Project Runway

Why do I like Project Runway?

I don't sew.  I don't know a bobbin from a button.  I couldn't thread a sewing machine if my life depended on it.  I don't know a thing about fashion -- and care less.  I've never seen a single copy of "Elle" magazine.  And yet Project Runway is currently in its 17th season and I think I have watched it from the beginning.  I can identify "Elle"'s editor, Nina Garcia.

My history with sewing is extremely limited.  My mother was an excellent seamstress and even took a course in tailoring at one point.  She made wonderful clothes for Karen and me.  

I took sewing in high school.  My teacher, Sister Bernadine, was a large woman who joked that the first thing she did every morning was to check the obituaries to see if she was alive or not.

I don't remember a lot about what I did in my sewing class, but my finale was a dress that I don't remember at all, except that it had a reversible overskirt that I really liked, which Sister wasn't all that keen on, but as I began to make it, she was very encouraging and I think actually liked the idea...until I accidentally tore the top of the overskirt and she was so upset about it, I don't remember her being at all encouraging after that.  I wore that dress for our mandatory fashion show and never again.

I made a couple of costumes for Jeri, which never turned out as I'd hoped.  The words I hated most in any flyer about an activity were "mothers will make costumes."  One costume I made never looked right at all until I realized that I had the head piece backwards and didn't realize it.

Walt had shirts he threw away because they needed a button.

And yet I became fascinated by Project Runway.

What kept me going in the beginning were co-hosts Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn.

Probably Gunn over Klum, since she often drove me nuts and I loved his relationship witwh the contestants, especially when he visited the final 4 at their homes.  I had to laugh at how many times my favorite choice of all the fashions that were modeled at the end of each episode were the ones that the judges sneered were for "older women."  But I cheered the season that the winner was a rotund woman with blue hair who designed for larger women. 

The only designer who ever won (or even was a contestant) whose name I remember is Christian Siriano.

I liked him when he was a contestant, was happy when he won and thrilled to see his name starting to be given on awards shows when stars were asked whose fashion they were wearing.  He is considered the most successful designer who ever won Project Runway.  Perhaps one of his most notable designs was this one for the Met Gala.

Klum and Gunn left Project Runway after Season 16, but Bravo has brought the show back with Siriano in Tim Gunn's position and model Karlie Kloss (whom I'd never heard of before because I don't pay attention to fashion shows) is the new Heidi Klum.  The only hold over from the old days is Nina Garcia, who still sits on the judging panel.

I've been watching Season 17 but realizing that I'm not enjoying it this season, and I think this is my Project Runway finale.  There are very few designs that I like any more, many of the contestants annoy me, and I often sit there wondering what in the world am I doing watching this stuff.

It's time to find another show.

Bookends

I don't do as many swaps on SwapBot as I used to.  But I do like exchanging post cards and journals.  This year there have been monthly journals, where you keep a journal for a whole month and then send it off to your partner.  There has been one of these journal swaps every other month, and they've all been fun to do.

The day before I began the current (May) journal, Walt and I met our friends Jeri and Phil (the other Jeri and Phil) for lunch at Fenton's in Vacaville.  At that lunch, I discovered (after years of eating there) that they have (free) post cards, including the one at he left, which is one of my favorite pictures--a larger-than-poster size copy of this picture adorns one of the walls of the restaurant.

I brought home a couple of the free postcards and so the first page of my May journal was this photo and a description of Fenton's.

Today is the 30th of the month and the journal will end tomorrow, and yesterday I met Char...at Fenton's, so I got a different free postcard that that will be at the end of my May Journal.  It's kind of like Fenton's was bookends for this particular journal.  

Given the distance from Davis to Vacaville it's definitely rare that I would eat at Fenton's twice in one month.

As usual we had a great lunch.  We started with shakes (I had a vanilla malt) and I learned a great secret for next time.  It used to be I would get a small sundae which comes heaped high in a small bowl and dripping with so much topping that the topping all rolls off the ice cream and pools at the bottom of the plate that the bowl sits on.  Awhile ago I asked for my sundae to come in a LARGE bowl and that was just GREAT.  For the first time I didn't have to try to figure out how I was going to get hot fudgs off of a flat plate without licking it.

