It's Harley Time!

Milwaukee is a great place, and especially this weekend for the Harley Davidson 105th Anniversary. I, of course, won't be around for the bulk of it, but even just the taste is pretty good. Last night on the way back from the airport, there was clearly a rumble in the air and WAY more motorcycles on the road than usual.

This afternoon I'm working from Panera and it is definitely not the standard Panera crowd. There are the senior citizens, the moms with their pre-schoolers, and the riders. One woman just walked in looking every bit the soccer mom carrying a big black helmet. And there are clearly many other riders here as evidenced by more leather boots that one would usually see on a Friday afternoon here. And, I'm sitting at a window by the street - it's loud with the rumble of bikes and pretty hard to get work done because the different bikes are just so interesting to look at - not to mention it's all really, really cool.

Too bad I didn't pass my motorcycle class.

Go Figure

I'm in DC and getting on the train this morning. I was going to sit in a seat by the door but I noticed a man with a white cane and big yellow safety goggles on. Being the well-mannered person that I am, I moved out of the way to let him sit where he wanted and figured I would sit down after him.

He moved to the middle of the car so I sat in the seat by the door. Ten minutes later I look up and the man is reading the newspaper. Huh? I know there is probably a perfectly good explanation for this - I just don't know what it is.

There are certain people....

I'm in a cafe right now and it's pretty busy. There are the requisite screaming kids accompanied by their parents who are pretending to be oblivious, a few of us still working despite traditional business hours being long over, and a few other interesting souls - like the man who got a small cup of coffee and is playing solitaire and gets up every few minutes to raid the samples of bread.

And I see, once again, that there are certain people who can pull off different looks and many, many others who cannot.

For example, one woman who just picked up her food is wearing a pinkish looking track suit. Except the pants are really more capri length. I could go on, but really, it just doesn't work. Doing yoga in the privacy of her own home - fine. Out in public - not so fine. And she's not old - she has no excuse for not being able to see how this looks on her. And then there's the woman who's wearing a blue fitted skirt with big orange flowers on the front and back. If I saw this on the rack, I would understand why it was on sale, but for some reason, this works on her.
There's another trio sitting in a booth - a mother and her two children. The daughter looks exactly like the mother, which is unfortunate because the mother never learned to use anti-frizz product in her hair and therefore neither has the daughter. I know, call me mean, but I'm just telling it like I see it.

One of the people who works here is starting to put away the outdoor tables, chairs and umbrellas. I'm not sure if he can tell as he's dancing to his own beat that we can all see him. He's been dancing for a few minutes now, sometimes using the chairs as props. I'm not sure he's the one I'd like to make my salad....

Too Much Fruit

I found Pete's. It's a produce store on the South side of Milwaukee that is located in the Hispanic part of the city. That's only relevent because I think I was one of the only non-Spanish speaking customers in the store yesterday afternoon.

Now you might ask, why go all the way to the South side of town just to buy produce (let's be real, I live in Milwaukee - it's just not so far!). Well, first of all, this is the only real produce store in town. Other than this, it's the regular supermarkets or the co-op or Trader Joe's. Not that there's anything wrong with those places, but I was looking for a different kind of experience.

I found it.

They sell baskets of things (tomatoes, plums, peppers, grapes, in addition to other things I couldn't identify) for $2 or $3. Not per pound, but per basket. So you can't help but buy baskets of things. You can also buy them by the pound, but somehow it doesn't make sense to pay whatever the cost is per pound for plums when you can get 25 of them for $3, right?

And there in lies the problem.

I now have 25 plums. And a cantalope and a honeydew, some apples, maybe 15 tomatoes, and a bunch of peppers, an eggplant, some grapes, and a jicama. Yes, a jicama. And a husband who might eat an apple and who tasted a piece of honeydew this morning. I'm clearly in trouble.

Food at Camp

I kid you not - this was dinner last week at camp: cheddar broccoli soup, macaroni and cheese, ziti with sun-dried tomators, salmon cakes, corn bread, and apple crisp. Except for the tomatoes and very tiny green flecks in the soup, everything was yellow. I did not try the ziti or the corn bread but can confirm reports that the macaroni and cheese was excellent.

Reflections on Karaoke

Until last night, I'd never actually been to a karaoke night. Now I know why and I learned a lot.

1. The people who really can sing are nice to listen to, but boring. The people who can't sing aren't boring, but they also aren't nice to listen to.

2. I learned that even when the words are flashed on the screen in front of you, people still don't know how to to put them into the music - even for common, popular songs.

