End of a long, lazy day

My peppers bouquet, gift of a friend. Love it!

My lazy day ended with good fellowship. Friend Mary was coming for dinner--she wanted to take me out since I often cook for her, but with the TCU game it was hard to find a restaurant without an hour wait. So we ate here. Sue and Teddy came by for happy hour, stayed an hour and the four of us had a grand old time visiting, eating gravlax and cream cheese and a raspberry infused cheddar. Sat on the front porch--the deck was a tad damp--and the cool air and breeze were wonderful, especially in contrast to this morning that greeted me with heavy, muggy air.
No, I didn't watch the TCU game but I did check after half-time and found a discouraging score. Later in the afternoon, after I napped, I checked again and TCU had won by a whopping score. Go, Frogs!
Sophie and I spent most of the day being lazy and quiet--I did some computer work and some reading; she slept. She is, however, grieving for Elizabeth--she lost her house manners in the kitchen, something she hasn't done since Scooby died over a year ago, and then she went and slept on his bed--another thing she did after he died. Mary and I gave her extra love while we ate scrambled eggs with spinach--I thought the spinach overshadowed the eggs, she thought it was just right. Hey, she was the guest. What else would she say?
Now dishes are done--except the skillet--and I'm ready to be lazy again. Reading The Lost Art of Mixing, by Erica Bauermeister, which follows The School of Essential Ingredients, a foodie novel I really enjoyed and admired for the quality of its prose.
'Night all. Sweet dreams.

Hunger, and a mystery author

I read somewhere recently that Americans are hungry all the time. We translate hunger for companionship and love into hunger for food and turn to food for comfort. That accounts for the current fondness for comfort food--those things like meatloaf and creamed corn and mashed potatoes that we remember from our chldhood. Makes sense to me and would seem to account for the huge problem of overweight Americans (no pun intended). Valerie Bertinelli's recent book, Finding It, is subtitled Satisfying My Hunger for Life without Opening the Fridge. I think she's got a real point. On the other hand, since I've been on Weight Watchers, I'm hungry a lot, and I think it's real, physical hunger. Or maybe it's my craving for chocolate that makes me think I'm hungry and need something. Anyway, I was very disappointed in Weight Watchers yesterday. It was my weekly day to weigh. Weldon and Elizabeth convinced me to weigh on Thursdays instead of Mondays, because we all tend to overeat on the weekend. But just to check, I've been unofficially weighing on Monday too. For the last two weeks, I've weighed less on Monday than Thursday. This week I weighed 151.2 on Monday and, since I had low point counts all week, was sure I'd finally get down to the magic 150. Not so! I gained 6 oz. Apparently you do hit plateaus where you stay for weeks and weeks, but it's discouraging. It's the point at which many people give up and give in to that hunger. (As I write I'm eating chocolate.) But I'll stick with it.
This was my second day to lie low, but it didn't work out that way. Went to Central Market for a quick trip in the morning, ate an early lunch and went to the office for staff meeting, which lasted way too long. By the time I came home, took care of emails, etc. I got a late nap and had to rush to be ready to go to supper with Elizabeth and Weldon. We went to hear Deborah Crombie talk about her new novel, Necessary as Blood. I think she said this is the 13th in her series. I really like these books, although I'm not usually a British mystery fan--but her research is thorough and these are contemporary stories, so that we can identify with the characters, Brits though they may be. She said tonight she wanted to write a series in which the characters evolve, and these really do--their relationship deepens and becomes more comlex, so that in many way that relationship and not the mystery is at the core of each book. I bought two--one for me and one for a Christmas gift. I was pleased that she said, "I thought I recognized you." Other writers in the room hugged her as she came in and chatted, but I felt that would be presumptuous. Still now I've got an autographed book. Elizabeth and Weldon didn't buy one, but I sent them home tonight with paperback copies of some of her earlier books. Plus Elizabeth took The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I'm sort of alarmed that I couldn't find The School of Essential Ingredients, which she wanted to borrow. It's a favorite and I don't want to lose track of it.
Since we were at the TCU Bookstore, I suggested a hamburger place nearby--I'd had a really good blue cheese burger there one day. Mistake. It turned out to be noisy, slow, and my hamburger wasn't all that good--kind of dry. Weldon liked his chicken sandwich, and Elizabeth said her turkey melt was what she needed today but she wouldn't order it again. I won't go back again, I don't think.
Tomorrow I really am going to lay low and stay in all day. There's a neighborhood block party, but I think I'll be off, especially since it's cool tonight--lowest temperature so far since summer. 44 is predicted.

