Many of you have asked about the health of Pawlie the Cat, whom (last we spoke) was suffering a heavily-abused tail. The good news is that the tail amputation was successful. Pawlie has now rejoined the household with no ill effect, and is back to his official duties of….well, whatever it is the cat does all day.
None of you asked about the scrapped ash-gray T shirt that my wife had appropriated for a tail bandage. Regardless, I shall inform you that the scraps have been discarded irretrievably and neither mourned nor mentioned by anyone except me, and all I’m doing is the mentioning. We now may fully describe the life cycle (not exactly the right term, but still) of the T shirt, which is as follows:
- Summer, 2006: Assembled and printed in a factory somewhere, maybe China or the Philippines.
- July 26, 2006: Shipped to a booth outside the White Sox stadium in Chicago, and distributed to Joe.
- Summer 2006–Winter 2021: Worn by Joe, then laundered, shelved, repeat.
- February 27, 2021: Torn into shreds that are used to bandage the cat’s tail.
- March 5th, 2021: Discarded irretrievably in Waltham, MA, presumably as medical waste.
Meanwhile, in the kitchen, I have enacted a personal and private rebellion against my least favorite instruction on the Hello Fresh recipes. Seemingly half the recipes issue the same command, a simple four-letter word that I associate with a brand of soap.
The command is….“zest”. As in “Zest the lemon” or “Zest the lime.” I have made several attempts to zest, all of which failed, most likely because I am not entirely sure what zesting is. Presumably the process is akin to mincing or dicing, or whatever you call scraping cheese over a cheese grater. For a lemon or lime, would the rind be so treated? I kind of hope not, because the fruit growers spray all sorts of nasty pesticides and herbicides. But my actual knowledge is minimal, and I intend to keep it that way. I could do a Google search on “zest” in less time than is taking me to type this sentence, but I categorically refuse. If you happen to be familiar with zesting, please keep the information to yourself, or at least keep it away from me.
I AM NOT GOING TO ZEST!!!
I’m happy to squeeze the lemon or lime it into the sauce or over the rice or onto the meatballs. Then I’ll put a slice on your plate and you can do with it what you like. The meal will be delicious. So there!!!
The concluding episode of the WandaVision series (source of the title of this little essay) provided everything that it had to provide, including plot resolution, punishment of the bad guys, the return of the status quo, and seemingly endless battles of airborne witches and robots hurling light beams at each other. It was all kinda sad and disappointing, but we’ll manage until the next blockbuster entertainment comes along.
Meanwhile, that found bottle of Modelo remains in the refrigerator, as it has been for two months now. However, I now have decided its fate. I am going to drink the beer. Most likely the next time that Mexican cuisine enters the Hello Fresh rotation, but presumably on some earlier occasion. I think it’s bad karma and poor resource management to have an item in one’s refrigerator that just sits there, taking up space for no useful purpose. Unless my wife carries out her idea of concocting some beer-battered creation, which could be just dandy, then I shall….drink the beer. You read it here first.
On my desk in my office, where I am at the moment, I have a small plastic model of a National Airlines Boeing 727-200 aircraft, as so proclaimed on the base assembly. The livery features the famous “Sun King” logo: an orange face silhouetted inside a blazing sun, which was appropriate to National because of their dominance in Florida. I flew the original National—and a 727 so decorated—on exactly one occasion, a flight from Newport News, Virginia, to Washington, D.C, with a stop in Norfolk. The day began at Colonial Williamsburg, where my brother Danny was very keen on navigating the garden maze. He thought he knew the plans, he thought he had them memorized. In fact, the three of us (the third was my father) all got quite lost in that maze, and I remember the amusing struggle to get out. Which we eventually did, and in fact it didn’t take all that much time, but it felt like the major obstacle to catching that National Airlines flight out of town.
National Airlines did not fly to my hometown of Minneapolis, and thus I classified it among the exotic and especially interesting airlines of the world. Stowed away somewhere is my old National Airlines souvenir lunchbox, which shows the airline’s 747 on one side and a professional flight crew on the other. I also still have the official National Airlines deck of cards that I asked for and received on that flight to Washington.
So where do you want to fly when the pandemic lifts, or at least you and yours are vaccinated and rarin’ to go? My first destination will likely be Minneapolis to see the parents and other family, and that’s all to the good, but after that….I guess we’ll see what’s possible. I want to go someplace sane, though. Which would seemingly eliminate Florida.
This Sunday is March 14th, aka 3/14, or pi day! Let’s all celebrate with some delicious pie, with the “e” on the end, and by recognizing the constant ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle, not to mention the area of a circle to the square of its radius. Or, let’s all just eat the pie.