So That's An Earthquake???!!!

I've actually experienced one other earthquake, many years ago, in Mexico City. But it was very mild and lasted probably about two seconds. The one we had here in Virginia yesterday was much more like THE BIG ONE!

We had just finished lunch, and I was tidying up at the time; and at first I didn't really notice anything because after living in a high-rise all these years I've gotten used to a certain amount of vibration in the building from time to time. But then as the shaking got really violent, I thought I was having some kind of attack or seizure -- the power didn't blink, and nothing was falling off the walls right at first, so it took me a second or two to realize that it wasn't just me. And by that time, Michael was up saying "Is this an earthquake?" Don't really know how long it lasted -- seemed like at least a couple of minutes. And then it took me about half an hour to stop vibrating, myself, after the quake was over! Also, I was very nervous that it might start again, so I quickly gathered up all the stuff I thought we might need if we had to evacuate, and stuffed it in my purse and my big Vera Bradley bag – cell phone, glasses, iPad, Filofax, all our pills, a change of undies, and my old Teddy bear. Oh, and my makeup bag, too.

I was very worried that the building might have been damaged -- that would be just our luck to have this place declared uninhabitable now that we're so close to putting it on the market. But they issued a notice later in the afternoon, on the condo website -- no structural damage. We didn't have any sort of real damage here in the apartment, either. A few things fell off the bookcases in the study -- but no books were affected. A clock was the only thing that got broken. And Michael went right to work on that and fixed it while I was still bracing for aftershocks (there were some, but fortunately we didn't feel any).

But at least we're OK, and there doesn't seem to have been many injuries (or I haven't heard of any, so far). The only other positive note I’ve found in the whole thing is that they say now it’s really unlikely we’ll ever experience another earthquake of that magnitude in this area, in our lifetime. But I’m of two minds about that -- in a way, it sounds reassuring; in a way, it sounds like famous last words.

Keep on Dancin'

Reading the Arts & Letters Daily today, I came across this nugget in an article ("Keeping Your Brain Fit") by Christine Larson, published in U.S. News & World Report, posted back in January --

A 2003 study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, for example, found that people over 75 who danced, read, or played board games or musical instruments also had a lower rate of dementia.
. . . the Alzheimer's Association recommends any activity that will keep you curious and learning: reading and writing, attending lectures, taking classes, even gardening.

See!!!??? It's perfectly OK for me to spend my days lost in the pages of a book (even though I still have a few years to go before I reach 75). After all, I'm doing it for my health! But maybe I should get up and shake my booty now and then, too.

Booking Through Thursday on Monday

Even though I always find it interesting, I can't seem to remember to check out the BTT web site every Thursday. Last week's topic:

"But Enough About Books - Okay, even I can’t read ALL the time, so I’m guessing that you folks might voluntarily shut the covers from time to time as well… What else do you do with your leisure to pass the time? Walk the dog? Knit? Run marathons? Construct grandfather clocks? Collect eggshells?"

Well, I do sort of read ALL the time – or at least, I try to do some reading everyday. Other than that, much as I hate to admit it, I guess my major leisure-time activity is watching movies (and old TV shows) on DVD – M and I subscribed to Netflix a couple of years ago so we could catch up on all the films we don't go to anymore. In the last 15 years (since the early '90s), we've gone out to see a movie in an actual theater about half a dozen times. So Netflix has been great for us.

A couple of cousins got me interested in genealogy many years ago, and since then I've spent a shocking amount of time and effort on family history research. It's a great hobby for a former history major. And it's a lot easier now than it was ten years ago, before there were all the online resources we have today.

I don't do sports and I'm not a real artsy-craftsy sort of person, although I am getting the itch to try doing some needlework again. I tried cross-stitch once and just couldn't stick with it – all those little x's over and over and over just got mind-numbingly boring after a while. But I think I could enjoy regular needlepoint or embroidery a little more.

For about a dozen years or so, I was deeply into doll collecting. Nowadays, I don't really collect – I maintain. I still love dolls and enjoy the collection, but I'm not actively buying anymore. The condo just can't hold any more additions. In fact, I may be on the verge of becoming a seller of dolls – could be my new hobby!

Another Food Meme: You Are What You Eat

I don't ordinarily play the meme tag game, but this one caught my eye. Apparently, it's been passed around a lot – I found it on the Books Please blog, where Margaret said she got it from Geranium Cat at Cat Musings, who got it from Ted at Bookeywookey, who got it from Ganda at eat drink one woman, who seemingly got it from Molly at les cadeaux, who got it from . . . . Well, I guess it might very well continue on back to the beginnings of blogdom, but I just now found it.

I probably won't "tag" anybody else, but here goes my list.

What did you eat/drink today?

