Book 9 DONE

As of now, my first draft of Book Nine, Shadowstrider: Reiekooadu (yes, such a weird name is explained and highly significant) is FINISHED!!!!

Party time, Party time!!!

If it weren't 2-in-the-frickin-morning I would bring out the whiskey and celebrate. As it is, I'm celebrating by getting some well-deserved rest.

Now... on to Book Ten.... eventually... blah!

If you actually read this blog, you'll ask "Book 9? What happened to Book 7?" Yeah, that was the plan. I finished Book 6 Homefront back in August, sent it to my husband to do a quick grammar check, and he got to my lovely ending, the one I thought was so great, and went "That's it?!?!" He then proceeded to spend a dinner at Sheri's convincing me I needed to expand on two somewhat major characters who just don't get much conclusive development by the end of Book 6. So he convinced me to write a Book 7 and 8, yet to be titled. I didn't want to fuss with that while I'm in the middle of Reiekooadu, so they got skipped. I'll be writing Book 10, tentatively called Final Destinies, finish that, then go back to those two.

A little personal record, I started work on this novel in mid August (I had an outline of it since 2003, but had to finish the previous books first). That means I've been writing this for just slightly under 6 months.

The first draft clocks in at 718 pages!

718 pages in 6 months. That's a new record for me. I have NEVER written ANYTHING so furiously in my life. And I totally followed nothing of my original outline. In fact, I went so far off course, I have to scrap Book 10's outline altogether. That's normal. I hate outlines; I never follow them. They're good to get a general idea out, but I never keep to anything.

Anyway, this means I averaged 4 pages each day. Of course, I don't work on typing this every day. I spend weeks sometimes researching stupid stuff (like last week was spent researching how to tan badger pelts totally natural, without chemicals or anything, and I got into the whole lore of tanning techniques, including a concept called "braining" which, obviously, uses the brains of the animal to soften the pelt and make it shiny. Let's just say, it's a chapter you do not want to read while eating.)

I don't know when was the last time you tried writing a 4-page essay in 1 day (or if you ever tried such a thing), but that's tough work. Record speed for me. Most of my books take a few years to finish. Book 1 took me seven years (I was in school, I had no time to write). Book 3 took me two years (college, same excuse). A few years for a novel is normal. Not bloody 6 months.

If I can keep this pace, I'll have this series finished and ready to resubmit to publishers in two years. YAY!

Wait... 2 years... writing 4 pages a day... every bloody day...

GAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Storm Front '07

Doesn't the title of this entry reflect the grotesque sensationalism of TV news? Back in California, it sprinkles a little, and they flash "Flood Watch 2007!!!" Gimme a break! Part of the reason why I don't watch the news anymore.

Anyway, we've had our first real winter storm a few days ago. At first, it was just bloody cold. There's a creek just outside our apartment, and we've been watching it for a while, wondering when it would freeze. Monday I think, Matt left for work, then came running back in shouting "It finally froze!" We got pictures, but the night pix Matt took of the fountain turned out the best. It looks surreal!




Finally, the clouds came back, and with them came the snow. I was up extra early that morning, and I like to look out my window (sort of like math class, you know), when I noticed in the pre-morning dark that there was a lightness not usual to the ivy planter outside my window. Snow! I took some pix, just in case it melted, just to prove it did snow. I didn't have to worry. By that afternoon, there was a good 4 inches, and it's still snowing off and on.



For Matt, it was only the second time he's ever seen it snowing (the first time was last month), and it surprised me when he confessed it was also his first time actually walking in snow (the flurries last month totally don't count) and he was worried about driving in it. But he did good, no accidents, only a little slippery in the parking lot.

His work closed early, so he came home eager to play in the snow. He was like a kid!



We got into a snowball fight.



Then we managed to scrap enough snow together in our little planter to make a miniature snowman we named Doc Brown, because the pine needles I stuck as hair look like Doc of Back to the Future.



It's warming up now, a whoping 38 degrees, just enough to make everything slushy. Well, it was fun while it lasted.

Doc Brown says: "Stay warm and well wishes to all my friends!"

