The Duck's Nest: online home of mizducky

The little LGBT pride celebration that could

After services this morning at the main campus of my right-on LGBT-affirming UU church, I climbed into a car with a couple of friends and drove on down to Chula Vista for South Bay Pride. This is the second year I've gone to this little lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender pride celebration, tucked away in a gorgeous little park just off of Chula Vista's Third Ave. retail district. The new South Bay campus of our congregation was reprazentin' in one of the couple of dozen booths set up, so I hung out there for awhile and attempted to help network the passing crowd. Our new ministry coordinator for that campus, Mar Cardenas, was doing a lot better on that score because she's a native Spanish speaker and my Spanish is embarrassingly rusty. My friends and I hung out for awhile longer, ate a few things and listened to a few bands, and then called it an afternoon. A nice mellow little gathering--glad it's keeping on.

Okay--who planned this crazy week?

It all started off so reasonably. First off, months in advance, I agreed to help cater a fundraising cocktail party this Saturday. Then, several weeks back, the sketch comedy/improv group I belong to scheduled a performance for this weekend--but it was for the Friday and Sunday, so I said hey, that works, I can handle that. Then a couple weeks ago, I get a call from a recent cat/housesitting client, asking if I could do that again for her this weekend. I took a deep breath, remembered I needed the money, and said yes--hey, I have to sleep somewhere anyway, I'd just be sleeping someplace other than home, plus playing with some kitties. And then, just last week I get a call from a fellow church member saying an elderly congregation member had a need for a long-term part-time caregiver--to start ASAP. Like, this Wednesday and Friday. I swallowed hard on that one--but see previous remembrance of needing money; plus I realized this was exactly the kind of additional long-term gig I'd been looking for to provide cashflow during school. So--again I said yes.

And so here I am, having run from piller to post all day today, about to run out the door again in 15 minutes, looking at more of the same through Monday at leasst, finding on my lips the paraphrase of Spock's quote that always comes to me when I find I've agreed to some crazy situation: "It seemed the logical thing to do at the time.

Orient Valley - merienda with requiem for a president

Wow, this is such freaky timing that I feel a little abashed that this post started out as another cheap eats post. As I headed for this cute new-to-me Filipino cafe near where I'm housesitting, (Orient Valley Filipino Cuisine in Ranchos Penasquitos), NPR reported the death of Corazon Aquino. I arrived to find a bunch of folks clustered near a TV, eating merienda and watching breaking-news coverage of Cory's death over a Filipino cable channel. Press conference, retrospective of her life and career, eulogies. This lady's major hunk of history happened in my lifetime--I am feeling pretty humbled. The folks in the cafe seemed to be feeling even more so. Thank you to random luck for being able to share the moment with them.

P.S. The food was good and generous - you should give these hardworking folks your business. Pictured here: chicken caldereta, pinakbet (in the styrofoam cup), pancit and steamed rice.

Turkey consumption day

Got my turkey fix today at an annual dinner for persons living with AIDS, their family and friends, that's been put on at my church for twenty years. I qualify as a friend of a PWA; plus I could be said to be a volunteer, being a church member who could direct the non-member volunteers to where stuff like light switches and such are hidden. But really, the joint was so overrun by volunteers that all I really wound up doing was standing around and saying "hello" a whole lot. The meal itself was actually great; got in some interesting conversations, and best of all did not have to do a lick of work. I love cooking all the traditional Thanksgiving foods, but I was just as glad to have other people taking care of that (not to mention the cleaning-up afterward). Still, I kind of miss having leftover Thanksgiving Day food, so I might yet decide to buy a smallish turkey on closeout and roasting it up for home.

Tired puppy

Getting this non-morning person up and awake and out of the house by 8:30am; spending all day up and talking to people as part of a church fundraiser; attending a very alternative communion service at my hippy-dippy church; attending a major potluck meal afterward, where I indulged in lots of tryptophan-rich turkey ... all of this taken together add up to one very sleepy duck.

Going crashy real soon now ... :-)

Dishwasher blues

Our household's dishwasher is on the fritz. You have no idea how beholden to a humble appliance you have become until you find yourself standing there in frustration in the kitchen, trying over and over to come up with some magic combination of knob twist and door closure to get the darned thing to unfreeze and fulfill its intended role, all the while eying the full load of dirty dishes carefully stacked inside the beast which you must now laboriously unload and wash by hand.

And it's not like dish-washing is even a totally hateful chore to me. It's not like vacuuming, which I hate with an irrational passion unparalleled in modern history. I have been known, after tripping over the vacuum's hose or power cord one too many times, to turn on the poor thing growling and baring my teeth as if about to fall upon it and rip its throat out ... if only it had a throat to rip.

