Last week I came home from work with an upset stomach, from eating a frozen linguini and clams dinner. It was one of those gross things you microwave in three minutes. Well it microwaved my stomach. I should not bitch too much because I have been pretty lucky with these frozen concoctions especially the pasta versions and mac and cheese. Just for convenience I’m like everybody else trying to get something for nothing in life. That is what these frozen dinners come down to. I don’t do them often but sometimes timewise they fit. Well this night my stomach was in bad shape and when I got home I took two Rolaids which gave me almost immediate relief. Soon I was burping up the chemical reactions that the Rolaids were having on my acidic stomach. I made up for that frozen nightmare that I ate. When I brought home a bunch of fresh tomatoes from the garden and some stuffed banana peppers that a guy at work gave me. The peppers were fresh garden grown. And Captain Bill stuffed them with sausage. So we heated up the peppers and I cut up a bunch of the tomatoes and made a tomato salad. This meal really made up for the one I ate earlier. This food was almost medicinal. Even though the acid in the tomatoes could have added to my upset stomach but the antacid tablets that I took were holding their own. I have never really been prone to acid reflux syndrome but when you eat enough acid you arr bound to upset the stomach. That’s why it is good to keep a couple packs of Rolaids handy. After dinner I watched the news and went to bed and slept like a baby ...

I ran into my old dentist at the supermarket. I don’t go to him anymore because he was not on my insurance plan. He is the dentist who works on his own car. I was never sure if he was a renaissance man who took an interest in everything or if he just liked working on his own car. Anyway it was always refreshing to talk about cars while he worked on my teeth. His office was pretty simple. It was an inspiration to me to see someone who went to dental school, and still took the time to work on his own car. We talked about how messed up my teeth were. I picked up the habit of using mouthwash after scrubbing my teeth from his dental hygienist. And it has helped my dental health. Actually getting into the habit of flossing helped also. I read recently that flossing, brushing and using mouthwash in combination significantly improves dental health. Eating a lot of cheese helps too. Something about making you salivate more, diluting the acid caused by the bacteria in the mouth. So much for dental health.
I made a batch of solar yogurt on the roof yesterday. And I left it on the roof all night. The temperature yesterday was around 89 degrees but on the roof the temperature read around 100 on the thermometer. Perfect temp for yogurt. I woke up this morning and heard it drizzling out so I ran out and grabbed the bowl of yogurt. There is nothing quite like the taste of fresh homemade yogurt. For this batch I added a cup and a half of nonfat powdered milk to a quart of regular, 2% milk to thicken it. Since the live yogurt organism is turning the milk into yogurt, the further you let this process occur the more tart and the thicker the yogurt becomes. This batch was not real thick and it had a real sweet flavor from the milk sugar. It was so good that I spooned a couple dollops of it into a glass and drank it down. Then I put a heaping teaspoon of it into a cup of coffee. The coffee turned into a interesting latté. With a bitter sweet flavor that I liked very much. Any people living in the southern climates should be making solar yogurt year round. Even a tool shed in the back yard should suffice for a warm place to make the yogurt. And up here in the north we can make it all summer. I eat it so fast that I don’t even bother to refrigerate it, I just leave it out on the counter. I think that it tastes better at room temperature. When making the yogurt just remember to cover the bowl with a dark garment to absorb the sun’s rays and to keep direct light away from the yogurt producing organism. When you have consumed all the yogurt you do not even have to wash the bowl. Just add more milk and put it in a warm place. The old yogurt left in the bowl will act as the starter and the whole process will continue. And the whole procedure will continue indefinitely. Just remember to keep some powdered milk around to add to the mixture to get a thicker batch. Anybody who can get their kids into this habit will find out what a healthy habit this can become. And how easy this kind of eating is on the pocketbook. Not to mention that the heat from the sun is free….