3. I learned a lot about the people in our group. Songs from Grease and the 50's were popular for some reason, as were a few country/western songs. That alone was pretty bizarre. And then there are the groups that go up and really have no business being anywhere near a microphone. But they honestly think that they can sing. This is a YouTube video waiting to happen.

4. I also learned that I am a decent emcee. Not too much harassing of the so-called talent, and definitely not too little. Plus, I got a few people who never expected to be on stage, on stage. Like our president. And the observer sent from a major philanthropic foundation. After that, I was hoping I hadn't cost us a huge grant.....

5. Lastly, I learned that the true colors of some people come out. They might be singing songs from Broadway musicals with a group, but then they are channeling Lynyrd Skynyrd when they're singing alone. Truly fascinating.

Rockerbox in Milwaukee

We were wandering around old neighborhood this afternoon and came across some closed off streets, a LOT of motorcycles parked, and a band. This was Rockerbox. There was a bike show, all the people that went with all of those bikes, vendors, and music. What made this a particularly typical Milwaukee event was that nearly everyone was walking around with a beer in hand and for a fairly hot summer day - there were a lot of people wearing leather. Even the kids had cans in their hands which actually (and surprisingly) appeared to generally be soda.

As we walked around we realized several things:

• There seemed to be pre-set tattoo minimum for anyone walking around either carrying a beer or wearing leather. I couldn't tell exactly, but that number seems to be somewhere between 4 and 17.
• Vintage records, falafel and schwarma, funny t-shirts and vegan brats make for fairly interesting vendors - and that doesn't include all of the motorcycle-related tents.
• Someone is making purple port-o-potties. I thought they were all blue and I was clearly mistaken.
• We are not very cool people.

Airports are NOT Casinos

I have a friend who believes that airports are like casinos. She's never actually been to a casino, but she's heard enough to know that there are no clocks, they are loud, bright and constantly in motion. There are clocks in airports, but you generally have to search for the time on the bottom of the monitors, and so I'll give her that point, since you'd have to get up and go look for the time if you needed to know and didn't have a watch or cell phone (or a friend with a watch or cell phone).

But, according to my friend, the most important similarity is that because of the constant motion and people and lights, you are automatically awake in both environments, even if it's the middle of the night.

I am here to say that is just not true. In fact, it's so not true that I almost missed my flight last night. I closed my eyes for a little while, wasn't actually asleep, but definitely lost track of time for long enough to open my eyes when the plane was nearly fully boarded. Had I had interesting people to watch, or slot machines to play, maybe I may have been able to force myself to be wide awake, but really, there's only a very, very small chance of that.

Airports are loud, and there are too many people, but it's not enough to keep you (or me) awake in the middle of the night. At least at a casino the people are interesting to watch - especially in the middle of the night.

And in case anyone is wondering, there were no celebrities on my flight that I could tell, at least not from my middle seat way in the back of the plane.

Crocs in LA

People in LA do not seem to be wearing Crocs. That's ok with me, but I feel a little out of place. I wore mine on the plane here, and I'm pretty sure I was the only person doing so. Everyone else was either dressed to the nines (after all they are coming to LA), or wearing grungy clothes and flip flops. Really - those were the two options - high heels or flip flops. And there I was in my Crocs. Oh well.

Ginormous Boca Burgers

Several weeks ago, I bought a box of 16 Boca Burgers at Costco. They've been languishing in our freezer ever since. I go through phases of eating them and evidently when I bought them, the phase was ending.

The phase is now starting up again and for lunch I pulled a burger out the box. It looked abnormally large. So I pulled out another and lo and behold, it was the same size. I thought maybe I was misremembering their size and was maybe thinking of some other brand of veggie burger. But I was pretty sure I wasn't.

I think that a minute in the microwave is about how long they take to heat up. But not this one - it needed another 30 seconds. Still - I thought maybe I was off on the time. But then - I finally discovered proof that this box contained Boca Burgers that were too big. "What?" you ask. Well, it turns out I needed 6 or 7 pickles to cover the burger rather than 4 or 5 (if you can find a really tiny one to go in the middle).

But still, this was strange. I looked at the box - Original Vegan Boca Burgers, 100 calories. I went on-line. Sure enough, the Boca Burgers that come in the regular packages of 4 are 70 calories. It turns out that the big burgers ones are the ones restaurants use when they serve Boca Burgers.

Who knew?! And of course, It doesn't hurt that I was right about it being a bigger burger and taking longer in the microwave. And the extra pickles were good, too!

