These beauties were made in the style of Mandela and generously topped with strawberries, blackberries, and blueberries, and finished with Cool Whip and maple syrup. Yum yum. Anybody that went to college with me has had these and knows how good they are.
We were watching CNN this morning. The morning show gave a brief introduction to Soledad O’Brien’s "Black in America" with a short report and a plug for the series.
Jaimito asked me,"Daddy? What means Black in America?"
"It’s kind of complicated, Jaimito, but let me try to explain." So I ran through a basic primer of just what it meant to be black in America since the days of slavery and why it was still an issue. Olaia helpfully pointed out that things had gotten better because Barack Obama was elected President. "I agree," I said, "and I think it says a lot that the majority of America has gotten past color as a qualification, but that doesn’t mean prejudice doesn’t exist."
And that was that. They asked, I tried to sum up years of legal and cultural discrimination over breakfast. They seemed satisfied and a few minutes passed until Jaimito, who was obviously still pondering something, asked.
"Daddy," he began, "am I black?"
I’m a whiner. Anybody who knows me, knows this to be true. But I really prefer to keep my whining verbal, rather than fix it in written word, so it is only sometimes that it spills out here. In any case, things have been kind of rough for us here for a while, for me personally and for the family. I’ve been in a funk, lost my mojo, and been a mofo. I could blame approaching forty, economic downturn, feeling like I’ve not accomplished what I’ve wanted to, stress, overworked, underpaid, blah blah blah. It’s just not that interesting. I’m sure we all have funks, no?
So here’s the scoop: I just had a really nice dinner made possible by the following:
It just doesn’t get any better than eating under the stars, laughing with your children, cracking each other up, and jamming to the Humpty Dance.
Laura said she hadn’t had a tomato that good since Italy.
Doesn’t that look good? It was. I haven’t had a tomato that tasty since the ones we were forced to grow as kids. I never would have known what I was missing. Thanks, Mom and Dad.
I finally got off my butt this year and planted a little vegetable garden. I have always loved fresh tomatoes, and I find the quality of grocery store produce has declined so drastically that you’re basically paying for tasteless fibrous water. Starting with Olaia’s science fair project on compost, we began our green journey to the perfect tomato. The vegetable garden is about fifteen feet long by two and half feet wide or so and has been stocked with nearly three cubic feet of homemade soil from compost.
Our compost is composed of yard waste (green grass and leaves), vegetable and fruit waste from the kitchen, coffee grounds, a bit of ash from barbecuing, some paper waste, and egg shells. You should not use meat or protein as it is said to attract varmints. Anyway, all that lead to the creation of this:
Lovely, isn’t it? Isn’t nature cool?
I planted two varieties, roma and these called beefeaters. Today, I was surprised to find that a third variety had sprouted from the composted seeds and was bearing a different type of fruit. I imagine that even though they are from tasteless grocery store tomato seeds, homegrown they will taste much better.
I can’t wait to eat it tomorrow on an egg sandwich with lettuce, fresh mayonnaise, and cheddar cheese on bakery bread.
And then I took this little picture for Olaia for a class project as we dined outside next to our garden in the cool night air.
Chee-bow-bow, the moon.
This morning, Laura asked me to pour bowls of cereal for us both. She was insistent that it be me who does the pouring. I protested at the oddity of the request but quickly dismissed my hesitations. I have such a short memory for things like this, and since I was hungry, I went to the kitchen to "make" breakfast.
Hmm, that’s weird, I thought as I took out Laura’s Corn Bran and found my Honey Bunches of Oats stuffed inside. Who did that? Who does a thing like that, I thought, my mind’s paranoia engine at full throttle. Let’s see what’s inside the Honey Bunches of Oats box then. Well, will you look at that, there’s the Corn Bran. Someone switched them. Who does that? Can’t they read?
I was seriously shaking my head at the insanity of switching the cereals’ contents. Was the universe screwing with me?
Will this mystery haunt me for all the days of my life? Just as I was set to call 911 and report a cereal "incident," Laura breezed into the kitchen with a wry smile.
"Hey hon, did you notice that the cereals were switched? That was Olaia. She wanted to trick you for April Fools."
"Oh that little girl," I said, smiling. "That is just too cute." I imagined her sneaking out this morning, carefully switching the cereals, and then informing her mommy.
