OOops! Ops!
The silence tipped him off.
He had just finished referring to his study as “The Command Center.”
The silence continued, then I broke it, quietly asking “and just whom would you be commanding?”
“Ummm. . . err . . . Ops Center! Operations Center!” he corrected himself.
We both laughed.
We’ve been married 37 years. 🙂
Hurricane Season Begins Today
As if the oil spill isn’t enough, today is the first day of hurricane season.
The hurricane guide tells us to have three days worth of food and water stored to get people through a hurricane and its aftermath – loss of electricity, highways blocked with fallen trees, etc. We have a safe room, a large closet next to an outside wall. We have a 7 gallon water storage container, and matches. I’m still working on the rest; I don’t want to be one of those running to the supermarket the day the hurricane might hit.
The good news – for us – is that we did not buy a house in the evacuation zone.
You cannot imagine how seductive some of these houses are. We had assumed we would buy a house on the water. Our beautiful 10th floor apartment on the Arabian Gulf in Kuwait gave us a taste for an endless water view, and that’s what we were looking for:
House 1
House 2
House 3
Every house on the water faces the possibility of serious damage in a hurricane. Two of the houses had damage from Ivan, one had ongoing damage from the dampness of being adjacent – well, almost inside – the wetlands. The wetlands are encroaching on two of the properties. One house, we totally loved. We could see ourselves living there, even facing the danger of hurricanes. That is, until we visited the basement, felt the humidity, saw a rotting pillar and realized we would face an unending battle with rot. The doorframe to the outside was rubbery with dampness:
It was a real blow to us giving up our dream.
On the other hand, it is a relief, now, knowing we are not in an evacuation zone.
There are no guarantees against a direct hit by a hurricane. All we have done is improved our odds, somewhat, which is about the best you can do when you live in a hurricane zone.
GMAC Rates American Drivers
This is an excerpt from Worst Drivers in America By State on AOL’s Wallet Pop:
GMAC’s sixth annual survey quizzed more than 5,200 licensed Americans from across the country on their driving knowledge and New York drivers fared the worst for the second year in a row, with an average score of 70 percent. That’s more than six percentage points below the national average score of 76.2 percent. New Jersey residents shouldn’t laugh too loudly at their neighbor’s expense. Garden State drivers finished second to last. Kansas, on the other hand, proved to be the best place to drive with a score of 82.3 percent. Oregon, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska drivers were also among the best performers on the survey.
Overall, though, the findings were pretty dismal. The study found that “nearly 1 in 5 licensed drivers — roughly 38 million Americans — would not pass a written drivers test exam if taken today.” A whopping 85 percent could not identify the correct action to take when approaching a steady yellow traffic light (hint: it involves the brake pedal). Many drivers also remained uncertain about safe following distances.
Nationally, the average score slipped from 76.2 percent from 76.6 percent. “When analyzed regionally, the results reveal that drivers in the Northeast may not be as road-rule savvy as their Midwestern counterparts,” according to GMAC’s press release. “The Northeast had the lowest average test scores (74.9 percent) and had the highest failure rate (25.1 percent). The Midwest region had the highest average test scores (77.5 percent) and the lowest failure rates (11.9 percent).”
Some other notable trends: Older drivers outperformed younger ones and men did better on the test than women but also flunked it at a higher rate. One-in-four drivers admitted that they did “distracting behaviors” such as selecting music on their iPhones, applying make-up or reading, though only 5 percent admitted to text-ing while driving.
(See full article from WalletPop: http://srph.it/ahqOZM)
2010 GMAC Insurance Driver’s Test Results
(Ranked in order of worst drivers by state to best drivers by state)
Scoring is from 1 to 100 on a 20 question test.
