FeeFiFoto Blog

The Main Reason We Don't Use A Lot Of Ice In Our House

I'm always cold.  Always, ALWAYS A L W A Y S cold. Except in July, when I droop from the heat and humidity unless I'm at a movie or a grocery store or a mall in which case I'm shlepping a jacket and I look stupid because I'm carrying a farkatke jacket in brain damage weather because it's probably going to be freezing inside. I'm one of those people who begs restaurants to turn down (up?) the air conditioning because it's blowing right on me and I'm freezing and then I make them move my table at least three times, not because I'm finally comfortable but because I'm embarrassed at being such a complainer but I'm still cold so I'm swiping napkins from neighboring tables to cover my lap and the waiters are wondering where the napkins keep disappearing to and at the same time, since I'm a gifted multitasker, I'm complaining that the music is too loud but that's another post for another time. So.  I'm almost always cold and always complaining about it. And then.  I got myself a couple of these: It's called a Kandle Heeter.  I have two of them, one for the left hand and one for the right. Here's some information:

              1) Heat rising from a burning candle (or electric lamp) is first trapped in the steel inner core and surrounding ceramic inner module. 2) The inner cores get very hot and radiate heat to the ceramic middle core. 3) This entire inner region gets VERY VERY HOT!! Heat synergistically builds up and “boils out” of the ceramic inner core into the ceramic middle core. The middle core heats up and begins to radiate heat. Heated air “boils out” into the ceramic outer core. 4) The large surface area of the outer core begins receiving heat. The inner wall surfaces become very HOT! Heat travels through the wall to the outer surface. 5) The outer surface gets VERY WARM to HOT and gently begins to radiate heat into your home or office.

I light a candle and within half an hour the little darlings are radiating heat all over the place. You know how forced air heating blows for a while and then doesn't blow for a while and then blows again for a while, and your eyes get dry and your mouth gets dry and your nose gets dry and your head gets hot while your feet are cold and you're warm while it's blowing and then cold when it stops and your hair stands on end and you get shocked when you reach for the lightswitch or the dog? Radiator heat isn't like that.  It radiates.  It glows.  It fills the room with warmth from your head to your feet. It's remarkable.  It's also very expensive, which is why they don't build homes with radiators any more and the homes that have radiators switch to forced air and see above: dry dry dry. These little radiators don't heat my home.  We have vaulted ceilings so it would take an awful lot of radiating to heat our home.  But they do radiate sufficient warmth to heat my general vicinity and keep my hands warm, which, in combination with a pair of Uggs (don't judge me) on my feet (not on my hands since that would make typing difficult) keeps me warmish and not complainingish. We use soy candles since they're not petroleum-based and we're all about the environment here, even though I have to drive all over creation to find the darn things. I suspect these little babies could warm a dorm room, so long as the occupants kept track of the candles and didn't allow the building to catch fire, which incidentally would make the room quite warm but not exactly in the way you might hope.  For that matter, the manufacturer offers the option of an infrared lamp to use instead of a candle for those of us who tend to fall asleep or leave the room or wave scarves around. I love these little critters.  In fact, if the house caught fire they'd be near the top of my list of things to save. Wait a minute...

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Call This A Birthday Party?

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We had a wine tasting party last week in honor of Cupcake's 12th birthday.  The guests were some of Cupcake's 12-year-old friends. Stop screaming.  Step awaaay from the phone.  Put down the rolling pin.  It wasn't a real wine tasting party, but it was almost exactly identical to a wine tasting, except that we didn't swirl stuff around in our mouths and spit it out. Wanna know why? Because it was a chocolate tasting party. CHOCOLATE. TASTING. PARTY. Photo courtesy of KakaoChocolate.com, home of You Simply Would Not Believe How Yummy They Are sweets. Cupcake and six of her friends gathered at a one-of-a-kind, locally owned and operated, not-a-chain-store confectionery to explore the history of cacao and chocolate from its origins in Central and South America to its importation and introduction to the royal families of Europe and -- oh, who am I kidding?  We spent 90 minutes tasting truffles. There is nothing -- NOTHING, I tell you -- to compare with handmade chocolates made from REAL butter, REAL cocoa, REAL vanilla, REAL cream.  I think I might be off M&Ms forever. We had chile truffles (I think it should be chili but who am I to argue with someone plying me with chocolate?), lavender truffles, vanilla marshmallow truffles, chai truffles (my favorite), and caramel with sea salt not-truffles.  In between courses the girls cleared their palates with sips of water and  waved wildly to people walking by in the rain until the owner finally had to ask them to stop; I think he was afraid they'd scare away customers. At the end we gave everyone a chocolate mustache-on-a-stick and brought them home for a sleepover. Kidding. I'm not dumb enough to try to accommodate 7 abundantly sugared and caffeinated girls for the night. We sent them home. Chocolate.  The best antidepressant EVER.  

