"You and Fran is Good Cookers"

Last night, Fran and I went over to Ivy and Rodney's house to deliver Christmas presents and have dinner. Fran and I always love going over to their house, not only to hang out with the adults, but also to hear the antics of Olivia (6) and Landon (3).

Landon loves to play this game, where I put him on my shoulders and then pretend I can't find him anywhere. He could play for hours and hours, and thinks it's the funniest thing that I seem not to know where he has gone. So when I walked in the door this time and picked him up, he said, "You say, 'Where Landon?'"

Along with the gifts, we brought all the makings for pear and spinach salad, including some homemade candied pecans. Landon, who loves nuts, had to try some. Upon eating them, he declared, turning to Fran and me, "You and Fran is good cookers." That's probably the most ringing endorsement I've heard of my capabilities as a chef.

Landon also loves to cook and seems to have a keen sense for good food. While sitting in the living room later, Ivy started making some shrimp-cake soup. Landon declared, "Me smell something yummy," again, looking at Fran and me to see if we had caught a whiff, too.

Next, Landon and Olivia showed us the loot that was already piling up under the Holms' 20-foot-high Christmas tree. I asked Olivia what you do with all those presents, and she quickly put on a demonstration for me. "First, you lay the present on the ground," she said, "Then, you tear it open, and shout, 'Yes!'" Olivia jumped up when she declared the, "Yes!" acting as if she was surprised and delighted by the contents within the box.

Then, our attention turned to The Never Ending Story DVD we got them for Christmas, which was opened and ready to be played within about two seconds of Fran and me walking through the door. Landon said that they had the book. "That movie has scary parts?" asked Landon. "Maybe two?" he wondered, holding up his fingers to clarify.

I forget just how scary movies can be when you're younger.

Every time Landon and Olivia come over to our house, they watch The Princess Bride. But they are always terrified of the R.O.U.S.'s (Rodents Of Unusual Size). It's been such a long time since I watched The Never Ending Story, I hadn't remembered "The Nothing," and its henchman, a big, nasty-looking wolf.

As the movie began, all was going well. Olivia thought at first that Atreyu, the warrior who's supposed to save Fantasia, was a girl. When I told her it was a boy, she said, "Oh, that boy has a really pretty face. He must use lotion on it." And after he talked for the first time, said, "Yeah, his voice does sound like a boy voice. Girls have prettier and softer voices."

The first time "The Nothing's" wolf appeared, Olivia sighed, "That part was rather scary." After the wolf had come a few times, Olivia couldn't take it anymore and had to leave the room. Landon, however, quickly said, "I'm brave of the wolf," holding up his hands and shrugging, like he couldn't help not getting as scared as his older sister. This is the same guy who touches cacti in the store, and says, "Ouch!" Then, "Me want one of those."

We wrapped up the evening - after a delicious dinner of soup and shrimp gumbo and amazing banana caramel bread pudding - with a rousing rendition of "Oh, Christmas Tree." I played the piano, while Ivy and Landon sang along. But instead of singing the regular words the whole way through, Landon decided, "Oh, Christmas Pee," was a lot funnier way to go about the song.

All in all, it was a fun night with good friends. That's what Christmas is all about.

The Kooks Concert at Fox Theatre

On Friday, Ivy, Rodney, Fran, Tess, Chad, Joy, Jeb, Gretchen and I went to The Kooks Concert. It was excellent. Those boys know how to rock. My personal favorites (same as the rest of the crowd), were Ooh La (awesome video shot in the streets of France below), She Moves in Her Own Way and Naive. Only drawback to the concert? These guys are so young and new and they played every single song in their repertoire in 45 minutes. Made for a very short show.

When Good Deer Go Bad

The other day, Fran called me to let me know that as he was pulling out of our driveway, he saw a whole herd of deer.

Among the ladies, he had spotted a buck, whose face and neck were all bloody and cut up from fighting the good fight. You can see a little bit of the blood on his throat if you look closely at this picture.

Evidently, he was protecting the honor of his harem, and apparently, the ladies were impressed by what they saw, if the number of females with him was any indication of his prowess.

A few days later, though, we spotted the young buck off on his own. Probably, he had grown weary of all those babes, their endless cackling and the rut in general, and was looking for some solitude in the evening as the sun set on Evergreen.

Slender, Tender & Tall Gives Birth to Slender, Tender & Small

Angie Iverson, one of my best friends from high school, called me today to let me know that she had just had a baby girl, who she named Paige Rihanna. My dad's nickname for Angie (along with Dannette, who he also called Olive Oil) was "Slender, Tender and Tall" in high school, because - well - she was pretty much slender, tender and tall. So I think a great nickname for her daughter, who was born one month premature, but healthy, is "Slender, Tender and Small."

I hadn't talked to Angie for more than a year; both of us were just busy with our lives, I guess. Now, I can't believe Angie's a mom, since she was one of the craziest people I knew growing up.

