Lisa Blount

One of my favorite horror movies from the 80s was Prince of Darkness. In it starred actress Lisa Blount. She passed away the other day from chronic illness....

Here's her whole movie list.

P for Pomegranate

I overheard a woman at Target talking about her credit card being hacked. Then I overheard another group of people talking about their credit union being hacked and all their cards were compromised. Wiki leaks...electronic madness!! Maybe it's time to go back to cash in hand for a bit.

While looking for pumpkin carving ideas tonight, I got a virus. I was stupid, but guuuhh!!! Painful!

Pomegranates are everywhere. They're prolly under my bed. And yet, I will eat them because they are fun to peel open and pick apart.

I sat at Denny's by myself today and had an All American Slam plus big bowl of grits. It's been a long time since I've eaten at Denny's let alone by myself in dare I say..peace. ahhhh Sip my coffee and stare out the window at the mountain which has a tip of snow on it now.

I finally finished all the homemade spaghetti sauce! I also finished my last frozen jar of lentil soup. I ate a Kipper snack recently. I forget how those little fishies can fill the room with their smell.

Halloween is right around the corner. Asa had a little school parade today where all the kids got to wear their costumes. It was cute. I think if I was going to do a costume, I would want to be V. It's just a mask I know, but I watched V For Vendetta today, and I still really like this movie.

A blaah Monday

Liz came home sick and slept all day. I hope she is feeling better at work today. I hope I don't catch whatever she has either. I always tell myself that I'll be fine. Just wash your hands and you'll be ok. Then I get sick and think, well that never works. I still cling to the idea that my body can repel most germs. I even have the irrational idea that I don't need a flu shot. That's more of a conspiracy theory though. Liz came home and said. " ughhhh I got the plague!" After reading Atwood's books, the word plague sounds so disturbing. That's just how they'd do it too, they'd innoculate all of us with it. See...I is cookoo!

So I had two medical appointments Monday. First the opthamologist for my yearly glaucoma check up. Have to go see if my eye pressure and big ole retinal cups are stable. I don't get worked up about it, but I really don't like the eye doc. I really don't like anything coming near my eyeballs. They always have a hard time getting a pressure reading on my eyes, because I can't help but seize my entire body when that purple donut is pressing against my cornea. Ughhhh!! I have thicker than average corneas btw. Sexy no?

This eye doc had some fancier equipment than the one in Omaha. He had a ultrasound glaucoma machine called an OCT. Not sure what that stands for. Ahh Optical Cohereance Topography! I think the machine looks like a cyclops hippopotamus though. They should name it Jerry the Cyclopotamus!

So long story short, I don't have glaucoma yet. But I think I'll be getting eye drops in my not too distant future.

Next I had my dental appointment. My last four appointments have been without issue. So I was hoping it would be another such appointment. Not so. First off, they took about 50 pictures of my teeth which included several digital xrays and a 360 one as well. That's a lotta pics of my mouth! The tech told me how she grew up with Lebron James. It's a wonder I even know who that is. Basketball is probably as cryptic to me as curling. She then told me how she's turning 40 and really wants some bling for her birthday, specifically a diamond tennis bracelet. I've never been into jewelry, but I think I understand it more now than I used to.

I don't trust dentists, or doctors for that matter. Which is ironic no? But I especially don't trust dentists. They rank right up there with sneaky auto mechanics to me. So when they told me, I have periodontal disease, a small crack in my tooth , show signs of grinding my teeth during sleep ,and a cavity....I was like nooo waay. You guys are trying to rip me off.

The first thing to address is the gum disease. After some research and honest thought, I am thinking this is a true assessment from this dentist. In fact, maybe it's been the other dentists who have been slack? Course I'm really the only one who can be truly slack in this. Regardless, next week I'll have my whole mouth subjected to scaling and root planing. It doesn't sound comfortable, but in a crazy way I am looking forward to the pain. Not so much masochism as a chance for mental imagery experimentation.