No, dish-washing as such I don't find objectionable at all. In fact, I find it relatively restful and meditative. In fact, whenever I'm helping out with a big community dinner I always volunteer to wash dishes rather than setup and clear tables or dish out food or schlep food or whatever. Dish-washing's okay ... as long as you've not built up the expectation that you don't need to do any because a machine's doing it instead.

But then, woe to you the day that the machine decides to stick its tongue out at you and refuse to function, in which case it's time for growling and baring one's teeth at it. I wonder where its throat is, so I can rip it out. Maybe that would make it work better. If nothing else, it would make me feel better.

Where is Too Much Coffee Woman?

Too Much Coffee Man - Comics.

This being all by way of saying that the Too Much Coffee Woman of the day is sitting here at this keyboard, but not for too much longer tonight.  I have been felled by one of the results of too much coffee on my bod, namely a very riled-up tummy, so I'm going to go lie down and wait for it to stop. Oh, the glamorous life I lead.

Quick check-in after LA day trip

I was so wiped out after my marathon cooking gig on Thursday that I decided to bag my original plan to drive up to LA on Friday night. So instead I got up at oh-dark-30 this morning and drove to Burbank, had an excellent time at the all-day voice-acting workshop I'd signed up for, and then turned around and drove back to San Diego. And now I'm all wiped out again. Sensing a pattern here ...

I have lots more to say about the excellent workshop I attended--it was definitely worth the grueling drive--but first I have to rest up from said gruel-ation. But I do want to briefly wonder out loud about the astonishing amount of traffic on the I-5 on a Saturday night--where in the world were all those people going at that hour? And why were so many of them driving just plain wacky? Ah well--I did succeed in making it home in one piece anyway.

Checking in after the catering gig

Exhausted but feeling a sense of accomplishment after catering a dinner for eight at the home of another member of my beloved hippy-dippy church. I've got photos, and I've got details, but they'll have to wait till tomorrow when I'm a little rested up. But for now I'll say that it was a lot of fun, and it was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun work, with a lot of immediate gratification. And dang, that was some tasty food, if I do say so myself.

Does too rain in Southern California; tailgaters; the birthday boy

As they tend to say here in SoCal, we were having some weather today. The usual default meteorological conditions being sunny skies and warm temperatures, anything that differs from that is counted as actual "weather."

The weather in question was in fact nothing much more than some overcast skies, chilly breezes, and intermittent drizzle--what my bubbe would have called "shvitzing" in Yiddish. However, given how seldom it does rain around here, how much oily residue builds up on the pavement between rains, what a slip-and-slide the streets turn into when rain finally falls and starts to loosen that oilslick, and how inexperienced the vast majority of Californians are with driving on such a surface, just a little bit of shvitz can and does turn into a whole lot of crackups.

Fortunately I didn't witness any such disasters today ... but I took no chances and kept a major amount of distance between my car and others on the road. No mean feat given SoCal drivers' love of tailgating. What the hell is up with that tailgating thing, by the way? There can be deserted lanes to my left and my right, and there will still be this car mindlessly hugging my bumper as if my lane is the only one in the world. And they complain about drivers from my neck of the woods being crazy? Sheesh!

Yeah yeah yeah ... whine snivel bitch moan. But I really don't get it: why in the world do people tailgate, anyway? What possible purpose could it serve? Why not simply go around the car ahead of you that's going too slow for your tastes, instead of sticking back there mere inches from that bumper, tempting fate to put you in an accident? After all, these are huge hunks of steel with huge hunks of kinetic energy and momentum happening to them, and one false move, especially at close quarters, can turn you into hamburger. So why up the odds of becoming highway hamburger by getting so close to that car in front of you? I really, really, really don't get it.

*  *  *  *  *

The senior gentleman for whom I am live-in caretaker (who I've taken to referring to in private as Tottsan,* after Lupin III's favorite nickname for his nemesis Inspector Zenigata), celebrated his 76th birthday today. While he was attending our hippy-dippy Unitarian church's Sunday services, I slipped out to the local supermarket and picked up a cake and a goofy candle that played "Happy Birthday" in an annoying little electronic squeal. The cake got presented at our weekly after-church lunch gathering at a local diner, along with risque birthday cards and much merriment. My little Tottsan was genuinely touched.

*"Tottsan," I am told, is Japanese informal slang meaning an older gentleman. The Lupin dubs regularly translate it as "Pops" or "Old Man." I get the drift that American slang like "Daddy-o" would also work.