I Knew Her When. . . Sort of

Meg Whitman of Ebay fame is running for governor of California. According to Tina Brown's blog, Meg is an arch conservative. Well, not my zebra, not my zoo.

I actually worked at the same company as Meg many moons ago. She was a divisional president and I was an IT dweeb, so we didn't interact. The company was forever trying to keep a human face (those days are gone forever) and one of the things it did was ask executives (maybe even the rank and file--I don't recall) to bring photos of themselves as a child. Meg's photo was her girlish self with a whopping big fish she had just landed. Cool kid. Cool photo.

One of my colleagues who did interact reported that she had a fantastic stragetic mind. Someone else reported that she was a revolving door for secretaries. Gee. Remember secretaries? How quaint. Maybe she was demanding, as one would expect.

Meg left to work for an internet florist, where she obviously learned a whole lot about net business. The next person to occupy her office had an Oriental rug and a white leather sofa which I promply put into a novel. This divisional president had a hissy fit when we cooked broccoli in the IT microwave. It did stink and we were on the same floor. I never cooked any, but some did. Actually fish in the microwave at lunch time is worse.

Speaking of food, and aren't we always, this week I made Chicken Piccata from Cook's Illustrated and it was a winner. The wonderful chocolate/mocca cookies are gone.

S.O. has a birthday and #2 son is arriving, so we're having a pork roast with creamed spinach, mashed potatoes and gravy, applesauce and for dessert- ta da! Chocolate panna cotta with portwine ice cream.

We ate tiny scoops of port wine ice cream in DC at Poste, and it was incredible. I found a recipe on the web. The ice cream tasted to divine with the dark chocolate. Haven't made panna cotta in ages. So we are in for a feast, and then the leftover pork will naturally be Roast Pork Fried Rice. We're doing all this in lieu of going out.

Have you seen the commercial that asks why spent $40 on a family dinner out when you can eat pizza on the cheap? My question is: where except a fast food establishment can you have a family dinner for $40? Certainly not with wine and tax and tip. Hell, you can barely eat lunch for that.

I submitted a memoir piece to an ezine and have one more submission to make, then everything I've written in the last five years will be out looking for a home. How cool is that?

Off to put the clothes in the dryer. The mundane always calls.

Grapeshot

The Trial

Today I take the train into town to the new Federal Courthouse to view a civil trial. Since I know or know of the plaintiffs and those being sued and have a lot of knowledge of the business and how it was run and why things happened, I have a real insider knowledge, and I am curious to know whether the trial will skew the facts as I know them. It takes all morning to select the jury, 45 people who looked as though they were collared for jury duty while mowing the lawn or washing the car. Not even a sport coat among them, hell, barely a shirt with a collar. Out of a pool of 45, they barely got 12 due to all the preemptory challanges and so forth.

Result being, I had lots of time to read, and since I had schleepped the NY Times along, I read the interview (Michael Kimmelman) with Tina Brown about her "Diana" book. Ms. Brown used a lot of cool words and phrases, some of which I wrote down, thinking a good word is (sometimes) hard to find and maybe some of these will be useful in Festival Madness, which I am on a marathon to revise.

Remember, you read it here first, the coolest new word everyone is using is "hubris." Was all over the Times today. So remember hubris and use it daily in a sentence ever so often until it is not only a part of your active vocabulary, but rolling off your lips like a scholar of ancient greek tragedies. You don't need hubris to use hubris.

Some other cool words and phrases: valedictory, revisiting, crystallized, naval-gazing, candor, notational subject, panache, gloss, marginalized, griefathon (apropos of Diana) festival of inclusion, fever of the moment, dot.com moment (whatever the hell that is) and best of all, "I drank the Kool-Aid."

More on the trial anon. Of course I don't want to name names or reveal who what or where. These people are dreadfully litiginous. Hey, that's another good word. I'll tamp down my hubris and see ya tomorrow.