That's me. And right now I'm bitter in defeat. I'm particularly bitter because the first round I lost in BlogMadness is the round that doesn't have a double elimination, which means I am just O-U-T. I'm also particularly bitter because when I went to bed last night, with another 3 hours of voting, I was ahead by two. This morning, I am out. By two.

Damn you, No Ping. Damn you and your Mr. Bean-esque tale of buying sex lube at Wal-Mart.

I had pathos. I had tears. I had dead friends. You had sex lube.

What a world, what a world. Where a little girl like you could... oh. Wrong story.

Ah, as my old pal Psycho Patti would have said: Joke 'em if they can't take a fuck. I wonder where she is, now? Last heard to be in Georgia, refusing to take her meds. I miss her. At least she isn't dead. I don't think.

Last night I dreamt about Bill. Dead, of course, like so many other of the people of whom I was most fond. We were doing something with ceramics. I was trying to glaze bisques. But the glaze was thick, like icing, and it wouldn't hold to the clay. I was dipping the clay in the swimming pool, and the glaze was peeling off. Running off, actually, like watercolor paints. I thought that it would make for very interesting effects, if I could just get it to the kiln.

Damn. I hate to lose. (tooth gnashing) But thanks to everyone who supported me and help me get as far as I did.

Working for the county has its advantages, now and then. Today I had off in honor of the generic presidential birthday celebration known as "President's Day." I took a nap.

Not just a nap, but the hallowed, mid-afternoon, workday couch nap.

There are just no words.

I also worked on a new quilt top and took the old cat to the vet to make sure he's just old and not old and sick. Old and sick seems to be a theme in my life, at least as far as the humans in it goes, so I was worried about the cat. He's 15 and a half. In cat years, that's um, 108.

The vet's prognosis: just old and he doesn't like his food.

There's only 24-ish hours left to vote in Blog Madness, Round Four. What are you waiting for? Follow the link, and vote for your favorite. That would be me, right? Right? RIGHT?!

Thank you. I promise to go back to my regular bitching and moaning tomorrow. But now, I'm going to bake chocolate chip cookies. With pecans. For the guy at the pharmacy who doesn't suck. He can rub it in and show them to the Insufferable Mr. Pimple, but no sharing.

And if you vote for me, maybe, just maybe, I'll bake some for you too.

Yep. This is getting serious, now. I'm getting spanked in Round Four by "No Ping," a Mr. Bean-esque tale of trying to buy sex lube at Wal-Mart without the children seeing. And how it won't ping the register. As I said in a previous post, it's very funny. I've voted for it. But not now. Now I'm trolling for votes. I want to win. I have to win. It's ugly, but it's one of those little things people love me (or hate me) for: my fiercely competitive nature. There's only another 35 hours at this writing, so get out there and vote... for me.

On another note, the spam haiku is continuing to fill my mailbox. I dump it all in the garbage, but admittedly, the topics are getting more interesting.

aerogene leisure august bronchial concretion
dowling cartilage palladia annotate
monadic fiddle knit bituminous

About Valentine's Day

Despite a childhood scarred with memories of an empty shoebox on Valentine's Day, back in the dark days before politically correct schools boards and soccer moms made their children give a valentine to every member of the class, whether they were popular or not, I enjoy the holiday. I love velvet boxes shaped like hearts, full of dark chocolates. I love the idea of receiving perfume, and flowers and other girly stuff. I love doting on the RLA. Not all the time, mind you, I have a reputation to keep, but on Valentine's Day, I'm happy to just schmear on the L-U-V.

That's just what I did yesterday. I baked a cake, and made a special dinner. Then we watched samurai movies. The cake though, was special. The first Valentine's Day that the RLA and I spent as a married couple we were living in the scorched-earth epicenter of hell* and he was teaching nights until late. That night, while he was teaching, I cooked a nice meal, and decided to bake him a chocolate cake for dessert. A rich chocolate cake that had been one of my mother's best recipes. Two layers. Never fail.

Unfortunately, I grew up at sea level and never lived more than 40-50 feet above it in my life. I had no idea about high-altitude baking. Even though where we were living was far from mountains, it was on the edge of the high plains, and sat about 5,000 feet above sea level.

The cake behaved like something out of a Three Stooges short, rising up and over the rim of the pans, and continuing to do so as I watched helplessly. By the time the RLA came home from school, there was a third layer of cake baking on the floor of the oven, and I was sobbing inconsolably on the floor of the kitchen. The cake, such as I was able to salvage, looked like an elephant dropping covered in a chocolate butter cream frosting.

