Drawing on the right side of the food court

I have been sketching a lot at the downtown library. And the other day I headed over there because I was downtown with Howard and I had a couple of hours to work while he went to the dentist. On my way to the library, though, I stopped and looked around.

I thought: I have drawn everything out the windows of the library that there is to draw!

That was when I saw Main Place Mall. Let me check out the food court, I thought. The food court is on the second floor and perhaps there are some views.

And sure enough!

I went in and I drew the Rand Building and the Brisbane Building. There was a table that afforded me a pretty good view. And it beat drawing the same old stuff I have drawn a million times from the library. I mean, I love some of the views from the library. But there are not as many as you think.

It is a strange situation you encounter in the Main Place Mall food court, I must point that out.

On the one hand is the sound system. They play classical music, I guess to try to make people finish up their lunch and go. Me, of course, I love it. On this occasion they were alternating between Mozart and Beethoven, mostly chamber music, but with some piano concertos tossed in. Even with the system being on shuffle, it was heaven.

On the other hand there is this garbage person who orbits the food court ceaselessly pushing this deafening garbage cart. Again, they do not want you to get too comfortable.

Also there were all these guys. There are no women in the food court! It was just me and these guys. And this one guy in particular kept yapping into his cell phone. Apparently people were wanting money from him and that was what he was talking about. He had a million calls going on and to each caller he kept saying, "I'm going to call you back."

True, you get in the drawing zone and you do not hear too much anyway. It fades out. But in the meantime I was getting a little stressed and I am afraid it would show in my work.

Well, all is well that ends well. I liked what I did and when Howard got out of the dentist I went home with him happy.

 And the next day I went back again, this time with my friend Meghan who is super-artistic and sketches with me. It was exactly the same as the first day -- Mozart and Beethoven quartets, schufts and oiks, the garbage guy, no other women in the food court, uneasy cell phone conversations, the whole bit. But we were there for, yikes, almost five hours! And we did good work.

Above is my second portrayal of the Rand Building and the Brisbane Building. The best part is the street lamp, to my way of thinking. I like to draw exactly what is in front of my eyes. It is a kind of souvenir.

The Main Place Mall food court .... I will remember it!

The Easter feaster

I went to Albrecht Discount and bought most of my Easter groaning board.

We are talking ham AND lamb.

Meatfest!!

Aldi is good for both items. They always have good and well-priced hams. Because it is a German chain they love their smoked meats at Aldi, do they.

Asparagus was sold out. That's OK, my mom said she was sick of asparagus anyway. I keep cooking asparagus because I love it and now is the time. But I got two big cauliflowers. I have an mind a cauli casserole with cheddar cheese. Good for Thanksgiving or Easter. Cauliflower is one of my favorite things.

I also got salad fixings. And I will make pie crusts because my teenage nieces are going to be coming over to do Easter baking. Tomorrow I may add to my spread. We shall see.

I got Austrian dark chocolate for my mom. You should see the Easter chocolate at Aldi. All kinds of chocolate from Germany and Austria. Eggs, bunnies ...

... and there is this Moser Roth chocolate, like something Gustav Mahler would buy ...

... for Alma, after one of their fights. You gain weight just walking in the door!

But you take off the weight packing up your items. I was dragging these big bags around the store with everyone looking at me pityingly. Huge, heavy items were in my bags, including that big ol' ham and a gallon of milk.

What made me smile was the ceremonial annual buying of the Half and Half.

I drink my morning coffee black during Lent. I know you are not supposed to mention your sacrifices but mine is so pathetic next to the stuff other people give up that what is the difference. Honest, I can just see Christ rolling His eyes. "Mary. Black coffee. I mean, seriously."

But I hate black coffee! Except under certain circumstances, by which I mean after dinner sometimes, with a rich dessert. Early in the morning, in Pennario's bathrobe, working on my book, I like that coffee with cream and sugar. I crave it. I know this will not win me points with St. Peter but still.

So I was delighted to see a few cartons of Half and Half left. You are mine, baby! You are mine!