Ah New Orleans: If I Didn't Love You So Much I'd Swear You Were Taunting Me, But I Know You're Just Urging Me Not To Stay Away So Long

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Drive carefully.

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Cupcake and I spent five days in New Orleans last week.  It's been a very long time since I graduated from Tulane Law School and I haven't been back since. My heart shattered along with so many others' after Hurricane Katrina and I've been pining to return so Cupcake and I went down the day after Christmas while her brother was visiting friends elsewhere.  Some observations: Drew ("Feel the" or "Cool" or "It's a") Brees is adorable and has The. Best. Name. for stadium signs and advertising.  You can buy a temporary tattoo that looks creepily like the quasi-football-shaped birthmark on Drew's right cheek, should you desire to wear one to the next Saints game.  Alternatively, you can attend a game wearing a black and gold tutu, or this: There is no better dining experience anywhere in the world than what you'll find in New Orleans, whether it involves a chili omelet, pecan waffle and mocha freeze at the Camellia Grill; shrimp remoulade and Bananas Foster at Brennan's; turtle soup at Galatoire's (wish the service had been a bit more attentive); or Mile High Pie ("Mahl Ha Pah") at the Ponchartrain Hotel, may it rest in peace.  Even for someone who hates eggs, spice and seafood ::coughCupcakecough:: there was plenty of delicious food to choose from, and nobody went hungry.  I was fortunate to snag one tiny taste of Bananas Foster before receiving distinct fork marks in my wrist as a warning to stop reaching for another bite. Don't anybody panic but I think New Orleans is suffering from an epidemic of falling streetlights.  The night we arrived we were standing on a street corner, minding our own business, reveling in a Saints' win along with 70,000 of our nearest and dearest new friends, when suddenly, out of nowhere, with no warning and to our surprise, the traffic signal not more than ten feet from where we stood keeled over into the street, where it courageously persisted in alternating green, yellow and red as a couple of blithely unconcerned policemen dragged it to the sidewalk.  Cupcake swore it was not her fault: but for the next three days it seemed that everywhere we looked traffic lights were keeling over: The above photo was taken the night before we came home in an entirely different part of the city, where the light valiantly kept beaming signals to any birds or bats flying overhead that might have needed to know which way the traffic was supposed to be flowing at street level. New Orleans is recovering admirably from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, with the help of the residents' joyful spirit and many generous hands, notably Brad Pitt's phenomenal Make It Right Foundation, which so far has built 73 homes in the devastated Lower Ninth Ward, all of which are energy efficient and storm resistant and dazzlingly modern.  We took a taxi tour through the neighborhood and saw many exciting homes like these: All of these homes have solar panels and roof access, tall pilings to raise them high off the ground, and air conditioners mounted on the roof.  Twenty-one architectural firms contributed an impressive array of designs so that homeowners can choose layouts and features that suit their tastes. We also saw many vacant lots and homes that looked like this: See the holes in the roof?  That's where rescue workers had to use axes to extricate people trapped in the attic.  See all the vacant space?  That's where homes still need to be replaced.  And please, would somebody finally open a grocery store or drugstore or school or restaurant in the Lower Ninth Ward so the residents that are slowly and doggedly trickling back into the community don't have to leave the neighborhood in order to live their lives? The people of New Orleans are relentlessly friendly.  It's shocking to be greeted everywhere you go by a nod and "How y'all doin'?" and it's challenging to respond appropriately when you spend all day looking down because a) you're too shy to look people in the eye and b) you're monitoring where you're walking to ensure that you don't trip over a sidewalk that bubbles up nearly three feet due to the live oak roots beneath its surface: We tried to concentrate on returning all friendly greetings from streetcar drivers, streetcar passengers, waiters, homeless people, Saints fans, and homeless Saints fans riding streetcars. In conclusion... Okay N.O., you win.  I won't stay away so long next time.  Cupcake and I hope to see you soon.  

