I stopped at my local grocer for some meat to grill yesterday. On an impulse, I snagged some ahi tuna. I sprayed a light coating of olive oil on each side of the steak, lightly seasoned it with salt and pepper, and grilled it to rare perfection. Topped with homemade salsa, tuna never tasted better.
In unrelated news, I think I’ll stop on the way home today and hit a bucket of balls.
Saw a coyote today on the way to work. Definitely could have fetched him with Old Betsy.
This calls for an quotation of Mark Twain:
“Along about an hour after breakfast we saw the first prairie-dog villages, the first antelope, and the first wolf. If I remember rightly, this latter was the regular cayote (pronounced ky-o-te) of the farther deserts. And if it was, he was not a pretty creature or respectable either, for I got well acquainted with his race afterward, and can speak with confidence. The cayote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton, with a gray wolf-skin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail that forever sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth. He has a general slinking expression all over. The cayote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry.
He is always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest creatures despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede. He is so spiritless and cowardly that even while his exposed teeth are pretending a threat, the rest of his face is apologizing for it.”
focus
Here’s the word of the day from dictionary.com:
blackguard BLAG-uhrd,
noun:
1. A rude or unscrupulous person; a scoundrel.
2. A person who uses foul or abusive language
adjective:
Scurrilous; abusive; low; worthless; vicious; as, “blackguard language.”
transitive verb:
To revile or abuse in scurrilous language.
Pronounced BLAG-uhrd not black guard, it’s yet another word that sounds like what it means. I have longed to use this word since I heard Michael Darling use it in the Disney version of Peter Pan but haven’t gotten any show to date. I suppose you want to be careful whom you label a blackguard.
Use it in a sentence: “Wednesday night, we won our first game in the city basketball tournament. One of the opposing forwards blackguarded L, but L brushed it off and owned him.”
Lately my emotions are all mixed up. That is, my water-works are subject to leaks. Peradventure the anomaly is caused by the gift of 3 sons and a wife about whom one may easily wax sentimental.
Example: I watched The Village again this past weekend and noticed at least one more major theme, namely the nature of fear and it’s relation to love. In the conversation between Ivy and Lucius on Ivy’s porch, Lucius says, “…the only time I feel fear is when I think of you and harm….” What an elegant expression of selfless love!
1 John 4:18 “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear…”
The northern lights were out last night. Haven’t seen them this far south in a while and I don’t now that we would have seen them had we still lived in the city.
I’m back on the cubicle farm. The place is newly remodeled so I have white carpet fibers all over my black pants.
Voting: Whoah! I stood in line last night for 3 hours, 45 minutes. Some people in our town who waited until closing time probably waited 4 and 1/2 hours. Who calculated that 1 registration checker could process 4000 voters in 13 hours?
All in all, it wasn’t a bad time. The night was crisp and still and everyone was in good spirits. The folks in line behind me were voting as a family and they rung up Domino’s Pizza for supper. Furthermore, I’m encouraged that that many people were not going to allow a 4 hour wait to stop them voting.
We carved up a few pumpkins last night. This was not my first attempt at a detailed carving but it was the first time I’ve used a pattern. (And the answer is yes, the relative size of the pumpkins does correspond to my choice for president.)
Thank God for small graces…
Bob and Brian: now heard on 104.9 in Wausau, WI (however, the music played on this station is thoroughly reprobate).
I went duck hunting on Saturday. Between the 7 of us we got 15-20. It was a lot of fun and I like duck hunting because you get to talk and be with the other guys. I stir-fried some duck yesterday and it turned out okay. To wit, I liked it but more experience will produce a better dish.