Round Robin Challenge: The Pumpkin Hunter

For the Round Robin Photo Challenge: Fun Foods, I was thinking about showing you the fun I've had recently taking my dad to restaurants that serve something a bit out of the ordinary. I may still do that - but first, I want to return to the subject of my annual obsession. For me, the months around October are all about the pumpkin. It's my absolute Achilles' heel this time of year. I'm working to lose weight, but then I see it: the sign at the register or the sign on the table:

Maybe the sign is for pumpkin cookies, pumpkin ice cream, or pumpkin smoothies. It hardly matters. It could be Pumpkin Anything, almost. I almost certainly want it. This is why it's only almost:

Fortunately for me, I hate coffee, even if it's a pumpkin-infused latte or frappuccino. (But did you know that Starbuck's will do a hot pumpkin drink without the coffee? It's called a pumpkin steamer. They'll also mix the pumpkin with hot chocolate!)

And I have no interest in ever trying beer...

 ...even if it's a seasonal Harvest Pumpkin beer.

That leaves many, many other pumpkin foods to try, if I look diligently for them Over the years I've had pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin-cranberry bread, several kinds each of pumpkin ice cream and pumpkin pie, pumpkin yogurt (Greek and regular), pumpkin or pumpkin-cranberry muffins...

pumpkin tarts, and I'm sure I'm forgetting several other delicious variations.  I go looking for the stuff, stopping in at Starbuck's, which I seldom visit otherwise, and prowling the aisles at Safeway or Alberson's or Trader Joe's. I think half the fun is in the hunt for new Pumpkin Anythings to try.

But you know, I'm trying to re-lose some weight here after being derailed by a knee injury last December. I shouldn't be having pumpkin anything. The maker of a particular brand of pie totally has my number:

It says right on the box: "We know you want this pie." Yes. Yes, I do. But last night I settled for this instead:

I want so much to like this. It should be like butternut squash or something, right? But I even added cinnamon, and I still failed to finish a small portion. And tonight I gave the tea another chance:

You know what? It just doesn't cut it. Pumpkin I don't have to feel guilty about is seldom pumpkin worth ingesting. Darn it!  I'd much rather have another taste of this:

I photographed - and ate! - that one in 2009. My pumpkin obsession - and pumpkin photography - goes back to at least 2005.

Karen

Now let's check out the other Robins' fun foods!

Linking List
as of October 5th, 2013, 12:34 AM MST

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/mavarin

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com

Freda - Posted!
Day One
http://fredamans.blogspot.ca

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

EMPS: P.S. - About Thanksgiving

Carly's Extra Credit on the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot this week was about a favorite Thanksgiving dessert. I've got enough photos in my entry as it is, so let's do a quick entry as a P.S.:

St. Michael's had its annual Thanksgiving pot luck this week, and that's where I bent my diet for a little dessert. As some of you may know, I'm wild about "Pumpkin Anything." From pumpkin pie to pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, from pumpkin soup to pumpkin tea, I'll  try almost anything pumpkin. This year, since I've been working seriously on my weight, low-carbing it, I've had to be very careful, taking my pumpkin in small, occasional doses. So for Thanksgiving, I had a thin slice of pumpkin pie, no crust or topping. As you can see, parishioners came up with apple pie, pecan pie, cream puffs and more in addition to pumpkin pie. So many people brought pumpkin that they didn't all get served on Thursday, and parishioners were urged today to have the leftovers to eat or take home. This time I had about a tablespoon of pumpkin pie filling, no crust.

At home on Thursday I made the most sensible low-carb meal I could without completely depriving us. We shared an individual side of stuffing from Boston Market to go with my mixed white and dark meat turkey roast. The only potato was a single sweet potato with nothing on it, to share between us, and the rutabagas were just a few tablespoons leftover from the pot luck. Instead we filled up on fresh steamed baby carrots with broccoli and fresh steamed green beans with almond slivers. For dessert I got John a single slice of pecan pie - his favorite. I'd already had mine.