What the RLA had no way of knowing at the time was that I had never had a cake fail in my life. I'd been baking since I was old enough to see into a pot. And I am damn good at it. But how could he know that? And what reason did he have to believe me when I said I'd never had a baked good come out bad. Darling boy ate the lumpy chocolate cake anyway.

All of which is by way of explaining why I was thrilled to be able to produce another flawless cake last night. I've been on a quest for a variety of Red Velvet cake that isn't chocolate, but flavored with maraschino cherry. There's a nurse at the hospital who makes it and won't reveal her recipe for love or considerable amounts of money. Last night, though, I think I came very close to getting it right. The recipe I used came from a 1950 copyrighted Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook. The only alteration I made was to use maraschino cherry syrup (from the ice cream sundae fixings shelf at the grocery store) instead of the juice from a bottle of cherries. I also left out the nuts and the chopped cherries. I made a mocha butter cream frosting for it, and the RLA ate a quarter of it last night.

Here's last night's menu and recipes.

Bloody Marys

Marinated Skirt Steak
Fresh Steamed Spinach
Baked Potato (really baked, in a super hot oven for over an hour, until the skin was crisp, not nuked until soggy)

Maraschino Cherry Cake

Skirt steak is an underused cut of meat. It's cheap and exceptionally flavorful and lean. The marinade I used also originated in the 50s I think, because it includes soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce, two staples of the 1950s kitchen, and very similar to a marinade my mother used to use on lamb chops when I was I child. I pulled the recipe from Epicurious and it was a reader's contribution from 1996.

Grilled Beef Steak Verciano

1/2 cup dry red wine
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoons dried rosemary, crumbled
2 large garlic cloves, chopped
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt

1 1/2 pounds of strip steak (any other kind of steak will do just fine)

Mix first 6 ingredients in a 13x9x2-inch glass baking dish. Add steak and turn to coat. Marinate 1 hour at room temperature or refrigerate up to 6 hours, turning steak occasionally.

Prepare barbecue (medium-high heat) or preheat broiler. Drain marinade into small saucepan; boil 1 minute and reserve to pass as sauce. Grill or broil steak to desired doneness, about 4 minutes per side for medium rare. Transfer steak to platter. Thinly slice across grain. Serve with marinade.

Maraschino Cherry Cake

2/3 cup soft shortening (half butter for flavor)
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 cups sifted cake flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup cherry syrup
3/4 cup milk
5 egg whites, stiffly beaten

Grease and flour 2 9" layer pans
Preheat oven to 350F

Cream together until fluffy the shortening and the sugar.

Sift together the flour baking powder and salt.

Mix together the cherry syrup and the milk.

Alternately add the dry and the wet ingredients to the shortening mixture, beginning and ending with the dry. Fold in the egg whites. Pour into prepared pans. Bake for 30-35 minutes. Cool and ice.

Mocha Butter Icing

3 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
1/3 cup soft shortening
3 squares of un-sweetened chocolate, melted
about 3 tablespoons of strong black coffee

Blend together the confectioners sugar, shortening and the chocolate.

Stir in the coffee until smooth and spreadable. You may need to add a little more coffee as the icing stiffens if you don't frost fast enough.

A word about baking soda

Back at the time of my chocolate cake debacle, there was a writer for Gourmet magazine by the name of Laurie Colwin, and she was, and is, one of my favorite food writers ever. She died in 1992, but I still read her two volumes of collected columns: Home Cooking, and More Home Cooking. The latter book has an article written for Halloween that includes one of the best recipes ever devised for butternut squash, but that's for another time. On pages 57-58 of More Home Cooking, Laurie had this to say about baking soda.

"In the back of Edna Lewis's immortal classic The Taste of Country Cooking is a word of advice about baking powder. Mrs. Lewis feels that double-acting baking powder, the kind now generally available, leaves a bitter aftertaste, and she is right. She suggests making your own with 2 parts cream of tartar to one part baking soda. Since I read this piece of advice I have never looked back. What is good for Mrs. Lewis is good for the nation, in my opinion."

Well, once I read Laurie's assessment of Mrs. Lewis and her baking powder, I, too, never looked back. I make my own, and it is heavenly.

And that was what I did for dinner last night.

*Clovis, New Mexico

Boyhowdie, I guess I shouldn't have used the word "flop" because that's what my server did.

There are advantages to free server space, cost being the most obvious. The down side of it is that you tend to sink to the bottom of the list when things go wrong and you go off-line for a day. Or two. Or two and a half, as you may have noted.

But I'm back, and I'd like to steal a trick from Wrapped Up Like a Douche, and give you all a look at a spam mail subject line. It's so abstract/obscure that I've left it in my inbox, sort of a spam haiku.

conjure counterpart enviable bilingual acid

Isn't it beautiful?

