"Normally, at this time of night, I'd be on my sofa with a mug of chamomile tea either watching Netflix or reading a mystery novel. So I'm not exaggerating; this is the highlight of my year."
Ladies First Louise

July 29, 2019

Burger Night

Do you know any burger-fiends? The sort that, even after having a Bacon & Swiss Buttery Jack on Saturday, insists on homemade cheeseburgers for Sunday dinner? Admittedly, on the scale of personality quirks, it's barely a blip. But I'm gonna milk this baby for a juicy (mmm... burger juice) blog post.

Last night's dinner. Yum!

Some signs of Burger Addiction Disorder (BAD*) include:
  • excessive viewing of burger porn on YouTube or Instagram, especially in secret
  • making a list of your favorite burger spots with ratings and notes
  • driving for two hours for a specific burger joint and nothing else
  • having images of burgers stored on your electronic devices or on your actual walls
  • wearing a shirt with a burger graphic or 'I ❤ BURGERS' or any variants, really

Is it strictly about taste? Or is it partly about associations?

If you want USA patriotic bragging rights, you certainly get it with love for the burger. Few can deny that it's at least one of - if not the - most 'American' of foods. Pair it with potato salad and you've got the basics for the big Fourth of July cookout. You also made a poor choice of side dish since three other people brought potato salad.

Living in the U.S., I grew up indoctrinated into burger culture throughout the seventies and eighties. My childhood memories include a steady rotation of ads from McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Jack-In-The-Box, Dairy Queen, and others. Nevermind that I didn't taste fast food until well into my teen years, my expectations had built up; I was craving Big Macs and Whoppers as the food of dreams I hoped to one day possess.

As an adult, I'm well aware that fast food is not 'real food' but when you've only got $5 and a coupon, it'll do. The problem comes when my partner's preference is a Quarter Pounder (pssst, I'm a Whopper gal). It's occurred to me that I can hide the McDonald's coupons, but I don't because I'm a nice person. That doesn't mean I won't gripe about it, though. In my mind, a good burger has mayo, lettuce, tomato, pickle, onion, Thousand Island dressing, and a bun that doesn't fall apart before its job is done. Oh, and it doesn't have mustard or 'American' cheese. McDonald's fails so much of my criteria. Most egregious of all is the lack of mayo. What kind of psycho-burger-chain considers mayonnaise an opt-in element?

Lest this comes across as me slamming** my partner's taste, let me proudly state that he is a better cook than I. This means that Burger Night, with him seasoning the patties and manning the charcoal grill, is one of my favorite at-home meals. So when he said 'I'm gonna throw some patties on the grill', I wasn't going to point out 'But we just had burgers yesterday'.

Of course, there are places where we've had very good/great burgers. Shout-outs to:

The point is... 

While I love a good burger, I'm not the maniac; my partner is. He would be happy to have them - and hot dogs, but that's another story - five times a week. I would be happy with once every two weeks. But that could change if a Shake Shack opens near us.

All in all, life with a burger-fiend is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, I sometimes get treated to really good meals. On the other hand, I sometimes get treated to McDonald's.


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Recommended Reading/Watching: Hamburger America paperback (2008) with the DVD documentary (2005)
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* Not for reals. I just made that up.
** I was initially going to use 'dogging' but a quick slang check dissuaded me. Does every word have an alternate sexual meaning? 😃

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July 11, 2019

Anticipating Autumn

It's July and you know what that means. Scram summer! Give me that cold and rainy sweater-weather I live for.

Haha. No, seriously. July means the start of... FALL NAIL POLISH SWATCHING ON YOUTUBE!

That's right. There's a summertime bug that has me itching for fall. In anticipation of autumnal delights, I dug out our Halloween Party CD - a little hardcover book with recipes for drinks and appetizers and a sleeve for the disc.


It was too adorable. We couldn't resist buying it even though we already owned the recorded material in its older packaging.


To further confuse things, there's yet another version...