Karen

EMPS: Pumpkins and Scarecrows

Carly wants to see autumn decorations for the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot, and also wants to know whether we think scarecrows are cute or creepy. Well, I'd say that the ones at St. Michael's are definitely on the cute side!





I also get this shot of "heirloom" pumpkins (old fashioned, non hybridized ones) at Trader Joe's. Taking photos there is not allowed, but I snuck in a shot anyway!



Karen

EMPS: Stealth Photography and Fall Fruits

It happens occasionally. I set out to take photos for some meme, such as this week's Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #62: Autumn Fruits And Vegetables, and somebody comes along and objects. Some stores and restaurants, and occasionally whole shopping malls, send someone to tell me to stop taking pictures, it's not allowed. So I say that I'm sorry, I didn't know, and put the camera away. Then I'm faced with two questions. Can I ethically use the photos anyway? And if I don't, is there someplace else I can go to find the same photographic subject and not encounter such problems?

So it was this week. With my usual autumn mania for "Pumpkin Anything," I immediately latched onto the idea of pumpkins as the quintessential fall fruit. Where does one find fresh pumpkins after Halloween? Why, at THAT well-known semi-gourmet food chain, of course!

So I went along to that store, and photographed pumpkins and a "pumpkin wreath" out front. So far, so good. Then I went inside.

I had just photographed this lovely display of fall veggies when a store employee tapped me on the shoulder, and politely told me that photography was against corporate policy. She even confessed that as someone who puts together store displays, she once sneaked a photo or two inside a different store in the same chain. I thanked her and put the camera away.

Then I bought this acorn squash. Nobody could possibly object to my photographing it at home! I don't have a working oven, but as I suspected, I can microwave the squash.

I also bought a "pumpkin anything," but let's pass over that bit of self-indulgence.

Ultimately, I went to the place where I've photographed an awful lot of fruit, vegetables, baked goods, flowers and holiday displays over the years: my local Safeway, where nobody has ever objected to my pulling out a camera. There I found more pumpkins, and apples, which as a former New York Stater I definitely associate with autumn.

Nor are all of these apples. See that bottom row? Those are pomegranates. I don't know whether they're a fall fruit, but Safeway sure had a lot of them!

Karen

EMPS: Pumpkin Anything on a Winter's Day

For Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #23: Winter Days, Carly asks to see photos of "WINTER DAYS in your neighborhood," and, for extra credit, "the current temperature where you live." For people who don't live where it is currently wintry-cold, she offers an alternative assignment: something COLD, such as ice cream, and, for extra credit, that "cold" color blue.

Very well, then, I'll do all of the above! First off, here's something cold and blue.

Blue vending machines vending "Glacier"-cold water.

And here's something else that's cold and packaged in blue: two cartons of ice cream I bought last night:

Pumpkin cheesecake ice cream adds to my Pumpkin Anything life list.

Notice that one of the cartons is Pumpkin cheesecake flavored, a limited batch and a new victory in my continuing quest to try (almost) any pumpkin-flavored foodstuff I can find. Yes, it was excellent. I also found a much more adventurous pumpkin-y food, which I had for lunch today:

Pumpkin What???!

I was almost afraid to try this, because in my experience, pumpkin doesn't really work in a food that isn't meant to be sweet, such as soup. But I bought and heated it up anyway:

It helps that there is asparagus in it. I love asparagus.

And it was really rather good - odd, but good. I may even buy it again.

But this EMPS isn't meant to be about Pumpkin Anything. What about this winter Monday in Tucson, AZ? Just over two years ago, at the end of January, we had a rare Tucson snowfall:

From my Picasa photo album Tucson Weather

But check out the temperature today, a couple minutes before sunset:

Even last night around 10:30 or 11 PM, when I bought the pumpkin stuff, the temperature in the car registered as 54 F initially, 49 F coming back. I could show you a composite of those temps, but it's not that interesting.

And here was the scene at the dog park itself, as dogs ran to take part in a momentary commotion. The weather could hardly have been nicer:

Really, though, there's a shot I took today that's more emblematic of winter in Tucson than yet another picture of the dog park, or an item of frozen pumpkinness. Here it is:

Tony's Ice Cream - one of two competing ice cream trucks that haunt Reid Park.

