) was to have your face painted green. The penalty for being without your shillelagh was to be thrown into Frisco Pond. Frisco Pond was actually the town’s sewage lagoon, but was called Frisco Pond because the St. Pat’s Board of 1927 rerouted the Frisco railroad into the pond after one of their meetings. I’m sure it seemed like a good idea to them at the time.

Fortunately I was able to cultivate my first beard, red and wispy as it was, and I cut myself a suitable cudgel. Carrying books and a shillelagh of the stated dimensions was a challenge, and even more so when certain professors wouldn’t allow them into class, meaning they had to be stacked in the hallways and guarded because Board members liked nothing better than to snatch unattended shillelaghs and then wait for their rightful owners to appear — followed by a honking procession to Frisco Pond. (I did mention the campus was 90% male and fueled by alcohol, right? During St. Pat’s week the campus looked like No Name City from “Paint Your Wagon.”)

The reason we carried cudgels was in case a Board member approached you with a rubber snake and demanded that you “kill” it. This generally meant pounding on the snake with your cudgel until the Board member (not you) got tired. I weighed about 170 then; you do the math as to what my shillelagh weighed, minimum. I was fortunate to go largely unnoticed (as unnoticed as a guy carrying a tree can be) through most of this period. This was especially remarkable given that one of my friends from my hometown was on the Board. Toward the end of the week, however, he came up to me in the dining hall. “Red,” (for my beard) he said, “I think I see a snake.” With chants of “snake! snake! snake!” I was led outside and my “friend” tossed said snake on the ground. It landed, however, in a flower bed. “Freshman! Kill!” was the command. Hoisting my club over my head (and somehow not tipping over backwards) I brought it crashing down onto the hapless rubber creature — and even more hapless plants in the soft earth.

“Hit it again, it’s not dead,” was the order. I looked down once, then again. “Oh, it’s dead, alright,” I said. Actually, it would be more accurate to say, “Missing, presumed dead” because the rubber snake was nowhere to be found in the newly-created crater. Rather than wait around for CSI, or the gardener, the small group repaired to the dining hall to toast the success of the mission and I survived the week, the highlight of which was the St. Pat’s Parade.

In those days the St. Pat’s Board would be out early in the morning with mops and barrels of green paint, painting Pine Street in advance of the parade. High school bands from around the area would march, car dealers would drive demo models with pretty girls in them and various and sundry other parade standards would be present. In particular, however, I remember the Precision Pony Team: a group of students scooting along on empty pony kegs strapped to skateboards with rudimentary heads and yarn tails attached to the kegs. They wove patterns and formations down the street, stopping periodically to lift the tails of their “mounts” and drop handfuls of malted milk balls.

Much like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, the event culminated in St. Pat (not St. Nick) appearing on the route, riding a manure spreader and attended by his Guard. The duties of the Guard were largely to keep St. Pat vertical (he’d probably been drinking for four days straight) and to bring any fetching lasses from the crowd to St. Pat for a good luck kiss. (I did say the campus was 90% male and fueled by alcohol, didn’t I?).

After this particular St. Patrick’s Day all the other ones I’ve experienced have just kind of faded from my memory.

Note: the annual UMR St. Pat’s parade and related festivities still go on, but in a much more muted manner. A couple of alchohol-poisoning deaths were a factor (sad and true) to be sure, but I also think it was because some of those Board members finally graduated.

Short on sleep in the city that never bothers to

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I’ve always loved coming into Manhattan from the outlying boroughs. Approaching and crossing the bridges or coming through the tunnels always has a certain feel of anticipation as if traveling to a fantasyland. In the past I’ve always come to the island via the Newark or LaGuardia airports, but this trip I landed at JFK. In one of those oddities of air fare arcania, I had a choice between two Northwest flights, each leaving Minneapolis at the same time on the same day, one arriving at LaGuardia and the other at JFK, one minute apart. The LaGuardia flight was some $650 more than the one that landed at JFK. That’s math that even I can do. (Heck, I can even do it in story-problem form: if two planes leave at the same time for the same destination, arriving at almost the same time, and if the Night Writer selects the one that costs $650 more, how long before Corporate Accounting comes down on him like a herd of flesh-eating frogs?

Approaching Manhattan from Queens especially enhances the sensation of being backstage at a big show. Nearing the Queensboro Bridge I noticed a cemetery resolutely holding its ground while the highway, roads, brick warehouses and homes pressed round its perimeter like a river coursing past a boulder. It occured to me that cemeteries tend to be a reflection of their environs. When I drive through rural areas, for example, cemeteries have lots of empty space around them and seem to jut up from the empty fields suddenly, without transition, much like the communities they serve. Squat stones and tall stones break up the lines of the earth in the same way the houses, barns and silos do. In Queens the headstones – squat and tall – are compacted together, their straight, tidy rows and random heights and shapes looking like a modeler’s panorama of Manhattan’s grid. I thought of these headstones again this morning as I had a bagel and coffee while looking out the window from the 44th floor of the Hilton in mid-town (yes, Corporate Accounting knows about this, too); the stone rectangles of differing heights and colors running row after row below in straight lines below my feet.

That’s about all of Manhattan that I saw on this short trip. Yesterday I went directly from the airport shuttle to a 13th floor conference room overlooking an inner courtyard off of Park Avenue. From up there, though, I could hear the filtered sirens and honkings from the streets below and the miscellaneous crashings and bangings that are a constant part of the background noise of the city, much like bird song on a country morning. Six and a half hours later I followed our little group out of the conference room and across the street to a restaurant; three hours after that I walked the half-dozen blocks to my hotel.

Though that was still “early” – especially by New York standards – it was still 18 hours after I had woken up that morning, a sleep that itself had only lasted about 3 ½ hours. By the time I got up to my room last night the 20 oz. Caribou coffee in the Minneapolis airport, two cans of pop and one cup of Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee (now that’s what I call a conference room!) in the afternoon that had provided life-preserving stimulation earlier were exacting their payback in the form of palpitations and twitchy muscles in my forearms and fingers. When I was younger I might have thought, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” Last night I was more interested in sleeping like the dead. The neon lights may be bright on Broadway, but they were nothing compared to the ones going off inside my head — and it was definitely time for lights out. I might as well have been in Des Moines or Owatonna except that way down below, the New York City serenade was a soothing backdrop.

You really can find anything you want in New York, including a good night’s sleep.