LET'S CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF

Back when Congress still showed up for work and passed the "Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007," I was on board.  It was in the midst of my environmentally responsible stage, and I believed with my heart of hearts that efficient light bulbs would, if not save the world, at least make it a better place for all mankind.  I couldn't wait to buy our first batch of CFL bulbs, but our incandescents just kept hanging on until finally, one cold afternoon--"pop, crack, fizzle"--and our living room table lamp was gone.  We raced to Home Depot and bought a 60-watt CFL lightbulb...not because we particularly wanted a 60-watt bulb (we needed one-hundred watts) but it was the only CFL available.  And, I guess it didn't really say it was a 60-watt bulb, it was a "replacement for"  a 60-watt bulb.  But sadly, it wasn't really.  We were about to learn our first lesson regarding energy-saving light bulbs.  Lumens.

Lumens are a measure of brightness and, apparently, are extremely precious or simply scarce.  If you replace a 60-watt incandescent bulb with a 60-watt equivalent CFL bulb, you will wonder where the light went.  So, forget about watts.  In today's world watts are meaningless.  It's all about lumens.  If you're replacing a 60-watt bulb, you will need at least 800 lumens.  It is not possible to purchase the 880 lumens that 60-watt incandescents used to put out.  That world has shut down.  Shop lumens.  But don't be surprised if they seem to be a bit stingy with them.

In order to make us feel better, we are told that CFL's, dim though they are, will last much longer than those nasty old incandescents and our savings will pile up amazingly fast.  I believed that until my first CFL burned out much quicker than the neighboring incandescent.  It seems, my friends, that a CFL rated to last 10,000 hours (vs. an incandescent at a mere 1,000 hours) will only perform that feat if you don't turn it off and on too much.  And, no, they didn't define how much was "too much." 

But, we are not finished yet.  We haven't discussed Kelvin.  New energy efficient bulbs will report their Kelvin--ie., their color temperature.  In this case, higher Kelvin  numbers mean the light will tend toward blue, whereas lower Kelvin numbers produce more natural light--more like sunshine.  If you grew up with incandescents and you like the way you and your house look in that light, go for 2700 K.  If, however, you want a whiter light move up from there.  But, be careful.  Right after we popped for a $25.00 LED bulb over our breakfast bar, put it in the socket and turned it on, our absolutely gorgeous granite (four weeks of shopping and months of scrimping) disappeared from sight.  Gone...washed out...blah.  Apparently, we went a little heavy on the K's.

All of which makes me want to say that I'm too old and set in my ways for this whole light bulb situation.  I did not stockpile incandescent bulbs because I felt it was un-American, and now look what has happened.  I'm buying bulbs that will live longer than I will, and if I don't get the Lumens and the Kelvins and the new Color Rendering Index just right, BC and I, plus some of the nicer features of our home, will look like hell for as long as we're here.  And that makes me sad--and just the slightest bit ticked off.     

CREME BRULEE

Well, as always, December is flying by and I realized yesterday morning that, yet again, I will have blown through another Holiday Season without making Crème Brulee.  Our schedule is tight and Crème Brulee is just not going to fit in.

It seems simple enough: Crème Brulee requires only five ingredients...at least that version touted by Alton Brown of The Food Network.  He simply asks for:

 One quart of heavy cream

One vanilla bean, split and scraped

One cup of vanilla sugar

Six large egg yolks 

Two quarts of hot water, and

Three Hours and Thirty Minutes of My Life

And, therein, lies the problem. 

If you have to google "vanilla sugar", as I was forced to do, you will be told to bury two vanilla beans in one pound of granulated sugar for a week or so, at which point you dig the beans back out and, I'm assuming, immediately float off into an absolute ecstasy of olfactory delight because nothing smells better than vanilla--and when it's combined with sugar it must be pure heaven.  Unfortunately, that one little ingredient has lengthened our time frame by the twenty minutes it took to figure out what it was, and our prep time has been moved up by one week. 

In addition to timing, the other factor that holds me back from taking on Crème Brulee is that I lack a certain amount of finesse in the kitchen, and if the recipe is just the slightest bit arbitrary, I am lost.  A few lines into Alton's Crème Brulee recipe and I learn that I am to bake little ramekins (add those to the shopping list) of Crème Brulee until they are "set."  Oh, Alton?  What exactly would set mean?  Oh--set means: "...set, but still trembling in the center..."  Oh... sorry, but I am morally opposed to placing anything that is still trembling into my oven, let alone lift it back out again. 

So, yes, there will be no Crème Brulee at my house this year.  I think I'm most sad about the fact that I still have no excuse to purchase the mini propane torch designed to carmelize some of that vanilla sugar I should have been making last week.  

But, I think I'm most glad that I will have three hours and thirty minutes more to shop and wrap for those little Midwest Munchkins I'm going to visit in another week.

Amen....  

