Thirty Years Ago Tonight . . .

Thor, Tongue-Tied Cherry Stem Champ, 1976

Actually, the other one is the artist...

Walk-Ins Welcome! No Waiting!

(WordCount 83800-83805: herkimer spoerri narin orthoptic perioperative shotokan)

Mudslide: A One-Sentence Memoir

Too tired to drive the last hour to the mountains, we spent the night at a roadside campground, and so were not buried in the mudslide like the others.

Box in Hand

Rubber: A One-Sentence Memoir

I never dreamed I'd find myself dangling upside down in a hollow tree looking for a four-year-old Rubbermaid box with an eraser in it, but there I was.

The Choir of Babel Goes Caroling

Holly, Ribbon, Gift Wrap...

...and The Wild Sperms of Christmas precision holiday-swim team.

Akela: A 2entences Memoir

When the Cub Scout leader brought us a Christmas tree that his troop had decorated for the poor, he hinted that I might take him "upstairs" and thank him. Apparently he thought I was really, really, really poor.

'Twas Yust a Yoke, Yah?

Six-Word Memoir 2

Final analysis: considerably dumber than tested.


Play the game at SmithMag and Twitter.

Parsnippity

Six-Word Memoir

21,319 days... six were pretty good!


Play the game at SmithMag and Twitter.

Canvas Chair

It just doesn't get any more exciting than this...

Handcuffs: A 2entences Memoir

I suspect my boss was hoping to scandalize me when he called me over to look out the office window with him. Maybe he thought I'd never seen a naked man in handcuffs before.

What the Goose Did for Love

Failed Entrepreneur Mounts Comeback

Eastern Italian cowboy looks to the past to jumpstart new career...

(WordCount 38701-38703: ruggiero ranching ninja)

Jump: A One-Sentence Memoir

When he offered to bring over his jumper cables to help me out, I waited a year and a half before he showed up, and then it wasn't "I'm sorry" that he said, but rather, "I've just gotten married."

Why I Don't Draw

self-portrait, 13 October 1985

In 1985, I acquired a copy of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. This was my first attempt at drawing myself from looking in the mirror. Friends who saw the drawing laughed. "Your nose is not that long," they said, but even at this very moment, it doesn't look all that disproportionate to me.

That should seem stranger to me than it does, because I've just spent some time playing around with this in Paint Shop Pro. I layered a photo of myself over the drawing to see how the features lined up. My friends were right--the nose was laughably long. So I fooled around with it a little, using Paint Shop Pro to shorten it. In the throes of laughter over the length of the nose, nobody mentioned that my eyes are not that big either. And the rest of it was somewhat misaligned as well. One by one, I selected features, resized them a bit, and placed them in better alignment with the features in my photo.

In the two samples below, I used a mirror-image of the photo to see how it lined up with the drawing. The drawing, of course, is what I see in the mirror, while a photograph is what others see as they look at me, the opposite. By mirroring the photo, I was able to see how the right side of the drawing face lined up with the same side of my face in the photo, and likewise with the left.

Then I tried reconstructing using both sides of the face, a left and a right, to make a complete face.

Below is the drawing as it appears after the adjustments. I can see that it looks more proportionate than the original sketch, but I can't see that either drawing looks like me.

Out of curiosity, at some point I mirrored the drawing, to see whether it looked any more like the photo. I was stunned when I saw the mirrored version.

This face is totally lopsided! I don't think my actual face is this lopsided, although I know my right eye generally does not open as much as my left.

I think it's really weird that, even though I can see how lopsided the mirrored image is, neither the original image nor the modified image seems particularly lopsided to me.

Returning now to the first pair of images with photo overlays, both the mirrored right and the mirrored left seem to be shaped about right, so maybe I really am lopsided.

Huh... who knew!

Dinner: Ready When the Smoke Alarm Goes Off

Piquant Chickpea Salad

Drain and rinse the contents of:

two 15-oz. cans of chickpeas, a.k.a. garbanzo beans (if you've cooked some yourself, use about 3-4 cups for this recipe)

Put the beans in a bowl and add:

1/3 cup finely chopped onions (green or sweet)

In a shaker or separate bowl, combine:

1/3 cup red wine vinegar
3 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon parsley flakes
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/8 teaspoon pepper
salt to taste

Pour over bean & onion mixture. Chill several hours to blend flavors, stirring occasionally so all your beans get a chance to bathe in the glory.

I like to use green onions for the visual appeal. If I use sweet onion, I might add some sliced black olives to add the visual interest.

This is a nice salad to take to a potluck. You can make it the day before. Take it out of the fridge ahead of time and let it come back to room temperature for better flavor.

------------

This recipe is slightly tweaked from the original in one of my favorite cookbooks, Lean and Luscious and Meatless by Bobbie Hinman and Millie Snyder (c. 1992, Prima Publishing, Rocklin, CA).

Before Breakfast

Cream puffs have no meaning either.

LadyBug Asks Big Question in Haiku

Huey got boulder...
so, how come he is hiding
behind that big rock?

The True Purpose of a Brownie

click any walnut to fulfill purpose

(It's the Saco which gives these brownies their unique flavor.)

Looking for Mr. GoodBodhi

Ka-Ching

Cone of Silence

If a tree falls in the forest... well, what if it's just a cone that falls?

In 1987, I had no idea what kind of cone this was. Today I am amazed that I drew it well enough to recognize it in Trees of North America.

Flight: A One-Sentence Memoir

The summer I turned sixteen, he flew me over our neighborhood during the Fourth of July pool party, but that wasn't the time his plane went down.

Hot Water, Milk, Bottle o' Wine, Bottle, Bottle, Bottle

Bottle Chant

Pink plastic, clear contents
Clear plastic, pink contents
Blue crookneck squirtstreamer
Amber squatty pumptop
Golden shapely whiffguster
Green capped misternozzle
Stenchstopper pitroller
Wee trial vial

Pilfersafe snagnail cursevoker
Cc-countcap facepucker syrupsaver
Ol' red rubbersides pluggerstopper hotterglugger
Fingerpresser aerobomb

Waxcolor candledrippy basketsitter
Scarlet sunray sillsitter windowfiller
Narrowneck sugarwater budbloomer
Aquachug bottomneck upender

Old glass summermorning porchdripper winterfreeze crackeruptor
New white polylight marketheavy emptystomper
Wristready nipplesucker
Longnecker bulb

Steakslopper shakedropper
Fatbottom herbglopper
Old glass skinnyneck poundbottom blocker
New poly squeezesides flipcap spurtplopper

Oceanmotion messagebobber
Brown glass balloon
Roundbasket spiritcorker
Tall green sway

photo by Ernest von Rosen (somewhat taller now!)

... glug ...

Pumpkin Patch