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  • 15 September 2020
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Dispatches From Dystopia

~ "What man by worrying can add one cubit to his span of years?"

Dispatches From Dystopia

Category Archives: food

Christmas. Fruit Cake.

26 Thursday Dec 2019

Posted by David in Family, food

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#Boxing Day, #Fruitcake

It was a pleasant Christmas. Family, in a small dose, gathered at my sister’s. J, #2 son. sister, brother-in-law, my stepmum (age 94) were there, along with me. Brother-in-law fixed a bread pudding from a panettone, mushroom tarts, other yummies. Gifts were exchanged. Sister gave me an antique fruit cake tin, (ca. 1958).

Fruit cake is kind of a snarky joke in The States. It was quite in vogue about 60-70 years ago, but has fallen out of favour. Every few years or so, a “gourmet” or other foodie type decides to “re-invent” it. The way it was made back in the day was just fine. My sister told me the mother of one of her music students (she teaches piano and strings) once offered her homemade “Christmas Cake”. They were a Welsh family and a Welsh Christmas Cake is very much the equivalent of what we Americans call fruit cake.

The mother of the family said she would understand if my sis refused, given Americans’ disdain for fruit cake, fostered by advertising. (A more unimaginative lot than advertising copywriters cannot be found, imho.) My sister accepted tbe proffered confection and found it quite delectable.

The fruit cake tradition left our family with quite an inventory of empty fruit cake tins. They usually had a Christmas or winter theme. We used them to store little items, easily lost, like crayons.

My Dad used a fruit cake tin to store 8mm ammunition from the Japanese Nambu pistol, he acquired during The War. The ammunition stayed in the tin, unused, till the day he died in 2011, 66 years after its acquisition. My nephew, a law enforcement officer, then took the now dangerously detetiorated ammo away for safe disposal,

Mum would put sewing notions in them, thread, needles, bobbins. She called them a “catch-all box”. (I still hear her saying it).

Sewing notions. These items I associate with the past seem so distant, but they aren’t really. There was a time when many women sewed, just as they did home canning. I suspect many women still do and are quite proud of these skills of self-reliance. It is just an image that isn’t so popular in the culture promoted by mass media.

As I write this, my Australian, English, Irish, Canadian followers are now or soon will be celebrating Boxing Day, with Pantomime (UK), or a hockey game (Canada), or cricket (AUS vs NZ test) We go buy more stuff in America or return gifts that don’t fit, don’t need or don’t want.

#1 son and his wife picked up Lila. She is such a sweet dog. But I was relieved when she left, much the same way grandparents are when their grandchildren leave, I suspect.

The love remains. The lights twinkle. I think we should have a midyear Christmas Dress Rehearsal to 1) remind us it is coming and 2) consider new food, decorations, potential traditions. Besides being reminded the weather will cool off when we’re sweating like hogs is always a nice thought.

Vintage 50’s Tin

This Day, A Subtle Triumph, An Observation Validated.

04 Wednesday Sep 2019

Posted by David in Exercise/ Fitness, food

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

#DD/lg

We are limping into Fall with an air conditioning system that is not quite working. We have maybe one more hot day to deal with before it cools down again. I can ride out maybe a few hours of discomfort. Today I let the cool morning air in. I took a nap by an open window. Sweet.

J wanted to go out to dinner. We had an early meal, more of a lunch really at Cheesecake Factory. I ordered a Cuban sandwich. I ate only half of it, with the green salad that came with it. Very nice. I prefer the Cuban sandwiches at Kuba Kuba or Kuba Kuba Dos, but a bad Cuban sandwich is hard to find.

We went home. I took another nap beside my open window. I awoke around Seven PM. Do I go swimming? At first blush, no. Then after dithering about for half an hour, decided a swim would be the right thing to do. So I went.

I got my 1750 meters in, faster than yesterday. Then I showered, shaved, dressed and came home. The triumph to which the title refers is that I swam, instead of sitting around. On my return, I fixed J’s lunch. She has a chance to work at Target tomorrow so she is taking advantage of it.

This afternoon, I was chatting with a friend who is familiar with the BDSM lifestyles and variants. She lives in Vermont and met J on holiday six years ago. I shared I thought J was a “little”. Upon her observation of J during our visit, she said she thought she observed some “little” behaviors. Now I am more certain of the opportunity and challenge presented to me and my role as a “Daddy”.