Okay, full disclosure... these renditions aren't that great. Don't get me wrong - we've played them often, especially to get our Halloween fix. The vocalist, Janice Hagen, has a very good voice and the style is what I call 'light-lounge-chic'. But it's all rather elevatorish. In other words, it's great for background music. And even though her 'I Put a Spell on You' is pleasantly sultry, it doesn't come close to generating the heat that Creedence Clearwater Revival does.

"But wait," you're saying. "What about Nina Simone and Screamin' Jay Hawkins?". I think it's well-established that those are the greatest recordings of 'I Put a Spell on You'. But my respect won't allow me to taint them with my dirty prose.

This is why, when it came time to draft a scene involving a passionate interlude and this song, I had CCR playing in the background. Honestly, in the past, I hadn't paid much attention to the band. But when comparing them and deciding which version would fit an orgasmic situation, there was no contest. CCR came out on top.*

That's a roundabout way of mentioning my current work-in-progress; a book of several short stories that take place around Halloween time. Romance and sexy times within a knitting circle, at a Victorian Inn, and between a yard-haunter and his neighbor. I'm shooting for an early October release for this one.

And just a reminder... there are only 111 days until Halloween.



* Yes, I groaned at that pun too. Bad Nina.


~~~~~

July 9, 2019

Jungle Romanticism

I love a good overgrown backyard - plenty of tangled vines to trip over and prickly brambles to draw blood. No, I'm no masochist. But danger adds to the appeal, right? There's a mystique to dense foliage making one wonder 'What's all back there?'. It stirs the imagination and gets the blood pumpin'.


I used to daydream about living in a jungle - surrounded by wild tropical flora. Those fantasies had me in a fancy-schmancy plantation house with fields of either cacao or coffee. Blame it on Elephant Walk and The Naked Jungle. At the time, I couldn't understand why Elizabeth Taylor chose drippy Peter Finch over hunky Dana Andrews. And I never got over how Charlton Heston burst into Eleanor Parker's bedroom, grabbed her, and drenched her nightgown with perfume (#sexualawakening). Hoo-boy!* What can I say? I was a hormonal teenager. Don't judge.

The point is, my initial fascination with all things jungly was at least partly tied to sex.


Of course, another culprit was Edgar Rice Burroughs. Tarzan** was in books, movies, TV series, and cartoons - you couldn't get away from him. It was a muscled collage of Weissmuller, Ely, O'Keeffe, Lambert, et al. The skimpy loincloths and swaths of exposed male flesh really did a number on this impressionable girl. But, these days, Lord Greystoke's animalism in Jane's bedroom is more amusing than erotic no matter how sexy Andie MacDowell's hair is. One day in the Congo and those locks would be a mass of dirt, bugs, and toucan droppings.

I don't daydream about living in the jungle, anymore. It might have something to do with sexual maturity. But I think it's more about coming to terms with the reality of icky bugs, snarly predators, and having to answer the 'call of nature' out in, well... nature. Realizing that Eleanor Parker likely had to wipe her ass with rubber tree leaves kinda strips the romance from the jungle.

That doesn't mean I won't ask my partner to reenact the bug repellant scene with me. 😉



(* That was not how I imagined 'Leiningen vs the Ants' at all.)
(** Not my favorite Burroughs hero, but that's a topic for another day.)

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July 5, 2019

The Changing of the Shirt

Sometimes you've got to change your shirt. Yes, even if it was perfectly serviceable. You've worn it for three days straight, but there are no visible stains? And as long as people don't get too close, only you will know how ripe it smells? That's all fine and dandy, but it doesn't change the fact that it's just not doing it for you, anymore.

As it is with shirts, so it shall be with avatars. Behold my new cross-platform logo...


The previous one - a sketch of my own - was never intended as more than a temporary placeholder. It's simply taken me this long (three months?) to come up with a graphic that was pleasing enough. It doesn't help that when I want to use Photoshop Elements I need to move to another room and use my partner's computer. Something he absolutely loves, by the way. I mean, while he's grumbling "Did you touch my computer again?" I know what he's really saying is "What's mine is yours, Honey." 😉


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