Ks Are Wild

Home. Let the healing begin.

Surgery is over. Managed to keep my uterus after all. At least for another couple of years hopefully. It was a surprise surgery. I wasn’t sure which way it would go and had to wake up to find out what happened. After lots of shaking and tremors and lots of rounds of nausea (until night time), I’m finally round the bend. Waiting for them to administer the next round of pain meds but wanted to follow through with my promise to update. Thanks to everyone for their cards, plants, flowers, meals, and offers of assistance be it carpooling of playdates or making play dough so my mom can have another activity to do with them. I should be released some time tomorrow if all goes well.

It’s another one of  those “I-can’t-believe-I’m-posting-this” posts:

I’m a Gleek; a latebloomer (lack of tv), but instant fan.  And I couldn’t figure out how I knew of Matthew Morrison.  Yeah, I knew Broadway, but where exactly.  Turns out, I was most familiar with him in the Disney special adaptation of Once Upon a Mattress with Zooey Deschanel, Carol Burnett, and Tracy Ulman.

Well, I just couldn’t stop from searching out clips of him from there.

Well, here’s one that I was most definitely NOT expecting.  Turn your sound way down.  I can’t believe I sat through some person’s shaky cell phone capture.  But it Morrison doing “the Humpty Hump” sure did make me smile in this Broadway Bares 18, an annual benefit for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.  And it certainly made me like him all the more.

But wait!  Here’s one from a different angle, straight on, with the whole skit.  Sorta worth it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QycWxUsAsM0

This looks like the BEST fundraiser to attend.  So much fun.

Bleh, I just feel dirty for posting that.  It’s like reading and spreading tabloid crap, or eating a candy bar.  It tasted really good at the time but now I just feel guilty.

Let me try to redeem myself by making up with something of substance….of quality….because that’s what Matthew Morrison is, not just a yummy morsel I’d like to devour…well, that too.  Figuratively, of course.  His voice is perfect for this South Pacific role.

On a side note, I can’t believe we’re the same age.  So much for my older man fantasy

My friend Kriste and I have the same birthday, we had some big medical issues going on at Da Vinci days last year, and now, we have surgeries scheduled for the same day this month, Friday, January 15th.  Too bad they’re not in the same hospital.  She, having already endured multiple surgeries in August and undergoing enormous occupational therapy with a professional and self-driven, is returning for her 5th surgery in Arizona.  She is a huge music buff and discovered her rally song to help her fight for survival and fight to regain a sense of normalcy and independence in her life.  She recommended I find one that works for me.  I was immediately reminded of my dad’s turning to “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong when he had cancer.  But that was his song.

This is mine.  Nina Simone’s “Feelin’ Good”  It’s the song that made me go out and buy the Point of No Return Soundtrack, and consequently 2 more Nina Simone albums.  Kriste- this one’s for me and you:

2010: The year of the K.  Ks are wild.

Surgivus, TumorFest, you name it.  I’m there with you buddy.  Save me some of that nasty trifle.

This is now an older story (from the beginning of the school year but it’s still cute so I’m going to tell it anyway).

Kosette’s first days of school didn’t quite go as anticipated.  She sighed dramatically when asked about school, “I don’t want to talk about it.”  More prompting from me.  “Booooooorrrrrriiiiiiiinnnnnnggg  All they do is read and write!!  All day long.  Write, write, write.”

She switched the next day from being the excited, never-look-back girl (I kid you not – preschool and kindergarten she disappeared and wanted me to do the same when emotional mommy went back in to get her last hug), to dragging her heels and asking if she had to go.  It was sad to see, actually.  Really, I think it was just her getting used to that transition from super-fun low-expectations lots of music to having to do actual work.  This continued on for weeks.  I was beginning to get nervous.

But then, one day, while talking to Kellen in the bathtub, Kham overheard her say that she “I’m in love with Parker”.  I was sitting at the computer just a room a way with the door open and that made me stop in my tracks.  Kham asked my question, “What did you just say?”  “That I love a boy.”  Well I just had to come down the hallway for this little conversation.  “Of course you do, honey.  Kellen is your brother.  He’s family.  You can LOVE family.  But “love” is a very strong word and it’s not something that we want to throw around and waste on just anyone.   Wait until you think this might be the one you marry and you have to be at least 25.  But you can say ‘I LIKE Parker’.  That’s okay.  So…who is Parker.”  Turns out he’s a 5th grader!!!!!  Ruh-Roh!   If she’s anything like her mommy, we’re in trouble.  Next thing I knew she was excited to go to school again….to see Parker.  She actually saved her chocolate square of dessert and put it in her bookbag to give to Parker.  Ack!