They deivered the shakes.  The waitress had asked us if we wanted whipped cream and we both said yes, but my malt had no whipped cream on it.  When I complained to the server who brought it to me she said she would get some more.  She came back with a whole little bowl of whipped cream -- easily twice what would have been squirted on the top.

(the whipped cream was actually heaped on this bowl)

 

Next time I will order my malt with whipped cream on the side and see if I get that much whipped cream again.

My new favorite menu item is a crab melt sandwich which is different from the usual crab salad sandwich I have gotten on several trips to Fenton's.  The melt comes with avocado and I like it a lot better.

The sandwiches are huge and I usually bring half of my sandwich home to Walt, if he doesn't come with me.  Today he was here with Ned while an assessor came to check the house and give us an idea of what it might be worth.  We have no plans whatsoever to sell it, but Ned thought it would be good to get the assessment before he and Marta start doing major rennovation around here.. 

When I finished the first half of my sandwich, I did consider taking the other half home, but it just tasted too good, so I ate it.

After lunch, my plan had been to stop at one of the other stores in the mall where Fenton's is located, but once I got into the car, I felt so full I couldn't see getting out and wandering around a store again, so I just drove home.

I got home in a full post-prandial exhaustion.  I thought about the standard Mexican siesta after heavy meals and what a good idea that was.  It took me a good, oh, 5 or maybe 10 miutes to get to sleep and I slept for an hour or two.  I woke up still groggy, was up for an hour, trying to think about what to cook for dinner, given that there was no way I was going to eat anything.  I was so groggy that I went back to sleep for another hour.

I finally woke up and made dinner, but gave it all to Walt and stumbled back to the recliner.  It was probably 8 p.m. before I actually felt "normal" again!

I woke up in time to paste a Fenton's postcard into my May journal, to make the second half of the Fenton's bookends.  Now it's time to go back to sleep.

The Bridge

Whenever I think of the emotional pain New Yorkers went through when the twin towers came down, I have to think of how I would feel if one of those bombs from N. Korea took out the Golden Gate Bridge.

 

I only lived in San Francisco for 18 years, the first 18 years of my life, but still think of the City as "home" and one of my favorite things is going up on some hill and looking at a view of the bay, with the bridge stretching across to Marin County.  I'm a bigger tourist than the tourists I take to view the City.  It would take a piece of my heart if the bridge were to be destroyed.

The two San Francisco bridges were built at the same time in 1937 and two of my uncles worked on both of them.

(no, those aren't my uncles! ... that I know of ...)

 

Strong winds come through the golden gate and workers were constantly buffeted by high winds and were in constant fear of plummeting to their deaths.

 

Here are some stats:

*The bridge is 8,981 feet long (1.7 miles) and contains about 88,000 tons of steel.
*The total weight of the bridge is 887,000 tons.
*There are two towers that hold up the two steel cables anchoring the bridge. Also, there are approximately 80,000 miles of wire inside each of the two steel cables.
*The towers stand 726 feet above the water and 500 feet above street level. They weigh 44,000 tons each and are 4,200 feet apart from each other.
*The bridge is 90 feet wide. There are six driving lanes and two sidewalks. The width of the driving lanes is 62 feet between curbs and the sidewalks are 10 feet each. Street level is about 220 feet above the water.

 

The bridge opened in May (and the first suicide off the bridge was in August of that year!  As of 2012, 16,000 people had jumped off the bridge, only 25 of whom survived.).  

My father and grandfather were among the pedestrians who walked across the bridge that first day.

 

I remember when I was a kid, the toll to cross the bridge was 25 cents.  I just learned that the latest raise in toll will bring the cost to cross this bridge to $9.

The 50th anniversary of the bridge was celebrated in May of 1987.  The bridge was closed to cars and pedestrians could walk across it.  Walt. Char, Mike (and others) went to do the walk.  I knew I wouldn't be able to keep up with them, so I drove them to as close as we could get so they didn't have that far to walk.  As it turned out, it was a madhouse on the bridge and so crowded that they never actually made on to the bridge, but were trapped on the road leading up to it.

