New Restaurant - this is the one with the salt and sugar in the water (day 35/56 foot debacle)

“Public opinion is always more tyrannical towards those who obviously fear it than towards those who feel indifferent to it.” 
Bertrand Russell





Husband and the oldest like Sushi.

I will not look nor try.

I like fish. But, I like cooked fish.



Last Saturday, girls were out with friends, husband/oldest/I went to their favorite Sushi restaurant.

The plan was for oldest to run in and see if there would be something (prepared the way I like it) for me to eat. If not, we would go on to reliable salad place.

Oldest ran in restaurant and checked and came back out to tell me they would grill me a piece of chicken and steam veggies for me. No sauce, no oil, no butter, no salt.

When the waitress came to the table she had been told that I was special order kind of gal. I explained what I wanted. She went back to kitchen with order and then came back to table.

She said she had been working there a long time and did not know (before that minute) that the restaurant "steams" veggies in salt/sugar water. From what she said, I think the steaming process involves immersion.


I am NOT the slightest bit embarrassed when I order. I do not feel I am the one who is out of line. I think society, in how they prepare food, is out of line. And I am used to dealing with restaurants, where if they have it in the kitchen, will accommodate me. If they want my continued business, they will be happy to do so.


So I asked it is was possible for them to steam with plain water or dry pan fry/grill veggies/chicken for me.

The kitchen decided they had 'clean' broccoli, chicken, mushrooms. And they had a pan they could use. Waitress asked if that was okay. It was.




Oldest asked if that interchange was upsetting. He asked if I was embarrassed or upset by it. 


I said no - it was just the learning curve. Now the waitress knows. Now the kitchen knows. Now I know how to communicate/order there. 



And my mantra of -
'No sauce, no oil, no butter, no salt, just the actual food, on a dry grill or pan' just had  'no sugar' added to the list. 




Husband was dumb founded by the whole thing. He asked WHY would a restaurant cook vegetables in SUGAR? I said - because all they care about is getting people to come back to them. So they are doing whatever they have to do to make their food taste 'special'. 


It is no different than the packaged food companies doing all they can to make their product taste like a party in the mouth so people buy more, More, MORE. 




We have to look out for our own health and our own waist line. No one in the food industry is going to do it for us. 




One of the restaurants with the highest amount of processed, I have seen, in almost every dish on the menu,  is a vegetarian restaurant in town. And it is a restaurant where I will NOT eat. 




At my (beloved) food coop, I have to be just as cautious about processed food as any grocery store. 


I am SOOOOOOOOOO not fooled by things that have a 'healthy' or 'organic' type word on the package. If it comes in a package, I need to be ubber careful in reading the label. If it has multiple ingredients, I have to be very diligent. 


If it is cooked by someone else, I have to be just as careful. 

Books: Tale of Two Cities (day 31/56 foot debacle)

I have to admit, I didn't even know what the two cities were (London and Paris) when I started this book. I did not know one thing about the book other than it was written by Dickens.


Here is a brief summary by Wikipedia:

"A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. With well over 200 million copies sold, it ranks among the most famous works in the history of fictional literature.[2] The novel depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the revolution, and many unflattering social parallels with life in London during the same time period. . . . The 45-chapter novel was published in 31 weekly installments in Dickens' new literary periodical titled All the Year Round. From April 1859 to November 1859, Dickens also republished the chapters as eight monthly sections in green covers. Dickens' previous novels had appeared only as monthly installments. The first weekly installment of A Tale of Two Cities ran in the first issue of All the Year Round on 30 April 1859. The last ran thirty weeks later, on 26 November.[1]"

So, this is the story in the time of the Bastille and the guillotine and 'let them eat cake', not necessarily in that order. I did not know this when I started. I figured it out very quickly. So from the time frame/topic I knew not to expect skipping through daisies and gumdrops. But even though the story is sad in a lot of ways, the book did not drag me down with the subject matter. I am not sure which of his books has some orphan begging for more gruel (?), but I might be brave enough to tackle that one later.

I knew after my other Dickens' books (Bleak House and then Great Expectations) that these books were written as installments. It helps me to keep that in mind as I listen.

Bleak House still seems like it had a LOT of characters. Great Expectations had very few characters. A Tale of Two Cities was somewhere in the middle. I did not feel like I needed to diagram them all out to keep track. I understood who everyone was, perfectly, as I read.

Someone in blog land (leave me another note please) mentioned there was a LOT of symbolism in A Tale of Two Cities. And yes, there sure was. I am not sure I could write a paper on the symbolism used in the book without some major research of the French Revolution, but I understood enough to know what was going on all the time. I did not get lost.  I followed along in a very relaxed way. I am going to read through Spark Notes, now that I am done, to see in more detail what all the red caps and knitting meant.


I loved this book. 

I am a Dickens girl and never knew it.




The University of South Florida (USF Lit2Go) has a variety of classic audio books available for free download on iTunes. I believe there might also be a separate site with free downloads for MP3's. I believe there might also be readable/book format downloads available (I do not know what system, I just know that first time I downloaded, the youngest realized the reason I could not get them on my very old iPod was because they were text and not audio).

