Greek Style Pork Chops

Greek Style Pork Chops

Always looking for new tastes.  This came through Yumly and used a link to my blog page.

Greek Style Pork Chops

Greek Style Pork Chops

A Huge Bucket-List Item

August 21, 2017

After over 50 years of waiting, I got my chance to view total solar eclipse. I wasn't going to at least attempt to fight the predicted massive traffic problems through the state of Oregon and the city of Portland. As I talked about it the last few weeks, I think Deanna was surprised to find out that if she went to work, I was going to Oregon to see the total eclipse some way or somehow. After hearing all the hype on the news for a few weeks she was closer to thinking that maybe it might be better than what she was imagining.

She took the day off so together we could attempt to see the total eclipse. If we had stayed home, we would have been able to see 98.7%, but being only about 35 miles away from totality, I was determined to give it a try. 

The reports were that traffic would be a nightmare all day so many businesses had their employees work from home or closed for the day in the Portland area. When we got up, we were surprised to see that Portland was "green" all over the city. We planned to go to the SW of Portland to avoid I-5 entirely. There's a way to get all the way around the northwest side and ending up in Hillsboro (far west suburb) where we planned to go south from there. As it was, we went right through the city in the AM at about 6:45, a time when it's usually backed up at the Columbia River Bridge on I-5.

We had a relatively easy drive using a GPS app called WAZE, which routed us a bit farther west, then south and got us to Mcminnville in enough time to look around for a good place to park. The plan was to go south to a rural area and find a farm that might be charging to park in their field, or go to Linfield College in the city where they had a viewing event and free parking. We drove by that area with the thought that if we couldn't find a suitable place, we'd head back into the south side of the city to Linfield. 

As it was, we headed south, found a busy fruit stand with a porta-potty and continued a couple miles farther where people were parking in various fields attached to the HWY for free. Found a spot and waited.

We had had our eclipse glasses for weeks, had some extras and when some recalls came out on Amazon and the Dutch Bros. coffee giveaway glasses made some scramble for glasses we were able to sell some which eventually paid for the ten we bought (4 went to Luke and Katie) plus enough for our lunch on the way back. We had purchased ones from companies on NASA's approved list. They were rather interesting in that if you looked through them, you say nothing. Sort of like looking through a welder's mask. However, looking at the sun, all you saw was the sun. I may take them apart, make a camera filter and see if I can photograph sunspots some time soon.

In any event, we watched for an hour as the sun got covered more and more by the moon and then that 50 seconds of seeing the corona flare out from the sun was ....

To say it was amazing would be an understatement.

After a few minutes, we got packed up and headed back, watching the traffic on google maps and our WAZE app. Traffic wasn't bad so we stopped in to Great Harvest Bread Company for a sample and a loaf of cinnamon bread and a pit stop since we had been drinking coffee all morning.  When we got back in the Chevy Silverado, traffic past the bread store was backed up into town as well as the four to five little towns along the way, however, our app rerouted us in McMinnville two blocks off the main drag and we zipped easily past the packed downtown with traffic lights every two blocks. As we approached the first of the little towns on the state hwy, we were rerouted again through some back roads and had an easy enjoyable ride through the country side on roads we have never been on before and most likely won't every again. Well, come to think of it, maybe we will because there are oodles of wineries along those roads and we plan some day to go back down there with our friends Mel and Carolyn from Olympia for a winery tour.

All this time, we expected to have to take the back way around the NW part of Portland, but the traffic still showed green all over the city. However, I-5 out of Salem was a mess. Salem had almost 2 minutes of totality as it was in the middle of the moon's shadow. We had less than a minute as we were near the edge of the shadow.

We stopped in Hillsboro at a Vietnamese place for lunch and took the back way, not because traffic was backed up, but I wanted to show Deanna the way for future reference. We made it home with no trouble at all. The folks on I-5 and those in central Oregon who watched on the high desert near Bend on the east side of the Cascades didn't have it so carefree.

Madras, a small town north of Bend, was "dark red" all day into the evening. Traffic reports were on the local news stations all night. The mass of traffic finally made it up into Washington after 6 PM. I-5 near our exit here in Ridgefield was red in parts and orange to the north and south. 