I had one of these moments when I heard the initial bathtub love disclosure:

I wish someone had uploaded a bigger clip of the scene, but you can seen what I’m talking about.

Father of the Bride – Another movie I love.  The house looks like mine growing up, the yard, the neighborhood, the crazy outgoing Dad named George who loves his daughter and family and home to death and wants to see their dreams come true, and loves spoiling them with family experiences like concert tickets.  I’m going to have to watch that again.  Too bad it’s on VHS.  I don’t even know if my machine works up here anymore.  It groans like it needs to be “put down” like a horse.

Anyhooo, it was Parker this and Parker that for months!  Kham actually met the dude for a second.  Said he had a swarm of little girl followers.  Weird.  What Kosette has said, what little info. she’s revealed hasn’t necessarily yielded the best picture, but she’s not exactly someone you’d go for for a whole story.  Anyway, it gaves us a quick heart attack and an early taste of our future life of wanting to check this guy out.  I gave the quick, “whatever you do don’t poo–poo the guy off the bat or she’ll just rebel” speech.  Daddy might be the cool one now, but mommy might have to be the mediator when we hit the day-to-day stuff in teenager-ville.

For now, I’m going to soothe those nerves with memories of her saying “bemember” for remember tonight.  She’s still just 6, she’s just six, just six, 4 more years until the crazies begin.  I had better enjoy and document them more while they last.  Kosette’s first crush = Parker.  Whoever he is.  I should have somebody point him out to me one day.

If you really think of the year in the term of seasons, and the daylight length, and the plants that grow/bloom/ and epitomize those seasons, then Winter solstice is really the beginning of spring.  From December 21st onward the sun marches its way up into the sky staying around longer and longer each day until the equinox when it spends equal amounts down and out.  This is my way of prefacing a post I wrote back in MAY of last year but never got around to actually posting.  They are mid to late spring plants/shrubs/trees.  So understand, that this is coming from someone who is writing in the dizzying colored height of spring when I was practically playing a game of bingo for these things as I drove Kosette to school each day.  Why am I publishing now?  I want to clear out my cache and because I’m convalescing in bed.  Sometimes it’s nice to see a bit of color when you’re in the drollness of winter.  Although, I will admit that now that I garden, winter is a nice break from gardening. Plus, my more learned eye can spot the teeny signs of life, some perennials emerging from the ground, the patch wider than the year before, or teeny buds on my elderberries.  My cats have dug up a nice fat clump of daffodils.  Damned cats.  I swear, they do more harm to my garden than anything else.  Gotta love ‘em or else I’d wring their necks.  Wait, was I talking about the kids or the cats?  Just kidding.  Or was I

There’s a lot of cool stuff that grows in Oregon; plants with which I’m unfamiliar because they need the coolness of winter or require a lot of water so therefore, weren’t in LA.  Occasionally, I’ll see an awesome specimen and go “What is that?!”  And then I’ll start noticing it all over and feel like an idiot for having never noticed it prior.  So what might be a mundane, urbane, plant for here seems almost exotic to my droughty, xeriscapic, homeland.

In the past month or so, I’ve fallen in love with those flowering plums or is it flowering cherries (Still don’t know the answer to that previous post), the red flowering currants, euphorbias (because they look good practically all the time), the big leaf maple tree, and now pink flowering dogwoods.  I find someone who knows what it is and then I find out as much as I can about it.  The lilacs are all blooming too so they’ve been turning my head.  My daffodils are nearly gone, the tulips are all in bloom, some now past their prime, 3 of my 4 lilacs are blooming, and the wands of wisteria are opening up.  The roses are budding up, the elderberries have big blossom buds developing, and my tall bearded irises are starting to unfurl at their tips.  Oh, and one of my clematis (Mrs. P.J. Truax) just bloomed.  And my peas are over 2 feet high now.

I wish I had some peonies though.  Bowl of Beauty – It certainly is.

(Yes, I’ve finally come to embrace the color pink.)