Even in February, late in the afternoon as the temperature begins to drop, at least two ice cream truck operators find it worth their while to tootle through the parking lots of Reid Park, offering their wares to picnickers and dog owners. Tony's is the one that leaves its music on a continuous loop of a dozen or so songs, from Happy Birthday to You to an odd version of It's a Small World (After All) with lots of extraneous notes. At the exact moment I photographed it for you, this truck was playing Jingle Bells. On Groundhog Day! Behind it, we can see that not all trees in Tucson stay completely green through the winter, but they mostly don't lose their leaves, either.

Be sure to check out Ellipsis each Monday for the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot, with links to the previous week's participants.

Karen

The First Meal of the Holiday Season

Weekend Assignment #191: When do you personally start celebrating the holiday season? Do you get into it at midnight of the Friday after Thanksgiving? Do you wait? Is Thanksgiving annoyingly in the way? Share your thoughts!

Extra Credit: Do you dream of a White Christmas (or Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa, or Winter Solstice, etc), just like the ones you used to know?


As far as I'm concerned, the holiday season begins with Thanksgiving Day, because that's one of "the holidays." (Once as a kid I explored the idea of Halloween being one of "the holidays," but I was overruled.) It's linked to Christmas by turkey and (in some households) rutabagas and Pumpkin Anything, by pre-Christmas advertising and holiday specials and Santa Claus at the end of the Macy's Parade. The Thanksgiving and New Year's Day parades are the bookends of the holiday season. Thanksgiving also kicks off the holiday overindulgence season of parties and cookies and candy and pie, necessitating all those New Year's resolutions about dieting and going back to the gym.

Of course, some of the 2007 Hallmark ornaments have been in stores for several months, and I've looked at those. I've seen Christmas decorations in Target and looked at musical Christmas trees at Loew's. My stepmother has already passed on a request for a Christmas hinting list, and I promised to take care of it over the weekend. From here on out I'll probably hear a lot of Christmas carols, and that's okay. Meanwhile, the religious side of Christmas begins a week from Sunday with the first Sunday in Advent.

But you know what? Just because the season has started, it doesn't mean I'm under any obligation to jump right in with the carols and the shopping and the parties. I basically don't do parties, and I don't think I've ever gone Christmas shopping on Black Friday. I've always worked that day, except for a couple Thanksgiving Fridays off without pay (except by taking a vacation day) at Worldwide Travel and FMFC. Even then I didn't go shopping. And I don't generally pull out my Christmas CDs until well into December. Don't rush me. I'll get there. Forcing the holiday on me before I'm ready doesn't increase the Christmas Spirit, only the stress.

So. Recap. First day of the Christmas shopping season, according to the culture, is Black Friday, but some people start on December 26th the previous year, Hallmark starts over the summer, stores start around November 1st and really get rolling tomorrow. But none of that matters to me, one way or the other. I'll shop when I'm ready. As long as everyone gets their gifts on time, I don't have to be synched up to the culture in that respect. Holiday music is tied to the shopping. Advent and the Feast of St. Nicholas are tied into the church calendar. And me, I'm mostly just tied to the emotion of it. When I feel it, I'll start celebrating. And if I don't feel it, I'll start faking it, somewhere around December 15th.


Meanwhile, here are a few pictures from this first holiday of the holiday season. The first three are from the Thanksgiving pot luck at St. Michaels. It was great! Most of my friends from church were there, and people ate about half of my rutabagas and said nice things about them. I got to try several kinds of Pumpkin Anything, including a slice of pumpkin pie that I stopped eating the moment its baker bragged about whiskey being one of the ingredients. Burned off or not, I hate food made with alcohol. It tasted like flan - the kind of flan I don't like, not the harmless kind from Safeway.

The thing is, I was right in my Monday night rant about Thanksgiving. It really isn't meant to be a celebration for two. Considering the holiday's origins, it was very appropriate that I was in church this morning with friends, singing "Now Thank We All Our God," the only one of the three hymns of the day that wasn't about three notes too high for me to sing properly. I enjoyed my friends' company and my fellow parishioners' food, in a spread every bit as good as the really expensive holiday brunches, and better than the Marie Callendar's meal we had to wait an hour for one year, even with reservations.

