Here comes the story of the hurricane...

I'll be the first to admit that a year ago I was a firm believer that hurricanes were just a really big storm. Obviously, I knew there were exceptions to the rule, but I always thought that, of the natural disasters, hurricanes were low on my worry list. I mean, you get several days of advanced notice, you know it's coming, and often the darn things don't amount to anything.

Of course, this was before I moved to a tiny island that once hosted the deadliest hurricane of all time. One one hand, there's a certain attitude that comes with being a Galveston resident. You can't help but feel a little badass that you live two blocks from the projects, have to drive more than thirty miles to eat at a chain restaurant, and that your whole city could be (and once was) destroyed in a single day. Whenever I tell mainlanders that I reside on the island, the reaction is a combination of shock and horror, and I kind of like that. In general, I really love living here, but my affinity for the strange island takes a strange turn when a hurricane is in the gulf.

Our first weekend here, we were initiated to coastal living with our very first hurricane, appropriately named Erin. Logically, I am very concerned about hurricanes. When the weather channel shows our barely visible island covered in a gigantic red blob, I freak out a little. I dig through the closet to locate the "important stuff" box, and make sure I have gas in my tank. I watch the weather channel for absurd amounts of time, watching the same five-minute segment of unpredictable Doppler maps and I read all of the "severe weather warnings" in effect for my county. Then I start thinking about when, if necessary, we will evacuate and how long it will take, and what we will take, just like any island citizen should. Sometimes I'll even stock up on bottled water and make sure we have plenty of food for ourselves and the dogs. I keep flashlights and candles in every room of the house and I know where all of the lighters are. I charge my phone every single day, and I always say that as soon as we are to the voluntary evacuation stage, we are headed north.

I do EVERYTHING you're supposed to do to prepare for a hurricane and waste hours of my life thinking and planning, and yet every single time it turns out to be a big fat nothing. It's not like I want our whole neighborhood to be washed away, or that I want anyone's lives to be ruined, but just once I'd like to maybe loose power for a few hours, or have a few palm trees uproot, or even just enough impending danger so that they cancel school and work and we get to spend a long weekend in Dallas. Just once I'd like for a hurricane to amount to something, to be headed straight for us and in the last hour spin right out of reach or to hit as a Category 1, just so we can say we survived a hurricane (and we would, our building was one of very few to survive the 1900 hurricane). It just seems like for all of the hype and excitement, the whole thing is usually a big let down. Like with Dolly, as I was driving home from class on Monday, probably the hottest day yet this summer, I perked up on my normally boring drive when I saw the highway alert signs flashing "Hurricane forming in gulf, fill up your gas tank!" So Ross and I anxiously watched the weather channel all night, planning our escape, if necessary, and discussing under what conditions we would leave. We were ready! We were fearless and totally prepared to face this natural disaster. 24-hours later, it appears that we will get nothing more than a week of light drizzle, which will be just enough to revive the parched mosquito population.

During the last "hurricane" we decided to brave the storm and drive up the seawall to the grocery store. Sure, it was rainy, and windy, and we probably shouldn't have been driving ten yards from the ocean, but it just seems like if the Rainforest Cafe Volcano is still burning bright, we're probably going to make it.

Until all hope is lost, I guess I'll just cross my fingers that Dolly takes a nasty turn and my class will be canceled tomorrow. As much as I like to say I've grown up, I'm still a sucker for a snow (or hurricane) day.

America: The Idiotic

It’s hard to believe that one year ago, I learned that we would be moving to Galveston, a city I had never visited until July of 2007. The time that passed last year between July 3^rd (the day we found out) and August 14^th (the day we moved and I began work) went so fast and was so stressful and busy. To think that we found a place to live, I found a new job, and we moved 300 miles in a mere 5 weeks is truly unbelievable. I’m really glad we aren’t doing it again this year. It is nice to relax on this 4^th of July and know that I’m not moving anywhere for 3 years, especially since I have really started to love this weird Island. After all, not everyone gets to eat at exclusively local restaurants (no chains!), cross the ocean every morning on their way to work, have a festival in your backyard every month, and have the ability to be on a beach in less than ten minutes. Coming back after a month of vacation has reminded me that I live in a pretty cool little city.