1. (WORST) New York – 70.0
2. New Jersey – 70.5
3. Dist. of Columbia – 71.9
4. California – 73.3
5. Rhode Island – 73.8
6. Louisiana – 74.1
7. West Virginia – 74.8
7. Hawaii – 74.8
9. New Hampshire – 74.9
9. Kentucky – 74.9
11. Florida – 75.2
12. Mississippi – 75.6
13. Pennsylvania – 75.8
13. Massachusetts – 75.8
15. North Carolina – 75.9
15. Arkansas – 75.9
17. Texas – 76.0
18. Connecticut – 76.3
19. Illinois – 76.6
20. Georgia – 76.7
21. Alabama – 77.1
22. South Carolina – 77.2
23. New Mexico – 77.3
24. Virginia – 77.5
24. Ohio – 77.5
26. Maine – 77.6
26. Delaware – 77.6
28. Colorado – 77.8
29. Utah- 77.9
30. Vermont – 78.1
30. Nevada – 78.1
32. Maryland – 78.2
33. Tennessee – 78.3
34. Wyoming – 78.4
35. Arizona – 78.5
36. Missouri – 78.8
37. Michigan – 79.0
38. North Dakota – 79.1
39. Oklahoma – 79.3
40. Wisconsin – 79.4
40. Washington – 79.4
42. Alaska – 79.8
43. Montana – 80.0
44. Idaho – 80.1
45. Indiana – 80.4
46. Nebraska – 80.5
47. Iowa – 80.8
48. Minnesota – 81.1
49. South Dakota – 81.2
50. Oregon – 82.1
51. (BEST) Kansas 82.3
See full article from WalletPop: http://srph.it/ahqOZM
Florida – where I am living now – is the 11th WORST state in the nation. . . .
Kuwait or Qatar or Pensacola?
Showering after my water-aerobics class, I could hear voices discussing a local political-social situation. A benefits agency has groups of families working in it, and they know all the tricks. They know how to insure more of their own family members hired, and they know how to help all their family members (and friends) take advantage of all the entitlements.
Expats abroad call it nepotism, and scorn it as a third-world corruption. In truth, it happens everywhere.
There is an ongoing schism taking place in Qatar and Kuwait, countries that have been gracious and welcoming to me. The nationals of Kuwait and Qatar control citizenship carefully. The citizen base is about 20% of the population, on a good day. The rest of the population are people who are in Kuwait and Qatar to work. Most there to work can never hope for citizenship. For many, the poverty in their home country is so brutal that no matter how hard the working conditions, at least it is a salary, and they can send something home so that, literally, their families can eat. They dream – like we do – of educating their children so that they will have a better, more secure life.
Here is the problem. When 80% of the population is NON-Kuwaiti, or NON-Qatari, your country starts to change. One way in which things have changes is that in a very short time, the highways have gone from very quiet to gridlock, due to a dramatic increase in drivers and cars. In Qatar, the situation is made worse by nationalization of the taxi service, resulting in so few taxis that hotels now use private limo services, because finding a taxi at peak times is near to impossible.
That’s one issue. The second issue is language. Imagine your elderly parents going into shops to buy something – in their own country – and the clerks don’t speak their language. As they are stumbling and bewildered, some noisy “workers” walk in, state their needs, are understood, conduct their business and exit before you even get served. This is happening in Kuwait and in Qatar; everyone is speaking English. In a country where the workers are Indian, Nepalese, Philipino, Saudi, Yemani, Omani, Lebanese, Syrian, French, Dutch, English, Australian, South African, American (and about thirty or forty others) the common language has evolved to be English, not Arabic.
How do you think you would feel if it were happening here? If the great majority of cars on the road were not “us” but “guests” in our country? If the clerks in stores couldn’t understand what you want, because although they are in your country, they don’t speak your language?
Another problem is what to do with the huge, disproportionate number of geographically single males brought in to work as builders, cleaners, heavy equipment operators, dishwashers, drivers, security guards and other fairly low-paid positions? In Kuwait and in Qatar, non-married sex is strictly forbidden, even holding hands in public is considered an affront to morality. These men are banned from malls where families might gather, and from other public places. Their existence is grim, and they often find themselves unpaid, or paid far less than they were promised for their labor.