I have to say something about music here because I have to justify my cd collection. Its starting to outgrow my house. Besides music and movies the only things I spend money on are food and tools. I gave my parents a Louie Prima album to try and cheer my mother up who has been depressed lately. And my dad told me that he never had time for music. And I told him that I need it to write this book. And he told me to do whatever you have to do. So I just thought that I would take the time to say that a lot of the motivation that I have gotten for this book has come from Bob Marley, Mark Knopfler, John Prine, Adrian Belew, Ani Defranco, Annie Lennox, Frank Sinatra, Tom Waits, Rochereau, Mbila Belle, Billy Bragg, Sade, Sting, Neil Young, Emmy Lou, Rolling Stones, Jimmy Buffett, Dixie Chicks,Southside Johnny, Robbie Robertson, Lindsay Buckingham, Alanis Morissette, Indigo Girls, Proclaimers, Warren Zevon, Iris Dement, Majek Fajek, Steve Forbert, Richard Shindell,U2-Me2, Kd Lang, Paula Cole, Pretenders-with strings, Aster Aweke, Peter Gabriel, Johnny Cash, OMC, Chris Cross, Counting Crows, Lucinda Williams, Bonnie Raitt, Cowboy Junkies, Bob Dylan, Toby Keith, Michelle Shocked,a-ha-ya-hoo,Joey Ayala-rganik,Billy Holiday, Jewel, Janis Joplin, Cyndi Lauper, Marvin Gaye, Tina Turner, Billy Joel-Angry Young Man, Whoever wrote-Poke Salad Annie, Sonny Landreth, David Bowie, Sinead, George Harrison, Roseanne Cash, and that is just what is laying on top of my speakers…

Today I want to write about something a little bit different. When I went up to the gym to lift it was a very hot day and humid to boot. So I took a frozen bottle of Gatorade with me to drink. While I was lifting the Gatorade was slowly melting on the counter where I laid it. About half way through my lift, I started shaking the bottle up until I started getting the consistency of a frozen smoothie. And since I was sweating pretty bad and there was no air-conditioning in the gym, my body temperature had to be above normal. When I started drinking this frozen concoction I noticed that no matter how much that I drank I could not get one of those brain freezes. Everybody has had one of these. The frozen headache that comes on when you eat or drink something cold. So I guess that I have just discovered that you can prevent a brain freeze by just busting your ass, before you eat or drink something cold. Wow I must be really onto something. I guess this is sort of like life in general. If you bust your ass doing anything you can prevent a lot of pain by being the aggressor in the competition for your emotional state. If you relax too much, smaller and smaller things bother us. But if you actively peruse challenges the small annoyances in life tend to disappear. And I find myself struggling with this reality. God I don’t want to be a man without dreams. But sometimes the daily routine of the job and the everyday bullshit in life wears me down. And if I find myself worrying about petty crap, its time to find the next challenge. A lot of the time I am not even sure what I am looking for. Sometimes just running 4 miles on an empty stomach puts me into the zone where the world clarifies itself to me. Something as simple as throwing a new piece of linoleum on the kitchen floor can put me into the zone of pleasurable comprehension. Someplace I wish I could stay. It would be nice to know that there was a certain 50 step plan that I could follow to stay in my zone. But life in America cannot be like that, there are so many possibilities. And to be a player in this life you have to consider a good many of them. That is why that at least in my consumption of things, I can simplify. With the possibility that if I truly find my niche, my consumption could be boundless yet controllable. Like taking a sailboat throughout the Caribbean to all those islands and pushing my grain philosophy while I am working and playing at the same time.