Why the French Hate the English

I was born in North America, raised speaking solely English, but with knowledge of eight other languages: Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Yiddish, and just starting on Gaelic. I majored in English in college with a focus on creative writing. I have studied Middle and Old English and ventured into the extremely difficult realm of inventing my own fully-functional language. I have read novels in English (Old, Middle, and Modern), Spanish, and German; and I've written some of my own.

Therefore, it is without arrogance that I claim I have more authority to hate this perplexing language than your average yo-dawg-whassup English speaker!

English is an evolving language, living and growing. It is made up from numerous languages, a melting pot of global glottals. However, after centuries of formation and evolution, it has found itself trapped in a printed-press world of Oxford absolutes and English professors with too much training in Latin.

Latin is a dead language, yet grammarians attempt to stuff our lovely, living language into the rotting corpse of Latin's rules. I would like to hastily identify split infinitives as one of these rules which simply does not make sense in our language. One of the joys of English is we CAN split our infinitives; therefore, let us revel in our uniqueness!

English is not just Latin! English is Germanic; English is Asian; English is Arabic, English is African! Therefore, our rules should not come solely from Latin.

Ebonics is simply an ethnolect, useful in the advancement of all languages (many Yiddish terms are in our language today thanks to such ethnolects) but still not a language in of itself as some claimed.

1337 is a cipher, useful in new spellings, thinking outside the dictionary-box, but it went chaotically awry and tumbled into anarchy at the fingertips of twelve-year-old haX0rz.

The Internet itself is a medium of free thinking that has been abused. Now, it is a juggernaut of horrendous spelling errors and punctuation anomalies (I am anal about punctuation after a professor humiliated me for it, and people who write "hi". with that damn period after the quotes annoy me to death). At times, it can be so bad as to cause pretentious lip-curling even from those who haven't read a book since Huck Finn was crammed down their throats only to be regurgitated.

My favorite Internet spelling error: "Earn Continuing Education Units Thourgh the AER Web Site!" What irony! Now, the word we know as "through" honestly is a metathetic of the Middle English "thourgh," but no one has used that spelling in over a thousand years! Certainly, it is not acceptable today, not in school exams, not in novels, not in esteemed websites, and not if you're going for CEUs! Unless AER is trying to start a ME trend or something.

Ye olde revolucion!

Umm... okay, enough English geek History of Languages crap. My point is this: the Internet is a cesspool of errors, but it is also helping people to realize that language does not have to be languid.

I feel there will be a time when English will adjust, cast off old rules, have a spelling-bee-revolution, accept "drive-thru" and "donut" as proper spellings, and stop harassing Trekkies for saying "to boldly go!"

Until that vernacular revolution, we are stuck with a great language with rules that make no sense whatsoever. Grammar is stodgily touted; changes in spelling to adapt our language into the 21st Century have been stubbornly denied. I give as example the same juxtaposition all 2nd Grade teachers give: "do" and "go."


Which brings me to the reason for this posting (all that above is just me ranting):


I found this poem in a joke site years back and have loved it since. Recently (as in this morning), out of sheer curiosity about who wrote this poem, I looked up about its history. It was written by a teacher of the English language in Haarlem, Holland, a man by the name of G. Nolst Trenité. Trenité wrote under the pen name "Charivarious," including a booklet entitled Drop Your English Accent from which this poem was taken.

Oh, and it's entitled The Chaos. Love it!

Another website also says this about the poem: "Multinational personnel at North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters near Paris found English to be an easy language ... until they tried to pronounce it. To help them discard an array of accents, the verses below were devised. After trying them, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months at hard labor to reading six lines aloud."

Anyway... Chaos indeed! Halfway through, even my brain starts to melt. An enduring example of why the English language needs to be updated!

We shall call it English 4.0!

See if you can read all the way through... properly!


The Chaos
- by G. Nolst Trenité

Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.

I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear;
Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.

Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!
Just compare heart, hear and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word.

Sword and sward, retain and Britain
(Mind the latter how it's written).
Made has not the sound of bade,
Say-said, pay-paid, laid but plaid.

Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as vague and ague,
But be careful how you speak,
Say: gush, bush, steak, streak, break, bleak ,

Previous, precious, fuchsia, via
Recipe, pipe, studding-sail, choir;
Woven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, shoe, poem, toe.

Say, expecting fraud and trickery:
Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore,
Branch, ranch, measles, topsails, aisles,
Missiles, similes, reviles.