"DECIDE WHAT YOU WANT'

During November, and much of December I had given up reading the "Self-Improvement" books I loaded onto my Kindle after Jay suggested I read them.  Giving them up wasn't a conscious decision but simply a matter of time and faulty prioritization. Over the weekend, I re-ordered myself, printed out a new "To Do" list and, for fifteen minutes this morning, picked up Jack Canfield's The Success Principles.  

I had stopped reading Canfield's book when I reached Chapter 3, which is titled: "Decide What You Want."  No reason--it's just where I quit.  After I read the first few pages this morning which detailed all of the reasons we seem to end up not doing what we really want to do in both major and not-so-major life decisions, Jack Canfield got down to the nitty-gritty.

As we begin this process of deciding what we want--what we really want, Jack (I like to call him Jack) writes that whenever we are "confronted with a choice, no matter how small or insignificant" we must stand tall and choose.  He says that giving up choice in order to please others is a habit.  And we can break a habit simply by reversing it.  No more "Whatever you'd like," or "I don't care," or "Whatever works for you."  We must choose.  Even if it really doesn't matter.  Feed the habit. 

At this point in my reading, I was feeling fairly empowered, and it wasn't even noon yet.  Now, this was not a short chapter and I was only a few pages in, but I was up for Jack's first exercise.  BC was gathering lunch possibilities out of the refrigerator and asked what I would like to eat.  Normally, I would answer, "I'm good with anything, what would you like?"  But, with my new found principle, I thought for a minute and said, "I'll split the tuna salad with you."

Whoa!  That was big.  In a split-second my 70-year old brain had worked out a preference, and in order not to be seen as piggish and selfish, offered to share the tuna salad...even though, secretly, I wanted it all.  But--I know in my heart of hearts, it's progress, not perfection.  Yesterday, I wouldn't have gone nearly that far.  Tomorrow or next week I may go farther.  Progress is good.

I know from skipping ahead in Canfield's book, and from a seminar I recently completed, knowing what you want--really want--is not nearly as easy as you might think.  It takes a great deal of thought and even more commitment and practice.  My tuna salad success at lunch is very small in the general scheme of things, but there will be more tiny victories that, once achieved, will lead to bigger victories. And I will indeed begin to ferret out what it is I do want to do or be in the years I have left, and just as importantly--what I need to do to achieve that goal.  Life is exciting.  Even when you're old-er.     

PETER PAN, REDUX

Hi--back as promised.  But, oh my.  Oh dear.  Well--darn it all.  Maybe the situation with "Peter Pan" at seventy is, it just isn't the same as "Peter Pan" at nine, or ten, or twenty-seven.  Maybe, at seventy, there are too many other Peter Pans still flying around in our brains.  And, maybe, the little yellow records I mentioned the other day really were as good as it got, and I shouldn't have trashed them, or given them away, or lost them, or whatever I did that caused their disappearance.  But, I can tell you right now that if I did have them back, I would only look at those little records and not ever play them.  Some things are better left where they are.

That being said. I still want to affirm that I heartily support NBC presenting live theatre.  "The Sound of Music," last year, and "Peter Pan," on Thursday evening were great ideas, and I hope they keep right on doing it. Quality programming does raise television to a higher plane, and we need a lot more of that.

Years ago, one of the television networks introduced me to Edgar Allan Poe when I watched "The Cask of Amontillado," and nearly wet my pants.  I recovered, and shortly afterward embarked on a reading frenzy of Poe's short stories.

On another summer afternoon, I saw "No Exit" by Jean Paul Sartre.  I was probably in high-school then.  The presentation was in black and white and  dramatized the theory that Hell might not really be all fire and brimstone.  Hell just might be three people who can't stand each other, locked in a small room with no hope of escape for all eternity. Think about that.  When I finally began to understand what I was watching, I was really relieved that fire wasn't involved; but, by the end of the hour, I had to consider fire might have been a blessing.  That play stayed in the front of my brain for fifty years, and only recently did I learn it had come from Sartre.  

So--what happened with Peter Pan that left me disappointed?  Primarily, Peter Pan and Captain Hook.  Allison Williams is darling and has a great voice, but I kept waiting for Peter to show up.  Her performance was careful, right on point and right on cue but, for me, Peter was missing.  I never felt his spirit or his spark.  Sadly, Peter never  flew, he was simply flown.

Christopher Walken, I thought, looked as if he were in a daze, bored, and perhaps a bit confused by all that was going on around him.  Actually, when I'd watched him in a portion of the preview the week before, I assumed he simply was still perfecting his take on the Captain and would come to life for the actual telecast.  I was wrong.

Now for the big confession.  I quit watching at 9:15 p.m.  I missed the last 45 minutes and I know a lot went on. NBC reassured me on Friday night's newscast that children across the country clapped their hands loud and long, and Tinker Bell did survive. For that I'm grateful and more than a little guilty I wasn't there to help.  I would hate to think of a world without her.

