off on vacation!

Dear Dear Readers,

I’ve been remiss the last couple of days in updating the blog, but I’ve been ABSORBED in my Trip! I am now in Chicago, and will be proceeding on to Omaha tomorrow, but let me tell you what has happened so far:

The train was a tad – but just a tad – late leaving Seattle: It comes in from Chicago in the morning, gets serviced, and turn right around and goes out. Since it was a bit late getting into Seattle, it was a little late leaving Seattle.

The colonel saw me off (the Greek was on the road), and before you know it, we were electroluxing up Puget Sound. This train, the Empire Builder, was recently upgraded by Amtrak, and the renovated cars are very nice – new carpets, upholstery, bathrooms, the whole nine yards. A glass of Champagne was offered and accepted, and I felt pretty smug about myself.

I had bought some Xmas lights and a little tree along with me, and proceeded to festoon the room, and became the talk of the train. Evidentially, not everyone does that!

Having had a nice lunch, I opted to skip dinner, and settled in with Jimmy Carter’s new book “Our Endangered Values” (which is excellent, btw) and I was asleep by the time we got to the Cascades Tunnel.

During the night we went to Spokane (where the Portland section of the train - with its cocktail car! - joined us) and I didn’t notice a thing until I woke up the next morning in Whitefish, Montana.

Whitefish is one of those cutesy towns that just get cutesier at Christmas. The old Great Northern Railroad Station is lovingly preserved, and people there wear cowboy hats without irony.

As the morning progressed, we proceeded through the Rocky Mountains, eventually bringing us into the high plains. Around 2pm, we hit Shelby, Montana, which is a service stop, which means we were there for about 30 minutes. I ran across the street to the lowly bar/casino, so I could snap a picture of J. James Hill (founder and president of the Great Northern Railroad, who the Empire Builder is named for)

Funny thing about the train – and this is true of almost every train I’ve ever been on – you see these small towns all along the line, and they all have small town bars, which look cozy as hell from the windows of the train.

By evening, we were into North Dakota, and passed through it while asleep (which is really the best way to go through North Dakota)

This morning I awoke in Minneapolis, where they were adding another coach to go to Chicago. We were running about 1.5 hours late, but that’s no biggie. The plan was that we would spend the morning and early afternoon running alongside the lovely Mississippi River before crossing over into Wisconsin, across to Milwaukee, and on into Chicago. Fate, however, was not into that.

At 11:30pm, the train got stopped due to a bad axle on one of the locomotives, and they had to set that locomotive out, which would leave us with only one locomotive (the second locomotive is for the mountains) It took three hours to swap that out, so we started running quite late. It was too bad, but sometimes that happens on Amtrak. And, as I have said time and again (and almost believe ;-) I would rather be stuck on a train than stuck on a tarmac. Actually, I do believe that. Tarmacs suck.

We arrived at Chicago Union Station at 7:09pm – three hours late, but not bad all things considered, and I proceeded to the Burnham Hotel. The Burnham is located right in the thick of things in the loop, and I will be hitting the neighborhood heavily. First to Marshall Fields (for the last time before it becomes a stupid tacky Macy’s) and onto the Palmer House for a nostalgic visit to Trader Vics before it closes.

Train 1 of 5 down. Not a bad trip so far. Off to Omaha tomorrow. I’ll keep you posted.

He gives the Irish a bad name.....

Poor Mr. O'Reilly nearly grew another blotch the other night in his sputtering indignation over THE WAR ON CHRISTMAS

As it turns out, the poor old dear was lying, or was sold a bill of goods. Not unusual: he's either a pathological liar or the most gullible of angry middle-aged cranks. Either way, why does anyone watch him.

Banquette!

I was going to write about some stupid racist people that irked me on one of my favorite websites, but I complain too much here, and why should I bum you out? Let me just say this: Anyone who thinks that "race is not an issue" in the United States is either a moron or a racist. Usually both. and I hate racists - particularly the ones that pretend they aren't. And we need a manadatory remedial course in American Government and civics for all adults.