Mass+Brunch=A Good Day

12 Monday Aug 2019

Posted by David in Catholic Life, food

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Popeye

This was a Sunday that began with my feeling tired and wishing I could sleep some more. I went upstairs, looking to sleep some more and planning to skip Mass.( I had an excuse, as if Jesus cares about excuses). J and I decide to go. We get there in plenty of time. We extend comfort and condolences to friends who lost their 35 year old daughter very suddenly. We hear a good homily from our Deacon. We meet the seminarian, Armando, who will be something of parochial “intern”for the next year. He strikes me as a young man who will become a good priest. As always, there are plenty of cute babies and young children to boost the spirits of a man without grandchildren.

After Mass, we go to Maggiano’s to have brunch and people watch the mall customers passing in front of our window. The brunch at Maggiano’s is their best value and we had a coupon in our email. J had the crΓ¨me brΓ»lΓ©e French toast, which, for all intents and purposes, is a donut without the hole. I had the braised beef hash with poached eggs.

We get home. Now I take that nap. I fix a quick dinner, sit and rekax

I’m taking a Jeffrey Epstein /Ilhan Omar/ Donald Trump respite, watching Popeye cartoons. I always think, watching these cartoons, that we were perfecting animation in America, while the Germans were perfecting the tank, dive bombers and mechanized warfare.

Better Day For Sure

07 Wednesday Aug 2019

Posted by David in Birthday, Exercise/ Fitness, food, Uncategorized

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Tags

#barbeque, swimming

We just came back from a birthday dinner for my Stepmother. She is 94 today.

We had barbecue from TD’s, a classic hole-in-the-wall take away BBQ joint that are a tradition in the American South. The great unifying elements of Southern Culture are evangelical Protestantism, mainly Baptist, American football, and food (BBQ). Most Southerners, black or white, intersect on at least two of these common interests.

Food was good. Barbeque and greens, turnip greens, I think. Then we had Angel Food cake. Nice food. My brother-in-law coaches softball, so we chatted about softball and cricket. Both sports and baseball, too, get the power from the batting swing from the batter’s, or batsman’s core muscles, not just the shoulders.

I went to the Y for the first time in a month. The pool had major maintenance and repairs done over the past month. Good to be back. I really missed my swimming. I could have gone to another Y and swum, but didn’t. I got a 1 mile plus swim in.

So I’m feeling better. The world looks better. We have problems we can fix.

So there.

Half-Day Tripper

05 Monday Aug 2019

Posted by David in Family, food, Gentrification, Uncategorized

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

#Fredericksburg, #U.S. Rte 1

Tomorrow is my brother-in-law’s, birthday. J’s brother. We met R and D, his wife, in Fredericksburg this morning. Fredericksburg is a quaint, but gentrified, city about halfway between Richmond and Washington. They live in Leesburg, to the west of Washington. So Fredericksburg is a good mutual rendezvous point.

Did I say Fredericksburg was gentrified? That is understating it. The housing prices have been bid up astronomically. There are the ubiquitous converted loft apartments. The downtown has been given over to antique stores, restaurants, and boutique shops. We ate at a restaurant called “Foode”, located in a converted bank building. Truthfully, it had lots of charm.

Across the street from “Foode” is St George’s Episcopal Church. The building with its distinctive steeple can be seen in pictures of Fredericksburg from the Civil War era. The area was of critical importance to the Union’s strategy to capture Richmond, the Confederate Capital. Volumes can and have been written about Fredericksburg in the Civil War. I will stop here.

R has his 76th birthday tomorrow. We had a lovely gathering, fully enjoying the overpriced, but satisfying food. A plate of eggs scrambled with cheese and squash was about $9. Not bad, all in all. $3.50 for a cup of coffee epitomizes the mark-up.

I volunteered to take a group picture for a lovely Muslim family out for brunch. A lesbian couple was not at all reticent about holding hands as they strolled down Princess Anne Street. Just typical scenes of our time.

We checked out a kitchen shop that had a nice selection, including Lamsonsharp forged knives, an American brand in the quality knife market. There were cutesy hand towels with sayings like “I’ve lost my mind. I think my kids took it.”

After the kitchen boutique, we browsed through an antique shop. It was the usual collection of soft drink bottles, furniture, Mid-Century Modern paraphernalia and fussy china. The stereotypical African-American racist kitsch, think Aunt Jemima, from the early part of the Twentieth Century, stood out among the kiosks in the store.