And here is my second helping of the meal I made afterward at home. John only had white meat and green beans, but I had the full works. I also managed to break this plate a couple hours later, setting off one of those inevitable stressful scenes that seem to ruin most holidays for me. Still, the food came out well, and John got the food he wanted, and Tuffy really does seem to be eating much more readily as of today. Yay!

Oh, and the White Christmas thing? I've gone on about that several times in this blog and its predecessor, with words and pictures about one of the very few white Christmases in Tucson since they started keeping records. It was in 1986 or 1987, I forget which. But when I was a kid, I remember more snow at Easter than at Christmas, probably because Syracuse weather is just that perverse. I remember a few 50 or 60 degree Christmas Eves, remarkable for Syracuse, thoroughly ordinary here. Actually it's usually warmer than that in December in the daytime here, averaging almost 65 degrees, according to this chart. Yes, I get all excited on the rare occasions it snows here, but I had nearly a lifetime's worth of the stuff in Dewitt, Manlius, and Syracuse NY and in Columbus OH. A snow-free Christmas in Tucson is fine with me.

One thing that does bother me, though, a little. Why is it that every song with snow in it becomes a Christmas song, whether Christmas is mentioned or not? Even in Tucson, where snow is rare, I'll soon be hearing about the bobtail nag and the weather outside that's frightful, the claim that there are "no cabs to be had out there," and the the snowman who impersonates Parson Brown. Then maybe I will miss the snow, just a little, the more so because I'm singing along and it's 75 degrees. Then on December 26th, whoops! Can't play that song; it's a Christmas song, and Christmas is over! The fact that Christmas isn't even mentioned in the lyrics makes no difference to the pigeonholing. Phooey.

Maybe I should declare that the holiday season ends when the snow...I mean, comes back if...aw, the heck with it.

Karen

Umm, well...

This is the part where I cobble together an entry because it's nearly 3 AM and inspiration hasn't hit yet. Hey, I'd like to be brilliant every night; I really would. But sometimes I have to settled for something less than that. Stick around, though, because sometimes these things get better as I go along.

I've accomplished a few things today, though:

1. I got ten hours of sleep, the benefit of which I'm losing rapidly as I styay up late tonight.

2. I replied to some comments as promised.

3. Okay, maybe it's not an accomplishment, exactly, but I finished watching the Doctor Who box set the first time through, all the episodes with the commentaries turned on and all the special features except the edited down versions of Doctor Who Confidential. I already have full length copies, thanks. Now I'm starting on the episode again, this time with the subtitles on and the commentaries off. I plan to pay particular attention to the music, the better to review the new soundtrack one of these days.

4. With a little prodding from Sara G., I worked on the Heirs opening scene tonight. I managed to cut 70 words from the first 300, rearrange the first two paragraphs, and change Bil and Jord's argument to be more dramatic - which added back about fifty words. I'm not sure it's better overall, but bits of it are. There's a lot of work to be done, and it's not easy for me to make major changes at this late date, let alone this late hour. But I'm trying!


5. I added to my "pumpkin anything" collection tonight with this purchase for tomorrow's post-Mass Coffee Hour. It's a "9 Pumpkin Cheese Pecan Streusel." I'm assuming the "9" is supposed to be the diameter in inches, not the number of pumpkins used in the recipe!

No, it really didn't get better, did it? But at least I got some fiction work in. I can feel good about that. sort of.

Karen

Am I too late?

The almost inevitable consequence of sleeping in on Saturdays is that I stay up too late on Saturday night. Tonight's case is a little extreme: I got 12 glorious hours of sleep, but now it is 3:20 AM. I've been up less than 12 hours, and here I am, rushing to pull together a rant for your reading pleasure so I can go back to bed.

I'm a bit annoyed and distracted at the moment because a rather large, fat mouse is making chewing noises a few feet from me. John puts out traps and catches them (we long since gave up on the humane traps, I'm sorry to say), but there are always more mousies to replace them.