Speaking of beautiful, this is the weather the tourist bureau promised you when you thought you'd like to visit Florida in the winter. My office window is open, and the air is mild, balmy, slightly moist. The sky is a hazy shade of French blue (or bleu). I can see the skyline of South Beach off to my right. Don't you wish you were here, right now?

Well, except for the part about it's my OFFICE window. Which means that I am in my office, and not actually slapping back the mojitos on the sands of South Beach. On the other hand, and with me, there is always an other hand, it's not like I'm actually working at the moment, either.

For those of you who follow the trials and tribulations I suffer dealing with the witless wonders in the PR office, I won the last round. The two designs (theirs and mine) were offered up to the committee and my design won hands down. In fact, there was even something said to the effect that design "A" was soooooooooo much more logical, and easier to figure out where information would be found. Yep. I guess the old man didn't waste his money when I got that degree in design, after all. Smug? Yes. Y qual es su punto?

Finally, for those of you in the South Florida area, or who plan to be there next weekend, my husband, the RLA* will be exhibiting some very exciting new work at the South Miami Arts & Crafts Festival on the 21 & 22 of February. He'll be in booth #1. He used to do super realism, but this past year he's changed his direction. I can't describe it, but I'll try.

Be-bop psychedelic surrealism with a little influence from low-rider art and 50's tiki/cocktail culture. Sounds good, doesn't it?

*RLA= Renown Local Artist

Nobody can say that Josh had flop sweats last night, as he woofed his way to doggie stardom. I, personally, was rooting for the Pembroke Welsh Corgi. I thought he had it all together and, in the words of our hosts "made the breed standard come to life." I also know/have known Pembroke Welsh Corgis in my life, and they are fine animals, indeed.

Shout out to Oliver, you good dog, you.

That's the fun part of today's entry. The rest is just misery. I'm having an early attack of spring fever, and the mild blue sky and fluffy white clouds outside my window are not helping any. Neither is the work I have to do today: scanning forms and rescanning forms and making PDFs out of said forms and explaining for the, like, twentieth time to the requesting department the difference in quality between a scan of a crappy print and a PDF made from the original electronic master. Which, of course, they cannot or will not give me.

BlogMadness continues, and once more I have advanced. But now it gets really hard, because I'll be facing off against an entry that is just so funny I've voted for it in every round till now. Now, I'll be forced to vote for myself. And I find that just icky. Even if it is a secret ballot.

Speaking of secret ballots, my boy Wes Clark is dropping out of the Democratic primaries. I'm sad about that. I still want to see someone who really served in the military go toe to toe with the Fly-boy in Chief. I guess all I have left to pin my hopes on is John Kerry. (Whinny, snort, paw the ground)

One of the things I committed to memory in my youth was a poem from the late, great John Lennon's first volume of poetry "In His Own Write". It was a poem about Nigel. Here it is.

Good Dog Nigel

Arf, Arf, he goes, a merry sight
Our little hairy friend
Arf, Arf, upon the lampost bright
Arfing round the bend.
Nice dog! Goo boy,
Waggie tail and beg,
Clever Nigel, jump for joy
Because we are putting you to sleep at three of the clock, Nigel.

This poem caused much laughter in my childhood, and at the same time, a poignant sense of loss. I bring it up today because tonight will find me ensconced in the big comfy chair, AKC Book of Breeds in my lap, watching the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, live from Madison Square Garden.

Much to my amazement, other bloggers are writing about the show. I thought I was the only dog geek, but apparently I am not alone.

The Blight also talks about agility trials. As much as I love them, I can't watch them. You see, not so long ago, the Good Dog Nails and I attempted to do agility. We were kicked out of training. It wasn't that Nails peed in the ring (he didn't) or tried to fight or hump the other dogs (he did, but I keep him on a short leash). It was because, said the trainer, he didn't have enough of a desire to please me. Well, he's a Jack Russell, what would your point be? (And he's a JRTCA Jack Russell, not an AKC Jack, thank you so much.)*



She told me I couldn't pet him or praise him unless he did something right in the ring. And that meant ever pet him, praise him, or give him treats. I wasn't willing to do that, and that meant he wasn't driven enough.

On the other hand, it also means that tonight I'll get to watch the show with my growly friend on the couch beside me, squeaky toy at hand. I'll throw, he'll chase and retrieve, and it'll be fun for both of us. When he's done playing, he'll let me know by herding me over to where I keep the treats, and he'll bark until I open the cabinet and give him one.

And that trainer said he wasn't driven. Ha! He's trained me quite well.

* The Jack Russell Terrier Club of America was against admission to the AKC on the grounds that the Jack is a working breed, and needs to be kept a working, not a showing breed. I concur.