Wholly, holly, signal, signing,
Same, examining, but mining,
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far.

From "desire": desirable-admirable from "admire",
Lumber, plumber, bier, but brier,
Topsham, brougham, renown, but known,
Knowledge, done, lone, gone, none, tone,

One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel.
Gertrude, German, wind and wind,
Beau, kind, kindred, queue, mankind,

Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather,
Reading, Reading, heathen, heather.
This phonetic labyrinth
Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth, plinth.

Have you ever yet endeavoured
To pronounce revered and severed,
Demon, lemon, ghoul, foul, soul,
Peter, petrol and patrol?

Billet does not end like ballet;
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.

Banquet is not nearly parquet,
Which exactly rhymes with khaki.
Discount, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward,

Ricocheted and crocheting, croquet?
Right! Your pronunciation's OK.
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Is your r correct in higher?
Keats asserts it rhymes Thalia.
Hugh, but hug, and hood, but hoot,
Buoyant, minute, but minute.

Say abscission with precision,
Now: position and transition;
Would it tally with my rhyme
If I mentioned paradigm?

Twopence, threepence, tease are easy,
But cease, crease, grease and greasy?
Cornice, nice, valise, revise,
Rabies, but lullabies.

Of such puzzling words as nauseous,
Rhyming well with cautious, tortious,
You'll envelop lists, I hope,
In a linen envelope.

Would you like some more? You'll have it!
Affidavit, David, davit.
To abjure, to perjure. Sheik
Does not sound like Czech but ache.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, loch, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed but vowed.

Mark the difference, moreover,
Between mover, plover, Dover.
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice,

Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, penal, and canal,
Wait, surmise, plait, promise, pal,

Suit, suite, ruin. Circuit, conduit
Rhyme with "shirk it" and "beyond it",
But it is not hard to tell
Why it's pall, mall, but Pall Mall.

Muscle, muscular, gaol, iron,
Timber, climber, bullion, lion,
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor,

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
Has the a of drachm and hammer.
Pussy, hussy and possess,
Desert, but desert, address.

Golf, wolf, countenance, lieutenants
Hoist in lieu of flags left pennants.
Courier, courtier, tomb, bomb, comb,
Cow, but Cowper, some and home.

"Solder, soldier! Blood is thicker",
Quoth he, "than liqueur or liquor",
Making, it is sad but true,
In bravado, much ado.

Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Pilot, pivot, gaunt, but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand and grant.

Arsenic, specific, scenic,
Relic, rhetoric, hygienic.
Gooseberry, goose, and close, but close,
Paradise, rise, rose, and dose.

Say inveigh, neigh, but inveigle,
Make the latter rhyme with eagle.
Mind! Meandering but mean,
Valentine and magazine.

And I bet you, dear, a penny,
You say mani-(fold) like many,
Which is wrong. Say rapier, pier,
Tier (one who ties), but tier.

Arch, archangel; pray, does erring
Rhyme with herring or with stirring?
Prison, bison, treasure trove,
Treason, hover, cover, cove,

Perseverance, severance. Ribald
Rhymes (but piebald doesn't) with nibbled.
Phaeton, paean, gnat, ghat, gnaw,
Lien, psychic, shone, bone, pshaw.

Don't be down, my own, but rough it,
And distinguish buffet, buffet;
Brood, stood, roof, rook, school, wool, boon,
Worcester, Boleyn, to impugn.

Say in sounds correct and sterling
Hearse, hear, hearken, year and yearling.
Evil, devil, mezzotint,
Mind the z! (A gentle hint.)

Now you need not pay attention
To such sounds as I don't mention,
Sounds like pores, pause, pours and paws,
Rhyming with the pronoun yours;

Nor are proper names included,
Though I often heard, as you did,
Funny rhymes to unicorn,
Yes, you know them, Vaughan and Strachan.

No, my maiden, coy and comely,
I don't want to speak of Cholmondeley.
No. Yet Froude compared with proud
Is no better than McLeod.

But mind trivial and vial,
Tripod, menial, denial,
Troll and trolley, realm and ream,
Schedule, mischief, schism, and scheme.

Argil, gill, Argyll, gill. Surely
May be made to rhyme with Raleigh,
But you're not supposed to say
Piquet rhymes with sobriquet.