                

PETER PAN--PART ONE

NBC has tempted me off my runaway Christmas prep treadmill, and gently nudged me over the curb onto Memory Lane with its promised live broadcast of "Peter Pan" this evening.  Or, more correctly:  Petah Pan.  Wendy will, no doubt, call him Petah numerous times during the telecast.  And, I can't wait to see it.

I love Peter Pan.  I have loved Peter Pan nearly as long as I've been alive.  I have to believe we had J.M. Barrie's book somewhere in our house when I was growing up.  It can't all have been Walt Disney.  I saw the movie when I was eight or nine, and had the records from it.  They were the size of '45s and bright yellow.  There was also a little book included in the box that had a very abbreviated story line and drawings on each page directly from the movie.  There was nothing not to love about that Christmas gift.

I remember the afternoon I arrived home from school and there, in our living room, was a television set, arranged rather awkwardly in the open curve of our grand piano, its huge eye staring mindlessly into our living room. My Mom was in shock and wouldn't touch it, so we all sat down and stared at it. I, for one, thought my head would burst, I was so excited.

About the same time as Disney's "Peter Pan," TV antennas began sprouting on the rooftops of Dodge City.  An NBC affiliate in Great Bend, 84 miles to our northeast, had just come onto the air, and its reception (in black and white), was the best available to us.  Although most broadcasts were viewed through a filter of snow, ranging from light to white-out blizzard conditions, Daddy bought an antenna for the roof. He was an early adopter.

Within days of our television's arrival, NBC announced it's upcoming broadcast of "Peter Pan" with Mary Martin--live, I assume.  Much was live in those days, so it wasn't as unusual as tonight's performance.  And, just like today, I couldn't wait--but it was an intense "couldn't wait" period.  I worried about the weather:  What if reception was so bad we couldn't see it?   I worried about strange, unexplained interference:  Sunspots?  Martians?  And, on and on.  I was a nervous wreck.

But, wonder of wonders, our reception that evening was watchable.  The snow was light, the music familiar, and Mary Martin as Peter was absolutely spot on. Nana, however, was not a real dog as he will be tonight.  It couldn't have been better and, obviously, I deposited that entire event near the top of my memory bank.

Only as I was writing this post did it occur to me that my father knew how much I loved Peter Pan.  Considering our small house and centralized record player, he had no choice.  What if the timing of his purchase of that beautiful RCA television set and the presentation by NBC of Peter Pan were connected?  What if?  It probably isn't so, but what a nice memory that makes.  I think I'm going to leave it like that and hope for the best. 

I'll check back in after Peter flies tonight..    

THE ONLY THING...

It's not quite December, but I'm already sneaking peeks into my new Planner, imagining what wonderful things will happen to fill all of those days.  There are few things more enticing to me than a blank calendar page.

I'm not sure if I mentioned that I opted for "The Seven Habits" Franklin Planner, which comes with a quote at the bottom of each day's page.  The January 1, 2015, quote is attributed to Bertrand Russell--"The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation."   My new discovery, Wikiquote, tells me this quotation comes from "Human Society in Ethics and Politics" published in 1954.  Despite the occasional bad press, I've opted to believe Wikiquote because, frankly, there is no way that I could ever get through "Human Society in Ethics and Politics" to actually find the context of that quote for myself.  I'm simply hoping for the best.

Russell's quote didn't speak to me until the third or fourth reading.  Cooperation seemed so obvious, I was kind of surprised it was included.  Most of us had heard any number of lectures on cooperation even before we walked into kindergarten, and had already found it relatively unappealing.  I mean, really, who wants to cooperate by sharing a brand new crayon with a stranger across the table?  Especially if it's Knock Your Socks Off Pink.

And, yes, I know the leap from sharing crayons to redeeming mankind is a long one, but I've been thinking about it a lot over the past week or so, during what seems to be an especially un-cooperative period across this world of ours.  Finally, though, I've had to stop criticizing Congress; the Administration; Vladimir Putin; Ferguson, MO; the Arizona Governor (incoming and outgoing); and bring the entire process closer to home.

I've considered:  Why is cooperation so hard for so many?  Ideologues aside, we know it's a very good thing.  Politically, it's even better.  But, personally?  I'm afraid, personally, it can suck.  Not all of the time...but enough of the time.

Why?  I think it's the giving up.  The letting go.  The handing over.  And in my case, it's the relationship of those three actions to time.  I was born with a finely-tuned sense of time.  I can literally see it flying by, sweeping away my good intentions, my plans, my daily duties...my days left on earth.  I will admit that I'm selfish with my time.  I'm not sure that's bad, but I have a feeling it's not good.  I'm working on it.

So...what does that mean at our house?  Sharing duties in exchange for time.  Helping each other.  It may take BC an hour to fill out an on-line form while I can whip it out in ten minutes.  It only makes sense for me to do it.  Right now?  Right this minute?  BC is doing the lunch dishes as he watches Big 12 Football, so that I can blog.  That's pretty darned close to a Win-Win, but it still counts as cooperation.   And let me tell you: If we can cooperate, the big boys can cooperate.  I just wish they would...