Anyway, that's not the theme du jour. The subject I've selected to ramble on about tonight is lateness, and the related concept, procrastination. This isn't going to be a listing of incidents like that Weekend Assignment of several weeks ago. Tonight I'm asking myself two questions. One, is there a qualitative difference between my chronic procrastination back in high school and my behavior now? And two, as it says in the subject line, am I too late? Too late for what? Yes, I'll answer that as well.

I actually threw a Doctor Who book at the mousie earlier. now it's out of sight. I can still hear it, though.

Okay, on that first question, I think that I really have improved over the last three decades in my tendency to put things off. (Ha! I just saw it run off. It was interested in a box that used to have candy in it. I took away the box.) In my school days (junior high, high school and college the first time) I had a distinct tendency to put off reading assignments and writing papers. In college the second time, I kept up with it all. More germane to my life now, the stuff I put off these days is cleaning and doing dishes and fiction writing and...okay, I take it back. Maybe I haven't improved as much as I think. Still, there's lots of stuff I face right away, and it's not that hard. I can't think of any examples right now, but there are some, I'm sure.

That was a bust. Let's see if I do better with the too lateness question.

Things I haven gotten done yet:

1. Publishing the Mâvarin books. This worries me, and has done so for a long time. I expect that an agent or publisher's interest in the first book would be a huge motivator in getting the rest ready to go, but meanwhile I'm not doing everything I can, and that's wrong. Beyond that, I worry that people will think that any book that's been in the works for 33 years can't be any good, because if it were it would be in print by now. It marks me as deluded, still thinking after all these years that I can do something with that same old manuscript. Of course, it isn't really the same old manuscript, but it's still a ridiculously long time for a book to be in the works. And don't tell me to put it aside and write something else, or I shall be very angry with you. I do attempt other fiction from time to time, but somehow, none of the rest of it matters. Mâvarin matters.pu

2. Tuffy's treatment. John and I are pretty much agreed on the third surgery, as scary as it is, but we have to get over the fear and worry in order to do it. The fear and worry isn't just over the tongue and the possible feeding tube, or Tuffy suffering thereby. John is still not convinced that the appetite issue isn't an indication of other troubles. I was going to call Dr. L today, but woke up after her Saturday office hours. John doesn't think it's vital that we take her in on Monday or Tuesday this week (when the surgeon is there), but I really don't want to put this off. But is it the right thing to do?

3. Halloween preparations. Somehow I seem to always tackle Halloween preparations the Saturday before the holiday itself. Last weekend I went looking for the seasonal Halloween shop, but didn't find it until Tuesday, as I drove back from the vet on my way back to work. It's not exactly close by. So tonight I went to Spencer's and World Market, having been disappointed with the offerings at Walgreen's this year. I've been cycling through the same couple of costumes for about five years, and it's time for a change. Unfortunately, the idea I finally had isn't panning out so far. Quick! Where can I get Tiki stuff by the 31st? I'm tempted to resort to papier mâché, and John would hate that.

4. Going to bed. Well, I can always go to bed! But first I have dishes to wash, so I'd better get on with that. But first...


My 2007 survey of "pumpkin anything" products has been less satisfactory than in past years. So far I've come across three products I would never try: pumpkin ale, pumpkin coffee, and pumpkin creamer. I've tried the pumpkin soup from Safeway, and disliked it enough that I didn't finish it. Not good!



And eating even the stuff I like in quantity can easily get to be too much. I would have liked the pumpkin muffin from Sweet Tomatoes much better had I not just eaten yam soup and other good things.



Oh! One other thing I worked on tonight was my AIM page. It makes me sad, because it used to be something that Editor Joe was paid to blog about. He's gone from that project, but the AIM pages are still there. Today I found out, briefly, how to add a little "what I'm up to" update, similar to Twitter, another social networking site I mostly ignore. From my AIM page, though, I see no obvious way to add another update, nor go to my email. The whole AIM pages thing seems kind of underdeveloped and counterintuitive. But I changed the theme and added a module and uploaded a photo: the one above, left over from the Shadowland entry. And I have been thinking about Rona and her grandfather. I hope to have more of their story for you soon. But for now, good night!