Oatmeal for breakfast (just plain old Quaker Oats), with blueberries and a little brown sugar. Starbuck's Breakfast Blend decaf, black. Peanut butter on whole wheat sandwich for lunch (Skippy Reduced Fat Creamy Style – wish Peter Pan would put its low fat version back on the market). I know peanut butter is a fairly high-calorie choice, but it's supposed to be good for cholesterol, and it's a quick fix. Also some Welch's grape juice. Also a pear – tasty, but not as good as the ones we got from Harry & David at Christmas.

Haven't had dinner yet, but it looks like it'll be pizza and a green salad (Wednesday is pizza night at our house). Also, a tiny piece of dark chocolate after dinner: since M. was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes last year, we don't do desserts anymore.

Probably a cup of tea just before bedtime.

Oh, and quite a bit of Dasani.

What do you never eat/drink?

I'll eat almost anything I don't have to cook myself. But I don't like squid and I can't digest cucumbers. Tasted kidneys in England once, and swore never to make that mistake again. And I've never been able to bring myself to try sweetbreads, tongue, or tripe, so I don't know if I'd like those things or not. Never drink buttermilk. Or Gatorade. Don't drink a lot of soft drinks, and I'm not crazy about Scotch.

Favorite failsafe thing to cook (if you cook) or defrost if you don't.

I'm a terrible cook, and I've never really enjoyed cooking. M. is a much better cook than I am. So I wouldn't say that anything is "failsafe" in my hands. Well, I used to make a great pot roast, but we don't really eat beef these days. However, I've discovered supermarket rotisserie-roasted chickens – they're always tasty and easy to reheat.

Complete this sentence: In my refrigerator, you can always find . . .

Perrier, tomato or V8 juice, fat-free milk, Kraft grated parmesan cheese, various vitamin supplements, and probably several items well past their throw-away dates.

What is your favorite kitchen item?

Well, it would have to be the microwave, wouldn't it? That and my little rubbery thingy for unscrewing lids. Ok, AND my antique Sunbeam pop-up toaster which I got when I was married 110 years ago, and still works perfectly well, thank you very much.

Where would you recommend eating out - either on home turf or elsewhere?

Close to home: Taverna Cretekou in Old Town Alexandria; La Tomate Italian Bistro in DC. Further afield: Victor's (Cuban food) and Molyvos (Greek) in NYC; Schilo's Delicatessen in San Antonio. I was going to include the Berghoff restaurant in Chicago, but remembered that they closed recently. Bummer.

The world ends tomorrow. What would you like for your last meal?

One of M's char-broiled burgers with extra sharp cheddar cheese, and a side of my own potato salad (one of the few things I can make without screwing it up) – just the way my mother used to make it, with chopped pimientos and lots of dill pickle and massive dollops of Kraft mayonnaise. Or, a generous serving of my Aunt Gussie's chicken and dumplings. Which would be difficult because she died in 1971. But we're talking fantasy here, right?

Moving On

J: ― "Tonight I'm having the last gin and tonic of the summer."
M:― "So that means no more gin and tonics?"
J: ― "No, it just means that now I move on to the gin and tonics of the fall."

Wednesday After Labor Day

You drop your guard for an instant and first thing you know, the seasons have gone and changed. There doesn't seem to be any way to adjust the default on the way the system works.

After growing up in south Texas, and living in that part of the world for many years, it seems very odd to me when people up here in THE NORTH are stricken with this autumn fever at the end of August and beginning of September every year. Back home, the summer season is so long and fades so gradually into fall – really there's little difference between the weather in August and the weather in late September – you hardly notice the change.

But you certainly notice it here. Everybody goes on vacation in August – gets out of town. And after Labor Day, everybody comes back and gets back to work and the new season begins.

Just like that.

And this year, it's especially irritating because we're still having lovely warm summer weather, even though Labor Day has come and gone. Still, you can see fall coming on. The pace has picked up. The crowds of tourists are thinning out in DC. Fashions are changing. And when he got back from his walk today, M. said the leaves on the maple trees are already beginning to turn from green to pink and gold.

Traffic around here definitely increases after the August break. The Washington Post reported yesterday that the Virginia Department of Transportation calls the day after Labor Day "Terrible Tuesday." People are back from vacation, schools are back in session. Thousands of school buses hit the roads, and so do thousands of parents in their cars.

Ah, to think that this time just last week, I was basking in the sun and dipping my toes in the surf on the Delaware coast. And here I am this week, already leafing through the Fall 2007 L.L. Bean catalog. Oh, and another Rite of Autumn has occurred. I picked up the September issues of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar the other day at Border's, and regretted I hadn't brought along a wheelbarrow to help get them out to the car – they get more massive and more ridiculous every year. But fun to read, if you don't take the fashion silliness too seriously.

What else? Well, our outdoor pool is closed now - the lounge chairs all neatly stacked, awaiting storage - the bikini-clad lifeguards all returned to Charlottesville and Pittsburgh and Dubrovnik. Most years, our condo association gets talked into stretching the season a bit and leaving the pool open for "just one more week" after its official day-after-Labor Day closing date. And every year, it always turns cool and rainy and nobody gets to enjoy the pool during those extra days. This year, of course, they were adamant about closing on time, and naturally we're having gorgeous summer weather this week – perfect for swimming and sunbathing. Go figure.