Looking For Me?

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Moving Day

I mentioned I was moving.  I've been considering this for a long time. One small reason is that WordPress offers more bells and whistles and I like that.  But there's a much more important reason.

When I began blogging it was at the suggestion of my marketing coaches, who pointed out to me that blogging would be a good way to get my web site's name noticed without having to spend so much money wrestling with Google Adwords.  They designed this lovely blog for me to match the theme of my web site, FeeFiFoto, named the blog, and had everything up and running for me to play with.  And play I did.

I blogged like crazy for months, promoting the site, trying to work a mention of FeeFiFoto into every post.  Much of my writing pertained to gift giving for Christmas, Valentine's Day, Mother's and Father's Day, birthdays and anniversaries.  I flogged the site, promoted the site, held giveaways from the site, wrote endlessly about calendars, Christmas ornaments, mugs and handbags decorated with your favorite photos.

I also wrote about other things, about my kids and my parents, our travels, our home, our varmints, our environmental issues, and our frequently self-inflicted personal injuries resulting from (usually) my carelessness, inattention, or, to put it nicely, lack of nimbleness.

In other words -- I'm no ballerina, nor do I pretend to be one.  Nor a gymnast.  Nor a tightrope walker.  Nor a brain surgeon.  Nor a savant who can carve a grain of rice into an exact replica of the Cathedral of Notre Dame.

To be brief -- I suffer from a deficit of dexterity.

And I wrote about it.  I wrote about forgetting to renew my passport, getting stuck in the mud, spending a night in a foreign emergency room, being sent flying by gamboling dogs, spacing out for an entire semester thanks to another student's lack of sartorial imagination, and falling in a muddy hole in the yard in the middle of the night.

I made up my own words, like existentiallier, awesomest, decibility, snackage, overwhelmedness, bragworthy, lawyerliness, slapstically, escapage, and last but not least, klutzing.

KLUTZING.  It was a go-to theme in my writing and I discovered that writing about klutzing (especially my own) was much more fun and interesting, and had a lot more potential, than writing about personalized photo gifts.  So I wrote about klutzing, and the environment, and food, and school, and planning a Bar Mitzvah, and books, and whatever happened to be at the ends of my fingertips.

But the original name and purpose of the FeeFiFoto Blog taunted me.  I much preferred writing about my daily stuff and felt less inspired writing about the gift site.  As I wrote more personal stories and less about FeeFiFoto, I wanted the name, design and theme of my blog to reflect what the blog was really about.  A re-urling didn't make sense, so I created a new blog.  Actually, I created a number of new blogs, reserving name after name until I could decide what was just right, what would roll off the tongue as glibly as The Bloggess or Do0ce or I am Bossy.  Here were some of my options:

1. Klutzingfordummies (clever but trite)
2. Klutzabelle (would have to be spelled regularly)
3. Klutzable (meh)
4. Klutzcess (obscure)
5. Klutzography (sounds like a high school class)
6. Klutzographer (see above)
7. Klutzophilia (negative)
8. Klutzophiliac (ditto)
9. Klutzing (not bad)
10. Klutzingattiffanys (clever but esoteric, and who knew if Tiffany might sue me)
11. Klutzipedia (derivative)
12. Klutzology (see number 5)

And the winner is...

Number 13 -- Klutz Capacitor!!!

I bought the address, transferred some of my favorite posts from here (but not all -- I'm still working on that), gave myself a crash course in WordPressing, acquired a new banner (with four choices of background color!  Wow!), and for a while posted on both blogs.  And for a while after that I posted on neither blog, because I felt caught in between the old and the new.