Respite from the Heat

Who knew that respite from the heat could be found at a grocery store. We were working on some last minute cleaning of the rental house this morning and we were soaked with sweat. But I was also working my real job and had a conference call to be on at noon. When beads of sweat are rolling down ones face, it's not so conducive to focusing on what other people have to say. It's not so conducive to anything really, plus, it could probably short out my phone.



Thankfully, two blocks away is a grocery store. And, given that we live in the modern era, it was a very air conditioned store and a great place to take my call. And of course, right before the call I needed to get something to drink. So I'm waiting in the 15 items or less line with my Diet Dr. Pepper and looking at what everyone else has in their baskets (because I do that).



The man in front of me had a New York Times and a tub of the generic equivalent to Cool Whip. That was definitely not a combination I expected to see. And the woman in front of him had a lot of things (probably well over 15!) including 2 cans of Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup. I can understand eating gazpacho in the heat, but definitely not chicken noodle soup!



The problem with this store - it was too cold. So I had to keep walking outside to warm up. And, there was no where to sit inside, so being outside was actually better because at least there was a semi-comfortable bench (made out of 31,000 recycled plastic bags). That bench was worth not using re-usable bags right there!

Popcorn

I've learned that you can make airpop popcorn in the microwave. And then you can put a mix of cinnamon and splenda on it. And I've learned that this is very good. I can't remember where I learned this, but they say you learn something new every day. Of course, I learned this a few days ago...

Not a Dead Man

Sunday we went to the zoo in Madison. It's a pretty small zoo, but a nice place to walk around. The spaces for the animals are pretty small and that's not so good but if you can get past that, it's a pleasant enough place.

Right in front of the Herpetarium we saw a man collapsing. He had two people (his brother and sister-in-law) holding him by the arms and taking him over to a bench. He had no strength in his legs at all. There were a lot of people around and so after offering our bottles of water (they were refused), we got out of the way. Someone else was already dialing 911, and soon after they laid him on the ground and started CPR. We moved farther away.

It seems like it took 10 minutes for the ambulance to arrive. A few minutes later he was on a gurney and in the back. But he didn't have an oxygen mask on and it was clear they hadn't done anything to him. His sister-in-law was walking around a little dazed and his brother was with the kids. Given the CPR and the time it took for the ambulance to get there and the lack of any work on him we were certain we had just watched a man die.

A while later I saw a zoo keeper and I asked him about the man. It turns out that the CPR worked and that he was doing fine and even joking about the fact that there wasn't a pillow on the stretcher. We didn't see him talking or laughing but we decided to trust the zoo keeper (because if you can't trust a zoo keeper, who can you trust?!) and believe that we did not witness a man die.

Whad'ya Know?

We went to a taping of Michael Feldman's Whadya Know today. The tickets were only $5, which is pretty reasonable especially since they have free donuts and coffee while you wait. There were only about 150 people (max) in the audience so I figured my chances of getting a question on air or even being a contestant were good. I was woefully mistaken. I had a great question on my card. In fact, I had three of them.

My first question was, "What's the most interesting place have you been and what did you learn there?" Technically that's two questions, but I was pretty sure that would matter. My second question was inspired by the woman selling show regalia outside the theater. They had nice sweatshirts and I thought about buying one for Ronnie. So I asked how much they were. She replied, "$40." I mentioned that I thought that was a lot for a sweatshirt. She then told me that they don't believe in using sweatshop labor and therefore everything was made in America and cost more. Ok, I wasn't asking for a political discourse - I was just commenting on the price of the sweatshirts! So my second question was also two questions and was: why don't you believe in sweatshop labor and if you don't have your shirts made there how are the people who work there going to earn a living?

My third question came from Ronnie who asked "What's your favorite Federalist paper?"

I didn't get chosen to play the game or read the rules before the show. And he didn't answer my question. At least the coffee was good.

More on the Felters

This morning is clearly the last day of their conference. Many of the women at breakfast were wearing their purple "2008 Midwest Felting Symposium" t-shirts. The back of the t-shirt read "If you don't behave, we'll felt you". I have no idea what this means, but it seems kind of negative, don't you think?

We did see a few more women under the age of 60 today who were also clearly felters. And one who wasn't white (and no, she wasn't one of the Tibetan's gone astray). As far as I could tell, no one was under 40, or 38 at the absolute youngest. One woman had a felt watch band (sort of interesting looking from a distance), another had a felt backpack (not sure how that holds up in the rain) and yet another had a felt necklace of sorts that was hideous. Really.