Karen

Rooting for Turnips

My recent spate of entries that mention root vegetables (pumpkins, rutabagas and turnips)* isn't quite done. A British reader of this blog, Alan, writes:

Your reference to swedes and turnips reminded me of when I was young. At Halloween children would hollow out turnips, carve a face on them (or get a parent to) and carry them around with a lighted candle within. I can still smell the singed turnip tops, when I think about it. Nowadays children carry pumpkins around, and dress up in fancy dress like their American cousins. A mixture of the fact that Pumpkins are easier to get, people have more disposable money, and the commercialism of Halloween means kids wouldn‘t put up with a turnip anymore. Those were simpler times.

*I appear to be wrong about pumpkins being a root vegetable. Drat.

All this was news to me, but in a later email, Alan helpfully provided corroboration in the form of the following links:

A couple of links, first a brief and not very good introduction to it:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cumbria/features/halloween/traditions.shtml

Someone having a go at carving:
http://www.irelandlogue.com/history/turnip-carving.html

This one has some photos, the practice seems to have been common throughout Europe:
http://www.andreagrant.org/zuerich/turnip.html

Well, long story short, it's true! Not only that, but our friend the rutabaga (swede) is also considered Jack O'Lantern material.

As Alan says, however, the pumpkin is rapidly taking over from the turnip in UK Halloween celebrations. Some of this is the influence of American culture, but as several articles point out, pumpkins are also naturally hollow, a lot easier to carve, better illuminated when the candle is lit inside, and smell better than burning turnip. Also, one can bake and eat the pumpkin seeds, and even make pumpkin pie. Much as I like rutabagas, I must admit that I like the taste of "pumpkin anything" about 1000% better.

Back to Alan for the last word on this:

I was talking to my Dad about them. He is 82. He mentioned that when he was young, before the war, he was a member of a group of kids who used to pinch turnips from farmers fields to carve them.

I live in the North-East of England. We called them Narkys here.

I know Pumpkins are easier to carve and look better, but I miss the old traditions. They are dying out so quickly. Eventually the world will be one homogeneous mass. You touched on it when you mentioned Route 66 and everywhere now having a Denny’s.

You never know, I might carve a turnip this Halloween.

Alan.

This is a good reminder to me, about several things. One is that an American such as myself can watch a lot of BBC and ITV television shows, read British novels, go to England and hack around by tube and by train, and still there will always be large pockets of British culture of which the American knows nothing. And really, that's a good thing. It means that that's always more to learn, and that there is still plenty that is unique to one country or another. Two, it tells us that despite this, it is all too easy for regional differences to fade, subsumed by mass media-driven culture. And three, it suggests to me that I should revive my Holiday Trivia postings of a few years back, and do a Halloween round of questions.

So I will.

Karen

Waiting for Scalzi, or, What do You Meme?

Okay, it's late Thursday night, and I'm in withdrawal. John Scalzi hasn't posted his Weekend Assignment yet.

This is not an unprecedented circumstance, but it's very nearly so. The first time it happened, Scalzi had just won a major award, so his mind was naturally not on posting his Thursday night meme. Not having missed a single Weekend Assignment since I started doing them (with Scalzi's fourth one ever, I think), I was determined to do one anyway, so I made up my own. The second time it happened, I did an old Weekend Assignment, one of the very few I had not done already.

Tonight I'm not going to do either of those things, although I actually do have a Weekend Assignment idea waiting in the wings. But I do want to say a few things about the Weekend Assignments before moving on to the topics of Tuffy and Pumpkin Anything.

Last week's Weekend Assignment had three participants. Three. Out of the whole Internet, AOL-J, the diaspora of bloggers and journalers: three. Pathetic. The Monday Photo Shoot had four participants - better, but not by much. Why is that? And why should Scalzi stay on top of posting his memes and response links on a particular day, when we haven't bothered with our end of the deal?

I have a few theories. One can claim this is a busy time of year, or a slow time, or a hot time, or a cold time, but I don't think that's the issue. I think there are two...no, three, factors involved.

