like Prometheus and his banana

I despise bananas. And there aren't that many foods out there that I despise (although bananas come to mind). I'm not fond of rutabegas, of course, but I certainly don't "despise" them. I mean, I don't want to "eat" them, but I don't "despise" them. I can't think of another food I despise right now at all, actually, possibly because my salmon was bad when I went to have it for lunch today (like, bad, not, you know, bad - like bananas), and so I wound up having brown rice and limp asparagus and plantain chips and now I'm ravenous. Anything sounds pretty delicious right now. Except bananas. Oh, and bad salmon.

Okay, so we all get it. I hate bananas. Why then do I eat a banana every day? (Except weekend days. Weekends are my banana-free zone. I often replace my morning banana with forgetting to eat breakfast at all.)

I used to get horrendous leg cramps every night. Every night at three a.m., and also every morning when I woke up and stre-e-e-tched my legs down towards the bottom of the bed and ARRRGGHH! They always cramped up. Always, and you know what, stick with the usual beeping alarm clock sounds to wake you up, if you have any say in the matter, because waking up to leg cramps is much much worse than beeping alarm clock sounds.

It's also much worse than waking up to having to eat bananas, thus rendering bananas the lesser of two evils for a change.

You can imagine my desperation, I assume, now that I've described for you the murky depths of my disgust for this "fruit", this... horrible...yellow...sickle-shaped...fruit...thing. I had nowhere else to turn. Clearly, I needed potassium or water or salt or prosthetic calves or something. The internet was no help. Everywhere I turned, everyone said, "Drink more water. Oh, and try eating bananas." GAH. Stupid internet.

But then one morning, about three months ago, after a particularly nasty bout of wake-up leg cramps, I turned to a banana. I ate it on Trader Joe's O's with plenty of milk and honey to mask the taste (which is impossible, by the way). The following morning, I had another banana on my O's. And the morning after that. And before you knew it, it was today and it occurred to me on the way to work that I haven't had a leg cramp in...three months.

So bananas have saved my life. Even though I detest them, I'm chained to them like Prometheus to...it was a giant banana, right? I'm sure it was. Anyway, like Prometheus, I can never stop eating bananas until somebody develops a banana in a convenient (and preferably round) pill-form.

I've been freed from the tyranny of morning leg cramps and it was bananas that done it, hallelujah, and so I love bananas. It's just eating them that I hate.

july

"Driven to distraction by the rattle of the cicadas and finally unable to resist the siren song of homemade ice cream, she purchased her new Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker and settled back with a soothing bowl of fresh strawberry ice cream to await the cooling rains of the monsoon. 'Ahhh,' she said."

Cloob Line-up #1

The other night, we went out with a couple of friends and a couple of people we didn't know. And over a couple of drinks, a couple of pizzas, and a couple of slabs of decadent chocolate cake, we six created...The Cloob. It's a beer club, and it's awesome.

We agreed that the function of The Cloob would be to gather together a modest group of people interested in tasting and learning about various beers. All participants would bring a six-pack of "good" beer to Cloob gatherings, and we would proceed to taste them and talk about them and eat snacks with them and tell jokes to them and generally just discover good beers.

Last Friday, we gathered at Cloob Masters Erik and Natalie's house. Twelve grown-up-type people, a baby, an elderly dog, a bowl of mango salsa, some fake meat, and a line-up of ten beers later, the first meeting of the Cloob was declared a rousing success.

I have no vocabulary for this sort of thing, but I'm going to list the Cloob line-up and then I'm going to rate them on a scale of 1 to 10 for you. I'll call it Jenny's Scale of Beers (JSOB). Unless you're drawn to A. cheap domestics, B. Hefe-Weizens, or C. beers that taste like fruit, you can read 10 as being the best and 1 as being the least best. If you're partial to A, B, or C above, simply read the Scale backwards. Brilliant!

Paulaner Hefeweisen
JSOB rating: 4.5

Hitachino Nest Real Ginger Brew - a new favorite of mine. Plus, the cyootest little owl on the label - superscore! Hoot!
JSOB rating: 9

Full Sail Amber
JSOB rating: 3

Stone IPA - Stone can produce no evil, although they'd like you to believe otherwise.
JSOB rating: 8.5

Stone Ruination IPA - if you don't like smoke or hops in your beers, this beer will probably remind you of sprinkling salt on slugs. Otherwise, you're in luck.
JSOB rating: 9

Stone Arrogant Bastard - a personal favorite, although someone else brought this one to the Cloob. Stone was a popular offering.
JSOB rating: 9

North Coast Brewing Co. Brother Thelonius Belgian Style Abbey Ale - with a picture of Thelonious Monk on the label, who could say no?
JSOB rating: 7*
(*Raphael: "I think this is a great beer. It's a beautiful, delicious, smooth brown Belgian ale that deserves a 9. On top of that, it has a picture of Thelonius Monk.")

Speedway Stout - coffee and chocolate with a bright, fruity finish - we mixed this with the Samuel Adams Cherry Wheat and wound up with a chocolate-covered cherry flavor that was tipsily proclaimed "Hey! Yum!"
JSOB rating: 9

Samuel Adams Cherry Wheat
JSOB rating: 4

Leinenkugels Berry Weiss - refreshingly sweet and fruity and very, very pink. I couldn't believe I liked it as much as I did. On the wine-cooler-ish side.
JSOB surprise! rating: 8

Cheers!

scary baby widders

People say to us, "Your yard isn't really 'infested', right? I mean, we're pretty sure you're just exaggerating, as per usual..."

