Elizabette's

This is a break from my usual type of post. I was stuck in a traffic jam yesterday, and my mind sort of just wandered, and this is where it went. It's very clear in my mind - I don't know if I am a skilled enough writer to draw the picture this deserves in your head...but I hope so. I would love your feedback on this.


The very first time I went to Savannah was in 1989 to visit my best friend. She had moved there after school, accepting a minuscule salary, no benefits or job security for the chance to work in her chosen career. We went to River Street, the gem of that lady of the south, and walked for hours on cobblestone streets meandering under old oak trees. We talked as if our very lives depended on getting everything said in that one very short night...It was January, and it was cold. Realizing we were hungry, we searched for a restaurant or pub, but time had wisped away under cover of our happy voices, and so the only place open was the big hotel on the river. Practically schoolgirls still, we were hardly dressed for dinner at the Hyatt, but in we strolled, graciously accepting the small table squished near the kitchen door. We paused our conversation long enough to look at the menus, and realized in an instant that we were out of our league...between the two of us, we had about enough money for a bowl of soup, and that was only if we had enough guts to not leave a tip for the waiter. So, out we went, back up to the river, not really distressed at our situation. After all, we had survived many nights of insufficient funds, back at school. We found another open door; down a half set of stairs, set into the basement of one of the big tourist places. We walked in to a blast of heat, and music - the jazz being played by the musicians on the tiny stage was the kind that sets every hair bristling...the kind of music girls like us had only heard in the movies we had snuck in to see. A very fat woman eased herself off a stool in the corner and approached us. We asked in timid voices if they served food there, and if we were too late to order something to eat. The fat lady didn't say much, but she sort of nodded, and slid an arm around each of us, and shepherded us to a table, right in front of the piano. The musicians looked at us briefly, without interest. A man in shiny pants brought us some coffee - unasked for, but very much appreciated because we were both feeling cold. We sipped our coffee, pungent with some unknown liquor, and assessed our surroundings. We were in a very nice place. Remembering the Hyatt, we began to get a little nervous, but no one had even brought us a menu yet. We figured we would have enough for at least the two coffees, if we couldn't afford to eat. The band played, the few other customers - women in elegant dresses, the men in suits with narrow colorful ties- danced in the small clearing near the stage. We listened and watched, silenced by the warmth, the coffee, the music, the comfort we had found in this little place. After a half hour or so, we had still not been brought menus, but the fat lady appeared at the table with two plates, mounded high with delicious smelling food. We looked at one another; my friend and I worried we wouldn't be able to pay. We started to ask how much for the dinner, but she shushed us and put a plate in front of each of us, and waited for us to start eating. It was meatloaf, hot and tangy and ambrosial with mashed potatoes that were salty and somehow sweet at the same time. Gravy floated on everything, except for the fresh strawberries and grapes that were nestled next to the pile of meatloaf. It tasted as delicious as it smelled and we ate it all. Warm, a bit tired now, but with full bellies, we enjoyed the rest of the band's final set. The fat lady once again came up to our table. She said that she was ready to close up, and asked if we had come by car or did she need to call us a taxicab to get home. We looked at her blankly, and my friend told her that we had walked there from her apartment on Whitaker Street. The woman sighed and shook her head; " You can't walk all that way now. It's 2 o'clock in the morning. I'll call a car for you." We were worried - we hadn't thought of getting back to the apartment, and we still hadn't paid for dinner. We asked how much we owed her for the dinner and coffee, and she surprised us by asking "Well, how much do you have?" "8 dollars", I said. She smiled and said that would be just about right. We handed her the 8 dollars but she took only two. "You'll need the rest for your cab ride home." She shooed us out the door and waited with us in the cold until we were ensconced in a battered taxi. She stood and watched as we were driven away, the old car bouncing heavily on the rutted road.

Airplane!