Emerging from the store my happy haze evaporated because of a boom car sitting outside.

Some schuft was apparently waiting for his woman to come out of the store. He had the SUV parked at the curb, all open so you could hear the stereo. And it was this loud, nasty rap! With the F word. The MF word. Everything imaginable! I wanted to call the cops, you know?

The checkout gal at Aldi had told me it was a zoo because it was Easter plus the first of the month. But this is unbelievable.

I mean, it is Good Friday!

Sometimes I worry about the world and this was one of those times.

Oh well. Back in the car I brightened. It was the presence of that Half and Half. The Aldi brand is Happy Farms. Suits me! I am one happy camper.

Or I will be, come Sunday.

The chimney dance

Yesterday I had the thankless job of calling the chimney folks on behalf of my mother.

My mom has this stove sort of thing that heats a room, and it happens to be her favorite room to be in, and it could be heated other ways, however, this stove is the favored way. So if the stove is on the fritz the room is closed off.

A few weeks ago the chimney folks were over to fix the thing but they needed parts. My mom paid for the parts and the chimney folks said they would order them, and they left.

And that was that. End of story.

Until yesterday!

"Call them up, will you?" my mother said. "Tell them I'm old and sick."

So I did.

And you know what happened, is what always happened, the two words I never heard from the chimney company were "I'm sorry."

No: "I'm sorry this is taking so long."

No: "I imagine your mom must be getting impatient."

They found the order and everything, was the good news. My mom had paid a deposit of something like $350. But all I got was that the parts had not come in yet. No apology, no time frame. Just: "It's a busy time of year."

The woman I talked to even got in a "honey." "Honey, it's a busy time of year."

Of course I was sweet as pie. Aren't we always? We always figure that the nicer we are, the nicer people will be to us.

I am starting to rethink that.

I am starting to think that if you are nice everyone walks all over you. Obliviously, too. They do not even give you credit for getting out of their way. They do not notice! They just walk.

I see that in Leonard Pennario's life, never mind that he was the world's greatest pianist, and I see it in mine.

Exhibit A, this chimney schuft yesterday. Can't be nice like Burt in "Mary Poppins."



Wow, just watching that cheers me up! I had forgotten a lot of that. How Admiral Boom gets into the act.

Then: "It's the master!"

"What's all this?"

Too funny.

Sigh for the days when chimney specialists were men of talent and principle.

My life would be different!

Torch song

Howard and I were fascinated by the story about a Buffalo car dealer accused of hiring arsonists to torch the Department of Motor Vehicles office on Dingens Street and also the personal car of one of the DMV's inspectors. And I guess he pulled it off! No one was hurt because the fire at the DMV happened on Christmas Eve when no one was there. The inspector's car was parked in front of his house.

No one appears to have gotten hurt, thank God for that.

With which, the big elephant-in-the-room question is:

What did the DMV do to this guy to push him this far?

It is not hard to imagine!

"You need to go to the back of the line."

"No, I'm sorry, we do not accept that form."

"This is the wrong line. The line you should be in is the one over there."

I know a thing or two myself about the DMV and the things it can do to drive a person crazy. Remember when I went to renew my driver's license? Hahahahaaa .... I was just reading over that. I had forgotten so many of the details! For instance, the woman who said she had been to the DMV a few days before that. "I was there for four hours and I never did make it through."

The woman saying to me, as we neared the window: "I'm excited. Isn't it stupid? But this is exciting, finally getting here." I am so glad I wrote that down!

Then the idea of Leonard Pennario writing: "Midnight at the DMV." That would have been one sinister piece! Virtuosic, no doubt, but sinister.

Also the comments, I am laughing at them. I had not realized I had gotten comments. My friend Larry talking about the DMV's in Virginia: "Here, they are ALL lazy, rude, inconsiderate, incompetent, mean, sadistic, egotistical, etc. slugs!"

Honest, I am not saying you should go around torching DMV's. But I could understand what made this guy want to do it.