My hunch of picking a place away from Salem to the SW of Portland seemed to be a fortunate guess as we made it home in about three hours. Not bad since we stopped for a sit-down lunch and then did some grocery shopping (We're in a bedroom community with no large grocery store so we have have to remember to stop for items on the way home from work or trips south) on the way home. So total drive time home was probably an hour and a half. Not far in miles, but slow due to being on back roads is all.

Attached is a photo I took of the area we parked. I tried to take photos with my cell phone through the solar filter glasses but they didn't really come out. If i had a solar filter for my camera, it would have taken too long to figure out the correct aperture, ISO, and shutter speed settings. I would have missed the sight of a lifetime and probably the picture as well. Decided it was best to just soak it in and rely on the professionals' photos. I've seen some and the photos just can't capture what it really looked like. Case in point, ever try photographing the Grand Canyon?

Something you didn't know about my favorite professor

When I was in Professor Sievert's Teaching Bible History class, he was probably at 48 years or so as a teacher and professor. My mom had him in college and he was definitely NOT her favorite teacher. He apparently was pretty tough and not-at-all chummy with the student body at that time twenty-some years earlier.
I was a bit concerned about this upcoming class as most of my friends had had Uncle Eric the semester before and always seemed to be writing and rewriting lesson plans and then waiting for all those red marks and the dreaded "See Me" on the front page. They would then have to trudge up to the second floor in Old Main and wait in line on hard chairs for Prof. Sievert to show them how correct their handwriting upstrokes or how they needed to change all those "Do" questions to no trace of the word. Now 33 years later, we are still reminded about using higher level questioning during in-service meetings. Needless to say, my classmates were enormously relieved when the semester exams were over and they would no longer have to follow the "See Me" directive any more.
 When it was my turn. I knew to always put upstrokes at the end of my letters, but he found plenty that I missed. I was always wary of Do questions and pretty much didn't use them unless I could absolutely not think of anything better. So I made that same trek up those creaky stairs and waited for my turn to come up with a better way to ask the question in the presence of the feared tyrant-of-the-classroom. I can't say why it was, but I enjoyed the class and learned more about the craft of teaching than in any other undergrad class. When my mom heard that my favorite teacher was Eric Sievert, she almost dropped the pot of water she was transferring from the sink. The musical tone of her "What??" got higher than what I had ever imagined was possible to hit without professional intervention. As I said earlier, he wasn't her favorite. This was the day that I found out. No worries, I liked making my choices based not on what others found acceptable. If you don't believe that, you should hear some of the electronic music I owned on LP. Every hear of  Sequencer by Larry Fast and Synergy? Had the Games album, too.
I don't recall how we got to teasing each other a bit, but I do remember one line that he used (I use it occasionally with some of my geometry students and they figure its part of their math teacher's math humor that they have to endure). Uncle Eric met me at the door before class one day and asked me if I wanted to fight,  how do you answer this question from a 70+ year old legend? I bit and said, OK. His response was that I should go wait outside and if he wasn't there in five minutes I should start without him.
I will tell you to this day, I still use every ounce of wisdom I was able to glean from that one semester class. I even will remember to make sure my letters move up and away when I write in cursive despite the fact that very few of my student can read my cursive, or anyone's cursive for that matter. It's still my tribute to Uncle Eric.
My college days took an unusual turn one semester later and I found myself away from campus when I should have been finishing. When I returned a year later, eager to complete those remaining credits and get out teaching (working an awful job putting up TV cable on power poles will get one refocused),  I was working two part-time jobs, going to school full-time, and getting the best grades of my life. About 2 to 3 weeks back to school, I encountered Uncle Eric in an upstairs hallway as we headed in opposite directions.  It was the second time I had the chance to greet him at school. The  first time he had inquired about a few things, asked about my little family. We lived in a four room house the size of one car garage with heaters that didn't work particularly well during yet another brutal Minnesota winter. How we had money to buy food is still something only God knows. We were poor, but we didn't really know it. Well, I didn't. I'm sure Dee did. But we had each other and a steady stream of friends to come down and visit our little house.
So here I am greeting the man that I respected above all others, chatting, and then moving on. But after a couple steps, he gruffly called out my last name, something that he had often barked before. I turned around to see him digging into his wallet. He took out a 20 and handed it to me and said, "Take your bride out to dinner." then turned around and continued on his way.
It felt like quite a long time before I could do the same.

