rudolph the red nosed reindeer, full length

the 1964 classic with burl ives, in full puppet animation!

louise crawford elementary school

i dreamt about elementary school last night. although i don't recall many specifics about the dream, the picture of the school in my mind is clear.

the red brick rectangle where i spent my k-6 tenure from 1979-1986 sat juxtaposition the obligatory blacktop playground and grassy lot. countless hours of socialization were impressed upon me during those years.

how to sit, how to raise your hand, how to remain orderly, one person to the bathroom at a time, no running in the halls...

and more importantly, the socialization of meeting other schoolmates. at the time, it was all that i knew and everyone seemed pretty normal. i had a great collection of friends and we seemed to laugh and play a lot. my elementary school experience was most joyful. however, looking back now at some of the odd things that some of them chose to do--it makes me raise an eyebrow and wonder what ever became of them. highlights of odd behavior i witnessed in those years include the following:

-in 2nd grade, a boy took off his shorts in the spring and walked home in his underwear

-in 3rd grade, a quiet kid slipped on the ice during recess in the winter and managed to get a laugh out of a few people. the quiet boy proceeded to jump up into the air and put is feet out straight, repeatedly doing this and landing smack on his ass on the snowy pavement for continued laughter. even at that age, i looked on in worry as to why someone would do this.

-in 5th grade, in the fall, a boy peed into an electric heater in the bathroom--when the weather got cold enough to turn on the heat, we all quickly became aware of the pee incident as a musty urine smell wafted through the halls.

now, these are not the challenges of knives and guns that some elementary schools face, but these are the strange oddities of behavior that i recall from a little 2-story school house in the middle of iowa.

internal hard drive

i'm reading this fascinating article on memory in national geographic.

it has always been raised by others that my memory is strong compared to their recollections. although i am not a savant (up for debate), the lucid visions of precise moments, sights, and sounds of the series of events in my life is within quick recall.

however, i do feel that in recent months, my occupied thought is so much in the present that i have not revisited the synaptic links of the past. this cloud of necessity to make sense of the present time period fogs and outweighs the leisure of reflecting. i have confidence that this opaque haze will become more routine and will empower the free will of my wandering mind to be able to weave together and revisit the days since gone.

the mind is such a beautiful thing. uh, wait...what was i saying?

japan

although our time in japan seems so surreal and unreal within itself. we continue to talk about our adventures on a regular basis. the year that we spent exploring the islands, cities, rich culture, and customs of such a beautiful place stands as such an amazing experience in our lives. we're so glad that we took the plunge and ventured off to the far east. the perspective we gained helps to propel us forward each and every day. the friends we met there are friends for life.

one of those life friends is deven, who has now recessitated his old web 1.0 blog that featured a sub-page that i put together and this story that i wrote about one sunday that we played in the sea of japan (or east china sea, depending on your political persuasion).

keep on keepin' on

one of those catch phrases that i always enjoyed in my early twenties. then there is keep on truckin'. beef had one of his signature large non-folding wallets that had a yellow patch sewn upon the face of the wallet with a comical old bearded man with the latter mentioned catch phrase.

wallets have a story behind them, no? i can recall several wallets that i really liked through the years. i bounced in and out of the velcro phases of wallets a time or two. one of my first wallets was, and i hang my head shamefully but you must remember that i was in 5th grade, a black nylon bi-fold that i bought at the qwick trip gas station. screen printed upon the front was the copyrighted playboy bunny profile face.

at the time, i had no idea what playboy really was other than some nudie mag that seemed to raise the eyebrows of generations--for what reason, i was unsure, but i thought i'd cast my vote by getting a sheath that would hold my public library card and my $5 a week allowance.

but get this-- a boyhood chum of mine, a "good" friend who was notorious for thieving at stores and staying out late with his carousing alcohol-dependent parents, stole my wallet and an atari video game from me in the same night. needless to say, i was crushed. my ego was shot, i lost my library card, my pitfall video game, four bucks and change, and my forlorned friend.

i was a teenage poser

in the spring of 1987, i was a chubby kid in 7th grade. i had a few friends, a good family, a newborn sister, and my eyebrows hadn't filled in yet. it was a confusing time of pressure to conform with the culture set out by the other 7th graders, as the social hierarchy was striating as it usually does. for the first time in my life, i had begun to feel self-conscious about my appearance and my clothes. i managed to convince my parents that my future was dependent upon me getting a polo shirt, just like the other kids.

so we went to younkers and i bought a pale yellow ralph lauren that was on the sale rack. i wore this shirt proudly the following day. my wardrobe increased one afternoon, when my father had found two more polo shirts at a garage sale. i was up to three, and near a full week's rotation. nice.

anyway, around this same time period skateboarding became über hip. i found that the other boys wearing polo shirts were now toting a fine line of powell-peralta designer boards--not that i ever remember them riding them much, they were a fine accessory otherwise. i first got a target (you know, the discount store) board and was a closet skater. i actually spray painted all over the non-brand markings to further cover my shame. alas, within a few months of saving i was able to secure $50 bucks necessary to purchase a lance mountain board as pictured here:

i would regularly skate with a few kids in the neighborhood to work on my skills. but most of my fond memories with the board were skating to the bus stop with juanny d. and hopping on the bus to go downtown to the skate shop to look at the new boards and stickers, all whilst wearing a pale yellow polo shirt i neglected to add. years later, we put our pride aside and determined that we were indeed, posers. i also had rounded out the fad by regularly reading thrasher magazine which was and still is good fun.

i was not disingenuous to my desire and curiosity to skate board, or to be a prep for that matter, but i was certainly immune to the awareness of the pressures that i was feeling to harmonize with the masses and file into line. obviously, life becomes a compromise of determining when to stand in line, when to sit it out, when to run away, and when to lead. fond memories and essential life lessons, skateboarding taught me.

shit on a shingle--vegan-style

when growing up in the middlewest, my mother would infrequently make this famed dish that my dad would base spare stories about his naval tour of vietnam around. the colloquial "shit on a shingle" was a pasty dish of corn-starchy white gravy intermingled with cured, chipped beef atop a slice of toasted white bread. my memories of this dish are not only of the novelty of eating something named after excrement on a roofing material, but of the whole experience. dad always got a bit excited to eat the s.o.s. dish.

this braw memory was the first thought that popped into my head on sunday morning. i jumped up and proclaimed to my dear sweet that on this morn, i would be making vegan shit on a shingle.

i started with a fairly basic white sauce using equal parts soy milk and water, added some veg bouillon, fresh rosemary, a splash of obligatory garlic, potato starch, a pinch of corn starch, and a dash of whole wheat flour amongst a few other errant spices tossed in. meanwhile, tempeh simmered in a soy sauce and chipotle maranade in the pan adjacent to the sauce--all being thrown together once the toast was browned. a bit heavy for the a.m. meal, but nothing a bit of muddy coffee can't help cut through.