Gall Stones, Gidget, and Other Matters

Recently I spent a week in the hospital, having my gall bladder and a bunch of stones ripped out. Actually, they didn't do any ripping – the surgery was laparoscopic. But a week in the hospital is never a load of fun. I couldn't move around much. The light wasn't good for reading. And my roommate spent the week entertaining and being entertained by a constant flow of enormous crowds of friends and relatives, who spoke beautiful Spanish which I could ALMOST but not quite understand. So I watched a lot of TV. A LOT of TV. And, since the channel lineup was limited to the major networks and news channels, I ended up watching a lot of TV programs I wouldn't normally watch. And one of those programs was Madonna's extravaganza of a stage show – her "Confessions Tour" concert.

Now ordinarily, I wouldn't even know that Madonna was still around. I'm not a celebrity watcher – for the longest time, I thought Jessica Simpson was one of Homer's daughters. And I've only recently figured out who "Jen" is. I think. But, as I said, hospital TV is a great eye-opener. And when you're flat on your back in a hospital bed, and it's Thanksgiving time, too, you grab all the distraction you can latch onto. So I watched a bit of her show. Not the whole thing – I was already in quite a lot of pain – but enough to make a few observations.

First off, she still looks great. Well, that's a "natch," right? I mean if you've got a massive staff of hair dressers, makeup artists, fashion police, fitness trainers, personal assistants, maids, butlers, drivers, hot-and-cold running nannies and the like, following you around 24 hours a day, looking your best must be like falling off a log. So she's not hard to look at.

And obviously, she can still pull a crowd. She's very energetic. She was always a pretty good dancer, of course, and she's kept in shape (again, see above paragraph). She does a lot of running and jumping around, and gives a lot of spectacle bang for your concert buck – especially if you're watching her perform for free on TV.

But the routines are pretty much the same old stuff, and though it's meant to be edgy and sexy, it sort of comes across as a little bit silly and, finally, more than a little bit disturbing.

When Madonna burst upon the scene back in the 1980s, her woman-as-unmade-bed persona was different and strangely appealing. Like Cyndi Lauper, she was so unusual. She was funny and kitschy and, yes, sexy, and the music was bouncy and hum-able and you could dance to it (I'd give it an 84). And the videos – "Borderline," "Like a Virgin," "Papa Don't Preach" and the rest – were fresh and entertaining.

Well, now we're twenty years further along. Even given the fact that La Madonna was only in her twenties back in the MTV era, she's forty-something now. Pushing 50, I'd say. And the concept of a middle-aged woman writhing around on nationwide TV, bumping and grinding and being pawed by a bunch of chorus boys, while she's grabbing and stroking her private parts, isn't really sexy so much as it is just kind of sad.

It's tough to get old. Well, oldER. And I know it must be VERY tough for entertainers. Especially entertainers who've built their careers on youthful rebellion and "attitude." It's hard to be rebellious and iconoclastic when you've got so much personal material baggage to maintain. So I can see that someone like Madonna would occasionally get an itch to step back in time and show the world she can still kick up her heels a bit (as it were). But it's an itch that really shouldn't be scratched in public. And definitely not in front of a public made up of the world's adolescents. So I have some simple advice. Get yourself some Vagisil, sweetie, and GROW UP!

One more observation about the amazing things you can see on TV. Sally Field is doing commercials for Boniva, a drug to slow bone-loss in women with osteoporosis. I've always kind of liked Sally Field – she's cute and funny and reminds me of my Aunt Betty Jean. And I was a big "Gidget" fan back in the 60s. Well, Sally still looks pretty good, and still seems cute and funny and appealing in a loopy sort of way – a little like "Gidget Grows Up and Turns into a Ditzy Old Broad." However, a cute old broad. She certainly doesn't look like osteoporosis is getting her down, and I wish her well.

But there's one commercial that I keep seeing over and over, and it gets more irritating every time it shows up. It's the one in which Sally tells us a tale about her "girl friend" who has to set aside a WHOLE morning EVERY week just to take her osteoporosis medication. Poor dear.

Now to start with, I'll just have to ignore the fact that I don't really believe movie stars have such things as girl friends (colleagues, yes – personal assistants, of course – girl friends, no way). The question I really want to ask is this: Sally, have you ever actually TAKEN a PILL? Are you at all familiar with the mechanism? It works this way. You remove your pill from its container. You place it on your tongue. You take a swig of whatever expensive bottled water you favor. You throw back your head and swallow. And, voila, the pill is gone. Pouf! You've done it. And the whole operation has taken what, maybe twenty seconds?

So if this is something that your girl friend has to "set aside" time for, somebody should check her technique – she could use some pointers. Refer her to this blog.