It’s a crime to be without them because they do so well here and are such an icon of late spring and harbinger of the summer to come.  Besides, I like having plants that I associate with friends or family members and evidently, peonies were Kham’s Great Grandma Welte’s favorite flower.  I grow a couple of huckleberry shrubs in honor of his family and our wedding (his grandparents carried a large container of them all the way from Spokane, Washington to top our wedding cheesecake with)

as well as an oakleaf hydrangea ‘Alice’ (after my Auntie Alice),

and Maureen tulips,white (Niece of my grandma).

There’s a Lavon peony (name of my grandma on maternal side, and grandpa on paternal side), so I’ve toyed with that but I have limited space and “it’s not my favorite” – to use my daughter’s expression.

When I do finally purchase a peony it will be from Adelman Peonies since they are a local, independent, family owned grower and I’d like to support their business.  Plus, their stock is wonderful and I had the pleasure of wandering their fields last mother’s day weekend.

I already talked about that pink flowering tree in another post.  Still waiting on an id there.  So onto the next thing that caught my eye – the red-flowering currant.  It turns out it’s a native shrub which is an added bonus.  This thing has been blooming it’s full head off for over a month and is still going strong.  Kosette’s school has a lovely specimen featured in their butterfly garden.  The birds seemed to seek refuge their in the winter and are now active about its branches.  They provide the first nectar of spring to returning hummingbirds.

Yep, definitely going to make some room for that one somewhere.

Big Leaf Maple or Acer Macrophyllum:  Another native – SCORE!  There’s one in the “forest” behind our house, it turns out.  It’s not as nice as a couple I’m in love with that lean over the road in a very picturesque but dangerous way, but nice to have one so near nonetheless.

http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfd/library/documents/treebook/bigleafmaple.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acer_macrophyllum

http://www.rainyside.com/features/plant_gallery/nativeplants/Acer_macrophyllum.html

I realize now, in trying to find pics of it on the net, that I’m just going to have to take a shot of what I see.  It reminded me of the old Banyan Tree in Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii.  And before the leaves grow big, the huge panicle clusters are most of what you see on the branches and it is absolutely spectacular; like a gigantic hops tree with the hops cones bigger than Wisteria blooms.   These pics also don’t convey the giganticness of the leaves; thus, its name “Bigleaf.”  I need to pull over and pick a leaf to show the scale.  It seems like the equivalent of three of my hands with fingers spread wide open.

As for the flowering dogwoods, there’s one at Kosette’s school becoming encompassed by a nearby pine, but that has cute almost lemon yellow with a green eye flowers.  And there’s a salmon pinky peach one about town that is fantastic.  Unlike the light pinks of the flowering cherries/plums or the dark pinks of the crabapples, this pink screams a salmony pink against the grey skies.  There is no missing it.  Don’t know how long they bloom but I’m sure going to enjoy it while it lasts.  Don’t think I’d grow one either because I think they are plagued by anthracnose disease problems, but I’ll appreciate them in the yards of others.  All the pictures I’m seeing online are clearly pink so I don’t know whether it’s a different variety I’m looking at, the effect of the color house behind it, or the lighting so I’ll try to take some pics myself.  Here’s a site, that I stumbled upon for lots of good pics and info: www.paghat.com/dogwoodpink.html.  And here’s a pink one I found online to give you an idea:

Such an ugly word for the beauty it can describe; especially the beauty that can be seen on a daily basis around Corvallis and the Willamette Valley in general.

bucolic

Translations: Etymology: From bucolicusLatin, bÅcolicus < Ancient Greek (polytonic, ) (boukolikos) “rustic, pastoral; meter used by pastoral poets” < (polytonic, ) (boukolos) “cowherd” < (polytonic, á) (bous) “cow” + (polytonic, -) (-colos) “keeper, tender” + (polytonic, -) (-icos) “-ic”.