Last, but not least, this very modest Gulf culture has people – foreign guest workers – parading themselves on their streets in various states of undress. Think about it – that’s how we look to them. We have no shame. We bare our faces. We flaunt the glory of our uncovered hair. Sometimes a shawl might drop and a glimpse of bare arm or even a hint of cleavage might shock the modest eyes of a believer.
In Pensacola, there are also fundamentalists who wear long skirts, long sleeves, and determinedly modest clothing. I wonder what these believers think about the skimpy clothing on the beaches, or in the malls?
Coming home has been a real eye opener. It was easy for me to be critical of things I saw in Qatar and in Kuwait. Coming home, we joke all the time about “Kuwaiti drivers” here in the US, but the real joke is – they sure look a lot like us.
Last week, we saw a man here make a U-turn right in the middle of the road, and rock as he tried to regain control of his truck, and almost blast right through a red light he didn’t see. The back of his truck was down, and items loose in the truck bed were heading toward the highway – fortunately he figured that out, and last we saw, he had stopped to fix his rear door. Maybe he wasn’t sober. Maybe he had had an argument with his wife or boss or someone and was not paying close attention to his driving. All I know is that we have seen a goodly number of inattentive drivers here, too.
When a bureaucracy gets corrupted, when the rules are not applied equally to all, when select groups get favored treatment – here in Pensacola, at the immigration department in Kuwait or in the traffic department in Qatar – everyone suffers. It’s a political problem, a social problem, and a systemic problem. God willing, if we are truly evolving as a species, we will find a way to create truly fair and transparent systems which will work as they are ideally intended to work.
It’s on us. We have to make it happen. We have to want it badly enough to make it happen, even making sacrifices for the greater good.
I don’t have any answers. I don’t know how to make us better people that we are, how to make ourselves make the right choices. I do know this – whether it is a tiny village in Germany, or an eagle’s aerie in Kuwait, or the lush life of Doha – we are all more alike, and share more similarities and problems, than we are different. If we could only learn to see through one another’s eyes, maybe we could find ways to resolve our differences and learn to cooperate.
Old Time Pottery
We were on a reconnaissance; an exploratory trip, or so I thought. We had passed through Elberta, Alabama, “Woh Das Leben ist Gut” and the Lutheran Church welcomes you; AdventureMan said it was a settlement of Germans, and the German names still dominate as you scan the businesses in town. We had perused the Foley Outlet Mall, and we were on our way down to the beach road to head back to Florida when AdventureMan said “What’s that?!”
It was Old Time Pottery! We had looked for Old Time Pottery in Destin last week, but I didn’t know there was one in Foley, too. I could see the grin on AdventureMan’s face, he had known.
“How did you know?” I asked.
“Oh, zee internet, it is a vonderful sing,” he replied, grinning and turning into the huge, gigantic store.
Right in front were the terra cotta pots I had been seeking, at a reasonable price. I picked up two 14″ pots.
For some reason my camera refused to focus, but as I pulled off the pots, I was surprised to find two bright green frogs. I thought they were decorations, and one quickly hopped through the pot hole and back into the dark:
“Only two?” AdventureMan asked, disappointment loud in his voice. “We come all this way and you only buy two?”
“I wasn’t planning to buy anything!” I protested. “You totally caught me by surprise! I thought we were just looking around.”
You can look around inside the Old Time Pottery for a LOOONNNNGGG time. They have everything. A lot of what they have is also available around the same price at other discount stores, TJ Maxx, Bed, Bath and Beyond, etc. But the sheer massive amounts of stuff was purely mind-boggling. It would be easy to buy stuff you didn’t even know you needed, just because it is all there. Actually (she congratulates herself) I managed to hold it to just the two pots. I know where the store is. It’s not that far away, about an hour, I can go back if I need to. 🙂
AdventureMan Wishes He Were There
I love our road trips. We always catch up on thoughts and pursuits that may seem to trivial in the activities of our normal busy days. It’s a time to talk over dreams, and hopes, and to sketch out some broad outlines of goals and calendars.
“Sometimes I read your blog,” AdventureMan starts off (and I never know where it will go!) “and I think ‘oh what a fun woman! I wish I were there with her having that adventure!’ and then I realize I was there!”
