We're moving from record-breaking lows and a 5-inch snow that stayed for a week into rain and higher than normal temperatures for the rest of the week. If you like four seasons and variety in your weather we are the place to be!
Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™ is an award-winning 2017 science fiction short story by Rebecca Roanhorse. You can read it online here. It begins,
You maintain a menu of a half dozen Experiences on your digital blackboard, but Vision Quest is the one the Tourists choose the most. That certainly makes your workday easy. All a Vision Quest requires is a dash of mystical shaman, a spirit animal (wolf usually, but birds of prey are on the upswing this year), and the approximation of a peyote experience. Tourists always come out of the Experience feeling spiritually transformed. (You’ve never actually tried peyote, but you did smoke your share of weed during that one year at Arizona State, and who’s going to call you on the difference?) It’s all 101 stuff, really, these Quests. But no other Indian working at Sedona Sweats can do it better. Your sales numbers are tops.
Your wife Theresa doesn’t approve of the gig. Oh, she likes you working, especially after that dismal stretch of unemployment the year before last when she almost left you, but she thinks the job itself is demeaning.
“Our last name’s not Trueblood,” she complains when you tell her about your nom de rêve.
“Nobody wants to buy a Vision Quest from a Jesse Turnblatt,” you explain. “I need to sound more Indian.”
“You are Indian,” she says. “Turnblatt’s Indian-sounding enough because you’re already Indian.”
“We’re not the right kind of Indian,” you counter. “I mean, we’re Catholic, for Christ’s sake.”
What Theresa doesn’t understand is that Tourists don’t want a real Indian experience.
*******
The Daughter came over yesterday afternoon for a wonderful socially distant patio visit and brought a blueberry pie made from scratch. What a treat! And it's sweet of her to think of me :)
Thinking back to warmer days, I remember eating BBQ out on the deck at Central BBQ. I saw the 42 right next to our table overlooking the Tiger and Central Avenue. I ate a BBQ sandwich and onion rings.
Here's a video that shows the energy at this place. Watch them plate up some of that great food:
I've lowered the number of carbs I eat each day, but there's still room for the occasional splurge. When I saw this recipe I knew I wanted to give it a shot for Thanksgiving. I mixed the ingredients by hand at each stage. If I make this again, I'll use a hand mixer. I used a bought graham cracker crust.
Cranberry Dream Pie
8 oz cream cheese
1/2 c heavy cream
3/4 c sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
16 oz can whole berry cranberry sauce
Beat the cream cheese in a mixing bowl until fluffy. Beat in heavy cream and sugar. Blend in vanilla. Stir in the cranberry sauce. Pour into graham cracker crust pie shell and freeze.
*******
It was tasty, different from what we usually have, and it kept well.
On a personal note, I read that a low-carb diet can help decrease sinus-related issues so am trying to alter my diet with that in mind. I considered a Keto diet, but I can't eat that much fat and weight loss is not my goal anyway. I'm having success over the last 2 weeks in keeping my daily carbs under 50 grams. I didn't think I'd miss sweets, but I do. I've discovered that a chocolate chip cookie is 7 carbs and half a Hersey chocolate bar is 10, so I'm including them as I can. I'm thankful for chicken salad, tuna salad, and eggs lol. I'll take a break from it around Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, but I'll eat fewer carbs than I usually do during those holidays. I have no interest in using wheat flour alternatives or sugar alternatives. I've added raspberries, celery sticks, and more veggie salads to my meals. I quartered some tortilla shells and small naan breads and salted and baked them to use one at a time with the chicken/tuna salads.
That cup above is Swiss Mocha, at 10 grams of carbs, for dessert. Little treats are a good thing.
Please join me at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's weekly T Stands for Tuesday blogger party, though the pesky squirrels have chewed the AT&T lines she counts on for internet access. We'll start the tea but keep plenty warm for her until she can join us. All willing to share a beverage with us are welcome. And there's no rush; it's not like these blog posts are going away if you're a bit late😄
May 22 was World Paloma Day. I'm not much of a drinker (and when I say that I mean that the last tequila I had was in a Tequila Sunrise back in the 70s when I was in college). I had never heard of the Paloma, but I did a bit of research and decided to observe the day. I had to do some preparation, as I had no alcohol at all in the house. As a matter of fact I had none of the ingredients. You may remember that this, for us, is the year of frugality and cutting back, but I do still have some disposable monies, and I decided to use some of it towards this as a splurge.