PASTORAL

Main Entry:

¹pas·to·ral

Pronunciation:

\ˈpas-t(ə-)rəl\

Function:

adjective

Etymology:

Middle English, from Latin pastoralis, from pastor herdsman

Date:

15th century

1 a (1): of, relating to, or composed of shepherds or herdsmen (2): devoted to or based on livestock raising b: of or relating to the countryside : not urban <a pastoral setting> c: portraying or expressive of the life of shepherds or country people especially in an idealized and conventionalized manner <pastoral poetry> d: pleasingly peaceful and innocent : idyllic2 a: of or relating to spiritual care or guidance especially of a congregation b: of or relating to the pastor of a church

— pas·to·ral·ly \-t(ə-)rə-lē\ adverb

— pas·to·ral·ness noun

agrestic, Arcadian, bucolic, country, georgic (literary) idyllic, rural, rustic, simple

Every day that I drive to and from Kosette’s environmental, place-based school in Corvallis, I practically have pinch to remind myself that I am indeed awake and not dreaming.  It is just gorgeous in Oregon and my area of the Willamette Valley.  No matter how rushed or grumpy I might be, I ALWAYS thank my lucky stars to be living in such a beautiful place.  But my daily commute forces a gradual wake-up, almost meditative, so that I’m centered and focused by the time I reach my destination.  I imagine that this was exactly was some Asian companies had in mind here in America when they purposefully designed their parking lots a great distance from their office buildings to force their employees to walk more.  And in so doing, they stroll through lovely landscaping and gradually their minds release their home problems and transition into their work personas.  I don’t remember where I heard or read that exactly, but it made an impression on me enough to retain it to use in my blog at least a decade later.  I think they really have something there.  The time of my commute and the pleasant smells (save for my tooting son in the backseat) of grass, rain, and coffee, and the lovely pastoral scenes through which I drive recalls imagery from bucolic imagery from Jane Austen films.  We’re about to enter into that electric green time of year when all the young, tender grass shoots (remember, this is the grass seed capitol of the nation, therefore, there is a ton round these here parts) go from looking like bad green hair plugs to a lush carpet.  I find myself listing synonyms and making up analogies to describe the multitude of different greens you can see here all the time.  It’s as if “green” would be Corvallisonians equivalent for our moss and leaves and grass to Alaskan’s 100 words describing snow.  By the way, that’s an urban legend.  I looked it up.  I love how NPR has a commitment to – dang – how did they put it – our “verdant” world?.  But here are some other words for the color: vert, verdant, viridian.  V words are the best.  Well L words are really good too; like Lascivious.  But these  are cool synonyms for green when using it in the young/new/blooming adjective sense: bosky, budding, burgeoning, callow, developing, flourishing, foliate, fresh, grassy, growing, half-formed, immature, infant, juvenile, leafy, lush, maturing, pliable, puerile, pullulating, raw, recent, sprouting, supple, tender, undecayed, undried, unfledged, ungrown, unripe, unseasoned, verdant, verduous, youthful

Just writing it makes me shake my head at my traffic ridden, frenzied, hurry-up-and-wait, smog-laden, gamble of should we take the freeway or go surface streets?, grumpy, surliness that was my morning commute in LA.  10 miles or so that would take at least 20 minutes.  (Everything’s 20 mins. away when you live in the valle, even if you’re just 5-10 miles away.)  Oy, it gives me a headache just thinking about it.  Thank the stars, I live here now.  My lucky stars.

My cats are shorthairs.  )You soooooo thought I was going “there” didn’t you?  That’s what she said!!!)

My black poodle is hairy high and low.  Don’t ask me why – don’t know.  It’s not the lack of bread, like the Grateful Dead Darlin’.

Actually, it is the lack of bread.  Do you know how expensive professional grooming is on a regular basis?  Yowsers!  Luckily, my parents, packrats that they be, still had the Oster electric clippers from my old Shelty, Muffy (I kid you not!  That was…wait for it…HIS name.)  And yes, for those who remember him, he did die when I was in the 5th grade.  Not gonna do the math for you folks, but that is quite a longass time to hang on to such an item.  I wonder if they’re going to sound like an old-fashioned vibrating bed they’re so old (the clippers, not the parents).  But you know what?  Despite my quipping, I’m grateful.  I needed electric clippers for Maude.  They saw it on my Amazon wishlist and they probably hunted it down in their crazy garage.  That was probably a lot of time and energy to do that so it was sweet of them to go through the effort and the cost in shipping them to me.

Maude’s pretty shaggy right now.  It’s interesting in that there’s more of the dumb dog jokes that get thrown out when she’s shaggy like this vs. when she has the poodle cut with the long ears and pom-pom tail.  Then she’s “cute” and “dainty” and “girly.”  Thank heavens she’s black so she doesn’t show all the mud on her lower legs and paws.  It is IMPOSSIBLE to keep my floor clean right now.  Whatever the case, I love to weave my fingers through it.  I miss having a longhair cat though.