 

It was a great idea, but they estimated 80,000 people would come and more than 800,000 did, 300,000 actually got onto the bridge.  Nobody anticipated that the weight of all those people would actually flatten the curve of the bridge. "The Golden Gate Bridge, all 419,000 tons of it, groaned and swayed like an old wooden plank thrown across a ditch," painting contractor Winston Montgomery wrote. "Frightened and seasick people vomited on their shoes.  People began throwing bicycles and strollers off the bridge in order to lighten the load on the bridge."  The engineers, however, stated later that there was never any danger of collapse.

 

The Golden Gate Bridge is my "twin towers," and when swords start rattling in other countries, I get afraid for the safety of my bridge.  It wouldn't be San Francisco without the Golden Gate Bridge, even if I had to pay $9 for the privilege of crossing it.

Memorial day

This is reprinted (and edited) from 2011.  It's the story of my Uncle Roger Scott (Scotty):

By way of introduction, this is an uncle who had never really spoken to me before, but we found ourselves seated together at the far end of the family table at a dinner and he began telling me about his experiences in a prisoner of war camp in World War II.  It killed me that I had NOTHING to take notes with--no paper & pen, no recorder, not even a camera that would record video.  When we returned to my mother's RV after dinner, I raced into the thing, dug out my laptop and wrote as much as I could remember.  Here, unedited, is what I wrote..

.

I think I knew he was a P.O.W., but I had never known much about it and there we sat, the two of us, oblivious to the rest of the table, and Scotty talked on and on about his experiences in Germany in WW II.

He was shot down over Germany and spent 9 months in the camp.  I can't remember where he was at first (a name I couldn't pronounce and don't remember hearing before), but he was moved to Nuremberg and then marched 100 miles to (Musberg?).  On the march he befriended an older German sergeant, about 55 years old, who was in no shape for a 100 mile march.  The sergeant was trying to find a truck to hop aboard, and Scotty signaled to him to let him (Scotty) carry his (the sergeant's) pack, which he did.

After they got to Musberg, they were sitting around cooking C-rations when this sergeant and another officer walked by.  The sergeant shoved his hand in Scotty's pocket and walked on.  Scotty put his hand in and found an egg and 2 onions.  Nobody in the camp had even SEEN an egg, much less one, in literally months and he said "you wouldn't believe what I went through to cook that egg without anyone seeing me."  The next day on the march he ate the onions, though "we weren't supposed to eat vegetables because they put human manure on the fields, but I ate them anyway."

Another tale was when one guy was going around with an empty can trying to collect a spoonful of powered milk from everyone in the camp.   The deal was that there was a guy who said he would masturbate in 3 minutes and if he was unsuccessful, he would contribute a whole can of powdered milk.  The whole camp gathered in the bathroom to watch and the guy did masturbate in 3 minutes...and then asked if anyone wanted to bet another spoon of milk for him to do it again (nobody did).

There was a German sergeant they called "Mr. Stoop" who had, it is reported, strangled 3 American POWs with his bare hands.   But Scotty ran into him one time and the guy gave Scotty a cigarette.  After the camp had been liberated by Patton's troops, they lined up all the German officers and paraded the POWs past them to indicate which were the ones who had done them wrong.   The sergeant who had given Scotty the egg, "I think was taken into another room and given a medal; everyone liked him," he said.  But Mr. Stoop was not to be found.  Later they found his body in one field and his head in another some 12 miles away.

They were liberated by Patton's troops, as I said.   Scotty said that this one day he and his friend decided to take a shower.  It was the day for officers to shower, but he and his buddy had not showered in something like 6 weeks, so lined up with the officers (I am not clear on whether they were without clothes or not--they must have been because Scotty said that you couldn't really tell the officers from the enlisted men--they had to argue to get the group in because there were 2 too many and the officers weren't going to give Scotty and his friend away).  Anyway, they had to cross a courtyard beneath a guard tower to get to the shower, and as they were making their way across the area, Patton's troops in tanks arrived and opened fire on the guards in the tower.  Scotty said, "if you've ever seen men trying to dig instant foxholes in concrete, this was it!"

