Fat Fingers, Kale and Some Other Stuff

Here is a little Tuesday night randomness:

Apparently I have fat fingers.  I was told once that I have long fingers which would be good for playing piano.  Six months ago I had narrowed my music lesson choices down to either piano or guitar and chose guitar, partly because of its portability.  Long fingers should help when playing guitar too but my finger tips seem to be large too, which makes it difficult to play an A chord, for example … seven of the twelve bars in a blues song in A are A or A7 chords.  An interesting challenge.

My favorite farmer at my local weekly farmer’s market has had kale for several weeks.  I don’t know anything about kale, so I looked it up.  Turns out kale is one of the healthiest veggies around.  How do you prepare and eat kale?  No clue, so I looked that up too.  This paragraph is brought to you by Google.  So tonight I cooked kale for the first time ever and it was pretty good.  The recipe said to cut the kale into ½ inch strips then cross cut the strips.  Wow, I usually leave leafy vegetables in leafy form.  But I complied with the instructions, added some chopped onions to the mix, steamed for five minutes.  Meanwhile I prepared a suggested Mediterranean dressing (olive oil, lemon, garlic, pepper, tomatoes), tossed the steamed kale in the dressing as indicated in the recipe and … it was pretty good.

I am renewing my lease this week.  Wow, it has been almost a year since I moved here.  Hard to believe.  My rent will go up, of course, but research and persistence got the increase from $150/month down to $50/month.  My negotiating skills have improved with age.

How many times have I said ‘wow’ in this post?

Met a friend for dinner last night, part business and part catching up.  Even though my family tree is part French and my mother’s first language was a French/Canadian/Cajun version of French, I don’t think I had ever eaten at a French restaurant.  But that’s where we went.  It was pretty good.  And we ate outdoors, a habit I have fully embraced for about four years now, and last night might have been the last time this season when the temperature was warm enough to have an evening meal outside.

The Google reference a few paragraphs was a bit sarcastic, although I really did do my kale research using that ubiquitous search engine.  But that reminded me of ‘product placement’, a trend in advertising.  When a product or brand is mentioned or shown in a movie or television show scene, that is product placement.  Sometimes it is subtle, like a bottle of Budweiser sitting on a bar.  Tonight I caught one on NCIS that was simultaneously subtle and not subtle.  McGee is listing items found at a crime scene … something, something, something and an Amazon Prime card.  OK, tell me, do you have an Amazon Prime card in your wallet or purse?  Do you know anyone who has one?  There are some out there and I am certainly aware of them because I get the ‘free shipping’ pitch every time I order something from Amazon.  But I have never heard that product mentioned in random conversation or a random television scene.  Product placement.

I bought five new CDs from Amazon last week and finally started listening to them this morning.  Tedeschi Trucks “Made Up Mind” is very good.  They’re coming to my area in January and tickets are on sale.  I think I will buy some.  Actually one.  See an earlier blog about going to concerts alone for the rest of what I would normally say to close this thought and paragraph.

OK, time to move my fat fingers from this laptop keyboard back to my guitar strings.  Thanks for visiting.  Eat some kale.