So, it's time to commit.  Klutz Capacitor is still in progress, but there's a roof, four walls and working bathrooms.  Paint and carpet can come later, but for now the site is livable.

So let's move in.  Here's the address: http://klutzcapacitor.com/.

Drop in any time.

Remembering 9/11

This morning my daughter, Cupcake, and I caught some coverage of the commemoration of September 11, 2001. We saw flags being raised, names being read, bagpipes being blown, hymns being played, and many tears being shed. She asked lots of questions and I explained how so many people were killed, why so few were rescued from the collapsed buildings, how hijackers took over four planes, how some passengers managed to resist their captors, and how painstakingly the survivors attempted to recover and honor the remains of so many murder victims.

I was unable to describe sufficiently the intensity of grief and despair experienced by those who lost loved ones in September 2001 (my family lost no one), as well as those who saw the nation we loved under brutal attack. Ten years later I still sense it, I still feel it, I carry it with me every day.

I cannot convey to my kids the depth of sadness I feel for the friends and families of those who were lost, as well as our entire country. They have to take me at my word, that September 11, 2001 was one of the worst days of my life and in the history of the United States.

I pray they'll never have any reason to understand it for themselves.

My Dad Is The Awesomest Dad Ever In The History Of Dads

You may dispute me.  You might maintain that the greatest dad is Warren Buffett, for teaching his kids to live on their own without inheriting his gazillions.

Or maybe it's Barack Obama or George Bush, for enabling their daughters to grow up surrounded by rose gardens and the ghost of Abraham Lincoln.

Perhaps you might argue for Will Smith, who finagles recording and movie deals for his kids despite their apparent lack of talent.

Or possibly you think the best dad is Prince Charles because... oh, forget it.  He collects toilet seats.

You'd be wrong on all of the above and anyone else you might suggest.  Want to know why my dad is the awesomest?

He just bought an iPhone.

Originally he resisted buying a cell phone, worried that he'd spend all of his driving time on it instead of enjoying classical music in the car on the way to and from his office. 

He was right about that part, but the part he hadn't anticipated was that he could get in all his daily checking-in calls to the family while driving, so that he could enjoy music at home without interruption from the phone.

Before retiring, my father was reluctant to use a computer, out of fear that he might become hooked on it and never get off. 

He was right about that part.  His office gave him a computer and he learned to use it.  Then he learned to fix software problems.  Then he taught himself to conquer hardware issues.  Then he stepped up as tech support for every member of our family, including his older brother.  He taught himself all the mysteries of Excel, and now he excels at Excel, managing family finances for those of us who were English majors.  He pays bills online.  He plays chess online.  He researches online for the literature and music courses he teaches.  Last week he joined Skype to communicate with four out of six grandchildren who are not in town this semester.

Yesterday, my father bought an iPhone.  Today he bought his first app, Viber, which allows him to chat with all the dispersed grandchildren.  Before the end of the month he'll be as knowledgeable on iPhone as his grandchildren.

Everybody's picking up iPhones lately.  If my kids don't stop nagging for them I'm moving to Sweden in the middle of the night, where they'll never find me.  Although iPhones are certainly cool and exciting, there's nothing too remarkable about having one any more.

So why is my dad so special just because he bought one?  What makes him extra cool?

He's 79.

What makes you cool?

You Won't Believe This: Last Week We Met A Whole Bunch Of Rock Stars!

I considered filling the spaces between the photos with a bunch of rock-related puns, but even I cringed at the possibility.

So instead I'm just posting photos of some really extraordinary rocks we saw at the Smithsonian last week.

Isn't that gneiss?

Sorry.  That one just slipped through.

What Do You Think Is The Meaning Of This?

Does it make any more sense this way?

I Had Him CORNERED And Then SHE Had To Interfere And Wreck My Big Game Hunt

A chipmunk got into the downspout next to the house! I could hear it squeaking and scrabbling around.

Come here, you chipmunk!

Brazen thing!  It just dared me to find it.

You ebil, ebil thing, you!

I was prepared to take down all the siding and trim to get at it.

I know you're in there.

I did my best, but then...

I don't care if I have to dismantle the entire house to get you.

Caught in the act!

Rats! Stupid rodent.