Friday Run

Well, today I decided to run to the top of Mt. Charleston. This would be over 16 miles of extremely tough terrain reaching an elevation of almost 12000 feet. (Not quite the minimum elevation of the HardRock 100 race) Half way up the mountain, I had a major problem though. You ready for this? A branch tore my pants off!!! I'm talking shorts and skivvies all in one!! Lucky I brought my knife, and I was able to cut my secondary top into a sort of tarzan garment.

Ok I'm lying. That shiznutter did not happen. In truth, there was NO run today. I was kinda bummed since I won't be able to do a long run this weekend, but the weather was not favorable and honestly, I just didn't feel like it. I realize that all this is very much a luxury, and I'm grateful to be able to take a Friday and do whatever I please.

So I finished my book The Year of The Flood.


I thought about doing a review on these books, but I don't feel I could do them justice. However, I am feeling this compulsion to draw the characters. I don't know why, but I just keep trying to picture them as clearly as possible. Perhaps I will get my focus on and show you some drawings soon. This is supposedly a trilogy, but I may have to wait another 5 years for the third book to come. That day will be met with great excitement!

To top off my luxurious day, Liz got home early and we went out to eat with just ourselves! We ate a Greek place called The Market Grill. It was very good!! Here's some pics of the food.


Above you can see my Lentil soup with feta and my gyro with both dill sauce and hummus. Next is another pic when our salads and rice came along with the rosemary an dill potato wedges. Yumm


And Finally for desert we ordered some yia yia cookies which are greek butter cookies and then this baklava cheesecake. Notice how the cheesecake is whipped rather than dense...slight taste of cinnamon and pumpkin on it..was pretty good.


I think I will be eating at this place again and soon. They have more soups and many more interesting dishes to try!

Harvesting

Well I went back to the mountain on Monday and harvested some pinyon pine nuts. I even ran into the Japanese couple that was out last Friday. They were much farther up on the trail and invited me to come pick nuts under their tree. So nice of them to offer, but I was just stopping from time to time to pick up a few nuts, since Finley had come along and needed some walking action. I thought I would be hacking into a lot of pine cones, but the nuts were all over the ground in some spots. This was a good thing because the few cones I did wrangle left me covered in pine sap which was a boondoggle to clean off. The gloves I brought, I ended up wearing home to keep my gluey hands off of everything. Hence no pictures from the day either. My fingaz were too sticky.

I had wanted to go further along on the trail to scope it out, but once again the weather was not going to let that happen. As soon as I got on the backside of the mountain, clouds rolled in, rather creepy too I must say, and then one drum of thunder was enough to make Finley wimper. I even wore my vibrams out on the trail and honestly, I think I could prolly run that trail in vibrams. There'd only be about 10 percent that would require extra caution. I did manage to chaf my heels though. The older vibrams had some issues.

I came home and put the nuts on a cookie sheet to go through. We baked them for 15 minutes after soaking in water, but many of the nuts are still soft inside the hard shell. The taste varies between nuts. Some taste really good, while others are really bland. If I had to do it over I think I'd bake them longer at a lower temp to keep the monosat fats intact.

Red Rock Casino

This weekend we went to Red Rock Casino. It's not downtown in the strip, but out on the west end of town. It's a big hotel, slash Casino, slash everything else. We have one close to us in the north called Aliante Station which is a bit smaller. It still has an IMAX 3D theatre though which I will visit on December 17th. We came here for Asa to go to a birthday party at a place called Kid's Quest. No adults are allowed in this place. It's basically a place to drop your kids off while you gamble. It's open till 1am!

So we had a couple of hours to burn. What to do? Well we tried some slot machines. Here's a pic of the inside of the Casino.


It looks just like Aliante on the inside. Liz tells me it looks just like the Casinos on the strip too. So after taking 10 minutes to figure out how to play, and then playing a mere 20 dollars on slots, Liz said she could see the appeal, but I was left thinking I'd have a lot more fun playing Tetris and eating pizza.