We drove home on U.S. Route 1, a road running roughly parallel with I-95. It was a storied road running from Calais, Maine, at the U.S./Canadian border, to Key West, Florida. There were restaurants and “tourist courts” running the entire route. Today it is all-but deserted. The restaurants were iconic brands like Howard Johnson’s, Hot Shoppes or Stuckey’s. They are all gone now. The tourist courts were the precursor to the motel. They consisted of a grouping of two room cabins, a bedroom with a bathroom. You can still see them, always repurposed to something else like antique shops and always, always shabby and run down, lost time in frame or brick. To take Rte 1 is a relief from the madhouse of traffic that is I-95. One can’t help but wonder what it was once like, back in the day.

Given I have had very little sleep in the past couple of nights, I was an even less enthusiastic traveler than I usually am, which is to say, I wasn’t thrilled about going, but I went. I very much like R and D, I just don’t feel like traveling much any more. I drove a lot in much of my working career. Going somewhere other than to Church, AA, or the Y has little appeal.

When we got home, I took a nap. Now I am writing, watching an Army Signal Corps newsreel from World War Two, dealing with Operation Market-Garden, the failed airborne invasion of The Netherlands in September 1944. This was the subject of the book and film, A Bridge Too Far.

Now I’m watching a segment about DDT, which 75 years ago, was a wonder substance. Now we know as a damaging and dangerous compound, affecting the survival of birds. Then DDT eradicated disese-carrying mosquitos.

I had a phone call from my elder son. He left his gruelling and unsatisfying job and, at age 43, is discerning a new career. We are having lunch tomorrow.

That’s about it.

To Nap Or Not To Nap

26 Friday Jul 2019

Posted by David in food, sleep

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

#Peaches

About 7:00PM I decided it would be a good idea to take a nap. And it was a great idea at the time. I slept for about ninety minutes.

Now it is 10:39 PM. I am wide awake, watching Family Lapkin pitch a tent on YouTube. Family Lapkin is a show about a young Russian family, husband, wife, young son. They depict their life, which isn’t too different from what young Americans or Brits or Aussies do in their lives. With the sound off you have no idea they are Russian. And we need to target thermonuclear weapons on a couple of twentysomethings pitching a tent?

But I digress. After today’s trip and closeness with J, she wanted to sleep, while watching TV in the process. Not. My. Thing. I did other stuff. Then got tired. Hence the nap.

When I woke up, I fixed her lunch for tomorrow. She may not need a lunch, but I will pack her one. She may work longer than the six hours she is scheduled for. If so, she has to take a lunch break.

I peeled and sliced a peach for her, made her some tuna salad. Should be enough.

The nap was a great idea, but 7:00 PM was too late to do any napping.

Having Enough

19 Friday Jul 2019

Posted by David in food, Futurism, Uncategorized

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Tags

love

The Great American Fear: 😱

Will I have enough?!?!?!? Oh. My. God. What if I run πŸƒ out?

This hit me today, more than usual, as I was counting my spare change in order to go buy ice cream. (Nothing odd in that behavior. No Sir-ree).

Well, I walked back from that ledge, did a quick mental inventory of all the stuff I did have, and determined I had more than enough food, coffee, tea, and seltzer to last through Wednesday when I get my Social Security deposit again.

But the salesmen, advertisers, and the hustlers in general, nearly set a hook in me.

I ended up fixing Greek yogurt with banana, 🍌 some malt, and a squirt of Fox’s U-bet Chocolate Syrup. And it was good. Real good.

I fixed black beans for tomorrow. I made a fresh tomato sandwich on Good Bread, toasted, with a liberal amount of good mayonnaise. (Hellmann’s or Best Foods. Duke’s is a highly regarded local brand.)

I slept til noon today, because I can and also because I was tired. After the usual non-vocal mental self-flagellation and self-criticism for being lazy, I finally got the message that this stuck phase might have a purpose, that there is a lesson to be learned.

Maybe I need to write about being stuck. And taking stock. And observing what is not working in my life and what is working. For example, I have a marriage that is a full-on “till death do us part” proposition. Everything extra needs to be built on that foundation.

Bear in mind, that these tech moguls, Beezos, Zuckerberg, etc. are in this game to get in your head. Repeat GET. IN. YOUR. HEAD. At first blush, just to sell you stuff, or sell your digital data to somebody else. But the real creeps, like Elon Musk, want to literally get in your head, with Artificial Intelligence eventually accessing, and controlling the neural transmitters in your brain.