It is bad enough just being a normal motorist and having to deal with the DMV. 

Imagine being in the car business!

The usher from the black lagoon

You know that classic type, the grouchy volunteer usher? I just encountered a great specimen.

That is how I am trying to train myself to deal with annoying people. I am trying to think of them as specimens to be studied and savored. The clerk at the supermarket who checks out your purchases without ever meeting your eye. The girl in the locker room at the gym who says "like" seven times in one sentence.

The mean usher, in my extensive experience, is a volunteer, and over the age of 60, and female. They are everywhere, not just at the Philharmonic. One of the worst ones I encountered ever was at Shea's.

I will probably never top the unbelievable specimen I encountered at Artpark two --- aaaaiiiee, three -- years ago, the one who blocked my path and would not let me leave when the music was over. Wow, I cannot believe that was three years ago. Pennario had just died. I had braces on my teeth.

But tonight's usher was a classic all the same.

The Philharmonic was playing Tchaikovsky. My little brother George was with me. We were trying to bring in what I guess was contraband -- i.e., a box of crackers. George had the crackers in a plastic bag along with some leftover pasta with zucchini that he had filched from my fridge.

We were trying to enter the hall from the lawn when an usher blocked our path.

"You can't bring anything in," she said.

I am thinking, come on. Last time I walked in with a bottle of wine and two glasses and nobody stopped me. But you cannot mention that to the ushers. You do not want to antagonize them.

Never antagonize a volunteer! That goes for athletic events as well as for cultural events. They hold the power. Your best bet is to behave.

Luckily for George and me we are old hands at this. We actually enjoy it. We went around to another door and another usher and, dusting off skills we had not used in some years, we walked in.

Upon discussing it later, we realized it cheered us up.

It made us feel alive, to be smuggling something in!

Even if it was just crackers and pasta.

Water under the bridge

Today I forgot to pay my water bill. I mean, I had forgotten to pay my water bill. And so they shut my water off.

The meanies!

The grinches!

It is not as bad as it sounds. This sort of thing actually happens a lot now that I am working on my book on Leonard Pennario.

Plus my water bill delinquency led to a story I will be laughing about for the rest of my life.

The deal was, I had to go downtown to Exchange Street to pay. As soon as you are in serious trouble with the water department they make it as tough as possible to pay your bill. I had to go and Mapquest my way to their office and then go there in a snowstorm.

The scene at the water office was not pretty. At first I breeze up to this teller thinking I can pay my bill and be out of there. Oh no. Oh, no! Not so fast! I had to take a number and go see the person in the office.

They point me to this numbers machine exactly as you would see if you were at a deli. My number was 68. I took the number and sat down obediently because I am German and I follow orders.

There is only one desk open for customer service and this one woman is parked at this desk. Ten, 15 minutes pass. The woman keeps talking. I can hear the conversation. She owns a bunch of slum properties and she is trying to straighten out all her water accounts. I hear: "That house on Bailey was torn down. I just want to make sure that's off the list."

I have nothing to do. They had a sign forbidding cell phones and I was afraid if I took out my cell phone it might be taken away from me. Let us pause to contemplate the idiocy of this situation. Here these people are supposed to be working for us. And instead they are bossing us.

Meanwhile a few more people join me in the little waiting room. This Chatty Cathy comes and sits down next to me. She starts this conversation about these cuffs I am wearing, that my sister Katie knitted for me. Being a Buffalonian I am always ready to talk so, OK, I answer her questions. The conversation quickly gets boring with this woman doing all the talking. She is talking this nonstop talk about all these cats she has. My eyes keep straying toward the room where the slumlord is still talking. I was so desperate I began praying. Please, God, please, get this slumlord out of here so I can pay my water bill and go home.

The cat woman keeps talking. The minutes keep passing.

Ten more minutes pass. They feel like 10 hours.

Finally .... finally .... the slumlord gets up. She stops and chats for a few minutes with the clerk. Apparently they know each other. Fine, just chat on my dime, you know? I'm not in any hurry or anything.

