Addendum to Left Over

Addenda, maybe, because I actually have two things.

1. Today's Wiki How To is How to Make Spaghetti Tacos. Just what I want, tortillas with noodles inside. Would have to have a terrific marinara sauce, don't you think? And meatballs. Still, I can't want any. Wiki doesn't call them leftovers, but I do, and I just have to say that my friend's spaghetti sandwiches predate this idea.
   
2. Ann tells of a family she knows who, every Sunday, open the fridge, take everything left over from the week, put it together in a pot, cook it up, add ketchup and barbecue sauce, and eat it for Sunday dinner.

Come on, I said, that can't be true. Ann says it is.

Stranger things have happened, I guess. Just ask Superman.

Moonstruck . . . ish

Not that the moon needed me to, but I stayed up until nearly 2 a.m. to keep an eye on it, watch its total eclipse.

At 11:15 p.m., Boise, I stepped out onto my deck and found the sky nearly light as day and a bright white moon directly above my house. Five more times, until 1:45, I went out and saw the sky darken as the moon's bright white changed to an eventual coppery red.

I mean, like the moon turned to blood. Look it up in the scriptures--Joel 2:30-31 and Acts 2:20-21. Perhaps that is why I stayed awake, to see if any other parts of those prophecies might be fulfilled. Or perhaps simply to see it happen. I like that kind of stuff.

Besides, this lunar eclipse was a rare one. It coincided with the winter solstice.

Here's more information about that from NASA, just for you:

This lunar eclipse falls on the date of the northern winter solstice. How rare is that? Total lunar eclipses in northern winter are fairly common. There have been three of them in the past ten years alone. A lunar eclipse smack-dab on the date of the solstice, however, is unusual. Geoff Chester of the US Naval Observatory inspected a list of eclipses going back 2000 years. "Since Year 1, I can only find one previous instance of an eclipse matching the same calendar date as the solstice, and that is 1638 DEC 21," says Chester. "Fortunately we won't have to wait 372 years for the next one...that will be on 2094 DEC 21."

I won't be here for that one. But I saw this one. Ha!

There Almost Always Are

There were lighter moments at last night's Messiah performance. I believe I should use bullets here.

• Maestro Franz welcomed us: "The few, the proud, the ones who were able to park."

• The maestro had to stop the performance and wait and finally wave in the group of five or six people who were twenty minutes late and, of course, had seats in front, about the third row. I have never seen that done before. I thought it shameful of them to be late, but the maestro was good-natured about it, and who knows what travel difficulties they may have had. I am glad I was not in that party.

• The program notes had some editorial problems. That's putting it nicely. Words and word endings--like a "the" and a final "s" and others I could only guess at--were left off here and there.
  

• But the best, which deserves its own bullet, was in the description of Handel's fervor as he wrote the score for The Messiah. He isolated himself for those 24 days, you know. Refused food, slept little, was intolerant of disruptions and was quite unpleasant with anyone who did interrupt. His behavior alarmed his concerned friends, who "thought he was loosing his mind."

I loosed my mind once. But it's all tightened up again. Thank goodness.

Philosophical Me

So maybe I get a little too deep sometimes.

Like the other morning I was giving thanks for waking up, another day, being alive, and I began to wonder just how that happens, what wakes us up?

I mean, from a sleep that may be sound and very deep we suddenly stir, open our eyes, and we're awake. What makes that happen? I know we have internal clocks, and we can set them. But there's another question behind that, don't you know.

I was telling these thoughts to a few of my friends. They may have thought what I said in the first sentence up there. "There goes Carol, getting a little too deep again."

Devan brought me right back up to the surface. She said, "It's the digestive system, Carol."

I guess I'll have to go along with that.

Me and Cars

I like cars, my own and others, and it may be that I covet cars because I’d like to have one, or more, for each day of the week. I do try not to covet, though.

• For Saturday an SUV, not huge, to take up to the mountains, in case I want to go there, and so I can see the road from up high on the way
  
• my somewhat sedate Acura TL sedan for Sunday, don’t want to raise too many eyebrows and be thought overly materialistic
  
• a BMW Roadster for Monday, whip into parking lots and watch the eyes follow me
  
• for Tuesday some kind of a Ford, any kind, because they didn't take government bail-out money and because of my mother's 1955 aqua and white hard-top convertible.
• Wednesdays get bogged down sometimes, need a pick-me-up—no, not a pick-up—in the form of something vintage, maybe a ’55 T-Bird, red. But no. That's another Ford. I'd better go Chevrolet, like my brother's ’57 Chevy convertible, white with silver trim, which I say still looks great, but the truth is I don't see myself in a convertible, so I guess the BMW Roadster is also out.
  

• Thursday wants a Lexus for luxury and looks, maybe, even though it's just a fancy Toyota.
  
• Friday, hmmm, Friday give me a Mini Cooper, just so I can try it out, but not yellow, please. Never a yellow car.
  

Fantasy is not reality. For now I drive my Acura and don’t complain. No, I don't complain. I'm mighty glad to have it.

Besides, my garage wouldn't hold more than three cars.

Okay. I write one sentence on today's weather.

We are inverted, not converted, not diverted, but inverted, which means we are experiencing an inversion, a meteorological phenomenon wherein the normal properties of the layers of air are reversed--should that be inversed?--so that cold air is trapped near the surface of the earth by a layer of warm air, and what it actually means to people is that the day is gray and you can't see much and you have to take it on faith that there's blue sky up there somewhere.

Left Over

The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.
- Calvin Trillin

I love this.

It was not true of my mother. I think there were leftovers, but I think my brother got to them before she could re-serve. I am not kidding about this.

In fact, very soon after Wayne and I married--like two weeks--my brother came to our small apartment. First thing he did was open the fridge. I had leftover tuna casserole but some blood from the package of hamburger meat on the shelf above had dripped into it. No problem. He just ate it--cold--deftly forking around the blood.

(Don't get after me about this blood in the casserole thing. I was a working woman and only saw it that very day when my brother came over.)

When I had a big family, I did try to serve leftovers to them. I hated to waste food. But sometimes I left them over too long. Know what I mean? And just threw them out. Which I maybe should have done from the beginning. I mean you kind of know what you're not going to want to eat twice.

Two friends:
1. Dian never served leftovers, never used up refrigerator space with them. Whatever they--five kids, two parents--didn't eat at mealtime she threw away.

2. Margie could be "creative" with leftovers. She just was not going to waste food. So she sent them--whatever they were--as the filling in her husband's sandwich the next day. Oh yes, Chris said he had eaten more than one spaghetti sandwich.

I wonder if that was with or without mayo.