If I let her ears and poof grow out again in time for next Halloween, I could stick a cool hat on her, roll a fat looking blunt out of a paper towel and tuck it in her collar and call her a Rastafarian tripping guide dog.  Seriously, she could get the dreads if I let her.  Their hair grows so fast!

When Kham’s mom visited over Halloween and the beginning of November, we celebrated their birthdays jointly since they’re close in date.  We ordered Indian Food because Janet had never had it before.  It was neat to be able to give a woman in her 60s a new experience.  I also finally had an occasion to try my hand at making a Floating Island Cake I saw on the Martha Stewart show years ago.  I have been toting that printed out recipe FOREVER, swearing that one day, I was going to make that sucker.  Alas, they do not have a video clip of it that I could find to show you the process, but after some digging I was able to find something comparable.  I also had to hunt down the recipe.

They (as in Martha and the guy), kept on saying how easy it was and how beautiful it looked served up and how impressive it was for company and they would never know how simple it had been.  Obviously, that was an enticing quality.  However, I did not find that to be the case.  It was quite laborious, and if you don’t have a stand mixer to beat the eggs, I wouldn’t bother.  It was cool though, very unlike anything we’d had before.  The cake itself tasted like a meringuey angel food cake with the frothy consistency of a stiff meringue.  The concept is to make a creme anglaise sauce and float the slice of cake in a pool of the sauce and then drizzle fresh caramel sauce over the top.

Here, is a picture of my finished product.  Pretty right?

But, let me elucidate you as to the process, and show you THOSE pictures.  It began to be funny, as in everything’s going wrong and I’ve been doing it forever so I’m not about to throw the towel in now, I’m going to finish this thing if it kills me….maniacal laughter!!!!!!  Both Kham and Janet had to jump in on two different occasions to help me try to save the sauce.

So here’s a picture of it, looking all pretty in the angel foodcake pan in a waterbath ready to go into the oven.

The guy said it would expand but then go back down later sort of like a souffle so I wasn’t worried when it started rising.  But it kept rising and pushing out.  So I had to push it back from the door of the oven because it was touching the glass and burning.

But then it grew so tall that even though I had lowered my oven rack it rose up to touch the top coils of the oven only to have their shape permanently burned into the cake top!

Even in the heat of the moment, I couldn’t help but laugh because it reminded me of that I Love Lucy Pioneer Women episode when she and Ethel try to save money by baking their own bread and churning butter from scratch (also make their own clothes and do their own permanents but I think I already posted that part of the clip in another post a ways back):

See what I mean?  (And I haven’t even got to the caramel or sauce making portion of this disaster.)  But, it was okay in the end because that’s really the bottom of the cake.  Once I had inverted it onto the fancy cake platter we used for our wedding cake it looked beautiful.

This is where I will stress that you really need to pack that egg white mixture in there.  Don’t be afraid to keep pushing it down and have it floop up the other side.  Try to bang it on the counter to settle it down and get out all the air pockets.  Think of it like farting flarp in a little plastic tub that you shove your fingers in to spill out the sides and make fart noises.  Yes, I’m using a fart analogy for baking.  Evidently I was still too tentative because you can see some of the air pocket holes.  I still think it’s perty.

Here’s the fresh caramel sauce I made….

and burned.  If you like the taste of burnt marshmallows, you’ll love the taste of the batch I accidentally made.  Don’t walk away from it people.  It goes from 0-100 instantly!  It’s pretty cool that you can make your own so simply.  It puts the nasty thick corn syrupy jars sold at the supermarket into perspective; but then again, I always thought those looked downright nasty.  It looked beautiful dripping off the spoon.  Oh and another warning about those directions on making the caramel sauce, when you add the water it splatters like an explosion!  Be prepared to stand back and, unless you want to be trying to clean that off your nice backsplash, you might want to do that on a front burner.

As for the creme anglaise sauce, that was a disaster.  Ultimately, mine ended up a loose custard stiff pudding consistency which it should NOT be.  It should coat the back of your spoon sort of like a bechamel sauce.  But, when I went to sing happy birthday at the table and toast them, the sauce broke just like a hollandaise.  Which was a real bummer because it was looking perfect and delicious just a minute before as seen here:

Suddenly it was all hands on deck.  I tried to salvage it by adding more egg yolks, a protein, and rebeating briskly by hand with a giant whisk to get those protein chains linked again and everything reincorporated.  It sorta worked.  I know first hand, you can do that for hollandaise because my aunt helped me out over the phone one time.  Auntie Alice is my own, personal, Martha Stewart.

