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Miramar Visit – More Photos

Here are some more pics from our company’s event at Miramar Marine base in San Diego.

Here was one of our “tour guides” – actually a Marine who flies one of the Hornets he is showing in this picture.

A view from inside the hanger out onto the tarmac – there were missiles stacked up, Marines working on planes, doing pre-flight tests and the like.

Another view of one of the hornets.

The bar at the officer’s club – where they shot the bar scene in Top Gun!

Smarmy

Smarmy
Adjective
1. Unpleasantly and excessively suave or ingratiating in manner or speech; “buttery praise”; “gave him a fulsome introduction”; “an oily sycophantic press agent”; “oleaginous hypocrisy”; “smarmy self-importance”; “the unctuous Uriah Heep”.
Word of the day (shoot, might have to call it word of the week knowing how I get too busy to update) is a new feature for Smash Monster. It will be influenced by anything from world events to personal experiences.
We live in a very smarmy world right now. Politicians are smarmier than ever. Think of how Bush admin folks gush over incompetents (Heck of a job, Brownie). Throughout our culture you see smarminess rewarded. The fastest way to rise, in fact, in American society, is to know how to be as smarmy as possible as publicly as possible. Smarminess is most effective when it makes others think you value them.
The more you obsequiously praise others in public, the less likely they are to figure out you are talking smack about them behind their backs. It is a critical element in getting or keeping power.
If you don’t have a knack for being smarmy in public (it can make your skin crawl if it isn’t in your nature to be a hypocrite), you can practice in front of the mirror. Just say really nice things about yourself (affirmations for example), then turn away from mirror, and talk smack about yourself. Soon you will be quite adept at doing this in the real world. You too can achieve the “Smarm Factor.”

The Amazing BBQ Race

Today (Saturday) we had a big belated July 4th BBQ – with 15 people coming over, we knew it would be quite a bash! It turned out great – fun, great food, great conversation…but it almost ended half an hour into it.

I bought a brand new outdoor gas grill earlier this year, and it has been working great. My roommate popped a fresh tank in, but the flames were pitiful. There stood Millie with her gigantic platters of chicken, pork, and steak and this sad little flame was simpering from beneath the grate.

I had put on the regular coal grill as well because I wanted to grill potatoes, fennel, and onions for a warm grilled salad (mmmm, with a yummy buttermilk dressing with fresh dill, fennel fronds, and green onions). But it quickly became obvious that this was not going to be big enough to cook the loads of meat!

I decided to run to Home Depot to give them back the defective tank. Our friend Frank volunteered to drive me and we raced – hoping to save the BBQ for our hungry guests. When I got to the Depot garden section, the cashier told me I would have to go to the main store returns – I said, “Oh no, we bought this yesterday and it’s defective. We are in the middle of barbeque – you can just switch it for another one.” He just looked at me and said, “OK.” (I think he could tell it wouldn’t be a good idea to start arguing about store policy at that moment.

Fortunately I remembered putting the receipt in the mail basket – so I had grabbed it on my way out. The idiot security guard who JUST SAW me walk three feet past him at the door and had to hear the whole exchange, actually asked for it.

Frank raced us back home and the party was saved! But wait, no! The flames were still pathetic. Leave it to Millie. She pulled out a pair of plyers, detached the tank, and started fiddling with the regulator. Other guests – Geoff, George, and Virginia – were sitting right there next to the grill. I had visions for a moment of our guests going up in flames. But lo and behold – Millie fixed it and the flames kicked in. Woo hoo!
Steaks and pork grilled away!

The party ended up being a total blast (did I mention the cold summer fruit soup that ended up all over the counter? Oh well, there was plenty to go around still).

The Menu
Cold Summer Fruit Soup (wonderful recipe from Food Network’s website)
Grilled chicken (Millie made an amazing homemade bbq sauce)
Steaks
Pork
Millie’s homemade chutney (oh this was soooo good)
Grilled potato and fennel salad with a buttermilk dressing
Grilled corn (Millie wraps them up in tinfoil with butter and salt in advance and it is so delicious you don’t have to add any more butter to eat it!)
Millie’s homemade apple pie (yum) with ice cream
Vera’s homemade three berry pie (yum if I say so myself) with creme fraiche

The last guests left at about midnight – so it was a grand success!

Smart Dog

I don’t know why – but this video just makes me smile. Maybe it’s because he has found away to finally stop his owner from making him jump in the pool

New Comment System Installed

Due to the impossibility of finding real comments among the fifty or so per day spam comments, I have signed up for a new commenting system from Haloscan – the problem with this blog software is that robots can exploit the system and post multiple comments. The authentication system never worked properly.
Haloscan should make it a lot easier to post comments.

Even if you gave up on posting comments, I hope you will start now with the new system! Thanks!
Hope you will comment!

Grilled Lamb with a Corn Relish and Grilled Asparagus

My friend Frank came over to grill yesterday evening. He grilled the most delicious meal!

The gas grill ran out of gas so we fired up the Weber and did it the old-fashioned way. Yum.

George Orwell

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

Great quote from the man who penned 1984 (he was only a couple of decades off)

Book Club – Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead

Beth, one of the founding members of ICK, hosted this week’s Ladies of ICK book club (LICK) – we discussed Rand’s Fountainhead then she cooked from a 1930s menu from the Waldorf Astoria – to get into the era of the book.

Beth cooking the dinner:

The group watches Beth cook while chatting about the book:

Birthday Surprises and Other Assorted Fun

So this is the note Millie taped to our front door last night to warn folks coming to a surprise bday party for me – I had no clue as I’d been ordered to my room because a cake was supposedly being made and designed that I could not see until later – this was just one of the ruses my roommate came up with to keep me stashed back in my room while she set up a surprise birthday party for me.

I have to hand it to her – I was totally surprised and had NO CLUE as friends creeped into the living room while I sat in my room catching up on General Hospitals and waiting for Millie to give the all-clear.

I am sure I looked like a deer in the headlights when she finally called me out to the living room and all these people were standing there yelling, “Surprise!” LOL. That it was! It really made this birthday very special, and, as most of you know, Millie rocks.

Max Is Home from the Hospital

Here’s Max getting all puffy and ferocious for his after-hospital photography session (he hates the camera):

For those of you who haven’t heard, Max must have been attacked by a cat that managed to get its paw through the cage bars and catch him unawares. I was at the office in Cerritos – but my roommate was home and heard him screeching then suddenly go quiet. She found him running around in a panic on the bottom of his cage bleeding.

He spent two nights at the Wilshire Animal Hospital. I rushed home from Cerritos and got him to the vet within 2 hours of the attack. The vet said it didn’t look good because she saw blood in his oral cavity – later she said this must have been from the injury to the ear (and thankfully, not the internal injuries she first suspected).

He had to be in a special “incubator” unit with oxygen pumped in to help him heal. He may be deaf in the ear the cat punctured, and his squawk sounds different now, but he is doing great and when I weighed him today he had gained 2 grams (that’s a lot for a little parrot). He is eating well, although on a softer diet because he’s still having trouble breaking shells.

He still hates his sister Inca and puffed up all vicious-like for her today. It’s a good sign when he is showing his typical ornery behavior toward her

He’s on antibiotics for 10 days and antiinflammatories for 5 days. He hates getting the oral medication, so it’s a bit of fight over that, but he’s not a biter so I just get a hold of his beak and squirt the tiny bit of medicine in (he then rubs his beak on anything he can find for 5 minutes, like that will make a difference).

I am relieved and very happy to have Max home!