hooray for the birthday fairy

Some years, the birthday fairy is missing in action. This year, the birthday fairy was in fine form, but he almost didn't get a chance to strut his stuff.

On Sunday, the day before my birthday, we had a quiet day at home. We both thought we'd communicated to the other that it would be nice for me to open my presents a day early -- we had lots of time, we were feeling fairly refreshed and unstressed. Somehow the message failed to penetrate into either of our brains. Monday, the actual day of my birthday, by the time I got home, I was miserable, grouchy, unhappy, and very tired, not necessarily in that order. Late in the evening, when presents were offered, I just wanted to go to bed.

Finally on Tuesday, we tried again. There was an impressive pile waiting for me, mostly from Robert's recent trip to Santa Fe. A few highlights: three different types of blackberry mead from a New Mexico winery. A CD of computer Sudoko. A biography of a Santa Fe woman. Spatulas that can tolerate very high heat in kicky turquoise. Chocolate from a Santa Fe chocolate shop, including chili chocolates. Some chipotle chili (hmm, instead of taquitos, maybe we could mix the chili powder with black beans and put *them* on top of the fake spanish rice?). And the pieces de resistance... Two presents from Nambe, one of our favorite design centers. One is a crystal vase reproduction of a traditional Indian basket, the other a pair of twisted crystal candlesticks. Both are stunning.

Robert's explanation? It's not often that someone has a birthday divisible by 50. Wow.

guilty pleasures

Last night, I made a dinner that I'm almost embarrassed to mention. I came home pretty pooped and fairly late. We had some Trader Joe's taquitos in the freezer -- black beans and cheese wrapped thinly into corn tortillas.

So, I arrived home. I preheated the oven. In a bowl, I mixed some leftover rice, salsa, and shredded cheese and placed the mix in a greased baking dish. I put the taquitos on top, put the whole thing in the oven, and set the timer. I set the table, put out some extra salsa and cheese, and went upstairs for a preliminary reading of the day's blogs.

About half an hour after my arrival home, we sat down to dinner, complete with wine and lit candles. The most embarrassing thing is that dinner was totally yummy. In fact, I'm already dreaming up variations on the theme for the next no-effort night.

sweet and juicy

I like pears a lot. Robert is fairly indifferent to them. He will eat them to be polite, but doesn't get nearly as excited by their delicate flavor as do I. Last week, I bought myself some pears and was letting them ripen one at a time, then eating them as a treat after dinner. Robert saw me slicing one and became a little agitated. He needed me to tell him what kind of pear I was about to eat. It was clearly on the tip of his tongue, but he just wasn't producing the word. Turns out that he'd seen a woman whom he'd wanted to tell me about. She was shaped like a pear, but not just any pear. She was shaped exactly like the pear I was getting ready to savor -- it was an anjou.

successful birthday bash

Robert and I had our big birthday bash yesterday and I couldn't have been happier. We cheated a bit on the planning by piggy-backing on two regularly-scheduled contra dances. Our dance group has a "sponsorship" program where an individual or group pays for a portion of an entire dance (the expenses include hiring a caller, a band, and the hall). So to celebrate our double-header birthday, Robert and I sponsored two dances, not just one.

I started working on the idea with our "Queen Mum" and dance group founder in May, and we've been talking intermittently ever since. The QM handled all the scheduling and arranged for the callers and performers. I also worked with some of the other board members to write an announcement for yesterday's dances.

Yesterday morning, the doorbell rang, and there was my hairdresser standing on the front stoop. She said "You're having a party tonight, aren't you?" and handed over an enormous bouquet full of peonies and roses -- blues, pinks, whites -- just stunning. Off she dashed to get to work on time.

And then the cake lady came and delivered a huge and beautifully decorated cake -- far fancier than I had dreamed it would be. We chatted very briefly before she dashed off too.