At last she leaves. The clerk says, "Next."

Not: "Number 68."

And in that split second, Cat Woman gets up and sprints into the office and shuts the door.

And I am sitting there in shock. Thinking: I was here first.... or was I? Yes, I was. I was here first. There was no one here when I took my number and sat down and after that was when this woman sat down.

Then I saw what had happened. This woman had been this kind of con artist. That was why she had been chatting me up. She was clearly familiar with this place, which I was not, and she knew that if she talked and established this friendly atmosphere she could cut in front of me and the odds would be less that I would make a stink. No, I would hesitate. I would be nice. Which is what I had done. It had all gone according to her plan.

As Howard said later it was like being mugged.

So here I am still sitting there. Now the door is shut so I cannot even hear what is going on. Five minutes pass.

Holy cow ...

... I thought.

I could be in here all day!

And I started getting mad. My bill was not that much. A few hundred dollars. As Howard said it is almost impossible to have your water shut off. This has never happened to me in my life. I have heard of stories about delinquent water bills but they are always in the tens of thousands of dollars. Here I am, small potatoes, and now this woman has cut in front of me and my whole day must be sacrificed.

Finally I got up. I went over to the teller. And I began to complain.

"I have to get back to work," I said. "That woman in front of me cut in line. I'm worried about how long this is going to take. I was here first and she dashed into the office in front of me."

The teller gave me the usual bureaucratic runaround. "I am just the teller." Etc.

"But that clerk in there mishandled the situation," I complained. "I took the number as you told me to and the clerk did not call the number. She said, 'Next, please.' That paved the way for that woman to cut in line. It isn't fair."

After a minute or two the teller told me to wait a minute please. And she vanished. She seemed to be heading for the clerk's office.

Where she went, exactly, I do not know nor do I care. All I know is, in a few seconds the door burst open, the door to the clerk's office. And Cat Woman, the woman who had cut in line, was ejected.

Just like that!

As if she were kicked in the pants!

And I was ushered in.

I could not believe it. I kept looking over my shoulder with my mouth open. After I paid my water bill I was still looking over my shoulder wondering if this woman would be out there waiting to cut me. Luckily she was not. Where she went, exactly, I do not know nor do I care.

Our water...

... was turned on in a few hours. The crisis was over.

But this memory is different.

It will stay with me forever!

• 
  
• 
  

  Larry Wroblewski Does seem strange for a shut-off for one late bill, but the Mayor did say he was going to hold the line on property taxes, gotta do that somehow. Now settle back for this Summer's major re-val.
  

  3 hours ago · 
• 
  

  Libby B. Maeder How incredibly aggravating! At times like this aren't you glad you are a writer so you can vent and avoid having a stroke? How utterly ridiculous and inefficient. Imagine a private business trying to run that way and stay in business longer than a month.
  

  2 hours ago · 
• 
  

  Arthur Page Be sure Cat Lady isn't lurking outside your door! Think she might be Jeremiah's sister? Seem to share the chatty gene.
  

  about an hour ago · 
• 
  

  Edziu Kornski Man some of my bad Karma must have rubbed off on you, I hope you dont de-friend me because of it?
  

  about an hour ago · 

Schuft-speak

This morning my friend Brian Meyer from work posted something on Facebook looking for our grammar pet peeves. The things that people say that drive us crazy.

You know me, I love being given a soapbox like that!

Before I knew it I was dominating the conversation. So to avoid driving everyone crazy I thought I would allow myself the luxury of listing on the Web log the top things that drive me crazy about how everyone talks. Me, of course, my speech is perfect. Not. I remember in California I would get into some convoluted sentence and Pennario would start laughing at me and I would say, "And Leonard, I promise I will use better sentence structure when writing the book."

Ha, ha! But enough about me.

Here are my Top Irritants.