The drive down to Washington D.C. from Pittsburgh takes from 3 ½ hours to 4 ½ hours depending on traffic. We used to stop in Breezewood, the fast food capital of the world, and eat lunch. My weakness was always Arby’s but the last few trips we forget the lunch and just suck down some fruit and yogurt while we drive along. It turns out the heavy lunch at Arby’s would make us tired and sleepy. And we would almost fall asleep at the wheel. It was torture trying to stay awake at the wheel. This last trip Laura and I trying to see who could go the longest without eating. Finally we split a banana and it was surprising how filling a banana can be when your just sitting in a car. It makes sense that if you are just sitting in a car you should not need that much food. But all the advertising that you see along the road seems to keep you always hungry. Today however I think because we both worked out in the morning before our trip we both were. And the endorphin rush lasted well into the car ride. So the advertising did not effect us so much. However I did bitch when we passed Arby’s because I thought we might get a mocha milk shake. But we passed on that idea. After the banana we split a cup of vanilla yogurt and we were ¾ of the way to D.C. and since half of hunger is just thirst we kept drinking water. The drive was so much easier eating light because we did not have to fight sluggish sleep. Before we knew it we had arrived. The weather was great mid 80’s and sunny skies. We just kicked back and we played with the nieces and nephews in my brother and sister-in-law’s big yard. My brother built a tree house in the woods surrounding the property. When we walked to the tree house we passed a stream that had trees felled by beavers the way they do by gnawing around the base of the trees. And they had already started on the dam across the stream by dragging some other trees across the small stream. It was fascinating to see their handiwork up close. It was good to see that they were still surviving with so much human encroachment. The tree house was about 15 feet off the ground and built really well. Since my brother builds houses for a living, this tree house showed his expertise. I told him that if I get laid off from my job I would come down and live in the tree house. He had put shingles on the roof and used really good lumber. The kids love it. After we climbed up the ladder we checked out the woods from this vantage point. Soon we all fell asleep and took a nice nap in the woods. After we returned to my brother’s house, Laura and I took a walk around the neighborhood. Since he lives in horse country we ended up looking at the horses behind the big wooden fences. When we returned to the house we had grilled chicken and hamburgers off of the grill. Meat always tastes better off of the grill. Grilled meat and beer and salad. I think I was in heaven. Laura’s Mother was already staying at their house because her and Laura were going to baby-sit the kids while my brother and his wife went to Puerto Rico for a work vacation the following week. The next day we all went to a place called Burke Lake where we walked around the lake and canoed. It was a lot of fun. That night we went out to an Italian restaurant and had some good Italian food. I had some free range veal and Laura had the tilapia fish special. My nephew ordered the kids portion of spaghetti and meatballs. And Laura’s mother ordered the regular portion of spaghetti and meatballs and her and my nephew switched plates. And my brother and his wife had lasagna and can not remember what my niece ordered. Now I remember it was ravioli. On the way to the restaurant my brother’s SUV got a flat tire. And we all had to get out while he and I changed the tire. Boy did we look like a hoot and nanny on the side of the road while this was all going on. Somehow changing a tire on the side of the beltway kind of takes your dignity away. Laura and I always prided ourselves on being somewhat white trash so this fit well into our perspective. After the meal at the restaurant we finished off the carafe of wine and ordered a couple of cannolies to split with the kids. The next day was Sunday and Laura and I went down to D.C. to meet in front of the White House for our annual rollerblade through the city. We got together with about 25 other people and started criss crossing over the Potomac river. There were the usual protests going on at the White House along with all the tourists taking pictures. At one point we were right in the middle of the ghetto and people were pretty friendly. We passed through the central train station and the old baseball stadium. At one point we stopped at a house on the outskirts of Georgetown where the guy leading the skate showed us the row house he was buying. Next we bladed through a huge flea market in a part of town that I was not familiar with. It was a really hot day and at one point we all pawed into an Eckerd drugstore to buy Gatorade. There we recouped our energy and went on our way. We bladed almost two hours and I expended so much energy I had to buy big pretzel at one of those stands when we got back to the White House. After the blade Laura and I drove up to Adams Morgan where all the foreign restaurants from places like Ethiopia and Ghana are located. Laura and I roamed around taking in all the culture. Monday morning I drove to the airport with my brother and Donna where they were about to begin the Puerto Rican holiday. And I was going to fly back to Pittsburgh. On the way to the airport it was very early and still dark we saw a lot of deer jumping fences along the road.