I wandered into the bowling alley they had there called Red Rock Lanes. The lighting in this place was a white balance nightmare. Not that I cared, but wow. To me, bowling alleys were better as dark pits. All the color, lasers, and tvs just makes it seem silly to me. Even the balls have these logos on them of skulls, crushing, and venom? To me it's like taking an econo box and putting a spoiler on it. That translates as tacky!


This is the locker room, but it reminded me of a Japanese hotel slash 2001 set piece.


All in all it was a good day and Asa had a great time at her birthday party. She didn't paint her face though. I kinda thought she'd go for that. Funny side bit, I had two people try to make conversation with me about college football here. What's up with that?!! What is it about me that says I am into some college ball.

Pine Nuts and Eggrolls

Who doesn't like eggrolls?!!! Not the cabbage and carrot filled crap at buffets, but juicy ,meaty, golden brown logs of love! Everyone has a comfort food ( or a few). It's those foods that follow you through life and have the power to make a bad day good or take you back to good times. For me, eggrolls are up there. I don't eat them often, but when I do...there is no self restraint. Gimme some vinegar and soysauce for dipping and leave the room. There are only a few things I can stuff myself with and not feel gross later. Right now...I'm riding the eggroll satisfaction train. Whoo whooo!

This past Friday was my weekly mountain trail run. I kept seeing all these people crouched under trees near the trail head. What were they doing!!! So on a stop at my truck to refill my new amphipod hydraform , I asked a woman walking by about their business. Apparently it's pine nut harvesting season. As I continued on my run, I saw a pine cone with nuts still inside. I stopped and popped one in my mouth. Ooops! I guess I'm supposed to remove the seed covering first. It's all in my teeth now and my fingers have pine sap on them. But hey, pretty tasty as pine nuts go.

Later I talked to a Japanese woman who explained to me how to cook them and how her and her husband come here a lot. She was proud of her new hiking boots. She had a 1 pound freezer bag full of nuts which took her about 3 hours to acquire. I told her I saw a bunch of them about a mile up on the trail, and she got this look in her eye. She wanted to know exactly where they were! Tuns out, Pinyon pine nuts are prime for production between 7 and 8 thousand feet which is wham right what Sawmill trail is at. The weekend was too busy for a family outing for nuts, but I may have to go back and harvest some for myself. Pine nuts are expensive, and the idea of fresh home made pine nut bread sounds goood!

At the end of my run, I was sitting in the back of my truck with the hatch open. I was just eating some food when I spied this mutant insect marching towards me on the pavement. It's legs were moving as if they were mechanical. It was like a robotic tank the size of a lighter! As it went by, I decided it was just a really big mole cricket. I said "Hi! Mr. Mole Cricket!" and the bug stopped for a couple of seconds and then kept on moving. Sensitive to sound no doubt, but if he rotated towards me and began marching at me, I might've got skeered!

As for the run, it was good. I did manage to get briefly lost which kinda spooked me for a bit since that's when it started to lightly drizzle on me, and the wind really picked up. However, my getting lost was a good thing as I found a new trail and a cool hill. It's really steep going up, but it's mostly packed dirt with no rocks and staggered really well. This means you can run down it fast and keep control. I don't get to run downhill much, and I think my quads are finally coming into the idea that they can take some stress. Scared a couple of horses, met some black labs, and felt really good through most all of it.

The brain plays tricks on you though. When I wore my heart rate monitor on the treadmill, my heart rate would almost always go up when nearing certain goals I had. No matter how I tried to concentrate or diffuse it, the beat would always go up. I think I felt something similar this outing. I knew I only had a couple more laps to go but my brain was already in the 'ok we're done' mode. I really had to focus my thinking, tighten my form, and concentrate on simple issues. I was going to get another gel in the truck before my last lap , but decided nope, just finish it. As I hit the uphill portion of the loop, I was very tired. I felt like I could just stop at any moment. So I just gathered what strength I could and just sprinted as far as I could, which wasn't far. hahaha But it kept me going strong. So I was very happy to have run my first half marathon. Felt really good the whole weekend too. This is when I start contemplating the idea of running 50 miles someday. Could I run for 10 or 11 hours? 'Do I want to' is probably the more important question.