1.) Like, like, like, like, like. This is the one I wrote on Brian's page. I wrote, "What drives me crazy is the word "like," over and over. Women are the worst offenders. In the gym locker room all you hear is "It's like... it's like... I'm like... like... like... like..." I guess it's better than what you hear in guys' locker rooms ; ) but until women stop talking like this I do not want to hear any talk about glass ceilings."

That is a picture of me in the locker room!

Ttalk of locker rooms reminded me of another peeve which is:


2.) Swear words whenever you turn around!


Well, that is kind of off topic. Let me continue.


3.) "Disrespect," used as a verb. It seems to be accepted everywhere now.


4.) That nasty ugly "suck," everywhere you look. "That sucks!" It is so obscene and no one thinks about it. It is as if everyone has turned into Beavis and Butthead, you know?


5.) That reminds me, "you know."


6.) "Snuck." You see this in print and it kills me. "He snuck into the house." It just looks so unprofessional. I get great pleasure out of writing, correctly, "sneaked."


7.) "Really, really, really whatever." My dad yelled at me for piling too many really's on top of each other with the result that I always notice it.


8.) This one is timely: "Feb-yoo-ary." 


9.) This one is in the kiddie pool, I realize I am being fussy but I do not like when people say "their" instead of "him or her." "Got someone special in your life? Name a star after them!" I do not like that!


10.) "Omigod" and "I swear to God." Usually the same person is guilty of both.


Wow, 10 gripes, about 15 seconds. That was as long as I took to write that!


Next week I should do the next 10!

Soup to nuts

So today I am at the soup kitchen, as you can tell from the picture above. And I make this stew I think is beautiful. I got it out of "The Moosewood Restaurant Cooks For a Crowd." My sister Katie gave it to me.

I was making Caribbean Black Beans and I added a whole mess of wonderful ham to it. It is great to take a vegetarian stew recipe even if you are going to add meat to it because most meat stew recipes, they have nothing but meat and onions and spices and maybe tomatoes, never many vegetables. So it is good to start with a vegetarian recipe and then think about adding the meat.

I served myself a bit to taste it and it was wonderful. You saute up these onions with all these herbs and spices and then you add the beans, plus, I added some leftover baked beans the kitchen had in the fridge. Plus the ham. Then it baked in orange juice.

I would serve this for a party! That is how good it was.

Then I made a rice pilaf to go with it.

And here is what happens. I am done and ready to leave because I have to interview Kaye Ballard, remember, about Leonard Pennario. And one of the guests shows up who is staying in this shelter where I cook at, as we like to put it in Buffalo.

"What's for dinner?" he asks.

This is a question we are not supposed to answer but I am stupid so I do anyway. I said it was a Caribbean ham stew with black beans.

"I don't eat beans," this oik says. Oik is a British word I am picking up from my British music buddies on Twitter. It means schuft!

"Well, you don't have to eat the beans," I said.

"You mean I can pick them out?"

"You can do whatever you want," I said. "You can eat the ham. The ham is in big pieces."

And this schuft, this oik, just looks at me angrily!

Then he goes on whining and complaining. And I start getting all mad.

Everyone is so entitled! That is what I whispered to Jim, the volunteer in the front office. He rolled his eyes and agreed with me.

So once again I will be getting no time off from Purgatory because of my, ahem, charity venture. Number one I get mad at the people I serve. "Bums" is the word coming to mind at the moment. And number two it made me mad so here I am writing about it for all the world to see. There are points deducted for that, too, in the great hereafter.

I will probably end up in Purgatory for a long long time the way I am going.

And not only that, but I will probably have to cook there!

Here is an artist's rendering of Purgatory. I am the woman with the laurels on my head, on my way to the kitchen!


Meanwhile Pennario will be up there in heaven thanks to all the candles I lit for him at church, which, I lit one just this morning. And he will be wondering where I am. So will my father -- and my grandfather the Lackawanna haberdasher, whose birthday is today.

All because I let that bum today get me mad and then I wrote about it. Not only that, but I used Howard's joke in the headline. "Soup to nuts" is what Howard calls my, ahem, charity venture. Today I say, he is right!

Ay me!