LLLOOOLLL!
People have told me I can make something out of nothing. I think the gift is knowing you are having a good time at the time you are having the good time. 🙂
Sunset in Panama City Beach
We’ve been putting in so much time around the house that when it came time to go out of town for a family dinner, we went a day early so we would have some goofing off time.
We had a lazy drive down, checked in to our favorite hotel on Panama City Beach, The Sunset Inn, and then I asked AdventureMan “do you want to take me to the quilt shop today or tomorrow?” I have an old friend from quilting days in Germany who owns Quilting-by-the-Bay, one of the most wonderful quilt shops I have ever visited, and if I’m in Panama City, it’s a MUST visit. 🙂
On our way back to the hotel, AdventureMan said “Hey, didn’t you want to do a sunset cruise?” Yes, but I had forgotten, LOL. We drove to the dock, checked on tickets and their was a boat leaving in just a few minutes, so we bought tickets for the Sunset Dolphin Cruise and boarded the ship.
What a lovely way to wind up a day! They played hokey Caribbean music that can’t help but put you in a good mood, and they knew just where to find the dolphins:
They were playing all around the boat! It was delightful!
Back in the car, AdventureMan remembered a great beachy restaurant where all the locals go to celebrate the sunset. As the sun still hadn’t set yet, but was getting ready to, we headed to Schooner’s in Panama City Beach. If you click on the blue type, you can see the restaurant, the menu, AND the live beach cam. 🙂
The parking lot is packed and we think we will go somewhere else, we can see crowds waiting to get in, but just as we are giving up, a car pulls out, it must be a sign we are meant to stay, and we take the spot and walk toward the restaurant.
Special parking for Harleys:
The place is packed on a Friday night, but we get in with only a 15 minute wait. Everyone is visiting, having a little beach drink, and then BOOOOMMMM! I think it is a cannon! There is a countdown, and as the sun sets, the cannon (or something) explodes!
We ordered drinks – iced tea for me, a beer for Adventureman:
And a smoked tuna appetizer – yummmy, especially with the jalepenos:
AdventureMan ordered the Mediterranean Salad and a side of hush puppies:
And I had the Schooner’s Tuna BLT – it had a wasabi sauce and oh, total wow. Who would think a tuna sandwich could have so much taste?
How To Be a Southern Lady
You’d think moving back to your own country would be a piece of cake, wouldn’t you? We nomads know better. Young people who travel to other countries to go to school know better. Military people know better. Missionaries know better. Diplomats know better. Anyone who has spent time living abroad know that it works both ways – you have an impact where you are living, and where you are living has an equal impact on you. You may go back, but you are never the same.
With this move, AdventureMan and I have been too busy trying to get settled and to take care of the incredible amount of bureaucratic detail it takes to relocate. Even with AdventureMan ‘retired’, the days are flying by, and we don’t know why we are so busy.
For one thing, I am doing my own housework, and I am finding I am not very good at it. Like I am good at getting laundry done, and even folded, but I haven’t ironed in a long time, and the things that need ironing are stacking up. I have bought a beautiful new ironing board, and a beautiful iron . . . and some starch, the liquid kind I like, not the spray kind. . . but I haven’t set it up, and I haven’t ironed, not a thing. I have discovered that all my packed things looked a lot better after hanging in the closets for a week, most of the wrinkles fell out, lucky me. But . . . the day of reckoning is coming.
The worst part, for me, is cleaning my floors. My floors are supposed to be beautiful; wood and tile floors. They actually ARE beautiful, maybe two days a week, the day I clean them and the next day, but five days a week, they need work. I wish I had asked my cleaning lady in Doha how she got my floors so beautifully clean. I wish I had paid more attention. I keep looking in the store for some miracle, a machine that will clean them in a heartbeat and make them all shiny. . .
The wonderful thing about moving into this culture – and it truly is a different culture from the one in which I was raised – is that we have our wonderful son and his wonderful wife to give us hints on what to do and not to do, and we have his wife’s wonderful family.