Scratchy

It's a scratchy throat I'm feeling. It started with a very strange night's sleep. All night long I had to clear my throat of excess fluids. Then on the way to work, it felt a bit off. Just that little tickle in the back of my throat.
I didn't think much of it during the day until we had an assembly in the outdoor stadium nearby. One of my co-workers mentioned the foolishness of standing out in the drizzle/drips since he had had a head cold for a couple days.
Now I wasn't about to discuss the issue of being outside in the fresh air as being worse for him than being cooped up in a 20x20 room with 15 teens as he has smaller classes being a special ed. teacher and therefore a smaller room. Still, why do people still insist that you get a cold from being out in it?
What's more, it was a humid 68 degrees out this afternoon. That's not what I'd call frigid. That weather, though, is hitting Montana's eastern plains, so I'm told by a friend of a friend's posting on one of the few social sites I frequent infrequently.
Those folks who avoid outside when they have a cold are the same ones who have bottles of hand sanitizer in their environment and sneeze into their shirt arms because they don't want to spread germs. And any teacher who has seen students run around at recess during 5 degrees in January knows that they are constantly MAKING those little knuckleheads put on their coats. It's like they have ice running through their veins. By all indications - running, tackling, blocking, sliding - the cold isn't making them sick because they're the same ones you've told to put on their jackets all week and they still aren't absent. Come to think of it, you were telling them all last week, too.
So we need to think of a better name than a cold. Cold doesn't enter into it. Unless the pencil I sneezed on and let you borrow got more germy when I put it into my refrigerator. Or maybe the railings at the mall that you used were filled with liquid nitrogen to keep the bacteria activated. I think that's where water monkeys come from - the mall. Not inside railings.
So what are we going to call the scratchy throat, itchy tongue, runny mucus holes, and background headache that occur mostly during the winter when everyone is inside sharing airborne orgnisms and avoiding the low temperatures for fear of catching their death?
Should we call it non-observation disease or n.o.d? That seems to be what you feel like doing when you're in a meeting, doesn't it? Maybe pony disease would explain why you are a little hoarse.
The world is filled with new names from drug companies: Cymbalta for that pesky fear of silver on drum sets; Celebrex cures those sudden urges to rejoice spontaneously; Flonase helps something out of your nasal capacity. If they can come up with 24,000 names for the rearrangement of 20 amino acids, they certainly can come up with a new name that sounds as miserable as the uncommon viruses that we call a cold that makes us wish we could scratch that itch and itch that scratch just above our esophagus.
With all that scratching going on, you'd think it was baseball season. But that's not played in winter either, (unless you count winter ball in Puerto Rico).
"CHEW!"

What's with the penguins?

I have received two gifts already this school year.
A former student, who is quite the artist made three pictures for me to hang up in my classroom: one of a penguin with her face on it, a penguin with the face of her friend and my student for the third semester in a row, and one of yours truly's face on a penguin body. They are hanging up behind my desk. Why penguins? Because a long time ago I started collecting penguin pictures from old calendars and have many hanging in my classroom. No big deal about the penguins, but they sure are photogenic.

A gift from a student's family
5 years ago.

This morning I got a little penguin in plastic from another student who requested me for this year again. If you stick it in water, it'll grow up to 600% of it's 3" x 1.5" size. These presents come on the heels of some frustration with the admin who are putting pressure on the staff to reflect about their thoughts, find new methods to share, collect more data, and prove improvement. It's frustrating because what we really need, having adopted new textbooks, two of which represent new classes, is encouragement and appreciation for the extra hours we are putting in for the kids. We in the math dept. are working our tails off more since we lost one FTE (one teacher position), cut by the district so that we can better serve the students who have gone from a minimum of two credits in math to graduate to three.
There are no such things as budget cuts, the same work must simply be done by less people. Oh wait, the government has decreed that the teachers are at fault for students who are taking drugs, not lessons. The government has decreed that if the students who sit in class stoned don't pass the national or state exams we can get rid of the teachers and therefore the problem will go away because the government has solved it. It's beat up a teacher week in your state capital and your nation's capital so that the foolish decisions that they have made can be hidden.
In the mean time, the students still love their teachers, the actual students, that is. And they are willing to present these little gifts in appreciation.
Nope, they aren't little gifts. They're huge.