Had this invalid invalid
Worthless documents? How pallid,
How uncouth he, couchant, looked,
When for Portsmouth I had booked!

Zeus, Thebes, Thales, Aphrodite,
Paramour, enamoured, flighty,
Episodes, antipodes,
Acquiesce, and obsequies.

Please don't monkey with the geyser,
Don't peel 'taters with my razor,
Rather say in accents pure:
Nature, stature and mature.

Pious, impious, limb, climb, glumly,
Worsted, worsted, crumbly, dumbly,
Conquer, conquest, vase, phase, fan,
Wan, sedan and artisan.

The th will surely trouble you
More than r, ch or w.
Say then these phonetic gems:
Thomas, thyme, Theresa, Thames.

Thompson, Chatham, Waltham, Streatham,
There are more but I forget 'em-
Wait! I've got it: Anthony,
Lighten your anxiety.

The archaic word albeit
Does not rhyme with eight-you see it;
With and forthwith, one has voice,
One has not, you make your choice.

Shoes, goes, does *. Now first say: finger;
Then say: singer, ginger, linger.
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, age,

Hero, heron, query, very,
Parry, tarry fury, bury,
Dost, lost, post, and doth, cloth, loth,
Job, Job, blossom, bosom, oath.

Faugh, oppugnant, keen oppugners,
Bowing, bowing, banjo-tuners
Holm you know, but noes, canoes,
Puisne, truism, use, to use?

Though the difference seems little,
We say actual, but victual,
Seat, sweat, chaste, caste, Leigh, eight, height,
Put, nut, granite, and unite.

Reefer does not rhyme with deafer,
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Dull, bull, Geoffrey, George, ate, late,
Hint, pint, senate, but sedate.

Gaelic, Arabic, pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific;
Tour, but our, dour, succour, four,
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.

Say manoeuvre, yacht and vomit,
Next omit, which differs from it
Bona fide, alibi
Gyrate, dowry and awry.

Sea, idea, guinea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean,
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion with battalion,
Rally with ally; yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, key, quay!

Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, receiver.
Never guess-it is not safe,
We say calves, valves, half, but Ralf.

Starry, granary, canary,
Crevice, but device, and eyrie,
Face, but preface, then grimace,
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.

Bass, large, target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, oust, joust, and scour, but scourging;
Ear, but earn; and ere and tear
Do not rhyme with here but heir.

Mind the o of off and often
Which may be pronounced as orphan,
With the sound of saw and sauce;
Also soft, lost, cloth and cross.

Pudding, puddle, putting. Putting?
Yes: at golf it rhymes with shutting.
Respite, spite, consent, resent.
Liable, but Parliament.

Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew, Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, clerk and jerk,
Asp, grasp, wasp, demesne, cork, work.

A of valour, vapid vapour,
S of news (compare newspaper),
G of gibbet, gibbon, gist,
I of antichrist and grist,

Differ like diverse and divers,
Rivers, strivers, shivers, fivers.
Once, but nonce, toll, doll, but roll,
Polish, Polish, poll and poll.

Pronunciation-think of Psyche!-
Is a paling, stout and spiky.
Won't it make you lose your wits
Writing groats and saying "grits"?

It's a dark abyss or tunnel
Strewn with stones like rowlock, gunwale,
Islington, and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Don't you think so, reader, rather,
Saying lather, bather, father?
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, bough, cough, hough, sough, tough??

Hiccough has the sound of sup...
My advice is: GIVE IT UP!

First Year

I'm a little late at posting about our 1-year anniversary, but technically I'm still on vacation until Thursday.

Rather typical, plans did not turn out as expected. We had this great plan to spend the week at the beach followed by a trip to the Columbia Gorge and see Multnomah Falls.

Well, we slept in (no snickering laughs, you!) and I decided, why not see the Gorge that day since it's only half an hour away. So we left behind the suitcase and drove beyond Portland into the beautiful Columbia Gorge. If you ever come up here, you must experience this drive.

We got to Multnomah Falls, which Matt had never seen but I've been to once. It's the second tallest perennial fall in the US, and you can see it from I-84, really amazing! It's romantic, watching the waterfall and standing on Benson footbridge that crosses the pool which separates the first fall from the second. Lots of people get married on this footbridge. It's very romantic if you can ignore all the tourists.