Newly hatched black widow spiders outside the Arizona room window:

big, cold plans

I think I'm going to buy an ice cream maker to make myself feel better about the zucchini. Also to make myself feel better about how hot and humid it is in my house. And also to make myself feel better about not having an ice cream maker.

transvestite zucchini

So, not unlike the Ugly Duckling, who one day unexpectedly produced vast quantities of sex appeal and pretty white feathers, the zucchini plant the other day unexpectedly produced several yellow squashes. I realized after this happened that yellow squashes make me happier than zucchinis anyway, so I was overall pretty pleased with the whole situation. Not that it mattered, ultimately, as immediately after the production of yellow squashes, they rotted into white goo and the plant's gloriously gigantic and blustery leaves crumpled sadly to the ground. Now I'm like the fox and the grapes: I don't have a zucchini plant OR a yellow squash plant. Or grapes. The story of the Ugly Duckling didn't end so tragically, did it?

shark love

We talked to my nearly-two-year-old nephew Jack this afternoon on Skype. You know, with the video picture thingie and everything. It went down like this:

Julie: Jack, say hi to Jenny.

Jack: Ai Yen.

Julie: Say hi to Raphael.

Jack: Ai Yel.

Julie: Jack, look! Jenny has a shark puppet! Say hi to the shark.

Jack: Ai Yark.

Julie: Jack, tell Jenny you love her.

Jack (throws self down on couch): NOOOOOO!

Julie: Tell Raphael you love him.

Jack (sobs heart-breakingly): NOOOOOOOOO!

Julie: Tell the shark you love him.

Jack (smiles): Wuv oo Yark.

reeling

I understand that many people in this world don't feel compelled to show before and after pictures of their gardens because they at all times fully expect that if they plant stuff, it will not only live but also grow. I'm not those people. So here's the before picture:
















And here's the after picture:
















It's like benevolent aliens came while I was out of town and snatched up my baby plants and replaced them with giant alien plants that nevertheless produce the expected fruits. I went to look at them the evening I got back and about fell over from shock. There's freakin' jalapenos on those suckers! There were no jalapenos when I left. There's about a billion cherry tomatoes and a ton of big tomatoes. And there's like eight zucchinis. No matter what angle I tried, the zucchinis look...difficult. Okay, phallic. So no pictures of zucchinis. And I made some grievous miscalculations about the size of your average zucchini plant, so no bell peppers either. But here's cherries:
And 'maters:
And the all-important jalapenos which, I can't believe it, are so cute and look just like Safeway jalapenos:

Burro Creek 2009

Some of you have said to me recently: "Four showers in thirteen days! How did you do it!" Well, people, it's complicated, but not that complicated.

You see, I just got back from the two-week field school we hold every summer in the ranchlands northwest of Phoenix. Far away northwest. Not like an hour northwest of Phoenix, but like five hours on dirt roads northwest. With cows and javelinas and antelopes and giant canyons and whatnot. It's very pretty there where we are.
















We have a fabulous little propane shower at Winter Camp which is where we stay and which is comprised mainly of a weathered cabin, a roofless outhouse known affectionately as the Skylight Lounge, and some bees but which is not comprised of any sort of water-producing apparatus or, generally in June, rain.

What with water an hour-and-twenty minutes away, conservation makes even more sense than usual at Winter Camp. Especially if you're the one driving to the water-getting place after a long day of survey and most especially if you're me, which you were in this case. Also I have a deep fear of the shower on account of the flames that shoot out of the propane heater every time you light it. Hence, four showers in thirteen days.
I had a good time this year. The weather was cool and windy most of the time, which kept the biting gnats somewhat subdued. I'm apparently allergic to gnat venom - something I had blissfully forgotten, but which came back to me pretty quickly after my ear swelled to twice its original size. "Oh, right!" I thought as gnats also punched me repeatedly in both eyes. "That's what I forgot to remember!" The gnats are not my favorite part of the Burro Creek field school.
What are my favorite parts are these: We covered lots of acreage and found nearly thirty new sites. I can't tell you how many artifacts we collected because I can't count that high.
















We also obtained a camp squirrel (Rocky) this year to replace our previous camp packrat (Splinter), and that was very nice. Rocky is at this moment probably huddled under the cabin we just abandoned, panic-stricken at the abrupt absence of peanut butter and jelly beans. Another positive thing was that we had jambalaya one night for dinner for the first time ever which was very tasty and delicious. I'm not going back if people don't commit to jambalaya again next year.

One interesting thing that could be positive or could be something different than positive but not exactly negative was that the crew was kind of boy-heavy this year. This led to games such as "Quesadilla Free-For-All" in which quesadillas are consumed in record time and in massive quantities in order to prevent other people from getting quesadillas, and "Trying to Hit Oranges With a Machete" in which people (mainly boys) attempt to hit oranges with a machete. It also led to the removeable backseat of the Suburban winding up in the outhouse. Here's some pictures: