Category: Theme Thursday

The Coolest Letter I Ever Received

So in the file of “things you might not know about me” there is an item I’ll share.

Back in 2005, I wrote a book. Ok, that’s not the exciting part. I’ve written several novel length books, actually.

What is exciting is that I really loved this particular book so I spent the time (a lot of time) and the energy (a LOT of energy) to scrub it, then I worked with an online publishing house to self-publish my little book, just so I could learn how it’s done.

The story takes place during the course of a baseball game, and I used the names of real players and a real Giants announcer as characters in my story.

Recently I reread parts of this story (a sample is available on the iBook store) and I am still incredibly proud of the story and the writing (even if I realize that it could still use some editing).

So once I had a real live book in my hot little hands, I took one copy and popped it in the mail with a letter. The package was addressed to one Mr. Jon Miller, game caller for the San Francisco Giants, and at that time, ESPN Sunday night baseball.

In my letter I explained to the now Hall of Famer that I’d appropriated his name and style for the announcer in my fictional story because when I think about baseball, it’s his voice I hear.

I had been too shy to actually put a copy in his hands when I saw him at Spring Training earlier that year (I’d had the opportunity and couldn’t do it), so mailing it was the next best step. I figured that was the end of that, and forgot about the package I’d sent.

Until one day in my mailbox I found one of the greatest letters I’ve ever received.

Written in his own loopy, cursive hand, Mr. Miller apologized for taking so long to respond, lamented about the 2007 season just passed, gave me his thoughts about the upcoming 2008 season, and he told me he appreciated that I sent my book.

Well knock me over with a feather.

I still have the letter and it still gives me such a rush to read it.

Now that’s a guy with good old fashioned class. I’ll never forget it.






Today’s Theme Thursday is: Letter

Image from FriscoFastball.com


Bending Nature to Our Will

So if you were to, say, go to Google Images and put in the word “square” you’ll end up with a screen full of images of this:





Square watermelons.

Why, you might ask? Well. The story goes that in Japan (you knew this had to be from Japan, right?) they don’t have much retail space in grocery stores. It’s hard to stock round or oblong watermelons because they are tough to stack and take up a lot of room.

Use a little ingenuity and bring on the square watermelon! Easy to stack, easy to store.

Making the melons square is fairly easy, just put the fruit in a box as it grows, the same way they get a pear in a bottle of brandy.





And for this special hand boxed hand-picked fruit, grocers charge 10,000 yen, or using today’s exchange rate, about $126. Yikes.

Why am I nattering on about square watermelons? Because today’s Theme Thursday just happens to be “square”, of course!




Details from BBC News.


Photos from all over the web, but these both come from Financial Hack.


Round and Round

And the wheel goes round and round.
And the flame in our souls will never burn out.

– From “The Wheel” by Rosanne Cash

Round and round
What comes around goes around
I’ll tell you why

– From Round and Round, performed by Ratt


Yeah a little wide divergence in my choice of artists, but I’m trying to make a point.

A little hard to make a point in the middle of a blog post about round, eh?

Ba-dum-dum-*crash*

The point is, this concept of circular, round, spherical, wheel of fortune, karma, changing seasons, the big wheel keeps on turning is something that has intrigued artists, poets, philosophers and musicians for centuries.

So when yesterday’s Theme Thursday listed this week’s theme as round, well…I knew I’d surely have something to say about that.

Yup. Something deep. Meaningful. Profound.

Unh-huh.

Sure enough.

Profound.

Meaningful.

Insightful.

Right here. On this very blog.

Only…I got nothing.

I mean, I have ideas. A round of drinks, a round of golf, singing in rounds, that epic wheel of fate spinning round, the wheels on the bus go round and round, I ate too much and now I feel round, the earth is flat, no it’s round.

Sure. Plenty of ideas but nothing to say.

The minute hand travels around the clock. Hours days weeks months years pass by. It’s Friday again, the winter of my week. Time to look back on what I did, what I didn’t do and find a way to go dormant over the weekend. I need energy to fight the dragons when the wheel clicks ’round and it’s Monday again.

For the moment, the best I have to say about the word round is that it happens to be the shape of the cookie I’m about to ingest. While I munch, I will think about the meaning of life and the role chocolate chips have played in history.







Photo by kasey albano and used royalty free from stock.xchng.


A Theme Thursday You Can Use

So I’m about five days late getting around to this week’s Theme Thursday.

It was a long week before the long weekend. Today, as with my astounding piles of work email, I’m finally getting caught up.

This week’s theme is: Simple

And so we have the word simple. We have the hot, hot month of July. We have a need for refreshment.

Time for an easy yet useful recipe.

Simple syrup. If you are sweetening your iced tea, mojios, or other cold beverages without it, well then…where have you been?

Get on board!

Here you go:

Simple syrup is 1 part sugar to 1 part water. I usually do one cup to one cup.

Combine in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring, until sugar has dissolved. Allow to cool.

Dispense into something tasty.

That’s it.

Now, go getcher drink on! Whatever that beautifully sweetened beverage might be.





Photo by Pam Roth and used royalty free from stock.xchng.


Just Like Evil Large Corporation Used To Make

While in the course of every adult’s life, whether male or female, there inevitably comes a time when you simply think to yourself, “I want my mommy.”

As we’ve become a mobile society, moving around to where opportunity is best, we often find ourselves in a geographical location far removed from mommy. Or for some unfortunate few, mommy has passed along and so there is no mommy to be had.

So in the absence of mommy, we must turn to the food that mommy used to make to help us feel comfort. By eating something familiar, there is a molecular “there, there” and a pet on the fevered head to make it all seem not so bad.

For many of us raised through the seventies, “food like mom used to make” may not have been the fabulous made from scratch homemade stuff of the Pleasantville moms of the fifties.

No, our moms had jobs and so they put on a blouse with the floppy bow at the neck and went to work to earn not only a paycheck but self respect.

And so our moms served us food no less comforting but bit more pre-processed.

As adults we find ourselves craving “mom’s” food that comes from a conglomeration like, say, KRAFT.

Which is not to say that KRAFT equals mom, but sometimes something that KRAFT makes does equal comfort.

I fell into such a KRAFT hole recently when I found myself lost and confused. I became overworked and overtired, low on a variety of essential nutrients and, most concerning, rather dehydrated. I found, in that moment, that all I wanted, needed, craved like the dickens was cheese slices. Good old-fashioned KRAFT cheese food that is neither cheese nor food, and wrapped in thin pieces of plastic.

This is frankenfood, to be sure. But damn it…KRAFT cheese slices make a darn nice grilled cheese sammich. Those fake orange plastic slices melt so nice under the heat of my toaster oven. Pair this with tomato soup and I feel, for a moment, mom’s hug and everything is just simply going to be all right.

Like Pavlov’s dog, I salivate at the sound of the crinkling wrapper, ready to take the first one out of the covering and shove the perfect square whole and intact into my waiting maw. While the toaster oven warms up, another slice goes down the hatch and my comfort-o-meter begins to register that something good is happening.

I feel a moment’s regret. A slight remorse. What IS this crap I’m eating? Then the plastic wrapper rustles again and I’m loading slices up on bread in gleeful anticipation.

My dearest mom would likely shake her head to think that I could possibly equate this crap food with her comfort. It’s a complicated association, and one I’m not proud of. But there is no denying the simple addictive magic of the sugar/fat/salt combination of ingredients that KRAFT loves to peddle to us unsuspecting rubes.

Look, the only KRAFT item I love more than American cheese slices is a nice big brick of Velveeta. Oh yes. Oh so very yes.

There’s a sucker born every minute and I’m standing in that line.





Even Gourmet Magazine understands.


Photo from user name Lazarus-long, used under a Creative Commons license, and found on Wikipedia.

Today’s Theme Thursday is: brick. See how I slipped that one in there? I’m a sly dog.