Two pumpkins, some strategically placed holes in their skin and flesh, fire raging in their heads, and there you have it – Jack O’Lanterns
On The Road
I spent a good part of the day on Phoenix freeways shuttling my great aunt Eleanor to and from the emergency room at Good Samaritan Hospital. Sharp pain in the calf, with a swollen knee and the inability to step on her foot, indicated she might be having a blood clot. Fortunately, it was not that serious, but it turned out to be inflammation brought on by a previous injury from decades earlier being made worse by arthritis. Ice packs, rest, and ibuprofen were the prescription.
Another Day in Tucson, Arizona
Another visit to see the Silvas in Tucson, Arizona. Our stop last month was too short; matter of fact, we only had moments on the street talking with Guadalupe, who was taking her daughters Melissa and Sophia (above) to Sunday school. Arturo was home, but we would only chat with him for about an hour and a half before we had to leave, and he would join his family at church.
As with our last drive south, this one, too, included seeing a movie. Today’s flick was the Japanese film Kamikaze Girls being shown at the Loft Cinema. Arturo came with us for this subtitled, candy-colored sweety girl film, although I offered plenty of opportunities to pass on joining us. He insisted on joining and even laughed during the screening.
Kamikaze Girls follows two high school students, one a Rococo aficionado who dresses lolita style, the other a Yanki who, like a tough biker chick, tries hard to put it on while sputtering about on her tricked-out scooter. The movie is visually a punch to the senses, and the story is a nice rendition of the need to do your own thing.
Instead of driving back immediately to Phoenix after the movie, as we did in September, this evening we made reservations for dinner together, and so we drove back to Arturo’s home just before sunset. Our reservation was not until 7:30, so we talked a while before leaving.
Caroline, Sophia, and Melissa (above) played piano for a while, and Sophia also gave me a spelling lesson proving that not only could she spell echolocation, but she knew what it was – that’s one smart second grader. Melissa spent most of her time reading a new book she bought today called Inkspell by Cornelia Funke.
When we arrived earlier in the day, Arturo’s mother, who lives with the family, was busy tutoring two art students. Inez is an artist who, when not painting, takes on students to help them learn the craft. This painting of Frida Kahlo is one of a few hanging in the front room of the Silva house that Inez has painted. There are also paintings of Arturo and Arturito. One painting of a reclining woman is now dressed; hmmm, I don’t remember her wearing that shirt as the painting was being finished. Inez is also turning her attention to knitting and showed us a nice shawl she recently completed.
On to dinner, and what a long dinner it was. We had discussed eating at either La Paria Suiza, P.F. Chang’s, or The Melting Pot, then offered the deciding choice to Guadalupe, and she opted for The Melting Pot. This place is popular on the weekend as we called early in the afternoon to reserve a table at six, and the first we could book was for 7:30.
Just choosing from all the options took us nearly a half hour, but as soon as things got moving, we thoroughly enjoyed the dinner. Well, all of us except the two girls who found this a little too weird. Fortunately, we were able to keep them interested as we described the chocolate fondue dessert that was yet to be served.
For two long hours, Melissa and Sophia Silva waited with great patience for the adults to eat the yucky food before the chocolate fondue arrived. Like a bat finding its dinner with echolocation, the girls’ skills at precision chocolate dipping and finding their mouths had them looking like professional fonduers. Now energized, happy, and quickly becoming gastronomically satisfied, our three-hour stuffing at the Melting Pot in Tucson, Arizona, was over.
Here is dessert, and the long faces disappear. Our visit lasted all day with the Silvas but hasn’t yet included an overnight, although we have been invited a dozen times. This past year has seen the fewest occasions of coming together for a bite to eat or chat; this will hopefully not be the story for the coming year, as we always enjoy our visits to Tucson with the Silvas.
No Backup?
For the second time this year, I nearly lost my blog. The first time was due to a hard drive failure in a RAID that went horribly wrong, and this evening, it was due to human error when a database was copied the wrong way. Panic ensued as the last backup was August 29th (the disk above is blank and, as an afterthought, is less than helpful), but then Caroline remembered that we made a copy of my site on a notebook to take to Santa Barbara for showing family, this brought me up to September 14th. With the help of Google Cache, Yahoo Cache, and a program called Cache View for looking at the cache on a local hard drive, we have been able to pull nearly everything back together. One story is missing; I had to rewrite descriptions for five photos of the day.
So, my site may take a few more days until everything is massaged back into place, you can bet that backups become more frequent and thorough.
Aunt Eleanor
Aunt Eleanor is out on the balcony, taking some sun in Peoria, Arizona. Lately, I have been visiting three to five days a week, helping out with food preparation, cleaning dishes, general housekeeping, laundry, taking her to the doctor, or whatever else she might need to make her 93rd year just a little easier.
Aunt Eleanor was born in 1912. During that year, Woodrow Wilson was elected the 28th President of the United States. In contrast, George W. Bush is the 43rd. The Titanic sinks. New Mexico and Arizona become our 47th and 48th states. Robert F. Scott reaches the South Pole. The Life Savers candy and Dixie Cup are invented. The Warner Brothers begin producing films. First Japanese cherry blossom trees planted in Washington D.C. Wilbur Wright, the aviation pioneer dies. The first foreign film is shown in the U.S. – “Queen Elizabeth” in New York City. Tarzan of the Apes is published. 1st person to parachute from an airplane occurs. The newspaper Pravda starts publishing. Alaska, not yet a state, is organized as a territory.
Little Farm in Gilbert
This bowl of fruit, vegetables, and herbs is a sampling of our first delivery of an expected total of thirty-one from the Little Farm in Gilbert. The Little Farm in Gilbert is a CSA or Community Supported Agriculture operation that, through word of mouth, attracts subscribers who pay $16 a week to receive varying selections of fresh foods depending on what is coming in from October 26 through June 7, 2006. Today’s bag included two ears of corn, six Japanese eggplants, three peppers, six pears, a bunch of carrots, approximately a pound each of lettuce and spinach, and a healthy portion of sweetly aromatic basil.
For the next 30 deliveries, we can look forward to locally grown pesticide-free fresh radishes, turnips, Chinese cabbage, garlic, turnips, kohlrabi, onions, lemons, pak choi, parsley, cauliflower, snow peas, beets, escarole, fennel, asparagus, chard, broccoli, arugula, sorrel, cucumbers, squash, and sage in addition to the items in today’s shipment. Tomatoes and beans have been scratched from the list because the crop didn’t make it – a risk of pesticide-free farming. No matter, though; the rest looks great, and wow, how nice it is to buy veggies that actually have a smell to them.