But enough about that. Let's talk about Banquettes!



I picked this up off of Craigslist over the weekend. I think it's pretty cute, and imenently functional for our household. It also lets me look out the kitchen window, which is very nice, but I have to do something about those curtains (I got the sewing machine fixed, so maybe I'll sew me some half-assed curtains after the holidays)

I was concerned - and remain a tad concerned - that this is a little too kitschy 50's. You know what I mean: the whole "Denny's Diner" trashy faux-50's look. But I think I'll be able to pull it off without it becoming too much like that.

But that floor! I HATE that kitchen floor! If it were up to me, I'd just get out my scraper and scrape up all that ugly press-on tile, and see what the original linoleum looks like, but that's just the sort of thing that makes the colonel all tense and nervous.

Comments, anyone?

To appease Sylvia, who hates the girls in the typing pool, we now have comments on the blog. If things get out of hand, however, this privlige will be rescinded!

Vengence is ours?

My Catholic teachings are a bit fuzzy, but there is one thing I took from it: The power of redemption. The belief that a person can attone and receive forgiveness. Well, that doesn't seem to be the case in the good ol' yew ess of A.

Tookie Willams may or may not have done what he did - we'll never know. Personally, I think that the chances of a black guy or a poor guy getting an honest trial in this country are pretty much nil, so we'll never know for sure. But beyond that is the fact that he tried to attone, to do the right thing, and to keep people from making the same mistakes he has. And what did he get for it? Bupkis. And who did he get it from? A has-been movie star with big old man-boobs who balls are in hock to his red-meat, mouth-breathing base.

And one last thing, before we move back to furnishings and china: The schmucks who pontificate on the radio and around the water cooler with the timeless retort "Yeah, well what would you do if it were your (insert relative here) he killed?" Well, I know a wonderful family that had a darling daughter who was killed in a horrible, public way right after Thanksgiving several years back. When the killer was captured, did they scream in the public square for blood? No. Did they go from cable channel to cable channel to babble about closure? No. Suprisingly enough, they responded in an intelligent and thoughtful way, and made a simple, dignified statement about their desire for privacy, and their wish to have justice take its course.

Since the state they live in does not have the death penalty, every gun nut, every death penalty freak, every "Christian" weirdo took this as "opposition to the death penalty" and came out of the woodwork to call into radio shows and send them vicious, anonymous letters about how wrong they were. These simian freaks didn't give a fuck about the dead girl, they just wanted more blood.

My point is this: until that happens to you - and I hope it never does - you don't know how you'd react "if it were your (insert relative here)" And to try and even guess is morbid in the extreme. Show me someone who asks that rhetorical question, and I'll show you a real asshole.

I'm not a particularly religious person; certainly not in the organized religious sense. But I do put up my old nativity scene in my house every year. Partly from nostalgia, as it was my parents, but also because of the story behind it: A poor, working-class couple, forced by petty government regulations to take an unexpected and unbudgeted trip, which is further complicated by the impending birth of their first child.

Too poor for lodging, they wander around until a kindly soul takes pity on them and lets them stay in a stable, where the woman gives birth.

In this day and age of conspicuous consumption and "compassionate conservative" there is a lesson in that story for all of us.

Unfortunately, it's too often lost when these christian gasbags open their yaps.-

What are they THINKING with?

Bad, sad news out of Chicago. The Trader Vics in the Palmer House Hilton is CLOSING!

This is one of the original Trader Vics: It's been in the basement of the Palmer House since 1957 and is Fabulous, just Fabulous.

Now, this isn't just me being a nostalgic fart. The Palmer House is a very historic, very ornate hotel with just oodles of meeting space. But it has no good restaurants. Nothing with any pizazz: Just the obilgatory lobby bar, "sports bar" and some sort of lame steakhouse.

Trader Vics, each and every time I was ever there, was always packed with heavy drinkers. That is a hotel manager's wet dream, because you make your money on liquor.