A Tale of Two Cities was the first USF Lit2Go book where I downloaded from USF thru iTunes (audio successful the second time around) and then listened to the whole thing on my iPod moving between the car and the house. I LOVE this. I do not loose my place. I am not trying to move between iPod in the house and CD's in the car (I listened to 3/4 of Huck Finn on CD and then finished on iPod).

My husband was cautious over the quality of the reader's voice when I started this very long, free audio  book. I think he had visions that college kids had read the books for extra credit or something. I do not know where they get their readers. I don't know if they are professional or local volunteers. The reader of this book had a mature voice and was an excellent reader. He did not try to imitate different caricatures of the voices/personalities. He simply read the book clearly, but with emotion. And I was perfectly okay with that.

One thing I thought would annoy me, but I learned to love, is at the start and end of each chapter, the reader identified himself and the chapter in the book. So he would say something like: "Charles Dickens' Tale of Two Cities, BOOK THE SECOND: THE GOLDEN THREAD, CHAPTER 5: THE JACKAL read by _________ for University of South Florida Lit2Go".

First two chapters, listening to the identification at the beginning and end of each chapter, I wondered if I should have
1.  taken the time to download the CD's from the library (10 CD's, 14 hours of listening)
2. used my credits to download this book from Audible.com


By chapter 3, I loved the identification.

First, I could keep track of where I was in the story's action/plot. Second, if I pushed the wrong button on my iPod, I knew where I was in the iPod tracks. I found this identification to be a very nice pause between chapters.

I am not sure, when I used to read (text/bound) books, that I paid much attention at all to the chapter titles. I think I rushed headlong into the next section of the story.

I  hardly ever listen to the radio any more, but when I used to listen to NPR, they paused between stories so I knew where one stopped and the other started. When I listened to contemporary radio stations, they flew from one topic to the next and I was never sure where the line was.

With USF Lit2Go, I liked having each stage of the story separated, clarified. The identification pause was very yoga like, centering; it became a zen thing.

Books/CD - Old Man and the Sea

I read Old Man and the Sea (1952) by Ernest Hemingway on the way to middle's college this past week. On 3 CD's, it was almost exactly 3 hours long. It was on the list of books previously read by my longer standing book review group. I am slowly working my way through that list while keeping up with the reading for two classic books groups which meet monthly.


Here is general information you might enjoy from Wikipedia:

"The Old Man and the Sea is a novel[2] written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cuba, and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction to be produced by Hemingway and published in his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it centers upon Santiago, an aging fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream.[3] The Old Man and the Sea was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953 and was cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Hemingway in 1954."

My husband remembered reading this book long ago (maybe for school) and his only memory was it was very slow moving.

Honestly, slow moving sounded like a positive to me this week. It was a very relaxing listen.

When we read Robinson Crusoe for one of my classic book review groups. I remember one lady, who did not like it, complained it was just endless talk about Robinson's days - gathering food, planning, etc. The style of this book made me think of that comment. Lady probably did not like Old Man in the Sea, when the group read it several years ago, either. I enjoyed both these books very much.



I have figured out how to handle the mechanics of my summer audio books. My winter listening was all in the car listening to CD's. Now I am in my car sometimes, but will also be listening, out of the car on my iPod. This creates issues switching back and forth between my iPod (out of car) and CD's (in car). I now am 100% listening on my iPod so I am always in the correct place in the story, because youngest realized I have an AUX port in my car which allows me to plug in my iPod and listen through the car speakers.

 The port was deep inside a storage box on the lower part of my dash (under the heating/cooling settings and the radio). Youngest was looking for an additional power port for her computer (we have the adapter so can plug adapter in car and then handles regular electrical plug (like you would plug in the wall) for power) and found AUX port.

This AUX port requires a special cord, but is easy to use.

When I was in buying AUX cord for my iPod is when I discovered new Apple lap tops were available and we went back to middle's college to buy hers. The new Apple operating system updates will then be a download later this summer. Yes, we have been supporting Apple well this summer. I bought my iPad from them earlier this month.

Graduation Open House Painted Letters (day 14/56 foot debacle)

Newest letters:

Original Post:

This is a 9" wooden letter from a craft supply store. There is a pre-cut hole for hanging on the back. The letters came sanded and primed with a coat of white paint. They were $3 regularly and on sale 50% off when we bought them.

We bought letters for each of middle's closest friends.

I bought 4 extra (random letters) so if we forgot anyone, I could exchange the extra letters for correct letters at the sale price.

Middle is painting these as graduation gifts for her friends.

She paints the background with a brush and then uses paint in a bottle with a pointed lid/dispenser to create the Henna style. She paints about one a day when she can. She is distributing them at each special friend graduation open house (which started last weekend and continue for the whole month of June). These special friends also get a card and a copy of the cap toss picture. Some (less special) friends only get a card and a cap toss picture.

Here are more pictures for you. Yes, she does a most excellent job. These letter are little pieces of art. As soon as I saw them in the store, I could visualize what middle would be able to do with each of them. She has had a very good time. At the very end, there are pictures of the types of paint she used. And they had to be wrapped in wax paper, regular paper or tissue paper sticks to the paint, even after they are very dry.