A friend's son posted the attached cartoon on his Facebook page. I responded:
"GAVOTTE--the best of both worlds!"
I knew that his mother would appreciate it because she and I have shared how we love the line in Carly Simon's song You're So Vain:
"You had one eye in the mirror
As you watched yourself gavotte."
After writing two BLOG articles about misunderstood song lyrics (see "MONDEGREEN" and "MY BOYFRIEND'S BACK"), several people told me that they thought that the line was:
"As you watched yourself go by it!"
There has been much speculation that the song is about Warren Beatty or Mick Jagger, but Carly has always refused to divulge the information. At a charity auction, Dick Ebersol paid $50,000 for Carly to whisper in his ear the identity of the subject of the song. Ebersol never revealed the name either.
gavotte: "a medium paced French dance, popular in the 18th century, marked by raising, rather than sliding, the feet.
My friend commented, "Don't you just love her rhyming gavotte with yacht and apricot?"
I frequently remark that I can make a meal for myself just with appetizers. Sometimes when I go to restaurants I just order an "appetizer sampler" instead of a meal. I love rumaki, stuffed mushrooms, potato skins, fried zucchini, mozzarella sticks; the list goes on and on!
A particular favorite appetizer in my family is ham rollups. At one of our Christmas parties, one of my nephews approached me and breathed in an exaggerated manner and said, "I ate 54 ham rollups." That year Les and I had made more than 1,000 ham rollups and all were eaten! I have made them with numerous kinds of vegetables, such as green onions, celery, and pickles, but my favorite is made with asparagus, but everyone else favors green onions (see recipe below).
In the movie Mermaids, Cher plays a single mother rearing two daughters. In the movie, Cher's character does not cook, but she prepares artistic appetizers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, much to the chagrin of her daughter (played by Winona Ryder), who wants to have a "normal" life. (see clip below)
In the movie Another Stakeout, the character portrayed by Rosie O'Donnell made appetizers resembling penguins, by using hard-cooked eggs and black olives. She also created armadillo-shaped meatloaf!
My friend Gretchen and I adore ladybugs and we have a nifty little collection of ladybugs. Today I was checking out gluten-free recipes on the internet because a friend who is coming to dinner on Friday is on a gluten-free diet. I was excited when I found the recipe for "LADYBUG CANAPES"!
When I showed the site to Les, he said, "OMG, is Winona Ryder coming for dinner? Lock up the silver!"
HAM ROLLUPS
16 slices boiled ham (rectangular shape)
16 green onions (the thinner the better)
8 ounces cream cheese, cut into 16 equal pieces, and softened
Place boiled ham on paper towels and blot dry. Spread cream cheese onto slice of boiled ham.
Place green onion with white part at top and trim bottom to fit the slice of ham.
Roll TIGHTLY and then cut into slices. Arrange attractively on tray.
I won an Employee Suggestion Program award because I designed a tool for the ease of operation for one of my employees (see attachments). My brother Duke machined it for me.
One of the jobs in my section was to install nuts into a difficult location, and the guys doing it would have raw, bloody, thumbs because they had to PRESS the nuts into place, without wearing gloves. There was also much waste because of the hardware falling out of the employees' grip.
Duke made ONE tool for MY guy on my shift; within two days my counterpart on the other shift was complaining to me about my "pampered pieceworkers", because, of course, MY guy just had to show off how "his boss had taken care" of him! I asked Duke to make another tool.
Soon, I was shocked to learn that a Time Study had been ordered because the use of the "shop aid" might lessen the time required on that job element. Fortunately, my guy performed the work during the time study and he made sure that it took LONGER to do it with the tool! Thus, my tool was not incorporated into the job breakdown because the other method was faster, but, of course my employee kept using it! However, I later learned that my duplicitous colleague had submitted the request for a Time Study as part of his Employee Suggestion in an attempt to try to claim it as HIS "cost-savings"! [I should write another BLOG article about DUPLICITY!]