2 ounces tequila (blanco or reposado) (I used Jose Cuervo Tradicional Silver)
1/2 ounce lime juice (I used fresh limes)
7 ounces grapefruit soda (or enough to top off the glass) (I used Squirt)
Fill the glass with ice and add the tequila and lime juice.
Top it off with grapefruit soda.
Now is that easy or what?! And tasty. It made a tall glass, and I can't drink that much soda at one sitting. Next time I do this I'll halve the recipe and use a shorter glass.
I'll give you a moment to make your own, and then you can enjoy it while you read about the history of tequila. According to Wikipedia: Tequila "was first produced in the 16th century near the location of the city of Tequila". "When the Spanish conquistadors ran out of their own brandy, they began to distill agave to produce one of North America's first indigenous distilled spirits." "Don Cenobio Sauza, founder of Sauza Tequila and Municipal President of the Village of Tequila from 1884–1885, was the first to export tequila to the United States, and shortened the name from "Tequila Extract" to just "Tequila" for the American markets."
I did a lot of research into tequilas before I decided which one to get. Price is a factor, after all, and I wanted to get the best bang for my buck. After poring over sites reviewing all the many different brands (I mean who knew there were so many?!), I picked the Jose Cuervo Tradicional Silver. Wikipedia says it "is the best-selling tequila in the world, with a 35.1% market share of the tequila sector worldwide and a 33.66% share of the US tequila sector as of July 2013. As of 2012, Jose Cuervo sells 3.5 million cases of tequila in the US annually, and a fifth of the world's tequila by volume." It is quite the family tradition. "Jose Cuervo is family-owned and is run today by the Beckmann family of Mexico, descendants of Don Jose Antonio de Cuervo. Juan-Domingo Beckmann, son of Juan Beckmann, is the sixth-generation leader of the company."
And now I have a bottle of tequila in the fridge along with the rest of the 12-pack of Squirt (can't you buy single bottles of soft drinks any more?), and I'm wishing you could get half-bottles of liquor. Maybe I'll see if there's a Tequila Sunrise Day.... Nope, no day for that.
*******
Just a quick look at the current state of the patio blooms:
The Daughter treated me to The Peabody Tea at Chez Philippe in the Peabody Hotel downtown. This is an elegant restaurant in one of the region's most elegant and storied hotels. I've been to the hotel for sight-seeing, the ducks, people-watching, photo-ops on the roof, and coffee and tea in the lobby many times but had never been to this restaurant.
We had a choice of teas, and I chose the Emperor's Pu-erh tea. It was purple and fruity. The Daughter selected Earl Grey.
The tea had three courses. The appetizer course:
the scone course:
and the dessert course:
I was overwhelmed by the tasty treats. Such delights! The staff couldn't have been more helpful and welcoming.
I took this photo from our table looking past the restaurant entrance into the lobby just to give an example of the detail:
In the photo above you can see tourists on the mezzanine waiting for the Duck March.
This 3-minute video is from a Travel Channel episode:
If you're ever in Memphis, and you want an enjoyable experience, I'd highly recommend this. Because we're currently in the middle of our annual Memphis in May celebration there were tourists everywhere. I have a special place in my heart for people who like us well enough to spend their vacations here.
image from the screenshot gallery at the WaldenGame website
I don't have a competitive bone in my body, so games and organized group activities have always been an interesting experience for me. They so often seem to have winners and losers. People have even turned children's Halloween parties into events where costumes are judged and winners announced. I've been surprised to see that the art/craft challenges on the internet sometimes have prizes for judged winners. Video games are usually no different, with most of the games I see being heavy on the competition components.
I stay on the look-out for video games that don't have contests, races, timed puzzles to solve, and ranked participants -more exploration-based and cooperative games. That's how I found Walden, a Game. From their website:
Walden, a game is an exploratory narrative and open world simulation of the life of American philosopher Henry David Thoreau during his experiment in self-reliant living at Walden Pond. The game begins in the summer of 1845 when Thoreau moved to the Pond and built his cabin there.
Players follow in his footsteps, surviving in the woods by finding food and fuel and maintaining their shelter and clothing. At the same time, players are surrounded by the beauty of the woods and the Pond, which hold a promise of a sublime life beyond these basic needs. The game follows the loose narrative of Thoreau’s first year in the woods, with each season holding its own challenges for survival and possibilities for inspiration.