Felters and the Dalai Lama

I'm spending the weekend in Madison, WI with a friend. Our hotel is right next door to the main convention space in town. The big to-do there this weekend is a Felting Convention, which means a lot of them are staying at our hotel. You can spot them a mile away. In addition to the hand-written nametags, they all have appliques on their shirts. It appears that only some are actually felt, and most of them involve puffy paints and sequins. With one dreadlocked woman who looked to be in her 40s, everyone else I saw is easily 60 years old, which then explains the puffy paints and sequins. I'm not sure how or why, but it does. It should be noted that the 40-something woman with dreadlocks was wearing a patchwork-y jumper kind of thing. She looked more like a textile arts person than someone who only works with felt (from my extremely limited knowledge of felters).

And here's another thing - the organization has enough money to hold their conference at a fairly large venue, but not enough to print real nametags for everyone? Maybe they're hoping it feels more "folksy", but it doesn't look like it (in case any of them are reading and wanted to know what I thought).

The Dalai Lama just left Madison and some of his aderents are still here, in our hotel, with us and the felters. We've got the men in red skirts (long, looks like they're made of linen) and red shirts, and the other people who look Tibetan. They aren't wearing red or saffron robes or dressed any differently than us, but they look like the pictures I've seen of Tibetans. And no, they aren't sherpas.

The hotel hosts a happy hour from 5:30 - 7pm each night. Needless to say it was a fascinating crowd waiting in line for Miller Lite and cheap wine. And in case you were wondering, I was drinking Diet Pepsi in my black pants and black and white shirt which was neither boasted an applique or a red linen skirt or saffron robe.

DC Weather and Pluots and Sprechers, Oh My!

No, these three things have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

I landed in DC, got off the plane, walked outside and was hit by a wall of heat. And not just heat, but humidity, too. It is hot here! I don't know how people live here. It's pretty hot in Milwaukee right now, but nothing like this. Thankfully, there is air conditioning where I am staying and while I am not a fan of air conditioning in general, I would chalk this up to a life-saving measure for today.

I bought two pluots today. They are some sort of hybrid between a plum and an apricot, but more plum than apricot. Evidently the hybrid of more apricot than plum is called an aprium. Really. Look it up. I wasn't sure what it would taste like and I figured if I liked it, I should have another one on hand. (If I didn't, I was just going to leave it in the fridge where I'm staying and pretend I knew nothing about how it got there.) It has a smooth skin like a plum, and it was brownish-yellowish. Imagine my surprise when I took a bite and found watermelon red fruit inside. I think it tastes plummy - I'm not sure where the apricot part is hiding, which is ok with me since I don't love apricots....

This weekend we went to the Sprecher's Brewery. It was a good tour, and at the end, there is the requisite tasting room. I'm not a huge beer fan and since they also make really, really good sodas, so it's never a problem of not having anything to drink when we go. There was one beverage the tour guide mentioned called Triple X. She said it was something (I missed exactly what it was that this is) that was aged in bourbon barrels. When bottled, it's about 5% alcohol.

I figured I should try this. Whereas they give you a full glass (albeit small) of the beers and sodas, they only give about a 1/2 inch of this Triple X. This stuff was excellent! It was like carbonated bourbon, except I know that sounds terrible and this was anything but. It's only sold at their factory and they recommended that it be consumed soon after opening. I didn't buy any, but I might need to go back.

On a soda note, they are now making a soda called Raven Red, that has Wisconsin cranberries, cherries and ginseng in it. Not only was it tasty, but we were told it makes an excellent sangria when combined with cheap red wine and some fruit. It's also supposed to be a good mixer with nearly every kind of alcohol that you might want mixed.

Le Tour du Shorewood

The Shorewood Criterium rolled through our small village yesterday and there is only one word for it - wow. Our house was located smack dab in the middle of the race so by default, the race was the only place to be.

The streets were blocked off by about 3:30pm and the first race didn't start until about 5pm. Evidently that was about 30 minutes later than expected and the delay was due to a crash at a different bike race across town. The women were doing 20 laps of a 1.3 mile course. About lap 5 or 6, the race was stopped for a good 30 minutes to take care of a serious crash. 10 riders went down, 3 were injured and 1 was taken to the hospital. Of course, that took place on the other side of the loop and we were watching from the start/finish line on the main street running through the village.

And 30 minutes later, the women started off to finish the race. It was fascinating. All of the things that you hear about in the Tour de France, but on a smaller scale and with no huge mountains to climb. Plus, since they were going in a loop, you actually got to see them every few minutes and who was now in which position in the pelaton.