I still received the money for the suggestion because I included documentation in my suggestion of the number of times employees had gone to the Medical Department to seek first aid for their thumbs and keeping employees productive was a cost-savings! Because I included that tidbit about employees not being injured, the suggestion was forwarded to the Medical Department for verification and the Medical Department informed the Engineering Department that the tool needed to be implemented for all employees to use as a safety measure. The tool was then listed as a "shop aid" which all of the employees who performed the job "should have available for use".
I gave one of the tools Duke had made to the millwrights to copy for the other employees to use. Their Manager said my tool was "too fancy" and they made ones of less sturdy materials. My worker said he wanted to keep the one I had made for him, and I took the other one home with me. Someone asked, "Did you get a patent?" I answered, "No, one must sign away all rights to inventions while employed by the Company."
To be eligible for salary increases, each management person must have turned in three cost-savings suggestions per year which had been implemented. I never had a problem accomplishing that. That same "duplicitous colleague" had the chutzpah to ask me if I had any other ideas he could submit! Each year, starting in September, male colleagues would begin begging me to give them "ideas" to submit because evaluations were completed by October 31 and they had not submitted their suggestions. I hate to use generalizations, but most men I knew in management were LAZY!
After my most recent caviling about the overuse of clichés, I heard a friend say, as she was talking about making a decision, "I was standing on the corner of Bitter and Sweet, and...." When she finished her sentence, I said, "Hey, I really like that!" She said, "But it's an old cliché!" I answered, "How can it be a cliché if I have never heard it?" She said, "My mother used to say it and there's a book and a movie called The Hotel On The Corner Of Bitter and Sweet." I told her I hadn't heard of either one. I have ordered the movie from Netflix. (See video from You Tube). It is about the disgraceful internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Just my kind of thing, don't you know?
I've written before about my family's pouncing on clichés and changing them, thus our family motto, "Where there's a will, there's a relative." (CLICK HERE to see my BLOG article THE CLICHE POLICE) My New Year's resolution was to limit any cliché usage!
I realize I do like some clichés and I usually preface the usage by saying, "As Mother used to say....." I said recently to my brother, "I gave it a lick and a promise," and we both laughed. Mother used to add a little "oomph" to some of hers: to "He didn't have a pot to piss in," she added "or a window to throw it out of!"; to "Calling the kettle black." Mother would say, "That's like the pot calling the kettle black ass!"
1. Sometimes I'll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.
2. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.
3. I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.
4. There is great need for a sarcasm font.
5. How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?
6. Was learning cursive really necessary?
7. Map Quest really needs to start their directions on # 5. I'm pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.
8. Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.
9. I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind-of tired.
10. Bad decisions make good stories.
11. You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you know that you just aren't going to do anything productive for the rest of the day.
12. Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after Blue Ray? I don't want to have to restart my collection again.
13. I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten-page technical report that I swear I did not make any changes to.
14. I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.
15. I think the freezer deserves a light as well.
16. I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Light than Kay.
17. I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Malls" routing option.
18. I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.
19. How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear or understand a word that was said?
20. I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars team up to prevent a jerk from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers and sisters!
21. Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.
22. Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, finding their cell phone, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey, but I'd bet everyone can find and push the snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time, every time.
23. The first testicular guard, the "Cup," was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974. That means it only took 100 years for men to realize that their brain is also important.
On the new series How To Live With Your Parents (For The Rest Of Your Life), I heard Brad Garrett's character say, "Do me a solid", and I didn't know what it meant. Later, that night, I heard Letterman tell that Dennis Rodman had asked Kim Kong Un to "Do me a solid."
I said to Les, "If this is a new slang phrase it must be six months old by now and the really cool people have quit using it already!" Les said he'd heard it before and it meant "to do a favor".
I looked on the URBAN DICTIONARY (CLICK HERE) and the first known source actually came from Seinfeld in a 1991 episode The Jacket.
Obviously, I had heard the phrase before because it was used in the movie Juno which I saw; it must have just "gone over my head" at that time! It was also used in the movies Half Nelson and Derailed, which I did not see.
I WON'T be throwing that phrase into any conversation!