The audience for the game is broad: from experimental game players to lovers of Thoreau and Transcendental literature. As such, the game offers more opportunities for reflective play than strategic challenge. The piece has a subtle narrative arc, in homage to the original text, which is not an adventure of the body pitted against nature, but of the mind and soul living in nature over the course of a New England year.
I keep forgetting to play, being out of the habit of video games, but I'm thoroughly enjoying it. To be honest, I wish it were even less structured and had fewer timed activities, but nothing's perfect.
I never play a video game (or any game, for that matter), watch a movie or TV show, or read a book without having a cuppa close at hand. Today mine is coffee:
For this one I used a crossword puzzle for the background -lots of squares there. I filled in one word and added a definition from a dictionary that isn't complete enough to use for its intended purpose. Then I made a ribbon crossing, where the crossing is a square.
No matter how much I played with GIMP I couldn't get the horizontal ribbon's pattern/texture to show up at all. At this point I've uninstalled GIMP and am looking into some other free and easy options. The next image was scanned but not edited.
In it, I cut out a part of a window from a magazine and tried to make an interior scene using only squares:
The picture on the wall was cut from a Christmas card. The vase was cut from a piece of newsprint and then dabbed with square-shaped watercolor touches. The flower stems were pieces of metallic edging and the flower was cut from ribbon.
Having installed Paint.net. I'll try it and see if I like it well enough or if I want to try Fotor or Photoscape. Those get good reviews, too. This next ATC is made of squares. I watercolored a base card and let it dry. Then I painted lines to make squares to cover the card. At the top left of the card I layered square pieces in diminishing sizes of (bottom to top) a Christmas card, an index card, felt, a one-inch square of card divided into four squares with watercolors, and a square button hand-sewn on. I marked off a two-inch square with silver edging.
The button kept the card from being in focus, and I sharpened the focus in the Paint.net program. This was easy to use. So far so good.
Another "Squares" card:
is a throw-back to many a fond game of Four Square I enjoyed as an elementary school-aged child. The background was cut from a magazine, and the gray squares from another ATC background. I hadn't realized how much the wrinkles in the gray pieces would show up, but you live and learn, right? The playground ball is made from tissue paper glued to card and then to an accordion-folded piece meant to give the ball some lift.
Because it had been such a long time since I last did any coloring, I decided the Squares theme would be a good place to see if I could still color inside the lines:
I made a background with graph paper and colored squares on it with Prismacolor colored pencils. I like these pencils, but I think there may be some other tools out there that might also be fun to try. I could've gotten better coverage, I'm sure, but somehow I was done with this one.
The next ATC:
is in response to a landscape/cityscape idea I saw here. The card base is cut from a magazine. I added ribbons and elastic on the left and then added hand-sewn "windows" in white thread to the top ribbon to turn them into skyscrapers. The moon and star were in a bag of bits I have in a cabinet. The word "BLUES" came from some Memphis promotional material. I sharpened the focus in the new Paint.net program.
I did two landscapes, the first with one of those old school supply watercolor sets:
I wish I could do more with watercolors, and I'll be looking for some short Youtube tutorials sometime.
and another by cutting flowing shapes and layering them:
and then I added some "trees" to the foreground using sticks from the patio. I do not actually enter any of these challenges but just use them for inspiration. I don't like contests or competitions or awards or any of that, but who can complain that I use the challenges as personal inspiration.
I am thoroughly enjoying making these ATCs and am already thinking about how to do more. I'm saving the card images in a folder on my computer and the originals are in a notebook in trading card storage pages. Happy T Tuesday, and thank you for introducing me to this doable little art form.
There is Christmas music galore out there. We used to have Christmas LPs, then we moved to tapes, and now we have CDs. We each have our own Christmas playlists, and I'd like to share mine with you. It's at Spotify, which I find hard to use on my phone but an easy delight on my computer. My playlist is almost 23 hours long, because even though I take some songs out every year I add even more. I've included a wide variety of types of music, but none of it -well, almost none of it- is instrumental. I hope you enjoy my eclectic Christmas music selection:
Because this blog does not consist of a single focus topic I chose the name Divers and Sundry where "Divers" means being of many and various kinds, and "Sundry" means consisting of a haphazard assortment of different kinds.
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