Of course, with all of the great things Galveston has to offer a resident, there are some major negatives. The Fourth of July is one of them. Typically, I really love the Fourth of July – heck, it used to be my favorite holiday because it’s one of those days where you get to hang out with people you like (versus, say, Christmas, where you have to hang out with people you “love”, a group entirely different from the people you like), cook and eat a delicious summer meal, and hang out by the pool. Truthfully, if we hadn’t just made the 5 hour drive last Sunday, we’d probably have driven back up to Dallas for the holiday, but since we’re still unpacking, we decided to spend our first married Fourth alone. One of the positives of living on an island is permanent access to a beach, a negative is that everyone and their dog heads out on a holiday. So, this morning we had brunch at one of our favorite local bakeries, Speculoos, which is usually quiet and peaceful, but today was filled with screaming vacationing kids. We drove to the grocery store down the Seawall, where visitors will walk with their small children across the busy street, not bothering to use the crosswalk twenty yards up. Unfortunately, the weather is less than desirable for the holiday weekend – we are scheduled to have solid thunderstorms for the next 10 days. On the way to the grocery store the storm began and thus the slightly humorous mass exodus from the beach. Kids screaming, pissed parents, umbrellas blowing backwards in the gale force winds, sand blowing everywhere, and a traffic jam caused by jaywalkers, people who have no idea where they’re going, and the couple trying to get to the grocery store, laughing at all of the idiots who would actually go to Galveston on the Fourth of July. We bought a few groceries where tired parents with carts of coke, chips, and stuff to make spaghetti glared at us when we zipped around them to load our cart with enough wine and tonic water to get through the weekend without going out again.

Sometimes we complain about the dumb people who invade our city: the motorcycles zipping by at 3A.M. during the rally, the people who act like they don’t know any better and block our alley during Dicken’s, the huge families who think that Joe’s Crab Shack would be a great place to sample some local seafood, and even the parents with small children, who, on making their retreat from the stormy beach, load their kids up with all of the beach crap and drag them across a street where cars are flying because they are too stupid to use the crosswalk. The truth is, without tourists, Galveston in all of it’s bizarre glory, wouldn’t exist. Luckily, we have plenty of wine, gin, and tonic water to get us through this very long holiday weekend. Cheers!

Hands of Time

I have big hands. Vicki and Whitney came over yesterday to help with our first attempt at cheesemaking (more on that later). After the curds and whey separate (didn't know which was which before yesterday), it's time to "use a gentle hand" to press as much of the whey out of the curd as possible. The curd makes the cheese, the whey, well we aren't sure yet, but are considering it a great plant food. We older gals had the perfect hands for the process. We joked about our farm hands, both of us have a heritage of German farming, and were able to do the job perfectly. Our girls have petite, slender, soft, hands. Will they improve with age?

My hands have always been big. I write left-handed with the pen on my ring finger, so I have a large callous there. Rings and long nails make me look like a transvestite. When Curt and I got married, rings seemed silly, so we went with the kick-ass stero instead.

I have blisters from pulling weeds, scars from poor knife skills, burns from too hot mozarella, and crooked little fingers from too many softball catches. As I approach 50, this is something I am becoming comfortable with. I have started noticing broads with big hands. Martha Stewart has strong hands, so does Nigella, and Mario Batali's sous chef on Iron Chef America. I'm starting to like the look.

Recommended products: Burt's Bees Almond Milk Beeswax Hand Creme
Burt's Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Creme

Truckin, Got Joel's Chips Cashed In...