Just the other day, a friend shot some video of his flight landing at a major US airport. The footage was spectacular, stunning, awe-inspiring and outright beautiful. The video was enhanced by his addition of wonderful, exciting music; something famous, I think. He put his artistic endeavor on his Facebook page and shared it with the world (or, at least people who are linked in as his FB buds). I watched his video and sighed - it was truly magical. Alas, when the screen showed his 'out the window' view of the planes very final descent, I had to look away - my stomach knotted, I began to perspire and I had an insane desire to run out of the room. Yes, you know my dirty secret - I am afraid of flying (Hah! That's putting it mildly!). And, it is TOTALLY a control thing with me. For years, I flew in tiny, laughably small planes, swooping over vast expanses of the southeastern US for my work. As long as I could reach over the pilot's shoulder and take charge of the aircraft at a seconds notice, I was fine. See, in my head, as long as I was watching the pilot and approving their every move, we were good. Case in point: Once, I was passenger in a puddle jumper that STALLED IN MID-FLIGHT. Did I panic when the dash light emblazoned with ENGINE STALL WARNING flashed on and off? Which I could plainly see because I was less than 2 feet away? Did the excruciatingly loud buzzer alerting us that the engine had stalled cause me duress? You betcha. But, I knew I could 'will' the pilot into fixing the situation, or 'yell' the pilot into fixing the situation, or if needed, SMACK the pilot 'upside his head' to get the situation fixed. And, if none of that worked, I could ruthlessly shove the pilot out from behind the controls, and I could take over; restart the engine and safely fly us to our destination. (cue applause: Yippee... Penny has once again saved the day!) Do I know how to fly even the least sophisticated airplane? Absolutely not. Hell, I can't even fly a kite. But you see, that's how I know I have control issues. Because if I am in a small plane, I'm okay. Whereas, if I am a passenger on a large jet, where I can not even SEE the pilot, much less SMACK them if they begin to screw up, I am seriously a mess. So, I don't know how to fix my control issue, but it's pretty bad and getting worse. The other day, my girlfriend was driving us to a restaurant for lunch and she took a wrong turn. It was all I could do to stop myself from smacking her 'upside the head'.

Water, Water Everywhere...

Today is "Blog Action Day 2010". On this day, bloggers everywhere have committed to dedicating their posts to a designated topic we all voted on to discuss. This years topic is "Clean Water", as in billions of people in our world do not have access to water which is safe to drink. Unsafe drinking water and lack of sanitation kills more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Unclean drinking water can incubate some pretty scary diseases, like E. coli, salmonella, cholera and hepatitis A, way worse stuff than what really bad cooking can do. Given that bouquet of bacteria, it's no surprise that water, or rather lack thereof, causes 42,000 deaths each week. So, this a pretty serious issue. The average American uses 159 gallons of water every day – more than 15 times the average person in the developing world. From showering and washing our hands to watering our lawns and washing our cars, Americans use a lot of water. To put things into perspective, the average five-minute shower will use about 10 gallons of water. I personally have NEVER taken a five minute shower, I am somewhat ashamed to admit - mine are generally 25+ minutes. But imagine stretching a measley 10 gallons of water to do all that we 'need' to do!

When you consider more than 40% of our country's rivers are too polluted to SWIM in, or support aquatic life, and 45% of our lakes are in the same condition, and that even now, wetlands are still being destroyed at an alarming rate, it's pretty amazing that we have ANY clean drinking water. But there is enormous cost to render water safe enough to drink. It is estimated that worldwide, pollution of the worlds waters costs the global economy over 12.8 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR! That's a lot of coin, no matter where you're from. Imagine what good could come from using that 12.8 billion for health and human welfare programs. If you want to know how you can help, visit water.org or follow their links for more in depth stuff. Or, for a really cool bit of technology for the environmentally conscious, you can download an iphone application which will allow you to calculate the 'water footprint' of your favorite foods at http://virtualwater.eu/ . I know this is a big departure from what I usually have to say here and I really appreciate you taking the time to read this. So now, I am going to get a big tall glass of water and reflect on how lucky I am that I can just open a tap to get some!