After the liberation, Scotty's friend came across an English soldier who was roughing up a German housewife who hadn't really done anything, but who was German.  His friend tossed the Englishman over the bridge, 40 feet to the water below.

He said that he weighed 174 when he went into the service and 138 when he came out of the camp, but returned home on a troop ship on which the baker had just quit.  There was a sign up that there would be no bread unless someone volunteered to take on the job.  Scotty said he had worked as a baker when he was about 12, so he agreed to take on the job.  He was so good to the troops that he ended up with a key to all the store rooms, full run of all the ship's stores, and his own private stateroom.  And when he returned to Galt, he weighed 174.

I don't know if all this reads interesting in the telling, but the best part of it was that it was fascinating, and it was just Scotty and me talking and I think that it was the first conversation I have ever had with one of my uncles about anything.  I left the restaurant feeling as if I had discovered an uncle--and feeling that this was the best night of the whole trip.

NOTE FROM TODAY:  Scotty and I never had another conversation and he died a few years after this incident took place.  But I will treasure it always as a wonderful night.

After he died, my cousin Peach found a lot of things pertaining to his time as a POW, most special of which was this little book:

The cover is corrugated cardboard, as if it was cut from a box and the pages inside are like tissue paper--apparently it was toilet paper.  On the pages, he recorded the names and addresses of the guys in his unit (some had X's on them, and we wonder if those are the ones who died when the plane was shot down).  But he also recorded the forced march that they made shortly before they were liberated by the Americans.

This is the telegram his family received letting them know that he had been taken prisoner.

143 in Pennsylvania

I missed it by a couple of days, but May 23, the 143rd day of the year, was declared "143 Day," in Pennsylvania, a day to celebrate and honor the Fred Rogers (Mister Rogers) by following his example. According to the Fred Rogers Center, the number was a reminder of compassion, and it meant a lot to everyone's favorite neighbor.  "1-4-3" is a code that Rogers would say to his friends in the neighborhood — and it stands for the number of letters in the words "I love you." 
 
Isn't it nice to see a headline dealing with something positive for a change?

To help people show their neighbors a little extra kindness through simple good deeds, the state's website created a "kindness generator," which pumps out ideas such as "Donate to a local children's fund" and "Write your favorite teacher a letter." 

Imagine what our real neighborhoods would be like if each of us offered, as a matter of course, just one kind word to another person. --Fred Rogers

It may be belated, but better late than never.  Here are some other ways you can show you care:

- Donate a book to the library
- Bring constructions workers bottled water
- Giver a server a big tip and a good review
- Send care packages to the troops
- Leave some quarters at the laundromat
- Send friends or family a postcard
- Let someone ahead of you in line
- Make a list of your best qualities
- Throw away a piece of litter
- Help someone who's busy at work
- Give a stranger an honest compliment
- Bring donuts or muffins to work
- Send someone an encouraging tweet
- Offer to cut a neighbor's grass
- Offer to take a photo of a couple
- Clean up a common area at work
- Send flowers to nurses at the hospital
- Give your pets a brand new toy
- Give a friend or coworker a ride home
- Sweep a neighbor's walkway
- Feed some birds in a local park
- Return an abandoned grocery cart
- Leave someone a nice note

etc., etc., etc.

It doesn't take a lot of work, and not necessarily any money, to show kindness to someone.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if 143 Day became a national holiday? 

I spent the day showing kindness to lots of people.  I spent the day writing letters and sending photos to the Compassion kids, a job which is more time consuming than you would think and I didn't get as many letters written as I would have liked, but the letters were more personal than the ones I write and send to everyone from time to time. 

Ned and Marta were here today and showed lot of kindness, some of which I almost wish they hadn't done.  Marta decided to organize my closet and she found a big picture that one of our foreign students had drawn for me.  It's about poster size and was leaning up against the wall.  When she took it out to bring it to show to me, she uncovered a termite nest.  So instead of organizing the closet, they removed everything from the closet and will make an appointment with an exterminator on Tuesday, when the Memorial Day holiday is over.