While there may be someone in Texas that wanted a motorcycle more than Joel, it’s a pretty safe bet they don’t live in Grand Prairie. He had been looking and saving and saving and looking for 4 years until last week, when he finally pulled the trigger. It’s a sweet little machine, if you call a 650 little, and when we unloaded it, it was clear that all of our lives had changed. He made the first few short trips around town and his reports made both of parents feel quite a bit younger and maybe even slimmer. But while the first jaunts are exciting because of the newness, an official road trip was needed to achieve official biker/pirate credibility. It couldn’t be a lame-o, 1 hour jaunt to the country store and back either. No, this needed to be a regulation road trip that involved a minimum of 2 gas stops, twisty, windy roads with farm implements, two or three highway jerks with a close call or two and a great, hole in the wall cafe that hasn’t got the transfats memo yet. Luckily Mark knew the route that would surpass all of the requirements.

Mark has two motorcycles which allowed me to tag along and on Saturday morning we got our motors running and headed out on the highway about 7:00am. The air was cool and light as we wheeled out on 1187 skirting the filthy underbelly of Fort Worth. It was the best of guilty pleasures as we watched all of early morning joggers and bicycle riders getting in their workouts before the hot, Texas sun came out in earnest. Our aerobic duties were set on hold as we surrendered to the glory of internal combustion and loud pipes. Life just doesn’t get much better. Pretty soon we were in the country and running down roads most folks never see. The farmers around Stephenville were cutting silage and it stung our necks as it spilled over the side of the big, farm trucks. The organic smells of the fresh hay paired nicely with the dairy farm as we cruised into town for the first gas stop. We met a nice couple on a VTX 1300 from Wichita Falls who were riding to Hico and compared a few cafes and roads. A big gathering of 2-wheel Texans was in the works and was ending up at the “best barbecue joint in Texas” that afternoon. We bookmarked the address for future reference as we had already made our plans for fine dining.

Backroads have always held me in their tractor beams but riding behind my son on his yellow beast gave them an even stronger appeal. Although he was in front, I could feel the smile coming out of his exhaust which sounded happy. We met numerous other riders some slower, some faster and most all willing to wave, except for the Harley gang who seemed to be in their own world. We had one small SUV creep closer to my bumper until he eventually roared around and decided to pass all 5 bikes in our short convoy. The fact that the first two were turning left onto another highway did not deter him and he generously avoided killing both of them by punching in between them and forcing the 2^nd one off the road onto the shoulder. Luckily all five of us remembered how to shoot the bird and let him roar off in the distance with our curses of gut wrenching diarrhea upon his head. That’s just another bonus of being in the country though. In the city sometimes it’s hard to distinguish the dick-weeds, but in the country they stand out like a diamond in a goat’s ass.

After all that excitement we were hungry and tired, and as luck would have it, close to Mary’s in Strawn. Many places claim to have the best burger, steak, catfish, etc., but Mary’s holds the undisputed chicken fried steak crown. From the moment you step on the concrete floors and smell the cigarette smoke in the back room, you know you’ve arrived in culinary heaven. The exact millisecond your bike weary butt hits the naugahyde cushioned chairs, a giant iced tea appears on the formica table top. The waitresses are always the same, one too cute, one too fat and one too pregnant, but all of them sweeter than the pink saccharin packets they give if you ask for them cause everyone knows you use sugar for tea. Once your senses have recovered from their initial overload, you face your only real decisions, small, medium or large and choice of salad dressing which comes conveniently in multicolored squirt bottles. The small was perfect for Mark and I and even Joel remembered the large as being outrageous, so he settled for the medium. 10 minutes later giant cafeteria-beige, plastic platters of breaded, pan fried, round steak, Texas toast and thick cut french fries made their appearance along with a big bowl of gravy. The salad now comes in a tiny relish dish so it doesn’t ruin any of the gravy. Thirty minutes later we stumbled out in the hot sun and saddled up.

The ride home was uneventful in our gluttony induced torpor. We met a Harley rider at a gas station in Weatherford that actually spoke to us metric types and discussed the weather a little. When we pulled back into Mark’s driveway, the odometer was 267 clicks heavier than when we left. Mark and I were both so beaten down we had to drink several glasses of ice-water before we could stand back up. Apparently, Joel wasn’t quite as tired since he roared off to see his friends and show off the new machine. All in all, a damn fine day.