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June-uary in Seattle

26 Jun 2012 by KRAG

Seattle’s reputation for grey, rainy, dreary weather is well known.

I grew up in California, just north of San Francisco, so I know from dreary. In Sausalito, you can set your watch by when the fog rolls in, and that Humphrey Bogart movie set in San Francisco? The one with all the fog-filled streets and misty, noir nights? Well, they didn’t make that up. I also spent some time living in the Judean desert, even vacationed in a spot where it was literally 125°F in the shade. Each climate was integral to the locale; each city had been born there, and would have been out of place in any other clime.

When I moved to Seattle (a quarter-century ago), I knew what I was getting into. I love the rain, the overcast, the clouds, the drizzle. I love the “sun-showers,” the virga (go look it up), even the moss in my lawn. Seattle and I—we’re like that.

Other folks…not so much. And this year is one of those years that tries men’s souls and tests the patience of women. This is one of those years that sends Californian transplants running back south (which explains a lot about Portland, if you think about it) and makes even the hardiest PacNorthwesterner sign up for email alerts for flights to Arizona.

In short, this is a June-uary year, a year where summer looks like it will never get here.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a fan of summer. Summer is my least favorite season. I hate traveling in the summer; it’s crowded, hot, expensive, and, well, hot. To me, 73°F is a nice summer’s day, and (despite my time in Jerusalem) anything over 90°F is just evil-hot.

But this year has been exceptionally dreary. Our spring just plain wasn’t, and this June—a month known for “blue-tarp camping” and indoor-contingencies for outdoor weddings—has had maybe…maybe three nice days, all told. And that’s “nice” by my standards, not yours, so you get the picture.

But it’s part of who we are here, like finding two Starbucks catty-corner across from each other at an intersection, like finding seven kinds of IPA at the Safeway, like hearing the grind of studded tires in May even though there hasn’t been snow for months.

And I’m loving it. Saturday afternoon (June 23rd), I sat out on our deck (covered), wrapped in a big-shirt (fleece), sipping a cup of coffee (French-pressed), and listened to the birds sing and the raindrops fall. The cypress branches hung low like rain-heavy clouds and everything was clean and green and moist and beautiful.

Keep it coming, June-uary.

k

Posted in Gardening | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

You, a Disappointment

25 Jun 2012 by KRAG

Ever-mindful of the fact that the freshest ingredients make for the tastiest meals, and always on the lookout for products that are economical and can be re-used, the line of AeroGarden hydroponic indoor grow-farms had always piqued my interest. Last year, I got a small one like the one pictured at right, along with two herb seed kits. The results? Well, let’s say that the pictures AeroGarden provides (like the one at right) should be sub-captioned “Results not typical.”

Any foodie worth a pinch of salt would be gaga over the idea of having thick, never-ending bunches of organically grown basil, dill, or thyme at the ready year-round. Well, I was, anyway. And justlookat it! Lush, tall, bursting with aroma and freshness!

Sadly, though the seed “pods” are guaranteed to grow, my first pod of thyme didn’t. And if I thought I was going to be able to rip off stalks of basil for weeks on end, I was sorely mistaken. Another realization was that these plants were no more “organic” than anything I might buy at the grocer’s, because every week I was dumping the contents of a nameless, unspecified “nutrient pack” into the water.

After a month, I was able to get two stems of basil for an omelet. A week later, I could get another stalk, maybe two. After eight weeks of growing, I had only collected as much basil as I got in one $2.99 plastic pack from Safeway. And the Italian parsley? Ha!

So, cost-wise, it was a bust. A $17.99 for a three-pod herb pack only produced a fraction of the herbs I could buy at the grocery store for around $8. It was also a bust by way of quantity; it never produced enough to supply herbs for two meals, much less enough extra to dry.

In short, a disappointment on every level.

My recommendation? Buy fresh herbs at the store, when you need them, or go down to the hardware store and get a 4-inch plant that might give you a second crop. Fresh is worth it, but the AeroGarden is more toy than utility.

k

Posted in Food, Gardening | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

Meetings Meetings Meetings

25 Jun 2012 by KRAG

I'm Melting!!Is every corporation in America as Meeting-Happy as mine?

Recently, my we implemented a new methodology: Agile. We’d already been using it, here and there, but this was an across the board mandate, so that we were “all on the same page.” To be honest, I wasn’t a fan, since after 20 years in IT it was perfectly obvious that this was nothing new; we’d been “agile” back in the 90s and all these guys did was change the jargon. One thing I do like about it, though, is its enforced honesty about how you spend your time.

I just calculated the hours I’d have available for this next 3-week “sprint” (see what I mean about the jargon?). Out of 84 possible productive hours (14 days @ 6 hrs a day), once I take away all the meetings I have scheduled, I have a grand total of 37 hours to apply to actual work. Reduce that by the number of hours I expect to spend handling on-call issues (15) and I have 22 hours of work, or 26%.

Best case scenario, that means I’m spending over half my time in meetings. Planning meetings, “Backlog Grooming” sessions, demos, “retrospectives,” reviews, etc., etc.

No wonder IT has a rep for never getting anything done (or done well). After spending all that time in meetings, we don’t have time to do quality work! We slam it all together in the remaining 25% of our time and hope for the best.

