Thank you for your comments, Noodle. Am I to guess if that’s you reading a book?
April Fools Day has come and gone, but go to thirdcoastdigest.com and read all about All Fools Day and how I got snookered in Iowa in the long ago. I mean the photograph of my brother cross-bred with a sheep is worth the click, isn’t it?
If you’re curious about who is the newest “narrator” of the Pfister blog, pay a visit to the neat clean site. The panel met on March 31 to view videos of the finalists, and then, in a civil democratic way, make our final decision. Because we were sitting in the newly refurbished Pfister café, things were easier, though getting past the array of sweets is another story. Julie Ferris, the out-going Narrator with the auburn curls, sat to my left, and a really fun guy with gray hair, from the Business Journal on my right. He’s expecting, at any moment, his fifth grandchild, so midway through the discussion, he excused himself to check on the progress of this thing called “giving birth.” By the time you read this, No. 5 perhaps will have checked in.
All’s well that ends well. Directly to the south of the café, across the way, artist-in-residence, Shelby Keefe, was moving into her space, where she and her paintings will be installed should you care to visit. The Pfister is worth it.
My dropping of fat continues and I’ve graduated to smaller pants (trousers? slacks?) and a few hideous rags hanging in my closet, symbols of a past life, now hang loosely on me.
There’s no magic to the soy-based powder I drink (Medifast), but I’m determined to stick with the plan. It ain’t easy, let me tell you, which reminds me of a joke that I can’t remember. Dropping weight does nothing for one’s memory. It certainly dims the memory of big pints of Chunky Monkey and platters of pasta swimming in butter and cream.
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| Photo courtesy Web Gallery of Art. |
If you haven’t noticed, you’ll need to look skyward in the Pfister’s lobby to enjoy the myriad of plump cherubs on the ceiling. I was doing that when a lady from Eau Claire, sitting in a nearby chair, remarked that she and her spouse had driven down to attend a ceremony honoring the founders of Tombstone Pizza, something I am no longer allowed to chow down. The hotel was full to its elegant gills and the lady from Eau Claire was dazzled by the place. She wasn’t sure if they’d be having Tombstone Pizza at the award gala.
I’m still a smoker, so I tested the smoking “oasis” outside, behind a trellis, near the parking entry off the west end of the lobby. A young woman was busy filling the planters with a top layer of moss. I apologized for smoking, but she said she also smokes, so I lit up my American Spirit and sat on a bench to puff away. “The Christmas decorations downtown are gone now,” she observed, and I remarked that the oasis was so devoid of light, that I didn’t see how anything but plastic flowers would thrive. The space was only slightly better than the dismal smoking lounge on Amtrak, but that too, has gone the way of the dinosaurs. Filled with blue smoke and folks sucking and wheezing, the room was a room for the doomed where victims sat silent on slabs of benches. There wasn’t even an exhaust fan!
A Southwest Chief highlight during a ride to Arizona, was the sight of a bare butt mooning the train. It wasn’t the mob from California that gathers annually to flash and moon. No, this was a dude who emerged from the brush somewhere out in nowhere. Nice buns. He dropped his pants and slapped his bottom as we sped by. Fortunately I was sitting in a compartment with a full-moon view.
But let me tell you, Amtrak means it when the conductor announces, “If you try and smoke on this train, you will be put off at the next stop and you can find another way home.” Let’s say, you’re on the Southwest Chief, and they drop your body somewhere in the high country around Raton, Colo.
That could be a problem.
