Chef Mojo

Happy Birthday To The Lady!

Well, it's Valentine's Day, and that's not a good thing. Or it is, depending on how you look at it.

In our household, Valentine's Day is something of a curse.

First off, I'm a chef, and Valentines is a sorry service to work. Busy as hell with frantic men taking out their women for a night on the town; something that approximates their somewhat skewed view of what romance consists of. So they take the girl out to dinner to a restaurant staffed with an incredibly stressed staff that would rather be fighting the Taliban than serving you food.

Think about that for a moment...

Second, this is The Lady's birthday, and we can't really go out to celebrate it, because of the above. And especially today. We've been on the road. That's right. The Lady, great sport that she is, has been on the road with me on her birthday to Savannah, Georgia. And it's not on vacation or anything like that. No, Chef Mojo had a major catering gig out on Tybee Island, and he needs The Lady to help him pick through 25 pounds or so of crab meat so he can do his job. 450 or so little crab cakes, along with shrimp, asparagus, stuffed tomatoes, tapenade and a cheese display for 150 well heeled Savannahians and Islanders. Jeez. I feel like I'm in the middle of a train wreck...

But all is not lost. Tomorrow, we'll take some time off and do it up right with a birthday dinner at Elizabeth on 37th, perhaps one of the best restaurants on the East Coast. We're going to take a taxi, eat like dukes and drink like kings and pretty much enjoy the hell out of ourselves.

So, thanks, sweetie. For everything. Love you lots.

14 Years

There are anniversaries and then there are Anniversaries.

Happy Anniversary, Sweetie. Love you lots.

Radio Daze

For those of you who are interested and/or suffering from insomnia, The Lady will be doing the DJ thing on WNRN from 2:00 am till 6:00 am. She's laying down voice tracks as I write this.

Just go to WNRN's website and click on the "Listen Online" button to the left. As long as you have Windows Media Player and a bunch of caffeine, you should be able to listen.

Enjoy!

So What Am I Doing Up At This Hour On A Saturday Morning?

Another good question. Well, I am up because The Lady made her DJ debut on WNRN this morning between 4:00 and 6:00 ayem. And for something that got thrown together literally at the last minute, she sounded great on the station breaks.

Fortunately, she did not actually need to be at the station at those ungodly hours; she did the "voice tracks" yesterday afternoon. I gotta say that she sounds great on the air. I know I'm biased and all, but there you go.

Modern technology! Ain't it grand?

What A Day

So, we didn't go into C'ville. Instead, we went to Short Pump Mall outside of Richmond to hang out, window shop and eat at Maggiano's Little Italy.

We ended up at the Apple Store, where The Lady sprang a suprise on me by buying me a new 30 gig iPod for as an anniversary present. I'm still blown away by that. She is the bomb.

At this moment, I'm loading music by the ton onto my new, black iPod, which shall be henceforth named, "Mojo Box."

Huzzah! So it is written. So shall it be.

Next, we had a great early dinner at Maggiano's, where we pretty much stuffed ourselves silly. Oy.

Have I mentioned lately that The Lady rocks.

Happy Birthday!

It's February 14th and that means...

Oh, no. It's not what you think. It's even better. Today is The Lady's birthday.

Happy Birthday, sweetie. You're the cat's meow!

Listen To The Lady!

I don't know why I haven't gotten around to posting about this till now. The Pixies show reminded me. We hooked up with Jaz, who is Jaz Tupelo. She's a DJ at WNRN, C'ville's commercial free modern rock station. WNRN is what the late WHFS used to be way back when. Great music and no commercials.

Now, The Lady, back when she was at Haverford College, was a DJ at the college station, and she's always missed that. After getting to know Jaz a little on the outside, she decided to go to work at WNRN as a volunteer. One of the things that the volunteers do is morning and afternoon newscasts, and that is what The Lady is doing on Tuesday mornings! She puts the news together the night before, gets up at an ungodly hour, goes in, gets some coffee and does 90 second news spots every 20 minutes from 6 till 9.

Well, if you've ever wondered what The Lady sounds like on the radio, you can catch her on Tuesday mornings by clicking here, which will take you to the WNRN site. When you get there, click the "Listen Online" button. You'll need Windows Media Player for it. The Lady is up at the top of the hour, 20 after and 20 before.