The afternoon dance, which was for advanced dancers (really, intermediate to advanced) was called by one of my all-time favorite callers, Lisa Greenleaf. She has a wacky sense of humor and puts together fun, energetic, and mind-bending dances. I'm guaranteed to get so turned around at some point when she's calling that I start walking 180 degrees away from where I'm supposed to go. Fortunately, the experience, while disorienting, is usually so amusing that I start laughing (often harder than I'm laughing already).

Often advanced dances start with just a handful of people and don't build up to much of a quorum. Yesterday was different. Many people were there at the beginning, and we had a rather large crowd toward the end. The level of dancing was great, with lots of laughter and good spirit.

The potluck was lovely. The food was yummy (including one incredible mushroom stroganoff made by a friend who knows I love his mushroom dishes). And when people seemed to have finished eating, we had CAKE!!!! We sang two birthday songs (the traditional one and a beautiful round that many in the community know) and also celebrated another friend whose birthday was yesterday.

And of course the cake was outstanding -- four levels of dark chocolate layer cake with hazelnut butter cream between the layers and milk chocolate frosting. The baker had created a criss-cross lattice of darker chocolate on top with piping around the edges. This time there was so much cake that we were able to take some home for freezing and future enjoyment.

The cake and flowers were widely admired and praised, which was nice, and we received many thank yous, also nice.


The evening dance was called by one of my other all-time favorite callers, Linda Leslie. Linda has the wonderful skill of helping brand-new dancers feel successful quickly while also managing to engage experienced dancers who need something of a challenge. I don't know how she does it, but she weaves community and puts a smile on people's faces. The new people (who at some dances feel confused and frustrated) danced through much of the evening and were smiling and happy at the end. I hope we made a few converts last night.

Early on, Linda called a dance written for Robert and me a few years ago on one of our anniversaries. It's a mixer, where instead of taking a partner and dancing with one new couple each round through the dance, you dance with just one other person and get a new partner each round. At the end, Linda called Robert and me into the middle of the dance circle and invited us to swing until the end of the music. It felt so good to have our community (Our People!) gathered around. Very loving.


Oh, and the band. My, my. Two people played throughout the two dances. They were joined by half of another band for the evening dance. The musicians are all extremely good and have many different sounds. (Some bands, also very good, have just one sound. But when a band plays in different styles, there are more surprises to mix into the blend.) I heard them throw in silly references to known songs in the middle of other tunes (including, at one point, Somewhere Over the Rainbow).

And fortunately, my wonky ankle, the one I've been struggling with for years, was on its best behavior yesterday. I danced all but one of the afternoon dances and nearly all of the evening dances. I even had a lovely waltz sometime after dark.

I got to dance with a huge variety of people, some new, some more experienced than me, some dear old friends, some complete strangers, but friends in dance. It was a joyous, energetic, and loving event. Yesterday was a wonderful sendoff into my sixth decade. From the smile on Robert's face, I think the same goes for him.

rite of passage

Robert signed up and I benefitted. I am now the proud possessor of an AARP card. This makes me eligible for discounts on motor home insurance, something I've been waiting for for a long, long time. On the other hand, it might also make me eligible for motorcycle insurance too. Oh, and for discounts at motor inns across the United States (in case we get tired of staying in our motor home or neglect to trail a tent behind our motorcycle).

Oddly, they'd been pestering Robert for months leading up to his birthday but they haven't caught up with me. Now I'm wondering if they'll even notice.

best frenemies

After my great grandparents died and the summer home was sold, my grandparents bought a house in Connecticut and moved out of Manhattan. Because my grandfather had severe breathing problems, my grandparents wintered in Scottsdale in a little snowbird house. This, of course, was before greater Phoenix became polluted and humid.

My grandparents had two sets of good friends. One, a comestics heiress, had a vast estate with multiple buildings and a swimming pool. When we'd visit the grandparents, we were expected to avail ourselves of the pool as often as we wanted. The woman was very sweet. We developed a game where the kids would bark like seals and swim to one end of the pool. She'd hand-feed us little treats (not fish, something sweet usually) and we'd bark and bark our pleasure.