Mostly, I try to keep my eyes open. Southern women admire things extravagantly, and after living for so many years in the Middle East and Gulf, learning to admire extravagantly goes against all my instincts.
In the MIddle East, when you admire extravagantly, you can make people nervous. Some people worry about attracting “the evil eye” of jealousy, evil intentions, people who envy you and wish you harm. Some people, if you admire something, will give it to you! It’s true, those stories, it has happened to me. So now I have to un-learn my lessons in retraint and learn to appreciate, if not extravagantly, at least enough to be polite.
One of my wife’s relatives gave us a house-warming gift, an iced-tea maker, with a darling card that states Rule #1 is that every Southern Hostess knows that a pitcher of iced tea is a MUST for all occasions. I like iced tea, but I have never kept it on hand to serve, and I guess I need to start!
Her second rule was one that made me burst out laughing – “A Southern Lady, the most interesting ones anyway, know that rules are made to be broken.”
“Just be prepared for people to leave your home saying “Bless her heart, she must be getting forgetful. There was no iced tea!”
And then rule #3 – “The only correct and acceptable way to criticize anyone is to add ‘bless his/her heart!’ and then, anything goes!”
At a party at her house this weekend, I learned a couple more – the first rule being that when you are invited to a great big family dinner, bring dessert! Thank God, I did take a little guest gift, but now I know – bring dessert! And it had better be sweet!
The next rule is would make any Kuwaiti or Qattari feel right at home – spare nothing in making our guests comfortable. This Southern Hostess had seating areas inside the beautiful air conditioned home, and also seating outside for those who don’t mind a little heat. She had a big basket loaded with all kinds of insect repellents to keep her guests from being bitten. She took time with each guest, and although she was running her little bottom off getting everything organized, she made it all look easy, and as if she was having a good time. I have a sneaking suspicion the truly was enjoying having all the people around and that her great big heart loves taking care of the crowd. She was the essence of gracious hospitality. Did I mention she has also lived in Kuwait?
Dinner was “Perlow” an old Southern tradition, made in a huge old kettle from her husband’s mother, and hung from a tripod over a roaring fire to cook. The actual cooking was the men’s work as they sat outside drinking iced tea:
Home grown peas and beans mix – delicious!
Serving up the perlow:
My Middle East / Gulf friends would be comfortable eating this meal – Perlow is a variation of Pilaf, and very similar to Biryani. No alcohol served. No pork. Lots and lots of fabulous sweet desserts.
It’s funny, I used to tell people in Kuwait and Qatar that it was a lot like Alaska; when the weather got too bad, you just stay inside most of the time. When the weather gets good, you go outside as much as you can. When it’s too hot/cold, you run from your air conditioned/heated car to your air conditioned / heated store or movie theater, or restaurant, and then back to your air conditioned / heated car and back to your air conditioned/ heated house.
In the same way, I am beginning to wonder if the South and the Middle East know how much they have in common? In Pensacola, on Saturdays, we have the religious people on the corners shouting at passing cars, not a whole lot different from the volunteer morality police in Saudi Arabia. In the South, as in the Middle East, ‘family’ isn’t just blood, it’s also who you’re married into, and there is a lot of emphasis on family getting together and spending time together. In the South, as in the Middle East, men tend to gather in one area, women in another.
In the South, they drink iced tea; in the Middle East, it’s hot tea. Both have passionate patriots, fundamental believers and a tradition of gracious hospitality. Both have a passion for hunting and fishing. Nobody much likes obeying the rules in either culture. Maybe I’m still in the MIddle East?
AdventureMan Cooks a Florida Bouillabaisse
One of AdventureMan’s retirement dreams was to have time to cook. There have been two times in our lives together when he has had the time – one, when our son was born and he learned Chinese cooking so he could stir-fry while I held the squalling baby (he had colic, and squalled from about four in the afternoon to eleven at night. Do you know how long every single minute is when you are holding an inconsolable baby?)