One, and I think it's the biggest reason, is that AOL doesn't promote By the Way or the Weekend Assignments any more. I've searched and searched the People Connection screen and the screens that feed off it, including the one about blogs. There is no link, no mention of our Blogfather. This seems manifestly unfair to me, and it means that nobody is going to find By the Way except through other blogs. If nobody's doing the Weekend Assignment, how is anyone going to find their way to By the Way? I don't think even Whatever promotes it any more. That's too bad, because it's still amusing and informative and occasionally even helpful.

Two, the old AOL-J Land is pretty much dead. The whole kerfluffle over the ads sent half of us out into other blogging venues, and other people just plain dropped out. I've read lots of sad little nostalgic comments lately from folks, lamenting the loss of the old days, when large groups of J-Landers read each other's blogs, and the illusion was that everyone knew everyone else. It wasn't true; there were actually a bunch of overlapping mini-communities, humor fans and mommy bloggers and people with health issues, photographers and political bloggers and so on. But close enough. By The Way was central to all that for quite a while. Everyone read Scalzi. But over the past year or two, people have drifted away. They've been absorbed into the larger blogosphere, and not necessarily forming personal connections with each other, or even maintaining them.

Three, and related to this, there was a time when the Weekend Assignment was the only game in town. We had these shiny new blogs and journals, and didn't necessarily know what to put in them. So once a week, Scalzi fed us some cool idea to play with. He still does that, but fewer people are looking for that prompt now. We've got the Round Robin Photo Challenge, Feline Friday, the Saturday Six (does Patrick still do those?), and lots and lots of other free-floating memes, full of random facts, interviews, lies, Q&As, and so on. And many people, being less obsessive than I am about such things, simply don't post unless they have something to show and tell, whether it's their own idea or some meme that turned up in another blog yesterday.

Nevertheless, I like the Weekend Assignment. Like those endlessly forwarded emails that I wish someone would stop sending me, most memes tend to make the rounds over and over. Usually there is a "rule" about tagging others to do the meme, so it doesn't take long for one's entire circle of friends to have seen and responded to it, if they're going to. Someone tags a blogger outside that immediate circle, and it spreads out from there, eventually finding its way back to the original group - who will sometimes post the same meme all over again. But the Weekend Assignment, the Monday Photo Shoot and (incidentally) the Round Robin Photo Challenges aren't like that. They are tied to a particular set of dates, and the specifics change before the next set of dates comes up. I occasionally gripe that one Weekend Assignment is reminiscent of another, but usually it's something new each time. That should be applauded, and encouraged, and responded to. Frankly, I see a "use it or lose it" scenario developing here. Myself, I don't want to lose it. How about you?

***

Tuffy is...


I don't know that I can really tell you how Tuffy is, actually. She was ravenous for a while last week, but for the past several days it's been kind of tough to get food or treats into her, particularly with pills tucked inside. She's out of the one pain pill now, and has several days' worth of the other pain pill and the antibiotic still to finish off. But if she's bored with cheese, uninterested in soft peanut butter treats and turned off by pork tenderloin dog food, it's tough to get pills inside her. I have a hamburger on the stove right now, just to wrap around a pill or two.

I haven't heard back on the pathology, and I'm trying not to worry. Please note, however, that she's not lethargic, not whimpering or anything like that, and she's always been an annoyingly fussy eater. But I'd feel better if she would regain her appetite of last week.

Update: she was happy to eat as much hamburger as I would give her (about a third of a patty). This morning John opened a different can of dog food and she ate a (small) bowl of that, too. Guess I should stop worrying. Maybe.

This Year's Pumpkin Anything

Tonight I bought pumpkin nut loaf from Trader Joe's, and pumpkin soup (at last!), pumpkin ice cream and pumpkin creamer from Safeway. The creamer is for tomorrow at work: everyone takes turns in teams bringing in Friday breakfast, and I was specifically asked to bring in flavored creamer, particularly pumpkin flavor. Not being a coffee drinker, I don't know whether I'll find a way to sample it myself. But I'm happy to discover that several people at work are like me, seasonally seeking out "pumpkin anything" to try.

Karen