She was clearly an elegant woman. I don't think she'd ever get in the pool herself (though maybe when she was younger or there was noone else there); but she sure liked having other people use it. I imagine that her chauffer (she must have had one of those) would drive her into The City for opera and museum openings. Had she lived in Boston, she might have been part of the blue-haired Friday afternoon symphony crowd.

The other friend was also a lot of fun. She'd get down on the floor and play with me. She taught me to play jacks. She introduced me to cream soda, still one of the only sodas I'll drink. Her husband and I did a crafts project in his wood shop.

I loved both of these women, but it turned out they hated, hated, hated each other. It was so bad that when the seal lady would ask what we'd been doing, we could talk about playing in my grandparents' backyard, going to the animal petting zoo, or walking in the woods. But we were never to mention the cream-soda friend. Not ever.

And vice versa. We had to lie by omission to both.

And then my grandmother died when I was 10. In one of the next years after, I went to Scottsdale to visit my grandfather. I can't remember that we did much -- we probably just sat around. But by that time, I was enjoying his company.

He did take me to a very fun party. I think he had a good time; I know I did. There was a guy there playing the five-string guitar -- one string had broken and he was too lazy to fix it. He played passably well. There was a woman who told me about her adventures driving her broken-down jeep through the desert looking for rocks.

There was one of the friends from Connecticut. I was so happy to see her! And then, the second friend arrived. My stomach tensed. I drew in my breath and sat very still. Friend 2 walked over to her mortal-enemy-in-Connecticut and gave her a warm kiss. Turns out they were best of friends in Arizona; they were only enemies back east.

cleaning frenzy

I'm not much of a cleaner. In fact, for years (nearly 20), I've paid a woman to clean the house for me*. But there's lots of "around the edges" stuff to do. Since Robert left yesterday, I've been attending to a good number of those edges.

I've already done three loads of laundry and there's another left to go after I change the bed.

Yesterday, I cleaned out the food cabinets -- we had loads of food that might still be perfectly good after all these years, but chances are slim to none that we'll ever eat it. Gone. I also went after some of the more suspicious items in the refrigerator. It turns out, for example, that even cats aren't impressed by cod liver oil. Oh well, gone.

This morning, I sorted through piles of financial paperwork and shredded almost all of it, then put it in the recycling pile. OK, I'll never be elected to public office, but I think we knew that already. Gone.

I may also think about which books to donate to the swap library at work. (Leave all the books you want; pay a dollar to take a book; the proceeds are donated to charity.)

I feel a little lighter already.



* I mentioned my cleaning lady to a friend recently. They snarkily asked if she was an illegal immigrant and whether she spoke English. She is an immigrant, but she's from Canada, PEI to be specific, so she does speak English. I also happen to know that she pays taxes, so I highly doubt that she's here illegally .

tired and lazy, but apparently verbose

My first full week of work at my new job has come and gone. I'm cautiously getting my feet wet, but my prevailing feeling is that of being tired. Part of it is that going into sponge mode and learning everything new is exhausting. Part of it is that for the last few months, I haven't been working all that hard as the work at my last place dried up. And part of it is that I'm now working more hours per week than I have for several years.

Robert left early this morning for a weekend trip to Santa Fe. His grandfather is exactly, to the day, 50 years older than I am, and is celebrating his 100th birthday in just a few weeks. We had scheduled a huge dance party on the same day that the family scheduled the 100th birthday gala, so Robert is heading out for an early visit. I'm staying home to care for the cats and me.

I got up early this morning to see Robert off. Meanwhile, he sweetly scooped cat output, cleared the dish drain, and probably did some other morning chores, all much appreciated. Before I even heard the garage door come down after he'd left, I was already back in bed, a cat on either side. I woke up several hours later, cats still heavy little lumps around my legs. I don't think this will be a very productive day. Thank goodness there are two more days in this weekend.

So, the new job. I'm finding that people are kind and helpful. I don't know how well I'll get to know anybody but then again, I try not to count on the workplace for "best friends." (Sometimes I get lucky, though.) I'm loving being in the same company with the guy I helped get a job just before I applied for my own job -- I think he'll be a good friend.