If you want to have trouble sleeping tonight, consider that Pervert Of The Year, Jeffery Epstein, was funding research on AI and its interaction with the brain on the level of the synapses. I know. He’s just another eccentric philanthropist.

“Hey. Tiffany, it’s time for my back rub.”

So, just a tip. Unplug, at least, for a little while. Get in touch with a Higher Power, that inspires you to love and serve others more than yourself. That High Power doesn’t have to be God, as Christians define God. Or Jews. Or Muslims. Just consider the collective wisdom of the Universe that wants children and old people safe. Maybe just acknowledge that there is Evil out there. As in Auschwitz or Hiroshima or Jonestown. And live to prevent such horrors from happening again.

Things I Did Today

27 Thursday Jun 2019

Posted by David in Dogs, food

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Tags

#Dentistry. #Sleep

Got up. Turned on TV. Fixed J’s lunch. Watched Amtrak #98 Northbound Silver Meteor pass through Ashland on the way to New York. Turned to Cricket New Zealand vs Pakistan.

Decided to buy baked goods. Left home for store but went to Mass first. The priest is from Uganda, so understanding him in room with terrible acoustics is sketchy. But, hey, I went to Mass.

I did go to the store, bought lots of fruit. I came home, put the groceries away, then went to AA. I was getting sleepy. My friend Colette was there with her dog.* The dog is very sweet. He is an Italian hunting dog, a spinone. (Look breed up) He is gorgeous and sweet. He licked my face. 🌟. Went to another store to buy J the chocolate mini croissants she likes.

I came home, had a cat nap. The I went to the dentist. He told me teeth #31 and #18, far lower molars, need to come out, because keeping them clean has become increasingly difficult. We want to avoid risk of infection to jaw bone.

Made appointment for periodontist to extract them.

Went to dinner, had street tacos, carnitas. They were good.

Came home. Realizing I’d been struggling through day on 3-4 hours sleep, I fell asleep. I woke up after 2 hour nap. I am watching the British couple who trek around Britain looking for abandoned railway stations or the sites where they once stood. Very nice engaging couple.

Now I have to get sleepy again, real fast.

*Colette, who looks like Julia Roberts, has a penchant for finding off-the-wall dog breeds. Her last dog was a catahoula, a Cajun hound dog. New words today: spinone catahoula

End Of The Day

15 Saturday Jun 2019

Posted by David in Exercise/ Fitness, food

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

#The Wild Bunch

Where do I start? It was a good day. Got some money deposited in my checking and bought fruit and seltzer and fish for dinner.

I wanted a donut, went to Dunkin’ Donuts, and bought two. They were OK. Not worth the WW points or the calories. I tried to take a nap with moderate success.

I went swimming, five days in a row. I had not done that in a while. The total for the week is over 6 miles. I am on pace for a good month. After a few setbacks, I should have a total of 100 miles swum between January and the end of June.

I came home, rested a while, fixed dinner. Grilled salmon, cold vegetables from last night, fresh tomatoes. I just finished some sliced fruit, mango, strawberries, and bananas.

I’m watching Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. This may be my favorite Western of all time. The acting, story, action scenes, even the score work brilliantly.

So my neck/shoulder issues are greatly improved. The swimming, coupled with pain meds, heat and ice post workout are working.

I think I will watch Seinfeld now.

After Brunch

08 Wednesday May 2019

Posted by David in food, Sexuality, Uncategorized

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Bloggers

Discussing Some Sexuality Stuff.

I had brunch today. Alone. At home. I slept til almost noon. Then I read http://ddjennifer Domestic Discipline Jenny Style episodes 311 and 312. She always has an interesting read. Upon realizing I needed to eat, I fixed huevos rancheros, fresh coffee and a fruit salad. It would have been nicer, had J been here, but she is at work and will be til after 8:30.

I’m reading Olivia’s post about toothbrushes.http://oliviasubmits Is it just me? . It is highly interesting, particularly the comments.

I’ve done some stretches, feel better. I enjoyed my brunch. My immediate goal is to finish my coffee before it gets cold. This is not trivial. My finishing a cup of coffee while still hot is about being “in the moment”, without some jive-ass need to multitask.

So I’m posting this, getting my coffee, and watching The Loving BDSM podcast on YouTube. Later. Yeah multitasking again (insert emojis)πŸŽ…πŸ˜€πŸ­

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