A Taste of Home

When my father's mother was nearing the end of her life, I don't know for what particular reason her diet was restricted, but I remember her saying "when I can eat again, all I want is a big slice of rare roast beef."

I don't know why I think of that from time to time. Maybe because as I get older, things don't taste quite the same as they used to and I miss the foods I used to love.  It's strange how many vivid food memories I have.  It's no wonder that I have had a  weight problem all of my life.

Walt went to San Francisco yesterday to go to a symphony matinee and decided to take the train down, so I took him to the train station at 8:30.  On the way home, I stopped at the donut shop and picked up a couple of donuts for breakfast.  I love donuts but almost never buy them, for several reasons -- one because I need them like I need a hole in the head, and two because it means getting up and out in the morning and doesn't seem worth the effort, but whenever I do get donuts at this particular shop, I'm always happy because if you get there early enough the donuts are still warm and so very, very fresh.  

I always think back to my days at UC Berkeley and the mornings we would go to Mass at the Newman center and then walk down to a donut shop nearby where I'd have a couple of warm donuts and hot chocolate.  What a way to start the morning.

My father didn't cook much, but when he did, what he made was memorable.  I have never had a potato salad to match his.  He said the secret was to slice the potatoes very thin, but even with that and adding the onions, mayonnaise, and sweet pickles that he mixed together, I've never been able to recreate that special taste.  I was his "taster" whenever he made potato salad, to let him know if he had the salt right.  My mother occasionally made potato salad, but it was never quite right.

I also remember the first time he made egg nog from scratch.  I can picture myself sitting in the kitchen while he worked in the pantry and gave me a taste of what he was making (without the liquor, of course).  It was like drinking flavored cream and I loved it.

He once made...and I can't remember what they are called, but Italian meat pies.  How he loved Italian food and swore that somewhere in his genes there were Italian ancestors.  But his pies were delicious and I have had them many times in many places, but never as good as the ones he made.

Of course then there were the peanut butter cookies that you had to drink from a glass.  We always teased him about that.  I don't know what he put in the mix, but whatever it was, it had the consistency of milk.

He always wanted the richest and the most calorie filled.  We would occasionally have taste tests where he would sit in our laundry room and open the window into the kitchen and we would give him a taste of two things and he would decide which was the best...it was always the thing that had the most calories.

My mother was a good cook, but mostly cooked "basic" things, though she made the best meatloaf, which try as I might, I have been unable to duplicate.  My cousin Peach had the same complaint.  She loved my mother's meatloaf and could not duplicate it either.  Something about the texture, I think.  I can't get the texture right.

One thing I remember most about my mother's cooking was her chocolate cream roll.  She must have made it often when I was a kid.  It was a chocolate sponge cake that was turned out onto a powdered sugar covered towel after it came out of the oven.  The edges were trimmed off (Karen and I got to eat them) and the cake was rolled tightly until it cooled.  When it was cooled, she unrolled it, filled it with real whipped cream, rolled it back up again and frosted it with a dark chocolate frosting--something else I have been unable to duplicate, despite my many years as a cake decorator.  I have often thought of making my own chocolate cream roll but don't think I ever did.

But outside of home, throughout my life there are special moments..."nothing" moments really, that I remember vividly because of the foods involved.

I worked for a summer at a tool company with my friend Joycie.  We would meet for breakfast before work each morning and I can still taste the wonderful pastries I had there, loaded with butter and just toasted enough.  Another taste I was never able to duplicate, though I've tried.

That was an interesting place.  The guy sold those cheap dollar tools and I was his biller-clerk.  I don't know why but I can't remember his name, but I remember that his birthday was March 24.  And I remember after I left the job reading that he had been arrested for something related to fraudulent business practices.  I wonder whatever happened to him....