I have a pile of work to do, though it's not clear when I'm supposed to get started. There are tutorials I can take; those will help me. (The product I'm working on is enormous but has been around for a while and there's a lot of existing documentation. So, for the most part, I'm not starting from scratch on anything.)

Also, the group is switching to a new technology (called DITA) and a new tool (XMetaL), both of which I have experience with. The plan is to write some of our new material using the new tool and then slowly convert the existing material, perhaps over the course of several years. A sister company is ahead of us in this process; we are taking a field trip to visit with them next week.

My afore-mentioned friend and I have been tagged as the leaders in this effort. So, next Monday, I am making an hour-long presentation to the group to help them get a little further along. Then the field trip happens, and then we'll attempt the following parts of the presentation. There will be practice homework assigned so that the group can compare and contrast, share tips and tricks, and have more of a basis for questions.

My job this week has been to prepare the presentation. I've talked with nearly everyone in the group. I think the material will be fairly good and fairly straightforward. I'm hoping that the conversations I've already had will minimize surprises and distress -- changing process is always a little anxiety-provoking.

I have to mention the environment. It's like a country club. I have my very own office. There's no door and one wall is glass, but it's so cushy and big! There are people whose job it is to help -- an actual facilities department dedicated just to our company (there are other companies in our building). You can call facilities and ask them to move the furniture around in your office, bring you a fan (it's hot -- we have honking big computers), or bring you office equipment. They're responsive and cheerful! I've also had occasion to call the internal help desk. They, too, have gotten back to me quickly and are cheerful.

On the first floor, there's a tiny museum that shows off some of the consumer products that have been designed with our product. My boss has pointed out that it's far more likely that our product will be used to design manufacturing facilities that produce the consumer products, but factory equipment doesn't make for very entertaining museum exhibits.

We have coffee stations everywhere, with coffee, tea, soft drinks, and highly subsidized snacks. All the money from the snack machines goes to charities. In the mornings (and this is every morning), they provide either bagels or muffins. On Wednesdays, they serve dinner. In the summer, they have barbecues on one of the balconies. The company has season tickets to major sports teams and occasionally runs raffles to give away tickets to employees. And so on.

I think the challenge with all this generosity will be to stay heavily on the grateful side of the gratitude-entitlement spectrum.

Seven Unusual Things About Me

I have been tagged to write seven unusual things about me. I'll try not to repeat myself from previous postings, but do forgive me if you've heard one of these already.

1. I've had a multicultural religious upbringing: I attended Unitarian Sunday school, Jewish Sunday school, an Episcopalian high school, and a formerly Quaker college. I feel fairly comfortable in all but the most hateful religious settings but don't particularly want to belong to a religious organization.
2. As a vegetarian for most of my life, I've added fish into my diet twice, once in Spain, where I realized "it was the fish or me" and again when I was married to an ardent carnivore. The second time, it stuck, even though the marriage didn't.
3. In my last job, our only customer was the online purveyor of women's fancy underclothing. Most of us looked at what amounted to soft porn for most of the day. I used to walk by peoples' work stations, look in shock at what was displayed on their monitors, and then remember "oh yeah, they're working". (The other day, at my new job, I received an email promoting free shipping on all bras and had the cute graphic up on my monitor for a few minutes before realizing that it probably wasn't very cool in that setting.)
4. I try to eat a little chocolate every day.
5. I was in high school during the Watergate investigations. One time, one of the younger girls ardently and publicly defended her father. The next week, he had resigned from his position at the White House, and the family had quickly and quietly moved to the west coast. Another time, I saw one of the girls in the next grade up standing by the theater and crying. A few days later, her father, who was Vice President, resigned due to a public scandal, not Watergate.
6. I sewed costumes for four years in high school under the only person in the United States employed (at the time, at least) full time by a high school as a costume designer. Later, when I came to Boston, I got a job over the phone making costumes for the Boston Ballet.
7. I met the father of the person who tagged me for this exercise in a city 2000 miles away, just a few years before I met the tagger. It took us a few more years of knowing each other to figure out the connection.