Dogs, books, You-Tube, agents

'Twas a dark and stormy night . . . only it really wasn't. It just grew suddenly very dark about 5 p.m. and looked threatening. The wind blew, and I know there are storms to the north of us but not here. Still, Scooby, who spent the afternoon inside because it was so very hot, refused to go out. When I finally persuaded him (with a leash) to eat his dinner and promised I'd bring him in at any sign of thunder or rain, he went--and promptly peed a lake, which I knew he had to do. But now he's done what I call his "I'm mad at my mother" trick. I keep his dish on the top step outside the back door--so easy to refill. When he's feeling vengeful, he pulls it down and puts it out on the lawn so I have to go fetch it. And tonight he didn't even eat all his food--it's scattered all over the back steps so I can slide on it in the morning. So far, it hasn't shown any signs of storm, but he's safely in again.
Today at a book luncheon at TCU I presented three books that have recently enthralled me (I may have talked about them here already): The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which gives along with much enjoyment a real and chilling history of the Nazi occupation of the channel islands off England's coast during WWII; but it's more than that--it's a story about a people surviving, a writer becoming interested in them and finally travelling to Guernsey, all told in letters. It's truly warm and wonderful--and I was amazed only two people in the room had read it. It's been very popular.
The second one also used letters to tell part of the story: Comfort and Mirth, by Lori Swick (TCU Press) is the story of a young bride, moving from Seattle to Austin, Texas, where her husband will teach philosophy (that relates to the title and their ongoing debates about what is happiness). Camille is an herbalist and we learn about herbs through her, but we also learn about racial issues in Austin in the first decade of the twentieth century, women's rights movements (and a good bit about Elisabet Ney), and the treatment of the mentally ill, which was appalling. People found it Sunday entertainment to go watch the inmates of the institution for idiots and the insane (or some similar title). In spite of all that, it's a gentle novel, about one determed women's process of maturing. We learn much of the story through her letters home to her mother. The ending is a real surprise.
And the third was The School of Essential Ingredients, about which I earlier blogged at length, so I wont go into it here except to say it's a book that I hope stays with me a long time.
Last night I got the You-Tube video of the session of me making southwestern tuna salad. Of course, I thought it was awful--I looked frumpy, I forgot to take my monitor off, my shirt was hiked up over my rump. I couldn't get any audio but I got it today at work. I've had several emails from kids and friends saying I should be the next Food Network challenger--aren't they nice? Here's the link if it works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlqu_40w468. Which reminds me, I really got hooked into the recent Food Network Challenge and was rooting for the young woman who won--she was the only one without professional cooking experience. Her show debuts Sunday at 11:30 and I'll watch--unless Sue and I work it out to go to see Julie and Julia at the 11:00 am showing.
I've spent tonight rewriting a contract for the press. We don't often have to deal with authors who have agents, so it's always a shock. In this particular case I thought I was doing the agent a courtesy by sending him a draft of the contract. He hacked it up in ways I couldn't possibly accept, and I said I guessed we'd have to step aside. Then the author said he had told the agent to conform to anything we wanted--he really wanted TCU Press to publish his book. That was a big ego boost, since he's a well known author. So tonight I rewrote the contract, laboriously including as many of the agent's changes as I could accept. I really tried to be appeasing, so we'll see what happens. We'd like to publish the book--it's good, and the author is well respected. See how I'm still hooked to the press? Spent the morning there in staff meeting and then doing odds and ends. So far it's an arrangement I like a lot.
But tomorrow, nothing on my calendar until lunch--I can sleep late!

Whew--retirement! And food, books, and friendship

Yesterday I was so busy I had no time for my daily workout or for blogging. I had to get up at 6:30--a real pain since I'm not used to sleeping until about 7:45. Went to the office, after hurried stops at grocery and pharmacy, for a 2-1/2 hour staff meeting--still can't believe it! Then I had to rush around to get things done so I wouldn't have to come in another day, took a lot of work home with me. Went to lunch with a visiting author who happens to be married to someone I knew a long time ago--delightful. I took them to Ellerbee's, my new favorite spot, and I had a tomato, lemon aioli, basil sandwich on bread that had some kind of cheese and flecks of prosciutto in it--delicious. Maybe my new favorite. Came home to emails that I hadn't looked at all day--Sisters in Crime, and their sub-group, AgentQuest, are most helpful sites but they can absolutely drown you in emails. It was four o'clock before I took care of all that--and a few business emails--and took a quick nap, waking up at five to realize I had company coming at 6:30. Fortunately dinner was easy--leftover chicken loaf, asparagus I would roast in the oven, and a salad.
Jeannie and Jim came because I had questions for Jim, my financial advisor--and he reassured me I'd done the right thing getting out of a money market fund. They loved the salad, which is so easy: you rub a good wooden bowl with garlic, then with salt and dry mustard. Put some blue cheese (I like quite a bit) in the bowl. When ready to serve, mash the blue cheese in vinegar, plain old apple cider viengar, with a fork and then stir in olive oil, sort of according to the traditional wisdom of 2 parts oil to 1 part vinegar. (Sometimes when Jordan does this, because she loves it too, she gets it so tart you sort of pucker when you eat it!) Then just tear up lettuce in the bowl and toss. I should have made twice the amount I did last night.
By the time I got the dishes done, it was too late for serious work, so I finished re-reading the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society--I rarely re-read books but I found this as delightful as the first time. Next week I will also talk briefly to a TCU book group of The School of Essential Ingredients and Comfort and Mirth, a TCU Press title that I just adore, set in the early twentieth century in Austin, with a newlywed central character who is a herb gardener. There are threads in it of women's rights, racial discrimination, treatment of the mentally ill. Some of the story is told by a narrator but lots of it is in letters Camille writes back home to her mother. in Seattle The ending is truly a surprise.
Today was much less hectic--I cleaned out files in the morning, because when I got my TIAA-CREF (retirement) files out to talk to Jim, I discovered I had papers going back to 1985, clearly not needed now; then I cleaned out a file of Colins' early medical bills, etc. --when his Crohn's was diagnosed. But there were a couple of priceless letters from him, including a postcard when he first moved to Grand Cayman, in which he wrote, "I'm sorry I haven't written sooner but I've been busy with the ladies. I miss you. I miss my dog. Please give Cisco a hug for me. I'd send for him, but I spend all my money on booze." How to push your mother's buttons!
Lunch with a good friend was a delight and I spent the rest of the day napping and working. Now going to give up and read.