Well, then we decide, let's take the one-mile hike to the top of the falls. We're young, we've marched Hollywood Christmas Parade for crying out loud, we can do a one-mile hike.

(Can you hear the ominous thunderclap yet?)

Well, this trail is not at all difficult. It's made for tourists, paved good, well kept, has benches at the halfway point, offers some great views, but it is quite steep. If you're in fair shape, it's doable. Tourists travel it all the time, even little kids. However, Matt is a self-proclaimed "mouse potato" and I badly injured my knee two years ago. I didn't think anything of it. I mean, that was years ago, right?

(Surely you hear the ominous thunderclap now!)

So, we made it to the top. You really can't see over the edge, but you can see where the water dumps over, and "Little Mulnomah" Falls just before the big drop. Being the adventurous idiot I am, I kept going off the trails (ignoring signs all over not to do such a thing) and I was just about to jump over the railing and peek right over the edge of that waterfall. Luckily, I have a strong husband who knows me too well. He would not let me hop the railing. Boo on him, but it was probably a good thing.

Then... came walking down the trail. No more than a hundred yards of that sharp decline, and I feel a stabbing at my knee, then the quick instinctual reaction of muscles tightening around inflamed tendons, making the whole joint stiffen. We jokes about needing a ranger to helicopter me out, and just pushed on. The more we went, the worse the pain got. Soon, I couldn't bend my knee at all. It was on fire! Matt was holding on to me because I kept losing balance.

And then I heard the pop!

*cue ominous thunderclap!!!!*

I knew that sound too well, ingrained in my memory from the injury I took at work in 2004. A loud pop, loud enough for others around me to hear, a pain in the knee, then everything seems okay... until you take a step forward. It happened two years ago, and it happened again. I waited for the initial pain to go away, then tried taking a step. And then I nearly fell.

There was no way I could go on, we were still 3/4 of a mile away, and it was almost night. Well, Matt wasn't about to leave me alone on the trail, we had no clue who we could call (plus we were so far out, our cell phones probably wouldn't have worked), and I was being my usual stubborn-ass self, so I pushed on.

30 degree grade, night quickly making everything dark, bugs coming out for the night (and a snake which I almost stepped on), no more tourists on the trail, and I'm holding onto Matt, putting almost my whole weight on this poor boy who hadn't done any hiking since he was a boyscout, whose idea of a workout is walking across the street to the pub.

Well, I'm sure you've seen enough movies to know how this turned out. Me hobbling, barely able to put any weight on my left leg, yet having no other choice but keep going, Matt realizing he had muscles he never knew existed, darkness all around, forest noises creeping us out. What was supposed to be a simple one-mile trail took us almost a full five hours to finish. We got back to the car some time after eight. We went to a nice restaurant, enjoyed the rest of the night, got back home, and crashed!

Next morning comes... and so does the pull brunt of the pain. Matt's muscles wage a rebellion, my knee refuses to bend, Ibuprofen becomes more holy than the Shroud, and out comes the booze to dull the pain. A jug of rum and a few beers later, we're both hobbling like a bunch of old fogies. No way we can make it to the beach, nor do we have any desire to do anything besides rest and sleep.

And that was our anniversary, romantic and painful, but not in any S&M way. We're still recovering. Matt seems to be walking better, but my knee is pretty bad off. I can't go see a doctor, because I'm not on Matt's insurance yet and we have no money. So I keep it heated and iced, Matt waits on me, I get to lay around and read.

Wait a minute.... this has turned out to be a pretty damn good anniversary after all!!!!

Here are some pictures we took.

The view from across the highway. I wonder how many truckers even notice it's there.


As best of the entire height as I could get. It's VERY tall.

Here I am!



Handsome!



Matt said my hair looked like a waterfall.

Looking down from the footbridge at the secondary falls.

We had some great views of the Columbia Gorge on the way up.



There were signs everywhere not to go off the path. When do I ever follow directions But lookie what I found. Purdy!


This is the first of the three falls, at the very top of the big falls. Matt was getting creative with time lapse and stuff.

Looking down from the very very top of the falls. You really can't see OVER it, not without climbing out of the observation deck (which I nearly did and Matt stopped me, he was worried I'd slip) so I just reached out as far as I could with the camera and snapped.