The kids race began immediately after. The kids rode the same loop, and only the one loop. They youngest was three and the oldest about 8 would be my guess. Some kids were on tricycles, and they looked determined - to win or finish I don't know, but they were pretty cute.

We decided not to stay for the men's race. BIG MISTAKE! 10 minutes later we had to go to a friends car (that parked outside the loop) and saw the men go by. Needless to say we didn't go home for the next 2 and a half hours. This was serious racing. A huge field of men's professional racing. I'd had no idea what we could have missed.

Every time the pel0ton went by, we would naturally stop and watch. Plus, it made for a very good breeze on a very hot day. In front of one neighbor's house, the woman I was standing next to said, "mmm. Spandex". That was probably the funniest moment of the race.

We were also watching them on the other side of the loop (where the crash had been during the women's race), so the street was narrower and so they were that much closer. They are fast! And the peloton was a full three blocks long. Around lap 30, a break-away group of 4 made it's way forward and by the end had a full 1/2 loop lead on the rest of the field.

They man driving the lead car drove not only the men's race (50 laps) but also the women's - in the same direction, the same 1.3 mile loop, basically for 3 and a 1/2 hours. I think he probably had a crick in his neck by the end. And he had to drive pretty fast - especially for the men.

The other nice thing was that at least on the neighborhood side of the race, everyone brought out their lawn chairs, a lot of people set up barbeques if not full out picnics, and everyone was just hanging out and doing the Shorewood version of tailgaiting. That was pretty nice. We talked to a few neighbors, played with some dogs and declined the offer of shrimp cocktail.

How Not to Work and Run Errands

It's hot in Milwaukee today. Somewhere in the 90's I would guess even though the official reading right now is only 86. For a change, I was going out for lunch, which, on a day like today, is a nice thing to do being that most restaurants have at least minimal air conditioning.

Afterwards, I get in my car. My very hot car which has been baking for the past 90 minutes in direct sunlight. Lovely. And since it's so hot, I decide that I'll stop at the grocery store on the way home so I don't have to go out later. It's the regular grocery store - the one I rarely go to, but I need sliced dill sandwich pickles to go with the 16 Boca Burgers we bought at Costco over the weekend and Trader Joe's doesn't carry them. And I need diced tomatoes for the black bean soup I'm going to be making, which I could get at Trader Joe's but I'm not about to make a special trip just for them.

So on my drive to the store I call the office and try and touch base with someone (let's call him Avi) who's working with us on a specific marketing project. I tell him that I'm on my way back from a meeting and running an errand, just so that if he hears strange noises, he knows I'm not completely ignoring him. No problem. Until I'm looking at the diced tomatoes (there are way, way too many choices of diced tomatoes). Then it happens. A guy walks up to me and says, "Excuse me, do you know where the tomato paste is?" He clearly cannot see I'm on the phone, so I can't be annoyed. But do I look like I know where the tomato paste is? Evidently I do.

Avi laughs at me.

I excuse myself from the call for a second and say, "No, but maybe farther down this aisle?" And I was back on the call in no time.

And then it came time to check out. I had four items with me. There were three check-out lanes open and they all had at least three or four people in them. I'm not really sure why all of these people are shopping in the middle of the day, but that's why they have self-checkout lanes.

I start checking out. I'm mid-sentence with Avi when he interrupts me to ask if someone else came on the line. I have no idea what he's talking about because I'm focused on only two things: Scanning my three cans of diced tomatoes (I couldn't decide on just one kind) and my jar of pickles and having this conversation. I'm not listening to or hearing other voices.

If you've ever used a self-checkout at a grocery store, you'll remember that the machines speak to you. I did not remember this. Avi laughed at me again. I reminded him that I am so focused on our conversation that the extra voices are being kept at bay. And somehow he thinks this is funny too. So I have Avi laughing in one ear and a machine reminding me to put my diced tomatoes in the bag and take my receipt. It's a strange world.

(It should be noted that now that I am back and seated at my desk I am really enjoying the breeze and would have been fine not going out at all.)

Bastille Day!

Ever since I read A Tale of Two Cities in junior high school, I've had a thing for Bastille Day. I'm not sure why.

I don't know what would be involved in celebrating it. Should I be eating croissants? French fries? Fromage? I'm drinking eau, if that counts for anything other than my 8 glasses a day.

I don't honestly know much more about Bastille Day than I read in the book, which I realize was not non-fiction.

Speaking of which, isn't non-fiction a weird term? Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't we describe books that aren't 'real' as 'non-real', rather than by defining 'reality' by what it isn't?

Au Revoir.