Phew. Assignment completed.

Iowa caucus, as explained by CNN

I'm reprinting this article from CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/03/iowa.caucuses.101/index.html, to be exact, http://snipurl.com/1wggb for short) because I'm not sure how long it will be on the CNN web site. The article explains how the Iowa caucuses work. I found it fascinating; I hope you do too.

Iowa caucuses 101: Arcane rules have huge impact on outcome
Story Highlights

• Iowa caucuses start at 7 p.m. CT Thursday night
• Candidates have to show up at caucus sites to vote
• Candidates must have 15 percent of the voters to be "viable"

(CNN) -- The arcane rules governing Thursday's Iowa Democratic caucuses will test even the most organized campaign, but mastery of the process could launch a candidate on a path to the White House.

Most Americans are familiar with how elections work -- secret ballots, an 18-year-old age requirement, all-day voting. But that's not how the Iowa Democratic caucuses on Thursday will work.

When the Democratic caucuses begin at 7 p.m. CT sharp in school gymnasiums, libraries, churches, farm houses and other locations in the 1,781 precincts across the Hawkeye state, step one will be to stand up and be counted.

"What you'll do is get up out of your seat and you'll go walk to the corner or space by the wall designated for the candidate of your choice," Chelsea Waliser, an organizer for Sen. Barack Obama, told potential caucus go-ers during a recent Obama rehearsal caucus.
After this first step, party officials will determine if a candidate meets the 15 percent "threshold" requirement.

Supporters of candidates making up less than 15 percent of the vote in a particular precinct will have the option of making their vote count by voting in the second tally for a "viable" candidate -- one that got at least 15 percent of the vote on the first tally.

It is particularly interesting to watch what happens between the first and second tallies at the Iowa Democratic caucuses, as viable candidate camps vie for the votes of the unviable. It's one of the few times in American politics where voters directly interact with each other.

During the "persuasion" time in between tallies, the precinct captain for the viable candidates sends a person over to each group that failed to meet the threshold to convince them to support their candidate. Once everyone has decided where to vote, a second tally is taken, and the results are then sent to Democratic state party headquarters -- not electronically but via ordinary mail.

The Iowa Democratic Party keeps the total vote tally a secret and only releases the percentage of delegates won by each candidate, so it all comes down to how many delegates each precinct has, not the popular vote.

By comparison, the rules governing the 1,781 Republican caucuses, which are held on the same night as the Democrats, are pretty simple. The Republican caucuses will use a secret ballot, and, since there is no viability threshold, each vote is simply tallied and the number of votes each candidate gets is reported to party headquarters.

The ability of a candidate's supporters to use the persuasion period to win over second-choice voters could be a key factor deciding who comes out on top Thursday night."You hit that floor and work it and try to get them. It's like a fun game," Clinton supporter Ed Winfry of Sioux City, Iowa said last month.

Because the rules are so complicated, organization is key. Each campaign needs to get its supporters to the caucus locations by 7:00 p.m. sharp. If they are late, they will not be allowed to vote.

And Iowa's unpredictable winter weather could be a factor and dissuade a candidate's supporters from traveling to a the caucus sites.

Democratic caucus rules also make polling very difficult. Unlike a regular election, when a voter can immediately leave the polling place after he or she casts her ballot, a caucus go-er may have to spend hours caucusing before his or her vote counts. Plus, caucus go-ers without a viable group may end up switching their support to a candidate who had been trailing in standard polls.

The latest CNN/Opinion Research poll released Tuesday shows a tight race, with 33 percent of likely Democratic caucus-goers backing Clinton and 31 percent supporting Obama. But taking into account the survey's sampling error of 4.5 percentage points in the Democratic race, the race is virtually tied.

Former Sen. John Edwards is in third place in the poll at 22 percent.

But the final results could diverge greatly from the polling numbers because it is more likely that a person who tells a pollster that he or she is going to attend a caucus may not do so.