But THEN, in getting help from Janet to put it on an ice bath quickly so the yolks don’t cook, water spilled into it when the pretty crystal bowl tilted not once but TWICE!  That separated and slightly chunkified things, like made it grainy.  It still tasted okay, it just was no longer a creme anglaise.  Considering how bad it looked when it broke, and the fact that it got water in it twice, it didn’t look that bad.

Floating Island Cake (as made by a guest on the Martha Stewart Show):

First, a picture on their site of their end product:

Directions

1. Prepare the meringue. Preheat oven to 325 degrees with rack in center. Fill a large roasting pan halfway with water and transfer to oven.
2. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, slowly whisk whites and salt until slightly foamy. Add cream of tartar, and gradually increase the speed to high. Add sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, until meringue is stiff; lower speed and add vanilla, whisking until combined.
3. Spray a 10-inch (15 cup) nonstick angel-food cake pan without a removable bottom using nonstick cooking spray; transfer meringue to pan. Using a rubber spatula, firmly press down on meringue to remove any air pockets, and to smooth the surface.
4. Transfer to prepared roasting pan. Bake until lightly golden and puffed, 45 to 55 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack, and cool completely; meringue will deflate as it cools. Invert into a shallow serving bowl, and chill until ready to serve.
5. Prepare the creme anglaise. Prepare an ice-water bath; set aside. In a medium saucepan, heat cream over medium heat until just beginning to steam, stirring occasionally. Meanwhile, whisk together yolks and sugar in a large bowl until smooth. While whisking constantly, slowly add 1/4 of the heated cream to yolk mixture, being careful not to cook the yolks. When thoroughly combined, slowly add remaining cream. Transfer yolk mixture back into same saucepan, and set over low heat, stirring and scraping down the sides of the pan with a small heatproof spatula until thickened. Strain creme anglaise through a fine sieve into bowl set in the prepared ice bath. Stir in vanilla. Chill until ready to serve.
6. Prepare the caramel syrup. Combine sugar and 1/4 cup water in a small saucepan over medium heat. Do not stir or allow to boil until sugar is completely dissolved; gently swirl or tilt saucepan to help dissolve. Bring syrup to a boil by increasing to high heat; cook, covered, for 2 minutes. Uncover, and continue to boil untouched until caramel begins to darken; swirl until syrup becomes a dark amber color. Remove from heat, and immediately add 1/3 cup water, being careful to stand back. Swirl until smooth and let cool; chill until ready to serve.
7. When ready to serve, pour enough creme anglaise around meringue to come 1/3 of the way up the sides. Drizzle meringue with caramel syrup; serve immediately.

September 2005

Here’s the clip I found of a fun, Nancy Drew loving cook making it to help give you an idea of what it involves should you ever want to attempt this yourself:

I’m sure I’ll try this again, if just to have success at it.  Only next year, I’ll KNOW that it can take a lot longer, no multitasking for me, and to have plenty of additional eggs on hand to help save it just in case.

I’m 15 minutes early on this post.  So sue me…

I know some of our friends and family have had a tough 2009 with deaths of family members, pets (many would argue that’s the same thing), burned down homes, job loss, and all in all tightened belts.  Here’s wishing all of you a Happy(ier) 2010!!!  And please know that if there is anything that we can do to help make it so, we’ll sure do our darnedest.

Big shout out to Michelle, for informing me about this little diddy by ABBA that I had never heard of before and thought I’d share with you:

It was so hard to find a good Auld Lang Syne song!!!!  This is the best I liked after wayyyyy too much searching time.  Pure and simple and with its beautiful poetry written for your eyes and ears to imbibe as well.

I couldn’t end this post without a quote from the most perfect New Year’s Eve movie, When Harry Met Sally.  It just wouldn’t be right:

Harry: What does this song mean?  For my whole life I don’t know what this song means.  I mean, ‘Should old acquaintance be forgot”.  Does that mean we should forget old acquaintances or does it mean if we happen to forget them we should remember them, which is not possible because we already forgot them!?

Sally: Well may be it just means that we should remember that we forgot them or something.  Anyway it’s about old friends.

Cheers From Corvallis to all of our old Friends! and Family!  Be ye past or present!