"Mommy, you have to tell Daddy to pour the cereal this morning, okay. I switched them for April Fool’s. You have to make sure Daddy does it, okay."
"Okay," her mommy replied.
And there you go. That’s how Daddy fell for an April Fool’s joke on April Fool’s Day. You got me. 
You know what makes a great cleaning song? – Tableau IV. Fête Populaire de la Semaine grasse (vers le soir), the fourth act of the ballet Petrouchka by Igor Stravinsky. It’s a series of lively dances, triumphal, tragic, fanciful, and full of folly – much like my kitchen in all its disasterous dimensions.
Within my kitchen, there is the toil of the ants scouring the counters for small crumbs to take back to their lair and feed their families. I know too well how they shall never again see their homes as I crush them and wash them down the sink.
Then there are the remnants of the children with their messy plates, forks, glasses half full of liquid. Their little spirits are too lively to sit still for more than a moment, yet their bodies are small, incapable of pacifying the mess of life. They make do as best they can given their small statures.
Laura too is represented here in the menagerie, for all that we consume was created by her hands, lovingly prepared for us without reservation. There are the burned pans, stuck rice, splatters of oil and tomato sauce. Disorder is an unavoidable bi-product of creation, I think.
Would it be better for the magician to have never brought this kitchen to life? The tremendous gift that is a kitchen comes with an inevitable cost: The Cleaning
Is a kitchen worth it?
Someone send me a maid!
Straight away upon arriving at home Javier strips his clothes and replaces them with his favorite pajamas. He likes being Batman.
"Javier," I ask, "How come you keep taking your clothes off and putting on your jammies? It’s not time for bed."
"I like them, and I’m hot."
"So they are comfy?"
"Yeah."
Javier, comfy at home
And I’m sure Batman has nothing to do with it.
I just got a new phone, and I wanted to customize it with some of my favorite things: my wife and songs that remind me of her, one being her incoming ring of course. I don’t care much for any other calls, but when my love calls, my heart skips a beat, so here we go.
First, select a photo. I choose this one because she’s smiling at me and looks lovely.
Next, I took a short video in order to reverse engineer the video format of the Samsung Rant m540. Turns out the sound is AAC, 128 kbps, and the video is mpeg-4 (reports as DIVX) and the frame size is 176×144 and the rate is 15 fps.
I want to create a video with a still picture along with a song by NEK called, "Laura no está" – the sentiment of the song is that Laura is not there, but in her absence, I am tormented, she is everywhere. I am unable to escape. Honey, your feet must be tired, because you’ve been running around in my head all day. Chuckle. So I want to loop a 16 second sample of that song (the refrain) along with the above still picture. Turns out that ffmpeg (in Linux) will help you out tons. Check out the following gem:
ffmpeg -loop_input -vframes 240 -r 15 -f image2 -i foo.jpg -i foo.wav -s 176x144 -f mp4 -acodec libfaac bar.m4v
-loop_input causes the image to repeat throughout the clip. -vframes 240 is 16 seconds multiplied by 15 frames per second to give total frames. -f image2 is from the man page of ffmpeg and and forces a format. Specify two inputs -i foo.wav and -i foo.jpg a frame size -s 176×144, and video format -f mp4 an audio codec -acodec libfaac (you have to compile ffmpeg with libfaac support) and the output file bar.m4v.
Take the resulting video file and copy it to the directory /dcim/100ssmed/ of your phone’s memory card. I think you have to rename the file to sspx000(?).3g2 where the "?" represents a sequential number. I had trouble getting the video to play properly at first, but I think it’s because I had the frame rate slightly off. I don’t know, however, because I changed the frame rate and the file name at the same time and the thing started playing, so I’m unsure which was the cause, the frame rate or special sequential internal naming of the Rant m540. Dunno, maybe I’ll mess around with some more and post my results here.
So there you go. Now every time my love calls, I am greeted with her smiling face and a song.
Laura had me rolling with this post and I had to share.
Interpret me this: I was having a happy dream. I did not want to wake up I wanted to keep the dream going.
I
had just gotten out from hanging out a hotel pool with Javier and
Jaimito. We had been sitting on the steps, chatting, playing having
fun. I remember thinking I love these two little boys they are so darn
cute. Next thing I know we were out of the pool, kids had gone up to
the room to change and go down for the evening. I was hanging out at an
outdoor bar in plain clothes waiting for Jim to come down and meet up
with me.