rallying the animal lovers

moderngypsy's beloved dog Shunka was run over on the 1st and needs complex and expensive surgery to reconstruct her crushed pelvis. to raise money to defray the cost, she's raffling off a very beautiful shawl that she finished in the vet's waiting room.

go here to see her entry, and please donate if you can. i know i'd do everything possible for either of my boys, no matter the expense...

on a day not unlike today

there we were, two thirteen-year-old girls in need of a tan. we wanted to be more like Suzanne's older sister Lori, who tanned religiously and had long blonde hair and looked great in a bikini. a few years later, Lori moved to L.A. and became a professional bodybuilder, but that's not the point of this story. the point is that we needed a tan, but we were both sheltered kids. we didn't really know how one went about doing that. but we did know that if we reclined on top of the camper in her driveway on colorful towels, slick with tanning oil and wearing our bikinis, boys might notice us, and we liked that idea a lot.

Suzanne was an early bloomer, and she filled out her bikini top a lot better than i did mine. it was only at 15 or 16 that my breasts finally came into their own, and soon enough i would be wishing for them to stop. i'm pretty sure the bikini i wore that day was a very skimpy day-glo lime green one -- the worst possible color for a girl so white i was almost blue. my mom had bought it for me on clearance at Marshall's for $1.99, though, and it was the only bikini i had, so i had to make do.

anyway, we searched both our houses top to bottom looking for tanning lotion without success. we were kind of unclear on the concept. i guess we assumed the oil was to help you brown, in the same way a turkey browns in the oven. we were at a loss. what could we use? suddenly, Suzanne had an idea. "We could use margarine!" she said, retrieving a tub of the spreadable kind from the refrigerator.

it seemed logical to me, so we headed outside and climbed onto the camper with our towels and tub of margarine. and there we sat, smearing each other with partially hydrogenated vegetable oils in the hot summer sun.

we didn't attract any boys. which, in retrospect, is their loss. now, pushing 40, those boys probably lie in bed next to their wives late at night fantasizing about adolescent girls greasing each other up with margarine.

well, sorry, boys. you had your chance. the show's over now.

if you're curious about the science behind hurricane Frances...

take a look at this over in kratkrat's lj. an excellent analysis of why the hurricane behaved as it did, plus some general background about what ingredients are necessary for a hurricane to grow and/or weaken. very interesting stuff.

dinner al fresco

with the temperature in Pacifica still at 89 degrees at 8pm, clearly light fare was called for. i assembled the following:

mixed greens with kiwis and prickly pear vinaigrette
sliced pears
taleggio
cracked pepper water crackers (no bread handy, didn't want to run the breadmaker)
Fife 2001 Redhead rosé

i'd never had taleggio before... it's fantastic. the pears, as it turns out, aren't as good a match with it as i'd imagined; however, it goes very nicely with the champagne jelly Shirley bought me at the farmer's market... mmmmmmmmm.

the wine, an impulse buy based entirely on its unbelievably beautiful color, is bone-dry, light, and really does, as the fact sheet claims, have notes of pomegranate and jolly rancher watermelon. good with the cheese (but a real red would be better, maybe zinfandel) and perfect with the salad. inexpensive at something like $10 the bottle at BevMo. tastiest lightly chilled, but not cold.

re: prickly pears, i think they're more trouble than they're worth, overall. when i cut them open, i found one thin layer of fruit beneath the skin without much flavor and a sweet, crimson, tasty center with lots of small, rock-hard seeds. i ended up spooning out the centers and pressing them through a sieve to make a puree. warning: the juice will stain like pomegranate.

overall, not a stunning success, but still, everything's tasty. and i tried a bunch of new things, and now i know what to do with them later on.