The two of us at the top lookout. Notice I'm already taking pressure off my left leg.


It was very late by the time we got down, but Matt still wanted to take some pictures. I think this was the halfway marker or something, since there's still some gloaming light. It's really weird how the water seems to light up at night, considering there are no lights around, not even on the trail, which was very frightening, I'll tell ya!

NaNoWriMo

November blows in with crisp, autumnal aromas and the sound of a thousand novelists furiously tapping away at keyboards across the world.

It's that time of year again: NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month.

I'm not blogging much about this event, because my fingers are nearly bleeding from all the typing I've done over the past week. All I'll say is I'm working hard to make that 50,000 word deadline, and I have a horrendous case of writer's block at the moment (thus the blogging). Both me and my sister have entered. We'll see if either one of us finishes.

Pirate's Last Meal

Want some grub and grog to feed yer hearties that's pirate-themed? Here's a little somethin' I've cooked many a time, and everyone loves it.

What ye be needin':

Some form of meat, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar, lime juice, pepper, a big plastic ziplock bag to mix it all in, and of course RUM!

First off mateys, forget measureage. You're a pirate! Pirates don't have cute little measuring spoons! We dump in however much we want. So dump in lots of soy sauce and worch... worshe... worchest... whose-chest? YARRRR! Lots of that good stuff. It should fill an inch or two of the baggie.

Then dump a bit o' brown sugar in there, not too much, half a cup or so, enough to make it like wet sand... wet sand on the salty beaches of a Caribbean island! Arrr....

Then dump rum in there, maybe a jigger's worth, smartly now, no wasting the grog! Squeeze a lime wedge, or get those bottles with lime juice and squirt some in there. Then shake enough pepper to taste but not too much to make you sneeze. Freshly ground pepper is best, but we're pirates, we don't have the pleasure of gettin' the finer things in life. Shake that baggie up. It should be like quicksand, avast!

Toss in what vituals ye want. I likes me deshelled shrimp, but it can be chicken too if'n ye wants. Whatever pleases yer fancy.

Zip it nice and tight and let the meat soak in the marinade for an hour in a cool spot, like down in the dank corners of the bilge, but ye can use the refrigerator. Then flip the bag and soak another hour. You're getting the flavor of pirate-musk in there, not something to rush.

When the meat is nice and flavorful, take it out of the baggie and grill it up good and hot. No raw meat now, mateys! Get sick from the rockin' of the ship, not the cookin'.

You can serve it with whatever be to yer liking. I like to serve it with a side of brown rice with pineapples. Pineapples really enhance that erotic... I mean exotic flavor.

Exotic, you know, like palm trees swaying and a three-masted schooner anchored offshore, sipping your mai tai as you watch the sea gulls fly by.

Speaking of mai tai, the grog is important too. Vituals must have the right grog. Rum, of course! You can serve something fancy-like (mai tai, daiquiri, pina colada) or be simple and just have a rum and coke. Or just rum! If you're one of them landlubber teatottler sort, no worries matey, the rum in the meat cooks out, no alcohol there, just flavor, and you can down it with some pineapple juice if it pleases ye.

So that's my recipe. Simple because it's adjustable. You can toss other spices into the marinade, like cayenne and ginger and other fancy-like things, but we're pirates! When did you last hear a pirate complain that he's out of ginger? Arrrr!

This is what I use, simple and savory. Savvy?

Rock the Angels, Trumpet Man

Rock the angels, trumpet man!

Maynard Ferguson
(May 4, 1928 - August 23, 2006)

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My first exposure to Maynard Ferguson was high school jazz band. We played Birdland, MacArthur Park, Chameleon, Gospel John, and others. Mr. Pergola played for us his Maynard records. Our trumpeters' eyes just bugged! The rest of us were left in serious awe. Since then, that screaming trumpet has tickled my ears and boggled my mind, but always made me smile with teenage memories.

My band director, Mike Pergola, passed away last year, and to lose such a mentor and a music legend so close together is sad. The world has lost a beautiful voice, but I know future musicians will hear Maynard Ferguson and be in awe just as I was when Mr. Pergola opened my mind to a new stratosphere of sound.