Of course, Hilton wasn't getting the gravy on that - Trader Vics was. But there is no way that a company like Hilton will come up with anything near as cool as a Trader Vics. They'll probably just put in some lame health club or something.

But at least I'll get to be there one last time before it closes.

Press Conference

Now I've done it......

I thought it would be nice to use the Flair's "Cookmaster" feature (the one that allows you to put a delay start on the oven or the outlet) to start the coffee au-to-matic-ly on the mornings that the Colonel works. So I set it all up, tripped prettily to the Flair, plugged it into the convenience outlet, programmed the cookmaster, and went to bed.

I got up the next morning when the colonel did to see how it worked. It didn't. So I figured that I just set it wrong. So I went back to bed, and tried again that evening. It still didn't work.

So last night, I spent some quality time with the cookmaster, and it seemed just like that control thought it was an hour off from the clock (perhaps it forgot that it was no longer Daylight Savings Time) so I tried it again.

I woke up this morning and went to look. It still didn't work! so I started to slowly turn the "end time" control on the cookmaster. It came on at about 6, but was also making scary electrical noises, so I turned it to manual. Now neither the outlet OR the large oven works!!!!

But don't despair just yet: I had it on my list to take the front glass off and clean it anyway, so I will do that tomorrow AND take a look behind the scenes. I suspect it may just be a loose wire or bad switch. Worst case scenario, I will bypass the cookmaster entirely. No one will be the wiser (except for you guys, and you can keep a secret, right?)

I'll keep you posted.....

Sometimes I amaze myself.

A friend sent this to me. I had written it this summer in the posting area of a website called AmericaBlog.com, which is a fabulous blog, btw.

It's Ann Coulter's "bio". I had totally forgotten about it, and then I read it and thought "wow, who wrote that?". It turns out I did.