And don't just listen to the Lady. WNRN is a fantastic radio station. Why not listen to it online all the time if you're not local to C'ville?

Idiot Teacher

In addition to the story below, The Lady had another story. It was not as serious, but it was tragic in its own way. Anyway, I'll turn Chef Mojo over to The Lady and let her tell the story:

Another one of the historical interpreters (tour guides) had a story to tell regarding a teacher/chaperone on one of his tours yesterday morning.  A teacher with a group of students asked this guide whether Jefferson knew Lincoln.  She said that since there are copies of the Declaration of Independence in the house, was Jefferson a fan of Lincoln?  The guide was perplexed, and asked what she meant.  She said, well, Lincoln wrote the Declaration of Independence, and there are copies of the Declaration here, so did Jefferson know Lincoln?  The guide responded, ever so diplomatically, that Lincoln was born after Jefferson had died, and that it was Jefferson who wrote the Declaration of Independence.  The teacher replied, "Well, I'm a science teacher, so I don't need to know things like that."

What can you say after hearing a story like that?  And this is hardly the first time that we guides have heard things like this coming from schoolteachers and the public in general.  I really should be creating  a "Wall of Shame," a list of stupid questions and comments overheard at Monticello.  I did that for exam essay questions while teaching at the University of Maryland, College Park.  Of course, at Monticello, with close to 500,000 visitors a year, keeping track of the many stupid mutterings would be an impossible task.

Tragedy on the Mountain

Yesterday, The Lady and I got home at about the same time. We settled down in the kitchen with our first cocktails of the evening and shared the day's events. I went first; pretty uneventful. No problems.

The Lady, on the other hand, had a couple of stories, one of them downright tragic, from our point of view. To refresh, The Lady, among other things, works at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home. We refer to it as "the Mountain."

On one of the tours up on the Mountain today, a teenage girl fainted. This is a pretty common occurrence, especially in the summer, and tends to happen mostly to teenage girls. This fainting spell had disastrous consequences, however.

In the House on the tour, one passes from Jefferson's Book Room to his bedroom by going past his Cabinet, or office. In this office are a number of fascinating objects, many of them original to Jefferson. One of the neatest things there is a revolving book stand, probably designed by Jefferson and built at the Monticello joinery by a slave, possibly John Hemings. It's an ingenious, yet simple device. This is what it looks like:

The one in the picture is actually a repro available through the Monticello gift shop. As you can see, it allows a prolific reader to keep a number of open books close at hand.

So, this girl faints, pitches headlong into the Cabinet, hitting Jefferson's desk, which sends the book stand flying into the air. It lands with a crash on the floor, breaking.

The Lady is not sure of the extent of the damage to this priceless historical object, but any damage cannot be good.

Both The Lady and I were horrified by this. It really bought home how easily things like this can happen up at Monticello. Monticello is a very open place; there are only ropes to keep you out of spaces which the Foundation does not want the general public to have access to. Granted, a number of the spaces are alarmed, but what good is that? By the time anyone can respond to the alarm, the damage is done. And this was an accident (although The Lady and I are really down on teenage girls starving themselves into fainting spells at this point in time...). What if some nut job decides to sneak a hammer into the house and go after the Houdon bust of Jefferson, valued at $15 million? There is really nothing to stop such a person, and that really worries me. There are a large number of historically significant objects at Monticello, many of them within arm's reach. The famous Gilbert Stuart portrait of Jefferson (co-owned by Monticello and the National Portrait Gallery) is displayed in a way that if you lean over to look at it, it's only a few feet away. This is just not right. I believe the original objects should be in a museum environment built somewhere on the Mountain and the House should be stocked with very good reproductions. Why take the risk of having priceless, historical and irreplaceable objects within reach of the public? Especially a modern public with little or no appreciation of the significance of what they are viewing.

Happy Anniversary!

I just wanted to take a moment to wish a Happy First Anniversary to The Lady. A year ago (actually February 29th...), The Lady took my hand in hers and made me the happiest man alive.

After all we've been through, whenever I look at her curled up on the sofa with a cat and a book, I still smile and still feel that memory.

I love you, sweetie.