Boozers need heroes, too

 "Awesome concert" were the words used by "Alabama Beachlife" described on cmt.com's web site's report on their live broadcast of the One Love One Ocean performance on the Country Music Television channel on Sunday night. Jimmy Buffet must be this guy's hero.

 I happened to do a bit of channel surfing at about the time the concert started, found the performance and was intrigued. I remember a few Jimmy Buffet songs that hit the airwaves when I was in college and thought I might listen in. Who knows, maybe I'd find another fairly popular act that was out-of-the-mainstream to enjoy on my mp3 player which is not an iPod. (It's about 150 cheaper for the same functions.) I listened to 80 minutes of the concert before leaving for a walk in the park. Apparently, I missed hearing "Margaritaville" as the cmt.com's web site mentioned that the concert went an hour and a half without commercials.

There was an expectation to experience a show that would make me a fan or make me turn off the tube. It did neither.

After closely listening to the guitar work, the lyrics, the background vocals, the percussion the conclusion was: nothing special. The twenty- to forty-something audience, shown often, was not in love with the music they had paid to see. They were singing along at the beach, they were happy. They were not entranced.

Looking back at a few concerts while in my forties that had the power to captivate, such as The Blue Man Group and Piano Men (B Joel and E John) made the three hours feel like an out of world experience. Watching the DVD of Dire Straits at Wembley Stadium still installs goose bumps. The Jimmy Buffet concert didn't even goose the girls in the second row.

It wasn't bad. It wasn't awesome, it just was. While the the set-ups for the songs, explaining about the upcoming selections: "Son of a Son of a Sailor" and "Nobody from Nowhere" were intriguing there were no clever twists in the verse. The musical introductory measures to "Rumba Man" sung by the co-writer or writer or friend or somebody who came on stage to sing it, appealed. But then the thoughts didn't really lead towards touching or clever or sarcastic. Harry Chapin, Jim Croce, or Jim Taylor, would have spent some creative vibes on making the words just right. At the very least, Paul Simon would think up all sorts of alliteration. Time to create? Buffet MUST have had time to work on the message on all the beaches, bars, and honky-tonks that he claimed were home, mentioned often in each interlude between songs.

At least the instruments weren't off tune in the salty air. There was no special guitar work. The start of every song had the drummer hit his sticks together four times. Four four beat on your whole show? I learned all my first year piano songs in four/four time with an occasional three/four time thrown in to confuse me. These guys weren't confused. They made a big paycheck for being the same.

If you were offered to give a 1 -10 rating on this concert, you'd put down what you answered on your latest office survey. Five. This means you aren't finding anything to comment on, you don't like the topic much, but not enough to dislike it, either.

At the end of the show, one  could relate to the lyrics to the aforementioned Nobody from Nowhere. "We’re just waiting for a car to drive by, Just so we can wave..."

My mp3 player is safe from an additional artist. 

The reviewer on cmt.com's page might edit his or her comments when he sobers up.

What Is It With You?

So why did you pick me? When I walked into that pet store at the end of January where the local Rescued Pets group was showing you off to potential cat staff, why did you cuddle up to me and not let me leave without you? Why didn't you snuggle up to anyone else during that four hour stint of kitty-show-and-tell?

Why do you follow me around the house whenever I come in from someplace else? Why are you sitting on my lap right now - half on and half off, leaning against the keyboard shelf. This looks not-so-comfortable.

Did you know that you were needed? Many animals have a funny sense about these things.

Did you know that you were coming to a house that tended to spoil kitties with toys, good nourishing food (for cats) and a warm lap or two to choose from? You've come to the right place.

You must have known that you'd get the second blog, right after an ode to a family favorite. Somehow, you seem to know that we'll figure out what you mean by your squeaks, meows, and other slightly different vocalizations that you've been letting us hear. Maybe you're just playing mind games with us as you bat around krinkly sounding balls, pick them up, move them, and then drop them into your water bowl.

We know you aren't KB and aren't expecting you to take her place. We are sure you won't do many of the things that endeared us to her. Yet, you're finding new ones.

Why did you pick me? Did you see a sucker for a fuzzy face and did we need a little critter who practically melts into my arm when sitting on my lap? Or did you just know we needed your type here?