(note: the "bulldog" I refer to is Jeff Gannon, the gay hooker who posed as a reporter and had unprecedented access to the Bush White House. )


~~~~
The explanation of me is simple. I am the love child of Eva Braun and Joe McCarthy (strictly test tube, mind you) That's where I got my blonde, blonde hair and strong, "mannish" chin (as well as my penchant for Wild Turkey)

I was carried to term by Nancy Reagan, who was under contract to General Electic at the time.

I was raised in the test kitchens at Betty Crocker where a steady diet of Instant Mashed Potatoes and Chex Party Mix caused a chemical imbalance in my already fragile brain, causing a total mental collapse. While recovering, I was given a box set of the collected works of Ayn Rand by Phyllis Schlaffley. My destiny seemed clear. I too would write bad romance novels that people would mistake for political manifestos!

One day, as I sat laughing at the homeless in DuPont Circle, I saw the man who would change my life. His bald, bald head and military drag drew me to him like a moth to a flame.

"What's Your name, gorgeous?" I asked him.

"Sorry, I'm not into drag queens" he replied.

"That won't be a problem" I said, as I pulled out the ether spray I always keep handy.

And that's the story of how Bulldog and I met. Our love, while perhaps a bit unconventional, is nothing abnormal, as others have suggested. He's 100% man, and our sex life is amazing. Just as long as I remember to wear that Reagan mask.

Ayn Rand is a pain in the ass

A dear friend of mine posted a blurb in my guestbook a while back that said, in part "I was brushing up on my Objectivist Theory and related musings of Ayn Rand, and for some odd reason, Dan Langdon popped into my head"

Odd Indeed. I remember being somewhat mystified at the time, but wrote it off as part of her eccentricity (She's a darling girl, but a little too far to the right in politics for being the intelligent person she is. I just hope that her child turns out to be a flaming liberal.) Anyway, this popped into MY head because the other day I heard a program from the Ayn Rand Society (or some such nonsense) and it occured to me that there really are people who take her writings seriously. I mean, you always hear about them, but you assume that they're just overly earnest college Sophmores, and that they will snap out of it. Apparently not.

Ayn Rand, as you may know, wrote a series of hugely boring and overly long novels in the 30's or 40's glorifying self-interest. Actually, I'm not being fair: "The Fountainhead" would be a perfectly nice romance novel about architects if you took out the incredibly long speeches by Howard Roark and Ellsworth Toohey. But to the Randians (or whatever they call themselves) that's the best part.

Rand, like Ronald Reagan (who I used to think was the worst president ever until THIS one came down the pike) makes greedy people feel good about themselves, and legitimizes their baser instincts. Rand makes them feel smart by presenting them with big long books that are actually somewhat readable, while Reagan put a kindly face to being a selfish jerk. Neither of them were what I would consider a positive development for mankind.

I have never been on welfare, or receieved unemployment compensation, or student grants or any of the "giveaways" that people like Rand or Reagan deride (and I hope I never am in that position), yet I am fully supportive of these programs. The main reason is that I think we are wealthy enough as a nation to take care of everyone, but the other reason is this: When a nation becomes divided into greedy jerks with money, and lots of poor people without, people end up dead. Rand, a refugee from the Soviet Communists, should have realized that, but like I said, she was greedy, and not too bright.

So it just goes to show you that some people will buy anything if it makes them feel OK about being a jerk, when it would be much easier to just stop being a jerk.

OMG - I'm in love with a Lesbian!

I keep meaning to tell you this. I am just in adoration of Rachel Maddow - the host of Air America's "Rachel Maddow Show". She is intelligent and insightful, and very funny to boot. If you aren't much of a "newsy" person, she is perfect - her show is only about an hour long with commercials, and very easy to digest.

A Very Stylish Girl i know somewhat shocked me by casually saying that Air America is as bad as Limbaugh (or something to that effect - we were both drunk). She should really, really, really check Rachel out. Not because she's a lesbian (the stylish girl, that is - because she isn't a lesbian. She's too stylish. Not that lesbians can't be stylish, but... oh, never mind) I think she would appreciate Rachel's insights.

Anyone who might be up early doing their beauty regime would probably like her also. She's on hellishly early, but I listen to her podcast when I get home.

Midwestern housewives would like her also. And I think that just about covers the readership of this blog.

Tacky Tacky Christians

As usual, the denser among us (and in America that means fundamentalist Christians) have missed the point. The latest rage in the Bible set is to get your panties in a bunch about stores that use "Happy Holidays" in their advertising, instead of "Merry Christmas"

Now, just think about that for a moment.

Jesus, whether divine or not, had a basic message about helping the poor, and treating people nice. Do unto others, and all that jazz. In all the years I went to church (and we went to church a lot) I don't remember ANY gospel about using the right terminology when shopping.

If anything, you'd think these "Christians" would be a little embarrased with how tacky everything has gotten at Christmas, and might be telling people to chill out a bit. But no - that would not play into the current vogue of the victimized Christian.