The second time was when he retired from the military, and spent several months at home, keeping house, taking our son to visit colleges, and serving up some of the most fantastic meals we have ever eaten. (I was working; it was a total role reversal. Kind of fun to shake things up, do things differently in a relationship now and then. 🙂 )
So when he started thumbing through cook books, I started grinning to myself. This man is very talented, and while I am very good at ‘survival cooking’, i.e. getting a meal on the table that will nourish and quell hunger pains, AdventureMan takes cooking to an art form.
First we had to make a trip to the grocery store for some basics. When you set up housekeeping after a (yet another) move, you are missing some of the most basic things – like cayenne pepper, or garlic.
Then – oh heaven! – we visited Maria’s Fresh Seafood Market, heaven on earth for this little old Alaska girl.
Fresh, fresh seafood, and people who know how to cut it. The prices are good. As we entered, a drama began, a woman buying a lot of (something) picked a fight, first with the man serving her and then with the cashier. We were there about half an hour, and during this time, she complained, loudly and vigorously, to anyone who would listen. I think she wanted her purchase comped.
AdventureMan bought what he needed, got it cut mostly how he needed it, and also got a fish head and tail for making stock – a great big grouper! He said as he cooked it up, the head and mouth were sticking out of the pot like “Help me! Help me!” but I wouldn’t know because I was upstairs minding my own business while he worked his magic on the Florida fish bouillabaisse. 🙂
Soon, tantalizing odors drifted upstairs, rich, complex odors, with a hint of sherry . . . it was divine. I had to pop down to let him know how much I was appreciating his efforts.
“Do you think it’s a little too thick?” he asked.
“I think it’s like a fish stew; I think thick is OK. You can add a little more liquid if it seems to need it,” I added, but actually, he is doing just fine without any input from me.
Finally, it was time to eat. AdventureMan dished the concoction into some shellfish soup bowls I found many years ago at that exotic resource store, TJ Maxx (LOL) and dinner was served.
Total YUMMMMMM. Bravo, AdventureMan, Bravo! I am having a lot of fun with your retirement! 🙂
Slow Cooker Cassoulet
When I first saw this recipe on allrecipes.com I thought “this isn’t right! Where’s all the fat?” Cassoulets we have eaten in the high plateau central southwest part of France had duck in them, and goose fat, and some mutton, maybe a little pork. They have elaborate rituals, where you boil it in a large enamel pot for hours, then bake it, pulling it out now and then to break and stir in the crust that forms, baking again, breaking the crust, for hours. Cassoulet is a ritual, not just a dish.
But I saved the recipe, because our son and daughter-in-law have gotten us intrigued with slow cooker cooking, and this week, I gave it a try:
The hardest part of this recipe is finding cannelini beans. After I finally found dried beans (at the Four Winds International Grocery at 9th and Creighton) I actually found canned cannelini at WalMart. (I know! Whoda thunk?) I wanted to go ahead and try it with the dried beans, so I soaked them overnight, cooked them, and then went ahead with the following recipe:
Cassoulet Slow Cooker
• 2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken breast halves, cut into chunks
• 1 onion, quartered and thinly sliced
• 2 large cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 2 (15 ounce) cans cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 pound turkey kielbasa, cut into 1/2-inch slices
• 1/3 cup dry white wine
Directions
Place the chicken into the bottom of a slow cooker.
Stir together the onion, garlic, parsley, salt, pepper, cannellini beans, and turkey kielbasa in a large bowl. Pour the mixture over the chicken in the slow cooker, and pour the wine over all the ingredients.
Cover, set the cooker to Low, and cook until the chicken is very tender and the cassoulet is thickened, 5 to 6 hours.
This recipe perfumed the house with rich aromas. We could hardly wait to eat. Such simple ingredients, so easy to fix! Toward the end, I had to add a little more wine and I also added about a teaspoon of Herbes de Provence. If you live in Kuwait or Qatar, or don’t use alcohol in your cooking, you can substitute chicken broth for the wine, or an unsweet grape juice, or one of the non-alcoholic wines available in some supermarkets.
Here’s how it looked close up, shortly before serving. 🙂 Hope you try it, hope you like it. 🙂
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