Angie and I went cliff jumping into Lake Sakakawea one time near Riverdale. I'll never forget, the guys we were with told Angie, "Whatever you do, make sure to keep your legs closed, especially when you hit the water." Of course, Angie, being up for anything, decided to go first - and screamed and straddled her legs the entire way down. After she hit the water, she thought she had torn her butt open.

Other times, Angie and I would cruise around by the lake in my parents new Toyota with the windows down and "I'd Die Without You," by P.M. Dawn blasting. But my favorite memory of me and Angie was going sailing one time with my dad, building a campfire and going skinny-dipping, then dancing around by the light of the fire and the moon to music on a boombox we brought along.

Angie was always up for anything, which is one of the things I always loved about her. Now, she seems like she's up for motherhood; she was breastfeeding while we talked on the phone. And she also seemed very happy, which is great to hear.

We also talked about the time my parents got caught at her parents' house in Wilton in a crazy blizzard in North Dakota, back in '77, when I was just a few days old, I think, on the way back from a doctor's appointment in Bismarck, or something like that. So, we were laughing that we were destined to be friends, since we've known each other for so long. Strange that that was 30 years ago. Her birthday's Oct. 28, and mine's the 17th, and her mom was either pregnant when my parents stopped, or she had just been born. Either way, I've known Angie for a long time.

The Writing on the Wall

People always say, "Read the writing on the wall," or ponder what walls might say if they could talk. Well, Fran and I finally took this advice and read the writing on the wall at our house. We listened, too, just in case it decided to say something. Initially, the writing on the wall didn't seem too insightful about what our future might hold:

Eric. Eric. Didn't seem like much, but since the wall said it twice, it must have been serious about this Eric business.

According to Wikipedia.com, the phrase, reading the writing on the wall, originates from a Biblical reference from the book of Daniel. Apparently, the King got drunk and said some things that weren't very smart (sound familiar to anyone?), and a hand appeared out of nowhere and wrote Aramaic words on the wall that had a double meaning, portending the King of Babylon's and his empire's demise. At first, the King, like us, didn't understand what the writing on the wall meant and had to have someone - Daniel, in his case - interpret what the message conveyed.

Had we not had our own version of Daniel to decipher our message, we might never have even noticed the barely-visible letters on the wood, let alone decoded its intent.

It turns out, our Daniel - or Daniels - as the case may be, are the former owners of our house, Mark and Deanna Fell, who visited recently. They owned the house from about 1991 to 1997. Apparently, the writing on the wall mysteriously appeared after their grandson ventured out to a little ledge, outside the railing on the second floor of the loft, and was precariously perched there when they discovered him.

The couple, who now live in Arkansas, said this was their favorite home of all the houses in which they ever lived. Along with the story of the writing on the wall, they told us about all of their other memories here.

Building the waterfalls that we still hear from our bedroom in the summer...the two cougars up on the deck, getting into the grill....how their 13-year-old daughter lived in the basement, because she needed to get away from her parents...and put posters up on the stairs, because she thought her mom couldn't see her that way...but the mom could see her anyway...how they used to have a wood-burning stove, where we now have a pellet stove...that there used to be plexiglas on the windows...and carpet on the floor...but the back bedrooms were basically the same...that the French doors in the basement squeak now just like they did then.

"Do you still see elk?" the man asked. "Just look at this view," said the woman standing in loft. "Every way you look it's beautiful."

I can remember being little in Wheeling, W.Va., when my dad took me and my sister to see the house he grew up in on Poplar Lane. He just marched up to the door on the big old Victorian and said that he used to live there as a kid and could we come in. I think the people were freaked out, but we took a picture on the front porch anyway.

And my mom had a hard time going by my grandma's house after it was sold and completely remodeled, because it's changed so much from how it was when she grew up in it. It's sad to think, but the dogwoods in the front are likely gone now and who knows if the azaleas are still there. Or the screened-in porch in the back, where my grandma would sit and read The New York Times, the bird-feeder outside the window at her kitchen table, the orange-and-aqua room, where my sister and I would stay, the attic, which, no matter how many times you searched it, would always yield some treasure that you never saw there before, and the black-and-white pictures of relatives that lined the hallway.

It's interesting how much people's homes mean to them. I guess it's because they are physical reminders of so many memories. Inanimate, yet alive with the smells and laughter of the people who once lived there.

The other night, sitting at dinner, Fran and I talked about how many houses we have grown up in. Fran has lived in four houses; I've lived in two, but only one I can remember.

A lot of big events in our lives have happened in the places we have called home. I had an apartment in Elmhurst, Ill., right by the railroad tracks, where I lived during the first year of my first real job out of college. Fran and I got engaged on the front porch of our apartment in Boulder, before it was completely built. And when I'm in Chicago, I always have a strange urge to check out my old haunts in the city, despite some of the bad memories I have associated with them.

Of course place means something, but home, for some reason, means so much more.

I wonder what people are looking for when they visit the homes in which they used to live. Are they looking to recreate or relive memories, triggered by the sight of something written on the wall? Do they want to see if the house has changed as much as they have since they lived there? Or has it stayed the same, preserved like a museum, honoring the life they once lived in that place.