But it's all part of what I call "Smelly Fart Christianity": Make a big stink to show how pious you are, then go out and screw over your neighbor.

In other news, our office charity this year is the Friends of King County Animal Shelter. One of the things the need is called KRM - Kitty replacement milk. It's for the kittys who don't have mother cats to nurse them. I'd never realized that was a problem before.

They also want (among other things) baby wipes, used pet carriers and (clean) old towels. Not to mention good old-fashioned cash to defray the cost of vet care. So if you are feeling charitable, check 'em out at http://www.friendsofkcac.com/

I want one of these

I always said I'd never have a TV in the living room, but these are just too cool.

The "holiday" model please.......

Attic Access

The new house has a full attic, but the only way to get to it is through a smallish trap door in the bedroom closet. Not only is it a bitch to squeeze into (I'm not as young or as petite as I used to be, believe it or not) it also assures that everything in the closet will get coated in stray insulation.

The colonel has a friend who is a carpenter, and he is going to install one of those pull down ladders. Ideally, I'd like to have it done before the holiday season is over, and while the Greek is out of town, but trying to pin the colonel down on these things can be tricky, as he tends to get testy when nagged (not that I "nag" - it's more of a "melodious re-asking", but the nuances is lost on many)

In the meantime, everything that could be up in the attic, minding its own business, is now in the garage (along with the colonel's four lawn mowers and three bikes) which means we can't put a car in the garage. It's all a huge mess, but what can you do?

And if that weren't bad enough, I tried to make a fondue last night, and it was a disaster!

Vulgar, Vulgar People.....

Really, all politics aside, these people are just unpleasant and vulgar. How can they live with themselves?



First, we have Ann Coulter. What the hell is she anyway? Is she a drag queen? A transexual? Whatever she is, she's a nasty skank, yet we're supposed to believe she's some sort of sex symbol. The only person she could possibly appeal to would be a college republican, and who wants to be sleep with a College Republican?

Then there's Bill O'Reilly. If I want to listen to an angry middle-aged guy drone on about his dreary worldview, I'd go to the bar at the Omaha airport.

Finally, there's Robertson. Why can't we just state the obvious: THE MAN IS CRAZY! I seriously think he might be experiencing dementia. Can someone PLEASE do a senior evaluation on him? I think he needs some meds.

These people are just hateful, nasty people. We used to be better than to give trash like this airtime, but now even The Today Show puts O'Reilly on like he was some sort of expert, instead of the small-dicked bully that he is.

Sorry, these people just bug the hell out of me, and I needed to get that off my chest.

How to make a Dork's Day

I purchased a new (to me) sideboard by my favorite designer, Paul McCobb. (You know Paul McCobb don't you? He's the last word in furniture designers. He died ages ago) It replaced a piece that I had that was exactly like it, except it had significant water damage thanks to it's loutish former owners.

Anyway, I go to pick the thing up, and imagine my suprise and delight. IT HAD A TAG ON IT FROM FREDERICK & NELSON!!!!

Frederick & Nelson, as any CHILD could tell you, was THE classy department store in Seattle. It was a division of Marshall Fields until they spun it off to make some money to fight the hostile takeover by Target corporation (they lost). IF they had just held on to F&N, we'd now have a downtown Seattle with a Marshall Fields (soon to be Macy's) and a Macy's. Wouldn't that be weird?

F&N bowed out in the 90's, and nobody really noticed except for me and some old ladies. The downtown store sat empy for a few years until Nordstrom bought it and converted into their "flagship" store. While it is admirable that they saved the building, and Nordstrom is certainly a fine institutuion (Hear that, Sylvia?) It is mystifying to me how Nordstrom could have taken a lovely building, full of character and with many original fixtures, and turned it into a bland "mall-esque" store. There is NOTHING interesting about the store now, which is a shame, but that's part of the whole Nordstrom/Seattle inferiority complex thing that I've written about before.

Anyway, Here are the tags. I am the happiest old lady in the world this morning!

HoLiDaY HaPpEnNiNgS!

The colonel is quite pre-occupied this month with yet another crushing responsibility: He is dogsitting these ridiculous dogs that live down by the airport.

These dogs - we call them "The Griswalds" have absolutely no pizzazz. Unlike Shadow and Crackers, they just sit there. They are ex-showdogs, which is sort of like being and ex-Ziegfield girl, but without all the stories. They are also quite large and eldery, and require various drops and sprays, which means that this gig is much more complicated than the usual "fill the bowls and pick up the poop" duties inherenent in dogsitting.

So it will be me and the livestock at home for the next week or so, as the Greek is coming back on Saturday, and going out on the train again on Sunday. On the 19th, I depart for my customary holidayAmtrak trip, returning on New Year's Day.

But it's a constant social whirl prior to that: On the 9th, I have both the office Christmas Luncheon AND Catalina Vel-DuRay's office party (and evening affair). On the 12th, I have the Beacon Hill Neighborhood Holiday Potluck. Since the neighbors all look to me for hints and tips on being a high-class person, it's my duty to attend.

I'm sure I'll just collapse from fatigue once I'm on the train, and shall have to be coddled and cooed over by the crew on the train, but that's why I go first class.