Rock and Roll

So over the summer I went to a concert up in Charleston, SC. I went to see Boz Scaggs. Now Boz Scaggs was never what you would call rock and roll, he's more like jazzy light pop sort of stuff. And now that he is in his advanced years, his music style is even more apparent. Which was good, because just about everyone in the audience was old. I don't mean old like me...I mean OLD! Now old doesn't usually equate to bad or undesirable, but related to "rock" concerts, it does. Here's how: The venue was all wrong. It was all plush and clean...there were cushioned seats that still had the padding intact and the place didn't smell like stale beer, cigarettes, pot or come to think of it, it didn't smell like anything yucky. I am not particularly fond of yucky smells, but they do have a place in a concert hall. In this arena, I felt I could not stand on the seats, drink beer, smoke or do anything I associate with typical rock concert behavior. I sat down in my seat for most of the performance, rising to my feet in enthusiastic and irrepressible bursts of rebellion sporadically throughout the show. At these times, I was corrected by my elders in the seats behind me with "Down in front!" and some outright mean sounding "You. You sit down...now!" Catering to the comfort of the audience, specifically old people, is a Bad thing for a concert. So then there was the concessions. Concerts used to maybe sell beer and a few junky type snack foods, but most of us would go to a concert with full flasks and refills at the ready in the pockets of a jacket for the liquid libation (which is all we ever seemed to need in those days). At this show, the concessions sold not only beer, but wine as well, and, they sold more than ONE TYPE of each! I could have also purchased a mixed drink or, get this, one of those 'frou-frou' drinks like a daiquiri, complete with little PAPER UMBRELLA! I mean, what the heck were the promoters thinking? Most concerts I have been to would never have given out the little umbrellas because they are on a stick, which when hurtled across a concert arena would likely start a toothpick war, and cause at least one very drunk person to stick someone or be stuck badly enough to have to be removed from the show. So again, undesirable catering to old people. I think the final downer of the night was the man a few seats down who scolded me with, and I am quoting here, "I didn't spend a hundred bucks a seat to hear YOU go 'woooooooo' and whistle all night, now shut the hell up and listen to the guy on stage." Verbally spanked at a concert by a man old enough to be my...well, my PEER! Sheesh.

Interview

So, I am hot on the trail of a job. It's a good job - I don't have to know anything about fondue or soccer schedules or laundry soap or when it is necessary to change the vacuum cleaner bag to avoid potential personal injury due to the bag exploding because the dirt from oh, I don't know @2008 has mutated in there and wants out... I interviewed for the position about 6 weeks ago, and it went very well. The secret to my success? Exhaustion. I was unable to sleep the night before the interview, so I was very tired and therefore, totally relaxed during the meeting. I was so relaxed that I said some things, such as "Well, I'm pretty smart, ya know - I could figure that out" and "Well, it's important you pick the correct person to fill this position, because you'll be stuck with them for awhile." I cringe even now. I also shudder at the recollection of how I dressed for the interview. As some of you may remember, my wardrobe is pretty much non-existent unless it involves being on a boat or a beach. I wore my one and only nice white shirt (I even busted out the iron) which still fit okay and seems to have held up to its long solstice in the closet with minimal yellowing, and a pair of brown pants I purchased recently to wear to a funeral. The shoes were another matter. I tried my boat shoes but that looked pretty bad. Then, I tried a sort of new pair of tinnies which were still white and mostly clean. They gave me the appearance of an AWOL nurse. Digging way back into the recesses of a closet, I found a pair of brown sandals, that once I cleaned the dust bunnies from seemed to look okay. Stylish? Definitely not, but functional? Absolutely. So, considering how cocky and badly dressed I was for the interview, I figure I should be hearing about the job any day now!