After thinking about all of this, I don't think Eric, the writing on our wall, is a bad omen at all, as the saying has come to mean these days. Instead, it reminds me of what Alex says at the end of "Everything is Illuminated," one of my favorite movies:

I have reflected many times upon our rigid search. It has shown me that everything is illuminated in the light of the past. It is always along the side of us, on the inside, looking out. Like you say, inside out. Jonathan, in this way, I will always be along the side of your life. And you will always be along the side of mine.

Mom vs. Del Monte

VS.

When my mom and dad where here for Thanksgiving, my mom brought some dilly beans for my sister that she had made this summer from fresh green beans in her garden. Hoooweeee, sister. Those things are tasty.

Apparently, she used to make dilly beans, along with homemade pickles, when we were little. After opening up a jar of Little Cis' Finest Dillies, I realized dilly beans were on my new top ten list for food. Megan and I each demolished about a jar a piece in no time flat. Dilly beans may just be the new superfood: hardly any calories, made of a vegetable (so they have to be good for you) and edible by the jar. Now that's my kind of food. They're this incredible cross between pickle (also on the top ten) and green bean.

Well, I decided I couldn't wait to get my hands on the next batch of homemade dilly beans, so I went to Safeway and was wandering the aisles, when lo and behold: Del Monte Dill Beans. Today, I opened these puppies up - and they were okay - but no match for Little Cis' Finest Dillies. Much to my chagrin, they were too sweet and not as sour - mom seems to have that combo down perfectly.

One other thing this blog made me realize: So far, the topics my blog covers are frightnening similary to my dad's - granny-slapping food and unusual, you-had-to-be-there-type events.

Sloth Hides Out in the Hills of Evergreen

While Megan, Ned (my sister's boyfriend), and my parents were here visiting for Thanksgiving, Megan and I went for a short walk on the roads just above my house with Mr. Toni J. Sprinkleton (my only nephew by blood, who also happens to be a chihuahua, and now also apparently goes by the name Gary Gasbutt, a new and very fitting name according to many who've seen a bad aura around the dog as he realeases his shakra).

The roads around our house wind around like corkscrews, and, in the winter, are somewhat treacherous. But most everyone here is friendly, so as each car passes, there's a customary wave, just to let you know that they see you - and you see them. Not a bad idea, when, as my dad says, people are playing "dare to be stupid."

A couple in an SUV drives toward us on the opposite side of the road; the man behind the wheel waves. A teenager in a red Audi passes; not surprisingly, no wave. Two overweight dudes in a suburban. Both wave. Old geezer in a green Subaru, gives the frantic "Hullooo, hullooo, hullooo," that my dad used to do around Hazen, which always left us asking, "Did you know that person?" (We later found out that this is a genetic trait on the male side of the Quinn clan, when, at my cousin Cindy's wedding, my uncle Tom drove around Wheeling, W.Va., waving at anything that moved.)

Just as Megan and I are getting the hang of this - smile, be friendly, wave, watch the ice below and try to get out of the way, an odd vehicle comes our way. It's a weird cross between golf cart and Hummer, and it seems to be all-terrain, because it's having no problems getting up the slick roads.

But the person in the vehicle turns out to be an even weirder hybrid than the car he's driving.

I prepare myself for the usual grin and start moving my hand in recognition that I see the person. As the vehicle approaches, I see this enormous bump protruding from what appears to be the person's face. Closer: The face has next to nothing on it, no eyes, no hair, no features. Just a round, pink orb. Closer: I think there's at least one eye, maybe two, and a mouth drawn in a small o-shape, like a fish's pucker. As for teeth, it looks as though they (probably three of them) may be made out of makeshift objects, like a cut-off piece of a woodtip cigar.

Unfortunately, by now, my face cannot hide what my brain is thinking, but I manage a forced grimace nonetheless. The man-monster waves back unassuredly, sadly seeming mystified that someone might be waving at him.

After the man has passed, I turn around to Megan, who has a similarly stunned look on her face, and ask, "Was that Sloth?" We both laugh. Anyone from our generation knows this reference.

But we also agree that we feel really sorry for the guy. Or maybe it was a woman. Pretty hard to tell. Then, we tried to guess what might have happened to him. My first thought was the Iraq War. Megan's take: He had either been horribly disfigured in an accident - or was the result of too much inbreeding.

Needless to say, I'm surprised that Sloth lives in Evergreen. And Brook Forest, no less.

Maybe it's a cruel comparison, but Sloth from the movies turned out to be very friendly, was a great help to the Goonies in finding One-eyed Willie's treasure, and all it took to keep him happy was a few Baby Ruth candy bars. And he was pals with a kid named Chunk, who did the "Truffle Shuffle." What's not to love?

We think Evergreen's Sloth may work for Sanford and Sons, an interesting operation that we discovered this weekend operates in an area with myriad "Keep Out" and "No Trespassing" signs a few miles above our house. From the road below, you can see where the whole hillside has been clearcut for their junk. Let's just hope that the Sanfords are nicer to Sloth than the Fratelli's were.