Agile has some good points, but its enforced egalitarianism, born of today’s “Everyone’s a winner!” mentality, is stupendously inefficient. Divide the work, and you get more done faster. If everyone has to be present for every activity, we just get bogged down.

k

Posted in Hi Tech | Tagged , , | 5 Comments »

Evening-Iris-Cluster

24 Jun 2012 by KRAG

Some things are too good not to share. Check out The Wildflower Scout. Beautiful, and inspiring for anyone with a camera.

Posted in Gardening, Low Tech | Leave a Comment »

Dick’s Burgers–You Get It or You Don’t

24 Jun 2012 by KRAG

20120624-101018.jpgOver on his blog, a friend of mine admits that he just doesn’t grok the whole “Dick’s” thing. This is a shame because, as much of a foodie as he is, this means he is at risk of becoming that most despised of all things: a food critic.

Just as movie critics often lose sight of what movies are for and about—i.e. entertainment—food critics often forget that eating isn’t about cuisine. Eating, arguably the most basic thing in our lives (that we discuss openly), is an experience.

Example: on a recent road trip I spent about 600 miles craving a corn dog. Driving through the high Sierras, through lost towns and backwater podunks, we stopped at several places, but no corn dog joy was found. Then, stopping for gas in northern Oregon, after I had given up all hope, we entered the mini-mart and I smelled that combination of corn and grease that spoke of times gone by. When the unlovely girl behind the counter told me that they just changed the grease yesterday, I ordered two. I sat in that drab mini-mart with its ear-splitting door chime, watched a parade of ugly, tattoed locals come in with a smile and leave with their cases of beer, ate two servings of tasteless tube meat covered in fried corn batter and slathered with mustard that was more vinegar than turmeric, and I was happy.

Dick’s Drive-In is similar. Dick’s is a place the locals know, love, and visit frequently. Just as when, ages ago, I used to take visiting friends and relatives to Starbucks because Seattle was the only place you could find one, now I take them to Dick’s.

Dick’s is not grand cuisine. The burgers will not make you type “OMG” as a caption to your Instagram photo. To be honest, you’ll find a better burger and better fries in many places. But what my dear friend over at Cheap Seat Eats is missing is what the rest of us know: Dick’s is an experience.

When you go to Dick’s, you take a step back in time. You stand in line outside a window (and in Seattle, this is definitely an experience for many). You look at the readerboard menu and goggle at the Henry Ford-esque menu (any flavor you want as long as it’s “beef”). You see the prices and you feel like you’re in an older time–a burger for a buck and a quarter? The “Deluxe” for $2.70? You state your order as you would get tickets at a cineplex, and a very, very young person zips around, gathering your desires; it’s all right there, but you know it’s fresh because the food is just flying out of there and all will need to be replenished in minutes. You get your grease-stained bag and go back to your car, and you want to eat it right there, no waiting, and often you do. And when you take that bite, sitting in your latest-model vehicle, swathed in the scent of grease and meat, you are transported, and now you are sitting on a bench seat with a massive steering wheel and Buddy Holly playing on the AM radio. The lettuce may be wilted, the fries may be soggy, the condiments may be a little on the sweet side, but that burger tastes just like that burger you had as a kid, back before the world went to hell, back before you had to worry about mortgages and college tuition, back when summer was a golden, shining thing waiting for you at the end of the school year. And you are happy.

When you leave Dick’s, if you’ve paid attention, that happy will last for a while.

Now that, my friends, is a burger.

k

Posted in Food | Tagged , | 2 Comments »

Moonrise Kingdom is Brilliant

23 Jun 2012 by KRAG

One look at the cast list and we knew we had to see it, but I have to say, this is probably not a movie everyone will love as much as we did. And no matter how many superlatives I throw its way, for some folks (like many with us in the theater today) this movie will somehow, for some reason, miss the mark, fall flat, or just make them go “Hunh?”

For my money, though, it was brilliant. It was a perfect piece of craftsmanship. The acting, the writing, the cinematography, the art, the direction, it was all superb, absurd, and totally hilarious.

But humor is such a subjective thing. Ilene and I were laughing out loud through the whole movie–every shot, every scene, every performance was…just…a little bit…off center, over the top, surreal, comic. Every shot had some little bit of business in the background. Every scene had just a little bit of business as an aside. Every line, every angle, every bit of costume and set design was thoroughly thought out, and it was all both spot on for the period (1965) and subtly heightened, exaggerated, and lampooned.

This is, I think it fair to say, a movie goer’s movie. You have to have an appreciation for the craft to get many of the jokes, whether it’s the nearly clumsy camera work (each tracking and pan shot started with a little jerk and went a little wide of the mark at the end) or the nods to other movies (I dare you to watch the flood and not think of “The Shining”).

But even if you aren’t a devotee of the cinema, I still recommend it. The deadpan performances, the stiff-limbed gestures, all evocative of a school play or church pageant, are there for laughs, and the characters that populate the story are unique, memorable, and priceless. When Bill Murray comes into the room, half naked, bottle of wine in hand, goes into the closet, takes out an axe, and announces, “I’ll be out back,” it’s a marvel of understated comedy. And the movie is chock-a-block with moments like that.

See it.

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

So far, so good…

23 Jun 2012 by KRAG

This is working well. So far I have put up two sample chapters, built a menu, inserted photographs, built links to Amazon, and configured my widgets.

However, I need to drop this for now and get on with my day. It’s my wife’s birthday and she’s just finishing up all her Facebook correspondence, which means I need to go into “wish fulfillment” mode.

Posted in Culture, Writing | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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