I can picture the restaurant where I sat with my boyfriend Bill and his father.  The father ordered sweetbreads and Bill dared me to try them.  I didn't have a clue what sweetbreads were until years later -- and how could I pass up something with "sweet" and "bread" in the name? But I remember liking what I tasted.  I wouldn't eat them now that I know it's really the pancreas from a lamb or cow.  Shudder.  But I didn't know that at the time.

Like I can picture sitting at my grandmother's table (my mother's mother) and eating tongue for the first and only time and how much I liked it until I thought about it later and didn't want to ever eat it again.  I am not an adventurous eater.

I did agree to eat escargot once, though, when I took Gilbert to dinner at a French restaurant.  He had taken Paul and me to dinner somewhere after a rehearsal of a play Paul was in and someone nearby had escargot.  That buttery garlic smell was enticing and he talked about how delicious escargot was, so I decided I would try eating snails and offered to take him to dinner for his birthday.  The restaurant where we went didn't have the standard escargot but had them in a sauce and my word...they were so good we had a second order.  I don't think I've had escargot since, though I remember that dinner fondly.  I just can't get past the "snails" part.

I remember when Walt and I ate dinner at the home of a friend of his mother's once.  I don't remember her name, but I remember she made pie for dessert.  I don't remember what kind of pie it was, but I remember that it had the flakiest crust I'd ever had and I had to ask her how she made it.  In the days when I could still make pie crust (another art I've lost in my old age), I was able to duplicate that and think of her whenever I had a crust that came out light and flaky.

It is weird how vivid so many of my food memories are, and so I understand my grandmother's longing for a good slab of rare roast beef.  I don't think she ever got it.  I don't know that I have that sort of longing, but if I did long for something delicious from my past, I guess it would be to have another big dish of my father's potato salad.

Smiling

I went to Eldervilla yesterday.  I hadn't been in a little over a week.  She was at the kitchen table eating her lunch when I arrived.  I sat down with her and we had a nice visit.  She joked with Mala, the care giver who was cleaning up the kitchen.

 

The thing I noticed most about her is how relaxed and happy her face looks.  She really does feel at home.  And she is definitely treating Sandy like her boyfriend, which he handles well.

(notice she has a new manicure)

 

I'm not sure who she thought I was but we talked about her parents and what they were doing today and I made comments based on things I knew about things when she was growing up.  It was a good conversation.

At one point she went to the bathroom and when she came back, she sat down and looked at me in amazement.  She had no idea I had come.  She said she had been talking to someone else and was surprised to see me there now.  Of course who "me" was, I don't know!  I know that many people feel very upset when their parents don't recognize them.  I guess after all these years, I'm just used to it.  It's not one of the things that upsets me.  I'm more upset when she has no connection to Bri and Lacie at all, just that they are "cute kids."

I did have a bit of a pang when she told me that my "glass paper" was pretty.  "Did you mean my hair?" I asked, since she had gestured toward my hair.  "Yes," she said, "your glass paper."  It gave me a pang because the subject of my hair has been an almost constant topic for decades.  One of the things my other has been VERY disappointed about all of her life was that she did not have curly hair, as some of her sisters did--and as I do.  She never failed to mention it for a long time  Every time she saw me she said "Oh look at that hair! It just makes me sick. That makes me feel so DISGUSTED."  Of course she meant it as a compliment because she wanted hair like mine, but I finally told her years ago how it made me feel to be told that she was disgusted whenever she looked at me.  She actually never used that word again and rarely mentions my hair now except to say it looks nice.  I'm not sure if I'm sad or happy that I never disgust her any more.

Sandy and I talked a bit.  Nancy, the woman whom the police picked up last week, fell in the ER and broke her hip, so she's been in the hospital and is moving to a convalescent home.  And I never dreamed that Jeannie, my mother's best friend at Eldervilla, is almost completely blind.  You'd never know it to watch her.

While we were talking my mother got up and went into her room and to bed.  I had been there for about an hour and a half, so I just left and didn't bother trying to tell her goodbye.

I often left Atria fighting back tears.  I have never done that at Eldervilla, and usually leave feeling so happy and grateful that we found this wonderful place.